The Running Girl (Kaunovalta, Book I)

The Running Girl (Kaunovalta, Book I) Page 6

by D. Alexander Neill

  Chapter 5 ♦ Stonewisdom

  Carrlár, Frida explained to Hax as the caravan shuddered to a halt in the Tube station, meant ‘Stone-Wisdom’, and was a contraction of the moniker Carrláreow, or ‘Stone-Teacher’ – one of the many names that the Dwarves ascribed variously to Lagu, the master of all stone-lore, and to Khallach, the divine servant of Lagu who had taken the hill dwarves under his tutelage thousands of years in the past, during the Age of Making. The priestess had recited a translated version of the Treléodscearula Dwéorga that told of the Holy Mother’s rejection of her children, and her attempt to destroy them; of how Ana had prevailed upon Bræa’s four brothers to divide the Kindred between them; and of how Lagu had, after some negotiation, accepted responsibility for the Dwarves, giving the three tribes over to Khallach, Barraj and Zoraz to be instructed in the arts of stone, metal and gem-craft.

  Hax had found the tale interesting (she had heard a similar version, transliterated into the elven tongue, during her early schooling nearly a century earlier), but she had difficulty concentrating on it. The sights, sounds and smells of the Dwarf-city immediately overwhelmed her.

  Immediately upon disembarking from the coach, she realized that the city was unlike any other dwarven settlement she had seen thus far. Eastgate had been busy, but it was a relatively remote outpost, the furthest such habitat from the centre of the Deeprealm. She had seen many dwarves there, to be sure, but nothing like the crowds she had seen bustling around the platform at Midpoint. And even that mighty cavern paled in comparison to the sights that awaited her when she exited the Carrlár tube station. But actually making good her exit, she discovered, took some time.

  The arrival platform at Carrlár (she was desperately trying to improve her comprehension of the dwarf-speech, and so eschewed the travelling tongue equivalent) could not have been more different from its counterpart at Midpoint. When the coach door opened, she found that she faced not a vast, open space, but a narrow stone tunnel only as wide as the door itself. The ceiling was low, and puddles of water covered the floor. The air was stuffy, damp, and reeked of moss.

  Hax froze at once, her fear of small, enclosed spaces creeping over her limbs and numbing them. The dank, narrow passage was what she had always imagined the dwarven realm to be like. A cold, sickly feeling settled into her stomach, and she wondered whether all of ‘Stonewisdom’ would be like this.

  A gentle nudge from Frida set her feet moving, and, with her saddlebags over one shoulder and her bow and baldric over the other, she ventured slowly forward.

  Her claustrophobia, fortunately, did not have much time to manifest itself. The tunnel was soon joined by similar exit tunnels leading (she assumed) away from the other coach doors. The joint tunnel was broader, slightly higher, and well lit, with better air flow – a good thing, too, as she soon found herself surrounded by hundreds of Dwarves, hauling a vast array of suitcases, crates, chests, shoulder-bags and other varieties of luggage. She kept glancing up nervously at the ceiling, expecting to crack her head on a protruding stone (there were few of these) or sign-stanchion (of which there were many).

  A moment later she saw a man of Ekhan, easily six inches taller than she, shuffling uncomfortably down the passageway, his neck bent at an awkward angle. She immediately felt better.

  Several twists, turns and stairways later, Hax found herself in an immense, rectangular hall. Waist-high (thigh-high, to her) barriers separated the vast throng of travellers into long, shuffling lines that inched slowly forward. She had become separated from her companions in the press, and, when she asked the dwarf behind her – a gruff-looking fellow with eyes and beard as black as firestone and the stained fingers of a glassworker – what the purpose of the queue was, he merely shrugged, and replied, “Niet ymbsprecan ælflæden.”

  Hax knew that phrase; she had heard it dozens of times. It meant the he didn’t speak the elven tongue. Feeling slightly adventuresome, she tried a few of the words she had learned from Frida and her men-folk. “Ac ábídan?” she asked, hoping that she had put the emphasis on the correct syllable. What are we waiting for?

  The dwarf snorted. “Gafolgeréfan,” he replied, obvious contempt in his voice. “Ábregdan nestpohha, lufigendlic.”

  Hax didn’t understand a word. “Gafolgeréfan?” she asked, adding an interrogative inflection in hopes of receiving some further explanation.

  “Gése,” the dwarf replied shortly, busying himself with his kit-bag.

  Hax smiled helplessly, looking around. She knew that gése meant ‘Yes, indeed’, and therefore that they were waiting in line for the Gafolgeréfan. But as she had no idea what a Gafolgeréfan was, she was no further along than before.

  The line snaked back and forth between the barriers. The pace was so slow and so gradual that Hax was nearly driven to distraction. The dwarves, though evidently tired and surly, were remarkably patient; had any of the folk of Eldisle been forced to stand in such a line, she reflected, most would have either drifted away in search of other interests, or rioted before ten minutes had passed. Thanks to a night spent questioning the coach-crew, though, her fatigue kept her from becoming too restless.

  As did her nervousness over what she was carrying, tucked deep within her pack. Hax had no desire to draw attention to herself.

  She occupied herself by inspecting the intricate, detailed bas-reliefs that decorated the walls. Most appeared to be allegorical representations of historical or mythological events; she recognized dwarven warriors and clerics, as well as orcs, giants, and what she thought were probably hobgoblins. She lacked the cultural references for most of the works, though, and soon lost interest in them.

  After about half an hour spent glancing idly at the room and her fellow travellers and growing increasingly fidgety, she found herself at the head of the line, only to be directed – by an elderly dwarf wearing some sort of rune-marked, burgundy-coloured sash and a pair of brilliant white gloves – to one of perhaps half a dozen small booths set into the stone walls. A bored-looking dwarf-woman sat behind a low desk half-buried in rolls and scraps of parchment. Without looking up, she said, “Nama æghwæther ingehyd néosung?”

  “I’m sorry,” Hax replied in the travelling tongue. “I don’t…”

  “Name and purpose of visit?” the dwarf-woman interrupted in the same language.

  “I’m travelling with friends,” Hax replied, relieved that the woman could understand her. “They’re here somewhere; I’ve just lost them in the…”

  The woman ignored her, selecting a thick, rectangular piece of heavy paper festooned with black and blue runes, and hammering it with a heavy bronze stamp. “Temporary visitor’s visa,” she snapped. “Good for three ten-days. Six silverweights.”

  Despite Frida’s insistence on paying for everything, Hax had managed to exchange some currency at Midpoint Station. Somewhat nonplussed by the woman’s abruptness, she fumbled in her purse, eventually producing the requisite coins. She slid them across the desk; the woman slapped them into a slot and thrust the stamped paper back at her.

  “What if I want to stay longer?” Hax asked quickly.

  The clerk eyed her with irritation. Snatching the paper out of Hax’s hands, she selected another stamp, hammered it down, and passed the form back. “See the ‘immigration’ office,” she replied. “It’s the one marked ‘Udlanderne’, halfway down the embarkation hall, on your left. “Níehst!” she shouted, glancing over Hax’s shoulder.

  The black-eyed dwarven glazier jostled her impatiently from behind. Hax hurriedly retrieved her belongings and stumbled past the desk, feeling that she had gained considerable insight into what it felt like to be a sheep.

  She joined the throngs flowing out through what she assumed was, according to the dwarf-woman, the ‘embarkation’ hall. To her infinite relief, Frida was standing a-tiptoe next to a pillar, waving to catch her eye. Hax thrust her way through the crowd to the priestess’ side.

  “Liking it s
o far, dearie?” she said with a sympathetic smile, speaking loudly to be heard over the crowd.

  “It’s a madhouse!” the elf-girl gasped. “Do you go through this every time?”

  Frida nodded. “You get used to it, after awhile. Did you get your papers stamped?”

  “Yes.” Hax produced the document the clerk had given her.

  Frida took it and scanned it with a practiced eye. “Planning on settling down?” she asked, grinning slightly.

  “I just asked what to do if I wanted to stay longer than…what does it say, three ‘ten-days’?”

  Frida nodded. “You can ignore it,” she said shortly. “You won’t be settling in Carrlár anyway. And if you do decide to stay with us, we’ll make permanent arrangements once we get home.” She handed the paper back. “Keep this with you. But from now on, stick next to me, and I’ll make sure you don’t get lost in the paperwork.” She shouldered her pack. “Come along. The men folk are already outside.”

  “Good,” Hax said tiredly. “I’ve had enough of this place already.”

  Frida took her by the elbow and steered her into the crowd. “Don’t fret,” she said encouragingly. “You haven’t seen the best of it yet.”

  ♦

  The worst of Carrlár, she decided later, was the tube station. The ‘best’ was nothing short of astonishing.

  By purest chance, Uchtred, while waiting for Frida to locate Hax, had come across his contact, Bedwulf, in one of the shops on the Tube station platform. The two fell immediately to talking, and it emerged that Bedwulf was waiting on delivery of a crucial component for Uchtred’s new boiler design, and that it had been promised to him the following day. The four dwarves conferred, and it was decided to wait for delivery in order to ensure that the part met Uchtred’s specifications before carrying on to Elder Delvin and points west.

  Moments later, Hax had to revise her opinion of the city once again. Upon exiting the tube station, her senses had been overwhelmed by the variety and splendour of the sights, sounds and smells surrounding her. Not damp and moss this time, but iron, firestone-smoke, roasting meat, perfume, incense, clean water, fresh air, brimstone…and, to her amazement and delight, trees.

  Trees! The city of Stonewisdom, as it turned out, was built in the empty shaft of an enormous, long-extinct volcano. The Tube station, not surprisingly, occupied its lowest level, in an area reclaimed from groundwater, regularly pumped out to prevent flooding. This, Uchtred informed her proudly, was the system that he had worked on in his youth. He pointed its features out to Hax as they ascended through the city’s imposing foundations. She made a point of exclaiming loudly every time he did so, even though she did not understand even a tenth part of what the engineer was saying.

  Their exit from the station had been a marvel that left Hax speechless. They entered a broad, round-walled room seemingly carved of crystal that held upwards of a hundred passengers. Once its doors were sealed, the entire chamber rose swiftly through a smooth stone channel, propelled by some unseen force beneath her feet. A few moments after motion began, the room shuddered slightly, and was suddenly surrounded not by stone, but by clear, lime-green water. An instant later, it burst into open air, and was immediately engulfed by rainbow shards of brilliance as beads of water, cascading down the transparent walls, shattered and reflected the gleams of light emanating from some vast source far overhead.

  Hax looked down, and gasped in amazement. The crystal room seemed to be floating – flying, soaring ever upwards on invisible wings, passing alongside (and occasionally through) stone platforms bearing shops, temples, homes, cave-entrances, free-standing buildings…and hundreds upon hundreds of dwarves. Surging, teeming crowds of them.

  At each level, the chamber slowed noiselessly to a halt. Doors opened, allowing passengers to enter and leave, then closed again, before the room once again took to the air.

