by Dan Willis
“That will be quite enough, Mother,” Bradok said, rising.
He blotted the fresh ink on the paper then folded it carefully and put it in the breast pocket of his coat. “I’m going out,” he announced.
“Going to warn your new friends at the temple?” she asked, still smiling like a wolf.
“Of course not,” Bradok said, brushing her out of his way. “I am going to do my duty and deliver the daily report to Mayor Arbuckle.”
Bradok turned down the hallway and passed out into his grand foyer. Behind him his mother’s laughter echoed down the hall, mocking him.
But Bradok did not intend to go to Mayor Arbuckle’s house, as he said. Instead he wandered through Ironroot, down past the Artisans’ Cavern and into the Undercity.
Down one of the many side tunnels stood a decrepit facade built of wood that covered a great hole carved in the rock. A warped, wooden sign outside read The Butcher’s Block in faded green paint. The wooden facade hadn’t been repaired in generations. It leaned away from the edge of the cavern, making it possible for Bradok to see into the tavern’s interior. As seedy as the place was, the Butcher’s Block had the best ale in the city, and Bradok needed something stronger than his usual beer just then.
An hour later he had nursed his third ale down to the bottom of the mug, and he still had no answers. He wanted to believe that Arbuckle’s motives were innocent, but at the same time he knew he had been duped. The council was plotting against its own citizens.
Bradok turned on his stool, surveying the tavern, as if answers could be found in the hardened faces of the dwarves around him. The bar stood against the back wall of the room and was stained black and pitted with years of hard use. Oft-repaired stools stood in front of the bar in a ragged row, occupied by a bunch of patrons. In the middle of the great room sat a stone hearth over which a metal shroud and flue hung. A fire crackled cheerily, spreading a dry warmth through the cool, humid air and filling the room with the scent of burning pine.
Bradok had taken the stool at the far end, by the kitchen. A barmaid with a face as haggard as the bar leaned on her arms, attempting to draw the men’s eyes away from her face by exposing ample amounts of cleavage. All of the dwarves at the bar were drinking with abandon, so none of them noticed anyway.
Bradok finished his cup and pounded on the bar. The pitted-faced barmaid brought him another drink efficiently enough, but with a disinterest bordering on disdain. Bradok took a swig, but he had drunk his fill; the liquid soured in his mouth. He pushed the cup aside and stared at the fire.
Next to Bradok sat a mountain of a dwarf. Seated on his stool, the red-bearded dwarf was easily a head taller than Bradok. He’d been pounding back ale and muttering darkly to himself since before Bradok arrived, and still he showed no sign of slowing. The dwarf wore a thick leather apron of the kind smiths wore, but his clothes and boots were far too fine for such a profession. As soon as he noticed Bradok had paused in his drinking, the big dwarf slammed his mug down, sending its contents launching out of the mug and splashing on the bar.
“What’s the matter with you?” he demanded testily. “You look like a dwarf, but you sure don’t drink like one.”
Bradok sat up as if he’d been struck by lightning. Glaring at the red-bearded dwarf, he raised his tankard and drained it in one gulp.
“No one ever accused me of being a teetotaler,” he said with a growl, slamming his mug down on the bar. “Now leave me alone.”
He turned back to the bar, but the red-bearded dwarf would not be dismissed so easily. With a roar of laughter, he pounded Bradok on the back so hard that the stool beneath him cracked ominously.
“I like you!” the fellow said. “You’re different than most of the rest. You’re not afraid to say it like it is.”
“Yes, I am,” Bradok said in a low voice he intended only for himself.
“So you didn’t tell off those crooks on the city council,” the dwarf said matter-of-factly. “That’s all right by me. Being prudent with your tongue doesn’t make you a coward.”
“How did you know that?” Bradok demanded, seizing the big dwarf by the arm.
“That’s nothing.” Red-beard shrugged. “You’re that new councilman from the upper city. It stands to reason you wouldn’t want to say more than is prudent on your first day.”
