The kobold chiefs hunkered around the greenish-blue light of one of their strange firepits, in which they burned stones as other peoples burned wood. The chieftains were huge folk, as kobolds grew each year of their lives and their chiefs were always the largest and oldest among them. For kobolds, this meant they were more than a century in age, and had long ago outgrown the cramped, slimy tunnels of their youth. The chieftains, being the largest of their kind, were bent in a permanently hunched position. They lived scuttling and crawling through their warrens on scarred knees.
The kobolds eyed Oberon with vast distrust. “You must help us. Our enemy is your enemy,” said the wisest of them. He had but one eye and one arm, but there was a red gleam of cunning in that sole remaining eye.
“Aye, and we will!” shouted Oberon, leaping to his feet. The sudden movement caused the huge, wary kobolds to grope for their flint knives and heavy stalactite clubs.
Oberon strutted before the hulking figures, having not a care for their firepit of burning stones or their crude weapons. Their knobby knuckles popped and bulged as they gripped their clubs, but they did not lift them.
“It will be this way: We elves are not close at hand, dwelling as we do in another place. When the Kindred bubble and churn and finally boil over, they will seek the creatures that are easiest to reach, the way lava flows down into tunnels beneath it first, before shooting up shafts to the surface.”
The kobold chieftains relaxed somewhat. Oberon spoke now in terms they comprehended.
“Your people will thus take the brunt of the pain early on,” Oberon continued in a most reasonable voice. It was very hard to argue with his words. Every single syllable sounded self-evident and truthful to a mortal listener. “Kobolds will be exterminated first, almost immediately in fact, as you are very near at hand. So your question should not be when will the elves help, but why would we help you at all? Why should my people move to your aid? Would we ensure that the Kindred will turn their yellow greedy eyes toward us secondly? It would seem in our best interests to wait, and to hope you quench their flame for conquest with your collective bloods.”
Kobold throats growled. Bent spines twisted and shoulders rubbed against the tunnel ceiling, which was only a dozen feet high.
“But we elves see more deeply than that,” said Oberon. He had every one of their eyes now. Even the single red orb of the wisest was intent upon his words. “We will strike. We will help. We will die with you. Not to save kobolds, but to save ourselves.”
The others stared at him, and the fire of burning stones shot up a hissing white flare. A pocket of magnesium had no doubt been set alight.
Oberon hopped forward and leaned over the flaring fire, as if the intense light and heat of it meant nothing to him.
“All the folk, all of us, must fight the Kindred at once. We must stand together. We can’t wait and sit back and huddle while they rebuild their walking machines and forge demonic weaponry. We must strike hard and fast. Each day, they grow stronger, preparing to march. Each day, we grow weaker in comparison, and if they slay the kobolds and then the gnomes firstly, well, that will only put off the day of reckoning for the elves by a month or three. They will come for us, we know that. They have Dragon Magic, and we have lost our Sky Magic. They do not fear us.”
Oberon produced a tiny lyre, and he strummed it idly while he spoke. The chieftains were so intent on his words they did not think to demand he stop, to insist that no enchantments be cast.
But the wisest one, the kobold with the single red eye, spoke up. “Then strike with us. Bring your elves into the caverns through the mounds that exist here. Stand behind each rank of kobolds a line of elf archers. Let us, as you say, work together.”
The lyre stopped strumming. An almost infinitesimal flicker of anger could be seen as it ran across Oberon’s face.
They stared at him, awaiting his response.
Oberon, not for the first time these many days of traveling among the most unwholesome of folk, doubted his strategy. These oafs were so simple and distrustful they could not grasp the perfection of his plan. They suspected him of duplicity, and wriggled upon his baited hooks with tenacity. He heaved a breath, and regretted the action instantly, as his nostrils filled with the rich foulness of kobolds. In truth, he cared not one thin whit if the Kindred exterminated the lot of them. The world would be a better place without these filthy creatures.
