Defenders of the Valley

by K. J. Coble

  The journey to the dwarven home had taken a miserable day and a half, the tiny escort of imperial cavalrymen sent with Sarcha by Vennitius speaking little as they hunched low in their saddles and followed the soppy, mud trail that was all that remained of an imperial side-road. Early spring rains had chilled to flurries near night and long-damp wood made for feeble, guttering campfires.

  The holdfast, itself, was a lugubrious affair. Somber dwarves in frayed coats had pulled open double doors of rotting wood and rusting iron bands to permit her party entry. Deep halls lay beyond, a gray gloom of uneven flagstones, crumbling columns, and streamers of cobweb that everywhere spoke of disuse and disheartenment.

  The door to the Hall groaned open and Sarcha straightened as dwarf elders, squat, shuffling figures in faded finery and rune-etched armor filed into the room. They trudged to their places like figures in a hazy memory of ancient ritual, one of them batting away a crusted plate leftover from a previous night’s dining.

  A particularly rotund dwarf plopped into the high-backed chair of stained black ironwood at the head opposite from Sarcha, brushing a natty gray beard rapidly-streaking white smooth as his eyes glittered over her. Dwarven females were not noted for their beauty and the males were not so diminutive as to think themselves incapable of mastering a human girl.

  Sarcha tried not to squirm as the others’ gazes settled upon her, whiskers no doubt hiding grins of lust their superior didn’t bother to mask. “Greetings, great members of the Norothar Elder Table!” she said. “I bring to you a plea for aid from glorious Thyrria.”

  “Thyrria has need of us?” one of the elders said with a chuckle. He looked to the elder at the opposite head with his one eye—the other a sightless milky white dotting the “I” of a scar that ran from his jaw line. “What does this she-human prattle to us about, Rasti Ironforger?”

  Grunts of ascent issued from the others. Rasti Ironforger, last in a line that had long served Thyrria in past, faded glories, leaned forward over the table, clanking with chain mail and plate kept enough in order to be as functional as they were ceremonial. “We will hear her words, Hammerdown.”

  “Thank you, great Thane,” Sarcha said. She cleared her throat of its quavering. “I come to you with a map in my possession that details the location of the ruins of Vul Aronath.”

  Murmurs stirred around the table, bearded faces looking back and forth amongst one another, ancient armors grinding against chairs and table. The elder that had first spoken, Hammerdown, did so again without masking his disdain. “Vul Aronath—all of the Great Tyrants’ citadels—were swallowed by earthquakes and floods during the Seven Cataclysms, smitten by the gods.”

  “They were,” Sarcha agreed. “But a Thyrrian scribe, perhaps a human eunuch in the service of the Vuls, detailed their locations, possibly not long after their fall, as some sort of historical record to the early Republic. Time and the upheavals of the rise of the Thyrrian Empire saw the destruction of much of these records—”

  “For good reason!” Hammerdown said. “The Republic, pressured from without and within, tried to utilize the Vullian ways and technologies...to their great peril.”

  “Let the girl finish,” Ironforger said before the older dwarf could continue.

  Sarcha bowed to the chieftain before continuing. “The scribe took into account the catastrophic changes of geography in his notes. He claimed Vul Aronath to lie somewhere in the southwestern Labyrinthines, less than a hundred miles due southeast of Candolum.”

  The murmuring renewed, flickers of zeal lighting some of the elders’ eyes. Sarcha hid a smile, seeing the fish beginning to circle the hook.

  The elder Hammerdown stood, glaring one-eyed around the table. “Enough! You fools are actually considering this? Master your greed!”

  “Not greed, noble Hammerdown,” said another dwarf, whose fully-red beard proclaimed his relative youth at the table. “Think of the riches! Think of the glory we could bring back to these halls!”

  “Think of the curse, young Greatclub!” Hammerdown retorted.

  “Superstitions,” the younger dwarf said.

  “Not so!” Hammerdown roared. He glanced at Ironforger. “Some of us here are old enough to remember the dark days. Some of you around this table fought with me against the Great Tyrants and later as the Republic tore itself apart!”

