The Dwarves

VI

Kingdom of Gauragar, Girdlegard, Early Summer, 6234tb Solar Cycle Over here, you runt," a voice cried lustily in dwarfish.

"Come here so I can slaughter you!" A squat figure pushed its way between the orc's legs, whipped out two short-hafted axes, and planted them in the orc's vulnerable nether regions.

Oinking derisively, the diminutive warrior jerked the weapons out of his opponent's crotch and launched himself into the air like an acrobat, seemingly unhampered by his heavy mail. On his way down he struck again, hewing the neck of the orc who was doubled up in pain. The axes sliced from both sides, almost meeting in the middle. The beast crumpled to the ground.

"By Beroпn's beard," the warrior scolded Tungdil, "what were you doing dropping your ax?"

"You're a…dwarf!" Tungdil gasped in surprise, scrambling to his feet.

"Of course I'm a dwarf! What did you think I was? An elf?" He bent down, picked up the ax, and tossed it to Tungdil. "Don't let go of it this time. We'll save the talking for later." With a grim laugh he threw himself back into the frenzied scrum.

Tungdil spotted a second dwarf, identical to the first in every detail except his beard. He was slashing vigorously at his opponents with a crow's beak, a kind of spiked war hammer equipped with a curved spur as long as his lower arm.

"I thought you said you wanted our flesh? Too bad you didn't bring more of your friends!" shouted Tungdil's rescuer, taunting the orcs. "Your pig-ugly mothers must have slept with a hideous elf to make monsters like you," he boomed. "With a one-legged, mangy, no-eared elf. She probably enjoyed it!" When one of the orcs lunged forward, snarling with rage, the dwarf dispatched him with a flash of his axes. "Come on, don't be shy," he harried them. "You can all take a turn."

His fellow warrior preferred to work silently, wreaking his own brand of deadly havoc, slicing through limbs and hewing torsos with well-aimed swipes.

By now the orcs numbered just four, their slain comrades littering the ground around them and drenching the soil with their blood. Closing ranks, the last of the beasts prepared for a joint attack. The dwarves immediately drew together, standing back-to-back.

"Huzzah! That's more like it!" shouted Tungdil's savior, his eyes gleaming maniacally.

Rather than wait for the orcs to engage them, they whirled their way forward into the mob, spinning on their axis like a dancer in a music box, each warning the other in dwarfish of any threats from behind.

This unconventional strategy secured the dwarves a speedy victory against their more numerous foes. The last ore went to his death to the sound of their laughter and cries of "oink, oink!"

Tungdil was profoundly impressed. The dwarven warriors had dispatched an entire band of orcs without incurring so much as a scratch. He gazed at them in dumb admiration, then realized he had done nothing to help.

"May the fire of Vraccas's furnace burn in you forever," the second dwarf greeted him. "My name is Boлndal Hookhand of the clan of the Swinging Axes and this is my twin brother, Boпndil Doubleblade or Ireheart, if you prefer. Secondlings, the pair of us." His friendly brown eyes studied Tungdil shrewdly.

"You can see straightaway that he wouldn't stand a chance against a band of orcs," his brother said, guffawing. "He had enough trouble with just one of those runts. What kind of idiot drops his only ax?" He checked himself and looked at Tungdil. "I'm assuming you weren't planning to strangle them with your bare hands?"

"Oh no, sir," said Tungdil. "I'd be dead by now if you hadn't come along." He blinked. There was something peculiar about Boпndil's eyes, a strange flicker that gave him a rather frenzied look. He was probably still fired up from the battle.

"There are no sirs here," said Boлndal with a smile. "We dwarves were all hewn from the same rock."

"Absolutely, I'm sorry. All the same, you saved my l-life," stuttered Tungdil, his relief at being rescued already eclipsed by the excitement of meeting others of his race: For the first time since Ionandar-for the first time ever-he was face- to-face with real dwarves. A thousand questions jostled for attention in his head.

Boлndal's plait rippled down his back like a long black snake as he shook his head good-naturedly. "You don't have to be grateful. We'd do the same for any dwarf."

"Even a thirdling," chortled Boпndil, "although we'd give him a good hiding as well." He bent down to wipe his gore-encrusted axes in the long grass.

"It took us a while to find you." Boлndal paused. "You are Tungdil Bolofar, aren't you?"

"What a name!" his brother grumbled. "Bolofar! It's not some magical piffle paffle, is it?"

Tungdil's astonishment was stamped on his face. "Yes, that's me," he said slowly. "But how did you-"

"What's the name of your magus and the purpose of your journey?" the twins demanded.

"Lot-Ionan the Forbearing is my magus, and as for my journey…" He paused, then continued firmly. "You have my undying gratitude and deepest respect, but the purpose of my journey is my own private business and I'm not ready to share it with you yet."

Boпndil roared with laughter. "Pompous as a scholar, but I like his spirit." He clapped Tungdil on the back. "Don't worry. Lot-Ionan told us that he'd sent you to look for Gorйn. We wanted to be sure that we had the right dwarf."

"The right dwarf?" For a moment Tungdil was mystified; then he remembered Lot-Ionan's letter to the secondlings. "My clansfolk want to meet me!" He could barely keep the excitement from his voice. "But why the escort? Is it because of the orcs?"

"That too, but it's more a matter of getting you safely to the high king. Gundrabur is expecting you as a matter of urgency," explained Boлndal, tearing a scrap of cloth from an orcish jerkin and carefully wiping his crow's beak.

His brother produced an oily rag and polished his gleaming axes. "Someone should get the orcs an escort," he chuckled. "Vraccas knows they need all the help they can get."

"The high king," Tungdil whispered, awestruck. "What an honor! But why would he want to see me?"

"We're supposed to get you back to Ogre's Death so you and the other contender can stake your claims to the throne." He made it sound like the most natural thing in the world.

"My claim?" Tungdil echoed incredulously. He looked at the twins' craggy faces. "What claim? Which throne? What's this got to do with me?"

"He should change his name to Baffledbrain!" wheezed Boпndil. "Well, fry me an elf if the poor fellow isn't quite ignorant! Let's get away from these snout-features before the stench makes me vomit. I say we walk another mile or so, set up camp, and tell him everything, agreed?" He looked to his twin for confirmation.

Tungdil wasn't consulted on the matter, but luckily for the others, he was dying of curiosity and followed without a fuss. They marched for a while, then left the path and camped in the woods.

"There's nothing better than a decent meal after a hard-fought victory." Boпndil kindled the fire, skewered some cheese, and held it above the flames.

"And after a defeat?"

"If you're dead, your belly won't bother you. In any event, Vraccas will give you some victuals from his smithy."

The smell of molten cheese was overpowering. Tungdil choked. "I think I know that aroma. I smelled it when I pulled off my boots after twenty-one orbits of walking."

"Oh, our food isn't good enough for you, is it?" said Boпndil, trying to copy Tungdil's look of disdain. "This is the best cheese in the kingdom, I'll have you know. Come on, give him a piece, Boлndal. It's time he got used to the taste. Living with humans has spoiled his palate."

His brother cut a slice of bread and handed it to Tungdil with some cured ham and cheese. "Right, I suppose you want an explanation. I'll make it brief: The high king is dying and a fourthling must claim his throne. Gundrabur found out about your secret because of the magus's letter."

"My secret?" groaned Tungdil. "I didn't know I had one." He still hadn't convinced himself to eat the cheese. It was all a bit too much.

"It's time you learned the truth, then. You weren't stolen by kobolds. The long-uns made that up so you-"

"Long-uns?"

