CHAPTER 25
The mine was much bigger than Hreodwater.
Some of the passages were tiny shafts, only just big enough for a person to climb down.
Some were vast, ancient ways, a hundred feet high, with great bridges across underground rivers and eel-haunted lakes.
Avelyn had known some of the King’s Way, the section of the mine owned by the Brocken; he had never even seen the Saint’s Way, the sole kingdom of the Hringen.
Avelyn plunged back down to An El to change into a top with long sleeves that wouldn’t show up too much dirt.
It would be hot down there: no need for a jumper.
With the camera on his hip, a spare packet of film in his pocket, and his rosary wound around his wrist, he went to the gate early to wait, determined for nobody to complain he wasn’t ready on time.
If he could just say to the Vatican: Look.
This is the salt light at An El. Twilight, dim.
Now this is the light in the deep: bright.
And everyone says it’s brighter than it should be, and the people who are being cured have a salt light halo .
. . That was something. Whether or not he could make Father Li or anyone believe that what was down here was something so ancient and terrible that hardly anyone at the Vatican truly believed in it anymore, at least he would have tried.
At least there was a chance of making enough noise to bring a real exorcist, officially or not.
“I did say to wear something more sensible,” Lady Hringen said when she arrived. To his surprise, Ras was with her. Uncomfortably, it occurred to him that maybe Ras didn’t want her wandering around the mine with The Path Not Travelled.
“What’s wrong with this?” Avelyn asked.
Both of them were wearing real mining gear: Hreod leather, heavy boots. He had seen that plenty, but what he hadn’t seen was mining gear with silver plating. It was like armour, worked with the Hringen sigils. They looked more like knights than miners.
They glanced at each other, and there was one of those moments where a great deal of talking was being done without any speaking. Lady Hringen looked awkward. Ras looked . . . somewhere between patient and tired.
“I brought some things for you,” Ras said, lifting his satchel a little. “There’s a locker room off to the side there. You can get changed there.”
“But—why?” said Avelyn, as Lady Hringen unlocked the silver gate. It was so high and heavy she had to put her whole weight to it. Beyond it, the salt light was an aurora again, dancing above the sloping road down into the deep.
She ignored him and waited to one side as Ras led him through the gate, then to the left, into a locker room hewn into the bedrock.
It was lined with hooks, all full of gleaming silver harnesses, and open boxes of what anyone else would probably have called treasure. Silver gauntlets. Silver cuirasses.
Those horrible silver masks.
Ras closed the door. “Those things weren’t made in Hreodwater, were they?” He was looking at Avelyn’s clothes.
“No. Ras, what is all this?”
Ras brushed Avelyn’s shoulder, where the cotton was already managing to gather salt grains. He did it as though someone at the market had just tried to sell him something rotten. “These will salt-tarnish.”
“Salt-tarnish . . . well, they will, but we’re only going down for an hour, no?”
“They’ll tarnish in an hour,” Ras told him, taking clothes from the bag. All Hreod leather. Then he started to gather up silver equipment. Harness, gauntlets, cuirass; mask.
“Are you serious?”
Ras nodded wearily. “Let’s say there have been some embarrassing incidents with people who like to buy their clothes on the Outside. What’s this made of?” he added, pointing to Avelyn’s rosary.
“Cherrywood.”
Ras shook his head. “Leave it here. And . . .” He was looking right into Avelyn’s eyes, troubled. “Caer Halen, are those coloured contact lenses?”
“Yes?”
“Take them out, please.” Ras pushed one fist against his own chest. Avelyn was annoyed that he was being so dramatic. “Unless you want them to fall apart in your eyes.”
Avelyn had been looking at the leather shirt and feeling uncomfortably Hreod about it, but the lenses were different.
He had worn them every day since he’d found out they existed.
He had a stupid urge to ask if Ras would wait while he ran back to An El and put them in their solution.
But he knew Ras wouldn’t wait. He looked away and pinched them out, and then found he didn’t want to look up properly again.
He turned away to get changed. Jericho was right. He was just being precious about it. It was probably as well to be forced to admit to the colour of his own eyes, for Christ’s sake.
“Oh, by the King . . .”
Avelyn swung around. Ras sounded as though he had just seen something hideous climbing up the wall. He had backed right away.
“What?” said Avelyn.
“What happened?” Ras rasped. His eyes were fixed on Avelyn’s arms, on the broken lines of his old tattoos.
