The miners around me scattered, leaving me alone, ghosts whirling down, down, down. I screamed, whole body quivering in terror. They were headed to Tradfast and Lorsson, but I knew that once they’d got the emerald, they’d be after me too. I dropped my pickaxe, leapt up off the ground and ran, not giving a damn where to. In a flash as I turned, I thought I saw Tradfast hurl the gem away, and Lorsson charge after it, swinging his sword in an arc. But I couldn’t be sure, and it didn't matter anyway. In the face of those nightmare phantoms, they were surely dead.

I pelted along, flimsy shoes slapping against the hard stone, clutching my sapphire through the pocket, hand agony from the cold iciness. I glanced back exactly once. The emerald, Tradfast and Lorsson had disappeared, and the soldiers were being overwhelmed and destroyed, runed spears proving little help. That glimpse was enough, and I didn't look back.

“Over here!” came a shout from ahead. “A tunnel!”

But in the blur of terror and exhaustion, I couldn’t make out where the shout had come from.

I kept on running.

Ten minutes later I ran out of breath and fell to my knees. Vomit erupted from my mouth in great exhausted heaves, its bile burning my throat. I paused there, choking up globs of acidic spit, rubbing my legs with numb hands. I couldn’t stay. I had to keep moving. With a cry of despair, I forced my legs to push me up, but they betrayed me and I fell on my face.

I squeezed my eyes shut. This was the end.

The end didn't come, so I braved a glance backwards. Total blackness, spotted with glow of hundred of tiny lamps, laid across the floor like the ‘stars’ that could be glimpsed from the mountaintops. The ghosts had gone again, as suddenly as they’d appeared.

My hacking, gasping breath slowed to shaky calmness. Apart from my breathing there was total silence.

Was anyone else still alive? I stood up, and wandered around for a while before working up the courage to call out.

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

Someone must have made it out alive, since some of the miners had been ahead of me. There was no reason for the ghosts to spare only me. But no one replied.

I shivered, without the press of miners and soldiers around me the cavern was empty of heat. My footsteps echoed as I walked.

I decided to approach one of the fallen lanterns.

“I found your lantern! Are you there?”

Again, no reply. I began to walk to the next one, quite some distance away.

“Ouch!”

My toe smacked into something which rolled away clattering. I limped after it, and bent down to examine. A dwarven spear, perfectly straight and sharper than anything I’d ever held before. I picked it up in both hands.

“When they return, that will provide paltry aid,” came a voice. It seemed to come both from behind and from within my head. New adrenaline zapped through me and I spun around, nearly tripping over my feet.

“Who’s there?” I waved spearpoint in front of me, ready to jab at whoever had spoken. But there was no one there. I shook my head, it must have been a hallucination.

Hands shaking, teeth clenched, I crept along to the concentration of lamps at the feet of the pillar, vaguely hoping someone had survived.

No one had. Hundreds of dead soldiers lay scattered, vacant eyes staring up, mouths twisted open in frozen paroxysms of terror. None had visible injuries. Bile rose in my throat again, and I sank to the ground shivering.

All dead. They were all dead. I should have known it, no one could survive out here.

“Chasing riches was always fraught with danger.” The voice from before came again, echoing inside my head. I jumped to my feet, spear at the ready.

“Who are you?” I shouted. “Are you a ghost?”

My sapphire flashed blue, an azure star sewn into my shirt, putting the corpses’ features and the grotesque pillar into incandescent relief. A ghost flickered into being before me, but he was different to the others.

Not quite as translucent as the rest, his turquoise figure was nearly opaque enough to pass for real. He looked old, but not too old, and his eyes were life-like, white, blue then black in the middle, glinting with intelligence. On his head was a golden crown, and his clothes were cut in the oddest ways and from the oddest furry materials, but from their complicated and perfect symmetry, not to mention the multitude of ghostly gems sewn into them, they were clearly of great worth. His beard nearly reached his knees and was banded with alternate chains of gold, silver and other metals I could not recognise.

“Who are you? Get away!” I cried.

I leveled my spear at his throat, but he made no move to step back. He held himself straight and proud, and despite being was a little shorter than I was, looked down on me.

“You can put the spear down, young dwarf. I am not here to bring harm to you. In fact, I very much ought to be grateful to you.” A muscle twitched around one eye. “As much as it pains me to.”

“Stay back!” I shouted, and hid myself behind the spear point, which shook in time with my hands. “Who are you?”

