by A. Attanasio
Broydo paused for Old Ric to catch up, and the demon sparks flurried about his head, darting for his ear-holes and nostrils. He batted them away deliriously. "Don't let them in!" he cried, and a mote of cold fire flew into his mouth. He spat it out at once, and the poisonous taste of it filled the hollows of his head with a rancid stink that nearly doubled him over vomiting.
Old Ric's breath mangled his chest with exhaustion as he batted the demons away. Arms waving wildly, the two of them ran around a shale plate blocking their way and flared abruptly downhill along a quartz-studded slope.
The tall rocks fell away behind them, and they found themselves beneath a sheer basalt wall topped with turrets and stone cairns. Where the wall ended and level to the horizon, the Abiding Star rose through a cloudless sky, contorted their shadows upon the stony field like creatures of another form.
The gnome spun about, arms still waving to ward off the demonic swarm. But the demonic surge had vanished.
"The Necklace of Souls must be nearby!" the elf announced with delight. "Only its presence could drive off a host of devils."
Old Ric bent over to catch his breath. His blood burned hotly through its loops.
"There!" Broydo shouted.
Old Ric squinted into the rising Abiding Star toward where the elf pointed. Spectra rayed through his lashes. Out of the glare, he discerned among scattered boulders an anvil rock upon which lay a heap of clear gems clasped by interlocking glyphs of gold.
"The Necklace!" the gnome bawled with relief, and his echoes, too, tumbled over themselves on their climb up the cliff wall to silence. "The Necklace of Souls! Why is it here in the open?"
"Who goes there?" A heavy voice startled them from high up on the rampart. A pure white entity, squat and creased with obesity, waddled into view from a crevice in the wall. It had a slash of a mouth and two red beads for eyes and otherwise no features at all, only stubby arms with immense hands. No raiment, only pinguid folds of white flesh shaped its glossy appearance. "Who goes there?"
"By the Scrolls!" Broydo squealed. "It's a dwarf!"
"We are not in the open!” Old Ric whispered sharply. “The witch has led us directly into the courtyard of the dwarf fastness!"
"You two!" the dwarf shouted in a squealing, high-pitched voice, holding up a thick hand to shield its featureless face from the dawning light. "Who are you? How did you elude the guardians in the Labyrinth of the Undead? How came you here?"
"Old Ric, seize the Necklace and get away, quickly!" Broydo ordered. "The dwarves cannot abide daylight. That is why the witch has led us here at this hour. Come!"
Broydo and Ric rushed toward the anvil stone, squinting into the level rays of the Abiding Star.
"Stop!" the dwarf spat. At its side other white beings appeared, emerging from crevices in the granite wall. "You two, stop!"
The gnome and the elf paused before the anvil stone, gazing in amazement at the Necklace of Souls. Frayed rainbows spilled about the heap of gems—each stone bigger than a big thumb and pellucid as air. Old Ric lifted the gold-clasped jewels, astonished at their beauty.
A searing pain penetrated him, and blood sprayed onto the empty anvil stone. Horrified, he looked down at the barbed tip of an arrow impaled through his chest.
Broydo gasped with shared pain. "By the gods, Ric, you are killed!"
Old Ric agreed. The arrow had slammed directly through his heart. The pain ate like flames through his whole torso.
More arrows whistled past and clattered against the anvil rock. Quickly, Broydo swept Ric into his arms, careful not to jar the embedded shaft, and ran with him into the cleft of the rampart wall, toward the Abiding Star. Feathered shafts wobbled past them, and others clacked at the elf's heels.
"I am killed!" Old Ric moaned, and fisted his hands about the gems that had cost him his life.
"Be silent, gnome." Broydo cleared a flinty bluff and came into view of the giant cinder cones. Above them, sulfur clouds boiled with poisonous shades of citrine and puce. The morning light fanned to fierce spikes of radiance. The elf clattered mightily over gravel banks until he no longer heard the slicing sound of arrows.
Under a weathered escarpment, they stopped. Nested in the rock were immense arcs of bone—the huge hull of some dragon's rib cage—Broydo lowered Old Ric. Blood trickled from the gnome's mouth, and his eyeballs rolled loosely in their sockets.
