The Triumph of the Dwarves

  Natenian tried to catch his breath but was not able to speak. He choked back all recriminations and threats. It was obvious his chosen successor did not approve of his intentions. The successor he had selected and named himself. On a whim.

  Nobody spoke.

  Incredulous eyes were focused on the young woman who was already in place at the top of the table, standing tall and beaming. “I accept your decision,” she said with the sweetest of smiles. “It is better for Tabaîn. But I shall often come and ask for advice, should I need it. I would suggest that a few more privileges for the aristocracy would not go amiss. In honour of the occasion, of course. That is my first decree.”

  Phenîlas turned into a statue whose expression could not be read. But with his eyes he promised Natenian support. The elves had absolutely no wish to enter a new round of negotiations.

  This was a relief to the ruler. Privileges. What a clever piece of work she is. As soon as I’ve got my breath back I’ll send her straight back to where she’s from and from there directly to her death.

  But Cledenia led the cheers, warmly and firm: “Long live Dirisa the First!”

  At that moment Natenian knew that at least two of the nobles had been prepared for this turn of events.

  I was in a quandary.

  To go into endingness?

  To join the älfar resistance?

  Or to stay calm and wait for my time to come?

  It was hard to quash my pride.

  Mallenia will never learn how often I stood secretly at her bedside at night with the metal quill in my hand ready to cut her throat.

  I may be an old älf—but I can do more than my enemies and deriders fear I can.

  Secret notes for

  The Writings of Truth

  written under duress by Carmondai

  III

  Girdlegard

  United Kingdom of Gauragar-Idoslane

  Gauragar

  6492nd solar cycle, early summer

  “Give us another.” Ireheart waved the empty mug that had been roughly carved out of a lump of wood.

  The serving lad nodded. “At once, Master Dwarf. It’s the best from our ice cellar.”

  Ireheart chose not to respond, as his opinion of long’un beer, after ten large beakers of it, was not favourable. It was the colour of piss, tasteless, and had so little effect on his head that he had to down two brandies with each tankard. Puzzlingly, the long’uns seemed to like it cold, as cold as if it came straight from a glacier. It froze his teeth and numbed his palate.

  He sat at a long table in the smoky atmosphere of the main drinking room of Gauragar’s courier way-station, located at the crossroads where a southern branch joined the main east–west route. Candles and soot-covered lamps gave the dimmest of light but this did not bother him.

  The captain of the couriers had allowed the dwarf in to take a rest with no idea who he was. Ireheart did not let on. As long as he had coins in his pocket and could pay for his keep, they would leave him in peace.

  The beer arrived and he mumbled a thank you to the skinny lad in charge of the bar.

  You little so-and-so! Ireheart stared at the capsules he had collected. Absentmindedly he twisted his beard into two braids and fastened the ends together with a silver clasp. How am I going to get you open? For four orbits now he had been trying to open the casings, but they resisted every attempt; it made little difference whether he hit them with a hammer or fiddled patiently with the catch. He was starting to think it was a practical joke.

  The inscription FOR IREHEART in large dwarf runes mocked him.

  “What’ve you got there, Master Dwarf? A puzzle?” The dark-haired youth wearing his innkeeper’s long leather apron had come back to the table. “Sorry if I’m being nosy. But we’ve seen you working at it for quite a time. Everybody’s wondering what it is.”

  Ireheart threw his head back and laughed. “Vraccas! I may be dim but I’m providing entertainment for the entire place.”

  “That’s true,” the boy grinned back at him.

  “And who are you, you cheeky beggar?”

  “I’m Heidor.”

  Ireheart patted the seat next to him. “Right, Heidor Big Mouth. These capsules—I can’t get them open.”

  “What’s inside?” Heidor sat down, his eyes sparkling.

  “Haven’t got the foggiest.”

  “And what’s this writing say?”

  “My name.” Ireheart crossed his arms and grinned. “Alright, clever clogs, what do you make of it?”

  Heidor weighed the capsules in his hands and spun them on the tabletop. “Uneven. Either one part is thicker or there’s something heavy inside,” he said enthusiastically.

