The White Fox

by James Bartholomeusz

  “Come on,” Smith said. “We’ve got to get you sorted out for this afternoon.”

  Jack followed Adâ and Lucy out of the chamber, leaving his empty plate behind.

  Outside, the dining room was still as busy as before, except that the overflow of refugees seemed to have spilled into here as well, with some chewing meat next to their bags and carts in corners and others having commandeered a table. Smith marched away with surprisingly long strides towards the opposite door.

  Just as they were about to follow, Adâ faced them. “Thank you,” she said quietly before bustling off behind the forgemaster.

  Jack turned to Lucy in mock shock, but she was clearly not in the mood for jokes, having just been volunteered against her will for a mountain expedition. As Jack followed, he reflected on his mixed feelings about Adâ. He could not suppress the notion that they had been manipulated by her into getting her own way. But, he acknowledged with some surprise, he pitied her. He knew what it felt like for someone close to disappear suddenly without a trace, and, he supposed, being put on babysitting duty for two thankless teenagers must have been very frustrating when she was so worried about Sardâr’s well-being.

  A few minutes later, having climbed through the innards of the cliff via more flights of stone stairs, they emerged into the light. They were standing on an open air metal platform that seemed to fill a gap in the cliff face, affording them a phenomenal view over the valley. The mining machinery they had seen the day before was working just as it had been, beneath the magnificent grey peaks that brushed the lower cloud banks. Directly below them, another mass of refugees thronged towards the main gate, escorted by a group of the green-tunic guards.

  Smith led them along the gangway, which clung to the side of the cliff. Both Jack and Lucy kept well back from the edge. They couldn’t see what was supporting the metal bridge, and neither really wanted to find out that it was nothing at all. A large doorframe was set into the rock at the end of the gangway, and it was to this that Smith moved.

  Inside was extremely hot. Jack looked down and jumped backwards in shock. The gangway continued into this chamber, but now it suspended them over a lake of deep crimson liquid. Patches of black rock formed on the surface here and there, and every so often a bubble popped loudly on the surface.

  Dwarves, clad in scaly-looking aprons and gloves, were hunched over on high platforms raised above the lake by thick, charred columns of rock. Some funnelled the liquid up in metal chutes, others fed it into what must have been miniature furnaces, whilst still more beat weapons into shape on the anvils above. Rails were suspended by poles from the ceiling, a series of hooks hanging from them. More dwarves added the completed weapons to the hooks and gave them a hefty push, sending them rattling down to the opposite end of the chamber.

  “Is this … molten lava?”

  “It’s from the mountain,” explained Smith as they crossed the gangway over the pit. “Magma is channelled into this chamber and cools, so we can use it as a natural forge.”

  “This is cool?” Lucy said incredulously.

  Smith chuckled, showing his wide teeth again.

  They reached the end of the gangway and passed under another doorframe. As they walked, Jack noticed that there were two massive holes in the rock on either side of the gangway through which the rails swerved together and continued. In the next chamber on the other side of a rock partition, the rails curled around and lined up to form a sort of bizarre department store. He had to look at it more closely to realize that the room was an incredibly huge chamber; where they were standing was only a platform overlooking a massive cavern full of the rails, all with metallic objects hanging off them. Some dwarves stood near the entrance, sorting the arriving goods onto rails. More were standing in the aisles on the lower levels or crossing the further matrix of gangways to reach items on higher rails.

  Smith beckoned one over and gave him a series of instructions. The dwarf nodded and scuttled away to look amongst the racks.

  “This fortress was the first of the seven that are the strongholds of our kingdom. Our ancestors built this one around the use of weapons … We were a more warlike people then …” Smith glanced over a few documents on textured parchment. “This forge has been here for hundreds of years, and our mechanisms haven’t changed very much. All the major doors are operated by axes. Even the emblem of the royal family is an axe.”

  “Well,” said Jack offhandedly, watching several swords appear through the hole in the wall and swirl down to the store, “you’re always ready for a fight.”

