by Dan Allen
“Room for two more?” Meeraz said to the woman Gork assumed was his mother. “I have preparations to make for this evening.”
“Of course. Friends of yours are friends of ours. We don’t get many visitors here.” She gave Gork a once-over.
Meeraz clapped a hand on Gork’s shoulder. “This is Gork of Dwarfholm Bastion.” He nodded at Terras. “And this is Terras, friend of the Deeproot. They’re friends of Princess Ruby of Crystalia Castle.”
Gork smiled at the mention of his association with the princess.
Not a moment after Meeraz excused himself, two young tonnerian girls seized Terras, pressing their fur-lined bodies against him.
“I get this one,” said the taller of the two.
“Already taken,” said the sister, who was probably from the same little litter.
The mischief in their eyes was unmistakable.
“That’s not how we greet a guest,” said the mother.
“Yes, it is,” the two answered in unison.
“Nothing like a friendly embrace,” Terras said. The smirk on his face had Gork stepping back.
A second later, two gourd vines snagged the young girls and hauled them back against the cave wall.
“Good one,” said the mother. “It’s been a while since somebody put them in their place.”
“Their place is tied to the wall?” Terras gave a shrug of acknowledgement. “All right.”
Druids tended to take everything literally.
“No, it isn’t! Put us down.”
Gork chuckled at the sight of the girls squirming to free themselves from the vines. At least Terras knew how to play hard to get—literally.
A young male tonnerian pointed at Gork’s beard. “He’s got a mane on his chin.”
“It used to be a lot longer before the princess gave it a trim.” Gork gestured halfway down his chest to show the previous length of his beard.
“And he’s fat,” said one of the girls as her claws scratched at one of the vines binding her.
“I’m not fat!” Gork bellowed. The tonnerians all covered their ears. “Sorry about that. Dwarves don’t have the best hearing.”
“How long have you known the princess?” Meeraz’s mother lifted several stone bowls from a clay storage pot, took a gourd ladle, and began filling them with a savory-smelling soup that woke Gork’s stomach with a rumble of interest.
“Um,” Gork began. The scent of the soup was terribly distracting. “. . . maybe a few days.”
The tonnerian handed him a bowl of soup. “Here, try this.”
Gork sat down and drained his bowl of savory squash and tart melon soup in record time. Terras was nearly as fast finishing his.
“What brings you to the Oasis?” Meeraz’s mother asked as she offered Gork a large mug of cucumber-scented fizzy cave water.
“I’m looking for Arcadian artifacts,” Gork explained, not going into details. It was an unbelievable story anyway. But Ruby was headed for the Blasted Tombs as well—just as unlikely.
There couldn’t be a coincidence in that. There was definitely something important to the prophecy that had brought them together. Gork was prepared to accept that now. The question was what would Terras do? And Nyan-Nyan. They had both accomplished their first objective. Terras had found the princess. He could report back to King Jasper III on her location. And Nyan-Nyan had found the tonnerians. Whether they agreed to help their fellow chimera in the Frostbyte Reach was up to their council.
But Gork guessed that Terras wouldn’t leave the princess’s side, especially with her planning to head for the Blasted Tombs. He seemed more than a decent fellow. He wouldn’t abandon her now.
People like Terras were the heartwood of Crystalia. Love of the Goddess’s realm before self.
“And you?” asked their hostess, nodding to Terras.
“I go with the princess.”
Gork gave a sigh of relief. So he was planning on seeing the adventure through. Gork wasn’t keen on losing an ally as powerful as Terras.
“As should all who fight the evil that infects Crystalia,” the Druid added.
Gork considered asking what Terras would do if he succeeded and his source of custom magic was entirely cut off but thought better of it. The talented Druid would just find another way to make his mark.
“So where is the princess going?” asked the young tomcat—Meeraz’s youngest brother.
“To the first source of the Dark Consul’s power.” Gork said. “To the Blasted Tombs. We are going to take the fight to the enemy.” He locked eyes with the youngster. “Where we go, only the bravest may come.”
