by Markus Heitz
Boлndal sighed resignedly, setting his beard aquiver. "We've got our work cut out with this one."
"You can say that again," Boпndil said testily, wiping his sweaty brow with the end of his plait. Muttering under their breath, the secondlings hurried after their charge.
They caught up with him in front of the easel. There was something very obviously wrong with the picture: It showed the settlement in the aftermath of the attack.
There was no denying that the artist was incredibly gifted. The scene had been painted entirely in shades of red, every detail of the destruction reproduced with chilling precision on the smooth white canvas: corpses, the burned-out shells of buildings, scorched trees.
Tungdil peered at the work more closely. There's something funny about that canvas. He walked to the back of the easel and paled. The reverse of the painting was a damp, shiny red. He reached out gingerly to touch it, then whipped his hand away. Skin! The scene had been painted on skin so flawless that it could only belong to the mistress of the glade. Tungdil had a nasty feeling that the paint was far from conventional too. He showed his grisly discovery to the twins.
Two smaller pictures had been propped up nearby. The first showed the tortured face of the elf, her eyes dull with pain and fear. The second depicted her crucified body in all its gory detail. Tungdil knocked them over in disgust.
"It's still wet," said Boлndal, peering at the easel. "The freak who painted these pictures could be back at any time."
"So much the better," growled Boпndil. "We'll see how he likes to be flayed alive."
"I've never seen anything so monstrous," said Tungdil. Any admiration he still felt for the artist's talent was overshadowed by his revulsion at the foulness of the work. He shouldered the easel and hurled it into the burning embers of the fire. The two smaller pictures met the same fate.
Silently they turned to leave the village, but were halted by an aggressive snort. It was followed by angry neighing and a furious whinny.
A black steed left the forest and stepped into the clearing twenty paces to their right. Its eyes gleamed red, and white sparks danced around its fetlocks as its hooves clipped the ground.
Mounted on the shadow mare was a female дlf, tall and slim with long brown hair. She was clad in mail of stiff black leather with polished tionium trimmings.
"What do we have here?" The hilt of her sword was visible above her head and in her right hand she held a curved bow. A clutch of unusually long arrows of the kind favored by дlfar protruded from a saddlebag. Tungdil needed no reminder of their murderous force.
"The stinking groundlings have ruined my pictures, have they? In that case, I'll need some fresh paint." She sat up in the saddle to get a better look at the dwarves. With her delicate features and fine countenance she could have passed for a creature of Palandiell, save for the gaping eye sockets that proved she was no elf.
"I hope your blood doesn't clot too fast," she said, reaching with her free hand for an arrow. "I won't be able to paint the finer details unless it's nice and fluid."
"I was beginning to think we'd been cheated of our battle." Boпndil grinned. "Quick," he instructed in dwarfish, "make for the ruins or she'll shoot us down like rabbits."
The first arrow came singing toward them just as they were ducking behind a timber wall. It passed through the wood as if it were parchment and struck Boлndal's mail with a ping. The black tionium cut a gouge in the metal, causing the dwarf to curse.
Keeping low, they scurried deeper into the smoldering village, hoping to throw off the дlf, then attack her from behind.
Tungdil peered around the next corner and spotted the slender nose of the mare. There was something feline about the way it slunk through the ruins, branding the ground with its hooves. The earth gave a low hiss as the false unicorn passed over it, nostrils flaring as it tracked its prey.
Suddenly the dwarf had a terrifying thought. The mare's saddle was empty. Where's the rider? The дlf was at large in the village. He closed his eyes, trying to forget everything he knew about her race.
When he opened them again, Boлndal and Boпndil were gone. He wasn't afraid anymore; he was panicked.
"Psst," he hissed, "where are you?" He tightened his grip on his ax, cursing the twins for abandoning him in the ruins. First they tell me I'm no warrior; then they leave me at the mercy of a shadow mare and an дlf!
Someone touched his arm. Tungdil started and lashed out with his ax. The blade buried itself just below the man's rib cage. The dwarf stared at him in horror. "Gorйn? I thought you were dead."
