“You need fear the beast no longer with me in your company, Prince.”
The dwarf raised an eyebrow. “If you are as strong as you say, why do you even need our help?”
The Master sheathed the sword and handed the Prince a roll of paper. “I need your smiths to forge me a shield,” he said. “The metal for which can only be found on the Stone Cloud.”
Prince Regin studied the blueprint. “Yes,” he nodded, “I remember seeing this in my Father’s mines. But —” he added, rolling back the paper and handing it over to Ennaki, “ — you would first need to get there. To break into the Stone Cloud. And for that, you’d need to slay Ymriel. It is a conundrum no sword can break.”
“Leave the practical side of the plan to me,” replied the Master. “I just need your warriors and your blacksmiths.”
“They are one and the same.”
The dwarf returned to his throne and stomped the butt of his axe on the marble floor. “In four days we have a festival of martial prowess. If you win it, you will have the right to request any reward of me. So let it be known.”
“I understand,” the Master said and retreated from the hall, bowing.
Ennaki turned to follow, but as he did so, he tripped on an iron stud in the floor and dropped the sword. He picked it up hastily, burning with shame. The Master pushed him forward, quickly, past the guards, into the labyrinthine corridors of Prince Regin’s mountain hall.
“You seem very nervous today, boy,” he remarked when they were out of reach of spying ears.
“I’m sorry, Master. I can’t help it. It’s all this magic in the air,” he lied.
He had glimpsed Espe’s face among the masked guards. The Queen had arrived already.
The Master chuckled. “I see. You can sense it too.”
“Where is it all coming from? The Dragon?”
“No,” the knight shook his head. “Ymriel dwells here because of the magic. The power flows from the Old Earth.”
“The Old Earth?”
“The Source World, the original of which all else are just ever-fainting reflections.”
They emerged out of the corridor. The Master raised his hand to the sky, where a faint Moon shone through the clouds. Somewhere, beyond even the clouds, Ennaki sensed, rather than saw, a presence of another celestial body, exerting its unseen presence on everything around them.
“Niðavellir is one of the Nine Realms — the worlds closest to the Old Earth; almost its twin, in a way.” The Master continued. “This is the true home of all the Dwarves, just like Alfheimr is the home of all the Elves. The magic pours freely through the cracks in the border between the worlds, imbuing the land and its people. The Dwarves who live here…,” he paused.
“What about them?”
“Let’s just say I’m not so sure of my victory in the Festival,” the Master finished with a crooked smile.
Prince Regin looked from Ennaki to Espe, perturbed, twirling the ends of his long beard in confused agitation.
“I knew that trusting other-worlders was a bad decision,” he murmured. “How do I know I should believe your word over his?”
Queen Espe stepped forward. “Everything we told you can be easily verified. Send your men to the Dragon Knights’ chapter on Alfheimr. Tell them to ask about the betrayal on Dihlantar, or the destruction of Nivar.”
The prince raised his hand. “Pah! Elven tricks. There’s no need for that. Fine, I do believe you. I wouldn’t be the lord of my people if I could not see the truth in the words of others. But, I have also seen truth in the words of the knight when he told me of slaying Ymriel. Or do you deny that, too?”
“No,” Ennaki admitted, “he will slay her, given the chance, of that I have no doubt.”
Regin leaned back in the chair. “Then what do I care what he does afterwards? A dragon slain is a dragon I don’t have to worry about. Without Ymriel, the Stone Cloud is as good as mine. It is known.”
“But don’t you see?” the Queen raised her arms. “He will betray you, like he betrayed all others. I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but I’m certain of it.”
The dwarf’s beard shook from side to side. “It’s still worth it. Even if history remembers me only as the dwarf who helped slay the Earth Dragon, who for so long tormented my people and protected that tyrant, my Father.”
“If our plan succeeds, the dragon still dies,” said Ennaki. “And so does my Master.”