Bradok narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “That’s not what you said. You said something about … me disagreeing with the council,” he finished. He scratched his head. What had the red-bearded dwarf said? He wasn’t sure. His head was clouded with drink.
The big dwarf grinned sympathetically at him. “You’ve got an honest face,” he said. “It’s the kind of face you only get from hard work and fair value. I can respect a face like that.”
Bradok couldn’t hold the penetrating gaze of the red-bearded dwarf’s crystal blue eyes. The dwarf’s eyes seemed to look into the very depths of his soul, and Bradok turned away before they found the thing that all the ale in the bar couldn’t drown.
“I’m not worthy of anyone’s respect,” Bradok mumbled, motioning to the barmaid for a fresh mug.
“Why is that?”
Bradok frowned. Why, indeed? Because what he suspected about Arbuckle and Bladehook made Bradok shudder just to think of it. He no longer doubted that the lists he had been innocently drawing up for the council were intended for some kind of drastic action against the believers. Bradok himself didn’t care a whit for the believers, but it just wasn’t, well—dwarflike.
“Are you a believer?” Bradok suddenly asked the big dwarf, daring to look into those probing eyes for a moment.
The big dwarf laughed. “My name is Erus,” he said, raising his mug to Bradok. “And you might say I’m the ultimate believer.”
“Then I suggest you leave Ironroot while you can,” Bradok said glumly, staring into his mug. “Take anyone you love and get out.”
If Bradok’s warning fazed the big dwarf, he gave no sign.
“So you think that anti-preaching law was just the beginning?” the red-bearded dwarf said in a conspiratorial tone. “That there’s more to come?”
“Something like that,” Bradok said.
“What about you? Are you a believer?” Erus asked.
The question almost made Bradok laugh. Then, all of a sudden, he felt like weeping, which was all the more surprising.
“I don’t know what I am,” he said finally. “I’m not sure what I believe.”
“That’s gutless,” Erus declared, taking another drink.
Bradok looked up at the dwarf sharply, intending to protest, even to challenge him to a fight, but the dwarf’s accusing gaze froze the words in his throat. The dwarf’s eyes appraised him for a long time, their depths hard and flat. Bradok wanted to glance away, to look anywhere else, but those eyes held him fast, as surely as a vice. Then Erus blinked and looked away, accepting the fresh tankard the barmaid had mechanically brought him.
“Let me tell you something, Bradok,” he said, taking the fresh drink and tackling it with gusto. “There comes a time in everyone’s life when they have to make a choice. When that happens, you can’t stay on the sidelines; you have to enter the fray.”
“There! You’ve done it again. How do you know so much about me? How do you know my name?” Bradok asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Erus said, setting his cup on the bar and leaning closer to Bradok. “When the time comes that you are forced to choose which side you’re going to be on, I think it would be a good idea if you found out just what you did believe.” Erus reached into the front pocket of his apron and pulled out a steel coin, which he spun on the bar. “Because it’s much easier to make the right choice when you know what your beliefs really are.”
“Easy for you to say,” Bradok said, genuinely confused.
Erus smiled. It was a warm, sincere, friendly look, full of compassion. “Right you are,” he said, taking a small cloth-wrapped bundle from his apron. “Here,” he said, holding it out to Bradok.
Bradok took the bundle hesitantly. From its size and shape, it might have been a pocket watch.
“Take this to the Artisans’ Cavern,” Erus said solemnly with the hint of a wink. “There you will find the shop of Silas, the cooper. You might also find some of the answers you seek.”
He got up off his stool and slung an enormous warhammer over his shoulder. “Be warned, though,” he added. “The time to choose sides is almost upon you. Don’t take too long to make up your mind.”
With that Erus turned and strode to the door, exiting into the dimly lit tunnels without so much as a backward glance.
Bradok scrambled to dig a few silver pieces from his coin purse before he raced to the door and out into the street. The narrow tunnel ran straight to either side for several hundred yards, but Erus was nowhere to be seen. Despate the dwarf’s formidable size, he seemed to have completely vanished.
