Chapter 7
The Thief on the Hunt
— Part the Third —
The glassworks of The Lady of Gloams’ Cave lay at the edge of the city, connected to other parts of the settlement by a web of paths and roads carved through the rock. Whenas at last they arrived, Habel was struck by the mingling glow of the furnace fires and the silvery sheen of the night. Unlike much of the Cave, the glassworks was not entirely concealed beneath the surface but sprawled within a vast and yawning pit — one of the city's great hollows, called grottos by its folk.
Habel’s gaze swept over heaps of wood ash piled high, then climbed the sandy embankment that rose toward the riverine forest and its thick carpet of undergrowth. He wondered for a fleeting moment what enchantment or craft kept the pit hidden, for he had not spied it during his flight. Casting a sideways glance at Jorén, who was puffing slightly from the long trek, he waited.
“There,” panted the glassmaker, catching his breath. “Behold the glassworks — like a blasted volcano.”
Habel offered no reply, though he wouldn’t have had the chance even if he wished to speak. One of the glassmakers, gripping an iron rod longer than any spear, hailed Jorén. The gnome, ere following him deeper into the pit, cast a backward glance at the sylph and said:
“I’ll find you later. Look about, but don’t cause any mischief.”
Habel nodded in understanding, then took his time to survey his surroundings. The cavernous glassworks did indeed resemble the fiery calderas of the dragons' western lands. He had to summon all his will to keep his wits and not succumb to the paralysing dread stirred by the sight of so much flame. Fire seemed to burst from every crevice, roaring from scores of multi-chambered kilns sunken into the earth and stone.
The heat was nigh unbearable. Habel’s gaze flicked to the glassmakers, clad in light grey tunics, scorched and frayed by time and flame. Sweat drenched their garments, causing them to cling tightly to their bodies. Beneath his thick woollen cloak, Habel was already sweltering, his tunic clinging to him like a drowning man to driftwood. His gloves were slick and sodden, as though he had just plunged his hands into a steaming spring.
Suddenly, something caught his eye — a strange niche in the rock, narrow and black as pitch. A grotto, it seemed, but so deep that its end was hidden from sight. The darkness promised cool respite, and without hesitation or hindrance, Habel made his way toward it, curiosity tugging him forward.
The passage was narrow and lightless, darker even than the labyrinth beneath Nan Farlas, with not a single torch to illuminate the stone walls. Yet Habel, accustomed to shadows and adept at navigating their depths, moved forward undaunted. He listened to the echo of his own footsteps, letting it guide him to avoid stumbling against the jagged rock.
He had gone a fair distance when a pale, dust-thick beam of light filtered through a cluster of stones ahead. Guessing that the path curved there, Habel pressed on. Whenas he reached the bend, he saw a formation of steps — or perhaps a natural alignment of stones — rising gently upward.
Tilting his head back, he caught sight of moonlight, pale and insistent, forcing its way through a fissure in the rock much as it sometimes pierced the depths of Nan Farlas itself.
He began to ascend the steps with care. The path was treacherous, and he stumbled more than once upon uneven stones or fragments of hardened glass — rough lumps, mostly misshapen and of a blue-green hue, scattered across the entire stairway as though someone had once toppled a full basket of them from the top.
One particular shard caught his eye. He paused on the step, frowned, and bent to pick it up. Brushing off the dust, he turned it over in his hand. This was no mere splinter of molten waste but something carefully fashioned — a perfect, polished sphere. It gleamed clear, free of the greenish tinge and ash impurities common to forest glass, without even the faintest air bubble marring its surface.
Fascinated, he studied the orb, but almost too late he caught the sudden clatter of hurried footsteps echoing down the passage. Quick and deft, he slipped the sphere into the pocket of his trousers and turned just as a dazzling lantern flare cut through the gloom at the base of the stairs.
The figure holding the lantern drew closer, lowering it to reveal a thin, boyish face alight with unexpected joy and excitement.
“You’re from Jalo!” the boy whispered, his voice trembling with eagerness. “I knew he’d send someone — he wouldn’t just abandon everything he discovered!”
Habel did not deny it. He merely stood in patient silence, intrigued by this fortunate turn of events.
“Were you heading to his workshop?” the boy asked, though he scarcely seemed to await an answer, for he added at once:
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Come on, let’s go together!”
Without waiting, the boy scrambled up the stairs, tripping and nearly falling in his haste. His enthusiasm for Jalo’s business clearly outweighed any sense of caution. Habel marvelled that someone so young remembered a glassmaker who had left the city more than a dozen years ago.
He recalled the words of the Sorcerer: “Jalo was more gifted than most, though his gift was a peculiarity. Glassmakers will remember him. The rabble alw remembers a man’s strangeness, whether they admire it or scorn it.”
Likho always right, Habel thought grimly, wincing inwardly.
“In my grave I sit alone, darkness 'round me like a stone, thou shalt not find me on this throne — for darkness clings, and flesh is gone,” the boy suddenly sang, laughing at his own stumbles. Yet there was an unsettling edge to the words, as strange as they sounded from a child’s lips. Habel, hearing mention of a grave for the second time that day, pricked up his ears in curiosity.
“You know that the willow above the city is Féna’s grave, don’t you?” the boy said conversationally, perhaps merely to keep the talk flowing. “Sometimes it sings her songs or plays her zither. I guess it’s her now — or what’s left of her body. Not that I understand philosopher stuff much.”
