Toilday, Mid-Day

It’s funny how some things always stay the same, until one day, they don’t.

Case in point. I was visiting Sera and we were talking about basically nothing, and out of the blue I said to her, “I need to get out of this place.” It is a familiar refrain. She got real quiet and we stared at the wall for a while before she said, “You and me both”. And then we lamented the fact that it took quite a bit of money to strike off on your own, and that was something neither of us had. It’s a conversation we’ve had dozens of times, and it’s like we’re reading off a script.

Diamond Lake isn’t a strike-it-rich kind of town: it’s more of the your-dreams-have-died variety. If you’re lucky, you can work and make enough to stay afloat until you get sick and die. If you’re really lucky, you can do that without resorting to living at Jalek’s. For most folks, that means earning enough to stay trapped here. Getting out is so far out of reach that most don’t even talk about it.

Sera and I like to buck the trend.

At least she’s got an excuse for being an optimist: her family is better off than most. They’re not going to give her money just so she can leave—family businesses are their own sort of Diamond Lake—but they could all go if they wanted to. Mine’s not like that and there’s never been an option other than funding my own way, and that’s not exactly panning out. Apprenticing for Osgood has paid okay (no one gets rich on barmaid money, and I certainly didn’t), but there’s not really a lucrative future there. I mean, I’m no genius when it comes to figures, but even I can see that seven apprentices to one smithy is not great math.

So it’s an old conversation, one that dates back a couple of years, with the same beginning, middle, and end. At this point, I think Sera and I have it just because it’s familiar and there’s a twisted sort of comfort in the familiar.

And then it changed.

I don’t like visiting The Feral Dog. For one, I used to work as a server there and going inside brings back memories that are better off repressed, and for two, it’s run by Kullen, who somehow manages to be sleazier than the tavern. But his nephew Zhog works there, and I was dropping off a kukri for Zhog, so I was visiting The Feral Dog. And we got to talking, like we do, and it was like deja vu: I was having that same conversation again, only substitute him for Sera.

Like his uncle, Zhog is a half orc, but that’s both the start and end of the family resemblance. There is not much love lost between the two, either. Kullen has taken care of Zhog since the latter’s parents died, and while I am sure he feels a familial obligation there, I don’t doubt that his loyalty is influenced by having access to cheap labor. Kullen has what you might call a “transactional” parenting style: as long as his nephew works in his tavern, Kullen provides a roof over his head and enough food to eat. Zhog wants to get out from under his uncle, but that takes money which he doesn’t have, and isn’t going to make by working for just food and lodging. So it’s the same story, just with different actors.

Unlike Sera and I, Zhog actually had a shot at it, but he ended up snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. He received some sort of inheritance from his parents when he turned 17, and spent it getting equipped to get out of Diamond Lake and see the world. Zhog has been an acolyte of Desna for as long as I’ve known him, and “see the world” is one of those Desnan things where you take a pilgrimage without a destination. Unfortunately, math wasn’t his strong suit, either, and he spent his inheritance on the “getting equipped” bit, and there was nothing left for the part where you “see the world”. And thus, he’s still here. So, that’s only mostly the same story, I guess. I’m calling it close enough.

One of the few things I miss about being a barmaid, or working in a tavern in general, is that you overhear a lot. People are pretty interesting, and by extension, taverns are interesting places—even the seedy ones. While Zhog and I were bemoaning the state of our finances, our ears picked up the conversation at a three-top that was a group from Korvosa. I don’t know why, but adventurer types from out of town always seem to end up in the Feral Dog, despite it being, literally, the worst of their options. It’s like a magnet for people who like to complicate their lives. We could tell they were adventurer types because they were talking loudly and indiscreetly about exploring the Stirgenest Cairn. Typical.

Diamond Lake is surround by ancient burial cairns from some long-dead culture, the kind that built enormous and elaborate tombs to prove their greatness. All of them have been raided by explorers since their discovery decades ago, and consequently emptied of valuables because who doesn’t love a little grave robbing? And yet, for some reason, every year people from out of town—most seem to hail from Korvosa like this bunch, but we get treasure hunters from all over Varisia and beyond—get the idea to come and explore the Stirgenest Cairn, with dreams of looting it’s hidden riches.

There are no riches, hidden or otherwise. Like the others, it was bled dry years ago and there’s nothing left of value inside. Listening to tourists dream about scoring it big in the Stirgenest Cairn is what passes for community entertainment in Diamond Lake. Like, there are several factions in town that do not see eye to eye on hardly anything, but one thing they will all agree on is that tourists who don’t do their research are endless sources of both amusement and money. Which is probably why we don’t, as a community, correct this public misconception. Admittedly, that’s not particularly virtuous of us, but the way most people figure it: treasure hunters are here to exploit the town, anyway, and their money is good, so why not exploit them first? Also, Diamond Lake is one of the last places you go when seeking virtue.

