by Markus Heitz
The actor had gone pale; his hands were fastened behind his back with a chain the orc took from his belt. But Rodario was still standing tall, with his chin slightly raised.
Coïra looked over at her mother again and tried to read in her eyes what the queen was thinking.
“I was telling the truth, Präses,” said Rodario. “But what if the orcs don’t agree? How reliable are they?”
“If it turns out they are sure that it was indeed Coïra who was responsible for the attack on the prison, Wey will suffer the consequences.” Girín sounded indifferent. “Those are the terms of the treaty you signed,” he told the queen. “The Dragon insists the terms are strictly observed and does not want to be the only one to keep to the agreement. You can thank your own flesh and blood.”
“No. She won’t have to. Coïra had nothing to do with it,” Rodario repeated. He was dragged to one side by the orc and forced to stand next to the desk.
“Mother, what do you say?” asked Coïra, her hands on her belt that lay loosely round her hips. “The älfar would not stop for Präses if they encountered him and he were to stand up to them?”
“Hardly,” said the queen. “And we’d have to ask the Dragon for support immediately to help us get rid of the invaders who threaten our island.”
“What are you talking about?” barked Girín, switching his gaze from mother to daughter and back. “There are no älfar here, and they certainly would not dare to attack an envoy of the mighty Lohasbrand. The consequences would be unthinkable.”
Wey got up slowly from her chair, her hands folded in front of her, like Coïra’s. “I have waited so long for the opportunity to be freed from these fetters, Präses,” she announced with dignity, pride in her eyes. “The gods listened and sent them to me. On this notable orbit. Thanks to you and to the älfar.”
Girín guessed what was coming and sprang up from his chair. “Quick! Kill them both!” The orc drew a huge sword and was about to attack Coïra, while the four guards pulled at the chains holding the queen’s collar. The circumference of the ring narrowed.
Rodario tripped up one of the orcs, but not sufficiently to bring the creature to the floor. It stumbled, though, and took a couple of moments to regain its balance.
Red lightning hit face and breast; the orc let out a shrill scream of pain and fell burning onto the marble flagstones. Even the dark blood issuing from its wounds was in flames. Rodario could not tear his eyes away.
White trails of energy laid themselves round the ring and prevented it being pulled any tighter. Then the flashes worked their way along the chains to the hands of the Lohasbrander guards. With a hiss their fingers caught fire, as if they were made of dry wood.
The flames traveled up with amazing speed, slipping under the armor. Smoke issued from the guards’ collars. The soldiers dropped the chains and beat at their clothing trying to extinguish the flames. Seconds later they were on the floor, burned black.
The iron ring around Wey’s neck burst open with a clang and fell, glowing, to her feet. The queen looked at Girín, who had drawn his sword and was standing by the great window, trembling all over. “Did you really think I had no more magic power, Lohasbrander?” she said angrily.
“The Dragon will come and annihilate you!” he said. “He will destroy the whole of Weyurn; it will be overwhelmed in a sea of fire and the lakes will boil away.”
“The Dragon will learn nothing of this. But he will be told about you and the älfar who fought you. In the palace. You will be portrayed in a heroic light. You should be pleased about it.” Coïra smiled and stepped over to Rodario. A quick flash and his bonds were released. “We shall implore him to seek out the älfar. Because, of course, we care about the future of Weyurn, just as he does, even if for different reasons. He will take up our offer, that much is certain.”
“But before that,” Wey went over to him, “you must die, to bring our story to a fitting end.”
Girín struck the window with his sword, shattering some of the panes. A strong gust of wind swept in through the opening, blowing objects around. The curtains flapped, papers and cloths and empty glasses landed on the stone floor. The air was filled with noise. “Never!” he screamed and jumped out, knowing that though it was a considerable fall he would eventually hit the lake waters.
Rodario did not want to leave it to chance as to whether or not the man died. Surprisingly fast he bent over one of the dead guards, drew a dagger and hurled it at the falling figure.
The blade hit Präses in the back of the neck. His body went limp and the hand released the sword. Rodario was satisfied. The women rushed forward and watched the corpse fall. They saw Girín as a black dot flying to meet the waves.
