by Steve McHugh
“Very helpful, Remy. Thanks,” Diane said, using as much sarcasm as possible.
Zamek rejoined us and didn’t look very happy. “We have a problem. The tunnel was caved in. We’re going to have to clear out a lot more rock than we’d anticipated.”
I sighed. It was going to be one of those days/weeks/months. “Meaning, we need to buy you time.”
“That’s about the short of it. The second we start moving rock around, those things are going to hear, and they’re going to come and investigate.”
Remy removed the twin daggers from his belt. “We get it: kill anything that comes this way. How long?”
“Long enough to get the job done,” Zamek said matter-of-factly.
“Plenty of time to get killed,” Irkalla said. She removed the claymore from her back. “Ready when you are.”
The sounds of tons of rock being shifted could probably be heard all the way back in Sanctuary, so it was hardly a great surprise when most of the blood elves on the bridge began to run toward us.
I stepped out from the alcove flanked by Irkalla and Remy. We started off down the path, followed by Diane, who let loose three arrows unhindered by the distance to the bridge, killing a blood elf with each hit. She was going to run out of arrows well before she ran out of targets.
Either there had been a lot more elves on the bridge than I’d first seen, or there was a camp nearby, but there were nearly a hundred of them by the time they reached the bottom of the walkway. They paused for a few seconds, snarling and shouting insults about how they’d defile our corpses. An elven commander, eerily similar to the one we’d seen on our way here, barged to the front of the crowd and screamed something about feasting on our skins. Then the group charged.
Four against a hundred wasn’t exactly great odds, and Diane did her best to thin out their ranks, killing a dozen as they ran toward us, but it didn’t take long for them to reach us. I parried a sword thrust from one blood elf as they swarmed around us, and returned the parry with a slice through the elf’s throat, using my momentum to spin toward the next, catching it in the chest. Another two went down with cuts to their exposed legs, then decapitation.
The killing of each elf brought a new one into the fight, and I was soon covered in blood. I blocked a hammer, stepped under the weapon, and thrust my spare sword up into the elf’s chin and out the top of his head. I kicked the body away just as a knife flew past my head and into the eye of a nearby blood elf.
I turned toward the thrower and saw Irkalla, surrounded by corpses. An elf charged into her, and she used her necromancy to pick it up by the throat and toss it aside, kicking it in the head as it landed. Remy was like a whirlwind of movement, constantly cutting and stabbing at anything taller than he was. His speed and agility made it impossible for any one elf to get close.
The second I’d taken to scan the battlefield, an arrow flew toward me, but I stepped aside and used my air magic to send it into the back of the head of a nearby elf. My magic might not have been overly powerful when used on organic matter, but that didn’t mean it was useless. One of the elven commanders charged at me, whipping his two-handed maul at my head with staggering speed. I used air magic to send the maul sailing comfortably over my head, using the elf’s own momentum to send him past me. He spun around, swinging the maul toward my pelvis. He kept moving toward me, forcing me further and further back, as he stepped over the corpses of his own men to get to me, swinging the maul from side to side with barely any effort on his part.
He roared in rage as he swung the weapon up and toward me in the blink of an eye. I reacted without thinking, activating my shadow magic. The shadows in front of me instantly grabbed the maul and dragged it into the ground so fast that the elf had no time to let go of his weapon. His arms were buried up to their pits in the rock. Strips of shadow leapt up, wrapping around the commander as he struggled to get free. The other blood elves backed away, shocked and afraid. The shadow continued to drag the commander down into the darkness, vanishing from view. I removed my magic, unsure of what I’d actually managed to achieve.
Many of the elves turned and ran, and to be honest, I felt like doing the same. I had no idea how I’d managed to drag a blood elf into magical shadow, especially considering magic wasn’t meant to work on them. But I had bigger problems. The fleeing elves quickly found their resolve when they were joined by hundreds of their friends, who had heard the fight and charged over to see what was happening.
“We need to leave,” I said. “Now!”
The four of us ran back to Zamek, who, along with the other three dwarves, was finishing up the tunnel.
“Hundreds of the bastards have turned up,” I said. “No idea where from.”
“The front of the library is swamped with them,” Udthulo told us. “It’s why we’re going this way.”
“Everyone get in,” Zamek ordered, and no one needed to be told twice when the first of the blood elves reached the alcove and spotted us.
Malib, the last into the tunnel, began to collapse the walls and mouth, giving us protection from the mob. Once done, several tons of rock covered the entrance, and the blood elves would have a considerably longer and more difficult time of removing it than the dwarves.
The tunnel was big enough for us to stand up in and wide enough to walk two by two, but it was full of stale air and darkness. Sounds of rage came from the elves on the other side of the entrance, but I did my best to ignore them. I applied my night vision and turned back to make sure everyone had made it through.
“Good work. Let’s go,” Zamek said. But he stopped when Malib collapsed to his knees, showing the arrow that had caught him in the throat.
Zamek was beside his friend in an instant, but it was too late. Malib died making sure all of us were able to continue. And as much as I didn’t want to think about it, I doubted very much that he would be the last.
