26. To the Alchemist’s rescue

Dumbfounded, I followed the Black Cat as quickly as I could down the dark alley, carrying a load that would undoubtedly have spirited me away instantly had it activated. The sky was overcast and the moon was barely shining, but being a sokwata I could see more than enough to avoid the obstacles, the hanging laundry, and the stone protrusions.

Yerris led me to a place dangerously close to the Ojisary territory, situated a little lower down the slope. We descended the deserted stairs which bordered one of the steepest escarpments of the Labyrinth. At the foot of it stood buildings with terraces. The Black Cat entered a backyard full of junk and stopped in the middle. He whispered:

“This is going to be grandiose.”

I looked at him, eager to know. But the Black Cat said nothing more, he put down his bag of explosive magaras and approached the rock face about thirty metres high. He boldly climbed up a bit and scanned for a few moments before dropping down nimbly and saying in a low voice:

“During my explorations in the Well, I found a hole hidden by light. This hole leads to a dark cavern, free of vampiric foam. And from there, there are two tunnels. At the bottom of one, there’s a closed black steel door that leads spirits know where. But the most incredible thing is that at the end of the other tunnel, you can see the sunlight. Just imagine how I felt when I discovered it. You could barely see it, but what the heck, after spending so much time searching and searching in the mine tunnels, here I am finding a piece of the sun! And, to make matters worse, after pushing aside all the wobbly rocks I could, I saw…” He jerked his chin toward the terraces plunged in the darkness of night. “That.” He smiled at me. “It took me a long time to recognize the place. But, now, I don’t have the slightest doubt. A few days ago, I recognized the same old woman on a balcony. I don’t have the slightest doubt,” he repeated.

I looked at him, speechless. I couldn’t believe he kept it to himself and didn’t tell us.

“I tried to enlarge the hole,” the Black Cat continued. “But it was impossible. And I said to myself, ‘Ayo freedom, I’ll stay in this well until I die’. But, then, that young friend of yours brought us the keys, and we went out and… Sla and I started looking for the hole from outside. We found it. And, well, now we’re gonna blow it. And we’re gonna get our companions out of the mine. And we’ll be done with those Ojisary scoundrels once and for all.” He paused and turned to me. “Hey, shyur. What do you say? Did you swallow your tongue?”

I cleared my throat.

“No, no. It’s just that… Damn, it’s… unbelievable, but… Black Cat, I don’t know if I understood correctly. We make a hole and we take out the gwaks, did I get it round?”

“Dead round,” the semi-gnome agreed.

I shook my head, put my bag next to his very carefully, walked over to the wall, and turned around.

“But, Yerris, the Ojisaries still have the Alchemist. If they don’t capture us, we’ll be the ones to go to them eventually. Syrdio and Diver have lost the sokwata they had.”

Yerris rolled his eyes, and not seeing him appalled by the news, I guessed.

“Good mother! You snatched it?”

“Sla did,” Yerris said. “In case the gwaks in the Well need it. And don’t believe everything those isturbags tell you: the sokwata they had hidden there wasn’t even half of what the alchemist gave me. They must still have a lot of pills hidden around. I should have done the same thing before they stole it from me, I know, but I was too busy helping Sla find goldies and pay for those explosives… to worry about two isturbagged gwaks. Anyway, things are what they are.”

I exhaled sharply.

“You could have asked me for help before. I’m a Black Dagger. I know how to ease the nail-pinchers.”

“By pulling a few nails out of their pockets?” Yerris scoffed. “Explosive magaras are expensive, shyur. They can’t be bought with pilfering tricks.”

I defended myself:

“I stole the Wada and a diamond. That’s not pilfering.”

Yerris turned his head towards me and let out a muffled laugh.

“Well. That’s different,” he conceded. “But, anyway, the explosives are here, and thanks to you: remember you gave Sla the picklocks to sneak into a house. I did the shopping. Each to his own, shyur. And now, let’s get to work.”

He began to move all the junk away from the wall, probably so that it wouldn’t fly into the air when he activated the magara. I still wasn’t convinced by his plan.

“Yerris. And the alchemist?” I insisted.

“Don’t worry about that,” the Black Cat said in a mocking tone.

“And how do you expect me not to worry?” I replied sharply. “We get the gwaks out of the mine, it runs, but for what? To come back to the mine the next day?”

“No,” the Black Cat said, setting a pile of baskets down beside me. “The Ojisaries simply won’t be able to send us back to the mine, because there won’t be a mine anymore.”

