by Dale Lucas
Because he chose his people over his father, Torval thought. He chose them, even though he had to know what it would cost me.
What stung was that Tav had gotten what he wanted, while Torval felt as if he’d lost everything he had. His pride, surely … and maybe, just maybe, some of the affection he’d borne his eldest son.
Even as the thought bloomed in his brain—red, pulsing, like iron hot from the forge—he cursed himself for entertaining it. Tav was the son, Torval was the father. Tav could have no power that Torval did not give him. If it was true that Tav’s desires had forced Torval into a horrid, backbreaking capitulation that still, weeks later, made Torval feel the drum of his heartbeat quicken and his body shake with rage when he remembered it—then the blame could only lie at Torval’s feet.
You mewling, whey-faced little shoat. Why are you still dwelling on this? You are made of scars and bruises and knitted bone and anointed in blood—and here you stand, grieving for the forfeit of your pride. Why should it trouble you so? You’re stronger than this, aren’t you? Tougher than this?
No. Apparently he was not.
Perhaps it was just his pride that was forfeit—but that pride meant a great deal to him. So far as he could see, it was all that remained in the world that was truly, entirely his.
But now even that was gone, wasn’t it?
I remember you, Eldgrim, the dwarven ethnarch, had said.
And Torval remembered him as well. For years he’d sworn that if he ever met any of those who’d beaten and humiliated him all those years ago, he’d have their hides. He’d wear their braids and beards from his belt and he’d flay their skins for new boots. But then, standing before one of those he’d dreamt so long of having his vengeance on, what was he forced to do?
For Tav’s sake, he was forced to kneel.
Grunting disgustedly to himself, Torval unbuckled his belt and hung it and his maul on one of the cloak pegs by the door, then lurched across the room toward his bedchamber.
He opened the door to the oversize pantry that served as his own private sanctum, edged past the inward-swung door, then collapsed onto the bed wedged inside. He liked his little room, and his little bed, and it was all because of that narrow door that separated the space from the common room outside. That, and its notable lack of windows. The twin luxuries of privacy and daytime darkness had eluded Torval for years as he shuttled his family from place to place in search of a home, in search of a job—in search of a life that wouldn’t be rendered obsolete by deflated labor markets or inflated rents. Hells, they’d been happy enough at their last apartment—the one above the arkwright’s, which they’d fled after an attempt on Torval’s life—but even there the little cot that Torval slept on by day had occupied the very same room that the boys slept in by night, and the shutters on the windows had never quite shut out the infernal daylight. Torval was proud of the fact that he’d adapted himself to living in a world of vertiginous blue skies, blindingly bright light, and panic-inducing vastness when most of his people chose to live their whole lives in underground cities lit by only firelight and the natural luminescence of strange cave fauna. But if there was ever a time when he most missed the subterranean world that had borne him, it was during the day, when he was trying to sleep.
To sleep well he needed darkness, a darkness so deep it threatened to swallow him. And returning each morning to a home where his eldest son no longer slept, where the boy’s terrible absence somehow mocked Torval in both mind and spirit—well, wrestling with those demons required darkness, too. Darkness. Silence. Stillness.
And ale. Lots of ale.
He kicked off one boot without rising, then went to work on the other. The door to the little chamber still stood ajar, so Torval kicked his remaining boot toward it. The heavy boot thumped against the door, slamming it shut, then slid to the floor, acting as a stopper. The room was dark now, the air pleasantly close, the only light a pale thin line beneath the door.
Close, dark, airless—anathema to the tall folk, a blessed comfort to one as accustomed to close, dark spaces as Torval.
And still it seemed too large. Tav’s absence had left a hole in their home—a hole in Torval—just as surely as if he’d died or run away. Even here, in this welcoming, warming little closet that served as his bedroom, Torval could not escape that absence, and could not forgive the conditions of it. No matter how cramped the room enclosing him, the hole in the middle of him—the rage within him—seemed as deep and wide as ever.
You’re a fool, he thought. Every son comes of age and makes his own way in the world. Did you really think he’d be here, beside you, on your knee, forever? What a braying, bawling little billy goat you are, Torval.
He had been a fool, should’ve known the day would come. The boy was forty-two years old now and entering puberty. Torval had known that age—that season—would bring with it restlessness, a desire for Tav to buck against his childhood traces and bolt free like an unbroken colt. That was the way of things, and deep down Torval had expected it.
But he hadn’t been ready for Tav’s mode of youthful rebellion—not in the slightest.
What’ll it be, then? Torval had said when Tav finally spoke directly to him. Arms, perhaps? We could squire you to a soldier, someone who makes their home here when not on campaign. Or maybe a trade? Leatherwork? Carpentry?
None of those, Papa, Tav had said. Truth be told, I don’t know what I’d like to be—but if I could, I’d want to learn an art from my own folk … from dwarves.
And Torval had known what that would entail. When a dwarven boy or girl came of age and pursued a trade—accepted their purpose—that was a sacred vow, a dwarf’s first true, adult oath. If Tav wanted to rejoin the dwarven collective, then his father—an outcast and exile who’d separated his son from that world—would have to offer reparations of some sort.
