by Tom Liberman
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” said the girl as she finished with the kettle and sat down next to the gaudily bedecked dwarf. One of his beard bands alone contained more wealth than the girl could possibly hope to attain in a lifetime. His robes were made of the finest silk imported from some far off lands, even his rings glowed with magical energy and sported gemstones the size of her thumb, “First Edos, why are you here?”
“Please, call me Fierfelm, I’m only First Edos in name now that that the Firefists have taken control. I’ll be eased out with awards and ceremonies but they’ll never let me back into the Deep Forge to pursue my craft,” this last he said as he eyes took on a faraway look and he sighed. “I’ll miss that forge more than anything else. I remember the first day I saw it with old Udor. It was, it still is, the most beautiful thing in all of Craggen Steep. The seat of power for old Gazadum, where Hovslaag himself forged the tools used to craft the world.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Milli and patted the old fellow on the hand. “It must be terrible to have known such beauty and lose it.”
Fierfelm smiled and nodded his head, “That’s very kind of you to say. I’ve trusted Borrombus and his nephew to handle things up until now but the Firefists knew my plans all along, so I’ve come to you personally this time. I was followed, you can be sure of that, but they know everything in any case so all I can do is try to fulfill my promise personally. I’ll not rely on others anymore.”
“I’m not sure I really understand,” said Milli and took a sip from the steaming cup.
“The Hammer of Fire, old Udor wanted it to be used, but the Firefist family won’t allow it and frankly, until your friend Delius came along there wasn’t really anyone who could effectively wield it in any case.”
“Dol won’t do it,” said Milli. “We tried to convince him but he’s stubborn, he won’t listen to reason.”
“Borrombus explained everything to me,” said the old dwarf with a nod of his head as he took a sip of his coffee and forced it down his throat with an expression as if he just swallowed an iron ingot. “This coffee is just atrocious; I suppose once I’ve been removed as First Edos I’ll have nothing to look forward to except death and bad coffee.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Milli and looked down at her cup without a further word.
“Never you mind,” said Fierfelm, “never you mind. I’m here for something far more important than coffee. It’s a good thing that young man of yours is stubborn because last night was a trap. They knew you would try and steal the hammer and had agents there to prevent it.”
“He’s not really my young man,” said Milli with a little blush, “we’re more just friends.”
“That’s nice, in any case, I’ve come to you with a plan, something that Delius will like, it’s something I’d like myself but I’m not young anymore, and frankly, even when I was young I wasn’t much the adventuring sort. I’m a fair blacksmith, no false modesty there, I know my way around the hammer and anvil, but as for killing and rescuing fair maids, it’s not really my forte. Where was I?”
“A plan,” suggested Milli with a hopeful look in her eyes as she gazed up at the old dwarf.
“That’s right; now, I can’t tell you how to get to the hammer anymore and any suggestion I make is based on information fed to me by the Firefists. It’s been nothing but lies and spying for years now. That miserable apprentice they’ve saddled me with is nothing but a lying filthy little spy with no character whatsoever. I’ve tried with him, tried to instill some discipline, some pride of work, but he’s grown up spoiled, entitled, rich, there’s nothing I can do with him. But young Delius, I can give him something to do with the hammer.”
“What?” said Milli her coffee cup poised half-way between the saucer and her flush lips.
“What do you know about Craggen Steep?” said Fierfelm as he carefully set down his coffee cup in the chipped saucer and turned his old eyes to the girl. “What do you really know?”
“Well, it’s a secret citadel, hidden from the rest of the world, that it is endless miles of caverns tunneled through the mountains, that … that … that’s it’s ruled by a council of elders but the blacksmiths, the master blacksmith’s, the Edos’s, they are the other power.”
“Yes, but what do you know of its origins?”
“I don’t really know very much. They brought me here as a little girl but I’m still an outsider, they won’t tell me anything.”
“What do you make of the great passages, the grand halls?”