  She looked up, and saw that the light overhead was getting closer, growing from a gleaming pinprick to a broad, yellow disk, as bright as the Lantern itself. She found herself blinking rapidly as her eyes adjusted to illumination of an intensity that she had not seen since leaving the sunlight behind more than a week before.

  It was a marvellous experience, and Hax found herself holding her breath, clutching Frida’s calloused hand tightly. At last, though, it ended; at the ninth or tenth platform (she had lost count), Frida tugged her towards the opening door, and they exited the chamber along with a dozen or so other passengers. Hax hung back, watching the crystal room soar ever higher, until it passed through the next stone platform some dozens of paces overhead.

  At least her new perspective revealed the propulsive mechanism. The chamber was perched atop a gleaming shaft of polished metal. She shook her head in wonderment, promising herself that she would ask Uchtred to explain how it all worked.

  Glancing around, Hax saw that they were standing on a narrow platform, almost a ledge, halfway up the throat of the volcano. A thin, delicate-looking metal railing ran around the edge. She stepped carefully towards it, and found herself looking down at dozens of other such ledges, big and small, that encircled the shaft; and beyond them, to the clear, bright green of the vast pool of water from which they had emerged, hundreds of paces below. “Mirus mirificus,” she breathed.

  Frida smiled. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said. “Come along, we’re nearly home.”

  “Home?”

  “Bedwulf’s home. It’s this way.”

  Bedwulf, it transpired, was a second cousin to Uchtred, and also happened to be married to a distant niece of Frida’s. Frida tried to explain the relationship to Hax, but the attempt only left the elf-girl more perplexed. The dwarves, she was learning, set great store by familial bonds, both by blood and by marriage, and put considerable effort into sorting out parentage, lineage and other ties.

  It was unfamiliar, and rather confusing to the elf-girl. Apart from the records kept by the noble families of the Third House (mostly for purposes of determining the royal line of succession), her people paid little attention to ties other than blood; long life-spans, frequent and prolonged absences, and the ease with which the nobility traded spouses (both formally and less formally) meant that the web of family ties – especially among the Duodeci – resembled less a ‘tree’ than a bowl of noodles. Hax did her best to try to follow her friend’s explanation, but the discussion broke down quickly once Frida realized that the travelling tongue simply lacked the words for most of the relationships she was attempting to portray.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when the priestess finally gave up. Hax had no desire to supplement her meagre knowledge of the Dweorgaspræc with volumes of pointless minutiae. She needed to acquire basic courtesies more than reams of genealogical terminology.

  Being a guest in a dwarven home, fortunately, was, nowhere near as daunting a task as trying to sort out dwarven blood-trees. After leaving the astándanyppe (“It means ‘rise-up-room’,” Uchtred had explained helpfully), Frida led Hax and the dwarves into the first of a trio of broad, low tunnels leading away from the ledge. The illumination dropped off quickly once they left the volcano’s throat; light sources were few and far between in the tunnels, and Hax found herself squinting in dim passageways once more. She remembered the light-crystal she had been given in Eastgate, and patted her pockets to ensure that she still had it. Just in case.

  After a bewildering array of passageways, narrower side corridors, ramps and stairways, the priestess finally halted before an intricately-carved stone door decorated with plaques of hammered bronze.

  “Home at last!” she announced. Placing her right palm flat on the door’s surface, she said clearly, “Bedwulf, Frideswide infær cépan.”

  “I got most of that,” Hax murmured to Uchtred. “But what’s ‘cépan’ mean?”

  “ ‘To ask for’,” the engineer replied.

  Hax nodded. Then another thought struck her. She struggled to recall wha
t the dwarven glazier had said to her in the Tube Station entry hall. “How about ‘Ábregdan nestpohha, lufigendlic’?” she asked, trying to mimic the correct pronunciation.

  Uchtred and Frida both burst out laughing.

  “What?!” Hax asked, feeling embarrassed.

  “It means, ‘Get your purse out, gorgeous’,” Uchtred chortled. “Making new friends, were you?”

  Frida ignored the engineer and patted Hax kindly on the arm. “Your accent’s improving, dearie.”

  A moment later, the door swung noiselessly inward. Hax immediately found herself immersed in the gabbling frenzy of a dwarven family reunion. She quickly discovered that even distant relations were greeted like long-lost brothers, and that the greetings involved vast amounts of food, and even vaster amounts of beer, jordwin, and the dreaded Laguhland. She also discovered to her delight that the jordwin was simply delicious – fresh, fruity and flavourful. Hax immediately instructed Frida and Uchtred not to tell her how it was made, fearing that if she discovered that it was distilled from some horrible subterranean mould or other, she would no longer be able to enjoy it. Fortunately, while stronger than the ale, the earthwine was nowhere near the potency of the more ardent dwarven spirits. Those she studiously avoided.

  Bedwulf’s wife, Eanfled (“Me name you Yanni,” she had said with a shy smile, in a heavily-accented attempt at the travelling tongue), was a trim, compact thing, younger than the other four. Hax was surprised; the woman would likely have been deemed attractive even outside the Deeprealm, with flaming red hair and pale green eyes complimented by a dense array of freckles. These features were apparently rare enough among Dwarves that women so marked were deemed great beauties, and were remorselessly sought after by suitors of all social grades. “Some go further than others in search of loveliness,” Uchtred jested, giving Bedwulf a playful shove. Hax had no idea what that was supposed to mean, and did not have a chance to ask.

  She was less impressed by Eanfled’s physical traits (which were, after all, common enough among the Hiarsk, and for that matter, among the humans of Jarla and Ekhan) than she was by the woman’s cuisine. When the family sat down to dinner at the round stone table with the elf-girl in the position of honoured guest between her host and hostess, Hax quickly found herself attacking everything within reach with the voracity of a wolf bitch nursing two litters. She had to will herself consciously to exercise restraint.

  “Cempestre niet æten?” Bedwulf murmured with a sly grin, eliciting a burst of laughter from the assembled company. Hax, not understanding, turned to Frida with a helpless shrug.

  The priestess was chortling into her beer stein. “He asked, ‘Don’t you feed the warrior-woman?’,” she translated.

  Hax smiled self-consciously. She ceased gnawing on the roasted thigh-bone that was her current focus, and saluted her host with the grisly relic. “Æbrucol anbyrignes. Dancword ac giestning,” she gurgled, trying not to spit too much as she masticated the complicated syllables.

  The roar of laughter that greeted this sally nearly knocked her backwards off her seat. Uchtred coughed a mouthful of ale across the table, narrowly missing Frida, and began choking. Eanfled pounded him on the back until he recovered. Bedwulf howled gleefully while slapping his thigh, and even the dour Wynstan managed a smile.

  “Did that not come out right?” she asked Frida, feeling terribly self-conscious.

  “Oh, aye,” the priestess chuckled. “I’m proud of you, cildic. You’re mastering our language faster than I ever thought you would. Especially the…ah…colourful parts.”

  Hax flushed scarlet. “I’ve heard Uchtred use that phrase before!” she protested faintly, as the engineer laughed even more loudly. “What did I say?”

  The priestess rolled her eyes. “You could find a better model to teach you polite speech,” she replied, casting a threatening glance at her hiccoughing kinsman. “Best you not know. Don’t take it to heart,” she went on when she saw Hax’s wide eyes and trembling lip. “Knowing when to swear, and when not to, is an art-form for us, dearie.

  “Using so foul an epithet to praise a meal was…” she snickered, “well, let’s just say it was so horribly inappropriate that it couldn’t help but be funny.” She raised her mug, and added, “I think you’re going to fit in just fine.”

  “So long as don’t compliment the King’s chef like that,” Uchtred chortled around a mouthful of black bread.

  The complexities of the dwarven tongue plagued her for the rest of the evening. At one point, Hax found herself discussing the vagaries of vocabulary with Frida. She asked for and was given the correct phrase for complimenting a host, and practiced it several times, struggling to wrap her tongue around the convoluted syllables. Frida complimented her on her efforts, if not the results.

  At one point during the evening, she recalled what Uchtred had said about ‘going far in search of beauty.’ She asked him what he had meant.

  “Yanni,” the engineer replied, jerking a thumb at their hostess. “She was a stonewife when Bedwulf set his level on her. Had to petition the High Priestess of Khallach herself for permission to carry her off.”

  “ ‘Carry her off’?” Hax repeated, confused. “She was a prisoner?”

  “No, no! Not at all. Like I said, she was a stonewife.”

  “What,” the elf-girl asked with exaggerated patience, “is a ‘stonewife’?”

  Uchtred was about to reply, but Frida silenced him with a shove. Turning to Hax, she said, “The Stonewives – we call’em gástliccavindren – are maidens who are promised to Khallach. Adepts of the faith.”

  “Priestesses?”

  “Necat,” Frida snorted. “They’re not ordained. They do wield power, though, by virtue of their sacred oath. To remain pure and faithful to the Stoneteacher.”

  “They live apart from the other clergy, and other folk in general,” Uchtred chimed in. “In abbodriccar. That’s what I meant when I said that Bedwulf had ‘made off with her’. From the abbey.”

  “Coniuga sancta,” Hax blurted out, suddenly understanding. “Divine novices, yes?” She wanted to add virgo intacta, but was relieved to discover that she did not know the correct phrase, either in the travelling tongue, much less the Dweorgaspræc.

  “I suppose,” Frida shrugged.

  “Then how did she marry?” Hax asked, confused.

  “Just as Uchtred said,” Frida replied patiently. “Bedwulf begged the High Priestess to release her from her vows, and she did so.”

  “And she lost her powers when she wed?” Hax asked, stunned.

  “That’s how it works, dearie,” Frida shrugged again. Turning to Eanfled, she spat out a few swift phrases. The red-haired woman smiled and replied softly.

  “What’d she say?” Hax asked, enthralled.

  Frida shook her head sadly. “She said she’s never tried to summon the power. She’d rather not know, than be certain that it was gone.”

  “That old life my,” Eanfled said slowly. “New life – him.” She pointed at Bedwulf, and her whole heart was in her smile.

  Hax smiled, touched by the girl’s obvious love for her husband. Then she remembered something else that she had meant to inquire about. If anything, it would require even more tact. “There’s something else I don’t understand,” she said, wondering how best to proceed.

  “What is it, dearie?”

  “Your…liquor. The lagu-land. That stuff.” She pointed at one of the pitchers.

  The priestess glanced at the vessel. “Laguhland? What about it?”

  “Well,” the elf-girl began, “and don’t be offended if this doesn’t come out right, but I’d always thought that dwarves were…well, you know, more devout.”

  “More devout than whom?” Frida asked. To Hax’s relief, she looked puzzled rather than offended. “Some are more so, and others less, naturally. What does that have to do with…”

  “It’s the name,” Hax blurted. “I mean, r
eally; ‘God’s piss’? Don’t the priests get…I mean, don’t you find it offensive?”

