Before she made contact, a spark came to life in the guard’s eyes and he grabbed a fistful of her hair with forceful indifference. “I’ll say when enough is enough!” Before she could so much as cry out, he forced her to the ground, head first.
“Make a move and the boy will meet a fate worse than death.”
Raidon froze mid-step, the weight of the guard’s words keeping him anchored in place.
Releasing his mother, the captain stepped toward Alistar but paused thoughtfully. Looking over his shoulder and following the guard’s gaze, Alistar saw that the older man lying on the ground was just beginning to stir. The captain was at his side before he was able to push himself up off the ground.
“You know,” he began with an empty voice, “back home they used to call me weak. Weak! Can you believe that?” Having just regained consciousness, the older man didn’t know how to respond. No one could be sure exactly who the guard was speaking to. “Just because I was the youngest, they called me the weakest. Because they thought me the weakest, they branded me useless. Useless! Second-hand equipment, third rate inheritance, and now this talk of permanently pawning me off at this lousy mine.
“I…” the man mumbled, disoriented.
“Oh, the injustices I’ve had to put up with. Well, I wouldn’t expect slaves such as yourselves to understand.” Somewhere amidst his ranting he had begun patting the older man’s head, the light clap of skin on skin accenting his now gentle words in a most peculiar way. “Tell me, dear friend.” He lifted the man’s chin and made it so that their eyes met. His voice deepened. “Do I seem weak to you?”
In lieu of words, the man shook his head, fast. The look on his face left Alistar in a fit of cold sweats. Nearby noise was blocked out. It seemed as if the only things that existed were the two men in front of him.
“It seems we’re of the same mind.” He shook his head with a ghost of a smile. “I am not weak. Weak is being unable to take action. Weak is being too frightened to do so. Weak is helplessly allowing yourself to take constant abuse, to labour past the point that the body can handle, but saying nothing out of fear for your life. To me, weak is…this.”
Perhaps because Alistar had been so focused on the bald man’s expression, it caught him off guard when the red-haired man produced a small knife from his sleeve and lodged it deep into the defenseless man’s throat. As if he were cradling a newborn, the captain of the guard held his victim’s head in place as he shook quietly. Choked gurgling sounds filled Alistar’s ears despite the noise that drifted over from the rest of the line.
When Alistar had nicked his arm after falling within the crevice, he had been both scared and fascinated with the stream of blood that had trickled down his arm. That was the most he’d ever bled in his life. The blood from that time didn’t even come close to comparing with the amount that seeped out of the body in front of him. If he wasn’t there to see how much blood had pooled around that hairless head, he would never have believed that a person’s body held so much.
He felt as if he were in a waking dream.
The realization that the third collection box was because of him had stopped his thoughts in their tracks. Before he’d been able to acknowledge the realization and all of its implications, the guard captain had murdered an innocent man for no apparent reason. The suddenness of the killing left Alistar unable to move, his body sending him signals that he was in danger.
Suddenly he was in his mother’s arms, her face swollen and cut in several places with clumps of dirt stuck in the corners of her eyes and mouth. The ghoulish scene was replaced by his mother’s sweaty, sackcloth clothing, her sweet, warm scent filling his nose and allowing him some extent of control over his thoughts. He quickly averted his gaze to the ground.
It was then that he noticed the stains. Beginning exactly where the line of slaves cut off and ending at his mother’s workstation were several large, dark blotches. Had the line been longer, a person would occupy each of the reddish spaces, some of which were darker, some faded.
Just when Alistar’s mind seemed as if it might stop functioning altogether, he recalled a stream of calm and reassuring words. They were words from his father, simple and unrelated, said casually during the happier days of his life. Detailed myths and fairy tales often told to him just before bedtime. Descriptions of all sorts of foods, of the sights that he would see and the people he would meet.
Warm words echoed throughout his mind and allowed him to maintain a hold on his sanity. He kept thinking of the past, and did everything he could do to ignore the lifeless body before him.
His father had promised that he would one day leave the mines and enjoy the best quality of life that the outside world had to offer. Today, Alistar finally realized that he had given his life in an attempt to make that promise a reality.
All this time and he had been required to fill a quota as well, but there was no way that he would have survived through such labour during his earlier years, so his family had split the difference between them. He suddenly recalled all of the times that his father had dumped some of his gatherings into his mother’s crate, always so nonchalant, so natural. But now, his father was gone. The way things were going, even with his uncle’s help, his mother would eventually work herself to death. If his father were here, what would he do?
Drawing strength from a lifetime of memories of his father, Alistar pushed himself from his mother while trying his best to hold back the frightened tears that threatened to spill down his face. Focusing his best glare at the captain of the guard while at the same time keeping his eyes off of the nearby body, he endeavoured to imitate his father’s calm way of walking as he approached the corpse. Warm blood stained his feet as he stopped beside the dead man, a wave of shivers rippling through him. He knelt down and retrieved the fallen pickaxe, whose owner no longer had any use for it.
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He returned to his mother, dragging the pick behind him. He stopped to face the crystal-studded wall, hefted it up and rested its shaft on his shoulder. It was heavy, a lot heavier than he would have thought. It was so heavy that he almost lost his balance. But that didn’t mean anything. His father had never complained, not once throughout all of his suffering.