"It's dwarfish for men-just a little joke. In any event, the magus didn't want to burden you with the story until it was time." Boлndal handed him the water canteen. "So there you have it: You're a fourthling."

Tungdil thought about Girdlegard's geography. "I can't be. The fourthling kingdom is miles away."

"There was a good reason for the distance," Boлndal said soberly. "You're the son of the fourthling king-illegitimate, mind. The birth was kept a secret and you were entrusted to the care of friends. When the queen found out, she was furious. No bastard child of her husband's was going to lay claim to the throne while she was around to stop it. She wanted you dead."

"Are you going to eat that cheese?" Boпndil interrupted. "It'll fall into the fire if you don't get on with it soon." Tungdil handed him the skewer wordlessly and the warrior wolfed it down. "Much appreciated."

Boлndal resumed his account. "Your adopted family took pity on you and carried you off. They took you to Lot-Ionan for one simple reason: No one would ever think of looking in a magus's household for a dwarf."

"You do realize that dwarves have no truck with the long-uns' wizardry, don't you?" Boпndil said suspiciously.

"Quiet!" his brother shushed him. "Just let me finish." He turned back to Tungdil. "So now you know why you grew up in Ionandar, miles from your kinsfolk. When the assembly of dwarves heard of your existence, it was obliged to summon you in accordance with our laws and consider your claim to the throne."

Tungdil held the canteen to his lips and took a long draft. "I don't mean to be rude," he murmured weakly, "but it can't be true. Lot-Ionan would have told me."

"He intended to tell you on your return." Boлndal produced a letter from his pack. It was written in the magus's hand. "He gave me this, in case you didn't believe us."

Tungdil unfurled the parchment, fingers trembling, and scanned the lines. The story was true, down to the last detail.

All I wanted was to meet a few of my kinsfolk, not be crowned king of all dwarves. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I can't do it. I'll gladly accompany you to Ogre's Death, but the other contender should be crowned." He laughed wryly. "How could I rule over anyone? No one will ever accept me as a dwarf. They'll think I'm a-"

Suddenly a morsel of stinking cheese was thrust under his nose. "Stop grousing," snapped Boпndil. "It's a long way to Ogre's Death. We'll make a dwarf of you yet." The molten cheese wobbled threateningly. "You may as well start now." He still had a faintly crazed look in his eyes. "Go on, taste it!"

Tungdil pulled the warm cheese from the stick and popped it in his mouth. It tasted revolting. His fingers would reek for orbits, not to mention his breath. "I can't do it," he said firmly. "I promised to deliver the pouch to Gorйn."

"You don't have to come right away," Boпndil said magnanimously. "It's not far from here to Greenglade village. We'll go with you."

His brother nodded. "And you don't have to worry about the magus; he's given us his blessing already."

"What if you were to return without me?"

The brothers exchanged a look.

"Well," Boлndal said thoughtfully, "I expect they'd crown Gandogar, but no one would ever accept him as the rightful king." He fixed his brother with a meaningful stare.

"Exactly," Boпndil put in quickly. "There'd be all kinds of arguments and whatnot. Some of the chieftains might even…well, they wouldn't take orders from him, so before you know it, there'd be terrible feuds and…" He gazed into the flames for inspiration, then rushed on. "It could all end in war! The clans and the folks would fight each other, and you'd be to blame!" He sat back with a satisfied expression on his face.

Tungdil didn't know what to make of it all. Too much had happened since that morning. Having never raised his ax in anger, he had slain two orcs in succession and now his kinsfolk were trying to bundle him onto the throne. He needed time to reflect. "I'll think it over," he promised them, curling up beside the fire and closing his eyes wearily.

Boпndil cleared his throat and began to sing. It was a dwarven ballad with deep mysterious syllables that charmed the ear, telling of the time before time began… Desirous of life, the deities fashioned themselves. Vraccas the Smith was forged from fire, rock, and steel. Palandiell the Bountiful rose from the earth. The winds gave birth to Samusin the Rash. Elria the Helpful, creator and destroyer, emerged from the water. And darkness fused with light in Tion the Two-Faced. Such are the five deities, the… For Tungdil, the song ended there. It was the first time in his life that he had heard a dwarven ballad sung by his kin and the sound was so soothing that it lulled him to sleep.

Tungdil awoke with the smell of cheese in his nostrils and his mind made up: He would go with the twins to the secondling kingdom. His doubts had been conquered by a desire to meet more of his kin.

"Just so you know, I haven't changed my mind about being high king," he told them. "I'm doing this only because I want to see my kinsfolk."

"It's all the same to us," Boлndal said equably. "The main thing is you've decided to come." He and his brother packed their bags and they set off briskly. "The sooner we get to Greenglade, the sooner we'll be home. Eight hundred miles are a good long way."

"We'll accompany you to the edge of the village and no farther," snapped Boпndil. "We want nothing to do with that elf maiden. It's bad enough having to walk through an elfish forest, let alone visit an elf house or whatever they build for themselves." He made a show of spitting into the bushes.

"What did the elf maiden ever do to you?" Tungdil ran his hand over Gorйn's bag; there was no avoiding the fact that some of the artifacts were no longer in their original state. The encounter with the orc's sword had done them no favors, which made him doubly certain that the beast had deserved its fate. "Six hundred miles!" he muttered crossly. "Six hundred miles through Gauragar, through Lios Nudin, past beasts and other dangers without the artifacts coming to any harm, only for a confounded orc to ruin everything. Another three or four hours and I could have handed them over, safe and sound!" He hoped the wizard would be understanding.

Boпndil's mind was still on the elves. "Oh, she didn't have to do anything! Her race has caused enough trouble as it is," he blurted out angrily. "Those self-satisfied, arrogant pointy-ears are enough to-"

Overcome with fury, he whipped out his axes and fell upon a sapling, swinging at it with unbridled rage.

Boлndal, an impassive expression on his face, lowered his packs, pushed his long plait over his shoulder, and waited for the outburst to end.

"He does this sometimes," he explained to the dumbfounded Tungdil. "His inner furnace burns stronger than most. Sometimes it flares up and he can't contain his anger. It's why we call him Ireheart."

"His inner furnace?"

"Vraccas alone can explain it. Anyway, take my advice and keep out of his way. It's fatal to challenge him when he gets like this." Boлndal sighed. "He'll be all right again once his furnace has cooled."

Boпndil finished hacking the sapling to pieces. "Bloody pointy-ears! I feel better now." Without a word of apology, he wiped the sap and splinters from his blades and carried on. "We need to find a proper name for you," he grumbled. "Bolofar is no better than Belly fluff, Sillystuff, or Starchy ruff; it's plain daft! We'll come up with something on the way." He glanced at Tungdil. "What are your talents?"

"Er, reading…"

"Book-learning!" Boлndal burst out laughing. "I should have guessed you were a scholar! But we can't call you Pagemuncher or Bookeater. Dwarves should be proud of their names!"

"Reading's important. It-"

"Oh, books are very useful when it comes to fighting orcs. You could have killed the whole band of them with the right bit of poetry!"

Boпndil looked at Tungdil and frowned. "No one could call you a warrior, but you've certainly got the build for it. Your hands are nice and strong-with a bit of practice, it might come right."

Tungdil sighed. "I like metalwork."

"That's not exactly unusual for a dwarf. How about-" Boлndal trailed off and sniffed the air attentively. His brother did the same. "Something's burning," he told them, alarmed. "Wood and… scorched flesh! It must be a raid." Boпndil pulled out both axes and broke into a jog. The other two followed.

