Child of Fate (14 page)

“More goblins?” Karthor asked.

Alto frowned. “Maybe? I don’t know. They’re
small and light; on hard ground, they don’t leave much for tracks.
And you said you fought some earlier—I can’t tell if there were
more or not. There’s no blood that I can see.”

Tristam swore and spun around to stare around
him. “He can’t just have disappeared!”

“No, something happened, you can be sure of
it. Mayhaps he rode off himself and took the horses with him?” Kar
suggested.

Tristam scowled. “He was lazy and crude, but
he wouldn’t leave us like that.”

“He was in no condition to do that,” Karthor
added. “A full gallop would kill him. Anything less would leave him
exhausted, in pain, and sure to fall off the horse.”

“They were galloping,” Alto confirmed.

They turned and stared at each other. Drefan
was dead, Gerald gone, and now their horses had been run off.
“There’s more to this than just a bounty,” Tristam muttered.

“We’re not meant to make it back,” Kar
opined.

“Back to the mines,” Tristam decided. “We can
jaw about it there after we secure ourselves. If something’s after
us, it’s best we meet it on our terms.”

Alto stared to the south, worried about
Gerald and Sebas. The others filed into the cave until only Trina
and Namitus remained. “What’s going on?” Trina asked him.

Alto shook his head. “I don’t know,” he
admitted. “But it’s not good.”

Namitus let loose a single chuckle. “I was
thinking of turning this adventure into a song to impress the
Kelgryn,” he said. “The trick is making sure I get back to share it
with them.”

“Get in here,” William hissed at them from
the entrance of the mine. “Tristam finds you missing and he’s
likely to tear the mountain down himself.”

Alto nodded and led his new companions back
into the mines. Rather than offering the security Tristam
suggested, it felt like he was entering his own tomb.

“What’s going on?” Alto whispered to Kar
while Tristam and Karthor went through the contents of the desk in
the entry chamber of the mine.

Kar took out his pipe and inspected it, and
then glanced at the confined quarters of the mine. He sighed
wistfully and put it away. “Haven’t you figured it out yet,
boy?”

Alto frowned. Trina and Namitus stood nearby.
They were staying together out of familiarity but they were
maintaining their proximity to him. They’d accepted him as one of
their own. He wondered how that relationship would hold up if they
were surrounded by her people instead of his.

“Well? Spit it out and quit fawning over the
princess,” Kar reprimanded.

Trina and Alto shared a gasp. “How did you
know she was a princess?” Alto managed.

Kar smirked. “It’s why you need to learn to
read, my boy. You must stay abreast of the happenings in the world.
I know of a certain noble young lady named Patrina and why else
would her guards and attendants be killed yet she was spared?”

Alto’s eyes narrowed at the wizard’s shrewd
reasoning. He nodded. “But who’s behind this? And why us?”

Kar snickered. “We’re in the way, Alto,
that’s all. I’d wager we stumbled onto things sooner than expected.
Not Highpeak, certainly, but this mine and your young friends most
assuredly.”

“But you’ve no idea who?”

“Who? Or what?”

Alto’s brow furrowed. “What? What do you
mean?”

“Could a man run off our horses and abscond
with our favorite gap-toothed scoundrel with almost no sign of it?”
Kar asked. “What about a band of goblins? Even trolls and giants
would leave some sign. A track or some spilled blood. Gerald’s a
ruffian to be sure but even bedridden, he’d not go without a
fight.”

Alto cast his eyes about, trying to make
sense of it. “What else is there?”

Kar shrugged. “I wish I knew, my young
friend. I wish I knew.”

“You suspect something?” Alto accused. He
could see it in the wizard’s eyes.

Kar nodded, briefly. “Far-fetched speculation
with no proof. I’ll withhold my thoughts to spare you any bias.
You’re a quick-witted lad; I’d rather you reached your own
conclusions and shared them with me when you’re ready.”

Alto stared at him until he figured out what
the wizard wanted. He nodded moments before Tristam slammed a
drawer shut on the desk and straightened from his task. William
glanced over from his sentry position at the tunnel that led deeper
into the mines.

“It’s a silver mine. A good one at that,”
Tristam explained. “No explanation beyond that why it’s been taken
over.”

