Forgotten Stairs Read online

  “What?” Gern and I asked at the same time.

  Erom seemed to grasp the alarm he was causing and said, “Sorry, no. Sorry. Nothing is the matter. Kyoden—what did he say about the mine?”

  Gern was angry but managed to reply. “The long road beneath the lonely peak.”

  I was getting as upset as Gern. “What are you talking about, Erom?”

  “My quarry,” he replied cryptically and pointed along the straight, narrow lines of meadow that reached away from the spot in every direction. The one reaching south had been ridden flat.

  “These were Kyoden’s roads,” he said. “This spot was an intersection of four. The breaks in the trees reached away at every cardinal and ordinal. The dense gravel foundations of the old roads won’t take tree roots. You only have to kick at the grass to uncover the hard pack beneath. You can also see that a road made its way toward my quarry.”

  Recognizing the meadows for what they were did not in any way solve the mystery of his behavior. “Bondsman,” I said, “explain yourself.”

  He wouldn’t stop smiling. He said, “Kyoden spoke of a mine. I think I found it. The long road beneath the lonely peak. This is it.”

  I looked south at the peaks of the Daavum Mountains that stabbed up over the trees. “There is nothing lonely about them.”

  “Not south, north,” he said and pointed along the forest-choked road. Every Chaukai craned with me. And there it was. Mount Thumb, a barely discernible burp of rock—but it was there.

  The Chaukai did not seem impressed. Gern spoke for the group. “There is nothing in the hills around the quarry. Generations of Chaukai and a horde of Yentif prospectors found nothing.”

  “Not in the hills beyond it. Not near it. Beneath it. Come. Come! Yes! It must be there.”

  He tore off, Gern and I close behind. The rest charged the road after us. The quarry was farther away than I remembered—as far away from Urnedi as the harbor and enough to stress the ponies.

  We startled the quarrymen as we thundered in. Erom hollered for them to settle down while I took in the sight of the place he had transformed. His quarry was a massive egg-shaped divot in the wide face of the tall dome of dark granite that punctuated the bottom of a thick ridge. The forest was cleared well back, and each terraced carving of dark stone was lined with scaffolding and cranes. Teams of Fell Ponies powered the cranes, and quarrymen crowded the place like angry ants. Erom and his foremen quieted them before rejoining us.

  “At first,” he said to us, “I’d thought nothing of all the crushed stone and failed blocks stacked at the back of the quarry. Pilings and failures are typically moved out of the way, but it is not unusual. After I used up most of the pilings to replace the foundation of the failed curtain wall, I found this.”

  He gestured to the back wall of the quarry while he made his way across. It looked to me like the walls of Urnedi—a set of gray blocks stacked four high and eight wide. All were cracked or missing corners—the failures he described—a high and useless wall of broken stones.

  He slapped the centermost block at the base of the wall. “There is no reason at all for this one to be here. It is perfect.” And then he pointed, and we all looked back north. The road ran straight away from the spot, and above it was the lonely peak of Mount Thumb.

  The rest of the afternoon was maddening. Erom’s men demonstrated their prowess with the stone and pony teams. One after another of the tall blocks was pulled down and dragged out of the way. It took all eight teams to get the last to pull away from the wall.

  “Go, go, go!” Erom yelled, the ponies strained, and the block slid free in one loud and long grind of granite across the smooth floor of the quarry.

  We stepped tentatively toward the revealed space. Behind it was a tunnel that descended slowly into blackness. It was tall, wide, and carved from a light-colored stone that looked far less formidable.

  “Was the entire quarry built as a disguise?” Selt asked in a long gasp.

  “I don’t think so,” Erom said as he studied the stone. “It looks like the quarry worked its way back and found a vein of quartz … loaded with silver, perhaps?” He considered the tunnel for a long moment and then answered his own question. “Yes, I would bet my eyes and legs that they found silver. The quarry became a mine, which Kyoden must have ordered hidden before the Hessier made their way here.”

  We stood transfixed. Gern found and lit a set of lantern boxes, and passed them out.