But, unfortunately, he needed these lowly beings. That very fact was depressing, and worthy of vengeance all by itself. He vowed, right then and there, to add this ignominy to the list of crimes performed upon his dignity by Brand and the Kindred. There would be an accounting, and soon, of these accumulated insults. He should not be forced to ally with crude creatures such as these. They were not worthy of his spittle.
He forced a smile, and raised his head again, removing all dark thoughts from his face as best he could. “You ask a piercing question, ancient one,” this last statement caused a real smirk of amusement to come unbidden to Oberon’s face. He, who was as old as the stones in their firepit, had called one of these infantile animals an ancient. The irony was enough to make any thinking being smile.
“There is the small matter, unfortunately, of trust,” said Oberon, speaking as one might to a half-wit. “You will strike first, and thus commit yourselves to war. We will follow your action. That way, we will be ensured of your cooperation.”
“Why we go first?” grunted another chief. This one was the fattest and had the largest mouth, two factors that were probably complimentary in nature.
Oberon shot his gaze that way. “Because otherwise, my people will do nothing, and you will be rolled over by the maddened Kindred. Like ants swarming over a carcass, they will pick your foul bones clean.”
“Your turn will come if you wait.”
“True enough, but we have many other allies and will simply take the time your demise provides to better ready ourselves.”
The kobolds set up a storm of annoyed grunting in their own crude language. Oberon knew some of their speech, but preferred not to listen. He would feel sullied if he listened to their prattle of grunts and whistles too closely.
Finally, they came to a conclusion. The one with the single red eye spoke for the group. “We will do as you ask. We will set a thousand traps. We will throw a thousand darts. We will slay every Kindred we can find alone, and we will creep forth in their artificial night and set alight their fields of mushrooms and lichen.”
“Excellent,” said Oberon, beaming.
“But, we ask something from you now. Give us weapons if you won’t stand with us. Give us something to better slay the Kindred than our sharpened stones.”
Oberon, for the first time, paused in thought. He placed a finger to his mouth, then he swept up that finger upward into the thick air of the tunnel.
“We will do it. You will throw darts that will not miss. The triggers of your traps will snap with clockwork precision. Your archers will bend bows with a greater spring to them than any they have ever held.”
The deal was struck. Oberon was forced to touch the knuckles of each of the foul beasts in turn, as was their custom. Leaving the stinking tunnels, he reached fresh air an hour later.
Finding a clean blue lake, he spent a long time bathing and scouring the soiled hand that had touched their foul, scabbed flesh.
He steeled himself for his next visit. It would be the last, and the most important of the lot. In foulness, the next meeting would far surpass his experience with the kobolds. In comparison, he would recall their company and liken it to a fresh spring morning.
* * *
Gudrin accepted that the effects upon the Kindred of having a living monarch were undeniable, but inexplicable. The Kindred, when under the sway of a monarch, were a people apart from their normal selves. The phenomenon was well-known, but little studied, even by the Kindred talespinners. She found herself to be the locus of this strange reaction, but that didn’t make it any easier to explain t
o races that had never experienced a time of group madness.
As a naturalist and a scholar she could find corollaries in the world. Other species behaved vastly differently when an instinctual drive overtook them, such as salmon dashing their brains out on wet stones, trying to reach their home waters to spawn when one would think that any spot would do. As well, many varieties of insect exhibited specialized group behavior when the queen of their nest was ready to mate.
She was aware of these comparable instances, but was unable to apply any of them to her own folk. Firstly, because such a comparison was disgusting, and likened the Kindred to creatures that were nearly mindless. Her people didn’t respond to some chemical signature. They were not thrown into a constructive—or destructive—frenzy by some primitive instinct shared with hive creatures. She rejected such comparisons out of hand as insulting. Her people were instead, she knew in her heart, driven by a sense of loyalty and bravery and self-sacrifice. It was honor that drove them to wild acts when they had a monarch. They were capable of surprising things under normal circumstances, but when following a leader they truly believed in, one that inspired the Kindred heart do its utmost, that was when others had cause to eye them fearfully.
