Dan Parkinson: The Swordsheath Scroll

"You're a magician?" Derkin glared at him.

"You mind your mouth," Calan snapped. "I certainly am not a magician! But Despaxas is."

"Who is Despaxas?"

Calan turned, pointing. "He is," he said.

From the shadows of a grove of conifers, a lean, cowled figure appeared. Derkin could see nothing of him but his stature and form as he strode forward. But one thing was clear: he was no dwarf.

The figure approached, lithe and graceful even in the muffling of his full robe, and Derkin squinted, trying to discern his features. Then the newcomer spoke, and his voice was rich and clear, musical as few human voices and no dwarven voices were. "Welcome to freedom, Derkin Winterseed," he said. "I am Despaxas."

"Where are we?" the Hylar demanded.

"About four miles from where you were," the hooded one said quietly. "This is Tharkas Pass. The mines of Klanath are back that way, to the north. And south of here, through the pass, lie the dwarven lands… or what used to be dwarven lands."

Derkin looked where the figure had pointed, then swung back. "What do you mean, 'used to be'?" he demanded.

"You think you were the only one captured by slavers in these past years?" Calan rasped. "Well, you weren't. The human emperor's soldiers hold the dwarven mines now, and the lands all the way to Sky's End. And all the miners who worked those mines are now slaves in them, just as you have been a slave in Klanath."

"I never made it that far," Derkin said grimly. "We were attacked on the road south of the Tharkas mines by human raiders. My escorts were all killed. Only one survived with me, and he died of his wounds before they got us to Klanath."

"Those were no raiders," the hooded one said. "Those were scouts for the assault force that invaded Kal-Thax and took over the Tharkas mines. Only a very few dwarves survived that assault, got away, and made it to Thorbar-din."

"Then the alarm was spread?"

"It was," the cowled one said sadly. "But no one came. The tribes were at war again within Thorbardin, and no one thought it important to defend the mines outside the undermountain realm."

"Gods," Derkin whispered, realizing the enormity of what he had just heard. Since his capture, Kal-Thax had been invaded by humans. And now the humans ruled the northern ranges. "And what of Thorbardin now?" he asked.

"It stands," the figure assured him. "There are reports that some order has been restored, at least temporarily. But still there is no help for these northern realms."

Again Derkin squinted, peering into the shadows of the cowl. "Who are you?" he demanded. "What do you want of me, and how do you know all this?"

With an eloquent shrug, Despaxas reached up and pulled back his cowl, dropping it to his shoulders. Rising moonlight revealed a chiseled, serious face with long, lustrous hair and no beard. It was a faintly ironic face, but the smile on it was as innocent as a child's. It was a face almost-but not exactly-human.

"You're an elf!" Derkin said.

"Of course I am," Despaxas admitted. "My mother was a good friend of an ancestor of yours. She admired him, in a way. Look here." The elf knelt and brushed back gravel and dust with a graceful hand. Beneath was a glint of iron. "This is a claim spike, Derkin. A long time ago, it was driven here to mark the boundary of the dwarven lands.

My mother was here when that was done. The person who set the spike was named Cale Greeneye. His sister was your great-great… well, several greats, grandmother."

"And your mother was alive then?"

"Yes. She still is. Her name is Eloeth. It was her idea, frankly, that I should come and find you."

"Why?" Derkin frowned up at the innocent, ironic face. His frown became a startled stare as his eyes shifted. Behind the elf, only a few feet away, something was watching… something he could barely see. As he stared, the creature seemed to unwrap itself, unfurling wide, shadowy appendages that seemed to ripple in the shadows. Undulating gracefully, it rose silently, then turned and glided away, disappearing from sight.

Derkin stared after it. "What in the name of corrosion was that?" he hissed.

"I call him Zephyr," Despaxas said. "He's a verger."

"A what?"

"Verger," the elf repeated. "It means he doesn't exactly exist in this world, but he isn't exactly out of it, either."

"If s Despaxas's pet shadow," Calan Silvertoe rumbled. "It follows him around. Ugly, isn't it? I mean, what you can see of it."

"Zephyr doesn't see you any better than you see him, Calan," the elf said softly. "He probably doesn't see your body at all. What he does see, though, is your soul."

Derkin stared at the elf, then at the empty night where the almost-creature had gone. "That thing looks at souls?" he growled. "Why?"

"So he can tell me what he sees there," the elf said. "Zephyr is my friend."

Derkin shook his head in amazement. There was something he had meant to ask these odd people-something about his escape from the mines-but for the life of him he couldn't remember what it was.

From a high, cold pinnacle of stone, two dwarves and an el f looked down upon a scene of desolation, and Derkin Winterseed felt a hard, stubborn anger begin to grow within him. They were south of Tharkas Pass, and the steep ranges below-just now touched by morning sun- were the region of the Tharkas mines. Once a rich, productive cluster of hard-ore shafts, the mines had been carefully developed over a span of more than two centuries by the dwarves of Kal-Thax. Originally delved by Daergar experts from Thorbardin, the mines had proven immensely productive, yielding the highest grade of precious iron ore any of them had ever seen.

Once before, when he was very young, Derkin had seen the Tharkas mines, and he well recalled the busy, bustling slopes where hundreds of Neidar worked the shafts and the mills, the scours and the seines, preparing top-grade ore for transport to Thorbardin for processing in the great smelters deep within the mountain fortress. It had been a happy scene, as the Hylar remembered it. Everywhere he had looked there were hundreds of bustling dwarves laboring in relative harmony, doing what dwarves most enjoyed-working for their own purposes.

But the scene now was different. Where there had once been neat, orderly ore dumps and the methodical ring of hammers and drills, a sound as musical as dwarven drums echoing among the mountains, now there was an ugliness about the entire area. Everything seemed discordant. Slag flows ran here and there at random, the ore heaps were messy hills of ill-sorted stone, and the ring of hammers and drills had no rhythm to it, only the heedless clatter of slaves at labor. Even without the companies of armed humans that roved the area, it would have been obvious to any dwarf that these were no longer dwarven works. Everywhere, the thoughtless sloppiness of human mining methods was obvious.

Here was proof of what every dwarf knew-humans were poor miners at best, and even the skills of dwarven slaves could not improve their methods. Unlike dwarves, humans found no harmony with their enterprises. They didn't work their mines as dwarves did, cooperating with the stone to ease its riches from it. Instead, humans fought the mines, as one would fight an enemy. They fought the mines, fought the ores, and fought the very mountains that provided their riches. The human concept of mining, to most dwarves, was like the human concept of most things: take what you want any way you can, usually by brute force. The scene below the pinnacle seemed proof of that. The few cabins and sheds below the mines-three of the buildings were the remains of what had once been a pleas- antNeidar village-new looked run-down and unused. It was obvious that the shelters now served only as sleeping quarters for the human conquerors. Even from the pinnacle, one could see the dejected weariness of the few dwar-ven women working around what had once been a handsome longhouse. Like the dwarves in the mines, the females too were slaves, kept by the humans to cook and clean for them.