“Oh, they’re magnificent, the stone work is so beautiful, the gems, the precious metals, the artisan work, it’s the most beautiful place there could ever be,” said Milli her eyes glowing and a wide smile on her face as she gazed towards the corner of the room and saw not the faded paint, the cracked trim, but something else, something far grander.
“What do you think of their size?” Interrupted the old dwarf, breaking her from her reverie.
“Their size?” repeated Milli.
“Yes, their size,” said the old dwarf with a twinkle in his eyes.
“The grand passage that cuts through the heart of the mountain must be a hundred feet tall, the ancient cathedrals to Davim and the other Gods, you could walk an army through them.”
“What do you make of that?” said Fierfelm with a little nod of his head.
“I’m not sure I understand,” said Milli, her head tilted to one side and her nose slightly wrinkled as she gazed at the elderly dwarf.
The First Edos smiled gently at the girl and raised his eyebrows.
“Well, I suppose, as a girl, I always wondered, why build such massive structures when you’re, well, not exactly very tall,” she said. “Is that what you mean?”
The First Edos nodded his head and took another sip of his coffee, “It’s best to make it too hot and then it cools nicely after a bit. These porcelain cups are quite nice for keeping the heat. Gold is ridiculous as a coffee mug, just ridiculous; you’d think someone would think of that.”
Milli closed one eye and shook her head, “What?”
“The coffee, best to make it too hot.”
“Yes, I’m sorry First Edos, would you like me to put the kettle back on?” said Milli.
“What do you make of that?” said Fierfelm.
Milli blinked three times with her long lashes and stared at the elderly dwarf for a long moment, “The halls?”
“Of course, what else were we talking about?”
“I suppose …,” she started and put her hand to her chin, “I suppose it means that they weren’t built for dwarves in the first place.”
“Or even by dwarves,” said Fierfelm and took another sip of his coffee, made a sour face, looked at the cup, and frowned.
Milli stood up, went to the kitchen, put the kettle back on the fire, and then returned to sit down next to the First Edos, “If not dwarves, then who built all this?”
“Elementals, from the dawn of time, the greatest elemental of them all, Gazadum, this was his seat of power,” said Fierfelm, put the coffee cup to his lips for a moment, wrinkled his nose, and set it back down again without drinking further.
“But, but, but where are they now? These elementals?” said Milli as she sat down with a thump.
“You know the story of Dar Drawhammer,” said Fierfelm with another distasteful look at his coffee. “Did you say you had cake?”
Milli jumped to her feet again and went back to the kitchen as she looked over her shoulder, “I’ve heard the story a thousand times, how Dar defeated the Elementals with the shield … wait, you mean that story is about here, about Craggen Steep? They never say that, they always say it was some far off place.”
Fierfelm nodded his head and the platinum circled around his beard bumped into the table and sent some of the coffee in his cup slopping out. “It’s all a secret you know.”
“Let me get that,” said Milli as she rushed back over to the table with a rag just as the kettle began to whist
le.
“You said there was cake?” repeated Fierfelm.
“Oh, yes, I’ll get some, in just a moment, I think I might have it around here, somewhere,” said Milli with a desperate look at the kettle, the spill, and her cupboard.
“I thought all you halflings loved to bake?”
“I was raised by dwarves,” said Milli as she suddenly stopped and looked at the old dwarf with a wide smile, “I love gold.”
Fierfelm nodded his head, “Not a bad thing necessarily, although to extreme, it is a dangerous pursuit. Perhaps, because I have so much, it is not as valuable to me. One doesn’t value what one has in abundance I suppose, it’s the nature of a dwarf.”
“What about those elementals, how does that fit into convincing Dol to take the hammer?” asked Milli as she finished cleaning up the mess, although her subsequent neglect of the kettle saw boiling water slop onto the stove and hiss violently.
“Gazadum was possibly the first of the elementals and certainly one of the most powerful,” said Fierfelm. “When Dar drove him from Balag Tol he fled to the southlands along with many of the other powerful fire elementals including Hezfer the Blue Flame who consumed Onod, his twin sister Eleniak the Dancing Flame, and the terrible Shadak the Black Fire.”
