Feist, Raymond E. - Riftwar 3 by Feist Raymond E

Author:Feist, Raymond E. [Feist, Raymond E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-06-11T13:58:20+00:00

file:///F|/rah/Raymond%20E.%20Feist/Riftwar%203%20-%20Darkness%20At%20Sethanon.txt horses hitched to a large wheel, which Arutha supposed was the power source for the lift. It certainly looked impressive, with large tongue and grooved wheels, and strange multiple rope and pulley arrangements. But Guy ignored the horse team and drivers, walking past them.

He pointed at a large door, barred from the inside.

‘That’s the bolt hole out of here. We keep it sealed, for by some fluke or other, when the door’s open a constant breeze blows through here, something to be avoided.’

Opposite the large door stood another, which he opened, leading them into a natural tunnel. He took a strange-looking lantern from beside the door, one that glowed

with a lower level of light than expected. Guy said, ‘This thing uses some sort of alchemy to give off light. I don’t understand it fully, but it works. We risk no flames here.

You’ll see why.’ Jimmy had been examining the walls and pulled off a white, flaky wax substance. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger and sniffed. ‘I understand,’ he said, making a face. ‘Naphtha.’

‘Yes.’ Guy looked at Arutha. ‘He’s a sharp one.’

‘So he’s quick to remind me. How did you know?’

‘Remember at the bridge south of Sarth, last year?

The one I fired to keep Murad and the Black Slayers from crossing? That’s what I used, distillation of naphtha.’

‘Come,’ said Guy, taking them through another door.

The reek of tar assailed their noses as they entered the chamber. Strange-looking large buckets were hung from chains. A dozen shirtless men laboured to manoeuvre the buckets down into a huge pool of black liquid. The odd lanterns burned about the cavern, but mostly the place was shrouded in darkness. ‘We’ve tunnels honeycombing this entire mountain, and this stuff is found in all of them. There’s some natural source of naphtha below and it constantly bubbles to the surface. We must keep taking it off, or it seeps upward into the basements of the city, through cracks in the bedrock. If work was halted, the stuff would be pooling in the cellars of the city within a few days. But as the Armengarians have been doing this ‘for years, it’s under control.’

‘I can see why you don’t want to risk a fire,’ said Locklear, in open wonder.

“Fires we can handle. We’ve had dozens, as recently as last year, briefly. What we’ve discovered, or rather what the Armengarians have discovered, is some uses for this stuff we don’t have in the Kingdom.’ He motioned them into another chamber, where odd looking coils of tubing ran between vats. “Here we do the distillation, and some of the other mixing. I understand a tenth of it, but the alchemists can explain. They make all manner of things from this naphtha, even some odd salves that keep wounds from festering, but one thing they’ve found is the secret of making Quegan fire.’

.Quegan fire!’ Arutha exclaimed.

“They don’t call it that, but it’s the same stuff. The walls are limestone, and it’s limestone dust that turns naphtha into Quegan fire oil.

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