by Meg Cowley
Ragnar... Think of Ragnar.
She held the wooden piece tightly between her hands, feeling the ridges and contours. She had watched Ragnar carve it. Watched his stiff hands shape it, like fat spread with a knife. He made it look easy, sitting there calmly while his hands worked.
Harper could smell the smoke of his pipe that always seemed to linger, but it was a pleasant, fragrant smoke. In her mind, she replayed him carving the chatura piece, then stopping and looking up at her, smiling in the way he always did – warm, friendly, genuine, the skin around his eyes crinkling.
She pulled toward it, holding every part of Ragnar she could recall. Slowly, the niggle built, just as it had with the Dragonheart.
“This way,” she whispered, pointing to the fourth passageway.
Korrin turned and led them farther into the mountain. If nothing else, the growing stench told them they were on the right track. That, and the faint sounds of shrieking and chattering that Harper had hoped never to hear again.
Dwarves drew their weapons, most bearing an axe of some kind – some large, some small, some double-headed, some with short blades. Harper had never seen such an array of different axes. Some dwarves held staffs with long blades upon the end, and others gripped hammers.
Despite being fully armoured, with clanking metal plates and weapons, the dwarves moved with surprising stealth, using the goblin’s din as cover for their own movement. All had been warned to hold the element of surprise. Still, the order came too soon for Harper’s liking.
“Now!” thundered Korrin, and burst forth. The dwarves surged behind him, pushing Harper along in their midst. Aedon firmly grasped her hand and pulled her to one side.
She felt the magic flare in him, then added her strength, focusing upon coalescing the light into being. Aedon’s large faelight eclipsed her small, winking mote, but slowly, hers gathered strength, merging with his and soaring up to illuminate the cavern in blinding white.
It took the dwarves a moment to adjust to the brightness, but they threw themselves back into battle with relish. The goblins’ shrieks soon became wails of pain as the light seared their eyes and dwarven weapons struck them down.
Still, more swarmed from nowhere, jumping over the grated pits to fall upon the dwarves in great numbers. Brand and Erika, smiles on their faces, stood back to back in the middle of the fray, killing all who came within reach.
“Don’t stop focusing your magic!” Aedon said with gritted teeth, even as he pulled his blade. “Come. We have to find Ragnar!”
They leapt forward as the last of the dwarves spilled into the caves. Sheathing their weapons, they rushed to the pits, hauling up injured dwarves and carrying them through the passage, up to the Thirl Door, and out to safety.
Harper followed the tiny thread of Ragnar’s essence through the maelstrom, while Aedon danced around her, his blade a whir as he cut down goblins. She joined in as little as possible, smashing her blade against any who dared get too close.
The goblins were small and extremely fast, popping up from seemingly nowhere. Her blade squelched into the guts of one, slurping as she pulled it free, the body falling to the ground, lifeless. She bent over, vomiting.
“Harper, we don’t have time! Hurry!” Aedon said.
Brand and Erika fought their way closer until the four of them stood as a knot once more.
“Here! He’s here!”
She rushed over to the pit with the overhang and saw Ragnar huddled at the bottom, staring up with wide eyes.
He shouted at the sight of them, and Brand wrenched the grate aside. He leaned down to grab Ragnar’s hand and haul him out with ease. The dwarf crumpled onto the ground before them, his face blanching and twisted in pain.
Brand swore and picked Ragnar up. He launched into the air and dove for the cave exit before landing, tucking his wings in, and running up the tunnel to pass Ragnar off. Erika, Aedon, and Harper helped the other two dwarves out of the pit, sending them on their way before moving to the next one.
They were halfway across the cave when the entire area shook. At the far side of the cavern, Saradon emerged in the giant opening, wreathed in glowing, purple light. Magic flickered in his palms.
Thirty
Aedon swore, only to be drowned out by Erika. Brand landed beside her, slamming onto the ground, and bodily held her back to prevent her from leaping toward the elf.
Everything around them ceased. Even goblins cowed before him. Bedraggled, injured dwarves flinched away. Their battle-weary brethren gripped weapons tighter, but their grave faces poorly masked their apprehension.
