The Light of Burning Shadows

TWENTY

A fter another five minutes, Yimt led them to a dead-end alley with a tarp for a roof and several lanterns hung from rusting iron hooks set in the walls of the surrounding buildings. Wicker baskets, some as large as a man and others smaller than a rabbit, filled the space. A leathery-faced dwarf wearing local robes with a gray beard tucked into his belt sat on one of the baskets chewing crute and spitting into an earthenware pot on the ground. Frowning, he got up when they approached, a drukar appearing in his right hand.

Yimt took a moment to catch his breath, then walked forward. His shatterbow remained slung on his back. “Well met this fine evening,” he said, holding out his bag of crute.

“Don’t got drink or women here, and I don’t keep more than a few copper coins in my purse,” the dwarf replied, taking a pinch of the offered crute and placing it between his gums and cheek. His metal-colored teeth flashed in the light as he smiled, then quickly went back to a frown.

“Both more trouble than they’re worth,” Yimt said, smiling broadly. He sat down on another wicker basket and pointed toward Alwyn and the group to come closer. He looked around the stall.

The dwarf snorted. “Quite a commotion going on at the Blue Scorpion tonight by the sounds of it. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Yimt held out both arms wide. “We’re innocent.”

The other dwarf grinned. “I don’t doubt it, but what are you guilty of?”

“Nothing they’ll get us for if we keep our wits about us,” Yimt said, scowling briefly as he looked at Scolly. “Now, we got a bit of time to kill and could use a diversion for perhaps an hour or two, one that would remove us from these fair streets, and away from prying eyes.”

“We could get tattoos,” Teeter suggested. He had pulled a bottle out from somewhere in his uniform and was mid-drink. “I always get a tattoo when I land in a new port. Sort of a tradition in the navy, you know.”

“You ain’t in the bloody navy no more,” Zwitty said, grabbing the bottle out of Teeter’s hand and taking a drink. “Besides, where are we going to find an inker around here, anyways?”

“Tattooing is considered immoral in these parts,” the dwarf merchant said, lowering his voice. “Folks round here figure you’re desecrating your body if you get ink done. A fellow could lose a hand that way if he got caught…if you catch my meaning.”

Yimt held out his hand until Zwitty walked over and put the bottle in it. “Times are changing,” Yimt said. “In case you hadn’t noticed, the Empire is now in town.”

The other dwarf spat and laughed, a harsh sound that was not at all comforting. “Sure, you’re here now. But where will you be a week from now? A month from now? Times are changing all right. Stars are falling, the Shadow Monarch is rising, and the Empire is scrambling to hold on to what it can. I was here the first time the Empire waded ashore. Less than a year later, they were gone save for a token trading delegation and a few siggers to keep up appearances. That was decades ago. Only thing different since you boys arrived is the price of just about everything has gone up.”

“Oh, I hear there’s at least one more difference,” Yimt said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder toward the desert outside Nazalla. “Way we hear it, sounds like the Shadow Monarch ain’t the only one stirring things up.”

The dwarf shrugged. “The Suljak keeps the tribes in check. In return for a cut, the trade caravans pass through the Hasshugeb Expanse and come in to Nazalla, then on to Calahr. Nothing new.”

Yimt took a pull on the bottle, then offered it to the dwarf. He shook his head.

Alwyn stepped forward. “Uh, Sergeant, maybe we should be moving on. We have to get back to camp, remember?”

“Ally, I told you, we got time. You know, Teeter ain’t got a half-bad idea. Maybe a little something to remember our night here in the big city is just the ticket.”

The dwarf stood up from his basket. “I might be able to help you,” he said. He pulled up a sleeve on his left arm, revealing a large tattoo of a stake with several orc heads skewered on it. Alwyn looked closer and counted eight.

Yimt stood up and looked around at the other soldiers. “Lads, we’re in the presence of greatness. There’s only one regiment in the whole Calahrian Army that wears a tattoo like that, and that’s the Queen’s Own Shields.”

Alwyn whistled. The QOS were famous the world over for their stand against the orcs at Frillik’s Drift in the Second Border War over fifty years ago. Six hundred dwarves held off ten thousand orcs for over a week. When it was over, thirty-four dwarves made it back.

“You’re one of the thirty-four,” Alwyn whispered.

“Well, if I wasn’t you’d be talking to a ghost,” the dwarf said. He held out his hand to Yimt. “Sergeant Griz Jahrfel, retired.”

