Grandmother looked down into the hole with a frown. They tied two ropes together trying to get more length. Ellen created a harness out of a third rope which they put on Alex. The opening was a long narrow rectangle, but the shaft below was square. By securing the rope to a cross piece close to one end, Alex was able to walk down the wall.
Companion was laying with his face on the rail, ready to call out the approach of any rail car at the first whisper of vibration. Grandmother planned to haul Alex up as fast as possible if something approached. The harness at the other end meant Alex would be dragged up, even if he lost his grip. They were pretty certain the rope, even two lengths of it, didn’t reach the bottom. If he fell during the climb, hopefully the harness and float would save him.
A bright light flashed once at the bottom of the pit. That was Alex’s signal that he was heading back up. Grandmother kept her post as the warrior ascended. When he reached the top she offered him a hand to lift him out of the shaft.
“What did you find?” Grandmother asked.
“There are four rope eyes under the lid, one in each corner. They are set far back so that they aren’t covered by the open doors. They will be hard to reach from above. There is a spell ribbon on the edge of each panel. I thought it would be easier to read with a mirror than from below, so I didn’t try. It’s a straight shaft, no branches. I couldn’t see the bottom,” Alex reported.
Grandmother looked up to find Sarah accepting a shaving mirror from Todd. Todd took her place on the watch. Ellen was watching the other direction, with Companion’s help. The bulk of the dumper’s car was blocking the tunnel and limiting visibility. They discovered the wheels of the cart bore a negative impression of the spell ribbon on its wheels. They wasted a lot of time maneuvering the cart back onto the rails and aligning the wheels to the ribbon. They rolled the car back and forth, but the doors never opened. Eventually they gave up and rolled the car out of the way.
They were more successful prying the doors open. The finished bracing was close to the square frame Alex described, only it didn’t incorporate the moving parts. Everything in it was solidly set.
“I checked my map, and at the end of the rope I was near the level of the quest room, but we are way too far west here,” Alex said.
“Ah,” Grandmother said. Once more she wasn’t paying attention to the map. She really didn’t trust it. She opened her own map, and scrolled around until she found the quest room. She started studying the maze of mine passages and how they overlaid the section of map revealed by the inscription.
“There’s one other thing,” Alex said a little tentatively as he wiggled out of the harness.
“What’s that?” Grandmother asked.
“The rock walls down there seemed… different. I think they were real,” Alex responded.
Grandmother couldn’t decide what that meant, except that maybe the shafts were not semi-permanent, but permanent. Although if it was raw stone, maybe they could tunnel through it. Structure walls were repaired as fast as they were damaged. Would spells work against it or did they need to find a pick? Most of the work in magic spells was done by nanobots already in the target material. Alex’s light blade spell worked at the bottom of the shaft because of the nanobots in his knife. Saying the stone was real probably meant it wasn’t saturated with nanobots. If it acted like normal stone they would need to brace the tunnel against collapse.
Grandmother gazed down into the hole and considered everything. How was she going to get all that equipment down there to the right level, and still be able to get back up? It was Companion’s fear of heights that gave her an idea. The selkie didn’t have a problem with the elevators on the Speedwell.
“You have an idea,” Alex commented. Grandmother looked up to find everyone looking at her, even Todd and Ellen who were supposed to be on watch.
“Yeah,” Grandmother observed. “It's going to be a lot of work and I may need to head back to the Speedwell for some of the design. We need to get some measurements and do a couple tests before we leave.”
----------------------------------------
“It seems overly complicated,” Todd commented. “Weren’t you the one who taught us the simple solution is the best?” They were back in the south gallery. They were all standing and sitting around multiple vellum map sections spread on the floor. They roughly represented three levels. The lowest level of the mine, eighteen shafts revealed in the inscription section, and the room.
“I was,” Grandmother responded. “I did hatch this plan all on my own. Let’s hear everyone else's ideas.”
“That’s not fair,” Sarah said after a few moments of silence, “all I can think of now is your plan.”
“Consider my plan,” Grandmother countered. “It is only a rough sketch, where will it fail? How can we improve it?”
“Since we haven’t found any place to camp inside the mines, we have to come out every night. This plan is too long, we would have to come back out before the setup is done. Or are you planning to stay the night in the shaft? I don’t think I can do that.” Companion commented.