I stood dumbfounded, and understanding what the Black Cat intended to do, I let out a muffled noise.

“Good mother… I get it now.”

“Really? Not all of it, I think,” Yerris told me in an amused tone. “Because, hopefully, before we blow it all up, you and Sla will come with the alchemist through the tunnel. You’re good harmonists. You will take him out of his lab, along with his devices to make the sokwata. No Ojisary will expect the alchemist to escape through the tunnel, because, as far as they know, there is no way out that way.” He smiled, “It’s doable. It may all work out… or it may not. But, at this point, nothing is lost by trying even the craziest thing. Don’t you think so, shyur?”

I barely hesitated before nodding. The idea of having something to do gave me wings.

“It runs. Then I’ll work with Sla. Where is she?”

“She’ll be here any minute. She… she went to buy a silence magara from Korther. We’ll wrap the explosive magara with it, so maybe we won’t wake up the whole neighborhood. Besides, we’ll wait for the fireworks for the Wells Moon Festival: they start at eleven and last for a few minutes. Best case scenario, no one will notice anything.”

“Well, you’ve got it all pretty much worked out,” I said, impressed.

“Natural, we’re Black Daggers,” Yerris replied with some pride.

I arched an eyebrow, pleasantly surprised.

“Has Korther forgiven you?”

Yerris swallowed hard.

“Uh… No, not exactly. But I made him a number of promises and… at least he didn’t stick his black dagger in my throat.”

I swallowed. Reassuring.

“She’s coming,” the semi-gnome added in a whisper. “But, devils, who is the one with her?”

I turned and saw the two figures coming down the stairs. There were distant rumors of the festivities in town, but where we were, all was silent. Slaryn reached the small courtyard and joined us, followed by the hooded man. He looked familiar.

“Un-be-lie-va-ble,” the dark elf girl snorted. “Korther gave us a dark lantern, a magara of silence, and he even sent us an onlooker. And that’s not all: he offered us a safe place to hide the alchemist. Surprisingly, he’ll even turn out to be altruistic and all.”

Yerris let out a small, skeptical laugh, but he didn’t dare comment because of the presence of the onlooker, who approached with a hand out.

“Aberyl, at your service, gwaks. Yerris, isn’t it? The last time I saw you, you were but a brat, but you are still as black and, I, as white.”

The young Black Dagger shook Yerris’s hand vigorously, and then he shook mine as well. I could feel his slight flinch and the glance he gave my hand before he let go… I turned pale. Had he felt something strange? He said nothing and declared in a light tone:

“I have come to have my name go down in history. From this night forward, all shall know me as Aberyl, the Hero of the Gwaks. So the entrance is this way?” he inquired, glancing with interest at the rock face.

Yerris and I exchanged a look and smiled. Aberyl looked really happy to be able to help us.

“It’s about three meters high,” Yerris informed. “If it all blows up like it’s supposed to, the bottom part of the tunnel should be less than three feet high, I think. What I’m wondering is why the miners of the past made another tunnel farther down and didn’t make an opening here, when they had an exit so close.”

“Um… Interesting,” Aberyl said. “And do you guys know how explosives work?”

“We know the theory,” Slaryn replied. “But I haven’t done any testing.”

Aberyl nodded thoughtfully.

“For that, I can help you.” He laid a hand on the bag of explosives and asked, “Can I?”

Yerris hesitated then gestured.

“Go ahead.”

Aberyl untied the rope, opened the bag, and fished out a strange circular gadget. Despite my curiosity, I dared not approach it. As my nakrus master used to say, ‘Don’t get your skull near the bone cracker vulture if you can avoid it’.

“They don’t look bad,” Aberyl agreed. “You bought them from the Artificer, didn’t you? I heard he was passing through town. He sells high, but so far I’ve never had any complaints about any of his items. How many are there?”

“In all? A hundred, approximately,” the Black Cat replied.

Aberyl huffed, and suddenly he laughed, and his laughter, stifled by his muffler, sounded a little sinister.

“A hundred! And what are you waiting for to blow up the Rock?” he asked cheerfully.

Yerris cleared his throat.

“It’s the mine that’s gonna blow up, not the Rock…”

Aberyl made an amused throaty noise, and horrified, we saw him throw the magara in the air before catching it in flight.

“A hundred of these things… must have cost you an arm and a leg.”

The semi-gnome muttered something low and said:

“It cost us quite a bit, yes. And now will you stop playing with it?”