The trees grew farther apart as the path rounded a corner and emerged into a clearing. Until recently, the spot had been home to a settlement, but the elf maiden's haven at the heart of the forest had been ravaged by flames. Charred ruins hinted at the former elegance of the many-platformed dwellings that were set about the boles of the tallest trees. The carved arches, smooth wooden beams, and panels embellished with elven runes and gold leaf were so perfectly at one with the forest that they seemed to have grown with the wood.

But most of the gold was missing and the beauty of the glade had been savagely destroyed. For the second time on Tungdil's journey, the orcs had got there first. He tried in vain to recapture something of the leafy harmony, but the desecration was complete. "By Vraccas," he gulped. "We'd better see whether-"

"Absolutely," Boпndil said cheerily. "With any luck, we'll find a few runts. You've got to hand it to them: We couldn't have done a better job ourselves!"

"It's what you'd call rigorous," his brother said admiringly, gripping the haft of his hammer. As true children of the Smith, the twins were unruffled by the wreckage around them; it wasn't in their nature to feel pity for elves.

Tungdil felt differently. Wandering through the smoldering ruins, he lifted up planks and peered under girders in the hope of finding Gorйn alive. Instead he found corpse after corpse, some of them horribly mutilated. At the sight of the carnage, memories of Goodwater came flooding back and he stepped away from the bodies, closing his eyes to the horror. The images stayed with him, more gruesome than ever in his mind.

Pull yourself together, he told himself firmly. How are you going to recognize Gorйn if you find him? Where would a wizard hide if he survived? Tungdil's gaze settled on the largest dwelling, which had come off slightly better than the rest.

"Keep an eye out for any trouble," he called to the others. "I need to find out what's happened to Gorйn."

"I've changed my mind," Boпndil shouted jauntily to his brother. "Forget what I said earlier about not going in. We might find some orcs."

While the twins began patrolling the ruins, Tungdil climbed the sagging staircase toward the front door. The charred steps groaned beneath his feet, but at last he reached the first platform and walked across the blackened planks.

The house was pentagonal in form, with the bole of the tree at its center. Linking the rooms was a corridor that encircled the trunk, its inner wall comprised of bark. Rope bridges led out to the sturdier branches where colored lanterns swung mournfully in the breeze.

Leaves were already floating to the ground, as if the tree were mourning the elves who had lived among its branches for so many cycles.

Tungdil gazed at the fluttering foliage, then tore himself away and searched the rooms. There was no sign of Gorйn or any survivors, but the library had been spared the worst of the damage and he came upon a sealed envelope addressed to Lot-Ionan and some objects wrapped in a shawl.

He picked up the envelope and hesitated. Surely these are exceptional circumstances by any standard? He broke the seal, scanned the contents, and sighed. Yet another errand for me to run! In the letter, Gorйn thanked Lot-Ionan for the loan of some books. The wizard had evidently intended to return them by courier, which meant Tungdil had landed himself another job.

There was a second letter, written in scholarly script and therefore indecipherable to anyone but a high-ranking wizard. He packed it away with the other items and continued his search.

A shudder ran through the platform. It started as a slight tremor, but in no time the planks were shaking violently. The wooden dwelling groaned and creaked furiously; then the commotion stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The dwarf took it as a sign that it was time for him to leave.

He hurried into the corridor and stopped in surprise. The tree was moving, its leafless branches squeezing and crushing the groaning timber of the house. The trunk gave a ligneous grunt and swayed to the left. A gnarled bough swung toward him.

"Hey! You've got the wrong dwarf! I'm not the one who killed the sapling!"

The tree took no heed of his protests and swiped at him again. Tungdil ducked, the cudgel-like branch smashing into the paneled wall behind him. He darted to the steps, but found himself engulfed in a sea of white. In his confusion he thought for a moment that it was snowing; then he saw that the haze was made up of petals that were swirling around the tree. The flowers and trees of the forest were hurling their blossoms at him, the glade's shattered harmony turning to violent hatred.

The house shook again, this time cracking some of the joists and sending debris crashing to the ground. Tungdil clattered down the steps to safety.

The twins were no less surprised than he was. Weapons at the ready, they were eyeing the glade suspiciously.

"It's nasty elfish magic!" shouted Boпndil above the din of rustling leaves. "They've turned the trees against us."

"We'd better get out of here," Tungdil called to them. "The trees mean to punish anyone who-" He broke off as a Palandiell beech loosed a shower of withered leaves, exposing the gruesome secret hidden among its naked boughs.

They had found the elf maiden. Her delicate white visage, previously obscured by a thick screen of leaves, stood out against the murky bark. From the neck down she was a skeleton, stripped entirely of flesh but glistening wetly with crimson blood. Long metal nails pinned her slender limbs to the trunk.

The sight was too much, even for the otherwise imperturbable twins. "Vraccas almighty," exclaimed Boлndal, "what kind of mischief is this?"

"That settles it," his brother decided. "We're leaving before the same thing happens to us."

"Not yet," Tungdil told them. "I need to keep looking for Gorйn." The horror exercised a strange attraction on him and he walked on, obliging his companions to follow. "The wizard's body might be somewhere round here too."

On closer inspection, it looked as though the elf maiden's bones had been gnawed. Her murderers had finished the job by driving a nail through her mouth, pinning the back of her skull to the bole of the tree. In place of her beautiful elven eyes were two empty sockets.

"They pinned her to the tree and ate her alive," said Boпndil. "It's a bit too fancy for runts. They eat their victims on the spot and suck out their marrow."

Tungdil swallowed and took another look. Even in death, the elf's face had retained its beauty. For all his inborn antipathy toward her and her race, he was sorry she had ended so gruesomely.

Boлndal rounded the tree and discovered further corpses as well as a trail of curved black prints. "They're hoof marks, but they've been burned into the soil. What do you make of that, scholar?"

Tungdil remembered the two riders who had parleyed with the orcish war bands on the night before Goodwater was destroyed. "Shadow mares," he murmured. "They strike sparks as they walk. The дlfar ride them." It explained why the elf maiden had suffered so cruelly before she died: The дlfar took pleasure in torturing their cousins.

"Дlfar?" Boпndil's eyes flashed with enthusiasm. "It's about time we came up against something more challenging than those dim-witted orcs! How about it, brother? I say we blunt our axes on Tion's dark elves!"

Tungdil, his gaze still riveted on the skeleton, was beset by awful visions of the mistress of Greenglade writhing and screaming on the tree while shadow mares ripped the flesh from her bones. The urge to vomit became uncontrollable and he covered his mouth with his hand, unwilling to forfeit the last shreds of credibility in front of the twins.

One corpse, a male body crumpled not far from the tree, excited their particular attention. A circle of scorched earth bounded the patch of grass where the dead man was lying, pierced by arrows. By the dwarves' reckoning, seven orcs had perished in the towering ring of flames.

Tungdil was as good as certain that magic had been involved. "I think we've found Gorйn. He probably conjured the ring of fire to defend himself."

Hands trembling, he searched the dead man's pockets and brought out a small metal tin engraved with Gorйn's name.

"He would have done better with a shield," Boпndil said dryly. "I always said that magic can't be trusted."

His brother's gaze was fixed on the rustling trees that were shedding their leaves furiously in spite of the season. "There's something wrong with this place," he decided. "If we hang around much longer, those trees will tear up their roots and attack us. We're leaving."

"What about Gorйn and the others?" objected Tungdil. "Don't you think we should-"

"What about them? They're dead," Boпndil said breezily.

