He told them funny stories about what the Kindred would do upon the site of the “Great Battle of Gronig”, as he had taken to calling today’s events. He suggested they may build a monument, or a shrine, or a place for festivals to be held. He described plays with mock battles fought upon a stone stage with Kindred gathered around raptly watching the re-enactment.

  “Battle? It was really more of an argument,” said Telyn.

  “What?” squawked Tomkin. “Never! Three Jewels of Power raised in anger in one stone hovel? The Kindred are lucky they yet breathe, one and all of them.”

  They smiled at him while he went on in great detail, excitedly over-inflating his role in the events of the day. They did not bother to point out he had never actually used Lavatis to do anything. They knew it was a point that would not be appreciated.

  Along the way they passed carts pulled by teams of large goats. The mountain goats and the wheels of their carts passed alarmingly close to the cliff that had grown to their right as they proceeded northward to Snowdon. Brand imagined that if just one of the goats slipped, the entire cart, driver and load might go over the side. They were large white mountain goats, however, and the sure-footed creatures seemed very confident. Their drivers dozed under floppy leather hats as they sat on their buckboards, knowing their goats knew the way.

  When these carts came down toward them, both sides had to work to find a turnout spot so they could both pass safely. Fortunately, turnouts were placed frequently along the road, at measured distances. The Kindred were always organized, at least in their construction efforts.

  They walked all day. The road usually climbed, but leveled off in places and finally reaching its highest point by early afternoon. The road, once up at the top, widened somewhat and more traffic was in evidence. Brand marveled at the number and variety of carts and travelers. Goat carts were in profusion, transporting all manner of goods. There were patrols of Kindred who were clearly of the warrior clan, marching in formation with red cloaks flapping. Each trooper carried a crossbow which rested on their shoulders. Their polished scalemail shimmered brightly in the sun and an axe rode on every belt.

  They had one of the very few horses in evidence. Brand wasn’t surprised, as horses required a lot of flat grassland to support and there was precious little of that in this place. Kindred lands consisted almost entirely of mountains with dense forests huddling against stone cliffs. The Kindred would have little use for horses or cavalry of any kind.

  By nightfall, they had finally reached the ramp that led up to the great Gate of Snowdon. The gates were fashioned entirely out of stone and metal. The doors themselves, which were swung wide during the day and shut tightly at night, were the now familiar slabs of granite. The great hinges and the locking mechanism, each of which was larger than Brand was tall, were made of black iron.

  Snow coated the entire body of Snowdon, and Brand understood it’s name better when he saw it. He had never walked upon a true mountain before, and he was awed by the beauty of it. The most amazing thing was the view down around them, which reached all the way in the west to the sea.

  Telyn stared that way. The noted a strange scent in the air, a not unpleasant tang. Tomkin rolled his eyes at them and explained the unique scent of the seas. The two River Folk marched northward, entranced. To their left, far down the rocky slopes, was a wild looking region of forests and open white snowfields that ran down to an endless gray-blue body of water such as few of their folk had seen for generations. Brand thrilled inside to know that he gazed upon the open sea. Few folk from the Haven had ever seen it. To the right and east, the Deepwood bordered the mountains and led eventually, beyond the range of their vision, to the distant Berrywine along which they had spent their lives.

  Soon, they came to the great gates and were there eyed coldly by the guards. They were allowed to pass within without harassment. Tomkin bowed to them mockingly. Brand was under the instant impression they recognized the manling. It had to irk them, having one of the Wee Folk freely allowed to travel by their post at will. They had, only months ago, been at war with his kind.

  Brand was surprised by the gust of heat that came up to into their faces as they entered the mountain. It was as if a giant, huge beyond all imagining, blew hot breath into their faces. The passage into the mountain sang with the passage of this unnatural wind, exchanging hot air for cold.

  Once inside, the two river folk halted and stared.

  “What? What?” complained Tomkin. “Don’t tell me you two are mooning again?”

