by Dale Lucas
Torval shook his head. Shrugged. Threw his hands in the air again. “I have no idea. I only know I’d like to see all their smug faces pressed into the mud. Slap manacles on the lot of them and give them a nice long walk of shame back to the watchkeep. Let the dungeons soften them up for a few days or a week …”
“You know that won’t help,” Rem said. “All that cack he threw at us about the largesse of the guild and how much the locals owe them—it might have been tacky, but it was absolutely true. If they’re that closely bound to the neighborhood and its people, arresting them just to terrorize them won’t help us. Far from it, in fact.”
“I know,” Torval spat. “Believe me, I know. But oh, how it galls me …”
The dwarf was shaking. A rage had bloomed inside him, but it had nowhere to go. Rem knew it well, for he’d seen it in Torval before. The only cure for it was a brisk walk, some persistent silence, and—if their luck held out—perhaps a crime to foil or a perp to run down before they made it back to the watchkeep. Such a distraction, right about now, would serve Torval nicely. So Rem shut his mouth, kept his feet moving along at the same quick step that Torval had established, and prayed to all the gods of the Panoply that, somewhere between the Stonemason’s Guildhall and the Fifth Ward watchkeep, there was a footpad or purse snatcher on a collision course with the two of them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“I see you’ve turned the library into a hermitage,” Therba said.
Bjalki raised his eyes, her voice yanking him out of a waking dream. The old docent had approached without a sound, and now she stood just on the other side of the table from him, bright eyes smiling in her lined, round face, its many creases and liver spots darkened in the dim candlelight.
“Good reading?” she asked, her eyes sweeping over the works arrayed before him.
Bjalki managed a weary smile. “In truth,” he said, “ponderous.”
He’d been poring over the texts before him for hours—so many hours, he’d lost count. He sat at one of the study tables, walled in behind a great collection of dusty old codices, bound scrolls, and ancient, flat stone tablets, inscribed by chisel in bygone ages, now housed in ornate wooden chests. Two lonely candles burned in the vast darkness of the library, just enough for dwarven eyes to read by; far more comfortable, in fact, than the brighter light a human might require. They were subterranean folk, after all, bred to a sunless world. Night vision was one of their greatest inherent gifts.
“Everyone’s been wondering where you disappeared to,” Therba said, drawing a chair out from the table. She laid aside her ceremonial stave—mostly used as a walking stick—and sat. “What have you been reading?” The docent sat, silent, clearly awaiting an explanation but too tactful to force it.
Bjalki stared at her for a moment. Though Therba was at least a century and a half older than Bjalki himself, something in her—her sternness, her kindness, her practicality, her hard-won wisdom—yet reminded him of his wife, hundreds of leagues away. Those were the responsibilities of dwarven clerics appointed to an ethnarch’s court: to tend to the administrative needs of the local ethnarch and the spiritual needs of the dwarves in residence, without familial distractions to undermine their clerical duties. It was good work—important work—both rewarding and sanctified, with only a single downside: separation from one’s family, however temporary it might be.
It had always been thus, those years apart from their families a rite of passage in the lives of many young priests and priestesses working their way up the ecclesiastical hierarchy, reinforcing in both their hearts and the hearts of their families that not only were the needs of their people placed before their own wants and desires, but also that, whether at home or abroad, dwarves could and should always rely on one another, as a great, extended family. Love between spouses mattered, as did the devotion of parents for their children, and children for their parents—but kinship—dwarfhood, in its largest sense—was the greatest allegiance any of them could know. Everything else paled beside it.
Bjalki had never questioned the validity of those values. But suddenly, reminded of his wife and children and their distance from him, he felt a pang within—sharp, palpable, like a knife in his gut. He wanted to feel Wettelin’s strong arms around him, the warmth of his three daughters as they all jostled and scrambled for a place on his lap. Only they could give him the strength he needed to see to his duties here, to be an asset to his people, to earn his way home.
