The Sceptre of Samnos

Dermakarak Part 8

     They found themselves in a large artificial cavern, narrow near the door but widening out further away and the ceiling rising until it was too high for the humans to touch it with raised hands. Pillars of rock five feet thick ran down the middle at intervals, some of them with glints of gold bearing quartz left there from necessity. The floor was flat, made from a layer of crushed rock and gravel, and sloped down from the door at a one in five gradient. As they walked, they heard the distant sound of dripping water, sending echoes bouncing eerily off the walls and back from the far distant other end of the cavern.

     To one side was an opening into a smaller cavern. Inside, the walls and floor were stained with splashes of solidified slag and the ceiling was black with soot. Most of the room was taken up with piles of crushed quartz, some of which still had tiny specks of gold in them, and beside them were the huge mills that had crushed the excavated rock into powder. Near the back wall stood two huge furnaces in which the gold bearing ore had been heated until the gold melted and ran out. A wide crack had opened in the side of one of them as it had cooled during its long neglect, rendering it forever useless. A few crumbly lumps of charcoal lay around them, all that was left of the mountain of cooked wood that must have fed the furnaces during the days of the mine’s operation.

     Next to them stood a collection of refining equipment including suits of body armour and face masks to protect the workers from the heat of the furnaces. Beside them was a neatly stacked pile of ingot moulds and pouring buckets, all carefully cleaned of any trace of gold. Block and tackle gear hung from the ceiling for raising and pouring the buckets of molten gold, and huge tongs for lifting and moving other hot items of equipment hung from hooks on the wall. There were hammers in a range of sizes, from tiny ones smaller than lollipops to huge mallets that would have needed two humans just to lift, and beside them were several other tools which the wizards couldn't identify, all scarred, dented and worn from over a century of active use, all rusty and decayed from almost a century of neglect except where a trace of the protective oil that had been left covering them still remained. Shale ignored all of these, however, and went straight for two picks that hung above the door, also rusty with neglect but still strong and usable. "Knew they'd be here," he muttered, handing one to Bluin. "Now, let's get out of here."

     He led them further down the main cavern until they came to a place where a smaller tunnel branched off to the right and sloped upwards. It was just barely high enough for a trog to stand upright inside it, forcing the others to crouch down uncomfortably, and was just wide enough for two people to stand side by side. Entering it, they found that it came to a dead end after about sixty feet. Shale tested the rock with his massive, stubby fingernails, scratching it with their pointed tips, and Thomas remembered his comparative anatomy teacher saying that they could actually dig through some of the softer rock types with them. Not this rock, though. "Just a couple of feet to go now," said Shale, hefting the pick. "Back up a bit, give us room to swing."

     The others retreated a few feet, leaving Shale and Bluin to begin attacking the face of the tunnel with the picks, swinging alternately. Chips of rock began to fly out, and the sound of the blows reverberated around the cavern, worrying them that it would attract Dermakarak's new masters. "We'd better get back to the doors and guard them," suggested Thomas.

     Sure enough, they arrived back at the doors to hear the barking of buglin voices and the impatiently shouted orders of the shologs, and they saw the doors slowly being pushed open. A buglin's hand holding a short ironwood sword appeared through the crack. They jumped at the doors, slamming them shut and trapping the hand, which opened wide with a yelp and dropped the sword. The mercenaries eased off the pressure for a moment, long enough for the gashed and bleeding hand to be snatched back, then they pushed again, closing the door fully. "Quit yer whinin'!" they heard a sholog say. "Now git that door open before I rip yer guts out an' strangle ya wiv ‘em!"