A Thunder of War (The Avalon Chronicles Book 3)

by Steve McHugh

  Layla got back to her feet and, after taking a tentative step and not falling over, decided that she was good to go. They had reached the entrance to the temple when Zamek appeared.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Layla asked.

  “Nice to see you too,” Zamek said.

  “How the hell did you get here?” Chloe asked.

  “I walked mostly,” Zamek said. “I got everyone back to the citadel and through the realm gate there before I made sure that it was broken and then made my way to the elven realm gate where I saw a whole lot of angry blood elves. One happened to mention that a bunch of dwarves had turned up and stopped them from killing you. I figured out where the tunnel went and found a few dwarven hunters close to where Nabu was imprisoned and they showed me the way out of the mountain. Took me a few hours to get here. I’d have still been wandering around if they hadn’t.”

  “How long was I in that machine?” Layla asked Vorisbo.

  “A little over six hours.”

  Layla looked at everyone in the room with her. “Six hours? It felt like minutes. How’s Nabu?”

  “Resting,” Chloe said. “We’ll know more once he wakes.”

  Layla felt some relief that her friend hadn’t died while she’d been learning the dwarven language.

  “On the plus side, the six hours gave me time to get here,” Zamek said. “I also brought something with me to move quicker.”

  “A tank?” Layla asked.

  “Actually it’s a sort of jeep,” Zamek said with a smile. “Leonardo makes these vehicles that use crystals as a power source. It took me a while to put it all back together again once I’d taken it through the gate, but it works well. Much faster than walking and makes almost no noise.”

  “Wait, why didn’t we just take one of those?” Chloe asked.

  “Because we didn’t know how deserted it all was,” Zamek said. “Also, technology going through realm gates tends to . . . break, and Leonardo wasn’t sure it would work. I think using the crystals instead of a combustion engine stops it from exploding.”

  “So, we have a way to get back to the elven realm gate and get out of here,” Layla said.

  “I only spotted a few blood elves on the way here. Managed to behead one with my ax as I sped past.”

  “You’re smiling,” Layla pointed out.

  “Yes,” Zamek said. “Yes, I am. Anyway, the dwarves I ran into were near the prison where we left you, and they created a nice hole for me to get through the mountain. I think they enjoyed getting a lift more than anything they’ve done recently. So, you had our language dumped in your head for a second time, although this one is much more permanent. How’d that go?”

  “I saw the sun elves work with blood elves to butcher a human village in this realm,” Layla said. “I don’t understand how it’s possible, but Terhal thinks that the sun elves are blood elf commanders.”

  Zamek blinked.

  “There were dwarves with them,” Layla continued. “Dwarves and sun elves watching those blood elves slaughter innocent humans. It was like a test or something.”

  “I have no idea how you saw anything,” Vorisbo said slowly.

  “My drenik was there. She showed me everything that her first host saw. She blocked it out of her mind and recreated this fantasy where the drenik was responsible for it all. She blamed herself and the drenik for something the dwarves and elves did. This was done just before the elven uprising. Maybe a century before, maybe less—it’s hard to gauge without being able to talk to Gyda herself, and I can only do that when I’m asleep, and she doesn’t always come because she’s . . . not exactly okay with my bond with Terhal.”

  Zamek stared at Layla for a few seconds, his jaw clenched, his eyes full of anger. “They knew,” he said softly, his voice shaking.

  “We need to see the dwarven elders,” Layla said.

  “Those bastards knew,” Zamek said, and took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

  Layla, Chloe, and Vorisbo followed Zamek as he stormed out of the temple. They found Dralas and Tarron sitting outside, eating bread and meat.

  “Ah, you’re done,” Tarron said. “You should try this, it’s exquisite.”

  “We’re going to the elders,” Layla said. “I think the shit has hit the fan.”

  “Why is someone throwing shit around?” Dralas asked, looking confused. “Is that a metaphor? Humans have a lot of them. They’re weird. Just speak plainly.”

