by D. P. Prior
“Nothing,” Aristodeus replied to the helmed dwarf, holding something silver to his pipe and pressing with his thumb. Flame sprang up, and he swirled it around the bowl, sucking in air and smacking his lips. He returned the silver flame-maker to his robe and puffed out a couple of smoke rings. He gave a curt nod to the homunculi.
The little creatures picked up the crystal block containing the axe and carried it straight through the wall. Aristodeus winked at Thumil.
Thumil frowned after the dreadlocked homunculus, eyes boring into the stony surface that seemed to have swallowed him. There was something about how he’d uttered those words: ‘Nameless Dwarf’. Thumil rubbed his beard. A shiver passed along his spine. It sounded oddly familiar, like it had always been there and had come home to roost from some ill-defined future. Cordy must’ve sensed his unease, gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. Was it a description or a name? Had the homunculus chosen it for him, or was it meant as a joke? Thumil caught himself nodding vigorously. A descriptor and a name, he decided. Had to be. Had to call him something. Wasn’t a person otherwise.
“How are you feeling?” Aristodeus asked.
“In need of some mead or a flagon of ale,” came the voice from within the helm. “A big bottomed lass and a stout drinking pal. We’ll soak up the booze with a spit-roasted cow, and sing bawdy songs in the best bars in town…”
Thumil opened his mouth to join in the refrain then clamped it shut, tears streaming down his cheeks. Cordy hugged him so tight she nearly crushed the life out of him.
“Shogged out our brains,” the Nameless Dwarf bellowed. “Nothing’s the same as a brawl and some mead and a beer-drinking dame.”
How many times had they sung those words together, terrorizing the taverns of Arx Gravis?
“Thumil?” said the voice from within the helm. “Thumil, is that you?” The eye-slit turned toward him. “Who’s the lucky lassie?” He turned to Cordy. “Like the beard, gives me something to… Cordy? What’s wrong with me? I didn’t recognize… I mean, hang me for a shogger, you two were married last time I looked.” His hand snaked out, took Cordy’s. “There, see! A ring to match that golden hair of yours. Lassie, forgive me, I’m not myself. You too, Thumil. Am I forgiven?”
“Aye,” Thumil said, sniffing back some snot and wiping the tear tracks from his face. “Course you are.” He looked down at his feet, at the dark stains creeping up from the soles of his boots. His eyes followed the trail of bloody footprints to the door they’d entered by, now sealed like a sepulcher.
“No, wait. Something’s wrong,” the Nameless Dwarf said. “You’ve been here all along. Me, too. It’s all a blur. Can’t even remember my own name.” He shook his helmed head from side to side, slapped at it with his palms. “Must’ve fallen out my ear.” Bang, bang, bang. “Shog, it’s lost. Help me get this thing off my head, will you? My name… I’ve lost my shogging name. Gods of Arnoch, do you know how stupid that sounds?”
Aristodeus stepped to the side of the chair, pipe clamped in the corner of his mouth. The eye-slit focused on him.
“Can you find it for me, laddie?”
“No,” the philosopher said around the stem of his pipe. He glanced at Thumil, gave the impression of sighing. “No, I’m afraid it’s gone.”
Thumil closed his eyes, sought the narrowest crack in all the torment through which to slither away and once more know peace, but it was a hollow hope. None of them would ever know peace again after what they’d witnessed, after what this poor, cursed soul had done, Lord have mercy.
The Nameless Dwarf slumped forward in his chair, catching the face of his helm in his red-stained hands.
Aristodeus turned away, as if he had better things to do, casting casually over his shoulder, “Tell them it’s safe to come in now, Councilor.”
Thumil extricated his fingers from Cordy’s one at a time. She must have been holding her breath, for she exhaled so sharply it sounded like air escaping from a corpse. He couldn’t look at her right then, but he knew she’d manage. She was strong enough. Stronger than him. All that held him up was Aristodeus’s command. He followed the bloody path to the door and slapped the stone with his palm.
“Thumil?” Old Moary’s muffled voice came from outside. “That you?”
