On the opposite ridge—the east—Jonathan’s eye caught a small, round building with a half-spherical dome, perched precariously at the top of a sheer cliff. High above this, barely visible against the leaden clouds, a triangular kite fluttered in the wind. He wondered what strange games the Snuggs were playing at. Since it was Rufus Snugg’s operation, he concluded it must be devious, brilliant, and ethically questionable.
In the center of the valley, straddling both sides of the turbulent river, was the small settlement of Beatrice. It had not been there when Jonathan last looked down at this valley, returning to Hog Hurst with Cyrus and Merrily more than two years ago. Though the new houses were mostly small, their heavy log construction promised a sturdy resilience against the harsh weather. Larger buildings, with the look of warehouses, dotted the riverbank on both sides, and a series of stone piers jutted out into the icy water on both banks. A ferry was tied up to one of these. It was, evidently, the only method of crossing the river.
His mind clung to memories of his first view down on the valley, with Merrily. They had found love here, once upon a time; love born from shared thrill and despair, and then simply from love. He had resolved, here in this valley, to follow her to Green Bridge. All that history was waiting, down there, to pull him back into a past that he could never touch again.
“You can’t go back,” he whispered to himself.
A small, ambulatory heap of clothing, coming up to about Jonathan’s waist, passed close beside him, interrupting his melancholy.
“Good day, Mr. Miller,” it said politely as it waddled past.
Then another heap of clothing trundled by, and another.
“I didn’t eat anyone today, Mr. Miller,” proclaimed one of the heaps in a tone of immense pride.
“Almost to the new cave home!” observed another self-propelled bundle. “Will there be a sandwich bonus?”
Jonathan nodded, smiling despite himself.
Behind him, a long line of similar clothing heaps stretched out along the traversing path up the western slopes of the ridge. The odd mounds chattered as they trundled up the steep road, their Uellish delivered in a maniacal, lilting dialect peppered with good-natured threats and eye-watering curses.
The heavily-wrapped grayskins moved with an energy and urgency that never failed to surprise Jonathan. For every day of their two-week journey along the emerging rail line from Hog Hurst, he had awakened before dawn to find that his was the last tent to be struck, and the rest of the diminutive gang were lined up and ready to march on. They slept only very briefly each night, generally heaped together in several giant piles near the campfires and emitting a thunderous collective snore.
Jonathan resumed his pace, quickly catching up to the head of the line just as it was approaching a pair of Snugg sentries standing outside a small, cozy hut at the peak of the ridge.
“I’m Jonathan—” he began.
“Miller,” interrupted one of the two men. He had a black cloak over a chest plate of padded leather, and he carried both a long gun and a sword. A silver patch in the shape of a snake, curved to resemble the letter “S,” was visible on his breast. His companion was similarly armed and attired.
“We’ve been expecting you,” the other sentry added. “The hawk-riders have been watching you for the last three days. Head down to the pier on the west bank, and the ferry will take your company across. Mr. Snugg wants to see you as soon as you get in. But before you go, you’ve got another boss to answer to.”
Jonathan looked around in confusion. Other than his goblins, there weren’t any other people nearby.
“Is he very small?” asked Jonathan.
“Yes,” answered the first sentry. “He very small.”
“‘T’aint’t tha’ I’m small,” came a tiny, piping voice from near the ground. “‘T’s tha’ yer a bloody great lumberin’ oaf wi’ all the perceptive aptitude of a mouse turd. Ye’d best watch yer feet while yer in our valley, Jonathan Miller, or ye’ll find a very small lance stuck in one of ‘em.”
Jonathan turned his eyes to the source of this overture, and found that it was Daven Dingeholt. The six-inch tall diplomat was perched on top of a badger, which glowered at Jonathan ferociously. Daven was heavily wrapped in furs against the cold—and, true to his threat, he carried a silvery, needle-like lance.
“Sorry, Daven,” apologized Jonathan with a grin. “I should have known better. Devi will never let me forget—”
He yelped suddenly, feeling a razor-sharp pin sticking into his back, through the fabric of his heavy pack.
“Er…” he stumbled. “Devi Valley… will never let me forget… to be polite to snarfs.” He resisted the urge to unsling the pack and give it a vigorous retaliatory shake.
Daven stared at him suspiciously. “Well,” he concluded, “ye ain’t gotten n’better a’ talkin’. So I’ll be especial patient-like whilst ye explain why yer leadin’ e’en more int’ar valley. A whole army of’em now, ‘t looks like.”
Jonathan blinked. “Rufus didn’t tell you?” he asked in surprise.
A colorful scowl lit up Daven’s tiny face. “Rufus Snugg don’t tell me much o’ anythin’,” he spat.
“They’re here to work on the rail line,” explained Jonathan, some unseen bother tickling the back of his mind. “Nobody’s invading. What’s wrong between you and Rufus? I thought the two of you got on well.”
Daven turned his head to watch the line of goblins moving past, and then nudged the flanks of his badger mount, turning the animal to follow after the head of the line. Jonathan trailed after him.
“‘Tis all gone ta’ pot,” the snarf explained, his voice tinged with bitter sadness. “Since Rufus pumped out the water in the deep mines, ‘ee ain’t had time ta’ talk ta’ us snarfs. Suddenly the Snuggs’r all secrety-like, an don’ wan’ us around. Pulled out tha’ piece o’ paper ‘at the lawyers made up, an’ ‘ee started goin’ on about ‘quiet enjoyment’ and ‘right ta exclude,’ and other silly words. Our man Threespoons said i’ was all legal an’ proper, an’ we mustn’t make a fuss.”
“Rufus Snugg is very fond of his property rights,” observed Jonathan as they trudged along through the snow. “But has he actually done anything that was against the terms of your deal?”
“No,” conceded Daven grudgingly. “A’ least, no’ as I know about. But ‘ees up ta’ somethin’ down there in the mines—an’ I wanna know what! Those mouse-shite steel finers ha’ been smokin’ up Great Roof somethin’ awful since they started bringin’ more coal from yer gobbo friends in the west, an’ more o’ our people are takin’ off fer Refuge when they can’t stand it no more. Every now an’ then tha’ twit Dadtoad Digdeep drops by ta’ sneer an’ ask if I wanna join ‘em. An’ now the Snuggs ‘er doin’ something secret-like down in the deep mines ‘at used ta’ be underwater. What’s ‘ee gonna do next, Jonathan? Blow up the ridge? ‘Ee’s mad, if ye ask me. First pumpin’ out the deep mines, as should have been rightly left alone, an’ now flyin’ aroun’ like ‘ee was a hawk rider, distractin’ our patrols—”
“Wait,” interrupted Jonathan. “Can you say that again? I got a bit lost in your brogue.”
“Not right in the ‘ead,” said Daven, slowly and precisely. “Pumpin’ out the deep mines. Smokin’ up our home. Flyin’ around in our sky.”