  “We’ll join you,” Tarron said, getting to his feet. “You staying, Dralas?”

  Dralas stood, picking up a leg of cooked meat and taking a bite. “Coming. Still eating though.”

  Layla had trouble keeping up with Zamek, who marched through the palace with purpose. People bowed to him as he walked by, and while Layla knew that he normally would have told them to stop it, he had bigger things on his mind.

  Zamek stopped in front of a set of ornate wooden doors. The guards in front moved to block Zamek’s path with their spears.

  “The elders are in conversation,” the first dwarf said. He was in full plate armor, with a blue-and-green cape that almost touched the ground.

  “Move,” Zamek said, leaving no doubt that his words were a command.

  “We’re sorry, but it doesn’t matter who you used to be, you will wait.”

  Zamek turned to Layla. “We need to get in there.”

  Layla nodded, moved her hands, and the two dwarves flew across the room, both pinned to the wall, their spears discarded to the ground. Zamek pushed open the double doors and everyone strode into the large chamber where the elders were meeting.

  The chamber reminded Layla of a small amphitheater. There was a raised dais in the center of the room and a semi-circle of increasingly higher stone benches that sat against half of the dais. The other half was just bare room. The dais was occupied by two dwarves, who stopped talking as the group strode across the room. Layla quickly counted thirty dwarves on the stone benches. They were a mixture of male and female, and none of them looked too happy at the interruption.

  “What is the meaning of this?” one of the two dwarves on the dais asked.

  “Shut up,” Zamek said, stepping onto the dais as whispers of “Prince Zamek” circulated around the room.

  The dwarf’s mouth dropped open in shock. “You are not a member of the royal family anymore, young man,” he snapped. “There is no royal family.”

  “Did you know about the blood elf commanders?” Zamek demanded.

  “What?”

  Zamek turned back to Layla. “You saw what the dwarves looked like, yes?”

  Layla nodded. She knew where this was going, although she didn’t like it much. “Two dwarves. One was male, long black beard, silver dangling earring in his left ear, hair shaved up the middle of his head. Missing two fingers on his right hand. The other might have been male or female, I don’t know—they wore black-and-gold plate armor, and their visor was down. They carried a morning star in one hand. It was black, like those weapons the blood elves were using.”

  “I demand an answer,” the dwarf said, putting his hand on Zamek, who grabbed his wrist and swept his feet out from under him, dropping him on his back in the middle of the dais.

  “If you touch me again, you lose the hand,” Zamek told him, releasing the older dwarf. “You will be quiet.”

  The dwarf on his back made a noise that sounded as if he wanted Zamek to get on with it.

  “Layla, it’s all yours,” Zamek told her.

  “I am an umbra,” she said, stepping onto the dais. “I was put through your language-learning machine, and while my brain was absorbing it all, the drenik in my head showed me visions of the first bonding between her and a human who had lived here before the blood elf rebellion. The human’s name was Gyda, and she was convinced that the drenik had taken control of her body and killed her loved ones. But it was a lie. It was blood elf commanders who had done it.”

  A dozen soldiers rushed into the room, but the elder who had been
planted on his back a few moments ago put his hands out to stop them, then motioned for Layla to continue.

  “This was decades before the blood elves came and took your home,” Layla continued. “Terhal, the drenik in my head, believes that these were not shadow elves like my friend, Tarron. These were sun elves. She believes that the blood elf commanders are sun elves. I think she’s telling the truth. But I don’t understand how it’s possible, so we’d like an explanation.”

  “Now,” Zamek said.

  “I watched as these commanders murdered innocent people. Did you know? Did you know that the sun elves were involved? Did you know that the commanders are sun elves? Did you know that your own people aided them?”

  Everyone in the room started talking the second Layla stopped to take a breath. A man in the front benches stood and stepped up next to Layla, raising his hands in the air. Everyone quieted.

  “Clear the room,” he said. “The front bench can stay.”

  No one argued.

