The Seal of the Worm by Adrian Tchaikovsky Page A

some betrayal.
    ‘So tell me,’ she challenged the blind man.
    ‘I don’t understand.’ He was a remarkably poor liar.
    ‘What’s waiting for us at Cold Well?’ she pressed.
    ‘You wanted to see . . .’ Messel’s words petered out.
    ‘Who knows we’re coming? You’ve sent word ahead to the people who live there?’ Abruptly she was certain of it. ‘What’s waiting for us, Messel?’
    ‘Sent to them? No, no,’ he insisted. ‘But there is one . . . a mentor, one who you must meet. The Teacher, we call him. One who still tells the oldest stories. One who spoke of the sun to me once; yes, he did.’ The word was given great ritual significance that matched Messel’s evident lack of understanding of what such a thing as the sun could possibly be. ‘Him, you must meet, if you are to do anything, if anything can be done for you . . . He, only he.’
    ‘But he’s not of Cold Well.’
    ‘He is of all places – a traveller, a wise man,’ Messel insisted. ‘And, yes, I have sent word. I have left markings and messages since I found you, only for him. And he is coming. He is coming back to Cold Well for you, only for you.’
    She opened her mouth then to gainsay him, to refuse to place her hand in the trap. The echo within her mind called back, And then what? Where will you go, without him? What have you left to trust, if not this blind guide?
    After resting several times, they heard Cold Well before they saw it. The sound rang out across the stony expanses, cutting across the murmur of running water. They heard a disconcertingly domestic sound: hammer on anvil, as from any forge anywhere.
    Cold Well was a wound. That was Che’s first thought. It was a gash in the earth, jagged edged and organic, and it had been eaten there by human occupation, as though the mere presence of people had corroded the rock like an acid.
    Approaching the settlement at one of the points where a narrow track led, switching its way down, she saw how the miners had made this place their own. The walls of the pit were lined with round gaps like eye sockets, level after level of them, the inhabitants carving out their own community from the walls of the grave they had been set to dig. How many? She could see hundreds of openings and no hint of how deep they went or the numbers they housed.
    She did not realize how much light there was until she let her Art slip. She had assumed that the locals had as little use for illumination as eyeless Messel. Instead, though, firelight glowed from most of the entrances – the same weird hues as before, nothing so wholesome as wood providing the fuel, but still a sign of warmth and life in this barren wilderness. Deeper in, there were greater fires, too. Che could look down and see vast glowing vats, streams and strips of incandescence that were being constantly renewed as they cooled. They were smelting there, an operation of a size to gladden any Helleren mining magnate’s heart.
    ‘What is it they make here?’ she wondered, and Messel went still and looked back at her as he was about to start on the downward track.
    ‘Tin, copper, iron,’ he explained. ‘Salt-coal as well, though some must be brought in. Swords and armour for the armies of the Worm. Food for it in a good year. Sometimes food in a bad year too. We starve, then, some of us.’
    They were all holding back at the lip, unwilling to let themselves be drawn into the pit. Che was looking beyond, trying to make out more details of the scurrying figures who were bustling about the smelting works, ascending or descending the steep paths, but the glare of those fires was dispelling her Art.
    ‘I see no guards.’ Thalric, relying on the firelight, had made more headway. ‘How can you have a slave town with no garrison?’
    It was hard to tell what Messel thought of that, but his reply was hushed. ‘They come, often. For their tax and for our work.’
    ‘But you’re making swords,’ the Wasp pointed out. ‘Can you not