He fell silent, and the Dragon Knight thought this had been his last word, but Garoud spoke one more time; he was barely audible.
“This is only the beginning.”
END
From the tales of the White Knight
Silence attacked his ears.
One moment, he was standing in a busy town square, in the middle of a holiday market, bargaining for passage with a portal mage, the next, he was at the top of a mound of shattered grey rocks, with nothing but more grey rocks strewn around the quiet landscape. A line of dark-blue, snow-covered mountaintops marked the edge of a plateau to the east; a thin strip of sea shimmered in the evening sun to the west.
Was this really the place? He had to hope so. The portal had closed shut behind him with a sizzle of purple lightning. He could open it again, but it would take great effort to break through the barrier between worlds here, on Old Earth.
At least now, he was certain — it was the right planet. There was no mistaking this magic-infused atmosphere. He had been on the Old Earth only once before, accompanying a diplomatic visit from the Alfheimr court, and he could never forget the charged air and the strangely metallic-tasting waters of the Source World. The magic here was everywhere: in food, soil, and in people.
He began a long climb down the cracked slope of the mound, away from the sea and towards the mountains. He hoped his target was somewhere between the two features — the mountains seemed steep, cold and very, very far away.
By the light of a campfire — the flames buzzed with purples and blues, as the raw elementals in the atmosphere fought each other to get closer to the heat — he cleaned up and polished his white armour. Today, as every day for the last ten days, it was covered with mud, muck and bits of rotting vegetation.
The marshes of Gautr seemed endless. He had grown used to the smells and the vapours emanating from the morass; it was the dirt and the damp that still irritated him.
On any other world, he could keep his clothes and armour in pristine condition with a minor charm. He could start fires with a flick of a finger. If he tried hard enough, he could even fly over the swamps, using one of several applicable spells. But not here, not on the Old Earth. Here, only most powerful mages dared to cast spells. Not because they lacked power — there was plenty of that all around — but because they lacked control. Casting a spell was like lighting a match in a house full of swamp gas; unless you knew exactly what you were doing, the result was likely to be catastrophic.
Dragons, of course, were made of pure magic, and had no such limitations. It made his task an almost impossible challenge, but then, his whole life was made of impossible challenges.
He reached for the headband and untied his hair. They were dirty too, clumped with grease and dirt. Not wearing a helmet had its disadvantages.
Tiny droplets of ice covered his beard. He was now a good hundred miles away from the spot where the portal had thrown him out onto the inhospitable rocky plateau. He left the frozen marsh-lands, and then made his way to a low tundra. The ice-capped mountains were all around him as he headed into the narrow, v-shaped valley carved by melting snows.
He was following his instincts; there was nothing else to go on. The few natives, hunters, and gatherers living in scattered camps on grass islands on the marsh could only point him in the general direction of roars and rumbles; for all he knew, they could have been leading him towards a mighty waterfall or to the spot prone to avalanches.
But, as he ventured deeper into the valley, the path of destruction became clear. Fallen trees, patches of scorched ground, claw marks on the stones… a dragon had flown through here, and not a small one, either.
The double roar tore the night’s silence, shattering his sleep. It was followed by a mighty splash, and the sound of creaking timber. A burst of flame pierced the dark sky. A clap of thunder boomed against the cliff.
This was no ordinary dragon rampage. He jumped up, grabbed the axe and ran out of the shelter. He listened, intently. Yes, it was certain now: there were two voices, roaring and shrieking among the thunders and explosions.
Two dragons! Are they fighting or…?
Fiercely territorial, Great Dragons usually kept to their own worlds, unless a need arose for them to mate — which didn’t happen more often than once an aeon. Of course, things could have been different on Old Earth; he hadn’t studied the dragon lore of this place. The beast he was chasing was not from this world, anyway.
He ran towards the noise — it was easy to follow — up a shattered slope, down a crevice and over a causeway of fallen aspens. He could see the two majestic shapes now in the light of their eruptions. One dragon was much larger than the other; faster and fiercer in its movements. The smaller one was struggling to get away, somewhat clumsily, spitting tongues of flame which seemed to make no impression on its attacker.
It was hard to tell the colour of each dragon in the night; the blasts of flame and lightning cast their own shades on the monstrous bodies. He moved closer and shielded his eyes. The stronger beast was snow-white, her breath icy; it was obviously the native one, an overlord of this domain of winter.
The weaker beast was crimson red; its wings were torn up, and by the time he reached the glade where the final throes of the duel were taking place, it was merely trying to crawl away to safety. He had never been present at a duel of dragons, but he could tell that it was going to be over in a matter of moments.
The answer given to him by Garoud the Wise had cost him dearly, but he knew it was worth every price. It was surprisingly clear and straightforward. He knew it was not at all like the vague prophecies most pilgrims to the Water usually received.
He only had a few seconds left to fulfil the command. The snow dragon raised its long neck high into the air, readying itself for the final strike. The red beast huddled in the nook of a rock wall, hoping that at least that way it could shield itself from the worst of the enemy’s wrath.
