The Revenge of the Dwarves (50 page)

Watching through the spyhole, Rodario saw Tungdil go up to Ireheart and Goda. The three of them left the marquee at once. “What do you say to that?” he smiled. “It’s just one momentous occasion after another. I’ve got more material than I can ever turn into plays.” He stroked his beard. “I’ll start up another
Curiosum
,” he decided. “Tassia can run it. What do you think?”

“Smart idea, Rodario,” said Furgas. “That’s the way to sideline your rival—promote her.”

Rodario nodded. “Exactly. And she’ll be eternally grateful to me. Lovemaking right, left and center, nights of passion whenever I knock on her door.” He heard his cue and adjusted his costume before he stepped out through the curtain on stage, winking at Furgas. “I’m terribly pleased with myself.”

The scene was an adaptation of the time Nolik had stormed into his caravan. Here on stage the number of attackers had obviously been increased for the sake of the action; the fight for Tassia’s affections and the struggle for the jewelry were even more dramatic. Soon the ruffians lay senseless on the floor or had taken flight.

“And thus love and a sword triumph over adversity.” Rodario addressed the spectators.

Tassia joined him, holding up the necklace. “And the necklace makes up for everything I had to endure.” The thin gold shimmered and glowed; the rock crystal flashed in the lamplight from the stage and sent sparks dancing over the audience—over humans, dwarves and elves. Tassia threw herself into Rodario’s embrace. “What are you going to give me to make up for what I shall have to endure with you?” she asked, fluttering her lashes.

“The diamond!” came a shout from the audience.

“No, not a diamond,” Rodario picked up the cue. “Not a diamond—I shall give you my heart!”

Gandogar leaped onto the stage, his right hand closing over the pendant. “Lights!” he shouted.

“Your Royal Highness, Noble Majesty, high king of all the dwarf realms, sire. I know your people are awfully
keen on gems and jewelry and that you get really passionate about them, but you are ruining my play!” said Rodario, politely but with impatience. He grabbed the necklace. “Go and sit down again, Your Majesty, and watch the final act. I rule here on this stage. You will be good enough to recognize my status.”

Gandogar pulled the jewel out of his hands again. “This is one of the diamonds, you idiot thespian!” insisted the king. “Can’t you understand?”

Rodario laughed. “Your connoisseur’s eye has been deceived here, Your Noble Majesty.” Faster than the dwarf could react, Rodario had taken possession of the necklace. “The pendant is made of polished rock crystal, not diamond.” He swung it from his hands. “It is paste, Your Majesty. I would never use a genuine precious gem as a stage prop.”

“I am the king of the fourthlings; my tribe is descended from the best gemstone cutters amongst the children of the Smith and if anyone knows about jewels then it’s going to be me, not some actor!” he retorted so angrily that his beard quivered. “Give me the diamond! At once!”

Tassia tried to mediate. But just then a huge creature mounted the stage. It was taller than dwarf or human and thick strings of twisting muscle showed under its gray-green skin. Apart from a leather loin cloth and boots it was naked. Round its forearms white chains hung.

Its contorted älfar gaze was focused on the pendant, the eyes glowing green. “Give me the necklace!”

Everyone in the auditorium stared in surprise.

King Bruron was the first to applaud. “What a magnificent
performance!” he called. “The creature looks just like the one Tungdil and the soldiers described.”

“Totally lacking in taste,” complained Isika.

Rodario and Tassia stepped back; the actor held up his sword. “Run, Gandogar!” he said hoarsely, horror compressing his larynx. Hastily he thrust the jewel at him. “Save the last of the stones from Tion’s creatures.”

Then mayhem broke out in the theater marquee.

Girdlegard
,

Kingdom of Gauragar
,

Porista
,

Summer, 6241st Solar Cycle

R
isava stopped outside an anonymous-looking house wedged in between properties that reflected the status of wealthier owners. “Here it is.” She opened the door and went in.

Tungdil, Sirka, Boïndil, Goda and two dozen dwarves followed her in, prepared for action; the wagon lined with straw was ready in the street outside.