“Bless me,” Therba said, almost to herself. “He’s lost the power of speech.”
Bjalki smiled in spite of his melancholy. “My apologies,” he said. “I came to study and to pray, hoping maybe I could be of use.”
Therba cocked her head. “Do you not feel of use, presently?”
He started to answer, but the words evaporated before he’d uttered them. In the end all he could do was raise his hands in a silent question and let his eyes skate over the tomes and texts scattered before him. “As I am the auspice,” he said, “Lord Eldgrim told me outright that I should read the signs and portents for him. Tease out the future. Determine a course of action.”
“He wants a resolution?” Therba asked.
Bjalki shook his head. “He wants a weapon. He wants … an edge. He wants to know that whatever he decides, he is justified in doing so.”
“And you will find such things in these?” Therba asked, suggesting the litter before him.
Bjalki shrugged. “I’ve always felt that what’s to come is already written in what’s past. When I study the chronicles and legends, it seems to stir something in me … give me some sense of what to do in the moment, in answer to the crisis of the day.”
Docent Therba’s mouth twisted at its corners, the barest hint of a smile. Bjalki knew what came next. She was about to question him, to lead him toward a debate with himself that would, with luck, reveal some wisdom that lay still undiscovered, right under his nose. Wettelin often did the same.
“And what,” the docent said, “do you see as the crisis of the day? What troubles you, that you’d sequester yourself in here and pore over all these moldy old tomes?”
Bjalki leaned forward, fingers laced before him. “It feels as though we’re on the edge of something,” he said. “A precipice of sorts. What we do next could yank us back from it, or send us plunging over. I’m simply trying to tease out which action is best—the retreat or the plunge.”
“What do you think?” the docent asked, then hastily added, “And stop holding out on me, Bjalki. It’s just the two of us. This is not a clerical conclave, nor a privy council meeting with the ethnarch. This is two colleagues talking.”
Bless her for saying so. Bjalki had both great affection and great respect for Docent Therba. She was the finest docent—the finest priest or priestess, period—he had ever known. When others feared, she hoped. When others rested, she worked. When others squabbled and separated, she alone undertook the hard work of mediation in search of some accord. Old Hrothwar, the sage, was often too prickly and aloof to treat with meaningfully, while Arbiter Haefred seemed forever in search of a solution, but resistant to first probing and defining the problem. But Docent Therba, she was the best of their ill-matched quartet—the mortar that bound the bricks, the keystone that kept the arch from collapsing. She could even get Eldgrim, their stubborn and quarrelsome ethnarch, to examine his words and change his frequently unchangeable mind. For lesser miracles, dwarves had been deified.
“This business with the temple contract,” Bjalki said, “the riot, the fire … it frightens me, Docent. From such humble sparks come terrible conflagrations.”
“What remedy do you seek, then?” Therba asked, indicating the books and scrolls and tablets strewn about. “What have the histories and legends told you?”
“They’ve told me that the price of impatience is often high,” he said. “But often the price of hesitation is equally so. The hell of it is in discerning which is called for, and when. Perhaps I’m just inclined to pessi
mism at the moment, but all I find, time and again as I peruse the annals, are small conflicts that bloomed into ruinous wars, blood feuds that claimed generations of combatants, cycles of vengeance and retribution that were only broken when all offending parties were finally dead, and none left to thirst for more blood.”
“But such is the nature of our people,” Therba said. “‘Let every wrong endured plant the seed of retribution, but pick not the fruit until it is sweet and ripe.’” It was a quote from the Pillars of Kondela—their holiest text—specifically from the Chronicles of Wengrol, the warrior demigod whose exploits and conquests made him the eternal paragon of dwarven masculinity.
