20. Princes hunt pearls in vampiric tunnels

I walked through the foam, feeling with each step how the white paste consumed my energy, which I had recovered only a few hours earlier.

I’d been in the Well for quite a while, or as Rogan would have said, quite a few bongs. I think about twenty. In all that time, only three notable things had happened. First, with each passing day, I felt more impervious to the parasitic energy of the mine, as if the habit or the food we were given prevented it from seeping into my body to drain my strength. Secondly, there were now thirty of us in the Well: the Ojisaries had brought three new ones at once, two weeks ago, and then three more in the following days. And, third and last, Slaryn was one of the newcomers. She had not arrived alone, but accompanied by two of her friends, Guel the Soothsayer and the Mole. As Slaryn said, they had caught her lurking in the Ojisaries’ territory, followed her back to her hideout, and captured her along with the Soothsayer and the Mole. She would not elaborate. At first, I thought the reason she was so quiet was because the energy of the cave was making her dizzy, but then I realized that she just didn’t want to talk about the bloody blunder she had made. To my disappointment, she became as uncommunicative as Yerris. The two Black Daggers watched each other from a distance. You could count on the fingers of one hand the words they had exchanged in the last two weeks. They didn’t say much to me either. Sla would just gently nudge me whenever I came near her and say a “how’s it going, shyur”, and it didn’t seem to matter to her if my answer was a “so-so”, “blasthell, I want to get out of this hole!” or a “wind in the sails!”. When I went to sit next to Yerris, he would remain silent or make brief fatalistic comments like: our life isn’t worth a damn, shyur, the salbronix pearls have saved it so far, but until when? And, if I asked him any questions about his wanderings in the more distant tunnels, he would invariably reply: get lost. And I would walk away, disappointed, and, guessing that Sla was not going to talk to me any more than the Black Cat, I would go and find Rogan and listen to his ramblings about the spirits, the Sacred Book, and the sad but glorious and honest fate of the gwaks. To say the truth, the other companions didn’t listen to him much; rather, they laughed at him and his theatrical gestures, but I found the Priest to be a great gwak, especially because he not only spoke well, but he knew how to listen and answer my questions; in short, we formed a good duo, he, as my spiritual guide, and I, as his bard and personal questioner.

Apart from that, the days could be summed up as waking up with the bong, eating the magic bread, going fishing, and sleeping. I had noticed subtle changes over time. For example, the light didn’t hurt my eyes as much. Which was quite useful, almost as useful as my right hand when I put it in the sockets and took out the pearls without getting grazed like the others.

Precisely at that moment, I put my hand into a cavity submerged in the haze of light and felt around. Nothing. Cautiously, I withdrew it and continued to advance in that sea of light, striving to tread carefully on the treacherous rock at the bottom.

At first, I had feared that my hand would be damaged by the foam and that the energy would destroy the magara, but I had quickly realized that the foam, while it prevented me from casting external spells, could only be dangerous to the jaypu. Yerris liked to call it vampiric foam, and the Soothsayer called it dragon drool, but unlike sea foam or saliva, it didn’t get wet or stick to our skin either. It was like a white, static mist that covered the underground walls, obscuring and protecting the cavities where the salbronix pearls were formed.

I heard voices echoing, and I frowned as I perceived an intonation of discord. After a brief hesitation, I approached the noise and saw two companions, both a little older than me and both human. They were Syrdio and the Mole. While the former was standing on a rock, the latter had crept into a crevice of the tunnel and wore an expression of intense concentration.

“I’ve got it!” he then exclaimed, stepping away from the wall.

“Well, hurry up, pass it to me, shyur!” Syrdio said without moving from his rock.

“I’ve already given you one!” the Mole protested.

Syrdio looked at him contemptuously.

“I don’t care, you owe me this one, if you don’t want me to pull your beard off in front of everyone.”

The Mole glared at him, but he gave him the pearl. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“But blasthell!” I said, approaching. “Mole, what are you doing? Why are you giving him the pearl?”

The Mole did not answer, and sketching a smile, Syrdio said:

“Stay out of this, brat, it’s none of your business.”

“You’re the brat here,” I replied.

Syrdio shook his head, climbed down from the rock, and pushed my head back.

“I said stay out of it.”

I saw him walk away and bit my cheek, tense, before asking the Mole:

“Why did you give him the pearl?”

