The Fate of the Dwarves

by Markus Heitz

  She looked carefully round the corner and saw the opposing magus about to strip her daughter naked.

  Goda pressed the diamond splinter in her hand so hard that she drew blood. She must not let her fear gain the upper hand. Too much was at stake. Vraccas, you hold in your hands your own fate and that of my daughter! She leaped round the corner and hurled a spell against the enemy dwarf.

  He noticed too late to invoke a counter-spell. Instead, he threw Sanda into the corridor, pulled back his arms and offered his armored chest to the incoming beams of lava-red light.

  The magic hit home and the dwarf’s armor glowed like fiery coals fanned by bellows. The vraccassium changed color to a flaming yellow, sucking the magic in, while the runes turned black as night.

  “Kill him, Sanda!” yelled Goda. She had nothing but dust in her hand. She swiftly took out the next diamond splinter to add to her spell or to respond to an attack. But what she had just seen stole any last hope. She would never be able to overcome this dwarf with magic.

  The glow vanished and Goda saw Sanda behind the enemy, ax raised. She thrust its blade down, hitting the dwarf in the tiny gap between the side of the neck and the edge of his helmet. But the blow was deflected by a protective layer of chain mail; the dwarf swayed slightly, making a frightful gurgling sound.

  “Save Bandaál!” cried Sanda, “He’s at the bottom of the shaft…”

  The dwarf hit out behind him and his gauntlet caught Sanda on the temple; she crumpled up.

  Goda did not hesitate for a single eye-blink. Her daughter was not now in immediate danger and so she could risk using one of her strongest spells. It was the one she had originally employed to blast away the mountain above the Black Abyss, so it ought to suffice for this dwarf. It would have to!

  She concentrated hard and sent out a lightning flash beam toward her adversary.

  The dwarf hunched down and stretched out his arms as if appealing for clemency. But the energy streamed into the smoke diamond in his armored fist, turning it into a sparkling turquoise star. As the magic heated the metal there was a smell of burning flesh and the dwarf cried out in a voice more bloodcurdling than anything Goda had heard before in her whole life. But, determined to absorb the magic energy, he still did not lower his arm.

  Yet again she felt a diamond splinter turn to useless powder between her fingers. The powerful beam failed. “I’m not letting you leave Evildam alive,” she threatened, reaching into her bag. But she found nothing—except a hole. “No!” When I fell on the stairs!

  The enemy magus groaned; smoke issued from the joints of his gauntlet, but he had survived the magic blast. His powers of resistance were incredible!

  Goda now had nothing to fall back on but her own innate magic. “I shall defeat you!” she growled, lifting her arms. “We don’t need a false Tungdil and we don’t need a Lot-Ionan to be rid…”

  The dwarf laid his smoldering hand on Sanda’s breast, and fixed Goda with hate-filled eyes. He touched one of the runes on his breastplate with his left hand and a transparent dark-yellow sphere enveloped the two of them. Another blink of an eye later and they had disappeared, together with the magic ball!

  “Vraccas, no!” Goda whispered in horror and ran to where the magus had just been standing. Her daughter’s blood, her ax, shreds of her tattered undergarments and some charred pieces of material—nothing else. “How did he do that?” She ran back into the passage, back to the main corridor, back to the shaft—nothing!

  Footsteps rang out and a unit of dwarf-warriors charged up the steps. “My lady, what has happened?”

  “Find my daughter,” she told them, stammering with anxiety; then she remembered what Sanda had said. “No! Go down to the basement and find my son, Bandaál, at the bottom of the shaft! Quick!” she screamed, distraught, and raced up the staircase. She tried the place where she had slipped on the steps, and picked up one of the lost splinters; she had no time to look for the others. If need be she would get some soldiers to do a thorough search later on.

  Holding the diamond fragment she raced downstairs to where the soldiers were trawling through the debris of the cabin at the bottom of the shaft. The cage walls had mostly fused with the metal chains when they had melted; on top of the ruined cage were piles of huge sections of collapsed masonry.

  “Let me through!” Her voice broke with emotion. In a frenzy of desperate anxiety for her son she labored at the wreckage, burning her hands on hot metal, but not stopping for a second, until she glimpsed a bloodied hand. “Bandaál!” She pulled at the blackened debris which had, by some miracle, buried but not smothered him in molten metal.

