by Jim C. Hines
“Darnak?” Dare he touch the immobile dwarf? Would it make any difference? He looked around, but the others were with Ryslind. Darnak’s face and lips had taken on a bluish tinge. How long could dwarves hold their breath? he wondered.
A terrible thought hit him. If Darnak died, the others would find Jig standing over his body. How was he going to explain that?
“Darnak, wake up.” He grabbed the dwarf’s shoulder and shook him. Rather, he tried to shake him. It was like trying to move a wall. Darnak’s muscles were hard as rock.
“Wow,” Jig whispered. Growing braver, he poked Darnak’s chest and arms. No wonder he hadn’t worried about a few bats.
Jig’s stomach growled, turning his thoughts down another path. A dwarf like this could keep the entire lair fed for a day and a half.
He shook his head. I couldn’t eat Darnak any more than I could eat Smudge. Still after a day and a half with nothing but dried meat and bread, the idea was tempting.
“Come on, Darnak. Breathe!”
Darnak gasped. Jig’s heart scrambled up into his throat with fright. Even as Jig tried to get his own breathing under control, he turned toward Ryslind. For his ears had noticed something none of the others could possibly have heard. Ryslind had gasped for breath at the exact same moment as Darnak.
What does that mean? What is it that connected them?
“Go see if he’s all right,” Darnak said. He took a long drink from his wineskin. A line of dark ale trickled from the corner of his mouth and into his beard, a tiny stream through a black forest. “Go on now.”
Jig hurried up the hallway. Ryslind stood with one hand on the wall for support. Jig’s attention had been on Darnak, so he didn’t know what had happened. That was a shame, for he would have loved to know how Barius had ended up on the floor with a puffed lip. Ryslind didn’t usually rely on his fists, but maybe in his madness, he had made an exception.
“Brother?” Barius asked.
Ryslind nodded. “I am ready to go on.” With that, the mage straightened his robes, used his sleeve to mop his sweaty face, and walked up the corridor as though nothing had happened. Whatever he had done to Barius was enough to stifle the prince’s imperious manner, and he fell in next to Ryslind in silence.
Jig slowed until he and Darnak were walking side by side. “Is this a common thing with wizards?” he asked nervously.
Darnak kept his eyes on his map. At first, Jig didn’t think he was going to answer. He scribbled another row of tiles, extended the tunnel another few inches, then dipped the quill in his inkpot.
“No, it’s not,” he said at last. He counted tiles and continued to draw as he spoke. “Never seen anything like it, truth be told. Mind you, Ryslind’s always been a queer one. But he never warred with himself like that. Makes me wonder if he hasn’t taken on more than he can handle with this quest.”
They walked in silence down the right-most of a three-way fork. If Darnak was right, could they trust Ryslind to lead them in the right direction? Without the dwarf’s help, would he have even made it this far?
“What did you do back there?” Jig asked.
“Eh?”
“When you prayed. You and Ryslind were connected somehow, and you stopped breathing.” At the dwarf’s scowl, he quickly said, “I didn’t mean to listen in. But you were distracted, so I thought someone should watch for more of those creatures.” Jig almost smiled as he thought up the lie. No goblin would have believed it. But Jig didn’t want to admit he had been eavesdropping. Fortunately, Darnak didn’t know goblins well enough to understand that rather than try to protect the others, the average goblin would have simply cut the dwarf’s throat and fled.
“Something’s been draining his strength,” Darnak said quietly. “Felt it when we first reached the mountain two days ago. Been growing ever since. Earthmaker can’t help him directly. Wizards don’t get along with gods, never have. But through Earthmaker, I can lend him a bit of power and will.”
He shook his head. “There’s some who’ll be telling you that dwarves have the thickest, hardest heads of any race in this world, and I’ll not argue with them. And a good thing for Ryslind, too, for without my help, I’ve no doubt he’d have lost himself when we came through that whirlpool. My help and that of the god, that is,” he amended hastily.
Jig bit off his next question as Darnak stopped to note another trap Ryslind had pointed out. When he finished, Jig asked, “How long until you can’t help him anymore?”