“Too bad all of those cairns are empty,” Zhog said.

I almost agreed as an automatic response, but I cut myself off and just stared at him. Were they all empty?

Zhog was looking at me funny. “You okay?” he asked.

I’m not normally known for sitting quietly with my mouth gaping. The opposite, really. I feel like mom is being polite when she says I have a way of “filling the gaps in conversation”.

“Yeah. I Just…I think I have an idea.” I told him I’d be back in a couple of hours, and left him standing with a puzzled expression while I went to find Sera.

When I was twelve, I started hanging out with a group of teens that called themselves The Night Walkers. Sera was one of them, and also the one who encouraged me to join. We did all sorts of crazy, irresponsible things that only teens would do, and that only parents from Diamond Lake would ignore. It was more than just irresponsible, really. It was, like, irresponsibility taken to staggering heights. We ran around in the night, literally, like a cult of survivalists. The group was actually quite fun, even exhilarating at times, and a good diversion for a town that’s all dead-ends. I learned a lot of useful stuff that is not so easy to learn on your own, but we should still call it what it was: a bunch of kids being reckless in the dark. We navigated the hills, learned how to hunt for food, even played field games, all by moonlight. Sometimes by just the light of the stars. We had initiations, rituals, you name it.

And we also visited a little-known and well-hidden cairn that became an open secret among the Night Walkers and other kids in town. At the time, it probably wasn’t known to anyone over eighteen. We all called it The Whispering Cairn, named after the strange sounds that echoed inside when the wind blew in just right. We even spread rumors that it was haunted (an easy sell just on the sounds alone) which both elevated it to legendary status among Diamond Lake youth, and kept the casually curious ones away.

I am not sure who discovered it—probably Sergiu or Alina, our de-facto leaders at the time— but regardless of its origins, the Night Walkers kind of claimed it as our own, and we used it for our initiation ritual. A brave or foolhardy few, like Sera and myself, even spent the night in it as a test of our mettle. But what we didn’t do was explore the thing, because we all knew at some deeper level that it was dangerous. You could see animal tracks leading in and out, and sometimes footprints from something larger and bipedal. You went in not knowing if you would be alone, or if you would stay that way.

About five years after I joined the group, our collective luck ran out. A friend of mine, Masildi, went in to spend the night and she never came back, and that was the end of the Night Walkers. A couple of years later, another idiot kid tried to do the same thing, because one disappearance wasn’t enough, and Alina found out about it and we went to pull him out. He was attacked while he was inside—by what, we don’t know, and we didn’t wait around to find out—but we got him out before he could bleed to death. As far as I know, no one has been back since.

No one has ever talked about the Whispering Cairn outside of that group of friends. The Stirgenest Cairn was emptied years ago and people still can’t shut up about the thing. If the Whispering Cairn had been explored and looted, you would think we’d have heard about it. We’d probably never stop hearing about it.

What if it hadn’t ever been explored? What if it wasn’t empty, like the others?

I needed to talk to Sera.

Toilday, Evening

There were seven of us in all. Sera and I have been friends for practically ever, and I worked with Zhog and Snagsby back in my serving girl days. As for the others? I had seen them around, and no one is truly a stranger in a town of a thousand people. Snagsby works with Viore, and also knows the newcomer Varin. Most of us probably knew Viktor at least casually.

“For those who don’t know me well,” I said, starting us off, “you can call me ‘Bel’. Seriously, just call me ‘Bel’.”

I always need to get that out of the way, because while I don’t ever use my full name it’s far from being a secret. I want to say that my parents have a sense of humor, but I really think they were being serious when they named me Belessandralena, especially since they use it all the time. They never shorten it: not out in public, not in private with friends and family, and not even casually at home. Never. Most kids’ names get longer when they get in trouble with their parents. Mine just got more enunciation.

Dad has labored in one of the mines for as long as I can remember, and he’s always been close with the local gnome community since several of them are in his same work crew. That is the super-abridged story of how I got my name. Once, when I was younger and feeling particularly feisty, I argued that it’s gnome men that have the long names, while the women’s names tend to be really short. Dad just said that I was missing the point. I was so vexed by this response that I didn’t even think to ask what that point would be. I still haven’t, under the theory that some mysteries are maybe better left unsolved.

“We’re all here for the same reason,” I continued. “The ‘why’ is different for each of us, but we all are looking for something that is outside of Diamond Lake. A better life. A chance to see more of the world. Connecting with our past. But getting out, and staying out, takes money, and none of us have enough of it to survive for long on our own. Sera and I have an idea that might just change that.”

