Dragons & Dwarves

  Be rational, damn it.

  It was tied to the salt. The salt that I had given to Kawata, the salt that Ossian had given to me.

  “This was why he killed himself.”

  Mazurich had led the dwarves into the salt mines. Mazurich and the dwarves had formed Magetech. The point of Magetech was to exploit the influence of the Portal, to apply twenty-first century science and engineering to it, or vice versa . . .

  What kind of resource would that salt be?

  I thought back to when I received the package. How my satellite and phone reception went, despite the filters for normal background mana. How Dr. Kawata complained about his brand-new spectrometer failing. The camera on my phone failing at Thor’s Hammer, and at the Nazgûl.

  The white circle around Ossian’s remains.

  Potential.

  Implication.

  Nothing solid . . .

  I wanted to talk to Dr. Pretorious.

  The man I called was a private investigator of a rather specialized variety. His name was Quintin Valentino, and he didn’t stake anyone out, didn’t take incriminating pictures, didn’t even own a gun. As far as I knew, the guy lived in his office. But you could give him a first name and where the person worked, and he could come back with a credit report, tax records, arrest record, and résumé.

  “Quint?”

  “Kline, darling. How long has it been . . . ?”

  “Too long. Can you look someone up for me?”

  “On your account? Anyone you want.”

  “Name’s Pretorious. Dr. Eric Pretorious.”

  “Please tell me you can spell that.”

  I gave him the spelling from my notes.

  “Any other identifiers?”

  “Worked at, probably part owner of, a company called Magetech.”

  “Well, that won’t be too hard. Tomorrow soon enough?”

  “Yes, fine.”

  I hung up my cell phone as I drove up one of Solon’s snaking industrial pathways. Solon was one of the outer suburban nets that caught a lot of the industry shaken loose from the Cleveland metropolitan economy in the last quarter of the twentieth century. It was the closest of a cluster of suburbs whose combination of undeveloped acreage—read “farms”—and attractive real estate taxes attracted large box warehouses and factories like a presidential campaign attracted unreasonable promises.

  I drove by windowless boxes made of concrete and corrugated steel, squatting in the midst of floodlit asphalt. Semi trucks backed into loading bays—industrial young sucking the teats of their mother. Every few moments, a tractor trailer would drive past me, going in the opposite direction. The side panels advertised kitchen cabinets, soft drinks, or auto parts.

  At the end of the road sat my destination.

  The Magetech factory/warehouse complex wrapped around the end of the street so completely that it was able to build its massive logo into the island in the center of the cul-de-sac.

  I pulled into a small visitor’s parking lot under the watchful eye of a security camera. I sat in my car and looked around, trying to get a sense of the place. The scale was huge. Easily several hundred acres. A half dozen separate buildings were immediately visible, each marked with standardized runes which could be wards, or could simply be some form of building markers. I could also see runes on the plowed surface of the main parking lot.

  The lot was down a long driveway from the five visitor spots, wrapped in chain-link, and protected by a guard shack where a single uniformed dwarf sat, eyeing me suspiciously. The lot was mostly empty except for a quartet of charter buses, all bearing the Magetech logo.

  As I got out of the Volkswagen, I saw thirty or forty dwarves dressed in overalls and hard hats exit one of the buildings and head toward one of the buses. I heard their guttural conversations drift my way, and slow to a stop as they reached the bus and more of them saw me.

  It felt as if they all stared at me as they queued up to board the bus.

  Okay, I’m out of place here. We’ve established that.

  I wanted to see more of Magetech, and I was holding the hope that Mr. Lucas’ uncharacteristic openness would filter down to the factory floor. Seeing the dwarves react to me made me second-guess that idea.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t be here,” I whispered in a puff of fog.

  I managed to shock myself by voicing such an unprofessional thought. I was still suffering from the aftereffects of my visit to the corporate office. I was expecting some evil premonition, some sort of nasty mana overload to raise the small hairs on my neck.

  Fortunately, I didn’t sense much of anything.

  That made me wonder what was at the corporate office that made me react so badly. It couldn’t be raw mana, considering what Magetech did here. I couldn’t imagine there’d be less concentration here than downtown.

  I took a few deep breaths, became a journalist again, and walked into the front office.

  The name Simon Lucas was good for opening doors. Enough so that I had the sense that I was expected. After I showed my credentials and did a little strategic name-dropping, I soon had a bright-blue engraved visitor ID and a tour guide.

  I was surprised that the foreman who got the job to show me around happened to be human—though he was as grizzled as any dwarf. “You keep that ID on you, boy, or security will hit you.” He reminded me of an old shop teacher.

  On our way to one of the factories, I got a glimpse of some of the security he was talking about. Not only were there double rows of razor-wire topped chain-link surrounding the compound, but they had some really impressive guard dogs. A Rottweiler is intimidating enough, but give one an extra two hundred pounds of muscle and an extra head or two, and you had a pretty good deterrent against industrial espionage.

  My guide didn’t need to tell me to stay on the path behind him.

