Wrath of the Urkuun (Epic of Ahiram Book 2)

by Murano, Michael Joseph

  “A controlled avalanche,” explained Orwutt. “Master Xurgon must have ordered a passage to be closed. Let us hasten.”

  They heard the shriek again, and it kept them company as they quickly climbed the stairs. They reached the collapsed wall the dwarfs had mentioned and stepped off the staircase. They followed a path that led them to a perfectly aligned set of stairs. The smooth walls were interspersed with regularly spaced alcoves where small torches burned, which Ahiram knew meant they had reached the dwarfs’ quarters. Exhausted, he wished he could rest. Progressively, the steps stretched and became a flat passage leading, after several turns, to a comfortable cave where a wood-burning fire crackled brightly. Six dwarfs stood guard by three doors. A delicious smell of chicken soup filled the air and Ahiram could see freshly baked bread.

  Orwutt and Zurwott brought him near the hearth while the cook, who happened to be a man and not a dwarf, served him a hearty bowl of chunky soup and a generous piece of bread. Ahiram recognized the cook; he was the butcher that had sliced the meat for the praniti at the start of the Games of Bronze.

  “Isn’t it past supper time? Why is the kitchen still open?”

  “A dwarf’s kitchen never closes,” replied the cook as he wiped his hands with the towel tied to his side. “They eat day and night.”

  No one seemed surprised to see the Silent, or if they were, they hid it well. He wanted to ask questions but was too tired and too happy to sit next to the hearth. He bit into the bread and smiled contentedly. After the events of the day, this felt like home.

  “More?” asked the cook as he saw him devour his dinner. Ahiram blushed. The cook gave him a second bowl and a larger chunk of bread. “I bet you haven’t eaten in a while,” he said with a smile.

  Just then, another dwarf walked in. Ahiram saw he was dressed in the fashion of the northern dwarfs: black pants over leather sandals, a black flowing shirt, and no helmet.

  Orwutt and Zurwott rose to their feet and bowed. Ahiram was about to copy them when the cook placed a hand on his shoulder and shook his head. “Keep eating,” he whispered. “Interrupting a guest’s meal is rude among dwarfs.”

  Two southern dwarfs bowing before a member of the northern realm. How interesting, thought the Silent.

  Master Xurgon’s long, braided silver hair reached down to mid-back. His arms and legs were knots of muscles, and his black eyes shone like obsidian. He starred at the two dwarfs who stood as still as rocks.

  “Had I knowingly known where you had been, I would have sent you to the quarry to turn flinted flint into pebbles. You have been imprudent. A danger has been occasioned by your absent absentmindedness. I should punish you in proportion to the rising voice thundering behind these walls. This is a bear to carry, for you are the nephews of the immense Kwadil who forwarded your singular personal personalities to me.”

  Ahiram gave a start when he heard the name of Kwadil, for this was the dwarf that had sold him into slavery to Commander Tanios. He did not know how to react. Wait and see, he thought.

  “He is not speaking real dwarfish,” he whispered in the cook’s ear, mostly to distract himself.

  “The northern jargon is less wordy, especially when a northern dwarf is angry, as Master Xurgon is presently. And by the way, he can hear us.”

  Ahiram busied himself with his soup.

  “But Master, we were not consciously conscious, nor conscious in a consciously manner that she even existed. She was not there before, and now she is.” Orwutt was visibly agitated.

  “I would say more,” protested Zurwott, “we were conscientiously conscientious, and conscientious in the most conscientious of ways.”

  “Hush now, Orwutt and Zurwott. Do not add humdrum to badly bad deeds. You were where you should not have been, and were not where you should have been. Is it not so? Now then, a corridor is a faithfully faithful friend. She does not move and go about like mindless dwarfs. She stays where she was carved.”

  “Carved she was and carved she remains.” replied Orwutt, rather vehemently. “But I dare say that in the day that preceded this day she was shorter than what she is now.” He waived his hand to prevent a forthcoming interruption by Xurgon. “I say that she was shorter because of a landslip. There is a scree to assuage your commanding irritation and demonstrate beyond remonstration that it is as I say.”

  “And we can demonstrate with the assuredness of the rocks that it is as my brother has said,” added Zurwott.

