by D. P. Prior
“Tricks and traps and labyrinthine ways,” Stupid said.
“How do you know all this?” Duck asked the fool. “You say you’ve been there,” he said to Nameless, “but what about him?”
Nameless cocked his head and raised an eyebrow at Stupid. “Laddie?”
“I read a lot. A fool’s day is spent with words on pages, when he’s not dancing a merry caper and weaving daisies into chains. But, Sir Nameless Dwarf, the sands are running out.”
“Eh?” And then Nameless realized that their two minutes was nearly up. “Come on,” he said, and headed through the archway.
The glare was blinding, forcing him to blink until his sight adjusted.
He stood within a kaleidoscope of sparkling colors that streamed from the chamber’s glassine walls, ceiling, and floor.
There were eight walls in all, beveled in honeycomb sections, reflecting beams of mote-filled brilliance from facet to facet. It looked to Nameless like a web of light, a silent symphony of questions and responses.
On the far side was another arch, this one with flickering letters of flame etched into the keystone. Before each of the eight walls stood a gem-encrusted statue of a robed dwarf holding either a staff, a book, or a scroll. The base of the nearest bore the inscription: Nardok Valta, Dominus Montis Seraph.
Weasel was crouched at the back of the statue working away at the stone with his dagger.
“What are you doing?” Nameless said.
Weasel poked his head out and stood, sheathing the dagger and keeping one hand behind his back.
“Nothing.”
Nameless walked behind him, peering at his clenched fist.
“All right, so I’m collecting keepsakes,” Weasel said, opening his fingers to reveal a sizeable garnet. “It’s not like they belong to anyone now, is it?”
Paxy hissed in Nameless’s mind. A tremor ran along her haft, and he had to steady her with both hands.
“So, that’s what this volcano is called, is it?” Duck said, peering at the inscription on the statue. “Mount Seraph.”
“Fiery serpent, fiery serpent,” Stupid sang. The fool went off to look at the writing on the arch. “The Bitter Passage,” he said, translating the Old Dwarven.
“Sounds like fun,” Nameless said.
“Fun, my bollocks,” Grok added.
Kal was wandering from statue to statue, squinting at the inscriptions. “Who are they?” he asked no one in particular.
“Lords of Arnoch, at a guess,” Nameless said. “Probably held dominion over the volcano. Reckon this must have been an important place for the economy of Arnoch, not to mention the natural resources. It’s what we were trying to do at Mount Sartis.”
“Shogging goblins,” Grok muttered.
Nameless raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t have thought you’d have had any interest in industrial projects.”
“Curse ’em for a bunch of green-blooded, pointy-eared sons of shog. Lost a bleedin’ fortune on investments ’cause of ’em, I did. It’s what turned me to crime.”
“Yes, well,” Kal said, “and now you’ve learned that crime doesn’t pay.”
“Shogging does.” Grok grinned. “Don’t regret one iota of what I’ve done.”
Kal swallowed and looked away.
Nameless frowned and then shrugged. So what if Grok was an unrepentant psychopath? At least he could fight, and right now, that was all that mattered.
Cordy stepped into the chamber and looked around, blinking. Old Moary was carried in behind her on a stretcher, and beyond, in the corridor, a column of dwarves wound back out of sight.
“Time’s up,” Cordy said. “We need to keep moving.”
Nameless gestured toward the opposing arch. “It’s a bitter passage we have to take,” he said.
“Don’t care if it’s the road to the Abyss,” Cordy said. “It’s gotta be better than facing those feeders.”
“Hey!” Kal yelled. “Leave them alone.”
Weasel was surreptitiously prizing another gemstone from a statue. He started and stepped away, hands raised.
Paxy writhed in Nameless’s grasp. It was all he could do to hang onto her. “I won’t tell you again, laddie.”
“All right, all right,” Weasel said. “Keep your beard on. For shog’s sake, a bloke can’t even make a dishonest living these days. What’s the world coming to?”
“Need to…” Old Moary rasped from his stretcher. “Need to keep discipline.”
