“That’s new,” whispered Ahiram. “I can use the medallion against them.” His arm was tingling and the medallion had become very hot. He motioned his arm toward the closest creature and was about to reuse the tile, but the two creatures retreated to safety. They leaped over the crates and were hidden from view.
“Don’t look back.” The voice was a very quiet whisper behind him. Jin, he thought. She’s back. “Go around the crates. We’re waiting for you.”
Smart, he thought, if I’d looked back I would have revealed their location. Slowly, Ahiram slid the mask of gold on his face. Immediately, the port lit up as if in bright daylight. He used the wings to jump nimbly on top of the crates the massrifuun had crossed over a moment ago. He crawled to the edge and peered down. Through the mask, he saw the two creatures crouching behind the crates with Dariöm behind them. He was toying with a stack of medallions. Silently, Ahiram jumped down and landed in the aisle where Jin and three other dwarfs were hiding. He slid the mask off his head and removed the wings before approaching them.
“Dariöm and two of his creatures are close-by. They know I’m here,” he whispered.
“By the mighty might of Antral and all that is sacredly sacred in the Karangalatad,” one of Jin’s companions said, speaking in the peculiar manner of the dwarfs. “You have spoken the truthful truth, Jinoike, and truth as plainly plain truthful as the noses of tajéruun running after gold. We cannot tarry here as we must be somewhere else and not otherwise. Let us immediately be on our immediate way and our way most immediately immediate.”
Jin leaned over and whispered. “We need to follow him. He doesn’t want us to use names. He’ll explain.”
“We can’t. Dariöm and his minions can track me anywhere.” He pointed to the medallion in his arm.
“Not if we apply ourselves diligently and with the diligent diligence of warring warriors,” the dwarf replied. He quickly sprinkled white powder in the air. “This powdery powder and powder most powdery shall render us invisibly invisible and visibly invisible to their eyeing eyes.”
“They are here,” Jin whispered. “Everyone, quiet!”
Dariöm and his creatures walked in, swords drawn. “What do you mean, he vanished?” The tajèr was visibly annoyed. “The boy cannot command magic well. He does not know how to hide from us.”
One of the dwarfs placed a spherical dry sponge on the medallion in Ahiram’s arm. It burned his flesh, but the dwarf kept pressing. Ahiram gritted his teeth, barely managing to keep quiet. The two creatures stopped in front of them and Dariöm looked straight at Ahiram, but the Silent could tell the tajèr did not see him.
“I know,” grumbled the rich man, “I know he is here somewhere, so look around.” They moved away and began a methodical search. Ahiram saw the dwarf next to him throw the sponge up and over the stack of crates in front of them. Instantly, the massrifuun jerked and Dariöm stood still.
“Yes, he must have used El-Windiir’s artifact to jump over. After him.”
The three of them ran out of the alley. Everyone remained still.
“Let us be on our wayward way,” one of the dwarfs finally said.
Ahiram frowned. Why should I trust them? “I’m somewhat surprised,” he said carefully, “by the rapid turn of events. The dwarfs I know would act with greater caution.”
“Indeed, young feather-head,” the same dwarf replied, “and head filled with mining feathers, or rather, filled with the confabulation of mining dwarfs and dwarfish miners who have all the hours of the day and the day in its longest hours to contemplate contemplatively a droplet of water fall unfailingly and unfailingly fall from the tip of a stalactite to the tip of a stalagmite. Not so with merchant dwarfs such as my selfish self. We have not the luxurious luxury of minute examination of minutia before a decisive decision is rendered, lest our necks are rent from the rest of our bodily bodies. Now, if you would follow unfailingly and without fail, we might be about our busy business presently and no later than what is properly required.”
“We need to follow him,” Jin said.
“Let them lead, we’ll follow.”
The dwarf who just spoke, obviously the leader, looked at his two companions. “We shall cover our tracking tracks with a properly proper coverage, and a coverage to be pleasingly pleasing to your ancestors, my ancestors, and your motherly mother, who has entreated your personable persons into my caring care. This feather-head reeks of magic like a piglet pigging out in a pigsty. Hurriedly hurry if you please.”
