So saying, and before any there could call a halt to his hand, Modi raised the pick and struck downward with all the force of his heavy arms. The tunnel rang with the sound of the strike. Black chips of stone sprayed everyone.

  He struck again, and again.

  * * *

  The offspring of dragons take a great deal of time to hatch. They must lie dormant for many centuries undisturbed before they will quicken with life and erupt from their leathery eggs. Because they need so very long to incubate, their parents sometimes place them in a permanently warm spot, such as near a lava flow. This strategy has its obvious dangers. Locations such as volcanoes provide permanent geothermal heat, but are often unstable. There are likely to be earthquakes or eruptions of lava in such spots. Another strategy often taken by the mother is to hibernate with the eggs, thus guarding them and warming them with her natural body heat through the many long years. If any behavior can be called common when dragons are concerned, this would be one. Most female dragons opt for this strategy to ensure their young eventually hatch. Fewer eggs are produced, but the young are much more likely to hatch and survive to maturity with the mother there to protect them.

  These habits, not well understood by other beings, have spawned many of the legendary stories of encountering dragons sleeping in lairs. Why are dragons so often found sleeping deep within the earth? To guard their eggs, naturally. Why have great treasures been found with such sleeping dragons? Because of all the other adventurers who discovered the dragon centuries earlier, and died there, leaving behind their wealth. Why do stories of dragon raids commonly end with the dragon leaving, or vanishing deep within the earth? Because they have lain down with their eggs, and have slept so long they have become only hazy legends to the short-lived folk who wisely fear them.

  And so it was with Sigrid, the deep blue dragon who slumbered far beneath the peak of Snowdon and far beneath the caverns that the Kindred had hollowed from that mountain. Sigrid slept in that zone of the underworld known to the Kindred as the Everdark. She slept in a place that was very deep, but not so deep as to become hot and unbearable. The rock here was solid and cool to the touch.

  This region of the Everdark was a mile-thick layer of rock, rivers and sunless cavern vistas which was primarily inhabited by creatures without eyes and often without minds as well. The lowest creatures and growths here derived sustenance from the internal heat of world rather than the external heat of the sun. Pools of solvents and oils filled vast chambers, sometimes forming seas of black liquid. It was a harsh world, and the larger more complex creatures of Everdark were alien and vicious. Among them, only a dragon could slumber without fear.

  But one hour among millions was different. During that one hour, something disturbed Sigrid’s slumber.

  At first, only the great scaled ears twitched, each as big as a knight’s shield. The movement would hardly have been noticeable to a witness, had there been one.

  Slowly, minutes later, a single great eye cracked open. She waited, breathing perhaps once a minute. She sensed nothing and let her great eye close again.

  Tap-tap-tap.

  Both eyes snapped open.

  There it was. The sound. She knew what it was, in a single moment. She knew that infernal tapping. Possibly, she had been hearing it for hours, or even days. It had invaded her slow, endless dreams. It had disturbed her.

  She checked her three eggs. Each was oblong and ridged with a rough leathery exterior. They were close to hatching, she could tell. She had hoped that the disturbance had been her quickening young, ripping their way from their eggs, but the time had not yet come.

  Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.

  She knew what the tapping meant. The Kindred were coming back.

  * * *

  The trip down the chimneys was worse than Brand had imagined it would be. His skin was scorched and red in a dozen spots before the first hour had ended. He hoped this was the worst hour as they were heading away from the Earthlight itself, that vast chamber of magma that bubbled a thousand feet below the Great Vents themselves.

  Gamal, to their great horror, did not lead them down some neat flight of steps. Nor was there a ladder, nor even a rope to guide them. Instead, they followed a slanted shaft that seemed to lead down into Hell itself. Their hands dragged down the crumbling sides of the shaft, which went downward at sharp angles that twisted without warning, occasionally opening upon unknown black voids of darkness. Brand was immediately impressed by Gamal, as he must have traveled up this very shaft, which the River Folk found almost impossible to traverse even when sliding down it.

