The Watchman's Cider

The iron rungs had left red smears across Halward's palms, and the air in the chamber smelled of iron oxide, dead grease, and damp coal dust that clung to their wet wool. The lantern in the stranger's hand rattled against its wire handle as he took a shallow breath, finishing the warning he had begun as they hauled themselves through the grating.

"The municipal square," the man whispered, his teeth knocking behind chapped lips. "The cobblestones were lifting before dusk like dough in a trough. Whatever has been sleeping under the valley is pushing its way up into the daylight. Everyone who had boots ran north toward the ridge. I am Silas—the watchman for the sluice works. Only I stayed to mind the valves, though God knows why."

Silas doubled over, coughing violently into a rag of grimy grey linen that came away spotted with dark, clotted blood. He tucked the handkerchief into his greasy coat, reached to a bench beside him, and lifted a dented tin flask. The faint, sweet smell of mulled apples drifted across the cold flagstones.

"Drink," Silas urged, holding the flask out with a trembling forearm. "You look like dowsed rats, all four of you. It's warm still. Take the edge off the water-chill before you think of stepping outside."

Osric stood back against a dormant flywheel, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes never leaving the old man's twitching fingers. "We don't need cider," the rogue said quietly. "We need to know which street leads clear of the square. If the town evacuated, the wagon gates on the valley road will be choked or barred."

"Drink first, boy," Silas rasped, his voice tightening. "The wind off the ridge will freeze the spit in your mouth."

"He offers hospitality, Osric," Padraig murmured, though the cleric kept one hand near his holy symbol, his brow furrowed as he watched the yellow light flicker across Silas’s sallow cheeks. "Though if the church foundations are collapsing, every minute we linger below the surface is borrowed time."

"I don't trust an old dog who sits by a dry pump while his neighbors take to the hills," Clement said from the rear, wringing river mud from his sleeve. "The whole valley is sour. Let us get to the surface hatch and see the sky with our own eyes."

Halward took a step forward, his boot sole scraping grit over the stone. He was not looking at the tin flask. His gaze had dropped to the three-legged stool where Silas had been resting his boots. Cut directly into the lime mortar beneath the stool's splayed legs was the neat, rectangular line of an oiled trapdoor, its iron ring flush with the stone and recently cleared of soot.

"Silas," Halward said, his voice flat and hard. "What is under the seat?"

Silas did not answer. The white of the watchman's eyes curdled, the grey irises flooding instantly with an inky, pitch-black gloss that swallowed his pupils whole. The flask clattered to the flagstones, spilling lukewarm cider across the cracks, and Silas's hand whipped beneath his mantle toward a long, slender bodkin tucked into his waistband.

"Light!" Halward roared, dropping his shoulder to lunge.

Before the blade could clear the scabbard, Padraig raised his silver icon and spoke an ancient syllable of censure. A clean, searing burst of divine radiance exploded from the holy symbol, illuminating every rivet of the iron pipes and blinding the shadowy corners of the station. Silas shrieked, clutching his face with blackened fingernails as the brilliance scorched through his clouded sight, his knees folding beneath him.

Osric darted through the glare like a shadow. Slipping behind the reeling watchman, he brought Silas hard to the flagstones, pinning the old man's wrist with his boot. In three fluid motions, Osric dragged a coil of hemp rope from his hip, lashing the watchman's elbows behind his shoulder blades and cinching the knot tight with an iron toggle. Silas collapsed onto his stomach, groaning into the dirt, dark drool leaking from his parted lips.

"Madness took him," Padraig whispered, his chest heaving as the light dimmed back to the dull yellow glow of the lanterns. "The black glass has its fingers in his skull."

While Halward kept the point of his blade near the watchman's neck, Osric kicked the stool aside and threw open the trapdoor. Set into a masonry recess below the floorboards sat a heavy iron lockbox, bound with riveted straps and green with cellar mold. Osric wedged the blade of his hunting knife under the corroded hasp and leaned on the hilt until the tumbler gave way with a sharp snap.

Inside, fifteen old silver coins jingled against the bottom, heavy and unclipped. Beneath the silver lay a thick, brass-bound journal, its calfskin cover stained with lamp oil. Osric flipped the pages open with his thumb; inside were hand-drawn maps of the drainage bypasses, marking sheep paths and old smugglers' flumes that circumvented the main gate entirely and led out of the valley through the western crags.

"An exit," Osric said, looking up. "He wasn't waiting to die. He was waiting for—"

The bedrock beneath their boots gave a sickening, violent lurch.

It was not the grinding slide of an ordinary cave-in. From deep within the mountain's root came a heavy, resonant thud that hit the soles of their feet like an iron mallet—a rhythmic, subterranean pulse that rattled the dormant copper pistons in their housings. A second later, another beat struck, louder than the first, shaking centuries of black soot and splintered bark down from the ceiling timbers.

Silas began to laugh from the floor, a wet, bubbling sound.

Before Halward could haul the watchman up, the entire eastern masonry wall of the pump station tore open. Dressed ashlar blocks and lime mortar exploded inward in a deafening crash of dust and tumbling stone. Through the gap lunged a towering mass of black glass, its jagged edges catching the lantern light in sharp, razor reflections, trailing thick, writhing tendrils that lashed against the floor, shattering the floorboards and burying the iron ladder to the upper street under a mountain of sheared rock.