When it came, it was, by his reckoning, a turn of the glass after the turn of night. He felt increasing pressure in his head, a desire to close his eyes, lie down, sleep. He ignored that. Refusing the invitation to sleep was a basic skill all in the Thieves’ Guild learned early.
Though he listened for the chink of pick on stone, he did not expect to hear it. With pick and shovel, even rockfolk could not have delved from the inn to Gird’s Hall so quickly: they would use rock-magic, he was sure. The Guild dwarf had told him of it, but could not or would not describe what it was like. “The rock parts,” was all he would say.
A faint vibration came through his boot soles. Arvid took the bread from the bowl and poured in water. It stilled, then the surface shivered again, showing concentric rings. A faint groan, and the rings steepened.
No sound from the knights outside the door: they might have fallen asleep naturally or yielded to the rockfolks’ enchantment. Arvid slid a little buckler onto his left hand, checked once more that he could reach all his small blades, then drew sword and dagger. The groan again, then a noise like a board breaking, and a gap opened in the stone an armspan from the jewel he had placed. Two heads rose through it, one bearded, one not, one with bright eyes scanning the room, the other’s eyes closed, skin sickly pale.
“Rockbrethren,” Arvid said in their tongue. “Did I not say I had so hoped not to see you this night? It would be better to depart now, and not return.”
“Sertig’s curse on you!” the dwarf said. He glanced at the single sapphire and two gold coins. “You took it yourself and now you would mock us?”
“I never touched it since I gave it to Paksenarrion,” Arvid said. “It is neither mine nor yours. Give up this quest, for your own health, before you kill your kteknik.”
“He is not dead, merely drunk,” the dwarf said with a shrug. He had risen, finger by finger, from the crack.
“Gnomes do not drink themselves sick by their own will,” Arvid said.
“You knew we were coming,” the dwarf said. “Why did you not stand here and run us through before we could move?”
“I saw no benefit in it,” Arvid said. “So it was not my intent to kill you, although—if you sling that ax you’re trying to raise without my noticing—I may be forced to action.”
The dwarf’s shoulders drooped. “What would you have us do?”
“Go back as you came and heal the rock you wounded,” Arvid said. In their language, that sounded more powerful than in Common. “It is your charge as rockbrethren, is it not, to care for the rock as the elves care for the taig?”
“A human lectures a dwarf on his duty!” The dwarf laughed harshly, but sweat had broken out on his forehead, glittering in the lamplight. His eyes shifted about. “Besides—rock once broken like this will never be dross.”
“It was ill done, then, to injure healthy rock, and for the sake of so little. Sertig’s curse will not fall on me.”
The dwarf seemed almost to shrink, but then he burst out of the crack, letting the gnome fall back into the crevice. “You at least must die, having seen our rock-magic.” He had his ax in hand now and a blade longer than Arvid’s dagger in the other hand.
“This is foolish,” Arvid said, moving out of reach. “You and the kteknik could escape. Why attack me?”
“Vengeance,” the dwarf said. “You betrayed us; you ruined our plan; you are my enemy and the enemy of all rockfolk, for what you have seen.” He waved the ax in a complex design and spoke words Arvid did not know. In an instant, with a shriek and showers of grit, stone flowed across what had been the doorway. Even if the knights outside awoke, they could not help him now.
A moment’s panic almost cost him his life, as the dwarf charged. Arvid shifted aside just in time, taking a slice from the dwarf’s knife on the outside of his left arm. His body took over, years of training producing parries and attacks, over and over, as the dwarf, rock-strong and angry, came at him without pause. Simyits! Help! But here in Gird’s Hall, the trickster god, the two-faced, had no power, if indeed he ever had. Arvid wondered, in the fourth time around the margin of the room, using the wall to help ward him from the ax blows, if he dared call on Gird.
