S Glyph [https://i.imgur.com/mHhTdaF.png]

Cal led the way and Simon followed, keeping an eye on Lorie and Sam. The ceiling gradually lowered until he was forced to crouch. Ahead it sloped down sharply to almost meet the floor, leaving only a dark crack less than two feet high.

Cal stopped. ‘It’s through there.’

‘It looks tight.’ Simon assessed the gap. He would fit, but he didn’t enjoy crawling into holes, especially when he didn’t know what lay beyond.

‘Opens up in a bit, no problem. I’ll go first if you like.’

Simon eased his shoulders. He’d been Cal’s age when the mine tried to kill him. Twenty years, a marriage, two children, and uncounted days of work underground had passed since then. The fear remained, though he’d learned to live with it, to accept it as part of himself even as he hid it from others.

Crouching, he sidled forward crab-wise. Pain pulsed in his bad leg. Even the bright light of the cold-lamp couldn’t penetrate far into the gap. He went down on his hands and knees.

Sam crawled past him.

‘Stop,’ Simon said.

‘I’m through.’ Sam’s voice echoed strangely. ‘Oh, wow.’

Simon wriggled forward, dragging the cold-lamp with him, knees and elbows scraping over the rock. A tight spot squeezed the breath from his lungs. The glare of the cold-lamp blinded him: all he saw was light and dark.

Abruptly, the space opened out. Simon struggled to his feet. Sam stood ahead of him, staring open-mouthed at an arched entranceway flanked by fluted columns.

Cal crawled out to join them, followed by Lorie. He grinned. ‘It’s something, ain’t it.’

‘Amazing,’ Lorie said.

Simon swallowed. The doorway was twice his height, the columns twice as tall again. A whole temple-like building had been carved into a sheer cliff of red granite, over a mile underground. It was impossible, yet undeniable real.

‘There’s stuff inside too.’ Cal gestured to the doorway. ‘Afsen’s gone down.’

‘Sam, Lorie, you wait here.’

‘But, Dad—’

‘Do as I say. It could be dangerous.’

‘Cal,’ Lorie said. ‘Is it dangerous?’

Cal straightened from his usual slouch. ‘Don’t reckon so. Afsen’s down there. But if your old man’s worried, I can stop here and keep an eye on you.’

Simon didn’t like the way Cal eyed Lorie, or the way she smiled back. ‘All right. You can come look. Just mind me and be careful. Cal, you wait for us here.’

‘Suits me,’ Cal said. ‘I seen it already anyhow.’

Simon turned to survey the building again. The lines of the columns and lintel were crisply defined, perfectly straight and true. The rock hadn’t shifted so much as an inch since the builders had put down their chisels. He suspected that was a very long time ago—quite possibly thousands of years—and if it had lasted all that time, it wasn’t likely to collapse now.

He climbed the short flight of shallow steps up to the entrance. The interior was smaller than he’d expected, just a bare chamber a few yards across, the floor broken by the mouth of a steep downward sloping passage. He descended a few steps.

In the white glare of the cold-lamp, the passageway stretched ahead. Like the carved facade, every line was straight and true, the walls smooth and flat, without a tool mark to show how they were made.

Hair rose on the back of Simon’s neck. He had seen something like this, long ago, when he was just a child. He pressed his palm to the wall with a sort of reverence. ‘Parts of the Labyrinth under Athanor are like this.’

‘Athanor,’ Lorie sighed.

The wistful awe in her voice set Simon’s teeth on edge. To the miners of Sark, Athanor was almost a legend, the golden city many of them had never seen and never would, but for his own children, it shouldn’t be like that. Athanor was his home city. Though he might well never return there, it was still his home. It should be more to them than a story.

‘According to scholars, the Labyrinth was built by the Forerunners. How do you think this was made, Sam?’

‘Digging,’ Sam said.

‘I think,’ Lorie said. ‘It was shaped by an Earth Master.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘It looks too… perfect, and the Forerunners were great arcanists, weren’t they?’

‘You’re right.’ The wall beneath Simon’s hand was smooth as sothron silk. Certainly a work of magic, though he doubted even the most powerful human Earth Master could replicate it.

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He walked on. After fifty yards or so, the steeply sloping passage became even steeper, and turned into a stairway, the risers slightly too tall for human comfort. Simon kept one hand on the wall to steady himself, grimacing at the ache in his bad leg.

At the bottom of the stair, the passage ended in a doorway. On either side, monstrous creatures emerged from the stone in a tangle of powerful limbs, curved claws, and jagged teeth.

‘Stone-wyrms,’ Simon said. He reached out to touch the one on the left; the carving was so lifelike, he could easily believe it was about to move, but the stone was cold and still. ‘Guardian figures.’

The lamplight flooded through the doorway into a room only a few yards square, empty and bare except for a matching doorway on the opposite side. He stepped across the threshold.

A chill ran down his spine, and he stopped, lifting the light high, but there was nothing, not even a carving—only bare stone walls and shadowed corners. He crossed the room in a few steps, Lorie and Sam following.

In the next room stood a monumental stone sarcophagus, and on its far side, the mine manager Afsen, holding up his lamp to examine walls decorated with painted plants and birds in a riot of greens and reds and blues.

The unexpected beauty of it drew Simon forward. He’d reached the sarcophagus before he realised what he was doing, and stopped.

'Well, Simon vai Oryche, what do you think of this?’ Afsen liked to use Simon’s full name, rolling the syllables in his slow norther accent as if it were his own precious possession.

‘A Forerunner tomb,’ Simon said. ‘Amazing.’

