by Markus Heitz
“How many were killed?” asked Balyndis. “What about the Steel Fingers?”
“They’re fine, I think, but we haven’t heard anything from the clans on the western border, closest to where the comet fell.” The firstling led them to a wooden platform connected to a pulley system. They got on, and the lift shot up, whizzing past hundreds of steps before stopping to let them out in the eastern halls of the kingdom. “I’m just pleased that our queen has returned. Four hundred of our kinsmen lost their lives in the disaster, but Xamtys will give us the strength to carry on.”
They saw straightaway that the dwarf’s description of the damage was no exaggeration. The passageways were riven with cracks, some no wider than a whisker, others big enough for Tungdil to slot his fingers inside. He noticed that the metal bridges, sturdy enough to carry hundreds of dwarves across rivers and chasms, had buckled in places.
“We lost one hall entirely and the ceiling in the throne room is sagging,” said the sentry. “It nearly buried our precious sculptures and statues. It was terrible.”
They ascended a staircase and reached the chamber where they had left the wounded Boëndal many orbits earlier on their way to the Dragon Fire furnace. He was lying in much the same position, swaddled in blankets, in a marble bed with a thick mattress.
Boïndil threw himself on his brother and flung his arms around him. He lowered his ear to his chest and listened to his heart. “He’s cold as a fish,” he said softly. “Anyone would think he was…” He tailed off and a smile spread across his careworn face. “A heartbeat! A good, strong heartbeat!” His joy evaporated. “Nothing again…”
“It’s what I was trying to explain,” whispered the firstling. “We think his blood might be frozen. His poor heart is pumping ice through his veins.”
A firstling appeared at the door with a tray. “He wasn’t the only one we found in the snow, but the others weren’t so lucky.” She put down a pot of steaming tea by the bed.
“Lucky?” said Tungdil, shaking his head. “He’s barely alive.”
“Some of our kinsmen looked like they’d been flattened by a giant hammer when we pulled their poor, crushed bodies from the snow. The rest died from lack of air. Boëndal survived, which goes to show that Vraccas wanted him to live.”
She stood at Boëndal’s bedside, decanted the piping hot tea into a leather drinking pouch, and raised it to his half-open lips. Boïndil stopped her and laid a muscular hand on the pouch. “What are you giving him?”
“A herbal infusion. It will thaw his insides,” she said. She went to raise the pouch, but Boïndil tightened his grip.
“An infusion? A tankard of warm beer will thaw his insides faster than a bunch of herbs.”
“No,” she said firmly. “The herbs have a medicinal effect, especially in combination with hot water.”
“Wouldn’t it be more effective to give him a bath?” threw in Tungdil. He had read about methods for treating hypothermia in one of Lot-Ionan’s books. The author was principally concerned with reviving humans who had fallen into lakes, but there was no reason why the remedy wouldn’t work on a dwarf.
“An excellent suggestion,” she said brusquely. “But I’m afraid we tried it and it didn’t work.” She snatched the pouch away from Boïndil. “You’re a warrior and I’m a physician. You do your job, and I’ll do mine. I wouldn’t dream of telling you how to use an ax.” Boïndil complied begrudgingly, but refused to leave his brother’s side.
“I scoured our archives, and the infusion is our only hope. Nothing else will work.”
Tungdil knew that she was holding something back. “Is there something we can try?” he probed. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. I owe my life to Boëndal.”
The firstling looked away. “It’s a legend, nothing more.”
“Listen to me,” shouted Boïndil, as if he were interrogating a spy. “By the beard of Vraccas, I’ll do anything—anything—to rekindle my brother’s furnace and make his spirit burn as brightly as before.” The glint in his dark brown eyes testified to his determination to make his brother well.
“The oldest records in our archives were chiseled by the ancients on tablets of stone. They’re thousands of cycles old,” said the firstling. “According to one of the tablets, it’s possible to fire up the soul of a frozen dwarf by kindling the embers of his furnace with white-hot sparks.”
“What do you think it means?” asked Balyndis. “Surely you can’t use real fire to warm a soul?” She turned to Tungdil. “Do you think we should cut him open and put sparks in his heart?”