"Elves, elf lovers, and orcs." Boлndal set off at a march. "They needn't concern us."

As far as the twins were concerned, the matter was settled, so Tungdil fell in behind them, hurrying through the ruined village in the direction from which they had come.

Before they reached the path, he glanced round to bid the wizard and his mistress a silent farewell and apologize for leaving them without a proper burial. It was then that he saw something strange.

An easel, he thought to himself in surprise. In spite of the surrounding wreckage, it was standing upright, as though the painter would be back at any moment. Tungdil felt sadder than ever at the thought of the elf maiden or one of her companions abandoning their work in terror. The unfinished painting was a silent testimony to the moment in which the invaders had arrived.

I wonder what she was painting. "Back in a minute!" he told the others as he clambered over the charred timber, curious to see the elven artwork.

Boлndal sighed resignedly, setting his beard aquiver. "We've got our work cut out with this one."

"You can say that again," Boпndil said testily, wiping his sweaty brow with the end of his plait. Muttering under their breath, the secondlings hurried after their charge.

They caught up with him in front of the easel. There was something very obviously wrong with the picture: It showed the settlement in the aftermath of the attack.

There was no denying that the artist was incredibly gifted. The scene had been painted entirely in shades of red, every detail of the destruction reproduced with chilling precision on the smooth white canvas: corpses, the burned-out shells of buildings, scorched trees.

Tungdil peered at the work more closely. There's something funny about that canvas. He walked to the back of the easel and paled. The reverse of the painting was a damp, shiny red. He reached out gingerly to touch it, then whipped his hand away. Skin! The scene had been painted on skin so flawless that it could only belong to the mistress of the glade. Tungdil had a nasty feeling that the paint was far from conventional too. He showed his grisly discovery to the twins.

Two smaller pictures had been propped up nearby. The first showed the tortured face of the elf, her eyes dull with pain and fear. The second depicted her crucified body in all its gory detail. Tungdil knocked them over in disgust.

"It's still wet," said Boлndal, peering at the easel. "The freak who painted these pictures could be back at any time."

"So much the better," growled Boпndil. "We'll see how he likes to be flayed alive."

"I've never seen anything so monstrous," said Tungdil. Any admiration he still felt for the artist's talent was overshadowed by his revulsion at the foulness of the work. He shouldered the easel and hurled it into the burning embers of the fire. The two smaller pictures met the same fate.

Silently they turned to leave the village, but were halted by an aggressive snort. It was followed by angry neighing and a furious whinny.

A black steed left the forest and stepped into the clearing twenty paces to their right. Its eyes gleamed red, and white sparks danced around its fetlocks as its hooves clipped the ground.

Mounted on the shadow mare was a female дlf, tall and slim with long brown hair. She was clad in mail of stiff black leather with polished tionium trimmings.

"What do we have here?" The hilt of her sword was visible above her head and in her right hand she held a curved bow. A clutch of unusually long arrows of the kind favored by дlfar protruded from a saddlebag. Tungdil needed no reminder of their murderous force.

"The stinking groundlings have ruined my pictures, have they? In that case, I'll need some fresh paint." She sat up in the saddle to get a better look at the dwarves. With her delicate features and fine countenance she could have passed for a creature of Palandiell, save for the gaping eye sockets that proved she was no elf.

"I hope your blood doesn't clot too fast," she said, reaching with her free hand for an arrow. "I won't be able to paint the finer details unless it's nice and fluid."

"I was beginning to think we'd been cheated of our battle." Boпndil grinned. "Quick," he instructed in dwarfish, "make for the ruins or she'll shoot us down like rabbits."

The first arrow came singing toward them just as they were ducking behind a timber wall. It passed through the wood as if it were parchment and struck Boлndal's mail with a ping. The black tionium cut a gouge in the metal, causing the dwarf to curse.

Keeping low, they scurried deeper into the smoldering village, hoping to throw off the дlf, then attack her from behind.

Tungdil peered around the next corner and spotted the slender nose of the mare. There was something feline about the way it slunk through the ruins, branding the ground with its hooves. The earth gave a low hiss as the false unicorn passed over it, nostrils flaring as it tracked its prey.

Suddenly the dwarf had a terrifying thought. The mare's saddle was empty. Where's the rider? The дlf was at large in the village. He closed his eyes, trying to forget everything he knew about her race.

When he opened them again, Boлndal and Boпndil were gone. He wasn't afraid anymore; he was panicked.

"Psst," he hissed, "where are you?" He tightened his grip on his ax, cursing the twins for abandoning him in the ruins. First they tell me I'm no warrior; then they leave me at the mercy of a shadow mare and an дlf!

Someone touched his arm. Tungdil started and lashed out with his ax. The blade buried itself just below the man's rib cage. The dwarf stared at him in horror. "Gorйn? I thought you were dead."

The wizard looked at the wound distractedly and ran his fingers across the gaping flesh. He fixed his gaze on Tungdil. "Nothing," he moaned softly. "I feel nothing." He plucked an orcish arrow from his body. "Nothing," he said again, this time more desperately. He reached for a wooden beam, locking the dwarf in his empty stare. "All I can feel is hate…"

"Hang on, Gorйn, I…" Tungdil leaped aside as the wizard brought the beam crashing toward him. It smashed into a wall.

The din was enough to alert everyone to their presence. There was a clatter of hooves and the shadow mare whinnied.

Tungdil made his escape by crawling under a sunken ceiling. Anything would be better than being discovered by the mare.

"Nothing…" Gorйn straightened up and swayed drunkenly out of the ruined building, dragging the beam behind him.

The shadow mare leaped toward him, trampling him to the ground. Tungdil watched as its forelegs crushed the wizard's abdomen in an explosion of sparks. To the dwarf's horror, Gorйn rolled over and picked himself up.

The truth hit him in a flash: Greenglade had fallen to the Perished Land. Any who die here will rise again as revenants! The forest wasn't grieving for the elf maiden; the canker had spread into the soil, poisoning the tree roots and filling the trunks and branches with malice.

But that's impossible! Unless…Tungdil realized with horrible certainty that the girdle had failed. I can't go to Ogre's Death without warning Lot-Ionan that the shield has been breached. If the Perished Land has encroached this far, it might be advancing on other fronts as well.

But first he faced the immediate problem of leaving the glade alive, and the odds were stacked against him.

The shadow mare had picked up his scent and was heading his way. Its hooves struck Tungdil's hiding place and the timber erupted, crackling with light. The steed was intent on driving the dwarf into the open.

Tungdil had no choice. He rolled out, hoping to throw himself under the nearest piece of debris, but the shadow mare was faster.

In a single powerful leap, it soared over the wreckage and landed beside him, its head shooting forward to seize Tungdil's right shoulder in its jaws. The dwarf's chain mail saved him from its sharp teeth, but the pressure was excruciating.

"Get your filthy teeth off me!" Tungdil's fighting spirit came to the fore, and he forgot his terror, swinging his ax at the steed.

But the shadow mare had no intention of relinquishing its quarry. Jerking its head, it shook Tungdil back and forth like a doll. Without warning, its jaws flew open and he sailed through the air, landing on the ashen grass with a thud. The shadow mare whinnied, carving deep furrows as it pawed the ground. Tungdil was still coming to his senses when it thundered toward him.

The twins sprang into action. As the mare drew level with them, they burst out of their hiding places on either side of its path.

"Here, horsey, horsey," shouted Boпndil, driving an ax with both hands into the steed's right knee. Boлndal's crow's beak carved into its left foreleg.