Jonathan stopped walking and stared at him. Daven reined in the badger and looked up at him questioningly.
“Flying,” repeated Jonathan.
“Aye,” confirmed Daven. “Not well. Not graceful-like. Had a couple o’ bad landin’s ‘at gave us all a good laugh. But aye, flyin’.”
“And how, exactly, is Rufus Snugg ?” asked Jonathan, still not quite believing it.
A look of extravagant resignation came over Daven’s face, and he rolled his eyes in the direction of the distant kite that Jonathan had spotted over the domed building on the eastern ridge. The broad red triangle was circling deliberately, wavering but resisting the wind; it appeared to ride up on the gusts, allowing itself to be buffeted without losing its balance, and then dipped down, using gravity and glide to propel itself against the motion of the air. It didn’t move at all like a kite. And there was something round suspended beneath it.
“‘Tis th’ most unnatural nonsense I’ve ever seen,” grumbled Daven. “But if ‘ee don’t break his neck landin’ tha’ contraption first, I reckon ‘ee’ll find a way ta’ fly up an’ touch the sun.”
???
Rufus Snugg descended from on high, swooping toward the ridgetop at an apparently lethal speed as Jonathan watched in horror. Next to him, Gretchen Pickle observed the approaching disaster placidly.
“He’s going to die!” proclaimed Jonathan.
“Probably,” she agreed.
The broad triangle of red fabric swooped closer.
“Shouldn’t we try to catch him?” inquired Jonathan, watching as his prospects for professional advancement hurtled toward a sudden and probably squelching conclusion.
“And get crushed ourselves?” replied Gunnar von Boof with deep skepticism. “Not likely.”
A pair of hawks flew nonchalantly alongside the rapidly descending craft, their snarf riders watching in evident interest as Rufus Snugg plummeted toward destiny.
At the last second, with the flying wing just ten feet from the ground, there was a flash of smoke and fire from the nose of the triangle and it tipped upward sharply. With the plane of its wings suddenly perpendicular to its angle of descent, the craft wobbled wildly and jerked to a sudden deceleration. The frame of the left wing snapped, plunging that side downward into a sudden, spinning final descent. The entire contraption came to a crunching stop on the thin, ice-crusted soil of the hilltop. A faint moan could be heard from underneath it.
“Best landing yet,” remarked Gunnar.
“Only one of the wings broke,” agreed Gretchen. “Let’s see if the pilot broke as well.”
Jonathan, Gretchen, and Gunnar moved forward and dragged the wreckage of the glider away from Rufus, as the two hawks continued to circle curiously just above the scene.
“Brilliant!” exclaimed Rufus, popping awkwardly up from the carnage of his craft. The ruthless merchant scion that Jonathan knew appeared to have transformed into something resembling a brown snowman. His body was obscured under a shapeless outfit of massively padded clothing, and a huge, spherical helmet of cotton-padded leather adorned his head. His arms were so enormously bundled that he could barely move them. Gretchen and Gunnar began undoing the straps that held his padding in place, causing huge wads of cotton and wool to spring out from inside the nearly-formless sack that protected his body.
“The retro-thruster was nearly perfect, Gunnar,” Rufus went on enthusiastically. His face was lit up by a huge, boyish grin. “You just need to make it burn slower so I can fire it earlier. Then I expect the shock of it won’t snap the frame.”
“Making a pot of gunpowder burn slower is no easy matter,” grumbled Gunnar, zipping down the front of his employer’s cocoon and allowing him to step out of the protective wrapping. Beneath it, Rufus wore a rumpled business suit, complete with a heavily-creased cravat. “All the powder wants to go off at once,” the engineer concluded.
“Maybe if you put the powder in a tube made of steel,” suggested Gretchen, “you could persuade only the part at the front of the tube to go bang. And then the bits behind it would go off once the front part had blown away.”
Rufus appeared to notice Jonathan for the first time.
“Jonathan Miller!” he exclaimed in evident pleasure. “Have you brought my miracle workers yet?”
“I have,” answered Jonathan. “But they’re not miraculous enough to keep you alive if you fall out of that thing. What on earth are you doing riding a kite into the sky? I’ve heard about your adventure with the balloon, but a kite seems excessive.”
Rufus clapped him on the shoulder, leading him back toward the square tunnel entrance that led from the ridgetop down into the finery system.
“It’s not a kite,” he explained. “It’s a . This one was our fifth prototype, in fact. And it’s a marvel, Jonathan. A miracle! Not much longer will my reach exceed my grasp. Gretchen and Gunnar together have made a true miracle. I can fly for minutes at a time; sometimes more. The snarfs have been teaching me how their hawks find thermals to ride on, and I can use them to gain altitude and then dip down.”
“Landing seems to be giving you some difficulty,” observed Jonathan.
“Pish,” snorted Rufus derisively, “and posh. Any landing you walk away from is a success.”
“Why,” Jonathan repeated, “are you trying to fly?”
Rufus stopped and stood in front of him, looking squarely into his eyes.
“Because it is magic, Jonathan. To escape the bonds of the earth, if only for a short time; to soar with the hawks; to master the world below; it is to become, ever so briefly, like a god.”
Jonathan shook his head. “Why do you need to be a god, Rufus? You have more money than God already.”
Rufus barked a laugh. “Right again! But for all that money, I’ve never yet bought the thrill of floating above the earth. I only discovered it by accident in the balloon incident two years ago. But alright, my friend—if you must destroy the romance of my personal apotheosis, consider this. The ability to rapidly move men and goods overland without concern for the dangers and impediments on the ground creates a strategic advantage over opponents both commercial and military. If we can master the magic of flight, let Leadfeather and Wallacewog look to their pocketbooks—and let Hobb the Wise and his goons find another kingdom to loot.”
There was a faint grumbling from inside Jonathan’s backpack, but he ignored it.
Jonathan looked back over his shoulder, across Devi Valley, at the rough path of the rail line taking shape up the flank of the opposite ridge.
“Isn’t it enough to invent a steam-powered engine?” he muttered. “Life is short enough without going up in the air on a kite with explosives strapped to the front of it.”
Rufus looked at him slyly.
“Life is too short, Jonathan,” he said, “to learn to fly.”
???
It was late when Jonathan made his way back to the river to collect his goblin workers, and later still when he got them settled into an abandoned tunnel in the old iron mines. Though Jonathan found the environment dark, damp, and unpleasant, the goblins chortled and smiled as if the arrangements were cozy and welcoming. They placed their campfires to maximize the draught of smoke outward, carefully set out their meager personal belongings, and then fell to dinner with gusto when the Snugg mess staff appeared with heaping trays of meat, steamed vegetables, and fresh bread. Jonathan had taken the precaution of writing ahead with the provisioning requirements for his new workforce, and was pleased to see that Rufus had heeded his cautions that food be provided in abundance.