Golden rings glinted on Regin’s hand, as it tightened on the grip of his battleaxe. “You warn me of betrayal, small silver man, and yet it’s exactly what you ask me to do,” he said, spittle gathering around his mouth. “You would have me break a given word. Dishonour my name. People die. Castles fall. Only the name remains,” he recited, his eyes bloodied.
Ennaki thought fast. The stubborn dwarf lord pretended fame and honour were all that mattered to him, but he had long ago learned, in his Master’s service, that every man had his price.
And every woman.
“You speak of history…” He leaned closer, his voice becoming a theatrical whisper. “What if history remembered you as the dwarf who ended the enmity between your people and the Elves?”
“What do you mean?” asked the Prince, calming down.
“An Elven Queen for a bride…”
He caught an alarmed look from the Queen, but ignored it. Espe had to know her value; she was a ruler without a people, worth only as much as the royal blood in her veins. On Alfheimr she was regarded with respect, a minor noble from a distant world, but a kin of the Highborn, nonetheless. The Elves sympathized with her for the loss she’d suffered. But without a land and subjects, she held no true power... and diplomacy was her only weapon. She had nothing to lose in the bargain but her pride.
He glanced at her again and she nodded, hesitant.
The Prince looked her over with renewed interest, licking his lips. “You must think me an old goat that will fall for any Elf’s charms,” he scoffed, his eyes firmly on the prize. “I know the Kings and Queens of Alfheimr. They will never — ”
“They will agree if it means destroying the Dragonsbane, Prince,” Espe interrupted him gently, her voice sultry and silky. Ennaki felt envious of the dwarf; if only the Queen spoke to him like this, even as a ruse...
“His name is a curse word at the court — I made sure of that,” she continued. “And if they learn you’ve helped him...”
The dwarf sat silent for a moment, pondering the unspoken threat, then grabbed his axe and hurled it at the wall with an irritated growl. “Enough! You’re making my head hurt. Your voice is sweet, but the words are bitter. Treasons within treasons, secret alliances… maybe this is how other-worlders do things, but we on Niðavellir are straightforward and honest. A word is a word.” He pointed at Ennaki with a long, callused finger.
“If your Master wins the Festival, he gets everything he requested. It is known. If he doesn’t, well… I may consider other proposals. That is all. Leave now, and don’t come back until you are asked for.”
The Dragon Knight’s doubts, if they had ever been real, were soon put to rest. The dwarves of Niðavellir may have been among the strongest warriors in all the Mirror Worlds, filled with raw magic seeping in from the Old Earth, but none of them were even a match for the Dragonsbane. One by one, Prince Regin’s mightiest champions walked off the festival ground with grave injuries dealt by the immortal, indefatigable master of combat. The crowds jeered and booed.
A final opponent appeared on the arena, as short and squat as all the other dwarves before him, dressed in armour of light plate painted crimson red, with a helmet in the shape of a raven’s beak concealing his face. He was armed with two long, serrated daggers made of dragon’s teeth. His moves were uncertain, hesitant. The Master raised an eyebrow and whirled the sword above his head.
The enemy in crimson lunged forward at the same time. Passing the Dragon Knight, he stabbed one of the daggers into his opponent’s side. The Master’s sword struck him on th
e shoulder, between the plates of the armour. Both warriors cursed with pain. Blood from both wounds stained the sand, and both injuries healed at the same time without a trace.
The Master frowned, raising his sword to another strike.
The duel lasted for two days, uninterrupted. Neither of the opponents seemed to need rest or sleep, though the one in the crimson armour began to show signs of tiredness on the second day. The arena was slippery from their blood, yet neither had any visible injuries after all this time. The audience had gone home; some returned in the morning, driven by curiosity, but when they saw that nothing had changed, they wandered off into other, more entertaining venues of the festival. Only Prince Regin endured firm on his seat, honour-bound by his word and the sacred rules of the tournament.
At last, when the bright Niðavellir sun set beyond the peaks of the Westhammer Mountain on the third day, the Prince rose and stomped his axe against the ground. The great gong rang out and the horns played a fanfare. The two warriors stopped their fight and turned his way in surprise.
