Dark Magic (16 page)

There was no blood, for stones do not bleed. The gnome withdrew his arm with great speed, however. Groth howled and raged. His remaining fist slammed into the walls of the tunnel. Exploding rock flew everywhere. Brand threw up his arm to cover his eyes and felt the sting of the debris even through his armor.

“That was basely done!” cried Groth. He began tearing at the walls of the tunnel then, widening it, like a terrier digging out a rat.

Brand darted forward and slashed at the other’s remaining wrist. He drew a long white scratch that filled with dust upon the back of Groth’s hand.

Groth flinched back, thought to grab for the axeman, but then drew back warily, not wanting to be tricked again.

“Hold Groth, King of the Gnomes.”

Still gargling gravel in his rage, Groth backed away from the tunnel and fumed. “You wish to yield?”

“I wish to end this, yes,” said Brand, stepping into sight but not into reach. “I wish to spare the River Folk a champion and the Gnomes their King.”

“You claim you can defeat me?”

“I have your hand. Soon, I will have the other. Then I will take your head, as you will be defenseless,” said Brand, shrugging easily as if he had not a care. As if the conclusion were foregone.

“Such confidence. Only due to trickery have you gained an edge.”

“You are correct, but we stated no rules for the duel.”

“You think like one of the Fae.”

“My apologies, but I have had many dealings with those folk.”

Groth nodded, considering him anew. There was respect in his manner. “I can see the River Folk chose their champion well. I can see also, how so many of your battles have you won. Our people will not underestimate yours again.”

“That is exactly what I wish for,” said Brand seriously. “We require respect. We will no longer stand still while we are idly abused by anyone.”

“How do we end this feud? It will not be said I yielded to Brand.”

“No,” said Brand, thinking. “Let us say we fought, and wounds were taken, and we ended the duel by mutual consent, thinking it better to fight our real enemies than to damage one another further.”

Groth froze again, and Brand now knew that this meant he was thinking deeply.

“There is wisdom in your words. But call us not your allies, for we are not.”

“I ask for a truce only. We will slay no more gnomes. You will lure and slay no more children. Nothing else is promised.”

“Agreed.”

Brand gathered up the huge fist, almost too much to lift even with the strength the axe lent him. He rolled it out to Groth who picked it up with his good hand.

“Can it be repaired?” he asked the King.

Groth nodded. “It can be cemented and fired with fresh magma.”

“Good. We will depart then, with your leave.”

“Brand.”

“Yes?”

“Someday, we might take ale together. Or we might die in each other’s embrace. Truly, I have not yet decided which.”

“Neither have I,” said Brand.

Chapter Sixteen

The Funeral

Their journey up to the Earthlight was taxing, but not deadly. The kobold traps had all been sprung, either by the fleeing kobolds themselves, or by the thundering gnomes that had followed them. Once out of the ruby tunnel their biggest problem became the weight of their burdens. The Kindred insisted on carrying Modi’s body, their own stuffed packs and still they dragged behind them the huge leathery egg. Everyone had a hand wrapped around the chain that led back to the egg, which sledded along through the dusty passages with a rasping sound. Going uphill and often hauling the thing vertically, Brand marveled at the stamina and tenacity of the Kindred. No similar group of humans, he thought, could have managed it.

They came out at long last near the Great Vents. The egg, they knew, must be kept warm to survive. Brand met with Gamal there, who had waited for them at the exit from the Everdark for nearly a week. He rejoiced to see them, but his welcoming smile faded quickly as he counted their number. The wrapped corpse of Modi, riding the shoulders of six Kindred, captured his eye. He barely noticed the leathery egg they dragged until Brand put a hand upon his shoulder.

“Gamal?”

“Modi is dead. None other could fill that shroud. It would take two of us together.”

“Yes,” said Brand. He was tired all the way down into his bones. It was not just the trip that had fatigued him. The dead weight of a friend, as anyone who has felt it can tell you, is a heavier burden than most.

Gamal’s eyes finally fell upon the monstrous egg.

“What is that you have brought with you?” he asked.

Brand wiped away a sheen of sweat. As they had come up the tunnels to the Earthlight, getting closer all the while to the Great Vents, the heat had become oppressive. His boots stood inches deep in drifting gray ash.

“That is a gift for Hallr. Modi was slain by a dragon. I slew her in return. This is the last of her eggs.”

Gamal’s eyes were wide and haunted. He gazed upon Brand as if he were some form of abomination, birthed from a Fae mound. Most likely, Brand reflected, he had never set eyes upon a true dragon-slayer before.

“A gift?” he said.

“I’m leaving it here with the mechnicians.”

“And what are we to do with it?” asked a gruff voice. A mechnician trod up to them, stamping in the ash so that a cloud followed him. Brand could not tell if his beard was gray or simply full of clinging particles.