Satisfied that his charges were in no immediate danger of collective feral degeneration, he made his way wearily back to the town of Beatrice along the eastern riverbank. A small room had been made up for him in a private house next to one of the barracks. Jonathan withdrew Devi secretly from his pack, and they ate a private supper together. Then, with his miniature bodyguard already snoring in a tiny bedroll in one drawer of the bedstand, Jonathan collapsed into bed himself, not even bothering to change clothes.
As he ruminated on his many worries, his eyes fluttering closed and his mind starting to drift away, there appeared perversely in his brain an echo of the testy conversation with Daven earlier in the day.
“Even more goblins,” he said aloud into the darkness.
Only Devi’s snores answered him.
“More goblins,” he said again, struggling to think through the implications.
Then he pounded hard on the bedstand, eliciting an explosively foul, if high-pitched, curse from within.
“I need to talk to Daven!” he hissed to Devi. “How do I find him?”
???
The night was unusually calm as Jonathan climbed the narrow human-path up the eastern ridge. Though Devi Valley was known for its near-constant wind, tonight barely a breath of air tickled his skin. Only a sliver of moon glimmered in the sky, but the vast canopy of stars overhead gave him enough light to see the path. The effort of climbing the steep slope soon warmed him, warding off the chill air of a late-October night.
“Up thar—take th’ little path off ta’ th’ right,” directed Devi quietly from over his shoulder. Rather than riding in the pouch in his sash, she had insisted on staying just inside his pack, where it was harder to spot her. Jonathan followed her directions, clambering up a steep, rocky notch toward the crest of the ridge.
At the top, there appeared suddenly a small light near the ground. As he drew closer, he saw that this came from a narrow window in an odd, circular hut with its half-sphere dome, perched at the highest point on the ridge. It was, he realized, the small building that caught his eye earlier as he stood on the opposite ridgeline. The door opened and the form of a woman entered, briefly silhouetted against the light from within. Her body was rather broad, and her gray hair was pulled back in a messy bun. Jonathan caught a brief glimpse of a face he didn’t recognize. Then the door shut, and he turned back to the task at hand.
“The hawks nest o’er thar,” directed Devi. “Watch out; the crack opens up real sudden, an’ a clumsy oaf like ye is like ta’ fall down in’it. Be a right mess, an’ disturb the hawks somethin’ mighty.”
Jonathan felt forward with one foot at time until he at least found the steep drop-off into the chasm that formed a mews for the snarfs’ hawk flights. He pulled back, then called into the darkness:
“Hey you!”
There was a startled silence below him.
“Hey! Whoever’s on duty down there! This is Jonathan Miller. Please tell Daven Dingeholt I need to talk with him right away.”
“Why should I?” came a high-pitched voice from below.
“I brought beer.” He pulled out a sealed flask, opened the top, and poured out a bit on the ground.
“Ho now!” replied the voice from below. “Don’t be pourin’ good beer out on’ the rock, ye daft big-man. I kin smell ‘er well enough. Hold yer mice there, an’ I’ll go an’ fetch Daven. An’ if ye drink the beer while I’m gone, I’ll poke yer eyes ou’ in the dark.”
Jonathan sat back, closing the flask. “Your friends, Devi,” he remarked, “are all charming and well-adjusted. There’s not one psychopath among them.”
He felt a prick against the side of his neck, as the tiny lance pressed against his skin.
“If ye speak another word abou’ me while we’re out ‘ere, Jonathan Miller,” she said matter-of-factly, “then Digit down there won’ have ta’ bother wi’ yer eyes, cause I’ll already ‘ave fed ‘em ta’ the ‘awks.”
Jonathan spent many minutes seated on a profoundly uncomfortable rock, shivering under the cold and brilliant stars. Eventually, there came a faint rustling from ground level, and his eyes picked out the tiny forms of two snarfs outlined against a patch of icy snow.
“Give th’ man ‘is beer, Jonathan,” instructed Daven. “An’ save some fer me, fer me trouble comin’ out in the freezin’ night.”
Jonathan carefully poured out the flask into a pewter mug that he’d brought along, and then knelt low to address Daven at something like eye level. The other snarf—Digit, evidently—stuck his head into the pewter cup and began to slurp away happily.
“Ye’ve gone ta’ some trouble to come an’ find me, Jonathan,” observed Daven. “I’m sure neither of us is keen as a good mushroom trip ta’ be out ‘ere a’ night. So wha’ is it ye want to tell me?”
“What other goblins?” he asked bluntly.
“Come agin?”
“This morning you said I’d brought goblins to Devi Valley. I’ve never brought even a single goblin here before, and neither has Snugg, as far as I know. What other goblins have been here?”
“Ye don’ know?” asked Daven in evident surprise. “I figgered ‘ee was one o’ yers. Yer the only big fella I know who’s on good terms wi’ gobbos.”
“I know,” said Jonathan, “but I very much want to.”
Daven shrugged. “‘Twas near exact a month ago, as the Snuggs put it. Th’ moon looked about th’ same in th’ sky, ‘t any rate. Thar was jes one; little gray feller, come up ta’ jes about yer belt. Nights wairn’t so cold then, an’ he wairn’t wearin’ much; a bit of a smock, an’ nothin’ on ‘is ‘ead. I dinnay whether th’ Snuggs knew abou’ ‘im, but ‘ee was on ‘is own. If we was on speakin’ terms, Rufus Snugg an’ I, then I migh’ ‘ave asked—but we ain’t, so I ‘aven’t.”
“Where did you see the goblin? And where did he go?”
“‘Awk riders spotted ‘im as ‘ee came across the western ridge,” answered Daven. “We sent badger scouts ta’ keep an eye on him after tha’. ‘Ee crossed the river pretty far upstream, away from th’ Snugg village. Looked like ‘ee was tryin’ not ta’ git caught. Made ‘is way up ta’ the ridge at night, right where we’re standin’ now. And then ‘ee went inta’ tha’ upper entrance tha’ you used when ye came out this afternoon.”
“Did you follow him inside?”
“Well now, Jonathan, we aint’ s’possed to go in th’ ‘uman tunnels, are we? Property rights an’ quiet enjoyment an’ all tha.’”
Jonathan shook his head in impatience. “I won’t tell Rufus. I promise. Whatever he’s got down in the deep mines, it doesn’t involve me. I just need to know everything you can tell me about that goblin.”
Daven rubbed a hand on his chin. “I reckin’ yer a man o’ yer word, Jonathan. Ye ain’t ne’er played us wrong before, whate’er I might say about th’ scoundrels ‘at came after ye. So yes—I followed ‘im in. Did it meself, jes in case I got caught. They’d ‘ave a ‘ard time puttin’ me in a barrel ta’ drown, like they did Devi; they’d all wake up dead th’ next mornin’.”
