by Markus Heitz
Leaning back against a tree trunk, he stopped to recover his breath. No amount of marching could have prepared him for sprinting through a forest, laden with bags. He made a quick check of his things; the pouch with Gorén’s artifacts was still slung from his shoulder, rattling and jangling as soon as he moved. The bag had been making strange noises ever since his misadventure with the orc.
Still listening attentively for his pursuers, he took a sip of water. The brigands are hunting dwarves for a reward. He could scarcely believe it. Of all the terrible things that had happened, this new revelation shocked him to the core. Putting gold on dwarven lives ran counter to the laws of Girdlegard and it was hard to see the sense of it: What would anyone want with a disembodied head?
As soon as he had recovered sufficiently he made a beeline through the forest toward the nearest path. To his astonishment, Boëndal and Boïndil were coming the other way.
“About time too!” Boïndil called out to him. “You went the wrong way!”
“I went the right way,” Tungdil corrected him. “You missed the turn to Porista!”
Boëndal took a closer look at him. “What happened, scholar? Did you run into trouble?”
“Just my luck to miss all the excitement,” his brother grumbled moodily. Then he laughed. “I know, I bet a squirrel was after his n —”
“Headhunters,” Tungdil cut him off. “They’re decapitating dwarves in return for a reward.”
“What?” screeched Boïndil, eyes rolling wildly. His voluminous beard billowed. “Where are they?”
“I don’t know,” Tungdil told him, “and to be perfectly honest, I’m just glad they’ve stopped chasing me.”
They stopped in a clearing to decide what to do.
“Did they say who was paying them?” Boëndal asked.
“No, but I’ve seen them once before. They didn’t lay a finger on me at the time — too many other people nearby, I suppose.” Given half a chance, they would have killed me, he realized with a shudder.
“Sounds like the thirdlings are up to their tricks again. They’re probably paying the bounty hunters to wipe out the rest of the dwarven race, or it could be a ploy to turn us against the long-uns so we end up feuding with them as well as the elves.” Boëndal looked at his companions. “There’ll be plenty to talk about when we get back to Ogre’s Death.”
They unpacked their blankets and spent the night under a dense roof of leaves. It seemed prudent to do without a fire: It was dark enough for the flames to be seen for miles around and the mere snapping of a twig seemed alarmingly noisy in the stillness. Tungdil snuggled down and put his hands behind his head, only to sit up abruptly and pluck a beetle from his thick shock of hair. “It’s strange,” he mused out loud, “but the two of you must have left Ogre’s Death at roughly the same time as the headhunting began.”
Boïndil, who had coiled his long plait into a pillow, frowned. “You mean it’s nothing to do with the thirdlings? You think they were after us?”
His brother shook his head. “That hardly seems likely, Boïndil. No, our scholar thinks they were after him. Am I right?”
Tungdil sighed. “I’m probably making too much of it, but didn’t you say I had a rival for the throne?”
Boëndal saw what he was getting at. “Gandogar Silver-beard would never do a thing like that,” he said firmly. “He’s an upstanding dwarf!”
“I don’t know what you’re getting so offended about,” his brother said reproachfully. “He isn’t even a secondling.”
“No, but he’s a dwarf, an honorable dwarf with some funny ideas.” He thought for a moment. “Besides, Gundrabur didn’t tell anyone about Tungdil until after we’d left. No,” he insisted, “the headhunting is another nasty thirdling ploy. It’s bad enough that one of our folks has turned against us, but we can’t start suspecting Gandogar. Our race will be doomed if we can’t trust one another; it mustn’t be true, it can’t be.”
They lay in silence, pondering the matter uneasily until they fell asleep.
Tungdil’s dreams were filled with all kinds of unsettling nonsense. Hordes of orcs and älfar were pursuing him with shaving soap and razors, determined to cut off his burgeoning beard. In the end they caught him, held him down, and shaved his face; it was humiliating and infuriating to be lying on the ground with cheeks as naked as a baby.
The thought of it jolted him from his restless sleep and he got up, ate some of his provisions, and offered a fervent prayer to Vraccas, asking for protection from bounty hunters and safe completion of his mission.
