The dwarven market

Meanwhile

Somewhere beneath the City.

Rakkec wiped the sweat from his brow and picked up his pack again. The tools inside clanged against each other and made him wince. Whose idea had it been to go out drinking last night? He shot a venomous glare at Korrio, who was whistling tunelessly to himself as he strode along. Korrio had drank at least as much as he, but the bastard always woke up with a head as clear as a bell.

Both men were muscular, with the ebony skin and white hair of the drow. Rakkec's hair was thinning, and he wore a leather cap to cover this fact. Korrio, in yet another stroke of luck, had a full head of hair, along with the beginnings of a moustache and goatee. He liked to pluck at it while he thought, which he imagined made him look sophisticated, but to Rakkec's eyes just made him look as though he had lice.

Korrio's pack was identical to Rakkec's, a leather satchel containing a pick, a pan, a crushing stone, a brush, a spade and all of the other tools he would need to sift through spoil. The caverns underneath the City were honeycombed with mineshafts, dug for everything from iron and silver to adamantite and fire opals. The great mining families had a stranglehold on territory rights and viciously protected their turf, but freelancers could make a profit around the edges. Most of the mineshafts were abandoned before they were fully tapped out, as excessive undermining of the City had proven disastrous more than once in the past. For a hefty fee independent prospectors could purchase the rights to sift through the spoil of worked-out shafts before they were filled in. It was always a crapshoot, but in the past Korrio and Rakkec had found barely-touched veins of mithril and moonsilver that had kept them going for months.

Lately, these discoveries had been thinner on the ground. The mining operations were spreading farther from the center of the City, into wild caverns that two independent prospectors couldn't reach without an expensive escort. They had been making due with scraps harvested from the fringes of the Bir'kil Oreworks silver mines, but after their last day trip had turned them up emptyhanded, Korrio had suggested a change in strategy.

"Let's go deep," he had said, over shots of rotgut gin in one of the seedy taverns outside the minehead. "Torrageth just pulled out of the blackiron shafts. I heard it from an engineer at the Shift Change. Unstable, they said, they couldn't use golems or dwarven engines. But perfect for us!"

Rakkec shook his head. "Are you insane? There's wyrms down there, and worse. If Torrageth pulled up stakes, they must really be scared."

Korrio knocked back his shot and grinned. "Nah. They're just fat and lazy. They've forgotten how to swing a pick. If they can't get their Mother-damned clay men and their fancy engines to do their jobs for them, they'll take their toys and go home. You and me, couple of picks, couple of hammers, we can make a killing down there. And the rates can't be beat. Close to free, is what I'm hearing."

"More like get killed ourselves," Rakkec had grumbled morosely, but he handed over his meager purse all the same, and here he was now, trudging along a corridor nearly a mile below the City. The air was sulfurous and blisteringly hot. On his back, a wooden cage held a half dozen whistling crickets, hardy creatures that glowed with an inner luminescence that did little more than texture the darkness. It was enough for any self-respecting drow, and he had to admit as he picked his way along that this did seem like a promising drift. He had already passed two huge deposits of blackiron, the hardy material favored by the Fangs for their weapons and armor, and the second one had been set in a larger quartz deposit that might have held rubikite or even gold.

Up ahead, Korrio stopped and turned around. His face was suddenly serious. "Did you hear that? Hold still!" Rakkec stopped and glared at his friend. He had heard something, but the earth grumbled down here; it was just something you got used to. Occasionally the ground shivered and groaned as vast tectonic forces squeezed the drift they were in out of existence. In a month or two it would be gone, but Rakkec had spent enough time in mineshafts to know when to run, and he wasn't getting that sense now. Then he heard what had stopped Korrio: a chittering, somewhere up ahead. A ratlike squabbling noise that was all too familiar. "Kobolds!" he cursed. "Little sneak thieves! Rotten bastards! Let's get 'em!" He unslung his pick, a heavy steel tool with an axehead on one side. Korrio had drawn his own, and side by side the drow rushed down the corridor. Up ahead a half dozen kobolds were clustered around a pile of spoil. They squealed in fear as Rakkec charged into their midst, his pickaxe held above his head. The little vermin scattered away from him, all but one who was a bit too slow. Rakkec's downswing pulverized the creature's head and splattered bone shards and bits of brain across one wall. The kobold's body collapsed like a stringless puppet, and he kicked it away with revulsion.

