It was a while before I decided to get up. Half of me was terrified; for the third or fourth time in two days I’d seen the face of death staring right at me. But aside from that, there was a curious peacefulness. Perhaps it was just tiredness, but not quite the same as how it felt to curl up beneath your blankets and ebb into dreamland. No, it was more like being in dreamland.

The blue roots stretched into the ceiling all around me. No one in ten thousand years, perhaps ever, had seen this sight. This whole place was incredible, and I’d been too caught up in my problems to realise it. Who’d have thought a world like this existed a mere walk from where I slaved and toiled with my pick? I couldn’t blame Urist for stopping and staring when he first saw it. Nearly anyone would have.

Gradually though, the peacefulness went away. The barest hint of a sound transformed into high cackles in my ear, and my heart, slow and steady as a mournful drum, started to accelerate.

“Stony?” came Urist’s voice. I let out a long and unsteady sigh. Time to face reality, and find out if the Ghost King had kept his promise.

I put my hands against the ground to steady myself, slime oozing up through my fingers, and tottered to my feet. Blood rushed from my head, making me dizzy, then I turned to look for Urist.

A trail of smashed fungi led its way past two of the great blue roots, and to a diminutive figure, bent and cowed as he walked towards me. So different was his gait, no longer the angry stride tense with coiled energy, but slow and nervous, there was a moment of dissonance. Could that really be Urist? The closer he came the less sure I was.

“Stony,” he said, stopping a few paces from me. “I have to apologise.”

“Uh,” I grunted, still transfixed by his sudden transformation. Perhaps it was just the strange light, but even his face looked different: his muscles less stiff; eyes and veins less pronounced. Even if the face in general was the same shape, it was uncanny. Like a mask of someone I knew being worn by someone else.

Wait. He’d come to apologise? What under the mountains had the Ghost King said to him?

“You were right all along.” He hung his head. “I should never have accused you of murder. It was all self defense, all of it. Here, take this. I found it on the ground among the mushrooms.”

“What?”

Before I could tell him no, he reached into his trouser pocket, and drew out a dagger slowly, holding it by the blade and presenting the handle. It was rust worn through the centre, but the wooden grip and cutting edge were good as new, runes winding through them. I eyed his face. It was a floppy mask, no malice at all.

“Is this a trick?” I asked.

“No, no trick. Take it, please.”

I snatched the dagger away, giving him no time to pull anything funny. The handle was a coil of thin wood, which felt good and firm in my palm, like it’d never slip out. He handed me a leather scabbard, similarly runed.

“Why are you giving me this?” I asked. “You aren’t going to stab me?”

He shook his head.

“No, of course not. I’m apologising. I found it when the ghosts caught me.” He pursed his lips, and took in a deep breath. “I have something to tell you, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh?” I said, tucking the dagger into my belt, not taking my eyes off him. “What is it?”

“Promise you won’t get angry?” He bit his lips and looked down at his feet. I noticed his hands quivering slightly. No, twitching? I couldn’t quite tell.

“I won’t stab you,” I said.

“The... Ghost King told me all about it. The sapphire, I mean.”

The heat drained from my face, and I felt the sapphire’s weight dragging at my shirt. My insides felt hollow.

“What?” My right hand crept down to the dagger he’d given me.

“I won’t tell anyone!” He raised his hands and took a step back, white with fear. My eyes must have looked like ice at that moment. “I wouldn’t have given you that knife if I planned to tell anyone, would I? Please trust me.”

He couldn’t know about the sapphire. No one could know about it. The most logical action would be to step forward and sink my knife into his guts. I’d killed his friend for the same reason. But looking at Urist’s sad little face and his downcast eyes, I couldn’t bring myself to so much as draw the dagger, let alone stab him with it. He just looked so pathetic. Lashing out at a dwarf trying to murder me was one thing, but murdering him would be totally another.

“I’ve kept that secret from everyone,” I said. “Now tell me what you know. Fast.”

“You found the sapphire before the earthquake,” he said, hurrying out the words while I glared into his eyes. “You hid it from everyone. The King of All That Has Worth lives in the sapphire with his servants. And you’re going to bring him to his treasure. Right?”

I frowned. His treasure? True, he did mention a path to riches, but he hadn’t mentioned anything about owning treasure. Nor bringing me to it. In fact, I had no idea what his goals were. He’d never told me, just assumed I’d trust him to do the right thing.

Bloody rich dwarves, all the same no matter when or where they were. If they had more money than you, they expected to be obeyed without question. What sickened me most was that I’d been doing just that.

“He never told me about any treasure,” I said. “But sure, if I can get some I’ll be very grateful.”

“I’ll help you!” he cried, and flung himself to the ground, head to the floor and arms outstretched. “I don’t even need any payment!”

My mouth dropped open. This was very wrong.

“What’s happened to you?” I said, stepping back. “You were trying to kill me ten minutes ago, and now you want to help me? Is this an act? You are trying to trick me, aren’t you!”