  “Is this one of your disorderly disordered ordinarily ordinary tricks layered in extraordinarily extraordinary empty utterances?”

  “I should like to negatively assert with the most assertive negativity that no tricky tricks, nor tricks of a tricky nature, are hiding behind our most sincerely sincere stand.”

  “Our stand can be effectively demonstrated and demonstrated with great effectiveness,” added Orwutt.

  Master Xurgon’s gaze bore into the twin brothers as if wanting to extract truth out of them. He grunted, shrugged his shoulders, and looked at Ahiram.

  “Well now, my friend, what is your opinion?”

  The abrupt change in style surprised Ahiram. He desired to stay outside the verbal joust, so thought it best to tell Xurgon that he had no opinion but recalled a lecture from Commander Tanios, “If a dwarf directs an intelligible question to you, he wants your opinion. Not to offer one would gravely insult him.”

  “The broken wall is real. The shrieks are real,” advanced Ahiram prudently. “Orwutt and Zurwott strike me as reasonable dwarfs. I would look into their claim before drawing any conclusions.”

  A thundering roar answered him, followed by powerful poundings. Ahiram nearly jumped. He thought the roaring monster was standing beside him. Three dwarfs ran in, stopped and bowed respectfully before their master.

  “Xern, first ax reporting, sir.”

  “Brix, second ax reporting, sir.”

  “Arax, third ax reporting, sir.”

  “Xern, please provide your truthfully true report now, and not a moment later,” replied Xurgon.

  Ahiram may have been amused by the greetings had the shriek been less chilling. By asking for their “truthfully true report now, and not a moment later,” Master Xurgon had the young man convinced he was minimizing the danger, but this was due to the Silent’s lack of experience. Among dwarfs, poor diction and slouched posture were dishonorable. When sojourning among dwarfs, humans quickly learn not to measure danger by the length of a dwarfish conversation; better to measure danger by their feet. Indeed, dwarfs’ feet rarely touched—a sign of timidity and punctiliousness tantamount to cowardice—unless they were facing a grave danger. Presently, the left foot of each dwarf hugged his right foot like a newlywed couple.

  “Master Xurgon,” said Xern, in a booming voice. “It has become impossibly impossible, and impossible in the most impossible manner to contain the uncontainable. She is growingly growing frantically frantic.”

  “She has reached such a degree of agitated agitation,” added Brix in a louder voice, “and an agitation so agitated that it is agitating us to the highest level of agitation.”

  “It is preventing our cogitated cogitation and our cogitation that is customarily cogitated,” interjected Arax, in a voice so soft Xurgon had to strain to hear what he said. Arax’s sadness was painted on his face. “It is preventing our preventative strategic stratagem from strategically preventing our stratagem from turning into a preventative retreat.”

  Xurgon tapped his pipe on the chimney’s sill before filling it with fresh tobacco. “I thank you for the confirmation of the factual facts, plainly painful, which have been imposed, with a momentous imposition on our broad shoulders. Do get back to your respectable positions and thrive to protect her from the assaults of the uncontainable one. She must not cross our linear lines.”

  “Will the beast quietly quiet down, and quiet down quietly, once the happening of the sacrificing sacrifice has happened?” asked Arax.

  “Master Arax,” interjected Zurwott
, “I would give this advising advice to constrict constructively, and constructively constrict peremptory confabulating confabulation until they acquire the solidifying solidity of solids, and not before.”

  Arax and Zurwott locked eyes—or rather locked brows. Ahiram quickly understood there was no friendship lost between these two.

  The dwarfs bowed before leaving the room. Ahiram could tell Master Xurgon was not pleased with Arax’s mention of a sacrifice. The Silent wanted to know more, but chose to temporize.

  Master Xurgon waited for the three dwarfs to leave before focusing on Ahiram. “Now my young friend, has our food assuaged your hunger?”

  “Yes, thank you,” replied Ahiram. “How do you know the common tongue so well?”

  Master Xurgon chuckled. “I am far older than I seem and have spent many years in the company of Commander Tanios. I hail from the northern realm,” he added, with a mischievous glint in his eyes, “and have been with the commander to Alep and back. One of these days you should ask me about Alep.”