“The Snuggs didn’t drown Devi,” insisted Jonathan—noting with some inward amusement that Daven was doubly wrong. “You can’t hold them responsible for the crimes of the White Knights.”
Daven shrugged. “All ye big folk are the same in th’end, Jonathan. We never shoulda made that deal. But we ain’t talkin’ abou’ time travel ‘ere, are we? Ye wanted to know about the gobbo. Well, yes. I followed ‘im in. ‘Ee was real careful-like, stayin’ well away from big-folk any time ‘ee ‘eard ‘em. Didn’t seem ta’ need a light, either; went through some of the unlit sections of th’ upper complex wi’out slowin’ down a bit.”
Jonathan nodded. “Goblins can mostly see in the dark. Comes of being a cave-dwelling race, I suppose. Where did he go?”
In the starlit night, outlined against the icy rime on the ridgetop, Daven’s expression was unreadable. He was silent for a moment.
“‘Ee went inta tha’ thaird vault,” came the answer, spoken softly. “Shut the door, so’s I cunnay get in.”
“How long did he stay?”
“I dinnay. Troop o’ Snugg men came by after a bit, an’ I skedaddled. Ne’er saw the gobbo agin. Fer all I know, ‘ees still in thar.”
???
The vault level of the System A complex consisted of a long, broad hall leading from, at one end, the library and stairway down, to, at the other, an opening into the enormous shaft directly above the sulfurous vent chamber. Scaffolding, recently constructed by Professor Weaselbeer-Yourfork’s archaeologists, allowed access to a labyrinthine nest of tunnels and chambers about thirty feet above, cut into the solid bones of the ridge. Who had carved out these upper chambers, or why, remained even less understood than nearly any other space in the enormous three-part complex—save only the vaults themselves.
The vaults were the home of dead and alien things.
The hall was black. No archaeologists or librarians with their, tiny, impertinent lights disturbed the massive, crypt-like serenity. Jonathan walked down it slowly, holding his own lantern high and taking little comfort in the presence of tiny Devi in his pack. She had remained in a near-permanent state of obscurity since their arrival, and did not rouse herself to comfort him in the dark. He was alone.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Jonathan counted the massive, arched openings as he walked past them; all on his left. He peered inside each one as he counted it. The hulking shapes of quiet, unknowable artifacts lurked inside. He caught a glimpse of tubes, pipes, rows of irregular, blocky shapes; and other shapes that more closely resembled the skeletons of men, though with oddly distorted proportions. If Snugg had clues to their purpose or meaning, no one had shared it with Jonathan Miller. Their complexity and otherness left him with a creeping dread that his rational mind could not explain away.
Snugg, he thought, know about this place. They must have translated something. They must have theories.
He counted vaults as he moved past them, until he reached the one. A small wooden placard just by the floor proclaimed, in simple, blocky Uellish letters: “Vault Three.”
Swallowing his fear, Jonathan stepped through the door.
His lamp cast light, but illuminated little. A tall structure ran down the center of the room, studded with embrasures, flanges, tubes, and cables. The ceiling of the vault was outside his view, and the central structure stretched up at least fifteen feet; he could not clearly make out its upper surface. Some distance along its length, a cluster of thick, knotty cables ran up into the darkness. The space around the thing was mostly empty, with perhaps ten feet of clearance to the wall on all sides. A lump or two of decayed metal along the perimeter suggested that there once might have been additional features, now lost to time. The silence was oppressive, and a faint odor of rust tickled his nose.
“Devi,” he whispered. But she did not answer.
His eye caught a glimpse of sparkling light from somewhere
the strange edifice. But just as he began to look closer, trying to discern if it was a reflection or some other light source, a faint hint of sound from behind him made him jump and whirl.
Something was in the room with him.
He backed away from where he thought he’d heard the sound, breathing in the iron taste of the air and feeling his heartrate soar. Nameless and Terrible Things gathered in the darkness beyond his paltry lamplight. There was another sound, closer, and Jonathan froze, utterly petrified. It had come from behind him.
He forced himself to turn, his knees wobbling.
A face entered his field of view. It was wrinkled, and illuminated from beneath by the yellow light of an oil lamp. It was a woman’s face; rather plain, old, and a bit round. Jonathan blinked, and waited to die.
“Mr. Miller, I presume?” said the woman’s mouth.
He shivered, but forced himself to speak to the demon who had come to kill him.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry to frighten you.”
“Yes.”
“My name is Agaberth Tentimes.”
“Yes.”
“Now Mr. Miller, you’ve had a bad fright. Come along out of this haunted old place, and up to the observatory. I saw you come in, and followed along to find out what you were about. But I feel badly that I’ve put you out of your senses, so let me make you a cup of tea and settle you down.”
He followed mutely as Tentimes led him back down the wide, dark corridor with its horrible vault entrances, up a steep stair in the scaffolding, through the narrow corridors in the level above, and eventually out into the frigid night air. Jonathan felt as if he’d walked out of a prison and breathed deep despite the sting of the cold. Tentimes kept going, though, and he followed quickly. She opened the single door to the round hut, letting a wave of heat and light escape.
Inside was a broad, round room, with a cast iron coal stove in one corner and several lamps. A strange contraption, comprised of a series of increasingly narrow tubes joined together, protruded down from the ceiling. This ceiling, he saw, was made not of wood or thatch, but of canvas, liked a tent. Furthermore, it could be unbuttoned to open different panels. The telescope—for Jonathan had read enough adventure novels to slowly remember what the business end of a telescope looked like—was set on wooden skids, and could be moved around the room to sit beneath different openings in the ceiling.
“Sit down, Mr. Miller,” said Tentimes, gesturing at one of two wood-framed chairs with seats of woven rushes. There was a tiny table with teacups and saucers, and a kettle was venting steam on top of the coal stove. She scooped tea leaves directly into the cups rather clumsily, then poured the hot water over them, sloshing it on the saucers.
“Damn. I’m afraid I’m not much of a hostess. I keep the tea up here to stay awake. Don’t get many visitors, even from the Snuggs. Man dining alone may be a barbarian, but woman taking tea alone… is a man.”
Jonathan had by now unwound his mind sufficiently from the precipice of hideous death to attempt a multi-syllabic query.
“What are you doing up here?”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’ve never seen a telescope before?”
“I’ve seen woodcuts.”
“What do you imagine I’m doing with this large telescope, at night, on top of a mountain? I’ll give you a hint: It’s not sex, but it does rhyme with ‘salami.’”
“I imagine you’re looking at the stars.”
She sniffed. “Peasants look at the stars, Mr. Miller. I am measuring the distances between them.”
He picked up the tea, but she swatted his hand with a spoon.
“It’s not ready yet. Even a barbarian waits for his tea to steep. Now it’s your turn, Miller. What are doing up here?”
“Wait. How do you know me?”