“It’s all right to come in now,” Thumil called, barely recognizing his own voice, it rasped so much.
There was a dull thud as the mechanism kicked in, and then the door clunked and ground its way up into the ceiling. It was a disconcerting thing, learning the Dodecagon could be locked from the outside. Normally, the councilors wanted to keep others out while they were debating. Made you wonder who’d instructed the engineers. Made you wonder even more what the original purpose of the chamber had been, back in the days of monarchy before Maldark the Fallen, before the Council of Twelve took over the reins of Arx Gravis.
“Is he held?” Throam Grago said, pushing his way into the chamber first. “Has the axe been removed?”
“The Council of Twelve?” the Nameless Dwarf said, sitting bolt upright and taking in the white-robed dwarves bustling through the doorway, then looking around the room as if for the first time. “The Dodecagon? Shog, this must be serious. What have I done, drunk the last bottle of Urbs Sapientii mead? Wait, no, Thumil, that would have been you, you sozzled old shogger.”
Thumil dipped his head, clamping his eyes shut to hold in the tears.
“Yes, yes, Councilor Grago,” Aristodeus snapped. “Just as I said it would be.”
“Then we have him,” Grago said. “To the seethers!”
“Oh, it is serious,” the Nameless Dwarf said.
Aristodeus sighed and rolled his eyes. He crossed the chamber and made a show of inspecting the stonework, all the while puffing on his pipe.
“That’s not what we—” Thumil started, but he sounded tired, defeated, even to himself.
“Pish,” Grago said. “Never mind what was said. We are talking about the survival of our race. Risks, Councilor Thumil. The risks must not outweigh the benefits.”
The rest of the councilors made their way into the Dodecagon, eyeing the butcher in the helm warily before gathering together in a tight clutch, as if they were afraid to sit at the same table as him.
“The ends justify the means,” Tor Garnil said, as if it were a fact. “Councilor Grago is quite right; it’s all a matter of proportionalism. If you take, for example, the paradigm of the—”
“My husband was speaking,” Cordy said in a voice like a whiplash.
Thumil winced. They had her riled, and that was never a good thing.
“My dear lady,” Garnil said, “your husband is an elected member of this council, whereas you are not.”
“Look, you ignorant shogger,” Cordy said, advancing on Garnil, fists clenched.
Garnil took a step back, right into Castail, who was in the middle of a hushed debate with Yuffie, couple of conniving backstabbers that they were.
“Wait, my dear,” Thumil said, instantly regretting it.
“Don’t you ‘dear’ me,” Cordy said. “I’ve had a gutful of death already, and I won’t let you stand for any more of it, Thumil, do you get it?”
Old Moary coughed into his fist, wiped the spittle from his gray beard. “Well, I don’t know. I mean, what if—”
“No, Councilor,” Grago said. “No more ‘what ifs’, no more prevarication. We are on the brink. On the brink, I tell you. The time for inaction is past. For too long have we cowered in the shadow of Maldark’s sins, afraid to even take a shit without months of debate. We must—”
A long drawn-out groan reverberated from the Nameless Dwarf’s helm. “Lucius?” The helm pivoted left then right. “Oh shog, Lucius went to the seethers. Poor old Lucius.” The eye-slit came to rest on Thumil. “Thumil? Have I...? What have I...? Oh, no!” He went suddenly rigid, and his arms shook as he gripped the edge of the table. “Thumil, Cordy, was it me? Oh no, was it me?”
“Yes, it was you, you evil shogger,” Grago said. “
It was you all the way, cutting down decent dwarves, chopping them into pieces, sticking their heads on spikes. Why, had you forgotten? Wasn’t it important enough to remember?”
“Thumil?” The voice was a shrill lament. “Say it isn’t true. Say it isn’t…”
Thumil forced himself to look at the Nameless Dwarf. His jaw hung slack and his eyes were transfixed. The black helm was overlaid with the phantom of his friend’s face, a twinkle in those mournful eyes. But it was gone in a flash, replaced by dead eyes and a bloody visage, a visage that was better off encased in scarolite forever.