Avelyn was lost. “I serve the god of Rome. I can’t have the King sprawled all over me, can I?”
“Who did that to you?” His voice was strained, on the point of tearing.
It was the way he would have spoken if he’d found someone with their arms cut off.
“I did,” Avelyn said, and pulled the Hreod shirt on to stop Ras staring.
“They made you do it to yourself,” Ras said.
“Nobody made me do anything.”
“The witches of the nailed god are . . . clearly very devoted.” Ras might have been standing in front of a suicide bomber who was explaining to him the great benefits of martyrdom.
Avelyn didn’t know what to say.
Silent now, Ras helped him into the silver cuirass. It was heavy, and exquisite. Figures of miners toiled down the chest in vertical shafts, and around the collar, tiny gems of deep-blue halite glowed enough that, somewhere dark, they would uplight the face of whoever wore it.
“What’s this for?” Avelyn asked quietly. “You didn’t say.”
“Just a precaution,” Ras murmured, busy with the buckles. He didn’t look up. Avelyn had a feeling he was trying to pretend he was dressing a mannequin.
Avelyn caught his wrist to make him stop. “I’m at capacity for the cryptic sidestepping, brother. Please.”
Ras still didn’t look at him properly, clamping down the fastenings that would hold the silver gauntlets in place.
“We don’t know for certain, but there are old stories .
. . light this bright can hurt you. That image at the Witan, it shows a witch called Gwenneth.
Long ago, in the time of the mammoth, the King woke, and she went down to him, and she sang him back to sleep.
But she was blinded doing it, and she could never have children after. ”
Avelyn frowned. Now he was thinking about it, there must have been a dozen stories cautioning everyone not to go too far into the deep or too near the King. Even Saint Hildegard had vanished afterwards.
“I thought those stories were just about making sure children don’t wander off in the tunnels,” he said, gazing at the boxes and boxes of silver.
“So did I,” Ras said to the last of the clasps. “The King hasn’t shone like this in a thousand years. But . . . all this equipment has been stored here since then. They didn’t go to the expense of forging it just to frighten children.”
In the passageway, Lady Hringen was waiting. She nodded once. Avelyn kept his eyes tilted down, hating that she could see the colour. In his pocket, the dark contact lenses had already dried out and cracked. He hadn’t brought another pair.
The shaft tilted them down, and down; as far as An El was from the surface. The salt light was brighter with every step. It hung like glowing mist everywhere, and sometimes, something in it shivered, making half-familiar shapes.
At last they came to the crossroad between the main shafts. Avelyn felt a dull thud of recognition. He had come this way every day for years, and the last time he was here, it had been with his entire family.
The way forked in three directions. Down the path on the right was the King’s Way, the way Avelyn had always gone. Down the middle was the Tower, the vertical shaft owned by the Balen, which went down deeper than anyone in living memory had ever been. And on the left was the Saint’s Way.
Between them all, at the pillar where they joined, there was a silver bowl, sitting inside an alcove at the feet of a statue of the King. Avelyn gazed up at it and felt his tattoos burn again. It was a lovely burn. He had to crush it aside.
Lady Hringen went to the silver bowl and took out a handful of glowing black salt.
She held it for a second, then cast it onto the flat base of the alcove.
Avelyn watched to see what sort of picture it would make today, then blinked when it didn’t do anything at all.
It was just salt, scattered as it would have scattered anywhere else.
Lady Hringen made a half-satisfied noise.
“Do you remember?” Ras asked Avelyn. “You have to hold your mind blank. You can’t wonder what the King is dreaming. Just think of salt. It helps it . . . remember to be only salt.” He closed his fist. “Mind like a rock.”
Mind like a rock.
He remembered that.
His uncles—twins—Hagan and Hengest, had said that to him all the time.
He had a vivid memory of sitting between them when he was small, getting frustrated that he couldn’t do it, even though Gwen from school could do it perfectly, and now she was allowed to go into the mine with the big children while he was still stuck in the cleaning room, chipping salt off old chisels like a baby, even though he was whole months older than her.
Gwen’s uncle had been bragging for weeks about how she was born to be a great miner.
Hagan, who approached child-rearing competitively, had almost started a blood feud when he said that Gwen was born to be a great show pig.
Hengest, being much more like Ras, had just said that it always took clever people longer than simple people to turn their minds off.