  More of the dwarves and ubariu sprang to assist her, bringing crowbars, poles and rope.

  Together they managed to hack out a niche in the mix of metal and stone. Goda peered in, candle in hand.

  “He is still alive!” she sobbed in utter relief. “I can see that he’s breathing!”

  A loud crash came from above their heads; dust and small stones rained down. The damaged lift shaft was threatening to collapse.

  “We must get out, my lady!” A ubari’s hand shook her shoulder.

  But she snapped back at him not to touch her. “We must free my son first.”

  “Look out, below!” called a voice. “The supports are about to give way!”

  Goda looked at the diamond splinter. I have no choice. He is nearly a magus. And he is my son. She closed her eyes and chanted a spell.

  As if moved by spirit hands the great lumps of broken stone levitated, revealing Bandaál’s body. Three of the dwarves pulled the badly injured famulus out of the shaft and took him to safety on a stretcher. Goda withdrew as well, before letting the spell drop.

  A grinding grumbling sound above them preceded a rockfall that could not be stopped by the debris floating in the air. It all crashed down, some of the rocks rolling out of the shaft right to the feet of the dwarves.

  Grayish clouds of dust shot along the corridors as the shaft walls collapsed. The soldiers and maga were covered from head to foot in a thick layer of dirty white particles.

  Goda opened her hand and let the remains of the crumbled diamond drift down onto the rest of the dust. It made no difference now. Then she set off after the stretcher, not knowing which child to worry about first: Bandaál or Sanda?

  Girdlegard,

  The Former Queendom of Rân Ribastur,

  Northwest,

  Spring, 6492nd Solar Cycle

  Coïra cast her eyes down. “Not unless Aiphatòn and the älfar have managed to deplete Lot-Ionan’s strength significantly,” she whispered. “I have prayed to the gods to let me find an undiscovered source of magic somewhere on the way! Perhaps they will have pity on us and there will be a miracle.”

  Rodario unobtrusively indicated Franek, who, surrounded by dwarves, was talking to Tungdil and Ireheart. He looked intimidated and was defending himself with upraised hands against harsh rebukes. “Perhaps he is our miracle.” The two of them sat down and he told her what the exiled famulus had reported.

  “It was this Droman character that I met,” she said, leaning against Rodario’s shoulder, glad to have sorted out their difficulties and misunderstandings. “He chased me with a tranquillizer spell and dragged me off to a clearing when he saw I was not on my own. But they defeated him.”

  “It didn’t go well for him, as I hear.” He put his arm around her shoulders to comfort her.

  Coïra nodded. “That’s right.” She was enjoying his presence but her eyes were wary, watching for Mallenia, who was over with the dwarves. She had a guilty conscience because Rodario was spending time looking after her, and she was aware of her friend’s feelings. He must be told the truth and made to understand how embarrassing the situation was for the two girls. “Rodario, there’s something I’ve got to tell you,” she began, but just then Tungdil turned round and waved them over.

  “Keep it for later,” said Rodario. “Our leader wants us now.” He helped her up and they walked past th
e fire and over to the dwarves.

  Tungdil made room for them at the campfire. “Franek regrets that he forgot to tell us about the famulus who had been chasing him.”

  “He regrets it so much that he wants to lead the way,” Ireheart added merrily. “Not that we thoroughly trust the little wizardling. If he takes us into a trap he will die before any of us do.” He thumped Franek on the back. “Ho! I’m right there, aren’t I?”

  “Yes,” the famulus coughed out his answer. “I will do everything I can to make Lot-Ionan pay for his betrayal and his ingratitude toward me.” He looked at them all. “I know nobody here will trust my words if I swear an oath, so I shan’t bother. Suffice it to say, hatred unites us. That is stronger than anything else.”

  “Hatred?” Rodario was baffled. “Was our mission…?”

  “Hatred of my foster-father for letting himself become such an evil person and for inflicting such damage on my native land,” said Tungdil. “I have sworn he shall die; remember, actor. Against your will.”