Ahiram sighed. The dwarfs must have become miners out of necessity. There’s no way they could have won a war by talking the way they do.
The first dwarf took the lead while the two others flanked Ahiram and Jin. As they ran, all three dwarfs kept sprinkling the ground with the mysterious white powder. After a short while, Ahiram understood that the powder hid their tracks from Dariöm. “Where are we going?”
“Some place safe,” Jin replied. “I hope,” she added.
The dwarfs led them away from the canal and the tavern, further west, toward the coast. They kept to the shadows and did not waver, zigzagging through rows of piled containers. I never knew a port could be this large. There must be thousands of crates here.
Suddenly, the dwarfs disappeared from view. The skies were now covered with dark clouds rolling in from the nearby sea.
“This way,” Jin tugged his arm, leading him through narrow aisles.
Ahiram heard the soft voice of a dwarf urging them to hurry. They nearly bumped into their guides, who stood in front of a lone crate.
“Watchfully watch and watch most watchfully the stepping steps and the lowly low ceiling,” he said. Ahiram saw that the front of the crate was open. He followed Jin inside and heard their footsteps echo on hard rock. A fake container. What else would I expect from dwarfs?
The two other dwarfs walked behind them. They rubbed their hands on the crate’s left panel, and the face of the fake container slid silently back in place. The lead dwarf struck two firestones and lit a torch. In the spectral light of the sputtering torch, their shadows, frantic and undecided, slid up and down the muted walls like sailors lost at sea about to be swallowed by the raging deep.
Ahiram looked closely at the leader. He did not expect him to look the way he did. He was older than his voice, with shaggy silver hair rippling down a face chiseled out of flint and held by a neck that would have looked appropriate on the shoulders of a bull. The rest of his body was knotted in muscles, enough to give a tiger a lasting bout of jealousy. The dwarf was massive; what he lacked in height he more than made up for in width. A ridiculous looking contraption fit snuggly around his eyes; a thick leather band holding two cloudy hemispheres in front of the eyes gave the impression that the dwarf’s eyes were bulging out of their sockets. The other two dwarfs drew closer. One was a runner: young, lithe, and thin like a snake. The other was stockier and wore the same eye-contraption over a beard thick enough to spin a medium-sized carpet.
Before Ahiram could speak, the older dwarf stuck his left thumb in his right ear. Ahiram had never seen a dwarf make this gesture before, but he vividly remembered Commander Tanios explaining that in dwarf language, it meant complete silence was expected.
Then Jedarc had stuck his left thumb against his right nostril and asked the commander if dwarfs used this gesture to ask for fresh air after a bean-based meal. That antic earned him twenty chickens to pluck and clean, and another twenty after he decided to spice up the performance of his chore by singing A Lonesome Bard.
Back inside the fake crate, Ahiram watched the older dwarf shuffle his feet in a sort of strange dance. He ended it by stomping on the ground three times. A trapdoor slid silently before them, revealing a long flight of stairs. Not waiting, the dwarf began the endless descent, and Jin and Ahiram followed. I’m not liking this, the Silent thought. There were too many unknowns; too many unanswered questions for him to feel comfortable. The younger dwarfs came last and shut the door behind them. In the limited lig
ht, Ahiram saw the interminable stairs follow one another like a trek to the netherworld, as if the strange dwarf holding the light was dragging him down to the gates where no mortal flesh had trodden before, down to the City of the Dead. As they rounded a wide arc, the smooth walls gave way to ragged rock, and in the fold of the silent stone, in the light of the torch, Ahiram glanced at two darker specks on the wall. As he looked at them, he imagined seeing Noraldeen’s face smiling at him. He felt goose bumps run up his spine. But when he looked again, it was only a grotesque deformation on the wall. The light passed, darkness claimed the spot, and on they went, burrowing into the earth with no end in sight. Ahiram remembered the stairs he had climbed on his way up from the tomb of El-Windiir. He remembered the first time he had tried to use the artifacts he found in the sarcophagus, almost killing himself, how the sword he was now expertly holding had nearly skewered him when he first called its name. I couldn’t have known that the Letter of Power interfered with the sword. He thought. I wish someone could tell me what this letter is really for. How many letters are out there? Where do I find them? I need to reach Salem and find the mysterious person Master Habael said could explain these letters to me. When fighting the urkuun, the Letter of Power had become a sort of conduit for a star. He had seen the star up close. Sheheluth helped him see what it truly looked like: a monstrous fireball, beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. This is how he had managed to defeat the urkuun. Somehow, the Letter of Power had unleashed the raw energy of that star and burned the monster. Ahiram hated to admit it, but he knew he had not defeated the urkuun by his own strength. I was a conduit, he thought bitterly. The fire of that star did the rest. But another part of him, a part he had not known existed before, had relished the experience. When the star’s power had coursed through him, he felt alive in a way he had never thought possible. I felt alive like a … god. That thought confused him, scared him, yet enthralled him, so he did what he was accustomed to doing when faced with an uncomfortable situation that he did not wish to deal with it: he buried it beneath thick layers of anger.