He drew the mighty two-handed axe from the harness on his back and with a few strokes carved a power rune into the air. The atmosphere around him shimmered and crackled, the elementals popped from the mud in anticipation. No human had used magic here for centuries — certainly not that powerful.
“Arrhe’a Ha’Ken!”
The air between him and the white dragon was in flames. The recoil from the blast threw him away, straight onto a pile of sharp boulders. He winced at the sound of bending armour, and the piercing pain in his back. His eyebrows and the tips of his hair were singed.
The dragon hovered in the air mid-leap and looked incredulously at the ray of white light and flame piercing its chest. It waved a paw at it, as if trying to break it away. At last, it realized its heart was no longer where it should be; vanquished into dust by the fierceness of the amplified spell. The beast broke in two with a wail and fell down, crushing the thin aspens beneath its body.
Dawn was rising as he approached the red dragon. The nights were short and intense here in the North.
Something didn’t feel right about the beast. It was lying on its side, with one of the legs raised unnaturally, and the remains of a leathery wing floating on a puddle of melted snow. Its head was half-buried in a heap of rubble, its eyes were dim, devoid of that powerful glint common to every dragon. It was silent and motionless.
Am I too late?
The dragon’s head cracked open, releasing a plume of steam. He jumped aside. He had not seen that kind of injury before…
Something was crawling out of the opening. He gagged, thinking it was the dragon’s oozing brain, but it was a living creature. A humanoid, in fact. Short and stout, dressed in tough leather and a chain-mail shirt. When it turned around to face him, the remains of a scraggly beard were still smouldering.
“A dwarf!” he exclaimed.
“At your service,” the dwarf bowed down, coughing. “I believe I owe you my life, knight in white.”
And with that, the dwarf collapsed.
He carried the dwarf back to th
e tent, clicked on the campfire — there was no danger of overusing the magic in the area for at least a day after the dragon duel had used most of the local energy — and splashed his face with ice-cold water. The dwarf spluttered and woke up. It looked around, blinking.
“Where am I?”
“In my camp. Two miles away from where the dragon attacked… you?”
The dwarf tried to stroke his beard, before noticing there wasn’t much of it left. His right hand was clutched in a fist. “You could have waited for my death and taken it from me there.”
“Take what?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know. You all come here just for one thing.”
“I swear I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t even know who you are. I knew dwarves were rough people, but to accuse me of some thievery when I just saved your life…”
“You’re right. I apologize.” The dwarf tried to stand up.
“Careful. You look exhausted.”
“No dwarf ever sat down saying his name if he could stand up.” He struggled up, supporting himself on whatever he could put his hand on — including the knight’s head.
“I am Favnir, Son of Hreiðmar,” he introduced himself. “The true heir to the Niðavellir Throne.”
The knight crouched up — the tent was too small for him to straighten fully upright.
“You can call me Sigrud,” he said. “I am, as you might have guessed, a Dragon Knight.”
“No, I could not have guessed,” the dwarf answered, somewhat grumpily. “Where is your dragon? Your sword? What are you doing out here, alone?”
“I lost my dragon fighting the Shadow. I have had no time to get a new one yet. As for what I’m doing here… I believe I was looking for you.”
The answer both satisfied and confused the dwarf. He sat down, heavily, and looked from the knight to the handle of his battle axe. “Sigrud, eh. That’s a good dwarven name,” he said at last.
“That is what they call me on your home world.”
“But it is not what you call yourself.”
“No,” the knight replied in a definite tone. This conversation had to end there. He knew how important names were in dwarven culture, but he didn’t care.
“I’ve heard legends that one of Hreiðmar’s sons had been turned into a dragon by his own avarice.” He changed the subject. “Now I see that the rumours were true. What was that thing out in the marsh?”
“A contraption of my own design,” Favnir replied boastfully. “It has served me well all these years, guarding my home from all sorts of unwelcome visitors.”
“But not dragons.”
“Oh, I fought back quite a few of them, too. I just didn’t expect a Great One to ever come here.”
“Didn’t you notice this marsh was a dragon lair?”
The dwarf shrugged. “I’m not versed in the lore like you. I was trying to find as remote a place as possible. Away from the robbers and thieves.”
“What is it that you hold so precious?”
The dwarf laughed. “You truly don’t know?” He opened his fist, revealing a ring on his finger; two bands of twisted red and white gold.
“Andvar’s Gift,” he said. “The Cursed Gold.” He chuckled again, at the look of bewilderment at the knight’s face. “If you don’t know about it, what are you doing in this forsaken marsh?”
The bubbling pot lid told the knight that the bracken stew was ready. “Why don’t you tell me your story, dwarf, and I’ll tell you mine,” he said, reaching for the ladle.
“Sounds fair,” Favnir said, nodding. “And then we can both come back to my home, to eat something proper,” he added, eyeing the unappetizing broth.
“Like every dwarven story worth its salt, this one, too, begins with seven of us,” Favnir began, between slurps of the bracken stew. “Seven brothers, sons of Hreiðmar. Each of us was given a domain to rule, far away from his flying palace, where we were to wait for his death before deciding how to carve up the kingdom. I was the oldest,” he poked his chest, “but that meant nothing for the others.”
