The Crucible of the Dragon God

by Mike Wild

  No, she thought, not quite darkness. What appeared to be some kind of small, cramped cabin lay within, illuminated very dully by the same strange glow that had brought her to this part of the cave. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she noticed that the glow seemed to be emanating from a number of places within, each of them small - panels, perhaps, with levers. Some kind of control cabin then? But controlled by what?

  Oh, she thought suddenly, my Gods.

  The panels were not so bright as they might have been, not because they were actually dim, but because something was blocking their glow. There was a figure within, just sitting there, staring straight ahead. Kali swallowed, knowing that if it moved she would very likely have a dicky fit.

  But it didn't, of course. How could it? Who knew how long this machine had been stranded here, within the rock. Anything within it could not have hoped to survive. Hells, what a lonely, lonely death it must have been. But what nagged at Kali more than that morbid thought was, why had no one come to help? She wondered for a second whether it was possible that the inhabitant of the machine had died here because there was no one to come to help - that perhaps he had died here at the time the Old Races had gone away? And if that was the case then it begged the obvious question. What was she looking at?

  Swallowing again, Kali leaned in and the figure emerged from the shadows before her eyes. Squat but, by the size of the ribbed uniform enclosing its now shrunken frame, once well-muscled and powerful. It remained utterly still. Dry, eyeless sockets stared straight ahead, gnarled hands gripping levers on the panel before it that had not moved since before the land was young. Though the body was completely mummified there was no doubt at all what it was she was looking at.

  A dwarf.

  Kali realised she had been holding her breath, and she let it out now in an exhalation that almost turned into a laugh. This was incredible! Something she had always hoped, but never thought, she would find!

  The discovery was a momentous one and Kali took the appropriate length of time and appropriate reverence to appreciate it. After all, after Gods knew how long stuck in this hellshole a few more minutes would make no difference at all. But then, with a deep sigh, she moved forward, grabbed the desiccated corpse by its shoulder and turfed it out of the cabin onto the mine floor. The dwarf's remains crumbled under her touch - clothing and all - and while the arms and torso hit the rock, they left the legs behind, half sitting on the seat. Kali heaved them off with a grimace and dropped them onto the collapsed torso - and only then realised she hadn't a clue where the head had gone. She scanned the cabin, peering into its shadowed recesses, and then spotted the missing appendage lying in the far corner, out of her reach. The head was looking right at her, its empty eye sockets baleful and reproachful, but Kali ignored them - what else could she do? - because her friend had been sitting in the driving seat of something that was still working. She slipped into the empty seat, thinking: Sorry, my friend, but I have a lot more need of this thing than you do.

  Whatever this thing was.

  Kali peered down at the panels and the levers and realised that she didn't have a clue how to use them even if she knew what it was they did. So what followed, she thought, was going to be interesting, to say the least. She did, though, have one starting point - a button marked with the same rectangular symbol she had seen on the outside of the machine. Humming softly to herself, she pressed it. With the same judder and sliding motion that it had opened with, the hatch closed and sealed itself.

  Kali felt as if she were trapped inside a metal coffin.

  But she just knew this thing was her way out of here. So, it was time to see what it could do.

  Chapter Three

  Dolorosa considered she had better things to do than chase a herb up and down the hillside. The preparations for Kali Hooper's memorial evening - a drink-till-you-drop session which all the Flagon's regulars considered the most appropriate way to remember her - had taken the best part of two days. The last of them, a surprise stew for the evening - which was, of course, no surprise to the regulars, though none of them had told Dolorosa that - was all but done. But the hunt for one of its more vital ingredients was proving to be difficult. Said task had occupied her for the past half hour and, in that time, something of a murderous glint had appeared in her twitching right eye.

  "I will 'avva you, you leetle red bastardo!" she threatened, her arm swooping down to grab the skittering bunch of macalorum.

  But once again the leafy herb evaded her clutches, bouncing and flapping away down the hill towards the Flagons and causing the tall, thin woman to lose balance on the slope and flip heel over head, her skirt flapping after her and enveloping her like a tent.

