elves and the dwarves will be mere memories; stories we tell our children.”
The man chuckled thickly.
“Get some rest, for now,” he said. “Work starts soon.”
“Work?” Katya asked, but he would say no more.
She found it impossible to rest. The anger that burned within her demanded focus, but she could hardly rage at her companions, and all her pounding on the door achieved was bleeding fists. Silus, Zac, Kelos and Emuel had been taken away, the rest of them discarded like so much human trash.
“I swear to the gods, Dunsany. The first pointy-eared bastard that comes through that door is going to get my fist right in its face.”
Several hours later, there was the sound of bolts being drawn back and Katya leapt to her feet. But when she launched herself at the tall, lithe woman who entered the room there was a crimson flash, and a smell of burning hair, and darkness swiftly descended.
Zac may have only recently just learned to walk, but he could crawl alright, and that was all that was required of him. He was gathered with the other human children before a vast wall, its apex lost far above them in the gloom of the cavern. Deep holes had been tunnelled into the wall at regular intervals, and it was in front of these that they now stood. The man who had led them down here had handed each child two glazed clay balls. He told the children that all they had to do was crawl as far as they could into their assigned tunnel, before dropping the balls and crawling quickly out again. It was a game, he said. But people who played games didn’t generally look as terrified as the children around him, Zac considered, and, anyway, what sort of game did you play deep underground, in tunnels lit only by the glowing minerals veined through the rock walls? Because Zac was so young, he was given into the care of a slightly older child, one who had more grasp on what they were being told.
“And remember,” the man said. “When everybody gets back out of their tunnel, we all have to run away, really really fast. The first one out gets a prize. Sound fun?”
The man may have been using the language of play, but his face was deadly serious, cruelly stern. Already some of the infants in the group had started to cry. Fat tears trickling through the dust on their cheeks; snot heavy with grime pouring from their nostrils.
By the look on the man’s face, he wished he could slap the children into silence. But he didn’t.
“Okay, everybody before their tunnels. Good. Now, on three. One. Two. Three. Go!”
Zac hesitated for just a second before following his companion into the narrow slit in the cold rock wall. Within, he could barely move his shoulders, but the man shouted something behind him and, remembering his angry face, Zac forced himself onwards. For a while he could hear the shuffling and sniffling of children in adjacent tunnels, but as they went deeper that soon faded away, until the only sound was their breathing. Zac couldn’t see a thing, and he thought that maybe this wasn’t a game at all; that they would be trapped here in this never-ending darkness and he would never see Mummy and Daddy again. Zac had been in frightening situations before, had seen many scary things (like the monster Daddy had turned into), but none of them had been as terrifying, or as lonely, as this. He began to cry.
“Shh!” the boy in front of him snapped. “We’re almost there.”
There was light up ahead: a soft glow permeated the darkness. Just before it ended, the tunnel widened slightly and Zac found that they could stand.
Before them, the entire wall of the tunnel was glowing. Zac could feel the warmth pouring from the stone, and he knew that this was where the man wanted them to place the clay balls. He looked up at the spheres in the boy’s hands. They were giving off a strange smell. The boy grinned nervously before dropping them at his feet, where they began to sink into the stone floor with a hissing sound.
“Go!” he said.
Zac hoped that he would be the first one out. He hoped that he would win the prize the man had promised them. Giggling, he thrust himself back up into the darkness of the crevice, wriggling for all he was worth. He was almost out — he could see the lights in the vast cavern beyond the next turn — when, with a loud thud, jaws of rock snapped shut before him. The tunnel behind him shook and filled with rubble, thrusting his knees painfully up against his chest. Zac struggled to breathe through the clouds of rock dust enveloping him, stinging his eyes and scouring his throat.
Then there was silence — absolute and terrifying — before the cries of trapped children reached him in the darkness. Zac looked behind him and saw a pale, bloody hand reaching from a pile of rock, the fingers barely grazing his ankle. He heard the shouts of the overseer as if from a great distance, before he was silenced by what sounded like metal ringing on stone.
Zac struggled, but all he could move were his fingers, and these could do little more than weakly paw at the rock before him. It struck him, then, that he might die. He’d never seriously considered his own death before, but now that he did, he realised what a terrible and unjust thing it would be. He wanted his parents; Mummy and Daddy would make it alright. But they weren’t here, and there was no way they could get to him.
Zac yelled for all he was worth and was answered by the many voices of the children trapped in the darkness. Some of the cries were cut short when a tremor shook the walls. The rock creaked and groaned; Zac could feel the floor rippling beneath him and he cried out even louder as panic gripped him.
When a warm liquid began to trickle over his hands, he thought that it was his own tears or blood. But then the trickle became a gush and soon a tepid stream was lapping about his body. There was a strange smell; a charged feeling like the approach of a thunderstorm. Zac blinked as a shaft of light punched through the rock before him. The stone was melting, trickling away like wax before a flame. He could hear movement beyond: adult voices; children responding with delight and relief.
The last of the boulders blocking Zac in dissolved, and he could see a short, bearded man crouched in the half-light of the open shaft. Steam wreathed his hands where he moved them about the tunnel’s walls, and he was muttering something beneath his breath, in a tongue that Zac didn’t recognise. He looked up as Zac crawled towards him and grinned.
“We’ve got a live one here, boss. Come on, wee man, let’s get you out of this mess.”
The man enclosed him in his broad arms and helped him from the shattered mouth of the tunnel. Zac blinked in the lights of the main cavern, seeing other children being helped from the collapsed tunnels by more of the short, bearded men. One whole side of the chamber wall had collapsed, spilling rubble far into the cavern.
At least twenty-five children had been sent into the tunnels; Zac saw only six amongst the men and women who now crowded the chamber. He looked around for the elf who had led them down here and saw his headless corpse at the feet of a squat, broad man, who was cleaning blood from the blade of his axe. He noticed Zac gazing at him, and smiled.
“Don’t yer worry yourself, sunshine. That pointy-eared bastard won’t be bothering you no more.”
The dwarf’s grin scared Zac more than the blood on his blade or the corpse at his feet. The jagged teeth that loomed out of the patchy ginger beard covering his face looked just like the broken stones that surrounded them.
“You might want to stand back somewhat,” said a voice behind him. It was the man who had rescued him. His hands were flat against the cave wall and sweat beaded his forehead as he began to chant. Zac stumbled back as the rock began to give way beneath the man’s hands. One whole section of the wall above him bowed outwards, looming over the dwarf like a great belly of stone. The man looked up nervously, but maintained his litany.
When the stone began to drip and trickle around his hands, the dwarf stepped away from the wall.
“Everyone back,” he shouted. “It’s going.”
Zac was swept aside by a woman with bright red hair as a dark waterfall tumbled into the chamber, sloshing up against their feet in a warm flood and filling the air with the sharp smell of liquid rock. He could see pale shapes tumbling within the wash and as the tide drew back, revealing their true forms, he gasped.
Eight children lay on the cavern floor, their bodies crushed and broken.
“No, no, no!” the dwarf shouted as he attempted to revive one of the children.
“You weren’t to know, Orlok,” the woman holding Zac said. “None of us knew the elves were using child labour in this part of the mines.”
“It was my idea to force our way into this chamber. It was my sorcery that led to the collapse of the tunnels. If we’d come in further up the shaft, none of this would have happened. We’re supposed to be here to liberate the humans, Greta, not kill their young! ”
