Markus Heitz - The Fate of the Dwarves

Ireheart picked it up and started after Tungdil to hand it back. It was valuable. Gem cutting was not one of his strong points but he knew enough to be able to estimate the jewel’s value. Smoke diamonds were extremely rare.

“I’m getting forgetful, too. I didn’t tell him about the fourthlings. Or the freelings.” Two more reasons to disturb his friend again before he went to sleep.

It all still seemed like a joke on the part of Vraccas that the realm of the fourthlings, smallest of the dwarves and presumably least well versed in the arts of fighting, should have managed to repel all invaders. The thirdlings had waged campaign after campaign against them but had been unsuccessful. The freelings had been able to resist conquest, too.

“He’ll be surprised to hear that,” he told himself as he pushed open the door to Tungdil’s chamber after knocking several times. “Ho there, Scholar! I’ve got something of yours here. You’ve been throwing expensive diamonds around, did you know?”

Tungdil was standing with his back to the door and did not seem to have noticed him come in. He had removed his tunic, thus unintentionally giving Boindil a full view of his bare back.

The skin was criss-crossed with scars.

Some were small puncture marks, others were long, reaching round to the front, narrow and broad, some of them jagged, some smooth, some caused by weapons, others made by teeth or claws. The scars had destroyed the tattooed runes and images.

Boindil took a deep breath. His own body bore witness to sword fights and battles but what he saw here was uniquely terrible. He knew his friend to be a skilled fighter, so could not imagine what foe he must have faced to have these injuries. What would a warrior have to fear from combat with the kordrion?

Tungdil had still not noticed him. His head was bowed and he seemed to be staring down at his own chest. Then he threw a bloodied cloth into a bowl of water; he stifled a groan, and then a glow appeared before him.

Boindil put the jewel soundlessly onto the chamber floor and withdrew swiftly from the scene.

He had disturbed his friend and witnessed something no one was intended to see. The dwarf left those quarters of the fortress and tried to combat the doubts in his mind by humming a tune. But he could not wave his qualms away, being particularly troubled by the appearance of those black veins around the missing eye. An insistent niggling suspicion made him want to lift that eye patch. What was it hiding?

Goda and Boindil were sitting in the assembly room where the officers normally held their strategy meetings and discussed the guards’ patrol rotas. A scale model of the Black Abyss and the fortress was displayed on the table; every detail was repeated here in miniature, enabling exact inspection routes to be specified.

“We shan’t need that anymore.” Ireheart touched the glass globe that had represented the barrier. He lifted it off and placed it aside. Then he carefully removed the model of the artifact as well. He stared at the rocks, deep in thought.

“You waiting for the kordrion to show up?” Goda teased him. “The model still matches reality in that respect: No sign of the monsters so far.”

“I was wondering whether we can risk carrying out our old plan,” he replied, running his hand over the edges of the Black Abyss. “We break off the edges here and fill it all up with low-grade iron and other metals. Then nothing else can get out to attack Girdlegard or the Outer Lands. A plug to keep in the evil.” He glanced over to his wife. “What do you think? Would it be possible with your magic to get the abyss to cave in? But I know your famuli aren’t ready yet to give the support you need.”

Goda stroked Boindil’s back. “I might be able to do it, but it would take all the energy I have. I’d have no magic left. And the amount of molten metal we would need would be massive! Where would we get it all from?”

“The ubariu would supply it. They’d bring it from all the corners of their realm if it meant ridding themselves of the threat from the Black Abyss.” Boindil went over to the small table and poured out a cup of water for them both. “I’m afraid the monsters would dig through stone. They’ve waited more than two hundred and fifty cycles and they’re confronting us with an army such as they had on the orbit when the barrier was first erected. Without the shield they would have overrun us.”

Goda sat down. “You don’t think your own fortress could withstand the hordes?”

“In the long run?” Boindil shook his head. Tungdil’s hints had sent shivers down his spine. “It doesn’t bear thinking what will come crawling out of the abyss if we don’t act soon. The kordrion would not be the worst of our worries.”

“Who says the worst thing isn’t already here among us?” she said in a low voice. She had not intended to speak the thought out loud, but her tongue was too quick. She looked down at the cup in her hand.

Ireheart had heard her words, of course. “You have suspicions about Tungdil?”

“I don’t believe it’s the genuine Tungdil we’ve welcomed here inside our walls,” she responded firmly.

“It is him,” Boindil insisted resolutely, but he avoided her eyes.

“How do you know that? How can you be sure? Because you drank together yesterday?” Goda sighed. “I wish for your sake that it is our Tungdil and not an illusion sent by some dark power to trick us. But I think his behavior is so different…”

Boindil gave a mirthless laugh. “He’s spent many man-generations in a world devoid of anything except killing, pain and violence. Do you think he would come back to us with a broad grin on his face and cracking jokes all the time? That would have made me suspicious,” he defended his friend. “If it had been me I’d probably have gone completely mad.” He looked at her. “Tungdil faced the kordrion all on his own! He did it for us!”

“It could have been agreed in advance,” she objected.

“The beast lost an eye and its side was ripped open! It didn’t look pleased!”

“But if there was a greater purpose? Like the conquest of Evildam? The kordrion has eyes enough to spare.”

He snorted and waved his arms in the air. “Goda, you turn round everything I say with this… conspiracy phantom theory.” Boindil clucked his tongue, at a loss for words. “You are a maga. Why not cast one of your spells to check him out?” He stared at the model in fury and tried to organize his own thoughts. He was angry that Goda was, in effect, raking up his own doubts instead of calming his fears. And he had been so convinced about having his old friend back.

“I already did. When I introduced him to our children,” she said, to his amazement. “And I…”

There was a knock at the door and a fully armored Tungdil appeared on the threshold. He saw at a glance they had been quarreling, however much they tried to hide the fact by their smiles.

“I’m too early, aren’t I? Didn’t we arrange to meet up?” he asked, entering the room. He took a seat on the other side of the table and looked at Goda, giving her a steely look, as though he had listened in to what she had been saying about him; then he turned to Ireheart, his voice warm. “Nice model,” he said, praising the reproduction and winking. “Are there lots of little monsters in there, too?”

Boindil laughed, relieved. “We’ve got a few pennants somewhere. But we’ll have to find them first. Who’d have thought we’d be needing them so soon?” He gave his friend a quick run-through of the plan to seal up the ravine once and for all, so that nothing could ever escape again, large or small.

Goda kept out of the discussion and contented herself with observing Tungdil. She wanted to provoke him into betraying himself. In her view this was not the old celebrated hero but a piece of refined trickery, a clone of Tungdil. It was her responsibility to unmask the deception. But her steady gaze bounced back off him like a sword blade from a good suit of armor.