  They made no response, as they were shocked. The place was so alien, it was so beyond their experience, that they did not know what to think. They barely knew what they were seeing.

  The Earthlight, which is what the Kindred called the interior of Snowdon, was a strange place. Some would say it was among the strangest places inhabited upon this world, at least by civilized folk. Much of the interior of Snowdon was hollowed out, but although the mountain served as a rocky shell, the shell was by no means a thin one. The solid stone walls were at least two hundred paces thick at the thinnest spots. The entire cavern, if such a large enclosed space could even be called a cavern, was lit by a deep orange-red glow. This was the source of heat that came up into their faces and blew back their hair as they entered the gates.

  From the Great Gates a winding path led downward, interrupted along the way by several strongholds. These were castles or towers, carved from the rock of the mountain itself. The Kindred rarely built structures. They preferred to sculpt them with their picks out of the living stone of the mountain. These towers and castles, all seven of them, were placed mostly along the path down to the floor of the great cavern. There, at the distant bottom, they could see a far larger structure had been carven from the very heart of the mountain. It was the eighth and final defensive structure, and they knew it must be the Citadel of the Earthlight. The sculpted citadel served the Kindred as their capital.

  Brand and Telyn managed to get their feet moving again. They had to tug at their roan’s reins, as he didn’t like this alien place and tried hard to bolt. After they had fed him carrots and put blinders on him, they managed to lead him down the broad road toward the distant floor, following the road around the curving walls of the mountain.

  In the distance on the western side, they could see the great vents, all three of which stood wide. From these all the light and heat of the place came, as they opened upon the furnace that existed many thousands of feet below. Magma chambers belched fire, but for the most part the light and heat was even and steady. Brand wondered what might happen if the magma ever bubbled up in a torrent from the depths of the Earth, as he understood it sometimes did. He shuddered to think of all the Kindred in their vast habitat being burned away to nothing in a wave of molten rock. He could see, however, that many canals had been built to channel away such eruptions to safer areas. Many of the eight strongholds in sight used these deep channels as encircling moats, in fact. Most were full of water, but in he could see how they might be filled with hot lava should the ocean of it ever overflow into the cavern.

  “Stop dawdling,” complained Tomkin as they made their way slowly down the path, pointing and gawking like farm boys at a fair. “The vents will close in a few hours, and it’s hard to tell your hand from your tooth down here without it. We’ll be forced to camp upon the road itself.”

  Not liking the sound of that, as they were still thousands of feet from the floor of the cavern, they picked up the pace.

  As they passed the first of the great towers that stood along the way, Brand better understood their defensive nature. In order to invade the Earthlight from the surface, even if you did manage to blast your way past the fantastic gates, you had to literally press through every one of the towers and castles. They all blocked the only path of entry, squatting directly upon the road itself and there was no way around. Each one had two portcullises that must be passed through to continue on down the road.

  It took the rest of the “day” to reach the bottom of the spiraling roadway and to pass all seven of the towers along the way. At the bottom, they were tired, but jubilant to have reached their goal. In the west, the three great vents had closed half-way, dimming the light to a deep red. This was the nightfall for the Kindred. Each day was exactly the same length in the Earthlight, with the opening of the vents and their closing each taking an hour to complete. These hours served as both dawn and dusk. In the day, it was always warmer, and the in the night, when the great vents were shut down to glimmering red slits, it grew cool.

  Brand sought an Inn to stay at, but Tomkin persuaded him to seek out Gudrin immediately. Brand agreed the matter was urgent and sent Tomkin ahead to the citadel to tell the clanmaster they had arrived.

  Brand watched Tomkin bound off on the task, thinking him perhaps too eager for a mundane duty. He wondered what Gudrin had promised him for this mission’s completion. Probably, more wisdom in the matter of wielding Lavatis. If that was the case, she was indeed worried for Modi’s life. He knew well that she did not approve of Tomkin possessing the Blue Jewel. For her to aid him, she must have been hard pressed.