“Is there a way to speed it up?” Grandmother asked the group.
“Do we have to kill the dumper?” Alex asked. “They seem unobservant compared to the rest of the machines. What if we put the trap door blocker in place and just wait for the dumper to come by, dump its load and leave. If you're right about the shafts being permanent we should be able to find them without chasing down a dumper.”
“What would stop another dumper from coming while we are working in the shaft and dumping a load on our heads?” Todd countered.
“If we unlock the doors from below, maybe that marks the chute in use,” Ellen commented.
“Sarah, did you identify the spell?” Grandmother asked.
“It is a tier four spell used in blacksmithing,” Sarah commented.
“I wonder if the tier five spell is also a crafting spell?” Ellen mused.
“Does that mean you don’t know the tier four spell?” Grandmother asked Ellen.
“No, I don’t, but I can learn it while making javelins for Todd. I’ll substitute the tier four version for the tier three I’ve been using. At tier four it will take a couple days, maybe as long as a week.”
“Before you start making large amounts of spears, think about making picks instead,” Grandmother commented.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Picks?” Ellen asked.
“To dig with,” Grandmother responded.
“Oh yeah,” Ellen said, “the tunneling part.”
“What keeps it from falling on our head?” Sarah asked.
“We build frames to hold the stone up,” Grandmother explained.
“Can we do the same for the dumper load?” Companion asked.
“Hmm… Maybe, although we might do better by redirecting the rock fall. The shaft is larger than the trapdoor. We could put together a kind of slide to push the rock over to one side, away from where we are working. Once we have the tunnel started, we can flatten the platform against the wall and stay in the tunnel.”
“How do you know integrated rope will hold the weight of the platform and us?” Todd asked.
“How do you know anything will hold in the structure?” Grandmother countered. “We’ll cast reinforce on the rope and float on ourselves. We can tie each of us off using separate lines for safety.”
“That is a lot of rope,” Ellen commented. “
“Valin is looking for someone to run my shop in Londontown. He promised three candidates by the next Challenge day. We can buy some of the rope there or in Seagrass,” Grandmother commented.
“So what is the first step?” Todd asked. “We buy rope?”
“No, let's design the trap door frame and go try it out.” Grandmother leaned out over the map squares and pointed out five of the shafts. “I want to see if we can get access to any of these five. These three are close to the cave, or whatever it is, that runs by the room here.” She moved her finger down to the room sections, pointing out the cave that ran the closest to the room that they could see. It ran over the top of one corner. “While these two are the closest to the room itself,” Grandmother said as she pointed them out. “If we can find more than one of them, we can read the ribbons and pick based on the spells.
“After we’ve picked our access point, we can start designing the platform and gather supplies. I’d like to rig a pulley system to help lower the platform. I may have to make some of the pieces at the Speedwell,” Grandmother explained. “While I’m out there I want to visit the villages and see if anyone might be convinced to teach in the school.”
“We are coming up on ‘the inn is never full’. I have some things I need to finish up before that for the event,” Todd said. “Can we delay this plan until after that?”
“Of course,” Grandmother said. “I didn’t realize that was getting near. The season must be half over.” The inn is never full event was scheduled to fall between challenge days. The next challenge day was too close for it to be before it, but that meant it was less than a month away.
“Just about,” Ellen responded. “We’ve been really busy this year.”
“I want to promise you that it will be easier next season, but I am planning on opening a school,” Grandmother admitted, trying hard to look contrite. Todd laughed. “Ok,” Grandmother said. “I can take a hint. We’ll take a break.”
“We still have five days until the next Challenge day. We can spend three looking for trap doors,” Alex offered. “Then maybe a break after that.” Everyone nodded their agreement. Grandmother remembered how many projects of their own the group members started the last time she called a long break. With the transportation room at the upgraded rest, she could make the trip to the Speedwell quickly and none of the others really needed to go. She’d take Todd with her to Londontown, for the interviews with Valin’s shop keeper candidates, but the rest of the party didn’t need to be bothered with that either.
