Fools errand, p.36
Fool's Errand, page 36
Persephone only nodded, her throat having closed up again at the sight of the heads.
For what seemed a very long time, the three would-be intruders lay in a shallow depression in the earth about fifty paces from the nearest guards, waiting for the opportunity to advance. Persephone was just beginning to despair that such an opportunity would never come when, at the distant sound of a whistle, the guards all began hurrying toward the nearest gate. Realizing that it must be the changing of the guards—and that, at best, they’d have only a few minutes before the next shift arrived at their posts—Persephone whispered to Azriel and Miter to follow her. Then, before her courage fled—and without waiting to see if the other two were following her—she jumped up and, staying low, sprinted toward the nearest mountain of dirt. Darting around the head-topped spikes without looking at them, she clawed and scrambled her way up the mountain, not pausing until she’d reached the very top.
An instant later, Azriel collapsed on one side of her and Miter on the other.
“Here’s a thought,” panted Azriel. “Next time, how about we talk about what we’re going to do before we do it?”
Persephone was so dumbfounded by the sight that lay before her that she barely noticed that he’d spoken. Her first fleeting thought upon getting a bird’s-eye view of the mines was that Miter had been right: she’d seen nothing but a minuscule fraction of them during her internment there.
Her second thought was that this was surely what hell looked like.
Far below her lay a pit that was vast beyond imagining and so deep that Persephone could not see the bottom. She could, however, see the orange glow of the mighty forges she knew occupied the pit’s lowest level—forges that worked day and night to melt and mould freshly mined ore. Dotting the walls of the pit were the jagged mouths of the mine shafts that burrowed into the earth. Over the long decades, as excavation had seen the pit grow deeper and deeper, narrow, uneven ledges of rock had been left behind to allow workers to more easily access the mine shafts. These ledges were crowded with scaffolding and equipment and what looked to be thousands of half-naked slaves. Some of these pushed carts or carried timber or torches but most shuffled along carrying brimming buckets. Persephone knew that some of the buckets were filled with dirt that would eventually be tossed onto the surrounding mountains of dirt. Others were filled with ore that would be dumped into one of the massive buckets that were continually being lowered to the glowing forges below. In and amongst the slaves were the overseers—easy to spot for the fact that they were fully clothed and ever cracking their whips. Why, even as Persephone watched, an overseer on one of the higher ledges laid his lash upon the bent back of a woman who seemed to be holding up the line of bucket-toting slaves. Obviously startled, the woman stumbled to the edge of the ledge, lost her balance and fell to her death.
This was what Persephone could see.
What she could hear were the belching roars of the forges and the barking of dogs. She could hear the sound of a thousand pickaxes striking rock and of a thousand buckets of ore being up-ended. She could hear screams and droning murmurs; every few seconds, the crack of a whip would be followed by a shriek. Or not followed by a shriek—a thing Persephone knew meant that the unfortunate upon whose back the lash had landed was beyond pain and just waiting for Death.
Beyond this vast pit was another pit.
And another … and another … and another …
Terrible as these open pit mines were, however, far worse were the mines that were nothing more than holes in the ground. At least the slaves in the open pits occasionally breathed fresh air and saw light. They even had the chance to die beneath the open sky.
In the underground mines like the one Persephone, herself, had been locked in, the slaves got none of these things. Feeling a wave of nausea, she was struck by a vivid recollection of toiling in darkness by the meagre light of torches, of delivering her buckets of mud and ore through the bucket-sized opening in the heavy door at the mouth of the mine, each time hoping with pathetic eagerness that she’d done enough to earn her daily bread and ladleful of water.
Wildly now, Persephone’s eyes darted around, trying to pick out the particular door that had slammed behind her all those years ago. Though she could not do it, she did recognize the barrack in which her head had been so viciously shaved on the night she’d first arrived. Outside the barrack a group of children huddled close together.
