Fool's Errand (53 page)

After he was gone, Azriel asked Persephone what she thought.

“I think our chances are better with Miter along,” she replied at once.

“Are you sure?” said Azriel dubiously. “Because I'd lay odds that my new best friend is going to try to kill us the minute we find the pool—to protect his investment, so to speak.”

“Even if that is so,” said Persephone, “the mines are unimaginably vast, Azriel. If Miter really did oversee them at one time, he knows his way around them far better than I.”

“That may be true,” conceded Azriel. “But you knew your way around the mines well enough to have escaped them.”

When Persephone said nothing, Azriel pressed the point.

“Princess?” he said, ducking his head so that she could not avoid looking into his very blue eyes. “You knew your way around the mines well enough to have escaped them, right?”

“Not exactly,” said Persephone after a long moment. “Though I did escape the mines, it was never what I meant to do.” She hesitated again before adding, “What I meant to do was die.”

Azriel seemed to stop breathing.

“I'd just found Faust's body,” she explained in a weary voice filled with all the old pain. “He was only a rat, Azriel, but oh! He was
such
a warm and clever one. When I was too tired to work but too afraid to sleep, we would chat together, Faust and I. He liked to perch on my shoulder like a furry parrot, and if I had food, he'd sit up on his hind legs and beg like a tiny dog. He had the most cunning little hands,” recalled Persephone, smiling at the memory. Her smile faded as another memory crowded out the first. “The sight of him lying in the dirt, ripped apart and half-eaten, his neck snapped and his eyes gouged out—it was the end for me. Using the sharpest rock I could find I hacked off his tail. Then, clutching the tail in my hand, I started walking. As soon as I could, I veered away from the torch-lit tunnels. Groping my way through the darkness, I ventured deeper and deeper into the mine, turning this way and that until at last I was so hopelessly lost that I knew I'd never be able to find my way back again.”

“Then what happened?” asked Azriel, his voice little more than a puff of air.

“Then I lay down and waited to die.”

“But you did not die.”

“No,” said Persephone, a little sadly. “As I was lying there, I felt the ground rumble beneath me and heard the sound of screams.”

“There'd been a cave-in?” guessed Azriel.

“Yes,” said Persephone. “Shortly afterward I felt a breeze on my face. It was so faint that it took me a while to realize what it was—and what it meant. Even after I realized, I yet lay in the darkness for a while longer, waiting for Death to claim me. But He did not come quickly enough, and eventually I got to my feet and forced myself to follow the breeze. Miraculously, it led to an opening beyond the outer perimeter of the mine. All I had to do was to climb out and start walking.”

Brushing a strand of hair off her forehead, Azriel sighed softly and said, “I am
very
glad you did.”

“For a long time I was not glad at all—but … but I think I am now,” whispered Persephone. Looking up at him, she gave him a wobbly smile before adding, “And since I am pretty sure Rachel would kill me if I let Death claim me now, I say we take Miter with us.”

“Agreed,” said Azriel, smiling back as he gently pulled her against him and wrapped his strong arms around her. “But if my new best friend so much as looks sideways at us, I'm going to string him up by his own damn slingshot.”

“Agreed.”

FIFTY-THREE

Eleven white beans left in the jar

T
HOUGH
PERSEPHONE
would've liked to have started out for the mines at once, darkness was already falling by the time she and Azriel decided to allow Miter to join them in seeking the healing pool.

After learning of their decision, Miter grudgingly provided a supper of coarse bread,
very
stinky cheese and meat stew. Though Persephone refused to eat the latter on the grounds that
many
things probably tasted like chicken, she ate as much of the bread and cheese as her queasy stomach would permit. Thereafter she silently but fervently entreated the Fates to keep Rachel safe from harm before joining Azriel on the floor by the dying fire. He lay on his back; she lay in his arms with her head on his chest.

She was asleep before she heard him whisper good night.

They were prodded awake before dawn the next morning by Miter's scratchy toenail. Dropping a dozen empty water skins on Azriel's head, Miter irritably informed them it was time to go. Persephone got ready in a stupor. Indeed, it seemed to her that she'd barely rubbed the sleep from her eyes before she found herself hurrying through the streets of the still-sleeping Gorgish city and into the jungle beyond.

The pace that Miter set as he led them north through the jungle made Azriel's usual punishing pace seem downright sluggish. For Miter didn't walk, he
ran
—and not just in short bursts, either, but all the time. Hour after hour he ran, pushing aside branches and letting them go unexpectedly, leaping over heaving roots without calling out a warning to Persephone and Azriel to watch their step, flying through puddles in a manner that left the person directly behind him soaking wet and covered with mud. At regular intervals, Azriel insisted that they stop to catch their breath or have a sip of water; whenever he did, Miter sneered and loudly whispered disparaging remarks about hideous Gypsies and their lack of manliness.

By the time they finally emerged from the jungle, it was nearing nightfall and Persephone was shaking with exhaustion.

And fear.

“Are you all right?” asked Azriel as he watched her staring wide-eyed at the distant mountains of excavated dirt and debris that marked the outermost perimeter of the mines.