“Where are the bodies?” Alto drew everyone’s
attention with his question. “I mean, we’ve been through some of
the mine and found no bodies. In Highpeak, the town was littered
with the dead. Here, there’s nothing.”

“Disposed of,” Karthor said with a glance to
his father.

“Aye, lads,” Kar said. “If you were planning
on spending time in quarters such as these, would you want the
stink of a rotting body here? Besides, mines attract trouble
enough, why invite more?”

“More trouble? What do you mean?”

“Mountains such as the Northern Divide are
riddled with caves and passages. Why else would goblins and other
foul folks make their homes here? It’s not uncommon that miners
break into caverns that may or may not be inhabited by creatures
happy to make a snack out of something killed by someone else,” Kar
explained. “Indeed, somewhere in these mountains there are entire
underground dwarven complexes! Long abandoned, so the dwarves
claim. Overrun by dark forces, some say.”

“Goblins?”

Kar snorted. “It would take a legion of
goblins to run out a dwarf!”

“What then?”

“What indeed?” Kar said with a wink. “Think
on that as we spend time away from the surety of the sun.”

“Kar, enough of your bedtime stories!”
Tristam snapped. “We can’t just stay here. Our water and food left
with the horses, and I don’t fancy dining on goblin-flesh.”

“Wait, Kar might be right!” Alto said.

“Of course I’m right, I’m a wizard!” Kar
snapped.

“No, about the underground caverns,” Alto
said. “Think it through: the goblins didn’t bring the carts filled
with rocks up to this level—they left them in the room below. The
room that served as a hub for other tunnels.”

“Makes sense,” Karthor said. “If it serves as
a hub, why bring them up another tunnel if they don’t need to?”

Alto nodded. “True, but what if they found
the silver ore there and then took them down a different
passage?”

Kar snapped his fingers. “The ore must be
smelted and there’s nothing here to purify it. Silver ore is worth
far less in its raw state.”

“So this is because someone wants silver?”
Tristam asked. “A lot of work to go through for a mine.”

“There are many mines in these mountains;
this is only the first we happened across,” Kar reminded him. “The
others might be overrun, too.”

Tristam grunted. “But goblins working a
forge? The thought of goblins even owning a forge I’d bet long odds
against. We’ve seen their weapons. Crude at best.”

“Only one way to find out,” Alto said.

Tristam stared at the farm boy with great
potential and then nodded. “I don’t like the thought of leaving the
entrance unguarded, but I’m not willing to split us up. There’s not
enough of us.”

“Then we all go,” Kar said. He slapped his
hands together and turned to the tunnel. “Let’s be off!”

“What about Drefan?” Alto stared at the body
of their fallen companion.

“We’ll get him on our way back,” Tristam
said. “If we don’t come back, it won’t matter.”

“Motivating speech,” Kar offered with a
twinkle in his eye.

Alto grabbed a torch out of a barrel near the
tunnel. He struck flint to steel to light it and then led them back
into the mines. They emerged in the chamber where he, Trina, and
Namitus had fought the goblins. It looked the same as before,
though this time they took extra time to study the room.

“That one,” Namitus said, pointing at the
tunnel farthest from the one they’d used before. “When I saw Spike
talking to the others, a goblin fled down that tunnel from
him.”

“Spike?” William was the first to ask the
question.

“The goblin in charge had a helmet with a
spike on the top of it,” Alto explained.

“Until you knocked it off his head,” Trina
added. Alto blushed at the praise in her voice.

“Search the bodies,” Tristam commanded. “We
rifled the fallen for coins before; this time take any food or
drink. No telling how long we’ll be down here.”

Trina frowned while the others moved to
search the bodies. Alto found the practice disturbing; blood and
other fluids ran from them and occasionally a strange noise could
be heard. Namitus joined him, his own face a tight mask of pale
skin.

Their spoils consisted of five
partially-filled water skins and several pouches with dried and
salted meat and even harder bread in them. A sixth skin of water
had been ripped in the fight. Alto reclaimed his dagger once Trina
and Namitus found knives of their own from the dead. They girded
belts and scabbards for their swords and Alto acquired a small
wooden shield. Carrying both the shield and the torch was
difficult, but he managed.