Yimt grabbed his hand and shook it vigorously. “Sergeant Yimt Arkhorn, Iron Elves. I know, I know, takes too long to explain. And this motley bunch is my old section. I was showing them the sights of Nazalla when we ran into a few lads from the twelfth.”

Griz nodded. “Ignorant buggers with hard heads and soft kneecaps.”

“Especially if you hit it just right,” Yimt said. Both dwarves started laughing.

“So are we getting tattoos or what?” Teeter asked. He’d found yet another bottle and was drinking from it. “We want to get a move on if we are, ’cause you know damn well they’ll be sending us out to that desert to chase down that Kama Wall fellow soon enough.”

Alwyn waved at Teeter to be quiet.

“Wait, you’re serious?” Griz said. “You lads really here to go after Kaman Rhal’s ghost?”

“Wasn’t no ghost that burned ol’ Harkon,” Teeter said, swinging the bottle to make his point. “That white fire fried his shadow like an egg getting…fried.”

“Teeter, why don’t you do us all a favor and pass out already,” Yimt said.

Griz whistled and stepped back. “I’ve heard some tall tales in my time…told most of them, so I ought to know, but you don’t want to be talking about white fire and shadows around here. People get upset at that kind of talk.”

“It’s true,” Alwyn said. “We fought it just a few days ago.”

The dwarf looked from Yimt to Alwyn then around the group. “You’re having me on. Kaman Rhal is as dead as dead gets. His power was lost when his library was. It’s just local myth handed down through the generations.”

Yimt shook his head. “Myths aren’t what they used to be. These days, everything old is new again.”

“I heard something over here!” a voice shouted from down the alley.

Griz peered into the distance. “Might be some of those weak-kneed knuckle draggers from the twelfth. Quick, lads, follow me,” Griz said, “we can continue this conversation in private.”

Griz hurried over to a large wicker basket the size of a grown man and stepped behind it. When no one followed, he reappeared and waved his hand. “Well, come on then.”

Alwyn was the first to walk around the basket. He discovered that the back half of the basket was in fact a secret door that opened onto a hidden entrance. Closer inspection revealed a set of stairs. The light from a candle or lantern somewhere below illuminated the steps enough for him to see. Unslinging his musket, he crouched and descended the stairs. They twisted around several times before finally emptying out into a small tunnel with a curved roof about six feet high lined with hardened mud bricks.

“This way,” Griz said, holding a small lantern. Alwyn looked behind him and was reassured to hear the others thumping down the stairs. He set out after the dwarf, who walked quickly for someone with such short legs, forcing Alwyn to almost hop along behind him. Alwyn was about to ask how much farther when Griz stopped and knocked on the left side of the tunnel.

The muffled sound of knocking came in reply from the other side, and then a hidden door opened up in the tunnel wall. Griz motioned Alwyn inside. Alwyn looked back down the tunnel the way he came. Yimt appeared a moment later, with the others following along behind.

Alwyn stepped inside, and for the second time that evening found himself in a room unlike any he had ever been in before. “It’s, uh, cozy,” he said, removing his shako and standing up. His hair just brushed the ceiling. Another dwarf stood just inside, but instead of robes, this one wore heavy leather boots, dark leggings, and a leather and chainmail overcoat. His red beard was shorn so that it only reached the top of his chest. A drukar hung from a leather belt around his waist.

This was a dwarf you didn’t mess with, which got Alwyn thinking he hadn’t actually met a dwarf yet whom you did want to mess with. He nodded at the dwarf, who only stared at him in reply. Alwyn looked around the room. Lanterns hung from iron hooks set in the ceiling. The room itself was a perfect cylinder, with curved walls of ordinary field stone so perfectly laid that Alwyn had to squint to make out the joint lines.

“Not a drop of mortar in the entire place,” Griz said, hooking his thumbs in his belt and beaming. The younger dwarf snorted, or perhaps sneezed.

Alwyn ran a hand along a section of wall. It was as smooth as a polished slab of marble. Fittingly, instead of pillows and hanging curtains of fine cloth and beads, the dwarf had furnished his underground home-if that’s what it was-simply. There were several low, wide stools and benches of slate. There were no wicker baskets in sight.

“Do you have a large family?” Alwyn asked, noticing several dirty mugs and plates sitting on a long, low table on the far side of the room.

Griz looked over at the table, then at the younger dwarf, and cursed under his breath. “Uh, just the hired help.”

The rest of the group now entered the room. Hrem came in almost bent double. He looked around, then sat down and leaned his back against the wall. The younger dwarf’s hand came to rest on the hilt of his drukar, but he otherwise remained still.