CHAPTER 29
The tunnel was lengthy, and no one spoke for the entire time we walked through its darkness. Malib’s body had been left where he’d fallen, something none of the dwarves were happy about, because bringing home the fallen was part of their creed. But we had no idea what was going to happen next, so he had to be left behind.
After some time in the tunnel we reached a part that forked off into three more tunnels. We paused, while Zamek tried to figure out where we were.
“So, you used your new magic to kill an elf,” Remy said. I was surprised he’d managed to stay quiet as long as he had; it must have been torturous for him. “I thought Mordred said that your magic wouldn’t be as powerful on them. That looked pretty powerful to me.”
“I don’t know what I did,” I said.
“We saw the elf get sucked into those shadows,” Irkalla said, taking a swig from her water skin.
Diane sat down beside me. “Whatever it was, it scared those elves. I don’t think they’re used to seeing magic that works on them here.”
“Wait, you used magic that worked on the elves?” Birik asked. “Why didn’t you use it on those who murdered my friend? Why didn’t you stop them?”
He took a step toward me, his hands gripped tightly around the hilt of his two-handed sword.
“It’s not Nate’s fault!” Remy snapped. “It’s not anyone’s fault but the people who actually killed him.”
“Shut your mouth, fox!” Birik said. “If you hadn’t come here, Malib would still be alive, and we wouldn’t be here.”
“We didn’t ask to come here,” Irkalla told him, stepping between Birik and an angry-looking Remy. “We’re just trying to save our friend.”
“What about my friend?” Birik screamed. “Why didn’t you use your magic to save him? It’s always the way with you earth-realmers: you come here demanding help, telling tales of how awful it is that you have to be away from your precious friends and family, never caring about what impact being here actually has on us!”
“The only earth-realmers sent here are those who were torn from their families and se
nt here against their will,” Remy pointed out. “And most of those probably never even see a dwarf before the blood elves get them.”
Birik stared at Remy for several seconds. “I meant before the elves. When we allowed earth-realmers to come and go—a policy that was short-sighted in its stupidity.”
“Enough, Birik.” Udthulo hadn’t moved from her seated position close to the tunnel Zamek had continued down. “It’s not their fault, or anyone else’s from the earth realms. Malib died. Dwarves die in war.”
“What do you know about war?” Birik’s face was full of rage as he turned on the female dwarf. “You’re only here because your mother died. You’re only here because you decided you might like to actually do something to help for a change.”
Udthulo exploded from the floor and was at Birik in a heartbeat, grabbing the larger dwarf around the throat and planting him on the ground.
“Tell me how I don’t know war again, Birik,” Udthulo demanded, her voice calm and terrifying.
Irkalla took a step toward the pair, ready to separate them, but it wasn’t needed. “That’s enough!” Zamek ordered as he returned to us.
Udthulo was on her feet within a second, and Birik slowly got up, trying to hide the hurt and anger in his face as he kept his eyes on the ground.
“I don’t care about the reason,” Zamek said, “but I will not have my people fighting here. We need everyone we can to complete this mission. Fighting among yourselves is pointless.”
Both dwarves nodded.
Udthulo walked off and Zamek remained beside Birik, placing a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “None of this is their fault. None of it is anyone’s but the elves’ fault. If you want to be angry with someone, be angry with the right someone. If you lash out like that again, I’ll leave you here. I won’t carry a liability around.”
Birik nodded once.
“I found the entrance to the library.”
We all followed Zamek until we reached a part of the tunnel that looked exactly like every other part of the tunnel. Zamek placed his hand on the dirt and it shifted slightly, exposing a trapdoor he levered open with the hilt of his battle-ax.
Zamek motioned for me to take a look inside. I lay on my front and put my head in the hole, looking at the room upside down. It was a vast room, with row after row of books, all on shelves. Hundreds more books and scrolls lay littered across the floor, and some were piled haphazardly in large stacks. It was a bibliophile’s worst nightmare and dream all at once: more books than you could read in a lifetime, and most of them badly taken care of.
I got back to my feet and dusted myself down. “There’s no one in there. Lots of books, huge windows down one side, several doors, too. No idea where any of it goes.”
We all climbed down into the hole using the rope Udthulo tied around the trapdoor handle so that we could actually get back up to the tunnel when we needed to.
I picked up several of the scrolls and books, each one instantly translated as I read part of it. “Most of these are actually about agriculture. This one is about keeping cows. I’m going to guess they’re not why we’re here.”
“We traded cows, sheep, and pigs for weapons once,” Zamek said, picking up a hefty scroll and tossing it aside after looking at the first line. “The humans who lived on the surface tended to the animals,” Zamek said. “Long time ago, though. I assume the humans are long gone.”
I nodded. “I didn’t see any. My guess is they didn’t last long against the blood elves.”
Zamek nodded sadly. “Shame. There were plenty of good people up there. I’m hoping one day we’ll take back this mountain and go across the realm, where we’ll find pockets of humans and dwarves still free.”
“You’re not in contact with the other dwarven cities?” Irkalla asked.
“They all fell at once,” Zamek said. “If there are any still out there, we haven’t heard from them.”
“So where would Brigg be?” Diane asked.