"By the gods!" Broydo groaned. "By the very gods!" He fretted helplessly over the mortally wounded gnome, until a long morning shadow fell over them. With a cry, he lunged about, ready to fight, and fell to his knees with relief before the cowled figure of the witch.
"Place the Necklace of Souls about him," she ordered. "He will go forth now as one of the undead."
Broydo obeyed, and the instant he touched the Necklace, the warts vanished from his young and not unhandsome face. When he draped the gems over the gnome's head and around his neck, Old Ric's eyes focused at once, and his breathing calmed. The gnome sat up taller, surprised to feel no pain whatsoever. He put a tentative hand to the arrow.
"Leave it be," the witch said. "It has killed you. And if you remove it, you may well lose your body and become a wraith."
Broydo wailed piteously.
"Hush." Old Ric laid a blood-streaked hand on his companion. "I am not suffering. I feel no hurt at all. What is this wonder I have become?"
"You are now a deadwalker, Old Ric," the witch informed him. "So long as you wear the Necklace of Souls, your life goes on. But when it is removed—you will die."
The gnome peered down quizzically at the rainbow-shot gems linked with gold. "I have been killed, yet I feel no pain, no fear. Is this good?"
"Is your mission for the Nameless One good?" the witch replied brusquely. "Without the Necklace of Souls, your mission cannot be accomplished."
"My mission—" Old Ric gawked, remembering at once his promise to the Lady of the Garden. "I must not die yet!"
"Then it is good that you live," the witch agreed with a slight smile visible beneath her cowl. "And there is more of good yet. For now that you are a deadwalker, you will have no further need of food, water, or air."
Ric put a finger to the barbed arrowhead varnished with his blood. It felt firmly lodged. "I am ready to join my wives and my Amara—but first, I must fulfill the bidding of the nameless lady."
"We must hurry then, Old Ric," Broydo said nervously. "The dwarves will be upon us. Only the daylight impedes them. Soon they will don shrouds and pursue us. The Necklace of Souls is the last of Duppy Hob's magical implements. They will chase us into the Gulf itself to recover it."
"But why?" The eldern gnome scowled. "Smiddy Thea said that it was the dwarves themselves who overthrew Duppy Hob and cast all his magical devices into the Gulf after him. The Necklace of Souls fell by accident into this blighted place. Why should they display it in their courtyard? And why should they even possess it at all—or now want it back?"
"The fervor of their rage toward their old master has cooled," Broydo replied, casting an anxious glance at the witch, who stood silently in the narrow shade under the ledge of rock. "If they could, I do believe the dwarves would retrieve Duppy Hob himself from the abyss, for without his magic they have been reduced to mere caretakers of the ancient fastness where once he ruled.”
“Ah!” The gnome’s eyes sharpened with understanding. “So, the Necklace of Souls is their only object of real power. And it lay fully exposed in the courtyard to receive and absorb Charm from the light of the Abiding Star.”
“Yes. It is the Charm that summons the wraiths from the Bright Worlds and the great souls from the Abiding Star. The wraiths pay the dwarves homage and grace them with portions of their Charm. Without this great amulet, the dwarves are quite literally no more than maggots with arms and legs."
"The elf is correct," the witch spoke, and her blood-freckled hand pointed to the giant bones encased in the bluff. "And here, it might interest you to know, is what remains of the world serpent from whose flesh th
ose maggots fed before Duppy Hob molded them into simian shapes."
Broydo's ice-pale eyes widened. "This? This is a world serpent?" He reached out and stroked the yellowed surface of a gigantic rib. "Have you any notion how valuable this material would be to charmwrights across the Bright Worlds?"
"Or how valuable it would be to you against the dwarves?" added the witch knowingly. "A talisman fashioned from bone of this world serpent will surely keep the dwarves at bay."
"Of course!" Broydo agreed excitedly. "They rightly fear it. If they are touched by a world serpent, Duppy Hob's magic is broken, and they revert to their maggot origins." The elf looked about with thrilled attentiveness, searching for a rock large enough to hack at the embedded ribs.
"Stop, Broydo. There is little time for such manual labor," the witch said. "The dwarves will be upon us soon. Stand away."
Broydo took Old Ric under the gnome’s arms and helped him stand. As soon as they had stepped back, the witch raised her fists abruptly, snapping the robes of her cowl.