At long last, the staircase ended. They stood in front of a narrow wooden door with no handle. The dwarf walking ahead looked at Ahiram and scowled. He repeated a gesture that Ahiram had seen earlier and understood he was to remain silent no matter what was about to happen. The dwarf knocked on the door following an elaborate sequence and then waited. After a short while, the door finally opened and another dwarf peered through. He was wearing a similar device around his eyes, only thicker and larger. He gazed at them for a short while, then opened the door and silently ushered them in. They walked into a long narrow passage. The welcoming dwarf quickly closed the door and sprinkled a white powder on the ground. It gave off a bright red glow, and the door they had just walked through vanished, leaving in its stead a hollow inside with a tall square stone. Ahiram inhaled sharply. Powerful magic. The guide motioned for them to follow him through a long passage and then through a massive iron door that two dwarfs, standing guard, slammed shut behind them. They were now inside a wide cave filled with fog.
There is no such thing as underground fog, thought the Silent, tense. Where have they brought us?
“Welcome to Karak-Zuun, mighty city of the dwarfs,” the older dwarf said with great flourish.
Ahiram scanned the strange fog but could only see emptiness. He gazed at the dwarf with the strange device on his face. He looked like a crazed madman who had just stepped out of the Pit of Fire.
“The dwarfs are unparalleled master builders with an abiding love for rocks and caves. It stands to reason then that they must have built more secret dwellings under the earth than there are rats to find them.”
–Philology of the Dwarfs – Anonymous.
“We are at liberal liberty to speak frankly and frankly speak liberally.” The older dwarf removed the strange object from his face. The creepy feeling Ahiram had, subsided. “I am Jinodus the Elder,” he introduced himself with a curt bow. “Nevertheless, I would urgently urge you and urge you with the greatest urgency to keep walking until we have reached our destined destination in short order and in order.”
Ahiram bowed before Jinodus the Elder. “I am Torros,” he began.
“We knowingly know who you are,” Jinodus cut in. “We have received newsworthy news from Tanniin about your respectable respectability. Let us be on our wayward way before a curmudgeon bludgeons our precarious safety into a chaotic chaos and a messy mess no respectable dwarfish dwarf could tolerably tolerate.”
Not waiting for an answer, he then led them along a wide road cut into the belly of the mountain, inside a very wide cave whose ceiling was so low in several places that Ahiram had to crouch. In the dim light of the torches they carried, the Silent could not tell how big the cave truly was, but the seemingly endless rows of colonnades that subtended the ceiling told him the grotto must have been as large as the city of Ezoi itself.
“I am Jinorus,” the second dwarf said. He was the one built like a runner. “I do want to impressively impress upon your contained countenance that it was not my intentional intention to delay my introducing introduction.”
“And I am Jinomus,” the third one added. “Alas, the circumstantial circumstances of our encountering encounter are what they are, and are not diffidently diffident as would be becoming of a proper introducing introduction.