  “Don’t mention fighting,” Smith replied darkly, still scanning his documents. “Ever since Sardâr disappeared the king has been extremely jumpy. He’s convinced that we’re about to be attacked at any moment. It is understandable, given that he has direct responsibility for so many refugees within this city.”

  The dwarf returned, his platform now laden with a multitude of different plates of armor and weapons.

  Smith straightened and looked Jack and Lucy up and down. Instinctively, Lucy covered her chest.

  “Both of you are too tall for dwarf armor,” he remarked. “Luckily for you we have some spares for other races, usually commissioned and then never picked up by visitors. We don’t get many of those, though.” He siphoned through a few unidentifiable pieces of armor. “Try these on.”

  A few minutes later, Jack and Lucy were clad head to foot in dwarf-made armor. It mostly consisted of a thick, scaly hide, backed with leather, which Smith explained was troll skin (this didn’t encourage either of them, particularly after what Jack had heard about grungles the night before). There was a chest plate, gauntlets, a metal-topped helmet, and another pair of protective boots. In addition, they had each been given a rather cumbersome large sword and a round, dull silver shield. The entire thing was absolutely stifling in the intense heat.

  “Of course, depending on how long you stay here, we might have to invest in a custom-made suit for each of you,” Smith said, stroking his beard.

  As Jack tried to loosen his tunic slightly under the armor, he had the painful inkling that this might be necessary.

  After thanking Smith excessively, they followed Adâ out of the forge and into the open air. The fifty-foot drop to the rocks below did nothing to ease their light-headedness.

  Chapter V

  mount fafnir

  The journey was extremely strenuous.

  To the south of the colony-city of Thorin Salr, an ancient flow of lava had cleaved a gap between the high rocks. There, a trail of volcanic rock, dulled in color over the aeons, rose. It wove steeply up from the valley, cutting into the edge of the mountain as it climbed. The sparse vegetation found in Thorin Salr became less and less prevalent and eventually ceased altogether.

  Each time they reached a bend in the trail, they were afforded a view of the surroundings. The mountainous valley was directly below, falling farther and farther with every glimpse. To the north, the mountains gave way to hills and then rocky, grassy plains that looked like they could have recently been used as arable land. To the east and south, the massive effigies of rock disappeared into the mist, with the dull grey mass of the sea in the distance.

  The search party had, in accordance with Jack’s request, featured himself and Lucy. Accompanying them were Hakim and Adâ, three dwarf soldiers, and, much to the surprise of them all, Bál. They could only assume that the king had commanded him to go. His attitude was one of sullen resentment from the moment they had left.

  Jack, for one, was extremely uncomfortable. Apparently, the armor he wore hadn’t been designed for elves. It was particularly height restricting, so that the bottom edge of the breastplate cut into his diaphragm, and the boots reached only halfway up to his knees. The helmet did not well accommodate pointed ears, and he had removed it several times to feel deep, sore grooves in them. On top of all this, the temperature was tangibly increasing as they climbed higher.

  Lucy wasn’t particularly happy, either. Her parents �
��not believing in exercise” (although she had considerable natural talent at netball), she was having serious difficulty keeping up with the rest of them. Every so often, Jack had to wait two minutes for her to struggle up the slope to join them, by which time the rest of the group were two minutes ahead. In addition, she seemed to have decided that being concussed by a falling boulder was preferable to helmet hair.

  In the first stages of the journey, Hakim had hung back to talk to Jack. Jack quickly gathered that he was feeling a little guilty about Sardâr’s instructions.

  “This mountain,” he had said, “is supposed to be a relic of an ancient epoch. According to legend, a malevolent dragon was slain here by the patriarchal dwarf hero Rofhæle. The beast’s body fell into the heart of the volcano, and its spirit was fused with the mountain itself. It’s an old dwarfish superstition that when the mountain erupts it is the ancient dragon taking revenge on the descendants of its murderer.”

  Jack nodded, genuinely interested. He had always enjoyed myths and legends at school, and a small part of him—the seven-year-old part—was revelling in this opportunity to almost live one. But for now, what concerned him were the matters immediately at hand. “What’s up with Adâ?”