“Enough!” the dwarf lord bellowed. “The Festival of the Hammer has ended. And so must this duel. You have fought to a draw. It is known.”
The Master threw his sword on the sand, despondent. His opponent knelt down, panting.
“Look at him,” the Dragon Knight pointed, accusingly. “One more day and I would have defeated him.”
Prince Regin’s eyes narrowed. “It is forbidden for a duel to continue after the festival. It is known. You have both won. You will both be granted your wishes.”
The Master turned to his opponent.
“You had a wish, too?”
The knight in crimson armour raised the mask of his helmet, revealing Ennaki’s face. The Master laughed.
“I’m sorry, Master. They forced me to…”
The Dragon Knight shrugged and patted Ennaki on the shoulder. “No matter. I got what I wanted. I’m surprised they thought you could defeat me… I suppose they were desperate to try anything.”
“I tried my best, Master,” Ennaki smiled weakly.
Sixty of Prince Regin’s best warrior-smiths boarded the flying dragon-head longship. Piercing the skies, it sped for the Stone Cloud; King Hreiðmar’s vast flying fortress. Under the veil of the Master’s invisibility spell, the ship reached the first rampart of the castle unnoticed. The warriors poured out and overpowered the guards in a matter of seconds.
Led by the untouchable Dragon Knight, they soon breached through to the vaults underneath the castle, where the flying fortress’s engines roared in a powerful, raw rhythm. From there, the tunnels branched off, leading to the cloud-tin mines and the warehouse where smelted ore was stored before processing in the royal smithies. Along the way, some of the dwarves stayed behind, manning blockades and barricades, to slow down the inevitable pursuit.
Half of the troop reached the warehouse gate. The Master cut through it with one blow of his fiery sword.
“Take as much as you need,” he ordered the dwarves. The chief of the smiths grunted something in their coarse secret tongue, and two warriors grabbed a chest full of processed ore.
“We make a final stand here,” the Master said. “Close down that tunnel, and set up the smithy in the cave to the left.”
“The blueprint,” the chief smith said, reaching out a hand.
“Of course. Ennaki — ”
Ennaki promptly handed over the scroll he’d been keeping safe on his breast.
“What about the dragon?” asked one of the warriors.
“Let me worry about her,” the Master replied. “I’ll hold her off until the shield is ready. How long will it take you?”
The chief smith looked over the blueprint. “It’s complex, and the metal is hard to work with… normally, I would need days to finish such a complicated task.”
“You have until dawn,” said the Master. “Even I can’t ward Ymriel off longer than that.”
The dwarf scratched his bulbous nose and nodded. “I will do what I can.”
A faint sound of an explosion coming from the upper levels told them King Hreiðmar’s troops had breached the first blockade.
The walls of the cave trembled; steam and rubble gushed from the rock fissures. Ennaki could only guess what was happening above them. The Master’s battles with the dragons had been growing increasingly titanic; the fight with Ymriel, one of the four Elementals, must have been the most terrific and terrifying of them all, and Ennaki felt almost sorry that he could not witness it.
Instead, he had to stay in the cave by the impromptu smithy, making sure the work on the Master’s shield was progressing fast and smooth… and that the necessary “corrections” to the original blueprint were introduced in time…
The shield began to take shape after midnight; a large oval of bronze upon a frame of timber and leather, with a massive steel spike protruding in the middle. But the base was less important than that which had to be attached onto the front; an intricate lattice of strange shapes, cubes, cones and wires, all woven out of the strange dark grey metal found in the warehouse chests. Six smiths worked on that apparatus simultaneously in a dark, damp corner of the cave, by the white light of evertorches. A seventh dwarf, sitting apart from the others, was weaving another conical pattern out of the dark grey wire.
The pattern was Ennaki’s own addition to the shield. It had been devised by the Elven smiths on Alfheimr. They weren’t sure themselves it would work — the design of the shield was unlike anything they had known; the Master had used counting machines from the non-magic worlds to support his meticulous magic calculations. The Elves had to reverse-engineer most of it before they could think of “improving” the details. They could only hope.