I drew the knife and pointed it at him, holding my arm to stop it shaking.

“It’s not a trick! Please!”

He lifted his head, and I saw tears sparkling in the corners of his eyes. This had gone too far to be acting. No, the Ghost King had done this. He’d given me a servant. He’d warped Urist into a quivering, apologising mess I neither wanted nor needed. Well, I didn't need Urist’s help. I didn't want him watching my back. No matter how changed he was, I couldn’t trust him.

“I don’t need your help,” I said. “Never speak to me again. Get out of here, and if you don’t want this dagger in your guts, tell Lorsson you didn't find a thing.”

I gave the space between us a vicious slash, my new dagger humming as it severed air from air.

“Stop!” he cried, sitting up and scrambling backwards. “You can trust me. Look!”

With one hand he wrenched the shirt covering his shoulder down, exposing bright red flesh. I put my hand over my mouth. If it had been any normal wound, it’ve been pouring with blood. But no blood came, just a hint of blue deep within the scar. My head spun. The Ghost King had done something to him. Could he have--

“See?” said Urist. “I can’t betray you, even if I wanted to. The King has one of his own keeping an eye on me.”

“Shut up!” I said, and began to grope at the sapphire sewn into my shirt. One side, two, up to seven and then my fingers hit nothing.

No. I probed around more, breath frozen. A gap.

I narrowed my eyes.

“You have part of it! Is that meant to make me trust you?” I took a step towards him, pointing my knife to the wound. “I should gouge it out right now!”

He held up his hands.

“It was given to me! It’s the King’s to give! And it’s just for your assurance!”

“Oh really?”

He still had that innocent look in his face.

Look.” He put both hands over his heart, and tears ran down his grime smeared cheeks. “I want to help you. The Ghost King saved my life, and in a way that means you saved it. Let’s make our way back up and I’ll tell Lorsson you told the truth. You can show him the dagger too, he’d like that. And you can take all credit for what we saw down here.”

I licked my lips, and looked at Urist. I’d been lied to plenty in the past, and reckoned myself pretty good at knowing how truthful someone was. Liars always had something in their voice, a hidden thing behind their words that you could hear if you knew how. Urist had none of it. He spoke openly, clearly, laying his heart bare. So what did I have to fear from him? I could worry about the Ghost King’s plans for me later. And seven eighths of the sapphire was still a lot.

“Fine,” I said. “We’ll make our way back up. But you’re to walk right in front of me.”

“Thank you,” said Urist. “Thank you.”

I made to step out of his way and wave him forward, then stopped, remembering something.

“We need our lanterns first though. We both dropped them. Let’s start looking through the mushrooms. I’ll start near the entrance, you cover the left side.”

He nodded enthusiastically, and dashed off. I watched him run to the left wall, get on his hands and knees, then scrabble through the undergrowth, acting very much like a child on his first day in a park, hunting for slugs and snails. My stomach twisted, and I looked away from him as I walked along the trampled path to search the base of the stairs.

I found my lantern a few metres from the base of the stairs, faint yellow glow just showing against the blue glare from above. Urist called out a few seconds later.

“I’ve got mine too!”

“Good,” I said. “Now lead the way up the stairs. Don’t fall on top of me.”

He dashed along to where I was, took a careful circle around me, averting his eyes, then began to climb the steps, taking them one at a time. From the back I could tell he was keeping his weight forwards, and with each step his foot tensed. Was he gripping with his toes? He was really taking my request not to fall seriously. The steps weren’t that slippery.

I followed after, and reached the top half a minute after he did, panting. He glanced back with a questioning look.

“Keep going,” I said, and he did so without another word.

Although I’d wished for slaves and servants many times, I hadn’t imagined it to be quite like this. Urist should be his own man, even if I had ‘saved his life’.

“Are you angry?” he asked, turning around with a stupidly concerned expression. “You’re stomping awfully hard. Did I do something wrong?” His eyes widened and his pupils contracted visibly. “You won’t stab me will you?”

“Shut up and keep walking. I won’t stab you.”

He turned away, and I bit my lip, hoping the pain might alleviate some of my anger. Why was I even angry? That question just irritated me more.

I looked down at the path beneath my feet to take my mind off him. Nearly a dozen sets of tracks intermingled. One from the big beast that had been licking the fungi off the walls, two from me and Urist on the way here, a bunch of small prints from the lizard-dogs, and finally the one Urist was making just in front of me. Even his footprints were different! The fresh ones were more even, and somehow softer.

I just couldn’t get it off my mind. I needed to know what had happened.

“Urist,” I said. “What did the Ghost King say to you?”

He didn't change his pace. Now I thought about it, it was almost military in its regularity.

“Oh,” he said. “A few things.”

“A few things like what? You asked me to trust you, remember? So tell me what the Ghost King said.”

“He said...”

“Tell me!”