They look so small and helpless, thought Persephone, wondering if she was going to throw up. They look so—
The feel of a hand on her shoulder made her jump. Jerking her eyes away from the nightmare below, she forced herself to give Azriel a brisk nod to show that she was all right. He studied her face for a long moment before reluctantly nodding back and gesturing that she should turn around and pay attention to Miter.
“As Miter was saying,” said Miter, looking mighty peeved, “the good news is that according to the map, the particular mine we seek has been abandoned for many years.”
“How can you be sure?” asked Azriel.
Looking even more peeved, Miter said, “Because Miter personally sealed it off when he was overseer.”
“Oh?” said Persephone, trying to sound businesslike. “And … and why did you do that?”
“Because there’d been an outbreak of the Great Sickness among the workers in that particular mine,” explained Miter. “Rather than risk the entire workforce, Miter decided to seal off the mine.”
“Wait—you mean you shut up living, healthy people with the dead and the dying?” exclaimed Persephone, who’d heard rumours of such things during her time in the mines but had never believed them.
“Yes,” said Miter unconcernedly.
“So, in order to reach the healing pool we’re going to have to go into an abandoned mine littered with corpses,” said Azriel in disgust. “You call this good news?”
“No, hideous one,” sneered Miter. “That is the bad news. The good news is that the mine has been abandoned for a very long time. And the reason this is good news is that although it is true that it is nearly impossible to escape from an active mine, this place is simply too vast to guard all the mines all the time. Though it is a closely guarded secret, very important people like Miter know that abandoned mines are frequently left unguarded.”
Azriel whistled softly and said, “So that would explain how Balthazar was able to get inside.”
“And how he was able to get out again,” added Persephone.
“Yes,” said Miter, as smugly as if he’d arranged the whole thing. “Shall we proceed?”
Moving at his usual brisk pace, the Gorgish leader led them up one dirt mountain and down another for nearly an hour before finally taking them down into the heart of the mines themselves. Though the particular area they were in was clearly abandoned, and though she could see no guards at all, Persephone suddenly felt as though she was walking on the knife edge of hysteria.
This feeling eased a little when Miter trotted onward with great self-assurance but came rushing back full force when he stopped in front of an iron door fixed over a mine shaft entrance by way of a padlock as big as Persephone’s head.
“This is it,” breathed Miter, licking his lips in anticipation. “The mine from the map.”
“He’s right,” confirmed Azriel. “I memorized the map.”
Miter scowled. “There was no need to do that,” he said in a deeply offended voice. “Miter told you that he’d memorized the map.”
“Yes, well, I felt that under the circumstances—”
“I could not care less about the circumstances!” burst Persephone, feeling as though she was about to take a flying leap off the knife edge. “How in the name of the gods are we going to get—”
“Inside?” said Azriel with a swift, steadying smile. “I’m going to pick the padlock. I’m a thief, remember?”
Biting hard into the knuckles of one clenched fist, Persephone willed herself to stay calm as he pulled out his tools. Before he’d even inserted the pick into the lock, however, from somewhere not far away Persephone heard the sound of scrabbling footfalls. These were immediately followed by a breathless sob. Snapping her head around, Persephone gasped when she saw a woman stumbling along through the moonlit darkness. She was painfully thin and dressed in rags, and her hair was shorn; even from thirty paces off, Persephone could see the desperate, hunted expression on her face.
As if sensing sympathetic eyes upon her, the woman stopped suddenly and looked right at Persephone. It was as their eyes locked that Persephone heard it:
The distant sound of many barking dogs.
Many barking hungry dogs.
Breaking off eye contact, the starving slave cast a terrified glance over her shoulder and began to run.
Frozen with horror, Persephone watched her go—as sickened by what she knew was going to happen to the woman as she was by the fact that she couldn’t do anything about it.
Then, realizing with a start what was going to happen to her, Azriel and Miter if they were still out in the open when the dogs arrived, she bolted forward.
“Hurry, Azriel!” she urged, clutching at him in her terror. “For … for both our sakes, hurry!”
“No need to nag, wife,” he said lightly as he poked and prodded at the lock. “I can assure you that I’m doing my utmost to hurry.”