  Frida burst out laughing. Uchtred, ever ready for a solid joke, inquired what she was chortling about; and upon receiving a hasty explanation rendered in dwarf-talk, burst into renewed gales of hilarity himself.

  Hax sighed. She waited until the entire company had been told and the chuckles were dying down. If this keeps up, she thought, exasperated, I’ll be able to make a living here as a jester.

  Frida saw the expression on her face and patted her consolingly on the arm. “Sorry, my dear. I thought everyone should know.”

  “What, how miserable my grasp of your language is?” Hax muttered. “I’d’ve thought it was pretty obvious already.”

  “No, no! Not at all!” the priestess averred, holding up her hands. “If anything, you should be proud of yourself.”

  Hax blinked. Now she was confused. “Why, exactly?” she asked.

  Frida poured her another glass of jordwin. “Our tongue,” she explained, “is ancient. Other languages have changed over time. Even your own has, although not as much as some. But ours has not. Over time, a lot of jokes have crept into it. Especially…oh, what’s the word…”

  She glanced over at Uchtred, raised her voice, and said, “ ‘Toórder’?”

  “ ‘Puns’,” the engineer replied, around a mouthful of half-gnawed meat.

  “Just so,” Frida said, nodding. “Puns.” She raised her glass to Hax. “You, my dear, have managed to detect one of the oldest ones in our language.”

  Hax’s eyes widened. “ ‘God’s piss’ is a pun?”

  “Part of it is. You see, we are the folk of the earth, are we not? All of the old songs speak of it.” She paused for a moment, thinking. “Do you remember when I recited the Treléodscearula Dwéorga for you?”

  Hax nodded, grimacing. “Vaguely. The vagueness, I should note, was due to all the Laguhland you poured down my gullet that night.”

  “I should sing it for you again, then!” the priestess crowed happily.

  “If you must,” Hax mumbled.

  Frida shot her a hard glance under lowered brows. “I’ll attribute that remark to the wine. The Treléodscearula Dwéorga,” she continued archly, “or ‘Three Tribes of the Dwarves’, is an ancient poem that tells how Lagu became the god of the dwarves. One of the early stanzas concerns how Bræa made her children. In the common speech, it is usually rendered thus:

  The dame of the Kindred, the Mother of Morning

  Created her sons from Anuru’s fair form;

  From fire she brought forth the curious Men-folk,

  And Elvii she wrought from the clouds of the storm.

  The happy Halpinya she formed from the waters

  The rippling rivers, the fast-falling rain;

  And Dweorga she made from the bones of the mountains,

  And gave them the Deepdark to be their domain.

  Thus made the Mother the breeds of the Kindred;

  Thus wrought the Powers in Bræa’s bright reign.

 

  “Nice,” Hax remarked, emptying her cup and motioning urgently for Uchtred to refill it. “It even rhymes.”

  The engineer chortled, and tipped the wine-pitcher for her.

  Frida rolled her eyes, “My point,” she said, exasperated, “is that according to all legends, all songs, we are the folk of the earth. We live here, beneath the stone. We created the Deeprealm. We are, in all ways, people of rock.”

  “That’s not news, Frida,” Hax said patiently. “So what?”

  “So,” the priestess said, “Lagu is the chief deity in our pantheon, the mightiest of the Dwarf-Lords, the master of earth and iron and stone. And in our language, lagu means ‘water’.” She smiled triumphantly, as if she had made an important point.

  If she had, Hax’s head was too fogged with wine to see it. “Your g-god’s name is ‘water’?”

  “Yes,” the priestess replied smugly.

  “Isn’t that s-singularly inap-p-propriate?” Hax asked, stumbling over the polysyllables.

  Perhaps, she thought giddily, I should put my cup down. She did so, watching it carefully.

  “Yes!” Frida crowed.

  “So that stuff,” Hax asked, pointing at the pitcher of Laguhland, “is called ‘piss-water’?”

  Frida’s smile began to fade. “I think you’re missing the…”

  Hax looked down into the priestess’ half-full cup. “You’re drinking piss-water?” she asked, blinking.

  By this time, Uchtred was red-faced, gasping for breath between spasms of laughter, and pounding his horny fist upon the table.

  “Stoneteacher give me strength,” Frida sighed heavily.

  Dinner eventually ended, leaving Hax feeling as though she had consumed half her own weight in meat. Despite having avoided the stronger liquors, she had consumed more of the jordwin than was perhaps wise, and her head was swimming.

  And not only with drink; at one point, she started up in her seat, and realized that she had nodded off in the middle of a conversation.

  Eanfled was regarding her sympathetically. She leaned over and said something quietly to Frida, who nodded. “Bed-time,” the priestess announced.

  Beckoning to Hax, she said, “Come along, cildic. Mine hostess has a nice, cosy guest-room set aside for you.”

  Hax rose obediently, remembering her manners just in time to bow to Bedwulf, the host, who nodded happily in return. She stepped carefully around the table and followed the two women, receiving a hearty “Sleep well!” and a companionable slap across her backside from Uchtred, who – having drunk most of a pitcher of Laguhland himself – seemed to be having difficulty getting his eyes to uncross.

  Shocked, she briefly considered punching the dwarf in the nose; but then, thinking better of it, simply blew him a kiss.

  “See?” Uchtred stage-whispered to a stony-faced Wynstan. “I told you! She likes me better!”

  “I was going,” Hax said with the immense dignity of the badly inebriated, “to p-p-punch you in the eye. But I was afraid that eye-p-p-punching might be so…some obscure d-d-dwarfy courtship ritual.”

  Laughter billowed after her as Hax followed Frida and Eanfled deeper into the Dwarves’ snug, compact home.

  At length, the red-haired woman threw open a stone door, and gestured to Hax to enter. The elf-girl did so.

  She backed out again immediately, shaking like a windblown leaf, nearly falling over Frida.

  The room – which was attractive enough – was no more than six feet long, four deep, and at best five feet high. It contained a comfortable looking metal-framed bed, piled high with clean linen and multicoloured blankets – but it was lightless and, with its heavy stone door, looked entirely too much like a crypt for Hax’s comfort.

  She found that she was trembling. She put a hand on one wall to steady herself.

  “What is it, ducks?” Frida asked, her voice filled with concern.

  “It’s very nice,” Hax replied, her voice tiny. “But I can’t…it’s too…” she trailed off.

  The priestess was nodding. She’d seen this before. “Too small?” she asked.

  Hax nodded mutely. “I’m not good in tight places,” she whispered.

  Frida glanced over at Eanfled, who had been watching this exchange with a look of surprise on her freckled face. “Hwæt lá?” she asked.

  “Lytelnes dthraciana,” the priestess replied, speaking softly.

  Eanfled’s eyes widened. “Æltæwelíce?”

  “Géa.”

  The red-haired woman put a sympathetic arm around Hax’s waist; the latter was so distracted that she nearly did not notice the gesture. “Ábútan geswebban gád?” she asked softly.

  “Eh?” Hax muttered.

  “Eanfled asks, ‘Do you want to sleep outside?’” Frida translated.

  Hax turned an inquisitive eye on the priestess. “What?” she asked, confused. “How c
ould…I mean, aren’t we underground?”

  Frida saw the nascent panic on the Elf-girl’s face, then turned and nodded at their hostess. “Géa. Ábútan geslápian.”

  Eanfled nodded, smiled, and began gathering up the bedding. Frida took Hax by the elbow, and said, “This way.”

  They returned to the dining room, receiving curious glances from the men, and ignoring them studiously. Frida led Hax through the kitchen, where tables, countertops and a charcoal stove were festooned with the detritus of their repast, and into a smaller sitting room. There, she opened a pair of wide, shuttered metal doors…

  …and Hax gasped. Beyond the doors lay a small balcony ringed by a thin metal railing, looking out over the throat of the volcano.

  She walked hesitantly forward and gazed down. They were standing on a narrow stone ledge; below and to the right she could see the platform where they had disembarked from the ‘up-lifting-room’. But from this higher vantage, Hax could also see innumerable other details: hundreds of similar ledges, and thousands of similar balconies, many framed by lighted windows. Vast, soaring support struts of stone and metal arced across the open space, intertwined with walkways and stairs that looked to be constructed of gossamer, alongside more robust cargo-handling cranes and lifting equipment.

  Far below, the green-tinged water glinted up at her like one of her own eyes, magnified ten thousand-fold.

  She looked up, and felt her eyes swim with tears. The blinding light she had seen earlier was gone now; from this height, she could see that the mouth of the volcano was covered by some shimmering, crystalline substance, as clear as glass, but brighter than any diamond she had ever seen. Beyond it, stars twinkled in the night sky; and each twinkle, like the Lantern’s blazing luminescence of earlier, was transmitted by the crystal, refracted into a thousand points of glittering light. All of the glimmering light spots were moving slowly and in concert, as the starlight shifted with the inexorable rotation of the earth.

  The gleams illuminated the cavern walls above her, and she could see innumerable broader ledges, many holding bushes, small plants, and even trees. Presumably these were the source of the fresh forest scent she had noticed earlier.

  Small shadows flitted almost invisibly between the tree branches. She thought she heard a lark’s call; and its beauty, after so many days underground, nearly broke her heart.

  “Is this all right, dearie?” Frida asked quietly.

  “Oh, yes,” Hax whispered, still staring upwards, a rapturous smile on her face. “It’s perfect.”

  The priestess grinned to herself, and helped Eanfled lay the bedding out on the moss-stuffed mattress she had brought along.

  The ledge was barely wide enough to hold it all, and Frida shuddered slightly. “Couldn’t pay me enough to sleep out here,” she muttered. “Honestly, I don’t know how your folk do it.”

  “Don’t give it a second thought,” Hax replied, wrapping one of the blankets around her narrow shoulders. “It’ll be just like home.”

  “I’m glad you think so,” Frida shrugged. “But I couldn’t sleep in a tree, myself.”

  “If ever you visit me at my father’s palace,” Hax replied, grinning happily, “I’ll ask him to find you a nice, cozy spot in the crypts.”

  Frida laughed, and then translated Hax’s reply for Eanfled, who laughed as well. The two Dwarf-women bade her good-night, and left, half-closing the balcony doors behind them.

  Hax stared at the stars for a long, long time before she finally fell asleep. She was thinking of home.

  ♦

  “But I want to come with you!” Ally shouted.

  “No,” her father replied roughly. Two of his attendants were helping him into his mailshirt, and his voice was muffled slightly until his head emerged from the neck hole.

  “She’s my mother!” she begged, nearly shouting.

  “And my lifemate,” Kaltas shot back, his voice rising angrily. “And the Duchess of Eldisle. And a child of…of a noble, ancient line.” He paused, visibly trying to calm himself. “It may be nothing. You will remain here, daughter, against my return.”

  His voice may have been calm, but his eyes were not. Ally caught the merest hint of his panic, and it chilled her blood. Even in time of war – it had been no more than two hands of years since the final engagement with the Hand knights at Duncala – she had never seen her father lose his patient equanimity.