Bradok opened his hand, looking at the wrapped bundle. A soft linen cloth covered the object, held in place by a length of twine that had been tied on top. He took hold of the loose end of the twine and hesitated. A strange sense of foreboding swept over him, causing a chill to run up his spine. He couldn’t help feeling that he had been handed a piece of some great and terrible destiny, and he wondered if he dared accept his fate.
After a moment, however, his natural curiosity got the better of him, and he tugged on the twine, pulling the knot free. Carefully, he removed the cloth, revealing an exquisite brass device. It looked like an oversized pocket watch with fine etching covering its every surface. Bradok had never seen etching so fine; it seemed impossibly small yet perfectly straight, as if done by the most unwavering of hands. The pattern looked basic at first glance, but as he examined it closely, Bradok saw that it wound over and around itself, like a ball of knotted string.
In the exact center of the top, a purple gem had been set. It was cut to be flat on top, with flat sides around it and, although Bradok had years of experience with every kind of gem known to dwarf, it was a stone he’d never encountered before.
As he turned the device over in his hand, Bradok spotted a small hinge, indicating that the top of the object was covered by a door of some kind. Opposite the hinge, he found a small, hidden clasp. When he pressed it, however, the lid didn’t move. He tried prying at it with his fingernails, but it didn’t budge.
Then something suddenly caught his eye. The purple stone gave off a soft glow. Fascinated, he held it up to his eye. The light from the stone seemed to reflect on certain parts of the etched surface of the top, causing some of the lines to glow. To Bradok’s great astonishment, they formed words across the object’s face, tiny yet readable words.
“A person’s destination depends more on his choices than his direction,” Bradok read. Still puzzling over the strange saying, he slipped the device into his pocket.
He didn’t know why, but for some reason the brass device suddenly seemed more urgent than anything Arbuckle might be plotting. “I guess I’d better find this Silas fellow,” he said to himself.
Undercity, as its name implied, had been built below Ironroot proper. To keep from undermining the stability of the upper caverns, Undercity had been built down and away, gradually curving into a descending spiral. To reach the Artisans’ Cavern, Bradok had to wind his way back up, almost to Ironroot cavern, then along a side passage for almost a mile.
The connecting tunnel consisted of two parts. Along the left side ran a raised walkway, set aside solely for foot traffic. The rest of the wide tunnel contained a divided street set with rails. Metal carts pulled by donkeys moved goods in and out between a loading dock on the Ironroot side and the artisans’ shops below. The carts had been put in as a security measure to control what actually passed into the Artisans’ Cavern. Most of Ironroot’s artisans worked with steel in one form or another, making the cavern a tempting target for thieves.
Bradok watched, fascinated as a donkey pulled a row of three cars up toward the loading dock. The cars were filled with wrapped bundles, and they jumped and jostled each other as they made their way along the tunnel. A train of five cars passed, going the other way, rattling and clanking like armor dropped down a stone stairway. Since the Artisans’ Cavern had been built slightly lower than Ironroot proper, the carts could return under the power of gravity, meaning they moved faster and in greater numbers.
Unlike Ironroot cavern, the Artisans’ Cavern was not natural; it had been painstakingly carved out and provided with multiple ventilation shafts that connected to the surface.
Because of the smoke that perpetually hung over the cavern, the tunnels didn’t have long strings of lanterns for light as Ironroot proper did. The ceiling of the cavern had been built like an enormous chimney, designed to funnel the smoke of the many fires up and out. By law, all chimneys had to be higher than the top of the Ironroot tunnel, lest any smoke get passed to the city above. That left a layer of cleaner air, close to the ground where glow lanterns on short poles were hung. Because of the carts and the system of rails, elevated walkways continued out from the tunnel, keeping pedestrians above the clattering carts. Each of the walkways was brightly lit with glow lanterns every few feet, giving the impression of ghostly lanes hovering above the dark floor.
Bradok exited the tunnel and went left at the first fork he came to. He didn’t know exactly where Silas the cooper might be found, but he knew that most woodworkers would be clustered together down one of the left-hand passages.
