by D. P. Prior
Nameless felt the worry tugging at his face start to break into a smile, but then he looked behind on the stage, and he met the sullen gaze of Gitashan.
“But the Matriarch’s not at all happy.”
Cordana’s eyes hardened. “Tell me about it.”
***
Leaving the post-ceremony celebrations in the great hall, the Council of Twelve, sans Abednago, processed into King Arios’s throne room with Cordana at their head. Gitashan led a comparable group of Dwarf Lords, hastily put together, among them Thyenna, Cidruthus Tallish, and Yyalla of House Thane.
Nameless left Paxy on the lowest step of the dais, and looked up at the throne, near-empty tankard clutched to his chest. In his mind’s eye, he saw an image of the original throne, with the skeletal form of King Arios seated upon it. The ancient king had told him to take the Axe of the Dwarf Lords. He’d recognized the Immortal blood in Nameless’s veins, and he’d hoped against hope that Nameless could do what all the heroes of Arnoch had failed to do, and take down the Destroyer. As if reliving the same memory, Paxy floated into the air and hovered above the throne, in the same place Nameless had first seen her.
The two factions seated themselves once more on opposite sides of the long table set up before the dais.
When Nameless started to grumble that he had no business being there, Gitashan snapped, “No. You stay. There are hard things that need to be said, and you have a foot in both camps.”
“Camps, lassie? We’re all dwarves here.” He placed his tankard on the table and seated himself.
Gitashan snorted and looked away.
Cordana waited for the room to settle before standing and opening the meeting. Almost at once, Thyenna stood and, cordially, as though she were making allowances for ignorance that no one was to blame for, said, “It is unfitting for a common-blood to speak before a Lord, let alone an Immortal.”
“Hah!” Nameless said. “Someone should have told her that when we were children. That way, at least I might have got a word in edgeways.”
No one laughed, not even Cordana. The tension across the table grew so taut, the air felt ready to rupture.
Nip Garnil coughed and said, “It has yet to be determined by this Council—”
“Silence!” Gitashan barked. As she stood, Thyenna sat back down. “On Thanatos, your head would already be rolling across the floor for such insolence.”
The color drained from Nip Garnil’s face, and he sunk slowly back down again.
Cordana’s fists clenched on the tabletop. She lowered her eyes and drew in a long breath. Her shoulders bunched up around her ears. When she looked up, she met the Matriarch’s glare unwaveringly.
“This is not Thanatos. This is Arnoch.”
There were mutters of agreement among the Council. It only came as a surprise to Nameless they hadn’t called a recess so they could discuss among themselves the veracity of Cordana’s statement.
“Exactly,” Gitashan said. “The ancestral home of the Dwarf Lords, not common-bloods. Arnoch is ours by right.”
“Now hang on a minute,” Nameless said, leaping up from his chair. “That is not why I brought you back here.”
“Then why?” Thyenna said, remaining seated. “You just wanted us to take care of your dragon problem, and then what? Accept the rule of our inferiors? Listen to the rambling debates of this so-called democracy?”
“If you don’t like it—” Cordana said.
“I don’t,” Gitashan said. Slowly, deliberately, she drew her scimitar. “And I intend to change it.”
Nameless put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. In response, Paxy sped to his waiting hand. “Put that down, lassie,” he said.
His voice had grown cold once more, and he saw nervous looks pass among those of the Council who’d been there at Arx Gravis, those who’d seen the Butcher up close. Cordana flinched and swallowed. She’d witnessed the full horror of which Nameless was then capable, more so than anyone else.
Gitashan’s head snapped round to face him, but she faltered. He knew that his glare was excoriating, scorching fire to the ice in his tone. Thyenna started to rise but dropped back down again when he included her in his ire.
“I’ll count to three,” Nameless said.
“I refuse to accept—” Gitashan started to object.
“One.”
“How dare you! I am the rightful ruler of—”
“Two.”
She cursed, and scraped her blade on the table as she resumed her seat. She lay the scimitar across her lap.