“That’s me!”
“And the biggest,” said his mother, shoving his head down playfully. “Which is not you.”
Gork exchanged a glance with Terras. Their eyes met, and what passed between them was an unspoken promise, a word of allegiance that no oath could make stronger. They were as different as Crystalians could be, but whether or not the tonnerians joined them, neither was going to leave the princess alone.
Theirs was an oath of courage.
Gork raised his mug and clinked it once against Terras’s. “To victory.”
“To victory.”
After downing the mug of fizzy cave water, Gork could still taste the delicious final notes of the soup. Apparently, gourds grew fantastically in the mix of shade and sun that shone through the many cavernous openings to the sky in the underground oasis.
“You haven’t forgotten about us, have you?” toned one of the girls.
Terras made a motion with his hand, and the vines binding the ten-year-olds went slack.
“Can’t go soft on those ones,” the mother warned.
They pounced on Terras immediately. “Tell me about the Fae Wood,” one girl said as her tail curled around Terras. The other tried to lift up Terras’s residual wolf fur that looked like a shirt. “Do you have any tattoos? I’ve heard Druids have magic tattoos.”
Terras sighed and held out his right arm. A tattoo wriggled to the surface. Black traces appeared in spiraling arcs, tracing a map of the Fae Wood.
“Ooh.”
Gork had to admit it was pretty cool. Could be very useful in a cave network.
“So,” said Meeraz’s mother, raising an eyebrow at Gork, “you’ve only known the princess a few days?”
“Ruby?” Gork gave a cough. “Uh, yeah. A few days.”
“He fancies her,” said one of the twins as she stroked Terras’s tattoo. “I think he’s blushing.”
“Dwarves only get red in the face when we’re angry,” Gork said. It wasn’t entirely true, but either way, if a dwarf was red in the face you were well on your way to getting clobbered.
“Mind the claws,” Terras said, wincing at the twins’ curious prodding of his tattoo.
“Do you want a back scratch?” The other twin pounced on his back.
“No!”
“How much longer until the council meets?” Terras dragged the tonnerian girl off his back by her tail and put a leg over her to keep her down while he put the one that had been stroking his arm in a headlock.
“That’s more like it,” said the mother. “Keep that up—that’s what they need.”
“No fair,” said the one under his leg. “He’s too big. I think he’s a half-elf.”
“No bigger than your father,” said Meeraz’s mother. She shook her head. “Just a few more years and I’ll have them married off.” She dried her hands. “You two, off to bed.” She hissed and the girls pinned by Terras sprang free and darted for their cave-like room, dropping a curtain behind them. “And you.” She raised her eyebrows at the youngest.
“Story?”
“You’ve heard plenty. Bed.”
“Mercy,” Terras breathed. He collapsed backwards. “I’d take the Biting Sands over those two.”
“I had a girlfriend like that back at Dwarfholm Bastion,” Gork said. “It’s like a wart that kee
ps coming back.”
“Didn’t know you had a girl,” Terras said.
Gork turned his head to see Ruby standing in the entrance.
“Not . . . not anymore,” Gork muttered as red heat rose to his cheeks. “Wasn’t a good match.”
Ruby smiled. Her hair was fantastically done in her signature twin braids, with not a hair out of place.
Gork stood quickly and gave a bow. “Princess Ruby. You look . . .”
Ruby gave a playful twirl.
Gork couldn’t find the right word to describe her beauty. He simply smiled.
Ruby pushed the entrance curtain beads aside and Nyan-Nyan stepped through as well, her orange and black fur glossy and shining.
“Did sulfur water do that to your fur?” Terras asked.
“None of your business.”
“No gauntlets at the council meeting?” Gork asked, noting her missing weapons.
“Got them right here.” Meeraz stepped in behind the girls. “For safe keeping. We’re hoping to avoid another lucky break.” He nodded to Gork and Terras. “Time to go.”
