The Elemental Jewels (Book 1) (10 page)

Another stream of energy emerged from his left hand again, striking the tunnel wall and blasting more chips away, reaching inside the mountain to knock its innards virtually into particles of sand, and advancing quickly, chewing up foot after foot after foot of stone every second.  The energy of the jewels was advancing faster and farther in a matter of moments than he could advance in a day.  He felt the strength of the jewels, not diminishing very quickly, and he stepped forward to move closer to where the end of the tunnel was moving away from him at a pace that was almost as fast as he could walk.

Within a few steps he found he was stepping upon the gritty, sandy chips of stone that he had just demolished, and he kept advancing, keeping his head ducked low to avoid the clouds of gritty smoke that roiled along the roof of the passage.  He stepped a yard deep into brand new tunnel, and then another yard, and then further again, each step taking him deeper into the tunnel, and deeper into newly excavated space.

“Grange?  Where are you?” he heard Garrel call minutes later.

Keep it secret
, the voice of the spirit warned him.  He cut off the power of the jewels, and removed his right hand from his left arm. 
Tell him you found a natural cave in the mountain
.

“I’m here,” Grange called.  He was in total darkness without the glow of the power of the jewels.  The tiny spark of Garrel’s torch was growing slowly larger as the bearer advanced towards Grange.

“What happened?” Garrel asked in astonishment.

“I broke down a wall, and found a natural cave,” Grange answered blandly.  “This mountain must have a lot of them.  With some luck, we might be able to get out the other side soon.”

“You’ve been breathing tunnel gas too much!” Garrel exclaimed.  “We won’t live to see this tunnel finished.  But this is amazing!  I’ll have to have an extra shift brought in here to help haul all this sand and gravel away,” he said thoughtfully.

“We’ll tell them you knocked the whole thing down yourself!” Garrel laughed as he slapped Grange’s back.  “Take a break, while I go get the others to haul this away.  We won’t catch up to you for at least a fortnight,” he said as he turned to go.

Grange waited until his friend’s torch was out of sight, then he raised his arm and took a deep breath.  He found the use of the gems’ power to be an extraordinary experience, one that was beauty to observe on one level, while also frightening, but also fulfilling on a deeper level, as though he shared a kinship with the jewels and was a part of their completion of purpose by expending the incomprehensible powers.

He placed his hand on the arm, focused deeply within himself, and found the willing cooperation of the gems waiting.  The beam of power burst forth, and the further excavation of the tunnel recommenced.

The smoke and the heat and the light and the flying stone fragments were overwhelming once again, making the first several yards closest to the crumbling tunnel end uninviting, so Grange kept his distance as before, remaining back, pointing his hand – while it slowly swept back and forth, up and down – and continually edging forward.

He stopped after another half hour, resting and letting the air clear out.  He began to walk backwards through the pitch black tunnel he had excavated, holding his hand on the wall to allow him to keep his balance in the dark, and it was several minutes later before he finally spotted torches in the distance.  Garrel and a trio of others were scooping rubble into their wheel barrows just inside the beginning of the tunnel he had blasted that day.

He stopped and rested, ate dinner with Garrel that night, and the next day he walked back to his working location at the end of the tunnel, as he heard the squeaking approach of the other wheel barrows that were ready to start the day hauling away the rubble of the newly excavated tunnel.

Grange journeyed into the darkness of the new stretch of tunnel, but heard the echoes of the voices of the other workers arriving at Garrel’s location.

“Doesn’t he like people?” Grange heard one worker ask Garrel.

“Doesn’t he like light?  He never has a torch with him,” another asked, before the distance and the echoes in the tunnel smothered Garrel’s answer.

Grange was anxious to resume working with the power of the jewels again.  He had sensed their presence all through the night, through more dreams about his past, about his time in the orphanage, about the money he had given to Constance, and more.

“Let’s get going,” Grange spoke aloud when he heard his footstep echoes come back to him quickly, a sign that he had reached the end of the tunnel.  He expected the spirit to respond, to direct him in the use of the jewels once more.

“Alright you rocks,” he said as he raised his arm and touched the stones with his fingers.  “Let’s start digging a tunnel!”

There was silence, darkness, and inactivity.

“Spirit?” Grange called.  “Why aren’t they working?”

There was further silence.

“Alright,” Grange muttered, “I can do this.  Come on stones, let’s open up the tunnel!” he urged.

There was no activity.

“Stupid rocks!” he muttered.  “Do what I tell you to!  You’re part of me now.”

Partners, not slaves
, the concept was presented to his awareness, and suddenly he was aware of the jewels’ collective consciousness, in the background of his own.

You do not command, we do not command.  We are partners, doing what we chose to do together
, the statement was firm, definitive, and carried a tweak of a reminder of the statements to that effect made the day before.

“I’m sorry,” Grange apologized, contritely.  “I’ll learn,” he promised.

Yes, you will,
the jewels agreed. 
You must
.

“Can we please begin to enlarge the tunnel?” Grange asked.

That’s better
, the voice of the Spirit sounded at last, not as unsettling as the voice of the stones, coming as it did from outside his mind. 
I believe you’ll learn
.

“I will learn,” Grange agreed, and then he suddenly focused, as the jewels sent messages to him, directing him to will the energy to release, and melding their own desire for the energy with his, so that his left hand burst into a glowing plasma of energy, which sent a blazing streak of power at the tunnel wall, and the excavation recommenced.

Grange felt himself drift into a semi-conscious state of awareness, as the power of the gems flowed through his hand, and he felt their personas active within him.  They were pure in their goals and pursuits, though he could not truly decipher their goals, and they were single-minded.  But they also seemed limited, and he wondered if they understood subtlety – then he wondered if it mattered.  They seemed fully able to help him affect an escape from the dark, crushing open the tunnel that he had been confined to for a month, and that was all that mattered.

