Draka

When we returned to the small room where Herald’s family had set up camp Makanna was sitting on her bedroll, sniffling occasionally while stroking Herald’s hair. Herald was lying with her head in Makanna’s lap, her eyes closed, relaxed and with a small smile on her face.

“Did you have a good talk, girls?” Tamor asked as we settled in.

“Tell them,” Herald said without opening her eyes.

Makanna sighed. “We’ve come to an agreement,” she said, her tone making it clear that she was reluctantly reciting a prepared statement. “Herald will be coming with us on jobs as a regular member of the group.”

“And…”

“And,” Makanna said, looking at me. “If you’re willing, madam Draka, we will sometimes ask for your help, if the job seems harder than we can handle safely. Herald, on her part, will stop taking unnecessary risks without discussing it with us first.”

Meaning Herald got everything she wanted while giving nothing up. I didn’t know if Herald was a good negotiator, or if she’d browbeat Makanna into giving her what she wanted. Probably the latter, honestly. Either way it was clear that the balance of their relationship had changed.

“Lovely!” Tamor said, and Valmik, who’d been watching Tamor, nodded. “Now, how about we eat something?”

Herald may have gotten what she wanted, but other than that the hierarchy that she’d described to me that first night by the lake was still easy to see. Makanna made a decision. Tamor went with whatever she had decided, and Valmik followed Tamor. Which was good at the moment, but I’d have to keep an eye on Makanna. Or, I scolded myself, I could try to show that she could trust me.

We talked while the others ate. Herald’s three half-starved family members showed some respectable restraint, eating slowly instead of shovelling down food the way I’d expected them to. I declined, since I wasn’t that hungry, and most of what they had was bread and fruit anyway.

What the goblins had told Herald and me was pretty much spot on. The group had arrived at the village a few days ago. It had been empty, of course, and they’d searched it. Just like the mining camp, it looked like people had put their things in order and left, all at once. They had tried to speak with some goblins they saw watching the place, but with no success. Luckily Tamor had found some clear tracks leading from the village and up the valley, and they followed those all the way to the gate. Of course, when they got there the gate was open, and the doors were so flush with the walls that they didn’t even see them. As far as they could tell, there was just an open tunnel leading into the mountain.

They set up an ambush, hoping to catch someone coming in or out, but after waiting a full day they decided to go in. Thanks to Makanna they could see fine in the dark, similar to my shadowsight. They followed the tunnel all the way to the large chamber, saw the villagers and the valkin, decided that they were in over their heads, and tried to leave. Unfortunately for them, in the hours it had taken to go down and back again the gates had closed. They had no way to break through, nor did they want to be trapped if the valkin came. That left only one option.

First they considered looking for another way out. They’d explored one other tunnel before this one but it had been a dead end, though now Tamor wondered if it was a gate like the one at the entrance. When, hungry and exhausted, they found the small side room in this tunnel they’d decided to set up camp and wait for an opportunity.

“You don’t want to go farther in this tunnel though, unless you need to take care of business,” Tamor told me. “There’s another, smaller room a minute away that we’ve been using for, you know. Natural needs.”

“Warning duly noted,” I told him, suddenly glad that the smell of the camp was strong enough to mask anything that might come wafting down the tunnel.

Their new plan had been to keep an eye on the valkin and hopefully follow them out, if and when they left. Unfortunately, no one seemed to use the tunnel to the surface, and when we found them they were planning to do something desperate. They were almost out of food. If they ran out of food, Makanna would no longer be able to let them see in the darkness, and they would be at a terrible disadvantage, unable to move around without torches, possibly giving themselves away. But the villagers were being fed something, somewhere. So, they were going to have to fight while they still could.

They would kill the guards and take what food they could. Then they would look around for heavy tools to break through the gate or, if that failed, try to find a different way out. They were extremely pessimistic about their chances, but it was fight, or starve in the darkness.

“So, you’ve been here a while. What’ve you found?” I asked as they were finishing up.

“Some scouting has been possible,” Valmik said, “but the passages down are in sight of the guards. There is at least one more chamber below the workshop where the villagers go, to sleep and eat, we assume. More likely there are many more chambers for the valkin. Tunnels must also exist, we think, since the valkin come up from the chamber.”

“Any idea how many of these valkin there are?”

“Nah,” Tamor said. “They’re hard to tell apart, and we only see a few at a time. There’s one that we’ve seen a few times that might be a leader though. Easy to recognize ‘cause he’s got a scar on his face. He carries a staff, looks like it’s made of some kind of bone, with a big fang on the end.”

“He comes up from the lower chambers sometimes,” Makanna added, “and looks over the villagers. Might have something to do with keeping them obedient, or asleep, or whatever is going on with them.”