“That must be… at least eighty paces down. The impact of the water would have broken his neck, anyway,” said Rodario with enjoyment. “He just didn’t think it through.”
Coïra wondered if Rodario’s good aim had been more luck than judgment. She could not decide. Together they saw how the Lohasbrander plunged into the waters of the lake and disappeared. “Do we need his body?” Wey asked them.
“It would be as well. We’ve got enough corpses to convince the Dragon, but the cadaver of Präses would be most effective.” Her eyes fixed on the boat nearing the shore. “There’s the orc rowing over, the one he sent to find the night-mare.”
Coïra had understood. “I will see to it he doesn’t land, in case he saw who fell out of the window.” She embraced her mother and held her tight for a long time. “How long I’ve waited for this!”
“It seemed like an eternity.” Wey had closed her eyes and placed her arms around her daughter.
Rodario’s heart was beating wildly. “What shall we do now?” he asked excitedly. “What’s the plan? You do have a plan?”
“In part,” replied Coïra, freeing herself from her mother’s arms. “We let the Dragon think that the älfar killed his men. Then we’ll see what happens. If we’re lucky he’ll wage war on them. While they wear each other down we can go about our other projects.” She came up to him and embraced him. “You are welcome to contribute your ideas to our rebellion.”
Rodario grew hot. In his imagination she was naked as he had seen her at the bottom of the shaft. “Gladly, princess,” he breathed, lifting his arms awkwardly. Was he permitted to embrace her or not?
Before he could decide, Coïra let go. “You are a sweetie, Rodario the Seventh!”
“I do have a suggestion!” he hastened to say. “How would it be if we kept people thinking the unknown poet is still alive? I could take on his role—well, the rhyming, anyway.”
Coïra nodded, although she was not over-enthusiastic. “Do you think you’d be able to? Nothing against your poetry…”
“I am a quick learner. You’ll see.” He made a deep bow. “I promise you, you’ll be surprised just how quick.”
There was a glimpse, Coïra felt, an image of the other Rodario, the one who was manly and who could aim very straight when throwing a dagger. Suddenly she was keen to see his verses.
Wey was still standing at the window watching the lake. “See to the greenskin, Coïra,” she commanded. “He’s nearly at the shore.” She turned to them. “I shall speak with our new poet in the meantime. There seems to be a hidden talent here.”
Rodario bowed. “At your service, Majesty!”
The Outer Lands,
Seventy-six Miles Southwest of the Black Abyss,
Winter, 6491st Solar Cycle
The flattened head of the crow’s beak hammer struck Tungdil’s armored chest and the runes flared up once more on the tionium platings, as if issuing a challenge to the sun and stars.
The handle of the weapon flashed—and shot off diagonally to hit the ceiling. Then the crow’s beak fell to the floor.
“Ha!” Boïndil was standing close to the feet of the recumbent dwarf. “This time I didn’t get clobbered with a magic shock.” He grinned and smoothed down his beard, realizing that the hairs were standing on end
from the magic charge. “If I let go of the weapon at the last moment and jump out of the way, the energy can’t get to me. Ho, Scholar, what do you say to that: Am I clever or am I clever?” He picked up the crow’s beak and studied the metal head. “Hmm. It looks all right.” Ireheart extended a hand to Tungdil. “How’s it going? Can you move now?”
Tungdil blinked. “All I can see is bright lights in front of my eyes,” he snapped, lifting his right arm. The friends clasped hands and soon the dwarf was on his feet next to Ireheart. “But it did help. Colossal shock and potentially self-destructive, but it did the trick.”
Boïndil laughed. “Not really self-destructive.” He looked at the huge hole the magic had torn in the ceiling, a hole the size of a cow. “Anyway, now I know what to do if you fall over again. You’ll just have to make sure I’m always around. If you’re not careful they might think you’re a statue next time it happens and you’ll end up on top of a pedestal.”