That thought struck him as funny, and in that moment of utter relaxation, he managed a kick at the dwarf’s elbow, and the ax flew clear. With his next thrust, he buried his blade in the angle of jaw and throat. The dwarf staggered; Arvid shoved and twisted; the tip of his sword was stuck in the back of that hard, thick skull. The dwarf grabbed at the blade one-handed and thrust at Arvid with the other, but could not reach him. Finally—too slowly—the dwarf slumped to his knees and fell over. Arvid waited … the dwarf was, at last, obviously dead.
So he hadn’t needed Gird after all? A man’s laugh—whose?—rang in his head, and someone—who?—asked how he planned to escape. The lamps were guttering now; the air already smelled close and stale. He could die here—suffocate here—and be entombed forever. Even if other rockfolk came, they would not give his corpse any honor, not with a dead dwarf in the same chamber. No one would ever know—
Panic returned. No one would ever know what he had planned to tell the Archivist about Paksenarrion.
Well, then, the voice suggested, best use the wits the gods gave you and find a way out.
Panic receded; the pain in his arm returned; blood dripped off his fingers. Arvid tore off his bloody sleeve and used it to bind the wound, an awkward task one-handed, but it was not the first time he had tended himself. He would clean it properly later, if he made it out of here alive. He had a grisly time removing his sword from the dwarf’s body, then cleaned it on his cloak before sheathing it again.
He went to look at the crack in the floor. There, an arm’s length down in the shifting shadows, the gnome lay huddled, filling the space. Even as Arvid watched, the gnome’s eyes opened; he could see the gleam. Beyond the gnome was a passage that might lead to the outside, if the rockfolk had not closed it behind them.
He reached in, grasped the gnome’s shoulders, and hauled him up into the room, then laid him gently on the floor, facing away from the dwarf’s corpse. He bore no visible weapons; Arvid forbore to search him closely. The gnome lay still, gazing up as if confused.
“You were ill-used, rockbrother,” Arvid said in their language. “Your companion drugged your ale and then reft the rock-magic from you. You will want water, I daresay, and perhaps some bread. May I fetch it for you?”
“Why—help me? What trade?”
“You are injured; we will talk trade when you recover,” Arvid said. He turned aside, slipped the knives from their pockets in his cloak, and laid the cloak over the now-shivering gnome, then fetched the bowl of water and the bread. “May I lift your head?”
“What price?” the gnome said again.
Arvid sighed. “Rockbrother, I know not if you are fully aware yet, and I know that among your people a valid contract may not be made between one who is aware and one who is not. I honor your desire to set the terms and be sure they are just, but you must recover first—”
“You named me kteknik.”
“So I did, and so you are. But I do not treat you differently for all that. I am not your prince; I have no cause to punish you. If you permit, I will lift your head so you can drink; I think water and bread will help rid your mind of the drug, and then we can bargain.”
“I am thirsty,” the gnome said. “I will pay what you require for water.”
“I require only your permission,” Arvid said. Indeed he felt pity for the gnome, who was probably kteknik for something he himself would not consider a crime, and who had been abused by one he trusted. He lifted the gnome’s round head, noticing as he did that it felt rock-hard for all the thick hair on it, and held the bowl to his lips. The gnome sipped, sipped again, and then brought his own hands up to hold the bowl. Arvid slid an arm under his shoulders to lift him a little more. “There is bread,” he said, indicating it.
With a bowl of water and some bread, the gnome
became more alert, looking around. Arvid stayed between his gaze and the dwarf’s body. The gnome stared at the sapphire.
“That?” he asked. “That is what he aimed for, one single jewel and a bit of gold?”
“Indeed,” Arvid said. “And he blamed me for that, and would have killed me, had I not killed him first.”
“Fool,” the gnome said. He looked down at himself. “Was it you or he who took my blade?”
“I took nothing,” Arvid said. “He had an ax and a long knife or short sword—I know not how you call something that length.”
The gnome turned, still sitting; Arvid moved aside and let him see the dwarf’s body, the blade lying beside it and the ax some distance away. The gnome looked back at Arvid. “You were wounded,” he said. “By my blade, I judge. The ax would have severed your arm.”
“Wielded by someone else,” Arvid said. “I bear you no ill-will for that.”
