Sagaria (74 page)

The gate, when they drew near a couple of hours later, proved to be both imposing and anti-climactic at the same time. It was as if whoever built it wanted it to be awe-inspiring and had made architectural plans for a huge and mighty construction, then someone else had pointed out that a vast gateway was perhaps not ideal for a place where occupants would do their utmost to escape. But the designer, reluctant to get rid of all those laboriously conceived pillars, porticoes and stone flourishes, shrank everything down in scale while leaving the original concept as it was. The result, the companions could see, looked like a gateway created for the largest, most important and most revered building in a model village. It seemed even more like a miniature by the size of the vast wall in which it was set.

Sagandran was reminded of the frontage of one of those great buildings of Classical times – the Pantheon, perhaps, or the Parthenon – which were reconstructed in loving detail on a tiny scale, so that parents could take their
icecream
sucking kids around it when it rained in the holidays. He half-expected to see a Lego man standing in some cockeyed pose.

The two guards standing by the gate were real enough, though. They obviously ranked far below the Shadow Knights, because they stiffened to attention when they saw Sir Tombin approaching with his ill-assorted party of prisoners. Because the gate was so much smaller than it should have been, the leather-armored men seemed to be veritable titans beside it – an illusion that persisted until the companions were close enough to be within speaking distance. The sentries bore crossbows across their muscular arms and expressions of casual brutality on their faces. If it hadn’t been for the fact that one of them had an infectious-looking black eyepatch, Sagandran would have been hard put to tell the two apart.

“Who goes there?” called Eyepatch.

“A loyal servant of our great master, Arkanamon,” replied Sir Tombin, sounding bored, as if he’d done this a thousand times before. “I bring further human fodder for his mines, praised be his name.”

The two-eyed guard seemed inclined to accept this, and turned dutifully toward the gate preparing to opening it, but Eyepatch was still suspicious.

“This is all very unorthodox. Why are there so few of them? Where’s your horse? Where’s the rest of your troop?” he demanded of Sir Tombin.

Sagandran could almost hear the cogs whirring inside Sir Tombin’s metal helmet.

“Who are you to challenge me, man?”

“Another loyal servant of Arkanamon,” retorted Eyepatch. “Our master has set me to guard this gate, and it is my duty to satisfy myself about all who would seek entrance.”

“You get many volunteer slaves, hm?”

It was the wrong thing for Sir Tombin to say. Shadow Knights obviously didn’t joke about matters like service to their master. Eyepatch’s crossbow rose until it was not quite aimed at Sir Tombin’s armored chest, but not far short. Even the other guard, who’d been manipulating the gate’s massive wooden crossbar, stopped and turned, his eyes suddenly questioning.

It was time for Sir Tombin to improvise something that sounded good. Sagandran hoped those cogs had not been turning in vain.

“I have been on a solitary mission,” said the Frogly Knight, after a pause that might or might not have been short enough to allay suspicion. “I cannot go into all the details. They’re secret, and must remain so until I report them to Arkanamon, but I can tell you that my task involved inspecting the portal that leads to the accursed Sagaria. Our main onslaught begins soon, as you must know.”

The two guards nodded. Sagandran was glad to notice that Eyepatch’s crossbow was lowering again.

“My horse fell lame upon the road,” Sir Tombin continued, “so I left it and continued on foot. A while later, I came across these scum traveling together. They’re rebels or they’re not, but either way, they’ll make good slaves for our master’s purposes – so long as they might last, anyway. I shouldn’t think the old graybeard’s got many weeks left in him, but the boy seems sturdy and, ahem, I’m sure we can find other … ah, uses for the girls.”

Eyepatch’s solitary visible eye became a slit as he surveyed Cheireanna and Perima calculatingly. “Hm. The one with the mucky face is nubile enough, but the other,” he shrugged, “well, everyone to their own tastes, I suppose.”

Sagandran almost felt it as every muscle in Perima’s body tightened. He tried to beam a thought at her.
Keep it in. You’re a downtrodden peasant, resigned to being a slave.

Whether she heard the thought or not, her lips remained closed.

“Now,” said Sir Tombin, his voice perfectly imitating the sinister lightness that Shadow Knights affected, “pleasant though it is chattering with you two fine stalwarts of our master, I have many things to do after I dump these vermin, so would you be so good as to …?”

