by Tony Daniel
“Yes.”
“And if you partake of it, your…ability to control others is stronger?”
“Very much stronger.”
Fruling nodded. “Interesting indeed.” She turned to Keiler. “Earl Keiler, we may have a use for this…girl.”
Keiler nodded. “I see what you mean, Lady Fruling.”
“What are you talking about?” Ravenelle said. Her voice was trembling now.
“Several nights ago bear and tree people caught something very interesting wandering through the eastern woods. We have had it delivered here.”
“What is it?” Wulf asked.
“It is a man, m’lord. He claims to have deserted the Sandhaven army. If he is one of your…type, Lady Ravenelle…you might be able to discover what he knows.”
“I could try it,” Ravenelle said. She looked around at the staring Tier. Wulf could see her shudder.
“If Ravenelle says she is on the side of the mark, you can believe her,” Wulf said. He stood up and put a hand on Ravenelle’s shoulder. “I stake my life on it.” He paused, and gazed around the circle. He tried to make his own expression as hard as theirs. Finally, he spoke. “And I promise you that I will fight to the death anyone who lays a hand on her.”
From the back of the room came a clear voice that echoed through Bear Hall. Wulf recognized it immediately.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, Lord Wulf.”
The eyes of all the Tier and otherfolk turned toward the sound. Next they heard the clip clop of horse hooves. And then from the entranceway, a male centaur emerged. Wulf had never seen a centaur before, and at the moment he thought it—he—was the most noble-looking person he’d ever laid eyes on.
But the voice had not come from the centaur.
Riding on the centaur was a gnome. He looked almost like a doll on that creature’s broad back. It was the gnome, however, and not the centaur who had spoken with his big, bell-loud voice.
“Master Tolas!” Wulf and Ravenelle shouted together.
Chapter Thirty-One:
The Revelation
“Is that your friend Ahorn?” Wulf asked Tolas. After Earl Keiler had greeted him and admitted him to the council, Tolas had dismounted. He smiled broadly and came over to Wulf and Ravenelle.
“Yes, he is,” Tolas answered. “And it is very good to see you both.”
Ravenelle knelt down and hugged the gnome tightly. He seemed surprised. So was Wulf.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Master Tolas,” she said.
“My dear little princess,” Tolas said.
She finally let him go and quickly wiped away a couple of blood tears. No one but Wulf and Tolas seemed to notice the color.
A bobcat man moved, and Tolas sat next to Wulf on the other side from Ravenelle.
The stump left Tolas sitting very low in relation to the rest of the council. Earl Keiler motioned to the side and a woman brought Tolas a velvet cushion to give him more height. Tolas climbed down from the chair, and she placed the cushion on his seat.
Wulf wasn’t paying attention to what Tolas did next. His eyes were on the woman.
Her hair was red and there were freckles sprayed across her face. Her eyes were startlingly green. She was very much human.
And she was lovely to look at.
She caught him staring at her and gave him a small smile. Then she went back to a desk in the chimney shadow by the fire. Her position in the shadows was probably why he hadn’t noticed her before. Now he couldn’t help looking at her. There was a scroll and a goose-feather pen on the desk. She took up the pen and seemed to be making a record of the meeting.
Wulf was distracted from staring at her by the restless movement of the centaur Tolas had ridden in on. Ahorn had joined the Law-speak Circle and was looking around eagerly for something—what, Wulf could not figure out.
“Ahorn’s looking for a buffalo woman he says he’s in love with.” Tolas raised up, then settled himself better on his new cushion.
“Your wise woman Puidenlehdet is not here,” said Tupakkalaatu from across the circle. “She would be, but she tends Duke Otto’s wounds at Buffalo Camp.”
“I hear you,” the centaur nodded gravely. “I have medicinal herbs I gathered for her. They are for treating deep wounds. She will need them, I think.”
“That be as it may,” Tupakkalaatu replied. “We know ye would have come through the gates of Gulch to see her.”
“Gulch is their version of cold hell,” Tolas said to Wulf. “I hope that you have been keeping up with your lore since my departure?”
“I haven’t slacked too much, master,” Wulf said. “But I’ve been…busy.” Wulf sighed and smiled. “Master Tolas, it’s really good to see you.”