Those words—so cold, so absolute—seemed almost unholy when spoken by one whose heart was as open and understanding as Therba’s. And yet … they were holy writ, were they not? From his childhood—from his earliest memory—Bjalki had been taught that vengeance—the righting of wrongs, however slight, however long past—was a holy endeavor, a sanctified mandate. That was the only way that evil was quelled and wickedness punished. For every wrong, someone was responsible, and that someone must pay the price in order to restore and redeem the world. It was a given, like the passage of seasons or the strength of stone or the warmth of the sun. Some human gods and sages—the riven and reconciled Aemon, to name but one—taught that forgiveness and reconciliation were not just graceful practices or moral imperatives, but necessary for spiritual and mental health, the only way to strip evil and wrongdoing of their ultimate power over one’s life. But most dwarves, even if pressed or engaged in a reasonable debate, could not truly embrace such thinking.
“I fear for our people,” Bjalki said finally. “Our place in this world—the world of men—is precarious and risky. We are at their mercy if we do not guard and defend ourselves.”
“True,” Therba said.
“But must our dealings with men be so … hostile? So guarded and distrustful?”
“I’ve often asked myself that same question,” Therba said, smiling thoughtfully. “I cannot number the times I’ve urged patience, understanding—even a pause for breath before action—and been ignored.”
“Perhaps we’re weak,” Bjalki said.
“Who is weak?” Therba asked.
Bjalki studied her. There was a new light in her eyes now—inquisitive, guarded. “We,” he said, as though it were obvious. “You and I. Those like us. The peacemakers. We lack something that our kin have naturally, a combative instinct we must forever go in search of.”
“Do you really think that’s true?” Therba asked him, leaning forward.
“It must be,” Bjalki said. “The scriptures say so. My family and clan always said so. Truth be told, I would not count my openheartedness as a deficiency, but … the world seems to. So I must find a way to be of service with the strengths I do possess—knowledge, discernment—and leave better dwarves to lead the way when action is called for.”
Therba stared at him. As though urging him to offer more—to better justify himself. Taken by a sudden inspiration, Bjalki plunged on.
“Consider the Book of Ormunda,” he said, indicating the great dusty pile of parchment and leather before him. “In those days war was endless. Our people suffered so much, they finally tried to put it all behind them. They put away their swords and their axes and their shields and they made a concerted effort to live in peace with the world. And what was their reward? Slaughtered by orcs. Enslaved by elves. Raided and robbed by men. Only Ormunda the Red saw how weak we’d become, how vulnerable. She showed our people the way—”
“She summoned demons from the Fires of the Forge Eternal,” Therba said sharply, “and reanimated the dead with those unclean spirits. The blood those monsters spilt has stained the hands of our people for five thousand years.”
“But they fulfilled their purpose,” Bjalki countered. “They gave our people strength and resolve when they had none. And they enacted the worst punishments—the most terrible depredations—upon our enemies, so that, in the end, we did not have to.”
“Do you think that absolved Ormunda?” Therba asked pointedly. “Savior or no, she blighted us. She damned herself. Do not lift her up as a hero, Bjalki. Even in her own tale, she is the villain.”
Bjalki shook his head. “Perhaps,” he said. “But she made a choice, and that choice saved our people, even if it ultimately damned her.”
“Is that what Eldgrim wants?” Therba asked. “An army of Kothrum? Foul spirits to do his dirty work for him?” She uttered the old name for those demons of vengeance as though it were a curse just to speak it.
Bjalki said nothing.
Therba took a deep breath, sat back in her chair, then folded her hands in her lap. “I would urge you, Bjalki, to have more faith in yourself—and certainly to have more faith in me.”
“Docent, I meant no disrespect,” he said. “To call you weak—”
“To call yourself weak!” she said. “It was not the insult that hurt me, but your inability to trust your own heart above words recited by rote and traditions clung to without understanding.”
Bjalki stared at her. The docent’s words bordered on blasphemy. Trust one’s own reason over the scriptures? Trust instinct over received wisdom? “I don’t understand,” he said, and he truly didn’t.