  “Is it safe?” I asked our mason.

  Gern tapped Erom on the shoulder.

  “Oh, sorry. Yeah, I mean, yes, my lord. This tunnel’s roof is solid granite. No seams, no framing … the work this took … it is built like the road over the mountain. Meant to last … forever.”

  “So it’s safe?”

  He nodded, took an offered lantern, and led us inside.

  The wide tunnel sloped steadily down, weaving ever so slightly back and forth. Its ceiling was made of the same hard gray granite the entire way. The walls and floor were made of purple- and gray-swirling quartz. Every surface bore the mark of hammer and chisel, and every dozen paces there was a niche in the wall for stowing an oil lamp. The light from our lanterns danced strangely upon the swirling white, purple, and browns of the quartz.

  We came to a level patch that entered a large chamber. A second, much wider shaft exited the far side.

  A breeze pushed down the tunnel and tussled briefly with the lanterns. I shivered, and everyone looked to Erom for an explanation.

  “Still ventilated,” Erom observed and went on to say. “The shape of the quarry catches the mountain air and points it down the tunnel. This is a well-built mine.” He stepped carefully toward the next shaft.

  We followed him farther down. It was odd. The floor sloped slowly away, made of the same quartz. But the ceiling and walls were hard to understand. The walls had been dug away and replaced with more of the same heavy granite blocks like the walls of the keep. And the ceiling was a perfect arch that reached away, level, as if from a palace hallway.

  “Why did they go to all the trouble?”

  Erom took a very long look at the arch. “I … don’t … know.” The way he said it worried me.

  He led us farther in. We lost sight of the ceiling high overhead.

  “What are those?” Gern asked. We all looked at the deep, square notches in the wall and began to find them all along the tunnel. They were evenly spaced, and the ones on the right-hand wall were set deep. A few of them sprouted the rotting remains of heavy timber posts.

  “Cross beams for flooring,” Nace said and pointed at the matching sets that projected into the deep gloom on the same plane as the ceiling high above. “One, two, three—four levels so far. They were working the entire vein in long tiers.”

  “I don’t like it down here,” Fana said and took hold of Gern’s arm.

  “Great Spirit,” Erom exclaimed, and we had to trot to keep up with him after that. My shins began to hurt from the descent. I counted fourteen more rows of grooves as we went, and then, so very suddenly, we met a chest high wall of quartz that was loaded with swirls of silver. I looked up and could only blink.

  Before us was a place I do not think a man should visit unless prepared—well prepared long in advance. It was as if we had found the stairway of a mountain god. Each rough-hewn step was as tall as a man and made more or less, of silver. It gleamed in the lantern light, and the dark granite walls of the place left the eyes with nothing else to look at. Other lanterns began to arrive behind us, and with each we could see farther up the stairway. I did not have to guess how many steps there were.

  Erom stepped forward with a heavy pick, and after a moment to gather himself, he brought the tool around and down. Quartz clattered wildly around us, and a large piece fell free.

  We gathered close as he took hold of the fist-sized mass and held it up for us to see. All along and through it, wires of silver curved and swirled like dancing smoke.

  “Native silver,” Nac
e said. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Have you ever worked a mine like this?” I asked him.

  “Not like this … never like this,” he said softly, as if he were in a cathedral. “In Dahar and Havish there are pit mines that give up terrible ore—loaded with lead and limestone.”

  Kyoden and his kin lit through me then, soft and happy. I caught a glimpse of a long line of lanterns marching out from Katat toward the mine.

  Kyoden! What are you showing me?

  But he was gone, triumphant and content.

  We gaped at the silver stair.

  “How much is it worth?” someone asked.

  Nace voiced an estimate, a pure guess it seemed, but no less believable. “Ten, forty … ninety-million-standards worth … the wealth of a dozen nations.”

  “Can you fashion it into standards?”

  “Yes …” he said but then looked very troubled.

  Selt groaned then with such exasperation I worried that a hundred Hessier stood behind us. He looked ill.

