Page 1 of Swords of Soul and Shadow (Gate Chronicles #3)

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TWELVE WAS MUCH TOO YOUNG an age to have blood under one’s nails.

It was also much too young to be working in the Zuprium mines, but the boy didn’t have a choice.

He longed for fresh air, not the sort he breathed now…stale, like water left in the summer heat. The scent didn’t match the mines themselves. More experienced miners told him he’d get used to it, that it would cling to him like sweat soon enough. If they meant to reassure, they failed miserably.

Uneven, jagged scraps of rock bit through the soles of his secondhand boots. He had to wrap both hands around the handle of his pa’s old pickax so he could swing it hard enough to harvest the crystal in front of him. His fingertips barely touched one another.

The crystal sang to him in its ethereal way, the only beauty down in mountain depths. In the lantern light, it glittered and grinned like the summer sun.

It knew it was to be harvested. It knew the boy only did this to keep food on the table. It knew he wanted to be anywhere but covered in Zuprium dust and sweat.

He did not know how. It just did. Its song told him so.

But its music wasn’t the only thing hollering in this hole; pain raised its voice with every swing of his pickax, complaints lodged by the bruises on his arms.

They would take a few weeks to disappear. First red as a mountain hornet, then purple, then green, and yellow. They always faded that way. The only difference was the boy could now pretend the mines had made them.

Even with Ma’s poultices, Pa’s mind was going too fast…

and with it, his restraint. None of the herbs in Ma’s garden could fix the brain.

James Hale needed help only doctors in Kyvena could provide, but when your only lot in life was a pickax and a handful of Zuprium dust, you couldn’t afford to reach that help… or pay the hefty price for it.

Instead, you simply went insane.

The dust ate at your mind and body until it couldn’t no longer. It got into every mountain cottage nook and cranny. Most mountain folk died at the ripe old age of forty—if they were lucky.

The boy hated it all.

He hated the mountains. He despised the way the dirt floor of his family’s one-room cottage smelled when rain leaked through the roof.

He loathed the haggard miners who traipsed through the door that wouldn’t stay shut, begging Ma for poultices to ease the pain.

It was the most they could hope for somewhere as far removed as Ravenhelm.

Their larger sister village, Stoneset, also boasted fruitful Zuprium mines. Maybe they had the ability to avoid what was known round those parts as the Fogs; maybe they didn’t. Maybe the capital ignored them all the same, so long as they met their Zuprium load for the month.

The pickax handle scraped his palms and fingertips, leaving splinters behind if he wasn’t careful. But careful wouldn’t carve these crystals out of the wall; swinging the pickax took nearly all his strength.

Most didn’t enter the mines sooner than sixteen, but with Pa getting worse by the month—the week—the day , the Hale family had no choice…

they needed to eat, and most miners only had stale bread or nearly rotten potatoes to trade, no money.

Not enough to pay Ma what her poultices were worth.

At ten, the boy’s younger brother, Michael, had figured out what herbs he could collect from the garden and nearby forest to make the potatoes taste nearly edible. It wasn’t enough.

The thought of his brother’s bright blue eyes and blond hair that never laid flat tightened his hold on the pickax. He threw his whole weight behind the next strike.

The crystal was about the size of his fist and emitted a faint glow in the lantern light.

To the untrained eye, it might look like gold, but it was something more valuable than any jewelry.

Its veins ran deep within these mountains; it told the story of the planet itself.

Some said it was magic. The boy said it was a way to live and a way to die.

The pickax struck true. A sharp cloud of dust floated out of the small crack left behind.

Beautiful as it sparkled in the light, but a slow death to those breathing it in.

A flashpistol bullet to the head would be quicker, but the boy would do anything to keep his brother out of the mines, even if it meant the boy lost his own mind by the time he was thirty.

It was funny to think that three months before, he’d been playing groggon in the field behind the tiny schoolhouse with his brother and friends.

He’d been faster and stronger than boys even three years his senior.

He’d dreamed the sport was his way of leaving, his ticket to fame and the capital.

On that particular day in June, he’d scored the winning goal and had basked in the light of victory. He’d gone home a champion.

Pa snapped that very same day.