  “Who is he?” Layla asked Zamek.

  “He was my father’s advisor,” he told her. “He’s a good man. His name is Jomik Rakreas.”

  “I should go,” Vorisbo said. “I don’t think I should be here.”

  “You’re already here,” Jomik said. “You might as well stay.”

  When the chamber was empty of everyone but Layla, her friends, and the front row of dwarves, Jomik sighed, wrapping his dark-green cloak around himself as if he was suddenly cold.

  “Yes, we knew,” he told them. “The sun elves came to us and told us that they had a plan to create a soldier that would forever change the face of war. We were pretty happy with our arrangement with them and agreed to see the end results. The results were the commanders, and we were taken aback by how dangerous they were. The perfect soldier. Except then we discovered the truth.

  “It turns out that those who first underwent the procedure were not pure sun elves. They were those born of a sun elf and a shadow elf parent, something the sun elves were strictly against. They were prisoners from birth. They had the skin tone of the shadow elves and build of the sun elves. They kept these children in a clandestine prison, training them from birth to be warriors to use against the shadow elves, but then they discovered what the crystals did to them. They turned these assassins into monsters. But they didn’t have enough to fill an army, so they turned to blood magic. They took sun elf prisoners—anyone who spoke out against the military dictatorship in charge—and subjected them to blood magic rituals, using the deaths of shadow elf prisoners to twist and change their appearance.

  “When we discovered the truth, we demanded they stop, demanded that they destroy the monsters they’d created, but the sun elves refused. We had no idea that they would use the lessons learned then. It’s why they had the shadow elves brought here, to work the crystal mines.”

  “So you knew that these . . . monsters were out there murdering humans as a test?” Tarron asked.

  “No, never,” Jomik said. “We forbade any contact with the sun elves who were involved in these experimentations. This was thousands of years before the shadow elves became blood elves—no one was even aware of it until after the blood elves had made themselves known. Dwarves live for thousands of years, but to play the long game against our own kind was something none of us had ever considered. Unfortunately, the dwarf in your vision, the one in black-and-silver armor, was my grandfather. To my eternal shame, he helped the sun elves. It’s something I’ve tried to put right for a long time.”

  “How could you have not known the shadow elves were changing?” Tarron asked.

  “Certain numbers of sun elves and dwarves conspired to keep us ignorant until it was too late.”

  “Who?” Zamek asked.

  Jomik looked at Zamek and sighed. “Some wanted to use the blood elves to murder those who stood in their way of the crown. We found evidence of it during the centuries of interrogating blood elf after blood elf, of finding notes about what happened. And . . . we found some of the co-conspirators.”

  “Who?” Zamek repeated. “Who would betray our own people?”

  “For one, my son,” Jomik said.

  14

  LAYLA CASSIDY

  No one spoke for several seconds after Jomik’s revelation that his son had been involved in a plot to overthrow the dwarven royal family.

  “You were my father’s advisor,” Zamek said eventually.

  “That’s why my son decided to try to kill you all,” Jomik said. “He felt that I mattered less to him than you and your family. Unfortunately, it went horribly wrong. The blood elves were meant to kill as many as they could before he arrived to save the rest. Unfortunately he didn’t get there in time to save the majority of the royal family. Many fell, although your parents made it through the realm gate in the citadel.”

  “Everyone around that gate vanished,” Zamek said. “It’s been broken ever since the blood elves attacked. I reactivated it to get here from Shadow Falls, but I don’t think there’s any way to find the initial destination.”

  “Yes, the elder who arranged it did it wrong. Hundreds of thousands of dwarves vanished. I was outside of the mountain with others, and it took us several years to even get back inside. When we sent a small force to the citadel and found it occupied by blood elves, we believed you all dead, or lost forever. We didn’t give up hope, and sent search parties into the mountain to look anywhere they could, but a few dozen people could never search the whole mountain range. We live long lives, but not long enough.”

  “Does anyone know where the escaped dwarves went?” Zamek asked.

