Guild Mage: Apprentice-Chapter 74. Bald Peak Mine

For all the years that she’d made her home in Whitehill, Liv had never actually seen the entrance to the mines up close. Apart from the miners themselves, almost no one did, and there was a good reason for that: mining in the shoals of a rift killed you.

It might come quick, in the collapse of a tunnel, if the rocks crushed you. Or it might be slow, trapped behind rubble with a dwindling pocket of air. If you survived all that, it would be the mana-sickness that killed you.

The mining town down by the river had already been evacuated by the time the culling team arrived: they would have been the first to see the flare of mana that marked an eruption, and Liv guessed they’d been on the road south to Whitehill while she was still riding to Fairford with Matthew and Triss. It didn’t surprise her they’d seen no one until now: the time it took to get a culling team ready to depart would have been long enough for them to make it back to town.

However, the three corpses slumped at the threshold of the main shaft, at the foot of the wooden beams bracing the entrance, made it clear that for those actually working their shift, no warning would have been enough. These were hard men, muscled and covered in dust, with picks clutched in their dead hands, or tumbled to the ground close by. The head of the first was crushed, the second was missing an arm, and the last had been ripped clear in half.

Liv covered her mouth and turned away, fighting down the urge to empty her stomach.

“There will be more inside,” Matthew said. His voice was quiet, and not without sympathy. “If you can’t handle it, Liv, tell me now. I can send you and Emma back.”

“No,” Liv said. “Let’s keep going. You think that was the centipede?”

“Could have been,” Triss said. “I go first.”

“I’ll follow, and then you two behind me,” Matthew commanded. “Emma, a bow won’t be much good in the mines. How are you with that hunting knife?”

“Good enough,” Emma said. She slung her bow on her back, and drew the blade she used to skin game.

“Keep anything that gets by me off Liv, then,” Matthew said. “Triss will find the targets, then I’ll get their attention. Once they’re focused on me, Triss hits the flanks. Liv, don’t waste your mana on anything but a kill. You’re here to finish anything we can’t take with the swords, and we’re counting on you to do it. Emma, if she gets dogpiled, she can’t do her job. You stop that from happening. Ring check?”

“Twelve left,” Beatrice said.

“Twenty-eight, all told,” Liv said.

“Good.” Matthew nodded. “We’ll head back to camp for rest when we get low, or when someone is too wounded to continue. Triss, you’re up.”

The swordswoman slipped forward, quietly enough that Liv knew she must have some training in hunting. Had that come during her years at Coral Bay? Most Lucanian noblewomen, she knew, went hawking if they hunted at all. Liv was an exception, and that was because she’d been trained by Master Forester and, later, her father. The guild put more value on the skill than the nobility, but that made sense: the guild did the majority of the culling, these days.

A few moments later, Triss returned, her eyes sparking blue and gold. Liv wondered how long that particular spell lasted. “The eruption caused some stone to shake loose,” Beatrice told them. “But the shaft all the way down to the first chamber is clear. Watch your footing - it’s wet, with loose rock everywhere, and the floor isn’t even.”

Liv followed Triss and Matthew down the gravelled path that ran alongside the wooden wagonway. The wagonway was essentially a strip of wooden flooring with a gap left in the center: when she saw the first mining cart, Liv understood why. A wooden pin stuck out of the bottom of the four-wheeled cart, and rested in the gap that ran up the center of the wagonway. When the miners pushed, the pin made certain their wagon stayed on track, and the wood gave the wheels a smooth surface to roll on.

She’d worried that they might not be able to see, once they moved out of the sunlight pouring in through the main shaft, but Liv saw now that the ambient mana of the shoal kept the veins of mana-stone in the walls suffused with magic, and they gave off a soft blue glow, threaded with gold. It cast the faces of her companions in an eerie light, but it was more than enough to see by once her eyes adjusted.

By the time they’d reached the first chamber, the temperature had dropped dramatically. Liv was glad for her enchanted leathers, which now felt pleasantly warm. She resolved to use the waste heat from her next spell to raise her body temperature. She could feel the surging, wild mana of the eruption, as well, roiling around her as if brought to a boil.

The shaft opened up into a wide, low cavern, with a sloped floor. As Triss had said, there were tumbled, broken rocks everywhere, and dust in the air. Liv’s boots slipped on the wet rock, but Emma caught her by the shoulder before she fell.

“Thank you,” she murmured. Everything was so still and quiet that Liv didn’t want to draw attention by making a loud sound.

“There should be tunnels off to the left and the right, heading deeper,” Matthew whispered.

Triss nodded. “I saw them both,” she said. “Does it matter which I scout first?”

“I don’t think so.” Matthew shook his head. “Both lead to the river eventually.”

“River?” Liv asked.