“It is likely that the hideous one will fail,” confided Miter, sounding boastful in spite of the fact that he was hopping with agitation. “Miter did an excellent job of sealing up the—”
“Oh, shut up,” hissed Persephone. The dogs were now so close that she fancied she could hear their wet snarls and snapping teeth and—
“Got it!” said Azriel, the relief in his voice belying his earlier light tone. Leaping to his feet, he grabbed the handle of the door and yanked as hard as he could.
It didn’t budge.
The dogs—at least a dozen of them, by the sound of it—were nearly upon them.
Bracing himself, Azriel took a deep breath and yanked again.
This time the door budged—but just barely.
The dogs were only seconds away.
Heaving back on the door with a strength that seemed almost superhuman, Azriel somehow managed to open it just enough for a person to slip through. Whirling, he lifted Persephone right off her feet and shoved her through the opening after Miter, who’d pushed his way ahead to get in first. Just before she plunged into the darkness, Persephone saw eleven hungry terror dogs bound past about thirty paces away.
And she saw one stop and turn its head their way.
Then she was stumbling over the debris piled at the entrance of the mine. Falling to her hands and knees, she whipped her head around to see Azriel start to squeeze through the crack … and then get jerked back by the snarling dog. With a leap of horror, Persephone groped in the darkness for something, anything she might use to save him. Almost at once her hand closed around a stick. Scrambling forward, she jabbed it through the crack in the desperate hope that if she could hit the dog, it might distract it, allowing Azriel to shake himself free.
To Persephone’s surprise, the dog not only let go of Azriel but clamped down on the stick and jerked it right out of her hand. The next instant Azriel was inside and safe.
“Are you all right? Are you bleeding? How’s your leg? Let me see,” demanded Persephone, babbling in her terror and relief.
“I’m fine,” panted Azriel, fumbling in the darkness beside her. “The beast only caught its teeth on my breeches, wife. My greater concern is that by saving my life again, you have caused yet more damage to my manly pride.”
As Persephone gave a laugh that sounded more like a sob, there was a sudden flare of light in the darkness. She exhaled with relief when she saw that Azriel had managed to fashion a torch. then gasped when she saw that he’d fashioned it out of a dusty bone and an old shirt.
And she realized that the “stick” that the dog had snatched out of her hand hadn’t been a stick at all.
It had been a thigh bone.
Looking around she saw that she was kneeling in a veritable heap of human remains. Biting back a scream, she scrambled to her feet and stumbled away from them.
“M-Miter, after you sealed off the mine, the h-healthy workers must have crowded around the door!” stammered Persephone, staring at the mound of loose bones and partial skeletons. “You … you must have been able to hear them pleading for release.”
“Yes,” said Miter carelessly. “Come. Let us go find the pool whose magical healing waters will make Miter the richest man in his tribe!”
Turning away from the door—and the remains of those he’d condemned to death for nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time—the Gorgish leader eagerly started forward into the darkness. In spite of the horrors of the place and all they’d endured to get there, Azriel gave Persephone a look that could not contain his sudden excitement that their quest was almost over. Grabbing her by the hand, he lifted the torch aloft, and together they hurried after Miter.
For the first quarter hour, all three of them walked to avoid tripping over discarded pickaxes, buckets and bodies. As they drew nearer to the chamber that contained the healing pool, however, their excitement overcame them, and they began to run. The mine shaft forked repeatedly. Each time it did so, Persephone anxiously looked to see if Azriel agreed with Miter’s decision as to which tunnel to pursue. Each time, he did, until at last they came to a tunnel that did not fork but instead had a rotting wooden door at the end of it.
“This is it,” panted Azriel, gazing at the wooden door as though it were a thing of wonder. “Beyond that door is the chamber that was marked with an X.”
“Yes!” breathed Miter, who shook his pygmy fist and bared his teeth at Azriel before adding, “Do not forget the bargain you struck, hideous one.”
“I won’t forget,” muttered Azriel, sourly patting the empty skins he’d agreed to fill and haul back to the Gorgish village.
