by Prior, D. P.
Into the undercity they soared, over the glimmering waters of a canal. The lanterns hanging from barges were no more than streaking blurs of amber as they passed. From some hidden space, a gibuna shrieked, and then, with a sickening dread in his belly, Carnifex saw where they were heading: straight for the moonlit surface of the Sanguis Terrae.
As they skimmed the embankment, he let go. The ground teetered toward him. He hit hard and jarred his ankle. Grunting, he stood gingerly, hopping on his good leg as the silver disk carried the homunculus beneath the surface of the lake.
Carnifex cursed, and eased himself onto his ass to nurse his throbbing ankle. Even without the injury, there was nothing he could have done. Just looking at the water turned his guts to cold mush. While it might have been mandatory training, passed on from every mother to every child in the city, Carnifex couldn’t swim. His mother hadn’t been there to teach him.
Black Cloaks descended like spiders on threads of webbing. Thumil was with them, rappelling with the grace of a sack of coal bouncing down a mine shaft.
The specials stalked toward Carnifex, cloaks flapping like bat’s wings in the swirling gusts sending ripples out across the lake. Bands of scarolite armored their chests, green-flecked black, like malachite. Six of them came at him in a pincer, as if he’d done something wrong. The seventh broke away and stood brooding at the edge of the water. He might have been considering jumping in and going after the homunculus.
Carnifex got to his feet, gingerly tested out his leg. At least he hadn’t sprained it. A few cautious steps, and it could take his weight. A few more, and it was no more than a dull ache.
Thumil pushed through the cordon of Black Cloaks. “He entered the lake?”
Carnifex swallowed down the bile in his throat and nodded. “I would have gone after him, laddie,”—he was beyond titles at that moment—“but—”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t,” said the Black Cloak at the lake’s edge. He spun round and glared. “You know the rules.”
Carnifex did, but he still narrowed his eyes as he nodded. Kryptès or not, he didn’t like the shogger’s tone. It was an effort not to brain him. “Aye, laddie, I know.”
Thumil clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, old friend. Let’s get cleaned up before we make our report.”
The marshal bustled toward the Black Cloaks with the confidence born from rank. To Carnifex’s astonishment, they got out of the way. He clenched his fists at his sides and followed, albeit more warily. He’d heard things about the Krypteia. Heard you didn’t want to get on the wrong side of them.
Thumil led him along the banks of a canal and headed toward the iron ladders that joined the undercity to the levels above. Carnifex went first, keen to put some distance between him and the Black Cloaks; because if he didn’t, they might try something, and he’d be sorely tempted to try something back.
He put his hand on the first rung and snatched it away. It was coated in something brown and slimy. It was only natural to sniff it, but he wished the shog he hadn’t. It stank like an ulcerated scrotum, or worse, a pint of Ironbelly’s special brew.
Thumil chuckled and took the next ladder along. “Gibuna’s got to go, same as we all have, Fexy.”
Carnifex growled, and looked around for something to wipe his hand with. “Funny, Thumil. Very funny.” When nothing better presented itself, he crouched down to rub the stuff off against the pavement.
Thumil was already halfway to the next level. He arched away from the ladder, holding on with one arm, and began to sing the same bawdy song he’d offended everyone with last night in the bar.
Carnifex raised an eyebrow. It was a rare interlude in the marshal’s working day; one that would no doubt stop the instant they got back to barracks and had to plan what they were going to say to the Council. Because those old codgers would want to hear about this, you could bet your shogging axe on that.
Now, there was a thought…
“We got time to go back to the Scriptorium?” He needed to retrieve his axe.
“Why’s that?” Thumil called down to him. “Looking for something to read? Don’t reckon they keep your kind of material. And besides, it’ll make you blind. You’d be better off revisiting that lassie at Rud Carey’s Ale House, the one that gave you a bad case of the pox.”
“It wasn’t the pox. It was a reaction to the Ironbelly’s, for shog’s sake.”
“Oh, aye?” Thumil said as he swung back to the ladder. “That’s what they all say.”
Carnifex started up the same ladder the marshal had taken, still wary where he put his hands.
“And Thumil, remember what I said would happen next time you called me Fexy?”