“Trij, make yourself useful and get these boys a drink,” Griz said when everyone was in the room. Behind them the door to the tunnel slid shut silently.

Trij stood still a moment longer, studying every soldier in turn. On spying Yimt, Trij squinted and focused on the shatterbow that was now slung under Yimt’s arm and ready to use. Finally, the dwarf slowly took his hand off his drukar and turned and walked toward a section of the wall. He reached out a hand and lightly punched one of the stones. There was a click as the stone sank into the wall an inch. A moment later, another secret door swung open and Trij walked through it. Alwyn kept expecting to hear grinding stone, but there was barely a speck of dust set floating on the air as stone glided over stone. These dwarves knew masonry.

“You’re first,” Griz said, grabbing Alwyn by the arm and leading him to one of the stone stools. “The rest of you lads can grab a seat and get comfortable.” He sat Alwyn down, then pulled a stool up beside him. Griz stared at Alwyn’s ears until Alwyn pulled back a bit.

“Something wrong?” Alwyn asked.

Griz shook his head and smiled. “What, no, just thinking it’s a bit funny you lot being Iron Elves when the real ones is out in the desert.”

“No,” Alwyn said, “it’s really not that funny at all.”

Griz’s smile wavered, then he winked at Alwyn. “No, I suppose it isn’t. Now, sonny, lose the jacket and roll up your sleeve. You want the right or left arm?”

“Right,” Yimt said, looking around the room as he walked over to watch. Trij returned through the secret opening carrying two fistfuls of pewter mugs with beer froth dripping down the sides. He handed them out quickly, saving Yimt’s for last.

“Good weapon,” Trij remarked.

Yimt took a drink from his mug, then set it down on a bench. Foam covered his beard. “Yours, too,” he said, looking at Trij’s drukar.

“Forged in the Maiden Works under Schrakkart Peak.” Trij unsheathed it and held it up to the light.

Yimt peered at it and nodded. “Those gals do good work.”

Trij sheathed the blade. “You do not carry one?”

Yimt scowled. “I did, and I will again.”

Trij nodded, walked away, and began clearing the plates and mugs from the table.

“Nice enough fellow, bit on the talky side, though,” Yimt said, picking up his mug and taking another swig.

Griz chuckled. “That’s the most he’s said in three days.”

Alwyn looked from Griz to Yimt. “How can you be so calm? Evil is-”

“Easy, lad, easy,” Griz said, patting Alwyn on the arm. “You’ll rupture yourself if you keep gettin’ all excited like this.” He looked over to Yimt. “You’d think this was the first time the world hung in the balance.”

“Kids these days,” Yimt said, taking another drink from his mug and winking at Alwyn. “I tell them you gotta take a breath once in a while and stop and smell the nuns, but do they listen?”

“The thing you have to remember,” Griz said, reaching underneath a stool and pulling out a small, black leather valise, “is that there’s always trouble brewing somewhere. An elf-witch on a mountain. A dead wizard in a desert. Stars tumbling to earth. It’s the way of the world.” He opened the valise and brought out a quill with a metal tip and a jar of black ink.

Alwyn gulped. “But if Kaman Rhal’s magic really is back, we need to find it. This is important.”

Griz nodded. “Aye, I can see that. Trij is off looking for a map now. I’m pretty sure I got an old survey map from a hundred years ago or so. Should help you a bit if the cartographer knew what he was doing.”

Alwyn looked over to where Trij was busing the table, but the dwarf was gone. “Where’d he go?”

“Quiet, that one. Don’t tell him I said so, but I’d wager there’s a little elf in his blood. Never met a dwarf that could move as quiet as him.” Griz grabbed a small bottle out of the valise and uncorked it. “This might sting a bit.”

“Wait, what are you going to tattoo on me?” Alwyn asked. He felt like screaming that this wasn’t the time, but he was clearly outnumbered.

Griz sat back and looked at him. “Mercy me, your first one? Lad, I have no idea. It ain’t me that decides, it’s you. I just wait to see what appears.” He sprinkled a few drops of the liquid onto Alwyn’s arm, then sat back. “See, a good artist lets the canvas-in this case, you -speak to him.”

“But I haven’t told you what I want,” Alwyn said, watching the skin on his upper arm. The area where the liquid touched tingled. “I’m not really sure I want anything, to be honest. I just-ow!”

Alwyn stopped talking as tiny tongues of black flame flared up, then quickly vanished on his arm. Griz stroked his beard a couple of times and looked over at Yimt. “That’s new. Still, the potion never lies.” The dwarf picked up his quill and dipped it into the ink. “Odd though, I figured you for crossed muskets like the other-” Griz caught himself, then smiled. “Like the other soldiers that have been through here. Now, let’s get you inked,” he said, jabbing the quill into Alwyn’s arm as he began to trace the faint outline of a black acorn that appeared just underneath the skin.