Harper stilled, captivated by Saradon, whose penetrating gaze swept the cave. Part of her felt fear, just as the rest of them did, but it was different for her. He is my kin. It felt strange, abhorrent.
A shadow moved beside him. A figure emerged. Harper’s jaw slipped open and her eyes widened. She knew that figure.
No.
The clean cut of his dark, fitted robes.
No, no, no.
The dark, disdainful frown.
It cannot be!
Idle magic danced in Dimitrius’s palms as he stood beside Saradon and beheld them all. His own eyes widened almost imperceptibly as he met Harper’s steely gaze, his face paling. Without a doubt, it was him. Even if he had a twin, she would have known him by the way he so clearly recognised her.
Korrin’s horn sounded the retreat, and the wave of dwarves turned, running toward the tunnel. Aedon, Harper, and Erika followed suit, swept along by the tide.
Saradon attacked. Magic arced toward them, blasting aside goblins and dwarves alike. They were hurled into rocks, smashed into pits, or smote where they stood, falling to the ground in a jumbled tangle of limbs.
The area became a stampede as dwarves lowered their heads and sprinted toward the tunnel. The injured were dragged along, held upright by the crush of bodies; otherwise, they would not have made it out alive.
Aedon pushed through the bodies to one side, resisting the flow. When his hand ripped from hers, Harper turned back, swept forward inexorably. What is he doing?
With a determined look, he forged back down the passage and flattened himself against the wall, holding out of everyone’s way.
With a great rumble, the mountain shuddered beneath their feet. Aedon’s complexion whitened, and every muscle coiled in his body as he fought to channel enough magic.
He’s breaking the stone! Trying to bring the mountain down upon them! She paled. He can’t do it alone!
“Erika!” she screamed.
The woman turned, and Harper jabbed her pointed finger back at the elf. Erika immediately understood. Harper pushed through the throng of dwarves, Erika on her heels, and rushed to Aedon’s side, grasping his sweaty, bloody, dirty hand to lend her magic to him.
He drew from her hungrily, slowly pulling at the very energy of the rock, worming himself between every crack he could find. She wove with him, prising open fissures deep in the rock, weakening, pulling, as the last dwarves cleared the doorway.
The stone cracked and split around them, the sound jarring their ears. Aedon started running, pulling her along with one hand as he snagged Erika with the other. The magic snapped free, and the rumble grew.
“Run!” he bellowed, as the ceiling collapsed behind them.
Harper ran as fast as her burning legs could carry her, while the collapsing tunnel chased them toward the Thirl Door. The rumbling slowed as the cave diminished behind them, but Aedon did not reduce his speed.
“We’re the last!” he shouted as they broke into the fresh air, a cloud of dirt and rocks puffing out behind them. Harper breathed deeply, coughing on the choking dust.
The Thirl Door slammed shut behind them, and Korrin sealed it once more with his touch.
“Come. We must flee at once,” he growled. “We will only be safe when we return to Keldheim.”
Long into the night they ran, without stopping, knowing Saradon would not be far behind.
Harper
staggered until her muscles were numb, feet blocks of stone, and chest burned. It was not only Saradon’s eyes chasing her in the waking nightmare they endured, but Dimitrius’s.
Why is he here? Why is he with Saradon? What is he plotting?
She had no answers.
Thirty-One
“The Thirl Door.” Saradon tested the unfamiliar words on his tongue. He curled his lip, irritated. At a slice of his hand, the dwarf before him crumpled to the floor, limp.
No!
But it was too late. The dwarf was already dead. Beside Saradon, Dimitri held himself rigid, wiping his thoughts utterly blank. He turned as Saradon addressed him.
“Of course the rats have a secret entrance. Confound them! But it matters not. The goblins have what they want, a dwarven city, though less sport to enjoy now, and the Thirl Door is destroyed. They will not venture here again, and when the time comes, I will show them how we treat unwanted guests.”
“I have no doubt,” Dimitri murmured.
