Page 124 of The Salt King

“Yes.”

“I will seal this door behind you. I will not open it again. You open it yourself from the other side, or it does not open. If you cannot reach the door, nobody will come for you, and by entering, you swear to die down there before you let anything into the higher mine. So if you’re frightened, for the King’s sake, just come back before you go too deep. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Avelyn wouldn’t be doing that.

The witch looked at him for too long again. “Beyond this door, the salt light is bright enough to make the King’s dreams real; and his nightmares. Seeing is believing and believing is true.” That was it, the ritual of consent, but he didn’t say, Do you understand? “Watch your mind, tua-Brocken. You trust it too much. When a mind like yours believes things . . .” He shook his head and slung light across his silver mask. “You believe them far more unshakeably than most people.”

Avelyn had been raised right, so he didn’t say, And at what point will you be getting on with it? But you reached a certain age, and you could say that with your eyelashes.

The witch sighed. He spun the wheel on the vault door and held it open. “Mind like a rock. Sing to the King, and nothing else. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Avelyn said, and stepped inside.

The witch pulled it shut behind him. Avelyn stood to watch the locking wheel turn and hear the bolt thunk into place. It wouldn’t turn again unless he turned it. He grinned.

The salt light was like a winter morning when he reached the cave. It sparkled in the salt formed across the stones around the pools, on its stalactites—and in the witch stones. Hah. He picked one up and gazed around, soaking in the ras and the quiet. It hadn’t been a difficult walk down. It had taken him a long, long time to learn it properly—so long his mother had been convinced there was something wrong with him—but he could hold his mind still now even if he didn’t sing. He hadn’t seen the barest flicker of a dream, or a nightmare. Just the glow of the halite walls. It was lovely.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had been by himself. Only by himself: not just in the next room from eight other people. It was never quiet at home. Petitioners came and went all the time, pages were everywhere, foxes, cats, children, and his uncles were always talking to other people’s uncles, having their mysterious conversations in corners, while the grandmothers laughed over their wine.

This was bliss.

Then he almost fell over, because there was a man sitting on the rocks.

The man looked up fast when he heard the pebbles crunch, and—ran. He vanished into another passage, deeper down, fleet as a vixen.

“Wait! Wait, I didn’t mean to . . .” Avelyn lifted his hands and let them flop to his sides again, annoyed with himself. He had no idea who the man was, but it was clear he wasn’t supposed to be down here.

The echo was so sharp that his own voice called back to him entire seconds after he had spoken: Wait . . . didn’t mean to . . . wait, wait . . . mean to . . .

Hating that he could have frightened anyone—he felt sticky if he even startled Redspear’s piglets—Avelyn dug in his bag for the candied nuts he’d been saving, left them on the rock, and backed away.

Nobody knew what happened to the would-be witches who vanished in these tunnels. There were never bodies. There were stories; they walked too far, all way down into Caer Halen, and decided to stay. They found the King, and in that churning salt light they died, because you would have to be Saint Hildegard to walk through that and make nothing in it real. Or . . . they went mad, addicted to the ras, and lived down here. You could. There were so many miles of tunnels, and there were pools in all of them, rivers, lakes, full of fish and eels. There was supposed to be a forest in the Saint’s Way.

“I won’t tell anyone you’re here.”

Tell anyone you’re here, you’re here, you’re here . . . here . . . here.

He waited. He couldn’t just turn and go without knowing if the man was all right. You didn’t run like that if something hadn’t happened to scare you before. What kind of witch would leave someone like that?

Very, very slowly, the man came back. Avelyn stayed where he was, but lifted his hand to say hello. The man looked from him to the candied nuts as if the idea of a present were something that had never occurred to him before. In case the echoes startled him again, Avelyn mimed giving him something. For you.

The man stood still. He was looking down at himself now, at his own clothes, which were quite serviceable for someone who had been living in a mine, and at his own hands, as if he wasn’t very used to the idea of those either. Or maybe it was that he wasn’t used to being looked at.

“Hello,” Avelyn said, very quiet.

Hello hello hello said the echoes, and he winced.

The man lifted his eyes, but he didn’t run. Avelyn couldn’t tell how old he was. Not old, though. His hair was in a long plait over his shoulder, glass black. Barely faster than forming salt, the man touched his own throat. It looked for all the world like he was checking he still had the cords to speak with. “Hello,” he said.

He had an incredible voice. He sounded like a cello; rich, low, clear.

Avelyn smiled. “How long have you been down here?”

“A . . . long time.”

“Can I sit with you?”

“Yes.”