“The wound would kill him,” said Tungdil. The legend reminded him of something, but he couldn’t quite make the connection.
“Trust a blacksmith to come up with a stupid idea like that,” growled Boïndil. “We can’t feed him with fire or put lava into his veins.”
The firstling glared at him. “For your information, the tablets came from Giselbert’s folk. I’ve told you what I know, and besides, it’s just a legend.”
“Dwarven legends are usually true,” said Balyndis, who wasn’t prepared to give up on the idea, no matter how unlikely it sounded. “So you’ve tried warm baths and hot drinks. How else can you warm his blood?”
The firstling stared at the floor. “I can’t. All I can do is keep giving him the infusion and praying to Vraccas to make him well.”
“Can’t?” Boïndil was so incensed by the plight of his frozen twin that his fiery spirit was burning out of control. “Isn’t there any proper medicine in this joke of a kingdom?”
“Dragon Fire!” broke in Tungdil, who had finally worked out the connection between the legend and its provenance. “A white-hot spark! It’s a reference to the fieriest furnace in Girdlegard!” He saw his friends’ puzzled faces. “I think the Dragon Fire furnace might be able to help. It was lit by the mighty Branbausìl, remember?”
Neither he nor Balyndis would ever forget the power of the furnace: In all their experience of the smithy, they had never encountered such tremendous heat. The white-hot flames of Dragon Fire were powerful enough to melt any metal, from pure white palandium, made by Palandiell, to the black element of tionium, created by Tion, and the red metal of vraccasium, element of the dwarves.
“That’s all very well,” said the physician, “but how would it work?” She put down the pouch and laid a hand on her patient’s forehead. “We’d need proper instructions.”
Tungdil looked at the secondling’s rigid body. “The key to the legend lies in the fifthling kingdom. My friends and I are going there anyway, and we’ll take Boëndal with us.” He turned to the physician. “You’ve done everything you can for him, but he won’t get better here.” After a short silence, he went over to Boïndil. “I’m not giving up on him,” he said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Vraccas cured him of the arrow wounds and rescued him from the avalanche, and now it’s our task to wake him from his sleep. You mark my words: The Dragon Fire furnace holds the answer, and I’ll scour the fifthlings’ archives to find out how. The old Boëndal will be back before you know it.”
Boïndil took his hand and squeezed it gratefully. “We’re lucky to have a scholarly friend like you.” He loosened his grip and stroked his brother’s cheek. Then he fetched a stool and settled down to wait.
“You should get some rest,” said Tungdil, following Balyndis out of the room.
“So should you,” she said firmly. She asked the physician to fetch some provisions for Boïndil and make sure he had somewhere to sleep. “Come on,” she said to Tungdil. “Let’s get some food and go to bed.”
“Not until we’ve spoken to Xamtys.”
Balyndis’s plaits whirled around in circles as she shook her head vigorously. “The queen will send for us when she needs us. Her advisors will be briefing her on the damage to the stronghold and it won’t be long before she retires to bed. The rest can wait till the morning.” She pulled him through the corridors to her chamber.
It was the first time that he had see
n her quarters in the firstling kingdom. Someone had obviously taken care of the cleaning in her absence because the chamber was neat and tidy. Balyndis took a couple of blankets from the closet and laid them over the bed.
Then they kneeled in front of the shrine that Balyndis had erected in Vraccas’s honor in the corner of her room. After praying to the Smith on Boëndal’s behalf, they took off their heavy mail shirts, undressed to their undergarments, and lay down in bed.
Balyndis looked at Tungdil, her eyes filled with love. He gazed back at her tenderly, returning her unspoken affection with a kiss on the lips.
“They’re talking about us, you know,” she said with a tired smile.
“No wonder—we’re famous.”
She burst out laughing. “Not because of that. They’re talking about us because we don’t hide our love.” She realized from his expression that he didn’t understand. “I think the twins may have forgotten a couple of things when they were teaching you to be a dwarf. Our union hasn’t been sanctioned, Tungdil. We’re not supposed to show affection for one another until we’ve been melded. Any word or gesture that oversteps the bounds of friendship is a violation of our mores. Strictly, you shouldn’t be here at all.”