  She had to remain respectful. Although she was nearly seventy, and had been Sylloallen’s apprentice for almost a decade, she was still half a century from her majority. By ancient custom – by the Codex Diorcan itself – her father’s word was still her first law. And even were it not, her love for him would have commanded obedience.

  She lowered her voice, trying reason. “Father, I beg you,” she said softly. “I’m skilled enough. You’ll need…”

  “It’s not a question of skill,” Kaltas said. He grasped her by the upper arms, drawing her into a tight embrace. She had just come from the training ground upon hearing the news of Alrykkian’s disappearance, and his mail clinked against the heavy scales of the practice gambeson she wore.

  “I know your worth, daughter. It’s why I want you here.” He drew back, smiling lopsidedly, and brushed an errant, sweat-soaked curl out of her face. “Your mother’s missing, Janni’s nowhere to be found, and I don’t know what I’m riding into. That’s enough unknowns. I need to be certain you’re safe.”

  He paused for a moment, as if considering, then tugged the heavy signet off his little finger. “You may need this.”

  “Father!” she protested. Ignoring her, he grasped her left hand, spread her fingers roughly, and jammed the ring onto the only digit large enough to hold it in place – her thumb.

  Footsteps echoed in the hall, and the door of the Duke’s study was flung wide. Sylloallen rushed in. He had obviously paused on the way up from the square to change his attire; a silver-chased breastplate, its buckles dangling, was draped over one shoulder, and a longbow and quiver were slung over the other. His sword was naked in his hand. “I heard, my lord,” he gasped. “I’m ready.” He glanced around the room, panting slightly. “Where’s Kalestayne?”

  “On his way,” Kaltas replied. “But you’re staying here, Syllo. With Ally.”

  “Sire!” the warrior protested.

  Despite his obvious worry, Kaltas smiled narrowly. “Do I have to go through this with you, too?” he asked. “I’ve given Allymyn my signet, Sy. Help her hold things together until I get back. With Rykki,” he added, a complex broil of emotion tinting his voice.

  Sylloallen looked as though he was about to plead again. Ally could see her teacher wrestling with his own fear…and then she saw it melt away. The warrior’s face changed visibly, as though a mantle of tranquillity had been draped over his shoulders. “I understand,” he said calmly. “May the Protector’s grace go with you, sire.”

  “Thank you, my friend.” He grasped his comrade’s hand, glancing obliquely at Ally. “I know how much you need…how much you want to go. But I need you here. Your place is with Ally, now.”

  The paladin embraced his lord. “I know. Go swiftly, sire,” he said quietly. “For both of us. And give your lady my duty. And my love.”

  His mailshirt settled, Kaltas turned to accept his sword-belt from an attendant.

  Ally stepped forward, took it out of the startled man’s hands, pushed him aside, and knelt. She buckled the heavy girdle about her father’s waist herself. Then she stood and saluted the Duke, soldier to soldier.

  A sad, slightly bemused smile crept over her father’s face. He saluted her back, then stepped forward and crushed her to his chest, kissing her softly on the forehead. “Take care of Sy, Ally,” he said gruffly. “Keep him safe for me. And don’t declare war on anyone while I’m gone!”

  “Yes, father. No, father.”

  A commotion behind them. The Duke released his daughter a
s the house wizard, Kalestayne, bustled into the study, accompanied by a half-dozen lesser casters and apprentices. “Ready, sire?” the elderly mage asked.

  “As soon as you are.” Indicating the furniture, carpets and what-not with a sweep of his hand, the Duke asked, “Do you need any special preparations?”

  Kalestayne shook his head. “None, your Grace.”

  “What are these for, then? Support?” The Duke waved at the half-dozen hangers-on littering his study.

  “My students, my lord,” the wizard said evenly. “Here to learn.” Glancing at Ally and Sylloallen, the wizard added, “It is still only you and I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where do you wish to arrive?”

  “Astrapratum,” the Duke replied instantly.

  “The Palace?”

  “No. The Crane Gate.”

  “I know it well,” the wizard murmured. “Give me your hand, sire.”

  Ally wordlessly passed her father his heavy, gold-chased gloves. The Duke tugged them on, then joined hands with the silver-haired wizard.

  “Everyone step back, please,” Kalestayne said. Then he began chanting – deep, sibilant syllables that seemed to echo through the corridors of Hax’s soul.

  As he spoke, a low thrum of power began to build in the tower room. Hax felt gooseflesh rise on her forearms, and smelt something odd – like the sea air after a thunderstorm. All around her, lines of light faded slowly into view, humming with barely-contained might. I could touch them if I tried, she thought, mesmerized.

  A sudden fire seemed to gather in her belly, growing hotter and hotter until she felt faint and gasped for breath.

  Sylloallen grasped her outstretched fingers, centring her again, and the disorientation faded. The warrior raised his free hand, palm facing the wizard and his Duke. “Larranel Sanctus, defensor lustrum,” he was murmuring, “commendo princeps et principessa, amici mi, ab custodio tuus. Bene et aucupari se, hodie et usquequaqu.” He raised his hand in salute, and the Duke did the same. “Fiat voluntas tua,” he added.

  The hum of arcane power built to a crescendo, whipping Kalestayne’s incantation away into some unknown realm. Sparks gathered around the pair…and they were gone.

  “Mother,” Ally whispered. She had to grit her teeth to keep the tears at bay.

  ♦

  Hax awoke on the high terrace bathed in sweat, her heart pounding. She had relived, in excruciating detail, the terrible, icy panic that had clutched at her soul when she had first learned of her mother’s disappearance. That grief was old, now; decades old. But she had learned, from bitter experience, that it still lurked around every corner, ready to leap out and claw her heart when she least expected it. That dream, especially, always disturbed her. She was quiet and withdrawn upon rising.

  As it turned out, the artisan that Uchtred and Bedwulf were waiting on needed one more day to complete the component he was fabricating for the new boiler. They decided to wait for it to be finished and tested. Over breakfast, Frida announced that the men-folk could take care of the metalwork, while she and Eanfled showed Hax some of the features of a real dwarven city.

  Fortunately, there was much to distract her. Long after having completed her toilette, Hax was still marvelling at the magnificent simplicity of the water-closet. During her brief stay at the hostel in Eastgate, she had been too overwhelmed with fatigue and astonishment at some of the other facets of dwarven city-life to wonder about the plumbing, and during her journey on the Tube, the question of where the water to feed the wash-basin and relief-chair came from and went to had seemed relatively straightforward. But as she freshened up before breakfast, she found herself wondering where the washing water – especially the hot water, an indescribable luxury to her mind – came from, and how it was fed to the home.

  She broached the question after breakfast as the three women were leaving the apartment – “In search,” as Frida put it, eyes twinkling, “of adventure.” To Hax, it sounded a lot like they were going shopping.

  Frida laughed self-consciously. “You’re asking the wrong dwarf,” she replied. “Uchtred’s the engineer. I’m sure he could draw you a diagram. But as I understand it, the water all comes from natural springs. The hot water is simply fed through pipes in a magma bed before being sent to individual dwellings.”

  “Wouldn’t it cool off on the way?” Hax asked.

  Frida actually stopped walking and thought about that one. “You know, it should, shouldn’t it? Well, that just goes to show that you’d do better to ask somebody who knows something. If you want somebody to compound a poultice or recite the ninth Antistrophe of the Stone-teacher’s creed, I’m your woman. For plumbing, you’d best seek out a plumber.”

  “It doesn’t really matter,” Hax replied as they continued walking again. “I was just curious.”

  “It does matter, though,” Frida disagreed, her voice unusually thoughtful. “We shouldn’t take these things for granted. There are fifty times a hundred-score people living in this city. What would we all do for water, if the system suddenly failed?”

  “Has it never failed before?” Hax asked, surprised. In her experience, mechanical technology was never as reliable as arcane solutions. Of course, she recalled drily, that was before I’d met a dwarf.

  Frida consulted incomprehensibly with Eanfled for several moments before replying. “Yanni tells me that every now and then they lose the hot water; she says that it’s usually because one of the feed pipes in the magma beds melts through, or gets shattered by a fault or tremor. The átimbranican – that’s ‘builders’, dearie – usually manage to have the problem fixed in a day or so. She just heats water in kettles on the stove until it’s fixed.”

  Hax shook her head. “It’s simply amazing,” she said, overcome by wonder at how much labour and ingenuity had gone into providing so simple, and so necessary, a thing as hot water.

  Eanfled said something that Hax didn’t catch. Frida obligingly translated. “Yanni wants to know, how do the elves heat water?”

  Hax chuckled morosely. “Like you do when the hot water fails, except we do it that way every day,” she replied. “In pots or kettles, on the stove or in a fireplace. Or, if you’ve the skill, by magic.”

  Eanfled asked another question, eyes wide. “Have you no baths, then?” Frida said.

  Hax shrugged. “The great cities do,” she said. “They’re public, and they’re generally very nice. But they’re heated by arcane means, not molten rock.”

  “What about country folk?” Frida continued, translating Hax’s reply for Eanfled.

  “Streams and tubs,” Hax replied, feeling like a bumpkin. “There were baths in Joyous Light, but I preferred streams and pools. Or the ocean, in summertime.” She blushed slightly, and added, “And alone. Or at least, in…er…distaff company.”

  Frida chuckled, adding a few explanatory sentences to her translation. Eanfled laughed lightly.

  “Cold is?” the red-haired woman asked, surprising Hax somewhat.

  “The sea?” the elf answered. “Not at all. Eldisle’s a long way south. It’s warm there, even in winter.”

  She paused, looking around. They were leaving the residential section by a different tunnel than they had entered it. “This isn’t the way to the ‘lifting room’,” she said.

  “We’re heading across to Southwall,” Frida replied. “There’s a dressmaker I want to visit.” She smirked. “He had a special place in his heart for me, long ago, and I think I can lean on that to talk him down a little in price.”

  “How do we get across the crater?” Hax asked, confused. “I didn’t see any bridges.”

  Frida laughed out loud; once she had translated Hax’s question, Eanfled laughed too. “No,” the priestess shook her head, wiping a tear from one corner of her eye. “No bridges. We could walk around, of course, but there’s something a little quicker.”

  A few stairs, ramps and tunnels later,
Hax found out what ‘something a little quicker’ meant. Emerging from a large doorway at the end of a well-travelled tunnel, she and her companions joined a short line of Dwarves standing patiently on a broad stone platform set into the wall of the volcano’s throat. The line was delineated by more of the thigh-high barriers she had seen in the Tube station’s entry hall. A dwarf wearing an official-looking tabard and a small cap roamed up and down the line, collecting coins from those waiting, while another stood at the edge of the platform, holding a pair of torches – although, instead of throwing bright yellow light like a normal torch, one of the short staves glowed red, while the other glowed blue. He was waving these up, down and sideways in regular patterns, and she realized intuitively that he was signalling to someone far away.

