Cart spent the next few weeks supervising the soldiers’ work in the canyon. They fought off a few half-hearted worg attacks, but the worgs’ strength was broken. They cleared away the bones that formed the worgs’ labyrinthine temple and built a palisade using lumber from the surrounding hills. And they built scaffolds up the wall at the canyon’s head and began chipping away at the stone toward the buried crystal within. First they cut down from the top of the canyon wall until they reached the azure pool, then they began chipping the rock away from it.
Ashara supervised the excavation, which meant that she spent most of her time on the scaffolding, watching soldiers swing their picks to make sure that they didn’t strike the crystal. Once in a while, she called a halt and put her hands against the stone. Then she either told them to continue or ordered a switch from picks to chisels. The rhythm of the swinging picks changed to a rattle of tapping hammers as the last thin layer of stone fell away to reveal the gleaming blue stone beneath. Then the soldiers lowered the scaffold and swung their picks again. Every few days, they raised the scaffolds again and cleared more stone away from above the jutting crystal.
Haldren paced like a caged tiger, yelling at soldiers who flagged in their work or made any errors. He had earned some good will from the soldiers in the battles against the worgs, but he squandered it away until the soldiers burned with resentment toward him. Either he was oblivious to it or he thrived on it-with every passing day his vitriol grew more caustic. Cart was sure that if he had not been there, the soldiers would have killed Haldren in his sleep, and he wasn’t sure how long his influence could stay their hands.
Three weeks after the excavation began, Kelas arrived at the head of a caravan. A platoon of soldiers escorted a train of carts laden with food, lumber, and a jumble of metallic objects Cart couldn’t begin to identify-tubes and cylinders of all sizes, gears and wheels, and a staggering variety of other shapes. A team of artificers and magewrights from House Cannith walked in the middle of the caravan, and miners and smiths rounded out the convoy. Haldren’s soldiers cheered when the caravan first came into view, and laughed and clapped the newcomers on the back as they passed through the palisade.
Kelas and Haldren disappeared into the Lord General’s tent, leaving Cart to supervise the expansion of the camp and the placement of supplies. Though it was hectic, everything went smoothly. The sheer number of new arrivals made the work go quickly-until a problem arose with the Cannith contingent. They wanted to place their tents and supplies near the scaffolding and commanded the soldiers and miners who were already established there to move. When Cart came to sort the problem out, they ignored him, continuing to yell at the other soldiers as though he weren’t there.
It had been years since Cart had encountered that kind of treatment. As the only warforged in a squad of human soldiers during the Last War, he’d had to earn their respect-but he’d done that in their first battle. As he worked his way up the chain of command, he occasionally met resistance from his subordinates, but the army did not tolerate insubordination. On the Lord General’s staff, he commanded absolute obedience. But many of House Cannith-because they had made the warforged during the war-refused to acknowledge the warforged as equals, let alone superiors.
Cart turned to a soldier beside him. “Get Ashara,” he said. He hated to resort to that-bringing in someone else to bolster his authority-but he couldn’t see any other option. He stood, arms crossed and impassive as he listened to the argument continue, until Ashara arrived.
Ashara approached quietly, unnoticed by either of the bickering factions. She stood behind his shoulder and spoke quietly. “What is it?”
The Cannith representatives were junior members of the House, technically subject to Ashara’s command, and when they noticed her presence they slowly fell silent. She said nothing, but put a hand on Cart’s back.
“House Cannith, your place in the camp is to the south,” Cart said.
An artificer, a young man with pale hair and a constant sneer, stepped forward and looked up at Cart. The Mark of Making covered one of his arms, left bare by the sleeveless silk shirt he wore.
“We do not take orders from you,” he said. His arrogant condescension was what he had first expected from Ashara.
Ashara remained just behind Cart, her position reinforcing his authority. “There are two people in this camp who outrank Cart,” she said quietly. “Lord General Haldren ir’Brassek is one, and Kelas ir’Darran is the other.”
The blond man stepped sideways to face Ashara. “You expect us to obey a cart? A tool?”
Ashara’s hand flew like lightning to slap him across the face. A gasp went through the entire Cannith contingent.
“I told you his rank,” she said coldly. “You will behave accordingly, or the Baron will hear of it.” She turned and strode away, confident that her command would be obeyed.
His hand on his burning cheek, the blond man looked up at Cart again.
“House Cannith,” Cart repeated, “your place in the camp is to the south.”
The artificer spat on the ground at Cart’s feet and rejoined his contingent. Cart watched, seething with anger and grateful for his immovable face, until they had gathered their belongings and moved to the south of the camp.
Cart didn’t have a chance to seek Ashara until evening, with the new arrivals settled and the next day’s plans set in place with Haldren and Kelas. He found her walking alone near the palisade.
“Lady Cannith,” he said.
“Cart, how many times do I have to-”
“Ashara. I owe you an apology.”
“Oh, no-I should be apologizing to you. Their behavior was outrageous. I’m ashamed for my House.”
“It’s nothing. And certainly not your fault. But I’m sorry for the way I’ve been treating you. You’ve shown me nothing but kindness since we met, and I… I questioned your motives.”
“You thought I was trying to manipulate you.”
Cart nodded.