On the way to the council meeting, Ruby spoke to Gork about her conversation with the Chaos Kitty. “I thought it would be hard to convince her to continue on to the Tombs,” Ruby said. “After all, she’s found the tonnerians.”
“What did she say?” Gork asked.
“I don’t think she’s ready to go back.” The way Ruby smiled seemed like she was talking to an old friend, like they had always known each other. Of course, the princess was famous for her political magic. Gork just hadn’t expected conversation with her to feel so natural.
“The Chaos Kitty versus the Blasted Tombs,” Gork mused. “Is she taking bets?”
“No, but she’s taking friends.”
“So we’re all going,” Gork said, sounding almost eager about something that should have given him far more trepidation.
Ruby nodded. “Yes, we’re going.” She took a small cross-bladed scepter from where it hung on the sash of her dress and held it with both hands like a lucky charm. Apparently, it had been gifted to her by the tonnerians as a royal sigil. Although, it looked more suited to warding off undesirable suitors.
From the way she gripped the scepter, it seemed some thought had clearly upset her.
“What is it?” Gork asked.
Ruby sighed and spoke barely above a whisper, so that her voice did not carry to the others in the corridor. “Can we even succeed without my sister Amethyst? I mean—” she paused. “Is all of this just our way of going out with a bang—taking as many of them with us as possible before the end?”
“Of course not.” Gork shrugged casually. “I never believed in the prophecy anyway.”
Ruby gave him a sidelong glance and elbowed him. “You’re a horrible liar.” She gave a small laugh. “Never believed in the prophecy—as if. I saw the way you looked at me when I found you in the Palace of Illusions.”
“You get that a lot?”
“Enough to make me want to believe the prophecy is true,” Ruby admitted. “But all of that is so uncertain now.”
Gork stopped in front of the ornate statues of tonnerian warriors carved at the entrance to the council chambers. “Then maybe it’s time to believe in your friends.”
She smiled. “I think you’re right.”
“After you, princess.”
Ruby entered the council room and Gork stepped in last. Sentries closed the great stone doors behind him.
Gork reviewed in his mind the arguments he might use to try to get the tonnerians to go with them to the Blasted Tombs. It was, after all, incredibly dangerous. But the tonnerian’s strength and numbers would increase the chances of success immeasurably.
As it happened, the grand council meeting only lasted about forty-five seconds.
Gork and the other visitors were introduced and Nyan-Nyan promptly challenged the tonnerian village to a contest of bravery.
“Whoever gets the farthest into the Blasted Tombs wins.”
“She dares challenge our bravery!” Torbin roared.
In the ensuing cacophony, sixty warriors—men and women—volunteered.
Nyan-Nyan wiped her palms as if dusting off the situation and walked out of the room, her tail high.
The only eyes in the room to watch her leave were Meeraz’s. Gork noticed the warrior tracking her out of the corner of his eye.
“He’s protective of her,” Terras whispered as he came alongside Gork. “That’s how it starts for tonnerians.” He clapped Gork on the shoulder. “That’s how it starts for dwarves, too.”
Gork looked up to see Ruby leaving the council chambers behind Nyan-Nyan. He couldn’t pretend his heart hadn’t been soaring since the moment he met her. It was a silly thing to imagine: gaining the affection of a human, let alone a princess, let alone one of the princesses of prophecy. That it was incredibly impossible made it all the more excusable to dream about. Who could fault a misfit dwarf for fantasizing about the love of a beautiful princess from a faraway land?
Was it juvenile? Gork was fifty years old, the equivalent of a human graduating from a secondary academy. A sixty-year-old dwarf might consider marriage, though most married far later. Dwarves grew slowly. They learned to love even slower.
But sometimes things happened that were altogether unexplainable. Ruby couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen. She was fantastically talented, obviously a gifted courtier and negotiator with magical resources beyond even those accessible to the Druid.
