The Dark Ability by D.K. Holmberg Read Free Book Online Page B

to press in on him, squeezing him, and he closed his eyes to distract from looking at his surroundings, trying to imagine open skies and water stretching as far as he could see. He could not shut out the sounds.
    The other men who had come with him made their way toward the lantern. Rsiran heard them greeted as if recognized by others already there. A few men laughed.
    “Finally got caught?”
    “Damn Elvraeth,” someone said.
    Rsiran opened his eyes and turned cautiously toward the lantern. He wasn’t accustomed to anyone speaking of the Elvraeth with such disgust.
    The thin man hunkered near the lantern, a circle of others surrounding him, light reflecting strangely from his scar. He leaned toward the others as he spoke.
    “What did you do?” someone asked.
    The thin man shrugged. “Got caught outside town with an Asador merchant trying to sell silks.”
    “That’s not a crime.”
    The thin man laughed. “It is if they aren’t yours!”
    Everyone around him laughed. One even clapped him on the shoulder.
    “Any word on the—”
    The thin man raised a hand, cutting the other off. He looked around, casting his gaze around the cavern, settling briefly on Rsiran before turning back to the others. “You think they don’t have ears, even here?”
    “Not in here,” another said. “They want nothing from here.”
    “’Cept the ore.”
    “Yeah, that. I hear it’s coming slowly.”
    One of the men grunted. “That’s what we’ve been told to do.”
    “We’re still moving it, only not to the city,” one of the men said.
    “Why are you here?”
    Rsiran jerked around at the sound. The voice was soft and thin. A face that looked no older than ten peered at him from a half dozen paces away, squatted down atop a blanket. Dark hair was long and lanky, pushed back behind his ears.
    “Does it matter?” Rsiran asked. He tried listening, feeling a growing unease about what the other men had been talking about. The way the men spoke sounded nothing like anyone he’d ever met in Elaeavn. In some ways, they sounded more like Brusus and his friends.
    Rsiran’s heart skipped. What if Brusus had connections to the men in the mines?
    He needed to keep away from them, and not let anyone learn who he was. Already, he might have said too much, revealing the fact that his father had sent him to Ilphaesn.
    The boy laughed softly as he crept closer, crawling on hands and feet and looking animal-like as he did. “Does it matter?” he muttered, mostly to himself. “Always matters. To them, at least,” he said, motioning toward the men around the lantern. “Surprised you didn’t want to be closer to the light.”
    Rsiran shook his head. “Too many people there,” he said. Too much risk, he didn’t say.
    The boy smiled with a flash of pale teeth. “That’s why they like it. The longer you’re here, the more you’ll want to be around others.”
    “How long have you been here?”
    The boy tilted his head as if trying to remember. “Nearly a year.”
    Rsiran struggled to keep the surprise off his face. From what he understood, most sentences were for six months, rarely longer. “Why aren’t you near the light then?” He avoided the question he wanted to ask.
    The boy smiled again. “Some of us like the dark,” he answered and scurried off toward the back wall. Soon he was a shadow in the darkness, watching Rsiran intently, his eyes the only part of him clearly visible.
    Rsiran lay down on his blanket and closed his eyes. He struggled to ignore the sounds around him, the conspiratorial voices of those near the light now speaking in quieter tones, the occasional cough, and a steady tapping from deeper in the mines he did not understand. Sleep came slowly the first night.

Chapter 7
    T he following day he awoke with his back throbbing as a loud gonging startled him from a restless sleep filled with dreams that he vaguely remembered. The light in the cavern had not changed; the same lantern glowing a soft orange making