‘I know that, only he’s grown too big.’
‘People like him never like people like me,’ Harllo said. This was not a whine, just an observation.
‘Because you’re smarter than he is and his being older means nothing, means it’s worse even, because in your head you’re already past him, past us all, maybe. Listen, Harllo, I seen ones like you before, coming in, going through. They get beaten down, beaten stupid. Or they end up getting killed. Maybe they try to run, maybe they stand up to the pit bosses over something. Your smartness is what’s going to ruin you, you understand?’
‘Yes, Bainisk. I’m sorry.’
‘Why’d you sneak back into the tunnels?’
He could tell him everything. At this moment, it seemed like the right thing to do. But Harllo no longer trusted himself with such feelings. Explaining was dangerous. It could get them all into even more trouble.
‘You was carrying bones,’ said Bainisk. ‘Those bones, they’re cursed.’
‘Why?’
‘They just are.’
‘But why, Bainisk?’
‘Because they were found where no bones belong, that’s why. So far down it’s impossible that anybody buried them-and besides, who’d bury dead animals? No, those bones, they’re from demons that live in the rock and in the dark. Right down with the roots of the earth. You don’t touch them, Harllo, and you never ever try putting them back.’
So this was what Bainisk suspected him of doing, then? ‘I was… I was scared,’ Harllo said. ‘It was as if we were disturbing graves or something. And that’s why there’ve been so many accidents lately-’
‘Them accidents are because the new boss is pushing us too hard, into the tunnels with the cracked ceilings and the bad air-the kind of air that makes you see things that ain’t real.’
‘I think maybe that’s what happened to me.’
‘Maybe, but,’ and he rose, ‘I don’t think so.’
He walked away then. Tomorrow, Harllo was expected to return to work. He was frightened of that, since his back hurt so, but he would do it, because it would make things easier for Bainisk who’d been punished when he shouldn’t have been. Harllo would work extra hard, no matter the pain and all; he would work extra hard so Bainisk would like him again.
Because, in this place, with no one liking you, there didn’t seem much point in going on.
Lying on his stomach, fresh into another year of life, Harllo felt no ripples reach him from the outside world. Instead, he felt alone. Maybe he’d lost a friend for ever and that felt bad, too. Maybe his only friend was a giant skeleton in the depths of the mines who with new legs might have walked away, disappeared into the dark, and all Harllo had to remember him by was a handful tools hid-den beneath his cot.
For a child, thinking of the future was a difficult thing, since most thoughts of the future built on memories of the past, whether in continuation or serving as contrast, and a child held few memories of his or her past. The world was trun-cated forward and back. Measure it from his toes to the top of his head, tousle the mop of hair in passing, and when nothing else is possible, hope for the best.
In the faint phosphor glow streaking the rock, a T’lan Imass climbed to his feet and stood like someone who had forgotten how to walk. The thick, curved fe-murs of the emlava forced him into a half-lean, as if he was about to launch him-self forward, and the ridged ball of the long bones, where it rested in the socket of each hip, made grinding sounds as he fought for balance.
Unfamiliar sorcery, this. He had observed how connecting tissue had re-knitted, poorly at first, to these alien bones, and he had come to understand that such de-tails were a kind of conceit. The Ritual forced animation with scant subtlety, and whatever physical adjustments occurred proceeded at a snail’s pace, although their present incompleteness seemed to have no effect on his ability to settle his weight on these new legs, even to move them into his first lurching step, then his second.
The grinding sounds would fade in time, he suspected, as ball and socket were worn into a match, although he suspected he would never stand as erect as he once had.
No matter. Dev’ad Anan Tol was mobile once more. And as he stood, a flood of memories rose within him in a dark tide.
Leading to that last moment, with the Jaghut Tyrant, Raest, standing before him, blood-smeared mace in one hand, as Dev’ad writhed on the stone floor, legs forever shattered.
No, he had not been flung from a ledge. Sometimes, it was necessary to lie.
He wondered if the weapons he had forged, so long ago now, still remained hid-den in their secret place. Not far. After a moment, the T’lan Imass set out. Feet scraping, his entire body pitching from side to side.