Darnak didn’t answer.
Despite Ryslind’s magic, they still triggered another trap. At least this time it wasn’t Jig’s fault. So intent was Darnak on mapping every detail of the tunnel that he stepped squarely on a trapped tile, even as he drew that same tile on the map.
Like before, a panel in the wall flickered and vanished. Another of the corpselike creatures looked up and raised his sword. Darnak dropped his quill and raised his club, screaming a battle cry.
Before he could attack, something flew by and hit the wall of the alcove. This triggered the magic again, and the panel reappeared seconds later. As the marble solidified, Jig imagined he saw a look of annoyance on the creature’s sunken face.
Darnak stood there, club still raised, mouth still open, as if he didn’t know what to do now that his opponent had been taken away. After a few seconds, he lowered his club and glanced back at Riana. “I guess that’ll work too.”
Riana had thrown a piece of the bread she kept hidden in her shirt. Hard as stone, the bread had been more than enough to activate the magic of the alcove. She smiled sweetly. “But it cost me the remains of my lunch.”
Wordlessly, Darnak dug through his pack and handed her a small loaf. Jig grinned, happy to know that bread did indeed serve some useful purpose.
They stopped to rest in a small chamber, empty save for a black crystal fountain in the center. A wide pillar rose to Jig’s waist. Atop the pillar sat a wide bowl, guarded by four carved dragons perched on the rim. Each one looked almost lifelike, every scale glistening in the light. Their eyes were smooth blue jewels, and their teeth clear glass.
“Interesting,” Darnak said. Riana smirked.
He referred not to the carvings, but to the actual plumbing of the fountain. For each of the dragons stood with a leg cocked, and the water arced from between their legs into the pool at the center.
Jig knelt beneath it, staring through the black crystal to learn if it was pure enough to see light from the other side. He could, though the light was faint and diffused. He had never encountered anything like this. The bowl itself was ridged on the underside, cut so perfectly that Jig sliced his finger on the crystal. The wide rim formed the impression of a dirt trail with rocks and roots and even small plants. “It’s beautiful,” he whispered.
Barius sniffed. “Created, no doubt, by goblin artisans.”
Jig ignored him. The water in the bowl moved in a gentle swirl, propelled by the four streams. But how did the water get from there up into the dragons? It must drain through the pillar, then flow up through the sides of the fountain. He knelt again, trying to find where the water went.
What wonderful magic, to be able to move water about so easily. But why was it wasted here, where nobody could appreciate it? If Jig could build something like this, he would move water from the few pools around the goblin lair into the kitchens, so nobody would have to toil back and forth with the buckets. He could create fountains where goblins could go for drinking water, fountains that constantly replenished themselves. And washing down the privies would become at least a little less disgusting.
“Don’t be drinking that, mind you.” Darnak sighed. “A strange day, when I find myself warning a goblin not to drink dragon piss.”
“It’s only water,” Jig said.
“First rule of adventuring,” Darnak answered, voice muffled as he chewed his bread. “Never drink from strange fountains. Half the time it’ll turn you to stone, or shrink you to the size of a roach, or kill you on the spot.”
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“I imagine you would more likely suffer the same fate as those wretched corpses,” Barius said. “Worry not, goblin. You can rest assured I would strike you dead at the first sign of such a transformation, rather than permit you to suffer such horrors.”
He took a small sip from his waterskin. “ ’Ware the dragons themselves as well, lest they come to life and tear out your throat when you turn your back.”
Darnak laughed. “Getting a mite paranoid, aren’t you?”
“Cautious, friend dwarf,” Barius corrected. “In a place such as this, who knows what magic lurks in seemingly innocent things.”
That did it. Jig was tired of magic. Dead people coming through vanishing walls, giant bats, floating bridges, Ryslind talking with two voices, Darnak talking to his hammer, it was enough to make a goblin mad. How was he, with no more than a short sword and his wits, to deal with all this magic?
