Page 20 of The Salt King

She shivered as soon as she opened the car door. It was cold, even for December; even through her heavy jacket and the furry winter police hat. Above her, though, the sky was clear, and the stars were brilliant. It was really not a terrible night to be out here.

Not far away was exactly the kind of car you would expect irritating travel vloggers to have. It was an elderly Lada, in that horrifying shade of brown that used to be the only colour available: one they had clearly bought because they thought it was fun and retro, rather than what it was, which was a death trap. Her mother used to have one, and had spent a lot of time telling everyone what a marvel of engineering it was, which was technically accurate: it was marvellous to have built something that looked like a car from old stockings and scaffolding.

She shone the flashlight into the window. No, they hadn’t all conveniently died inside. Balls.

The gates of the mine had been locked together with a chain; now the chain was broken, the severed link winking bright. She nudged one of the gates open and trudged through.

“Hello?” she called into the tunnel. “Police. I’m here to . . . urgh . . . help you.”

Her voice echoed. She waited, but no second voice came back. Carefully, to keep her steps from echoing too loudly and covering over any other sound, she held the light up and went deeper into the tunnel.

The walls were incredible. They whirled kaleidoscope patterns in red and white, or blue and gold. She’d read about it somewhere; there was a mineral in the salt that made the colours. Everything was salt: the walls, the floor. The air tasted of it. She was instantly thirsty. It was warm too, not even that far from the open tunnel mouth. After about twenty metres she pulled off her hat and tucked it in her jacket pocket. After forty, she had to take off the jacket. What was making that heat? It was bizarre. Outside, it must have been minus twenty.

She called again, and again her voice echoed around and around. The tunnel branched up ahead. She swung the torchlight over the floor, looking for footprints. It was hard to see; the ground was powdery salt in some places, and in others the salt had formed in strange, alive-looking stalagmites, some small and new, others old, making pillars right up to the ceiling. All of it swirled with those incredible colours. She’d had no idea it was like this down here. Grudgingly, she felt a little bit grateful to the stupid vloggers. She would never have seen it otherwise.

Her light flickered, and at the same time, the radio in her belt made the whistling, crackly sound it did if she walked too close to the television at work.

Something in the flashlight was wrong. Something was spiking out of the little hatch that protected the battery, something white and crystalline. She dropped it, and the light went out. Pitch-black.

She snicked her lighter. The tiny light fell over the torch on the ground. It was bound up in spikes and weird arcs of . . . salt.

“What?” she said aloud, and then yelled when exactly the same thing happened to her radio with a howl of dying circuitry.

Only one thing destroyed electronics like that. To destroy them so quickly, there had to be a lot of it, too. A lot: even at Chernobyl, people had been able to use electronic devices for about fifteen minutes before they fried. How long had she been here—five minutes? Unprotected. That same fifteen minutes at Chernobyl had been enough to give all those people leukaemia. She backed away. God Almighty, what had they stored down here? It could be anything. They were only two hours away from the Mayak facility, where they made plutonium, where they had been making plutonium for seventy years, and spilling God knew what in the process—

The flame of the lighter caught on something on the left. A person.

No.

A statue about the size and shape of a person. Salt. Frozen mid-step, as though it was trying to run.

Five statues. Littered around them were salt-ruined phones and cameras, even a drone with a logo on it: MOST HAUNTED PLACES! LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, FOLLOW.

She ran back to the car. Getting out into the open and the roaring cold felt like reaching safe ground, though of course there was no way to know that. She wrenched the car door open and started the engine, almost expecting it to be dead and to open the bonnet and find spikes of salt inside, but it started, and cooperated as she skidded out of the parking lot. She pulled the car radio off its hook.

“Dispatch, this is Car Twelve at the salt mine, I—”

“That was quick,” the dispatcher said. “Any sign of them?”

“Their car is there.” She stared at the road. What was she supposed to say? “I think—I think I’ve found bodies.”

10

Hreodwater, England

The tower room at An El had a view across the whole cavern and its lake. It all danced with salt light, and the salt panes of the window had their own glow that would have gone straight through curtains if you had Hreod eyes—and so they were fitted with silver shutters. Avelyn tilted them closed, and blinked when he saw the room lit only by lamplight. Completely different. Much darker. Different colours. He’d forgotten just how much he wasn’t seeing, by ordinary light. No wonder he spent all his time stumbling around Rome not recognising people he knew. He could only half see, in the same way he could only half taste.

There was silver cladding on the walls too. Just a veneer, but it was enough to block the glow of the halite masonry. It was good, of course, but . . . he couldn’t imagine many Hreoda ever stayed at the abbey. That was a mad expense to go to for no reason, and he couldn’t think of a reason why an Outsider would need a silver-clad room. He touched it, puzzled, and a mirror-Avelyn did the same thing in the reflection.

It made him jump, because he had taken out his contact lenses and his eyes had changed.

In the Outside, away from salt light, they were coin gold. That was bad enough. Here, though, adjusted to the light, they were violet.

Nope.

He pushed open the shutters, and the window for good measure.

Straightaway, a fog of warm salt light invited itself inside. He stood with his arms resting on the sill for a long time, soaking it in and feeling—distant but distinct—that wonderful certainty that someone here loved him. It sang with holy clarity.