Tungdil lifted his arms and legs, turned his head and twisted from side to side. The armor had regained its former flexibility and was behaving as if nothing untoward had occurred. “I’ll try to remember that when I’m fighting our enemies,” he replied, going over to the table to have something to eat at last. Ireheart did not seem to have left him much.
“I couldn’t have known my treatment for broken armor would work so quickly,” Ireheart apologized in response to the enquiringly raised eyebrow. “What exactly did you feel when I hit you?”
“I don’t know. It should never have happened.”
Boïndil laughed and caught the sausage to pull it down. “Hang on, I’ll rub it clean in the snow. Should taste fine.” He tapped it against Tungdil’s armor. “When it’s thawed out, I mean.” “I’ll be all right with what I’ve got here,” said Tungdil, stopping his friend leaving the hut. “And the thirdling? Where did he get to?”
“The White Death rode down to the valley and caught him. Vraccas was on our side.” Ireheart thought hard, his brow furrowing. “I’ve never seen a skirt-wearer like that one before. In armor with those runes. I could swear they were älfish symbols. Very strange.”
“What’s strange about it? You said the thirdlings and the black-eyes had a pact.” Tungdil took the last ladlefuls from the pot, tipped them onto a plate and sat down to eat.
“There’s a big difference between making a pact and having weird runes and peculiar armor. What I’ve heard about the thirdlings didn’t mention they were actually friends with the black-eyes, or that they’d give each other armory lessons.” Ireheart could not help glancing at his friend’s tionium covering.
Tungdil went on chewing and drank a mouthful of tea. “So you want to know what kind of being it was I robbed and killed,” he said, interpreting Ireheart’s questioning gaze.
“Exactly, Scholar. He must have been a swine of a fellow, I know. And he must have used bad magic to make the armor, just like the älfar do. That’s obvious from what just happened.” Ireheart looked at Tungdil. “What else should I know? For an emergency?”
Tungdil scraped up the last bit of food and licked the spoon clean. “That was very good,” he said. “You didn’t leave me much, but it was very good.”
Boïndil frowned. “Is this a miserable attempt to avoid answering?” He hunted in his pocket and pulled out his substitute pipe. “Good thing I had a second one with me. That idiot trampled on my favorite pipe. I’d smoked it in just right.” He filled it with tobacco and lit it with a spill from the fire.
Tungdil paused, staring at the steam rising from his mug of tea. As it rose it mixed with the blue smoke Ireheart was puffing out.
“I met him one cycle after I arrived on the other side. At least I think it was a cycle. The light is different down there and you lose the sense of the length of an orbit. I was defending myself against a horde of orcs and was in trouble because of the injuries I’d received in the Black Abyss. I killed the first twenty orcs quickly, but more and more monsters kept emerging from the passageways, attracted by the screams of the dying. I had my back to the wall and was fighting for my life; I’d taken two crossbow bolts to the body and my arm was practically severed, so I sent my final prayer to Vraccas. Then he appeared.” Tungdil’s voice failed, as if he needed a drink of water. “He wore different armor from this set, but it was similar. It was the first suit he had forged.” Tungdil leaned over to Boïndil. “I swear he had greater strength than any dwarf. Stronger than you, Boïndil. Take you and me and your brother together and you come close. He wields two weapons the weight of the crow’s beak at the same time, and he’s so fast on his feet you can’t see his blows coming. He carries a third weapon in a harness on his back. He…”
“Has he got a name?” Ireheart was listening with rapt attention.
Tungdil’s eye flickered and Boïndil was not sure if it was fear or anger at the interruption. “He has many names. One of them I can pronounce: Vraccas.” “What?” Ireheart sat bolt upright. “That’s blasphemy! How does he dare to call himself that?”
“He is without doubt something special and until I turned up he was the only dwarf in the blackness of the other side.” Tungdil shuddered. “If you could see him, Boïndil, you would understand why the name made sense to me. And he saved me from the orcs.” He dropped his gaze and stared at the mug of tea. “He took me to his refuge, an old stronghold abandoned by Tion’s hordes. He had reinforced its defenses as necessary and had installed a giant forge there. It was just the way I’d always imagined the creator’s eternal smithy! He has forges hot enough to melt anything, Boïndil! Stone, ore, everything! I saw it with my own eye. Dragon’s Breath is merely a warm breeze in comparison.” Tungdil stood up, restless now. “He passed the time thinking up types of new armor and perfecting them. If you like, I was his apprentice.”
