This is a different character, in circumstances quite different from the last excerpt. Less color and magic, and more grit. This will be the first time that readers will be seeing this character since the previous book, so the excerpt, which is the beginning of a chapter, starts with a little bit of recap to remind readers of his situation.
There is one potential problem that I would particularly like feedback about.
I wonder if this reads too much like an info-dump, because it is one big expository lump with no dialogue and no scenes of interaction with other characters. However, he is supposed to be isolated much of the time and I really want to get that across, and also I am reluctant to make up conversations and interactions that don't do anything to advance the plot, just for the sake of breaking this up.
But maybe I have to.
On the other hand, if I simply decide to cut it down, it may seem like I am trivializing the horrors of his particular situation. He is an important character, and I don't want to minimize the consequences of the actions (shown in the previous book) that brought him here.
Nevertheless, it may need to be cut.
Again, this is book three, names can't be changed, and it's too late to alter my style, even if I decided it was desirable.
But before I begin, a long explanation of two things that are barely mentioned in the excerpt. Just so that you don't trip over them. The part about darkness solidifying into earth is a reference to natural (which from our point of view would be magical) laws in the universe of this book, which were already mentioned in a previous volume. Basically, there are eight elements. The inanimate elements: darkness, light, air, and mist. And a higher form of each of these, which are the animate elements: the classical earth, fire, wind, and water. Earth is animate darkness. There is a certain amount of natural transmutation going on. Just as mist can condense into water, darkness can condense into earth, and so forth. As in medieval alchemy, metals grow inside the matrix of the earth.
And after all this ... finally we come to the excerpt itself.
In the dark of the mine there was neither day nor night, only long cycles of grindingly hard labor under the lash of pitiless overseers, punctuated by brief periods of mind-numbed rest. Prince Cuillioc, still weakened by his long illness, bruised and limping after the beatings he had suffered as Lord Vaz’s prisoner in Persit, believed he would find a swift release in death.
The life of a mine slave was brutally hard: working with pick and mallet, chiseling the silver ore from the earth, breathing in the dust of metals and minerals. In the beginning, the Prince worked with three or four other men at the same face, in the glare of a pine torch held by one of the guards. Where the rock was hardest, men worked in pairs, one holding the gad and one the mallet.
Swinging the hammer caused such a burn to his muscles, Cuillioc felt a weary sense of relief whenever the time came to switch places, though holding the chisel was by far the more dangerous task. Other slaves gathered up the loose chunks of ore in leather bags and dragged them along the tunnel to the base of a ladder. There, two more men put the ore into baskets and handed them up with much backbreaking effort to other men at the top.
Sometimes there came a warning rumble; then a jolt passed through the entire mine. The slaves paused in their work to listen. No one ran, because no one knew exactly where disaster would strike. All around him, Cuillioc could hear men babbling out prayers to the gods that they worshipped. He simply stood silent, the sweat on his body turning cold. Then somewhere a ceiling fell with a crash, burying fifty or a hundred men. Much later, when the earth had settled, a party of slaves would be detailed to dig a new tunnel, to get at the vein from another angle.
In such cruel conditions, men either lost hope and died quickly, or else grew angry and violent, lashing out in vicious rages. But if a man did not perish by misadventure, or his fellow slaves did not murder him, the dust eventually did, for the matrix in which the silver developed was full of poisons, which he breathed in with every gasping breath. The overseers wore masks and rarely approached too closely while the work was in progress, to avoid breathing in the deadly particles. Yet rumor had it that they, too, lived shortened lives, and died an ugly death. It was work for men who had themselves lost hope.
But rather than dying, Cuillioc felt his strength gradually returning; even the leg he had thought permanently lamed healed. Worse, his desire for life began to revive, and that was a shameful thing. That he had survived the debacle in Xanthipei was a disgrace for which his death could scarcely atone; that a Prince of Phaorax should cling to life in such degrading conditions was immeasurably worse.
He realized one day that the guards, though brutal to all, and profane and quarrelsome even among themselves, were slower to punish him than the other slaves, that his punishments, however cruel, were invariably lighter than those meted out to the rest. By that time, others had also recognized this apparent favoritism, and out of a natural resentment excluded him from their rough fellowship. Cuillioc made no attempt to enlighten them. Even had they known the truth—that Lord Vaz kept him alive only so that he might some day soon be summoned back to Persit for more questions, more threats, more beatings—it would not have made a difference.
Miles and miles of tunnels riddled the mountain overhead, but the miners delved ever deeper, following wherever the richest veins led them. Sometimes they broke through into a natural cavern, a vast space of black air under the earth. There were (Cuillioc gathered from hearing the other men speak among themselves) dangerous places in the mine where darkness was gradually solidifying into earth, where the air that men breathed grew increasingly heavy and filled their lungs with grit. Such stories were horrifying enough, but sometimes, it was said, the process inexplicably speeded up, and a tunnel would fill in behind a party of workers so swiftly they had no time to escape.
When it came time to rest, he and his fellow slaves were shackled in pairs and allowed a brief period of sleep, sometimes in the utter dark of the mine, more often by the flickering light of distant torches, while another party of men continued to work further down the same tunnel. Yet for Cuillioc sleep was not always possible, as exhaustion competed with the pain of strained muscles when the labor had been particularly arduous. How many days and week passed in this way he had no way of counting.
At last, just as he had expected, Lord Vaz sent for him. Guards hustled him up a series of ladders, then out through the entrance of the mine, into a biting wind. Dazzled by the light, he covered his eyes against the aching brilliance of a winter day. They tossed him into a wagon that transported him across the miles to Persit, still in his dirt and his chains.