  "Bastardo!" she hissed again, from beneath the cloth.

  A group of drinkers outside the tavern stared open-mouthed at an exposed pair of skull and crossbones bloomers and - possibly as a release of tension at the bad new they had all received - there was much pointing and loud and raucous bursts of laughter. Dolorosa's head popped out of the bundle of cloth and she flipped her skirt back over her dignity and squinted at them, hard. It was a squint that some said could kill - some even said it had killed - and the laughter stopped. Dead.

  Dolorosa straightened, then squinted down at the tavern again. The drinkers had disappeared inside but she could still see their faces pressed up against the tavern's windows and she strained to listen for the merest titter from them. But there was none and they seemed only to be checking that she wasn't striding down the hill after them.

  Lucky fora them, she thought, because if they hadda tittered, I would havva to keel them horribly and withouta mercy.

  After she had keeled the bastardo.

  Dolorosa span as she saw that the macalorum had taken advantage of her unexpected halt to turn around and bounce back up the hill, chittering as it passed her. Once again she made a grab for it, and once again missed. What had made this essential ingredient of her surprise stew quite so skittish she wasn't sure - it was normally such a docile little herb - and she wondered whether it had anything to do with the reports of strange creature sightings to the west. These things nicknamed the k'nid. Certainly macalorum wasn't the only thing around here that was uneasy at the moment, as most of the smaller wildlife in Tarn seemed to be that, or worse. Whatever the cause, the macalorum's determination to avoid becoming an ingredient only made her all the more determined to catch it.

  Dolorosa bent and slid her fingers into the rim of her right boot, then rolled up her sleeves and began to stomp after the herb.

  The stiletto she had extracted from her footwear gleamed viciously and the woman grinned evilly and tossed it in her palm, weighing it up, before flipping it so that she held it by the end of the blade. All she had to do now was time her moment right. And there it was, she thought, where the herb was about to hop over that small ridge into the trees beyond. The macalorum tensed it roots and Dolorosa threw.

  Victory issa mine! she thought, and began to scramble up the hill towards the impaled and struggling herb.

  She was almost upon it when she found herself staggering backwards. The sky above her tipped dizzily, as if she were going into a swoon.

  Greata Gods of the Seas, I havva overdone myself, she thought. My 'usband, in moments of passion, hassa warned me ovva this.

  There was only one problem with that theory, she realised - she didn't feel remotely dizzy or weak. Why, then, did she continue to fall backwards, landing on her behind with a thud and a puff of dry soil?

  Anda wotta wassa happening to the hill?

  To her confused eyes it seemed to be getting bigger.

  Pah! Eet ees impossible.

  Impossib -

  "Greata Grandma of the Gods!"

  Above her, no more than a yard from her upturned feet, the grass that covered the hill was breaking apart, spilling roiling piles of soil onto the otherwise green landscape, like a pan that had begun to bubble over. Dolorosa scrambled back, thinking that perhaps she was being visite
d by a rarely seen undermuncher, but it soon became clear that it was bigger even than that. The roiling soil was spreading ever outward now, so much so that her feet and the bottom of her legs had begun to rise with it, tipping her further backwards so that she had to steady herself on the palms of her hands. The old woman watched, mesmerised, as the mound turned into a small hillock, and then one not so small, and her eyebrows raised as something suddenly poked its nose through the surface. Something big.

  Dolorosa rapidly muttered a small number of hail glorias, and then far more curses, as she was once more tipped heels over head, her skirt enveloping her again, though this time perhaps mercifully as it shielded her gaze from whatever monster was emerging from the depths. She rolled down the hill in darkness, aware as she went that whatever was emerging from the ground was rumbling loudly and that it stank of the depths and something old. Totally unnecessarily, considering she was under her skirt, she closed her eyes and waited for whatever fate was going to befall her.

  Suddenly the rumbling stopped.

  The unknown beast hissed loudly.

  And then... nothing happened.

