“Yes?”
“How do I get there?”
Ivar gave me directions, and I left the NHLF headquarters, which was located near the docks. From there, I headed inland, back into the warren of buildings that make up the bulk of our city.
The dwarves, like a lot of races, mostly settled in a few areas. The First Quarter was one of them. It was called that because it was one of the first places that you reached if you got off a ship at the docks and headed in a direct line toward the palace on the hill. Not that many people did that, but at one time, it may have been a thing. There was once a large thoroughfare that led from the port, in a straight line, to the castle. But over time, it was encroached on, covered over, and generally obliterated until it only existed in isolated fragments spaced throughout the city today.
But once upon a time, the First Quarter was home to the latest and greatest in fashion, food stuffs, weapons, and anything else the rich and powerful would have a yearning for. Those shops suffered as the tides of time changed the area. They were replaced or closed outright over the years and then the Quarter fell on truly hard times and became a nest for unsavory types and criminals.
Then the dwarves moved in, and in a brief time, the bad element was pushed out. Now, it was full of dwarven businesses, and becoming known again as a place to go for the best in weapons, armor, cookware and several other items that required careful craftsmanship. The proximity to the docks was again a boon to the area, as the dwarves imported material, and turned it into goods that were becoming essential throughout Capital City.
It did my heart good to walk through the area, even if there were some suspicious looks in my direction. The social revolution that Ivar started didn’t only find opponents on the human side. There were plenty of folks in all races who didn’t see everyone as being equal. Time would tell if the idea ever truly became universal.
It turned out to be pretty easy to find the entrance to Underworld, once you knew it was in the First Quarter. There was a large stone arch, the street that ran under it disappearing down into the ground, and large letters spelling out “Underworld” carved into the top of it. That was a pretty clear clue that I was on the right track.
I moved along the road, marveling at the size and artistry of the arch as I passed under it. If there was one thing that dwarves did better than anyone, it was stone work. The air coming up from the hole that the road dipped down into was decidedly cooler, and as I got closer I hoped that there were torches lit. I realized then that I had no idea if dwarves could see in the dark, but hoped that since Ivar said that others were welcome there, light had been provided for.
There was a guard booth next to the road, with three, sturdy, heavily armed and armored dwarves standing nearby. They talked among themselves, but kept a watchful eye on the foot traffic passing in and out of Underworld.
“Hi fellas,” I said as I approached them. “I’m hoping you can steer me in the right direction.”
The three of them fell silent and stared at me from beneath bushy eyebrows and caps of steel. None of them said a word.
“Let me try this again. I’m looking for Brindar, and I understand that he was last seen heading down there.” I indicated the road leading underground with a tilt of my head. “Who wants to tell me where I could find him?”
Still nothing, but one of the dwarves said something to his companions in their own language, which sounded like a bunch of rocks being crushed by a hammer. They all looked back at me and laughed.
“You guys are hilarious,” I tried again. “But here’s the thing. Brindar is a friend of mine, and a colleague. Maybe you’ve heard of me. The name is Grandfather, Duke Grandfather. You can either tell me what I want to know, or I can head out of here and see if Ivar can straighten you out.”
As threats go, it wasn’t much. But I wasn’t trying to start an inter-species war here, just get some information. If me saying that I was Brindar’s friend didn’t work, maybe dropping Ivar’s name would help.
To my surprise, it did. Well, a little anyway.
“If you’re his friend, why don’t you know where he is?” one of them challenged me. His friends all looked as if they thought he scored a point.
I was starting to get tired of this, so I stepped right up to the dwarf and bent to put my face close to his, our noses almost touching.
“In case you hadn’t heard, friend,” I growled, “I was busy saving the city from those pipers, like Brindar was doing here. And what were you doing?”
I straightened up as the dwarf looked embarrassed.
“Deep,” he said. “The last time Brindar was seen, he was heading deep, chasing something.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“Follow the road. Keep going. When it’s not a road anymore, keep going anyway. That’s where he was last.”
“But you’re dwarves. If he went deeper, why haven’t you found him already?”
The three guards looked at each other, then down at the ground.
“It’s forbidden,” a different one said. “Where he went, it hasn’t been cleared yet.”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean it hasn’t been cleared yet?”
They all shuffled their feet, and refused to answer any further questions.
“Stop at the Guild office on your way,” one finally told me. “They can answer your questions, or not, as they see fit. You can’t miss it if you stay on the main road.”
“Thanks for the information,” I said, and started to walk down the street. One of them called me back.
“Wait a second,” he said, and ran inside the guard shack. He came out a moment later with a lantern that held a round, black stone inside of it. “Here,” he said, handing it to me. “Down in the lower levels, there isn’t always light. I hope you find him. We need Brindar.”
I looked at the black stone dubiously, but I had been around long enough to know that things weren’t always as they appeared. I thanked him, told him that I would do my best, and headed down, under the earth, into Underworld.