  Straining her eyes, she tried to make out whoever the torch-bearing dwarf was communicating with.

  “Can you see the other ledge?” Frida asked, noticing where Hax’s attention was focussed.

  Hax didn’t notice that the Dwarf-woman was grinning broadly. “No,” she replied.

  “Keep watching.”

  “Okay,” the elf-girl said a moment later. “There’s something big. It’s blocking…wait, there he is. It’s another fellow with torches. He’s waving the blue one, now. He…oh, gods, something’s…aaaaaAAHHHHH!” Hax leapt backwards as a gigantic glass and metal structure appeared to fall off the opposite wall. Like an enormous, flying slug, it dove slightly, rushing downwards. It dipped down in the centre of the volcano’s throat, then banked upwards again, climbing and slowing as it approached their platform.

  It slowed, slowed…and at last, with a gentle thud and a ringing CLANK, it shuddered to a halt.

  “Our chariot,” Frida said proudly, indicating the thing with a bow.

  “What in the nameless hells is THAT?” Hax shrieked.

  The priestess regarded the elf with a mixture of sympathy and humour. “It’s a pendular,” she explained patiently. “That’s how we get across to Southwall, without having to walk all the way around through the warrens; or taking the liftroom down, crossing the lake, and climbing sixty stories worth of stairs to get back up again.”

  Hax eyed the contraption wildly. It was some sort of metal carriage. The lower half was solid, but the upper half consisted only of a light framework of struts supporting square panes of glass. “We’re supposed to ride it?” she asked, her eyes wild. As she watched, a door opened at the front end of the carriage, and a swarm of dwarves poured out, heading back into the tunnel from which she and her friends had just emerged.

  Frida shook her head. “Have you never ridden a swing, cildic?” she clucked.

  “Yes, but not…I mean, we’re…how high…” Hax clamped her mouth shut, realizing that she was babbling incoherently. You’ve danced from treetop to treetop, she reminded herself fiercely. You will ride this dwarven monstrosity, and retain your dignity when doing so!

  And besides, she thought, panicked, if I soil myself, I’ll have to buy new smallclothes. And I don’t think they make my size here.

  Frida pushed her gently between the shoulder blades. “Forward you go, dearie. We’re next.”

  Her resolve notwithstanding, it was all Hax could do to keep from bolting in panic as she approached the metal carriage. She could see one of the dwarves – the torch-wielder – laboriously turning a large crank set in the floor. An alarming series of clicks and twangs accompanied each turn. “What’s he doing?” she asked, curious in spite of herself.

  “Setting the launch spring,” Frida replied, glancing over at the dwarf in response to Hax’s question. “It gives us the kick we need to get all the way up to the other side.”

  “What happens if…” Hax trailed off. Her mouth closed with a snap. Do I really want to know?

  “If it doesn’t work?” Frida finished the sentence for her. “There’s not much that can go wrong, really. If the brake-latch fails, we swing back and forth for a while until the carriage stops in the middle of the air. And then we wait for the operators to hook on and winch us back to one side or the other.” She smiled grimly. “It’s not common, but you’d better pray that doesn’t happen, dearie. We won’t be in any danger, but a quarter-hour of swinging back and forth…we dwarves have strong stomachs, but there’s a limit to everything. There’d be a lot of vomiting.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” Hax replied, her voice quavering.

  During the priestess’ reply, they had managed to board the metal carriage. It was tilted slightly upwards at the ledge-ward end, and Hax found herself at the windows opposite, looking down at the green-tinged lake, glittering silently some hundreds of paces below.

  “It’ll be fine,” Frida replied soothingly. She decided not to tell Hax about the adamant wires that suspended the carriage. They almost never broke, so there was no point in terrifying the girl. “Just hold onto the support railing, and remember to keep your knees rigid.”

  “My knees?” Hax asked, as the dwarf closed the carriage door, latched it, and began waving his torches furiously back and forth. She shot a panicked glance at the portal. Maybe there was still time…

  Frida nodded. “Just do it,” the priestess advised. “There’s a lot of force when…”

  CHUNG.

  The metal carriage jerked suddenly, leaping away from the wall. Angling downward, it swung like a descending scythe blade, accelerating rapidly. The slither of displaced air became a roar, and at the bottom of the swing, the scenery outside the window panes became an indistinct blur. Hax understood what Frida had meant about locking her knees; the downward force at the bottom of the swing was incredible, nearly driving her to the floor. The much stockier Dwarves, she noticed, seemed to have an easier time staying vertical.

  Then all of her attention was taken up by the opposite wall of the volcano, which was rushing toward them like a charging cavalry regiment. Hax clamped her jaw shut and closed her eyes, determined to die in dignified silence.

  She didn’t open them until she felt a slight jolt and heard a deep, metallic CLANK. There was no further motion.

  She waited for three full breaths until she opened her eyes again. While she counted, she tasted blood, and realized that she had bitten her tongue.

  The door opened, and the Dwarves flooded out of the carriage. Frida and Eanfled began moving as well, so Hax followed.

  Exiting the glass and metal pod, she found that her knees were trembling, and she had to clutch the metal railing for support.

  “So?” Frida asked, eyeing her carefully after they had disembarked.

  Hax took several deep breaths before answering. Her heart was still racing. Finally, she said, as solemnly as possible, “That was the most amazing thing I have ever done.”

  Frida snickered, and Eanfled eyed her with something akin to maternal pride.

  “If we’re not too rushed,” Hax continued, pleading, “could we do it again?”

  They ended up riding the pendular five times, with Hax shrieking and giggling like a schoolgirl during each crossing.

  She insisted on paying for all five trips. Frida did not object.

  ♦

  By the time they returned to Eanfled’s home that evening, Hax had begun to suspect that she had only been invited along as a pack animal. The two dwarf-women had cut a wide swath through the economy of Carrlár, and the trio finished the day with armloads of purchases.

  It had been an educational experience, too. Frida may have been a sharp customer, something that Hax had already discovered during their travels – but Eanfled was an absolute terror to the shopkeepers. On more than one occasion, they left behind proprietors rending their beards in frustration, bemoaning in lugubrious tones the inevitable collapse of their businesses, and the abandonment and starvation of their children. She wielded her beauty like death’s own scythe. Hax took careful note of the dwarf-woman’s technique for future reference.

  For her part, Hax had enjoyed the day immen
sely. Haggling was not precisely unknown in the Homelands, but it was largely a feature of the villages and towns, something that took place between tradesmen and farmers, or stall-keepers and their patrons on market days. Among the nobility, it was considered to be in poor taste.

  She had shared this prejudice until she saw Eanfled at work. Among the dwarves, haggling was, it seemed, a part of every transaction, both a science and an art combined.

  The most brilliant example occurred late in the afternoon. Fortified by the flagon of jordwin she had consumed with lunch (a half-dozen fried meat and vegetable balls wrapped in spiced flatbread purchased from a cliff-side vendor – this was so delicious that she completely forgot to ask what sort of animal the meat had come from), Hax had decided to purchase a new necklace to replace the one she had given to the satyr in order to buy their passage through the Feywood. The drilled bit of amber she had received from the elderly dwarf was nice enough, but she did not think of it as jewellery. And she wanted a keepsake to remind her of the glory of Stonewisdom.

  The choices were, she quickly discovered, virtually endless. Dwarven jewellery came in infinite varieties, both in style and in source material – from agates, garnets, topaz, aquamarine, beryls and amethysts, up to diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds that would have done credit to the Queen’s court. Much to her astonishment, she even found pearls, comparable in size and lustre to those that divers occasionally found off Eldisle.

  When she mentioned to Frida the incongruity of finding pearls in an underground city, the priestess had snorted. “Geweariaed. Cultured.”

  “Cultured?” Hax asked. “What does that mean?”

  “It means they were made, not found. Live oysters raised in trellises, in salt-water caves. They do it up in Seagate. It’s a huge industry.”

  Eanfled had made a dismissive noise, earning a harsh laugh from Frida.

  “I didn’t get that,” Hax confessed, wondering what they were talking about.

  “Sorry,” Frida had apologized. “We tend to be a little snobbish about manufactured gemstones. Cultured pearls are like glass beads; some people would rather wear nothing than wear something geléaffulnes. That means ‘fake’.”

  The remark had set Hax back on her heels. It was yet another profound difference between the elven and the dwarven perspectives on life.

  She thought of her aunt, Annalyszian. The woman possessed a magnificent diamond necklace that Hax was almost certain – based on its weight – was made of cunningly-cut crystals rather than real gemstones. There was no way to tell that it was anything other than what her aunt claimed it was, unless you knew something about gem work.

  That’s the answer right there, she realized. There probably wasn’t a dwarf anywhere in the Deeprealm who didn’t know at least something about gem work.

  Well, she thought glumly, I guess there’s no necklace for me today. I can’t afford anything dear…and I certainly can’t buy anything chintzy in front of these two.

  Then she realized that there was a solution to her dilemma: all she had to do was ask for a recommendation. She explained her desire to Frida, who conferred with Eanfled. Then they all three set off immediately for a jeweller’s shop deep in the throat of the volcano, close to the level of the lime-green lake.

  As they walked, descending by ramp and stair, Hax thought she noted something different about Frida’s stride and the set of her shoulders. Normally very relaxed, the priestess was moving with grim determination, as though she were on a mission. Hax was flattered that her friend had taken her request so seriously, but she was also a little nonplussed; after all, it wasn’t the sort of thing that one would normally be serious about.

  At the end of the first thirty seconds in the jeweller’s shop, Hax began to wonder whether she had, in her ignorance, unleashed forces beyond her control.

  Eanfled had led them down a narrow, damp-dripping alleyway, indicating a non-descript stone door. Visibly expanding, Frida had slammed through the portal, shouting for the proprietor at the top of her lungs.

  With a rattling crash, two young-looking (to Hax, this meant that they had short beards and unlined faces) dwarf-men tumbled into the store-front. The first was clad only in boots, breeches and a leather apron, and still bore a small iron crucible, smoking hot, in a pair of long tongs. The other, obviously the first Dwarf’s brother, was more soberly dressed, but – rather disconcertingly – had a loupe screwed into each of his eye sockets, making him look like some sort of bizarre insect.

  To Hax’s astonishment, Frida begun thundering at the two Dwarves in deep, penetrating tones, punctuating her words with occasional flourishes of her holy medallion, and pointing at Hax on no less than five separate occasions.

  Both artisans blanched visibly. The loupe-bearer turned and bolted for the back room, while the bare-chested fellow remained behind, gesticulating wildly and speaking so rapidly that his words sounded like a hail of arrows on a slate roof. Frida’s replies were equally rapid, and far louder. Hax, who had no idea what was going on, watched the waving medallion carefully, hoping that her friend wouldn’t lose her focus and accidentally incinerate the cozy establishment.

  In less than a minute, the second dwarf – now minus one loupe – stumbled back into the antechamber, bearing a small, brassbound wooden chest. Standing before Hax, he flung back the lid and held the contents up for her inspection.

