they might have widened just a bit over the gleaming bracelets clasped around her and Bahzell’s wrists, but he simply nodded courteously to her, then cocked an eyebrow at Bahzell. “And this lady would be?”
“Leeana Hanathafressa,” Bahzell replied. “My wife.”
It was the first time he’d said those two words out loud, and they tasted even better that way then they had in the privacy of his own thoughts.
Harshan’s ears flattened and he pursed his lips as if to whistle in astonishment, then visibly thought better of it.
“Congratulations, Your Highness,” he said, addressing Bahzell with atypical formality, and bowed deeply. “And to you, Milady,” he added, bowing to Leeana in turn. “May you be having many years together, and may your joy grow greater with each of them.”
“Thank you,” she responded a bit wryly. “But I’m no ‘milady,’ I’m afraid. War maids don’t have much use for titles.”
“Well, that’s as may be,” Harshan said in a more normal tone, his ears coming fully upright again, and smiled at her. “Happens hradani don’t much bother ourselves with such as that. You’ve wed Prince Bahzell, and that’s enough and more than enough for the likes of me. It’s not a thought as we’d like to be going to his head, but we’re a mite fond of him in Hurgrum, and if you’re his lady, then you’re after being our lady, as well. Which isn’t to be saying I’d not give good kormaks to see him explaining to his lady mother how it was he came to get himself married with nary a word to her at all, at all, as to how he meant to. I’ve no doubt she’ll be pleased to see you, Milady, but I’m thinking there’s a word or three as might just be singeing someone else’s ears.”
“I’ve no doubt of that,” Bahzell sighed philosophically. “But in the meantime, we’d best be moving along smartly if we’re to reach Hurgrum before nightfall.”
“Aye, so you had,” Harshan agreed, and bowed to Leeana again. “He can be a mite slow sometimes, Milady, but a sharp rap to the skull usually gets his attention. Mind you use something besides your hand, now, though! I’ve heard as how broken knuckles take time to heal.”
“I’ll remember that!” Leeana promised as Gayrfressa and Walsharno started forward once more.
The other workers looked up from the courses of masonry they were laying to nod or wave as they passed. Some of them called out greetings of their own, and then the coursers were into the steadily descending tunnel, and Leeana looked about her in amazement as Gayrfressa’s freshly shod hooves clattered on the stone floor.
“We heard rumors about this in Kalatha,” she said, “but I never could have imagined something like this! How long is the tunnel, Bahzell?”
“Just more than a league and a half,” Bahzell replied, and found himself looking at the tunnel through fresh eyes in the face of her amazement. “The tunnel head is after being the best part of five miles back from the Escarpment’s edge, and it climbs a mite over three feet in every hundred. I’d thought as how it would be shorter, but old Kilthan and Serman wanted a shallower grade, and as Chanharsa was after doing all the hard work, we let them have their way.”
“I can see why some of Father’s critics thought he was out of his mind to even contemplate this.” Leeana shook her head. “Even seeing it, it’s hard to believe it’s real!”
“Oh, it’s real enough to be going on with, lass!” Bahzell chuckled. “And it’s a mite hard for someone as grew up in Hurgrum to believe, as well. Though not so hard, in some ways, as having a lake lapping up against the edge of town!”
Leeana nodded, but she was still looking at the tunnel as if trying to take in its reality. She asked Gayrfressa to move closer to one of the square channels cut into the tunnel’s floor and the mare obliged. Gayrfressa was clearly doing her best to look unimpressed, taking the enormity of the engineering project in stride, but Bahzell’s ears twitched with gentle amusement as he sensed her true reaction. She was just as taken aback by its sheer scale as Leeana.
Leeana peered down into the channel, then looked back at Bahzell. It was dim in the tunnel, with the entrance shrinking steadily into a brightly lit dot behind them. The light level was low enough for the gleam from Gayrfressa’s right eye socket to be clearly visible, but the lanterns and regularly spaced air shafts gave more than enough illumination for a hradani’s eyes to see Leeana’s raised eyebrows.