A scout arrived at the barricade, bearing grave news.
“The fourth barrier has been breached,” he panted. “They will be here any minute.”
“What about the surface?”
Another powerful blast shook the tunnels.
“Ymriel’s wrath is terrible.” There were hints of madness in the scout’s eyes. “I’ve never seen so much destruction. All the towers of the King’s palace have been torn down in the heat of the battle.”
The chief smith nodded with a smile. “At least that much good has come from it.”
He called out to Ennaki. “You there, silver boy!” he yelled. “Care to join us in making a last stand? Earn your name in the sagas?”
Ennaki opened his mouth to respond, but at the same time the dwarven smiths behind him cried out in triumph. The shield was complete. It was still red hot from welding the elements of the pattern, but that made no difference to Ennaki, who had stood countless times against the dragon flame. He grabbed the shield with his bare hands.
“I must carry this to my Master,” he said.
The chief smith stepped aside, opening a small passage in the barricade. Beyond, in the tunnels, the spears and hammers of the kingsfolk glinted.
“They’re all yours. I don’t suppose we’ll see each other again.”
“I suppose not.”
Ennaki bowed before the smiths, slung the shield on his back and, drawing the short dragon-tooth swords he got from Espe, plunged into the darkness.
Nothing but a scorched, blackened rubble remained of the King’s palace on the surface. Among the globules of molten window glass and cracked tiles lay charred bones of warriors, rattling inside their armour — the King’s and the Prince’s men alike. The dragon’s wrath did not discriminate.
At first Ennaki could spot neither his Master nor the beast he was fighting. He noticed the knight first — a silver dot leaping from one ruined tower to another, avoiding streams of lava pouring from high above. He followed the line of attacks to find the dragon’s silhouette in the granite-grey sky, veined with fire, when he realized his mistake. The dragon was the sky.
Ymriel’s body surrounded the flying fortress in a tight loop, sealing it from the outside world. Its enormous maw was like the mouth of a volcano, spitting
out pumice, ash and magma all in one stream. Slowly, the ruins of the Stone Cloud were being swallowed by layers of quickly cooling lava.
Ennaki — the only living being in this desolate landscape — ran up to the Master, climbing onto a pinnacle of what once may have been the throne hall, but was now just a dome of basalt, and handed him the still-hot shield.
“Ah! Finally,” the Dragon Knight exclaimed. “I was growing tired of playing.”
With the shield firmly on his left arm, he leapt high into the air, high enough to reach the dragon’s throat and slash it through. Landing again, he covered himself and Ennaki with the shield, protecting both of them from the hot blood pouring from the wound.
The dragon roared and, with a mighty crash, began to fall — it took a while for something so big to actually reach the ground. The Stone Cloud heaved from the impact, and Ymriel’s body shattered what still remained of the fortress into fine, black dust.
“You could have killed it any time you wanted!” Ennaki said, with eyes wide open.
He is truly a god now, he thought.
“Of course,” the Master laughed. “Slaying an Elemental was never as much of a problem as everyone made out — not for me, at least. It’s making sure it stays dead that’s difficult… and surviving the process.”
He leapt down, and ran up to the dragon’s furnace-hot body. He found the heart; a massive cracked boulder beating ever slower under the granite and marble scales.
“Step back, or hide behind me,” he ordered Ennaki. “Just get out of the way”
The boy chose the former, hiding behind a pile of molten iron which he recognized as a giant chandelier.
The Dragon Knight aimed the spike in his shield at the heart and pierced the rocky flesh. Blood like lava poured out all around him, cooling quickly in the cold air. The pattern on the shield lit up, and the lava changed direction — it was being funnelled into the shield… and into the Master’s own bloodstream. The knight’s skin began to turn the colour of anthracite.
Dragons' Fall_Tales from the Mirror Worlds Page 18