EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (370 page)

I silently drew my blade, waiting for the moment to strike. As the gnomes drew closer, the leader glanced my way and halted, its eyes meeting mine.

I raised my hand, spitting arcane words of power with all the hate I could muster, conjuring in my mind an image of a great golden dragon breathing her fury out all over them.
Dragonflame!

A wave of fire leapt from my claw, flying down the tunnel, enveloping the first three gnomes and blasting them to oblivion. The leader gnome shouted things in a panic. Khavi leapt, slicing down two of the hated fey. The last of the gnome followers shrieked and turned to flee.

But the lesson of the day, remembered at the Dome of Daily Reflection, came back into my mind.
 

No mercy for monsters.

A second blast of flame silenced the creature’s squealing, his charred corpse falling to the ground as he thrashed and kicked, then stilled as the flames consumed his flesh.

The leader fell down to its knees, jabbering and thrusting its hands into the air. Khavi raised his weapon.
 

“Keep her alive!” I shouted. Dead gnomes answered no questions. “Keep her alive!”

Khavi slammed the hilt of his blade into the leader’s temple, dropping her to the stone, silent and unmoving. She was still breathing.

It seemed too easy to me, and my rage wasn’t sated yet. Their deaths had come too cheaply. Their inability to put up a struggle had robbed us both of our righteous vengeance. My bloodlust surging, Khavi and I leapt upon the bodies of the dead, hacking and stabbing their smouldering remains until both of our furies played themselves out.

Panting and once more covered in blood, we rested, gasping for air. When we recovered, we rifled through the pockets of the slain gnomes. A few coins, some personal effects, and some jewels, all of which were absently tossed away. We were not interested in plunder.

We searched the leader. More baubles, more personal keepsakes and trail rations, but then Khavi found something tucked into the gnome’s chest pocket, the same place I had found the scroll on the other. Similar but different, a scroll tube wrapped in some kind of fireproof cloth. He uncapped it, carefully spread the parchment over the ground and together we studied it.

Two maps, one horizontal and one vertical, of the entire settlement, with indecipherable runes and glyphs labelling every feature.

“Their language is jibberish!” I complained, stabbing at a point on the map with a claw. “But I think those little round things look like dwellings of some kind.”

 
“It appears that way,” Khavi said. “But that is good. If we could encircle their main settlement by heading north, we can strike more of their expeditions.”

“Agreed.” I released the map and kicked one of the charred corpses. “These weaklings had no weapons and died too easily, pathetic and useless. I shouldn’t have expended spells on them.”

Khavi laughed, regarding me with a lighthearted grin and a rough shove to my shoulder. “That’s the spirit. I wonder if there are any more around here?”

“Let’s not get carried away,” I said, thinking of the scroll in my backpack. “We can do a lot more than attack their patrols.”

Khavi’s expression soured. “You must’ve hatched early if you think I’m planning on avoiding their city! There must be hundreds of them there. Think of how many we could slaughter if we struck them in force!”

I think he misunderstood what I was getting at. “There are two of us,” I said dryly, “and their druids aside, they’ll have spellcasters, an army of warriors, traps, and all manner of defences. Our best chance is to attack the outskirts, wear them down slowly. I want revenge, not suicide.”

“Speak for yourself,” grumbled Khavi, but I was the leader, and the promise of a greater plan seemed to mollify him for the moment. He returned his attention to the map. “Perhaps, then, we could strike at the outskirts, as you said. Avoid the warriors and target the miners. Pick off the weakest in groups.”

I glanced down at the map, nodding. “I think that would be best,” I said, then paused.

A black circle, its inside coloured a dull ochre, north of what I presumed to be the settlement. Judging by the size of the city, that circle must have been almost a mile across. Beside it was a note, but I could not read it.

I studied it, trying to make sense of it. What did it mean? Was it a weak point? Were these soldiers sent to reinforce the gnomish rear? It seemed unlikely. I glanced at the ruined corpses of the gnomes we had cut down. These were not like the loner we had killed by the mists; these were soft and weak. These were not warriors. More ominously, they were coming down from above.

A diplomatic mission to the surface?

That thought lodged in my brain for a time. Had the gnomes received their dark magic from the humans above? An alliance between the two could give both sides enough power to annihilate us forever. It made sense.

