Blood of Dragons

Below her, the grind of stone on stone startled her. She wanted to flee up the chain, but sharpest curiosity made her back slowly down the rope instead. There it was. A large block of stone in the wall was retreating, sliding smoothly away, leaving an opening behind it. ‘The seam valve,’ she heard herself say out loud.

And then the memory came, of her first trip down the shaft with the older Silver worker. He’d shown it to her, halting the platform on its slow descent. ‘Can you believe,’ he’d asked her, ‘that sometimes the Silver pressure was so high, it came into the reservoir at this level? Sometimes, we’d have to come down here and open the drains to let it out. There were pipes that would carry it out into the river and away from the city. And when the Silver seams were really producing, we’d have to shut down some of them, to keep it from welling out the top and running through the streets.’ The oldster had coughed and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘This seam has been dry for decades,’ he continued sourly. ‘And if the Silver pressure keeps dropping, we probably never will open it again. Well, start cranking, girl. It’s a long way down to where the Silver comes in now. We need to measure the level of standing Silver and log it. That’s your job now, once every seventeen days. Can’t ration it if we don’t know how much the seams are producing.’

Thymara blinked, abruptly surprised to find herself alone and hanging on a rope in a well shaft. ‘Reservoir shaft,’ she corrected herself quietly. Reflexively, she reached over and tapped the glyph again. She heard the grinding halt, and then resume with a different note. She moved down the line and set her hand to the wall until she felt the brick move back into alignment. Relief slowed her thundering heart. Best to leave things as they had been until someone like Carson could help her understand what little she remembered.

As she lifted her hand from the block, it seemed to tremble under her fingers. Then it suddenly shot out, past her hand, to land with a clatter at the bottom of the shaft. A square of liquid Silver followed it, pushing out thickly, at first keeping its shape and then turning into a fat worm wriggling down the wall. She stared at it, trying to make sense of what she saw. The seam had replenished itself. And the old valve had given way. Stone grated as two adjacent blocks swung out unevenly from the wall as the heavy Silver forced its way out and into the shaft. A slow bulge began around the leak. She heard a pop and saw another brick fly out of the wall. It hit the opposite side of the shaft with force, and a gout of Silver leapt after it. She stared aghast, then shrieked, ‘Rapskal! Something broke down here!’

‘What?’

‘Climb!’ she shouted up the shaft. ‘Climb fast!’ She went up the rope like a frightened monkey, gained the chain and did not pause. The one gauntlet was a hindrance on the slick chain; there was no time to strip it off. She raced a zig-zagging crack in the wall that paralleled her progress. It shone silver as the long-suffering stones gave way to the pressure behind them. They opened with sharp pops that hurt her ears.

Rapskal had paid attention to her cry. He was waiting for her at the top of the well, grabbing her by the shoulders of her tunic and jerking her to safety. ‘Do we run?’ he asked her, and his eyes were his own again, wide in a scared face.

‘Uphill!’ she confirmed, and they retreated to the edge of the plaza. Dimly she recalled a tale of a time when the Silver had overflowed the well and run down the streets to the river. People, fish and birds had died from its touch.

Overpowering curiosity made them pause at the edge of the square to look back. The dragons had not fled. They stood by the well mouth, visibly shivering with excitement. They both had their heads lowered inside the shaft. As they watched, Sintara dropped to her front knees and stretched her neck down further. She looked ridiculous, hunkered down. Her ribs worked as she crouched there and abruptly Heeby followed her example. Were they drinking?

Thymara gasped for breath, her gauntleted hand on Rapskal’s shoulder. Dawn was starting to grey the sky at the eastern edge of the horizon. The dragons still drank. No Silver reached the top and brimmed over. Then Heeby uttered a squeal of protest and lifted her gleaming dripping muzzle. She stared at Rapskal indignantly. His voice was his own as he said, ‘She’s furious. Sintara’s neck is longer and she can still reach the Silver, but Heeby can’t.’ He lifted his voice. ‘Don’t you worry, pretty girl. I’ll fill buckets and buckets for you. I promise.’

Thymara’s mind began to work again. ‘The buckets Tats and the other keepers used to haul rubble away from the well. We need to fill them with Silver and get them to Tintaglia. I’ll lower them down and haul them up. You don’t touch them unless I say it’s safe.’