Page 15 of Dark Bringer (Lord of Everfell #1)

They stared at each other, the unspoken truth hanging between them: they were running out of time.

The mines took a piece of you. A little bite, every time you went down, until they’d eaten you whole.

Kal knew thirty-year-olds who looked fifty.

Bent and battered, with dirty creases that never went away.

Even the ones with brown skin like her looked somehow pale underneath, spending most of their lives in the dark.

And they all had the cough. Every time you slammed that pick into the wall, it kicked up fine particles of dust. They filled your eyes and nose. In time, they’d turn your lungs to stone, too.

She did not want to end up that way.

“Fine,” she said. “But if anything looks shifty, we get out.”

Durian’s whoop echoed off the buttes. Kal shook her head and pulled a torch from her pack. “Lead the way, dumbass,” she said.

The first mile was easy enough, following a main shaft they’d explored many times before. Old tram tracks ran down the middle, steel rails pitted with rust. When they hit the cave-in that always marked their end point, Durian pointed out a new tunnel.

“Check it out,” he said. “Someone’s been busy.”

Kal examined the opening. The rock looked melted, not hacked. When the Sinn delved new tunnels, it sometimes unearthed new seams. A lucky few had made fortunes in the defunct mines.

Durian lit a match and held it to the gap. The flame wavered.

“There’s air coming through,” he said. “Might even be another route back to the surface.”

Kal considered the tunnel. It meant Sinn activity, but that was a risk they took every time they hiked into the Zamir Hills.

“How far to the garnet field?” she asked.

“An hour, tops,” Durian replied with his trademark cocky grin.

The passage was wide and smooth-bored. Every hundred cubits, they stopped and turned off their torches to listen for telltale sounds that meant they weren’t alone.

There is no darkness like the darkness underground.

It has weight to it. Kal heard nothing but silence, so they kept going, the circles of light casting long, misshapen shadows along the walls.

Her grandfather, a lifelong rockhound before the lung rot killed him, always said the dead kept watch in the deep places.

Then she heard trickling water ahead. Another wider tunnel bisected the first. They forded a shallow river and came to a section where the ceiling had partially given way. Navigating the dark shaft beyond would require dropping to hands and knees.

“This is where I turned back,” Durian said, pointing to a spot on the rugged ground. “I found the garnet over there. Figured it got knocked loose. But you can feel the draft. I think there’s a bigger cavern beyond this. Anything could be in there!”

“That’s the problem,” Kal said, staring at the dark hole. “Anything could be in there.”

Durian flipped the hair from his face. “No risk, no reward.”

The crawl through the final passage was the worst. So tight in places that Kal feared they’d become wedged forever in the earth’s grip. But Durian’s hope was infectious, pulling her forward.

About thirty cubits in, the strap of his pack caught on a sharp protrusion. He wiggled and cursed until she ordered him to hold still. She managed to squeeze up past his legs and work it free. Then they were through, scrambling into a chamber that made Kal’s breath freeze.

“Travian wept,” she whispered.

The cavern was unremarkable save for what littered its floor.

Hundreds of stones, scattered across the ground like seeds cast by a farmer.

In the torchlight, they gleamed with vivid color: blue, scarlet, and violet.

The weird part is that they weren’t even rough.

All the stones looked cut and polished. Just lying there for the taking like some lazy afternoon daydream.

“Serpent’s eye!” Kal cried, scooping up a teardrop-shaped stone. She squinted into its luminous depths. Serpent’s eye was worth a fortune. A cache this size would be enough to buy a merchant cutter three times over.

Durian danced a lopsided jig. One leg was shorter than the other, twisted after a childhood fever, and he always joked that he’d fit in perfectly with sailors and their rolling gait. “Told you!” he crowed.

Kal took a closer look. “Hold up, I might be wrong. The colors aren’t banded. The facets shift in the light.”

Durian examined another stone, muttering to himself as it morphed from blue to violet to red in his palm.

“Plus, it’s cold,” Kal added. “I’ve heard serpent’s eye is warm to the touch.”

They stared at each other. Kal’s mind raced. New gems were rare, especially ones this unusual. It might be worth as much as serpent’s eye—or even more.

“We need a name for it,” she said, gathering more stones from the ground and filling her pouch. “Something that sounds expensive .”

Durian grinned. “What about kaldurite? Kal and Durian.”

“Kaldurite,” she repeated, testing the word. “Well, it’s better than durkalite.”