A few inquires directed him to a freestanding wooden structure in the corner of one of the deeper side passages. He would have known it even if he hadn’t asked, as it had an enormous barrel for a doorway and a crowd of people milling around it.
Bradok hesitated for a moment. He was a public figure, and it probably wouldn’t be good to get mixed up in whatever had drawn the crowd to Silas’s shop. Still, the memory of Erus’s words, telling him that Silas might have the answers he sought, rang in Bradok’s mind.
The cool, smoky air of the cavern swirled around Bradok as he struggled with indecision. Finally, taking a deep breath, which he blew out with a growl, he set off toward the crowd. When he reached them, he saw that they weren’t doing anything in particular; they were just standing idly on the walkway, trying to get a look at the simple wooden building.
“What’s all this,” Bradok asked a scruffy, soot-covered dwarf.
“When you find out, you tell me.” The fellow chuckled. “Some say the cooper has gone mad; others say he’s had a vision,” he said. “Either way, it’s the darndest thing you ever saw.”
“What is?” Bradok asked, craning his neck to look over the crowd.
“That,” the scruffy dwarf said.
As Bradok followed the dwarf’s pointing finger, his jaw dropped open. He hadn’t noticed before because he’d been focused on the crowd, but one side of the building had been completely torn down. Thrusting out from the space where the wall should have been was a huge framework of wood that looked for all the world like the skeleton of some enormous creature. The entire apparatus ended in a long wooden spar that stuck straight out into the cavern.
Bradok had never seen an ocean, but he knew about large bodies of water. Likewise he knew what that was without ever having actually seen one. There, more than a mile beneath the surface, in the heart of a mountain, Silas the cooper was building a boat.
CHAPTER 5
The Cooper and the Council
Bradok had to push his way bodily through the crowd until, at last, he found himself in front of the curved shop door. A sign to one side read Silas & Son, Coopers.
Not really knowing what else to do, Bradok put out his hand and rapped smartly on the door.
A moment later it opened.
In the opening beyond stood someone who could not be Silas or his son. Instead a human appeared, tall, like all members of his race, and pudgy, wearing a smock. Dust and wood shavings covered his clothes, hair, and apron, making it impossible for Bradok to determine the man’s a
ge or appearance. Humans were not terribly unusual in Ironroot, but to see one so obviously apprenticed to a dwarf craftsman was additional cause for curiosity.
“May I help you,” the human said in a mild voice.
“I’m looking for Silas,” Bradok said.
The human’s face turned sour. “Master Silas is far too busy to entertain visitors,” he said grumpily. “If you just want to gawk, you can stay out here with this lot.” He nodded in the direction of the milling crowd.
He began to close the door, but Bradok shoved his foot into the jamb to keep it from closing.
“It’s really rather important,” he said.
The human appraised Bradok for a moment, looking him up and down with his dust-colored eyes, then stepped back from the doorway. “Then you’d better come in, Mister …”
“Axeblade, Bradok Axeblade.”
The human nodded, shutting the door behind Bradok. “I am Perin,” he said, indicating himself, though Bradok didn’t know if that was his family name or his given. “I am the first assistant to Master Silas. If you will follow me, please.”
Perin turned and opened a door just off the entryway. Steam and the smell of washed wood and fire billowed through the opening as the two passed into the workshop. A small forge had been built on one side, and two young dwarves were pumping the bellows while a smith heated a long, curved iron band for pounding on a nearby anvil. Along the opposite wall were workbenches where a burly dwarf shaped and planed wooden slats smooth. Next to the forge stood the steaming box where the slats would be cooked to make them flexible enough to bend.
Bradok took it all in with a single glance. Like most dwarven shops, the cooper’s operation was neat and well ordered.
The only unusual thing was the giant boat. Its curved wooden ribs ran all the way up to the ceiling, and Bradok could see why the side wall of the shop had been torn out: The boat took up the entire length of the shop and then some.
“What in the undermountain is this about?” Bradok squawked once he’d gotten over his astonishment.