“Deal,” Grandmother agreed. “Now,” she said, turning to the set of map vellums that showed the mine tunnels they explored so far, “does anyone have any ideas about how to navigate the mine? So far I’ve just been using brute force, but it seems like every time we enter, it is different.”
“Only the snake tunnels change,” Alex said. “It's not always easy to tell if a tunnel is a snake tunnel if we find it in the dugout version. Usually if it disappears on us, we later find a snake there, or a narrow tunnel with the tracks just laid.”
“Really?” Grandmother asked. She hadn’t noticed that.
“Yeah, I’m sure the main tunnels will change on us eventually, just like a structure remodel, but so far they have always been the same. At least on this trip,” Alex responded. “I’ve been marking the snake tunnels on my map so I can be prepared when we approach them.”
“Here,” Ellen said, digging a stylus out of her pocket. “Can you transfer your marking onto these maps?”
“Sure,” Alex said, accepting the stylus from Ellen. He started adding hatch marks onto vellums. Ellen was closely watching Alex’s work.
“What do you see?” Sarah asked her sister.
“Jeweler has me making these thread based, knotted necklaces. He told me with the right knots and beads they give you a temporary boost to things like stamina, strength and agility,” Ellen explained. “With Alex’s tunnels removed, the remaining ones remind me of some of the more complicated knots.”
Ellen took the stylus back from Alex. She drew a series of small and large loops over the revealed tunnels. The map squares only printed out a single ‘level’ in the structure. The tunnels ran up and down at least six levels, with the bulk of the tunnels in the middle. Grandmother pulled a level midrange to illustrate the complexity. Ellen’s loops were showing how the tunnels were connected across multiple levels. “See how the pattern here is the same as in this section here?” Ellen pointed out what she was talking about to the group.
She sketched the pattern over a blank section nearer to the shafts they were interested in. “If the knot is symmetric, I’d expect it to look something like this,” Ellen said. Grandmother sat down on the floor to get a closer look.
“This is really good,” Grandmother said. “I never noticed it. From your sketches it looks like this shaft here is really close to the revealed map.” Grandmother pointed to one of the shafts she targeted. It was one that passed near the cave system below. “We can target it first tomorrow. Ellen, you can navigate.”
Following Ellen’s knot they found access to three of the target shafts. Two were shafts that lead down to near the cave, while the third was one that dropped near the room. The trap door frame, with its multiple leaves, worked beautifully. Using the knot predicted map, they navigated to a tunnel that was directly above a shaft. They would carefully search the rails in the area looking for the inscription.
When they found it they centered their frame between the start and stop of the engravings, and retreated down the tunnel where they waited. During the waits everyone worked on learning the tier three tap spells. Changing which spell you were trying to learn before you learned it, made it all take longer. Everyone finished learning swift before switching to float. Grandmother went the other way. After she learned float, she got bored waiting and started working on learning the tier three swift, even though the current plan shouldn’t require its use.
As Alex predicted, the dumper would drop its load and move on, never giving any indication it sensed them. Not having to fight and clean up after meant they could cover a lot more ground looking for shafts in a day. On the second shaft they tried adding steel sheets to the top of the frame. The dumper tried to drop its load, but the rocks just spilled out into the space between the bottom of the dumper and the cover before jamming. After a set period of time, the dumper pulled away, trailing rocks behind it. The bulk of the cart scraped most of the material off the top of the cover. It would be easy enough to push the cover up from below.
The tier five spells on the top of the shafts were all different. They even came from different spell trees. They didn’t find any that Grandmother knew. She suspected they were all crafting spells. The tier four spells underneath matched the spell tree of the one above. One they recognized, it was another crafting spell that they knew about, but none of them had mastered. One they didn’t recognize at all.
“I know this one,” Ellen announced after reading the spell on the underside of the third trap door. This shaft was the one that led down close to the room, not the cave. “It is a spell for controlling a loom,” she explained. Ellen reached under the trapdoor with both hands and tapped out the spell on the underside of the doors.
The frame shifted, startling them all. The doors were open, releasing the pressure that was holding the frame solid.
“We should wait and see if a dumper still comes,” Todd observed.
“Yes,” Grandmother agreed. “I think we should put the cap on, just in case, when we start to dig. As long as the spell doesn’t change when we return, this will be our target.”