Tentimes snorted. “Your wife is famous. I’ve seen you dragging along behind her at Triad. And I do read the company dispatches; they told us all that Mr. Jonathan Miller would be arriving with a load of goblins, and not to kill or molest any of you unnecessarily. That’s two questions I’ve answered, and zero for you.”
“Did they really say ‘molest’? And ‘unnecessarily’?”
“No more answers until you even the score, Miller.”
He sipped at the tea, watching carefully to see if the sharp-tongued astronomer would swat his hand again. She did not. The hot, energizing drink settled his frazzled nerves, and he took another sip before setting the cup down.
“I was looking for a goblin,” he answered her earlier question.
“Did you lose one already? You’ve only just arrived.”
“Not one of mine,” he replied, shaking his head. “Another goblin. He—well, he ran away. I thought maybe he’d come here.”
“What makes you think that?”
“The snarfs saw a goblin go into Vault Three at night, a month ago. It just about fits with when he disappeared, if he’d made straight for Devi Valley.”
She sat back in her chair, musing.
“Vault Three is an interesting destination for a goblin fugitive. Did you see the light?”
He looked up sharply.
“Yes. I thought my eyes were playing tricks.”
She shook her head. “No. There’s a light on the inside of the… whatever it is. It never flickers, and never goes out. Can’t possibly be a candle or a lamp; it’s been there since Snugg surveyed the place, and I had a look at it when I got here this summer, too.”
“Why don’t you open up the enclosure and find out what’s in it?”
She snorted. “Maybe you were too busy wetting yourself to get a good look at that room, but the thing in there—around the light—is massive. Almost all metal. And not just iron or steel, but some kind of alloy that Gunnar can’t identify. Fantastically strong, and probably impossible to pry apart. Anyway, Rufus has forbidden his people from disassembling or destroying anything in the Vaults. Says we’d never get it back together again. I suppose he’s right, but I don’t understand quite why he cares. He’s taken apart plenty of other priceless artifacts to see how they work.”
“Did you see a goblin?” he asked.
“Before your lot? No. Is this fugitive a friend of yours?”
“Yes,” Jonathan mused, “I suppose he is. But the real problem is that all the other goblins badly need him to come back.”
She shrugged.
“Lousy argument to convince someone on the run to turn around. Now look, Miller. I have actual work to do up here. You’re welcome to sit and enjoy the tea and the fire, but I have a sky full of stars that need attending to.” Tentimes shook her head. “And one lost sheep,” she added to herself in an absent-minded mutter.
He sipped at the tea.
“What’s the lost sheep?”
“There’s a star out of place,” she mumbled in response, one eye already pressed to the finderscope. “I call it my lost sheep, because it wanders around like one.”
A number of dots connected themselves in Jonathan’s brain.
“Tentimes.
Tentimes? Of the Astronomy Department at Triad University?”
She glared at him over the finderscope. “Of course I’m a professor. Even Rufus Snugg wouldn’t give a rig like this to an amateur.”
Jonathan sat up straight in excitement. “Then you knew Rolly! You worked with him this summer, before—” He trailed off, thinking hard. “Before you fled the city,” he concluded. “And he was murdered.”
“I have an alibi,” she said dryly. “I was hundreds of miles away, on top of a mountain, looking at the stars. There are witnesses.”
“Nobody thinks you killed Rolly,” he scoffed. “But do you know he was killed?”
“I have no idea,” she answered, a hint of sadness creeping into her sardonic tone. “He was as gentle as a peanut. I can’t think of anyone who disliked him, and it’s inconceivable to me that he’d fall in with criminals. Triad paid him a decent salary, and he picked up extra working for Snugg.”
Jonathan sat up suddenly. “I didn’t know that. What did he do for Snugg?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know either, exactly; he was very closed about it. Something rather complex, though. He mentioned it once or twice in passing. Said Veridia Snipe was driving him like a pack mule.”
“I think,” he said slowly, “that Veridia Snipe has been keeping things from me.”
“She does that,” replied Tentimes, turning back to the finderscope. “Get used to it. That woman keeps secrets like you keep interrupting me. And she’s got more of them than Hobb the Wise. When she told me to drop what I was doing and come out here, I was on a coach within the hour, no questions asked. They sent me my things and circulated some nonsense about visiting family in Roosterfoot.”
“When was that?” he asked.
“The twenty-seventh of June,” she replied. “Now really, Miller, you must let me work. I haven’t had a good clear night like this in weeks. I have to take down measurements on my lost sheep.”
Jonathan pulled his leather-bound appointment book out of his pack, flipped to an empty page, and wrote notes.
“Thank you, Professor,” he said, rising to his feet. “I won’t trouble you any more tonight.”
???
The next morning, Jonathan groggily hauled himself out of bed, dressed, ate a quick breakfast of hot porridge, crossed the river, and ascended the western ridge to check on the goblin work crews. He found them busily clearing loose rock from the path of the planned rail traverse. Though they were still bundled absurdly, they swung shovels, pickaxes, and hammers with vigor, singing a thumping, rhythmic chant in their own tongue as they worked.
A well-stocked mess wagon at the foot of the path emitted the smells of a savory bean stew, and the work crews took it in turns to go to the wagon in small, organized groups to be fed. These then marched happily back up the slope to resume their labors, and another group came down to the food. A gang of heavily-armed Snugg guards stood by the mess wagon, eyeing the grayskins dubiously.
“Just keep the grub coming,” Jonathan instructed their leader, “and they won’t give you any trouble.”
The soldier shook his head in disapproval. “This’ll end badly,” he predicted. “Their type and ours ain’t meant to mix.”
Jonathan made a note of the soldier’s name in his book, with a reminder to have Rufus reassign him.
At the highest point that the crews had yet reached, he found the heavily-wrapped form of Arthur, the engineer. He was one of three Quiet Ones that Jonathan had brought along, in the hope that they might be able to mediate any trouble that arose between their cousins and humans.
“Mr. Miller!” Arthur exclaimed warmly, seeing the young man approach. “I hope your friends in the valley have more for us to do than just clearing the traverse. We’ll have this side of the slope done in a week, and the other side in another week. I don’t want this lot to get bored,” he added, nodding affectionately at the goblins down the slope.
“Take your time,” Jonathan advised. “Pay attention to the details. Even clearing rock and ice has to be done right.”
Arthur snorted. “If you think I don’t know how to do a proper excavation job, Mr. Miller, then go back to the Gray Kingdom and look at the new mines. As long as they keep my goblins fed, we’ll get it done.”
Jonathan nodded in approval. “After that, they’ll have you lay the rail and ties. They may need some of you to help with mining the iron ore, and perhaps in the finery. If that doesn’t keep you out of trouble for the winter, I expect they’ll put you to work on the bridge over the river.”