The guards turned busily back to the crossbar, though Sagandran sensed Eyepatch still wasn’t entirely convinced that everything was above board.
We’d better watch out in case he has second thoughts and sounds the alarm. I hope Sir Tombin realizes this as well.

The height and thickness of the solid stone wall had muffled most of the din of the slave mines. As soon as the gate was opened, the companions were assailed by all the cacophony they’d heard before – only from a distance – while climbing down the cliff. Sagandran flinched at the sudden assault of noise. Even more oppressive was the foul, odorous waft that puffed into their faces from the open gateway. It was a reek of blood and fear and death and cruelty, all intermingled with the stink of human excretions and rotting flesh. Sagandran found his feet were frozen to the ground by the place’s aura of evil.

A scream punctured his horrified trance.

Eyepatch glanced at the sky. “Regular as clockwork,” he commented to Sir Tombin as the Frogly Knight led the little party through the gate. “Time for the daily executions. That’s the trouble with being on guard duty out here,” he confided. “You miss all the fun.”

Sagandran’s stomach twisted. Was he strong enough to face the reality of the slave mines?

It was too late to turn back now, even if there had been the option of doing so.
He tried to appear as spiritually destroyed as he could.
I look forward to nothing, to no future at all. I’m resigned to my fate, which is to labor here until I die – unless they slaughter me first. I’m just a slave. I’m no longer a person.

The gate thudded shut behind them.

“I think we did that rather well, don’t you?” murmured Sir Tombin in an echoey sort of way.  

“Don’t let your defenses slip,” said Samzing equally softly, not raising his gaze from the ground. “There may be eyes upon us yet.”  

But there didn’t seem to be. Looking around furtively, Sagandran was amazed by the apparent total lack of organization within the compound. Or maybe it was all so organized, it didn’t need to be regimented. Perhaps all the slave masters and slaves knew exactly what they were supposed to be doing. He glanced once – just for long enough to confirm that the guard had been right in saying that the daily executions had begun – at the wooden scaffold against the inside of the wall along to the left. He swiftly averted his gaze, his gorge rising again. Even his nightmares had never been this bad. He suspected dismally that in the future, they might be.  

Just as there seemed to be no sense of organization to the activities of the people in here, there also seemed to be no plan to the compound’s layout. He couldn’t guess at the functions of most of the enormous bits of wooden machinery scattered around higgledy-piggledy, straining and grunting as they slowly moved in response to their infinitely replaceable power source: humans tramping on treadmills. A great angry orange glow arose from one of the machines, which was made largely of stone. Sagandran watched as under the liberally used lash of a man dressed in black leather, about a dozen slaves bearing a long and impossibly heavy scoop-shaped metal container struggled up to the lip of a huge rock bowl and tipped the container’s contents into the fiery brightness.
Ore
, he thought.
These machines must be for refining and smelting ore.
Primitive by today’s Earthworld standards, or maybe (his mind recalled photos he’d seen in books) not so primitive after all. Just using slave power rather than oil and electricity to drive it all.  

Directly ahead was the entrance to the mine, black earth heaped up behind it so that it looked like a faceless hood. It was a great gash, roughly rectangular, cut at a slant into the ground. Looking at it, Sagandran had the feeling that the hole went a long way into the ground. Two sets of wooden tracks ran into it. Or rather, as he could see from the directions the slaves were going as they hauled sturdy but dilapidated trolleys along the rails, one set of tracks went in and the other came out. The trolleys coming up the incline from the world’s interior were hugely loaded, and required a couple of dozen slaves or more to
shift it. The slaves pushing the empty trolleys back down again clearly had the easier task, but the slave masters with them used their whips all the more freely and savagely to compensate, making sure the stumbling slaves kept moving as quickly as their clumsily leaden legs would let them. Most of the slaves, men and women alike, wore nothing but filthy loincloths; a few were completely naked. All were covered in old scars and fresh, bleeding wounds from the slave masters’ whippings. Everywhere there lay the corpses of those who had succumbed to the beatings, the never-ending toil and the starvation. Some of the bodies had been there longer than others. Quite a lot longer, Sagandran’s nose told him. Dead slaves were obviously regarded as trash – trash that no one could be bothered to dispose of properly.

“I don’t think I can take too much of this,” muttered Perima thickly.