“Thank you, lassie.” Nameless placed Paxy on the tabletop in front of him and sat, too. “You saved me the embarrassment of counting further. I can never remember if it’s three or four next. That’s one of the problems of being a goat-rutting commoner, or whatever it was you called me.”
“You are an Immortal,” Gitashan said, without meeting his eyes. “There is no use any of us denying that. All else is irrelevant.”
“The way I see it,” Nameless said, “that makes me a servant, not a despot. I thought you’d shown that, you and Thyenna, during the fight outside the portal. That is how Immortals should act, not like… Not like this.”
“Like what?” Gitashan asked. Now she met his eyes, and her amber ones were narrowed to slits. “What were you going to say?”
Nameless was momentarily flummoxed. He looked to Cordana for help.
“Go on,” she said. “Be honest.” Then, to Gitashan, “Or am I speaking out of turn?”
The Matriarch ignored her. She was waiting intently on Nameless’s response.
He winced as he said, “A prissy little tart with a scarolite spoon shoved so far up her arse it paints her teeth brown when she talks.”
Cordana guffawed.
Barely suppressed sniggers passed along the Council.
Nameless couldn’t be sure, but he thought one or two of the Dwarf Lord’s chuckled before covering their mouth with their hands.
Thyenna was out of her chair. She took her sister by the arm.
“We don’t have to listen to this.”
“You know where the door is,” Cordana said. “Shog off back to Thanatos.”
Gitashan remained silent. Her eyes were locked to Nameless’s. He couldn’t tell if she was too shocked to react, or if he’d touched a nerve. Yes, that was it, he decided. She looked like someone had just punched her in the stomach and winded her so much, she couldn’t draw breath. He guessed no one had spoken to her that way before, and he realized he wasn’t proud of it.
“Lassie,” he said. “Matriarch. Forgive me. That was wrong of me.”
“Come on,” Thyenna said, “we’re going. All of us.”
“Back to Thanatos?” Gitashan sounded like a little girl.
“If we must.”
“But the Dark Citadel,” Nameless said. “It was breached.”
“Can we fix it?” Gitashan turned to Cid.
He blew out his cheeks and fiddled with his fingers on the tabletop, carefully considering his reply.
“I dare say Ancient Bub could have done, but we are none of us masons anymore. Thanatos made sure of that.” He widened his address to take in the Council and Nameless. “All we know how to do is fight. Fight for our survival. But in the process…” He looked nervously at the Matriarch to gauge if he’d gone too far, said too much. When she just watched him dumbly, waiting for him to go on, he said, “In the process, we have forgotten what we are. Who we are. If I may make so bold…” Again, that look to Gitashan for permission, and again, the same blank stare. “Ah, shog it,” Cid said. “What’s the point of being an old coot if you can’t speak your mind. You, the people of Arnoch, needed us, needed the help we could uniquely offer. But now, it is we who need help. Help rediscovering all that a dwarf should be. Help with settling into a new home, because returning to Thanatos would be worse than stupid, and I for one am not going.” He paused, as if waiting for one of the Immortals to cut the head from his shoulders, but when nothing happened, he con
tinued. “And we need help with continuing our race. We need you far more than you needed us.”
A heavy silence settled over the throne room, and eventually, everyone turned to the Matriarch, awaiting her response.
Nameless rested his fingers lightly on Paxy’s haft. Cordana finally sat down, flicking him uneasy glances.
After an eternity, Gitashan passed her scimitar to Thyenna and pushed herself to her feet. This time, when she spoke, she addressed Cordana directly.
“All that Cidruthus says is true.”
Thyenna shut her eyes and let out a sigh that Nameless took for relief. Thyenna had been acting out of loyalty, to her Matriarch, to her sister. But she had not really wanted to leave. And all her bluster had come from the same place. It was what she thought was expected of her.
“But it is not without issues,” Gitashan continued. “We cannot… I will not… accept the rule of a common-blood, nor of this Council.”