“What about the big wheel? Any idea what that’s about?”

“Not really,” Tamor answered. “My best guess is that it’s for exercise, but as to why they’re keeping these people at all… we have some unpleasant guesses, and we hope that we’re wrong. On the bright side none of the villagers have disappeared as long as we’ve been here, so I don’t think that the valkin are eating them, at least.”

“So, what are you going to do?” I asked, making sure to look directly at Makanna when I did.

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “The job was to find out what happened to the villagers. Now we know. We could return home and report what we’ve found, but then we’d need to prove it. I doubt that anyone will believe us.”

“Yeah,” Tamor agreed. “A magical door with a tunnel into the depths of the mountains sounds a little far-fetched. At the very least we would have to return here with an official to verify our report.”

“Like Tamor says,” Makanna said with a frown. “Still, the smart thing is to return, now that you’ve opened the way for us. I don’t like the idea of leaving the villagers here, but I’m not sure what we could do.”

“The number of foes, and their individual strength, is unknown,” Valmik said. “I recognise them from an illustration, but I know nothing of their capabilities.”

"We think there can't be that many of them, though," Tamor added. "They don't guard the surface entrance. It makes no sense to leave it unguarded unless they can't spare anyone."

“I saw one of them recharging one of their light-balls,” I said. “At least some of them must have some kind of magic. If that wasn’t obvious already with the sleepwalking villagers back there.”

“Which is why we won’t be changing our original plan. We’re returning to Karakan as soon as we’ve eaten and rested,” Makanna said bitterly. “This is far beyond us, and as much as I dislike it, I’m not willing to risk any of us getting seriously hurt to get these people out. We’ll report what we’ve seen and return with an official, or a raiding party, or not at all.”

“You know,” I told them, “there’s another one of these gates in the mountains not that far from the mine we went to. Seems likely that’s where our missing miners are.”

Makanna almost smiled at me when I said that. “That’s excellent news! Both the mining company and the city council are offering rewards for any clues to where they went, especially since these villagers disappeared. If we could show them two of these places–”

“Yeah, one problem though,” I said, interrupting her. “We need to see if you can open the gates, because I’d rather not be there if you’re bringing the authorities around.”

“That is a problem,” Tamor said thoughtfully.

“Did you try to open the gate here? When you tried to leave.”

“Of course we tried,” Makanna said. “Nothing would budge. There was a hole but it was too small for any of us to fit through.”

“Alright, so when we get up there we’ll have to see if you can open the gate, because I don’t know if that was a magic thing or a dragon thing.”

I left the others there to rest, offering to take guard duty until they were ready to go. Makanna looked ready to argue, but a pointed look from Herald made her turn it into thanking me for the offer. The tunnel back to the large chamber wasn’t straight, but there were no side tunnels so there was no risk of getting lost.

The chamber was silent. I used my shadowsight to find the darkest shadow I could that had a good view of the bottom as well as the stairway leading up to my level, but all of the humans were gone. Eating or resting, I guessed, which made me wonder what time it was. It had been evening when we went down, and several hours had passed since then. It must be the middle of the night.

The humans were gone, but there was still one guard, looking as bored as any security guard I had ever seen. With nothing else to do I observed the lone valkin. I had no way of telling if it was male or female. For that matter, I had no way of knowing if they had two genders, or if there were any obvious differences between them. I settled on thinking of the valkin as 'it'.

It walked around a bit, stood still a bit, then sat for a little while. It walked over to each of the shining orbs, and chose not to charge any of them. It looked up the stairs. It looked back towards an opening in the wall on the lower level. Then it repeated these things, in various combinations, for what felt like hours.

At one point it collected some pebbles and amused itself by throwing them at one of the orbs. When it hit it, though, the orb flickered, and the guard quickly scattered the pebbles and looked around nervously.

I was so very, very bored. It got so bad that I considered taking a nap and relying on the dragon to wake me if anything happened. The dragon was useful that way. But in this case I was so bored that I worried that even the dragon might pass out from the sheer monotony.

I was saved by the arrival of a second guard. It spoke to the first quickly, and both hurried through the doorway behind them, leaving the chamber unguarded.

That sure woke me up. This was a golden opportunity! I could sneak down there and follow the guards, see what was through that hole in the wall. Knowing what lay below this chamber, and how many of the valkin there were, would be valuable information if and when we returned. I couldn’t pass on a chance like this, could I? And the fact that I was bored out of my mind and burning with curiosity definitely had nothing to do with anything.