“Keep it, if you will. The egg needs great heat to survive. Not flame, mind you, but the nearness of flame.”

“Dragon expert, are you now?” asked the mechnician. “Humph.”

But the mechnicians did as they were asked. They lashed the egg with spiraling loops of heavy chain and placed it at the base of the great brass boilers, where overwhelming heat never ceased. If the egg awakened and the youngling dragon within tore its way out, the chains should hold it. They promised to maintain a vigil as well.

Thus relieved of their heaviest burden and traveling on level ground, the tired company now turned and trudged toward the citadel. Few spoke, keeping their thoughts private. For Brand’s part, he worried over what he would say to Gudrin, and to Hallr, Modi’s father. He had yet to meet the legendarily stern clanmaster, and was sick to know their first words upon meeting would be laden with grief.

Gamal had joined them, and he took up one of Modi’s great legs upon his shoulder, allowing two others to rest their bent backs. Brand thought to see a wetness about his eyes, but surely that was only sweat from nearness of the Earthlight.

When they came within a mile of the citadel, a cry went up and there was a blasting of horns. The horns made a wailing sound, long and low, not unlike the howling of wolves on distant hills. A party of red cloaks hurried out to meet them.

“What ill tidings do you bring us, Brand of the River Folk?” asked the squad leader. She gripped a poleaxe in one fist, the head of which reached twice her height.

Brand gestured over his shoulder to the wrapped body of Modi. “Many of the Kindred have fallen on Modi’s expedition. Including Modi himself. Great treasures did they find, great beasts did they slay. But the price was steep.”

The squad leader nodded once, curtly. “Modi has fallen. This is a cursed day for the Kindred.”

The squad of red cloaks did not offer to take Modi’s body from them. To have done so would have been an insult, unless the comrades who bore his great weight were exhausted and dropping in their tracks. The right of a Kindred trooper to bear a commander’s body was a great honor that was never ignored.

Instead, the squad leader sent one of her warriors ahead to the citadel. Then she and the rest of her squad marched with them in silence.

They followed a road now, built of crushed gravel and shored up on both sides by cut blocks of granite. They passed lichen farms and smoking factories. When they mounted a bridge, it was to pass over a crevasse in the stone floor of the cavern or a thick brass pipe. There were no liquid rivers of water in the Earthlight. The Kindred pumped their water from deep reservoirs beneath the cavern floor.

As they neared the portal at the base of the citadel, they saw the black stone doors had swung wide. In the opening stood a huge figure with a snow-white beard. Brand knew in an instant, by his stance and his shape, that he looked upon Hallr. He set his mouth in a line. It was in that moment that he realized Modi was a prince among the Kindred. They had no King, but the closest thing they did have was their warrior clanmaster. Now, he bore the body of Hallr’s son to him, he who was among the most heroic of the Kindred.

He blinked and hardened his heart. He would not have it said that he met this lord of the Kindred with a tear in his eye.

As they drew up to the drawbridge that crossed a deep, waterless moat full of iron spikes, the Kindred behind him halted. Brand took the hint and halted as well. Brand glanced over his shoulder. All of the Kindred stood with their eyes downcast.

Brand took a deep breath and stood tall. There was a breeze moving through the caverns, Brand knew that far above them the Great Gates of Snowdon were open and allowing in fresh air. He longed to see the sky and feel snowflakes stinging his cheeks again.

Hallr spoke first. “Who brings me my son?”

“I do, clanmaster,” Brand answered.

“Who are you to bear me such dark tidings?”

“I am Brand, Champion of the River Folk. I slew Modi’s slayer. I was also his friend.”

Hallr was silent for a time. Brand could see in his face that he struggled for control. Perhaps, Brand thought, he wanted to throttle Brand, or to scream and tear at his beard in his grief. But he did none of these things.

Finally, Hallr nodded. “At the striking of the twelfth hammer, we shall bear Modi back to the fires from whence we all come.”

* * *

The funeral proceeded in an orderly manner. It was slow and sad. There was a measured, thumping form of music that followed their dragging steps up the side of a great cone of stone. The cone stood apart, in the midst of the cavern. None of the Kindred towers guarded this spot, as it was used only for ceremonies such as this one.

A broad stone stairway wound up the cone to the mouth of it. Vapor rose from the top, and Brand sensed a great heat being released there. The first to mount the stairs was Hallr himself, followed by the various clanmasters, Gudrin among them. Brand lamented that he had not yet had a chance to talk to Gudrin. They had arrived, been sent away to clean the filth of the Everdark from their bodies, and then been summoned to join the funeral procession. No doubt the Kindred wished to move things along quickly, as Modi had died days earlier.

