The Dwarven Wars

by Leah Cutter

  God, she really was going to kill him when he finally showed up.

  Nora sipped her hot chocolate while she waited for Rainy to finish. Two students had stayed after class to talk to the teacher. Nora could tell that the girls were wannabes. They talked of energy flow and crystals. She tried not to roll her eyes at them. Much. They had no clue what they were talking about.

  Hell, they didn’t even realize that there were only three types of magic that humans could do: those who dealt with the past and ghosts, those who could make hazy guesses about the future, as well as those very few who could affect the present, the Makers.

  Tired of their inane chatter, Nora looked around the studio, noting the protections there. Large paper globes hung from the ceiling, glowing with a soft light. They held charms of comfort. Embroidered cloth covered the walls, disguising the hard walls. Woven into the edges of the cloth were spells to encourage flow of ideas and energy. The wooden floor felt mundane under her feet, but it still had great character and scars from its former life as a warehouse floor.

  Warm air blew in from the heaters, humid and overpowering. Nora had already taken off her jacket and folded it over her arm while she waited. Now, she tugged at her shirt, wishing she’d worn a T-shirt and sweater instead of a turtleneck over her jeans.

  Would those two just shut up? She had to talk with Rainy. Now.

  The students finally clued in that someone else was there and said their goodbyes. Rainy gave Nora a huge smile but didn’t try to hug her. She’d learned early on that Nora needed physical space.

  Fortunately, Rainy and most of the other teachers respected that.

  Nora almost reached out to her teacher anyway. However, she was afraid if someone hugged her, was actually nice to her, that she might break down and bawl.

  “What’s so urgent that it got you out of bed this early?” Rainy asked as she started putting on a thick sweater over her sleeveless yoga top.

  Nora stared for a moment at the sweater. It was made from a chunky orange yarn that had been twined with two other threads—one yellow, one red. The magical protection in the sweater came from the way the yarn had been twined, not from the pattern of knitting.

  Fascinating. Nora had never thought to do something like that. Maybe she’d have to try that with her knotted bracelets, ply her own thread and make the strands magical instead of the knots.

  She finally realized that Rainy was waiting for her reply. “My brother’s missing,” Nora said quietly.

  Rainy blinked. She was a short woman with large, surprisingly blue-green eyes set deeply into her chocolate-brown face. She wore her hair in a natural afro, standing out like a halo around her head.

  “Tell me what happened to him,” Rainy said, reaching out to touch Nora’s arm. Her hands were small but strong. The warmth quickly passed through Nora’s skin and into her bones.

  “I don’t know what happened to Dale. Mom called last night. Said he hadn’t come home. Still hasn’t come home, this morning,” Nora said. She gulped. She was too raw to talk about it. If something had happened to him…she’d never forgive herself.

  “His disappearance isn’t your fault,” Rainy said, accurately reading her student’s emotion.

  “You don’t know that,” Nora said. She knew her voice sounded harsh.

  Rainy sighed and nodded. “I presume your brother’s disappearance isn’t your fault. I don’t think the o’onakie would harm him intentionally. Not even as a way to get at you.”

  “And what about the fairies? Could they have done something? Trapped him, somehow?” Nora asked.

  “I know they have his name,” Rainy said after a few moments, thinking. “But he bargained with them recently, agreeing to work with them, no?”

  Nora nodded.

  “Then the fairies will keep their word and not try to detain him. It’s too important to them that he comes. If they break their promise, he’d no longer be bound by his,” Rainy said.

  Nora sighed. She knew that. She just needed to have it confirmed. “Is there anything I can do to help from here?” she asked. While she suspected the answer was no, she still felt obliged to ask. Rainy was much older than she appeared and knew more about magic than anyone else Nora had met.

  Rainy got a far-away look in her eye as she considered the question.

  That was something else Nora liked about Rainy. When it didn’t drive her crazy. Her teacher always thought deeply about any puzzle presented to her. Even if her answer was short, Nora quickly realized that Rainy had considered, and rejected, half a dozen answers before landing on the most appropriate one.

