Finally, he fell silent. He looked up at the towers, maybe seventy-five feet up, and waited. And waited. It was like a staring contest with someone you couldn’t see. Someone who had all the advantages. He barely breathed, barely blinked, barely moved for more than a quarter of an hour.
One of them had mercy in his soul. His deep bass voice held impatience. “I will send a runner ta the Thlen, human. Ye will wait outside the gates. If he shows, ye may enter. If he doesna, ye will not live to cross the bridge a second time.”
Nachal swallowed. “Understood,” he said. And then, because he was tired of looking up and tired of feeling like some mythical beings were looking down from their spires above on the poor race of humanity, he turned his back on them and went back over to the bridge.
At this end of the bridge were two more statues. He went over to study them, though not daring to touch them with the two dwarves watching his every move. The one on the right was a whale made out of a blue-green stone. It was massive, probably by far the largest of the animals on the bridge. Stone water was shooting out in an arc from atop its head. He went to the front of the beast to look at its eyes. Part of him knew that he was still searching for the reasons why he had been hit so hard by the wolf, but part of him was curious. All of these statues were intricately detailed. What exactly did a whale’s eyes look like?
They looked small. Well . . . small in comparison.
He left the whale and walked over to the opposite side to see what looked like a mountain goat. The stone fur appeared shaggy and dirty. One of its horns was broken a little at the tip, as though it had butted one too many things with its head and the tip had finally splintered off. It was a goat, exactly as a goat should look . . . if it were real. Which it was not. It was actually kind of eerie, this amazing gift of the dwarves. They created life from stone. Was it any wonder that he felt so out of his depth?
He spent hours sitting there with his feet dangling over the side of the bridge. Hours trying to figure out what he was going to say to Dhurmic. Hours thinking about a girl whose face he had never seen. Hours mourning.
Life was infinitely precious, much more than he had ever understood. Each life held hours, days, and years of memories and experiences, of laughter and tears, of lessons learned and foolish daydreams, of life. And it was worthwhile. To have it cut short, stopped, was almost unbearable to him. The strangers that had already died in the wars past; the faceless ones that would die in the war that was now upon them. It hurt. But nothing hurt worse than Auri.
The elves were a cool race. They lived so long that it seemed as though the travails of the common humans no longer interested them. That’s what he had always thought anyway. But Auri was different. From the first burst of burning lungs in his dreams to the last closing of her eyes, she was different. She wasn’t ice, she was fire, and she stayed lit within his heart whether he wanted her there or not.
He didn’t. At least that’s what he told himself.
He could feel that the eyes of the dwarves never wavered from him as the hours passed. He could feel their flinty disapproval, their heat, from where he sat idly. What could be taking so long? Dhurmic had told him that the Clan Brulna worked the mines just to the right of the entrance to Bremgar, in the right chain of the Gimrothlen Mountains. The mines should only be an hour at most away. Why was it taking so long?
He rolled out his blanket, sat down on it, and ate. Another few hours rolled by and he ate again. What if Dhurmic wasn’t here? What if he was further inland? He sighed. If Dhurmic wasn’t here or was further inland, he was dead. It was as simple as that.
He pulled the map out and spent a few hours memorizing its features and landmasses. The sun set and still no Dhurmic. Night fell.
He lay down on his back with his hands piled behind his head and looked up at the stars. The only sound that carried to his ears was the sound of the wind whispering over the inky depths of the lake. It lulled him to sleep.
A few hours before dawn, the stillness of the night was rent with a gruff, angry shout. “Stand down, ye blithering statues, and open the gates!”
Nachal sat up with a jerk. And then he smiled.
Chapter Nine- Bremgar
Tension bled out of him, tension that he had felt even in sleep. He hurriedly got up and gathered his things while Dhurmic’s obnoxious words escalated into a shouting match. Dhurmic won. Of course. Nachal smiled. The doors opened a small width, small enough for a person to sneak through but not an army, and Dhurmic slipped through. He was glaring at the dwarves on the tower, shaking his head, and muttering under his breath. Then he saw Nachal, and his ruddy face lit up with a smile.