After watching his family labour all throughout his life, Alistar was familiar with the mining process. It was quite simple. The minerals they extracted—the magic crystals Servan had spoken of, he now realized— emitted a faint glow. They were very hard, so hard that a swing from a pickaxe would hardly do any damage. The trick was to smash the exposed rock and sift through the debris, keeping an eye out for the faint glow of the crystals. Once a crystal was found, even if there were still bits of rock attached, it was stored in the collection box. The rock itself was very hard, and sometimes an hour of repetition would only yield a small handful of crystals. The collection boxes were relatively small when compared with the larger ones that the Carriers toted around, though these were full of useless debris.
Crystals were very valuable in the world outside of the mines. Based on what he’d heard from the guards, just a few of them were worth a handful of the silver coins. Because of their high value, the slaves of the Crystellum Mines had apparently once been able to buy their freedom after collecting a certain amount. He had learned this from a pair of guards who had been stationed there the year before, the two having shared a good laugh once they revealed to him that this was no longer the case.
Clank.
His arms went numb as he brought the pickaxe down in an ungraceful arch, the metal bouncing off of the rock and almost causing the handle to escape from his grasp. His hands wrung with strong vibrations, numbness clawing its way up to his elbows. His mother had been working in the mines each day for the past nine years, and one swing was this difficult?
He raised the pickaxe again, grunting from the effort. His father had done this until it killed him?
Clank.
This time he did lose hold of the pickaxe. After a quick glance at his mother, who was still kneeling where she had embraced him, the pick was back in his hands and its head was up in the air.
Clank. Clank. Clank.
His father’s words rang throughout his mind, urging him on as memories both fond and unpleasant fueled his efforts. The pain, the frustration, the gruelling repetition; rather than leave him demoralized, all of these factors strengthened his incentive to continue on.
Guilt and shame washed over him, anger at his helplessness and the ignorance that had clouded his mind until this day. Again and again he lifted his pick, wordlessly agonizing with each clumsy swing. When the tingling of his arms brought tears to his eyes, he would jam them shut and wipe the wetness from their corners. When his thoughts became disjointed and his footing became shaky, he would drop to one knee and take slow, deep breaths until his focus returned. His hands eventually grew raw with blisters, and splinters from the pick’s handle dug deep into his tender skin. Even so, he clenched his teeth and drowned out his tormented gasps with another swing of the worn out pick. His father’s hands had bled much worse than this.
By the time he looked up from his work, rivers of sweat were running down his body, dripping to the ground one droplet after another. Dust caked his ragged clothing and his filthy, sticky limbs. His body was hot and his eyes were stinging as he wiped at them in futility. Skin had peeled from his hands in places, the exposed sores crying out as they came into contact with his dribbling sweat.
He had never ached so much, his entire body screaming in protest against the harshness of his labour. Hours had passed since he had taken up his pickaxe. At some point his mother and uncle had resumed their work, reluctantly allowing for his meager contributions to persist. The red-haired man and the corpse he’d created were nowhere in sight.
Eventually, Alistar decided on taking a break that would last more than just a minute. After collapsing to the ground, he observed his surroundings while desperately sucking air into his lungs.
He caught the eye of the nearest guard, who stood in place along the tunnel wall while staring at him with his lips pressed so tightly together that they had gone white. The man paid no attention to the slaves before him, or to the fact that Alistar was taking a break. The surrounding slaves, still many paces away, were pounding away at the rock with a renewed vigour that Alistar had rarely seen since his father’s passing.
After a while he noticed that a dozen pairs of eyes had found their way over to his trembling, panting frame. This included the nearest guard and the one after him, as well as most of the sixteen slaves they oversaw. Be it pickaxe or spear, not one grip within eyesight didn’t seem tighter than it had been before Alistar’s arrival. Even the Carriers lingered for a moment after retrieving the debris from his and his family’s station.
They’re…looking at me?
Just to be sure, he turned to look at his mother and his uncle, both of whom were sparing him peculiar glances as they worked. Though they wore complicated expressions, Alistar could see the affection in their eyes.
It seemed that the others were indeed staring at him. Looking down self-consciously, his gruelling efforts had only yielded a small handful of crystals. Could it be that they pitied him for how little he had collected in comparison to the others? He couldn’t help it. The pick was terribly heavy and he was far weaker than the other workers. He didn’t want to be stuck mining in this uncomfortably warm tunnel. He would much rather wander freely through the tunnels with Kaila, or draw images in the dirt, or go over his lessons, or else fantasize about the wondrous world outside.
He’d barely caught his breath, and the shaking of his limbs and the pains of his body had yet to subside. Even so, Alistar forced himself up with a whimper and dragged his discarded pickaxe from the ground. He wasn’t here to impress anyone. He was here to help his family. With the embers of determination rekindled, he resumed his work with one goal in mind. No matter what, he had to help his family as much as he could.
While he worked, he wondered about many things. How many people had died since the guard shifts had changed? How many days had his family suffered such abuse? Was this the cause of Servan’s unease? What would his father do if he were still alive?
Hoarse coughing from his mother coincided with his feeble strikes.
Why my mama? Why does she have to do this?
Clank.
Why are we here? Why my family?
Clank.
Alistar continued his struggles despite the immense urge to break down in tears. On and on he fought until the work bells finally resounded throughout the tunnels, his pickaxe thudding to the ground after what seemed like an eternity, with slight traces of scarlet along the handle. Following the line of fellow slaves, he and his family left their tools behind and picked up their collection boxes. Having successfully met their quotas—most of the contents of his container owing to his mother and uncle—the three of them headed back to the Resident Cavern for dinner and then rest, dragging their bare feet along with the sombre procession.