  They had a light length of chain connecting their bodies. Each had clipped this chain to their mechnician’s belt, where loops of metal were attached for just this purpose. If one of them slipped badly or fell into a side tunnel, the others were supposed to clutch at the walls and hold the weight of the third. Chain was used, instead of rope, as rope was too easily burned through. This last bit of information Gamal had delivered unemotionally, but it left Brand with his eyes wide at the implications.

  They made rapid progress at first, but soon reached their first difficulty. The shaft ended. But it did not end gracefully, dropping them onto a dusty floor. Instead, it ended in a huge cavern that swallowed all the pitiful light their miner’s lanterns could toss down into it.

  “What’s down there?” asked Telyn, gazing over Gamal’s shoulder as he worked with pitons and ropes.

  “Something bad,” he said simply.

  “How do you know?”

  “I left a rope here days ago,” he said. He lifted a short stub of rope to show them. The end of it was frayed and most of it was missing. “Something ate it.”

  Brand noted that Telyn was having no difficulty with the unknown depths yawning beneath them. He recalled how she had always been the best climber of his friends. The mere sight of the chasm made Brand’s feet and hands tingle, as if they wanted to grab onto anything they could.

  When Gamal had the rope out and let it fall, Telyn unsnapped herself from the chain that connected them all together. She swung out upon the rope and hung, dangling in space. Brand’s heart leapt into his mouth to see his love so endangered. He reached out and grabbed her arm. She looked up at him in surprise.

  “I’m okay Brand,” she said, turning her pretty, if soot-streaked face up to him. “I’ll be fine. I’ll go slowly. Just don’t let anything eat the rope again.”

  Brand let her go. Internally, he called himself six kinds of a fool for bringing her on this trip. How many times now had she faced death on this journey? This had to be the third, and that wasn’t even counting sliding down the chute they had just come to the end of.

  “Just hold on to the rope, milord,” said Gamal, “I can tell she knows how to handle herself on a line.”

  Brand wrapped his gloved fists in the rope and braced his feet.

  Swinging a bit and shining that odd light of hers, Telyn went hand over hand down perhaps twenty feet before halting.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I think I found what ate the rope. They are working on the stray end right now.”

  She shone her light downward and they saw that she was about half-way to the bottom of the chamber. The floor of it was full of beetles. Normally, that would not have been worthy of note, but these beetles were as large as sheep. Their black iridescent shells reflected back gleaming shafts of light. They were indeed chewing on the bottom of the rope, which had coiled up on the chamber floor.

  “Come back up,” said Brand, sweating again. “I’ll slide down on the rope and put the axe to them.”

  Telyn swayed slightly, such was the ferocity with which the beetles tore at the rope. Brand breathed hard, thinking about Telyn falling amongst them.

  “I’ll take care of them,” she said confidently. She drew out her bow then, which she had looped over her back. She wrapped her legs up in the rope and hung there, her body tipping out horizontally to the ground. It made Brand’s heart pound seeing her so precariously perched. He tried to remember the many times he’d seen her do acrobatic tricks such as this without difficulty in the past.

  Her bow snapped and a beetle flipped over, legs flipping and quivering. An arrow sprouted from its back.

  Then another suffered the same fate, and a third, fourth and fifth.

  Brand released a breath he had been holding. She was doing well.

  “I think she’s going to be fine, Brand,” said Gamal, “I can see now why you brought her. Besides the obvious, of course.”

  Brand frowned and was about to ask him just what ‘the obvious’ was, when a strange sound intruded on his thoughts. It was a buzzing sound. He looked down and shouted, reaching for the rope.

  The beetles were flying. They had transparent wings the color of smoke under their black shells. They were all over the rope now, eating it.

  “Telyn!” Brand shouted, but she was too busy to call back to him. She dropped her bow, and it clattered to the floor of the cavern. She had out her knife, and it gleamed in her hand as she slashed at the nearest of the insects that fluttered closer.