They saw at once that the building had not been occupied for some time. There was a layer of dust on the furniture. Only the tables and chairs showed frequent use. It all smelled of cold smoke.

“We come here because of the cellar,” said Risava, who had come to a halt in the entrance. She touched a special place on the wall and steps appeared, leading down, when a stone slab moved aside. From the vaulted basement Tungdil caught the familiar smell of paper and parchment. “Is this Nudin’s library?”

“No, it’s mine,” said the woman, lighting a lamp and leading the way.

Soon they were all crowded into the small cellar room with walls full of shelves and books. In the middle stood
Lot-Ionan’s petrified statue inside a circle drawn with magic symbols; several runes had been sketched on the surface of the statue itself.

“We’ve got everything ready,” she explained. “All we need to revive him is the magic.”

“How did you get him here?”

Risava indicated the steps. “Carried him down. It took nearly all night.”

Ireheart walked round the statue. “There are a few bad scratches,” he said, running his fingers over the grooves.

Tungdil examined the damage. It was a strange feeling. Was he looking at a statue or a person? Perhaps Lot-Ionan would soon be emerging from the stone, the magus he had lived with for many cycles, his own foster-father. They could not afford to make any mistakes. “Should we fill the marks in with mortar before trying to bring him to life? We can’t have him bleeding.” He saw a hole in the stone robe near the spine. “Or he might fall down dead.”

“What do you think?” he passed his query to the famuli.

Dergard shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that.” He studied the hole, a finger’s width. He seemed surprised. “I didn’t see that before. Could have been rats or something else like that.”

“I agree.” Tungdil ordered the dwarves to get the carrying belts from the wagon. “It would be like a foreign body to introduce mortar into his flesh. If it wasn’t part of him when he was turned to stone then it won’t be changed back when he is restored to life.”

Ireheart bent down, picking up some of the powder he saw on the floor. “Stone dust.” He scratched around the
opening. “It all fits. This hole has been drilled on purpose.” He turned to Risava and Dergard. “I don’t know of any animal outside of the mountains that eats stone.”

The two humans looked at each other helplessly. “I swear by Samusin it wasn’t us,” said Risava.

“Perhaps a fourth famulus, still loyal to Nôd’onn and who wants to see Lot-Ionan dead?” suggested Goda. “The hole was concealed. It was probably to serve as a fallback in case we managed to bring him back to life.”

“Then they would have knocked his head off, apprentice,” Ireheart said, looking at her crossly. “That should cost you fifty push-ups, but I’ll be generous.”

Tungdil tore an empty page out of a book, rolled the paper into a spill and pushed it into the hole to see how deep it went. “As deep as my little finger. A person should be able to survive that.” He ran his hands over the statue. “And anyway, he’d be able to heal himself at once. We must just risk it.”

The dwarves came back with the leather harness. With a combined effort they managed to load the stone figure of the magus onto the wagon, bedding it down on the straw.

T
he diamond!” The monster’s dark eyes shone green as it shook the chains free from its forearms. The älfar symbols glowed and transferred their light to the iron links. Then it swung the chains at Rodario and Gandogar; both were caught within the coils.

At the next moment and before any of the spectators could move, the creature launched itself into the air, catapulting straight through the stage scenery, dragging its
captives after it as if they weighed nothing at all. Pieces of the stage flats broke off and fell down, one of them hitting Tassia and trapping her while dwarves and soldiers rushed off in pursuit. “Help!” she sobbed. Planks collapsed, bringing down sections of canvas from the tent. Smoke started to rise. Tassia could hear people stampeding past her to escape from the monster. There was no time to come to the aid of some actress.

At last Furgas came over to free her from her distress. She wept and threw herself at him, grabbing hold of his shoulder. He froze. Finally he put his arms hesitatingly around her and consoled her.

“Come along, let’s get you out of here.” He yelled orders to the theater group, most of whom were standing rooted to the spot in terror: they must put out the fires. He carried Tassia out and sat her on a makeshift bed. “You’ll be safe here,” he said. “I must go and save Rodario.”

