A Fair Fight
Page 14
"I caught Lani," Kerr said, standing and dusting off, before helping Lani up. Megan was all the more grateful that, outside of cold iron, the fae were a lot more durable.
"Amateur," Cassia said, sitting up. "I caught Justin and kept the cauldron from rolling over the edge." The satyress looked around. "The boys landed on their feet... cats."
Megan looked up at the walls, trying to figure out how far they'd fallen. "Cassia, do you think you could climb it?"
Cassia studied the walls, testing a couple handholds, one of which came loose in her hand. "Icy, crumbling rock and every possibility that there's archers up there keeping an eye out for us. I don't think that's the best idea."
Megan sighed, considering their options, until Lani stepped up beside her, studying the walls, then taking hold of a couple of the rocks. "Hmm."
"I like the sound of hmm," Megan said.
"The ice shouldn't normally form bridges and stuff. That's definitely a mystical thing. Stone... I think I should be able to work with this. I have my tools. If everyone is sleeping, I should be able to cut a ladder into the wall, or rig up a pulley, or something. It's going to need some magic, though."
Megan let everyone settle in, most looking grateful for the chance to rest after the mad scramble and the fall. Ashling and the Count did a quick scouting run to check for the presence of the dokkalfar, then found their own place to rest. Megan started the lullaby, drifting off to sleep as well.
She woke to the sound of sobbing.
Lani was kneeling, surrounded by chunks of ice and stone, and discarded tools. There was a hollow cut into the wall, but nothing resembling a ladder. Megan's best friend had her face in her hands and was gently shaking.
Megan quickly got up and ran over, wrapping her arms around Lani. "What happened?"
The sound had also woken Justin, and he shifted over to take one of Lani's hands. Her face was almost maroon as the tears streaked across her face.
Lani took a few quick breaths, managing to speak, though she was still shaking. "It won't work. It won't work. Everything... everything breaks."
“Okay, so let's work on that,” Megan said.
“...breaks...” was all Lani managed between heaving breaths, her eyes staring blankly ahead.
Kerr cuddled up to Lani's other side. “Not your fault,” Kerr muttered to Lani. “It's probably just the place.”
Lani was still beginning to hyperventilate.
“Hmph, makes sense,” said Cassia. “Underworlds get under the skin. And... well...”
Megan nodded as she slowly realized. Menehune magic wasn't as badly affected by cold iron as most of the Celtic fae. But apparently the dokkalfar only worked in ice and shadow anymore because nothing else in the place would be worked. “Not your fault,” Megan echoed. “We'll think of something.”
Lani's sobs picked up a little more. Reason wasn't going to work. Megan had her voice, but the idea of trying to pull out the rousing battle march now was absurd.
“'The careful textbooks measure,'” she started to sing softly.
Megan had heard the song plenty of times. The Kahales, whatever Kipling's thoughts on them might have been, loved it and bonded over it as a family. Megan had always considered it the silly engineering song, all about construction. It started with textbooks, for goodness sake. Perfect for Kahale nerddom. She usually stopped paying all that much attention when it got to buckled girders, whatever those were. But the whole thing had understandably been stuck in her head since the dream, and when it came down to it, she knew the lyrics.
Megan helped prop Lani back against her, letting her lean, while Megan wrapped her arms around her and sang softly. It was only when she hit the second verse that the words started to come alive for her more than ever before.
"But in our daily dealing
With stone and steel, we find
The Gods have no such feeling
Of justice toward mankind.
To no set gauge they make us,
For no laid course prepare—
In time they overtake us
With loads we cannot bear:
Too merciless to bear."
She knew about the building things, and the relatively warm relationship between the menehune and the people of the islands. In all her mentions of owls and lawn gnomes, she'd never given a lot of thought to the Gods of the islanders, or how old the Kahuna might be. Megan's father had obviously been affected by those few final moments, under Brigid's eye. The Gods had left them too. It was to seal away so many things, and prevent the wars that could have torn the world apart, sure—but they'd still left. And when they did, the Fomoire and Giants and who knew what else were still waiting under their ice and stone and shadow. The faeries had continued their lives, adding some beautiful and terrible magic to the world, helping the seasons turn, and all the rest, but the more Megan learned of all different fair folk, the more she saw that ancient ways and ancient natures did still shape them. And the menehune were engineers and building crews.
There was no direction, no plan. There were prophecies, perhaps, but no promises. What did that have to do to a people who relied, by their very nature, on a plan and on structure? She hugged Lani tighter, and as she sang, she looked at the ruins of Lani's attempt to build. She remembered all of Lani's rants about people who destroyed things becoming famous for it, and the remains, the realm, and the dokkalfar made more sense.
Even back in the iron-bound city of Findias, things had been built. The menehune's magic had worked to some degree, and the golems, the chains, and the rest at least had some structure. This was ruin. Destruction was one thing, but in the atmosphere of dokkalfar corruption, things couldn't even be built. Nothing would rise from the ashes... if they escaped, if the last battle happened, if the fae couldn't hold, and the Gods didn't show... then it would just be ashes.
