Black Ice: The Rings of Belzantra

Interruption

Interruption

My pick axe struck the hard black stone over and over, yet not a thing seemed to happen. Sparks flew with each clang! of metal on harder mineral. The black stone was priceless; even the smallest flecks would be swept from the well worn floor, made of the same black material.

I hefted the heavy axe over my head, and swung it forward, allowing its own weight to smash it into the wall before me. The tool rebounded, but I was ready for it. I braced, absorbing the shock into arms too numb to feel it.

There was no light around me. True, a lantern burned behind me and to the left, somewhere near the overseer. But I doubted that he could actually see anything. I certainly couldn’t. The black cave swallowed all light, not a fleck of color other than the obsidian walls for the lanterns glare to reflect upon.

I doubted that he could even see me. I couldn’t even discern my arms as they swung forward to strike the stone again, as coated as they were in stone dust. They would shower the black powder off of me, before escorting me to a sleeping chamber. Here, no one was a woman, or a man. I was a worker, and every ounce of powder they washed into the collecting drain at the end of the night was another ounce to make the Owner’s pockets heavier. Privacy was a distant memory, the feel of silken fabric on my skin even farther gone from my mind.

My shoulders were as numb as my arms, but I could feel when my axe stuck fast into the stone; there was no rebound. I stood, unsure what to do. I was working in a place where there were no cracks, no fissures. It was an newly uncovered portion of stone; sleek and smooth, it was as unbroken as a newly-thrown clay pot.

I turned my axe to the left, grinding and twisting the pointed end against the small hole I had managed to chip into the unpiercable surface. The tink of small chips of stone bouncing off the floor around my cloth wrapped feet was a sound more foreign than my own long-lost laughter.

I took a chance; placing my hand around the tip of the axe, I pulled it from the stone and aimed it against the small crack under my fingertips. Replacing my hands around the well worn shaft of my axe, I struck at the same weak spot in the stone.

With the sound of a small explosion, rock shards flew like sharp knives through the air. A line of fire burned across my cheekbone as a chip sliced across my pale, dirty skin. But I didn’t care. I was not unaccustomed to the sting of pain.

The sound of my axe hitting the floor echoed over hushed whispers as those working around me stopped their repetitive mining motions. I heard the Overseer rush from the mine, the sound of his polished boots clattering off the hard tunnel.

I kneeled, crunching on chunks of stone as large as my fist. Closing my fingers around a piece of the stuff, I lifted it. Its weight was enormous, heavier than I ever would have imagined.

It fell to the ground with a sizeable thud. My hands found the wall, exploring the hole I had made in the stone. No one had ever made a hole. The best, most favored miners were granted the cracks; places where they might be lucky enough to chip off a shard or two a day. They would be given extra rations, a second blanket. I had enough stone around my feet to gain a feast. A hundred feasts.

The stone wall was hollow where I had hit it. A hand span across, I reached my arm deep into the wall. The air was unimaginably cold. My already frozen hands, wrapped in threadbare cloth against the weather, ached painfully as seemingly-arctic breezes transformed my fingers to icicles.

But I could still feel when my hand hit a pile of small objects. Round, hollow. Warm? My finger tip slipped inside of one, rolled it around, and slipped it underneath the rags around my hand.

Hands grabbed the back of my shirt, if you could call it that anymore, and ripped my arm from the hole. I hit the ground, my spine slamming against the chunks of rock which now littered the normally clean floor.

I groaned, rolled over onto my side, and gripped the piece of rock in my hand. I slipped it into the folds of fabric swathed around my hips, resting it in a small pocket which normally, hopefully, I could stash a crust of bread.

The Overseer was speaking, but even my years in the mine hadn’t made his rough speech anymore understandable. His language was harsh, and as a slave, I was hardly given the chance to learn it, let alone understand a tense, whispered conversation.

The large man who had watched me work for countless years reached his arm into the wall. I could see the barest glint of light off of his light brown leather coat as he leaned against the wall, pressing his grizzled face against the cold stone to reach as far back as he could.

My fingers spun the warm ring of metal around and around under the wrappings on my hands. It fit me perfectly, smooth and thin against my skin so unaccustomed to the heat it exuded.

I was yanked to my feet by a mixture of my oily hair and the cloth wrapped around my body. The pain made my eyes water, but I didn’t say a word. Miners were slaves, we had no voices. If the Owner could, he would have cut out my voice when he bought me.

“How did you do this?” The words registered, but I hardly recognized them. It had been... ten years, fifteen perhaps, since I had heard my native language. But I did not answer. The Overseer doesn’t speak to miners.

He shook me, his hand embedded in my hair to the scalp. I croaked, trying to utter a word, unsure of how to make the sounds I wished to make.

My heels lifted from the floor, my hair tearing from root. I could feel the smallest trickle of blood run down the back of my neck as he shook me again, suspended by my hair.

“Sir...I used... my axe.” I gasped between harsh, rattling breaths as I tried to press my toes into the floor to ease the pain on my head.

The ground rushed up to meet my face as he released his hold. My nose hit the ground first, bursting like a plum in a splash of blood. My nose was significantly softer than the obsidian stone.

TO BE CONTINUED