Guy studied the two squires. “Well then, come with us if you’ve nothing better to do.”
They followed Guy into the first floor and down to the lift. Guy rang the bell, giving the code to raise them to the highest roof. Reaching it, they looked down upon the city and plain beyond. “Armengar.” His hand swept across the horizon. “There,” he pointed, “is the Plain of Isbandia, cut across by the Vale of Isbandia, the limit of our holdings to the north and northwest. The plain beyond that is Murmandamus’s. To the east, the Edder Forest, almost as vast as the Blackwood or the Green Heart. We don’t know much about it, save we can safely lumber at the edges. Anyone who goes more than a few miles deep tends not to be seen again.” He pointed to the north. “Beyond the vale is Sar-Sargoth. If you’re especially bold, you can climb the hills at the north edge of the vale and look across the plain to see the lights of this city’s twin.”
Jimmy studied the war engines upon the roof. “I don’t know a lot about this, but can those catapults shoot beyond the outer wall?”
“No,” was all Guy said. “Come along.”
They all moved back to the lift and Guy pulled the cord. Arutha noticed there was some code to indicate up or down, and, he supposed, the number of floors.
They descended to the ground floor, then lower yet. They reached a subbasement, several levels below the ground, and Guy led them from the platform. They passed a giant winch arrangement with a team of four horses hitched to a large wheel, which Arutha supposed was the power source for the lift. It certainly looked impressive, with large tongue and grooved wheels, and strange multiple rope and pulley arrangements. But Guy ignored the horse team and drivers, walking past them. He pointed at a large door, barred from the inside. “That’s the bolt hole out of here. We keep it sealed, for by some fluke or other, when the door’s open a constant breeze blows through here, something to be avoided.” Opposite the large door stood another, which he opened, leading them into a natural tunnel. He took a strange-looking lantern from beside the door, one that glowed with a lower level of light than expected. Guy said, “This thing uses some sort of alchemy to give off light. I don’t understand it fully, but it works. We risk no flames here. You’ll see why.”
Jimmy had been examining the walls and pulled off a white, flaky wax substance. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger and sniffed. “I understand,” he said, making a face. “Naphtha.”
“Yes.” Guy looked at Arutha. “He’s a sharp one.”
“So he’s quick to remind me. How did you know?”
“Remember at the bridge south of Sarth, last year? The one I fired to keep Murad and the Black Slayers from crossing? That’s what I used, distillation of naphtha.”
“Come,” said Guy taking’them through another door.
The reek of tar assailed their noses as they entered the chamber. Strange-looking, large buckets were hung from chains. A dozen shirtless men laboured to manoeuvre the buckets down into a huge pool of black liquid. The odd lanterns burned about the cavern, but mostly the place was shrouded in darkness. “We’ve tunnels honeycombing this entire mountain, and this stuff is found in all of them. There’s some natural source of naphtha below and it constantly bubbles to the surface. We must keep taking it off, or it seeps upward into the basements of the city, through cracks in the bedrock. If work was halted, the stuff would be pooling in the cellars of the city within a few days. But as the Armengarians have been doing this for years, it’s under control.”
“I can see why you don’t want to risk a fire,” said Locklear, in open wonder.
“Fires we can handle. We’ve had dozens, as recently as last year, briefly. What we’ve discovered, or rather what the Armengarians have discovered, is some uses for this stuff we don’t have in the Kingdom.” He motioned them into another chamber, where odd looking coils of tubing ran between vats. “Here we do the distillation, and some of the other mixing. I understand a tenth of it, but the alchemists can explain. They make all manner of things from this naphtha, even some odd salves that keep wounds from festering, but one thing they’ve found is the secret of making Quegan fire.”