  “Take your seat, Erlus Hammerdown,” Ironforger said, his voice quivering with an edge of menace.

  Hammerdown puffed hotly and slid back into his chair, drilling the Thane with his good eye’s spark. Ironforger ignored him. “We are mined-out down here. Our dames grow feeble and our babes go hungry. We cannot overlook this opportunity.”

  “Better hungry than damned,” Hammerdown said, his words lingering in the dusty air.

  Sarcha noted with concern some of the lust leaving dwarven faces. She could not allow the fish to reconsider the hook’s glimmer. She stood. “Perhaps I have misjudged. Strategos Vennitius spoke to me of a people hungry for new glory.”

  “Is that why you’re here?” Hammerdown asked, turning his baleful eye upon her. “Even that thief Vennitius doesn’t want your illegal scheme so you bring it us?” He looked at Ironforger again. “And make no mistake, any of you; this is enough to bring a Thyrrian Inquisitor down upon us—” He glanced at Sarcha “—as our young visitor certainly knows.”

  “Perhaps I should take it to Kobolon, then,” Sarcha replied with a sneer. “Certainly, your gnome neighbors have managed to prosper where you cannot.”

  Dwarves burst to their feet with shouts of outrage, hammering fists into the tabletop; on one side, Hammerdown and those apparently supporting him, on the other, the one called Greatclub and the faction seemingly friendly to her scheme. For a moment of shaken fists, bellowed threats, and fists clenching dirty silverware in menace, it seemed the ceremonial armors would see actual use.

  Sarcha wondered if she hadn’t overplayed her hand.

  “Sit down!” Ironforger bellowed over the din. “If you cannot sit down and shut up then get out!”

  “Consider me out, then,” Hammerdown bawled, “out of this entire madness!” The dwarf kicked his chair back and stomped from the room, a handful of elders marching out after him.

  “Rasti,” Greatclub said, turning to Ironforger with sudden concern in his voice, “you can’t let them go.”

  “Peace, Clegg Greatclub,” Ironforger replied, motioning the younger dwarf back into his seat. “I am still Thane here, am I not? We don’t need them.” Within moments, the other remaining elders had calmed themselves and settled back into their places. Ironforger looked around the table. “Are the rest of us agreed to hearing the lady out?”

  Nods, some of them grudging answered the Thane of Norothar.

  “Very well,” Ironforger said with visible relief. He looked up the table. “Now, Lady Sarcha, if you could finish detailing what you have in mind?”

  Sarcha didn’t bother to hide her smile now. The fish was on the hook and squirming.

  JAYCE ZERRON EYED THE rune-lined, concentric circles of protection Danelle had scrawled in enchanted ink across the floor of his workshop, scrutinizing figures and whorls of arcane warding, vigilant for mistakes. All seemed in order. He spared a second—perhaps longer than he should have dared—to glance at his apprentice.

  The young woman sat cross-legged at the edge of the outermost circle with palms upraised and lips moving in phrases that at this point in her summoning had fallen to inaudible. Her cowl had dropped away, allowing him to see sweat beading across her forehead, her mouse-brown hair matting to her skull, and furrows tightening at the corners of her eyes.

  She was straining, but she was doing it.

  Jayce looked over the spheres of summoning again. The innermost circle flared with cyan and inside it the stone floor faded under a pool of shimmering radiance that rapidly colored the dark room in its light. The wizard nodded to himself. Danelle had passed the first phase. He felt the tingling across his nerves of another being brush
ing the strings of the cosmos, finding the right chords, and bringing order from the churning chaos of energies lying under the material plane.

  Careful, he thought, unwilling to speak and risk disturbing the girl’s hard-fought victory. But the next phase brought increased dangers as the magic began to move of its own accord, taking on a life from her prodding that could be as fickle as a wild animal.

  The second circle flared to blue-white and the pool of light spread from the center. Danelle’s voice rose as powers resisted her will, forcing her to exert more concentration. Around the outer circle candles placed at even intervals burst into sudden, simultaneous flame. As Jayce watched, their wax began to run, dribbling to the floor where it traced the outer perimeter. The runnels snaked forth, following their set courses until they flowed into one another, completing the final barrier.