The black beast staggered and fell, tumbling along the ground in a pother of ash. In spite of its obvious agony, it tried to drag itself up again, but the dwarves rushed in.

"You're not a horse anymore, you're a pony," Boпndil yelled at it. "How do you fancy fighting eye to eye?" The shadow mare lunged at him and was rewarded with an ax blow to the jaw. "Try sinking your teeth into that!" The mare jerked away, thereby sealing its fate.

Boлndal embedded his beaked war hammer into its long bony nose and hauled the beast in. Not for nothing was Hookhand his second name. Triceps bulging and heels digging into the ground, he dragged the mare closer so that his brother could sink an ax into its neck.

"So you want to bite me, you worthless bunch of bones," cried Boпndil, hefting his ax to strike again. The blade severed the shadow mare's spinal cord and it slumped to the ground.

Boлndal put one foot on the steed's nose and levered the crow's beak out of the corpse.

His brother grinned at him. "Now for the pointy-eared rider!" He signaled to Tungdil to stay hidden. "Make yourself scarce, scholar, and watch how it's done!"

They crouched next to the mare's fallen body and waited. Tungdil started to tell them about his encounter with the revenant, but they waved him away. All that mattered for the moment was dispatching the дlf.

Before long an unnatural scream, more drawn out and high-pitched than the voice of any human female, rent the air.

Waggling his eyebrows in gleeful anticipation, Boпndil straightened his plait and steeled himself for combat. "Music to my ears."

Boлndal listened intently, then leaped to his feet. His brother followed.

I should be out there helping, not watching like a coward. Tungdil felt compelled to do something, even if only to act as a decoy. Sighing, he was about to emerge from his hiding place when two skeletal hands grabbed him from behind and thrust him to the ground.

"Who are you?" a musical voice demanded. Damp, foul-smelling bones fingered his face. "A small man or maybe a groundling…"

The dwarf was rolled onto his back and found himself looking into the tortured face of the once-beautiful elf. She too had become a revenant. Robbed of her eyes by the дlfar, she had torn herself from the trunk of the beech and was groping blindly through the ruins.

"Let go of me!" shrieked Tungdil, reaching for his ax. His arms were clamped so tightly that he went for his dagger instead. The blade clunked harmlessly against her rib cage.

"Who gave a dwarf permission to enter my glade?" she demanded imperiously. A bony hand tightened around his throat. "Are you in league with the дlfar? Do you hate us enough to ally yourselves with these monsters?"

Tungdil fought back his fear and realized that there was something different about her tone of voice. Unlike the wizard, she seemed to be in possession of her will. "Listen to me, my lady," he pleaded. "Lot-Ionan sent me here to return some items belonging to Gorйn."

She turned her fathomless gaze on him. "I'm changing," she whispered fearfully. "Something's happening to me. They killed me, but my soul… my soul…" She trailed off. "You say Lot-Ionan sent you? My beloved Gorйn thought highly of his magus." She released her murderous grip. "You'll find a book in the house; it's in the library. Gorйn was going to send it to your master, but then the дlfar attacked and-"

"I've got it already," he broke in excitedly.

"Don't let them have it!" she instructed. "Take it to Ionandar and give it to the magus; he'll know what to do as soon as he reads the letter." Her skeletal fingers clutched at him again. "Swear you'll do it!"

Tungdil stammered out a solemn oath, swearing first by Vraccas and then by the magus. The elf seemed satisfied and backed away.

"Now behead me," she said softly. "I can't allow the Perished Land to steal the little I have left." She stretched out her bony arms. "Do you see what they've done to me? Without your help, I'll be yoked to their evil forever, a blind servant of destruction."

There was something almost mesmerizing about the two dark pits in her face. Tungdil hesitated. "But I-"

"Everything I loved has been taken from me: Gorйn, my beauty, my home, my glade." She raised her left hand and poked a finger gingerly into her empty eye sockets. "Look, even tears are denied me. Have pity on me."

Her face and voice spoke so eloquently of her sorrow that Tungdil had no option but to comply. He rose to his feet, took a few shaky steps toward her, and swung his ax. As the elf's head rolled through the debris, her skeletal body slumped to the ground. The lady of the glade was dead.

The trees around them gave a piteous groan, the crackling and rustling mingling with the sounds of a raging battle. Tungdil remembered with a start that the twins were locked in combat with the дlf.

They still don't realize! he thought in alarm, quickly pulling himself together. If we don't decapitate the corpses, they'll rise up and attack us.

Meanwhile, Boлndal and Boпndil had discovered that their opponent had no intention of playing by their rules. The дlf was nimble as a cat, ducking, skipping, and leaping to evade their blows. But for all her agility she had yet to penetrate the dwarves' heavy mail.

"Over here!" Tungdil lunged forward and hurled his ax. The дlf spotted the missile just in time and stepped aside briskly.

Suddenly Gorйn loomed up behind her, swinging a plank. She heard the wood whistling toward her, but it was too late to move.

The plank connected with her back, catapulting her forward. With a cackle of frenzied laughter, Boпndil rushed up and took aim at her thinly armored thighs. "Fight on my level, no-eyes!"

The axes sliced deep into her flesh and the дlf shrieked in agony, only to be winded by Boлndal, who rammed the butt of his crow's beak into her belly. Before she could make another sound, Boпndil raised his blades and hewed her neck.

"What did you do that for?" he asked the wizard indignantly. "Couldn't you see we almost had her?" Puzzled, he stared as Gorйn staggered toward him. "Hang on, shouldn't he be dead?"

"He won't die unless you behead him!" Tungdil called out to him. "This is the Perished Land. You've got to chop his head off!"

"Well, if you insist…" Boпndil dodged the wizard's clumsy attempts to fell him and sliced off his head with a single strike of his ax. Gorйn was no more.

"Seeing as we're here, we should probably take care of the rest," said Boлndal, nodding in the direction of the ruins.

Brought back to life by the dark power, the charred corpses of the orcs and the elves were beginning to stir. The Perished Land made no distinction between its own soldiers and those who had died at their hands, so the twins were obliged to execute their task with utmost rigor, fighting and beheading every single revenant in order to deliver them from their fate. Tungdil chose to watch.

"They could have tried a bit harder," complained Boпndil when the gory business was over at last. "At least it's out of my system, though." Sure enough, the glint in his eyes was slowly fading. "Shall we go?"

They set off on a southerly bearing, quickly leaving the ravaged village behind them.

Perhaps the trees wanted to do a last favor to those who had slain one of the despoilers of the peaceful glade, but in any event they made no attempt to block their path. Creaking and groaning, the leafless boles and boughs swayed menacingly, stooping low and swinging above their heads, but allowing them to pass.

The only other sound was the crackling of dry leaves beneath their boots. They saw no sign of the forest's many animals; even the birds were too afraid to sing.

"There's been a change of plan," Tungdil informed the twins, recounting his promise to the elf. "Ionandar is far enough west to be safe from the Perished Land and Toboribor's orcs. We need to tell Lot-Ionan about Greenglade and give him the books. The elf maiden seemed to think at least one was important."

"But we won't get back to Ogre's Death for ages!" objected Boлndal. "We're late enough as it is, without walking an extra six hundred miles."

"I'm afraid there's no choice," Tungdil said firmly. "It's either that or ask to see the council in Lios Nudin."

"That's the spirit," chuckled Boпndil. "Cussed as a dwarf!"

Boлndal relented. "All right, we'll go to Lios Nudin. The high king has seen so many cycles that he won't begrudge us the odd orbit here or there. Vraccas will keep his fires burning." He took a sip from his water pouch.