  “The only thing you can do from here is to keep yourself safe,” Rainy said eventually. “Don’t give your mother more to worry about.”

  “That’s it?” Nora asked. She knew she was pushing. She didn’t care. It was her brother, after all.

  Rainy hesitated again, biting her full lower lip with extremely white teeth before she replied. “We can go visit Flori,” she said. “She’s a fortune-teller. More accurate than most.”

  Nora nodded, not trusting herself to say anything. Fortune-tellers were the second most common type of magic user. The majority of them, particularly the ones who advertised, were fakes. Even the ones who had some power were only rarely accurate.

  Still, it was better than doing nothing.

  “Let’s go see this Flori, then,” Nora said.

  Rainy gave her a warm smile. “Let me put on street clothes and I’ll take you to her. But you’ll have to deal with her yourself. I have another class to teach in less than an hour.”

  “Thank you,” Nora said. She knew that she was imposing—Rainy liked to meditate between classes, or “refill her springs” as she said.

  “Thank you for trusting me to help,” Rainy replied. She squeezed Nora’s arm before she rapidly left the room.

  Despite how warm the room still felt, Nora found herself wrapping her arms across her chest. Hugging her coat to herself.

  Dale had to be okay. He just had to be.

  Or she was really going to kill him.

  Ivan stood just inside the entrance to Kostya’s large network of abandoned tunnels, the awful expanse of the ocean at his back. The tunnels themselves were cozy, just the right height and width for dwarves. Scouts had already sent reports back of the riches that lay in the main rooms just ahead.

  However, reaching solid ground the day before had been the only thing that had gone right so far.

  Why hadn’t Varlaam warned Ivan that Kostya was a master illusionist? And that the tunnels were likely to be booby-trapped?

  Of course, in hindsight, given the perfidy of the local fairies, it made sense that Kostya would put extra safeguards in and around his home.

  Ivan still felt bad about the three dwarves he’d initially sent into the tunnels. None of them had made it back alive.

  The scouts had eventually cleared out most of the traps, at least along the entrance to the main caves, and had given the go ahead for Ivan and the others.

  How long had Kostya been in these caves? The dirt floor was well beaten down. The rock itself had been carved out, sometimes with magic, other times by hand. It felt rough and cold when Ivan touched it. If he’d been feeling fanciful, he would have said the walls felt angry, as though Kostya had burned with rage the entire time he’d lived there.

  He might well have.

  Will-o-the-wisps floated near the ceiling in the long tunnel. The place where the first dwarves had been killed was obvious: dark blood still haunted the walls and the dirt floor. Remnants of magic lingered in the air.

  Ivan paused for a moment next to the spot, bending his head in sorrow. Not because he’d lost friends, but because he’d lost good men, good fighters. The remaining three hundred or so dwarves could still take the fairies. However, he was certain that he’d miss the dead dwarves’ axes before the end.

  As Ivan descended farther into the earth, the air turned stale, though teasing traces of rich machine oil floated through it
. Dwarves were good with their hands, natural Tinkers. Had the humans with the same ability come from dwarvish lines? Ivan didn’t like to think about it, but he’d heard arguments in favor of it from drunken old dwarves.

  Finally, Ivan walked into the main tunnel.

  He stopped, stunned.

  Kostya had been a pack rat. While dwarves liked to keep bits and bobs of items handy, Kostya had taken it to a new extreme. Piles of scavenged items littered the floor: candy wrappers, brightly colored wire, plastic eyes, broken bricks, springs for pens, dried out markers, scratched up cork boards, and so on.

  While some of the dwarves eyed the items greedily, Ivan merely shook his head and sighed.

  That Kostya hoarded things that were useless and broken, just to have piles, showed how poor the dwarf really was. Did he think that he’d turn these piles into gold someday?

  Some of the less fortunate dwarves in Ivan’s party looked at that rubbish with avarice as well.

  Might there be useful treasures buried among the junk? If so, they would be riches that would rightly belong to Ivan.