Though Persephone nodded, she found herself shaking harder.

Azriel grabbed her bicep. “You don't have to do this, you know,” he said.

“Y-yes, I do,” stuttered Persephone as soon as she'd found her voice. “It … it is like I said to Rachel—Finn is my brother—”

“But the risk is
not
yours alone to take,” interrupted Azriel fiercely, pulling her close and kissing her hard.

“No,” she agreed weakly when he'd finished kissing her and the wave of dizziness had passed. “No, not mine alone.”

As soon as darkness had fallen, Persephone, Azriel and Miter stealthily made their way toward the perimeter of the mines. Though there were dozens of armed New Men in sight, it was clear from the leisurely manner in which they strolled back and forth that they weren't expecting trouble. Moreover, though they occasionally looked up at the mountains of dirt and debris, they never so much as glanced in the opposite direction.

“Why should they?” whispered Azriel.

“Because the storage sheds are brimming with gold, jewels, ore and weapons forged within!” breathed Miter, his voice brimming with avarice, his fingers straying to his precious new ring.

“That is true,” whispered Azriel. “But unless one had a sizable army, it would be impossible to properly storm such a place. And I'd think that yonder welcoming committee”—he nodded toward the dozens and dozens of heads perched on spikes planted at random intervals in the dirt mountains—”would be sufficient to deter all but the most determined lone intruder.”

Persephone only nodded, her throat having closed up again at the sight of the heads.

For what seemed a very long time, the three would-be intruders lay in a shallow depression in the earth about fifty paces from the nearest guards, waiting for the opportunity to advance. Persephone was just beginning to despair that such an opportunity would never come when, at the distant sound of a whistle, the guards all began hurrying toward the nearest gate. Realizing that it must be the changing of the guards—and that, at best, they'd have only a few minutes before the next shift arrived at their posts—Persephone whispered to Azriel and Miter to follow her. Then, before her courage fled—and without waiting to see if the other two
were
following her—she jumped up and, staying low, sprinted toward the nearest mountain of dirt. Darting around the head-topped spikes without looking at them, she clawed and scrambled her way up the mountain, not pausing until she'd reached the very top.

An instant later, Azriel collapsed on one side of her and Miter on the other.

“Here's a thought,” panted Azriel. “Next time, how about we talk about what we're going to do before we do it?”

Persephone was so dumbfounded by the sight that lay before her that she barely noticed that he'd spoken. Her first fleeting thought upon getting a bird's-eye view of the mines was that Miter had been right: she'd seen nothing but a minuscule fraction of them during her internment there.

Her second thought was that this was surely what hell looked like.

Far below her lay a pit that was vast beyond imagining and so deep that Persephone could not see the bottom. She could, however, see the orange glow of the mighty forges she knew occupied the pit's lowest level—forges that worked day and night to melt and mould freshly mined ore. Dotting the walls of the pit were the jagged mouths of the mine shafts that burrowed into the earth. Over the long decades, as excavation had seen the pit grow deeper and deeper, narrow, uneven ledges of rock had been left behind to allow workers to more easily access the mine shafts. These ledges were crowded with scaffolding and equipment and what looked to be thousands of half-naked slaves. Some of these pushed carts or carried timber or torches but most shuffled along carrying brimming buckets. Persephone knew that some of the buckets were filled with dirt that would eventually be tossed onto the surrounding mountains of dirt. Others were filled with ore that would be dumped into one of the massive buckets that were continually being lowered to the glowing forges below. In and amongst the slaves were the overseers—easy to spot for the fact that they were fully clothed and ever cracking their whips. Why, even as Persephone watched, an overseer on one of the higher ledges laid his lash upon the bent back of a woman who seemed to be holding up the line of bucket-toting slaves. Obviously startled, the woman stumbled to the edge of the ledge, lost her balance and fell to her death.

This was what Persephone could see.

What she could hear were the belching roars of the forges and the barking of dogs. She could hear the sound of a thousand pickaxes striking rock and of a thousand buckets of ore being up-ended. She could hear screams and droning murmurs; every few seconds, the crack of a whip would be followed by a shriek. Or
not
followed by a shriek—a thing Persephone knew meant that the unfortunate upon whose back the lash had landed was beyond pain and just waiting for Death.

Beyond this vast pit was another pit.

And another … and another … and another …

Terrible as these open pit mines were, however, far worse were the mines that were nothing more than holes in the ground. At least the slaves in the open pits occasionally breathed fresh air and saw light. They even had the chance to die beneath the open sky.

In the underground mines like the one Persephone, herself, had been locked in, the slaves got none of these things. Feeling a wave of nausea, she was struck by a vivid recollection of toiling in darkness by the meagre light of torches, of delivering her buckets of mud and ore through the bucket-sized opening in the heavy door at the mouth of the mine, each time hoping with pathetic eagerness that she'd done enough to earn her daily bread and ladleful of water.

Wildly now, Persephone's eyes darted around, trying to pick out the particular door that had slammed behind
her
all those years ago. Though she could not do it, she
did
recognize the barrack in which her head had been so viciously shaved on the night she'd first arrived. Outside the barrack a group of children huddled close together.