  He said, “When was the last time you saw new silver coins? Any of you?”

  No one answered.

  “Ohh,” was all I could say when it dawned on me, too. The rest wore puzzled expressions.

  Selt explained—better than I could have. “The Yentif mint very few new silver coins. If we use any meaningful amount of this silver, we will draw the attention of every monied interest in Zoviya. It is gold we are expected to have—new and shiny gold weights and quarters given as stipend to Prince Barok from the Yentif goldmines of Urmand. Gold, not silver. We could not hide the existence of the mine very long.”

  “Hold up a moment,” Gern said. “We can too, use it. Leger and I were able to exchange rough bars of silver for gold at Alsonvale. Why couldn’t we do the same with this? Trade it in pieces. You’re a banished Yentif. Wouldn’t it only make sense that you would be melting down all of your silver?”

  “In bits and pieces,” Selt said. “But can you defend this mine from a quarter-million Zoviyans? Because that is how many would be here by the end of spring if we take anything but a trifling amount of silver south. We have millions but can spend none of it.”

  A thought struck me like the kick of a horse. I straightened up so fast, my back and neck cracked frighteningly. “Selt, your bank. We lend it. We gather up this silver, and we lend!”

  “But, my lord … that is the same problem only worse, we could not lend silver—”

  “Stop, Selt, listen to me. We don’t lend coins. We lend notes. What did you call it … a merchant bank, where craftsmen and sellers of goods conduct large transactions. All of it could be done on vellum.”

  Fana asked, “What happens when someone redeems a note, something too large for us to cover with what we have in gold?”

  “We repay it with silver,” I said, “We give them new coins. Coin put on account with us by noblemen from distant lands. Enhedu doesn’t have a silver mine. Enhedu has a bank. Who are we to say where our customers came by their coin?”

  They gathered close around me.

  “Who would trust the Bank of Enhedu?” Nace asked. “What rate of interest could we charge? I would not borrow from you if all you gave me was a sheet of vellum. No one would accept it. They would be worthless.”

  “You think too quickly,” Selt said, resurrecting the arguments he and I had had all winter on the subject. “We have an entire province of suppliers who could be convinced to trust the prince’s notes. If you were a visiting merchant in need of capital to purchase our goods, how willing would you be to borrow from Prince Barok if everyone at our markets would willingly take them?”

  “Sounds like a fantastic deal for them. They get our goods and leave us with worthless notes …” He stopped there and looked back up the silver stairway. “Okay, so perhaps not worthless. But you see my point.”

  “I do,” I told him, “which is why a merchant bank needs many locations. We open a bank in Almidi, Wilgmuth, and every point of call upon the north coast that will have us. We lend money at half the rate that the Kaaryon charges and get goods and capital flowing as swift as our ships can carry them.”

  Erom said, “You could lose a great deal—men would abscond with the notes and fail to pay the interest or principal. We do not have the resources to chase debtors.”

  “Loss is no longer a concern,” I told him.

  “Hold a moment,” Gern said. “I haven’t understood a word of this. Why in the world would we want to build a bank?”

  “Imagine if Gern and Company was to borrow 500 silver worth of notes,” I said. “You could then spend those notes to buy horses, wagons, and warehouses from others in Enhedu or anywhere else they are accepted. The money you charged for drayage and storage would pay the interest and slowly the principle of the loan. Meanwhile, the men you bought the horses, wagons, and warehouses from would use those same notes to make other purchases, and so on.”

  “Now,” I asked my captain, “how much silver have we used from the mine to make all of those transactions possible?”

  “Why, none.” He looked across at Fana. “Really, none?”

  I said, “Not until someone brings one of those notes to the bank, asking to exchange it for coins. If managed properly, we should be able to pay with what has been paid to us in interest. And if we run out of that, our last resort is to use the freshly-minted coins from the mine.”

  Selt and I looked at Nace, wondering how long it would take him to begin minting coins. He was clearly already considering it. He was examining one of the thick silver wires.

