Alexey Pehov - Shadow Prowler

“Hey!” the gnome shouted upward. “Take the honorable gentleman to the fifty-second!”

“Right!” a voice called back down.

The lift shuddered and started downward.

Frahel heaved a sigh of relief and sat back in his chair. He had managed to do the impossible. This work was the finest thing he had ever created in all his long life.

The effort had completely absorbed the master craftsman, the challenge to his skill had required his absolute commitment-and now there was the key made out of the dragon’s tear, lying on the black velvet. The slim, elegant object already contained immense power, and after the dark elves endowed it with their magic, it would become a truly mighty artifact.

Frahel grinned. The orcs were in for a big surprise when the doors stopped opening for them. The elves were cunning and sly; they had decided to deprive the orcs of the memory of their ancestors by slamming the door in their face!

Now for the final, quickest, and most complicated stage-endowing his creation with life and memory. The master craftsman stood up, opened an old book, and raised his hand above the slumbering key.

And at that moment someone knocked on the door of his workshop. The dwarf swore furiously. That elf must be here already. Too early! Well, prince or not, he would have to wait until Frahel had done everything that was needed.

“Wait, honored sir!” Frahel shouted. “I haven’t finished yet!”

Another knock.

“Ah, damn you! It’s open!” Frahel called, preparing a couple of choice endearments for his client.

A man came into the workshop. “Master Frahel?” the man asked, looking carefully round the room.

“And who’s asking?” the craftsman replied rather impolitely.

“Oh! Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Suovik.”

“Suovik?” The dwarf was quite certain that this Suovik had a title. If only because there was a gold nightingale embroidered on his tunic. He thought that someone in Valiostr wore that crest.

“Don’t trouble yourself, Master Frahel. Simply Suovik will do.”

“Simply Suovik” was about fifty years old. He was tall and as thin as a rake, with gray temples and streaks of gray in his tidy little beard. His brown eyes regarded the dwarf with friendly mockery.

“What can I do for you?” Frahel asked, attempting to conceal his irritation.

“Oh! I would like to buy a certain item. Or rather, not I, but the person who sent me. My Master…”

“But, by your leave,” said Frahel, interrupting his visitor with a shrug, “I am no shopkeeper. I do not have anything for sale. I carry out private and very well paid commissions. If you wish to buy something, talk to Master Smerhel, two levels higher, gallery three hundred and twenty-two.”

Frahel turned his back to Suovik to indicate that the conversation was at an end.

“Oh! You have misunderstood me, respected master.” The man showed no signs of wishing to leave the workshop.

He walked up rather presumptuously to the table and sat down, crossing his legs.

“My Master wishes to acquire an item created by your own hands.”

“And what exactly does he intend to buy from me?” the dwarf asked with unconcealed mockery, setting his hands on his hips.

Politeness was all well and good, but he would take great pleasure in throwing this man out of his workshop.

“That amusing little trinket,” said Suovik, half rising off his chair and pointing one finger at the sparkling key.

For a moment the master craftsman was struck dumb.

“Have you lost your mind, dear sir? The elfin key? I have a client for it! And what do you want it for?”

“Mmmm… My Master is a man”-for some reason Suovik hesitated slightly over the word “man”-“a man of very special tastes. Let us leave it at that. He is a collector, and this remarkable key would suit his collection very well.”

“No!” the dwarf snapped. “You wouldn’t have enough money to buy the work, and I will not break my word.”

“Oh! You need not be concerned about money, Master Frahel!”

Suovik got up off his chair, went across to the table on which the artifact was waiting for the final touch from its maker, and began taking stones out of his bag and setting them on the table. Frahel’s teeth began chattering and his eyes turned as big and round as saucers. The man put a dragon’s tear on the table-a stone in no way inferior to the one that the elf had brought. Then another one. And another. And another.

“My Master is very generous, you will have no cause for regret,” Suovik said with a smile.

The dwarf said nothing: he gazed wide-eyed at the stones, expecting them to disappear at any moment. This simply could not be! The dragon’s tears lying there were equal to the amount found by the dwarves and the gnomes in the last thousand years! Without waiting for an answer, Suovik placed another two specimens of the mineral on the table. The last one was simply enormous.

“You must agree, dear Master Frahel, that this price is enough to make you think. Let your client wait for one more week, and you can make him another key; you have more than enough material here.”

“But the key is not ready yet, it has not been endowed with life,” said the dwarf, trying to convince himself.

“No need for you to be concerned; I can manage that on my own.”

“Human wizardry is of no use here,” the dwarf said, shaking his head.

“There is other magic besides human wizardry,” the man said with a smile.

“Other magic?” Frahel screwed up his eyes suspiciously. “There is also the stone magic of my people, and shamanism. The magic of the gnomes and dwarves is not suitable for men, and your tribe can only study ogric shamanism…”

“And what if this is so?” Suovik asked with a shrug.

“Who are you?” the dwarf blurted out, looking round the workshop in search of his poleax.

“Is that really so important? Well then, have we a deal?” Suovik reached his hand out for the key.

“No,” the dwarf forced himself to say. “Take your junk and get out of here.”

“Is that your last word?”

“Yes!”

“What a shame,” the man sighed. “I wanted to do things in a friendly way.”

The door opened and five shadows slipped into the room. Frahel turned pale.

Despite everything, Elodssa still somehow managed to lose his way and turn off into the wrong corridor. For a moment the elf’s dark skin was covered in sweat at the sudden thought that he was lost. But after walking back and turning twice to the right, the elf found himself in a familiar corridor with a low ceiling.

Eventually he found himself outside Frahel’s workshop and pushed the door open.

The dwarf was lying on the floor as dead as dead could be. A man was frozen absolutely still over a key-his key-singing a song in the ogric language, and the artifact was responding with a poisonous purple glow, pulsating like a living heart in time to the words.

The singer cast a single swift glance at the elf and snapped: “Kill him!”

Five orcs with drawn yataghans came dashing at Elodssa.

Elodssa’s s’kash slid from its scabbard with a quiet rustle as his other hand grabbed the dagger from his belt and flung it at the shaman. The blade sank into the stranger’s neck below the Adam’s apple and he slumped over onto his side, wheezing and bleeding heavily. Now he could not say another word and he would not use any magic. The purple glow that had been spreading around the key began gradually fading. But the elf could not take the artifact yet-the first orc had drawn back his yataghan to strike. The s’kash and the yataghan clashed, parted, and clashed again. The orc jumped back, waiting for his fellows to move up.