My companion made a face as if to say, “I don’t know”, which could mean either “Syrdio knows something about me that I don’t want anyone to know”, or a simple “Syrdio scares me and I don’t know how to say no to him”. Knowing him a little, I bet on the latter. I shook my head and said:

“I’m still missing one. How about you?”

The Mole frowned.

“Three.”

“Gosh,” I huffed. “Well, hurry up or you’ll end up collapsing on the way. You’re not a veteran fisherman yet, remember? Well, I’ll give you a hand; I can’t last as long here as the Black Cat, but almost. It runs?”

The Mole nodded silently, and we continued to search for pearls together. When we returned, my companion was deathly pale. Rogan was waiting for us at the entrance to the cave.

“Spirits, it took you guys so long!” he exclaimed. “I thought the devils had pinched you already.”

“They didn’t pinch me, but him, almost,” I replied, helping the Mole out of the lake of light. Rogan walked over to help him too. “Are we late for the sermon?”

“Not at all!” Rogan gasped. “I only give the sermon when you’re present, Sharpy. You’re the only one who listens to me, anyway.”

I laughed and observed:

“The Soothsayer listens to you, too.”

“Boh, who knows, who knows,” the Priest said as we entered our cave. “That one, you never know if she’s listening or daydreaming. Besides, by now, she’s probably already delivered her soul to the Spirit of Dreams.”

We went up to the platform, and I found that Guel the Soothsayer was indeed fast asleep. We left the Mole with her, and I took the pearls from his pocket and leapt nimbly from the platform to add them to the cup with my own. I stopped by the gate for a moment. I remembered that, before, I could hardly see the tunnel, and now I could make out the walls and even the first steps of the staircase, about forty yards away. Was it because the light in the cave was brighter and I didn’t realize it? I didn’t know, but in any case, the black steel was as indestructible as before. I picked up one of the bars, shook myself more than I shook it, and said:

“Bonehead.”

I let go of the bar and walked back to the platform, jumped off, landed on it, and sat cross-legged in front of the Priest.

“Well, well! Yesterday you told me what happened to the Travelling Spirit of Saint Lakan,” I reminded him. “He got on board and sailed and sailed to the horizon. What happened to him afterwards?”

Rogan rolled his eyes.

“He kept sailing to infinity. That’s why they call him the Traveling Spirit, shyur. Come on, forget that saint! Today I’m going to tell you what happened, long ago, to a gwak who got caught stealing a loaf of bread and got angry at the Patron Spirit. You’ll love it, it’s in verse and all. I learned it from an old well cleaner. I may get a few rhymes off the rails, but basically, it goes like this. Listen, listen.”

I paid intense attention, and he recited:

I’ve been pinched by the flies!

Oh, woe me! What shall I think

of the world and its compassion

if for one loaf of bread

I’m sent to prison?

Mr. Baker, please have mercy

on this gwak, and hear the plea!

Mercy for the starving man?

No, thief, expect no such thing!

Look at that barefooted brigand,

that motherless little brat…

Stop, thief, stop!

Everyone ran after him.

Oh how terrified he was!

Suddenly, the boy stumbled

and collapsed near the pier.

Stop, thief, stop!

Hurrah! We caught the kid!

And the neighbors kicked him.

How the bandit screamed!

They left him for dead.

They threw him in the river.

The boy, still breathing,

clung to a boat and raised

his dying eyes to the sky:

Why, Patron Spirit, why

why was I even born?

Why give me life if you’re going

to steal it from me now?

Then, both laughing and crying,

I told him: oh you thief.

Patron, you are a crook

and I’m a thieving cat.

But the ones who beat me up,

well, those are even worse than that.

With those words, he fell asleep,

the bread-stealing little kid,

lulled by the grayish light

that glows in the morning dawn.

Six o’clock. A fly comes by,

lifts him up. “He is so light!”

He carries him to the heart

of the home that nothing heals,

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behind iron bars that taunt

miscreants and nasty thieves.

Here I am before the judge,

and condemned for what I did.

I shall not leave this refuge

till I go to eternity.

Perhaps then, Patron Spirit,

you’ll tell me what I’ve done wrong,

unless you yourself can’t, either,

explain the justice of this world.

Rogan ended his story with a theatrical gesture and asked:

“How do you think of it?”