Hadn’t she looked in his eyes and smiled? Hadn’t she sat by his side all night during the storm of Biting Sand? Or was he simply mistaking Ruby’s general kindness for affection that did not exist?
Gork was used to hammering out his feelings at the forge. This night would afford him no such opportunity. And tomorrow they would leave for the heart of darkness—the dungeons of Arcadia.
Whether or not she loved him, Gork knew what he felt in his heart. The very thought of Ruby put him in a state of blissful panic.
He loved her.
Gork found a quiet nook in the rock, away from the curious eyes of the tonnerians. He knelt and took a vow, making a promise to the Goddess. It was a thing so sacred and rare that one dwarf in a thousand might make such an oath in their lifetime.
On my soul, I swear she will return alive.
* * *
The trek across the desert to the Blasted Tombs took more than a week. Rather than travel by bubble, Ruby reserved the magic stored in her necklace. Gork was glad to have the strong tonnerians helping to share the load, but the tonnerians turned out to be quite independent, each carrying their own food and equipment, sharing little. Only Meeraz and a few of his friends who all appeared to be quite taken by Nyan-Nyan’s exotic stripes and entertaining antics, volunteered to carry extra food for the slimmer freyjan, the lightly-built Druid, and the princess.
Gork kept the Dark Consul’s sword, not trusting it to leave his belt. Its weight had grown conspicuously in the last few miles. By the time the silent and wary warriors passed the first mound of piled skulls, the sword seemed to be dragging him down.
Ruby noticed. She put her arm on his, which drew snickers from several young tonnerians, but the princess’s touch gave him instant strength.
“Don’t waste your magic on me,” Gork said.
“I’m not wasting it. I need your strength beside me as much as I need my magic—perhaps more.”
Gork smiled. He tried not to, but the grin escaped him, slipping proudly onto his lips. “Just a little, then.”
“Of course, your highness,” Ruby teased.
“Your highness?” Gork said with a cough.
“Aren’t you the son of Holm Everbright, heir to the Dwarfholm Bastion?”
“How do you know all this about me anyway?” She had figured out who he was on their flight from the Palace of Illusions—without any mention of his name from Terras or Nyan-Nyan.
&nbs
p; Ruby gave a small shrug. “I’ve seen your face in my father’s magic mirror.”
“You what?”
“And your mother and those two younger brothers of yours.”
“You didn’t see anything else?” Gork asked. He stroked his mustache warily.
“You mean Brimmy?”
“Er . . .”
Ruby shook his arm and gave a chirp of a laugh. “Nyan-Nyan told me everything. I’ve never laughed so hard. I can’t imagine the look on her face when you walked in with the Chaos Kitty.”
Gork joined in the laugher, his rolling chortle bellowing out.
“Quiet, dwarf,” hissed Torbin.
“Sorry.”
“Giddy lovers,” grumbled the older warrior who had caught Nyan-Nyan on their first day at the Desert Drop Oasis.
Gork blushed again.
“I know all the royal families of Crystalia,” Ruby explained. “My father is much too busy to keep up with politics. I’ve handled most of the communication for the past two years.”
“What about the king’s seal? Doesn’t he have to put his seal on all official business?”
“I have my own seal.” Ruby lifted the necklace and showed a metal stamp on the bottom of the vial. “Anybody trying to impersonate the king would use the king’s royal seal, which all thieves have a copy of. Mine is far less known and a better mark of an authentic royal communication.”
“Amazing,” Gork said, trying to focus on the princess’s words and not the touch of her fingers as they traced over his arm.
“I only hope what I’ve discovered over the last few months of research will be enough.”
Gork looked over and saw fear in her eyes.
“The first opening of a passage to the Dark Realm involved magic far beyond our comprehension,” Ruby said. “We are meddling with powers none of us has ever imagined.”
“I’ve imagined it—at least twice.”
“Shut up, Nyan-Nyan,” Terras said.
Nyan-Nyan snickered and scurried away toward the front of the group.