  Hakim smiled slightly and lowered his voice. Adâ’s long dark plait was swaying down the back of her travelling cloak some twenty feet ahead. “She’s going through a tough time. Sardâr left without telling anyone, not even her. She’s normally perfectly amiable, but I must admit, I don’t envy you two being escorted around by her in her current state …”

  After at least an hour of trekking, they reached the end of the trail and halted. A doorframe, like the ones leading into the forge, had been set into the rock here, carved with numerous runes and symbols. In stark contrast to the cool mountainous air, the gap in the rock exuded heat like the breath of a sleeping beast; the hint of extreme incandescence far below was augmented by the fiery glow.

  Hakim felt the scorching air with his outstretched hand, then turned to talk to Adâ. He whispered something in her ear. She appeared to consider for a moment before nodding.

  “Right, let’s go,” Hakim said finally. He headed into the cavern with the four dwarves and Adâ. With a growing sense of foreboding, Jack followed.

  The heat became steadily stronger as they descended. Jack was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. It was claustrophobic in the dark narrow tunnel, with people clustered closely together and only a menacing orange light to show the way. Even Lucy’s attitude of bad-natured rebellion was gone, replaced by a lurking fear that was hard to identify.

  Finally, after what seemed like days, the tunnel widened, and the red glow became more pronounced. Hakim rounded a corner and disappeared, and Jack followed.

  The heat hit him like a blast of boiling water. He’d felt nothing like it before. It was like all the sunburnt weeks of August rolled into one, with midday at the equator thrown in for good measure. His eyes were forced shut by the wall of inferno heat, so it took him a moment to gauge their new surroundings. They were standing on a small crag of rock, suspended about halfway up the volcano. Before them, expanding outwards for what could be miles, was a pit of crimson liquid. There was no scraggly skin on top of this; instead it bubbled and frothed like a stormy river. Thick walls of steam rose and coiled into the air like snakes, disappearing into the distant, gold-tinged blue, which was the ring of sky above. Indistinct and cloudy, the arms of the rocky cliff face reached around the fiery pit and met in a rough circle on the other side of the crater over a hundred yards away.

  Strangely, the wave of heat seemed to have little to no effect on the dwarves. Jack was already sweating profusely, and Lucy’s normally straight hair was becoming more and more bushy by the second. Adâ maintained a look of serenity, slightly offset by the flush of scarlet that had flooded her face the moment they had entered the cavern.

  Hakim bent down, examining the edge of the rock.

  Jack moved over to him, careful not to look down. “What’s the matter?”

  “Something’s not right,” he said and looked up at Jack, gesturing to the edge below him.

  Down a sloping ridge of rock, there was the beginning of what once must have been a bridge—a pair of basalt grey rams on pedestals, flanking a stone walkway. Only a few feet protruded over the pit, where it had been broken off unevenly. Jack knelt down to look more closely. It was at least five feet thick underneath. Whatever had taken a chunk out of this bridge must have been absolutely enormous.

  Lucy, having recovered from the heat shock, was now deeply regretting allowing herself to be talked into this. Her feet were throbbing, she was filthy with dust and sweat, and she could tell she looked a mess. She slunk over the rock, her arms folded defiantly, kicking small rocks out of her way. She reached the end of the platform and gave the deep sigh of a spoilt little girl out of her depth. In fact, it was the sigh of a spoilt little girl out of her depth. As this thought occurred to her, she gave an extra vigorous kick to a pebble positioned just by her foot. It soared through the steaming air and plummeted over the edge, plopping unseen into the expanse of magma.

  A moment later, she realized that something was wrong. Surely the lava hadn’t been rippling like that a second ago? Just as she was deciding that she was imagining it, a small amount was thrown up to sizzle next to Hakim.

  The elf stared at it, then grabbed Jack and yanked him backwards. More magma splattered the edges of the platform, and the steam coils changed to erratic zigzags. All the others gathered as far back as they could without disappearing into the tunnel.

  The fact was, none of them could see over the edge. If they’d been able to, they would have noticed that the magma was sagging in the middle, as if someone had pulled the plug on the mountain. It sucked downwards like a whirlpool, and something else—something the shade of bone but much, much bigger—became visible within. Then the lava exploded upwards in a wave.