His brother turned the conversation to Tungdil's fighting prowess. "You didn't do too badly, considering you haven't been taught," he commended him. "But there's one thing you need to remember: Never throw your ax unless you've got another one in reserve. Of course your technique needs a bit of working on, but I'll soon have you fighting like a proper dwarf. Mark my words, Tungdil: The runts will be as scared of you as they are of me."

Tungdil could see the sense in being tutored by Boпndil. "The sooner we get started, the better." He nodded.

They walked until the light faded and they were obliged to stop and rest. After a while Boлndal launched into a dwarven ballad about the age-old feud between their kinsfolk and the elves. When he saw the look of dismay on Tungdil's face, he trailed off into silence: The last thing they needed was a song about destruction and death.

"What do you know about my folk?" Tungdil asked.

"The fourth lings?" Boлndal scratched his beard and unpacked a wedge of cheese to melt above the fire. "Goпmdil's folk are made up of twelve clans and they tend to be shorter, scrawnier, and weaker than the rest of us-typical gem cutters and diamond polishers, I suppose." He looked Tungdil up and down and nodded. "I've never heard of any fourthling scholars, but in terms of your build…Actually, you're a bit too big. Your shoulders are too broad." He thought for a moment. "I'm not trying to offend you, you know," he said simply. "Vraccas made us just the way we are."

"What else do you know?" persisted Tungdil, who found the answer too vague to be revealing.

The brothers looked at each other and shrugged.

"You'd best see for yourself once we get there. It's been hundreds of cycles since the folks had anything to do with each other," Boлndal explained. "I'll tell you what, though: We may not know much about Goпmdil's dwarves, but you can ask us anything about the secondlings. Our seventeen clans boast the finest masons in all the dwarven kingdoms, and the mightiest human stronghold isn't a patch on Ogre's Death. It'll take your breath away, you'll see."

Boлndal talked and talked, waxing lyrical about the fortifications and ornaments that were the envy of the other folks, while Tungdil listened contentedly, eagerly anticipating the moment when he would see his kinsfolk's architecture for himself. Enchanted Realm of Lios Nudin, Girdlegard, Summer, 6234th Solar Cycle The orbits wore on as the three dwarves journeyed to Porista to request an audience with the council.

At Boпndil's insistence, they had taken the precaution of walking through the undergrowth parallel to the road, but by the fourth orbit they were tired of scratching themselves on branches, finding thorns in their chain mail, and avoiding twigs that seemed determined to poke Tungdil in the nose or eye. They rejoined the dusty road, keeping an eye out for other travelers.

Tungdil still bore the scars of his recent ordeals. His sleep was haunted by nightmares and on stopping to fill his pouch from a stream, he noticed that the reflection looking back at him was older, more weathered, and more serious than before. The horrors he had witnessed were inscribed on his face.

Determined not to fall victim to the orcs, Tungdil applied himself to his daily training sessions with Boпndil. He was a fast learner-uncannily fast, his tutor said. While the two of them practiced fighting, parrying, and feinting, Boлndal sat and watched them, smoking his pipe and keeping his thoughts to himself.

From time to time they came upon wayfarers or a settlement and Tungdil was always sure to mention Greenglade and warn anyone from venturing too close to the Perished Land.

The long line of carts rolling into Lios Nudin reinforced his advice. With war bands of orcs terrorizing Gauragar, people preferred to trust Nudin the Knowledge-Lusty rather than rely on King Bruron to protect them.

It was midafternoon when Tungdil fell back a few paces. Guessing that he wanted to answer a call of nature, the twins walked ahead.

When Tungdil set off again, feeling much relieved, he came to a junction, only to find that Boлndal and Boпndil were nowhere to be seen. A signpost pointed east to Porista, so he set off at a jog.

A short distance along the road was a wooden caravan, its sides painted gaily with pictures of scissors, knives, axes, and other implements. The horses had been unhitched and the driver had abandoned his vehicle in a hurry.

"Hello?" The rear door was ajar, allowing Tungdil to peer into the darkness within. There was something odd about the situation. "Is everything all right in there?"

He drew his ax, just in case. If runts had ambushed the caravan, they might be hiding nearby. Where are Boлndal and Boпndil when I need them?

"Hello?" he called again, climbing the two narrow wooden rungs that led up to the door. He pushed it open with the poll of his ax and glanced around the little workshop. Drawers had been turned out, cupboards pulled open, and in the far corner a pair of shoes poked out from under a cabinet.

He stepped inside. "Hello in there! Is something the matter?" The smell of metal was mixed with a sweeter, almost sickly, odor. Blood. Tungdil had seen enough to suspect that the wearer of the shoes was no longer among the living. I knew it! There could be only one explanation for the string of calamities unfurling around him: His journey was cursed.

Hooking his ax on his belt, he bent down and gave the feet a shake. "Are you injured?" On receiving no response, he lifted the cabinet to free whoever was trapped underneath. It was a dwarf, or rather, the body of a dwarf. His throat had been cut and his head was missing. A ring of crimson gore encircled his neck, indicating that he hadn't been dead for long.

"What in the name of Vraccas is going on?" Tungdil was so perturbed by the sight of the dead dwarf that he let go of the cabinet, dropping it onto the corpse. As he stepped away, he tried to think logically. The poor victim was obviously an itinerant dwarf whose smithy had been ransacked by highwaymen. His death was an unfortunate consequence of the dreadful human greed for precious metals and coin.

No one deserves to be left like that. Tungdil grabbed the feet again and was dragging the corpse from beneath the cabinet when something clattered to the floor.

On closer inspection, the object turned out to be a blood-encrusted dagger, and although there wasn't much light inside the caravan, he was sure he had seen it before: It belonged to the brigand whose horse he had shod several weeks earlier.

Just then he heard the clip-clop of hooves. Peering warily out of the narrow window, he uttered a strong dwarven oath. Five armed bandits had come to a halt beside the caravan. He flattened himself against the wall and hid behind the door: Concealment was his only hope of survival against a band of seasoned warriors. Unlike Boлndal and Boпndil, he wasn't ready to fight five against one.

Heavy footsteps approached, the ladder groaned, the caravan wobbled, and a shadow blotted out the sunlight falling through the door.

Tungdil gripped his ax with both hands.

A man entered, mumbling indistinctly, and knelt beside the corpse. "Someone's been in," he called to the others. "He wasn't lying like this before." He scrabbled around for his knife. "Don't let anyone near the caravan, and hide the darned honey pot," he ordered. "The last thing we need is for people to ask what we're doing with the head of an ugly groundling."

"Stands to reason what we're doing. Earning our money like everyone else," said one of the company, laughing coarsely.

"No need to shout about it," snapped the murderer. "The little fellows are hard enough to get hold of, without every last Tom, Dick, or Harry competing for the loot. Ah, here it is!" He picked up the dagger, wiped the blade on the corpse's jerkin, and returned it to its sheath.

Straightening up, he stood for a moment in the light of the window, his mail reflecting the sun. A beam hit Tungdil's blade and rebounded. "What in the…" The murderer whirled round.

Tungdil had to act while the element of surprise was with him. Rushing forward, he drove his ax into the man's boots, cutting through the leather and cleaving the bone. In his panic he struck with such force that the blade embedded itself in the wooden floor. It took all his strength to pull it out.

The brigand bellowed in pain. If his companions hadn't noticed the commotion, they were certainly aware of it now.

"It's no worse than you deserve!" Tungdil grabbed his ax and fled. Whooping and yelling to spook the horses, he leaped out onto the road.