  Rodario hit himself on the back of the head, noting the comedy that was being played out for the benefit of the famulus. “I keep forgetting that you insist on killing him,” he announced. “You have, of course, every justification for doing so.”

  Franek appeared to swallow this, or else he was keeping his suspicions to himself. “And we’ve agreed I shall be allowed to bathe in the magic source?”

  “Not before Coïra has used it, little wizard,” Ireheart stressed threateningly. “You will wait your turn nicely.”

  “I don’t mind that. The source has enough energy for thousands of us.” Franek scratched his stubbly chin. “It will be a great feeling. After such a long time.”

  “Get some sleep. We’ll be leaving first thing.” Tungdil assigned one of the Zhadár to guard duty, then moved off with Ireheart, Rodario, Barskalín, Mallenia and Coïra to find a place to sit at a suitable distance from the famulus.

  “Providence has sent him to us.”

  Mallenia folded her hands and found a stone to sit on; the whole group settled down to talk. “You don’t think it could just be a very clever trick on the part of the magus?”

  “No. He’s got no idea we’re coming,” Tungdil insisted. “If he did, he’d have sent out all his magic apprentices, not just the one.”

  “Droman. That was his name?” Coïra placed a hand on her back where the man’s magic had hit her. She thought she could still feel warmth on that spot. “He wasn’t a bad magus.”

  “But he wasn’t good enough,” said Ireheart. “The Scholar took him apart.” He remembered that he had not actually seen how the famulus had died. Because his eyes had been dazzled.

  “I talked to Franek and his story sounded credible. He was one of those young people who smuggled Lot-Ionan’s statue out of the former palace in Porista. We never met him at the time, however,” Tungdil explained. “We dealt with the other ones: Risava, Dergard and Lomostin.”

  Ireheart was amazed at Tungdil’s precise memory of the names. How was it that he was able to remember such insignificant details? He knew the story, himself, of course, but though he remembered how the statue had been hunted down, and could also recall the long-legged frog-figure that had turned up to steal it back, for the life of him and for all the gold in Girdlegard he would not have been able to come up with the names of the statue’s abductors.

  Tungdil stared at the tips of his fingers. “I asked him if he could give us some explanation of the change in Lot-Ionan. When he told me how the magus dresses, how he conducts himself and speaks, I was forced to think of Nôd’onn.”

  “Not him again! We did away with that evil. The daemon cannot have returned.” Ireheart pretended to be swinging an ax. “You took Keenfire and split the fog down the middle… you know, that cloud-creature.”

  “Do you remember how we all wondered who had drilled a hole in Lot-Ionan’s statue?”

  “Someone trying… to kill him? To gain access to his magic powers?” Ireheart’s eyes grew huge. “No, someone was inserting something into him. By Vraccas! They put the seed of evil into him when he was defenseless and when we woke him up again the seed started to sprout!”

  Tungdil nodded. “Franek says that Risava nearly killed him when he objected to her plan. It was her who wanted Lot-Ionan to turn evil after his release.”

  Boïndil’s face became thoughtful. “I’m trying to imagine what you stick into someone to make them evil. It sounds so… simple? But I’m sure it’s not.”

  Coïra nodded. “I can’t imagine it, either.”

  “Don’t trouble your heads. You’d never work it out.” Tungdil picked up a stone. “Risava had picked up a splinter of the malachite crystal that used to belong to Nôd’onn. She kept it. When Franek brought her the petrified statue of Lot-Ionan, she knew how she could try to use it. She drilled a hole and put the last fragment of evil into him. Lot-Ionan never had a chance to protect himself.”

  Ireheart scraped his foot along the ash-strewn ground. “That would mean that Lot-Ionan is actually innocent. He can’t help what he has done. Because he… is possessed.” How infuriating. So we can’t just do away with him.

  “I suppose we could have expected no less from Nudin, when the demon changed him into Nôd’onn,” Mallenia interjected. “It doesn’t free us from the duty of pursuing him.”

  “We have to. At all costs. We need him to defeat Vraccas,” Tungdil said emphatically.

  “To defeat your master, Scholar, not Vraccas. The god Vraccas is my creator, but the dwarf we want to kill is no divinity.” Ireheart studied his friend. “I’ve been thinking: Can’t we take the splinter out of Lot-Ionan? And make him good?”