  The first building I saw was an assembly plant. We walked along a path, safely behind a thick sheet of glass. My guide expressed some pride in the vast space beyond which was filled with a forest of industrial robots undergoing strange repetitive gyrations. He explained that the line I watched was the ultimate in flexibility, the same robots that put together cell phones one day could put together wide-screen TVs the next.

  The flexibility was necessary, since ninety percent of Magetech’s production was retrofitting third-party electronics. Most of what this line did was disassembly of some brand-name device, insertion of Magetech’s patented hardware, and reassembly.

  The robots themselves were unusual. I could see glyphs engraved along the arm, and most of them sat inside a protective circle of some sort. I looked closely, and judging by the swinging gestures and unnatural glow, a few were actually casting some sort of spell over the finished products—HP laptops at the moment.

  I peppered the guy with questions, and, fortunately he didn’t seem to mind answering them. A lot of what I asked was a matter of confirming background details. I didn’t bring up Nina’s rumors since I doubted that would be productive at the moment.

  However, I looked down and saw a trio of dwarves working on one of the robots whose glyphs glowed an unhealthy green and I asked, “You employ a lot of dwarves?”

  He nodded. “They can work safely around hazardous mana levels.”

  I looked down again at the shop floor, and the robot the dwarves worked on belched a noxious looking cloud of green smoke. “If it’s not safe down there . . .”

  “How can we be up here?” He knocked on the glass. “One of our developments, mana shielding. All the radiation is confined inside this building.”

  I looked at the glass, trying to see what he was talking about. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  My guide laughed. “A lot of what we do here would be impossible without it.”

  “How’s it work?”

  “Trade secret—suffice to say it came from the study of dwarven mana resistance.”

  “I see . . .” So, perhaps there was more to the fact that Dr. Shafran had no dwarves willing to
be examined.

  He took me around to see a clean room where chips were etched and enchanted, and a few warehouses where boxes waited to be shipped across northeast Ohio.

  Everywhere dwarves worked, they gave me the evil eye. My guide made sure to steer me away from any employees. Judging by the way they reacted, I couldn’t tell if the foreman was trying to hide something, or if he was protecting me.

  It was late evening when I parked at my condo, trying to tell myself to take a break. The story would wait until the morning.

  Fate, the Oracle, or just plain old bad luck had other plans.

  When I stepped out of my Volkswagen and saw the lights on in my apartment, I knew there was a problem. I don’t leave the lights on, as a rule. And as I slowly walked toward the lobby, I didn’t see Willie, the doorman, anywhere around.

  Not a good sign.

  I hit the speed-dial on my cell phone; it rang once. “Cleveland Police Department.”

  I had a couple of thoughts about who might be knocking around my apartment, and was checking on the first possibility. “Can you connect me to the Special Paranormal Unit? Commander Caledvwlch, please.”

  The phone rang.

  I got Caledvwlch’s voice mail, which was just as well. “This is Kline Maxwell. It’s ten after eight on Friday, I’m at my condo, and if you’re not waiting in my apartment, either I’m about to be jumped or the FBI is about to haul me in for questioning about your dead dwarf.”

  I pushed my way into the lobby, and I wasn’t particularly surprised when a gentleman in a dark suit stepped up to me and said, “Mr. Maxwell, come with me, please.”

  I hung up.

  My apartment was Fed central. Half a dozen dark-suited men were poking around every corner of my condo, and judging by the state it was in, they had arrived a few minutes after I had left to see Dr. Shafran. They had easily put a good two hours into trashing the place.

  They’d opened closets, rummaged through drawers, and right now they were in the process of pointing various arcane charms at the walls and the furniture.

  “And what can I do for you?” I asked as my escort unceremoniously deposited me on my couch.

  “Hey . . .” I stood up, only to be pushed back down by another suit.

  I looked up at them. “You know, some sort of ID would be nice, not to mention a warrant.”

  “Still as cooperative as ever, aren’t you, Mr. Maxwell?”

  The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place it until the speaker walked into the living room.

  “Blackstone?”

  He hadn’t changed much. Hair a little grayer, but he still looked more like a math professor than a government agent. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out an ID for me. I gave it a cursory glance.

  “‘Counterterrorism?’ New career track, or are you ‘on loan’ again?” Last time I saw him he was a semilegal spook working out of the euphemistically named “Threat Assessment Office.” I’m not exactly sure what intelligence umbrella it worked under, but it was responsible for a fair bit of the cloak-and-dagger work around the Portal before the Feds got custody of it.

  I guess it would have been too much to hope that the Feds winning that particular battle would put Blackstone out of a job.

  “I have some questions for you.”

  I looked at the Feds ransacking my apartment. One of them found some dirty laundry I’d hidden and was busy dumping it on the floor, one dirty sock at a time. “I hope you have a warrant.”

  “We’re here under authority of the Federal Special Administration Zone.”

  “Christ, Blackstone, that hasn’t been used since the end of the blockade.”

  Blackstone shrugged and smiled. “I don’t have to explain this to you, do I?”