  “Hold onto the rope,” Brand told Gamal.

  The miner eyed him then nodded and wrapped his burnt hands up in it, grimacing.

  Brand unsnapped the chain at his waist. He grabbed the rope, which a moment before he had quailed at the very sight of, and half-fell out into the chamber. He swung on the rope for a few seconds, slipping and thanking the Kindred for insisting he wear gloves. He got a firm grip with his left and drew the axe with his right. A dozen paces below, Telyn leaned out and scored a slashing hit upon a buzzing wing. Damaged, the beetle fell and landed with a crunching sound. Its companions immediately set upon it and tore it apart, as he realized they were doing with corpses of those Telyn had managed to shoot earlier.

  Brand commanded Ambros to flash, and it did so, lighting up the nightmarish scene fully.

  They were in chamber full of hundreds, perhaps thousands of the insects. In the middle of the chamber rested a vast corpse, reduced now to little more than bones and scraps. He had no idea what the creature had once been, as it was too alien in aspect to compare to any surface-dwelling creature. He’d seen pictures of whales in books, and perhaps that most closely described it. If one could imagine a fanged whale that lived in caverns a mile beneath the surface of the Earth and which dragged itself through tunnels on its flippers.

  Surprised by the light, some of the beetles crashed into walls and fell down into the main mass of them. At least he knew then they had eyes.

  Part way down now, he was uncertain how he might help Telyn. He was above her, and could not pass her without knocking her from the rope. Worse, beetles worked on the rope now at both ends, ravenously devouring it as he suspected they would devour any organic material that didn’t fight back.

  “Telyn, we have to drop down into the chamber.”

  She looked up at him, still slashing with her blade. She looked down then and saw the seething mass of beetles down there.

  “You first,” she said, grinning. But he could tell there was fear in her. How could there not be?

  “Okay, slide down, we will get close to the bottom then both jump.”

  Telyn sucked in a great breath and slid down until she was no more than ten feet from the ground. Brand followed.

  “The rope’s giving way!” called Gamal from above them.

  Brand looked up to see several of the beetles working on it. Then he jumped, pushing away from the rope so that he wouldn’t land on Telyn’s head on the way down.

  He landed on several beetles, popping them like gourds. It was disgusting, but it broke his fall. He was up and hacking at them before they could mass and pull him down. The axe flashed and they snapped and chewed at his boots. A dozen fell and his boots were scarred when the rope gave way.

  Telyn gave a surprised whooping sound as she landed behind him. She found her bow again, but discovered the beetles had devoured her string. Down to her knife, she stood behind Brand, mostly ducking his backswing.

  The fight lasted several more minutes, when suddenly, the beetles retreated. Brand had no idea why. Perhaps they had some kind of commander, or maybe just an instinct that triggered to cause them to flee when enough of their kind stank up the air with their crushed bodies.

  In any case, the chamber soon emptied and they were left alone.

  Gamal applauded them, his popping gloved hands sounding loud and echoing in the chamber. “Well done!”

  They looked up at him askance. “What of the rope?”

  “That one is wrecked. You carried the spare, Telyn.”

  They checked and found much of her pack was torn apart. She had dropped it from her back in order to fight the insects.

  “It’s too far down to jump,” said Gamal, “you will have to proceed on your own. I’ll take word back up to Gudrin.”

  Gamal told them to find another shaft down, a very hot one, that would lead to a magma chamber. From there, they must find a tunnel where rubies could be found gleaming in the walls. Following that for some miles should lead them to the spot he had last known Modi to be.

  Licking their lips and trying not to feel fear, the two River Folk gathered their packs, or what was left of them. They made ready to travel more deeply into the Everdark, and Brand thought to himself he had never been more afraid of a place.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Hag’s Long Leather Bag

  Mari decided to run away the very next morning. The entire night, she could hardly sleep. She listened to the crone’s sighs, snores and grunts with trepidation. What would she do when she found Mari gone? Would she send for Mother? Would she cast a spell? Would she let that burning troll down out of the chimney, and send it running through the forest after her?