Tolas reached over and gave Wulf’s shoulder a squeeze. “You can make up your deficiencies, which I am sure have grown as wide as a canyon, with some late-night study after this business with the Sandhaveners is taken care of.”
“I would like that,” Wulf said.
Earl Keiler cleared his throat. “Master Tolas,” he said, “since you have brought Ahorn—or, it seems, Ahorn has brought you—we are eager to hear a report of your travels.”
Tolas turned from Wulf and nodded. “I have news, Earl Keiler,” he said. “I do, indeed.” His hand strayed to the plain brown robe he wore. He patted it, found the lump he was looking for, and pulled his pipe and tobacco pouch from a previously unseen pocket. “Pardon me. I can go without sleep, but I find long periods without a good pipe smoke extremely trying.” Tolas packed his pipe with tobacco.
“Somebody get him a light,” Earl Keiler said.
The gnome shook his head. “No need,” he said. Tolas took a thin leather sheath from an inner pocket of his brown robe. He pulled a punk stick from the sheath. It had a hot coal on the end. Tolas blew on this coal a couple of times to get it smoking, then dipped the burning coal into his pipe bowl and used it to light the new tobacco. Then he put the stick carefully back into the sheath.
Tolas took two pulls on his pipe. He blew out a cloud of smoke that drifted upward into the darkness of the ceiling vault. The gnome sat back contentedly.
“Much better,” Tolas said. He glanced over at Ahorn the centaur. Ahorn was trotting around and searching behind chairs and people’s backs. “Lord Ahorn, she truly is not here,” Keiler said. “You do seem a fool in love.”
“I am who I am,” Ahorn said dejectedly.
“Then you most definitely should keep looking for her, my friend. But there’s much more light over by the fireplace. Why don’t you look there?”
Ahorn laughed. “That is ridiculous, Albrec.” He looked serious again. “Maybe I will take a stretch of the legs to Buffalo Camp after the law-speak, though.”
Tolas took another puff on his pipe and addressed the council semicircle. “I had worries that something like this was brewing,” he said. “I was greatly alarmed in Wintervoll when Grand Docent Lars Bauch told me that I was being dismissed from the Raukenrose University faculty. I knew Bauch, and I knew he was hiding a secret. I tried to find out what was really going on, but I was prevented from entering the library after my robes were taken.”
“Did you find out what the secret was?” Earl Keiler asked.
“No,” Tolas said. “I knew that Bauch’s group had been arguing that the Talaia celestis could be put to good use to create a rational society. I believed they were up to something to further their cause.”
“Getting involved with red-cake? Are they crazy?”
“No, just academics,” Tolas said. “They were the pawn of greater powers. I’m very concerned about who or what those powers might be.”
“You are a university man. Why not take part in their revolt?”
“Because I know we’d be living in a slaughterhouse if they were in charge.”
Keiler nodded agreement. “So you went to the centaurs?”
“First I went south, to my people. I felt I could make them understand the danger I felt. Then
I rode to the centaurs. Since I’m of a certain size, I was able to use the mark’s message express service.”
“You rode the mail service relay ponies?”
“In a way. I mailed myself to Barangath in the Greensmokes,” Tolas said with only a trace of a smile, and took another puff from his pipe. “I found my good friend Ahorn and managed to convince him of the danger.”
“There are five hundred centaur archers and warriors a day behind me,” Ahorn put in. “We had already foreseen much and were preparing to leave when Albrec arrived.”
Ahorn spread his arms as he continued speaking. “The stars are singing of horrors. The dragon sleeps restlessly and sends troubled dreams.” Ahorn clenched his palms into fists. “We have foreseen war. But more than this war.”
“War with whom then, Lord Ahorn?” said Keiler in a frustrated tone. “You create more questions than you answer.”
“Men will fight. They always have. But there is evil rising, a war of darkness against life that will soon overtake us, men and Tier.”
“And you will fight?”
“We will,” answered Ahorn. “But the Dragon Hammer must return. Along with the silver buffalo, it is the symbol of Shenandoah. Yet the hammer is much more.
