The Well of Darkness (9 page)

Naddam walked back to where he had left me, near the command barracks; the gentleness I had seen in his handling of the woman vanished in an explosion of anger.

“Of course the death rate here is higher,” he growled. “Every other mine works their people to death, and then—then, as a gesture of kindness—they send the dying ones here to ‘recover’. They
might
recover, with total rest and constant care, but I can’t afford that—not in wasting them as manpower and not in the resentment of the other slaves. So I put them on the lightest duty I can, give them extra food portions and as much rest as possible—and, of course, they die anyway. And a ‘death’ that belongs somewhere else shows up on my record!”

“You’re not worried about your record,” I said.

“What?”
Naddam demanded. He must have seen something of what I was thinking in my face, because he repeated the word less belligerently. “What?”

“You’re concerned for
them
,” I said, waving my arm in the direction the slaves had gone. “I’d have seen it before, if I hadn’t been looking at everything from the slaves’ point of view, hating the work and the place and the confinement. I’ll bet your record for slaves who
survive
their sentence and go free is higher than anywhere else, too.”

“That’s right,” Naddam said. “And you’re here to change all that, right?” But there was less conviction than question in the remark.

“Wrong. I’m here because Indomel sent me. I can’t tell you why, because doing that will endanger somebody I care about.”

Naddam nodded. “I thought Obilin’s letter sounded a little out of joint. I’m not being thrown out, is that it? You’re being thrown
in?
“

“That’s about the size of it. I think you’ve figured out that I don’t like the idea any more than you do. But it seems as though you’re giving the slaves the best break they can expect. I want to keep that up, Naddam. Show me how to do things your way.”

He was quiet for a moment, studying me. “I been doing this for ten years,” he said at last. “It’s not bad duty—the women are grateful for decent treatment.” He put his hand on my shoulder, the first time he had touched me. “But now that I know these folks won’t see much change for the worse, I’m kinda looking forward to city duty. I’ll tell you all I can,” he promised.

In the remaining few days of his tenure, Naddam showed me every phase of the mining operation, explaining with some pride that Lingis was unique among the copper mines.

There were seven mines located from Lingis northward along a line that followed the base of the steep mountain range that marked this portion of the “wall” around Gandalara. Only the Lingis ore lode was close to the surface and reasonably shallow. The others used the same techniques I saw at Lingis, but to less advantage as they followed narrow lodes into the sides of mountains.

In Lingis, the people worked in air and daylight, and most of what they did was directly related to mining ore. The mine itself was a series of trenches, six to twenty feet deep, that ridged a hillside, with the newest trench also the highest. The effort of the work crews was divided about equally into three parts. A third worked the current trench, breaking the mountainside into large chunks with stone hammers and bronze pick-like tools. Another third hauled the chunks downhill and broke them down into manageable pieces. That was done by brute force; four people lifted a huge column of rock and dropped it, lifted and dropped, until a big rock was pulverized into pieces no bigger than my fist.

The rest of the crews worked at opening the next trench, and that process was intricate and time-consuming. Once the rock had been laid bare of topsoil and salt layer (much thinner here than it seemed to be in the Gandalaran deserts, where the Fa’aldu built their homes of three-foot salt-block cubes), an engineer studied the face of the hillside and marked a line with mild acid. Drilling crews placed a six-foot rod of bronze, mounted in a wood frame to stay vertical, over a point on the line. The rod was about six inches in diameter, and its tip was crusted with rock powder. It started digging into the acid scar when the crew pushed the shoulder-high turning spokes, and didn’t stop until a hole fifteen inches deep had been drilled—except for breaks to flush out the rock debris with water. Then it moved on to a new spot.

When there were holes at two-foot intervals all along the line the engineer had drawn, the holes were stuffed tightly with three-foot reeds that had been split, wet, and tightly rolled. The reeds were allowed to dry until they were stiff and hard.

I happened to be there on a “new trench” day. All other work stopped, both for the safety of the rest of the crew and because it was an impressive sight to watch.

The trench-opening crew stood above the reed-stuffed holes and worked in close coordination with one another. At each hole, two or three people placed a thin bronze rod with a pointed tip into the center of the stiff reeds, waggled it carefully until it was well seated, then forced it deeper into the opening by measured taps with a rock hammer. The ringing sound of stone on bronze was the only noise on the hillside. The workers didn’t strike simultaneously, or even in any detectable rhythm, but there was an inescapable feeling of teamwork to the sound. The blows seemed to slow, become heavier—and then another sound drowned them out. One crack, two, then a series of popping and cracking sounds that grew into a deafening noise.

The work crew jumped backward as, all along the line the engineer had etched, the hillside split open.

I felt like cheering, but I seemed to be the only one, and I realized that, for the rest of them, the feat of engineering just meant more work.

Still, it took only one talk with the engineer to convince me that Lingis duty was, truly, the easiest of all the mines. Elsewhere the “trenches” were only part of the job—as they led into the mountain, the over-hanging rock, too, had to be dismantled. At Tarnel, the oldest of the mines, the working trench was a combination chasm and unsupported tunnel, and the crews worked in dust-choked, dangerous conditions that provoked the coughing disease that claimed so many of the slaves.