You’re not making it easy for me, Vraccas. Tungdil longed to be back in Ionandar’s vaults with Frala, Sunja, and Ikana; even the prospect of seeing Jolosin no longer seemed so bad.
The long journey made friends of the trio and Boïndil devoted every spare moment to instructing Tungdil in the art of combat.
“So tell me, scholar,” Boëndal said softly one evening when his brother was snoozing by the fire, “what do you make of the first dwarves you’ve ever been acquainted with?”
Tungdil grinned. “Do you want my honest opinion?”
“Of course.”
“Boïndil has the fierier temper. His fists move faster than his thoughts and he generally acts on impulse, although once he decides himself on something, no one will convince him otherwise.”
“I didn’t need a scholar to tell me that. Go on!”
“He hates orcs and elves with a vengeance and his life is devoted to warfare. He fights with uncommon zeal.”
“You know my brother well.” His twin laughed. “Just don’t let him hear you say so! And what of me?” he inquired eagerly, passing him a pipe.
“You have a gentler temperament. Your mind is sharper and you’re willing to listen to other people’s ideas.” Tungdil drew on the pipe. “Your brown eyes are friendly, whereas your brother’s… I can’t describe the look in his eyes.”
Boëndal clapped his hands softly. “True, all true.”
“Why did the two of you become warriors?”
“Neither of us has any talent for masonry, so we decided to join the guard. The secondlings are custodians of the High Pass, the steep-sided gorge through the Blue Range. At ground level, the pass is fifty paces wide, but its walls are over a thousand paces high, and the sides slope inward after eight hundred paces, leaving the path in shadow except for a short span of time when the sun is directly above.”
“Sounds pretty gloomy to me.”
“Throughout our history a handful of custodians have defended our kingdom against invaders, no matter how powerful their ranks.”
“Don’t you have a portal like the fifthlings’ Stone Gateway?”
“No, our forefathers cut a trench in the path, forty paces long and a hundred paces deep. On our side of the trench they built a rampart with a mechanical bridge. The engineers worked on the design for almost as long as it took for the masons to hew the trench.” Boëndal paused, recalling the genius of the engineering. “They made a collapsible walkway from thin slabs of stone. It’s incredibly light but can bear any load. At full extension, it rests on columns that rise up at the pull of a lever from the base of the trench, but the bridge can be retracted instantly by means of chains, cogs, and ropes.”
Tungdil was lost for words. “That’s… I’ve never heard anything like it! But what happens when orcs or ogres force their way onto the bridge?”
“We send them crashing into the trench. Tion’s creatures are forever littering the fosse with their bones.” He laughed softly. “One lot were so determined that they catapulted each other to the opposite side. Most died on impact; the others felt the fury of our axes.”
Tungdil joined in his mirth. “If I were trying to cross over,” he said thoughtfully, “I’d fill in the fosse or climb down and up the other side.”
“They thought of that too, but they didn’t stand a chance. There was only one occasion when our folk came close to going the same way as poor Giselbert’s dwarves.” Like every seco
ndling, Boëndal knew this episode of his kingdom’s history by heart. “An army of ogres had the same idea as you. On reaching the trench, they didn’t even try to find a way of bridging it; they just climbed down carefully, waded through the bones of their ancestors, and appeared before us in their hundreds.”
“But the secondlings managed to stop them?”
“Why do you think it’s called Ogre’s Death?” Boïndil chimed in chippily. “Can’t you keep the noise down when I’m trying to get some sleep?” He rolled closer and gazed into the fire. “I’m wide-awake now, thanks to you!”
He fetched some cheese from his pack and melted it over the flames. This time Tungdil accepted a morsel. It didn’t taste nearly as bad as he’d thought.
Boëndal resumed his story. “The ogres had got as far as storming the ramparts when their chieftain was killed. That was our salvation. Without their leader, the ogres didn’t know what to do and our warriors succeeded in pushing them back to the edge of the trench. They fell to their deaths. But that was a long time ago, when Boïndil and I were still in nappies. There hasn’t been a single attack on the High Pass for at least thirty cycles.”