  “Pick one,” Frida said brusquely.

  “Excuse me?” the Elf-girl stammered, still nervous at having been on the fringes of Frida’s verbal assault. She was terribly embarrassed for the dwarven artisans; Elves, even the nobility, were generally far more polite to shop-keepers and artisans.

  “These are his finest wares. It is his honour and his pleasure to offer them to you. Pick one.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  Blinking in astonishment, Hax glanced into the tiny coffer. Her breath caught in her throat. The chest contained at least three dozen necklaces, maybe four: of silver, gold, mithral, and even one that appeared to be crafted of links wrought from some orange stone, carved with infinite care and precision. All manner of gems winked up at her: sapphires and some sort of azure crystal appeared to be the most common, but she recognized rubies, garnets, tourmaline and amethyst as well.

  “Is there nothing you like?” Frida said brusquely.

  “No, no, no!” Hax replied. “They’re stunning! I’ve never…” she glanced helplessly over at her friend. “Frida, I can’t afford any of these.”

  “That’s not a consideration,” the priestess said flatly. “Pick one.”

  Hax felt trapped. She rummaged quickly through the chest. Something caught her eye; a chain of some sort of black, glossy beads, cold and heavy, linked together with tiny golden eyelets. It looked elegant and simple. She held it up. “Is this one all right?”

  To her astonishment, all four dwarves shouted something in unison. Frida and Eanfled were smiling broadly. The loupe-wearing dwarf closed the casket and stepped back; but his brother (who had fortunately remembered to put down his tongs and the smoking crucible they held) lunged forward and grasped Hax in a bone-cracking hug. Her breath whooshed out of her lungs, and she felt a rib creak ominously.

  The dwarf put her back on her feet. Hax coughed several times, wheezing as she struggled to regain her breath. Frida patted her happily on the back.

  “I knew you had it in you, cildic,” she said warmly.

  “Had what in me?” the Elf-girl asked, hopelessly confused.

  “I’ll explain later. In the meantime, kneel down.” Hax did so, and the loupe-wearing dwarf deftly clasped the black stone necklace about her slender throat. She was about to thank him when he grasped her by the shoulders and planted a resounding kiss on each of her cheeks. His whiskers tickled, and she he did her best not to giggle.

  After that, Frida hustled her out of the shop. “I didn’t pay!” Hax protested.

  “It’s tak
en care of, ducks,” the priestess said soothingly.

  “What?” the elf said, dismayed. “Again? Frida, I told you, I have…”

  “It’s not about money,” Frida interrupted. “Yambol – that’s the gem cutter – was going blind. Cataracts. I healed him. Put Khallach’s blessing on his hands, too; he’s working on a big diamond right now, and that ought to help him do a good job.”

  “Still, it can’t be worth as much as this necklace,” Hax protested. “Can it?”

  “No?” Frida asked, smiling. “How much do you think that necklace is worth?”

  Hax fingered the cold, hard stones. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  “About four silver doubleweights.”

  That was a little less than a Zaran crown. A pittance. Hax turned and stared. “What?” she said, confused. “I thought…” She stopped herself, not wanting to be rude.

  “You thought what, dearie?”

  “I thought…I thought that Dwarves disdained cheap jewellery,” Hax said in a rush.

  “Ahh,” Frida said. She turned and murmured a few phrases to Eanfled, who chuckled lightly. “You’re confusing ‘cheap’ with ‘fake’, child.”

  “So this is cheap, but not fake?” Hax asked, perplexed.

  “Do you like it?” Frida asked.

  Hax nodded. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Did you pick it by accident?” Frida persisted.

  Hax thought about that for a moment. “Well, you certainly rushed me,” she replied.

  “That was deliberate. Was there one in the casket you liked better?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then,” Frida said happily, “you got the one you wanted. You make me proud, dearie.”

  Hax sighed. “I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

  Frida spoke briefly to Eanfled. The red-haired woman fished around in her bodice and pulled out a small chain of gold-linked black beads. Hax blinked. It was virtually identical to her own.

  “It’s a camæfenlác,” the priestess explained. “In the common speech, a ‘prayer collar’. You remember the tale of the Three Tribes, don’t you?”

  Hax recalled the song Frida had translated for her. “Yes.”

  “Well then,” Frida continued without breaking stride, “you know that Lagu, in his infinite wisdom, gave the teaching of the tribes into the hands of Khallach, Barraj, and Zoraz, the masters of stone, iron and patience. That is one of the things that divides us. But the thing that unites us is that we all cleave to the overlordship and teachings of Lagu himself.

  “The camæfenlác reminds us of this. All true children of the Carrláréow wear one.” She grinned up at the elf. “This is one of the ways we try the hearts of visitors to the Deeprealm. Many come here seeking wealth, for our ‘vast halls of treasure’ are well-known, spoken of far and wide. Whenever we meet someone whom we would call ‘friend’, we administer this last test: we present them with a choice of baubles, the finest and most expensive we can muster, and ask the newcomer to choose a gift from among them. They are told to choose swiftly, so that it is the heart that chooses, and not the head.

  “Among the costly trinkets, we include the camæfenlác. Those who seek only riches, wealth; they inevitably choose the most gaudy and most expensive. And so we learn something about them.

  “But those who choose the stone-teacher’s collar…well, we learn something about them, too. We learn that they come to us not for wealth, but for the other things that the stone-teacher offers: a welcoming hand, a warm hearth, and a little wisdom.”

  “So it was a test,” Hax said softly. She glanced down at the Dwarf-woman. “If I had given you cause for doubt, could you not simply have used your magic to learn my intentions?” That’s the way we do it at home, she thought glumly to herself.

  “We don’t do that to friends,” Frida replied simply. “Especially to those who, we think, might become more than a friend. Family, maybe.” Reaching up with her free hand, she tapped Hax’s new necklace with a thick fingernail. “That’s what I learned today. You are no mere ‘friend’, dearie; you are Gerád-Fandian, a ‘seeker of wisdom’.”

  “Carrnydmæge,” Eanfled interjected with a broad smile.

  Frida nodded. “Just so. A ‘blood-cousin of the stone’. As I said - family.”

  Hax felt a little overwhelmed by the Dwarves’ obvious fervour. “I’m not really…you know, don’t you, that the Elves…we revere the Protector, and Miros, and Hara the Wise. What I mean is – and don’t get me wrong, I’m…” she stammered.

  Frida cut her off with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I’m not trying to put a beard on you,” she snorted. “Who you worship in the silence of your own devotions is your business. But the trial of the camæfenlác is a trial of the heart; it was your heart that chose, not your head. And what’s more, the Powers of Light are all united in their divine glory. Since you’re among the Dweorga, now, I’m certain that the Protector, or the Lady of Dragons, or whatever tree or bush you normally bow and scrape to will forgive you if you whisper a prayer to the almighty power who guards and guides the folk of Dweorgaheim.”

  Hax laughed out loud. “ ‘Whatever tree or bush I bow to’?” she repeated, doing her best to mimic Frida’s deep voice, and failing utterly. “Is that how you talk to a new bloody stone-cousin, or whatever it is I am now?”

  “Just doing my job, cildic,” Frida replied with a smile. “I’m a priestess of the Dwarf-Lords. If I manage convert an elf, I get a bonus.”

  ♦

  “Gone?” Ally asked, disbelief warring with grief in her voice.

  “Yes,” her father replied. Still clad in his old leathers and travel-stained cloak, Kaltas was sitting on a stool near the hearth in his study. He had summoned his daughter the moment that he and Kalestayne had returned from their fruitless visit to the capital. Ally had passed the wizard on her way in, and the look of despair on his aged face had confirmed her worst fears.

  They had been gone for three weeks. In that time, the duke and the wizard had scoured the roads south of Astrapratum, questioned the gate guards, and spoken at length with Rykki’s sister Annalyszian, and her husband Landioryn, the Grand Duke.

  Kaltas had even stormed into the Lord Chancellor’s suite, demanding – and receiving – a private audience with the Queen. Few of the outlying nobles of the realm would have been able to get away with such temerity, but Kaltas of Eldisle was one who could. Ælyndarka knew how much she owed to the Commander of the Champions. And in his panicked extremity, the Duke – who had once served as equerry to her older brother and predecessor on the throne, King Callayian – had not been shy about reminding her.

  “But she’s not dead,” Ally pleaded. Once again, she had come straight from the practice yard, where she had been perfecting her already impressive skill with the greatbow, and was dressed with peculiar incongruity, with a chain shirt over a simple peasant gown. She still had a half-full quiver at her side. For the past three days she had hardly spent a moment without a weapon of some sort in her hands. Constant exercise was the only thing that had enabled her to keep despair at bay.

  “Dead, alive…I don’t know,” Kaltas replied, exhausted.

  “How can you not…Kalestayne can read thoughts, the skies, even the past!” Ally cried. “Was there no trace? No sign? No one to question?”

  “Nothing,” her father replied, despondent. “Not so much as a hair.”

  “That’s impossible!” Ally snapped.

  “Daughter…”

  “It’s impossible!” she shouted. “Sylloallen says that there’s always a sign! Always something left behind!” She tore her baldric over her head and flung the quiver into a corner. Practice arrows, tips blunted from repeated use, scattered across the stone floor. “Where could she have gone?”

  Kaltas spread his hands helplessly. “How do you propose I find out?” he asked. He had intended to be gentle, but Ally’s
words – her tone, perhaps, or something she had said – seemed to sting him to the quick. He hadn’t slept in days.

  “I don’t know,” she replied, weeping. “Look again. Look harder.” Her eyes met his, and he saw that they were filled with tears. “Take me with you this time. I can help.”

  Her father snorted. “Do you think you’ll see something I missed?” he asked. “Or Kalestayne?”

  “Take Syllo, then!” she cried. “Or Vennadyle, or Lallakentan!” They were the hunt-mistress and the arms-master, respectively – two of her other teachers.

  “Half the High Guardsmen in the Capital are combing Starmeadow, child,” Kaltas replied impatiently. He stood and walked to his desk. “Along with half the College.” He sat heavily in his working-chair. “If she can be found, they’ll find her.

  “If,” he added heavily, “there’s anything to find.”

  Ally took the stool he had vacated. Silent tears rolled down her face. It was blank, empty of expression. “So we do nothing,” she said hollowly.

  “Well, I’m going to pray,” her father replied. “To Hara, Larranel, Miros…any of the Powers, dark or light, who’ll listen.”

  He paused, weighing his next words carefully. Reaching a decision, he said, “I’m going to give you something. It’s time. Past time, probably.”

  Ally looked up, her eyes dull. “What?”

  Her father stared at her, and Ally felt certain that he was measuring her. Against what? she wondered. And why?

  They looked at each other for a long moment. At last, her father sighed. Standing, he crossed to the fireplace opposite. “Grey stone with the pink quartz inclusion,” he said absently. He gave her a hard look. “Remember that.”