“Attempt to cheat Miter and you and the female shall earn the eternal enmity of Miter and his tribe,” warned Miter darkly.
Azriel rolled his eyes. As he did so, Miter licked his cracked lips and started eagerly trotting toward the door.
“Not so fast,” said Azriel, yanking him back by the shoulder. “My wife and I are kin to the Gypsy who gave you that map, and the pool is sacred to our people. It is only fitting that we should be the first to lay eyes on it.”
Miter stomped his foot and shook his fist some more but Azriel paid him no mind whatsoever. Giving Persephone a dazzling smile, he stepped forward and slowly reached for the doorknob. Turning it, he pulled open the door and stepped into the chamber.
Breathless with excitement, Persephone stepped in behind him and nearly fell to her knees at the sight that met her eyes.
The chamber was empty.
FIFTY-FOUR
Nine white beans left in the jar
PERSEPHONE HEARD an angry hiss behind her, but she did not turn around.
Instead, she stared blankly at the empty place where the healing pool should have been.
“We must have taken a wrong turn,” she concluded, looking up at Azriel.
Wordlessly, he shook his head.
“We must have,” she insisted, sounding as shrill as any Gorgishman. “The words were written in Balthazar’s own hand. The pool is here somewhere!”
As though feeling a sudden and terrible pain, Azriel squeezed shut his beautiful blue eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with the fingers of his free hand. “The pool is not here, wife,” he said haltingly. “I cannot believe … I should have trusted my instincts … I should have known the map was a trick.”
“A trick?” exclaimed Persephone in disbelief. “A trick?” Heart pounding, she whirled to confront Miter for his treachery.
But Miter was gone.
“I’ll kill him,” snarled Persephone, reaching for her dagger.
Azriel laid a hand on her arm to stop her from unsheathing it.
She jerked her arm away. “He deserves to die!” she said hotly.
“Perhaps,” said Azriel. “But not for this.” “What do you mean ‘not for this’?” she spat. “He tricked us—”
“No,” said Azriel heavily. “The trick wasn’t Miter’s, wife. The trick was Balthazar’s.”
“Balthazar’s?”
Azriel shrugged helplessly. “He must have hoped that a fake map would throw the Regent off the scent.”
“Or perhaps he liked Gorgishmen no better than you do,” said Persephone, who could not help sounding accusatory. “Perhaps the map was nothing but a jest played at the expense of the Gorgish ambassador. A jest that has earned us the eternal enmity of Miter and his people—a jest that has seen Miter abandon us here, no doubt that he might have a better chance of saving himself!”
“Perhaps,” murmured Azriel, slipping his hand around her waist.
Violently shrugging him off that she might stand alone beneath the crushing weight of her disappointment, Persephone stared at the spot on the floor where the Pool of Genezing should have been.
She could not believe it.
Saving Finn was going to come down to bluffing and improvisation, after all.
FIFTY-FIVE
Nine white beans left in the jar
THEY LOST NO TIME retracing their steps to the entrance of the mine.
Persephone’s heart was in her throat the entire time, certain that if Miter got to the entrance before them, the furious Gorgishman would close and padlock the iron door, shutting them in to die among the dusty bones of those who’d died before them. Mercifully, this did not happen, though the pygmy fingerprints on the outside of the iron door told them that the Gorgish leader had tried to make it happen. Indeed, he’d tried so hard that his precious ruby ring had evidently slipped from his finger without his even noticing. Fiercely glad to have Finn’s gift returned to her—however inadvertently—Persephone snatched the ring up out of the dirt, dusted it off and slipped it onto her own finger once more. Then she and Azriel headed for the mountain of dirt and debris which they’d climbed down to enter the mines. They encountered no guards or dogs along the way, but halfway up the hill they encountered the severed head of the doomed woman Persephone had locked eyes with just before entering the mine. It was planted on a dripping pike, and though glazed over with death, the woman’s half-open eyes seemed to bore into Persephone, accusing her.