He grinned at her. “It’s all right, Balyndis, the rules are different for heroes. Besides, it won’t be long until we’re joined by the iron band.”
Balyndis wasn’t the least reassured. “Even heroes are bound by our mores. It’s a serious matter, and that’s why my kinsfolk are talking. Besides, no one shows affection in public—it isn’t the dwarven way.”
“I don’t remember the twins saying anything about that,” said Tungdil, nestling closer. “Let them gossip, if they want to; we’ll soon be melded.”
They snuggled up to each other and fell asleep.
It was exactly as Balyndis had predicted.
Queen Xamtys II allowed them to sleep off their tiredness and sent word that she expected them in the throne room in the course of the following orbit.
In the meantime, they took the opportunity to have a long bath—in separate bathtubs because they hadn’t been melded. Tungdil didn’t care if his kinsfolk gossiped about them, but he tried not to cause a scandal for Balyndis’s sake.
Later, she cooked for him and, in the course of conversation, it came out that she had almost been melded to someone else. Her clan had picked a partner for her, but the poor dwarf had fallen in battle before they could forge the iron band. It was lucky for Tungdil because a dwarven union was permanent unless both parties agreed to break the band, which, as far as Balyndis could remember, had never happened in the history of the dwarves.
“And then you turned up and stole my heart,” she said, turning her attention to the stove. After orbits of dried food, she couldn’t wait to have a proper dwarven meal. Soon their plates were piled high with steaming potatoes in mushroom ragout. Fried fudi-fungi slices and cranberry compote were served on the side. After a while Balyndis noticed that Tungdil had hardly touched his food. “Isn’t it spicy enough?”
“It tastes delicious,” he said quickly, “but I’m not accustomed to dwarven food.” He glanced round the kitchen. “I was thinking of adding a pinch of that cheese.”
She glared at him in disbelief. “You mean the stinking cheese that the twins always eat? It tastes as bad as it smells!”
“I like it,” he said, offended that she was sneering at the one dwarven victual that he actually liked. He headed off an argument by changing the subject. “So your clansfolk don’t know that we’re…”
“No. How was I supposed to tell them? I’ll talk to them when I see them.”
He scratched his beard. “You don’t think they’ll mind?” Tungdil, who had been living quite happily in ignorance of dwarven sensitivities, saw himself up against all kinds of awkward rules.
“That’s another matter,” she conceded, helping herself to a potato. “Maidens aren’t supposed to choose their partners. Widows are allowed to, but I’m only half a widow at best.”
Tungdil took another serving of mushroom ragout to show that he appreciated Balyndis’s food. A horrible thought had occurred to him, and he simply had to ask. “What if your clansfolk refuse?”
Balyndis put down her spoon and reached for his hand. “Listen to me, Tungdil: I’m coming with you to the Gray Range, whatever they say.” She looked at him gravely. “But we can’t be melded if my clansfolk won’t allow it. I can’t disgrace the good name of my clan.”
“But if we can’t be melded…?”
“I’d still be your friend.”
Tungdil stopped chewing and gasped, nearly choking on his mushroom. Why didn’t anyone warn me that dwarven mores are so complicated?
He imagined what it would be like to see Balyndis every orbit and never come close to her again. Their kinsfolk would frown at them for holding hands like they were doing now.
A brisk handshake, a formal embrace—that was the most he could hope for. She would never again press her lips against his. His heart wept at the thought that another dwarf could take his place and enjoy the rights that went with the iron band. It would be agony.
He was so distressed that he stopped worrying about Boëndal, all thought of the Gray Range and the orcs at the Stone Gateway forgotten. He finished the ragout in silence.
“What’s the matter?” asked Balyndis, squeezing his hands. “Have I spoiled things? I didn’t mean to upset you.”
He raised his eyes from his plate. The sight of Balyndis was so comforting that his mood brightened like the morning sun. “It’s all right,” he told her. “We’ll be a wonderful couple. Just think, we’ll have lots of lovely children and they’ll all be splendid smiths.” He kissed the back of her hand and she ruffled his hair. The bad dream was over.