A stab of lightning branded their vision, and they averted their faces. When they looked again, an arm's length of slivered bone had cleaved from the rib embedded in stone. It lay on the ground in a sparkle of retinal afterglow.
Broydo warily approached the long sliver, hands out, feeling for heat. The sharp bone felt cold to the touch. He hefted it with a flourish and turned with a grateful smile to the witch. Making no motion to acknowledge him, she stepped out of the shadow of the ledge and disappeared in the morning light.
"By the blood of drakes!" Broydo blinked. "The witch is a wraith!"
"As soon I will be," Ric moaned, "if the dwarves catch us. Come, Broydo. We must flee this place at once."
"What direction?" the elf asked, pivoting to scan the flinty slopes.
In the distance, the cowled figure of the witch appeared in shadows at the stony bottom of an extinct stream. The eldern gnome felt delighted at how fluidly he moved with an arrow through his chest pointing his way ahead. The Charm from the dwarves' gems filled him with supernatural strength, and he was not even breathing hard when he ran along the benchland above the empty channel of the dried stream.
"Wait up!" Broydo called after, huffing to follow.
"Who would think that I, a gnome, would stride so mightily in the sway of Charm!" Old Ric exulted.
The elf staggered to his side, clutching his ribs with one hand and with the other stabbing the bone sliver into the ground and leaning heavily upon it. He gasped, "Then why is it—that you gnomes—are famous for—avoiding Charm?"
"Charm is not the gnomish way." Old Ric tapped his finger against the arrow jammed through his chest, amazed to feel so little hurt. "It has ever been thus. Our very bones possess enough Charm to sustain us. What need for amulets and talismans?" He tapped the arrow shaft. "Until now."
In the dark of the gorge, the witch walked on, and the elf and gnome followed along the ridgelines. "Yet, you are a practitioner of magic, eh, Ric?"
"Gnomish magic, aye." The gnome cast furtive glances over his shoulder, searching for dwarves among the cobbled piles of rocks that reared like smelter chimneys against the ashen sky. "I am the first in my family of textile workers to learn the gnomish magic of elemental fire. I served my people for many years as a firemaker, hearth-builder, flue-cleaner, and reader of flames. That was how I first saw the shadow thing. A mere glimpse, mind you. A glimpse of something dark intruding upon the Bright Shore."
"And that is why the Nameless Ones summoned you—for your magic?" the elf queried, hurrying to keep up with the spry gnome.
"The blind god Chance plucked me from my den." He stopped, then walked backward several paces, reviewing the evil landscape behind. "When I asked the great lady why I was chosen of all the gnomes versed in magic, that is what she told me. She needed a figure from her dream to tell her why the child in her womb had gone still. And blind Chance chose me."
The witch waited ahead in the slurred shadows of talus boulders fallen from the hellish cinder cones that reared above. She motioned them closer.
"Where are you leading us, witch?" Broydo asked. "Ahead are the Gates of the Underworld. Must we trespass that dread territory?"
"Yes," her voice whispered from within the dark of her hood. "Before we part, I must have what you promised me—one crystal prism of the Necklace of Souls."
The gnome clutched at the gems. "But you said I will die if the Necklace of Souls is removed." He backed away a pace. "Wait until my mission is complete. Then you may have the Necklace entire."
"I cannot wait, gnome." The witch spoke firmly. "I must have my crystal prism at once. And so we shall seek a charmwright who can remove my crystal without disturbing the others. That is why we are entering the Gates of the Underworld—to find Blue Tipoo, the one dwarf who may help us."
"A dwarf?" Old Ric clacked his jaw with alarm. "He will seize the Necklace!"
"No." The witch turned and walked on, disappearing into the slanted rays of early morning and appearing again in the next swatch of shadows cast by the large, scorched boulders. "Blue Tipoo has gone mad. He alone of the dwarves defended Duppy Hob, and for that he was exiled beyond the Gates of the Underworld. He may help us—if we can calm his madness."
"How will we do that?" Broydo squawked, gazing timorously ahead to the fuming summits of black volcanoes.
"With the serpent sword," the witch answered.
"Serpent sword?" the elf repeated before recognizing that he grasped the weapon in his hand. As he ran to keep up with the witch and the Charm-powered gnome, he studied the length of sharp bone in his hand. Indeed, it had the slender shape and sturdy heft of a sword, and he brandished it with vigor.