“It runs underground before coming out of the bluff south of the waystone,” he explained. “It feeds into the Aspen, like the springs under Castle Whitehill. You wouldn't believe how much underground water there is in these mountains. It makes mining difficult, because if they aren’t careful, they can flood a chamber.”

“Left it is,” Triss said, and scooted ahead of them, vanishing in the dim light of the mana-stone veins.

Liv hated the waiting, even if she trusted Matthew and Beatrice’s experience in culling. She fidgeted with her wand, and had little else to do but continually scan the darkness, looking for any sign of an attack. When it finally came, it wasn’t on them: the first sign of trouble was Triss’ shriek down the left-hand passage.

Matthew immediately dashed down the treacherous slope of the chamber floor toward the left hand tunnel. “Triss!” he called out, and then a flickering mass of black shapes, interrupted by glints of blue light, erupted into the chamber, swallowing him up.

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Liv had seen a mass of stone-bats before, during the last eruption of Bald Peak, when they came for Whitehill. She’d nearly been killed by them, and had no intention of repeating the experience. She pressed the third button on her wand, and pointed it down at the cavern floor, drawing it horizontally in a swiping motion.

“Get down, Matthew!” she said, then grabbed Emma to keep her old friend close. A wall of adamant ice rose up from the floor, then anchored itself to the ceiling just above their heads. It only took a thought to capture some of the waste heat for herself, and Liv felt a rush of warmth from her fingers to her toes.

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A succession of thumps and crashes rattled through the chamber, as entire groups of stone-bats slammed into Liv’s wall. Nonetheless, the ice held, and she was grateful for every maddening moment of her father’s training.

“Celent’he Aiveh Svec Aimāk Scelim’o’Kveis!” Liv intoned. She hoped Matthew had heard her, but just to be safe she carefully envisioned the spell beginning at the outer base of the wall, and then firing upward at an angle, to avoid the entrance to the left hand tunnel.

Liv couldn’t see what happened, but she could hear it, and she knew what her intent had been. Six needle-thin shards of ice shot out simultaneously from the bottom of the wall, just above the cavern floor, into the flapping mass of stone-bats. Liv knew what her frozen shards had done to one of these creatures nearly twenty-five years ago, but that was nothing compared to what she was capable of now. Her shards were dense as steel, sharp, and thin enough to puncture armor like a crossbow bolt at close range.

A splatter of red gore hit the wall that protected Liv and Emma from the flock. “Seven rings,” Liv counted out loud. That left her with twenty-one, between all she had stored in mana stones. She used the waste heat to melt a long slit in the center of the wall, at chest level. “Use your bow,” Liv told Emma, then grabbed her flask of broth, pulled the cork, and put it to her lips. A rush of mana hit her stomach: not nearly enough to make up what she’d used, but perhaps a ring’s worth.

Emma unslung her bow, nocked an arrow, set it to the opened slit and shot. Somewhere on the other side of the wall, a bat shrieked. Something slammed into the wall, and an open, bloodshot eye pressed up against the open slit. Emma cursed, backed away, and shot a second arrow. The bat’s ruined eye socket disappeared.

“Matthew?” Emma called out into the darkness.

“Just keep shooting them,” Liv said. “I’ll bring the wall down when there’s nothing left moving.” She held onto as much of the waste-heat as she could stand, and it made her feel feverish: Liv could feel sweat soaking her clothes, and slick on her forehead. “Do it quickly.”

Emma had only three arrows left in her quiver by the time she couldn’t see any more targets. “Have your skinning knife ready,” Liv told her, and sent all the excess heat in her body into the wall, melting a doorway through the center. It was a blessed relief to get rid of it, but she gave a shiver at the sudden chill.

Before Liv could go through, Emma dashed ahead. When Liv followed, she saw that there were corpses piled everywhere. Many of the stone-bats were still pierced by the arrows that had killed them, and the rest had bloody, gaping holes left by Liv’s needles of ice.

“I don’t see them anywhere,” the huntress called back to Liv. She kicked aside corpses at the entrance to the tunnel, clearing the area where they’d last seen Matthew standing.

“He must have pushed forward to get to Triss,” Liv said. “Maybe pressed himself against the wall, and let the bats pass.” She waited for a moment, and then realized that neither Matthew nor Triss was going to tell her what to do.

“We go on,” Liv said. “Try to find them and link up. They can’t have gotten very far, and its possible they’re wounded and need our help. You scout ahead; I’ll give you a count of ten, Emma, and follow. That way you can get a first look and rush back if you need to, but we won’t be very far apart.”

“You’re certain?” Emma asked. “Neither one of us has ever done this before, Liv.”

“I’ve fought in the shoals of the Tomb of Celris with my father,” Liv said, trying to reassure her friend. She left out the fact they’d only ever fought their way to or from the waystone, while mounted and moving as quickly as they could.