“Um, everyone should come see this,” Remy called out from the far side of the room.
“We’re in the center of the library, so Brigg should be in the west wing,” Zamek explained as we all moved over to Remy. “That’s where the tracker is flickering.”
I was about to ask a question when I reached the window and looked down. A hundred feet below and across several hundred feet of open courtyard were the destroyed gates to the library, beside a partially ruined wall which, if the remaining parts were any indication, had once stood fifty feet high. The bridge was a few hundred feet beyond the gates, the flickering of torches in the darkness telling me that the elves were still there. Still ready to fight.
I went back to looking at the architecture of the library building. It had been made in a horseshoe fashion and was a stunning structure, made of white stone. The building and grounds together would put something like the Houses of Parliament to shame. But how nice the building looked wasn’t why Remy had called us over. The blood elves were.
There were thousands of them, all camped out in the courtyard, and spilling out through the ruined front wall and gate of the library, their camp torches shining in the darkness for as far as I could see.
“So that’s where those elves came from,” Diane said. “I’d really like it if we didn’t go down there.”
“I’d really like it if we had a big bomb,” Remy said. “Several of them. How do we get out of here when the front door looks like Woodstock, but with more psychopaths, and the caved-in tunnel we came down is now probably getting attacked by several hundred angry elves? Asking for a friend.”
“We’ll find a way,” Diane assured him. “We always do.”
“I await the fabulous plan, then.” Remy rolled his eyes. “I bet it’s going to be a great one.”
“Are you always like this?” Irkalla asked.
“Yes,” Diane and I said in unison.
With the closest we’d come to frivolity for several hours out of the way, Zamek brought us all over to a table, where he unfurled a scroll he’d removed from his pack. It was a map of this floor of the library.
“There are fifty floors in this building, and that’s not counting the ones that stretch underground. We can pretty much take those as being firmly in the elves’ control, as are the lower levels of this building. The dwarf who returned to us from Brigg’s group confirmed the number of blood elves.”
“They really want those locations,” I said.
“And the spirit scrolls,” Remy continued.
Zamek nodded. “We won’t have long to find Brigg and any of his people, find the scrolls and destination addresses, and get out of here. I think the blood elves would very much like the head of a prince, even one no longer given that title. And they will certainly all know you’re here, and what you did with your magic.”
“So I painted a big bullseye on me.”
Zamek nodded. “Pretty much, yes. I wouldn’t be surprised that if we all manage to get out of here in one piece, they’ll put a large bounty on your head. I meant to ask how you used your shadow magic to kill that elf. Either you used a huge amount of magic to do what you did, or shadow magic affects the elves more than other types. We’ll need to talk to the elders when we return. They might know more.”
“I don’t know,” I reiterated. “I wish I did, but I have no clue.”
“So, where are we on this map?” Diane asked.
Zamek picked up a piece of rock from the floor and placed it in front of him, next to several small marks that I assumed were meant to be Zamek and his team’s trackers. He removed a small compass-sized item from his pack and tapped the glass screen. “The tracker is twelve floors below us, in the east wing. The tracker says he’s in the far room, over here.” Zamek placed a second piece of rock. “It’s going to take a few hours to get there, so I hope no one is interested in resting. We do this quick and quiet. No fuss; any necessary kills must be done without any alarms being raised.”
No one had a problem with that. We all took a f
ew minutes to get a drink and eat some of our supplies before we were trudging through the library in search of Brigg.
The library appeared to me to consist of one long corridor with hundreds of doors down one side. Each floor had the same layout, but we often found the stairwells partially collapsed and had to break through the floor of one room to drop down onto the level below. The dwarves couldn’t move the debris without causing an avalanche—something that would be dangerous, even for alchemists. It was quicker and easier to just destroy a separate part of the floor.
I was surprised to find that the entire place wasn’t overrun with blood elves, as we only came across a few, and they were easily dispatched, most of them looking tired and weak.
“Their numbers aren’t as big as I assumed,” I told Zamek.
“Agreed. I’d expected more resistance.” Zamek replied as he removed his battle-ax from the skull of one elf. “For hundreds of years the blood elves only pilfered from certain parts of the library where they thought the spirit scrolls were. It allowed us to create expeditions to search in the least infected parts of the building. But now that the elves are looking for the addresses for the tablets, too, they’ve swamped the lower floors. Something is making them more cohesive than it has before.”
“Or someone?” I suggested.
“Or that. This hooded figure.”
“How many humans do they have?” Diane asked.
“Unknown. If they took those from the human villages above, a few hundred thousand, but that would have been centuries ago, and humans don’t live that long. My guess is, a lot more of them have been stolen from other realms over the last few years. We’ve found people in military uniforms, earth-realm people, and those from other realms where humans live. Mostly earth, though. Jinayca didn’t mention it earlier, but we’ve seen an increase in human slaves. Whatever the elves are doing, they’re quickening their timetable.”
“Well, if the witches did create the tablets that sent us, it makes sense. A lot of them love Hera and will happily do whatever she asks, no matter how awful it is,” Diane said. “I imagine she’ll have gotten a lot of those to help out.”