And dwarven reparations were seldom only material in nature. Usually they involved a great deal of groveling, coupled with oaths of obedience.
I should have said no, Torval thought, wishing he could just drift off to sleep but finding it impossible. He hadn’t been prepared for Tav’s willing submission—his actual desire for a return to the fold, to the prescribed paths and fixed regimens of dwarven culture.
I know why we left home, Papa, the boy had said during one of their arguments. But now I’m coming of age and I feel a hole in me—a void I can’t fill. It’s the home we left behind—the people that we’re no longer a part of.
Holes. Voids. Losses. What did that boy know of such things? Did he remember what it had felt like to lose his mother, sister, and brother to orcish steel? To see his father beaten, shorn, and shamed for challenging the very people who should have abetted his vengeance instead of forbidding it? How silent it had been the day they’d all left their home in Bolmakünde, shunned by their neighbors and clan-kin, denied even good tidings or farewells?
Could the boy even comprehend the hole he’d now left in Torval’s heart? How he ached for his son to be back in his life, back in their home, back under his guidance and influence, and not subject to the teachings of the very folk who’d betrayed them and cast them out?
Or that Torval had bought Tav’s desires with his own shame?
What did Tav know of losses and the voids they left? Hadn’t Torval spent the whole of their lives from Olian’s death to the present trying to fill the voids in his children’s hearts with the promise of a wider world, where anything was possible? Where hopes and destinies were not limited by foolish rules and the accidents of birth?
You can’t hold on to him so tightly, Osma had said, more than once. Especially since you’re not afraid that he’ll meet resistance or be cast out, as you were. You’re afraid he’ll love the place he’s found among them. That he’ll choose them over you.
They’ll cast him out, Torval said, or they’ll take all the fire out of him. I’d spare him either fate, if he’d just listen to me!
You can’t spare him anything, Osma snapped w
ith some finality. Hold on to him and lose him, or let him go and keep him. Those are your only choices.
And so, though it galled him—though it pained him to the core—Torval had relented. He’d made his petition. He’d stood, more than once, before the ethnarch’s court and answered its questions about his beliefs, his actions, his loyalties, his past transgressions.
I remember you, Eldgrim, the ethnarch, had said with a grimace on his face and a malign light in his eyes. Torval remembered him as well. He swore he could still feel an itching in the scars on his pate that the ethnarch’s sentence had once given him, all those years ago, long before they ever came to Yenara.
Of course they both remembered. Dwarves never forgot, and never forgave. They were vengeful losers and insufferable winners. And it was there, before the court, in the final meeting they held before deciding Tav’s fate, that the ethnarch had demanded a show of obeisance as a condition of Tav’s fostering and education. Torval had promised many things: coin to pay for Tav’s education, training, and board; that he would bring his family to the temple at least twice each week for rites and prayers; and that he would never again speak ill of their people or their culture, nor speak of the price of his own transgressions, paid so long ago. But those promises weren’t enough for Eldgrim. The ethnarch, wielding power over this half-forgotten, low-grade sinner who hadn’t darkened the doorways of his own people for almost two long decades, had taken the opportunity to demonstrate what cruel and arrogant victors dwarves could be.
One thing remains, he’d said, his sneer almost blooming into a grin.
Torval waited, fearing what would come next.
Kneel, Eldgrim had said. Kneel and prostrate yourself and beg this tribunal for the forgiveness of your sins, exile. Do this, and the stain on your honor will not mark your son.
Torval had faced death a hundred times, but no bloody duel to the death nor brush with the hungry void had ever filled him with as much dread, as much fear, as much red-eyed, tooth-grinding rage, as that simple command.
Kneel.
And what did Torval do? What could he do? Hold on to him and lose him, or let him go and keep him, Osma had said. Those are your only choices.
Torval knew she was right, damn her. So he knelt. He laid himself upon an altar—let those bastards in the ethnarch’s court all but cut his heart out—and he let Tav go. And damned if he didn’t let something else go in himself—something precious that he wasn’t sure he could ever recover.
Thendril’s tits, Torval thought bitterly. There are tears on my pillow.
Fool. Failure.
Coward.
And then, at last, as that last word echoed through his ale-addled, exhausted mind, sleep took Torval, granting a reprieve, however brief, from the ache of that stubborn wound that festered and would not heal.
CHAPTER FIVE
Here they stood: Rem and Indilen, side by side, arms round each other for warmth, gawping like shepherds on their first city sojourn at the wonders of the dwarven quarter. Before them lay a multilevel maze that rose and fell and curled in and out upon itself. Every street was a curious, canopy-covered arcade where the sun’s light penetrated only as a diffuse glow through street-spanning awnings of many-colored silks. Rising above those streets were a series of tiered pyramids, hewn of granite, supporting structures and lanes far above street level, rising in a haphazard arrangement throughout the quarter like handmade hills. Everywhere about them were ramps, stairs, switchbacks, and plazas; there were store-lined streets forty feet above their heads, and still more in deeply recessed pathways twenty or thirty feet below where they stood. And, adorning all these manifold pathways, the unique, austere beauty of dwarven architecture, expressed in multiroofed towers, finely wrought pillars of wood or stone, and delicate, soaring pinnacles and spires—a complex, dizzying geometric arrangement that stunned the two of them to awed silence.