We approach the end
, the jewels interrupted his thoughts.

“It’s time to quit?  Is it already sunset outside?” Grange asked.  He must have completely lost track of time as he had shuffled through the progressive destruction of the newly formed section of the mountain tunnel.

Yes, almost, and yes,
almost,
the gems answered. 
Our energy will reach the end of the mountain in moments.  We will be done for now, and it will be night outside.

“Free?” Grange felt emotions sweep over him.  His tired arm quivered, and the ray of energy bobbled as it struck the tunnel wall, then suddenly dissipated.  The tunnel was completely dark once again, and Grange’s eyes failed to quickly adjust to the absence of the glowing power.

“Are we free?” he repeated the question.  He stepped forward, his boots crunching through the stony residue that he had blasted free, and he smelled fresh, cool air, a bold, exhilarating scent that swept through his nasal passages and made him cough in surprise.  A few more steps, and he suddenly discerned lightness and darkness visible through the hole in the mountain’s side, and then it grew larger with each step, and he found himself outside, looking up at the stars and the dimly glistening glaciers that topped the peaks of the mountains all around.

“Yes!” he shouted.  “Free!”  The air was cool, but not terribly cold, he realized.  Up above though, where the ice and snow lay on the mountain tops, it would be terribly chilled. 

“I’m free,” he spoke in a quieter voice, speaking to himself.  He comprehended suddenly that he had truly been granted freedom from his doom in the tunnel.

“I need to go get Garrel,” he said aloud.  He and his friend had the opportunity to escape.  They could leave the labor camp of the Tyrant behind, and follow a path to freedom, a chance to begin life anew in some other city, astonishing and frightening as that thought was.

He turned and re-entered the tunnel, smelling the pungent odor of newly carved stone, and feeling the temperature of the tunnel air that was moderated by the geothermal mass of the mountain.  Grange started to cautiously jog, trying to increase his speed as he traversed the long path back.  Grange jogged for an hour, in pitch darkness, then slowed to a walk to catch his breath just before he saw a small glimmer of light, the rays that issued forth from the weak candle that Garrel carried as he came in search of Grange.

“Where have you been?” Garrel asked when they rendezvoused minutes later.

“Outside!  I’ve been outside!  I did it!  I reached the other side of the mountain – we can go free!” Grange found himself babbling excitedly to his friend.

“Calm down,” Garrel replied.

“Grange, no one says we’ll reach the other side of the mountain for months!  Not even with these tunnels you’ve found.  Do you mean you think you’re close to the outside?” Garrel corrected and asked.

“I’ve been outside tonight.  I saw the stars and the snow on the mountaintops.  I breathed fresh air.  Do you know how different it is from the stale stuff in here?” Grange insisted.  “Let’s get our blankets and dinners, and go.  We can be miles away before they even know we’re gone,” Grange urged.

“It’s late, and I’m tired.  I’m sure you must be too,” Garrel replied, disbelieving.  “Let’s just eat dinner and get to sleep.”

“Garrel, come look.  You have to,” Grange wheedled.  “If you come with me and we can’t get out, I’ll do your work for you tomorrow,” he bargained.

Garrel sighed in resignation.  “Alright, let’s go,” he capitulated.   “It’ll take us all night to go get our stuff, so let’s get started.”

It took them more than an hour to retrieve their items and to reach the new exit from the tunnel.

“I can’t believe this!” Garrel marveled.  “I can’t believe there were caves exactly where we needed them!  And they go all the way through the mountain – all the way!  It’s like the gods were doing this for us.”

“Not the gods,” Grange muttered gently.

“Let’s get going, while the candle still has some light left,” Garrel said.  A moment later, a gentle gust of fresh mountain breeze blew the candle out.

“Oh well, I’ll save it for tomorrow night,” he said philosophically, and the two of them began picking their way down the rugged mountainside in the dark.

After an hour of stumbles and near-falls, they found a path on the mountainside, a narrow, uneven trail, apparently made by mountain game.  They chose to walk in the direction that headed along a downward angle, but after five minutes, it started to climb upward.

They stopped after several steps and looked at one another.

“Which way should we go?” Garrel asked.

Grange looked at the starlit landscape before them and behind them.  “Why don’t we just go down?” he asked.

Garrel looked down the steep mountainside that sloped away from them.  There were no sheer cliffs or bottomless crevasses in immediate view – only a dim slope whose features were indistinguishable in the starlight.

“Okay, let’s go.  The next time we have to stop, we’ll eat dinner,” he agreed.

And so they meandered downward for a quarter of a mile, until they found another game trail that had a distinct but gentle slope towards the valley below.  They diverted onto the trail without speaking, and walked comfortably downward into the valley between the mountains, where a sizable stream of briskly cold water gave them something to drink while they finally stopped to eat their distasteful dinners.

“What will we do tomorrow?” Grange asked rhetorically.

“We’ll follow the stream, as long as it doesn’t lead us back towards Fortune,” Garrel replied.

They slept by the stream bank, in a cluster of bushes, and woke up to sunlight and birdcalls.  Grange slept soundly, without dreams or stirrings, too exhausted physically and emotionally by the events of the past day and night – the relationship with the jewels, the tunnel-blasting, the escape to freedom, and the climb down the mountain – to rise to any level of consciousness.

“So that’s the sun,” Grange spoke first, as the bright disk peeked over a mountain’s high shoulders in the east.

“That it is – an old friend who it’s good to see again,” Garrel agreed.  “And if it’s rising in the east – as I remember it did,” he said solemnly, “then this stream is going north, and that’s the way we want to go – away from Verdant.  So let’s follow it until it stops going there.”