The Serpent Sword
Soon Broydo huffed to keep up with his swift companions, and he had no strength for questions. He concentrated instead on his clambering stride over the dry, blistered land. Each cumbersome stride shattered plates of volcanic glass or gray, brittle tar bubbles.
The Abiding Star had bleached and cracked the ground like old porcelain, and shards lay strewn among the talus rocks. No life moved all the way to the foot of the cinder cones.
Old Ric slowed his pace to allow Broydo to come abreast. The gnome, lithe and strong as the wind itself, beamed at the elf, "I never felt so good alive! I think I like being a deadwalker."
"Yes—" Broydo huffed, jogging as fast as he could across the broken land, "but will you—like it much—in there?"
They stared glumly ahead at the Gates of the Underworld. The steep calderas leaked sulfur fumes that whirled away in the wind like dervishes in dementia.
"I like it not," the gnome admitted ruefully.
Broydo thought to protest going any farther, but he lacked breath.
The talus boulders had fallen behind them, and they scampered into the full glare of the ascendant Abiding Star, where no promontory offered shade. The witch had become invisible.
Obedient to their promise, elf and gnome climbed the cracked slopes among molten shapes of hardened lava that had less the appearance of geology than black-shawled figures.
At the verge of exhaustion, Broydo gasped that he could not trudge another step. He quaffed the last of his green wine, and his parched throat burned for water. The gnome turned back for him and pulled him up the broken slope.
The witch beckoned from a cave fanged with rime.
Old Ric dragged Broydo to the crusted entrance of the dark cavern, and the elf lay exhausted, unable to move.
"Leave him," the witch instructed. She bent close to the spent elf and ran a gory hand through the nape of his green hair. At her touch, he sat up taller. "Keep a watch, Broydo." She pointed across the huge vista of slag fields and ashen plains that the cave commanded.
The sprawling panorama revealed the cinderland they had crossed, with its brittle tracts of sharp black glass and flinty rocks. At the jagged horizon, the fastness of the dwarves and the maze beyond stood visible, crusted and discolored as a chancre. "When the dwarves do a
ppear, give shout. Will you obey me, elf?"
Broydo croaked an affirmative sound. He sat with his legs stretched out before him and his head leaning back against the glistening rock, his mouth ajar and his lips laced white with salt.
"Now take the serpent sword," the witch commanded Old Ric.
The gnome pried the long sliver of bone from the elf's locked grip. "Don't fear, Broydo. We'll bring you water." His own words sounded foolish to him, yet he spoke them anyway. "Rest here now. We will return shortly."
The witch entered the cave, a shimmering green presence in the dark. Old Ric gave Broydo a last wary glance and entered the black maw.
Within the darkness, he observed that he, too, shone with an ethereal glow. The Necklace of Souls hoarded light, like embers, only blue and fiery as daystruck sapphires.
The relentless dark continued a long way. Stalactites and glossy silica columns glimmered with ghostlight reflected from the cowled witch and the eldern gnome. They descended among grottoes and caverns ornate with natural pillars and crusted gems.
From deeper yet came a silver tapping. Presently, a red eye blinked at the far end of a lava tube, through which they had to proceed hunched over. Old Ric discerned that the scarlet flickering came from an open forge with anvil rocks set before it and gold and silver implements arrayed upon the rocks.
The witch stopped and turned. The dark within her hood relented to reveal the skullish contours of her maimed visage. "Go in there, gnome, and tell Blue Tipoo to fashion this bone to a sword with a proper haft or you will skewer him upon it."
"Me?" The gnome peeked past the witch's silhouette at the breathing crimson pulse of the forge. "What about you?"
"Say no word of me," she cautioned. "Go quickly now and do as I have said. Go!"
The ghastly face of smoke within the hood propelled Old Ric past the witch and into the glowing red chamber. Once within, he stood upright and quickly and frightfully surveyed his surroundings.
The foundry crypt loomed large, with a soaring ceiling that dimmed beyond sight. Tiers of galleries shelved naked rock walls, a honeycomb of balconies, alcoves, and niches that flashed with talismanic weapons, embossed armor, and heaps of jewel-studded amulets. Here resided a huge treasure trove of Charm, and the gnome could feel its power thrumming in the shining air.