Some time later, a steward knocked at the door and escorted them to the throne room. They passed through the imposing doorway and entered the octagonal hall, the walls of which shimmered warmly with beaten gold.
The quake had shown little respect for the time-honored room, and great cracks had opened in the ceiling, proving that solid rock was no defense against the force of a speeding comet.
Tungdil didn’t take long to spot the new columns, added for purely structural reasons. The firstling masons had done their best to match them to the rest of the room, adorning them with intricate carvings inlaid with gold, silver, vraccasium, and other precious metals, but for all their efforts, it was obvious that the pillars were a late addition. Glancing up, Tungdil noticed that the majestic mosaics had been damaged and several tiles had fallen to the floor.
“There’s a lot to be done,” said Xamtys, noticing their glances. She greeted them from her metal throne.
Tungdil and Balyndis inclined their heads, but the queen held up a hand before they could kneel before her throne. “Let’s dispense with formality. We’ve got business to attend to.” She paused for a moment while a steward brought stools for her guests to be seated. “Tungdil, I think you should leave for the Gray Range right away. Girdlegard won’t be safe until you’ve closed the Stone Gateway. We need you and as many of our kinsfolk as possible guarding the Northern Pass. On top of that, there’s the quake damage to consider. If the fifthling stronghold was hit half as badly as we were, you’ll have to work flat out to rebuild it. We know the orcs vandalized the fortifications; the quake may have flattened them completely.”
“I was thinking the same,” he said. “But you’ll need every pair of hands to repair the firstling halls. Why not send your volunteers later, when the work has been done?”
She considered him intently. The golden rings of her mail shirt shimmered in the light of the braziers, bathing her plump face in light. Her expression was serious. “Your generosity does you credit, Tungdil, but your new compatriots should leave at once. It’s in Girdlegard’s interest that they go.” She turned to Balyndis. “The Steel Fingers arrived bearing news from the western border of the kingdom. The falling star continued its trajectory and crashed to
earth on the far side of the range to the west. Since then, flames have been sighted every night on the horizon. According to the guardians of the Red Gateway, it looks as though a fire is raging throughout the Outer Lands.” She looked from Tungdil to Balyndis. “I’ve sent word to the elves and men. Andôkai should hear the news within the next few orbits. It’s a pity we can’t tell them more.”
Tungdil was busy trying to work out whether there was any connection between what the sentries had seen and Nôd’onn’s warning of a threat from the west. The magus, insistent that Girdlegard was in danger, had pleaded with Andôkai to spare his life. “I dread to think what happened when the star crashed to earth,” said Tungdil, remembering the craters formed by falling debris from the comet’s tail. “The damage was bad enough here, but the impact of a rock of that size… Surely nothing could survive.”
“Do you think the fire is connected with Nôd’onn’s warning?” asked Balyndis, catching on.
Tungdil shrugged. “Somehow it doesn’t seem likely. No good ever came of fretting, although I dare say we’ll fret anyway—there won’t be much else to distract us on the long march ahead.” He thought for a moment. “Your Majesty, perhaps you could propose a council of the most learned minds in Girdlegard,” he suggested. “Together, we stand a better chance of finding a solution.” He smiled. “Why shouldn’t a dwarven queen be the first to remind the other rulers of the newly pledged solidarity between dwarves, elves, and men? Your Majesty would have the honor of leading an initiative devoted wholly to the common good.”
Xamtys returned his smile. “Wise words from our scholar. Giselbert chose the right dwarf to rebuild his kingdom.” She turned to Balyndis. “You’re free to go—the Steel Fingers are impatient to see you.”
They bowed respectfully and hurried into the corridor where Balyndis’s clansfolk were waiting.
Tungdil appraised the delegation of dwarves. The women among them, four in total, were dressed in traditional brown leather bodices and woolen skirts. Some of their male companions wore heavy chain mail and had weapons in their belts. They were warriors in the firstling army, proud to be chosen by Vraccas to fight for their folk. Although Tungdil was standing right in front of them, they acted as if he weren’t there.