  A second passed. Two. Three. And then, with a gulp of apprehension, Dolorosa flung her skirt off her head, squinting ahead. There, silhouetted by the evening sun, something shadowed and bulky obscured the hillside. Something with a number of projections on its front, like cannon, that seemed to distort the air in front of them. As she stared the beast disgorged something from its side. No, not something, Dolorosa realised - a figure. A strangely familiar figure, as it turned out, witha what appeared to be a bum sticking out ovva its pants.

  The figure looked around, taking in its surroundings.

  "Pits of Kerberos," Kali Hooper said, "it worked."

  She leapt down from the cabin of the machine she had nicknamed The Mole and limped past the prone and gaping old woman, pausing only to point back and declare with girlish enthusiasm; "Dolorosa, you have GOT to get yourself one of those."

  "Bossa lady?" Dolorosa said. And then again: "Boss?"

  She picked herself up and, with a backward glance at the strange machine, raced after Kali as she hobbled purposefully towards the Flagons, circling her as she walked and squinting with some concern, but mainly suspicion, at the bedraggled, dirt covered figure. Once she had truly established its identity, she poked it in the chest with a bony finger.

  "You are notta dead?"

  "Nope. But I am thirsty. Very."

  "Beer eet issa notta good when you arra dehydrated."

  Kali snorted. "Yeah, right."

  They reached the doors to the Flagons and Kali flung them open, frowning in puzzlement at the fact the bar was adorned with a great strip of bunting inscribed, in Dolorosa's strangled peninsulan, with the words: 'Kali Hooper - Resta Inna Peas.'

  Rather unnecessarily, Dolorosa declared to all within that "the boss lady issa back", but before the expressions of joy had even had time to settle on the regulars' faces, Kali was already seated at the bar, pointing silently, but self-explanatorily, at the cask thwack. Much to his wife's apparent disapproval Aldrededor was already pouring a tankard, and then another, and then - because he knew the occasion would demand it - another still. Kali downed them all in rapid succession, wiped her mouth with her forearm, sighed and burped long and hard.

  "That," she gasped, "I needed. Hi, guys," she added, waving at the regulars and smiling as they welcomed her back.

  "'Allo, Kaleeee!"

  "Good to see yer, halfpint..."

  "So - you are not dead," Aldrededor declared, taking the last empty tankard and placing another frothing one in her hand. "It is very good to see you home, Kali Hooper."

  "Likewise, Aldrededor." Kali slapped the empty on the bar. "What made you think I was dead?"

  Aldrededor shrugged. "The fact that you have been missing for six weeks. That there has been no news at all and, of course, this -" The one-time pirate pointed at Kali's battered and torn equipment belt, hung in pride of place behind the bar. "It washed up on a beach near Nürn. Luckily, Mister Larson was there on his holiday and managed to retrieve it. Thank you, Mister Larson."

  "Six weeks?" Kali repeated. She nodded to Ronin as she reclaimed her belt. "That place really threw me out of whack. So have I missed anything?"

  "Oh, the usual," Aldrededor said casually. "Red was arrested three or four times, Miss Scrubb has been nibbling the Dreamweed again and -" Rather surprisingly, Aldrededor stopped and suddenly busied himself wiping glasses.

  "Aldrededor?" Kali prompted, but the swarthy Sarcrean only shrugged and devoted all his attention to erasing a tiny spot on one of the tankards, one that was seemingly never going to disappear no matter how hard he tried.

  Suspicious now, Kali span on her barstool to face the gathered regulars, but where a moment before it had been all "Here's to Kali!" and "We should have known you'd be fine!" there was now a totally uncharacteristic silence.

  Kali stared at Pete Two Ties on whom she could usually depend, but his head had descended into what was obviously a particularly challenging cryptosquare. She stared at Fester Grimlock and Jurgen Pike, who in turn stared at their quagmire board despite the fact their game was clearly over. Then she stared at Ronin Larson, the ironweaver, and Hetty Scrubb, the herbalist, who were staring hard at their feet or out of the window, the former humming something tremulous and the latter giggling uncontrollably. Of Dolorosa herself, there was at first no sign, then Kali caught sight of her peering warily from behind the bravado barrel at the far end of the bar. The bravado barrel was a game of nerve with a single arm-hole in its front and there were a number of... interesting creatures provided by Red hidden inside it, but having someone hide behind it was a first.