“We are not weak when we ask questions, Bjalki. Nor when we feel compassion, nor when we strive to change things. It is in those moments that we are strongest, for we are pushing against forces set in motion before we ever took our first breath. Each thing has its season—its purpose. If we are endowed by the gods with reason, then that reason must be vital to some part of our existence. If we are blessed by the gods with compassion and understanding, then there must be times when they are not just puzzling eccentricities but cardinal virtues. Remember that Wengrol the Warrior is just one of the Givers of the Law, Bjalki—not alone, complete unto himself.”
“Even believing so,” Bjalki said, “how can I make them listen? I’m the youngest of the Clerical Council. I’m no one.”
“Make them listen,” Docent Therba said slowly. “They may not take your advice, but do not let them move forward without it. Your silence may be far more damning than your failure to conform to their expectations.”
Bjalki shook his head again. He understood why she was arguing—pressing him to both better understand and challenge himself—but it still frustrated him. “Docent, even if I could make them listen, at this moment I know not what to tell them.” He fell back in his chair and stared at the great many old books and scrolls arrayed before him—the history of the world through the eyes of his people. The stories were vast and various, some thrilling, some torturous, but all, seemingly, bent toward the same ultimate assurance.
“Tell me, then,” Therba said. “Say it to me, just to hear it said.”
Bjalki drew a deep breath. Sighed. Swallowed heavily, his throat dry as a creek bed in late summer.
“If the annals are to be believed,” Bjalki said, unable to raise his eyes and face the docent, “then we are beasts, one and all. Men, dwarves, elves … we all believe we’ve left the savage primeval lands of our birth behind. That our gods have taken our hands and lifted us up, even above the others we share this world with. But we haven’t ascended far. We still fight over piles of acorns, or a bit of scavenged flesh. The beasts of the primeval past still live in us, and no amount of tall towers or paved streets or finely wrought bric-a-brac seems to placate them.”
Therba nodded. “Well said. If you see this—if you believe it—why, then, don’t you say as much to the ethnarch when he asks for your advice?”
“Because,” Bjalki answered, “though the beast often leads us into temptation, it can also save us when we’re threatened or cornered. Who am I to say that now is the time for peace—for understanding—when the beast may be all that is called for? All that will save us?”
Now, hearing those words spoken aloud—speaking them himself, from his own sickened heart—Bjalki was overtaken
by a terrible gloom. How long and deep were the oceans of history that they bobbed upon? How many men, dwarves, elves, and orcs had lived and died since the first stirrings? And in all that time, over all those untold eons and through all those uncounted generations—had any of them really improved? Did they fight any less? Succumb to greed with less frequency? Sow charity and compassion and concord instead of discord and hatred and fear and destruction?
It seemed there was no beating the beast. There was only feeding it, keeping it placated, until the time came to unleash it …
He felt Therba’s hand on his. When had she bent forward and moved closer to him? How long had her warm, soft hand been resting there, on top of his own? He looked up into the docent’s eyes and saw that she stared down at him with a great welling up of pity and understanding. She seemed to despair for him and believe in him all at once.
“At least,” she said, “you are still asking questions. In that there is hope.”
And then, without another word, she left him. Bjalki sat there, alone in the night-darkened library, for a long time, basking in the silence, contemplating his own restive doubts and fears.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Though Ondego had cleared them for a late arrival—providing they questioned the stonemasons on the way in—Rem and Torval somehow managed to stroll into the administrative chamber of the watchkeep more or less when they normally would have. Expecting the familiar bustle of the closing day shift, the routine grumbling and easy indolence of his fellows on the just-arriving night shift, Rem was most surprised to find the administrative chamber packed to the gills—day- and nightshifters alike—and uncomfortably quiet.
“Wengrol’s beard,” Torval muttered, “Who died?”
Rem could only shrug. They wended their way through the crowd, searching for one of their closer compatriots to glean some sense of what was unfolding, what everyone was waiting for. In moments they stumbled upon Djubal and Klutch, the partners haunting the desk at the corner of the room that Rem and Torval normally favored as their perch for nightly briefings.