“It is lost,” said Keiler. “For two hundred years.”
“We may have a way to find it,” Tolas said. The gnome took another puff on his pipe, and let his words sink in.
There was a long silence in the cavern.
Earl Smallwolf was the first to speak. “The Dragon Hammer is a total myth,” he proclaimed in his high voice. “Everybody knows that.”
“The Dragon Hammer is supposed to be magical, right?” said the wolf man leader in the circle. “What does that mean, though? Will it turn the Sandhaveners to birds or something?”
“Turn them into birds?” said Tolas. “Really? Count Bara, is it?”
The wolf man nodded.
“No, m’lord, I think that it is a relic that’s beyond magic. It may be beyond time itself. I doubt it will turn anyone into a bird.”
“What’s it good for then?”
“Tjark’s Saga describes it as the root of all dasein.”
“Dasein? What in cold hell is that?”
“Magic,” Wulf said, speaking up. “Well, magic is the effect. Dasein is the thing in itself.”
“It is a universal essence that can be instilled with purpose by the mind of people or the will of the divine,” Tolas replied. “In the saga, Duke Tjark used the hammer to make the were-beasts vulnerable to ordinary weapons.”
“I know the saga more or less, at least I used to…So that destroyed this ‘dasein’?” Count Bara asked.
“No. Dasein cannot be created or destroyed. I think what the hammer does is to wipe away purpose. It blanks the dasein back to its original form.”
“Sounds powerful,” Keiler put in. “But that doesn’t tell us how to use it.”
“The saga just says Tjark used the Dragon Hammer ‘mightily’ against the were-beasts,” Wulf put in. “Inulfsson’s Saga says they melted into puddles of guts and blood. Inulfsson was writing a hundred years later, though.”
“Werewolves! What a load of manure,” said the wolf man who had spoken before.
“Were-creatures are hybrid Tier. They certainly exist.”
“Unnatural git. We wolves don’t allow it for good reason. And that one should watch where he puts his staff.” The wolf man pointed to Ahorn, the centaur. “Horses and buffalos should not mix.”
“The laws of interbreeding are something we disagree on, Count Bara. None of which matters at all in the present circumstance. I really don’t think we ought to get into such things in this council or this law-speak,” Keiler said. He sounded very uncomfortable with the topic. “The Sandhaveners aren’t werewolves or were-anything.”
“No, but four months ago, Lord Wulfgang von Dunstig and his foster brother Rainer Stope saw one of the draug in Raukenrose,” Tolas said.
There was a murmur in both the council and the gathered law-speak audience.
“Let me get this straight, Master Gnome. The draug are elves that have gone over to evil?” said Washbear.
“Yes,” answered Tolas. “Some authorities even claim that they created the celestis for their own purpose.”
“Kalte propaganda,” Ravenelle whispered to Wulf.
“There is more evidence,” Tolas went on. “The university docent led by Lars Bauch and his Adherents group at the university have adopted Talaian ways. Prince Gunnar of Sandhaven was using a powerful new type of celestis. Princess Ravenelle here can confirm this.”
Ravenelle stiffened. Wulf felt sorry for her. She was frightened enough, and now she was going to have an intimate detail of her life exposed.
“Yes. The ater-cake,” Ravenelle replied. She sighed and help up her necklace. “It is this that I showed the law-speak in my amulet. It’s for dominations. Gunnar nearly turned me into his own bloodservant then and there. If I hadn’t had more experience than he did, he probably would have been able to.”
“This all paints a picture,” Tolas said. He took his pipe out of his mouth, looked over the end, then carefully broke off a fingerwidth length of the clay stem. Wulf had seen Tolas go through a complete stem in a day doing this. He was sure the gnome had a stash of new clay stems hidden in a robe pocket.
“You think something more than Sandhaven has come to Raukenrose, Master Tolas?” Keiler said.
“I do.”
“Do you really suppose the empire is behind it?” Keiler asked. “We beat them before, after all.”
Tolas smiled. “That you did, Earl Keiler, but what you beat was a small Roman colony.” He nodded toward Ravenelle. “No disrespect intended, Princess. Just stating facts.” He turned back to Keiler. “My Lord Earl, Duke Otto and you proved quite good at warfare, but you weren’t fighting the entire Holy Roman Empire.”
