* * *
After spending the night with Sardelle, something Ridge resolved to do more often, whatever he had to do to manage it, he found himself struggling to pay attention to the lecture from the general’s daughter. Oh, Professor Vespa surely didn’t mean it to be a lecture, but by the time she had explained the significance of the tenth type of rock from her sample case, Ridge was hoping General Nax would show up to send her away. Odd, when Sardelle had recited summaries of all those books, he hadn’t found it pompous or boring, but Vespa had an air of self-importance that made him want to pull out something else to work on while she spoke. He also got the impression she thought he wasn’t that bright.
“It’s important that we start getting the miners to categorize the non-valuable debris they clear out in each level,” Vespa stated. “I’m here to determine the most likely types of rock that we can find crystals in.”
“Someone has already determined that,” Ridge said. “That’s why we’ve found four in the last couple of weeks.”
“Someone.” Vespa crinkled her tiny nose. “A geologist? An expert?”
“I’m not sure what field she studied. She’s a prisoner.”
“You’re taking excavating advice from a prisoner? Oh, Ridge.”
“She’s educated.” Ridge probably shouldn’t be talking about Sardelle at all, but he didn’t want to have to institute some idiotic rock cataloguing system—he could just imagine how well that would go over with the miners, having to separate and label every chunk of dirt they removed—when they had a better way.
“From where?”
“She didn’t say.” It occurred to Ridge that he might have an unexpected resource to unearth a little more about Sardelle’s mysterious past. “Although, maybe you’ve heard of her. I think she was an archaeologist or in a similar field before… ending up here.” Did geologists and archaeologists work together from time to time, read each other’s papers?
“What’s her name?”
“Sardelle Sordenta.”
Vespa shook her head. “I’ve never heard of her.”
“Hm. She has some interesting ideas about where the crystals come from. Have you ever heard about there being a Referatu outpost here at some point in the past? Here, inside the mountain itself?”
Vespa took a step back. “The sorcerers? Of course not.”
She was genuinely surprised. Huh. Ridge had thought he simply didn’t spend enough time in the halls of academia to have stumbled across the information himself. Well, a geologist wasn’t an archaeologist. “You might find it interesting to actually go down into the tunnels,” he said. “See the mine shafts. You can tell that some areas appear to have been mined before, and then collapsed.”
“Truly? That’s fascinating.” She smiled, flashing a pair of dimples at him. “And did I just hear you offer to take me on a tour down there?”
“Er. I’m actually already late to meet Captain Bosmont to work on the flier.”
Vespa held up a hand. “I wouldn’t go near that thing if I were you. My father was furious when he saw that rusted junk pile—his words, not mine—in the middle of the courtyard.”
“Yes, I was there to receive his opinions on the project yesterday.” His opinions on everything.
“I heard him say he wants it scrapped.”
“He’ll think differently if we’re able to use it to defend against the Cofah, who could be back at any time.” Another reason Ridge didn’t want to dither around giving tours. The skies were clear. The snow and wind that had been keeping the airship away wouldn’t be a hurdle now.
“I’m sure he will. I would love to see you fly.”
Ridge would love for Sardelle to see him fly. Her background might still be a mystery to him, but he had gotten the impression that she had never seen a dragon flier before, despite her academic familiarity with the Denhoft book.
A door banged open out in the hallway. “Colonel? General?” came Captain Heriton’s excited voice. “News from the mines!”
Ridge pushed to his feet. “Shall we see what it is?” He held the door open for Vespa.
“Thank you, Ridge.”
She walked out first and as Ridge stepped out, General Nax strode out of the office next door. Not surprisingly, he scowled at the back of Vespa’s head, then at Ridge, having caught them both coming out of the same room.
“Hurry,” the captain called from the base of the stairs. “Out by Tram Three. This is unbelievable.”
“A crystal?” Vespa asked.
“Must be,” the general said.
Ridge wasn’t so sure. Heriton had been as excited as anybody at the finding of the first crystal—the first one in over a year—but now that it had become more common, he didn’t shout for everyone to come look when a miner walked out with one.
Ridge jogged across the courtyard. Quite a few people, soldiers and miners, had gathered around the tram exit. An ore cart full of something that wasn’t ore rested in front of the shaft. The dusty contents looked to be…
“Books?” Vespa asked, jogging too. “Dug out of the mountain?” Her face screwed up in disbelief.
Ridge was less surprised, having been warned of the Referatu by Sardelle. This must be the first true proof, other than the crystals themselves, as to a prior civilization living down there. One that had apparently had a mountain collapsed upon their heads.
Men moved aside for Ridge and the general to approach.
“We found ’em just this morning,” a miner was saying, “and some old dusty carpets too.”
Another miner standing beside him elbowed him and pointed to Ridge. “Tell them about the bones.”
“I know, I know, I’m getting to it.”
“Be quiet,” General Nax snapped. “Everyone. Except you.” He pointed to the first miner. “Explain everything. No one interrupt him.”
Several men muttered yes-sirs. A couple of them glanced at Ridge, as if they felt betrayed he had allowed this more authoritative—or despotic, depending on how one looked at it—figure to take charge. He kept himself from rolling his eyes or doing anything else that would let the men know how he felt about Nax. Channeling some of Sardelle’s maturity, perhaps. He took a deep breath and listened.
“It looked like an old room that had caved in. Part of some kind of underground fortress or castle or something. There were two crystals. Two! Within ten feet of each other. The engineer took those right away, but we brung up these books too. But, like Two-five-three said, there were bones too. All smashed from the rocks, but human skeletons for sure. Two of ’em that we got to right away. Could be more. Bunch of us are still digging down there.”
The general was staring at the books and didn’t seem to be paying attention.
“Good find,” Ridge said. “Thank you for the hard work.”
The miners knuckled their foreheads in something approximating a military salute. “Sure, boss. Sure.”
“What is this?” General Nax asked, touching the spine of one of the books with a single finger. The title was written in Iskandian, albeit an archaic-looking version of the text, with more flowery touches than one usually saw on a book.
“What is it, Da?” Vespa squeezed past two men for a better look.
“Rituals of the Harvest Moon,” Nax read, then jerked his finger back. “Rituals. These are… sorcerous filth.” He looked at a few more titles. “All of them.”
“If this was a Referatu stronghold,” Vespa said, “those titles make sense.”
Ridge winced. He hadn’t told her that believing she would speak openly of it. A mistake. He shouldn’t have said anything at all, a notion reinforced when the general’s head whipped around. “Who told you that?”
Vespa looked at Ridge, a question in her eyes.
He snorted to himself. She might as well have thrust a finger at him.
“I heard it from a prisoner,” Ridge said when Nax’s scowl turned in his direction again. “I thought it might be an accepted fact in the academic world,
so I brought it up to the professor.”
The miners were looking back and forth, sharing confused expressions. Ridge couldn’t blame them. They ought to be proud of finding such an old and unique find, but the general certainly wasn’t giving them that impression.
“Burn them,” Nax said. “Burn everything that comes out of there.”
“What?” came a familiar cry from the back of the crowd.
Ridge winced again. He couldn’t blame Sardelle for protesting this, especially if these artifacts were what had brought her all the way out here, but he wished she hadn’t let that cry slip out. In truth, it sounded like one of surprise as much as one of protest, and when he spotted her, wearing the usual prisoner’s garb and with a laundry basket in her arms, he also spotted the regret in her eyes, the cringe on her face. She, too, knew she had made a mistake.