The ghost rolled his eyes. “The world has really gone to the dogs, as they say on the surface. I am the King of All That Has Worth”

‘Who?”

“Your King.” He pronounced the words with firmness.

A king? I’d heard of kings before, those who had ruled the dwarfholds before the presidents, although I wasn’t too sure of the difference. Anyway, whoever he had been, he was dead now.

“You’re not a king anymore,” I said. “You’re a ghost. Why are you here?”

“I’m here to lead you from danger and to riches you could never comprehend.”

I snorted, and backed away. “I know better than to trust the dead. Leave me alone. I know the way out from here.”

“No you don’t.” He folded his arms.

“I bloody well do. I just have to walk back in the direction I came, and I’ll see the glow from the mine eventually. There’s hundreds of lights all around the tents there.”

“And you’ll get there through my former subjects, will you?”

I looked past the corpses, to the wall we’d come from. Specks of blue, red and green drifted from a ragged gap in the wall, behind which could be seen hints of white tents. My blood turned to ice. I had no choice now.

“Fine, I’ll trust you. How do I escape? Where’s the way out?

“There are ten thousand and two ways out of here. But only one will lead you to riches.”

My breath began to break down into short, rapid bursts, and cold dread pricked every inch of me.

“Stop messing with me! How do I escape?”

The ghost held his arm out in a way I can only describe as grand, and pointed to the base of the pillar. “There’s a hidden door around there. Originally they were for the priests. Some of your friends escaped that way.”

“How could anyone have found that?” I frowned. “You’re lying to me.”

The king rolled his eyes again. “I have got more important things to lie about. Now follow my orders, or you will die.”

I tightened the grip on my spear in frustration and fear, but I had no choice.

My heart pounded as I ran, jumping over dead bodies and discarded shields and spears. I put my hands against the pillar, but found nothing but unyielding scales of stone. Where was the door? I picked up a lantern, knelt down and pressed my nose nearly to the floor, running my hands over everything looking and feeling for a crack, a gap, anything. But there was just smooth stone.

“Damn it!” I shouted. “Where’s the door? Did you lie to me?”

The ghost king faded to nothing, and his former subjects sped up their advance.

“Shit!” I banged the butt of my spear against the pillar again and again. My elbow juddered with each strike, but the rock didn't budge. I glanced sideways; now I could make out the ghosts’ faces.

Where was the door? The ghost king said priests used to use it. Was that a clue? There were no dwarven priests anymore, but I’d heard stories about them. Dwarves who flung themselves before stone idols, believing in invisible, all-powerful beings who healed sickness, brought fortune, and had the power to remake the world.

Flung themselves before stone idols. I looked up at the ghastly pillar. If that wasn’t an idol, what was?

Right now, I was behind a heel. If the priests threw themselves before idols, perhaps the door was at the front. I ran around the clawed god’s foot, blue, red and green figures horribly visible in my periphery coming closer by the second, and made it to the idol’s fore. Where the monster’s ankles touched, was an oval outline. A door!

I leapt forwards and threw my shoulder against its centre. Feet rooted to the ground, I pushed, every muscle in my body straining. The ghosts were only a few dozen metres away now.

“Come one!”

I redoubled my efforts, sweat pouring down my brow, crushing my flesh against the hard stone.

It wasn’t going to be enough, the lead ghost was almost on me. Indescribable terror flooded every inch of me.

“Let me in!” I screamed.

Ever so gradually, the oval door opened inwards with a grinding sound. I squeezed through into a tunnel, ghost arm grasping at me.

“Fuck off!”

I nearly lost control of my bladder as a cold finger brushed me. For a moment I felt a pull, like vertigo at the top of an incomprehensibly high cliff, like part of me was going to fall into the ghost to be annihilated, leaving my body a husk.

“No!”

With a last heave, I ground the stone door back so only an inch gap remained. The hand drew back with whip-like speed.

I shut the door completely.

Panting, sweat running down my forehead, I sank down and leaned against the wall. In front of me, lit by the lantern I’d brought through, was a short passage, ending in a flight of stairs. Not so different than the hall in the miners’ barracks, apart from there being no sound of wet coughing, no smell of sweat and grease, and no jostle from the other miners. Instead there was naught but my panic struck breath, the smell of old bone, and total loneliness.

Where would the others have gone? I guessed down the stairs. The ghosts had once floated around the tops of the pillars, and besides that, no one in their right mind would want to climb up such a ridiculous height. So, spear in one hand, lantern in the other, I tiptoed down the corridor.