  “Heh. I would stake my reputation on this having a higher purity than any coin the Yentif have ever minted.”

  “That helps us?”

  “Indeed. The ore that the Yentifs mine has to be smelted—expensively and painstakingly smelted to get it pure enough to be coin quality. This silver here—it is ready for minting. So, long story short, what would take me years to do in Dahar with drums full of ore, will take no more than half a season. All I need is a forge, die, and a good hammer. It would hardly count as work.”“

  Nace, I leave you in command here. Selt, build me a bank.”

  18

  Geart Goib

  I would have worried about Sahin, but Leger left no time for it. He could make men move fast enough to forget they were married, hungry, and wounded. The great western city of Alsonvale was in sight beyond the lip of the next wide ridge, and it made no sense to me whatsoever that we’d come upon it already.

  “There’s good ground. We make camp here—on the quick,” he said and pointed at a dry slough just off the road we traveled. He’d get no argument from any of us. My pony was exhausted, and I could not wait one moment longer to shed the caribou hides and thick-skinned boots we’d all been wearing since we’d fled the estate across the Kaaryon River. We made convincing enough Bermish traders from a distance, but our disguises would not survive the inspection of a Hemari gate captain. We’d marched northwest along the Kaaryon’s twisting roads, and Leger managed to find the one good bridge downriver of Alsonvale so that we could cross to the north side. But now we were so close to the east wall of the city that I could hear the noise of the 12,000 Hemari barracks on the far side.

  The Hemari were not what worried Leger, though. I anticipated his next question. “I have not felt any Hessier today. They were all in Bessradi.”

  He relaxed a bit in the saddle and ordered the company to camp. He inspected the men’s progress for a time before he turned back to me and asked, “So who is this librarian of yours?”

  “Our first moment’s peace in two days, and that is what you ask?”

  “Sahin will be fine,” he said with a confidence I could not understand. “It’s your librarian I am worried about. Avin doesn’t seem to share your desire to bring him along.”

  “He is a priest of the Conservancy. His job in Bessradi was to find men capable of magic and deliver them to the Hessier. He is far more interested in learning the words that I know than d
oing his Conservancy duty. He’ll give you no trouble. He did us a service alerting us to our danger when I sang.”

  “It was a selfish act. I do not count it. What is his value? More words, I suppose?”

  “Yes. That and knowledge of our enemies. He will tell me how the Conservancy can hear and find those who can sing. I hope it is something that can be taught to the Chaukai.” This answer softened his expression. I asked, “Do you still intend to enter Alsonvale in the morning?”

  “Sahin’s success changes nothing. We should do well in Alsonvale tomorrow, buying all that Enhedu needs.”

  “You measure success strangely.”

  He shrugged. “Sahin has all of Zoviya aimed east. We could not have planned it better, and I don’t care if it was a blessing of the Spirit or Sahin’s blind arrogance that we have to thank. Every moment he moves east is a good one for us and Barok. Sahin wanted to be the bright and shiny end of Her spear. He’s gotten his wish.”

  “His sacrifice is hard to stomach.”

  “You are too much a fan of worry, Geart.”

  It was my turn to shrug. “I welcome the torture of not knowing Sahin’s fate. The worry keeps the desire to sing at bay.”

  “It’s as bad as that?”

  “The words I have learned wait for me like wine and kisses.”

  “Why can’t you sing them?”

  “They are made with the thoughts of the Shadow, not the Spirit. Singing them could kill me. I’ve come close enough to that too many times already.”

  “Hmm. I’ll not live long enough to understand a world with magic. You will let me know when I have reason to worry?”

  “Avin would, if nothing else.”

  He nodded and turned toward the city. “When was the last time you were here?”

  I studied it briefly. It was much the same. The valley it filled would never inspire. Its high tan walls separated the wealthy from the rest, and the traffic across the flat blue ribbon that bisected it was the same waterbug swarm of ferries, flat boats, and barges. Alsonvale boasted none of the fine bridges that knitted Bessradi together.