The wizard looked at the wound distractedly and ran his fingers across the gaping flesh. He fixed his gaze on Tungdil. "Nothing," he moaned softly. "I feel nothing." He plucked an orcish arrow from his body. "Nothing," he said again, this time more desperately. He reached for a wooden beam, locking the dwarf in his empty stare. "All I can feel is hate…"
"Hang on, Gorйn, I…" Tungdil leaped aside as the wizard brought the beam crashing toward him. It smashed into a wall.
The din was enough to alert everyone to their presence. There was a clatter of hooves and the shadow mare whinnied.
Tungdil made his escape by crawling under a sunken ceiling. Anything would be better than being discovered by the mare.
"Nothing…" Gorйn straightened up and swayed drunkenly out of the ruined building, dragging the beam behind him.
The shadow mare leaped toward him, trampling him to the ground. Tungdil watched as its forelegs crushed the wizard's abdomen in an explosion of sparks. To the dwarf's horror, Gorйn rolled over and picked himself up.
The truth hit him in a flash: Greenglade had fallen to the Perished Land. Any who die here will rise again as revenants! The forest wasn't grieving for the elf maiden; the canker had spread into the soil, poisoning the tree roots and filling the trunks and branches with malice.
But that's impossible! Unless…Tungdil realized with horrible certainty that the girdle had failed. I can't go to Ogre's Death without warning Lot-Ionan that the shield has been breached. If the Perished Land has encroached this far, it might be advancing on other fronts as well.
But first he faced the immediate problem of leaving the glade alive, and the odds were stacked against him.
The shadow mare had picked up his scent and was heading his way. Its hooves struck Tungdil's hiding place and the timber erupted, crackling with light. The steed was intent on driving the dwarf into the open.
Tungdil had no choice. He rolled out, hoping to throw himself under the nearest piece of debris, but the shadow mare was faster.
In a single powerful leap, it soared over the wreckage and landed beside him, its head shooting forward to seize Tungdil's right shoulder in its jaws. The dwarf's chain mail saved him from its sharp teeth, but the pressure was excruciating.
"Get your filthy teeth off me!" Tungdil's fighting spirit came to the fore, and he forgot his terror, swinging his ax at the steed.
But the shadow mare had no intention of relinquishing its quarry. Jerking its head, it shook Tungdil back and forth like a doll. Without warning, its jaws flew open and he sailed through the air, landing on the ashen grass with a thud. The shadow mare whinnied, carving deep furrows as it pawed the ground. Tungdil was still coming to his senses when it thundered toward him.
The twins sprang into action. As the mare drew level with them, they burst out of their hiding places on either side of its path.
"Here, horsey, horsey," shouted Boпndil, driving an ax with both hands into the steed's right knee. Boлndal's crow's beak carved into its left foreleg.
The black beast staggered and fell, tumbling along the ground in a pother of ash. In spite of its obvious agony, it tried to drag itself up again, but the dwarves rushed in.
"You're not a horse anymore, you're a pony," Boпndil yelled at it. "How do you fancy fighting eye to eye?" The shadow mare lunged at him and was rewarded with an ax blow to the jaw. "Try sinking your teeth into that!" The mare jerked away, thereby seali
ng its fate.
Boлndal embedded his beaked war hammer into its long bony nose and hauled the beast in. Not for nothing was Hookhand his second name. Triceps bulging and heels digging into the ground, he dragged the mare closer so that his brother could sink an ax into its neck.
"So you want to bite me, you worthless bunch of bones," cried Boпndil, hefting his ax to strike again. The blade severed the shadow mare's spinal cord and it slumped to the ground.
Boлndal put one foot on the steed's nose and levered the crow's beak out of the corpse.
His brother grinned at him. "Now for the pointy-eared rider!" He signaled to Tungdil to stay hidden. "Make yourself scarce, scholar, and watch how it's done!"
They crouched next to the mare's fallen body and waited. Tungdil started to tell them about his encounter with the revenant, but they waved him away. All that mattered for the moment was dispatching the дlf.
Before long an unnatural scream, more drawn out and high-pitched than the voice of any human female, rent the air.
Waggling his eyebrows in gleeful anticipation, Boпndil straightened his plait and steeled himself for combat. "Music to my ears."
Boлndal listened intently, then leaped to his feet. His brother followed.