  What I said a while back, about repealing tax abatements, goes for extensions of executive power, too. Back in the chaos when the Portal opened, the federal government did a few crazy things—like ringing Cuyahoga County with tanks. In the midst of all that was an executive order that made the area within the Portal’s influence a police state in the name of national security.

  To my knowledge, it had never been tested in court, since the Feds never actually “occupied” Cleveland—Congress intervened before that happened.

  I suspected that Blackstone was pushing things a bit.

  “We’re going to have a little talk,” he said.

  “Are we?”

  “You’re going to tell me everything you know about the dwarven operation.”

  I put my hand on my forehead and rubbed my temple. I could tell already that this was going to go really well. “Exactly which dwarven operation are we talking about?”

  “You know better than to play coy with me. This isn’t just provincial Cleveland voodoo involved here.”

  “Let me guess, it’s a matter of national security.”

  “Let me spell this out for you. We know that there are humans involved in this ring. We know you had contact with Ossian Parthalán a few hours before he was assassinated, and that he sent you one package we know about. We’ve identified one cell in California, and just by coincidence we find that you’ve been out to the coast at least ten times in the past four years.”

  “Good Lord, Blackstone, my daughter lives there.”

  “And you’ve been a very attentive father.”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  Blackstone sat on the arm of the couch, looking at me. Behind him, one of the agents started methodically rummaging through my DVD collection, popping disks into a laptop he had placed on the coffee table. “Help me, Maxwell. I don’t really think you’re involved in this. But I have enough now to pull you into the system, and then you’re not coming back out.”

  “What is it you think I know?”

  Blackstone smiled. “I’m giving you credit for being a good reporter. You’d obviously tapped the dwarf as a source. All I want is what he gave you.”

  The hell you say.

  A little voice inside me told me that Blackstone wasn’t going to be satisfied with the truth. What I actually knew was rather weak justification for the kind of muscle Blackstone was flexing here.

  Blackstone was an asshole, and I didn’t doubt that he’d pull me in just out of spite if he didn’t like my answers. I couldn’t even come up with some convincing lie. I didn’t know what I’d be lying about.

  The guy probably had a truth-detecting charm on one of his entourage anyway.

  Plan B; play up what I did know and stall for time.

  I looked at the guys tossing my apartment and said, “They aren’t going to find any more. He only sent one package.”

  “So why send it?”

  “To back up the information he was going to give me. A sample of what Magetech was working on.”

  I paused. That was a guess, and I didn’t like guessing in front of the Feds. But it sank in without much surprise on Blackstone’s part. I took it as a silent confirmation.

  “That explains your visit there today . . .”

  I looked around and had another guess. From the behavior of the Feds here, it was pretty obvious that this salt was considered some sort of contraband. If I played Blackstone right, I might gain as much information as he did from this interview.

  “If I’m guessing right—” I continued on with the assumption that if I qualified the statement as speculation it wasn’t pure bullshit. “—a sample of what he was shipping to California.”

  Blackstone should never play poker. His satisfied expression told me all I needed to know about my speculation. “Go on.”

  I thought of the car with California plates in Thor’s Hammer. “Did the zombie get to the car before you did?”

  Blackstone frowned. “I’m asking the questions here.”

  “Uh-huh. A little interdepartmental dispute with the local cops? They decided it was their evidence?”

  “That’s not your concern.”

  “The locals tend to get possessive about murder cases, don’t they?” br />
  Blackstone leaned forward. “Shall we continue with the matter at hand, Mr. Maxwell?”

  “What do you want to know?” I said in my most helpful tone. I found it an easier pose to make, now that Blackstone had confirmed a nagging suspicion of mine; the suspicion that the Feds weren’t fully cooperating with the local cops.

  But then, what else was new?

  “Let’s start with the note. Who was Ossian Parthalán referring to? Why ‘who’ killed himself?”

  Now there was an interesting gap.

  “The way you were following our dwarf, I’m surprised you didn’t have a tap on his phone—”

  “Mr. Maxwell—”

  “Apparently you didn’t need a warrant.”

  “You are trying my patience.”

  “I’m cooperating.”

  “You’re stalling.”

  You noticed. “Parthalán was hinting that the city government was involved. I never got to speak to him about it. He was killed before I got the chance. We were supposed to have a meeting the day he was killed.”

  “At the club?”

  “No, the Old Arcade.” I looked at him and decided to see how deep the schism between the Feds and the local cops actually went. “I found out he’d been killed when Commander Caledvwlch showed up and questioned me about it.”

  “What?”

  “Maelgwyn Caledvwlch, head of the SPU. Special Paranormal Unit. If the dwarf’s murder was part of a ritual, it falls into his jurisdiction—”

  “Cut the crap. I know exactly who the damn elf is.” He looked at a couple of the Feds who’d been watching our interchange. “I’m not even going to ask why we didn’t know about this when it happened. I just want someone to follow up and find out what else is going on in the SPU we might have missed.”

  A pair of agents nodded and left.

  “So, I take it this isn’t a joint investigation with the local authorities?”

  “Maxwell, do you really think—” Blackstone shook his head. “I don’t think you realize how serious this is.”