“Now that,” said Arthur with a smile, “is a challenge I look forward to. But I want a word with Snugg’s architects, if you don’t mind. I’m curious about the design. It’s a short span, but judging by the angle at which we’re building this traverse, they’re planning for a relatively high load rating.”
Jonathan returned the smile. “One thing at a time. But I’ll have a word with Rufus, and see what can be done.”
“You can tell him I have a few ideas for his glider, as well,” added Arthur with what Jonathan took, beneath the layers of scarves and hats, to be a wink. He started to turn back to the nearby work crew, straining to shift an ice-rimed boulder. But then he faced Jonathan again, and drew him a few feet further away from the other goblins.
“There’s more than iron ore coming out of that mine,” Arthur said, lowering his voice. “The tunnels where they told us to camp are well out of the way, but I went for a little walk last night while the others slept. There’s one tunnel where they’ve posted guards all hours. And there are people working down there. I saw men coming past with heavy sacks on poles. Why post all the guards, just for another ore vein? And I saw other people come and go, too—not miners, but the sort of people who spend their time reading and writing.”
Arthur carefully wrapped one hand in his handkerchief, then reached into his pocket and drew out a small lump of black metal. It was pitch black, and irregularly shaped. The metal seemed to suck up light, reflecting none at all back to Jonathan’s eyes. It looked oddly heavy in Arthur’s gray palm.
“This is what they’re bringing out,” the goblin stated. “One of the workers let it fall, and I took it when nobody was looking.”
He took his wrapped hand away, and the black lump of metal hung in the air for a moment, suspended, before slowly, reluctantly drifting down to the ground. It did not bounce on the cold rock, but simply stuck. Jonathan stared silently, eyes wide in amazement. Arthur stooped to pick up the lump of ore, wrapped it in the handkerchief, and slipped it back into his pocket.
“I don’t want trouble, Mr. Miller. I won’t ask questions. But maybe you should.”
???
“Dispatches,” announced Elizabeth Karn, laying a stack of papers on Jonathan’s desk. He sighed. Snugg’s paperwork followed him around like a lost puppy.
“Do you need help with the decryption?” she asked politely. Jonathan blushed, and nodded. Despite his best efforts, he still struggled laboriously with even the simplest of Snugg’s encryption ciphers.
Elizabeth Karn, the chief linguist among the many researchers that Snugg employed in Devi Valley, was a slim young woman in her late twenties. She had straight, shoulder-length brown hair, green eyes, and thin fingers. Her expression was perpetually serious, and her large spectacles gave her a bookish, slightly forbidding air. She reminded Jonathan of a younger, less carnivorous Veridia Snipe. Miss Karn seated herself gracefully across the table from Jonathan and began shuffling through the mail. Jonathan watched her for a moment, and then looked away rather awkwardly when she glanced up at him.
She suddenly stopped, raised one delicate eyebrow, and handed a small, rolled piece of paper to Jonathan. “This one is in cleartext,” she declared in surprise. “No ciphers. Addressed to you personally.”
Jonathan took the small slip of paper, opened it, and read. He instantly recognized Merrily’s graceful, compact handwriting.
, it began. Merrily never called him Jonathan.
His heart began to sink in his chest.
Jonathan felt a cold wash of panicked unreality slide around him. This couldn’t be real. It was the wrong branch.
, he mumbled in the fey-speech. But nothing changed. No vision of that elusive golden cord materialized in his vision. No alternatives appeared, in which he didn’t hold this piece of paper. It was gone.
“Mr. Miller?” asked Miss Karn, across the table from him.
He looked down at the simple, cheap, unstained wood of the tabletop. It wasn’t real.
“I’ll come find you later,” he said. “If you don’t mind. Please excuse me, Miss Karn.”
With a look of compassion, she stood up and left the room. He put his forehead down on the table and waited to wake up. But there was no waking.
???
“Don’ drink,” said Devi, sitting on an upturned cup in front of him. Jonathan, his eyes puffy, stared down at the table just in front of her.
A man brought a bottle of something very strong, just as he’d asked. He pulled the cork out of the bottle.
“,” she repeated emphatically. “Ye cain’t drink now. No’ now, no’ fer some time, Jonathan. Everythin’s shite now, but it’ll be shite on fire if ye stairt drinkin’.”
He reached for the bottle anyway, and she stabbed him vigorously in the hand. He cursed and drew his hand back, nursing it.
“Ye’ll thank me, one day,” she said. “Mebbe tomorrow. Mebbe next year. Trust me, Jonathan, I’ve ‘ad me ‘eart stomped too. Drink makes’t worse, na better. What ye need is a mess ta clean up. Somethin’ ta’ focus on, what ain’t yer broken soul.”
“What,” he asked, his voice still quavering badly, “did you have in mind?”
“Go an’ fin’ out what’s in tha’ deep mine the Snuggs pumped ou’,” she suggested.
Jonathan proposed that Devi be inserted into a somewhat different variety of deep mine, located within the nearest available donkey. His language was considerably colored by long acquaintance with Cyrus Stoat, and, I am sorry to say, largely unfit for publication.
“Why,” he asked in conclusion, “are the bowels of System C any relevant?”
“One,” she began. “Because Rufus Snugg don’ want Daven an’ my folk ta’ know, and that’ makes it interestin’ an’ probably dangerous. Two, because yer gobbo friend Simon came ou’ this way lookin’ fer something,’ and wha’s in them mines might well shed some light on’t. Three, any secret kept by someone else is worth findin’ out. An’ most impairtant, ye need ta’ git outta this hut and out o’ yer mind in a way that don’t involve puttin’ booze in yer brain. So figger out what’s in them mines, afore I have ta’ stab ye somewhere that’ll hurt more’n yer hands.”
He threw the mug at her, which she dodged nimbly.
“Do tha’ again,” she observed, “and we’ll see which o’ us fairst gets shoved up a donkey’s arse.”
???
Jonathan strode briskly through the upper levels of the System C mines. His thoughts were a fog of grief and panic, but he forced his back to be straight and his legs to move. I am a shell of myself, he thought, and the shell is going for a walk without me.
He drew the hood over his lantern and watched for a time in the darkness, until a small group of men came up from the deeper levels. Each pair carried between them two poles with a sling between, and these were laden with some obviously-heavy material, though its nature was obscured by sheets of sackcloth laid over it. He waited in the darkness, and the same group came back again. They said little to each other, and he could not make out their faces in the dark. They were Snugg laborers from the small settlement that straddled the river. A pair of broad pipes, apparently made of steel and dripping with condensation, ran side by side along the passage.
Jonathan followed in the dark along the tunnel from which the laborers had come, placing his feet carefully.
Somewhere out there in the unreal world was Merrily, lost. He felt a tugging at his mind, as if it were being pulled out of him. His senses told him he was in a rather pungent mine, but he found it nearly impossible to attend them. The world of senses was not real.
