Don't Know What We Dig 'em For

[catch]

Farmer Gwilyn had plenty to worry about. His manorhouse was a day's ride from Myrkenwood, on a stead that nestled against the northern rise of the Silver Mountains. It had been carved, painstakingly, from the rocky ground by two generations of forefathers, and his riches came from the hardy, tough little sheep that that ranged across the scattered tanks, and huge, white boulders and stones that interrupted the greenery. When he had been a lad, Gwilyn and his younger kin had pretended them the bones of giants, or dragons, but he was far too old and hard, now, for such imaginings.

He had felt the Blight, not as hard as some, but not so terribly suffered; the tanks kept their own water, and were fed by no stream, but by the rain. Some grass had gone bad, and some sheep had died, good and strong rams that had vomited up their innards. Sheep weren't so dumb as some people thought, however, and the rest stayed away from the patches. There was more than enough grass. What little food that took to the rough, stony ground, millets and turnips, cabbages, and tough, rangy, colored potatos, was grown close to the house. All in all, the Blight had almost put him better off than most of his neighbors.

There were dangers, of course. He'd seen bloody dragons flying around up in the peaks, reds and blues. Wolves, of course, and bears, more mundane worries. There were mythical things, like the Baie, and rumors that came when he and his wife, and their boys, hitched up the wagon twice a month or so. Rumors of families torn apart, or obviously eaten (probably by those dragons, b'ye), or simply vanished.

As he trudged through the snow, his rangy mutt bouncing at his heels, he almost hoped to find a sheep with a twisted leg, or come to some other misfortune. It was a financial hit, yes, but he could do with a bit of mutton, as tough and gamy as it would be. Man could only take cabbage soup and pickled turnips. And that was when he came on the hole.

It wasn't a terribly big hole. And it looked fairly ordinary. But Gwilyn was absolutely positive it had not been there yesterday evening. But here it was, the gaping mouth black, and when he pushed his shepard's crook past the lips of it, the crook went down quite a ways, as close as he dared to get his arm. Yet, still, he couldn't reach the back of it.

Wasn't the only one, either. Hole after hole was cut into the stone, regular and neat as a rabbit's hole, for a mile along the foothills. It was curious. And worrisome. Gwilyn was forced to stop following the holes, and went back to work, and that long-dead imagination nibbled uneasily at his brains. What could it mean? Visions of drow, of all sorts of terrible things from the Dark, meant he checked his herd in record time, making certain they had food in the snow, and coming back to the house with a hurry to his gait that was not normally to be found.

"Roch," he said, pulling his older boy aside. "Want ye t'take Betsy, saddle 'er oop, ride on down t'town. Somethin' queer's goin' on, an' someone should know 'bout it."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was like that, for many of the farms about, trickling in through days; tiny, expertly-crafted holes, that no man could fit down and no child would be risked in entering to satisfy curiosity, drilled into the rocks of the Silver Mountains.