THE COUNCIL OF TWELVE
The summons came even sooner than either of them expected. Black Cloaks were swarming about the Scriptorium, both inside and out. One of them, a scrawny wastrel in any other attire, any other role, was leaning on the haft of Carnifex’s axe like he shogging owned it.
“Baldar Kloon.” Thumil acknowledged him with a curt nod, which was his way of letting you know you were a scut or a toe-rag.
Carnifex couldn’t tell which; he only knew Kloon looked like a shogger who’d offer one hand in greeting and stick a knife in you with the other. He’d have said the same for Black Cloaks in general, what he’d seen and heard, but that wouldn’t have been fair. Even among the Krypteia, there had to be a shred of decency, if only you looked hard enough.
Thumil snatched the axe from Kloon and patted his shoulder with his free hand. “Good boy. Thank you.”
Kloon’s face twisted into a snarl. He was old enough to be Carnifex’s pa, but half the dwarf Droom was, skeletally thin and pallid, like he’d spent a lifetime smoking somnificus. Thumil was older than them both, and he called most everyone “son” as a matter of course. “Boy,” though, was always an insult.
Kloon opened his mouth for a retort, but Thumil turned away from him and gave Carnifex his axe back.
The flash of hatred in Kloon’s eyes didn’t go unnoticed.
Carnifex leaned in close to him and bared his teeth in a grin. “Much obliged, laddie.”
Least this time, the dagger-look was for him. He nodded to let Kloon know he’d seen, and he welcomed the challenge. Threaten him, and he’d note your face and watch his back. But threaten Thumil, threaten a mate, and he’d knock your shogging block off.
“Right,” Thumil said, “freshen up, a swift pint, and then we make our report.”
“No,” Kloon said. There was a rasp to his voice that was just plain wrong, as though he were a spiteful child taking pleasure in what he had to say next. “The Dodecagon, right now. You’ve been summoned.”
“Oh, aye?” Thumil said, squaring his shoulders and looking suddenly imperious in his red cloak and golden helm. It was an art, how he turned on authority at the drop of a hat. It was something Carnifex had tried to emulate, but it always came out as intimidation when he did it.
“Aye,” Kloon said, a thin-lipped smile cutting a gash across his face.
Black Cloaks closed in from either side of the walkway, upwards of a dozen.
Carnifex watched Thumil for any sign they were to resist. He tightened his grip on his axe.
“Thought it was past the Council’s bedtime,” Thumil said. “Oh, well, beer later, I guess. Thanks for letting us know, sonny.”
That was a whole degree worse than “boy,” from what Carnifex could gather; just one short step from “lassie,” or “whiskerless titty suckler.”
Kloon stiffened.
Carnifex peered at him and squinted. “You oil your beard, laddie?” Only women oiled their beards; and only cheap whores at that.
Kloon’s hand went to his lank excuse for facial hair, and he was momentarily flummoxed.
Carnifex tsked and shook his head, then he was off after Thumil, an escort of Black Cloaks in tow.
***
Rather than descending hundreds of steps spiraling around the Aorta to reach the seventh le
vel down, the Black Cloaks led them to one of auxiliary pillars set apart from it, and they entered through a concealed door.
Carnifex had to owe it to them: they’d done a good job of concealing it—them, or the Founders who’d built the city. It was invisible, even to a dwarf; even to Carnifex, who was a miner’s son, and miner’s knew all the tricks.
The door led to a vertical shaft that fell away into darkness.
“What do we do now?” Thumil asked one of the Black Cloaks. “Jump?”
It occurred to Carnifex that they were to be pushed, though he quickly shook the thought off. They’d done nothing wrong, nothing to get on the wrong side of the Council. And besides, they were Ravine Guard, and Thumil was the marshal, too well-known, too important to suddenly go missing. Still, it did nothing to settle his nerves around the Krypteia. They were shifty shoggers of the shadows, no better than thieves and assassins; not much different to the homunculi, when you came to look at it.
Instead of answering, the Black Cloak pulled up his sleeve to reveal a silver vambrace. He held it to his mouth and muttered something, and in response, a tortured yowl sounded from the depths of the shaft.