  Frowning, Ally nodded, and stood. Kaltas was still staring at her, so she answered quickly, “Yes father.”

  A deft movement, and the stone sank into the chimney. Not far; not more than a finger’s breadth.

  From inside the hearth itself, Ally heard a thud. Bending down, she glanced under the mantelpiece.

  A hinged metal drawer had swung out of the fireplace wall.

  “Don’t try this if the fire’s been burning,” her father cautioned, “or you’ll lose some skin.” Reaching into the hearth, he swung the drawer towards him. Ally glanced at it; the thick metal box was lined with a thin layer of ceramic, and contained a smattering of miscellaneous items. Her father fished one of the larger ones out and handed it to her without a word.

  It was a simple bone tube, as long as her forearm, and about as thick. Rough and irregular, it was capped at each end with parchment and thick, red wax. Gilt threads were woven through the seal.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “A letter,” her father replied simply. He swallowed audibly.

  Ally looked up and saw that he was weeping silently. “From your mother,” he added hoarsely.

  Ally checked the seals; they were intact. “You never read it,” she said, surprised.

  “No,” Kaltas agreed. “She attuned the seals to your touch.” He smiled sadly. “You know how cautious a practitioner she was, and how expert. I’m not fool enough to tamper with one of Rykki’s wards.”

  Ally turned the thing over in her hands. “But you know what it says, don’t you?” she asked.

  Her father nodded. “I think so. Your mother hoped to tell you herself, when you became a woman,” he replied. The ache of longing in his voice broke Ally’s heart. “She made that in case she was unable to do so.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me what it says?”

  Kaltas sighed. “Because I don’t know. Not exactly. I’d prefer you hear it from her, in her own words.

  “Why don’t you just find a quiet spot,” he suggested, “and let your mother tell you? Just as she intended?”

  Ally found herself nodding. “All right. I’ll be in my chambers.”

  Kaltas shook his head. “No,” he said. “Use your mother’s boudoir.” He smiled lopsidedly. “It’s yours, now, anyway.”

  The thought of treating her mother’s day-rooms as her own drove home Rykki’s loss in a way that nothing else had, and Ally had to grit her teeth to keep from breaking down on the spot. She was about to refuse; but the look of anguish on her father’s face was so terrible that she did not want to gainsay him, or give him any further cause for pain. So she simply nodded.

  “Come back when you’re finished,” her father added as she left, “and tell me what you’ve learned. And Ally…”

  She paused, glancing back at him. He was staring out the windows at the sea.

  “Regardless of what you read,” he said softly, “remember that we – all of us – make mistakes. Remember too that no mistake made from a full and honest heart should ever be adjudged evil. The Holy Mother in her wisdom forgives us for those.”

  Ally had no idea what he was talking about. She turned on her heel, and left.

  Alrykkian’s chambers were bright and airy, with south-facing windows that made the most of the sea breeze. Ally had spent countless hours there, perusing her mother’s many books, having her hair brushed (or watching her mother brush her own straight, silky, floor-length mane), submitting to stern words for some childhood fault or other, or simply rolling around on the thick carpets, staring up at the sky-vistas of clouds and birds that had been painted on the chamber’s vaulted ceiling.

  Ally looked around, remembering. The many plants had been watered, and some were flowering. Everything was tidy; the windows were open, and a wind that bore the salt scent of the ocean carried with it the harsh cry of the harbour gulls. Everything was as it had always been.

  Except that now, the room felt like a tomb.

  Her mother’s favourite seat was an old, threadbare reading-couch tucked into one of the corner towers. The high, narrow windows were set with panes of multicoloured glass – a gift to the Duke from the glaziers’ guild, in thanks for her father’s decision to eliminate a troublesome tax a century earlier. Rather than depicting some ancient hero or battle, the coloured panes in the windows bore no clear pattern. As a child, Ally had enjoyed staring at them, watching the play of the light on the walls – especially at sunset, when the level beams of the Lantern transformed them from mundane decorations into living flames of blue, scarlet, green and gold. She recalled dancing happily in the shifting, coloured rays of light, dancing in simple, childish pleasure, dancing until her breath came in gasps, and she collapsed, giggling madly, into her mother’s arms – and they both laughed, the daughter because she was happy, and the mother because the daughter did.

  No laughter now, Ally thought dully. Nor ever again.

  She sat on the couch, fingering the plain, unmarked bone tube that her father had given her, examining it carefully from one end to the other. There was nothing especially distinguishing about it; no writing, no runic marks, nothing of note other than the threads running through the seals.

  There would be no danger; her mother knew, and had often lamented, that her daughter had none of the flux about her. Alrykkian would not have expected anything special from her in order to open the thing.

  The Elf-girl shrugged. Danger be damned, she thought. Grasping one of the threads, she tugged gently; then, when she met resistance, more firmly. The thread broke the wax easily, releasing the seal on the end-cap. Once the seal had been cut through, Ally tugged sharply on the thread…and the end-cap came out in her hand.

  Despite her certainty that no horrid curse or trap lay in wait for her, Ally winced. When nothing transpired, she mentally cursed her megrims. She tilted the bone case, and a tightly rolled and tied vellum tube slid out and into her hand.

  And something else, that bounced off her palm and rolled, tinkling, onto the floor. Ally bent down to retrieve it. It was a ring.

  She recognized it in an instant. Grandmother’s ring.

  Ally was stunned. As long as she could remember, she had seen this ring on her mother�
��s finger. Her mother had told Ally that it had been given to her by Aylanni, Alrykkian’s own dam, when she had been but a girl herself.

  Inspecting it closely, she saw that it was indeed the same ring – a broad band of silver, decorated with what looked like interwoven vines, and as worn and battered as any bauble she had ever seen.

  She tossed it lightly in her palm. Given its size, it seemed heavy. Maybe it’s the weight of history, she thought, intrigued. After all, Aylanni had been famous in her day; a mage and swordswoman of the High Guard, one of the youngest that had been allowed to travel to aid the men of Ekhan against the Shadow King more than a thousand years before. She had fought at Niriam Vale, holding the river line against the hordes that had come swarming down out of the shadowed mountains of Ensher, and had been one of the few to survive the horrific slaughter that had followed. She had lived through the Sundering, too, to make the long march back to the Homelands.

  She had never met the woman, of course; Aylanni had passed to the Long Halls, centuries before Ally was born. But Alrykkian had known all of her mother’s tales by heart, and had recounted each of them, many times over, to her two daughters.

  And now I have her ring, Ally thought bleakly. It was cold comfort.

  Perhaps the letter would explain. She slid the ribbon off the smooth, peach-coloured vellum, and unrolled it carefully.

  Moments later, she was sobbing uncontrollably. Her mother had written:

  To my daughter Allymynorkarel,

  If you are reading this missive, then I have gone to the Long Halls. My first and greatest regret is that I must leave you and your sister. The second is that I will not be able to myself tell you what must be told.

  You know my power. I have told you that I acquired it through learning, in the ancient way, at the Ludus Astralis. I also told you the same tale about your revered grandmother, Aylanni.

  I must beg your forgiveness. For my part, this was at best a half-truth. For my mother’s, it was a lie.

  Your father counts his descent from the Duodeci, and the name of Aiyellohax denotes one of the oldest and most ancient families of the realm, descended of Dior and Anyalla in the Age of Wisdom. But my clan – whose blood also you share – is older still.

  You will not have heard the name, for it is kept hidden; but it is we who are the true royalty of the Realm. Ours is a lineage not of majesty, but of power. We are descended not of the lines of Tior or Dior, but rather from Holy Miros herself – she who gave her body to the Powers of Darkness, gaining wisdom and survival for all the elvii, even at the cost of her own life.

  You know from the songs of the skalds that Miros bore a daughter by the ancient wyrm, Sciarratekkan. What the songs do not tell is that her daughter bore daughters of her own. In the countless years that followed, all of her descendents bore children. Never many; never more than a few. But all daughters. And of those children, some bore the mark of power bequeathed them by the union of their divine ancestress with the greatest dragon-mage ever to soar the skies of Anuru.

  These children, scions of knowledge and power, are called the Kaunovalta. This name is yours, too. In my line, you are called Allymynorkarel Kaunovaltas. Our clan has never been large, but it has stood in the forefront of every great struggle the elves have faced. We fought to resist the dread majesty of Xiardath after he betrayed Tior; and fought also against the hordes of Biardath, too, when the son betrayed the father. Fanduiline, the true-born wife that Biardath slew at the behest of his fiend-whore, Shannyra, was one of our blood.

  We led the First House and the Second against the evil that had oe’erwhelmed the Third; and we stood in the van, wielding blade and bane together, when Bræa herself led the Powers of Light to overturn Mærglyn’s treason, and sent her and all her foul children down to darkness.

  All down the long years, through Yarchian’s reign to the gloaming; through the Darkness, to the coming of the Argent Three, and the voyages of conquest of the Yonar-ri that repopulated all the world, and that in time begat the terror of the Shadow King – we stood in the forefront, our names and lineage hidden, but our deeds known to all. They continue to this day. Your own grandmother, my beloved dam Aylanni, herself strove with the Shadow King’s dark and deadly minions; and later with the Knights of the Hand, who slew her. One day my call too will come, and when it does I shall answer it, as those of our line have always done.

  It is time you learned why.

  The women of our clan, daughter, bear a terrible and wonderful burden. The blood of Miros and her weyr-mate flows mingled in our veins. The power that she stole from her dread tutor runs true in us. Locked within your heart, Ally, is the might to command the flux – not to wield it by the word, like the magi of the book, but by will alone, like the dragons do.

  Your power – like mine is, and like your grandmother’s was – will doubtless be great. You must conceal it. People honour and respect the wise who earn their spells by dint of hard study; but they fear and distrust those who appear to gain power without effort. Make no show of your strength, daughter, lest you be named witch, devil’s-bride, fiend, or worse. You must find a way to explain your skill that doth not overly disconcert those with whom you must deal.

  It is for this reason, and this reason alone, that I despaired when you failed to gain admission to the College. Not because I was not proud – I have always been proud of you, dear one! – but only because I knew what you would one day become. Formal training would have lent you a formal excuse for the might that will soon break upon you like a summer storm. It was fear, not disappointment, that led me to condemn your decision to take up the sword instead of the staff. Forgive me, if ever I made you believe otherwise.

  The power will come upon you with your womanhood. Be wary. Never relax your guard. When it comes, test your abilities; but do so in private. Learn what you can and cannot do. You cannot control what form your strength will take, nor what you can do; but you can control what you do with it. Indeed, you must control it. All power is only a tool, like a sword, and a sword can be used for good or for ill.

  Your father, if he still lives, will help you. Kalestayne, too; his knowledge of the history of our land was too great for me to fool him. He knows what we are, and has never betrayed us. You can always trust him. Seek out your sister, too; Jianscæn took a different path than I did, and that I believe, in my heart of hearts, you will take; but that is because her power, though present, was far less than mine. Yours will not be. Janni has a gentle soul, Ally; but you have Aylanni’s heart. And you are your father’s true daughter, in every sense of the word.