  Danelle spat a series of sibilants and the third sphere flashed, the yellow of the candle flames going abruptly cyan. She had reached the highpoint of her casting. The air snapped around Jayce, tickled across his skin with power that stank of fresh lightning on wet stone and coppery hint of blood.

  “Yes,” Jayce whispered. Part of him swelled with pride. The girl, only now nineteen, had come so far since the rainy night a ragged peasant fisherman from the village had brought her to him, speaking of strange portents preceding the appearance of the mute toddler outside his hut. “Now,” Jayce said, “call the entity.”

  Danelle breathed deeply, her waif-thin form rising and falling, and spoke the creature’s name, one of many Jayce had found and scribbled into his dust-gathering tomes.

  “Shazzash...”

  A swirl of crimson broke the surface of the cyan pool. It grew as it wound itself round and round, bigger and bigger, tendrils of it snaking out to caress the boundaries of the summoning sphere and retract like a child’s fingers from a stone oven. The center of the whirl darkened to the color of old blood. Flecks of black began dirtying the epicenter, multiplying and congealing into a form that even now seem to struggle against what was happening. The blood-like reek strengthened in the air, set Jayce’s nose to wrinkling. The form materialized, knobby bones, skin flowing over it to harden into scales, fishhook-size claws elongating, fangs sprouting from a mouth opened in a silent scream.

  A pair of eyes, hot with the glare of magma opened to stare outrage at Danelle.

  “You have it,” Jayce said breathlessly. He looked at Danelle, saw the girl open her own eyes to stare at the fruits of her labor.

  The imp uncurled from its fetal position and staggered to its feet. A fiendish head lolled as it stretched its shoulders, tiny wings meant to propel it in the caustic, energetic currents of its own plane unfurling and giving the heavy, unfamiliar air a testing flap. It hissed, long barbed tongue lashing free, and spat curses of blaspheme potent enough to shred a mortal’s mind, were it not for the spheres of summoning—of confinement.

  “Shazzash,” Danelle repeated, grinning with ecstasy.

  A bell’s clamoring shattered the carefully-crafted balance of the room. Jayce cursed and shot to his feet. Some fool was ringing the door chime to the tower! It must be long past midnight! Who in their right mind—Jayce froze, halfway to the door of the workshop, and turned to see Danelle looking away from the spheres.

  Before her, the imp curled to leap.

  “Hold the trance!”

  The imp lunged for Danelle, howling in glee. It was a minor entity, probably thought it had lucked upon a hapless trickster beyond her talents who’d just opened the door for it rampage into the mortal realm. Danelle’s eyes shot back to the ring of candles, but her hands were up in reflex, her concentration gone behind her mind’s more primal urge to protect itself.

  Jayce lurched to her side, a hand up, words of spell-casting rushing from his lips. The imp froze as it reached the perimeter, inches from Danelle’s face. It dangling in midair, began to writhe as the spell holding it in stasis between two worlds unraveled and its plane of origin pulled it back from the brink. Scales sloughed off, exposed bones that began to flake and come apart. With a shriek that lanced the eardrums, the imp dissolved from the perimeter and fluttering down into oblivion.

  The candles fluttered out as one, the cyan dissolved with a crackle, and the room plunged into darkness.

  Cursing his way through the full pantheon of Thyrrian deities and working his way into his native Verraxian oaths, Jayce fumbled for and found a lantern. A quick spell sparked it into flame and he adjusted its shutters, brought the workshop into light once again.

  Danelle huddled at the edge of the spheres, her face in her hands.

  “It’s all right,” Jayce said, managing to steady his voice.

  “I failed you, Master.”

  “No...no, you were doing fine,” Jayce replied. He considered going to her side, placing a hand of comfort on her shoulder. But troubling thoughts held him at bay. She was doing more than fine...gods, she’s already in command of things an adept in the Order of the Sun would not yet have dared!

  What have I on my hands here?