Breathing hard, Rakkec looked around. The room they were in was a little cave, hardly more than a wide spot in the corridor, with tunnels leading away in two directions. He immediately saw why the kobolds had congregated here. One entire wall was a gigantic quartz deposit, the largest he had ever seen. Threads of blue and green and gold danced and twirled across the jagged wall. Rakkec stood transfixed until his body reminded him to breathe. It was gorgeous, a shifting pattern of light that twinkled in the faint glow from his crickets. Next to him, Korrio reached out reverentially with one hand to caress the wall.

"Rak, it's... beautiful. It's..." he trailed off. Rakkec's mind whirled with images. Gold, gems, moonsilver and sunsteel, blackiron and red iron and amalgam iron. This much quartz could hold anything. Everything. His key to getting out of these stinking mines, maybe making something of himself. This was the discovery he had waited his whole life for.

They both went at the wall in a frenzy with their picks. Chunks of quartz tore away from the wall and tumbled down. Rakkec saw out of the corner of his eye rubies and emeralds, cloudy stones set into the quartz like bubbles in amber. Already they had made back their deposit and more. It didn't matter. There was something greater in there, he could sense it. Something truly valuable.

Korrio swung his pick once more and stumbled as it caught on something. He shook his head to clear it, then yanked, and as he pulled the tool free a section of wall fractured and slid away in a great shower of dust and scree. Both drow doubled over coughing. When they looked up, Rakkec's jaw dropped in astonishment. The shattered wall had revealed a cavity behind it. The quartz was two feet thick, but then it abruptly stopped, and on the other side there was... a void. Another cave, hidden from the world for eons in its shell of quartz. It was filled with a blackness so solid that even Rakkec's keen darkvision could not penetrate it.

Dropping his pick, Korrio scrambled up the slope he had cut on his hands and knees. Sharp-edged fragments cut his palms, but he did not seem to notice. He pulled his head level with the gap in the quartz wall and peered beyond it. "Hey, Rak!" he called. "There's something here! It's... looks like... it's full of..." He went rigid. Rakkec stood gaping for a moment before darting forward. "Kor! Kor! What's happened? What do you see?" He reached Korrio's feet and grabbed them, trying to pull his partner away from the newly revealed cave. Waves of unreasoning terror rolled over him. Was it a wyrm? More of the kobolds, back for ****? His chance at wealth forgotten, he yanked desperately at Korrio's ankles. Korrio started to slide back down the slope, but to his horror, Rakkec saw that something was pulling from the other end. As Korrio's head emerged from the darkened cavity, darkness seemed to reach after it, trailing from Korrio's eyes and mouth like water. It clutched at him. Rakkec pulled once more, bracing his feet into the ground, and Korrio came tumbling down the slope on top of him. The wispy streamers of shadow disappeared, leaving Korrio panting on top of Rakkec. Both men lay there, too exhausted to move for a moment, before Rakkec slithered out and climbed painfully to his feet. He was covered in dust and small cuts and the back of his head throbbed where it had hit a large stone. He reached down to help Korrio to his feet. "Kor? What happened? What did you see in there?"

Korrio looked up and smiled. Rakkec froze in terror. A squeak escaped his mouth. He barely felt the warmth in his pants as his bladder let go. His arm, stiff as an icicle, wouldn't obey his instructions, and he let out a terrible low moan as Korrio grabbed his wrist and used it to pull himself to his feet.

Korrio's smile was friendly, but his eyes were completely black. Shadows poured off of the dead orbs like smoke. When he grinned, he looked skeletal, his lips curling back into a rictus. His voice was cracked and leathery, the creak of a coffin hinge that was finally opening after millennia.

"Something new, Rak. Something... wonderful."