Ten months later, the boy slammed the pickax again, his grunt echoing in the dim, roughly hewn corridor. The gas lantern above was a necessary evil so deep within the mountain. Hit the crystal wrong, and tatters of flesh would be all that was left when the miners dug you out.

It’d been six months since the last explosion. A record.

One he didn’t feel like breaking.

The boy wiped sweat off his forehead and coughed. He would get some herbs from Ma when he returned home. They slowed the process slightly, which was why his father was one of the lucky few who dodged the worst of the symptoms until they were older.

Lucky, too, that he’d only begun working in the mines after Cerl mercenaries killed his own father. Before that, James Hale had been a baker’s son, breathing in nothing more dangerous than flour.

The boy’s muscles ached. Soon, the call to end the day would go round, and he could go home and pray his father was asleep. He wouldn’t have to tiptoe around anything that might set Pa off.

A few of the miners nearby laughed at a crude joke the boy barely understood. The chuckles turned into hacking coughs.

He swung his pickax again.

At the same moment the tip connected with the crystal, the floor shook under his feet. The gas lantern swung on its hook so violently that it fell and shattered.

The boy blinked in the false twilight. Softly glowing crystals and another lantern further up the corridor were the only illumination. Shouts echoed all around him.

Mine explosion.

The boy’s heart hammered as the other miners sprinted toward the entrance, but all he could do was stare down at the dim outline of his pickax.

No one he liked was down in the mines. His mother and brother were safe in the cottage.

He was the only one in real danger, and even at twelve, he found he didn’t care.

If he died down here, Ma and Michael would starve without the pittance he received every week. They’d get along for a bit with scraps handed to them by neighbors for a while, but after that…

He gritted his teeth.

Then again, he wasn’t in the deepest part of the mountain where the more dangerous tunnels were dug.

The mine supervisor had taken pity on the boy.

He’d known his father before the Fogs had worked its way to his brain.

The supervisor wanted him to be a messenger runner.

The boy insisted on mining. It paid more.

And it would pay nothing if he ran out empty-handed.

Rage flowing through his veins, he swung the pickax and nailed the stone next to the cluster.

He laughed as rock shards bit his cheeks and exposed skin.

The little stings were nothing compared to the pain in his chest. He hit the rock again and again, loosening the crystal bit by bit.

His fingers bled worse than before. Blood ran down his hand and wrists from the busted blisters, but it almost made him feel better.

Maybe the Fogs had emerged early for him. That’d be just his luck.

Another rumble shook the cavern, and he paused again. He didn’t care, it didn’t matter…but two in one day, after six months of nothing? That seemed odd.

“Brother!”

The boy stopped his mad swinging and turned. He breathed heavily, blood still leaking from his hands like water from a cracked pot.

“Brother!”

Michael?

What was Michael doing in the mines?

The boy gripped his pickax hard, pain lancing through his palm like lightning.

He grimaced. The pain kept him focused. He trudged toward the tunnel entrance.

The remaining gas lanterns hanging from the interspersed beams down the main corridor flickered.

Only a third or so had survived the explosions.

The boy steadied himself on the wall.

He should’ve been terrified. He should’ve run to the entrance when the other miners had. He should’ve felt something other than rage. Any more explosions, and the entire thing would collapse with the boy inside.

But the only thing that frightened him right now was the sight of a small figure wobbling at the tunnel’s entrance.

“Brother!” Now that Michael was closer, fear and pain coated the syllables like sludge.

He probably ran to the mines soon as the village felt the first explosion. His brother had always cared more.

“It’s okay! I’m here!” The boy ran up the last slope. “What are you—"

Michael collapsed, his arms cradling his stomach.

Now the boy was afraid.

The boy threw his pickax aside and fell beside his brother, grabbing his narrow shoulders. “What happened?”

Something rusty and strange speckled his brother’s pale face. Splotches of the stuff coated his blond hair. “Soldiers—they—and Ma—” Michael sobbed, tears coursing down his face. The rusty freckles all over his face began to run like rivulets, brightening rust to a more recognizable red.

Blood.

Had Michael been inside the mines when the explosion happened? He should’ve been at the schoolhouse, or maybe even home helping Ma.