A wave of eye rolling and head shaking passed along the councilors.
Nameless pinched the bridge of his nose, then realized he still had a few dregs left in the bottom of his tankard. He drained them and looked about to see if anyone was on hand to get him a refill. There wasn’t, so he slammed the tankard down on the table, letting them know just what he thought.
“Then you can shogging well go find yourselves some place else to live,” Cordana said. “Qlippoth’s got plenty of spare room. And just remember, as you slowly die out with a whimper, that you only have yourselves to blame, because you think you’re too good to live under our rules, or to sully yourselves by breeding with us.”
The Dwarf Lords started to whisper among themselves. It was a break of protocol that would have earned them severe punishments on Thanatos, but the limits of what was acceptable had already been pushed too far, and they were apparently growing bold. As their voices grew louder, and started to compete with the noisy debate breaking out among the councilors, Yyalla stood and rapped her gauntleted hand on the table three times.
A hush fell over the throne room in an instant.
“Forgive me, Matriarch. Forgive me Thyenna. With your permission, I would like to speak.”
Thyenna’s eyes took on a soft edge, and she may even have smiled a smidgen. She faced Gitashan and gave the slightest of shrugs.
“Go on,” the Matriarch said.
“Arnoch, so the legends say, always had a king.” Yyalla’s eyes met Cordana’s. “I do not mean to criticize this government you have here. I can’t pretend to understand how it works. On Thanatos, we each have our station, and we obey unquestioningly. With anything less, we would have been wiped out a long time ago.”
“You are right,” Cordana said. “Arnoch did always have a king.”
“But it doesn’t now,” Gitashan said. “And why do you think that is?”
She didn’t need to add, “Because you’re all common-bloods.” It was plain from her sneer.
“We chose one, if you must know,” Cordana said. “And he said no. That’s why we made one of our councilors, Old Moary, regent, until a king could emerge from among us. When he died, and passed the regency to me, I re-formed the Council. I am, after all, just a nobody, and I’m certainly no Queen.”
“How shrewd of you,” Gitashan said. “But what you have to realize, is that no king can simply emerge from among you unless…” She broke off, suddenly realizing where this was going.
Nameless saw it, too, and he wished the ground would open up and swallow him.
“Nameless has the blood,” Yyalla said. “And he commands the respect of his people. After what I saw on the way back to the portal, and what he did going up against the dragon with Ancient Bub,”—she turned her hazel eyes on him and smiled—“he has my respect, too.”
“No,” Nameless whispered. He wasn’t even sure anyone could hear him.
Gitashan leaned on her fists and shook her head. “It is not enough to have the Immortal blood. A king must come from a House. He doesn’t even have a name, never mind a family.”
Nameless let out an exaggerated sigh of relief. The look Cordana gave him was in part sympathetic for what he’d lost, but there was something else: anger, maybe, at what she saw as a slight regarding the implied lack of status that came from being stripped of everything that defined him.
“I believe he does have a House,” Yyalla said. “And I said as much to Ancient Bub on the way from the Dark Citadel. He was going to look through the charts of genealogy up until the time of King Arios and the evacuation of Arnoch. When we arrived here, he said, he wanted to see if these people had annals of their own, so that we could plot a match.”
“We do,” Cordana said, “but after… after what happened at Arx Gravis, at the ravine, whole passages vanished, as if they’d been erased. Or rather, as if they had never been written.”
“So,” the Matriarch said, “there is nothing to prove he is descended from the Lords of House Thane. Which brings us back to my point. Only an Immortal with a House can take the crown.”
“And yet,” Cid said, “to my knowledge, there has never been a Queen of Arnoch. Nor a Matriarch.”
“The same situation we faced on Thanatos,” Thyenna said. “But better a woman of lineage than a man with no House.”
“What if I adopted him?” Yyalla said.
“What?” The Matriarch glared from Yyalla to Cid, who simply shrugged.