I went for it. I found a spot where all four light-balls were blocked and the shadow was nice and dark. I flowed down to the floor of the lower level, then sneaked across to the door as carefully as I could. Beyond was a steep, curving staircase, lit dimly by light leaking in from the top and bottom. From beyond the bottom exit of the staircase I could hear angry voices. They were speaking in the local language, and one of those voices sounded distinctly human.

I would have made a terrible soldier. Guard duty had been awful. But maybe I would have made a good spy, because this was exciting. Sneaking into an enemy stronghold, listening in on their dirty dealings? Knowing that I might have to run to avoid discovery, or fight my way out? I felt a thrill that went all the way to my bones, and that had nothing to do with the dragon.

Following the voices, I crept down the stairs and peeked out the door. There was a corridor there, not just a tunnel but a straight, finished corridor of stone, with a closed door at the far end. Halfway down the tunnel, in the right hand wall, was an open door from which the same pale blue light as upstairs spilled, broken by faint shadows. The voices came from there.

“...grandfathers and hags!” the human voice said. It was a high, male voice, tight with restrained anger. “We will not pay for what we did not order!”

“Yooou will paaay,” replied a breathy voice flatly. It sounded like the vowels were giving it trouble. “Assss agreeed, yoooou will paaay, or nooo mooore busssinesss!”

“We’ll pay, alright. As agreed. Children, young women, strong men. That was the agreement. I don’t care if you procured the wrong merchandise. We will take the kids, the three men there, her, him, him, those two. The three girls there… and her. The rest are worthless to us. Push me on this and we’ll call the whole thing off.”

“Yooou wooould nooot–”

“Try me! My boss would rather see me wash my hands of a bad deal than buy bad merchandise, and I know that you need our goods much more than we need yours. Look into my eyes and tell me I’m lying!”

There was a short silence.

“Whaaat aaare weee tooo dooo with–”

“Does it look like I give a fuck?” the human voice shouted. “Keep them, get rid of them, I don’t care! As long as they don’t bother my boss, I do not care! They’re your mistake, and your fucking problem!”

There was a knot of cold anger in my belly. It was obvious what I was hearing. They were trading in people. Human trafficking. Slavers. Someone was here to buy people from the valkin, and they’d had an agreement ahead of time. These villagers had been kidnapped on order.

I'd been expecting villagers to be used for labour. There were only so many uses for a large group of prisoners, after all. It disgusted me, but it didn't surprise me. But when the situation changed from monsters capturing people, to humans paying monsters to deliver people to them, I wanted to attack. I wanted to kill every bastard in there, and see them suffer for what they’d done. It was the cold-hearted, organised nature of it. I knew that the same thing happened back home, but to actually see it…

I held myself back. It was hard, but I did it. This was no time for hot fury. I crept towards the door. An angry burst of magic sent the shadows of the corridor spilling forward, swallowing the light in the corridor, and I flowed in front of the door.

The room was large, and it was full. It looked like some kind of meeting hall, with benches and light-balls along the walls. At one end, facing me, was a group of a half dozen humans, one obvious leader and five others backing him up. Unfortunately, as long as I was in shadow form everything looked odd, my vision too distorted to make out any detail. On top of that the room was too bright for my shadowsight to be much good. On the other side of the room the human captives stood, lined up, together with a dozen or more valkin. At the head was a particularly tall one, holding the staff topped with a large fang that had been described to me. The valkin outnumbered the human slavers, but from their postures and voices it was clear how the balance of power lay.

I had to see their faces. I had to know who they were. I backed up and shifted back, keeping the darkness up. I slowly stuck my head forward…

A scent struck me. Even with everything else, and through my anger, it stood out clearly. The room was full of the smell of unwashed humans, a dry, metallic scent that was probably the valkin, but above everything there was that same strange background scent from the chamber. I had no idea what it was, but the dragon…

When I saw the staff, together with that scent, the dragon went wild inside me. Not with rage, or greed, but with fear. The anxiety that I had felt from it in the upstairs chamber was multiplied ten- or a hundred-fold, washing over me and filling me with a sudden urge, no, a desperate need, to flee. The scent was a scent of pain and fear and confusion, of not knowing what was happening but knowing that it was terror and death if I could not get away.

The voices of the two leaders went on, but I didn’t hear them. I turned, shifted, and fled, flowing up the stairs in my shadow form and surging into the chamber until I hit the barrier of the pale blue light. I came back together and leapt onto the high ledge with two powerful beats of my wings, and ran full tilt into the tunnel towards the camp. I needed help. I needed my allies. They would protect me. They could hide me! They…

As I left the chamber behind me the panicked need to flee slowly faded, but I kept running.

“Jesus Christ,” I panted. “What was that? What was that?”

“Death!” the dragon whined in my head. “Dragon bone!”