“There are human rats down there, undoubtedly the 'slave boys’ that one just mentioned. One of them is the other tainted heartbeat, but it’s hard to distinguish between them because they are swathed in mud and up to their ankles in water. I would guess they are digging the tunnel themselves; probably laying the tile, too.” He turned to the blond apprentice, whose eyes stared in wide terror above the gag in his mouth. “What do you think? Does that sound plausible to you?” The boy nodded, glassy-eyed and terrified. “What a cooperative young whelp you are. I think I may let you live after all.”
“But why are they tiling the tunnel?” Rhapsody asked, leaning down in the attempt to peer into the horizontal hole at the bottom of the shaft. “And if they are merely digging for clay to make into slip for the tileworks, wouldn’t it make more sense for them not to build so narrow a tunnel? Have less distance to haul the clay?”
“Perhaps our new friend here can tell us,” the Firbolg king suggested. “Any thoughts?” The apprentice shook his head violently, shrugging his shoulders in exaggerated motions. Achmed exhaled in disgust. “They are deep in, Rhapsody—some of them asleep halfway up the tunnel, more of them at the terminus half a league away. You won’t be able to see anything from up here.”
“How many are there?”
Achmed blotted the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. Slowly he eased his arrhythmic pulse to disconnect from the heartbeat of the glowering apprentice who still struggled in his bonds, glancing from the two of them to the bell beside the open kiln. “Hard to say. They’re masked by water. You know how much I love water.”
Rhapsody nodded and stepped away from the alcove. Achmed watched as her face went suddenly pale in the flickering light of the ovens; the kiln fires roared to sudden life as terror came over her face.
“Gods,” she whispered. She walked quickly over to Achmed and spoke softly in his ear. “Water. Below Entudenin. That’s what they’re doing here—they’re tunneling to the artery that once was Entudenin.”
Achmed cast a glance at the enormous metal disk leaning against the alcove’s wall.
“It’s a well—an aqueduct,” he said. “They’re building an aqueduct to harness the water from the wellspring that once fed the geyser. A sensible idea; should be incredibly lucrative if they plan to sell the water, though I can’t imagine that the duke would allow such a thing.”
“Which must be why they are doing it in secret,” Rhapsody added, glancing nervously over her shoulder at the bound apprentices; the blond boy and Omet looked at her hopefully in return, while the demon-spawn snarled and spat around the edges of his gag.
“It might also have something to do with the fact that they are employing slave children to do the digging,” Achmed said curtly, rolling the dark-haired apprentice over on his face with a swift kick. The demon-spawn only grew more angry, spitting and cursing at the floor. “No one else would undertake the project; much too risky.”
Rhapsody was trembling. “Once they break through to the artery, those children are dead,” she said. “The force of Entudenin was said to be strong enough to shatter a man’s back on the first day of the water cycle; imagine the power it will have blasting through the first crack in the clay.”
Achmed walked back over to the alcove and peered down into the well shaft. “If there’s water now, then they’ve already broached the water table. They were fortunate to find it in its fallow part of the cycle—whatever it was you said the lore called it, the time of Slumber. When the Awakening happens again, the water will roar forth. It could happen at any time, judging by the waterflow down there already. We’d best get the other child out now, then.”
“Child? You mean children. Achmed, we have to get all of them out of there.”
The Firbolg king rolled his eyes. He drew his long, thin sword of Seren steel and handed it to her.
“Gag the bald one. If any of them move so much as a hairsbreadth while I’m gone, cut their throats,” he said in the Orlandan vernacular to be certain each of the apprentices understood him.
He waited until he was certain that Rhapsody was watching all three apprentices at the same time before lowering himself into the well shaft. The tiles were smooth and slippery, and Achmed had to fully extend both legs, then both arms, bracing himself against the sides of the shaft, inching down the vertical tunnel with agonizing slowness.
At the bottom of the well shaft he gingerly removed one foot, then the other, from the walls, and dropped carefully into the debris of broken pallets and mudfilth that coated the tiled floor. He bent and stared into the dark horizontal passageway that tunneled away into even blacker darkness.
A few moments later he hoisted himself back out and came back to where Rhapsody stood in the pulsing light of the kiln fires. The logs under the huge vats of clay slip were burning down to coals, unattended, and now the slip was beginning to thicken in heavy clumps within the viscous liquid.
“There’s nothing to be done; I can’t fit down the aqueduct,” he said, brushing the mud from his cloak.
He watched her face carefully in the inconstant light, knowing what she would say.
“Can I fit?”
“You can.” His voice was quiet, his words considered. “It would be much like crawling along the Root again.”
He had expected her to shudder, but instead she just nodded and began to remove her pack.
“Narrower, perhaps,” he added.
“I understand. Can you lower me down? My arms aren’t long enough to climb down as you did.”
Achmed cast a glance around the firing room of the foundry. The demon-spawn had settled into seething quiet, and was still lying facedown on the dirt floor, his countenance contorted by the twisting shadows cast by the firecoals beneath the cooling vats of slip. The other two apprentices lay near him, frozen with fear, watching Achmed apprehensively. He pointed at the nearest vat of hot slip.
“If you ever wanted to be the subject of a statue, just move.”
He turned and picked up a pole with a hook on it that was obviously used to lower and raise up buckets of clay from the bottom of the well shaft. Achmed held it at an angle and Rhapsody stepped on to the hook, grasping it with both hands. Her eyes were calm, though they were shining brightly.
“Are you certain you want to do this?” he asked quietly in Bolgish.
“Is there another option? Besides, I’m the Iliachenva’ar. It’s my duty to bring light into a dark place.”
Achmed snorted and began to lower the pole into the shaft.
“Perhaps you should wedge your blade squarely inside my head, then. There has been no illumination burning in there for a long time; it’s been utterly absent of reason ever since I allowed myself to get caught up in this ridiculous crusade of yours. Hurry. And remember, if there’s a moment’s hesitation, or threat, kill the little bastards. That was the agreement.”
“Yes. That was the agreement.” Her smile shone as brightly as her eyes for a moment, then disappeared into the murky blackness at the bottom of the well shaft.
A moment later the dark vertical tunnel filled with a brilliant pulse of light, and a hum that rang like a silvery horn being sounded. Achmed glanced over the edge of the tunnel. Rhapsody stared up at him from the bottom of the well shaft, Daystar Clarion in her hand. The sword of melded element fire and starlight burned brightly, sending glistening waves of illumination over fetid water on the shaft’s floor. She smiled again, then waded to the tiled hole in the well-shaft wall and crawled inside the horizontal tunnel, holding the sword before her like a torch.
Achmed watched as the blazing light from Daystar Clarion receded into a faint glow inside the tunnel. He turned around just in time to see the child of the Rakshas lurch to the side, rolling into the firecoals that burned beneath one of the steaming vats of hot slip.