CHAPTER 27 #2
She held the rag up to the light. Slowly at first, it started to look powdery, like she’d dropped it in chalk.
He took a picture. Then came another flare, vicious this time, searing its waving pattern into his eyes even behind the mask.
He took the second picture just as the cloth fell apart.
There was nothing left but a handful of salt.
“That’s salt tarnishing,” Lady Hringen said.
“You must understand, we have told the miners not to discuss it beyond their clans; we don’t want anyone to panic, particularly Outsiders.
” She was speaking quickly. Up ahead, Ras was coming back with the other miners, who were all talking worriedly, putting the children in front of them, even carrying the younger ones.
“Usually that happens over months, as you know. Steel tools usually fall apart after a year. Now . . .” She held out a hammer with a plastic handle, a cheap steel one from the Outside, and then next to it, her own, a Hreod one, which was made of silver and salt oak, alive with beautiful designs.
Flash, another flare. They were coming closer together now: it was like standing in a lightning storm before the rain.
For the first time, Avelyn started to feel like he wasn’t safe.
He had no idea what he was expecting—he had never seen a salt light storm—but he wanted to start backing away. His tattoos were buzzing unpleasantly.
Almost straightaway, the steel hammer started to soak in the salt light. It soon had a glow, as though they’d put it in a forge, embers at first but then bright, brighter than the light around it. It showed clearly when Avelyn took another picture.
Then the steel faded, a frost of salt forming across the whole hammer. Over perhaps a minute and a half, the salt ate away the handle, until the head fell onto the floor with a noise that should have been a clang but was more of a crunch. The tang dissolved.
The silver hammer was fine.
God Almighty.
Avelyn touched the Hreod hammer when she gave it to him. Completely undamaged, just like they were, and just like their clothes. He stood holding it, absorbing what it meant. Above them, the storm strobed.
“What would happen to an Outsider who stood where we’re standing now?” he asked, already knowing the answer, but needing to hear another voice say it.
Lady Hringen nodded at the salt shards on the ground that were all that was left of the steel hammer. “The way that glowed, did you notice?”
“Yes,” he said. The salt was so dense in the air that his throat burned.
Lady Hringen was going hoarse too. “That’s the Blessing. D’you see?”
He could see it in terrible detail.
If you weren’t from here, you were a sponge for salt light.
It was slower than this up at An El, which was maybe four hundred feet above them now, through solid rock.
But there was enough light to be doing quiet damage.
It wasn’t like sunlight. It didn’t bounce off.
People soaked it in, and it built up and built up until you could see the halo.
“Even in normal times,” Lady Hringen said, “they could be hurt after forty days. That’s why we set the limit, up at the abbey. But now . . . well. We’re seeing the Blessing much sooner.”
“But it isn’t just salt light exposure,” Avelyn protested. “The man who died, he was only here for eight days, whereas we have some people who’ve been here for almost forty with no Blessing at all. I’ve spoken about it with the doctor, but we don’t understand what’s happening.”
To his surprise, she shifted. “Well, that’s why we stopped the tours, to stop anyone else coming down.”
A weary dread settled over him.
“Anyone else,” he repeated.
“We caught him,” she said. “But he got all the way to the King’s Way. Lord Harkta was—well, he marched him back out and he seemed well enough, but we think he was up there for at least an hour.”
Flash, flash: an incredible violet flare lit the entire cavern. It left green slashes across Avelyn’s vision. If he hadn’t been wearing the mask, it would have—God, he didn’t know. Burned the enamel from his teeth.
“Matthew went into the King’s Way,” Avelyn said. “In a wheelchair?”
She shrugged. “No steps all the way, it’s just downhill. I can see why. Must have looked tempting. He ran some kind of—almanac? He wanted light paintings for it.”
“A YouTube channel,” Avelyn said in English.
It was enraging that she hadn’t bothered to find out what it was.
“He ran a YouTube channel. You’re telling me—you’re telling me you knew what had happened to him, and you didn’t think to explain to Rome?
Or his family?” He felt like he was salt-tarnishing too: stiffening up and slowing down with a gritty horror.
“We need to evacuate everyone from An El. Today. I . . .” He stopped, because he had just realized he had a handful of salt.
Yes. Of course he did. The last Polaroid.
The others were in his top pocket, under the silver breastplate.
Lady Hringen took his elbow and pulled. “Come on, this is too dangerous.”
“For us too?”
“Not like that,” she said. “I’ll explain above, but we need to go, we’re going to see something we—”
Crack: something in the trees breaking. Very close.
When he tried to turn, she caught his shoulders and wrenched him forwards. It threw him off balance and pulled at the stitches. “I said don’t look! Move, come on! They’ll be real in a few seconds if we stay, go—”
“No, I need to try and take some more pictures, this one just—”
“You can’t stay here,” she snapped, and he thought he could hear old rage in her voice, just like he’d heard old sorrow in Ras’s. She had been civil enough with him so far, but he was pushing too much now. “Caer Halen, boy, do as you’re told!”
“I am not your boy,” he said quietly. “You’re angry with me for not going to you, fine, but you didn’t come for me either. Get your hands off me.”