He knew Saradon thought of the dwarven king, a fearsome killing machine in his impregnable armour, wielding his giant, double-headed axe. But Dimitri’s thoughts lingered on the unexpected familiar faces in the crowd. Aedon. The nomad. The Aerian.
Harper.
Why them – her – here? Now? How?
He could not understand how their paths had collided under such impossible circumstances – again. His stomach sank as he realised that, having saved Harper from harm already, though not exactly out of kindness, she was in the thick of peril once more.
He had saved her from Toroth to save himself, but he realised he still felt a shred of compassion, a shred of responsibility for her safety. There would be no keeping her safe from him. He pushed her from his mind as Saradon huffed.
“And the others...,” Saradon mused slowly, pacing back and forth around the grand jarlshalle, the centre of power in Afnirheim, second only in grandeur to Keldheim’s königshalle. One of the only spaces he had not permitted to be desecrated. The pascha had not taken kindly to that instruction, or Saradon’s destruction of his throne of bones.
“The others?” Dimitri tried to keep his voice neutral. Luckily, Saradon was too engrossed in his own musings to notice his discomfort.
“The Aerian, the human, and the two elves. Who are they? What were they doing with the dwarves?”
“I do not know, Lord Saradon.” Dimitri was entirely truthful on that at least. He had no idea why. Only that they had rescued some of the dwarves the goblins had kept for sport. He suppressed a shudder of distaste. Ghastly creatures. He had no love for the dwarves, but they did not deserve such treatment.
This was not part of the bargain. Dimitri knew there was a cost to any war, casualties, but this was past the line he wanted to cross. It’s too late now, he told himself to try and alleviate the creeping guilt beginning to gnaw at him.
“The girl...”
Dimitri froze. He could only mean Harper. Erika was a grown woman, so could never be called such.
“She sang to me,” Saradon murmured, as if in a daze. “It was as though my mother’s blood called to me once more. Why, had I not known better, known it to be impossible, I would have thought her my kin.” He frowned, staring into nothingness.
Dimitri swallowed. “It could well be so, Lord. Perhaps she is a distant relation. You know how the Houses intermingle.”
Saradon met his gaze, steel in his eyes. “I do indeed, yet the line of Ravakian is ash, dead and buried. There could be none of my blood.”
Dimitri squirmed. “If I may, Lord. I do not believe you to be correct. I have been the king’s spymaster for decades. I have known his innermost business, his most secretive thoughts...things that could have destroyed him over the years. There was one secret I knew that he only shared with perhaps one other.”
Saradon did not speak, but his attention commanded Dimitri to continue.
“You had a son, am I correct?”
Saradon stiffened. Dimitri held up his hands to placate him.
“I know it to be true. I know nothing more than that of him. I suspect no one living, save perhaps the king, knows any more than that. Your son had a daughter before he died, and no, I do not know the means of Arven’s passing. It was before my time. The daughter, Ilrune, was killed on Toroth’s orders.”
Dimitri shook his head, sensing Saradon’s anger growing. “I played no part in it. You may examine my mind to know I speak the truth,” he added hastily. Saradon gave a sharp nod for him to continue.
“The general of the Winged Kingsguard saw that Ilrune met her demise upon the king’s orders. Afterward, there was just one question I heard the king ask that the general could not answer. Ilrune had a daughter. Her lover was already dead, but the child, a babe in her arms... She vanished as Raedon struck her mother down. It will be some twenty years past, give or take. No one could find the child. Not the king, not the general...not me.”
But now, Dimitri had a growing sense of dread as he finally, painstakingly, connected the dots. A mysterious woman of elven blood, about twenty summers old, from a land where she should not have existed... A missing baby twenty summers hence, sent far away by her mother in order to protect her... The Dragonheart finding her, instead of coming to him... How it had brought her home to Pelenor before she ever knew she belonged there... The charm on the bracelet that linked her to Saradon, to the line of Ravakian...
As everything clicked, he wished he had never spoken the words. Even before Saradon declared it, Dimitri knew it to be true.