“I’m sorry,” Thumil said. “Councilor Grago speaks the truth.”
The helmed head slumped forward, those mighty shoulders shuddering. “Then kill me. Please, please kill me.”
“See!” Grago said. “Even he agrees.”
Aristodeus spun on his heel, face red with fury. “Remorse, you numbskull. Don’t you recognize repentance when you hear it? Thought you dwarves read the Liber—no, wait, what was it Maldark called the scriptures? What did they used to be called on Earth?” He snapped his fingers and screwed his face up in concentration. “Damn. It’s on the tip of my—”
“No,” Grago said. “No, we don’t read those scriptures. Not after what the Fallen did.”
“Imbecile!” Aristodeus said. “Typical. Typical of you dwarves. Always throwing out the baby with the—”
“Isn’t that what you did, philosopher?”—A voice like rustling leaves. “Weren’t you once a man of faith, before you became too clever, even for the Supernal Father?”
A gale tore through the chamber, whipping up a vortex of sparks, flashes, tongues of flame. The whole coalesced into a cool conflagration then burst with the brilliance of a thousand suns.
Thumil’s arm covered his eyes, and he instinctively dropped to his knees. Everything behind his eyelids was white, then red, then black as the Void and dotted with pinpricks of silver. He blinked over and over, shaking his head and slowly removing his arm. Where the vortex had exploded, now stood a man robed in brown, sunlight bleeding from beneath an all-enveloping cowl.
“So, here at last is our troublesome Nameless Dwarf. A time will come when the name that is not a name will be as cursed as the Ravine Butcher’s, should we allow him to live. About time. About time the dwarves grew a backbone.”
“Nothing is predetermined,” Aristodeus said. “You know that as well as I, Archon.”
It was like standing beneath the most awe-inspiring mountain, or gazing upon the endless ocean, such was the feeling of dread that rolled off the being. Thumil didn’t know whether or not to throw himself to his knees and beg forgiveness for a life not always well-lived. In the end, he took his cue from Cordy, who merely snorted and glared daggers.
Grago must have done the same. He puffed up his chest and stuck his nose in the air. “Who the shog are you?”
“Silence!” There was thunder in the voice that time, and Grago dropped to his belly, along with half the council.
Aristodeus shook his head and held up a hand. “This, dear dwarves, is the Archon. If you still read the scriptures, you’d get some sort of idea of the manner of being he is.”
Flames licked around the edge of the Archon’s hood. “You grow too familiar, philosopher.”
“Quite right,” Aristodeus said. “And we can’t have that, can we? We all know what familiarity breeds.”
The Archon rose into the air and started to circle Aristodeus. “You have picked up the ways of your master, it seems. That doesn’t bode well for you extricating yourself from his trap.”
Aristodeus jabbed the stem of his pipe at the Archon, thought better of it and put it away. “Not my master, and you just watch. I’ll pry open the jaws of his trap sooner or later. Have faith.”
The Archon let out a laugh like a gust of wind. “Faith is something I have never lacked. I wish you could say the same. You are too proud, philosopher, just the way he likes them.”
“Being right doesn’t make one proud. Personally, I’d be more concerned about a Supernal Being who considers himself judge, jury, and executioner, wouldn’t you, Thumil?”
Thumil groaned internally. What did Aristodeus have to go and include him for? He turned his palms up and shrugged. Cordy elbowed him in the back, and he probably deserved it.
“Now is not the time to lose your tongue, Councilor Thumil,” Aristodeus said. “There was a vote, remember?”
Grago raised his head from the floor. “Technically, no.”
“What, your fingers were crossed?” Cordy said.
It looked to Thumil like she was going to kick the prostate councilor for a moment.
“Uhm, I must just say,” Old Moary said—Thumil was impressed to see he was still standing, a be-socked big toe curling from beneath his robe— “there was indeed a majority vote to stay execution. If you ask me—”
“Thank you, Councilor Moary,” Aristodeus said. “Age and wisdom go hand in hand like—”
“You are the voice of this council?” the Archon said, drifting up close to the ancient councilor.