  A massive shape spiralled out of the molten rock. The steam instantly dissipated, as if afraid of what it was concealing. As red liquid poured off it and out of its orifices, the thing became visible.

  Lucy and one of the dwarves screamed.

  Towering over them was the most horrific creature Jack had ever seen, far surpassing the hellhound. It resembled a gigantic lobster, but it was positioned like a hunched humanoid. Armor of charred bone covered its form, and the gaps between seethed with dark energy. Six appendages extruded from its hide, four like spider’s legs and two, the top two, ending in pincers the size of small houses. Its flat head stretched horizontally, its mouth a circular gash, and its eyes burned with the same otherworldly phantasmagoria that had occupied the skull of the demon on Earth. It opened its maw and roared, displaying at least ten circles of razor-sharp fangs.

  Jack stumbled backwards, his heart pounding in shock. He had not wanted to see what came out of that steam. He breathed in shallowly and gagged. The same stench of darkness penetrated his nose, searing this throat and making him retch. This was far, far worse than the hellhound. Jack just stared upwards, the height of the being before him seeming to exemplify the hopelessness of their situation. He knew for certain this was a demon, but the last one had been a fraction of the size, and Alex had said that a bullet could keep it at bay only temporarily. How were they supposed to defend themselves against this thing, let alone when their choice of weapons was confined to the Dark Ages?

  Hakim was the first to act. He flung the others behind him and flourished his staff expertly, but before he could do anything, he was knocked across the platform by the blow of one of those huge pincers. Another swung diagonally down, narrowly missing Lucy.

  Jack leapt out of the way of a third blow and landed hard on the rock. He scrambled to his feet.

  The rest of the party were spread out, each having drawn their weapons. Adâ had twin curved blades, and all the dwarves had axes of varying sizes. Hakim was nearby Jack, not moving.

  Slowly, so as not to attract attention, Jack sidled over to the
fallen elf. He bent down and listened for breathing, and to his great relief, he found it. Still trying not to make himself noticeable, he grabbed the elf under the arms and began to drag him towards the mouth of the tunnel. If he could just get him out of the heat …

  A horrific screech made Jack drop Hakim and cover his ears. He saw Adâ in front of him, holding the two blades in an X above her head, sparks flying everywhere as she blocked the blow of one of the pincers. The demon retracted its appendage and smashed it down again harder, knocking Adâ to the ground. The pincer opened, and tendrils of some pulsating, dark substance snaked out through the air, wrapping around the elf’s body like serpents.

  Jack gripped his sword handle and pulled. It caught in the scabbard, ripping off his belt instead. The scabbard clattered to the ground a few feet away, and at the same time, Adâ’s head was disappearing within the black wraps. Abandoning caution, he sprinted over to her and began tearing at the cords with his bare hands. The repulsive octopus-like tentacles felt rubbery to the touch but were clamped like a vise over her body. He yanked one with all his might, but as soon as it came free another took its place, hiding the strip of cloth he had managed to uncover.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the dwarves pulling Hakim into the mouth of the tunnel, whilst the other three formed a kind of phalanx at the back of the platform with the hefty metal shields they had been hoisting on their backs up the mountainside. For some indescribable reason, a page from one of his old history textbooks flickered to the front of his mind—the difference between a phased withdrawal and a retreat. For a fraction of a second he envisaged escaping—charging up the passage, leaving all this behind—leaving this crazy world, with its elves, dwarves, and demons, and running back to the lake, back to Earth, back to the way things had been before this madness.

  But no. There was Lucy inside the tunnel, watching with pallid horror. There was Hakim, hunched against the rock face, unconscious. There was Bál, strident before the beast, ready to parry any of its blows. And there was Alex, though somewhere in an unknown dark oblivion amongst the stars, who Jack knew needed help. And there was the second pincer swinging out of the roasted air, catching him in the stomach and launching him off his feet, his fingers scraping uselessly at Adâ’s glutinous cage as he soared through the air, tumbling downwards into oblivion.