  “We need an evil magus to help us against my former master,” Tungdil argued. “I would also have preferred to free him from the evil curse first.”

  Coïra wiped her nose with a handkerchief. “I hope we manage it. To free him from the malachite splinter.”

  “I know exactly where it lies. It will be painful for Lot-Ionan but he will survive. With Goda and yourself, Your Majesty, we have two magae who can apply healing remedies to ensure his recovery after the operation.” Tungdil looked round. “Not a word of our plan to Franek. He has to think that we want to kill Lot-Ionan in order to liberate Girdlegard. If we deprive him of this goal, he may decide he doesn’t want to help us.”

  Ireheart frowned. “All well and good, but we won’t let Franek enter the magic source, will we, Scholar? Who knows what deceitful tricks he has up his sleeve? He could easily have been the one who shoved that malachite into Lot-Ionan’s body. You can’t trust the word of a traitor.”

  “I’m against it, too,” said Rodario, and Mallenia agreed with him. “We should overpower him and tie him up as soon as we arrive. Then the secondlings can decide his fate. He was involved in the destruction of their homeland and has that guilt to bear.” He looked at Ireheart. “I don’t suppose you want to let him get off scot-free.”

  “Ho! I certainly do not!” Ireheart tapped his crow’s beak. “An eye for an eye.”

  Tungdil studied his friend. “You watch him, Ireheart. Franek trusts us as little as we trust him. I’m sure he’ll want to cancel our forced alliance before we do. If he tries to escape, you’ll know what to do.” He looked at Coïra. “And the same as before goes for you now. Don’t go using your magic. You’ve seen we can manage to keep the enemy off without it.”

  She nodded. He was obviously not intending to blab out her secret. To make sure Rodario did not, either, she took his hand and pressed it. He looked surprised, but said nothing.

  Tungdil pointed to the house behind them, while calling over one of the Zhadár to bring him the rucksack the dead famulus had been carrying. “You all get some rest. We’ll move on in the morning. Unfortunately the incident with Droman means we’ll have to speed up. Lot-Ionan will be wondering where his famulus has got to and he’ll be sending out scouts to find him. We know full well, ever since Lakepride, that he’s capable of causing serio
us trouble.” He unrolled the maps on his knee and called Barskalín. “Let’s find the quickest route.”

  Mallenia got up. “What if we get there before the älfar?”

  Tungdil was poring over the sketch map. “We’ll still head for Lot-Ionan’s realm. Time is running out.”

  “So suddenly?” queried Rodario.

  “So suddenly.” The one-eyed dwarf said nothing more on the subject and busied himself with the maps. The group retired, bewildered, to the gate house.

  Coïra found Mallenia, who had sorted herself out a corner of the attic and was spreading her blanket to lie on. “I wanted to thank you for coming to find me.”

  “You would have done the same for me.” The Ido girl sat down and got comfortable, then spread her long mantle over herself. She looked at the maga for a long time. “You didn’t think I’d abandon you because of our rivalry for Rodario’s affections?”

  Coïra attempted a smile.

  “Look,” Mallenia raised herself up on her elbows. “You’ve got an advantage over me when it comes to winning his heart. I saw you take his hand just now. He didn’t object.” Her eyes fixed the maga. “When I said at the pool that we should share him, I meant it. It’s up to you.”

  “And up to Rodario,” Coïra corrected.

  “He’s a man. He’s bound to like the idea of having two women,” retorted Mallenia with a grin, settling down on her hard bed. “I’m not worried about the choice he’ll make.” She clasped her hands behind her head. “There are regions in Tabaîn where it’s considered quite normal for a man to have as many wives as he likes, as long as he’s able to feed and clothe them. There’s nothing shameful about a set-up like that. Or do you disagree? Nobody would be forcing us into it.”

  Coïra did not know what to reply. Of course they had heard in Weyurn about the practices in neighboring Tabaîn, but she had always been troubled by the idea of this kind of communal living. And she was not yet clear in her own mind how she felt about Rodario. Youthful infatuation or the love of her life? If he was the love of her life, would she be prepared to share him with another—and why should she?