He lifted the cold-lamp. The rich colour and detail of the painting was truly remarkable, considering how old it must be. Even Athanor’s Labyrinth contained nothing like this, though it might have originally, before his Oryche ancestors dug out everything of value.

Along the top of the wall ran an intricate frieze, a dense tangle of symbols. At first glance, meaningless decoration, but a pattern snagged Simon’s eye. Some of the symbols were recognisable glyphs, familiar to him as his children’s faces.

As instinctively as he would have jerked his hand from a hot stove, Simon unfocused his eyes and forced what he’d seen from his mind. ‘Get out.’ He pushed his children bodily before him. ‘Out, now.’

‘What’s the matter?’ Afsen asked. He ambled after them into the antechamber.

Lorie and Sam stared at Simon, wide-eyed. He’d alarmed them, he realised—though not without reason. His own heart pounded and his palms sweated. ‘What did you see?’

‘Pictures.’ Lorie frowned. ‘It was pretty. What’s wrong?’

Simon locked eyes with Sam. ‘And you?’

The boy shook his head. ‘Nothing. I mean, just the pictures.’

‘What’s this about, Adept?’ Afsen said.

Simon took a breath to steady himself. He had seen only a fraction of the frieze, and that for an instant, before becoming aware of the danger. And then he’d pushed it from his mind, rejected it from sight and memory as thoroughly as he could. As far he could tell, his mental integrity had not been compromised.

He’d seen enough, though, to know the frieze was an arcane scriving, intended to invoke a Power. What manner of Power, he couldn’t guess, but he doubted it was a trivial summoning.

The training that had saved him was also what put him at risk. Lorie and Sam could both read, and Sam had perhaps learned a handful of glyphs from the Prime Grammar. Neither of them knew enough to be in real danger, not from a brief glance.

Afsen had looked for longer. But then, considering the sturdy, blunt-featured norther, whose education barely stretched to writing a letter and keeping accounts, Simon couldn’t imagine a more unlikely target for possession.

‘Who else has seen this?’ Simon asked.

Afsen shrugged. ‘A few of the miners, I suppose. Does it matter?’

’No one else can come down here. The whole area should be sealed off.’

‘Sealed?’ Afsen shook his shaggy head. ‘But we’ve yet to find the seam. Surely we can—’

Simon could have shaken him. ‘Listen and try to understand. Have you ever seen someone demon possessed?’

Afsen paled. ‘I’ve heard of such things.’

‘Demons are not the only Powers. Aside from the elemental forces, there are angels, gods, stranger things than you can begin to imagine. There are glyphs in that room I don’t recognise. Anyone who looks too long and deep could open themself to a Power far, far beyond human comprehension. It would snuff their mind like a candle. If we’re lucky.’

‘Sammael preserve us.’ Afsen’s eyes were very wide. He wrung his hands together. ‘Am I all right? I swear, I only looked at the picture. I felt nothing.’

His panic was almost comical.

‘You seem no different to me,’ Simon said. ‘Don’t be unduly alarmed. The danger is real, yes, but it takes more than a passing glance, especially for one who has never studied the arcane arts.’

‘All right. It will be done as you say. Should I have the men bring blasting powder?’

‘No! Light, no. There’s no danger if it’s sealed, and this sort of thing is too valuable to destroy. Scholars will come from Athanor, experts, with proper preparation, to record it for study.’

‘Valuable? How valuable?’

So quickly could fear turn to avarice. Simon shook his head. Someone like Afsen couldn’t begin to understand the value of scholarship. Even a single new glyph had a worth far beyond gold, and if it were an entire new invocation sequence… Though in truth, there were men who would pay a good deal for exclusive access to such a thing.

‘Thousands of forints,’ he said. ‘At the very least.’

Afsen’s frown deepened. ‘Simon vai Oryche, you know the state of things here as well as anyone. If we can’t find the seam—’

‘You won’t in this direction. I did the Search before coming down here. There was nothing.’

‘If that’s so, it’s over here. Every winter is worse than the last, and now no more ore, no mine, no work. Sark is dead. And what will we do then, all of us?’

It wasn’t news to Simon. The mine had been in a decline for years, everyone knew it. Some miners, like Afsen, hoped for a reprieve, a new seam of ore to extend the mine’s life. Many couldn’t imagine a life beyond Sark. Most lived from one month’s pay to the next, sinking ever deeper in debt to House Oryche, who owned the mine. If the mine closed, would the Oryche abandon the miners and their families, or move them to work elsewhere?

Simon’s own fate, and his family’s, was just as uncertain.

The Forerunner tomb could be the lifeline they needed. Enough money to make a new start, somewhere further south, where the winters were mild and there was work for honest men. The only question was how.

‘I want you to go to Athanor,’ Afsen said.

Simon started. ‘Me? Why?’

‘You are Oryche. You are clever. I trust you to make a deal, for all of us. Sell this—’ He gestured to the tomb behind him. ‘You say it’s worth money. Enough to make a difference for Sark.’

‘I can’t,’ Simon said. ‘My family disowned me. I’ve had nothing to do with them for twenty years.’

Afsen grimaced. ‘Pfft. What of it? You are still Oryche. You know how they talk, how they think. No one can do this better than you.’

That was probably true. Certainly the miners of Sark were ill-equipped to negotiate with the mine owners, and viewed objectively, Simon was the logical person to go.

Lorie and Sam were staring at him, transfixed. It was them he had to think of, their future, not his past. They deserved a chance in life. They deserved better than Sark.

‘You’re right,’ Simon said. His mouth was dry. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll go to Athanor.’