The stairs were of spiral construction, steep, edges so smoothed from the passage of hundreds of feet I had to use the spear to steady myself. I wondered for how many years the priests had climbed up and down, preparing to worship their awful gods. It didn't matter. All I had to do now was descend. Thankfully these stairs proved more stable than the ones I’d tumbled down at the scaffold, and I emerged without injury into another corridor.

It was straight for a while. Then the stairs disappeared behind me; I realised the corridor was curved. It continued curving, sometimes left, sometimes right, sometimes it looped around, sometimes it sloped up or down. The further I walked, the more unease crept in. I swallowed. This whole place was like a digestive tract.

Time lost meaning. My legs began to ache, and then burn until each step was an effort. But I had to keep going. The ghost king had said some dwarves escaped down here. I didn't know how he knew that, didn't see how he could. But I had to hope.

I put one foot in front of the other, gasping the dead air, spear dragging and scraping along the floor. Shifting shadows from the lamp, great black ghosts against the wall, every one me, played on my mind.

Finally, I heard the faint sound of a voice. I stopped, propping myself up with my spear. After what must have been several hours of loneliness, the mere hint of someone else sent relief flooding through my heart, my whole body.

“Hello? Captain Lorsson? Tradfast? Anyone?”

No reply. My heart sank again. Maybe there wasn’t anyone down here after all, and I’d walk until I starved and thirsted to death, and this awful tunnel would become my eternal tomb.

Then someone called back.

“Who is that?” It sounded like Captain Lorsson, but with a weariness I’d never heard from him before.

“It’s Stony!”

I though I heard a curse in the distance, but it might have been my imagination. Captain Lorsson’s voice perked up a little.

“Stony! You’re alive. How did you get in here?”

“I, I... It’s a long story.”

“We’ve got plenty of time.” Tradfast’s voice now. “Are the ghosts following you?”

“They aren’t, don’t worry.”

I continued my walk with a new energy. I recounted how I’d wandered back through the hall of pillars, been chased by the ghosts and noticed the door at the last second. I did not mention the ghost King.

By the time I finished, Captain Lorsson, Tradfast, and about a dozen miners and soldiers behind them came into view from behind a bend.

The miners were slumped against the wall, heads down, limbs relaxed like they’d given up on moving anymore. Tradfast was with them, looking only marginally less defeated.

The soldiers were standing, but they’d changed. Far from the well-disciplined, gleaming troops they’d been before, their armour was smudged and dirty, and they slunk together in a tight group, as if scared to separate. Captain Lorsson was in particular contrast to his previous appearance. When I’d first met him, he’d been perfectly clean, everything about him neat. Now his armour was scratched and dull, his face coated with dust, beard tangled and sweaty. Even his watch was cracked.

I gave a grim smile. His wealth counted for nothing now.

“Fall in, Stony,” said Tradfast. “We’re not making a camp for a while yet.”

“Camp? Aren’t we going to go back?”

“No. We’re going to search for the miners for a couple days, then find somewhere secure from the ghosts and wait for rescue.”

“Who’s going to rescue us?” I tried to shout in outrage, but all that came out was a wheezy croak. “No one could possibly know where we are. And what if the ghosts find us first?”

“My father will send a platoon or two down,” said Captain Lorsson. “You don’t need to worry about a thing. They’ll be able to work out our location. Now let’s keep going. We should reach another set of stairs in not too long.”

“How do you know that?”

“I have a map.”

He turned, and his men turned with him, and they restarted their walk down the corridor. The miners dragged themselves to their feet and trailed behind. I brought up the rear.

The energy that’d come to me for a brief moment evaporated, and my thighs began to burn once again. Then to make matters worse, Tradfast drifted back to walk next to me, eyes dark.

“Word of advice Stony,” he hissed. “Stop asking questions. Just follow along. Soldiers don’t like questions.” He clapped one great hand on my shoulder, squeezed until it hurt, then yanked me close. His filthy beard, badly decorated with chips of white stone, nearly brushed against me, and I turned away from him. “Look at me! I’m telling you this because you saved me back in the earthquake. Don’t cause any trouble. We don’t know what’s down here. If you don’t want to get eaten by something, or have a ghost suck your soul out, keep your mouth closed, and keep walking.”

I couldn’t summon up a disagreement.

Plodding along behind the rest, I reflected on my situation.

My thoughts manifested as a distant voice. Was it even my own?

You’re even worse off now than you were before, Stony. You’re far away from the riches you desired.

But I will lead you to them.

Trust me.