“Beautiful,” I confessed. “But dark and desperate. Who knows, maybe this gwak escaped from the slammer and went on to steal bread. Besides, you should make a song about it. Something like this…” I cleared my throat and intoned:

The flies got me, oh my gooooosh!

Woe me! Woe me, and what have you!

Rogan burst out laughing. A companion woke up with a start, gave us a half-awake look, and fell back into a deep sleep. On the other side of the platform I saw Syrdio discreetly chuckle and make some comment to his neighbor.

“Well, something like that,” I concluded.

“Surely even the Black Cat heard you,” Rogan laughed.

As always, the Black Cat was the only one absent. After a moment’s hesitation, I approached the Priest and leaned over, whispering:

“Today, I followed him.”

Rogan’s eyes lit up.

“For real?”

“Yes. He’s going very far,” I said. “I think he’s searching the whole ground, like he’s looking for a hole. But I don’t think he’s found anything.”

“And he didn’t see you?” Rogan wondered.

I shrugged.

“Well, no. I have my tricks. Tell me, Priest.”

“What?”

I examined a wound in my foot that was almost closed then lay down on the wood with my arms behind my head.

“Well… I don’t know,” I hesitated.

Rogan looked at me with mocking curiosity.

“What’s up?”

I shook my head gently.

“What are the Ojisaries going to do, when we run out of pearls?”

“Ouch.” The Priest grinned, “Now that’s an unhealthy question, Sharpy.”

“Yes, but that’s what the Black Cat said: pearls take many years to form and that’s why the mine was abandoned a long, long time ago.” I paused for a moment. “I wonder how he knows so much.”

“He’s the Black Cat,” Rogan said in reply. And when he saw me yawning, he added, “Well, get some sleep, or you’ll end up unhinging your jaw.”

I nodded, yawned again, found a comfortable position, and said:

“Sweet dreams, Priest.”

And, as usual, I fell asleep in a few seconds. I dreamed that I was running up the hill towards the Cave. I could feel the cold wind from the valley against my cheeks. It smelled of earth and grass and forest. ‘Elassar!’ I shouted happily. ‘Elassar, I found the ferilompard bone! I found the ferilompard bone!’ Sitting on his trunk, my master looked up with peaceful eyes, turning them away from his book of necromancy. And he said to me: ‘Took you long enough, Mor-eldal…’

Bong! I woke up suddenly and sat down on the platform. I was one of the first to arrive at the gate, and I could see the Masked One moving through the tunnel. I had once asked him why he covered his face. He said it was to protect himself from the evil energy. I didn’t tell him, but I doubted it was very effective.

“Good morning, children!” he greeted us as usual.

“Morning!” I said like the others. My hands clung to the bars and my gaze was fixed on the bag full of bread. I was hungry as a dragon.

“How’s it going, everyone?” the Masked One asked.

He received an uproar of responses, most of which were positive. He picked up the pearls and counted them. There had to be eighty-four. I had not counted them the day before, others always took care of doing that. The Masked One frowned.

“Hey, kids, what’s this? Three are missing!”

His disgruntled voice made me flinch, and I hurried back with the others. The only one who did not back away was Yerris. The Black Cat looked at the Masked One with a grim expression.

“I counted eighty-four,” he said calmly. “The three new ones only take one more. They can’t take any more.”

“I counted eighty-one,” the Masked One replied. His voice was so dry that, being used to seeing him cheerful and affectionate, it frightened me a bit, and I was not the only one. He said, “I’m sorry, but until you give me three more, you’ll have nothing to eat. You know the rules. Bring me those three pearls quickly. If you don’t have them in an hour, there will be trouble. Is that clear?”

A silence of anger and despair answered him. The Masked One gestured with both hands.

“Rules are rules, kids. It’s not my fault.”

He picked up the bag of bread and left. No sooner had we heard the bong of the metal door than a little girl, Venoms as everyone called her, rushed to the gate and began to rant against the Masked One. A boy tried to calm her down, others swore they had brought the three pearls, and most of us were fidgeting, worried. With a rigid face and his pointed ears twitching slightly, Yerris turned, not to the cave of light as I had expected, but to Syrdio.

“Syrdio,” he called in a somewhat strained voice. “You’re going to help me find these three pearls. Runs for you?”