“There’s two of the biggest waterwheels ever you’ve seen down yonder ahead of us,” he told her, “and when all’s finished, it’s them as will move the wagons up and down the tunnel.”
“How?” Leeana asked wonderingly, and he snorted.
“Would it happen you’ve seen one of the dwarves’ ‘bicycles’?”
“Not really,” Leeana admitted. “I’ve seen drawings of them in some of Father’s books, though.”
“And were those drawings good enough to be showing you the chain as drives the back wheel for them?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “Surely you don’t mean-?”
“That I do,” he said wryly. “Mind, it’s a cable they’re using, and not a chain, but I’d not have believed even dwarves would come up with such. It’s trees I’ve seen-and not saplings! — less thick than it is, and they’ll have one of them in each channel, when they’re done. And each of them the better part of nine miles long, to boot.”
Leeana pursed her lips in an unconscious echo of Harshan and shook her head.
“It’s a mite much when it comes at you all in one go,” Bahzell said cheerfully, “but if there’s one thing I’ve found, it’s that dealing with such as Kilthan has a way of stretching a man’s mind. And it’s a sound enough idea, once you’ve had time to be looking at all the edges and angles.” He shrugged. “Even as gentle as this slope is,” he waved one hand at the tunnel about them, “a wicked hard task it would be for horse or mule or even ox to be dragging freight wagons up it. Or down it, come to that, when the weight’s against them. It’s not too very close together you’d want to be hooking wagons to any cable, even one as stout as Kilthan’s, but each of them will move a sight faster than any team could. And any wagon as is cleared to be passing through the tunnel in the first place will be fitted with an emergency brake as will stop it dead if the cable breaks.”
“And how long would it take them to repair the cable if it did break?” Leeana asked shrewdly, and he chuckled.
“Aye, you’ve put your hand on the meat of it, haven’t you just? But Kilthan’s an answer for that, too. Either cable can run in either direction, so if it happens as one of them breaks, the other can still be moving wagons up and down at half the rate while repairs are made. And if it should happen as both of them break-which, I’ll have you to understand, Kilthan swears is a thing as could never happen to something his engineers had the designing of- wagons could still be moving with teams, after all. Not such big wagons, and not with such heavy loads, but enough to be keeping the tunnel open. And it’s not the entire cable they’d have to replace, either. It’s made in sections as can be spliced in or cut out, and not a one of them is more than a hundred feet long, so it’s likely enough they’d have it fixed almost as quick as Kilthan’s after claiming.”
“Well,” Leeana said after a moment, “I’d always heard dwarves had a way with stonework and machinery. To be honest, though, I always thought the tales had to have grown in the telling. Apparently I was wrong.”
“As to that, I’m thinking as how one day you’d best come with me on a visit to Kilthan in Silver Cavern. I’ll not call this a minor undertaking, lass, but the Dwarvenhame Tunnel, now-that’s after being an impressive little trip.”
Even the long, northern summer’s day had drawn to a close by the time Bahzell and Leeana reached Hurgrum. The western horizon was a pile of blue cloud against a sea of copper coals as the sun disappeared at last, and lanterns and streetlamps gleamed along the embankment which had been erected to protect the city of Hurgrum from the rippling blue waters of the lake of the same name. They glowed against the gathering dark like lost stars, their reflections dancing on the nighttime mirror of the lake, and the sound of gentle wind and moving water filled the world.
The Hangnysti River had been dammed well downstream from the city, but the water it had impounded stretched at least five miles above Bahnak’s capital, as well, and Kilthandahknarthas’ engineers had designed and constructed the embankment along the lake’s western shore-over six miles long, thirty feet wide, and twenty feet high-not simply to protect the city but to serve as the foundation and base for the huge docks and the warehouses they would serve when the Derm Canal was finished, as well. Not that there wasn’t already quite a lot of traffic on the lake. As they approached the roadway along the crest of the dam, Bahzell, Leanna, and the coursers had seen