  * * *

  Eyes.

  At first, they had thought they were the glittering reflections of the rubies they had yet to pluck from the tunnel walls. But when the eyes stared, then blinked, they knew the truth. These were the eyes of living beings that shone like red fireflies in the darkness.

  The eyes retreated as they approached. So smoothly and silently did they retreat, that the Kindred company thought these enemies too cowardly to face an armed foe. The miners laughed at them, snapped crossbow bolts into the dark and sent them scurrying away.

  Then the first trap was sprung and they realized that the enemy had a plan. Their foe had been working hard toward their demise all along. The enemy was not so much cowardly, but cunning.

  The unlucky miner Dugald was struck by a falling block. The stone, carefully placed and propped in a shaft overhead, dropped when his boot touched a tripwire. The blow did not strike his head, but rather crushed down his right shoulder. The clavicle snapped and the right side of his body was not shorn away, but instead folded down, so that his right arm hung six inches lower than his left. A human so stricken would have passed from consciousness, but Kindred bodies were not built the same way. Being a hardy soul, Dugald did not die immediately. He raved, and when death finally took him it was unclean.

  They gathered around Dugald and did what they could for him. All of them were angry, sad and fearful, except for Modi, who was only angry. They fired their crossbows into the dark at the glittering eyes, but struck nothing. Occasionally, heavy obsidian-tipped darts were thrown back at them.

  “Kobolds,” said Modi, in the manner of one spitting out a curse. No one argued with him. The evidence was clear. Kobolds rarely dared come near the lands of the Kindred, but here in the Everdark, the hated race plagued them. They must have run into a tribe of them.

  “Every step of the way from here to the Earthlight will be full of traps,” said Modi, voicing the fears of them all. He stood with his heavy hands on his hips, frowning into the tunnels. He thought hard before he spoke and every one of his crew hung on his words.

  “We can’t continue right into the teeth of them. They will kill one of us each day, always retreating. Therefore, we will camp and conserve our supplies. We will hope for one of three things.”

  He put up a thick finger, black with cave dust. “A rescue might come from behind them. They will then be caught between our two forces and we shall paint the walls of this tunnel with their blood.”

  The Kindred hooted at this prospect. Revenge for the cooling corpse of Dugald was second in their thoughts now, second only to survival.

  Modi continued with his next scenario. “Kobolds are easily bored. They might just wander off on their own, leaving us for their traps. That would give us time to disarm them at our leisure.”

  “What is the last possibility, milord?” asked one named Njal, who although lean, carried the biggest pack among them.

  “They will grow bored and attack, thinking us weak.”

  “And what if they choose that option?”

  Modi shrugged his great shoulder unconcernedly. “Then we will slay them all, of course.”

  Chapter Ten

  The Earthlight

  Brand and Telyn stabled their roan in a stone stable that barely cleared his head. Telyn worried that if the roan threw his head in the night, he might be injured. Brand thought a good conk on the skull may do the horse some good.

  After all her riding of him, Telyn had clearly developed a closeness with the horse that none other had ever possessed. Brand had to admit that much. She could coax him now into taking a carrot from her mouth and allowed her to scratch his ears at will. Mounting him was no problem for her now; the roan would stand and barely shuffled about when she threw her leg over his back. She had removed the bit from his mouth as well, and Brand had not argued. If she could control the beast, she could ride bareback and he wouldn’t care. The animal needed to be tamed, and he didn’t have the time nor the temperament for the task.

  When Tomkin returned, he led two of the Kindred who were clearly citadel guards. Their red cloaks flapped behind them and they huffed as they ran after the bounding little fellow who left them in his wake so easily. Righting their helmets and arranging their jangling chainmail, they snapped salutes to Brand in greeting.