Another group of laborers came up from behind Jonathan in the dark, and he scuttled into a narrow crevice in the side of the tunnel. The laborers moved past him silently, and he drifted along behind them, well outside the reach of their lanterns.
The small group approached a squad of four Snugg guards, each armed with a long gun and a steel sword. They looked bored, and one was dozing slightly. It was late, and these men had evidently drawn a poor watch. Jonathan, remembering the purpose for which Devi had prodded him to come here, drew himself up and started forward.
A hand fell on his shoulder in the dark.
“You won’t get in that way,” came the whisper of a woman’s voice. He turned, his eyes dull. Before him was a wrinkled face, gray hair sticking out in untidy tufts from beneath a broad-brimmed hat. He took a moment to study the face, and then recognized her.
“Professor?” he whispered in return. “Professor Weaselbeer?”
“It’s Weaselbeer-Yourfork,” she hissed. “All the syllables count. And if you want to get past that guard post, and find out what’s in the deep mine, then I have a better way.”
She pulled at his arm, and together they withdrew back into the darkness of the upper tunnels.
???
When a gang of laborers next approached the four guards, there was little difference to note about their appearance. And so the guards noted very little, watching in bored disinterest as the muscled but meek laborers trudged past. Each pair carried a long sling between them, bulging with an untidy heap of sackcloth to wrap their cargo on the return trip. Once they had passed beyond the light of the guards’ lanterns, the laborers set down the poles, and the slings’ hidden occupants flung off the sackcloth and stood up. Prunella Weaselbeer-Yourfork handed a small sack of silver bottoms to each man with an admonition to wait for their return, and then she and Jonathan went on their way.
“Never,” she counseled Jonathan as they walked, “overlook the productive outcomes of human greed. It motivates men to feats of tedium that no sane person would ever engage in, like writing history, or digging bits of shiny metal out of solid rock and melting it into little round discs imprinted with the face of some distant megalomaniac they’d go out of their way never to meet. Greed girds the mind and arouses the soul, and without it we would know precious little about our own past. In this case, greed is going to get us a look at Rufus Snugg’s secret project.”
“Why are you helping me?”
“I’m not. I’m helping me.”
“Why?” he pressed.
In the dim light of the hooded lanterns, her eyes glittered beneath the broad-brimmed hat. She withdrew a thin silver chain from inside her coat, even as they crept further along the stony passage.
“Because I’m not just here to dig up old pottery shards, Mr. Miller.”
Hanging on the thin chain was a delicate silver ornament: a pair of crossed bars, with a circle set in their center.
“An Advocate? You? I can’t believe it.”
She tucked the ornament back into the front of her shirt.
“We can discuss moral philosophy and the reasonableness of belief another time, Miller. Right now, there’s metallurgy at hand.”
“Metallurgy,” he repeated. But she said nothing more.
They continued walking even as they whispered, and Professor Weaselbeer-Yourfork now held her lantern up close to one of the walls. The rough-hewn rock showed signs of recent working, and amidst the scars from picks and hammers was a thin strip of blackness. It absorbed the light so completely that it seemed to Jonathan that there must a hole in the rock. He pressed his fingers up against the band of black, finding it to be icy cold even compared to the surrounding granite. The strip was hard and smooth.
“What is it?” he breathed, turning his eyes back to the professor. She shook her head silently, then motioned for him to continue.
Light began to filter up the tunnel from some source deeper down. Distant voices could be heard echoing from the stone walls. The two interlopers pressed themselves close to one wall as they moved, fearful of some group coming up from below. But none came, and the light remained steady, growing neither brighter nor dimmer. After a few moments, Professor Weaselbeer-Yourfork moved forward more confidently, gesturing for Jonathan to follow.
The light slowly grew brighter as they moved, and they finally emerged into a larger cavern at floor level. Lights around the walls illuminated an open chamber hundreds of feet across, and at least fifty high. The figures of humans could be seen moving about under the lights, and the sound of hammers and pickaxes greeted their ears. Jonathan looked around cautiously in case they should be detected—but no one was nearby. The two large pipes, which had run all the way from the upper levels, ended here. One of them was venting fresh air, still smelling of the frost and wind up above. The broken rock underfoot was slightly damp.
“God’s tits,” muttered Weaselbeer-Yourfork next to him, drawing Jonathan into the shadows behind a long hopper. The air temperature dropped noticeably as they crouched down. Jonathan soon perceived why. The hopper was full of that dense, icy metal, sucking into it all light and reflecting back none. At least two tons of it must have been piled up in the hopper. And as Jonathan’s gaze drifted around the room, he saw that great stretches of the walls were occupied by veins and sheets of utter blackness.
“It’s some kind of ore,” muttered Weaselbeer-Yourfork. “They’re taking it topsides, and it gets stowed in one of the larger warehouses.”
“What is it?” whispered Jonathan. “And what’s it for?”
She shook her head again. “I haven’t a clue. But look—the ore sucks in all kinds of energy. Light; heat; let’s see about kinetic. Pick up a piece.”
Jonathan selected a small chunk of the metal from the hopper and pulled. It was surprisingly heavy for its size. His fingers burned from the cold, and he quickly drew one hand inside his shirt sleeve to hold the chunk of ore through the fabric. The metal—if that’s what it was—seemed to resist movement with more than just the expected force of gravity.
“It feels like it’s glued in place,” he said, “like a magnet.”
“Drop it,” instructed the professor.
The thing fell almost reluctantly as Jonathan let go of it, just as the lump of ore that Arthur had shown him. When it struck the broken stones at their feet, it did not bounce at all, but rather stuck, and then slid downward slightly. Not the slightest sound came from its impact.
Weaselbeer-Yourfork timidly reached into the hopper, wrapping her hand in a cloth against the cold. She slid a tiny piece into her pocket. Jonathan picked up his piece as well, prying it off the floor against the strange magnetic force.
He looked up again at the activity. There were scores of people faintly visible—at least, where they didn’t overlap with the light-sucking black substance. Some were working at the walls, extracting the ore. Others appeared to be examining it closely, or working with instruments and machines.
Voices came suddenly closer, and Weaselbeer-Yourfork grabbed at Jonathan’s arm, with a silent gesture of her head toward the exit. Jonathan nodded, and together they scuttled back into the tunnel entrance.
Both were silent as they made their way back to the waiting laborers, who covered them in sackcloth again and conveyed them past the guard post. Jonathan’s mind wandered even as he emerged and followed meekly behind the professor, his thoughts split between Merrily and the strange hunk of ore in his pocket.
???
Weaselbeer-Yourfork’s office, if it could be called that, was in the workshop level below the steel finery in System B. The archaeological work on this level showed no signs of completion, and now, at night, it was entirely abandoned. A small desk at the back, cluttered with papers and surrounded by wooden crates and barrels, apparently served as her headquarters.