She laughed, the sound bouncing around the chamber.

In that moment, all the years spent in darkness scrabbling and digging and hacking were worth it.

This was the strike they’d prayed for—enough to put the Zamir Hills behind them forever.

Kal imagined standing on the deck of their own vessel, running ahead of a fresh salt wind.

The start of something vast and blue and limitless.

Durian lifted her up and spun her around until they both fell to the ground, dizzy and cackling hysterically.

“Bitch,” he shouted, “we’re rich!”

* * *

The riverboat shuddered against the current. Kal sat at the stern with Durian, two fat purses of kaldurite stones in their laps. Each time they opened the drawstrings to peek inside, the gems caught the sunlight, shifting from blue to scarlet to violet.

They’d left most of the find intact, taking two samples to sell in Kota. It wasn’t by choice. All their stupid laughing and yelling had drawn attention. When they’d felt the tremors of an approaching Sinn, the two of them had hightailed it out as fast as they could crawl.

But Kal felt confident no one else would come along and poach their fortune. The Clear Creek Mine was in a remote area far from any train depot. In their years of exploring it, she’d never encountered another rockhound.

“Once we sell this batch, we’ll go back for the rest,” Durian said. “And next time we’ll play it cool. In and out like little mice, girl.”

“Stop touching them,” she whispered, swatting his hand away. “You’ll wear the shine off.”

He laughed, that ridiculous bray that had earned him the nickname “donkey” from the other kids. “That’s not how these beauties work.” He leaned back, stretching his bad leg out before him. “I’ll buy the first round when we celebrate tonight.”

“Yeah, well, you owe me,” Kal said, but she was smiling. His optimism had always been infectious, a balm for her more practical nature.

The boat docked hours later at the bustling quay of Kota Gelangi.

They got off with the crowd, Durian’s limp pronounced after sitting so long.

The gem brokers’ district lay fifteen blocks inland, a maze of narrow streets with shops watched by hired muscle.

Most of the brokers were weirdlings—humans with just enough witch blood to sense the ley.

As always, they headed for Dona Lisi first. She gave fair prices, never trying to undercut them as most brokers did with young rockhounds. Her tiny shop smelled of sandalwood, the walls lined with locked display cases.

“It’s my favorite speculators from Pota Pras!” She greeted them with a smile, adjusting her magnifying eyepiece.

Durian produced his mining license, a clay disc stamped with a nine-digit number. Kal hovered behind him. They’d chipped in together to buy one since they didn’t come cheap, and you had to have a license to sell gems to a broker.

Dona Lisi copied the number into a ledger. “So what have you brought me today?”

“We found something special,” Durian said, unable to keep the excitement from his voice. He placed three of the kaldurite stones on the velvet pad she kept for examinations.

The old woman’s eyebrows rose slightly as she picked up the first stone. “Brilliant color,” she murmured. She held it to the light, then placed it on her scale. “Good weight.”

“It’s not serpent’s eye, is it?” Durian blurted. “I mean, we think it might be a new gem.”

“We shall see,” she replied, reaching for her testing tools.

Traders used various instruments to assess gems, but the most important was a simple ruby—one hot with ley power—that would resonate with any other hot stone.

Dona Lisi used a set of calipers to hold the ruby over the first kaldurite stone, then the second, then the third.

She eyed them regretfully. “I’m sorry. There’s no resonance. None at all. These stones are empty.”

Durian shook his head. “No, no. That’s not possible. They came direct from the earth.”

All raw gems held ley. It was only depleted by lithomancy.

“Then they were in a dead zone.” Domina Lisi shook her head. “It happens sometimes. Areas where the ley runs thin, or stones that formed improperly. They’re pretty, yes, but without resonance . . .” She gave them a pitying look.

“How much?” Kal interrupted, her voice flat.

“For cold gems? I can offer you six draghas apiece. Enough to make decorative pieces. But they’re of no use to the witches, and you both know that’s where the real money is.”

Durian’s face crumpled. They’d hoped for a hundred per stone. Maybe two hundred. He handed over the raw chunk of garnet. “What about this?”

Dona Lisi tested it. “Now this one is hot. I can take it off your hands for, oh . . . fifteen dragha?”

“But we found it in the same place,” Durian protested. “So it wasn’t a dead zone.” He eyed her with suspicion.

Kal reached for the gems. “We’ll try elsewhere,” she said, stiffly.

Dona Lisi shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She closed the ledger and returned to polishing a chunk of agate.