Sagandran reached to take her hand, then thought better of it. Slaves probably didn’t have enough human instinct left to do things like hold hands comfortingly. He contented himself with a whispered, “Same here.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Sir Tombin, speaking normally. There was no one within earshot now and, besides, nobody seemed to be paying the remotest attention. Sagandran looked quickly back over his shoulder in case Eyepatch might have decided to check on them, but the gate was still firmly closed.

“Memo,” Sir Tombin continued, “we’re in the slave mines now, just as the legends said we should be. Those scribes didn’t, perchance, offer any hints as to how we get to the Palace of Shadows, did they?”

A few smothered squeaks confirmed that Memo didn’t know either. The prophecies had been markedly silent on that point.

“I guess we just ought to head in the direction of the castle and hope for the best,” said Sagandran.

Knowing which direction to head in was easy. The Palace of Shadows seemed to blot out half the sky, a colossal predator waiting to pounce on the puny prey below. But actually going in that direction was a bit more problematic. The way was blocked by the monstrous mineshaft. They were going to have to go around the shaft’s side, weaving a route among the mighty wooden machinery. Although no one had expressed any interest in the companions so far, they couldn’t rely on this being the case forever, or even for much longer. Surely some slave overseer or other was going to wonder why this strange Shadow Knight was leading a band of apparently fit and healthy prisoners through the compound rather than delivering them up to whatever administrative center there might be here.

The companions didn’t have to speak to each other to know that no one had a better idea.

“Come on then,” said Sir Tombin briskly, “and do your best to look as enslaved as you can. You too, Perima. Our lives may depend upon it.”

Heads hanging listlessly, dragging their feet with a weariness that wasn’t entirely pretended – they’d been on the move, in one way or another, for longer than a full day – the rest followed in Sir Tombin’s wake.

At last, someone started watching them.

Sagandran didn’t know how he could tell, but all the small hairs on the back of his neck suddenly bristled. He chanced a quick look around.

There.

Over to the right, someone had dodged behind one of the bulky pieces of equipment when they’d seen his head turn.

Sagandran slouched on a few more paces, then glanced over again.

Once more, the shape darted behind the corner of the great wooden construction.

“Sir Tombin,” Sagandran hissed. “Over there.”

“Yes. I saw it too.”

“Is there anything you can do? Is there anything you should do? Or do we just ignore it?”

Sir Tombin came to a halt, and loudly snarled an order to the others that they should do likewise. One or two heads turned in their direction briefly, but their owners lost interest immediately and went back to their labors. Just another group of fellow unfortunates being bossed around by a Shadow Knight. Who cared? They’d all be dead soon anyway.

Sagandran and the rest of the companions clustered around Sir Tombin, heads bowed as if totally disinterested in what they were supposed to be doing. One moment, the Shadow Knight wanted the slaves to keep moving. The next, he wanted them to stop. Who could figure out Shadow Knights? Who had the time? It was hard enough for slaves just figuring out how to stay alive from one moment to the next.

“I’m worried about whoever that is,” said Sir Tombin more quietly. “Wait here, looking too cowed and terrified to think of dispersing, while I go and take a look. Pity I don’t have a whip to crack.”

“Always knew you had a sadistic streak in you, Quackie,” said Samzing with a sniff.

“Silence, slave!” bellowed Sir Tombin at the top of his voice.

Sagandran started at the sudden yell. Then he let his shoulders slump again. Slaves got bawled at by Shadow Knights. It was a law of nature.

Head still lowered, he observed Sir Tombin out of the corner of his eye as the Frogly Knight marched swiftly toward the mysterious observer’s hiding place. If 
it was an overseer who’d been spying on them, he’d surely emerge as Sir Tombin approached. If it was one of the slaves, with luck he’d be too paralyzed by fear as a Shadow Knight bore down upon him to make a break for it. Who among the slaves might find them so interesting that they would risk the slavemasters’ wrath by breaking off from their allotted drudgery long enough to keep them under observation? It could only be someone they’d met in their travels, but who? Sagandran let his mind run over the list of possibles. The people who’d encountered his friends back in that tavern, the Sign of the Cross-Eyed Ferret, were either dead or severely injured. Aside from that, they’d met no one of note since entering the Shadow World. Fortune forbid that it might be any of their friends, or even foes, from Sagaria. Not Lamarod, surely; not the stout little entrepreneur of Wonderville? He was the only Sagarian whom Sagandran could think of who’d fallen into the hands of the Shadow Knights.