I should be out there helping, not watching like a coward. Tungdil felt compelled to do something, even if only to act as a decoy. Sighing, he was about to emerge from his hiding place when two skeletal hands grabbed him from behind and thrust him to the ground.
"Who are you?" a musical voice demanded. Damp, foul-smelling bones fingered his face. "A small man or maybe a groundling…"
The dwarf was rolled onto his back and found himself looking into the tortured face of the once-beautiful elf. She too had become a revenant. Robbed of her eyes by the дlfar, she had torn herself from the trunk of the beech and was groping blindly through the ruins.
"Let go of me!" shrieked Tungdil, reaching for his ax. His arms were clamped so tightly that he went for his dagger instead. The blade clunked harmlessly against her rib cage.
"Who gave a dwarf permission to enter my glade?" she demanded imperiously. A bony hand tightened around his throat. "Are you in league with the дlfar? Do you hate us enough to ally yourselves with these monsters?"
Tungdil fought back his fear and realized that there was something different about her tone of voice. Unlike the wizard, she seemed to be in possession of her will. "Listen to me, my lady," he pleaded. "Lot-Ionan sent me here to return some items belonging to Gorйn."
She turned her fathomless gaze on him. "I'm changing," she whispered fearfully. "Something's happening to me. They killed me, but my soul… my soul…" She trailed off. "You say Lot-Ionan sent you? My beloved Gorйn thought highly of his magus." She released her murderous grip. "You'll find a book in the house; it's in the library. Gorйn was going to send it to your master, but then the дlfar attacked and-"
"I've got it already," he broke in excitedly.
"Don't let them have it!" she instructed. "Take it to Ionandar and give it to the magus; he'll know what to do as soon as he reads the letter." Her skeletal fingers clutched at him again. "Swear you'll do it!"
Tungdil stammered out a solemn oath, swearing first by Vraccas and then by the magus. The elf seemed satisfied and backed away.
"Now behead me," she said softly. "I can't allow the Perished Land to steal the little I have left." She stretched out her bony arms. "Do you see what they've done to me? Without your help, I'll be yoked to their evil forever, a blind servant of destruction."
There was something almost mesmerizing about the two dark pits in her face. Tungdil hesitated. "But I-"
"Everything I loved has been taken from me: Gorйn, my beauty, my home, my glade." She raised her left hand and poked a finger gingerly into her empty eye sockets. "Look, even tears are denied me. Have pity on me."
Her face and voice spoke so eloquently of her sorrow that Tungdil had no option but to comply. He rose to his feet, took a few shaky steps toward her, and swung his ax. As the elf's head rolled through the debris, her skeletal body slumped to the ground. The lady of the glade was dead.
The trees around them gave a piteous groan, the crackling and rustling mingling with the sounds of a raging battle. Tungdil remembered with a start that the twins were locked in combat with the дlf.
They still don't realize! he thought in alarm, quickly pulling himself together. If we don't decapitate the corpses, they'll rise up and attack us.
Meanwhile, Boлndal and Boпndil had discovered that their opponent had no intention of playing by their rules. The дlf was nimble as a cat, ducking, skipping, and leaping to evade their blows. But for all her agility she had yet to penetrate the dwarves' heavy mail.
"Over here!" Tungdil lunged forward and hurled his ax. The дlf spotted the missile just in time and stepped aside briskly.
Suddenly Gorйn loomed up behind her, swinging a plank. She heard the wood whistling toward her, but it was too late to move.
The plank connected with her back, catapulting her forward. With a cackle of frenzied laughter, Boпndil rushed up and took aim at her thinly armored thighs. "Fight on my level, no-eyes!"
The axes sliced deep into her flesh and the дlf shrieked in agony, only to be winded by Boлndal, who rammed the butt of his crow's beak into her belly. Before she could make another sound, Boпndil raised his blades and hewed her neck.
"What did you do that for?" he asked the wizard indignantly. "Couldn't you see we almost had her?" Puzzled, he stared as Gorйn staggered toward him. "Hang on, shouldn't he be dead?"
"He won't die unless you behead him!" Tungdil called out to him. "This is the Perished Land. You've got to chop his head off!"