“Well, uh, no. I mean, not really. I’ve just been on the council longer than the rest, but our primary is Councilor Thumil.”
Thumil’s guts turned to mush, and his legs threatened to buckle. Cordy pinched his arse, which did the trick.
The Archon turned on him, ire suppurating from his cowl in fingers of fire. “Heed my words, Councilor Thumil. If this Nameless Dwarf lives, thousands will die. He is a pawn of the Demiurgos.”
“Not if I keep him in stasis,” Aristodeus said. “Nothing besides my own voice will be able to rouse him.”
“You know this philosopher well?” the Archon said.
Thumil closed his eyes against the glare. He desperately wanted to see if the Archon had a face, but the brightness was blinding. “Not well,” he said.
“And you would trust him?”
Thumil gave a sideways look at Aristodeus. “No.”
“There…” the Archon said, turning on the philosopher.
“But no one’s killing my friend.”
Cordy gave his arm a squeeze. It didn’t matter to Thumil that this god-like being could probably blast him from existence; with Cordy on his side, he’d always have a fighting chance.
Aristodeus coughed into his fist and gave a curt nod.
The Archon’s hood shimmered with pent up flame but then settled back to a dull brown. “I cannot—will not—force compliance. Very well, but on your head be it. After all, it is your head to lose.”
Fingers of ice ran their way over Thumil’s flesh. Cordy tensed, her grip suddenly a vise that would never let go.
“With all due respect,” Grago said, pushing himself up onto his knees, “Councilor Thumil does not speak for—”
But the Archon was gone, leaving only swirling dust motes in his wake, and then even they settled. The air grew heavy, and it felt to Thumil as though the ceiling were pressing down on him, causing his shoulders to stoop.
“Well,” Grago said, making it all the way to his feet, “I still say we—”
“No,” Thumil said, with more authority than he felt, and then he added more gently, “No.”
Aristodeus caught his eye and nodded. “Come,” he said to the Nameless Dwarf. “Time for your rest.”
“Rest?” came the voice from within the helm. “Shouldn’t there be a snifter of mead first?”
“Perhaps when you awaken.”
Thumil thought Aristodeus was going to add, “If you awaken.” After all, it was no ordinary rest he was talking about. If things didn’t change, if Aristodeus couldn’t—or wouldn’t—find a way to eliminate the threat of the black axe, his old friend faced an eternity chained in a locked cell, unable to move a muscle; unable even to breathe.
The Nameless Dwarf shrugged. “Oh well. Can’t say fairer than that.” He let out an exaggerated yawn and stretched his thickly muscled arms above his head. “Don’t suppose you fancy joining me, lassie?” he said to Cordy.
She chuckled, but her eyes were damp.
“Probably for the best,” the Nameless Dwarf said as Aristodeus walked him from the chamber. “Don’t want to set the bar too high for Thumil now, do we?”
“Goodbye, my friend,” Thumil muttered into his beard.
The councilors were all up on their feet once more and clamoring for his attention. Their questions were like the cascading waters of the falls that fed the Sanguis Terrae in the depths of the ravine, forcing him in on himself, drowning him. Only Cordy’s hand anchored him, gave him the strength to remain standing. She leaned in close to his ear, her breath warm on his cheek.
“I am with you, my love,” she said. “Now and forever.”
“I know, dear,” he replied, even as a gulf of blackness opened up within his mind and threatened to swallow him. He patted Cordy’s hand, shuddering as he sucked air through gritted teeth. “He was my friend, wasn’t he?” He was starting to wonder. Was it possible that the past had vanished along with the name, and all that remained was the slaughter and the dwarf in the scarolite helm?
Cordy turned his face so that he had to look her in the eye. She was weeping openly now, and her lips quivered as she spoke. “Yes, my love, he was your friend. He was our friend.”
She pulled him to her breast, shutting out the insistent councilors, cocooning him against the horrors he had witnessed.