Nameless stepped closer and leaned in, the better to hear.
“I know… it’s not fashionable,” Old Moary said. “But times like these call… for tough measures.”
“Don’t worry, Councilor,” Nameless said. “Any more looting, and I’ll cut his hands off.”
He was joking, but Weasel didn’t look so sure. The color left his face and he put his hands in his pockets and sidled away, whistling.
Hanging would be better, Paxy said.
“Now, now,” Nameless whispered. “Let’s not be too harsh, lassie.”
Images of the black axe, and what it had made him do, sprang to mind. Gods of Arnoch, he hoped Paxy wasn’t going the same way. She couldn’t be, could she? After all, she was from the Supernal Realm, whereas the false Pax Nanorum had been forged in the Abyss.
It dishonors their memory, she said. King Arios would not have stood for this kind of sacrilege.
“Funny,” Nameless said, “he seemed all right to me.”
Death mellowed him, Paxy said. Believe me, these people have got a long way to go before they can rival the Dwarf Lords of Arnoch. They lack courage, might, and pride.
“Can’t argue with that,” was Nameless’s initial thought, but then he recalled Cairn’s self-sacrifice, Targ’s desperate last moments. He thought back to the Seven facing off against Blightey’s horde at the entrance tunnel. They might not quite be the dwarf lords of legend yet, but they showed a lot of potential.
It wasn’t surprising a race that had hidden away for so long lacked courage. That said, maybe it took a different sort of courage to keep out of the affairs of the world above in order to avoid the mistakes of the past. If the Dwarf Lords of Arnoch had been anything like the ancestors of the dwarves of Arx Gravis, those who’d lived at the time of Maldark the Fallen, maybe they were too cocksure for their own good. Thing was, pride wasn’t necessarily something to boast about.
I sense him, Paxy said, a note of distress reverberating around Nameless’s mind. He’s entered the forge.
“Blightey?” Nameless asked.
The Ebon Staff.
“I’m more concerned about the Lich Lord,” Nameless said, remembering the losses his friends had suffered in Verusia. “What about Nils?”
I don’t know. I only feel my brother’s evil. He wants me, Nameless. Please don’t let him take me.
“You’ll be all right with me, lassie.” Nameless gave her a reassuring pat on the haft. “When I get my hands on that shogger, I’ll snap him in half over my knee.”
Paxy shivered and went silent.
Nameless shrugged. Maybe she was right to be afraid. When he gave sway to the dark, he was petrified of running into Blightey again. There was something about the Lich Lord, something about his cruelty, his persistence, that unnerved him.
“Snap that shogging staff in two, I will,” Nameless said. “And then I’ll shove one part up each of Blightey’s nostrils. I was going to say something else, but I’m not sure he wouldn’t enjoy that.”
“Let’s move it,” Cordy said. “There’s a lot of people back here.”
Nameless couldn’t tell if she was angry with him for threatening to cut Weasel’s hands off, or disappointed he hadn’t done it. Something had gotten into her, that’s for sure. Maybe just the strain of leading, or perhaps embarrassment about what had happened earlier.
“Lassie?” he said.
“Later.”
Nameless nodded, and headed for the Bitter Passage with a new heaviness settling about his shoulders.
> NILS
“The Pear of Anguish!”
Blightey plucked a metallic fruit from the air and held it before Nils’s face. Its stalk was a key, which Blightey turned, and the sides of the pear opened with agonizing slowness, like the petals of a flower.
It weren’t fair. Weren’t fair at all. Just because he couldn’t get through the door, he had to take it out on Nils. It was the same as being at home.
“Stretches the orifice until something eventually gives,” Blightey said, leaning in to examine Nils’s teeth. “Now, which opening do we use?” His eyes ran down Nils’s torso until they reached the groin, and then he turned Nils around. “Decisions, decisions.”
I can open the door, the Ebon Staff said. It wasn’t quite a sound, Nils figured. It seemed to come from between his ears, and had the quality of a loud thought.
“Did I ask for your opinion?” Blightey said. “Now, you,” he said to Nils. “Take your britches down.”