A rush of air hit Carnifex in the face, and the wailing dropped to a whine, then a drone. Silver flashed below, and then a platform came into view, not dissimilar to the disk the homunculus had ridden into the waters of the Sanguis Terrae.
“Get on,” the Black Cloak said.
Thumil was hesitant. Clearly, even the marshal of the Ravine Guard hadn’t been granted access to this hidden space before.
Carnifex, though, didn’t want to give the Krypteia the satisfaction of cowing him, so he blithely stepped on, and Thumil joined him.
“There’s room for one more,” Carnifex said to the Black Cloak with the vambrace. “Maybe two, if we breathe in.”
Ignoring him, the Black Cloak muttered into his vambrace again, and the platform dropped like a stone.
It was a weird feeling, plummeting through the shaft; maybe even weirder than hanging from the homunculus’s floating disk. The speed of the descent flipped Carnifex’s guts like a pancake—one of Cordy’s pancakes, for everyone said hers were the best. Always had been, since they were at the Ephebe together, the school that prepared a dwarf to fight, long before they went on to learn anything else.
Thumil looked green, but to his credit, he didn’t spew as the platform came to a juddering halt, and they stepped off onto a statue-lined walkway that could only have been the seventh-level approach to the Dodecagon, the seat of the Council’s power.
Two columns of Black Cloaks formed a corridor for them to pass through. Of course, it could have been an honor guard, or simply a formality; but to Carnifex, it looked like a threat.
He’d only been to the seventh level once, and that was for Councilor Moary’s interminable speech on why the status quo could not be changed, why Arx Gravis shouldn’t open the way to trade with the Malkuthians outside the ravine, as Councilor Yuffie had proposed. Carnifex had heard every word, in spite of being on duty, but he couldn’t for the life of him say what Old Moary’s argument was. All he remembered was a lot of toing and froing, endless “What ifs” and “Well, I don’t knows”. Old Moary was famous for it. Infamous, you might say. But he’d gotten his way, as he always did. It was far easier convincing the dwarves to leave things as they were, than to introduce even the slightest degree of change.
Yuffie had his reasons for wanting trade with the upper lands, no doubt, and by the measure of the man, they likely weren’t legal ones. But the idea had fired Carnifex’s imagination, aroused in him the speculation of what might be found up there, what antidotes to the tedium of the ravine. When he’d mentioned it to his pa, Droom had shut the lid firmly on that can of worms. Miners weren’t exactly renowned for their wanderlust, and speculation to them was as useful as a broken pickaxe.
Thumil marched ahead a step or two, clearly on much more familiar turf. As marshal, he’d endured his fair share of summonses, and he’d let slip once or twice when he’d been asked to attend meetings, and the occasional private talk with Dythin Rala, the Voice of the Council.
Behind the flanking Black Cloaks, Carnifex caught glimpses of fluted columns and statues of the mythical kings of Arnoch. About halfway along, they came under the cover of a vaulted ceiling that hid the walkway from the one above. Supporting struts of whittled scarolite—a mystery in itself, for the ore was harder than diamond—gave way to windowless walls of hexagonal bricks. Glowstones set into the ceiling dappled the floor with an amber sheen. One of them winked and stuttered, its glow bordering on red. The flickering light it shed on the paving was like a bleeding wound, struggling in and out of reality.
They stopped outside the door. It was scarolite, too, blacker than coal and flecked through with green. There was no handle. It was no secret the twelve doors surrounding the Dodecagon were hermetically sealed, though the odd thing was, the mechanism was on the outside only. Whatever the original intended purpose of the council chamber, it conveyed the idea of an elaborate cell. Maybe that’s the only way the dwarves of old could get the job done; ensure their leaders reached a decision before they were allowed out to eat.
If that was the original function of the doors, perhaps the dwarves today could learn from the wisdom of their forebears, because the Council of Twelve was notorious for its stalling, and everyone knew it was comprised of a bunch of shilly-shallying shogwits. The idea, it seemed to Carnifex, was encapsulated in the two mummified councilors standing solemnly either side of the door, no doubt as animated in death as they’d been in life.