My “why” fell into the last category. A few months after I turned seventeen, I started developing the ability to see in the dark. By “in the dark”, I mean, “in the complete absence of light”. At first I thought it was just getting more sensitive to dim light, but it didn’t take long to figure out that light itself just wasn’t a prerequisite. Once I was done having a panic attack—I didn’t understand what was happening to me, and it’s pretty terrifying the first time the lights go out and you realize you can still clearly see the room—I went to see Sera. She’s been able to see like this since, I dunno, the womb, I guess, and I thought maybe she could help me figure out why it was happening. She suggested that there was something in my ancestry that wasn’t human.

Once I built up the courage to talk to mom and dad, they suggested I write to Aunt Esma, who is the family historian. And she had been digging around, too, because I guess I’m not the only one in the family with…unusual traits. According to my Aunt, if you go back a couple of generations on my mom’s side, you find that my great-great grandmother was pregnant with her oldest daughter before she met her husband. Based on hints found in some old diaries, Aunt Esma believes the father was a dragon in human form.

Think about that for a minute: somewhere in my family history, there is a real dragon. A dragon that, given how long they live, may still be around. As soon as that thought settled in, I kind of grew obsessed with the idea of tracking them down. It’s not entirely crazy. I mean, sure, there is the possibility that they don’t want to be found, and they are a dragon. But I feel like I need to try, and I have a where and a when, and I even have the name they were using, so I have a starting point.

“It’s common knowledge,” I continued, “that all the old cairns around here have long since been looted and emptied, but there’s one that’s about a half day from town that we’re pretty sure has never been explored. Because almost no one knows it’s there.

“Sera and I were part of a group of kids that used to go inside this cairn from time to time. She and I even spent the night in it once. We called it The Whispering Cairn because of the sounds it makes when the wind blows, and for a while we spread stories among the other kids in town that it was haunted so we could more or less keep them away and have it to ourselves.

“The few people that do know about it don’t go there anymore. About five or six years ago, a friend of ours tried to spend the night inside, and she never came back out. We’re pretty sure she died in there. And then a couple of years after that, another kid tried to do the same, and they go hurt, bad. That was the last time I knew of anyone going there.”

I paused to take a deep breath. Talking about what happened to Masildi is never easy. It doesn’t help that she and I parted on such a bad note. I could make all sorts of excuses for why things ended they way they did, but they are all just variations on blaming the victim, and that wouldn’t be right. So I just swallowed my guilt and pushed on.

“Even though we’ve been inside it, none of us went in very far. Just down the entry hall to a junction with alcoves on either side. That is less than a hundred feet in. But the cairn goes back a lot farther than that, and we don’t know what’s there.

“What we’re proposing is that we band together, and explore The Whispering Cairn. I won’t deny that it’s potentially dangerous. Sometimes there are animals living in there, and it’s possible we’d need to deal with that. But we are a group of seven, and we aren’t kids anymore. We’re also armed, and not without some skill.”

“Is it actually haunted?” Snagsby asked.

“I don’t know. It might be? But we never saw anything that suggested it was. The most dangerous things we came across were animals and other people.”

There was some discussion after that, and to my surprise and relief, no one got up and walked out. So that was a start.

“There’s more. If we want to do this, there’s an abandoned mine office near the cairn that we could maybe use for a place to stay. It wasn’t in great shape when we found it several years ago, but if it’s still standing we could maybe fix it up a bit so it could keep us dry, and give us a place to work out of that is away from prying eyes.”

This was another Night Walkers discovery and we used it as our private hideaway for a couple of years. I described the small structure which resembled a farm house, complete with kitchen, bedrooms, cellar, and a well out back. When we found it, the roof was leaking and we patched it with a sort of homemade tarp—we were teenagers, remember—but I doubt that had survived the last seven years. We’d be lucky if the roof hadn’t collapsed. But the idea had a lot of appeal. Even in severe disrepair, it would be better than sleeping outdoors. As long as it didn’t come crashing down on us.

Snagsby asked, “How much do you think we might get out of this? I need to know if I should quit my job.”

And that was the rub. I didn’t know. Abadar wouldn’t allow me to mislead them, either, even if I wanted to. “There’s no guarantee. This isn’t like a secured investment. The cairns around here that have been looted have held phenomenal treasures, but that doesn’t mean this one will, too. And though we are reasonably confident it hasn’t been explored yet, it’s still possible that someone else has already cleaned it out. I wouldn’t quit your job until after it’s paid out.” Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance, and so on.

“Great! I’m quitting my job then,” Snagsby replied. And, I might add, completely ignoring my advice.

After that, everyone else threw in, too. We were officially signing up to be squatters and grave robbers.