Boïndil rubbed his beard. He did not like the sound of this. “And these runes? Did the false Vraccas think them up, too?”
Tungdil nodded. “He knew a lot about magic, I think. But it was a different art from that of the magae and magi in Girdlegard. On the one hand, spells are compressed into the runes and you can bring them to life by the use of particular words. On the other, sometimes they can function on their own.”
“I remember,” grumbled Ireheart. “The first time was enough for me.” He glanced at the ceiling, where snowflakes were drifting through the hole in the roof before melting on the floor. A hole in the roof is better than an arm torn off. He leaned on his elbows and put his chin in his hands. “So he was your master?” Tungdil was walking up and down. “He showed me forging techniques that were new, and I made my own armor using these new skills. It had not escaped my notice that he would be visited every so often by monsters, and that he was quite polite to them. Horrific creatures, Ireheart. They were messengers from the kordrion and other monsters who are worse still. They would order armor and weapons for their troops. And some of them wanted to get him to lead their own armies. They’d have given him whatever he asked. You know, there was constant war among the beasts, because by nature they were so violent and bloodthirsty and couldn’t get out of the Black Abyss, so they would fight each other.”
Ireheart’s imagination was working overtime, creating terrifying images. He saw crudely hewn passages full of monsters, slaughtering each other and covering the walls and ceilings with blood and guts; enormous caverns filled with vicious fighting forces, roaring and rampaging and at each others’ throats; black fortifications that they charged and rammed, the walls shaking from the impact and from the hail of missiles.
Boïndil felt Tungdil staring. His friend smiled knowingly.
“Nothing you can imagine is bad enough to describe what I saw,” said the one-eyed dwarf softly, as he took his seat again. “What wouldn’t I give for a good gulp of brandy and a barrel of black beer,” he sighed.
“Me too,” muttered Ireheart, in spite of himself. His friend’s story had affected him deeply. “What happened to you after that?”
“My master, if we can cal
l him that, never took up their offers. He did not wish to lead armies—why would he? They weren’t his wars and they weren’t his people.” “And where was he from?” Boïndil wanted to know.
Tungdil ignored the interruption. Perhaps on purpose? “He provided arms for all sides. He made everything they asked for, but never gave them armor as good as his own. After thirty cycles with him I had won his trust and complete confidence. He would send me as his agent to negotiate with the forces of evil. They started to make those same offers to me.” He swallowed and looked down. “I didn’t resist. Reason told me it was a good thing to send as many beasts as possible to their deaths and I could do that best by leading one lot against another. And I had to get to the Black Abyss—what better way to get there than at the head of an army?”
“A wise decision, Scholar,” commented Boïndil.
“But it brought down the anger of my master on my head. I had always let him think that I was sticking to his own principles: Never take sides and make everyone pay.” Tungdil was about to take another sip and saw his cup was empty. “A mercenary. For one hundred cycles I was no better than a mercenary, serving the rulers who offered the best wages. I had my own domain, Ireheart.” He smiled, but it was a thoughtful smile and a cruel one. “Thousands followed my command, my two fortresses were impregnable. But that made the princes in the underworld mistrust me. The ones I served got together to try to defeat me.”
“You had to escape?”
Tungdil laughed and the sound of his laughter sent shivers down Boïndil’s spine. He noted the deep malice in the voice of his friend. “No. I defeated them all and seized their realms. My warriors were the best because I had trained them in the way of dwarves. They were able to cut great swathes through the lines of the enemy. My power lasted about thirty cycles and I was the undisputed overlord on the other side.”
“And your former master had turned against you,” Ireheart assumed. He could not banish the chill from his body. The shadows were making Tungdil’s face harder, the furrows deepened and the scar on his brow darkened.