One of the Black Cloaks touched his vambrace to a crystalline panel on the wall, and slowly, inch by inch, the door began to grind upward.
Blue light spilled through the widening gap and painted the walkway. As they entered, Carnifex tried to locate its source. He’d heard about it from Thumil: a hidden glow that suffused the interior walls, just enough to illuminate every nook, cranny, and feature, but not so much as to make a dwarf squint. The councilors, like every one else, were used to the shade of the ravine.
Rugbeard, the teacher of the Annals, said the lighting was of deep gnome origin, from a time long past when the homunculi had mixed with the dwarves. Some even said the two races were related; others, that the dwarves were but homunculi altered by the Technocrat, Sektis Gandaw.
The chamber they stepped into was vast. It must have occupied most, if not all, of the seventh level of the Aorta. There were twelve sides with twelve scarolite doors that each opened onto a different walkway or plaza. The head of a Dwarf Lord was embossed in the center of every door. They were carvings of scarolite; further testimony to skills and lore that had been lost. The green-flecked ore absorbed force, which meant the doors would have made the Dodecagon impregnable to the explosives used by miners to crack open buttresses of rock. They would have ensured the chamber was spell-proof, too, warded against the dark magic said to abound in the nightmare lands of Qlippoth on the other side of the Farfall Mountains.
Twenty-four ribs of the magical malachite, as they called it, stretched from the edges of each wall to meet at a hub of gold in the middle of the ceiling. The hub was molded in the form of twin axe blades, symbolizing the Pax Nanorum, the Axe of the Dwarf Lords said to hang above the throne of the king of Arnoch, the mythical city of origin.
A long table of granite was the focal point of the chamber. It was flanked by twelve high-backed chairs seemingly welded from pick axes, mauls, sledgehammers, and chisels—another symbol, this time of the workers that were the lifeblood of the city.
Black Cloaks stood two to a wall, as still as the statues lining the walkway outside. Only their eyes moved, tracking Thumil and Carnifex as they entered.
The councilors were dotted about the room, splashes of blue-tinted white in their robes, each uniform in their dress, but unique in the wearing of their hair and beards. Apparently, they had time for such affectations. Time that might have been better spent doing something, rat
her than carrying on endless circular arguments that ensured nothing ever changed.
Like a chorus line of dancers, they glided into position, each behind a chair, in a wave of motion that was anything but indecisive. In fact, it looked thoroughly rehearsed, as if that’s how they spent their days sequestered away in the council chamber: blocking out moves that created the appearance of regality, of cohesion and solidarity.
The only thing that spoiled the impression was Old Moary’s holey socks poking out from his sandals. They looked to Carnifex like the same socks the ancient councilor had worn the day of his rambling speech.
At the head of the table, Dythin Rala, the Voice of the Council, covered his mouth and yawned. The action deflated him, and he slumped down into his chair. Taking it as a cue, the other eleven followed suit, some scraping their chairs on the flagstones as they turned them to keep Thumil and Carnifex in view.
The Voice looked gray as ash, and though his beard was awash with the same blue light as everything else, there was no hiding the yellowish streaks, no doubt the result of too much smoking. As if he’d read Carnifex’s thoughts, the wizened leader of the Council produced a long-stemmed pipe and began to tamp down the tobacco in its bowl.
The only other councilor Carnifex knew by sight was Brann Yuffie, and that on account of his shadowy presence at the fighting circle matches, and his underhand dealings at Arx Gravis’s taverns. Rumor had it, he was the one smuggling somnificus from the outside world, and making a tidy profit out of addicting folk to the narcotic herb. The Ravine Guard had closed in on Yuffie’s activities on several occasions, only for Thumil to receive communication from on high to back off.
In the action of lighting his pipe, Dythin Rala somehow managed to convey to the councilor on his right that he was ready to start.
With too much vigor, for Carnifex’s liking, the councilor concerned swiveled in his seat and speared Thumil with a vulture’s look.
“Welcome, Marshal. Your promptness is appreciated.” He had a nasally voice, but each word was carefully enunciated, vowels short, consonants clipped, and “Rs” rolling. “A nasty business, by any measure. What is your take on it?”