“No wonder.” His twin guffawed. “The beasts are too scared of us. Actually, the High Pass has been so quiet lately that Gundrabur decided to send us in search of you.” He looked across the fire at Tungdil and his brown eyes glinted. “You were right, of course. I was born to fight. Combat is my calling; it’s who I am.”
“And I go where he goes. Twins belong together; find one and you’ll find both. It’s just the way it is.”
“Does every dwarf have a calling, then?” asked Tungdil, wondering what his might be. “Do you think I’ll be a stone hauler or a trench digger, or will I be an artisan with a proper talent?”
“Most fourthlings are gem cutters and diamond polishers. Maybe trinkets are your thing?”
Tungdil had never taken much of an interest in precious stones. Lot-Ionan possessed a few items of jewelry and Tungdil had enjoyed looking at the sapphires, rubies, diamonds, and amethysts because of the way in which they caught the light. He had never felt the slightest urge to craft a sparkling jewel from uncut stone, though.
“I don’t think so.” There was a hint of disappointment in Tungdil’s voice. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve been drawn to the forge. The smell of molten iron, tongues of fire that writhe like living things, the ring of the hammer, the hiss of hot metal as it enters the water — ever since I saw my first anvil, that’s what being a dwarf has meant for me.”
“You’ll be a smith, then,” Boïndil said approvingly. “A scholarly smith. Very dwarflike.”
Tungdil shuffled closer to the fire and tried to divine the secrets of his inner self. He pictured mountains of diamonds and then a column of dancing orange sparks rising from a furnace. He felt more affinity with the furnace. Gold appealed to him too, though; he loved its soft warm shimmer.
“I like gold as well, you know,” he confessed in a whisper. “I pick up any lost gold I can find — gold pieces, gold jewelry, gold dust dropped by prospectors. I collect it all.”
The brothers roared with laughter. “He’s got himself his own private hoard! If that isn’t properly dwarven, I don’t know what is. You’ll be a warrior soon,” Boïndil promised him, reaching for the pipe.
“I don’t know,” Tungdil said doubtfully. “The way you and Boëndal can fight and win against the odds. I’ll never —”
“There’s no such thing as having the odds against you,” Boïndil broke in. “Some challenges are bigger than others; that’s all there is to it.”
“All the same, I feel safer at the anvil; a forge is where I belong.” Tungdil decided not to dwell on the matter, so he opened his knapsack and pulled out Gorén’s books. The brothers watched as he slid the volumes out of their wax covering and examined them carefully.
“Well, what do they say, scholar?” Boïndil demanded impatiently. “Maybe that’s your calling, to be a learned scribe or an engineer. The dwarves are renowned for being prodigious inventors.”
“I can’t make head or tail of them.” To his immense disappointment, even the wording on the spine was written in scholarly script. “They were written for magi.” In some ways it was surprising that Gorén, an ordinary wizard, had been able to read them at all.
Tungdil tapped his forehead and scolded himself for being so slow. He had forgotten that the elf maiden would have been familiar with the workings of high magic. She must have helped Gorén unlock the secrets of the books.
He stroked the leather binding of the books. Why are their contents so important to the älfar? Since when have the elves’ dark relatives been afraid of parchment and ink?
“We’ll find out soon enough from Lot-Ionan,” he said, trying to rally their spirits. He was just returning the books to their wrapping when his gaze fell on the bag of artifacts. It had suffered visibly from the journey. In spite of the hard-wearing leather, the pouch was bleached from the sun and scuffed in several places, and there were sweat marks and grease stains where it had come into contact with his food. A faint line stretched across its surface like a scar, an eternal reminder of its run-in with the orcish sword.
The longer Tungdil looked at the pouch, the more he desired to look inside. He had been fighting the urge to undo the colored drawstrings for some time.
What harm is there in looking? Surely I’ve got the right to know what I’ve been lugging about all this time. Besides, Gorén is dead. Tungdil’s self-control failed him.
Trying to look nonchalant, he reached for the pouch. He didn’t want the others to know that the magus had forbidden him to look inside. He untied the knot and the drawstrings came open.