A clear example of this natural behavior might be the warrior company that had followed Hallr into the breath of Fafnir, powered by Pyros. More than willing, nay, with eagerness they had followed their clan leader into hopeless battle. The reason they changed so drastically when they had chosen a monarch, she decided, lay in the fact that the Kindred were a folk normally divided into thirteen clans. Only when they had a monarch did the center of their existence change. No longer were the Kindred just one of thirteen striving groups, but rather there rose up a single individual to whom all of them owed their total allegiance. They replaced a diffuse organization with a single focus for their prideful, honor-filled eagerness. Their king, (or in this case, their queen) by his or her very existence, drove the Kindred to great heights of activity. All rivalries ceased, all quips and snubs were pointless. Everyone was instantly on the same side, and all anyone cared about was the current goal of the monarch.
For good or ill, they had chosen her—or fate had. She had borne many great burdens in her long life, including for a time, two of the Jewels of Power. But this was by far the greatest burden of her difficult life. She had no choice but to lead, and lead she would. But she worried, especially at night when the repaired vents of the Earthlight were reduced to three dim red lines on the horizon, that Pyros would impair her otherwise excellent judgment at a critical juncture. She was sure her people would follow her, marching into the magma itself if she led them there. She had no doubts of their strength, honor and loyalty. But she doubted herself at times, at quiet times, when the Jewel whispered disturbing things to her.
She could see no flaw, however, in rebuilding the Kindred army to new heights. Their allies she trusted, but no farther than the reach of her axe. Their enemies—she trusted them, too. She trusted them to try to steal from the Kindred the glory, wealth and power they had so recently gained. She knew they would covet Pyros, and think she was weak and unable to properly wield its flame. They were wrong. And she would instruct them most harshly when they came to test her mastery of the Orange Jewel.
She expected to be attacked, and soon. It only made sense. Why wait until she had a firm grasp upon the Orange? Why not strike while they tarried to repair the damage Fafnir had done? Oh yes, she knew their plans. She was supposed to happily rebuild brass and stone, bending a thousand backs to pointless toils. All the while the enemy snuck up from the Everdark and gathered in the darkest regions of the Black Mountains and the Deepwood.
“Warriors, report!” she ordered, slamming an open hand down on a six-inch thick oaken table. She sat in the ruins of the citadel, where the rubble had been cleared out, but the carven stone furniture still lay broken. They had no time for re-cutting the great stone table that had once been sculpted up from the basalt interior of the citadel. Instead, she had ordered a heavy wooden replacement.
The reports came in from every sector. None of them were good. The kobolds below and the gnomes down still deeper were very busy indeed, constructing traps and moving about in great numbers. In the trees that huddled against the feet of her Black Mountains, more gnomes, elves and even goblins had been sighted, meeting in quiet moonlit glades.
Of her allies, Brand was the only one she had the slightest trust in. He was a boy, but naturally gifted as a leader. He would come to her aid, she felt sure, when the time came. The Wee Folk were little better than knaves, and might or might not lend a hand, depending on their fickle calculations of the state of affairs when the time came. But she didn’t have any plans to depend on the people of the Haven for salvation. In fact, she rather thought it was the elves and gnomes who skulked about her mountains—in, under and around them—who might be the ones needing help, ere long.
“What are we doing about all this enemy activity?” she demanded.
The new clan leader of the warriors stood. He was a relatively young fellow, barely four centuries old. His beard, however, despite his youth, reached the top of his boots.
“My Queen,” he said. “We have begun training our troops to follow the brass walking machines, but they blow so much steam into our faces as to obscure our vision. We request a new tactic, to spread out to the sides of the machines, to support them on a wider front.”