“Under our law, wounds dealt by my blade are my responsibility,” the gnome said. “Only in part, if someone else dealt it, but it was still my blade, and I did not prevent its use.” He looked at the water carafe, and Arvid poured more into the bowl. The gnome drank, then spoke again. “You may think it strange, that I do not ask now what you expect from me. You have shed blood from my blade and, I deem, in my service—for that dwarf would have killed me. My life is yours, until the debt is paid, and my debt to the prince as well. It is the Law.”
Arvid stared. “Rockbrother—what is this? It was not your fault: he put something in your food or ale and took your blade. He used your power as well as his.”
“It is the Law,” the gnome said again. Though still shaky and gray about the mouth, he got up to his hands and knees and kissed Arvid’s boot. “I will serve you in any way that does not break the Law, and I must interpret that law leniently, toward human laxity. Accept my service; say the words that seal the contract.”
But you are kteknik hovered on Arvid’s lips; he did not let the words pass. “I accept your service,” Arvid said instead. “But I ask only that you guide me from this place, which the dwarf sealed with his rock-magic—I deem you too ill as yet to use yours again this night.” He waved to the wall that had once had a door in it.
The gnome peered at the wall. “It is true, my lord, that I cannot open that rock this night. It will be days before I can use my powers again, for you said truly that the dwarf, may he rot in the light, drained me near to death. You are my savior; it is my delight to do your will.”
“Can you tell if it will take long for those outside to break through, should they choose? There is a passage, where men wait—they might hear me pounding—”
The gnome shook his head. “It will not be done, my lord. That is no skin of rock across a door: that is solid stone, encasing door and—” he winced, hands to his head. “He brought rock upon them in a trice; they were made one with it. Wicked, wicked—”
Arvid felt cold through. He had not imagined such a thing. The deaths of those knights … he should have insisted they stay farther back—
The gnome, was watching him, obviously fearful. Weak as he was, he must have realized Arvid could slay him easily.
Arvid forced his voice to calm. “Can we then use the passage through the rock that you came in?”
“Indeed, though it will be uncomfortable for you, being made for us. It is wide enough, but low.”
“More than one has told me it would do my soul good to bend,” Arvid said. He caught up the gnome’s blade; his own blood had thickened on it, and it took scrubbing with the remaining water and the dwarf’s cloak to clean it well. “Take this,” Arvid said to the gnome, and handed it over. He looked around the room and shrugged. “We might as well take the sapphire and gold as well; those above will not find it.”
With the carafe and bowl, the sapphire and gold, they descended into the crack, Arvid finding it awkward. Below, the opening the rockfolk had made was rough, wide enough for a man Arvid’s size but so low he found it easier to crawl than crouch. For a time, a little light came from the lit room behind and above, then at a turn all went black. He was acutely aware that if the gnome lied—if he had any power—he could bring rock down on Arvid and still himself escape.
But the gnome stayed close ahead, quietly warning Arvid of every twist and turn, every steep slope. Down they went, and down, this way and that. Arvid knew the city sloped down above them; Gird’s Hall and the High Lord’s Hall were on a hill. A stench came to his nose.
“Defilement,” the gnome said from the darkness ahead. “The mageborn cleft the stone to carry away their filth, long ago in your time; they dirtied clean stone, being too lazy to carry it away to the fields. The dwarf opened too close to it—”
“Sewers,” Arvid said, in Common. “Our name for such tunnels. If this is at all like other mageborn work I’ve seen, there will be a place to walk alongside. Is there an opening?”
“It is poison!” the gnome said.
“Not if we do not drink of it. Or have open—alas, I do have an open wound, and you are wiser than I.”
Past the stench, farther and farther. His knees hurt; his shoulders complained; his hands felt raw. He could feel warm blood trickling from the bandage he’d tied on his arm; he could scarcely bear weight on that hand. He tried walking in a crouch, one hand up to ward his head from the stone above, but that hurt as much after a short time. He was more and more tired of this, and afraid of being trapped. He forebore to ask the gnome how much farther, for fear of hearing an answer that would wrench a complaint from him.