He looked the same as always. Auburn, brownish hair that was braided down his back, same color beard that hung down to the middle of his chest, black miner’s pants with a shiny, silvery-black shirt, and a wide, black belt with all of his tools and other paraphernalia on it. Well, he looked mostly the same. There were lines around his eyes and they looked troubled. Worried.
“Nachal,” Dhurmic said with a gruff voice, “are ye insane? Bremgar is on high alert. Those stoneheads up there were about to kill ye!”
“I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t important. I need help.”
Dhurmic looked at him in silence for a minute then sighed. “Aye, ye wouldna have. And the reason that ye would brave what is outside to come and see me is what has me worried.”
“Can we talk privately? Is there somewhere we can go?”
“Aye. Follow.”
He followed. As soon as they slipped through, the gates closed again with a bang of finality. He looked behind him at the tall, impenetrable doors and shivered. All of a sudden he felt very claustrophobic.
“Ye’ll get out again.”
“Alive? Because it’s sort of important that I leave alive.”
Dhurmic chuckled grimly. “I’ll do my best.”
“Good to know,” Nachal murmured. Then he stopped dead. They had entered what looked to be a trading and commerce center. It was enormous. Vendors’ stalls were set up in a large, neat circle with a huge fountain dominating the very center.
He walked toward the fountain almost in a trance. Here, the animals from the bridge were replicated in minute detail. All of them. They circled around, inhabiting a small divider between the outside wall of the fountain and the actual water itself. The whale was on the top tier; cascading, illuminated water exploded out of its blowhole and dripped down to the central part of the fountain.
He stuck his face between a goat and a red fox and looked down at the cause of the illumination. “Dhurmic,” he said in astonishment, “there are glowing rocks in here.”
Dhurmic chuckled behind him. “Aye. Lumacrystals.”
He unstuck his head and turned to his friend. “Lumacrystals? I’ve never heard of them.”
Dhurmic nodded. “Ye wouldna have. We mine them in the Thlen. They are a rare type of rock that absorbs sunlight. When darkness falls, the stone lights up from all of the stored energy within it.” He gestured to tall, squared-off pillars around the circle. “Those are lumacrystals as well.”
Nachal looked around. White pillars, a little taller than he was, lined the periphery of the circle. And sitting on each of them was a brilliant rose about the size of his head. Each one glowed with a light so perfect that, if it were daylight, it probably would have thrown rainbows across the sky. It was a white, crystal-clear light.
“Is it actually a stone or is it a crystal?”
Dhurmic shrugged. “It has properties of both.”
Nachal turned to him. The white light from the rose pillar behind them lit up his face brilliantly. They studied each other in silence. “I want one.”
Dhurmic nodded. “I’ll bring ye back here on the morrow. A few vendors will be selling them.”
They turned and crossed the rest of the commerce center in silence. Before they left the bright area behind, Nachal turned. He could almost picture what it would be like the next day. Children screeching, ru
nning madly about, chasing each other. Harried mothers hurrying after them. Others bartering and trading loudly. Food vendors’ wares filling the center with tantalizing aromas. It was a welcome image. He looked forward to seeing how close the real experience was to his vision of it on the morrow. He turned around and followed Dhurmic into the darkness.
Their steps carried them into what looked like a cemetery. Only it didn’t look like any dead were buried there. Instead, it was filled with statues of dwarves. About fifty of them stood on stone plinths within the surrounding pewter gates. Gnarled trees grew up and around them. In one instance a statue sat completely engulfed in a huge, twisted tree. The tree had split and grown around it, encasing it within its middle.
He turned to Dhurmic with a question in his eyes.
“This is the Garden of Masters,” Dhurmic said quietly, almost reverently. “Those dwarves that have changed the course of history lie within. Their tombs are down deep below in a stone chamber. Their likenesses are graven on a statue that covers their resting place. To be entombed here is a symbol of high honor. Not even our kings are arbitrarily buried here. They must have done something extraordinary to be provided such a resting place. Honor isn’t given around here, it’s earned.” His voice became hard, punching through his last word like fists in a fight.