  “Don’t touch any of these until a scout has verified that the piles aren’t booby-trapped,” Ivan ordered.

  That seemed to startle some of those standing there. Obviously, they’d only thought about filling their bags and not about the dangers that could be present.

  Good. They’d all seen the damage caused by Kostya’s protective measures, had heard the scouts cursing about traps within traps. They’d keep their hands off everything that just lay around until after Ivan had taken his rightful share.

  A simple workbench was shoved against one wall, made of left-over planks that Kostya had clearly salvaged from a human construction site. The broad top was mostly clear of debris, though wrapped coils of wire, small piles of broken gears, and the ends of half a dozen rolls of tape cluttered the edges. A shelf rested against the back of the workbench, with over a dozen cubbyholes built into it. Again, no one had touched any of the drawers there, and wouldn’t, until they could be checked for traps.

  Continuing past the workroom, down a small hall, Ivan walked into the kitchen area, or at least where Kostya had most likely taken his meals. Two wooden chairs, well-made, were pushed under the small round table. The food that had been sitting, rotting, on the shelves that lined two of the walls had been cleared away, though the faint smell of spoiled cabbage and wilted pansies still lingered.

  It took Ivan a moment to remember that Kostya had had a wife. She’d been killed by the fairies, hadn’t she? At least according to Kostya.

  Maybe the walls did still burn with rage. It already pained Ivan that his wife was so far away, across that despicable ocean. But they’d decided that it was best for them to part, so she could continue their schemes. Plus, Ivan would gladly bet on his wife when it came to protecting their sons, even against an army of dwarven warriors.

  The next room held electronic radios, many of which could be hand-wound. Why on earth would Kostya keep such annoying items in the room next to his bedroom?

  Mitya came up to Ivan, and looked around the room, nodding his head in approval. “We should take some of these with us,” he said.

  “Why?” Ivan asked, still perplexed.

  “These generate enough electricity that they’ll throw off any fairy magic being cast at us,” Mitya said.

  Ivan blinked, surprised. Then he nodded enthusiastically. This was why they’d come to the New World, as much as anything else. To find new techniques to confound their enemies.

  “Excellent,” Ivan said. “Do check for traps first.”

  “Of course,” Mitya said sourly. “Kostya was a sneaky bastard.”

  Ivan knew better than to chide Mitya for speaking ill of the dead. Besides, the old warrior’s tone still held a hint of admiration.

  “Kostya had three escape tunnels from here,” Mitya said, “that we’ve found so far. He battled the fairies for a long while. There’s evidence of many attacks. Recent ones, too.”

  “I see,” Ivan said. And he did see.

  Had Kostya ever actually tried to negotiate with the fairies? Had all of his reports about their meetings been a lie? Ivan was beginning to believe that Kostya had shrouded not only his home but his actions in traps, illusions, and lies.

  It didn’t matter, however. The dwarves were here now. Ready to claim this as their territory and to destroy the fairies who lived here.

  They didn’t really need a reason to attack.

  Nora wrinkled her nose at the overwhelming smell of patchouli that permeated every inch of the small front room. She was quite frankly surprised that the air itself wasn’t blue or hazy.

  White curtains with sparkling crystals dangling from the edges hung over the two wide windows on one wall. In between the windows, the walls were painted a soothing peach. The others might have been the same color, however, book and knickknack shelves filled most of the available vertical space. A gray, semi-shag carpet covered the floor.

  Even with just Flori and Nora, the tiny room still felt overly full. A small round table with a dark-purple silk scarf took up the middle of the room. Nora perched uncomfortably on a white metal garden chair on one side. Flori herself took up the other chair.

  Nora guessed the fortune-teller was probably in her forties, like Denise, but Flori hadn’t taken care of herself very well. She’d dyed her hair black, and had put in extension dreads that fell to her waist. Her skin was pasty and white, as if she never got out into the sunlight. She wore a black dress that fit tightly. It showed off her large breasts, but at the same time lumped the extra weight around her waist into large folds across her belly. The sleeves dangled down past her wrists, open and edged in lace. Over her shoulders she wore a black crocheted shawl that as far as Nora could tell had no magic in it.