  Finally, look you to Sylloallen. Though he is no mage, he is a man, and there is none better. He knows what I am, and therefore what you may one day be; and he has better reason than most to defend and preserve you. I have trusted him with my life, and more; you can do so, too.

  Be wary of what you choose to do. I have told you of the blessing that we, the women of the Kaunovalta, share; now know the curse. You cannot know what form the power will take when it comes to you. You will never know how much you can do until you have done it. Therefore, be careful; guard your temper. Seek always to master your rage. Do not lash out on a whim, for you may do evil – great and terrible evil – without meaning to. Strive ever for reason and calm. It is all too easy for one of our kind to become drunk with might. With our power, Ally, we could have ruled the elves, or even the world. None of us has ever done so. We chose, all of us, to serve rather than reign.

  You must discover why we made this choice. And then you must make it for yourself.

  Know, too, that not all of the women of our clan are granted this terrible gift. In each generation, there are some in whom the power fails to appear. My sister, Annalyszian, is one such. I know that she has it not; and she knows that I know. Therefore, though I have given her no other cause, she has ever feared and distrusted me. I have grieved at this, for more years than you can imag
ine; but there is no overcoming it. Though it pains me to say it, you must never trust her. In all things, she is ruled not by love of what she has, but envy of what she has not. And always by fear.

  Lastly, daughter, I pray that, along with my advice, you take also my love. To outward eyes, you seem more your father’s daughter than mine. Never have I begrudged him this; for though my heart has known many loves, your father I have adored my whole life. He too has secrets to share with you, and will, in time. If I could exchange an eternity in the abyss for one more hour in his arms, I would do so happily.

  But you must never be deceived by appearances. In blood, and in heart, and in spirit, you are my child first: a woman of the Kaunovalta, born to wield the might vouchsafed our clan by the sacrifice of our distant ancestress. We are not practitioners of the book, daughter; magic is not merely something that we do. It is what we are. When your power comes, embrace it. Plumb its depths. Learn it, revel in it, and wield it, to the betterment of our clan, and to the glory of all our people.

  Do this, and you will do honour to Miros’ divine legacy, and our clan’s.

  And your grandmother’s.

  And mine.

  Fare you well.

  When the Duke entered silently an hour later, he found Ally sitting on the hard stone floor before the reading couch, hugging her mother’s letter to her chest, rocking and keening softly. He wondered what Rykki had told her, how much she had revealed.

  Then he saw his wife’s silver ring on his daughter’s finger, and sighed. Watch over and guard her, Protector, he prayed silently.

  I cannot lose her, too.

  ♦

  Hax’s novel status as a stone-cousin, or a wisdom-seeker, or whatever she was now, seemed unlikely to help her keep a low profile. She kept her new necklace out of sight, tucked away inside her bodice as she and her five companions negotiated the teeming throngs inside the Carrlár tube station.

  Frida led the group, thrusting her way through the mob of Dwarves, followed immediately by Eanfled, who widened the breach. Hax kept close behind the red-headed woman, shouting navigating instructions to Wynstan, Uchtred and Bedwulf as they followed along behind her, staggering under the weight of luggage.

  Uchtred was further burdened by the new pump body he had ordered for his boiler system; this, he claimed, was something far too precious to entrust to the “bumbling halfwits” in charge of loading and unloading the cargo coaches. His concern notwithstanding, the extra hundredweight of cast iron wrapped in rough sacking strapped across his shoulders did nothing to improve either his temper or his gait.

  As she danced nimbly through the crowd, Hax had to keep reminding herself to pick up her skirts in order to avoid tripping on them. During her commercial depredations of the previous day, Frida had found time to outfit the elf-girl in high dwarven style. Where the priestess had managed to find dwarf-made fashions suited to her slender physique was entirely beyond her; Hax half suspected that Frida had simply ordered tailor-made clothing cut to elven dimensions, and that the dwarves, with their customary efficiency and artistry, had merely stitched up appropriate attire in the wink of an eye.

  The results were more practical, and more comfortable, than she had expected them to be. Dwarven clothing was better suited to their living environment than her own eclectic mix of arming vestments, armour pieces and miscellaneous small-clothes. Her new garb was warmer, softer, cleaner, and far more robust than her previous attire; and notwithstanding the fact that it covered her from neck to wrists and toes (a fashion statement that would have gotten her instantly dismissed from the Queen’s palace as some sort of uncouth bumpkin), it was not at all confining. The chemise, hooded cloak, long skirt and high boots were a mix of beige, brown and other earth-tones, and each was stitched together out of soft, durable fabrics and softer, supple leather. Her snug vest went well with these, and she was glad to have an excuse to wear it; the many pockets, and the oddments she had secreted in them, were a comfort to her.

  She even felt comfortable enough to leave her armour packed. It took up most of the space in the haversack she carried over one shoulder, leaving the other free for her baldric, quiver and bow.

  The boots, she found, were particularly exquisite, fitting her like a second skin. They were softer than the finest doe-hide she had ever encountered. Amazingly, they had soles that, in addition to providing comfort and support, not only felt thin enough that she thought she might be able to tread on a shilling and call king or spade, but also seemed to offer such wonderful traction that she felt as though she could, if she tried, run straight up a wall.

  The best thing about the boots had been discovered by accident. She had insisted on trying them on the previous night, to show them to Uchtred (Frida and Eanfled being engaged in the kitchen). Smiling, the engineer had shown her the secret compartments inside the top of the boots; the right one held a long, thin, flat-bladed stiletto, and the left, a trio of delicate lock-picks. “We call these ‘cat-boots’,” he chuckled. “I’m surprised she could find them in your size.” He chortled. “Looks like the old girl’s fitting you out as a burglar.”

  Hax let that pass. She extracted the stiletto; the blade was bright, flexible, and razor-sharp. “How in the world do you get the leather so soft?” she had asked, replacing the dagger, and admiring once again the silky texture of the hide.

  “Badger piss,” the engineer had answered without a hint of a smile.

  Hax, struggling through the crowd at the Tube station, felt a momentary shudder of revulsion as she recalled the conversation. She squashed it brutally. I stepped in worse than that with my old boots.

  Fortunately, getting out of Carrlár was considerably easier than getting in. A dwarven official with a heavy bronze stamp wordlessly hammered an inky rune onto her entry papers (Hax presumed it was an exit mark of some sort) and waved her through onto the tube platform. Once all six of them had passed through the gate, Frida turned to the left, leading the group to the far end of the platform.

  The priestess set a good pace, and the men were puffing under the weight of their burdens by the time they arrived at the entry port. This, Hax was surprised to see, was considerably fancier than the last coach-door she had entered. The hatch was surrounded by gold filigree, and had intricate, detailed runes cut into it, limned in a shining, grey metal that she recognized instantly as hardsilver.

  “Ythwórigende,” Eanfled said, nodding solemnly.

  “Excuse me?” Hax turned to towards her.

  “ ‘Wanderer-on-the-Waves’,” Frida translated. “That’s a good omen.”

  “What is?” the elf-girl asked.

  “Our coach,” the priestess replied, just as the door swung open.

  Behind it, a pair of young Dwarves – one male, one female – stood at attention, dressed in livery that matched the coloured patterns of the interior, a shocking combination of red and gold. The pair bowed.

  Hax blinked. “What do you mean ‘our coach’?” she asked.

  Frida glanced back at the surprised Elf. “It’s nearly two days from here to Ædeldelf,” she replied, a mischievous gleam in her eye. “I decided we ought to go in style.”

  “You rented the whole coach?”

  “Why not?” the priestess asked.

  Hax shook her head in disbelief. “Nice to have rich friends,” she muttered. Then she paused and turned to Frida. “Why is it a ‘good omen’?”

  “What, ‘Ythwórigende’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well – step aside, dearie, and let the men folk load the luggage –” Hax did so “– mostly because it’s a joke. ‘Wanderer-on-the-waves’, or ‘Salt-roamer’, you see.”

  Hax shrugged. “I don’t understand why it’s a joke.”

  “Well, because there’s no ‘wandering’ or ‘roaming’ in the Tube. Right?” the priestess replied with an amused smile. “The coaches ride the wave, true enough, but only in the direction the tunnel goes, and back
again. No wandering.”

  “I see,” Hax said. In fact, she didn’t see at all.

  It must have been obvious. “Perhaps another example,” Frida said. “Look, if I were to come up with a nickname for you – just on a first meeting, without knowing anything about you – I’d probably dub you ‘Cyrtanyfellic’, or something like that.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “ ‘Short and ugly’.”

  Hax blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s a jest,” Frida explained patiently. “In our tongue, all nicknames are jests. Our true names we reserve only for family and our closest friends. Our day-names, our mock-names, are unimportant, so we allow others to select them. We do so as a joke. If I didn’t know you, ‘Short and ugly’ would be an easy mock-name for you, as you’re tall and fair. Understand?”

  “I suppose,” the elf said dubiously. “Why would knowing me make a difference?” she asked.

  “Ah,” the priestess replied. “Well, you see, that’s because while mock-names based on physical features are all right, we prefer to base them on things that nobody can see at first glance, that tell you something – albeit backwards – about their bearer’s personality. It’s not particularly clever to call you ‘Short-and-ugly’ because anyone can see at a glance that you’re neither. But, for example, Uchtred’s mock-name is ‘Léasáberd’. Means ‘lazy and deceitful’.”

  “And of course, he’s neither,” Hax nodded. “What’s yours?”

  “ ‘Lythrestníthering’. ‘Gentle coward’.”

  Hax laughed out loud.

  “See?” Frida said cheerfully, “You understand.”

  “I suppose I do,” Hax replied. “But I’ve never heard you use those names.”

  The dwarf-woman shrugged. “You’ve always been among friends and family, haven’t you? Mock-names are for casual acquaintances. Actually,” she added thoughtfully, “it’s quite an honour to be given one by one of our greater folk. The King, for example, or a High Priest.”

  “I suppose that makes sense,” Hax nodded thoughtfully. “So…what’s mine?”

  “I don’t know yet,” the priestess answered. She shouldered her bag and turned towards the coach, giving Hax a speculative look. “I’m still working on it. Although,” she added pensively, “Uchtred did suggest ‘Uchtredsnydhæmestre’.”

  Hax laughed. “I could never pronounce that! What does it mean?”

  Frida winked. “It means ‘Uchtred’s night-mistress’.”

  The elf-girl blushed scarlet and made a number of inarticulate choking noises.

  The priestess smiled, giving her friend a palms-out placatory gesture. “It’s a jest, remember! It sounds much funnier in our tongue, cildic. I swear!”

  As they boarded the coach, Hax was still sputtering incoherently.

  ♦♦♦

  Here ends the first part of the tale of Orkarel Hax

  Her story continues in:

 

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