“Balag Tol?” asked Milli as she returned with a fresh cup of coffee and a rather malformed pastry, icing smeared unevenly across its surface, “I’m sorry about the tart, it’s a few days old, I haven’t been shopping, I thought we were going to take the hammer and leave, so I’ve let things slip a little.”
“Quite all right, my dear,” said Fierfelm and he looked at the misshapen little tart with a glance and then raised the coffee cup to his lips.
“What is Balag Tol?” repeated Milli.
“What’s that?” said the First Edos.
“Balag Tol, I’ve never heard of it,” said Milli.
“Oh, that’s Craggen Steep, of course,” said Fierfelm with a little wave of his left hand as he sipped from the cup and grimaced again. “That’s what it was called before, at least so the chronicles say. They say Gazadum ruled there for a countless years while he and his fellow elementals shaped the world. It is his residual heat that still fires the Deep Forge all these centuries later.”
“What does all this have to do with the Hammer of Fire, and Dol?” said Milli as she leaned forward, “Not that I mind hearing the stories.”
“Gazadum,” said Fierfelm as he nodded his head.
Milli looked at him expectantly but the old dwarf just took another sip from his coffee.
“What about Gazadum,” said Milli.
“Haven’t I told you?” said Fierfelm, a puzzled expression on his face.
“Maybe I missed it,” said Milli with a little grin and put on the smile that always got her what she wanted. She patted the old dwarf on the back, “repeat it for me, please?”
“I’ve found out where he fled. It’s in the south, the far south, a place called Koalhelm Tol,” said Fierfelm with a silly little grin.
“Yes?” Milli.
“Don’t you see?” asked Fierfelm the many wrinkles on his forehead multiplying at an alarming rate.
“No,” said Milli with a shrug of her shoulders as she poked at her pastry in a rather desultory fashion. It didn’t look very good.
“Even Dar Drawhammer with the Great Shield could not slay Gazadum, but the hammer, Kanoner, was forged by Orin Firefist. It was the first thing created on the Deep Forge by dwarf hands, and inside is the essence of Gazadum himself. The haft is the bottom half of the Staff of Faelom taken from the elf king by a great dwarf warrior. It was fashioned from the first and most powerful of the shepherds. With this weapon a dwarf could slay the greatest of the fire elementals. And the dwarf who did that, he would live forever in the stories.”
Milli looked at the old dwarf for a long moment as the light of recognition shone in her sparkling yellow eyes, “I think Dol might like that.”
Chapter 6
“Now you’re ready to steal the thing but it’s too late,” said Brogus as he glared at Dol across the small table, and the tall dwarf stared impassively back at him without any sort of expression at all on his face. “What do you have to say to that?”
Dol said nothing, nor did he change his blank expression.
“They’ve got it locked up in the Hall of Relics and there are guards on it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” continued Brogus as he pounded the table with his fist. “Pikemen, the High Council’s guard, they wear the gold helmets. The finest warriors in all of Craggen Steep. We can’t overpower them. It’s lost, if you had only listened to me yesterday Dol, you dolt.”
“Inside voice,” said Milli at her usual place between the two dwarves and with her usual glass of elf wine in front of her. “We don’t want everyone in Craggen Steep to know our plan, do we, Brogus?”
“They already know,” said the heavyset dwarf with a scowl. “We’re the laughing stock of the mountain. Everyone on my floor was laughing at me yesterday. Even the lowest of the apprentices from the worst families. I can’t stay in Craggen Steep now, with or without the hammer, we have to get out of here. We could have had it easy just yesterday but now, it’s impossible. Impossible! What does it matter if everyone knows what we wanted to do?”
“It’s not impossible,” said Milli in a quiet voice as she glanced around the crowded room. A number of young dwarves smiled and tried to catch her eye but she ignored them and turned back to her two companions. “I know you don’t like him,” she said with a glance to Brogus, “but Uldex can help us. His uncle Borrombus is in the inner sanctum and he knows how the hammer is guarded. What forces, how many and where, the location of reinforcements, the passageways to take to avoid them.”