I stepped over to the gnome Khavi had bludgeoned into stillness, kicking it roughly in the ribs. It was time for some answers. She groaned feebly and stirred, and I pressed the sharp tip of my sword to the gnome’s throat.

“Speak if you know the dragon’s tongue,” I said, “or I’ll cut out the useless appendage and beat you to death with it.”

The gnome, her eyes wide with fear, stammered slightly. “S-some dragon,” she said, her accent almost indecipherable. “No kill. No kill.”

“Where did you come from?”

The gnome struggled to answer, and I didn’t know if it was searching for a believable lie or searching for the truth in a language it barely spoke. “From…from…”

I thrust the map at her. “Here?”

The gnome nodded, then slowly raised a finger upward, jabbing towards the ceiling.

“From the surface?”

It didn’t understand. “From…gnome,” it said, “Then from surface people. Then from gnome.”

I looked to Khavi. “It is as I suspected. They have an alliance with the humans. Is this one an envoy?”

Khavi studied the gnome, his face contorted into disgusted leer. “We should just gut it,” he said. “It can’t tell us anything. Gnome tongues are petulant and must be beaten to truth.”

I turned my attention back to the gnome and retrieved the scroll we had taken from the gnome warrior earlier. “What is this?”

The gnomish woman shrugged helplessly. I waved the scroll in her face. “The paper! It is a magical scroll of stone shaping! Tell me why your soldier had it!”

The gnome began crying, pleading something in her alien language. I jabbed the sword into her skin, leaving a thin red line on the side of her neck. “Silence!”

She returned to quiet sobbing. I saw through the deception, though. Saw the wickedness that dwelt within every gnomish soul. This gnome was just as guilty as all the others. Her life would continue only as long as her living served my purposes.
 

“Stand.”

The gnome looked confused. I withdrew my blade, gesturing up to the ceiling with it. The gnome climbed to her feet.

“No kill. No kill.”

“Name,” I said, “what’s your name?”

“No kill,” the gnome said, holding her hands in front of her. “No kill.”

Khavi gave a belly laugh. “No-Kill it is,” he said. “It’s a good enough name for a corpse.”

I shook my head. “We’re not killing this one just yet,” I said, then turned to the gnome and pointed down the corridor with my sword. “March,” I said.

The gnome didn’t understand. “No kill.”

“Walk! Leg after leg!”

She took a step down the corridor, and I nodded. She continued, walking before my blade, her pudgy hands by her sides.

Keeping the creature at sword’s length, I glanced over my shoulder. Khavi frowned disapprovingly at me. “A hostage,” I explained. “If we meet more of them, this will make it easier. We might even be able to get it to use the scroll for us.”

Khavi didn’t seem convinced. “They won’t use the scroll to destroy their own city. They’re not that stupid.”

“Then I might be able to use it,” I said, “but I’ll need some help.”

 
“Fine,” he said, exhaling in frustration through his nose, “but I’m gutting it afterwards.”

I had no mind to stop him. As No-Kill passed by the burned and hacked corpses of her comrades, her eyes lingered on their mangled remains.

“This will be your fate if you don’t obey us,” I said, although I was certain that No-Kill didn’t understand my threat.

We marched onward. The gnome moved slower than we did. I would occasionally jab the sobbing creature with my sword, forcing her to move faster as we walked in the direction of the gnome settlement. I mulled over my plan, or lack thereof, in my head. If we couldn’t figure out the scroll by the time we arrived, we would use No-Kill as our hostage, then we would storm our way in as far as we could and kill as many as we could with blade and spell. Khavi would make No-Kill suffer, make the other gnomes watch the light die in her eyes, and then we would almost certainly die in turn as the gnome survivors turned their wrath on us.

But we could only be expected to do so much, and the value gained by shaping the stone was high. Killing No-Kill would be an excellent final satisfaction.

The tunnel forked, and No-Kill stopped and turned around. I fished out the map and pointed at it with my sword. No-Kill stared at me, questioning my sanity.

“To gnome?”

“Yes, take us to your settlement.”

No-Kill continued to stare, her stubby fingers gingerly pointing at the map. “Many arrow. Many spell. Hate kobold. Gnome kill. Kobold and other kobold die. Why?”

