The first hole revealed diamonds.
Fe’or commanded the excavators to push further, sent missives back to the mountain halls with good news and requests for more workers, and counseled with Sightless Gohn, the stone speaker of the clan.
“There is Ralgium in the ground, deep, deep. I can feel it,” said the old Gohn. He hunched over a flat map of the wasteland with the small stone buildings resting on the hide, marking where their mining camp was.
“Ralgium,” echoed Fe’or. “Tis but a myth, stories for seasoned miners to share around a barrel of mead in the long winter.”
Sightless Gohn shook his head, the jewels in his stranded beard clattering against one another making soft percussive music. “Some stories are true. Deep in the heart of the land, beneath the stone and dirt and water, towards the red belly of the world, roam great Crystalachs, felbeasts of colossal size and movement, those with a curious strength: transformation of common stone to precious metal or mineral through consumption. Some produce Ralgium, an ore of such value, the strength and power it would give cannot be fathomed!”
Fe’or waved off the old man and turned from the map table. The small tent was his and held naught but a cot and two chests, the map table in the middle, and a shelf of weapons. The wasteland wasn’t entirely without life.
“Stories, all,” said Fe’or, facing the stand of weaponry. His grandfather’s warhammer hung from a leather thong among the rest, more prized than any weapon the clan could bring forth, a weapon he now carried as his own.
The ancient stone speaker began to hum and mumble in a forgotten runic tongue, a curse or a blessing, Fe’or didn’t care to know.
Back in the mountain home Fe’or’s father would surely be pouring over a mountain map in his own room, though his with many more stone buildings in miniature, showing the multitude of camps and clans of the war. Fe’or had asked for more workers, for there surely was wealth in the wasteland quarry, but King Thegal would find it difficult to send out workers to dig, when they could be given a war axe instead of a pick axe.
A bellow sounded in the night outside the tent, outside the cluster of tents, a sound that hardly made Fe’or flinch. It was the familiar growl of a pelegor, one of the four great digging beasts they had brought with them from the mountains. They were three or four times larger than a farming ox, with great scooped claws on their forelegs and partially scaly hides like a dragon. Yet, they were no kin to those fire fiends, for theirs was an earth affinity, digging holes and tunnels. Stone speakers would guide them, speaking through the whispers of the mind, directing their claws through the ground.
Sightless Gohn gripped Fe’or’s arm tightly and pulled the prince from his warhammer. The old man’s eyes were wide and terrible, though no light shone in the milky blindness.
“Do you not hear the beasts? They cry for stone, Fe’or, for the depths! We must delve deeper! There is Ralgium, I promise!”
The stone split and the earth moved and they dug deeper.
War in the mountains reached a lull, the armies of SkyFrost halted their advance on the mountain lords for a time, and King Thegal sent more workers to the wasteland. Down and down the pelegor burrowed, up and up the workers piled the crushed rock and stone. Ore and gem deposits were found, cleaned, and sent on covered train to the mountain halls, the precious metals and jewels refined and sent to the war effort to fund new machines and armor, buying weaponry from the craftsmen in the south. Fe’or was finding favor with his father.
One cold winterlong day brought news of death to the dig camp far above the tunneled mines.
“Fourteen obsidian miners, all burned to nothing. I’m sorry, my prince.”
Fe’or dismissed the messenger and pushed the documents of export away, letting his wide wrists rest on the table. A moment later, the old Gohn entered the tent without announcement, walking hunched and slow, his bearded face down turned and crooked, unseeing.
“Flamedrakes,” said the stone speaker. “I would stake my daughter’s life upon it.”
“Your daughter can stake her own life,” replied Fe’or. “What would you tell me, Gohn? Speak in riddles and old runic poems? Tell me to dig, dig, dig?”
“Your father would not end the defense of our ancestral halls for the perishing of fourteen soldiers,” mused the old man quietly. He stood before the table and carefully began sliding away letters and charts, the parchment component of mining moved out of the way to reveal the growing mine map marked on the table.
Withered fingers traced the channels and tunnels, down the ladder ways and through the larger chasms.
“Ralgium,” whispered that dry tongue.
“And we will dig until all workers are buried beneath precious stone or burned by monstrous waking beast?” Fe’or knocked his chair aside as he stood, his voice thundering with each word. “For a hope unknown?!”
“I am your hope!” shouted Sightless Gohn. “Have you lost so much history as to disbelieve the stone speakers? There is wealth beneath us, Fe’or, screaming up to me.”
“I only hear the screams of the dead!”
But Fe’or did not stop digging, did not send his workers back to the mountain halls.
A war party led by the king’s son himself searched the depths for the flamedrake that killed fourteen of the obsidian miners, and Fe’or’s hammer struck the killing blow.
King Thegal sent more workers from the mountain halls, two more pelegor had been born and were old enough for digging, and he spared an armor master as well, one skilled enough to turn the fallen flamedrake’s scales into black armor for a king. The invaders from SkyFrost had been pushed back and that war had finished. Yet, with the wealth pulled from the ground in Fe’or’s mine, the reach of the mountain lords spread, taking over more and more of the free lands of the world.