“It’s as if they missed the mountains,” Indilen began.
“So they brought them here,” Rem finished. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
If one studied it on a map of the city—as Rem had once or twice—Yenara’s dwarven quarter seemed rather small. It encompassed six or eight city blocks total, with only one major boulevard running through it, diagonally, crisscrossed by a dozen narrower streets and lanes. But, as Rem had been taught in his youth, and later learned through experience, maps were entirely symbolic and could be misleading. What looked smooth and orderly on parchment was often far more disorienting in the physical world. Such was the dwarven quarter: dense, labyrinthine, tiered, terraced, and possessed of more narrow alleys and pinched side streets than any map could ever show. Hence its evocative nickname: the Warrens.
“What is it they call themselves?” Indilen asked as they walked, Rem’s arm around her shoulder.
“Dwarves collectively?” Rem asked. “They’re the welk, which just means ‘folk’ in their tongue. These dwarves”—he suggested those bustling around them—“are from the Ironwalls, specifically. They’re called the Hallirwelk—Hallir’s Folk.”
“Is Hallir one of their gods?” Indilen asked.
Rem shook his head. Usually she was the one imparting all sorts of fascinating and disparate knowledge to him—yet another of the many things he loved about her. For once—because he’d asked the right questions of Torval—Rem had something to offer her in return. “No,” he continued, “not a god. The first of their line—”
“Like Edath and Yfrain for humans,” Indilen broke in.
“Precisely,” Rem said. “Each dwarven tribe has a name of its own based on the name of its progenitor. The Hallirwelk, the Borthenwelk, the Kjonderwelk—”
“Gods,” Indilen breathed. “Look at the molding above those arches!”
Rem followed her gaze and saw what she spoke of. The dwarves had a proclivity toward a very particular sort of arch for their doorways—neither boldly rounded, like the arches of the desert temples in far Magrabar, nor gracefully pointed, like those employed in the Aemonist temples across the mountains in Warengaith, but bent inward and topped with a flat, narrow lintel. Rem had already seen a dozen such portals in the half block they’d so far strolled through. The detailing above the doorway that Indilen now indicated was stunning indeed—a series of intricate, interlaced, unending knots, not curved, but wrought of hard angles, carved into a panel of dark-gray marble veined with green and white. Drawing, painting, or molding such a design would be challenging enough, but the thought of slowly, patiently chiseling it into that stone, drilling holes without shattering the whole thing, slowly sanding the edges to the smooth, delicate roundness they now possessed—it was mind-boggling.
Rem had always known dwarves to be hewers of stone and makers of mighty things, be they princely halls under soaring mountains or sharp axes to cleave orcish skulls—but he’d never realized how their handicrafts could just as often display patience, delicacy, even whimsy. No wonder Indilen had come here in search of the best nibs for her writing quills.
“Have they always been here?” Indilen asked idly as they carried on. They were not the only tall folk on the crowded street, and they and their human fellows towered among the milling bodies of the enclave’s residents, none of whom were more than two-thirds the height of the conspicuous outsiders moving among them.
“As Torval tells it,” Rem said, “the dwarves first came in large numbers about one hundred and fifty years ago.”
“After the elven resurgence,” Indilen offered, “and the orcish onslaught from the steppes?”
“Exactly,” Rem said. “The Ironwall dwarves lost tens of thousands—men, women, children—and all but expended their food stores and treasure reserves. They were desperate to restock their granaries and replenish their numbers. Meanwhile, Yenara was half-wrecked and in need of quarried stone to rebuild itself—including new, higher city walls. So the two parties made a mutually beneficial arrangement: the dwarves would quarry the great stone blocks needed for Yenara’s restoration and transport them overlan
d to the city, and once the stone had been delivered, the Council of Patriarchs would provide them coin and foodstuffs. They even threw in funding for a few mercenary companies to man the mountain passes and give the dwarven populations in the Ironwalls a chance to bury their dead and sow a new generation.”
Indilen shook her head in disbelief. Her eyes still danced over the strange world bustling around them. “And how long did that take? Hewing all those rocks and shuttling them from the Ironwalls to the coast? That’s more than a hundred miles!” They were passing a pie shop, redolent with the scents of hot buttered pastry, spiced meats, stewing leeks, and sweet candied fruits. Rem was still stuffed to bursting, but he made a mental note of where to find the place; he’d certainly have to find his way back some night when their patrols brought them near here.
“A long time,” Rem said, enjoying his role as historian. “A slow, steady parade, the way Torval described it—a constant stream of massive stones being rolled toward the city on hewn logs, sometimes going no farther than a league or two a day. I think he said the great canal was restored after long neglect just to help get some of those stones here.