His right arm convulsed like a snake, sending his lantern up and down, which in turn warped his shadow into crazy shapes all up the wall. With the other hand, he grabbed onto his elbow and pulled the spasming limb against his body. It shivered for a second, before going still, flopping dead at his side.

I stopped in my tracks, and held the lantern up to get a good look at him. It was as if his arm had rebelled, and he’d quelled it.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said, never once changing his pace. “Sorry. It’s just a twitch I have. It happens sometimes.”

I let out a slow breath and resumed the walk, making sure to keep a good distance. That hadn’t been a normal twitch.

Time passed, and I grew tired of obsessing over Urist. I had worse things to worry about. At least he probably wasn’t going to kill me, at least right away. He’d have stabbed me if he’d intended that. No, worse things than Urist were out here. Sour sickness returned as I stared at the footprints ahead of me. What if the monsters came back? What if the big monster came back?

No, surely it was long gone.

A loud thud echoed through the tunnel ahead of us. Urist stopped as suddenly as if he’d walked face first into a wall, and so did I. More thuds came, quieter than the first but getting louder.

“Stony, did you hear that?” he said.

“Shit!” I grabbed the dagger from my belt. “It’s the big monster. I’m sure of it.”

For a few seconds I watched in silence, listening to the thuds, eyes and ears utterly focused, legs and arms totally still.

At the end of the tunnel, a shadow made its way into the dim yellow of our lamplight. I couldn’t make out any detail, other than the fact it was twice as tall as Tradfast, and coming straight for us.

“We need to run!” I said. “It’s going to kill us for sure!”

“No,” said Urist. ‘Stony, we can’t run or we’ll be trampled.”

“What?”

The shadow in the distance grew larger and larger. The scraping stopped, and was replaced by a rhythmic thump.

“It’s charging us!” I shouted. “I’m getting out of here.”

“Stony, stay still! I know how we can--”

“Ghost King! Help!”

No answer. I fell to my knees. There was no point running, Urist was right. But there was no point in fighting either, even if I was holding my knife in front of me, razor edge glinting light off onto the walls. As the thumping grew louder, I saw myself crushed to pulp under the beast’s claws.

“Ghost King!” I screamed now. “Freeze me like you did before! Save me!”

But even if the Ghost King froze me, I’d still be trampled. A curious calm came over me as I watched the beast’s enormous head coming straight for us, filling the tunnel. Its little milky eyes were filled with terror.

Urist stood still, and pressed himself against the side of the cavern wall.

“It won’t try to run us over Stony,” he said. “Trust me. We need to stay calm.”

“Calm?” I couldn’t even keep my knife steady; my hand was shaking all over the place.

“Yes, calm. I’ve dealt with lizard-beasts before. Something spooked this one, and it doesn’t want any confrontation. All we have to do is press against the wall and shout when it comes past.”

“What? How’s that going to help?”

“Just trust me. I don’t want to die here either. If you still can’t trust me, trust that.”

I clenched my fist around the knife, and took a good look at the blade. As runic as it was, it was still far too small to do any kind of damage. And what Urist said made sense. Looking at him, his face was relaxed, fearless even, eyes turned sideways to look at the monster charging at us.

“Fine,” I said, and pressed myself against the wall, smushing the fungus against my already disgusting shirt. “We shout at it as it runs past, right?”

Urist gave a firm nod. The beast was nearly on us now. Just a few dozen metres was my best guess; it’d be here in seconds.

“Go away!” I screamed, but my noise was drowned out completely by Urist’s war-cry. His scream pierced into my ears and the raw sound went through my very brain. I put my hands up over my ears, and leaned away from him, sliding my back across the wall, sweeping wall-fungi to the ground in a sticky mess. For a moment I forgot about the monster, until it rushed past me.

Its footfall jolted the stone, and my foot slipped out from under me. I landed on the floor shoulder first.

“Ow,” I said, and looked back. The monster was disappearing as rapidly as it had appeared, all I could see clearly was its stubby tail. I flopped back to the ground, feeling very much like a massive boulder had rolled past, missing me by inches. For a while I didn't think of anything, just lay there, mind blank.

“Here,” said Urist, holding his hand out to me. “Come on Stony, I’ll help you up.”

“Thank you,” I mumbled, and took his hand. He pulled me to my feet and looked me in the eyes.

“You’re not injured, are you?”

“No, I’m fine,” I said, snatching my hand away. “Let’s keep moving.”

“Alright.”

He turned without another word and resumed his oddly even walk. I gripped the dagger he’d given me even tighter. A terrible revelation lurked in my brain, but I couldn’t quite pull it out of the subconscious. Like a word on the tip of the tongue, I had nearly worked out what the Ghost King had done to Urist.

Perhaps it wasn’t that I couldn’t recognise what had happened to him. Maybe I just didn't want to.

One thing was for sure though. I shouldn’t trust the Ghost King. At all, ever. He could easily do to me what he’d done to Urist.

But this trial had proven that if I didn't do as the King said, I was dead meat.