Underworld was an interesting place. I suffered a moment of panic as I walked out of the light of day and into the cave, but it passed quickly. The place was huge, and the size of it made it impossible for all but the most serious claustrophobe to feel closed in. There were lamps shining brightly everywhere, and the dwarves had cunningly placed reflective surfaces in strategic areas to make it seem even brighter.
In my experience, dwarves tended to be stolid, taciturn people, not given to idle chatter or playfulness. While that may hold true up above, here in Underworld it was different. Children ran and played, and weren’t hushed by their parents, who looked on with watchful, but lenient, eyes. People said hello to each other as they passed, and even to me.
In addition to dwarves, I saw at least one business, a clothes cleaner, being run by orcs, who seemed on good terms with their dwarven neighbors. Everywhere I looked, I saw nothing but smiles, friendliness, and prosperity. It seemed as if the dwarves really had built themselves an ideal place.
But if that were the case, then why were they here in Capital City in the first place? Why didn’t they stay in the mountains, in their own cities, which were said to encompass entire mountains? That was a mystery, but it was for another day. Today, I wanted to find Brindar.
Not only to compare notes on our last several days, but because something didn’t feel right. No one had seen him, and the guard up above said that he went deep, and implied that he was missing. Now, Brindar and I were friends, or at least I thought so, but we weren’t real close. But if I was concerned, then why wasn’t every dwarf in this city going crazy trying to find him?
I walked along, musing on this, and marveling at the size and complexity of Underworld as I went. It was only a little over a year, and they had constructed something truly remarkable. The houses and buildings blended into the stone walls behind them, like they had been there for centuries. The streets were wide, well paved, and clean. In additio
n to the main thoroughfare, several smaller streets branched off, leading to side caverns where more lanterns glowed and flashed in the distance. The air was cool, but moved nicely and didn’t feel stuffy in the least. All in all, it was a very pleasant, cosmopolitan type place.
The Guild office was pretty far down. The road turned a few switchbacks as it descended, grew steeper in some areas and leveled out in others. I walked for a good thirty minutes before I saw it, and the guards words came back to me. There was no way I could miss it.
The building was huge, dominating the cavern that it was housed in and set right across the road, so that by following it, you had no choice but to enter the building. There was something else about it, something that felt different from all the other buildings around. It took me a moment to realize what it was, but when I saw it, the answer was obvious.
This building was old. Not built to look that way, or built to blend in with its surroundings. It was ancient. The stone showed signs of erosion, and there were water stains on some of the walls where the cavern ceiling overhead dripped. Looking closer, there was moss and lichens growing in the cracks of the carvings which decorated the façade. It was as if the dwarves dug out this immense area for their new city, and ran right into the ruins of an old one.
The road ended at a set of immense stone steps. There were ten of them, each wide enough for two carriages to drive up side by side, and still have room to spare. From there, the building arched over a passage, several stories high, and the road looked like it continued on, through the building and out of the other side.
On each side of the arch, there were large doors that led into the building, made of intricately carved stone, but standing open at the moment. Windows covered the front of the building, revealing that there were seven floors inside. All in all, it must have had room for several hundred dwarves to comfortably work, without feeling crowded.
I walked up the stairs, still marveling at the sheer size and sense of age of the place, and at the complexity of the carvings in the doors, and the statues and gargoyles on the face of it. It was a true work of art.
Inside, it was no different. Stone, polished to a high gleam, shone from every surface. Dwarves walked about, with the intent looks of people engaged in serious business on their faces. Several paces across the floor was a raised area, with a large, circular desk in the middle of it. Chairs were set along the wall nearby, with a few dwarves sitting in them, glancing every now and then at the female dwarf attending the desk.
I walked up to the raised platform, mounted it, and approached the desk.
“Hi,” I said, trying to keep my voice cordial and friendly. “I was told to come here by…”
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked me, interrupting me.
“An appointment? Well, no, I didn’t know I was coming here. See, the guards up at…”
“Take this,” she said, shoving a thin piece of wood with a paper form attached to it at me.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Form 1087-BN. Application for an ad-hoc appointment. Fill it out and return it to me here when you’re finished. Make sure you’ve marked which Guild you’re here to see.”
“But I’m not here to see any Guild,” I protested. “I was told to stop here to find out where…”
She reached out and took the board away from me and pushed another into my hands.
“Fill this out instead, please. Form 1269-DK. Request to file an inquest. When it’s complete, drop it in slot C, near portico A12. Someone will get back to you within five weeks. At that time, your question can be presented and sorted to the correct Guild for answering. Thank you for visiting the Guild Hall, and have a pleasant day. Oh, and please bring the clipboard back to me when you’ve finished. I lose more of those things…”
She turned away and began rummaging through papers on the other side of the desk, dismissing me as if I was no longer even standing there.
I looked down at the form in my hand. It was filled with small writing, several lines on which I was apparently supposed to write, and a whole lot of boxes to check. Shaking my head, I set it back down on the desk, and walked off the dais and away.