They stared at one another for a minute. Finally, Nachal said, “You’re different. You’re angrier now, more cynical.” His voice became quiet. “And it’s something other than what’s going on outside of Bremgar. What’s wrong?”
Dhurmic shook his head in disgust and looked away from him. Silent. Nachal sighed and tried a different tactic.
“Why were you so late getting to the gate? Where were you?”
“I was mining stonesilk,” Dhurmic muttered mulishly. “The stonesilk shafts are farther north than the others.”
“Why were you working so far from the others?”
Silence.
Dhurmic continued to look mutinous as they cleared the Garden of Masters and began walking down a smooth stone fairway. Nachal looked down at the stone beneath his boots in amazement, distracted for the moment from Dhurmic’s stubbornness. “You have stone on your streets,” he said, nonplussed.
“Aye. ’Tis a major throughway. The stone is needful.”
“Needful,” Nachal muttered, shaking his head in admiration. “I wish others were as straightforward in their thinking.”
They walked in silence down the street and turned down another. About half a mile down, against the backdrop of the Gimrothlen Mountains, was a large, four-story building. To say it was a building was probably doing it a disservice. It was actually closer to a castle. It was made out of the stone that the Brulna Bear along the bridge had been made out of, and in fact had a Brulna Bear statue sitting on a large plinth in front of it. Instead of torches along the parapets, there were brilliantly lit lumacrystals. No dwarves stood along the walkways. All was quiet.
“This is the Brulna Clan Hall,” Dhurmic muttered quietly. “Along the back are the clan’s quarters.”
“You don’t live inside?”
Dhurmic grunted. “Nay,” he said simply.
They walked around and Nachal stopped. Squat, brown, smooth stone houses were built almost flush with the mountain face. Hundreds of them. His breath got all tangled up inside of his chest as he looked from the houses, up and up. The Gimrothlen Mountains towered over them, tall, imposing, and strong. He felt like a puny ant.
With Dhurmic leading the way, they walked for more than a half hour, until Dhurmic turned in and angled toward a particular door. Nachal stopped. “What happened to your house?” he asked in a garbled voice.
“What mean ye?”
“It’s ugly.” And it was. He had gotten used to seeing smooth stone during the past half hour but it wasn’t smooth here. It was rough, and looked as though it had been cobbled together by a blind man. A blind, inept man.
“I like it better this way,” Dhurmic replied almost loftily. “It has more character.”
“Sure,” Nachal said under his breath. “But I bet that’s all it has.”
The inside of the house was neat, but sparse. They walked through the entrance area, through a long corridor, and then left to the kitchen. The room was lit withlLumacrystals dangling from the ceiling in what looked like a circular, metal candelabra. A large hearth sat at one end. In front of it was a large pair of benches and a wooden table. Everything else was clean, with no food in sight.
Not that he wanted food right now. He had eaten so much at the gates that he didn’t think he could eat anything more for at least a day. Dhurmic settled his broad frame onto one of the benches and looked up at him. His eyes were tired and angry.
“Need ye any food?”
“No. I’m alright.”
Silence as they stared over the table at each other. Finally, as the silence seemed like it would go on indefinitely, Dhurmic growled in frustration. “Do I need to pull it out of ye? Spit it out, lad! Why are ye here?”
Nachal sighed, running blunt fingers through his dirty hair. He had no idea where to start. Dhurmic seemed to read his mind.
“Start at the beginning,” he ordered in a gentler voice.
Nachal nodded wearily, and started talking. He told him everything: The dreams and what he saw in them; Cerralys’s feeling that time was running out, and that the elf was vital to their survival. Finally, haltingly, he told him of Tristan and the utter destruction that he had left behind. The bodies. He even told him about the little girl’s hand that he had held, and the brightly lit funeral pyre. He left nothing out. When he got to the end, his words just sort of stumbled to a halt ungracefully.
He looked down at his hands and closed his eyes. The kitchen was very quiet.