  Something was definitely up.

  "Dolorosa?" Kali said, cautiously.

  "What?" Dolorosa objected loudly, throwing her hands in the air. "You thinka that iffa there is something you will notta like it hassa to be Dolorosa's fault?"

  That clinched it.

  "Dolorosa?" she said again, emphasising her question. "What will I 'notta like'?"

  Dolorosa squinted at her, saying nothing, but from the corner of her eye Kali saw Red Deadnettle pointing towards the rear of the tavern, mouthing something that looked like 'band.' Kali turned and stared up the few ramshackle steps that led up to her Captain's Table and saw that what had traditionally been her domain, had been filled with a number of strange musical instruments, including a road-worn, sweeping, stringed affair that looked almost elven - what she thought was called a theralin. Frowning, she mounted the steps and saw that the Captain's Chest - storehouse of her papers and sanctum sanctorum of the peninsula's history - had also been buried beneath a spread of tattered music sheets for such appropriately forgotten classics as 'Boom Bang-a Thud', 'What A Wonderful Pie' and 'Yes, She's Heavy, She's My Mother.

  "What," she asked Dolorosa, "is this?"

  The thin woman threw up her hands in protest but, nonetheless, looked guilty. "Wotta you theenk eet is? Eet is, eet is -"

  Her words were lost as one of the thick timber beams, supporting the rooms above, suddenly curved downward with a stressed and prolonged groan that drowned out every other sound in the bar. Kali looked upward, blinking dust from her eyes. The next beam along bowed down, as did the floorboards in between, and then the next, and then the one after that. It was almost surreal, as if the whole infrastructure of the tavern had suddenly turned to rubber.

  Then the top step of the stairs sounded as if it were splintering.

  "Oh Gods," Pete Two-Ties said. "They're waking up."

  Kali double-taked. "What? Who? Pete - who's waking up?"

  "Them," Pete pointed.

  Kali span. Whatever it was she expected to see, the last of it would have been a small mountain range, but that was exactly what appeared at the bottom of the stairs. A small mountain range squeezing itself into the bar and made up entirely of flesh. One of the mountains spoke. "Coo-ee, boys," it said, with a wink.

  Oh Gods,
Kali thought. No, it couldn't be. Not here.

  "The Hells' Bellies," she mouthed with dread. Her ordeals of the last few weeks notwithstanding she turned as white as a sheet.

  The eyes in the peaks of the talking mountain lit up. "Our fame has spread! This young lady, she has heard of us!"

  Kali was tempted to point out that the entire peninsula had 'heard' of them and that their fame wasn't the only thing that had spread. But she held her tongue and, instead, glowered at Dolorosa.

  "Explain," she demanded, darkly.

  "What issa there to explain?" Dolorosa said in a slightly high pitch, clearly going on the defensive. "We thoughta you dead and so we thoughta we woulda make a few changes..."

  Kali caught Aldrededor waving from behind his wife, desperate to catch her attention. He was shaking his head vigorously and pointing at Dolorosa.

  "Changes?" Kali asked, flatly.

  "Entertainment!" Dolorosa declared. "Cabaret! Culture! And so I contracted the most popular dancing troupe in the two provinces!"

  Kali felt her heart seize. "Contracted? For how long?"

  "They havva performed for three nights," Dolorosa said, "and they havva forty one left."

  Kali did a quick calculation. "You've contracted them for a month?"

  Pete Two-Ties head thudded down onto his table in defeat and shook back and forth slowly.

  "The whole of Cantar?" Kali said in disbelief. She signalled to Aldrededor to pour another thwack, which she grabbed and downed in one. "No, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO! Cancel it, Dolorosa, now."

  A small moon suddenly orbited in front of Kali's face. Except that it wasn't a moon but another face. It took a second to fold itself into a jowly frown. "Cancel... contract?" it said, and Kali wished that Merrit Moon was there so that the Hells' Belly and the Thrutt side of his personality could communicate on equal terms.