Well, if there was no one here to help, then there was no choice but to continue on my own. The guards said that Brindar went “deep”, whatever that meant, and to keep going even when the road no longer looked like a road. To me, the way was simple. All I needed to do was go back out, and follow the road under the Guild Hall, and down to wherever it led next.
I stepped back out, turned and walked along the front of the building and came back to the road. I walked along it, looking up at the underside of the Guild Hall arching far above me, a many candled lamp hanging down from it. It was so far up that I wondered how they managed to light the thing, let alone change the candles in it.
Then, my eyes were drawn to what was in front of me. Apparently, when the guard up top said that it was forbidden to go on, he meant that literally. There was a large iron gate across the road, locked with a gigantic lock, and guarded by no less than six of the largest, most heavily armed dwarves I ever saw.
Given the initial reaction to my presence from the last guards, I didn’t have high hopes as I approached these.
“I don’t suppose you guys are going to let me go through there, are you?” I said.
They all looked at me with bored expressions on their faces.
“No, sir, entry is forbidden to one and all, unless they have special orders signed by the head of the Militia Guild,” one of them said.
“And to get that letter?” I asked.
He pointed back the way I came.
“The Guild Hall, sir.”
“Thought so,” I sighed. “I don’t suppose one of you guys know a quick way to get those orders, do you?”
Nothing.
“I’d really like to get through there. I’m looking for Brindar, who I’m sure you’ve heard of, and last he was seen, he was down that way.”
Still nothing, although a couple of them looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes.
“I don’t understand you guys,” I flared up. “Brindar is my friend, and he could be in trouble down there. To you guys, he should be a national hero! If you’re not going to go yourself, why are you stopping me?”
Suddenly, the six dwarves snapped to attention and stood looking straight ahead.
“Mr. Grandfather,” a voice said. “If you would step over here, please.”
I turned to see a large dwarf approaching. He was stouter than most, and his beard was one of the most magnificent I had ever seen, snow white, and flowing down to his belt, where it forked and was held by two ties. He had piercing blue eyes that told of a man who missed very little, and the mental capacity to match.
I stepped off with him, and he walked slowly with me until we were out of earshot of the guards.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” he started. “Grundir Grimshornson, head of the Militia Guild. We got word that you were coming.”
“From Ivar, I’m assuming?” It must be, since he was the only one who I'd told I was headed this way.
“Indeed. He implored us to let you through the gate, to go deep, as it were, although I must confess, I have my hesitations about it.”
With the refined way that this guy spoke, he could have been Ivar’s long lost brother.
"Let me through," I said, "and I’ll find Brindar, bring him back, and everyone will be happy.”
He stared at me with those knowing eyes.
“I’ve heard of you, Mr. Grandfather,” he said. “I heard of you back before Ivar started his movement. You were a cautionary tale to our youth, and a story to frighten each other with around a fire in the deep of night. The Nuisance Man with the Horrible Gun is how we referred to you. You can imagine my surprise when Ivar not only spoke on your behalf, but named you friend.”
I was actually surprised by that myself. I had a great deal of respect for Ivar, but I didn’t know that he consi
dered me a friend.
“He told me of your saving of the NHLF headquarters from the War Golem, and of the mutual respect built between Brindar and yourself. Still, I find it hard to let a human, let alone a human who used to consider us no more than animals, into what lies beyond those gates.”
“Look,” I said. “I don’t really care what’s beyond the gates. I want to see if I can find Brindar, help him out if he needs it, and if not, compare notes on what’s been going in the city. That’s all.” I stopped then, and glanced over at the iron gates, noting for the first time that beyond them, the paved road stopped, and became a rough stone passage. There were also no lanterns, so although there were what appeared to more buildings, they were shrouded in darkness a few paces inside.
“But, uh…so I know…what is beyond those gates?”
Grundir regarded me for a moment, considering whether to answer my question or not, I was sure.
“We call it the Deep,” he finally said. “And it’s not what we expected to find here.”
“The Deep? The guard up at the top said that Brindar went deep, but I thought he meant that he went deeper into Underworld.”
“Underworld stops here, Mr. Grandfather. Or right before here, if we’re being technical. The Guild Hall is the first of the buildings to be reclaimed from the Deep. It very well may be the last.”
He walked around me, looking past the gates, into the darkness beyond them.
“When we sought your King’s permission to build Underworld, we had no idea that we would stumble onto a legend of the dwarves. The Deep was one of our oldest cities, lost to time and memory, and only spoken of in old songs that few today remember. But as we dug, and built, and expanded on the caverns that we found here, we came upon this building, looking out into the darkness as it had for centuries. We uncovered the road beneath it, paved it with our cobbles and began to go further.”
He stopped and sighed.
“And then we lost men. A lot of men. Most who ventured further down the road simply never came back. Those few who did, spoke of whispers, and shadows blacker than night gliding through the darkness, beyond the reach of the lanterns. They descended into madness soon after. Any attempt to move past this building, deeper into the ruins of the ancient city beyond was met with disaster.
Duke Grandfather- The Whole Story Page 37