“Denied,” said Gudrin sharply. The warrior looked surprised, but she had no time for softening her opinions. “The battles will often proceed underground in places where there will be no way to flank anything. We must find another expedient.”
Gudrin spun half around to face the Mechnician clanmaster, who recoiled slightly, having known the Queen’s scowl would turn to her next.
“We are working on it, milady,” said the mechnician. “With new exhaust fittings, the steam shall be ejected upward, not backward. But, I must add, in a tight tunnel the entire area will be affected anyway.”
Gudrin nodded. “We’ll try the new fittings. What of the killing arms? Are they strong enough yet to move stones? I’ll not have obstacles stopping my forces so easily.”
The mechnician rustled her scrolls nervously. She took a breath and selected one to read from. “Our tests show improvement in this area, but the length and sharpness of the tines will be affected if we continue to make them thicker and more powerful. They can’t be optimized for piercing thrusts and digging work at the same time.”
Gudrin pursed her lips. “Strive for a happy medium. I want them to perform both functions competently.”
Next, she turned to her own talespinner appointee. He was a young male, who kept his beard trimmed scandalously short. Most disapproved of him, she knew, but she had to have someone for the job. She could not very well lead her clan and run the kingdom at the same time. She had put a waif in charge, one who many thought was exceedingly young for the job, but who she knew was a genius at quick adaptation. She had no need now of some hoary librarian from the central scroll repository. She didn’t want someone who was interested more in dusting their knowledge than using it.
“Talespinner. What of our efforts to capture a sufficiency of elementals from the magma?”
This one was so nervous he spilled his scrolls when addressed. They splashed over his boots and his lap like a hurled deck of cards. “Ah,” he said, snatching at scrolls.
The warrior clanmaster rolled his eyes to the ceiling, clearly unimpressed.
Gudrin slammed her hand down on the table again. This time, her hand had formed into a fist, and a gush of flame scorched the table where she struck it. For several long seconds after the booming report of both the blow and the blossoming flames, her fist continued to burn. It blackened the table surface, bubbling the varnish from a new patch, one of many such scars the table displayed. She wondered distantly if this sort of thing was the very reason her forebearers had always built council chambers out of pure stone.
�
��Leave the scrolls, man! Report!”
Flustered, the talespinner stammered something about finding enough flame elementals, but almost none of the molten earth types. Gudrin calmed while he spoke, and when the flames on her fist were down to a bare flicker she rubbed her bare cheek.
Everyone watched quietly, seeing clearly that the flames had no effect on her whatsoever. She let them stare. A powerful monarch gave them faith in her leadership.
Finally, the talespinner offered his resignation at the end of his report. He sat with his dejected face aimed downward at his avalanche of scrolls, which still fluttered around his seat.
Gudrin snorted. “Request denied. I’ll decide when you are relieved of your position. It is none of your affair.”
“Thank you, my Queen.”
“Don’t thank me! This is no time to play with scrolls! Get out there and catch more elementals! We must have them to provide the heat source for our steam-driven machines. And pick up your flapping papers before I burn them all by accident.”
Gudrin left the council to their muttering and went to inspect the construction pits.
The crawler in the pits was a prototype, an early model based on scrolls that crumbled with age. There were many improvements to be made, but the thing was still deadly. One could sense, in its presence, it would be wicked indeed in combat. She eyed it critically. So long had it been since her people had marched behind such things. Seeing the evil of it, she no longer doubted why the Kindred council had seen fit to destroy the old ones nearly a millennium ago.
The crawler had a central torus of shining brass. The body of it was pot-bellied, in the general shape of a teakettle. But this teakettle had six multi-jointed steel legs like a giant crab. Also like a crab, two killing tines thrust forward, resembling claws, but each of them were sharpened to perfect spear-like point. They could thrust forward with startling rapidity, and were capable of piercing any armor, or even punching through stone.
Haven 5 Blood Magic BOOK Page 10