Next after the clanmasters came the body itself, borne by Gamal and the other miners. Brand followed close behind them, as was his due. After that came a great crowd of white cowled priests with swinging silver hammers, incense-burning devices and ticking mechanical drums. These last contrivances beat a steady, thumping note. The mechanical drums reminded Brand of a dozen heartbeats and the relentless sound of them set his teeth on edge. He made no complaint, however.

The priests of the Kindred were a strange lot, Brand reflected. Each wore a white flowing robe that they somehow kept clean despite the blowing ash that was everywhere. Unlike any others of the Kindred he had ever seen, they wore no armor, no heavy boots. They wore only their long pure white robes, sandals on their feet, and a single silver hammer. They had white cowls that draped over their faces and the sleeves of their robes hung long and low, covering their hands which they kept clasped in front of them. In fact, all one could see of them besides flowing robes was the occasional sandaled foot or a hooked nose protruding from under those hanging cowls.

After the priesthood came a seemingly endless stream of well-wishers and mourners. Brand had learned that Modi was Hallr’s only surviving child and he had lost his wife a century before as well. These facts did nothing to gladden his heart. He was left wondering if he could have done something differently back in the dragon’s cave. Could he have saved Modi? Could he have traded his life for the warrior’s?

When at last they reached the wide platform at the top of the cone, Brand noted with mild alarm there was no railing. The drop was sheer on every side. One had a choice of falling off the outside of the rocky cone, surely dying a quick death smashed upon the jagged, waiting stones, or falling into the mouth of it to burn. Falling inside the cone, he judged, would be the more horrible fate for the careless. Sheer, glass-like surfaces allowed a blindingly-fast sliding death into the smoky unknown. You could not see what awaited in that direction, but the tremendous waves of heat and vapor hinted at a painful fate.

The benediction was long and windy. Periodically the priests clanged upon a huge gong built for this sole purpose with their silver hammers. They completely circled the thing, and Gudrin sidled close to Brand to comment.

“Seventeen hammers,” she breathed, “I doubt they would honor me with so many. Only a King could warrant more.”

Brand nodded politely. In truth, the ringing sound of the hammers upon the huge gong, which seemed to soften every Kindred face, made his ears and head ache.

At long last, after many rumbling words were spoken, Modi was committed to the fiery depths. A gush of heat flared up some seconds after the body was slipped into oblivion, and Brand had to smile grimly. He hoped the Earth itself had a hard time swallowing his friend.

The procession then broke away from the strict protocol it had been following up to that point. People were allowed to speak and move as they willed. Brand relaxed a fraction. He tried not to, but he cast frequent glances at Hallr. He hoped the other wouldn’t come to have private words with him. He knew not what to say.

His fears quickly materialized. Hallr’s eyes sought him out from the crowd. It was not a difficult task, as he was easily the tallest person on the platform, with Hallr being second.

Brand braced himself, unsure of what kind of assault awaited him.

“That’s right,” said Gudrin, whispering advice at his side, “stiff spine. No smile. Do not shake hands, hug or bow. None of these things please any of the Kindred.”

Brand glanced at her, remembering the many times they had foisted just such behavior upon Gudrin. He wondered that she had never objected. He thought to himself that they had been in the lands of the River Folk then, and had followed the customs of his people. Now, he was in the lands of the Kindred—the very heart of those lands—and it would do him credit to follow their ways.

Telyn tapped at him, and he almost brushed her away, his eyes set only upon the approaching Hallr.

“Brand, look,” she said, not dissuaded by his waving hand.

He looked and Gudrin did too. They gazed at the Earthlight itself. The three Great Vents stood fully open. Something was amiss, however. On the right end of the vents a puff of flame and smoke appeared in the distance. The flame was a brighter, yellow-white brilliance, not the deep ember-red that the Earthlight usually emanated. Brand blinked at the sight, not sure what he was witnessing. Perhaps occasional flare-ups were normal.

“Brand,” said Hallr, suddenly close.

“Clanmaster Hallr,” said Brand, facing him. He almost smiled and leaned forward in a bow, but stopped himself. Unfortunately, his hand came up to clasp with Hallr’s. The response was automatic for him.

Hallr stared at the hand like it was viper. Possibly a venomous one. Brand managed to reach up with the hand and adjust the pack on his back. This distraction only earned him a frown.

“I understand that you slew a dragon. The very one that killed Modi as you battled it together.”

Brand nodded.

Hallr sucked in a deep breath. “So you were there at Modi’s final moments. Tell me truthfully, for few can lie to Hallr without my knowing it. Did my son die well?”

Brand thought for a moment of Modi’s brave final moments, fighting with cunning and fantastic strength of arm. He answered without hesitation.

“Absolutely. Without him, I doubt I could have defeated the beast. I was down at one point, and Modi drew it off me by attacking her flank.”

“Her?”

“Sigrid was her name, according to the gnome king.”