“With your father,” Emma pointed out. “Not alone. We should decide right now at what point we turn back, and then stick to it. Even if we don’t find them.”

“If I dip below ten rings of mana, then,” Liv said. “That’s two or three solid spells. Enough to get us back to the surface and down the mountain.”

“Alright, then.” Emma raised her hunting knife in front of her chest, then ducked into the tunnel. Just as she’d promised, Liv counted to ten before she followed. The presence of two stone-bat corpses in the tunnel, with throats slashed or eyes pierced, lent weight to her belief that Matthew and Triss had survived and pushed forward. Still, every moment that Emma didn’t come back and warn Liv she’d found a corpse was a relief.

“It opens up just ahead,” Emma said, slipping out of the glow of the mana-rock veins as if she’d used a waystone to appear. “There’s a bunch of those little mining wagons, all piled up with stone and: I think: silver.”

Liv nodded. “Lead the way.”

The two young women slipped out into the chamber. There were more bracings of wood, here, and three carts, like Emma had said. Two were filled with nuggets that might have been silver; Liv was no expert. The third she found far more useful.

Liv strode over, reached down into the cart, and lifted a softly glowing chunk of mana stone. It, like the veins in the walls, had soaked up the ambient mana released by the eruption. Unlike the veins, it wasn’t currently supporting an entire mountain above their heads, and she had no worries about killing them if she somehow messed up and broke it. Skin-to-stone contact made, Liv let her eyes close, exhaled, and drew the magic into herself. Twenty-three rings.

She was just about to reach out for a second stone when the pained groan of a wounded man came from the other side of the chamber. “Matthew?” Liv called, her heart nearly jumping out through her chest. What if he was wounded - or dying? How would she tell his mother? Had the duchess merely been prescient when she insisted Liv sign the adoption papers, or had the very act somehow reached out into the world and cursed them?

Liv and Emma scrambled forward by the light of the glowing veins in the walls, and found an overturned cart. “Matthew?” Liv called again.

“Don’t know a Matthew,” a man’s voice came from under the cart. It wasn’t his voice. With a rush of relief, Liv helped Emma heave the cart to the side, turning it over to reveal a dusty miner. He was filthy, and his leg looked bent entirely the wrong way, but otherwise the man seemed like he would live. “Name’s Warin,” he said, and then looked over Liv’s armor and wand. “M’lady.”

“Liv,” she said. “And this is Emma Forester with me. We’re part of the culling team. What happened, Warin?”

“The duchess’ Eldish witch,” Warin said. “Aye, we’ve heard of you. No offense, m’lady,” he added, wincing from the pain of his wound. “It’s just what they call you. But I’ve never seen a sweeter sight than you two. Thought I was done for.”

“We’ll help you get down the mountain, of course,” Emma said. “We’ve got a camp down there, and a chirurgeon to see to your wounds.”

“But first, tell us what you’ve seen,” Liv insisted. “Did two people come this way? A young man and woman, in armor and with swords?”

“Got caught in a collapse when the eruption struck,” Warin said. “Broke my leg good, as you can see. Took me a few hours, but I managed to get clear of the rock and drag myself this far. Thought I’d take a moment to rest, you see? Before trying to get up to the next chamber.”

Liv nodded, but none of this was what she needed to know. “The man and the woman?” she pressed.

“Heard footsteps coming,” Warin said. “The bats must have heard ‘em, too. They came boiling up from the river tunnel.” He lifted his hand and pointed across the chamber. Liv could see the telltale scars of mana sickness on his skin. “I turned the cart over on myself to hide, hoping they’d fly by. Didn’t see anyone else - but I did hear those footsteps. And a scream - a woman’s. You find any bodies?”

“No,” Emma said, shaking her head.

“I would have thought they’d have stopped or come back for us by now,” Liv admitted, with a frown.

“Everything’s shaky,” Warin told them. “Bad time for people who don’t know the mines to be running around down here. Could have been caught in a collapse, floor could have fallen out, or they could just be lost.”

“Matthew has his father’s maps,” Liv pointed out.

“Maps are only so good down here,” Warin countered. “Especially just after an eruption.”

Liv stared at the river tunnel for a long moment, but she didn’t realize she’d taken a step in that direction until Emma reached out a hand and took her by the shoulder.

“We have to get him down to the camp,” Emma said.

“Blood and shadows,” Liv cursed, in frustration. That wasn’t what she wanted to do at all: she wanted to head after Matthew and Triss. A part of her argued, unconvincingly, that if the man had survived this long they could leave him under the mining cart and come back later. Then, she thought of what it would feel like to be in his position: to first think you were dead, then drag yourself up the mine tunnels in agony. The relief she’d feel when help came. And then the crushing despair if they’d left her to die.

There was really no choice at all.

“Let’s get the empty cart up onto the wagonway,” Liv said. “We can put him in it, and push him up to the surface.”