“Aye—and don’t I know it. But now we might be?”
Smallwolf cackled in laughter. “None of this matters,” he said. “Arrows and steel will either save us or doom us. If you know where this hammer thing is to be found, Tolas, then tell us. Otherwise why don’t you go back down south where your kind belong?”
“My kind, Sir Fox?”
“Dragon-turds, some call you.”
“We gnomes call ourselves that sometimes,” Tolas said. “When we’re feeling ornery.”
“Your kind may. But as for us, we’re smallwolf. Nobody calls us ‘fox’ any more.”
“Fox is a good name with a lot of history.”
“It’s meant to call us sneaky and no good,” Smallwolf said. “It’s used to hold my people down, and we won’t stand for that no more.” The fox man moved to the edge of his seat and stabbed a pointing finger toward Tolas. “Say it again and you’ll be hearing from my sword.”
“Interesting theory,” Tolas said, laughter in his voice. “Maybe we can wish away all kinds of things just by changing the names and threatening those who keep using the old words. Let’s begin by calling ‘evil’ ‘good’ and go from there.”
Smallwolf looked as if he was about to come over and get into a fight with Tolas. Master Tolas, for his part, seemed defiant and ready to return blow for blow.
Keiler beat his staff against the floor again, and it boomed through the Bear Hall. The old bear man turned a serious gaze to Tolas. “Master Gnome, if you know anything about the location of the Dragon Hammer, now would be the time to inform this law-speak.”
Tolas turned his unflinching gaze from Smallwolf and nodded to Keiler. “It happens that I do,” he said. He took a long draw on his pipe and seemed to relax back into his calm self once again. “There was once an iron box in my hometown of Glockendorf. Very small, actually. Not much larger than my two outstretched palms.” Tolas held his pipe in his mouth and held his palms together to illustrate. “But this box has a very clever locking mechanism designed by Dondras Gerrisen, a legendary locksmith of my people.
“I could tell you
a great deal about Gerrisen, but I will spare the law-speak a history lesson—although I think some of you might greatly profit from such a remedial course.” Tolas looked at Smallwolf when he said this.
“In any case, the box is extremely strong and is considered impossible to open without its key. Gerrisen designed the interior in such a way that any attempt to force the box open either by force or lock picking would destroy the contents instantly.”
“And what is inside this box?” asked Earl Keiler.
“A very small scroll that tells where the Dragon Hammer is. There is also a small cache of spirit of niter that will flash flame that scroll to unreadable ash if the box is opened improperly.”
“Excuse me,” said Washbear, who was a raccoon man and was said to be a master spy. “Before you said ‘there was an iron box’ in Glockendorf. Where is that box now?”
Tolas reached under his wool frock with both hands and worked something out of an inner pocket. He drew it forth.
It was just as Tolas had described it—a small box, unadorned, with a keyhole on what looked like a button that could be pressed.
“Here is Dondras Gerrisen’s box,” Tolas said. “When he made it, he wanted the key hidden where it couldn’t be easily got at. So he sent it to the centaurs.”
“For two hundred years, my forbearers and myself have been the keeper of the key,” Ahorn said.
“Well, do you have it, Lord Ahorn?” Earl Keiler said. He was almost shouting.
“No need,” said Tolas. He smiled. “Ahorn and I, of course, checked to be sure the mechanism worked before I brought the information here. Wouldn’t do if the scroll were already burned up.” Tolas pressed the button on the front of the box, and its lid sprang open.
Wulf looked down. Inside was a scroll, just as Tolas had said, about as long and as big around as his little finger.
“Wow,” Wulf said. He looked at Tolas. “Have you read this?”
“Yes,” Tolas said. “But I thought you should be the first to receive it.”
“Me? What about Earl Keiler? Or Tupakkalaatu there?”
“No,” Tolas said. “They are vassals. So am I. His Excellency Duke Otto is apparently badly wounded. Lord Otto, the duchess, and Raukenrose are cut off from us. For better or worse, you are the only von Dunstig available. You must, therefore, receive the information.”