Dhurmic sighed again and rose. He poured some water from a pitcher into a blue, stone cup. “Here,” he said. “You look like you need something to do with your hands.”
“Thanks,” Nachal murmured. Only Dhurmic would know him well enough to know that. With his fingers gripping the cup tightly, he looked up. Dhurmic was standing at an open door, looking out. His stocky arms were crossed over his chest. He looked preoccupied.
“Ye need me help to find her, is that it?”
Nachal shook his head. “I have a map to find El`ness Nahrral. That’s not the problem.”
Dhurmic turned to him with a look of incredulity. Nachal smiled wearily. “I know. The old one’s past is thick with secrets.”
“Aye,” Dhurmic breathed in astonishment. Then he was all business again. “Then ye must need me to guard yer back.”
“That too,” Nachal agreed with a grimace. “But I also need your uncanny ability to avoid getting yourself skewered.”
Dhurmic preened for a moment, and Nachal laughed. They grinned at each other, and all of the barriers came down. Dhurmic sat down with a grunt. He sighed as he reached over and grabbed the blue cup that Nachal was just twirling around and around in his hands, draining every last drop.
Nachal looked down into the empty depths of the vessel as Dhurmic passed it back. “Thanks, Dhurmic,” he muttered sarcastically. “What if I had really wanted that?”
Dhurmic waved his thick hand negligently. “Plenty more.”
Suddenly, Nachal was bone-weary. He scrubbed at his face, at his dry, gritty eyes, and then looked across again at Dhurmic. He couldn’t even summon the energy to worry over the calculating look in the dwarf’s eyes.
“Sleep,” Dhurmic grunted suddenly. He got up, and started shoving him back down the corridor and up a flight of stairs. Nachal went with only half-hearted protests. They slurred together, probably sounding like meaningless babble to the alive and better rested. They reached a doorway that Dhurmic nudged open with a wide boot. “Sleep here,” he said, dropping everything from his arms into Nachal’s.
Nachal looked down in surprise to find his sword, bow and arrow, and pack there. He didn’t remember taking them off.
“Thanks,” he mumbled.
r /> Dhurmic sighed. “Get some sleep, lad. Yer speech is getting more garbled by the minute.”
Nachal nudged the door shut with his boot. Well, slammed it really. He turned back toward the room and looked for a place to dump the things in his arms. There wasn’t any. There was the bed—which he planned to be using in less than a minute—and the floor.
“Needs more furniture,” he mumbled, as he dumped the lot onto the floor with a loud clatter. He kicked his boots off, and sank into a bed that seemed—after many long nights on the ground—to be solely made of clouds. He was asleep within moments.
He awoke to strong afternoon sunlight pouring in through an open window and Dhurmic hammering on his door. “We need ta make some plans, ye lazy lad! Get out of bed and meet me in mine kitchen!”
Nachal pulled the pillow over his head and groaned then he sat up and stared around him. The room was just like the house: uncluttered to the point of near vacancy. He muttered to himself as he reached for his boots and started lacing them up.
Downstairs, Dhurmic was pacing. “Food,” he barked, gesturing to a side table with a few offerings. Nachal filled the same blue, stone cup from last night with water and sat down.
“Not hungry yet. I ate too much last night.”
Dhurmic paused in his pacing to look over at him. “Ye’ve been eating too much for quite a while,” he said flatly. “Ye’ve gone to fat.”
Nachal snorted into his water. If there was one place he wasn’t going, it was to fat. He laughed at the ridiculous image in his mind, and drained the water in one pull. “Never heard of it,” he answered with a slight smile. “Is it located around here?”
Dhurmic’s lips twitched. He shook his head and resumed pacing. Nachal got tired just watching him. “Sit,” he ordered. “You’re making me dizzy.”
Dhurmic ignored him. Like always. “We need some supplies,” he growled. His flinty eyes pinned him. “Have ye any coin?”
Nachal smiled languidly. “I have enough.”
Dhurmic shook his head in disgust and resumed pacing, muttering something derisive under his breath.
“Sleep has improved you I see,” Nachal said with a grimace.