  One of the dwarven elders on the bench shook her head. “No one does.”

  “The sun elves were behind all of this?” Tarron asked. “The blood elves, the destruction of your kingdom, the murder of my people.”

  “That’s our assumption, yes,” Jomik said. “My son has told me that they came to him with a plan to put him on the throne, to make a stronger bond between sun elves and dwarves. They told him that your father didn’t understand just how much an alliance would benefit both of our species.”

  “Where is your son now?” Layla asked.

  Jomik looked down at his feet. “He died. He demanded his chance to single combat, and he died fighting. I think maybe the elders agreed just to allow me a small measure of pride. His name will not be spoken of, he is merely my son.”

  “The sun elves were always traitorous,” Tarron said. He placed a hand on Zamek’s shoulder. “It appears we have a mutual enemy.”

  “The sun elves will have to wait,” Chloe said. “We need to get to that elven realm gate.”

  “You want to go back to the mountain?” Jomik asked. “I don’t advise it.”

  “The blood elves are mostly gone,” Zamek said. “If you commit enough of your warriors to the cause, we could take it back.”

  “Out of the question,” one of the elders snapped, standing.

  Zamek said, “You can overthrow the blood elves after a thousand years exiled from our home. Together we can crush those that remain.”

  “We can’t risk our people,” the elder said.

  “Is it because you’re a coward?” Zamek asked, his voice utterly calm.

  “Because I will not accept another royal family,” the elder snapped, and his expression suggested he regretted it. The other elders gasped in shock; one even unsheathed her ax and raised it threateningly toward the coward.

  “Enough,” Layla said. “We need to get back to the mountain. We can change the shadow elf realm gate so that the blood elves can’t get back. And then we can use it to return to Shadow Falls.”

  “Why not just use the realm gate in the citadel?” Vorisbo asked.

  “It would take too long to get back there,” Zamek said. “And if we did use the citadel realm gate, that still leaves the elven gate open for Abaddon’s plans.”

  “Can you help us?” Tarron asked. “Don’t you want your home back?”

  “More than
anything,” Jomik said. “What about the humans they used as slaves?”

  “They’ve been taken through to Helheim too,” Zamek said. “There may still be a few elves, but we can take the citadel. We can try to find our people and bring them back.”

  “To rule us,” the other elder shouted.

  “I don’t want to rule you,” Zamek snapped. “I want to see my parents again. I want to hold my sisters and tell them I love them. I don’t care who is in charge. I never have, and if you suggest otherwise again, I’ll lose my temper.”

  The elder paled.

  Layla was about to say something else when another dwarf ran into the room. “It’s Nabu,” she said to everyone. “He’s awake, but it’s not good.”

  Layla followed the dwarf through the palace without a thought of who might be with her, or where she was actually going. All she knew was that a friend of hers was in trouble, and the dwarf was leading her to him.

  They entered a room with light-blue stone floors and white walls. Nabu occupied the single bed inside. Dwarven runes had been drawn all around the room, and several were embroidered on the black blanket covering him.

  “Hey,” Nabu said, lifting his arm to wave.

  “They took the arrow out,” Layla said.

  “Yes, they managed to stop the bleeding,” Nabu replied.

  “You saved my life.”

  “And I would do it again. And maybe a third time.” Nabu smiled.

  “Are you going to be okay?” Chloe asked from beside Layla.

  “Not really, no,” Nabu said, sitting up with a slight groan of pain. “The crystals apparently do not agree with my physiology. They’re poisonous. Having never ingested, injected, or cut myself with a crystal before, I can’t say I knew that before today. Even beings who are thousands of years old have their weaknesses. Apparently, this is mine.”

  “So, you’re dying?” Chloe asked.

  Nabu nodded. “Yes. I am dying. Not today, but soon. The poison from the crystals has gotten into my bloodstream and is currently in the process of shutting down everything I need to stay alive. My guess is, I have a day. Maybe two. And then I will die.”