"Well, if you insist…" Boпndil dodged the wizard's clumsy attempts to fell him and sliced off his head with a single strike of his ax. Gorйn was no more.
"Seeing as we're here, we should probably take care of the rest," said Boлndal, nodding in the direction of the ruins.
Brought back to life by the dark power, the charred corpses of the orcs and the elves were beginning to stir. The Perished Land made no distinction between its own soldiers and those who had died at their hands, so the twins were obliged to execute their task with utmost rigor, fighting and beheading every single revenant in order to deliver them from their fate. Tungdil chose to watch.
"They could have tried a bit harder," complained Boпndil when the gory business was over at last. "At least it's out of my system, though." Sure enough, the glint in his eyes was slowly fading. "Shall we go?"
They set off on a southerly bearing, quickly leaving the ravaged village behind them.
Perhaps the trees wanted to do a last favor to those who had slain one of the despoilers of the peaceful glade, but in any event they made no attempt to block their path. Creaking and groaning, the leafless boles and boughs swayed menacingly, stooping low and swinging above their heads, but allowing them to pass.
The only other sound was the crackling of dry leaves beneath their boots. They saw no sign of the forest's many animals; even the birds were too afraid to sing.
"There's been a change of plan," Tungdil informed the twins, recounting his promise to the elf. "Ionandar is far enough west to be safe from the Perished Land and Toboribor's orcs. We need to tell Lot-Ionan about Greenglade and give him the books. The elf maiden seemed to think at least one was important."
"But we won't get back to Ogre's Death for ages!" objected Boлndal. "We're late enough as it is, without walking an extra six hundred miles."
"I'm afraid there's no choice," Tungdil said firmly. "It's either that or ask to see the council in Lios Nudin."
"That's the spirit," chuckled Boпndil. "Cussed as a dwarf!"
Boлndal relented. "All right, we'll go to Lios Nudin. The high king has seen so many cycles that he won't begrudge us the odd orbit here or there. Vraccas will keep his fires burning." He took a sip from his water pouch.
His brother turned the conversation to Tungdil's fightin
g prowess. "You didn't do too badly, considering you haven't been taught," he commended him. "But there's one thing you need to remember: Never throw your ax unless you've got another one in reserve. Of course your technique needs a bit of working on, but I'll soon have you fighting like a proper dwarf. Mark my words, Tungdil: The runts will be as scared of you as they are of me."
Tungdil could see the sense in being tutored by Boпndil. "The sooner we get started, the better." He nodded.
They walked until the light faded and they were obliged to stop and rest. After a while Boлndal launched into a dwarven ballad about the age-old feud between their kinsfolk and the elves. When he saw the look of dismay on Tungdil's face, he trailed off into silence: The last thing they needed was a song about destruction and death.
"What do you know about my folk?" Tungdil asked.
"The fourth lings?" Boлndal scratched his beard and unpacked a wedge of cheese to melt above the fire. "Goпmdil's folk are made up of twelve clans and they tend to be shorter, scrawnier, and weaker than the rest of us-typical gem cutters and diamond polishers, I suppose." He looked Tungdil up and down and nodded. "I've never heard of any fourthling scholars, but in terms of your build…Actually, you're a bit too big. Your shoulders are too broad." He thought for a moment. "I'm not trying to offend you, you know," he said simply. "Vraccas made us just the way we are."
"What else do you know?" persisted Tungdil, who found the answer too vague to be revealing.
The brothers looked at each other and shrugged.
"You'd best see for yourself once we get there. It's been hundreds of cycles since the folks had anything to do with each other," Boлndal explained. "I'll tell you what, though: We may not know much about Goпmdil's dwarves, but you can ask us anything about the secondlings. Our seventeen clans boast the finest masons in all the dwarven kingdoms, and the mightiest human stronghold isn't a patch on Ogre's Death. It'll take your breath away, you'll see."
Boлndal talked and talked, waxing lyrical about the fortifications and ornaments that were the envy of the other folks, while Tungdil listened contentedly, eagerly anticipating the moment when he would see his kinsfolk's architecture for himself. Enchanted Realm of Lios Nudin, Girdlegard, Summer, 6234th Solar Cycle The orbits wore on as the three dwarves journeyed to Porista to request an audience with the council.