The panicked animals shied away, unseating their riders, who had dropped their stirrups and were preparing to dismount.

Tungdil didn't wait for them to recover, heading instead for the dense forest to the right of the highway. He knew there was no room between the trunks for the men to pursue him on horseback and the undergrowth would slow their progress if they chased him on foot. For once his diminutive stature was an advantage. Besides, daylight faded quickly beneath the thick canopy of leaves and his eyes were accustomed to seeing in the dark.

"Catch the dwarfish bastard," the company's leader commanded. "We'll get a fortune for his head."

Tungdil tore through the forest, stopping occasionally to listen. Loud curses and snapping branches informed him of the brigands' dogged pursuit, but the gap between them was growing. After a time, their heavy footsteps faded entirely, and he knew that he had given them the slip.

Leaning back against a tree trunk, he stopped to recover his breath. No amount of marching could have prepared him for sprinting through a forest, laden with bags. He made a quick check of his things; the pouch with Gorйn's artifacts was still slung from his shoulder, rattling and jangling as soon as he moved. The bag had been making strange noises ever since his misadventure with the orc.

Still listening attentively for his pursuers, he took a sip of water. The brigands are hunting dwarves for a reward. He could scarcely believe it. Of all the terrible things that had happened, this new revelation shocked him to the core. Putting gold on dwarven lives ran counter to the laws of Girdlegard and it was hard to see the sense of it: What would anyone want with a disembodied head?

As soon as he had recovered sufficiently he made a beeline through the forest toward the nearest path. To his astonishment, Boлndal and Boпndil were coming the other way.

"About time too!" Boпndil called out to him. "You went the wrong way!"

"I went the right way," Tungdil corrected him. "You missed the turn to Porista!"

Boлndal took a closer look at him. "What happened, scholar? Did you run into trouble?"

"Just my luck to miss all the excitement," his brother grumbled moodily. Then he laughed. "I know, I bet a squirrel was after his n-"

"Headhunters," Tungdil cut him off. "They're decapitating dwarves in return for a reward."

"What?" screeched Boпndil, eyes rolling wildly. His voluminous beard billowed. "Where are they?"

"I don't know," Tungdil told him, "and to be perfectly honest, I'm just glad they've stopped chasing me."

They stopped in a clearing to decide what to do.

"Did they say who was paying them?" Boлndal asked.

"No, but I've seen them once before. They didn't lay a finger on me at the time-too many other people nearby, I suppose." Given half a chance, they would have killed me, he realized with a shudder.

"Sounds like the thirdlings are up to their tricks again. They're probably paying the bounty hunters to wipe out the rest of the dwarven race, or it could be a ploy to turn us against the long-uns so we end up feuding with them as well as the elves." Boлndal looked at his companions. "There'll be plenty to talk about when we get back to Ogre's Death."

They unpacked their blankets and spent the night under a dense roof of leaves. It seemed prudent to do without a fire: It was dark enough for the flames to be seen for miles around and the mere snapping of a twig seemed alarmingly noisy in the stillness. Tungdil snuggled down and put his hands behind his head, only to sit up abruptly and pluck a beetle from his thick shock of hair. "It's strange," he mused out loud, "but the two of you must have left Ogre's Death at roughly the same time as the headhunting began."

Boпndil, who had coiled his long plait into a pillow, frowned. "You mean it's nothing to do with the thirdlings? You think they were after us?"

His brother shook his head. "That hardly seems likely, Boпndil. No, our scholar thinks they were after him. Am I right?"

Tungdil sighed. "I'm probably making too much of it, but didn't you say I had a rival for the throne?"

Boлndal saw what he was getting at. "Gandogar Silverbeard would never do a thing like that," he said firmly. "He's an upstanding dwarf!"

"I don't know what you're getting so offended about," his brother said reproachfully. "He isn't even a secondling."

"No, but he's a dwarf, an honorable dwarf with some funny ideas." He thought for a moment. "Besides, Gundrabur didn't tell anyone about Tungdil until after we'd left. No," he insisted, "the headhunting is another nasty thirdling ploy. It's bad enough that one of our folks has turned against us, but we can't start suspecting Gandogar. Our race will be doomed if we can't trust one another; it mustn't be true, it can't be."

They lay in silence, pondering the matter uneasily until they fell asleep.

Tungdil's dreams were filled with all kinds of unsettling nonsense. Hordes of orcs and дlfar were pursuing him with shaving soap and razors, determined to cut off his burgeoning beard. In the end they caught him, held him down, and shaved his face; it was humiliating and infuriating to be lying on the ground with cheeks as naked as a baby.

The thought of it jolted him from his restless sleep and he got up, ate some of his provisions, and offered a fervent prayer to Vraccas, asking for protection from bounty hunters and safe completion of his mission.

You're not making it easy for me, Vraccas. Tungdil longed to be back in Ionandar's vaults with Frala, Sunja, and Ikana; even the prospect of seeing Jolosin no longer seemed so bad.

The long journey made friends of the trio and Boпndil devoted every spare moment to instructing Tungdil in the art of combat.

"So tell me, scholar," Boлndal said softly one evening when his brother was snoozing by the fire, "what do you make of the first dwarves you've ever been acquainted with?"

Tungdil grinned. "Do you want my honest opinion?"

"Of course."

"Boпndil has the fierier temper. His fists move faster than his thoughts and he generally acts on impulse, although once he decides himself on something, no one will convince him otherwise."

"I didn't need a scholar to tell me that. Go on!"

"He hates orcs and elves with a vengeance and his life is devoted to warfare. He fights with uncommon zeal."

"You know my brother well." His twin laughed. "Just don't let him hear you say so! And what of me?" he inquired eagerly, passing him a pipe.

"You have a gentler temperament. Your mind is sharper and you're willing to listen to other people's ideas." Tungdil drew on the pipe. "Your brown eyes are friendly, whereas your brother's… I can't describe the look in his eyes."

Boлndal clapped his hands softly. "True, all true."

"Why did the two of you become warriors?"

"Neither of us has any talent for masonry, so we decided to join the guard. The secondlings are custodians of the High Pass, the steep-sided gorge through the Blue Range. At ground level, the pass is fifty paces wide, but its walls are over a thousand paces high, and the sides slope inward after eight hundred paces, leaving the path in shadow except for a short span of time when the sun is directly above."

"Sounds pretty gloomy to me."

"Throughout our history a handful of custodians have defended our kingdom against invaders, no matter how powerful their ranks."

"Don't you have a portal like the fifthlings' Stone Gateway?"

"No, our forefathers cut a trench in the path, forty paces long and a hundred paces deep. On our side of the trench they built a rampart with a mechanical bridge. The engineers worked on the design for almost as long as it took for the masons to hew the trench." Boлndal paused, recalling the genius of the engineering. "They made a collapsible walkway from thin slabs of stone. It's incredibly light but can bear any load. At full extension, it rests on columns that rise up at the pull of a lever from the base of the trench, but the bridge can be retracted instantly by means of chains, cogs, and ropes."

Tungdil was lost for words. "That's…I've never heard anything like it! But what happens when orcs or ogres force their way onto the bridge?"

"We send them crashing into the trench. Tion's creatures are forever littering the fosse with their bones." He laughed softly. "One lot were so determined that they catapulted each other to the opposite side. Most died on impact; the others felt the fury of our axes."

Tungdil joined in his mirth. "If I were trying to cross over," he said thoughtfully, "I'd fill in the fosse or climb down and up the other side."