  The rattle of the door bells saved Jayce from further rumination. “Stay here,” he told the girl. “Clean up everything. Make certain the runes are scrubbed thoroughly. I’ll help you when I am done with these fools.”

  “Anything you ask, Master.”

  Jayce heard the hurt in her voice but the bells called. He turned and flung the door open. A short hall led to a stairwell he reached at a trot, following their winding way down to the lower levels of his tower. He reached the small foyer where he received infrequent guests and flicked a finger at the entrance, not needed words of casting for the crude spell.

  The simple, steel-banded tower door swung open at his magical nudge to reveal a trio of hooded men from Edon Village, over which Zerron’s Tower had long-loomed. A steady rain fell, hissing as it struck torches guttering in the fists of the villagers.

  “What brings you disturb my work at such an hour?” Jayce rasped, the near-disaster of the summoning depriving his tone of any cordiality he might force.

  “Zerron,” the leader of the three said, bold enough not to cringe at the wizard’s words. He was a thin man with flaxen hair drooping in wet tendrils from under his hood.

  Jayce curbed some of his anger as he recognized the man. “Speaker Fletcher,” he said with a bow. “My apologies, of course, but at this hour—”

  “We would not have come up here for a social call,” Arlen Fletcher, Speaker of Edon Village said petulantly. “There is a problem.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “Centaurs at the edge of the village,” Fletcher replied. “They wish to speak with you.”

  “The Arhem are here?” Jayce frowned. “What can have brought them so far south?”

  “If I knew that, would I be up here in the blasted downpour?” Fletcher said with a sniff. “One of them is a chieftain, I think.”

  “Not that you can tell the difference between the beasties,” one of the other villagers snickered.

  Jayce ignored the peasant’s casual bigotry. Similar words of distrust and loathing were no doubt said behind his back, the pale, small-minded Edonites having always feared the ebon-skinned foreigner and his witch-powers. He turned to grab a heavier cloak, dangling from a peg beside the door. For a moment, he thought of Danelle, cleaning up the workshop with her feelings wounded and all the doubts in the world. But he shook his head. It’s a hard world, my girl, and tonight seems have brought some of that hardship to our door.

  Jayce followed the villagers out into the rain.

  EDON VILLAGE LAY ALONG the Talos River, a cluster of fishermen’s huts around a knot of stone buildings and the low dome of their crude shrine to Habbah, the Green Mother, barely visible in the rain-thickened gloom of deep night. A sprinkling of lights had sparked to life since the centaurs’ initial appearance. A lone window gleamed from the highest window of Zerron’s Tower, looming like a dark finger from the low hill overlooking the town.

  The centaurs
waited atop the rise northwest of the settlement, at the point where the villagers’ fields left off and the forest began. Most lingered at the tree line, barely visible as Jayce followed Fletcher and the others uphill. Four stood in the open, massive shapes that haze could almost fool the eyes into believing were simply mounted men. As the village’s little greeting party neared them, bare, muscled chests, beaded with rain became apparent, as did proud, blocky-jawed visages and long braids of black hair. The largest of the group, a scarred being with gray streaking his locks, couched a polished wood lance and offered Jayce a nod.

  “Taul Rising-Gale,” Jayce called with an upraised hand.

  “Wizard Zerron,” Rising-Gale replied in a voice that boomed even when the centaur tried to speak softly. “Long has it been since we last spoke.”

  “Many seasons,” Jayce said. “I suspect this meeting comes not without trouble?”

  “I fear it is so.” The centaur chieftain glanced over his shoulder towards the trees and nodded. One of his people emerged from the forest and trotted forth, what was clearly a body sprawled over his back. “The Skinners are on the move. We ran across one of their war parties in process of waylaying this traveler.”

  “The barbarians?” Fletcher said, exchanging looks with his fellow villagers.

  “When?” Jayce asked, feeling his guts knot.

  “Two moons ago,” Rising-Gale replied. “It was a single war party, easily driven off. But there are more, moving southward into our hunting grounds. And there have been fires to the north and we have heard their Horns of the Hunt.”

  “Heading this way?” Fletcher’s voice cracked.