  “I’m way ahead of you on that.”

  Heidor swept them off the table, observing how they fell. They clinked and rolled around and ended up with the runes underneath.

  “Hmm.” The youth picked them back up and looked closely at one. “There are no scratches even though you banged it with the hammer.”

  “It’s an alloy with a high tionium content.” It appealed to Ireheart to have company as he tried to solve the puzzle. Reaching into his pocket, he took out his small travel pipe and filled it with honey tobacco. Heidor brought him a lighted spill. Makes the beer taste better.

  “Some new couriers have arrived, yes? There’s been a lot of coming and going recently, hasn’t there?” He blew out the flame on the spill and put it down on the table. “What’s been happening in Girdlegard?”

  Heidor filled him in without taking his eyes off the capsules. “King Natenian’s brother has been killed. A beast attacked him and his friends.” The boy was set on solving the puzzle. “It’s said one of them was devoured whole. Not a trace left.”

  Swallowed whole, my foot. A lie spread about the fate of the brave soldier he had encountered. He escaped, that’s what. Ireheart had buried the warrior next to the oak tree and had taken the signet ring as proof of having met him.

  The dwarf had dismembered the monster and chucked the pieces into the stream. He didn’t want word to get around there had been a fight. If what the injured Tabaîn soldier told him was true, it seemed the elves were playing their own treacherous game and involving some of the humans. It might be up to the dwarves to save the day.

  Not again, Vraccas. It’s only been a few cycles. First Tion sends that child from the Outer Lands and now the elves are playing false again. “What was the king’s brother doing at the time?”

  “Courtesy visit of some kind.”

  “Then Natenian’s still king of Tabaîn?” Ireheart puffed at his pipe, sending a stream of smoke up to the blackened rafters where clothes hung to dry. They would carry a nice smell of smoked bacon, for sure.

  “It seemed so, but then we heard there was a new successor, a woman.” Heidor was engrossed in his task. “Why don’t you ask the couriers? Over there. They’ll know.”

  Ireheart got up and clapped the youth on the shoulder with enough force to nearly knock him off his chair. He weaved his way over to the bar, where a couple of men, one blond, one dark, were helping themselves to beer from the new barrel, not wanting to wait for the landlord. The two men wore sweaty loose-fitting shirts and brown leather trousers and they had unlaced their boots for comfort. They had washed their faces but their clothes were covered in dust from the ride.

  “Tell me the latest. What’s the news in Tabaîn?” The dwarf placed a silver coin on the counter. “Drinks on me. The king: he’s been chucked out?”

  “That’s right, friend Short Leg.” The blond rider grinned. “Thanks. Shan’t forget it.” They raised their tankards. “To the health of Girdlegard’s protectors.”

  Short Leg, eh? Ireheart seethed. “So who’s made a play for the throne?”

  The dark-haired one mimed a feminine role. “Her Graciousness Dirisa, a distant relative of Astirma’s.”

  “Good impression.”

  “He can do a dwarf, too,” the blond one joked.

  “If he w
alks on his knees,” Ireheart quipped. “I can help out with my axe if he likes. We can give him the end of a cow’s tail for a beard.” He gave a belly laugh and the others joined in. They seemed to have had more than the one beer.

  The dark-haired courier began to speak again. “Natenian was going to abdicate, people say, and he was looking for a suitable successor among the nobility.”

  “Dirisa seized her chance,” the other continued. “Nobody knows quite what the actual situation is.”

  “Simple enough in my eyes: Natenian’s on the throne and he’s calling himself king. So he can have a usurper put to death,” Ireheart cut in. “Hasn’t anyone suggested that? You long’uns always take the long way round, don’t you?”

  The dark-haired one had a conspiratorial expression. He leaned in. “There’s said to be a secret about the royal family that’s preventing Natenian from wielding power.” He spat into the fire. “Else Dirisa would have been out on her ear.”

  “Their family tree, perhaps?” Ireheart drank from his tankard, clamped his pipe between his teeth and got a refill, tipping the brandy in. “It’s been only one cycle since the last war. Nobody’s going to be mad enough to start another one in the kingdoms,” he mumbled past his pipe stem. Unless, of course, he’d something to gain.