Her voice almost broke a couple of times, but she kept on singing. Eventually, Justin and Kerr chimed in—because knowing the song was some kind of side effect of caring about Lani—as they went through the verses. By the last two, Lani was singing along quietly with them instead of sobbing, and the shaking had mostly stopped.
"We only of Creation—
Oh luckier bridge and rail!
Abide the twin-damnation—
To fail and know we fail.
Yet we—by which sole token
We know we once were Gods—
Take shame in being broken
However great the odds—
The Burden or the Odds.
Oh, veiled and secret Power
Whose paths we seek in vain,
Be with us in our hour
Of overthrow and pain;
That we—by which sure token
We know Thy ways are true—
In spite of being broken,
Because of being broken,
May rise and build anew.
Stand up and build anew!"
Megan let her voice trail off on the final lyrics of one of her new favorite songs. She hugged Lani tighter, then started to take a breath to start it over.
She was interrupted by a heavy thunk of something metal hitting stone. Megan stared at some kind of grappling hook.
Before not-too-different words were out of Megan's mouth, there rang out a “Who goes there?” from below.
Chapter 29: Runes and Dice
“So. You're dwarves.”
“We're certainly dwarves." There were eight of them in all. The tallest was just an inch or two shorter than Lani, but most of them probably weighed almost as much as Cassia, with the breadth of their shoulders and muscular builds. All were dressed in drab, coal-and-oil-stained clothing, with the most heavily armed among them also wearing chain shirts and other light armor, though anything that might shine or catch the light was especially smudged or covered with cloth.
“Thank you for coming for us.” Megan said, as they were hurried along through the tunnels. Rather than going up, they'd climbed down the dwarves' chains, until t
hey'd reached another ledge in the depths of the chasm. The torches lining it seemed like the brightest, warmest things Megan had ever seen.
“We'll settle up later. You were hard to miss, with a good craftsman's song like that.”
Megan thought about that. It had been part of the dream with Mab, which had obviously helped with Lani, but maybe there was some magic to it as well that helped the dwarves hear it. Whatever had happened, it had obviously worked. “Oh. Well, I'm glad. Um...” She wasn't sure where they stood, or how difficult 'settling up' would be. On the one hand, the dwarves clearly delved deeper into the underworld than the dokkalfar themselves, which wasn't entirely reassuring. On the other, she'd learned in junior year that things weren't easily classified. “How do you feel about the whole thimble-winter..."
"Fimbulwinter," The dwarf corrected.
"Right, how do you feel about the... Ragnarok thing?"
“Certainly not looking forward to being involved in anything knowing there'll be no way to send the bill after.”
“Oh. Um. How do we need to pay our bill for tonight?”
“Let's have that song again,” he said, pulling an odd object out of his pockets.
“Oh.” Megan frowned. “I'm... can we talk this over? I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable losing that song.”
“What? Don't need to. Just want you to sing it.”
“Oh. Just sing it. So that's...” She trailed off, indicating the gadget.
“Solar-powered sound recorder. We haven't had a bard down here in a long while. Our recordings are limited, and 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' gives the neighbors creepy ideas.”
“Oh, yes. I can see how that would be.” Megan paused. “Where do you get your solar energy?”
“We've got an ongoing contract with the Huldufolk, through the last of the faerie gates.”
"Oh? Who are they? I don't think my dad mentioned them in any of the people he's trying to contact."
"I think that would be part of the point of being 'The Hidden People.’ They'd mostly rather stay out of military conflicts. I mean, sure, they actually get on with the humans better than most—"
"Wait," Megan interrupted, "Humans actually know about them?"
"Oh sure. And re-plan road building projects and things around not disturbing their space. So they do a few seers the favor of showing up for them and giving some advice here and there."
"That's really weird, with most of the faeries I've seen."
"Iceland is a weird place. Anyway, we'll get you to the workshops, send a message to the Huldufolk, then send you up to Hekla with them. I doubt they're going to be real happy about seeing your sort, but for some new workshop music, we'll work it out. We're hoping you have a few other songs."
“Sure!” Megan said. A few songs for negotiations on their behalf, on top of getting them out of the immediate danger, was a pretty good deal. The dwarves seemed to think so on their end, too.
As they progressed, she eventually spotted the door in the distance. Iridescent writing was painted all over it.
“What's with the runes?” Megan assumed they were runes. They looked even more like what one thought of as runes than the ancient writings she'd seen in the Lost Cities.
“In this neighborhood?” a dwarf asked in reply. “Without them, nothing holds together. Even our crafts."
The workshop turned out to be a noisy place. Megan couldn't understand why Lani went from 'barely functional' to 'relaxed' as she sat down among the clamor of building, except that it was Lani. Once she was resting, Justin set down her backpack and took particular interest in positioning himself next to the forge for the maximum amount of drying his clothes with the minimum amount of indecency. Megan wouldn't have minded if he took a few things off, but she suspected his problem was that Cassia wouldn't mind either.
Meanwhile, there was an audience. Megan tried to use the steady sound of hammers and metalworking in the background to find suitable beats, and sang every work-song-like thing she could think of.
Jude and Maxwell ended up sitting at attention at Megan's feet.