“I work here,” she informed him, “because it’s harder for Rufus’s people to listen in. I’m certain every wall in the buildings by the river has a spy-hole in it. But if he wants to listen in here, he’ll have to drill through solid rock.”
She took out the hunk of ore that she’d lifted from the deep mine and gently set it on the desk. Even under the light of several nearby lanterns it was entirely black. It was as if a little piece of void had come to rest on a tabletop.
“What is it?” Jonathan asked again, staring at the ore.
“I don’t have any more of an answer now than I did an hour ago,” Weaselbeer-Yourfork answered waspishly. “But observations suggest several germane points of data. First: It absorbs all kinds of energy, including energy that we’ve never considered to be transferrable. Second: It
be mined, meaning its absorption isn’t perfect. If it absorbed one hundred percent of kinetic energy applied to it, you’d never get it out of the rock. And third: Rufus Snugg is interested enough in it to devote considerable staff and secrecy to getting large quantities out of the rock. So there must be some commercial value.”
A nearby barrel gave a guilty squirm, and both Jonathan and Professor Weaselbeer-Yourfork looked at it sharply. The Professor reached for a nearby pistol. The lid of the barrel lifted, and a man rose up out of it. The light of the nearby lamps showed a shock of red hair beneath a wide-brimmed hat, a white shirt with dirt stains on it, and a heavily-creased cravat. It was Rufus Snugg.
“What are you doing in that barrel, Rufus?” demanded Professor Weaselbeer-Yourfork, not setting down the pistol. “And what did you do with the artifacts I had packed in their for shipment back to Triad?”
He shrugged nonchalantly.
“Hiding in a barrel is easier than drilling through all that rock. And before you turn that pistol on me, Prunella—I had the artifacts moved to a different barrel.”
“You personally sat in that barrel all this time, on the off chance I might show up here with someone to talk to?”
“No. I only got in the barrel after the laborers you bribed to sneak past my guards informed me that you and Jonathan were on your way back. I guessed you’d come here. Human greed, Prunella, is indeed a productive phenomenon, but so is human predictability. So—now that I’ll never be able to use this trick again, what do you make of your new pet rock?”
Jonathan blinked, momentarily too surprised at this exchange to recall that he was living in an alternate reality of horror and heartbreak.
“It eats energy and shits void,” she answered tartly.
“Indeed it does,” he proclaimed. “Though it does neither as efficiently as it might. Still, as you said, if it were a perfectly efficient energy sink, we’d never move it. Now where do you suppose all that energy goes to?”
“You’re not angry at us?” inquired Jonathan.
“Angry? Hardly. I hired both of you for your insuppressible curiosity. It was, therefore, inevitable that at some point you’d try to get into the deep mines. I have only myself to blame.”
“Then why all the secrecy?”
“Because not all of my employees are insuppressibly curious, and there are some among them that that are entirely curious. I know of at least three spies from the other trading majors, and two rather incompetent buffoons from the Republic. I assume the Brotherhood of Fallen Stars has someone on site as well, though we haven’t found him yet. We might at least make them work for their intelligence. But you, Jonathan and Prunella, don’t work for any of my enemies.”
“Why not just show us the deep mines, then?” the professor snapped.
“Because, my dear, you haven’t asked me nicely. And furthermore, it really isn’t any of your business.”
“You hired me to illuminate the secrets of this place, Rufus,” she retorted acidly. “Why keep me out of the biggest secret of them all?”
He shook his head in amusement. “What makes you think that’s the biggest secret in this valley?”
“What do
know about this stuff, Rufus?” asked Jonathan, suddenly feeling daring. “Why don’t you drop the spymaster act and tell us what’s going on?”
Rufus stepped out of the barrel, turned it over, and sat on it.
“Last night,” he said, “you went looking for a missing goblin. Tentimes told me all about it. I do from time to time inspire a certain loyalty in people, Jonathan, primarily by paying them well and fairly for it. You told her that your errant goblin went to the Vaults—and specifically to the Third Vault, which is nearly as troublesome as that hunk of ore on the table. How do you suppose your goblin friend knew to come here? What was he after? And what do the vaults have to do with the black metal ore?”
Jonathan blinked, and said nothing.
“The more we study this place,” Rufus went on, “and the deeper we dig, the less we seem to understand. We have the remains of a giant steam turbine, a library full of books we can barely translate, machines in the upper vaults we can’t begin to comprehend, a steel finery unlike any design ever seen before—and now an old flooded mine full of some kind of ore that sucks up light, heat, even movement. I’m out of my depth, Jonathan. There are more unknowns than I know how to deal with. There’s money to be made here, yes—but also enormous risks. My little colony can barely cope with one or two of these mysteries at a time. Sooner or later, if we don’t get a grip on what’s going on in Devi Valley, someone with more resources than Snugg & Co. is going to catch wind and take it away from us. What will we be giving away to them if that should happen? Some days I think we should simply mix up a giant batch of gunpowder and blow the whole thing up.”
“You can’t do that,” said Jonathan sharply. “What about the snarfs?”
“Indeed,” agreed Rufus. “One coin on the scale against total annihilation. But Daven hasn’t exactly made it easy to work with them.”
“A little good will toward your neighbors would go an awfully long way right now,” observed Jonathan. “Show Daven what’s in the mines, and that you don’t know what it is any more than he does, and his people might be easier to deal with. Move the finery operations out to the riverside instead of the caves, so the smoke doesn’t go up into their town, and perhaps they’ll—”
A faint ringing sound in the distance stopped him cold. Rufus held up one hand in warning, and Weaselbeer-Yourfork turned sharply in the direction of the passage up to the finery.
“That’s the fire bell,” remarked Rufus. And he hopped off the barrel and sprinted for the exit.
???
On the ridgetop, the small, round observatory was an inferno. Neither Jonathan nor any of the other rescuers from the colony by the river could approach it, so hot and all-consuming was the fire. A broad swath of flame lit up the ground, too, in a straight line proceeding out to about thirty feet away from the conflagration on either side.
“It’s like someone dumped oil on the ground in a line from above, and then threw a match on it,” remarked Rufus, standing next to Jonathan and watching the flames with a shared horror.
“No sign of Professor Tentimes,” reported Gunnar numbly, approaching them with the hulking form of Gog the Hammer just behind him. “She must have been inside. She came up to take observations tonight.”
They all stood together, watching the pyre in helpless futility.
“Do you hear that?” asked Jonathan. “It’s not the wind or the fire. Listen.”
There was a steady rhythmic beating in the air, like the flapping of great wings. Some enormous body rushed over them in the darkness; felt, witnessed, but not seen. It was not the wind or the fire, but some combination of both. They cowered on the ground beneath it.
“I am beginning to think,” said Rufus Snugg, “that I shouldn’t have come here.”
Jonathan patted his sash, then his pockets. A thought sprang into his head, unbidden: