by Ted Fauster
The dumpy dwarf nodded. “Yep. Just say the word and snap your fingers.” Again he muttered the word and with a snap of his crusty digits produced another spark of spearmint fire. He giggled.
“Of course, some cantrips can be used only once per day,” Andin added. “But flamefinger can be used as many times as you like. Comes in rather handy if you have the time to memorize it each morning.”
Andin let him have the book. Som marveled at the idea and immediately immersed himself in the small tome while the others conversed.
“So, heading back to the Hold, are ya?” Gleise asked when they all had settled.
Andin nodded. “My new friend here is without papers. And without his memory. All he knows is his name and that he is from some other world.”
The red-bearded dwarf looked intrigued. “Ah! Had an uncle once claimed he was from another world, but it turned out he’d been sippin’ too much still juice!” He laughed heartily and the blonde dwarf chortled on his pipe, still half asleep on the tiny metal bench that ran round the inner circumference of the bell. Gleise went back to his levering. “This channel will take us right up to the conduit gates,” he said with confidence.
“Did you hear about the storm?” Svengi asked. “Has half the pentalphas across the entire realm out of whack.” He coughed.
Andin grew concerned. “That’s not good news. What about the Hold? They’re supposed to have their own internal network.”
The blonde dwarf waved it off. “Nah, they’re just fine.”
That seemed to give the man some relief. Andin glanced down at the floor where a short axe and pry bar lay in a puddle of brackish water.
“So, you’re allowed to carry weapons now?”
The grin faded from Gleise’s face. “You have to remember, we Reyks are professional barterers.” He turned back as if he’d forgotten something important and quickly adjusted one of the dials. A soft stream of air wafted down from tiny vents in the ceiling. “We’ve managed t’ gain the trust of the gazers by working extra shifts and keepin’ in line.”
To Som it sounded more like the dwarves were just doing as they were told. The fact that their captures had allowed them to carry weapons simply said they considered the dwarves no real threat at all. It sounded like a sad situation.
“Besides, what can we do with these on?” Svenji added, jangling the sparkling rings of metal around his ankles. He didn’t bother to look up. Although his fingers sparked with more green flame, he was having some difficulty reigniting the remainder of whatever was in his pipe. At last, he relented and looked up. “All it takes is one good blast from a shock wand to bring ya to yer knees.”
Strangely, the two dwarves laughed at that, but it was obviously more forced than natural. The two dwarfs were trying to make light of a much more terrible situation, Som realized. It was a feeling he was not altogether unfamiliar with.
“Yes, I see,” said Andin, who forced a polite smile.
The bell chugged quietly along as it neared the gates, only a faint whirring of whatever machinery propelled it breaking the silence. The current was helping, pulling them into a dark tube at the base of the massive wall. On ledges above, several Colodian guards stood tall, looking ominously out across the waters, meter long staffs of a whitish metal in their hands. A few dingy dwarves near the lower ledges worked long sticks with hooks at the ends to nudge the bell along.
“Here we go,” Svenji said in a near whisper as they passed into the tube. Som peered out one of the side portholes. They bobbed barely a foot away from a roughly hewn rock wall. A moment later they were all pulled to the floor as a great bubbling overtook the bell and it rocketed upwards.
The two dwarves laughed heartily as they reached for hooks that hung from the ceiling.
“Happens every time!” Gleise cried out. He looked over to Som, who had located a hook of his own and was holding on for dear life. “So tell me,” he said loudly as the bell continued to soar upward—he didn’t seem to be in the slightest bit alarmed by the way it was vibrating and shaking—“what be yer plan?”
“Papers,” Andin answered for him.
The old dwarf laid a chubby finger beside his wrinkled nose. “Ah yes, papers.” He thought for a moment as the bell continued up at an amazing rate, a wash of blue bubbles rushing past the portholes. He winked. “I think we can help you with that.”
The bell continued upwards. Several loud clicks sounded and the overhead vents shot streams of fresh air into the chamber.
“Perfectly normal,” Svenji said when he noticed Som’s discomfort. “Happens every time.”
Gleise settled back down on the bench and pulled something from his pack, a small vial filled with a yellowish liquid. He held it up for all to see.
“A shrinking potion.” He handed the vial to Som. “I knew this would come in handy one day.”
Som had his suspicions but accepted it. “This will… shrink me?”
The dwarf nodded. “For a short time.”
Som gave a sigh. He unstoppered the vial and downed its contents.
All at once he found himself smothered by his own clothes. While the others laughed at his expense, Som struggled to free himself from the avalanche of material. He skittered out onto the bench, stunned to find he was now no larger than a hummingbird. He instinctively fluttered his wings and bobbled about.
“H… how long is this going to last?” he called up. His squeaking only brought more laughter.
“Long enough,” Andin replied. He scooped Som up and carefully tucked him into a hunk of perforated cheese, which he then placed into his rucksack. The pack was full of coins and other objects. The bell lurched.
“We’re here,” he heard Svenji proclaim. “They’ve netted us.”
Som heard the outer hatch open. He heard the bustling of a crowd. Even from within the hunk of cheese, an unmistakable stench like a damp basement stacked with alternating layers of fish and manure filled his tiny nostrils. The cheese jostled and he dug his tiny hands into it to keep from falling out.
He heard a strange noise, a kind of gurgling and hissing sound that echoed down into the bell. He remembered Andin mentioning the Colodians communicated naturally with each other through their minds. To hear what he assumed was one attempting to speak was a rather disgusting ordeal. Nevertheless, it soon became obvious what the creature was trying to get across.
“Ssstay! Inside!”
Som grew nervous. The entire contents of the pack swiftly shifted. He held on tightly as the sound of the crowd grew louder. The cheese was suddenly filled with light. Through an opening in the cultured mold he saw long shadows darting about, searching, moving things. The cheese fell over to one side. Then it turned completely upside down and all became dark as night.
The pack shifted once more, this time more gently, and settled onto what Som prayed was the back of Andin. He heard the sound of boots against wood and then a rhythmic jostling began. A few minutes later, the clomping became crunching. The crunching stopped.
Again, the rustling and the light. More shadows knifed down, this time surrounding the entire block of cheese. The cheese shifted and Som tumbled into the gigantic hand of Andin, whose cavernous mouth swung up and down as he pretended to chew at the block. Two enormous eyes looked down as he held it near his mouth.
“Quickly,” he said between mock bites, “fly up and into my hair.”
Som immediately complied, thankful to be free of the disorienting confines of the pack. He settled near Andin’s right ear, clutching onto the uppermost rim of it and burrowing down into the thick strands behind. From his perch he could see everything now, and from the same height as the man who now effortlessly bore his hidden weight.
They stood at the top of a flight of gigantic stone steps overlooking a sprawling underground city crisscrossed with cobbled streets and crowded with a variety of people and creatures. Tall stone buildings stretched out from a central courtyard that was stuffed with colorful trees and fountains. The buildings stretched
all the way up the sides of a mammoth cave.
High above, even more levels suspended from thick cabling could be seen, twisting and winding, disappearing around corners, connected to one another by a series of arching iron bridges. Far up into unfathomable reaches, a large ball of yellow light hovered dead center, spilling its radiance out over the underground denizens below.
“Welcome to Kriegen Hold,” Andin said.
He wasted no more time, hopping two at a time down the steps and dashing around the corner of one building where no one seemed about. There, he reached up and gently plucked Som from his ear. He placed him on the ground and the two dwarves huddled around him. Thanks to the contents of another vial, he was soon back to his full size.
Som stood gaping. “This place is amazing,” he said. Once again he donned the borrowed clothes. High above he spotted a great mezzanine supported by massive iron scaffolding. Just above it, a disk crowded with people rose up alongside the swollen glow of the pseudo-sun.
Som stared. A way out?
Andin brought him back to reality. He held up the wrist with the bracelet. “Papers, my little friend. You won’t be going anywhere without your papers.”
They stepped out onto the crowded main avenue and the dwarves bid them well. Once they had disappeared into the crowd, Andin turned to Som.
“Whatever you do, do not unfurl your wings and take to the air. Flying within the city proper is a punishable crime.” He grabbed him by the jacket and led him deeper into the busy rush of people.
Andin worked his way across the crowded street and around the side of a rather tall, stepped building from the sides of which bulged ribs of porches, each one stuffed with diners who raised fork and cup beneath the soot-stained canopies of banana yellow umbrellas. Here, an ornate wooden booth painted red stood. A fizzing sphere of green energy hovered in the air above it.
Andin waited. An accordion door eventually opened on the side of the booth and a man in a purple cape and fancy hat dashed out. He looked a bit surprised to find the two of them loitering so near. Andin glared at the man, who gave an abbreviated bow and a tip of his tricorne hat before dashing off. Satisfied they were alone, Andin pulled Som into the booth and drew the door shut.
There was barely enough space for the two to stand. A panel of glass that swirled with a smoky green light was fixed to one wall. Andin snapped open the lid to a compartment on his belt. He reached in and pulled out a single copper coin. This he dropped into a slot below the lighted screen and then tapped at its glowing surface.
Som flinched at the loud crackle of static. The pane of glass began to hum then glow brighter. Not sure what was happening, Som pressed into the corner of the booth and watched as the panel washed over with a speckled, green haze that quickly reformed into a checkerboard pattern of glowing symbols and numerals, each one lazily rotating.
Andin touched one. The screen gave a ping and flashed. He touched two more and a series of green and white bars appeared. They crackled, bent and then smeared, finally resolving into the grainy image of a creature that looked like a very dark-skinned dwarf with gigantic ears riveted with gems. The creature had a long, tubular snout.
“Yes, yes. What is it?” It said in a sour voice, sounding somewhat perturbed. It sat behind a desk, too busy with the counting of gold coins strewn across the surface to look up.
“Hello, Valengi,” Andin said. “It’s been a long time.”
The image flickered then steadied. The dwarf quickly covered the coins with a rag. He looked up and squinted. “Andin?” It chuckled. “Andin? Is dat you? I heard tell you was left for dead somewhere in da fells to da west. I ’spose I heard wrong.”
I suppose you did.” Andin studied a string of symbols below the image. He pressed one and then muttered something in a completely foreign language. When the dwarf spoke again, his words came out equally as jumbled. The two talked for a while, the dwarf pausing only to laugh a few times, and then the conversation was over. There was a click and the surface of the glass reverted back to the rolling green mist.
“What was that all about?” Som asked. But Andin wasn’t quite finished. He dropped a few more coins into the slot. A red light welled up. Som felt a growing warmth near his feet.
He looked down and saw five intertwining rings made of tiny symbols where the floor used to be, each of them slowly spinning, sliding past each other like the paddles of a mixing bowl. They spun faster and faster. The air took on a charge. And then everything dropped away.
It felt as if Som had suddenly dropped into a well. Startled, he stuck out his hands to grab hold of something, anything. But there was only darkness and the scream of rushing air. The space around him became smeared with a swathe of colors. The whirling palette began to congest. And just when it felt like the very breath would be pulled from his lungs, everything quieted and the insides of the booth suddenly reappeared.
Andin stood directly next to him with his arms crossed, looking thoroughly amused. “What’s the matter? Never been through a pentalpha before?”
Som failed to see the humor. He had no idea what a pentalpha was but he was in no mood for another demonstration. He was glad when the door finally opened, and not at all surprised to see they were now in a completely different part of the Hold.
He looked up. The giant sun-thing was still there. For a moment he seriously considered just taking to the air and heading for the crowded platform beside it.
Andin seemed to sense his thoughts. “Go ahead,” he said, motioning toward the glowing ball of gas. “What are you waiting for?” But Som just looked down at his feet and said nothing.
Arythria. He remembered the name well. He had to get to Arythria. He would just have to wait a little longer.
They were surrounded now by looming gray structures in an area that had a much more judicial feel. The cobbled courtyard in front of the tall buildings was crowded with Colodians, some conversing with more distinguished looking dwarves with neatly braided hair and tightly trimmed beards. Up close the gazers looked absolutely disgusting, their swollen ocular heads moist and shiny, the whites of each eye riddled with crimson scribbles.
Som noticed many different iris colors, but all of their eye-heads were about the diameter of a serving tray and lidless. In the stubby stalk below each one was a tiny mouth slit. Many of them clicked and snapped open and shut as they conversed with the dwarves in the more rudimentary fashion.
Andin pressed straight through them all, up to a long flight of stone steps. He led Som to the top where a pair of armored Colodians stood. The eye-heads of these gazers were nearly completely encased in thick plates of armor. Tendrils stirred. They crossed their shockwands.
Andin held up his wrist to show his identification bracelet. The guards pulled their weapons aside. Andin took Som to the very top where a set of iron doors waited. He gave a smile as he reached out to pull them open.
“You know, I have a feeling you and I are going to do great things together.”
By the time the doors closed behind them it was already too late. Two sturdy dwarves waiting in the shadows pounced, grabbing hold of Som’s arms. The tip of a needle pierced his neck and he winced. He felt instantly ill. In desperation, he flexed his wings. But a painful burning sensation shot through his veins and he only drooped.
Through bleary eyes he saw a very thin and bald man in a black jumpsuit. He held a long syringe in his hand. The bald man gave a crazy grin, his ivory skin swept with rivers of fine, blue veins. His eyes were concealed behind a pair of dark glasses, one side of which contained a rooster tail of alternate lenses. Thin blue lips spread apart to reveal a disturbingly white set of pointed teeth.
“Do not fight it, little one. It is so much easier if you do not fight it.”
9
The Chancing Pit
Som shook the fuzziness from his head and peered through bleary eyes…
He gave a jerk when he found himself strapped to a chair in a small room made of solid stone. A filthy wooden table s
tood between him. On the far wall, a wide panel of glass swirled and ebbed with the same greenish luminescence he’d seen in the street booth. It fizzled, and the hooded countenance of an ancient man appeared.
The image was coming to him from an unpleasant room that looked like a madman’s version of a counting office, piles of gold coins surrounding a simple desk, behind which the man sat studying some papers. A wince of static hit the air and the man’s lips moved, but there was no sound. A fraction of a second later the harsh words reverberated from the stone walls.
“State your name.”
Som tested his bonds. They were firm.
“Som Lek Trudeaux,” he said proudly. If they were going to kill him, then there was nothing he could do to prevent it. He might as well go out with at least some shred of dignity.
The image on the panel—which just had to be some kind of magical viewing screen—flickered with a sharp snap then steadied.
“Do not move unless instructed to do so,” the face said drolly. The man’s eye were hidden behind the top of the hood. “Do not speak unless spoken to. Do not attempt to fly or to dust. The potion given to you by the apothecary still flows through your veins and the effort will only bring severe pain. Do you understand?”
What else could he say?
“Yes.”
A sound like a pail of water dumped on a bed of coals came from the corner. A flash of crimson light followed and a hulking four-armed figure made entirely of segmented rock was suddenly in the room. It clomped over behind the chair, its stony appendages milling at the joints as it moved.
Som watched intently, wondering if the creature was going to pull his arms off, as it began working at the straps with surprisingly nimble fingers. Seconds later his arms were free, although his feet were still bound. Som gave a start when another fizzing sound came from the opposite corner. A second figure appeared.
She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, a blue-skinned fairy like Som, delicate and graceful, slender hands clasped at her stomach. She wore a short, shimmering skirt that looked fashioned of hundreds of flattened pearls joined in tight rows and a tight half-shirt of a similar design. A sapphire gem twinkled in her navel.