  A large bowl decorated with purple irises sat in the middle of the table. White sugar filled it to the brim. The delicate silver spoon that rested in the bowl held traces of…something. It wasn’t magic, not as Nora recognized it. It still had a tendril of power that kept distracting her, drawing her eyes to it. It wasn’t in the silver itself, but a coating over the spoon.

  “So your brother’s missing?” Flori asked. Her fat hands moved restlessly across the purple silk, as if she were playing an invisible piano.

  “My twin brother Dale, yes,” Nora replied. She’d checked her phone just before she came into the apartment, but it was decidedly empty of messages from her mother or from Dale.

  “And what does he do?” Flori asked. She never looked up at Nora, instead just studied her hands.

  “He’s a student at a local technical college,” Nora replied. She paused, then added, “The fairies call him a Tinker.”

  “A Tinker? Ah,” Flori said, looking up for the first time and staring at Nora.

  Nora wasn’t sure what color Flori’s eyes were. Were they black? But now a thin circle of gold seemed to outline the irises. Fascinated, Nora kept watching Flori’s eyes change color, a lighter green now creeping in.

  Flori looked back down at her hands, as if she was embarrassed by Nora’s scrutiny. “Tinker fate is strong. Should be able to find it.”

  “Good,” Nora said. “Thank you.”

  Flori nodded. She whispered something that Nora couldn’t hear, though she was certain the language was English. Then Flori reached for the silver spoon.

  Nora had no idea what Flori was about to do. She’d never seen an actual fortune-teller at work. Still, she was shocked when Flori took a heaping teaspoon of sugar and drizzled it across the table in a fine, swooping line.

  Nora had learned about fortune-tellers who read the lines of tea leaves, or even the pictures made by wax dripped into water. She’d never even read about someone reading sugar lines.

  A movement caught the corner of her eye. On the right side of the table, a small black ant had crawled up, followed by a second. And a third. And more.

  A swarm appeared. They formed themselves into discrete lines, following the sw
ooping curves of sugar.

  When Nora could finally tear her eyes away, she realized to her horror that Flori had not only put her hands flat against the table, but that the ants had started climbing up, over her fingers, then up further, under the loose black sleeves of her dress.

  How could she stand their tickling feet? Nora shivered, unable to control herself. Why hadn’t Rainy warned her?

  Flori’s eyes had rolled up into her head until only the whites showed. Her mouth opened and closed, whispering words that Nora couldn’t understand, though she wondered if they were hymns and praises to an alien god.

  Finally, the ants started retreating. A constant stream flowed off Flori’s hands, onto the table, and down again.

  None of the sugar remained.

  Flori shook herself and blinked, her eyes returning to…normal, whatever color that was, as it still appeared to be changing, growing from a pale blue to a darker blue, to almost black again.

  “I see nothing of your brother,” Flori said, her voice sounding as if she were still staring off into a great distance.

  “What do you mean by that?” Nora asked. She was afraid to ask if that meant he was already dead.

  “I saw nothing of him. Cannot bring you any news of his future,” Flori said. She cleared her throat.

  Suddenly, it felt to Nora as if Flori had returned and was present again. The full force of the fortune-teller’s personality pressed against her, as bracing as an ocean wind.

  Huh. Nora had felt that same way in the presence of the strongest of her teachers. Maybe Flori did have a lot of power.

  “You, though. Your future was easy to see.” Flori’s words rang clear and solid through the room.

  “What about my future?” Nora asked, her throat abruptly dry.

  “You are in danger, my dear,” Flori said.

  Nora nearly rolled her eyes. She already knew that. Brett and his stupid attacks.

  “No, not from the Old One,” Flori said.

  Nora blinked. She hadn’t mentioned the Old One. She was fairly certain that Rainy hadn’t either.

  “You are a danger to yourself,” Flori said flatly. “You’re likely to blow yourself up, along with half the city, if you don’t listen to me now and change your ways.”