"They thought of that too, but they didn't stand a chance. There was only one occasion when our folk came close to going the same way as poor Giselbert's dwarves." Like every secondling, Boлndal knew this episode of his kingdom's history by heart. "An army of ogres had the same idea as you. On reaching the trench, they didn't even try to find a way of bridging it; they just climbed down carefully, waded through the bones of their ancestors, and appeared before us in their hundreds."

"But the secondlings managed to stop them?"

"Why do you think it's called Ogre's Death?" Boпndil chimed in chippily. "Can't you keep the noise down when I'm trying to get some sleep?" He rolled closer and gazed into the fire. "I'm wide-awake now, thanks to you!"

He fetched some cheese from his pack and melted it over the flames. This time Tungdil accepted a morsel. It didn't taste nearly as bad as he'd thought.

Boлndal resumed his story. "The ogres had got as far as storming the ramparts when their chieftain was killed. That was our salvation. Without their leader, the ogres didn't know what to do and our warriors succeeded in pushing them back to the edge of the trench. They fell to their deaths. But that was a long time ago, when Boпndil and I were still in nappies. There hasn't been a single attack on the High Pass for at least thirty cycles."

"No wonder." His twin guffawed. "The beasts are too scared of us. Actually, the High Pass has been so quiet lately that Gundrabur decided to send us in search of you." He looked across the fire at Tungdil and his brown eyes glinted. "You were right, of course. I was born to fight. Combat is my calling; it's who I am."

"And I go where he goes. Twins belong together; find one and you'll find both. It's just the way it is."

"Does every dwarf have a calling, then?" asked Tungdil, wondering what his might be. "Do you think I'll be a stone hauler or a trench digger, or will I be an artisan with a proper talent?"

"Most fourthlings are gem cutters and diamond polishers. Maybe trinkets are your thing?"

Tungdil had never taken much of an interest in precious stones. Lot-Ionan possessed a few items of jewelry and Tungdil had enjoyed looking at the sapphires, rubies, diamonds, and amethysts because of the way in which they caught the light. He had never felt the slightest urge to craft a sparkling jewel from uncut stone, though.

"I don't think so." There was a hint of disappointment in Tungdil's voice. "For as long as I can remember, I've been drawn to the forge. The smell of molten iron, tongues of fire that writhe like living things, the ring of the hammer, the hiss of hot metal as it enters the water-ever since I saw my first anvil, that's what being a dwarf has meant for me."

"You'll be a smith, then," Boпndil said approvingly. "A scholarly smith. Very dwarflike."

Tungdil shuffled closer to the fire and tried to divine the secrets of his inner self. He pictured mountains of diamonds and then a column of dancing orange sparks rising from a furnace. He felt more affinity with the furnace. Gold appealed to him too, though; he loved its soft warm shimmer.

"I like gold as well, you know," he confessed in a whisper. "I pick up any lost gold I can find-gold pieces, gold jewelry, gold dust dropped by prospectors. I collect it all."

The brothers roared with laughter. "He's got himself his own private hoard! If that isn't properly dwarven, I don't know what is. You'll be a warrior soon," Boпndil promised him, reaching for the pipe.

"I don't know," Tungdil said doubtfully. "The way you and Boлndal can fight and win against the odds. I'll never-"

"There's no such thing as having the odds against you," Boпndil broke in. "Some challenges are bigger than others; that's all there is to it."

"All the same, I feel safer at the anvil; a forge is where I belong." Tungdil decided not to dwell on the matter, so he opened his knapsack and pulled out Gorйn's books. The brothers watched as he slid the volumes out of their wax covering and examined them carefully.

"Well, what do they say, scholar?" Boпndil demanded impatiently. "Maybe that's your calling, to be a learned scribe or an engineer. The dwarves are renowned for being prodigious inventors."

"I can't make head or tail of them." To his immense disappointment, even the wording on the spine was written in scholarly script. "They were written for magi." In some ways it was surprising that Gorйn, an ordinary wizard, had been able to read them at all.

Tungdil tapped his forehead and scolded himself for being so slow. He had forgotten that the elf maiden would have been familiar with the workings of high magic. She must have helped Gorйn unlock the secrets of the books.

He stroked the leather binding of the books. Why are their contents so important to the дlfar? Since when have the elves' dark relatives been afraid of parchment and ink?

"We'll find out soon enough from Lot-Ionan," he said, trying to rally their spirits. He was just returning the books to their wrapping when his gaze fell on the bag of artifacts. It had suffered visibly from the journey. In spite of the hard-wearing leather, the pouch was bleached from the sun and scuffed in several places, and there were sweat marks and grease stains where it had come into contact with his food. A faint line stretched across its surface like a scar, an eternal reminder of its run-in with the orcish sword.

The longer Tungdil looked at the pouch, the more he desired to look inside. He had been fighting the urge to undo the colored drawstrings for some time.

What harm is there in looking? Surely I've got the right to know what I've been lugging about all this time. Besides, Gorйn is dead. Tungdil's self-control failed him.

Trying to look nonchalant, he reached for the pouch. He didn't want the others to know that the magus had forbidden him to look inside. He untied the knot and the drawstrings came open.

At that moment an ear-splitting, bone-shattering bang rent the air. A volley of sparks shot upward and exploded in a blast of color.

"By the hammer of Vraccas and his fiery furnace!" Leaping to their feet, the twins stood back-to-back, weapons at the ready.

Tungdil swore and tugged at the drawstrings, but the fireworks continued until he tied the knot exactly as it had been before. Lot-Ionan had booby-trapped the bag. He must have reckoned with his inquisitive nature and decided to teach him a lesson.

"What in all the peaks of Girdlegard was that?" Boлndal asked peevishly. "Not some magical nonsense, I hope."

"I just wanted to see…Well, I wanted to see if the booby trap worked," fibbed Tungdil, trying to breathe evenly. He was every bit as startled as the twins. "The magus put it there to, er, he put it there to stop the bag from being stolen!"

"All that noise from a little leather pouch?" Boпndil stared incredulously at the bag. "I still don't see what the fireworks are in aid of, unless the magus wanted whoever stole it to earn a fortune as a street magician."

"It's so I'll know where it is and be able to get it back," Tungdil told him, inventing an explanation that was rather more flattering than the truth. He didn't want them to know that his nosiness was to blame.

"If he didn't want it stolen, why didn't he put a proper spell on it?" growled Boпndil. He spat contemptuously in the bushes. "I always said that the long-uns' magic was no good."

His brother joined in. "He could have conjured a hammer to whack the villain on the head!" he suggested.

"Or a drawstring that crushes his wrists! That would teach the blackguard to keep his hands off other people's belongings."

Boлndal sat back down. "The magi work in mysterious ways. All that power and no common sense."

Tungdil swallowed, thankful that his punishment had been mild by comparison. "I'll pass on your ideas," he promised.

"We'll tell him ourselves!"

"No," he said quickly. "It would be best if you didn't. He doesn't take kindly to anyone interfering in his business, especially if they're strangers." He could feel his cheeks burning as he spoke, but luckily for him, the twins were busy poking about in the fire, trying to retrieve a portion of cheese that had been dropped in the confusion.

"A stunt like that could have been the death of us in Greenglade," muttered Boпndil. He looked at Tungdil sternly. "Leave the bag alone in the future!" Sighing, he impaled the morsel on a stick, dunked it briefly in some water to wash away the ash, and popped it into his mouth. "No harm done," he said.

But Tungdil had taken the lesson to heart. From now on I won't touch the bag except to sling it over my shoulder and take it off at night. For all he cared, it could be stuffed full of gold; nothing could persuade him to open the drawstrings.