  He was always keen to believe in the humans’ power of reasoning, but found it hard. Mallenia and Rodario he was prepared to trust. To a point. But ever since that child had turned up at court in Grandcastle, they’d been less reliable.

  “I expect someone will get rid of her,” the blond rider mooted. “The nobles can’t agree, I hear. They wonder if Dirisa might be better for Girdlegard in the end.” He raised his beer in a salute to the company. “It’s all up in the air over there with our neighbours. I’m sure to get some despatches to bring over soon.”

  “I don’t care who’s in power as long as they give us some of their corn,” his friend laughed.

  Grain! That’ll be why the elves are interfering in Tabaîn events. Ireheart stroked his beard braids thoughtfully. “Thank you, gentlemen. That’s got me up to date. Now go and get washed, the pair of you. You stink to high heaven, you do. Could easily have mistaken you for orcs. It might have ended badly.” He returned to his table with a smile on his face, wanting to see if Heidor had made any progress. “Hey, stupid, how’re you getting on?”

  Taken by surprise at the deep dwarf voice, Heidor fell off his seat. He got up, ruefully rubbing his behind. “I tried puzzling it out but then I resorted to brute force, like you did.”

  “Best leave brute force to me.” Ireheart helped the boy to his feet and patted him on the shoulder. “Get me another spill for my pipe.”

  Heidor hobbled over to the fireplace.

  The dwarf watched him. His mind was full of swirling thoughts: the capsules, the child, the dead warrior, the lies the elves were spreading. I’m not getting anywhere with any of this.

  The dark-haired despatch rider chucked two logs on the fire, sending up sparks. There was a sizzling when the man sent a gout of saliva onto the embers.

  Of course! He had a sudden inspiration and drained his tankard in one.

  “Heidor,” he bellowed, startling the other drinkers and rattling the plates. “I’ll be in the blacksmith’s. Bring me a sack of ice. And some beer.” He bent down to pick up the capsules then hurried out.

  “And some brandy. And make it quick.”

  At the back of the shed, the brazier still had glowing charcoal in it; the dwarf used his foot on the bellows to stoke up the heat. He laid his pipe aside.

  Sparks shot up as Ireheart piled on more coals, spreading them out with a poker. A chain device on the main bellows quickly helped bring the temperature up.

  He placed the capsules in the fire and continued to blast air at the coals, which were now white-hot. They would have melted conventional iron and even good steel, but the two containers showed no sign of being affected by the heat. They did not change shape nor did any additional runes become visible.

  But that was not what Ireheart had been hoping for.

  Heidor came across the courtyard with a plump jute sack on his back. The contents crunched like fresh snow. “Your ice, Master Dwarf.”

  “In that tub over there.” Ireheart wiped salty drops from his brow before the sweat could run into his eyes. “Now for the beer and the brandy, lad.”

  The ice fragments floated in the horse trough.

  “At once, Master Dwarf.”

  Using tongs, Ireheart lifted the metal capsules from the glowing bed of coals and tossed them into the water, where they sank into the fragments of ice.

  He fished them out, placed them on the anvil and hit them with the heaviest hammer the smithy afforded; he turned his face away to avoid injury from flying metal splinters. The sudden change in temperature had placed the metal under extreme stress and with a loud bang, the containers shattered into several pieces.

  “Huzzah!” he crowed, looking at the two white-hot palladium discs on the anvil. They had absorbed the heat but had not melted inside their cocoon. Evil protects the good. Ireheart used the hammer to sweep the discs into the ice bath to cool off so he could study them. Clouds of steam rose up as the metal sank to the bottom. That looks like the Scholar’s work.

  It was clear to him that these were messages from Tungdil even if reason dictated caution: the messages might have been sent on their way before the Scholar died.

  Heidor came hurrying back with beer and brandy. He noticed the metal splinters on the anvil. “You’ve done it!”

  “I should have thought of it sooner.” Ireheart picked up his pipe and fished a piece of glowing coal out with the tongs to reignite the tobacco.

  The youth hopped from one foot to the other impatiently. “And? What was inside, then?”