She nodded and calmed down but the pain, coupled with the shock of the monster’s appearance, had hit her hard.

Furgas ran off, following the sounds of commotion. He could see from Porista’s lighted windows that the townspeople had been aroused. It wasn’t long before he found a crowd of soldiers and dwarves surrounding Rodario and Gandogar.

Whereas the actor had got away comparatively lightly, the monster had torn off Gandogar’s forearm. The dwarf king lay unconscious on the cobbles, being attended to by a healer who was binding up the stump.

Rodario was bleeding from numerous cuts and grazes.
Both he and the high king had burn marks on their clothing from the red-hot chains. He was holding his head. “Awful,” he said indistinctly. “I was nearly dragged to my death. It has the strength of twenty horses.” He looked over at Gandogar. “This courageous dwarf refused to give up the diamond and actually attacked the monster. It simply wrapped the chain around his arm and yanked…” He turned pale and covered his mouth with his hand. “I mustn’t think of it.”

“Where did it go?” one of the soldiers asked.

“I don’t know.” Rodario pointed up to the roofs. “It made one great leap and disappeared. It had no trouble getting right up to the rooftop and then jumped to the next one. You won’t catch it now. It’ll be over the city walls.”

Bruron appeared, surrounded by his bodyguards. He saw he had arrived too late. “Summon the assembly,” he commanded one of his servants. “And get Tungdil Goldhand. We need to make a new plan and must hurry if we are to save Girdlegard. There’s no doubt now that the unslayables possess all the diamonds.” Cursing, he turned and walked back to the tent.

Furgas gave Rodario a helping arm.

“How is Tassia?”

“She has a scratch on her shoulder,” Furgas told the actor calmly. “Nothing serious.”

“Amazing.” Rodario looked up at the rooftops as if he could still see the monster. “I had the most powerful of the gems and had not noticed.” He gave a wry laugh. “I am stupid enough not to be able to tell a crystal from a diamond.”

Furgas patted his shoulder. “Don’t fret. You didn’t know what the stone looked like. It wouldn’t have helped if you had known—it wouldn’t have stopped this catastrophe.”

Rodario nodded and fell silent.

H
ey! Take care, you clumsy idiots, or you’ll have his nose off!” Ireheart called with a grin. “He’d turn you into a gnome for that.”

The dwarves sweating with the effort of heaving up Lot-Ionan’s statue laughed and renewed their endeavors to lower the magus gently down.

Then they heard the alarm boom out through the night. There was no more peace and quiet in Porista now.

“What does that mean?” growled Ireheart. “Are they hunting down the impresario?”

There was a clink and a green glowing iron chain shot down from the sky, coiling itself around Risava’s neck.

She grabbed at it, gasping for breath, but at once skin, muscles and vertebrae were ripped apart as if made of paper and rotten wood. The torso remained upright for a moment then collapsed convulsing to the ground. Blood pumped out of the neck stump. The famula’s head fell to the cobbles with a dull thud.

“Stand against the wall!” Tungdil ran to the side and pressed himself against the side of the house, to give the whipping chains no chance. He raised Keenfire and looked up.

“The damned froggy,” growled Boïndil. “This time you won’t get away. I’m going to pull off your fine legs and I’ll have you crawling. You will pay for ruining my beard!”

The creature scurried over the roofs to right and left, covering huge distances effortlessly. Every so often it would show itself to the dwarves to mock them.

“What does it want here?” Goda wondered, not taking her eyes off the roof-line.

Tungdil looked at Risava’s corpse. “It must have felt that hope was emerging for Girdlegard.” He turned to Dergard and signaled ten dwarves over to protect him. “Ireheart and Goda, you lead them. The rest go with me,” he ordered, running off to the wagon on which Lot-Ionan lay. “Let’s get him away from here.”

The chains hissed close and tore both the dwarves nearest to Tungdil screaming into the air; they crashed down, ripped in two halves, as if a giant child had broken and dropped them.