“I should go first,” Namitus offered when
they gathered at the tunnel he’d pointed out.

“I’m all for keeping my men safe,” Tristam
began, “but it speaks poorly for us as men to let a boy lead the
way. The saying, ‘women and children first,’ wasn’t meant to apply
here.”

Trina stiffened and began to scowl but
Namitus beat her with a laugh. “I’ve played the part of a boy
because it suited me well. Might have saved my life, even,” he
admitted. “I doubt Teorfyr would have paired me with his daughter
had he known I was six years older than her.”

Trina’s rage turned to a gasp. Alto
understood her feelings; he’d only known Namitus a matter of hours
but the false boy had already become a fast friend. Now he felt
betrayed.

Tristam held up a torch of his own just above
Namitus’s head. He reached out with a dirty hand to the unflinching
boy-turned-man and rubbed his thumb up his cheek. He chuckled and
backed away. “They’re fair and hard to see, but you’ve the whiskers
of a man.”

“A benefit of my grandmother,” Namitus said.
“As is my youthful appearance.”

Kar chuckled and pushed William and Karthor
out of his way so he could look on Namitus. “Pray tell, who would
your grandmother be?”

“I’ve never met her, but my mother swears her
mother is an elven woman named Jillystria.”

“Pick up your jaw, dear,” Kar advised Trina.
“You hardly look the part of royalty, no matter how remote, when
you’re gaping like fish freshly gaffed.”

Trina jerked as though she’d been pinched.
She looked at Kar and then clamped her mouth shut fast enough her
lips made a popping sound. When she opened them again, she turned
on Namitus. “Namitus? Is this true? Why?”

He turned to her, his smile fading. He
nodded. “It is. I’m sorry; I never meant to deceive any of you. No,
that’s not true. I had to trick your father and his men or they
might have tossed me overboard at the time. I did it to survive,
but I meant to escape as soon as I could. I found your people
captivating and you…you were something else. So I stayed and worked
hard to learn your ways and be accepted.”

“Alto said you loved me,” Trina accused
him.

Namitus’s eyes narrowed for a moment. He
glanced at Alto but the young man held his ground. He sighed.
“That’s fair enough,” he admitted. “I did, but you’re so young. It
wasn’t right for me to hold any improper notions. I kept telling
myself I’d learned all I could, that it was time to move on, yet
the opportunities to do so came and went.”

“So you picked now to tell me?” Trina’s voice
rose as she confronted him.

“Settle this later,” Tristam said as he
stepped between the two of them. “Noise travels underground,
whether it’s a woman screaming or a man being slapped.”

William and Karthor chuckled.

“You’d be best suited to going first, if
you’ve got elven blood in you,” Kar admitted. “Probably see better
in the dark than the rest of us and hear better, too. But you’d
have men with torches behind you casting your shadow ahead of
you.”

Tristam frowned. “Stay near the front then,
behind me. Alto, keep your girl in the back and keep her
quiet.”

Trina’s eyes widened and her mouth flew open
to vent her outrage. Alto moved in front of her to break her line
of sight with his boss. He shook his head and said, “Later. Right
now we need to get out of here so you can have the chance to let
him know what you think of him when the time is right.”

“I’ll go first. After me will be Namitus,
William, Karthor, Kar, Trina, and Alto,” Tristam announced. He
thrust his torch into the tunnel ahead and nodded. “Into the belly
of the beast.”

“I hate when he says that,” William
muttered.

“Better than the dragon’s den,” Kar
quipped.

With that cheerful thought to guide them,
they walked into the tunnel and followed it as it descended slowly
into the mountain. At times it widened but never enough for two men
to stand abreast without fear of being hit by the other’s sword
should the need to swing them arise.

The tunnel branched off three times, the
first time to a short dead end as the silver vein ran dry. The
second time the mine forked, it led them to a chasm. Kar summoned
some magical lights that he sent spinning into the chasm to
illuminate it. They had no idea what was above them but between
their torches and the magical lights, the opposite wall of the
chasm was at least a dozen feet away. At the bottom of the sheer
walls some sixty feet below them, they could see a fast flowing
underground river.