  She shuddered on her dirty mat. She would not let such a thing happen to her baby, even if it were a troll. If she birthed something with hair and claws, she would cry and she would scream and perhaps die. But no one was going to burn it alive in a stove.

  That night, the snow blew in under the cracks in the hut, which were numerous. The snow swirled and drifted about Mari’s mat, which lay upon the floor a few feet from the stove. Before, she had huddled even closer to the stove to keep warm, but tonight she couldn’t. The thought of that skeletal foot, ever growing new flesh and ever having it burnt away again made her skin crawl. She had wanted to run, screaming, when she had first found it. But she had controlled herself. In order to escape the crone cleanly, she needed to vanish and get several hours head start before any kind of pursuit could follow. She could have run in the night, while the crone slept, but she was afraid. She didn’t want to freeze in the dark forest. The Haven wood was not as dense and dangerous as the Deepwood, which stood on the other side of the Berrywine, but it was still a forest. She would have to wait and run in the morning.

  Somehow, she managed to fall asleep before dawn, only to be awakened with a rough kick to the head, as had become the daily custom. The crone almost toppled to do it. Lifting one foot from the ground for any purpose other than taking a step was difficult for the ancient woman, but kick her she did. Mari wondered that the woman always awakened before her, just as the sun tinged the skies. She was part rooster, that old crone.

  A dark thought struck her then. She thought of something, as her head throbbed and she struggled to get her swollen belly off the dirty mat. It was something she shouldn’t have thought of at all. She was a good girl, not an evil one. But she had the thought, just the same.

  She thought of the bag of silver in the tree. The old woman’s hoard.

  When she ran, she could hardly go back to Mother. Her mother had abandoned her here, in this horrible place, fully knowing some horrible fate awaited her. Mother had left her, rejected her. Mari knew she was on her own now.

  Being on her own, traveling anywhere, getting lodging and food, would take money and she had none. But up in that leather bag, the crone had the money Mother had given her. Mari would take it, and run.

  She did her morning chores. It was Saturday, and soon Mari noticed that the crone heated water upon the stove. At first, she thought she planned to brew tea as she often did, but long before the water boiled, the crone took the pot to the floor and sat in the only rickety chair the hut had.

  “It’s time, dearie,” she said, gesturing toward the pot.

  Mari took a step forward, uncertain as to the old woman’s meaning. “Time for what?”

  The crone cackled. “How soon you forget you promises, maid of mine! It’s time for you to wash my feet. It is Saturday, you know.”

  And so Mari knelt. She struggled to keep from retching as she washed the woman’s crusty, dirt-black feet. There was something different about these feet, and it was not just her annoyance with them for kicking her awake each morn. It was more than that. She knew they were not normal, human feet, not entirely. They were more like the feet of a raven, or some other creature with thick skin and nails like clicking claws. The crone never wore shoes, not even when she spent hours in the snow. Never. Mari knew something of feet in the snow. No normal feet could take that much cold. But the crone did it, every day.

  Finally, at long last, the old woman left on her mysterious rounds, collecting bark and insect husks and squirming things that hibernated in holes. All the stuffs she stirred into pots to make her disgusting potions. Mari waited only long enough for the old woman to vanish into the trees.

  Gathering her pitiful collection of belongings, she headed out into the open. She paused, staring up at the tree where the crone kept her stash. She chewed her lip for a full minute, then dashed to it, stumbling in the snows which were a foot deep today.

  She produced a knife and stood at the foot of the tree. She hesitated, but thought of the thing that burned in the stove. She could not let her child, whatever it might be, suffer such a fate. She slashed the line. The long leather bag fell with a tinkling crash into the snow. Mari dug her hand into the bag and pulled out a surprisingly large number of coins. Mari wondered that the crone lived the way she did. Some of the richest folk in Riverton could not have owned such a fortune.