He would have to get some magic of his own. That was the goblin way. If your enemy had a knife, you got a sword. If he had two friends, you brought twelve. From what Jig had learned about magic, he had two choices. He could try to be like the wizard or the dwarf. Both of them had magic of a sort. Jig only had to figure out which kind of magic he wanted on his side.
Tough choice. Learn to talk to the gods, or become a freak of a man with tattoos and robes, fighting a losing battle with his own mind. Jig’s bald head, courtesy of Smudge, already gave him more in common with the wizard than he liked. He left the fountain and went to sit with Darnak. Better the lesser of two oddities.
“Tell me of the gods,” Jig said. A simple enough request, or so he thought. Barius cringed and moved to the other side of the room. Riana followed a few minutes later. Even Ryslind walked away until he had positioned the fountain between himself and the dwarf.
For it turned out that Darnak considered himself a bit of a historian, as well as an expert on the gods. A huge grin split his face. He finished off another wineskin and launched into a detailed saga, starting with the creation of the universe. Jig tried to listen, he truly did. But after a few minutes, he found himself wondering if Ryslind’s brand of magic was really as bad as it looked.
“To start with, you had the Two Gods of the beginning. All they did was fight. Spend an eternity with someone, you’re bound to get a bit tired of their company. They hurled magic back and forth, trying to get the upper hand, even though they couldn’t actually kill each other. The universe was young, and they were dumb as newborns. But powerful. They had all the power in the universe to themselves, you see. But some of it began to leak. And sooner or later this loose magic came together to form the Twenty-One Lower Gods. They were the ones who actually went about making the world and all the creatures on it.”
He ticked off their names, one after another, counting on his fingers and toes as he went. That only took him to twenty gods, but Jig didn’t bother to ask about the twenty-first. He didn’t try to remember all the names. Not one had fewer than five syllables, and they all had some sort of fetish about hyphenation and apostrophes. Really, what kind of a name was Korama Al-vensk’ak Sitheckt, anyway? When Darnak first mentioned that one, Jig thought he was hacking up yesterday’s dinner.
“What about Earthmaker?” Jig asked. “If the Twenty-One made the world, why didn’t you mention him?”
He looked embarrassed. “Well, Earthmaker didn’t actually make the world, as such. He came along a bit later, and he was after helping those blessed races who lived in the earth. Dwarves, gnomes, and the like. But he didn’t appear until after the Year of Darkness.”
“The Year of Darkness?” he asked before he could think better of it. As Darnak started in again, Jig looked longingly at the others across the room who sat safe from this endless storytelling. What had he started? And how could he steer the dwarf toward something useful, something that would help Jig?
Jig tried to understand the difference between the Lower Gods and the Gods of the Beginning and the Gods of the Elements, but then Darnak would mention something new, like the Gods of Men, and Jig was back to being confused. He began to wonder if the others would hold it against him if he stabbed Darnak to shut him up. Or perhaps it would be easier to turn his sword on himself.
Jig interrupted, desperately trying to break the endless flow of words. “How many Gods of Men?” From the other side of the room, his sharp ears caught a very unprincely groan from Barius.
“Nine hundred fifty-four,” Darnak said happily. “Starting with Abriana the Gray, Goddess of Storms and Sailors. She was born of a union betwixt Taras of the Oak—he’s a tree god—and a human woman named. . . .” Darnak frowned.
“Well, her name’s not important. Taras appeared to her in the form of a three-hundred-pound tortoise and propositioned her. Gods were always doing strange things back in those days. A right kinky lot, if you ask me. But like any good lass, this girl grabbed the nearest hammer and cracked that tortoise on the back. Split Taras’s shell right in two. Did I mention she was a dwarven girl?”
He hadn’t, but Jig wasn’t terribly surprised. He had only met one dwarf in his life, but he could imagine Darnak doing something like that. As for the rest of the story, Jig tried not to think about it. He didn’t know much about mating rituals, but he did know that all this changing into tortoises and other shapeshifting was a bit peculiar. Though maybe this explained why surface-dwellers were so fascinated by religion.
