rock. Four square cages hung from thick chains, driven by winches and spindle-wheels the size of Dragons. Two counterbalanced pairs, Lia whispered to him. One cage travelled up while its running-mate travelled down.
The din was louder and closer. Furnaces roaring. Metal clanging. Shouts and curses, the crack of a whip. Heat shimmered down there, rising past their faces as though the shaft were a living volcano.
As they crouched behind a great wooden box filled with mining tools, examining the guarded cages, Lia said, They must keep the slaves on this level. Look. Locked dungeon doors. Four levels, maybe more. How many slaves do they have working here?
A huge gong crashed somewhere below.
“Change of shift,” said one of the purple-clad soldiers. “Let’s get those slaves up here.”
Can we wait here? Lia asked.
Grandion will attack in less than an hour, Flicker reminded her. Finding your family is of the utmost importance. I haven’t seen any other Dragons down here, though, so we might stand a chance.
Down we go, said the Human girl.
Wait, here comes our chance.
Three men approached along a side passage, hauling a cart of what appeared to be water rations. They paused next to Lia’s hiding-place to have a short but rancorous argument with the guards at the transportation platforms. Unknown to them, they picked up two infiltrators in that short space of time. The cart rumbled forward and clanged onto the metal. With a deafening squeal of the winches, the platform began its slow descent, a thousand feet or more, into the caverns below.
The men stood about and griped about their lives in the mines, the toes of their steel-shod boots just inches from Hualiama’s nose beneath the cart, braced between the axles. Her eyes seemed preternaturally agleam in the gloom, Flicker thought. Just how much magic inhabited his lovely straw-head? No, not straw-head! When the dragonets sang this tale in the histories, she would be Lia Fire-Eyes, friend of Dragons.
They swung through the roof of a monstrous cavern lit by bulbous smelting pots and tens of roaring, open furnaces. Hundreds of men and women laboured down here.
Flicker bellied to the edge to look down. Another shaft like this one leads further down, he told Lia. Heaps of Humans coming up. They look exhausted.
The dragonet crept back to Hualiama, feeling cowed. He heard more commands being shouted. Whips seared the air with cruel cracks. Ore thundered into tumbling or stirring machines incomprehensible to a dragonet. The miserable cries of Humans in pain darkened his fires, while clouds of steam and smoke created a pall over the scene.
Strength to you, noble dragonet, Hualiama sent into his mind, accompanied by a picture of a dragonet wreathed in white fire, a golden circlet upon his head.
His fires sizzled. Lia knew him so well!
As the cage descended and the other rose to the top of the second shaft, fifty feet away, Hualiama and Flicker had a clear view of many pale, soot-blackened faces staring unseeing at the cavern. The Human girl stiffened with a soft cry. “Mother …”
“And how are we today, your kingship?” A soldier called, not unkindly, his voice carrying to where the pair hid. “Come on, the day’s work is done. Time to rest and sup. There’s more on the morrow.”
At least he’s not a beast, said Lia. I see Shyana and Fyria, and Ari, but where are Father and Elki? And Kalli, my oldest brother?
The slaves began to file out of the other cage, waiting their turn for the cage Hualiama and Flicker had taken down. Bracing her hands and feet across the gap between the cart’s axles, with Flicker gripping the wood with his talons, Lia clung on like a swamp leech as they bounced off roughly. A boulder smacked the Human girl’s rump as the cart jounced, scraping her loose. She yelped. Then, as the heavily-loaded cart rumbled forward, the royal ward tumbled out helplessly, snarling herself amongst the feet of the men pushing from behind.
There was a taut, shocked silence. A hundred pairs of eyes stared at the commotion.
“You!” shouted a man, grabbing Lia by her collar.
Flicker bit him in the calf muscle.
* * * *
Hualiama heaved free of the men with a flash of her throwing daggers, one in either hand. With a flip of a blade, she downed one of a trio of soldiers standing alongside the slaves. The second received a knife in the belly. Then, soldiers closed in from everywhere. Lia immediately drew the much longer Nuyallith blades and began her dance,