  “The northern realm,” said Ahiram, pretending he did not know, “so why are you are commanding a—”

  “A southern host? You have an observing eye, my young friend.”

  “There is a full dwarfish host in these mines?” asked Ahiram, shocked.

  A host was a military dwarfish unit comprised of seven hundred and fifty dwarfs.

  Xurgon chuckled. “I shall forthwith remember that I am speaking to a Silent. Your knowledge of our lore is greater than that of most humans. Technically, it is a minor host, consisting of three companies minus two platoons, but we need not quibble among friends.” Six hundred and fifty dwarfs are living in these mines behind our backs. Ahiram was amazed.

  “Regrettably, I am unable to disclose the reasons that placed a northern dwarf in charge of a southern host. But enough about me, let us talk about you instead. The regrettable news concerning your demise was happily premature.”

  Ahiram smiled.

  “I want to know what you were doing on these stairs. Legends dwell in their realm.” He eyed the Silent like a dragon eyes an intruder.

  Ahiram relaxed his shoulders and adopted a disaffected stance. “High Riders chased me over a cliff and left me for dead. I managed to escape and accidentally stumbled upon these stairs. I thought they would lead me back to the castle.”

  “Accidentally, accidentally,” grumbled Master Xurgon, “you should learn to choose your words more carefully. You have revealed much more than you intended, but you are hiding more than I thought. No matter, in time all shall be revealed. Tell me now, young Silent, do you really believe it is a coincidence that you showed up here a few days after the xarg-ulum manifested her presence?”

  “Xarg-Ulum?” asked Ahiram as he tried to understand. “Is this the name of the creature behind the shrieks we have heard?”

  “Indeed. What you have heard, friend, is the dreaded xarg-ulum, or a béghôm as you commonly say.”

  “A béghôm?” Ahiram jumped to his feet and his empty bowl tumbled noisily. “It exists?”

  “Yes, my friend, she exists,” explained Xurgon. With an agility that surprised the Silent, he picked up the bowl and handed it to the cook. “To subdue both dwarfs and giants, the Lords of the Deep created the Annuna-Ki, strident hordes, as they called them. These creatures were swift with both swords and axe but were no match for the shield-stone of the Marada or the strength of our portals. So the Lords of the Pit, created the béghôms to strengthen the Annuna-Ki and break down our defenses. Despite this reinforcement, the Annuna-Ki failed to conquer Andaxil, the greatest dwarfish cave. May Kerishal, gentle goddess of healing, preserve us from this plight.”

  “If I may,” interjected Ahiram, “why is Andaxil the greatest of all dwarfish caves?”

  Master Xurgon smiled gently. Unlike most dwarfs, interruptions and abrupt change of subject aggravated him, especially when a tale was being told, and most especially when he was the tale-teller. Still, he had to admit the question was pertinent and was well worth an answer.

  “Two words, if I may speak in your hasty ways: liquefied meyroon. One ounce of which is worth four kingdoms. Alone, the Malikuun, the Lords of Light, can bring forth the mystical steel that no fire can melt. In Andaxil, our forefathers managed to store a great quantity of meyroon in liquid form. How they did it, no one knows. This treasure is Andaxil’s unsurpassed glory and the reason behind the Lord of the Deep’s assault.”

  “So then,” Ahiram surmised, “this explains how the dwarfs forged swords of meyroon. But then when El-Windiir was a slave mining the meyroon for the Lords of the Deep in Tanniin, were there dwarfs with him who knew how to melt meyroon?”

  Master Xurgon’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”

  Ahiram shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve heard tales. The stuff of legends I suppose, about a sword of meyroon the dwarfs forged for El-Windiir. I don’t suppose this sword would have been forged in Andaxil?”

  Master Xurgon grunted. “On this point, our tale differs from Tanniin’s lore.”

  “I see.” Not wanting to offend his host by asking pointed questions, Ahiram reverted back to the main topic. “So the attack occurred during the Wars of Destruction?”

  “We believe it happened after the fall of Harbor Rohanon.”

  “Almost five thousand years ago?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “So then, this béghôm is five thousand years old?”

  “If we let the tale be told, answers shall be provided appropriately,” stated Master Xurgon somewhat flatly.