At that moment an ear-splitting, bone-shattering bang rent the air. A volley of sparks shot upward and exploded in a blast of color.
“By the hammer of Vraccas and his fiery furnace!” Leaping to their feet, the twins stood back-to-back, weapons at the ready.
Tungdil swore and tugged at the drawstrings, but the fire-works continued until he tied the knot exactly as it had been before. Lot-Ionan had booby-trapped the bag. He must have reckoned with his inquisitive nature and decided to teach him a lesson.
“What in all the peaks of Girdlegard was that?” Boëndal asked peevishly. “Not some magical nonsense, I hope.”
“I just wanted to see… Well, I wanted to see if the booby trap worked,” fibbed Tungdil, trying to breathe evenly. He was every bit as startled as the twins. “The magus put it there to, er, he put it there to stop the bag from being stolen!”
“All that noise from a little leather pouch?” Boïndil stared incredulously at the bag. “I still don’t see what the fireworks are in aid of, unless the magus wanted whoever stole it to earn a fortune as a street magician.”
“It’s so I’ll know where it is and be able to get it back,” Tungdil told him, inventing an explanation that was rather more flattering than the truth. He didn’t want them to know that his nosiness was to blame.
“If he didn’t want it stolen, why didn’t he put a proper spell on it?” growled Boïndil. He spat contemptuously in the bushes. “I always said that the long-uns’ magic was no good.”
His brother joined in. “He could have conjured a hammer to whack the villain on the head!” he suggested.
“Or a drawstring that crushes his wrists! That would teach the blackguard to keep his hands off other people’s belongings.”
Boëndal sat back down. “The magi work in mysterious ways. All that power and no common sense.”
Tungdil swallowed, thankful that his punishment had been mild by comparison. “I’ll pass on your ideas,” he promised.
“We’ll tell him ourselves!”
“No,” he said quickly. “It would be best if you didn’t. He doesn’t take kindly to anyone interfering in his business, especially if they’re strangers.” He could feel his cheeks burning as he spoke, but luckily for him, the twins were busy poking about in the fire, trying to
retrieve a portion of cheese that had been dropped in the confusion.
“A stunt like that could have been the death of us in Greenglade,” muttered Boïndil. He looked at Tungdil sternly. “Leave the bag alone in the future!” Sighing, he impaled the morsel on a stick, dunked it briefly in some water to wash away the ash, and popped it into his mouth. “No harm done,” he said.
But Tungdil had taken the lesson to heart. From now on I won’t touch the bag except to sling it over my shoulder and take it off at night. For all he cared, it could be stuffed full of gold; nothing could persuade him to open the drawstrings.
VII
Enchanted Realm of Lios Nudin,
Girdlegard,
Summer, 6234th Solar Cycle
Rantja scanned the crowd. Assembled in the atrium were 180 trainee wizards, the best famuli in Girdlegard, all waiting to be welcomed by Nudin the Knowledge-Lusty. At the behest of their respective magi, they had journeyed to Porista to lend their magical power to the crusade against the Perished Land. The high-ceilinged room echoed with their expectant chatter.
“The girdle must be in trouble if lowly apprentices like us are being summoned to keep out Tion’s hordes,” said a voice in her ear. “You look prettier than ever, Rantja.”
“Jolosin!” she exclaimed in delight, shaking his outstretched hand. It was then that she noticed his navy blue robe. “Oh my, you’re a fourth-tier famulus already. How long did you have to pester Lot-Ionan before he caved in?”
“Only thirty-two cycles old and already in Nudin’s fifth tier! I’m impressed,” teased the dark-haired famulus admiringly. “How are you?”
“Fine.” She smiled, then said soberly, “At least I was fine until I heard about the threat to Girdlegard.” She pointed to the cuts on his fingers. “What happened there?”
“Don’t ask,” he muttered gloomily. “But between you and me, I’m working on a spell to make potatoes peel themselves. It’s a relief to be out of the kitchen and doing something useful.” He glanced around. “Have you seen the council?”
“No. Even my magus has disappeared,” Rantja said anxiously. “What do you make of it?”