“Anyway, out sprang Abriana the Gray in a flash of thunder. She was twin to Wodock the Black, God of the Deep Ocean.”
“If they were twins, did he come out of the tortoise too?” Jig asked, trying to keep up.
“Nah. He came later. Had something to do with a mortal who fell in love with an acorn.” Darnak frowned. “Human, naturally. Wouldn’t catch a dwarf pining over an acorn.” He burst into laughter and punched Jig on the arm. “Pining. Get it?”
Jig got back up and rubbed his arm. He didn’t get the joke, and he didn’t want to. His arm hurt, his head hurt, and he still hadn’t learned anything useful. Over nine hundred gods. How was Jig to choose which one would be best suited for him? All he knew was that he didn’t want any god who turned into an acorn or a turtle to have sex, fell in love with a campfire, trapped mortals with bits of dandelion fluff, or any of this other nonsense. Which seemed to eliminate almost all of those nine hundred gods. “Are there gods for goblins?”
Darnak snorted. “Nah. Gods aren’t much for the dark races—goblins, orcs, ogres, kobolds, and the like.”
The dark races. Jig liked the sound of that. Intimidating and mysterious. But it didn’t help his problem.
He listened with one ear as Darnak droned on and on. The dwarf must have studied for years to memorize all of this information. He knew the stories of origin for almost every god. How he managed to keep the divine family trees straight in his head was beyond Jig. Or perhaps family vines would be a better term for the way the relationships twisted and intertwined and looped back on themselves, as gods mated with their mothers’ sisters, and so on. Jig twisted his ears, trying to filter out the worst of it.
There was something Darnak had said before, back when he was healing Barius. Something about Earthmaker being busy with the prayers of an entire world. Too busy to spend all his time on one dwarf.
Jig chewed on his bread without tasting it. Not that there was much to taste. But his mind was elsewhere. He could see two ways to use the power of the gods to his advantage. One would be to become a follower of the most powerful god, one who could hurl thunderbolts and destroy worlds without breaking a sweat. Did gods sweat? It didn’t matter.
The problem was that such a god wouldn’t have much of a use for a mere goblin. Which brought Jig to the other option. He could follow a god who had grown unpopular. One with few worshipers, who wouldn’t be busy answering other prayers. One who could devote his full attention to people like Jig. One who might be grateful even for a goblin follower.
His ears shot up as a phrase caught his attention. “What was that?”
Darnak blinked. “Eh? Oh, the Fifteen Forgotten Gods of the War of Shadows?”
Forgotten Gods. That sounded perfect, if a bit misleading. If they really were forgotten, how would Darnak know about them?
“Who were they?”
The dwarf played with his beard. “Let me think . . . they fell out of favor for going up against the Two. You can’t kill a god, of course, but the Two showed them all that you can beat one within an inch of his or her life. Take the Shadowstar. They stripped his mind, flayed his body with blades of lightning, and cast him loose in the desert. May have turned him into a lizard for a while, I’m not sure. He wandered there for two hundred years, all but forgotten.”
“Tell me about him,” Jig said eagerly.
“Well, Tymalous Shadowstar was God of the Autumn Star. When his lady brought the snows of winter, Shadowstar lengthened the nights and danced in the darkness.”
There was more, but Jig had heard enough. A forgotten god, one with power over the darkness. He didn’t understand this idea of longer nights, and he knew nothing of the seasons, but it didn’t matter.
Jig the goblin would be a follower of Tymalous Shadowstar.
CHAPTER 10
Falling Short of Expectations
They might have stayed there forever, listening to Darnak’s endless recitation of divine history. He was determined to tell Jig about every wart on the frog-god’s back and every copper coin claimed by the god of gamblers. No matter how often Jig cleared his throat or glanced at the others, Darnak kept on talking. Jig could have done without this demonstration of dwarven stamina.
Finally Barius strolled around the fountain and tapped his boot for attention.
Darnak hesitated.
“You have not yet completed your map of this room, friend dwarf?” He waved at the fountain. “Such a creation deserves to be noted, would you not agree?”