Visyna lightly descended from Rallie’s wagon and walked to the center of the open space between the buildings and alleyways. Between the moonlight and flickering lanterns, she was able to see well enough. Jir padded alongside her, providing additional comfort that no one, or no thing, was going to surprise her. Visyna raised her hands and began to gently tease at the fabrics of natural energy around her. Light shone from between her hands as she sorted through the many threads, searching for traces that would tell her what had happened. Clearly, a fight had taken place here, and recently. Old, bitter threads marked the three piles of ash that dotted the ground, but just what those piles had been, she couldn’t tell. She concentrated harder, searching for telltale signs of the Shadow Monarch’s power.

“I don’t think you’ll find it here,” Rallie said, still sitting in the wagon and looking down. “This is something else entirely.”

Chayii knelt a few yards away, thoughtfully sifting sand through her hands. She grimaced and stood up, throwing the dirt away. “The magic used here was ancient. Much older than Hers. Tyul was here, and my husband,” she added.

Visyna wasn’t sure if it was annoyance or concern in her voice. Probably both. “Then is this Kaman Rhal’s doing?” she asked. She stretched her senses a little further, worrying at a thread so thin she couldn’t quite grasp it with her mind. She let out a deep sigh and lowered her hands.

“That,” Rallie said, “is what we’re going to find out. We still have a few hours of darkness, so let’s make the most of it and get out of Nazalla with as few eyes watching us as possible. I assume we’re still heading south?”

Chayii nodded. “Tyul is all but untrackable, but Rising Dawn is not. They are definitely heading for the desert.”

“Why, though? Why would Tyul and Jurwan leave the ship and come here?” Visyna asked, climbing back onto the wagon and turning to help Chayii up. The elf smiled her thanks and sat down beside her.

“Tyul sees things differently than us. To him, the world is simple, or should be simple. Things are either in their natural state or they are not. That is why he is still with me. He understands the threat the Shadow Monarch poses and seeks to restore Her mountain to its pure form. If he detected something equally wrong, he would have sought it out. In his mind he would be helping it, even if that meant killing it.”

“And Jurwan?”

Chayii shook her head. “My husband is a fool. Brave, intelligent, loving, but a fool. No one else could have survived Her mountain, and I’m not entirely sure he did. What he wants, what he knows, I can no longer say.”

The brindos lurched forward and the wagon began rolling again. Visyna continued to weave the air around her, puzzling through the various energies and trying to make sense of them. Being tricked by Her Emissary in Elfkyna had been deeply humiliating to her, and she wasn’t about to let it happen again.

It wasn’t easy to weave magic this late at night on a moving wagon in a large city. Visyna yawned and had begun to let the threads go when something caught her attention. She tried to pinpoint it, but it was too difficult to grasp.

“Do you-” she started to ask the other two women, but had gotten no further when she turned toward them. Both were looking to the southern sky. A thin blue light glimmered among the stars.

“I feel it, too,” Chayii said, her eyes unblinking as they watched the night sky. “The Jewel of the Desert is returning.”

Rallie snapped at the reins and the brindos picked up their pace. “That’s not the only thing that’s coming. There’s a change in the weather, masking a power out in the desert.”

No longer feeling sleepy, Visyna focused her energy on her weaving, following threads deep into the desert.

After a distance of some miles, the threads frayed and became lost in a swath of bitter cold darkness. Visyna was all too familiar with its taint. “The Shadow Monarch’s forest has crossed the sea and is out there in the desert,” she said. She lowered her hands and rubbed them on the tops of her thighs.

Chayii cursed in Elvish. “Tyul and Jurwan are heading straight into it,” Chayii said. “They won’t have the sense to turn back. Nei ther’s mind is clear enough. We must get out there and save them from themselves.”

“We’ll need help, Chayii,” Visyna said. “Rallie, we must get a message to Konowa at once. The regiment needs to move. The Star will fall and the only powers out there will be Hers and Kaman Rhal’s. We three alone won’t be enough. We need help.”

Rallie pulled up hard on the reins as the wagon shuddered to a halt.

“Rallie, what are you doing?” Chayii asked.

Rallie pulled a cigar out of her cloak and lit it, drawing in a huge breath until the end of the cigar was bright red. “I think we just found some help,” she said, as shadowy figures emerged from an alleyway to block their path.