  Ahiram felt like adding: and shall be appropriately provided. Instead, he bit his tongue.

  “As I was saying,” continued the old dwarf, “the Lords of the Deep created béghôms at great expense of their powers, and embedded them in the twelve hives of Annuna-Ki, each twelve thousand strong. Then the armies of the Pit fell on the combined forces of dwarfs and the Marada like a raging flood. The war raged for three years and six months. In the end, the Annuna-Ki broke through our ranks, and we were defeated. Many dwarfs died, but many more of the Pit’s offspring perished. When the remaining hordes reached the great cave, they found its portal open, and in their great haste, rushed inside. The great portal slammed shut, and even the mighty béghôms could not destroy the greatest door built by dwarfish hands. Enraged, the monsters destroyed the cave’s foundation, and she crushed them as she died. We lost her in the heart of the mountains.”

  “Who is ‘she’?” asked Ahiram prudently. “Andaxil?”

  Xurgon nodded in silence. The Silent understood how the dwarf felt. After a short while, Xurgon continued.

  “We lived in peace, and many of us forgot the existence of these beings. Then, Dilandiir I, invited Karak-Dargon, my ancestor of illustrious memory, to come and take possession of these caves.”

  “Dilandiir the First?” Ahiram asked, “He was the fifty-eighth King of Tanniin and the first monarch who was not of El-Windiir’s blood. He led Tanniin two thousand years ago and his reign lasted for twenty-six years.”

  “You are correct. Our tale recounts a famous battle that Karak-Dargon fought against a xarg-ulum, and we thought our ancestors had defeated the monster. But, two years ago, she showed up again.”

  “After two thousand years?” Ahiram was skeptical. “That does not make any sense.”

  “Yes, after two thousand years,” Xurgon agreed.

  Right when I started training for the Games. What a strange coincidence, Ahiram thought.

  “We built massive walls to contain her, and then six days ago, she began pounding on these walls with a ferocity we have never seen before.”

  Master Xurgon grabbed a chair and set it down with its back toward Ahiram. He sat facing the Silent and leaned his powerful arms on the back of the chair.

  “As you pointed out, this béghôm is long-lived, far beyond her mortal years. So, the source of her longevity must be found in—”

  “Magic!” interrupted Ahiram.

  “Magic inde
ed,” retorted Xurgon. “So, there we are, there you are, and there she is.”

  Master Xurgon’s implied accusation did not go unnoticed by Ahiram. He pondered if he should tell the dwarf that he had found El-Windiir’s sarcophagus, but decided against it.

  I need stronger evidence that links this monster to El-Windiir’s artifacts.

  He changed the subject slightly and asked, “Have you ever seen this béghôm? What does she look like?”

  “Seen her?” snorted Xurgon. “We fought her. She is twelve or thirteen feet tall, with the head of a large cat, yellowish eyes cast between a bear’s snout and bat-like ears. She is covered with white fur, and moves with great alacrity. Her eyesight is keener than an eagle’s even in the darkness of the caves, and her olfactory sense is superior to dogs. One of her blows would kill the strongest man. She is a mighty enemy.”

  “Still, one xarg-ulum against a dwarfish host?”

  “We have wounded her multiple times, but she always recovers. The magic that sustains her also heals her.”

  “Can you not break this spell?”

  Xurgon snorted derisively. “Magic is the offspring of fools.”

  “Tonight’s report says that you are losing ground.”

  “She has been pounding on a wall for the last three nights and three days. We fear she will break through, unless we can stop her.” The dwarf’s eyes bore into Ahiram’s. “What is driving her, I wonder?”

  “Hmm, I wonder too,” replied Ahiram. Master Xurgon’s breath was fouled by his constant pipe smoking; and Ahiram coughed from the smoke as well as the stench.

  “Something that was not here before the black sun.”

  “The black sun?” asked Ahiram, surprised. “An eclipse?”

  “It happened yesterday. Now the monster is beyond herself with rage and foaming fury.”

  Ahiram grinned. “Never fear, Master Dwarf. A Silent is always of service. I must go to the castle as quickly as possible and not a moment later. I shall then speak to my commanding commander and will bring him to you to help solve this mysterious urgent urgency.”