Ahiram managed a curt bow and glanced at Jin. “Jin, Jinodus, Jinorus and Jinomus? Are you all related?”
She nodded. “They’re my kins. We share a portion of our name.”
“Not all dwarfs do,” Ahiram said. She did not answer. “Is your full name Jinoike?”
She looked down and shrugged her shoulders. “Jin will do.”
Ahiram nodded. “They must have been on the lookout for me. This would explain why they moved so quickly, then.”
“We were instructed to provide you with assisting assistance,” Jinorus explained.
“And an assistance most assisting, as soon as you would ask for it and no later,” Jinomus added.
Ahiram smiled. The two dwarfs reminded him of the twins Orwutt and Zurwott. He knew dwarfs tended to finish each other’s thoughts, but he had only seen it first hand with the two brothers.
“Are we safe here?” he asked. “Where is this fog coming from?”
“I would safely say and say with a realistic level of safety that your safety and ours is assuredly assured here for the time being and no later,” Jinodus the Elder said. “Your wounding wound,” he added while pointing with his chin to the medallion still lodged in Ahiram’s arm, “must be tenderly tended to as soon as possible and not later.”
“The white powder you threw in the air when we ran from our pursuers,” Ahiram said, “is that what is keeping us safe?”
“In all impartial partiality, the powdery powder kept us partially safe until we reached Karak-Zuun. Now we are protectively protected by the defending defenses of the city itself.”
“City?” Ahiram asked, frowning. He scrutinized the cave, but in the dim light, could not discern any traces of a city. The fog is blocking my view, he thought. Where is this city?
“Over there,” Jin pointed out. “Down that hole.”
“Hole? How can you see a hole in this fog?”
“Straight ahead,” she replied, pointing to the ground.
Then Ahiram saw it.
Cast in the center of the massive cave was Karak-Zuun, the vertical city—dug by the hands of dwarfs. Inside a square hole two thousand feet long and wide stood an island, which the dwarfs had honey-combed into a massive city, layered in four hundred stories.
“Each story is roughly three acres wide,” Jin explained. “About three hundred dwarfs live on each floor.”
“But that’s … that’s one hundred and twenty thousand dwarfs,” said Ahiram. “That’s … a lot of dwarfs.”
Jin nodded. “There are about thirty-thousand dwellings in Karak- Zuun, each with thirteen windows, for a total of—”
“Of 3
90,000 windows,” Ahiram said. “That’s … a lot of windows.”
“Excluding the doors, of course,” Jin added.
“Of course.”
“Look over there,” she said, “there are forty mechanized bridges linking the city back to the main cave, and an additional twenty bridges linking the city to a giant cave a little less than a third of the way down.” Ahiram craned to see the cave but could barely glimpse it. “That’s where this fog is coming from.”
“From a cave? That’s strange. How is the city lit?”
The city glittered in the darkness as if a deity had washed off the stars of heaven and decked the tall rectangular stone with them.
“Very efficient torches,” Jin said. She did not elaborate, so Ahiram did not press the matter. He sniffed the air. It was brisk, fresh, and salty. “Are we close to the sea?”
Jin nodded. “There are hundreds upon hundreds of small shafts that pull fresh air in from the cliffs of Mycene.”
“How do they bring water and food?
“Small waterways, each several miles long, bring in water from outside Ezoi, and dozens of passages spin a wide web from Karak-Zuun far into Mycene’s countryside.”
“All hidden beneath Ezoi,” whispered Ahiram. “That has got to be the biggest hideout ever.”
They had reached one of the bridges. Ahiram noticed the dwarfs had deferred back to Jin to answer his questions, which he found surprising.
“Do you see that big hole on the other side of the city? The one where the fog is coming from?” said Jin.
Ahiram could see it now as they started crossing over the chasm. The bridge was wider and sturdier than he had expected. It was made of beams of steel with hardly any wood. Ahiram squinted, trying to see what was inside the giant cave. Then he heard an odd, familiar sound, a sound he did not expect to hear in a cave inside the earth.
The Wretched Race (Epic of Ahiram Book 3) Page 21