There is one potential problem that I would particularly like feedback about.
I wonder if this reads too much like an info-dump, because it is one big expository lump with no dialogue and no scenes of interaction with other characters. However, he is supposed to be isolated much of the time and I really want to get that across, and also I am reluctant to make up conversations and interactions that don't do anything to advance the plot, just for the sake of breaking this up.
But maybe I have to.
On the other hand, if I simply decide to cut it down, it may seem like I am trivializing the horrors of his particular situation. He is an important character, and I don't want to minimize the consequences of the actions (shown in the previous book) that brought him here.
Nevertheless, it may need to be cut.
Again, this is book three, names can't be changed, and it's too late to alter my style, even if I decided it was desirable.
But before I begin, a long explanation of two things that are barely mentioned in the excerpt. Just so that you don't trip over them. The part about darkness solidifying into earth is a reference to natural (which from our point of view would be magical) laws in the universe of this book, which were already mentioned in a previous volume. Basically, there are eight elements. The inanimate elements: darkness, light, air, and mist. And a higher form of each of these, which are the animate elements: the classical earth, fire, wind, and water. Earth is animate darkness. There is a certain amount of natural transmutation going on. Just as mist can condense into water, darkness can condense into earth, and so forth. As in medieval alchemy, metals grow inside the matrix of the earth.
And after all this ... finally we come to the excerpt itself.
In the dark of the mine there was neither day nor night, only long cycles of grindingly hard labor under the lash of pitiless overseers, punctuated by brief periods of mind-numbed rest. Prince Cuillioc, still weakened by his long illness, bruised and limping after the beatings he had suffered as Lord Vaz’s prisoner in Persit, believed he would find a swift release in death.
The life of a mine slave was brutally hard: working with pick and mallet, chiseling the silver ore from the earth, breathing in the dust of metals and minerals. In the beginning, the Prince worked with three or four other men at the same face, in the glare of a pine torch held by one of the guards. Where the rock was hardest, men worked in pairs, one holding the gad and one the mallet.
Swinging the hammer caused such a burn to his muscles, Cuillioc felt a weary sense of relief whenever the time came to switch places, though holding the chisel was by far the more dangerous task. Other slaves gathered up the loose chunks of ore in leather bags and dragged them along the tunnel to the base of a ladder. There, two more men put the ore into baskets and handed them up with much backbreaking effort to other men at the top.
Sometimes there came a warning rumble; then a jolt passed through the entire mine. The slaves paused in their work to listen. No one ran, because no one knew exactly where disaster would strike. All around him, Cuillioc could hear men babbling out prayers to the gods that they worshipped. He simply stood silent, the sweat on his body turning cold. Then somewhere a ceiling fell with a crash, burying fifty or a hundred men. Much later, when the earth had settled, a party of slaves would be detailed to dig a new tunnel, to get at the vein from another angle.
In such cruel conditions, men either lost hope and died quickly, or else grew angry and violent, lashing out in vicious rages. But if a man did not perish by misadventure, or his fellow slaves did not murder him, the dust eventually did, for the matrix in which the silver developed was full of poisons, which he breathed in with every gasping breath. The overseers wore masks and rarely approached too closely while the work was in progress, to avoid breathing in the deadly particles. Yet rumor had it that they, too, lived shortened lives, and died an ugly death. It was work for men who had themselves lost hope.
But rather than dying, Cuillioc felt his strength gradually returning; even the leg he had thought permanently lamed healed. Worse, his desire for life began to revive, and that was a shameful thing. That he had survived the debacle in Xanthipei was a disgrace for which his death could scarcely atone; that a Prince of Phaorax should cling to life in such degrading conditions was immeasurably worse.
He realized one day that the guards, though brutal to all, and profane and quarrelsome even among themselves, were slower to punish him than the other slaves, that his punishments, however cruel, were invariably lighter than those meted out to the rest. By that time, others had also recognized this apparent favoritism, and out of a natural resentment excluded him from their rough fellowship. Cuillioc made no attempt to enlighten them. Even had they known the truth—that Lord Vaz kept him alive only so that he might some day soon be summoned back to Persit for more questions, more threats, more beatings—it would not have made a difference.
Miles and miles of tunnels riddled the mountain overhead, but the miners delved ever deeper, following wherever the richest veins led them. Sometimes they broke through into a natural cavern, a vast space of black air under the earth. There were (Cuillioc gathered from hearing the other men speak among themselves) dangerous places in the mine where darkness was gradually solidifying into earth, where the air that men breathed grew increasingly heavy and filled their lungs with grit. Such stories were horrifying enough, but sometimes, it was said, the process inexplicably speeded up, and a tunnel would fill in behind a party of workers so swiftly they had no time to escape.
When it came time to rest, he and his fellow slaves were shackled in pairs and allowed a brief period of sleep, sometimes in the utter dark of the mine, more often by the flickering light of distant torches, while another party of men continued to work further down the same tunnel. Yet for Cuillioc sleep was not always possible, as exhaustion competed with the pain of strained muscles when the labor had been particularly arduous. How many days and week passed in this way he had no way of counting.
At last, just as he had expected, Lord Vaz sent for him. Guards hustled him up a series of ladders, then out through the entrance of the mine, into a biting wind. Dazzled by the light, he covered his eyes against the aching brilliance of a winter day. They tossed him into a wagon that transported him across the miles to Persit, still in his dirt and his chains.