I hissed and bared my teeth at the gnome. “Do not question why! That is not the purpose of gnomes!” I jabbed my blade incessantly at the map. “Take us there, or your use to us has expired!”

No-Kill held up her pudgy, clawless hands. “No kill.”

I snarled and levelled my blade between No-Kill’s eyes. “Which. Way.”

Trembling, the gnome pointed to the eastern corridor. “To gnome.”

So we set off again, climbing upwards and onwards, towards the gnomes and our own deaths.

Chapter IV

T
HE
CAVERN
STRETCHED
ON
ENDLESSLY
and the minutes turned to hours. My arm grew tired holding my blade, but I dared not take it away from the gnome for one instant. I stared at No-Kill’s back, trying to stare through its body and into its heart to see if it was as black and shrivelled as the kobold leaders had told me it had to be. Everyone knew that gnomes had black and twisted hearts, writhed and gnarly like knotted rope, belying their twisted and unnatural otherworldly origin.

The gnome slowed its pace, strange water sticking to its whole body. I spent a moment examining the fluid trickling down the back of its neck, beading as it ran over scaleless skin. Was her body crying? Is that why she slowed down, why her feet dragged on the stone? I studied the gnome’s walk, a slow, easy pace that was in stark contrast to the efficient march of Khavi and I. Was the creature really so weak that the act of walking made her whole body burst into tears?

“Do you think they feel fear?” I asked, staring at her wild yellow hair that bounced all around as she walked. Our Leaders told us that gnomes were too simple to have such emotions, but No-Kill certainly seemed more complex than a ravening killer.

“They’re monsters,” said Khavi. “Monsters don’t feel fear.”

“That is what they say, but I don’t know,” I said. “It seems frightened enough.”

“So do glowbugs if you stomp near them,” said Khavi, “that’s not
fear
in the way we feel it, that’s just survival instinct. It doesn’t want to die, that’s all. Any animal feels the same way, even the mindless insects, and we eat those.”

I poked No-Kill in the back with my blade to hurry it up, drawing a yelp as it scurried forward. “It’s right to be afraid,” I said to Khavi. “It should fear death.”

Khavi gave a chuckle. “In this case, yes. I’ll enjoy seeing this one’s insides. Perhaps they are as dark as they say.”

We walked for a little more, our claws scraping over the cold stone of the underworld. I switched the blade into my weaker right arm, weighed down by my buckler as well as my sword, but it was a relief for my left arm, which was almost numb.

“How do you think they breed?” asked Khavi. “How many eggs do you think they lay a year?”

“Probably less than us,” I said, “they tend to be fewer in number in the same area and consume more resources. That’s what my teachers say.” I recalled some of their lessons, trying to remember if this fact had come up. “Perhaps one a year?”

Khavi nodded thoughtfully. “So fewer than us, then.”

“That’s why when we fight, we are content with losses that are two to one. One individual affects their society greater than one of ours. It is a disadvantage of their kind, one of their many.”

“Perhaps we could break into their nursery then,” Khavi said. “If we could, your flames could burn their eggs to a crisp.”

The thought turned my stomach. “I’d rather not kill younglings if I could avoid it.”

“Why not?” Khavi snarled. “Do you think the gnomes had such reservations about our young when they collapsed our tunnels? How many kobold eggs were crushed only hours ago by these feyspawn?”

I grimaced, baring my teeth as I imagined the hunks of stone falling through the glass ceiling of the crèche, annihilating them in an instant. “No,” I said. “I suppose they didn’t care.”

“Then the nursery should be our goal, to maximise the damage we do. The gnomes stole our entire community’s future—we should at least put a dent in theirs.”

I flexed my tired left hand at my side, clicking my claws together, feeling the wellspring of dragon magic within rumble in my veins. I imagined a gnome egg, round and fat like the one walking in front of me, and pictured a wave of my fire rolling over it, heating it until it popped, the tiny, squirming gnome inside boiled alive in its own juices.

The mental image was disturbing, but this was no less than they deserved, I had to remind myself, and no less than they had wished upon my own kind.

“So Khavi, speaking of the future, what do you see in it for us?”