Then he smelled freshness in the air and saw dim light ahead … and then more light, defining the surface on which he crawled, the gnome’s shadow on it clearer and clearer. Was it daylight already? It could be. He stayed on hands and knees until at last the rock above him receded. The gnome waited, hand out to help him rise, and he needed that help.
Morning sunlight blazed on the open land around him—not the city or its walls. They had come out the side of a hill that rose above them to the north and cut off the view to the west as well; to the east he saw a patchwork of fields and woods below.
“Where are we?” he asked. When he glanced at his injured arm, blood soaked the bandage he’d applied, glistening in the light.
“A half-day’s walk from Fin Panir,” the gnome said, “over the land, that is. It is shorter, under the ground, but you, my lord—you are sore wounded. I know where clean water is, and herbs for your wound.”
“I must go back,” Arvid said. “I must tell them—”
“Not now,” the gnome said. “Stone comforts me,” he said in response to Arvid’s look of surprise. “We were under stone for hours; though it could not restore my strength completely, it removed the taint of the drug he used.”
Arvid felt the bright sun fading, the light going gray, and the next he knew he was lying on half his own cloak, with the other half pulled up to form a shade. Footsteps neared, a slight crunch on the pebbles, and then the gnome handed him a bowl. “Drink, my lord. It is good water.”
“Thank you,” Arvid said.
“And now I will clean your wound. Close your eyes; I must move the shade.”
Instead, Arvid turned his head and watched as the gnome took down the shade and laid that half of the cloak flat. On that he set the carafe, a pile of herbs whose clean sharp smell tickled Arvid’s nose, and one of Arvid’s small knives, gleaming in the sun.
The wound, revealed, oozed blood and looked already swollen. The gnome, gently enough, bathed it with water and what had been, Arvid realized, his own handkerchief, the lace-edged one he used to prove solvency from time to time.
“It’s not that bad,” Arvid said, though he never liked seeing his own flesh torn.
“A clean slash,” the gnome agreed. “But needing to be purified, and I have no numbweed or even ale.”
“Be at ease,” Arvid said. “I have felt worse.”
The gnome, he decided, could have taught the healers he’d used before a thing or
two about wound cleaning; he had to use every technique he knew not to cry out before the gnome had the wound packed with herbs and rebandaged. But when it was done, he could feel a change in his arm—pain, but a cleaner pain. The rag of his sleeve, blood-soaked, the gnome had rolled up and tossed away, washing his hands after.
“And now you must chew these leaves,” the gnome said. “They do not ease pain at all, but they will strengthen your blood.”
Arvid chewed them—a bitter, sour taste but not disgusting—and after that was able to sit up, back against a rock. “Thank you,” he said. “If it is acceptable, I consider your debt discharged.”
“No,” the gnome said. “It cannot be. It does not balance. Without my aid, if indeed the dwarf had killed me, you would have gone down the passage anyway, would you not?”
“Well … yes.”
“And I perceive you to be a man of strength and determination; you would have made it to the opening. Your wound was serious, but not immediately fatal; you could possibly have found aid at a farm, and would have found water. So by my honor I am still in your debt.”
The implications of the night’s events came into Arvid’s mind: what had happened, and what the Girdsmen would think of what had happened. Their knights entombed in rock that now blocked the passage … his absence … and, if they did manage to break through, a dead dwarf, a missing gnome and master thief, and no jewel or gold. They would be after him, as furious as hornets whose nest had been kicked. And he afoot, without his purse … and no Thieves’ Guild hostel nearer than Tsaia. Only one thing might work.
“I must go back,” Arvid said. “I cannot think you would wish to return.”
The gnome shrugged. “In reality, I did nothing against their law: I was overpowered, and by human law that makes innocence, does it not?”
“Ye-es,” Arvid said. “But will they believe it? I fear I have damaged your reputation, for I told them you and the dwarf were talking thievery—that’s why I was there, alone.”