David Chandler - A thief in the night

“Strength did not matter to the beast. It yielded every time I grasped it, stretched like dough in my hands. Always it covered more of me, always it sucked hungrily at my more solid form. Then, of a sudden, I was inside the beast. It had swallowed me whole. My lungs cried for breath, my skin burned as if I’d been doused in acid. I could just see by the light that streamed in through its translucent hide. Before me were the livers and hearts and faces-faces attached to no skulls, faces with no eyes, like living masks. There was another shape inside there, one I had not seen before, just as a man will not see a piece of glass that is under dark water. This was the biggest of the shapes, a thing like a clear egg full of worms. With the last of my strength I grasped it with my hands and started pulling it apart. It was more solid than the rest of the beast, and when I broke it open, it bled. Could I breathe then, I would have laughed, for I knew death favored me still. The beast trembled and shook and spat me out all at once, dripping from my skin to the floor of the cave. It raced away from me, for it knew I was going to slay it. I tracked it all that night, though it moved far faster than a man on that rough terrain. I tracked it up the mountainside, until it came to another cave, which I thought must be its lair.

“This new cave was far deeper than I expected, however. It proved to be the mouth of a tunnel that led deep into the heart of the mountain. Nor was it any natural cavern. Had I not been so hot for the thing’s destruction, I would have noticed how regular the floor was, how the walls had been carved out of the rock by metal tools. The tunnel went down and down until it came to what looked like a blank wall. There was no light down there, so at the time I could not see that a solid block of stone filled the tunnel, a block cut almost to the exact dimensions of the shaft. I was just in time to watch the thing flow around that block, to ooze through the hair-thin gap between the block and the wall. It nearly got away from me. I managed at the last only to stab at it one more time, and to pin one of its hearts to the floor. It tore itself in half to get away from me, so desperate was it to escape.

“I had not killed it, I am sure of that-the part that got away still lives. What remained behind shriveled rapidly, parts of it drying out and turning to dust, other parts melting and soaking into the floor of the tunnel. I put the heart in a sack and brought it down the mountain, to my father, who is called Morg the Wise. He is a man of great learning, they say, and it was he who told me of demons, for I had never heard the word before. He told me how they are hauled up out of the pit, and how they take forms unseemly to man. He said that if such a thing was haunting the steppes, all of our clan were in great danger. I said I would take a band of men back up to the mountain and slay it, but he shook his head. He had something else in mind.

“In the eastern land of my birth, no boy becomes a man, not truly, until he hunts and kills an animal of his father’s choosing. I had thought this cat, the poor creature I originally tracked, would be the prey that made me a man. Yet my father laughed at the prospect. After all, I had not killed the cat myself, but only seen what did it. He demanded that I track and kill the demon properly-with a tool that was made for such work. And that was when he gave to me Dawnbringer, and made me swear all the vows of an Ancient Blade. I will not be allowed to marry, or sire children, or lead men to battle, until this demon is destroyed.

“I do not think my father knew how hard that would prove. Or perhaps he did, and wanted me to show that I had not just manhood within me, but greatness.”

“I returned to the shaft many times, trying to plumb its secrets,” Morget went on. “It was very deep, running almost three hundred feet down into the mountain. Its walls were perfectly square, cut with precision. The block of stone at its end was cut to almost exactly the dimensions of the shaft. I brought men up there to break through the block, thinking to find my demon waiting just beyond where I could challenge it to single combat. It was not so easy as that. I soon discovered there was not one block, but four of them. They were plugs, you see. When the shaft was finished, its makers brought these four giant stones up the cliff face and slid them down the shaft to seal it forever.

“I could not rest, though, until my demon was destroyed. The blocks were broken one by one, shattered with iron picks, their pieces dragged back up the shaft with the strength of our backs. When we reached the fourth block, we were surprised to find a dwarven rune carved into its face. The thorn rune, which every man knows.”

“The rune of death and destruction,” Croy said. It was true that everyone learned that rune early on. When a dwarf decided something was too dangerous to meddle with, it was wise to take heed.

Morget nodded. “When we broke through that block, we found it was all a trap. A great underground river was being held back by the stone. The water burst through, filling the shaft and nearly drowning me.

“The demon’s lair could not be breached that way. I needed another route in.

“For months I searched, looking for another shaft. There was none. I traveled far and wide seeking out wizards who could see inside the mountain, to tell me how I could find my path. The effort I spent was wasted. Yes, they told me, there is a demon in there, which I already knew. Yes, they said, there were tunnels and even whole caverns inside that mountain where the demon could hide. Bah! Useless. At last one told me something I could use. He said to go to the library at Redweir. There I would find my answers.”

“That must have been daunting,” Croy said.

“Oh?” Malden asked.

“Redweir is a city of Skrae,” Croy said.

“Even I know that,” Malden replied.

“It lies on the far side of the Whitewall Mountains from Morget’s home.”

“How was that a problem?” Malden asked.

Croy shook his head. “Forgive me, Morget, if I say anything that offends. But the… clans of the eastern steppes have been enemies with the land of Skrae since… well, for hundreds of years. It’s only an accident of geography that keeps us from total war.” He looked at Malden the way a teacher will look at a recalcitrant pupil. “You don’t know any of this?”

“I’ve spent my entire life in Ness,” Malden explained. “I never needed to know anything about maps or mountains.”

Croy nodded sagely. “This continent is split in half by a range of snowcapped mountains, called the Whitewall. The mountains are impassible, save in two places, both narrow defiles that are open only in the summer. The passes are well guarded on both sides, on the Skrae side by our soldiers, on the other side by the clans, so that no army can pass. If Morget wanted to travel from his own land to Redweir, the easiest way would be through those passes, but we would never allow even one clansman through-for fear an army would be right behind him.”

Morget laughed with excitement. “Give us one chance only, and we’ll do it, too! You’re right, the men at the passes would not let me through, even when I told them I was on a sacred quest. Just as we would not permit one of your warriors to travel east and live, no matter what flatteries and pretty turns of speech he offered,” Morget said. “Yet come to the western lands-and Redweir-I must. So I took the long way around. I traveled halfway around the continent, on ships that sank and by trade routes beset by bandits. Along the way I taught myself how to fight against magic.”

“How?” Malden asked.

“By finding sorcerers and slaying them, of course. Many times death whispered in my ear, but never did she claim me.” He shrugged. “It was a long journey, and I needed something to do to pass the time.