The boy’s face seemed very pale. I saw him swallow and nod. When I saw them both walking away towards the cave, I had the impression that in reality they were merely acting. For I was almost certain that Syrdio already had those three pearls in his pocket. Did he perhaps think that we would give him a day’s holiday just to please him?

“What a troublemaker,” I muttered.

I approached the place where the Mole, the Soothsayer, and the Priest were sitting. The former did not look much better than the day before.

“Priest,” I said. “What does the Masked One mean, when he says there’s going to be trouble?”

Rogan pouted.

“That they’re gonna beat the crap out of us if we don’t give them these three pearls. Something similar happened before you were here. Only, that time, we knew there weren’t enough pearls. We thought, well, what can they do to us? Well, they came with the dogs and the crossbows, and they gave the Black Cat a thrashing, all because this crazy guy interfered and told them: ‘this is our house, you isturbags’. They got very angry. And they told us they wouldn’t give us any magic bread until we brought them the pearls we owed them. At first, we didn’t understand the threat, they even kept bringing us bread! But, after eight bongs… Well, we still owed them pearls because some of us were lazy and dragging our feet and… we started to feel really bad, as if the Evil Spirits had crept into us and started tearing everything apart. I swear to you, it was hell. They left us like that for… I don’t know, maybe two days. Then they gave us the magic bread, the real one, and we recovered in a flash. We learned our lesson pretty damn well. Unfortunately, Syrdio came after that,” he added in a whisper. He looked up at the stalactites and drummed on the wood of the platform, feigning a detached air. “Well, well. But, this time, it’s not going to happen, because Syrdio… I mean, the Black Cat will be fishing for those three pearls in less than an hour. There’s a reason he’s the veteran of the Well,” he said with a smile.

Indeed, shortly afterwards, the Black Cat returned with the three pearls. Syrdio limped after him. His nose was bleeding and a bruise was forming on his forearm. Nat the Diver, who had been a friend of his long before he was in the Well, was speechless when he saw him.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

“I hit a rock,” Syrdio grunted.

Rogan scoffed and gave a sympathetic exclamation.

“No kidding! By any chance, did the rock have two ears and black cat whiskers?”

I let out a loud laugh. Syrdio gave us an annoyed look, and without replying he limped off to the water source to clean himself. Still smiling, I turned and approached the gate, where Yerris was already waiting, sitting on a rock between two columns. I glanced at his fist and confirmed my impression that both had fought, and that the Black Cat had won. I put my hands through the bars, and my eyes pierced the darkness. I thought I could even make out the metal door, though it was obviously out of my sight, up the stairs. And in my head, I could already hear the long-awaited bong ringing. I was hungry…

“Shyur.”

It was Yerris calling me. I looked at him curiously and met his assessing blue eyes.

“Can I ask you a favor?”

I squinted, intrigued.

“Natural,” I said.

“I can’t stand watch and look for a way out at the same time. Watch Syrdio, will you? If he does anything wrong, don’t interfere: you just tell me.”

I smiled and nodded.

“All right. So you’re really looking for a way out. Did you find anything?”

He shook his head and sighed.

“No. Nothing at all. But, even if I did find something, we can’t run away just like that. Not without the sokwata.”

I frowned and approached.

“The sokwata? What’s that?”

Yerris grimaced as if he just thought: I shouldn’t have said that. My curiosity was aroused, and I insisted:

“What’s that?”

The Black Cat glanced at the others. They were all on the platform, waiting for the Masked One to return.

“Don’t tell anyone about this,” he muttered. “Does it run?”

I nodded and sat down beside him, attentive.

“I want your word as a Cat,” the semi-gnome demanded.

I smiled, and as Rogan sometimes did, put my fist to my chest, and said:

“I give you my word as a Cat that I won’t tell anyone.”