“Isn’t it funny?” she said, looking away. “We get so used to deception that we see it everywhere.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
“I don’t blame you. You trust me now?”
“You took my side against members of your own House.”
Ashara smiled up at him, all warmth and affection. “You were in the right.”
They walked together around the perimeter of the camp until the second watch of the night.
The excavation progressed quickly. The miners extended the head of the canyon from the top down, slowly revealing the bluish crystal, like a great glass monolith jutting up from the ground and leaning out into the canyon. Cart began to worry that if they cleared the stone around it all the way to the canyon floor, it would topple forward, but Ashara assured him that it extended at that angle deep into the earth, far deeper than they would dig.
As more and more of the crystal came into view, Cart started thinking he saw movement within it. At times it seemed like a faint light shifting inside, at other times like a dark smear. He tried to get a clear look, but it seemed to resist his gaze, vanishing into the azure depths as soon as he fixed his eyes on it. He hated it, somehow-looking at it made him inexplicably angry.
He wasn’t alone in feeling perturbed by the crystal. Arguments broke out more often among the workers and soldiers, sometimes escalating into violence. As Cart broke up the fights, he had to keep a tight rein on his own anger to make sure he didn’t injure the people he was trying to calm. Energy flagged, work on the excavation slowed dramatically, and the night was filled with the moans and whimpers of tortured dreams.
“Do you feel it, too, Cart?” Ashara asked. They stood together, looking up at the crystal from the greatest distance possible as the crimson sun of another day sank below the horizon.
“Anger, unease. At least I’m spared the nightmares.”
“Be grateful.”
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s going on?”
“It’s them.” She pointed to the crystal. “The Secret Keeper and the Messenger.”
“The imprisoned fiend?” Cart said.
“And the spirit that binds it. They’re both angry. The Messenger fears that we’ll release the fiend, and the Secret Keeper is furious that we haven’t done so yet. I think it also suspects what we actually plan to do.”
“Which is what?”
“You don’t know?”
“Haldren only tells me what he needs me to know.”
“They’re going to power the Dragon Forge. They’re the enormous knot of magical power our artificers will tap. And we think we can do it without breaking the bonds that hold them.”
“You think? What if you’re wrong?”
“If we’re wrong, it will be disastrous. So we can’t be wrong.”
Cart felt tired. Not in his body-muscle fatigue was alien to his construct body. But his mind was weary, sick of the schemes and plans and ambition. He shook his head.
“I hope you’re right,” he said.
The situation grew bad enough that Haldren got involved. He put his own force of personality to work to counteract the influence of the imprisoned spirits and even used magic to soothe the emotions of the soldiers and workers. The pace of the work increased again and fewer fights broke out, but the nights still seemed disturbed. Cart circled the camp while the soldiers slept in shifts, and the things he heard made him jump at shadows in the dark-fevered whispers and fearful whimpers, soft groans and sudden shouts.
Cart walked in his own nightmare, though his body needed no sleep. Shadows seemed to stalk at the edges of his vision, shapeless figures lurking behind corners or flitting across the sky. At times he wheeled to confront an approaching attacker, sure he’d seen the flash of steel in the darkness, but he found nothing. Whispered voices nagged at the limit of his hearing, wordless murmurs that seemed to threaten pain and destruction. All the soldiers, miners, and artificers he passed on his patrols looked suspicious or actively hostile until Cart fixed his eyes on their faces.
Disaster struck on the ninth day after Kelas’s arrival. A miner’s pick struck exactly the wrong place, as far as Cart could determine afterward, and a sheet of rock split away from the crystal beneath. Its collapsing weight caused a landslide that swept away the scaffolding and buried a dozen workers under a cairn of boulders. Cart felt the earth rumble, saw the rock begin to crumble, watched workers fall and then disappear beneath the rocks, but before he crossed three paces toward the scaffold it was over. A cloud of dust hung like a stormcloud over the ruin left behind.
He was thunderstruck. As he stared at the wreckage, though, a movement in the crystal caught his eye-the black smear within seemed to grow, or to surge to the surface. For a moment he thought he saw the shape of enormous hands pressed against the glass of the crystal column. He heard a sound like the beat of a muffled drum, quiet but clear, and a howl arose in answer-then another, then a chorus of faraway howls, as though the worgs were responding to a distant call. There could not have been many worgs left in the canyon, but they must have all joined that sinister choir.
Cart saw soldiers he knew as brave and battle-hardened fall to their knees and cover their heads, crying out in prayer or despair. Others just sank to their knees in silence, overwhelmed by the combination of grievous loss and the possibility of a renewed assault. He knew he should take command, get the soldiers doing something-anything-to get their mind off the cries of the wolves and dealing with the disaster at hand. But he was as frozen as the others.
Kelas emerged, took stock of the situation, and began giving orders. He sent soldiers to the palisade, to prepare for another worg attack. Miners and more soldiers started picking through the rubble, hoping against hope to find any survivors, and others carried the rubble away to fortify the palisade.
Kelas was no more forgiving than Haldren when a soldier, overwhelmed with grief and horror, walked away from her work for a moment or fell to his knees at the discovery of a comrade’s crushed body. There was work to be done-work that would take their minds off the horror.