A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

whenever we can.'
    'My thoughts too, 'bout all that. My thoughts exactly.'
    Smoke and stenches, voices ringing through dust, oxen
lowing as they strained with overloaded wagons. Gorlas
Vidikas and the dying workmaster looked down on the
scene, feeling very pleased with themselves.
    Harllo squirmed his way out from the fissure, the hand
holding the candle stretched out in front of him, and felt a
calloused grip wrap round his narrow wrist. The candle was
taken and then Bainisk was pulling Harllo out, surprisingly
tender but that was Bainisk, a wise veteran all of sixteen
years old, half his face a streak of shiny scar tissue through
which peered the glittering blue of his eyes – both of which
had miraculously escaped damage. He was grinning now as
he helped Harllo on to his feet.
    'Well, Mole?'
    'Iron, raw and cold and wide across as three of my hands
laid flat.'
    'The air?'
    'I'm here, aren't I?'
    Laughing, Bainisk slapped him on the back. 'You've
earned the afternoon. Back to Chuffs you go.'
    Harllo frowned. 'Please, can't I stay on here?'
    'Venaz giving you more trouble?'
    'Bullies don't like me,' Harllo said.
    'That's 'cause you're smart. Now listen, I warned him
off once already and once is all the warning I give and
he knows that so he won't be bothering you. We need our
moles happy and in one piece. It's a camp law. I'm in charge
of Chuffs, right?'
    Harllo nodded. 'Only you won't be there, will you? Not
this afternoon.'
    'Venaz is in the kitchen today. It'll be all right.'
    Nodding, Harllo collected his small sack of gear, which
was a little heavier than usual, and set out for upside. He
liked the tunnels, at least when the air wasn't foul and
burning his throat. Surrounded by so much solid stone
made him feel safe, protected, and he loved most those
narrowest of cracks that only he could get through – or the
few others like him, still fit with no broken bones and still
small enough. He'd only cracked one finger so far and that
was on his right hand which he used to hold the candle and
not much else. He could pull himself along with his left, his
half-naked body slick with sweat despite the damp stone
and the trickles of icy water.
    Exploring places no one had ever seen before. Or
dragging the thick snaking hoses down into the icy pools
then calling out for the men on the pumps to get started,
and in the candle's fitful flickering light he'd watch the
water level descend and see, sometimes, the strange growths
on the stone, and in the crevices the tiny blind fish that – if
he could reach – he slid into his mouth and chewed and
swallowed, so taking something of this underworld into
himself, and, just like those fish, at times he didn't even
need his eyes, only his probing fingers, the taste and smell
of the air and stone, the echoes of water droplets and the
click-click of the white roaches skittering away.
    Earlier this morning he'd been sent down a crevasse,
ropes tied to his ankles as he was lowered like a dead
weight, down, down, three then four knots of rope, before
his outstretched hands found warm, dry rock, and here, so
far below ground, the air was hot and sulphurous and the
candle when he lit it flared in a crossflow of sweet rich
air.
    In the yellow light he looked round and saw, sitting
up against a wall of the crevasse not three paces away, a
corpse. Desiccated, the face collapsed and the eye sockets
shrunken holes. Both legs were shattered, clearly from a
fall, the shards sticking through the leathery skin.
    Furs drawn up like a blanket; and within reach of one
motionless, skeletal hand was a rotted bag now split open,
revealing two antler picks, a bone punch and a groundstone
mallet. A miner, Harllo realized, just like him. A
miner of long, long ago.
    Another step closer, eyes on those wonderful tools which
he'd like to take, and the corpse spoke.
    'As you please, cub.'
    Harllo lunged backward. His heart pounded wild in the
cage of his chest. 'A demon!'
    'Patron of miners, perhaps. Not a demon, cub, not a
demon.'
    The candle had gone out with Harllo's panicked retreat.
The corpse's voice, sonorous, with a rhythm like waves on a
sandy beach, echoed out from the pitch black darkness.
    'I am Dev'ad Anan Tol, of the Irynthal Clan of the
Imass, who once lived on the shores of the Jhagra Til until
the Tyrant Raest came to enslave us. Sent us down into the
rock, where we all died. Yet see, I did not die. Alone of all
my kin, I did not die.'
    Harllo shakily fumbled with the candle, forcing the