The Spirit Ring Read Online Free PDF Page A

for Farel to take with him, as long as he was going. In the pause, Thur could hear distant echoes of the pounding now going on at the lower tunnel's working face. The rock was hard, the ore was thin, and they'd extended the tunnel barely fifteen feet in the last three months. Thur adjusted the leather knee pads his mother had fashioned, knelt, and attacked the face lower down. He hacked till he was winded and aching from his crouched position, then stood and leaned to rest a moment on his pick.
           Farel was not back yet. Thur glanced around, then stepped up to the rock face and leaned against its chipped and scarred surface. He spread his fingers against the discoloration and closed his eyes. The babble of his thoughts faded into an inarticulate silence, at one with the silence of the stone. He was the stone. He could feel the stringer of ore, like a tendon running through his body. Thinning ten feet in, dwindling... and yet, a few feet farther on, like a sword stroke slanting down: a rich vein, native copper glorying along like a bright frozen river, crying for the light that it might shine.... "The metal calls me," Thur whispered to himself. "I can feel it. I can."
           But who would believe him? And how did these visions come? Or were they devil-dreams, false lures? Stussi the tanner had babbled of visions in a fever once, then a long worm had slithered out of his nose, and he'd died. Thur's vision throbbed with a pulse of danger, maddeningly vague, melting away the moment his emptiness was clouded with the very question, What...? His hands clenched on the stone.
           A flicker in the corner of his eye—lamp going out? Or Farel returning? He sprang away from the rock, flushing. But there was no tramp of boots, and the lamp burned no more badly than usual.
           There . A shadow in the wavering shadows—that funny-shaped rock moved . Thur stood still, barely breathing.
           The rock stood up. It was a gnarled brown manikin, some two feet tall, with what seemed to be a leather apron like a miner's about its loins. It giggled and jumped to one side. Its black eyes glinted in the lamp glow like polished stones. It skipped over to Thur's basket and made to put in a lump of ore.
           Thur made no sudden moves. In all his time in the mines, he'd never seen a gnome so close and clear, only movements in the corners of his eyes that seemed to vanish into the walls when he made to approach them. The manikin giggled again, tilting its narrow chin aside in an attitude of comical inquiry.
           "Good morrow, little man," Thur whispered, fascinated, hoping his voice would not startle it away again.
           "Good morrow, metal-master," the kobold returned in a tinny voice. It hopped into the basket, peered over the top at Thur, and hopped out again, in quick jerky motions. Its arms and legs were thin, its toes and fingers long and splayed, with joints like the knobs of roots.
           "I'm no master." Thur smiled. He hunkered down so as to loom less threateningly, and fumbled at his belt for the leather flask his mother had filled with goat's milk before dawn. Carefully, he reached for the bateau, the wide wooden dish used for carrying out the best ore, tapped it upside down to knock out the dirt, and poured some milk into it. He shoved it invitingly toward the little creature. "You can drink. If you wish."
           It giggled again and hopped to the rim. It did not lift the vessel, but put its head down and lapped like a cat, pointed tongue flicking rapidly in and out. Its bright eyes never wavered from Thur as it drank. The milk vanished quickly. The kobold sat up, emitted a tiny but quite distinct belch, and wiped its lips with the back of one twiggy wrist. "Good!"
           "My mother fixes it, in case I thirst before dinner," Thur responded automatically, then felt a little idiotic. Surely he should be trying to catch the creature, not conversing with