Habel had never heard of the grave-willow nor of Féna, though his heart quickened with curiosity. Nevertheless, he assured the gnomish boy, “Of course, I know.”
After a short while, they reached a heavy wooden door, slightly ajar. In full light (if such a thing ever shone here), it must have been a deep blue; now it appeared a dark navy, almost black. The gnome-boy stopped before it, his face glowing with proud enthusiasm as he looked up at Habel.
"If you meet him, tell him it worked."
"What worked?" asked Habel, immediately realising his foolish blunder, for he had nearly revealed that he knew nothing of Jalo’s work. The boy, however, did not seem to notice.
"You’ll tell him what you see here. He’ll understand," the lad said confidently, then pushed the door wide open.
Before Habel even cast his eyes about the place that had once been Jalo’s workshop, the sound of water filled his ears. He turned toward the source of the noise, where the light seemed brightest. The white glow of the second moon illuminated a waterfall that seemed to spring forth from the very rock. It was no more than twice his sylph frame in height and breadth, but it cascaded just below the workshop’s floor, transforming into a narrow stream that vanished further ahead, slipping once more between the stones.
Then Habel turned his gaze to the remnants of Jalo’s craft: glass vessels lining wooden shelves, scattered fragments of molten glass strewn about, tools left where they had last been used, and a furnace now cocooned in spider silk.
The gnomish boy strode to a peculiar table made from a tangle of thin stalagmites with flat, splayed tops. Setting down his lantern, he took a piece of cloth and began wiping dust from something on the tabletop — the surface of a mirror.
Intrigued, Habel stepped closer. The mirror was unassuming, yet its surface was remarkably smooth and even. He seldom saw his reflection save in the waters of the Lake of Fiery Stones surrounding Nan Farlas. Now, catching sight of himself, he grimaced. He looked like a daemon — wide eyes, shadowed beneath by darkness deepened by the workshop's dim light, giving him an appalling appearance.
Meanwhile, the boy fetched a four-wheeled wooden cart from the corner and positioned it beside the table.
"Help me!" he commanded, grasping the frame of the mirror and struggling to lift it. Habel seized it as well. It was heavy as a hundred Likhos, and he clenched his teeth to stifle a groan as pain lanced through his crippled arm, sharp as a dagger thrust. Somehow, he guided it onto the tracks fitted neatly into the cart, scarcely aware as the boy pushed the mirror across a plank bridge spanning the stream and toward the waterfall.
Habel forgot his pain entirely, though, his left hand frozen mid-motion where it had been massaging his wing. The boy manoeuvred the mirror until it caught the moonlight, filtered through the curtain of water. Then something wondrous occurred.
O Lady of Alders! Habel exclaimed inwardly.
The mirror transformed into a stained-glass window, its vibrant images shifting subtly with the tremors of the falling water. The window divided into four distinct scenes, yet the same two figures appeared in each. Habel’s gaze swept across the glass until it landed on a scene where a maiden with hair white as swan’s wings and a boy dressed in the garments of the gnomish guard from the king’s age stood by a riverbank, eyes wide with wonder as they stared into the water's depths.
Just above the water, a forest grew, though two trees were wholly unlike the rest — behind the maid and youth stood the ponderous Master Chestnut, his thick trunk and brows lifted in serene contentment, whilst beside him loomed the scarred and resin-bleeding figure of Mistress Alder.
Habel’s gaze lingered on the water depicted in the stained glass, then he started as sudden understanding dawned upon him.
The lake! he thought, a barely perceptible smile flickering across his lips. Jalo was searching for the lake from his window of glass!
"Extraordinary, isn’t it?" the gnomish boy called out, standing beyond the stream’s trickle, his hands stuffed into his pockets and a wide, proud grin splitting his face.
Habel nodded in agreement, then motioned toward the window.
"What is that lake called?"
"What sort of gnome are you, not knowing the tale of Féna and Nélchod?" the boy huffed, clearly affronted.
There’s that Féna again, Habel mused, though he had already assumed the white-haired maiden in the window was indeed her — the one who became a grave.
"Everyone’s heard it at least once in their life," he muttered disdainfully, shrugging. "I've just never had a memory for legends." A blatant falsehood, for few could remember stories as well as he.
"They call it the Lake of Blazing Stars," the boy said as he crossed back over the stream toward Habel.
"Where is it?" the sylph pressed. It was a safe enough question — the lad was neither particularly clever nor suspicious.
The boy shrugged again. "Maybe the philosophers know, but the story never says."
"There are maps," Habel suggested, the corner of his mouth curving faintly.
"Maps don’t interest me. I’ve never wandered far past the Cave, and I don’t reckon I ever will," the boy said with a dismissive wave. Then, as he stopped beside Habel, his face brightened with fresh enthusiasm, and he changed the subject:
"You’ll tell Jalo what you saw, won’t you?"
The sylph glanced at him. Only now, under the fuller glow of the moon, did Habel notice how strikingly blue the boy’s eyes were — strange for a gnome.
"I will," he assured.
Not a word I will tell, he thought later, lying atop a stone slab in the small room carved into the rocks above the glassworks — a place Jorén had set aside for him to sleep, though climbing up to it earlier had required no small effort.
He drew the stolen glass sphere from his pocket and, shifting toward the window, held it up before his eyes.
The image within spun on command, like during a bat's sleep.