  “Please come with us, milord,” they said. Brand and Telyn followed them, carrying their gear. The soldiers insisted on relieving them of their burdens, and after a short time of wrangling, Brand allowed them to do so. He felt silly marching behind the red cloaks, who were armed and armored and still stacked three feet high with baggage. But the Kindred bore these burdens without strain or complaint, so Brand finally sighed and stopped worrying about it. They were like oxen, these people, he thought to himself, shaking his head. Whatever they lacked in speed, they made up triply for it in sturdiness and stamina.

  Entering the Citadel of Snowdon was, if anything, more impressive and awe-inspiring than had been their passage through the Great Gates. The structure was both indescribably beautiful and stark at the same time. Carven with lofty towers, all made from a single massive block of black basalt, it reminded Brand of an ice sculpture he had seen once at a Drake clan wedding, but formed all of stone. Banners and tapestries adorned the place. Iron fittings held every doorway, but wood was rarely used except for the six-inch thick doors themselves, which were fashioned of ancient oak.

  Following the Kindred through a labyrinth of passages, they finally found their way to Gudrin’s apartments which sat high in a northern tower. Brand and Telyn were glad to meet her and everyone touched hands and shoulders. Brand thought about hugging Gudrin, but stopped himself, knowing that the Kindred were not used to such familiarities. Telyn, however, was not able to contain herself and embraced her. Gudrin tolerated the contact, blinking and standing stock-still.

  Tomkin, for his part, stood atop a pile of scrolls on Gudrin’s great desk. He struck a pose that reminded Brand of a cat who had dined well upon wildlife. He seemed pleased with himself.

  “What did I say? Can I not deliver that which is promised?” he asked of no one in particular.

  Gudrin extricated herself from Telyn and retreated behind her massive stone desk. She shooed Tomkin off her papers and smiled at them.

  “I’m very glad you came. I realize you must have used all haste to arrive so quickly. Tomkin, you did very well, and I’m most pleased with all of you.”

  The River Folk smiled and Tomkin stood upon another book, but this time further away and out of her easy reach.

  “I’m sure Tomkin has told you why I’ve asked for you,” said Gudrin, turning serious. “Modi is missing, he’s a week overdue and one of his company returned injured and bearing grim news. They had, at that time, suffered a single death and requested aid. Modi’s father, Hallr, saw fit to deny the request.”

  “Why?” asked Brand. “Is he not interested in the survival of his own son?”

  Gudrin studied her blocky hands. “Modi, as you know, is a headstrong individual, even for one of the Kindred.”

  Brand had to concede that point. They all nodded.

  “Hallr is just like him, only older and possibly more stubborn. To understand, one only has to think how Modi would treat his own son, should that son flagrantly disregard his wishes.”

  Brand inhaled, understanding better. His own father had been dead for many years, but he had watched other men battle with their sons. Two strong-willed individuals didn’t always make for the most harmonious family life.

  “Yes, but to deny aid... To let him die?”

  Gudrin turned up her palms. “These are two extreme individuals. I should tell you that if Modi does survive this, his father will be secretly pleased. Perhaps it is something of a test, something to demonstrate to all watching that Modi might be worthy as a successor to Hallr.”

  “Such a succession is not automatically inherited, then?”

  “No! Never!” said Gudrin as if scandalized. “The Kindred have no King. We have no lords, at least not in the traditional sense of them. We are not lords, we are clanmasters. That is not the same thing. It is an elected post, selected and elected by elders.”

  “But I’ve noticed the red cloaks still refer to clanmasters as lords. And the process is still political in any event.”

  Gudrin conceded this point.

  “Very well, where is the entrance to the Everdark, and how do I get there?”

  She smiled and nodded. “I’m gladdened to hear you speak like that, Brand. It makes me certain I called for the right aid. Perhaps you should freshen yourselves with a single night here first, however?”

  “That depends. How long do you think it will take to get down to where Modi was lost? And will I have a guide?”

  “I can’t send any of the red cloaks with you. It has been forbidden,” she answered, “But Gamal can guide you. He is of the clan of miners. He is the one who brought us Modi’s message from the deeps in the first place. It is my impression that it will take days to reach Modi, if not weeks.”