So Lingis was blessed with easy access to its ore, as well as a humane manager. Under those circumstances, it didn’t surprise me that it was the most productive. And
that
made it no surprise that the Lingis profits went to the High Lord’s family.

Naddam spent several days showing me around and introducing me to guards—a group Ricardo would have named a “motley crew”. On his last night at the mine, he invited me to his rooms for a few glasses of
barut
, the Gandalaran equivalent of whiskey, made from a fermented grain and not bad as booze went. I left his rooms—soon to be mine—late, with the remainder of the bottle as a farewell gift, grateful for Naddam’s sympathy and hopeful that the barut would help me get to sleep.

My Gandalaran “inner awareness” had been telling me I wasn’t sleeping enough, but it could only warn. It couldn’t force compliance on a mind bent on self-pity and worry.

During the days, the company of Naddam and the mental activity of learning what he had to tell me had kept me pretty well occupied. But even then, examining production charts or viewing the mining operation, I frequently found my breath snatched away and my chest squeezed by a flash vision of Tarani, alone in Eddarta. At night, there were no distractions.

Tonight I was so tired that I found it difficult to worry about one thing at a time, and I was swept through a dizzying assortment of images, each one plunging me deeper into depression. Tarani as I had last seen her—in control but threatened by Indomel and Obilin, Zefra an unknown quantity offering little hope.
Keeshah turning away from me.
Naddam, a friendly figure, but threatening in that his protection would be absent tomorrow.

One of the most tormenting visions—the memory of Obilin in the desert, tracing the outline of Tarani’s breast with the point of his sword—had me in its grip when I heard a noise outside the closed shutters of my bedroom window. The shutters didn’t rattle. There was no real
sound
to the noise at all, merely a whooshing, like wind.

But the only wind I’d encountered in Gandalara was in the high passes that formed the Chizan crossing.

I heard it again and, grateful for the distraction, I went to the window and opened the shutters. I had to clamp down a shout of surprise and pleasure—Lonna was hovering, patiently waiting to be admitted. The sound I had heard was the sweeping of her big wings.

The white bird sailed past me into the room, and I closed the shutters. She swung around the room once, her wing-spread making her seem to fill the room, then she slammed into my chest, knocking me over. She made one sound—the soft, hooting sound I had learned to associate with pleasure—then remained silent. But it wasn’t the bird’s nature to be inexpressive; for a few seconds I was blinded by flapping white feathers, the skin of my ribs and legs both tickled and pricked by her claws as Lonna jumped all over me.

For my part, I was nearly as happy to see her. She would have been welcome in herself as a “friendly face”, so to speak. But the manner of her approach—so silent, so’ wary—could mean only one thing. Tarani had sent her to me. The bird’s arrival meant that I wasn’t as alone as I felt, and neither was Tarani.

I took all the time necessary to calm and cuddle Lonna, since that was the only reward I could offer her. Then, so eagerly that I was shaking, I took the bulky band from her leg and opened the letter from Tarani.

I thought a lot of things about that letter as I read it and re-read it by lamplight.

Our names are on it
, I thought.
What if Lonna had been caught?
Then, sentimental as a schoolboy, I was shocked and thrilled by two words:
“My love”. She called me “my love”.

But mostly, the words in the letter confirmed what would have been my own hunch, if I’d been able to lasso all the wandering thoughts together in some logical order. Indomel hadn’t acted like someone who had just laid his hands on a worldkiller.

He must have tried to read the Bronze himself,
I decided.
Probably really burns him that Tarani could do it and he cant. Tarani said that any help from the Ra
‘
ira came subconsciously, and I believe her. Considering the fact that Indomel
‘
s gift is pretty strong, and he
‘
s having trouble, it must take a little time to get the hang of using that thing when and how you want to.

I
‘
d like to think it has the fairy-tale quality of only working for the good guys, but what I know of Gandalaran history proves that idea
‘
s a crock. The reason the Ra
‘
ira was in Raithskar in the first place was because it had been misused by the last of the Kings.

Indomel
‘
s direct ancestor. It figures.

Now don
‘
t say that,
I chided myself.
Harthim was Tarani
‘
s ancestor, too
—
in blood, if not in spirit. It
‘
s ironic, really, that the only person who might lead the way the good Kings did doesn
‘
t want any part of the Ra
‘
ira.

So there
‘
s a balance of power in Eddarta, in many levels of meaning. And Tarani says she
‘
s safe. Can I believe her?

That question helped me put my finger on one of the things that had been bothering me most. In the desert, I had stubbornly dragged Tarani into captivity. Afterward, another pendulum swing of my irrational mind had let me dump all the responsibility on her. I hadn’t questioned her leadership continuing in Eddarta because Tarani could deal from a stronger hand than mine. But squirming away in the back of my mind was a nasty little thought, a suspicion that I had won Tarani’s undying contempt.

What am I thinking?
I wondered.
Be logical, at least. If she were really trying to sacrifice herself for me, she
‘
d have said: “Break out of that there hoose-gow and high-tail it for home!” But she said to get away and come to Eddarta. Therefore she
‘
s safe, logically.

But logic be hanged, damn it!
I thought.
What about trust? She
said
she
‘
s safe; therefore she
is
safe. I
‘
ve got to get rid of this guilt complex; it
‘
s making me see Tarani
‘
s motives through a mirror.