Session 7 - The Long Road Down

12 Sleepwind 850

A blow to the chest brought Talik to his senses. Instinctively, he reached out and, for a second, felt something solid, like slippery stone. A moment later, the sensation vanished, replaced by cold and the feeling of a current carrying him toward some unknown destination. Everything before his eyes was dark. The boy even tried rubbing his eyes, but it did not help. He tried swimming across the current, as Uncle Al had once taught him, but the flow kept turning him in a different direction. At one point, he thought he was beginning to make out some shapes, but then something slammed him into another obstacle. His ears rang unpleasantly, and everything before his eyes began to turn white.

Water seared his lungs once again. Talik tried to swim to the surface, but after a few strokes, he found stone instead. His sense of which way was up and which was down had strangely blurred, and now he felt as though he were actually swimming sideways. Barely keeping himself from inhaling water, Talik changed direction, but the raging current suddenly dropped into a waterfall. As he fell, he managed to take a few gulps of air, but a moment later he was underwater again, once more unable to tell which way was up and which was down.

The boy's strength was fading. He lost consciousness more and more often, coming to after yet another collision with the rocks. The blows were growing more painful, but it was these flashes of pain that brought him around and allowed him to keep fighting the current. His whole body hurt. For some reason, Talik remembered being beaten by other boys once. Talik could not remember why it had happened, but the pain of being kicked was very much like what he felt now. The memory of being struck painfully in the head several times was so vivid that Talik instinctively covered his head with his arms and stopped fighting the current.

When Talik came to yet again, the current had clearly stopped. Up and down had finally stopped jumping from place to place. Only the cold and the pain remained unchanged. After swallowing a good deal of water, Talik finally broke the surface. At that very moment, a bright light blinded him. Once his eyes had adjusted a little, he saw that he was in the middle of a small lake. A cliff on one side, a forest on the other. The boy tried to make out the shore, but the pristine snow covering everything around him seemed to sear his eyes. Squinting, he paddled toward the shore. The last thing Talik remembered was crawling onto the bank, mixing sand with snow.

Interlude

Mirin was nervous. Several minutes had passed since she had come to meet Lial in the old mines, but nothing was happening. Casting a displeased glance at her partner, who was swinging a pickaxe by the far wall, she continued ostentatiously gathering pieces of ore and rock and loading them into a mine cart. She and Lial had failed to come up with any better explanation for what Mirin was doing there. When a distant rumble sounded, she stopped and looked around in surprise. Only then did she realize that she had no idea what the opening of the path to freedom would actually look like. The floor trembled harder and harder, and dirt rained down from the ceiling. The rumbling grew steadily louder. At one point, part of the floor simply collapsed, opening a passage into the darkness. When Mirin looked back at Lial, he was pulling two backpacks and a lantern from a niche in the wall. The man wasted no time and simply tossed one of the backpacks to Mirin. She had barely managed to slip the straps over her shoulders when Lial grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the opening.

At the passage, Mirin stopped, trying to make something out in the darkness of the pit. Lial merely growled:

“No time to look around, jump!”

Still holding her hand, the man jumped, dragging her after him. Somewhere above, the shouts of guards and the thud of heavy boots could be heard. The guards were much closer than they had expected.

The fall was brief. Mirin had expected to land in water, but instead she felt soft ground beneath her feet. Looking around quickly, she realized that she was standing on a mound of earth directly below the opening. Lighting the lantern, Lial quickly moved forward, following a route only he understood. Mirin could do nothing but rely on his skills as a scout and tracker and his ability to read signs in their surroundings. After taking a few steps, she gave a nervous snort:

“This plan came close to falling apart so many times. It's almost strange that it worked.”

Lial shook his head:

“You heard the guards, didn't you? Too close — they were clearly ready. It looks like my alibi didn't entirely work and they continued to suspect us. So try not to leave any unnecessary tracks.”

Their path wound along the rushing stream. Sometimes they veered away from it, but time and again they returned. The clatter of the guards' boots and armor drew ever closer. From time to time, Lial cursed and changed their route considerably. At such moments, Mirin began to pray that it was not a dead end. Several times, the guards nearly caught up with them. This forced Lial to take even greater risks: he extinguished the lantern and pulled Mirin into a large fissure.

They sat there for several hours, not daring to make a single unnecessary movement, until the voices and footsteps faded into the distance. From the last words Mirin managed to make out, the guards had spotted something or someone and had gone to investigate in another direction. She simply could not believe such luck.

After weighing all the options, Mirin agreed to Lial's suggestion that they change their route. Instead of returning to the stream, which Lial said should lead outside, they went deeper into the caves in search of another exit. According to Lial, the previous route, on which he had pinned such hopes, had now become dangerous.

Interlude 2

Elvar Morren leaned back in his chair and slightly closed his eyes. His gaze wandered over the wall. Several times, it slid over the sweaty forehead of the man who had delivered the report. The guard, who had just finished his report, waited tensely, shifting from foot to foot and carefully avoiding that gaze. Elvar slowly opened one of his desk drawers and took out an apple and a small knife. The blade slowly pared away the skin in thin strips that fell to the floor with a soft rustle. When half the apple had been peeled, the Senior Overseer said quietly, drawing out his words a little:

“So there are three after all… Lial, Mirin, and this… Talik…”

Elvar's eyes noted how the guard flinched at the last name, hiding his bruised fist behind his back. They noted it and slid onward. Another strip of apple peel slipped to the floor. Elvar's voice grew quieter:

“Return all the prisoners to their rooms. Send three squads to the lake…”

His eyes once again looked into the guard's face. Elvar continued:

“In fact, that's where the only known exit from the caves lies — the one we haven't managed to block completely…”

Elvar placed the peeled apple on the edge of the desk, slowly wiped the blade, and put the knife back in the drawer. The guard seemed to stop breathing.

“You're looking for three… But that body the search party saw in the current… They might have split up…”

The guard could not help himself and asked:

“Three? But only Lial and Mirin were by the collapse…”

The guard's voice trembled noticeably. Elvar's gaze lingered on his face for a moment before sliding away again. The Senior Overseer's voice remained just as quiet:

“Three. Besides the collapse in the mines, there was another one. In the utility rooms. The same ones where this…”

Elvar Morren hesitated for a second and continued:

“Where this one… was turning valves! And where he was last seen.”

The Senior Overseer slowly rose from his chair and picked up the peeled apple from the desk. His voice grew quieter still:

“By the way, if you don't give me an answer by evening as to exactly how he got to the machinery, then you needn't bother coming back.”

The overseer's hand unclenched, and the apple fell straight into the wastebasket.