“Oops.” Aberyl grabbed the magara again on the fly and let out, “My bad. You’re right. We’ve talked enough as it is: let’s get to work.”

There followed an ominous process in which I helped him entangle five explosive disks on a wire. When Aberyl said that everything was perfect, Yerris climbed up to the hole, fixed the string of discs as the Black Dagger told him to, and no sooner had he come down than a boom sounded and took me so much by surprise that I jumped up, thinking that the magaras had activated themselves.

“Calm your nerves, mate!” Sla scoffed. “It’s the fireworks.”

I breathed a sigh of relief followed by unintelligible curses. I didn’t like this explosion plan. Frankly, I would have preferred my master to be there to raise a small troop of skeletons and send them straight for the Ojisaries. Surely some would die of heart attacks and the others would run off like frightened squirrels.

I came back to reality when I saw Aberyl take the silence magara and turn towards us. He waved his hand at us.

“Get out of the way, this is deadly.”

No kidding? I knew that from the start. We took the bags, dropped them off far away, and finally the three of us hid behind the corner of the adjoining building. As Yerris poked his nose out, not wanting to miss the show, Sla pulled him by the shirt, exasperated.

“Black Cat!”

“I just want to see,” he protested.

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Slaryn replied. She hesitated and added, “Let’s hope this works, otherwise…”

The Black Cat turned and smiled as he came very close to her.

“It will work, Princess,” he whispered. “It has to work.”

I looked at them, my eyes wide. They weren’t going to kiss just when things were about to explode, were they? Suddenly, Aberyl appeared around the corner at a run, colliding with the Black Cat and saying:

“Cover your ears!”

Despite the magara of silence, the explosion was loud, even after covering our ears. Several seconds later, rocks and stones could still be heard rolling. I staggered away from the wall of the building and took the first look around. An impressive cloud of dust had risen, and I coughed as I approached. I cast a perceptive spell and smiled broadly as I saw that there was no longer any obstacle. The tunnel was open.

“Clear!” I said.

“Careful, shyur,” Yerris called out to me, grabbing my arm and pulling me back. “It could be that not all the magaras exploded.”

I backed away with him, but after waiting a while and seeing that no neighbors were coming and that nothing else was exploding, we decided to approach. The fireworks were already over, and there was silence in the small courtyard. When I heard Aberyl assure us that the five discs had been drained of their energy, I nimbly pulled myself through the hole and cast a spell of harmonic light. The tunnel was so narrow and low that not any sajit could have passed through it. I took a few steps forward, and when I came to a slight bend in the tunnel, I thought I could see a distant light at the bottom. Was it the vampiric foam? It was more than likely.

I was about to take another step when my right foot kicked something. Curious, I crouched down and examined the object. It was a bone. And it looked very old. Out of reflex more than necessity, I absorbed the morjas, and while doing so, my other hand found another bone.

“What on earth is this, a graveyard?” I muttered.

“Draen!” Yerris whispered.

He called to me from the mouth of the tunnel, and seeing him try to carefully assemble the bag of explosives, I left the bones and rushed to the Black Cat to help him. Once up, Yerris went:

“All right. First, I’ll get all the gwaks out and then I’ll place the explosives. I don’t think Aberyl can follow me through the vampiric foam: it’s still a long walk to the cave. But everything will be fine, don’t worry. You go with Sla to find the alchemist. In two hours, at most, everything will be ready.” As I nodded, he took me by the arm and whispered, “Hey. Be very careful. The Ojisaries may not have been able to capture us yet, but if they catch you in their territory, they’ll pop you off, you hear me? And don’t forget, shyur: if anything happens to Sla, you’ll pay for it.”

I shuddered as I felt his hand grip my arm more tightly and shook my head.

“Don’t get in a huff, Black Cat. I’m doing what I can.”

Yerris sighed, let go of me and patted my shoulder.

“I know. Onward and good luck.”

I smiled, patted him on the shoulder, leaned on him to get up, and slipped out. Aberyl had just placed two wooden boxes under the hole, to form a small staircase. He pushed aside one stone, kicked another, and under my curious gaze, rubbed his hands together, and said calmly:

“Securing the way out is essential.”

I nodded and, remembering that Yal had once said something similar to me, I said:

“Yal says, for a good thief, there’s no going without getting away… No, wait, there’s no getting away without going. He says that there’s…”

Sla grabbed me with a gasp.

“Let’s go, shyur! We’ve got things to do.”

I followed her without protest, through the shadows of the night, and I thought I heard behind us Aberyl serenely utter a:

“Good luck.”