Nils fumbled with his belt buckle. His hands were shaking so much he couldn’t unfasten it. Blightey let out a sigh like a spitting serpent.
“W-w-why?” Nils blurted out.
“Because I can,” Blightey said, tapping his foot on the ash-strewn floor.
“I m-m-mean the dwarves. Why do you hate the dwarves?”
Blightey inclined his head to one side and furrowed his brow. “Hate? Hate the dwarves? I’m not sure that’s quite the word I would use. Hatred has such a close connection to love that I can’t see how you could conceivably think I hate them.”
“You’re trying to kill them, ain’t you?”
Blightey held up a slender finger. “There is no such word as ‘ain’t’, boy. Have you got that?” He emphasized each word with a sharp rap on Nils’s head.
“Well?” Nils persisted.
“Does the spider hate the fly, or the shark the fish? Does a hurricane despise the town it levels, or lightning loathe the blasted tree?”
Nils edged away an inch, desperately racking his brains for something to keep Blightey talking. Maybe he’d forget about that pear thing, switch his attention back to the task in hand.
“Yeah, but it’s personal, ain’t… isn’t it? You said you’d come across Nameless before.”
Blightey’s eyes narrowed to smoldering slits. “He and his companions were an annoyance, an inconvenience. More of an inconvenience than I’ve suffered in an aeon. Fate was indeed cruel to him to place him in my clutches the instant I returned from the Void. I like to think of it as cosmic justice, or perhaps even a joke.
“But sometimes, revenge needs to go beyond the individual. Sometimes, it needs to be extended to friends and family. Sometimes, even an entire race.
“Now, tell me, young Nils, have you ever been burned at the stake?”
Nils shook his head.
“Not many people have,” Blightey said with the barest hint of a smile. “Let me tell you, it is not the most edifying experience. The flesh melts like candle wax, and the fat brings the flames to an unimaginable heat. Cartilage, ligaments, muscles… even bones are reduced to simmering sludge.
“In my case, the only thing that survived was my skull. The rest of me would have been invulnerable, too, with a little more time, but back then, my vulnerability was pretty much every other part of me.
“My skull was shut in a scarolite casket and hurled into the Abyss by one of the Supernal Father’s first born—the Archon. I guess that’s why the Ebon Staff and I get along so swimmingly. We agree that the Supernal Father and his offspring are the sort of megalomaniac despots the universe could well do without.
“A thousand years it took, before some bumbling demon opened the casket. I took its body and fortified it with a suit of magical armor stolen from the Cynocephalus.
“You may have noticed, Nils, that I am a planner. I plan for every eventuality, but have you any idea how boring it was waiting by the banks of the black river for untold centuries while my plans reached maturation? Besides terrorizing the locals, who were glad to see the back of me, I spent the time writing my autohagiography.”
“Your what?” Nils asked.
The air about Blightey’s hand shimmered, and the Pear of Anguish vanished.
“The story of my life. The title is somewhat ironic, though not without a shadow of truth. As you can imagine, it is a huge volume. When you have lived as long as I have, there are many recollections. Some of them are hard to retrieve. My organic memory decayed millennia ago, but it’s all there somewhere.” He made an expansive gesture. “If you know where to look. Much of it is in my grimoire, encoded in glyphs. I’m told it’s a good read, but the only problem is, everyone who’s read it has subsequently perished. Can’t have this sort of knowledge in the public domain, now, can we? Have a look at it, when you get the chance.” He started to rummage in Silas’s satchel.
Nils felt sick to the stomach at the thought of what he might learn from that vile book, and of what Blightey might do to him once he’d finished it. “Maybe not right now,” he said. “My reading’s not that good. Silas was learning me.”
“Yes,” Blightey said, letting the satchel fall back by his side. “Yes, I know. Now, where was I?”
For a heart-stopping moment, Nils thought Blightey was about to recall the pear.
“Scarolite,” the Lich Lord said. “Not only was I trapped in a casket made from that blasted ore, but when I first encountered your Nameless Dwarf, he wore a helm fashioned from the stuff. It made him… resilient. And now,” he said, turning his ire toward the door, “I am thwarted once more by this odious substance from the bowels of Gehenna.”