“The girl is the babe!” Saradon exclaimed, his eyes alight with an excitement Dimitri had never seen before. “Her blood called to me. I knew it. That is why. She is the blood of my blood. I must have her,” he hissed, whirling on Dimitri, fervent in his desire.
The floor seemed to have dropped out from under Dimitri as he stood, hollow, whilst Saradon celebrated the survival of his bloodline. She cannot be his blood, he thought desperately. It would irrevocably change her fate, change her safety. Now he had no way to keep her from Saradon’s attention.
“I have an heir. She will be my heir.”
Crushed, Dimitri bowed. He did not dare speak.
At that moment, the pascha and his chieftains burst in, cavorting across the jarlshalle, all drowning in dwarven armour, jewelry, weapons, and other spoils.
Saradon’s jubilation tempered upon their arrival. Dimitri knew the pascha wanted more. More than Saradon was willing to give. Their disagreements never ended beautifully. Saradon’s magic always won. Dimitri had no desire to get in their way.
Using their entrance as a distraction, Dimitri slipped away, his heart thundering, into the ether, racing as far and fast as he could. Yet no matter how far or fast he flitted, he could not outrun the doubt and panic crescendoing within him.
Harper is his kin.
The unfamiliar beast of his conscience haunted him. She was safe... Without your meddling, she would have lived her days in Caledan, none the wiser. Dimitrius, you fool! This is all your fault.
Thirty-Two
Upon their return to Keldheim, König Korrin immediately set about fortifying the dwarven stronghold, whilst Afnirheim’s surviving casualties, Ragnar amongst them, were treated in the city’s infirmary. Harper and her companions crowded into Ragnar’s sick bay, unwilling to leave his side.
After the traumatic and exhausting retreat from Afnirheim, it took a day before he regained consciousness. His breathing deepened and colour slowly returned under the ministration of the dwarven healers, who used natural cures, and Aedon, who gave Ragnar what magic he could to speed his healing and take the pain away.
Harper tried to push away the lump in her throat. He was a shadow of his former self. Tucked into the deep, dark coverlets, he looked pale, frail, his strength diminished. His once beautiful beard had been roughly hewn off, some of it even torn out. His face was swollen and bloodied. She had not seen the rest of his body, but Aedon had grimly informed them all that the rest of him was in no
better state.
Worst of all, he now had two fingers and part of his thumb missing on his dominant hand. The wounds were dark, swollen, and infected. It had taken all Aedon’s concentration to draw the poison out so the wounds could heal.
Harper’s heart ached. Will he ever carve chatura pieces again?
After the fearful exhilaration of the retreat, their high spirits had diminished upon realising what – or, rather, whom – they faced, as well as the health of their friend.
“He’s still alive at least,” Brand murmured, frowning. Despite Ragnar’s state, they knew it could have been far worse.
“We were lucky,” said Erika, her voice hollow. “So many others did not make it.” They shared a moment of silence. It was unlikely they would see any of the dwarves left behind alive again.
Aedon stirred, but did not speak, his attention fixed upon the rise and fall of Ragnar’s chest under the beige linen shift. His bandaged hands rested atop his belly, the wrapping clean compared to the dirt and blood that had covered his hands when they found him.
“What is he doing?” Erika asked. They did not need to know who she meant.
“I do not know,” said Aedon. “We can only presume that, somehow resurrected, he means to continue his old mission, to rive the wheel of society. It is a dark day indeed if he starts by seeking alliance with the black hearts of the goblin scum.”
“Why would Dimitrius be with him?” Harper asked, an edge of desperation cutting through her voice. “Is he a prisoner?” A part of her wanted to think the best of him. He had been kind to her, after all. Saved her. Let her escape.
Erika snorted scornfully. “Did he look like a captive to you? No. He’s connected somehow. I’ll wager he’s a part of it. I wonder if this is the king’s doing, or whether Toroth has any idea.”
“Shall we warn him?” Aedon asked, raising his eyebrow and flashing a scowl that quickly faded. “I know. I know. Just jesting.” He sighed. “It’s over our heads. This is an age-old war between the goblins and dwarves. We take no part in it.