‘The same, sir. Just bubbles and silt.’
‘Should we send someone out to investigate?’ asked Brendan.
Martin was silent for a moment, then said, ‘No, we wait.’
‘Wait for what?’ asked his brother.
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Martin replied.
The four figures at the corner table were quiet, and while the room had cycled from an almost-sullen silence to a near riot of noise and back again over the previous day, these four were unnaturally silent.
Arkan had found little to divert his attention since reaching Ylith, so he spent his time studying the customers in the inn, jammed cheek-to-jowl as they were before him. It was a little like hunting, thought the moredhel chieftain, sitting in a hide observing the game through the swaying trees.
There were no rooms for rent, and every available floor space from the basement to the attic was occupied by exhausted workers and stranded travellers. So Miranda, Nakor, Calis, and Arkan had been content to stay at their table, occasionally leaving to use the public jakes out back.
Arkan and Calis were of elf stock, so silence was not difficult for either. The two demons in human form reflected the nature of their human identities, Miranda’s moods being manifold. Nakor was by nature ebullient, but he could also embrace solitude and quietude, so idle conversation had withered hours before.
Now all four of them sat and covertly studied the other four men. They were rather ordinary looking, apart from the unnatural silence they observed. Had they been monks of some contemplative order, they couldn’t have been less talkative. Still, that wasn’t the only thing about them that caught the attention of Calis and the others.
The Prince of Elvandar had lived among humans more than the other three, even though the two demons possessed Miranda and Nakor’s memories. All questions about how the two supposedly dead friends had reappeared in Ylith had been deflected, and Calis had dropped his inquiry, assuming he would learn the truth in good time. Like his mother’s people, he had greater patience than humans.
It had been Arkan who had first noticed the four quiet men. He had simply said, ‘There’s something off about those four.’ He indicated the four men at the table in the corner on the other side of the rear door.
‘Off odd, or off dangerous?’ asked Calis, taking an interest.
‘I’m not sure, which probably means dangerous,’ said the moredhel chieftain. ‘They are trying to appear to be strangers, sitting at the same table by happenstance, yet despite the differences in their attire, each sports the same fashion of hair, as if they are members of the same clan.’
Nakor grinned. ‘Monks, perhaps?’
‘Not likely,’ said Miranda.
‘No visible weapons, so they are either harmless or have other means to protect themselves,’ continued Arkan. ‘Magic would be my best guess, as there are no obvious guards nearby.’
‘Agree,’ said Calis, glancing at Miranda. ‘Anything?’
Miranda knew what the elf prince was asking, but she hadn’t told him yet that she wasn’t who he remembered and lacked the original Miranda’s ability to detect magic. She glanced over at the men and said only, ‘Nothing useful.’ She felt a familiar, distant sensation being near these four men, like almost remembering a name, or trying to place a faint aroma, maddeningly familiar but just beyond recall.
Nakor grinned. ‘I could go and poke at them.’
‘I don’t think that is wise,’ said Miranda.
‘Why?’ asked little man.
‘I think they’re waiting for something. It might prove futile to do anything until that moment arrives.’ Her tone and expression communicated to Nakor that she was on the verge of recognition. He turned his head slowly and studied the four men, then his eyes widened slightly. He turned back and nodded almost imperceptibly. He now felt it too.
‘It might be too late,’ suggested Arkan. ‘I have spent little time among humans, save when trading in Raglam or Caern, but I have fought them and dealt with human prisoners.’ He lowered his voice. ‘These have the look of prisoners condemned to the mines.’
‘Not hopeless,’ said Nakor. ‘Resigned to their fate.’
‘They expect to die,’ said Calis. ‘Here, in this inn?’
‘I don’t think so,’ offered Miranda. ‘How much mischief can they start here?’
‘A nice brawl?’ asked Nakor with an evil glint in his eye.
‘As amusing as that might prove to be,’ said Calis, ‘Miranda is right. If those four are up to something, it’s not here. At some point I expect one or more to leave the inn.’
‘So we wait until they leave?’ asked Nakor.
‘And follow them,’ said Arkan.
‘What’s your interest?’ Nakor ask the moredhel.
‘Anything that gets me out of this reeking inn is my interest.’
Nakor raised his eyebrows in amusement and inclined his head as if he understood.
‘So we wait a bit longer,’ said Miranda with her first hint of impatience.
An hour wore on as the bubbling in the harbour continued. Martin finally grew bored with watching it and said to his brother, ‘If it’s a threat, it’s not immediate.’
Brendan nodded. ‘Though I wouldn’t discount it being a sudden one if whatever is going on out there is finished.’
‘What could cause such a thing?’ asked Bethany, standing at Martin’s side. She glanced at Brendan and Lily.
Lily said, ‘I’ve lived here my entire life and have seen nothing like it.’ Then her expression grew thoughtful. ‘But I know someone who might know.’
She vanished from the wall and a few minutes later returned followed by an old man. ‘This is Balwin,’ she said. ‘He’s the old harbourmaster.’
‘You ever see that before?’ asked Martin.
The old man was slender, but not frail. He looked wiry and fit for someone who appeared to be eighty or more. He squinted against the afternoon sun, now gleaming off the water in the distance and said, ‘No, but I’ve heard of its like.’
Suddenly Martin was interested. ‘Really? What?’
‘Story told me when I was a boy.’ Balwin grinned as he remembered, his leathery face wrinkling in amusement. ‘If I remember this right, it was the old imperial governor in LiMeth was behind it.’
LiMeth was the westernmost coastal city, little more than a convenient port for pirates and smugglers, in the Empire along the coast of the Bitter Sea.
‘Somebody or ’nother was foolish enough to go looking for gold up in the Trollhome Mountains.
‘Now, anyone who knows anything about the Trollhome knows there’s a reason they call it that. Mountain trolls everywhere, so it doesn’t matter how much gold is up there; you’re not going to get it unless you’ve got more guards than miners.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘So the governor decides he’s going to tunnel up from beneath the water, starting off shore and moving up through the bluffs to the west of LiMeth, right up into the guts of the Trollhome.’
‘What happened?’
The old man laughed. ‘Lot of miners drown is what I heard. But for a while it worked. Got some sort of magic-user to make some sort of air bubble and the men worked in that until they got up into the ground where they could drive an air shaft to the surface.’ He rubbed his chin as he remembered. ‘Thing was, water goes where it wants to go and seeks its own level, so as I heard it told, tide collapsed the lower end and the whole thing fell in on itself. Doubt the Governor even got enough gold out to pay for the cost. Anyway, the thing was when the magician had that air bubble in place, it leaked a bit and you could see bubbles rising to the surface. That’s what this reminds me of, that story.’
Martin and Brendan looked at one another. ‘Crossing the Bitter Sea underwater?’ asked Brendan.
‘Is it even possible?’ wondered Martin. ‘I mean, a stationary bubble. Men diving into the bubble then working up the mountain …’ He sighed. ‘I find that story hard enough to believe. Where are they tunnelling from? They’d have to start somewhere over there.’ He pointed to the south-west then leaned forward, behind the merlons on the wall, as if to see better. ‘We’d have seen anyone on the shore attempting any sort of mining.’ He shook his