“Isn’t that what they used to do,” Yyalla said, “in the days of old? When a line neared extinction, those of no House could be drafted in, adopted, to ensure its continuance. Like so many of our Houses, House Thane is close to extinction. There are only three of us left. What if I exercise my right to adopt Nameless into our family?”
“Why would you do that?” Cordana said. She gave Nameless a withering look that might have been suspicion.
But there was nothing to warrant it in Yyalla’s expression. She was excited beyond measure, almost ecstatic in what she was proposing. But there was no personal gain for her. She was just doing what she thought was best for her people.
“Because Arnoch needs a king, a ruler acceptable to both our peoples.”
Looks were exchanged between the councilors on one side of the table, and the Dwarf Lords on the other.
One by one, the Dwarf Lords stood and slammed their fists into the tabletop and said, “I agree.”
All but Thyenna and the Matriarch.
“This is not a democracy,” the Matriarch said, but there was no fight left in her voice.
“Maybe it is,” Cordana said. “And for what it’s worth, I agree, too.”
In another bewildering show of unity, the other ten members of the Council present added their voices.
The Matriarch started to slowly nod.
“Gitashan,” Thyenna said, “We cannot permit this.”
“We may have no choice,” Gitashan said. “Times change. People change. Maybe even you and I have changed a little, but we have yet to notice it.”
Thyenna’s lips drew closed in a tight line. Finally, her shoulders slumped, and she nodded.
“But a king must have a queen,” Gitashan said. She turned her wild eyes on Nameless in what he took as triumph. This was it: what she’d wanted all along. Not to rule alone, but to have a consort, and to shoulder the burden with another. It mattered not to her which way round it happened, a Matriarch choosing her mate, or being the mate of a king. It only mattered that she got what she wanted: an Immortal for herself, as if anything less would somehow sully her.
Cordana’s eyes dropped to her lap. She hadn’t seen this coming. None of them had, least of all Nameless.
But then he recalled the conversation he’d had with Gitashan at the Dark Citadel.
“Remember what we were saying, Matriarch, about the Immortal blood overwhelming anything less?”
She nodded vigorously. “You felt what we have during the fight at the portal. How we soared, we three. The blood of the Immortals is infinitely precious, and vastly superior.”
“So superior, it can’t be diluted.”
And she saw his intention way before anyone else had caught up. Triumph fled her eyes, left them startled and frantic.
“No matter who I mate with,” Nameless said, “my Immortal blood will pass to my children, even if only to remain latent.” He ran his gaze around the table. “But let’s not dwell on that. It may be a moot point, because I’ve a different theory. From what I’ve seen of how your people and mine have carried themselves through this crisis, I suspect the blood of the Immortals has run through the veins of every dwarf who’s ever lived since the Cynocephalus first dreamed us. If,” he added, “that dog-headed shogger really had anything to do with it, and we were not anodyne to his nightmares, sent as a gift from on high.”
Ah, I wondered when you’d get there, Paxy said in his mind. I wish I could have told you this before, but for everything I reveal, there are countermoves from the other side.
She meant the Demiurgos, the black sheep of the Supernal Father’s family. The Great Deceiver who was no doubt behind all the false trails the dwarves had been following as to their true origins and identity.
A thousand questions seethed and bubbled in Nameless’s brain, but he couldn’t let Paxy’s words distract him. There would be time enough for that later.
“It’s all gift, the way I see it,” Nameless went on. “The blood of the Immortals. All for someone else’s benefit. It’s not there for self-aggrandizement or dominance. I’ve been starting to suspect for some time, and now Paxy here has confirmed it:”—most of the dwarves frowned with confusion, but Cordana’s eyes widened, and Gitashan scowled—“We are anything but the dreams of an insane god. Anything but random aberrations thrown up by blind chance, and anything but the creations of a deluded Technocrat. What we are is heroes. Every last one of us.”
“No! Don’t do this,” Gitashan said. “You can’t. She’s a brewer’s daughter, for shog’s sake!”
Nameless pushed his seat back and went round the table, where he dropped to one knee beside Cordana’s chair.