I said I can open it, the staff said. I can get us through the door.
“Well, aren’t we the cocky one?” Blightey said. “Show me.”
He released the staff, but it did not fall. It hung momentarily in midair and then sinuous roots sprouted from its base, sticking themselves to the floor with some sort of brownish resin. Tendrils burst from its shaft and probed at the edges of the door, squeezing through the hairline gaps. The main body of the staff rippled, and the tendrils pulsated, swelling to twice their thickness.
The door groaned, and rock dust showered down. The tendrils swelled again, and this time, the wall around the door started to crumble, until finally, with a grinding crunch, the whole door came away and crashed to the floor.
Two sparking cables flopped out of the cavity above the entrance, hissing and writhing for a moment before going still.
“Smart arse,” Blightey said, snatching the staff back up as the tendrils and roots retracted. “Yes, dwarves…” The Lich Lord leaned on the staff and peered into the corridor outside. “Call it a vendetta, if you like, and there may be some truth in that, but I prefer to think of it as a hobby, and right now it’s becoming a rather tiresome one.”
NAMELESS
Nameless led the way along a meandering corridor flanked by solid oak doors that opened up onto living quarters, a dining hall, some kind of meeting room with a long table and high-backed chairs, and a store room with nothing but rats’ droppings on the shelves and rusty meat hooks suspended from the ceiling. Tempting as it was to explore, he permitted nothing more than a cursory glance through each door. They had to keep moving and pray, if not for escape, then at least for a stronger defensive position, preferably one with options for falling back if things got desperate. Problem was, most of the dwarves still lacked weapons or the balls to fight. Jaym’s baresarks might hold the feeders for a while in the narrow corridors, but once that line of defense was overrun, there was no hope for the rest.
A commotion behind brought him to a halt. He caught himself gripping and releasing Paxy’s haft as he bit his lip and glared.
Apparently, Weasel had been caught sneaking into one of the chambers and had to be dragged out by Kal to face Cordy’s wrath. Nameless didn’t envy the rogue, but Paxy fulminated so much, he started to wonder how a dwarf could get a divorce from a sentient axe. That said, it looked like she wasn’t alone in her dem
ands for swift and severe punishment for Weasel’s opportunism. Even Old Moary on his stretcher didn’t quite say no when execution was mooted.
Things were dire indeed for the dwarves to advocate such decisive action. Cordy just looked like she wanted to slap Weasel, but in the end it was Jaym trudging up from the back who resolved the matter by taking Weasel under his wing and guaranteeing his good behavior.
When they set off again, Stupid was never far behind Nameless. He muttered almost continuously, studying his map and biting his fingernails. When Nameless asked him what was up, the fool just raised an eyebrow and scratched his head.
“Is there something you’re not telling me, laddie?” Nameless asked.
“What’s to tell?” Stupid said, holding the map up to cover his face.
After an hour or so, the worked masonry gave way once more to natural rock, and the two of them followed the tunnel into a vast flooded cavern.
A stone jetty had been constructed close to the entrance, and three flat-bottomed barges were moored alongside it. Dark water lapped rhythmically against the bows, and here and there, the surface rippled and bubbled.
Duck was next to arrive, and as usual Grok was right on his tail.
“Not the sort of thing you’d expect to find beneath a volcano,” Duck said.
“We have passed beyond the roots of Mount Seraph,” Stupid said, sounding strangely sober for a change.
Nameless took a closer look at the barges. At best, they could take a couple of dozen dwarves each. He peered across the water, to where a similar jetty waited perhaps a hundred yards off.
“Quicker to swim,” Grok grumbled. “Shogging hate boats.”
“Not as much as I hate swimming, laddie,” Nameless said, his gut clenching as he recalled almost drowning at the serpent’s lake, the monstrous creature coming up at his fruits. That was no way for a dwarf to go.
“What’s the hold up?” Cordy said, entering the cavern with Kal in tow.