Great turns of the stars in the sky passed and passed again, and Fe’or’s mine was deep and wide and a city of its own. A small body of soldiers patrolled the deep and the surface, keeping away those felbeasts below and the marauders and thieves above. For talk of the mine and her wealth had spread far and wide.
Then, a crystalach was found.
Eighty-five workers, twelve soldiers, two pelegors and their stone speakers, all dead at the felbeast’s claw.
Fe’or stood in the bloody remains of the battle, a wretched memory spread out in husbands and sons and brothers. Through all the blood of his kin, not one drop of crsytalach blood mixed in, not one scale lay among the limbs. Even the red eyes of the beast, exposed and fleshy, had not been cut and removed.
Sightless Gohn shuffled around Fe’or in a wide circle, missing torsos and legs and broken equipment in the curious way of the blind.
“We will mourn the dead, give tribute to their families. But this is a wondrous day, Fe’or. Wondrous indeed!”
Fe’or bit back a reply and calmed his heart, inhaling deep of the underground air. He was thankful his warhammer sat in the cart at the entrance to the mine chamber and wasn’t held in his clenched hand.
“You would dig through the world, to the place of the dead below?”
Sightless Gohn ceased his roaming and stared at Fe’or with eyes unseeing. “Crystalach shape Ralgium,” said the man. “Crystalach are the answer to all, the purpose of this mine!”
“Ralgium is a myth!” shouted the younger mountain lord. “A myth and nonsense! We have reached the monsters of the deep; we have reached the end. I will give no more boons to loved ones, no more letters home with bits of carved bone, no more reports to my father of lost workers and the need for more. I am at the end, Gohn. We will delve no deeper.”
“My lord, certainly you see the folly of this!” shouted the speaker. “Ralgium nearly glows in the air, so close as we are! Imagine the power of such a thing! Imagine the conquering wealth, the strength you could give our people, our clan! Do not throw away this chance in fear.”
Fe’or turned but did not yet depart. There was something in the air, yes, but it might have just been the ministrations of the old stone speaker, turning his senses to imagination and figments of lore. He set his jaw and strode from the chamber, leaving the mine. No more workers would die.
King Thegal sent letters and hooded ravens, all with questions and requests for conference. He had not taken word of the mine closing well. He was enjoying the conquest of the mountain lords and the strength they had gained through the wealth of the deep. He was also bitten by the Ralgium whisper as much as Sightless Gohn. Fe’or sent letters in return and ravens without word–for he had no wilderwoman to speak into them–all with the same reply: he had set his heart, and the mine would be closed.
More wealth than any other mine in the past twenty turns of the stars had been found in just four turns in Fe’or’s mine. There was more death as well, not just from the crystalach or the flamedrakes. Those numbers meant more to Fe’or than those of gain.
The train of workers wearied home to the mountain halls, the pelegor and stone speakers, wagons of equipment with oxen to pull them, a caravan of a small city leaving the barren lands and the wealth behind.
Fe’or stood at the mine entrance, peering down into the deep along the stair and the cart track, into the glowing light below. Sightless Gohn had not been seen in six days and Fe’or was afraid what that could mean. He was an old man, old in the ways of the clan and in his belief in the powers that lay in their blood, and surely he believed he could guide a wild beast as well as the tamed. Fe’or had no doubt the man was searching for the Ralgium, believing himself capable of directing the crystalachs out of his way, the flamedrakes back to their crevices, all other creatures to clear his path as he searched.
If he were below and Fe’or set fire to the fuse at his feet. . .
But he could not wait forever.
Glancing over his shoulder he saw the tail of the caravan lumbering away, leaving the pit where he stood. He looked back to the mine and breathed deeply, knowing what must be done.
There was all likelihood that the old man hurried ahead to the mountain halls to convince King Thegal to rebuke his son and send another mine leader in his place, someone who. . .
No, no, no. It was futile thinking. The old man was surely below.
“Deeper and deeper,” muttered Fe’or as he brought the torch down to the fuse trailing up the steps. “Ever deeper, old Gohn. Deep until it is all you know.”
The fuse caught and Fe’or quickened away, catching the reigns of his mount and riding off toward the caravan, away from the mine and the muffled explosion below, away from the collapsing crumbling tunnels. No more workers would die.
Far beneath the earth, far from the booming shock and falling pillar supports, deeper than the bloody battle of the crystalach, a hunched figure moved in silence and darkness, ignorant of the bulbous red eyes that burned at him from the cracks and holes in the stone. Ignorant, for he could see the violet stone glowing luminous beneath his feet.
He fell to his knees and wept, seeing his hands, seeing his beard and the trinkets and gems bound within, his sight repairing and returning in the pink healing glow.
“Ralgium,” whispered the stone speaker, and the red eyes watched him from their darkness, even as the booming sounds far above echoed into the depths of the mine.
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Noah Aderhold was raised on reading and writing, putting his first stories down on paper in middle school, continuing and growing until he finished his first novel at sixteen. He has written nearly a dozen novels and short stories since then, pursuing his betterance of the craft and a place at the publishing table. He currently lives in VA with his wife and son, and when he is not writing and reading he works in the wonderful world of remodeling, repairing and rebuilding projects for homeowners.
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