  Ireheart puffed out a cloud of smoke, hiding his face and making Heidor cough. “Nothing.”

  ‘Nothing?”

  “Just air.” He regretted having to lie to the youth who had been so helpful and eager, but it really wasn’t any of his business. “The secret was in working out how to open it.”

  “Oh.” Heidor looked very disappointed. “So I’ve lost my wager.”

  “What wager?”

  “They were betting on whether you’d be able to break it open, and, if so, what would be inside.”

  Ireheart puffed away at his pipe and rewarded himself for his hard work with a mouthful of honey-flavoured beer. “And what did you predict?”

  “A magic diamond.”

  The dwarf smiled broadly and put his tankard down on the anvil, gathered the various bits of the tionium alloy casing and pressed them into the boy’s hands. “It’s not a diamond, but almost as valuable. Sell it to a swordsmith. He’ll know its worth and will pay you for it.” He grabbed the boy by the collar. “But not a word to the others. Or it’ll be nicked before you know it.”

  “Of course, Master Dwarf!” Heidor was profuse in his thanks as he stowed the metal carefully in his apron pocket. “May Vraccas heap blessings on you.” He took the tankard. “I’ll bring you another.” He hurried off to the main building.

  Good lad. Ireheart smiled and pulled at the mouthpiece of the pipe, releasing grey-blue smoke. As soon as he had been given the promised refreshment, he sent Heidor off, claiming he wanted to stay in the forge for a while: perfectly natural behaviour for a dwarf.

  Once he was alone he fished out the coin-sized palladium discs and took them into the depths of the shed. Meticulously-crafted dwarf runes covering the surface were just visible in the light of the forge.

  What will you be telling me? Ireheart was afraid his dearest hopes would melt away like a wax mould in the flames.

  He rubbed the thin metal with his thumb.

  He had waited so long, had railed against fate, had given in to doubt—but this could be the proof he had longed for. Proof that the great hero of Girdlegard was still alive and that it had been something else that had died by the Black Abyss, killed by the axe Ke
enfire in Kiras’ hand.

  A something that had not been a true Child of the Smith.

  Ireheart was convinced for a long time that he had been the reason the blade’s diamonds had lit up. All because of the dreadful zhadár elixir he had tasted; it had been produced with the dark arts of the älfar using distilled älf blood. The magic blade had recognised the evil within him, not Tungdil. So he had thought. But in the cycles that followed, he had started to wonder. He put his hopes on Vraccas sending some miracle to save his lost friend, the Scholar.

  Ireheart took a deep breath, put his pipe down and took a final draught of beer. “Father of all the dwarves, I beseech you: restore him to me,” he whispered.

  His chestnut brown eyes focused on the runes.

  His heart thumping in his chest, he scanned the message by the light of the forge’s glow.

  Girdlegard

  Black Mountains

  Kingdom of the Thirdling dwarves

  Eastern Gate

  6492nd solar cycle, early summer

  Grey-haired Rognor Mortalblow stood next to his friend and king and looked down from the battlements to where, one hundred paces away, the eastern gate to Girdlegard stood.

  The fortress had been hewn out of the cliff in the shape of the helmeted head of a dwarf, through whose open mouth travellers would pass. If the upper half and the lower half of the gates closed, like a nutcracker, those outside would see the grim sharp teeth of sharp-edged steel.

  All the arrow slits and the outlets for heated pitch, burning oil or other liquids were cunningly concealed about the stone face. When the fortress was constructed, iron and steel vertical and horizontal beams had been incorporated within the balustrades. No battering ram had been able to breach the walls in recent cycles and no bombardment had been able to inflict serious damage.

  Behind the fortress a sheer cliff of glass-like basalt reared up: it looked as if Vraccas had tried to thrust the mountain peak up through the clouds to tower to the stars. Polished surfaces mirrored and focused the dazzling sunshine and reflected it back down on the open plain in front of the entrance like the light of the night constellations. Light could be a useful weapon. Now in the early afterzenith, the rows of granite-black teeth were wide open and the banners above the portal fluttered a welcome to all arriving with peaceful intent.