“The Hall of Relics?” said Brogus. “How are we possibly going to get in there, steal the hammer,” here he lowered his voice, “and get back out again? There are hundreds of Council Stalwarts guarding it all the time.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” said Milli with a shake of her head that sent her hair flying, “it’s hardly hundreds and there are plenty of times it’s not guarded.”
“Now is the time,” said Dol as he contributed to the conversation for the first time. His face was still a mask of impassivity but his eyes glowed black and he nodded his head. “Now, they think they’ve won.”
“Dol’s right,” said Milli. “Their confident now that our plan was foiled and they’ll relax. With Uldex helping we can get in and get out. You still have a plan to leave Craggen Steep, right, Brogus?”
The burly dwarf nodded his head, “I’ve got friends in the lower levels who know about an old breakout section. Somebody split rock through to the surface years ago and it was patched up, but it’s only a few inches thick, there was an earthquake or something. We’ll poke a hole in it no trouble and be on our way. I can even have mules waiting for us. But I don’t know much about the outside world, I’ve only been with one caravan and that was when I was a kid. We don’t even know where this Koalhelm Tol is located.”
“It’s in the south,” said Milli, “as far south as you can get in a region filled with volcanoes. Fierfelm said …,”
“Fierfelm!” interrupted Brogus with a sudden exclamation that sent his beer slopping out of his mug, “I thought you said it was Uldex that told you all this.”
Milli paused and leaned back in her chair with a little twinkle in her eye and small grin on her face, “I may have led you to believe that, but I never said it.”
“What?” shouted Brogus, standing, putting both hands flat against the table, and leaning over so that his considerable bulk loomed directly above Milli. “You don’t think we should have known that?” He asked with a look over at Dol who sat impassively in his own seat. “Don’t you think little miss pretty should have told us that, Dol? Don’t you?”
Dol shrugged his shoulders and stared back at Brogus with calm black eyes, “What difference does it make where the information comes from, as long as it’
s accurate. I want that hammer, I want to be the one remembered for killing Gazadum. You can either watch me to do it, or you can help.”
Brogus stood for a few long seconds as their eyes bored into one another and then he looked up at the ceiling and shook his head, “There’s no stopping you, once you’ve made up your mind. I’ve known that since we were kids. Remember when I broke your nose for eating more than half the brownies that time?”
Dol nodded and a small smile appeared on his face.
“What did he do to you?” asked Milli, looking quickly back and forth between the two.
“He ate all the brownies the next time,” said Brogus with a snort as he collapsed back in his seat. “I could have beat him some more, but what was the point? Then he’d probably just eat all the pie too. You can’t win with Dol.”
Milli laughed aloud, the sound almost like a song, “That’s our Dol. Now that we’ve settled the what, we need to figure out the how.”
“They’ll expect us to wait a few days at least to see the guard routines,” said Brogus with his hand on his chin as he looked at Milli. “I think Dol might be right. We should do it as soon as possible. If they knew about us stealing it in the first place they might have found out about my escape route too. It wouldn’t take a team of miners more than an hour to brick up that narrow break and we’d never get through.”
“So, we do it tonight then?” said Milli in a whisper.
“Why not now?” said Dol and suddenly stood up.
Milli’s eyes opened wide and she stared at her thick-haired friend with her mouth agape, and then she shut it with a snap. “Why not now?” she went on more to herself. “They certainly won’t be expecting it. We just run into the hall and grab the thing.”
“They’ll catch us quick enough,” said Brogus. “They can communicate through the tunnels and have a hundred stalwarts waiting for us whichever direction we go.”
“Uldex can help with that, he can send false messages, get them all confused, we’ll be half way to Das’von before they know we’re even gone. Once we’ve joined up with Corancil’s army they can’t stop us, not without revealing Craggen Steep’s location at least and they’ll never do that.”