Finally, though, the high-pitched ringing echoes of iron striking rock become muffled by an undercurrent of sound, like a low-pitched moaning. Mingled with that were alarming gusts of air that seemed to blow from nowhere, and occasional crackling sounds which neither of them could identify.
Then Martan stopped dead in his tracks, and shut down his lamp completely. The action was so completely unexpected that Gawain's hand instinctively reached for the hilt of his longsword over his right shoulder, but even though this stretch of tunnel had been heightened, it would have been impossible to draw the blade in such close confines.
Martan stood rooted to the spot, and then Gawain understood. Even with the lamps shut down, he began to make out Martan's silhouette in front of him. There was light, ahead of them, and a strong breeze suggesting a vast open space beyond…
The old miner eased himself against the wall, and Gawain took the hint, though with the sounds echoing down the tunnel from all directions, they could have spoken without fear of detection, or so it seemed to Gawain at least.
He moved cautiously forward, the darkened lamp in his left hand and his knife in his right. The breeze grew stronger, the light seemed brighter as they approached the opening, but Gawain thought it must just be his eyes adjusting to the faint glow from without. Finally, the tunnel opened out onto a familiar ledge, and the sounds that had echoed down the tunnel grew louder and more distinct.
The low-pitched moaning seemed to be resolving into a repetitive chant, and as Gawain stepped onto the ledge and scanned the immediate area, he recognised a single word, split into two syllables, repeated over and over again. Ra-Moth. Ra-Moth…
Gawain gasped as he turned his eyes to towards the sound. Perhaps five hundred paces to his left, lights, moving, from the edge of the rip, and beyond, barely visible on the far side of the mighty chasm, tiny pinpricks of light, moving. Moving, to the edge of the rip, and down into its depths.
"Poke me in the eye and say I'm dreaming." a familiar voice whispered from behind Gawain's left shoulder. "Look what the mad bastards are doing!"
Martan's eyes were clearly better than Gawain's in such poor light, but a shudder ran the length of the young man's spine nevertheless. He eased forward, and since Martan didn't object, he was confident that they were invisible in the darkness as far as the Ramoths were concerned, them so far away and them bathed in light as they were.
The ledge here was narrower than the site of Gawain's first encounter with the rip in the earth, and he lowered himself to the ground, his head over the edge, gazing in awe and horror. Martan gasped too, and held his breath.
The procession of moving lights on the far side moved slowly but surely to the chasm's edge, spaced at intervals of perhaps thirty paces. Each light moved slowly to precipice, and then began to descend…rough-hewn steps had been cut into the sheer wall of the precipice, and it was these the lights were following. Down, and down, to the blackness so far below that the tiny pinpricks of light faded and were invisible before the floor of the rip had been reached.
And on Gawain and Martan's side, the lights emerged from the inky blackness, moving upward, slowly and deliberately.
The tooling sounds they'd heard were coming from the chasm walls. On both sides of great divide, lights were fixed at intervals, and workers were hammering new steps out of the rock face, a second stairway to the pit.
"Madness." Martan gasped, as one of the tiny lights dropped suddenly, and rapidly, and disappeared.
"Morloch madness." Gawain agreed, watching as another tiny light plummeted to destruction far below.
"Something's happening," Martan hissed, "They've stopped!"
They had, at least on the ledges either side of the rip. The lights on the downward wall, on the far side of the chasm, continued on, but the lights on the upward side came to an abrupt halt. There was a sudden crackling discharge, and a massive shaft of black aquamire light blasted across the chasm, and was gone. Immediately, the procession of lights resumed.
While they watched, Gawain counted. Perhaps one in five of the lights that went down the far side of the chasm emerged on this side. Not once, when the lights plummeted to destruction, did he nor Martan hear a scream.
"Do you know," Martan whispered, his voice tremulous, "how long it must have taken to carve those steps? How many lives? How many lives?"
Gawain shook his head, stunned. The sheer scale of the effort, the sheer waste of life, for what? So that shaven-headed vacuous idiots could babble about an ancient god to uncaring traders at markets across the southlands? Madness.
"That is where I must go." Gawain said, nodding towards the few survivors that carried their tiny lamps into a well-lit cavern. "You do not have to come."
"Yes I do, if you're to find yer way out again."
"I can come back to you."
"You'd be lost in the blink of an eye, Serre, and well you know it. I've come this far, and not yet bloodied a nose. I'll not hug me knees in the dark while you get yerself gloriously killed by that lot."
Gawain smiled. "Very well. But stay behind me, Martan, for your own sake."
"I'll try."
Gawain stood back from the edge, sheathed his knife, stowed the lamp in his pack, and drew his short sword. When he glanced at the old miner, he saw a glimpse of the dwarven youth who'd first ventured across the farak gorin so many years ago. Martan stood proud, a rockhammer in each powerful hand, and a sparkle in his eyes that spoke volumes from beneath bushy gray eyebrows.
Gawain moved off, silently, Martan several paces behind him. The chanting grew louder as they approached the cavern, and just beyond the pool of light spilling from it, Gawain paused. A bell sounded, far off, and he froze, noticing that one of the shaven-headed lamp-carriers approaching from the edge of the precipice stepped quickly to one side. After a few moments, a crackling blast of aquamire light blasted from the cavern, and shot across the rip to the far side, and was gone in the blink of an eye. The lamp-carrying Ramoth continued, and as it drew near, Gawain could see it was a woman. In one hand she held a small glowstone lamp, perhaps a quarter of the size of Gawain's and Martan's, and in the other, she held a small black phial. Her eyes, as she passed within ten paces, were empty, vacuous, completely unaware.
"What is that stuff she had?" Martan whispered.
"Aquamire, from its appearance."
"What's aquamire?"
"Whitebeard evil. Poison. Power. Whitebeard evil."
"Ah. That's cleared that up for me then." Martan muttered.
"Hurry, we must follow."
Gawain strode forward, before another tiny light could emerge from the edge of the chasm. The chamber was lit by glowstone lamps hanging from sconces in the smooth stone walls. It ran dead straight, far off into the distance, and if Martan's assertions about direction were correct, it ran due south.
Tiny alcoves had been cut into the sides of the walls at intervals, and Gawain had no idea what purpose they served. Up ahead, the bald Ramoth woman strode onward, completely unaware that she was being followed. Beyond her, Gawain could not see. But the incessant chanting grew louder with every pace, and the distant light at the end of the tunnel seemed to be growing brighter too.
"Serre!” Martan whispered urgently, and Gawain glanced behind him. Entering the far end of the tunnel, now some sixty paces behind them, another shavehead Ramoth.
"No matter. They seem unaware of us. Keep going."