“But Hreiðmar would not die. Centuries passed, and his beard hadn’t even begun to grow grey!” He grasped at his singed facial hair in protest. “This could not go on. We decided we’d have to take the Stone Cloud by force, if need be.”
“Two of my brothers perished in the first, largest assault. It was then that we discovered that Ymir’s Spawn, our world’s greatest dragon, was in our father’s service: the dragon simply devoured most of the army. After this, we changed tactics. Instead of full-frontal attacks, we resorted to brief forays, hoping to strike our father down before the dragon noticed. When those failed, we began to raid the fortress for loot: at least that way, some of our inheritance would fall to us.”
He raised the ring to the light. “I got this on my last raid. The bravest robbery ever attempted by a dwarf: I stole it from my sleeping father’s hand. Why didn’t I kill him, you ask? By then we knew that, due to some foul deal with the dragon that guarded his kingdom, he had become immortal. As long as Ymriel lived, so would Hreiðmar.”
“Andvar’s Gift,” he said longingly, as if remembering an old friend. “The greatest work of the greatest dwarven smith. It doesn’t look like much now, does it? And yet, when my surviving brothers learned I had it, they turned against me. Instead of fighting our father, they fought me. My domain lost, my armies defeated, I had to flee with all my treasure; eventually, I fled here, and I’ve been hiding from robbers and assassins since then.”
The White Knight nodded. He had heard this story many times before, in many guises, with many heroes. It didn’t surprise him. Anything that happened on Old Earth and the neighbouring Nine Realms rippled and reflected throughout the Mirror Worlds. The history of this land literally repeated itself in mirrored, distorted images.
Even his own life resembled that of the dwarf, not so long ago — alone, hiding away on a remote world, fighting off assassins and robbers… was he just another false ripple of the only true story?
“What’s so special about this ring?” he asked.
“Look at it carefully.” The dwarf held the jewel before his eyes. “And now look into your heart, and tell me how much you think it’s worth.”
“Everything I own,” Sigrud replied without thinking.
The dwarf laughed. “That’s not very much from what I see! But you understand the effect of the Curse? It works the same on everyone. For my father, it was worth his kingdom. For my brothers, their domains and all their treasure. For me, it’s worth this wretched life.” He threw his arms wide with a grand gesture. “It is truly a tragedy: though it’s worth so much, it can never be sold. There simply isn’t a price anyone would accept. It can only be stolen — like I stole it from my father, and he stole it from its creator. I imagine one day my brothers will come to steal it from me — even if, for the moment, they have stopped their efforts, for some unfathomable reason.”
They are all dead, the knight thought, wondering whether he should tell the dwarf of the situation on his home world — the slaying of Ymriel, the death of Hreiðmar, and the dark rule of the Elven Queen. He decided against it, for now. The developments on Nivreðil did not change the effect of the ring’s Curse.
“But enough about me,” Favnir said, hiding his hand in the pocket of his leather trousers. “If you’re not here to steal Andvar’s Gift, why are you here?”
The knight put away his bowl, wiped his lips and burped.
“My story is long,” he began, “but the part that concerns my journey here begins on a small world known as Eilill. It was there that I lost everything to the Shadow: my dragon, my horse, even my sword… I wandered the Mirror Worlds aimlessly, seeking a way to regain my power and rejoin the fight against the Abyss, but the war evaded me: every time I reached a planet, the front line had already moved away.
“I was at a loss; I, who was once called the Destroyer, He, Who Does Not Bear the Helmet, the knight who ravaged entire continents and s
wayed the tide of countless battles, could not find so much as a skirmish to bloody my blade. Fate played cruelly with me. I was all but ready to give up the search, when, by chance, I found myself on the world called The Water. You’ve heard of it, maybe?”
The dwarf shook his head.
“It had been an unimportant frontier planet, until Garoud the Wise decided to make it his new home. It was fate that brought me there, an accident. But I realized then that that was my chance. Garoud would have the Answer. I decided to ask him what I should do to fight the Abyss — and help defeat it.”
He wiped his face with a tired gesture; even the memory of those days was making him weary.
“Wait, the Angels told me. So I waited. For five years, working among the Sea People, helping them build their rafts, defending them from the sea monsters, escorting their trade caravans… near the end of the fifth year, a battalion of the Abyss army landed in the Water. They, too, must have become lost on the way to some battle. They did what they had always done: laid waste to most of the planet… burning the raft cities, slaying the Sea People, sinking their ships.
“It was a challenge I had been waiting for,” he continued. “I gathered the remainder of the natives and built an army out of them; the Angels and the dragons that fly around Garoud. In a few battles I routed the enemy and forced them out of the Water… It was a brief, small-scale conflict, compared to the campaigns of my past, but it was a satisfying starter… I wanted to follow the fleeing ogre ship, and, in this way, find my way to the war, but…”
“What happened?” the dwarf asked, leaning forward.
“I had the portal open when the summons from Garoud came. I was surprised. I thought I had already received the answer — I waited, and the war came to me… but no, the dragon wanted to tell me something else. The true Answer.”
“What was your price?” Favnir asked. Everyone knew the Answer did not come free from Garoud.
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