“What do they want, Cassia?” Megan said, looking down at the cats while trying to remember more material.
“Beatles. They want Beatles. Speaking of which, I can do the 'What I want' backups if you want to sing 'Money.'”
“Is...that really a 'craftsman's song'?”
“Craftsmen like getting paid,” said one of the dwarves. “Let's hear it.” So she sang that, then let Cassia make a couple of other suggestions.
Eventually, Kerr, after a little bit of fussing, took a tupperware out of Lani's backpack. As the scent of oatmeal and butterscotch filled the air, the dwarves started sniffing.
After handing a cookie to Lani, the brownie shuffled awkwardly holding the tupperware as the dwarves looked first highly interested, then suspicious.
“And what do you want for those?”
Kerr looked to Megan. Megan was about to say she didn't want anything, but remembered Tiernan and the limited things she'd heard about the dwarves. "Send delegates to my father's conference, and keep an open mind. They could use good armorers and all, and you'd like to postpone Ragnarok. That's our goal, too. If we can beat the Fomoire, the thimble-winter..."
"Fimbulwinter."
"Yes, that. It doesn't happen. Maybe. But it's a chance. So if you promise to listen, you get cookies. If it all works, you get to stay in business longer."
"I'll take it up with the council."
With the smoky conditions in the place and her limited repertoire of suitable music, she was very glad when the dwarves came back to tell them that they had a guide back to the real world.
Tinna Dimmasdottir turned out to be a quiet but reasonably friendly hostess, small and platinum-haired.
“We won't keep you long,” Ashling assured her. “After a break, I can get us to Murias from Iceland.” The pixie looked over her shoulder at the others. “Volcanos have great connections. It'll just take a little planning and, well, we need more warming up.”
“Just don't go overboard,” Lani said, sounding tired but much more herself. Megan nodded in agreement: there were too many ways a pixie warming up near a volcano could go wrong.
Instead of mushrooms, a ring of rocks served as the gateway. The dwarves had that area heavily guarded, both by armed troops, and magic runes. If the dark elves had no bridges to the surface world, Megan could only imagine how valuable a single gate out of Svartalfheim would be.
Though Tinna was pleasant enough as she led them to the Huldufolk village, most of the folk, who looked a bit like slender, slightly smaller, unarmed ljosalfar, avoided them. There was particularly annoyed staring at Justin's and Cassia's swords. Megan did appreciate that both of them managed to keep their hands off their hilts.
"Don't mind them," Tinna said. "They don't trust you. I've assured them, however, that you're just travelers and will be on your way soon."
"We will. Thank you.”
The group was offered beds and a thin soup. The soup helped warm them, at least, even if it only did so much to actually fill them. Megan was pretty sure she had some idea, with food like that, why the Huldufolk were so thin. The beds were better, though Lani still spent most of the night curled up around Jude for warmth.
Megan woke to Kerr and a new bowlful of soup, a bit thicker and generally foodier. The brownie had, unsurprisingly, already given Lani a bowl and soon made the rounds. As Kerr filled up Lani's thermos, Megan found herself fidgeting with tiny carved blocks of bone that were on a low table. There were different numbers of decorative circles carved in them. Eventually, after their hostess checked in on them, Megan managed to look back up.
“Nice dice.”
“Thank you,” said Tinna.
“What are they for?”
“What do you think they're for?”
“Well, the dwarves mentioned you help human seers, so these might be for some kind of magic fortunetelling, but ...”
Tinna smiled. “But?”
“That they are. Seers just go to the right places, wear the right things, and conversations ensue.”
“Cool. Seems like, with dice this shape, you'd hardly ever roll a one, though.”
“Well, why give trouble an even chance?” Tinna asked.
Megan smiled at that, then thought for a moment. “...Thanks again for letting us rest here, then. Trouble seems to have a thing for us sometimes.” Megan looked over at Lani, who was napping a little more after eating her soup. “Menehune apparently being allergic to Svartalfheim didn't help.” She casually rolled the oddly-shaped die. It came up 3.
“Not just menehune,” Tinna said. “She was simply the first. Underworlds like that get to anyone in time.” She rolled a 5.
“So we cheated fate?” Megan rolled a 4.
“No,” said Tinna. “You were rescued. If you have a tragic fate to meet, it can clearly wait a little longer. Those far more hidden than we know that this die, despite its shape, will roll a 1 eventually. This does not mean I have to do this.” She placed the little block on her fingers just so and almost bowled it towards a stack of books on the edge of the table, so that it stopped against them with a single-circled side propped up.
Megan watched and thought. Finally she spoke. “...So yeah. Thanks for having us. Do we need to settle any bills here?”
“Just pass on the message to the warmongers to stop trying to call.”
“Warmongers...?” Megan thought about nearly all the Scandinavians. “Oh. Okay.” She reflected for a moment. “We will. But if it helps any, this war kinda came pre-mongered."
"All wars seem to," the woman replied simply, rolling the dice at the books again with a small frown.
"Well, we've been trying to think of a way to stop some of it before it starts. Who knows? Maybe none of this was necessary. Maybe back at Murias, they already have a new plan."