There was a silence, and I waited patiently for Yerris to say something other than: we are doomed. In a very low voice, he admitted:

“It’s not that it’s a secret, really. It’s just that I don’t like talking about it. Actually, the Ojisaries call sokwata what they put in the magic bread. Sokwata is what changed us… into this.” He hesitated under my puzzled gaze and then resumed, “It’s a mutation potion. The alchemist who invented it… screwed up big time. The Ojisaries captured him, I don’t know, maybe six moons ago, I have no idea. Anyway, I was locked in a cell in their lab at the end of winter and… I was the first one to test their potion. It changed me. It changed us all. There are things I can do now that I couldn’t do before. There’s no way you haven’t realized that. Our jaypu is… different. We’re more resistant to outside energy. One day, the alchemist threw a magara at me. And the spell bounced off me. It barely affected me.” He breathed in, thoughtful, then concluded in a whisper, “That’s what sokwata is, shyur: a figment of some deeply idiotic alchemist’s imagination. It might almost seem practical and advantageous if you didn’t need it to live. It’s just as you heard. The alchemist told me as it is: if I die, you die. And he did it on purpose, believe me: he knows that, when the Ojisaries won’t need him anymore, they’ll get rid of him. That’s why… He’s made sure that our mutated bodies need his sokwata to keep functioning. Without it, we die, shyur. Without the sokwata, everything becomes hell. And, if we run without it, we are dead. Popped off. Spirited. Say it the way you prefer. Dead,” he repeated.

I swallowed as I took it all in. It coincided with Rogan’s story. Through those loaves of bread, the Ojisaries had made us take a magical product to allow us to fish for pearls in that mine, and to make matters worse, we were now dependent on that product to stay alive. It seemed to me that the bars of the grate were getting bigger and more impenetrable.

“Blasthell,” I muttered. “But… but, Yerris, everything you say… is it true?”

The Black Cat rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“Forget it, shyur. It’s not worth thinking about. It’s just that… well, I suppose I’d better tell you about mutation potions before that Priest puts ideas of curses and spells and witchcraft into your head…”

“The Priest doesn’t do that,” I protested.

Yerris smiled.

“Well, I hope I didn’t break your spirit. I haven’t told Sla about it yet. She seems to be angry with me, so I don’t dare, I don’t want her to wring my ears off.”

I twisted my upper lip in surprise.

“Angry with you? Sla?”

“She doesn’t say a word to me.”

I huffed.

“You don’t tell her anything either.” I paused for a moment, and then I let out all that was in my heart: “You two are acting so strange that it seems as if lightning has fallen on your heads. And you’re blowing me off every time I come to talk to you; it’s a bit unfair, because last year, I was listening to you all the time and you kept talking on and on. Haven’t you noticed?”

Yerris gave me a surprised look, turned his eyes to Slaryn, who was chatting with the Soothsayer, and smiled.

“Gosh… Maybe you’re right,” he admitted. “You know, shyur? What I’ve noticed, anyway, is that in one year, you’ve become an authentic gwak Cat. I still remember when you used to say to me, Yeeeerris! What is that thing with legs and horns? An ox, shyur! And that huge mushroom that lady is carrying in her hand, eh, Yerris? An umbrella!” We laughed, and he tossed one of the salbronix pearls into the air before retrieving it on the fly. After a silence, he said, “By the way, how’s your mentor?”

I pouted.

“He’s gone to Kitra for a job. But maybe he’ll be back soon and…”

“And he’ll find he has no sari,” the Black Cat completed. He shrugged. “What can I say, shyur? The life of a gwak is hard; it won’t surprise anyone that you disappeared overnight. Yal is a guy with a good head on his shoulders. He’ll soon come to the conclusion that you’re dead, he’ll mourn you for a while, and he’ll go on with his life. And we’ll go on fishing for pearls and swallowing sokwata until the day we can’t find any more pearls, and then the Black Hawk will forget about us, let us starve, and condemn the mine again after getting richer than Captain Tedious did with the gold-making machine.”

At my appalled expression, he smiled, and raising his forefinger and thumb in a mocking religious gesture, he said as if completing a prayer:

“Peace and virtue.”

His smile widened, he shook his head, amused, and added:

“Maybe that’s the solution: accept our condemnation and live with it. All in all, we were already living like doomed souls up there, except in a different way. And we could be worse off. It’s not cold, we’ve got a bed softer than stone and tunnels so well lit we’re not even afraid our torch will go out… It’s paradise!” he laughed.

I looked at him, my eyes wide. Just then, a BONG! sounded, and the Black Cat rose nimbly to his feet, concluding:

“And, on top of that, we get lunch brought to us!” He gave me a joking smile. “Get up, great prince, the table is served.”

I huffed, and a smile stretched my lips. The Black Cat was finally in a better mood. Maybe it was due to a hint of madness, but… whatever the reason, I was glad.