***
As Pandey drives her out to “the extraction site,” as they call it, she watches the wire fences out the window, running along either side of the road with a threatening tangle of razor wire lining the tops. “Seven miles long,” Pandey remarked when they first started out. “One hundred tons of aluminum, all stretched along the road. Though the fences are a little inconvenient now, as the road requires a lot of maintenance.”
“So you knew this wasn’t an expansion when you first brought me to the fort,” says Mulaghesh. “As you claimed.”
He coughs. “Ah, yes, ma’am. Cover stories and all that.”
“Well. I’m pleased to find you could dupe me so thoroughly, Pandey.”
“Always keen to impress, General.”
She sees tall forms up ahead: towering lights, another fence. Fences within walls, walls within fences, she thinks. It’s almost as bad as Bulikov. “We’re here, ma’am,” says Pandey.
They get out and approach the checkpoint. Another guard booth, another string of yellow and red warning signs. Pandey holds up their credentials, and the guards let them through.
“We call this the dock,” says Pandey. One side of the concrete structure has a retractable aluminum door, which is open. They walk inside the concrete structure, which is really just three concrete walls, a tin roof, and some bare bulbs. The floor is iron, and Mulaghesh notices there’s a seam running along it, forming a square.
Pandey walks to a small switch standing in the middle of the grated floor and says, “If you can, ma’am, please step closer.”
Mulaghesh does so. As she does she sees Pandey is pale and ashen. “Something the matter, Pandey?”
“Ah…Well. Not too keen on the mines myself, ma’am.”
“Why not? Do you have a problem with close, dark places?”
“Not that I’m aware of, ma’am. It’s just…” He pauses. “Well. You’ll see.”
“See what?”
“I hesitate to give you the wrong impression, ma’am. If you’re ready, ma’am…”
He flips a switch, and the floor drops out from underneath her. Well, not quite, but that’s what it feels like: as she steadies herself, she realizes that the center of the floor is like an elevator of some kind, made to bring up huge quantities of material.
Exactly how much thinadeskite do they plan on mining here?
At first the walls of the elevator shaft are sheer, smooth concrete. Then these begin to ripple and churn, turning into raw rock, dark granite with glinting silicates. Mulaghesh remembers Signe telling her about the tomb and inspects the shifting walls for any sign of architecture or civilization, but finds none. She cannot imagine there having ever been any ruin buried down here: it’s all just curdled stone and shadows.
A large tunnel rises up to them, its ceiling lined with oil lanterns. The elevator comes to a sharp halt. Ten feet before them is a guard seated on a stool. He nods at them.
“And these, ma’am,” says Pandey, “are the thinadeskite mines of Voortyashtan.”
He and Mulaghesh pace forward, then stop as she looks at the tunnel walls. They are still dark granite, but the walls are riddled with holes, as if giant termites have been laboring here for decades.
“So…how does it work?” asks Mulaghesh.
“I suggest we start at an active branch, ma’am,” says Pandey. “That’ll probably be more informative.”
They wind through the dark tunnels, ducking this way and that to avoid the dangling oil lamps. The air is cool and still, yet somehow Mulaghesh thinks she feels a breeze. She imagines the tunnels as the bronchi and alveoli of a giant lung, a vast underground mass of spongy tissue, gently flexing to push air through its endless corridors….
“I can see why you said this place was unpleasant,” she says. “There’s something odd about it.”
Pandey takes a sharp left. Mulaghesh hears a scraping and grinding up ahead. “Are you worried about it being Divine, ma’am? Like the Ministry is?”
“Well, yeah. Some. Can you imagine this stuff just naturally occurring?”
“Perhaps. Once when I was a child,” says Pandey, “I was walking along a dry creek bed. I walked it many times in my youth, but that day I saw one of the creek bed walls had fallen in, General. And inside this wall, in all the loose earth piled there, were dozens and dozens of crystals. Quartz, of course. I didn’t know that it was a commonly found thing, not then. I couldn’t imagine something like this just existing. You know? It was beautiful and wonderful to me, because I didn’t know any better. So now, faced with this strange stuff, I have to wonder if we just don’t know any better.”
“Maybe you have a point, Sergeant Major,” says Mulaghesh. “Maybe.”
“Imagine the first person to discover magnets. Or flint. Or milk! We Saypuris like to think we know so much about how the world works, ma’am, when in truth we’re as ignorant as anyb—”
Another breeze.
The lights fade around her.
The temperature drops—no, it plummets. Then everything goes full dark.
Mulaghesh keeps moving forward, arms and legs pumping.
What’s going on?
The ground is no longer hard stone, but soft.
Like moist grass…
A cold white light begins to seep through the darkness.
Mulaghesh squints and sees forms against the light, tall and thin.
Trees. It’s impossible—this can’t be happening—but she sees a small copse of trees ahead, the air heavy with mist and fog, the cold light of the moon shining through behind them. Pandey is nowhere to be found.
Somewhere there is the cheep of meadowlarks and wrens, and the soft sound of the ocean.
A stag slowly canters over the wet grass. A beautiful creature the color of pearl, its flanks shimmering in the moonlight. Its breath steams; its shanks are flecked with dark mud.
A young man emerges from the shadow of the trees. He is smeared with mud, the whites of his eyes bright against the earthen hues. Something in his hand glints: a small knife, made of bronze.
The stag looks at him, dark eyes watchful. It snorts, curious, distrustful. The young man extends his free hand to it. His palm is slick with something—honey.
She understands what will happen. No, it’s like she remembers: it’s like she’s always known that the white stag will come and sniff the honey on his palm, and he will leap forward and bury the knife in the stag’s neck, and he will ride it as it thrashes against him, leaking blood, and he will come back down to the waters from the cliffs anointed with steaming blood, fresh from his kill, and there he will face them, their helmets proud and regal and terrifying….
She thinks: How do I know this?