The Great Betrayal

CHAPTER TWELVE

Old Magic

Morek had been listening to the rinkkaz from an alcove behind his master. Dutifully, he remained silent throughout the summit with his head bowed.

As Ranuld Silverthumb returned to the shadows he strode past his apprentice, uttering a single word.

‘Come.’

Morek followed, marvelling at how the statue of Smednir slid aside as his master worked the earth runes on the hidden doorway it concealed. Like many of the lesser ancestors, Smednir dwelled in the penumbral darkness that haunted the edges of the Great Hall. Few knew of the statue’s presence, let alone the existence of the hidden passageway that lay behind it.

Lost in thought as he counted the six hundred and thirty-four steps of the spiral down into the first of the deeps, Morek started when his master spoke.

‘You are prepared for what is before you, runesmith.’

From Lord Silverthumb’s tone, it was difficult to tell whether it was a question or even one that he wanted answering.

‘I am, master.’ The feebleness of his own voice surprised Morek.

Ranuld Silverthumb barked back at him.

‘I know you are, wazzock. I have made certain of it, sure as steel.’

Morek fell into silence again at the sudden rebuke, which only earned further reproach.

‘Have you no tongue, zaki? Bitten off by a grobi hiding under that last step was it?’

Morek resisted the urge to look back to see if there actually was a greenskin crouched under the last step. Their echoing footfalls, clacking against the stone, seemed louder in that moment.

Smoothed by the rivulets of water trickling from some underground lake or stream, the walls of the stairwell were also chiselled with runes of warding and disguise. None but a runesmith, or someone who was accompanied by one, could enter this place and not lose his way. By their natures, dwarfs were secretive but there were none more clandestine about their craft than the runesmiths. Other than its enchanted sigils, there was little else to distinguish the long, winding, descending corridor.

It was wide, massive in fact like so much of the subterranean Karaz Ankor. There were precious few sconces with lit braziers and those that did grace the coiling tunnel did so with a flickering, eldritch flame.

Occasionally, the hewn face of Thungi, lesser ancestor god of runesmiths, would glare at them from some sunken reliquary or shrine. Lord Silverthumb seemed to ignore it but his lips moved in silent oath-making as he passed by the patron of their guild and profession. Morek felt cowed by every stony glance, feeling more unready and unworthy than his master surely already believed. After the four hundred and fifty-eighth step, he found his voice again.

‘No, master. But I am unsure of what you want me to say.’

Lord Silverthumb grumbled another insult under his breath, hawked and spat as if the stupidity of his apprentice left a bitter taste in his mouth.

‘Aren’t you wondering,’ he said, ‘why I brought you to the rinkkaz?’

‘I… um…’

‘You are the second ufdi to refer to yourself as “um” in as many days.’ Ranuld Silverthumb came to an abrupt halt, bringing Morek to a stop too. So sudden was it that the apprentice nearly tripped and fell trying to avoid clattering into his master, who stood in front of him like a craggy bulwark and glowered.

‘Come here,’ he snapped, and seized Morek’s chin in an iron grip that had more in common with a vice than a dwarf’s fingers. Even the gnarled leathern skin of the runelord chafed and the apprentice barely stifled a yelp.

Lord Silverthumb pulled open Morek’s eye, using thumb and forefinger to check the sclera. His own eyes narrowed as he made an observation.

‘Are you a doppleganger wearing the flesh of Morek as a dwarf would wear a coat of mail? Hmm, well? Speak, fiend, if that’s what you are!’

Ranuld Silverthumb let him go, carried on walking.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I think you are him.’

Morek shut his open mouth, an answer no longer needed.

His master continued. ‘I shall tell you then why I brought you.’

Scents and sounds wafted and emanated from below as they closed on the deep. Morek discerned metal, the heady aroma of soot, the tang of heat pricking his tongue. Hammer rang on anvil, creating a monotonous but dulcet symphony that had oft been used to send beardlings to sleep. But there was something further… Old stone, dank, but which had seen and endured more than one age of the slowly turning world. Every time Morek placed his hand upon it to steady himself when a step was too broad to descend safely without being braced he felt the resonance within the rock, the sweat and earth of the dwarfs who had also once traversed this passage. Magic was thick in the air, and not just on account of the runes engraved into the walls. It saturated the corridor, bound to the rock, to the earth.

‘Master?’ Morek ventured after a few minutes of silence.

Lord Silverthumb scowled, flashed a scathing glance in his apprentice’s general direction. ‘What is it now, wazzock? Always talking… chatter, chatter, chatter,’ he said, mimicking a flapping mouth with each of his hands. ‘You’re no better than a rinn.’

Reddening beneath his beard, Morek said, ‘Why did you bring me to the rinkkaz, master?’

Lord Silverthumb sniffed either with regret or rueful derision, Morek couldn’t tell which.

‘Do you know how old I am, Morek?’ he asked.

‘I… um…’

‘Again with this “um”. Our noble ancestry has been watered down to a clutch of would-be lordlings and princes who when confused can only think of “um”. You and the prince, “ummers” both. Must be chuffing catching or something.’

Ranuld Silverthumb had lit a pipe and was blowing intricate smoke rings in the shape of runic knotwork through the flickering half-darkness. ‘I am venerable,’ he said, and now he sounded weary, thin like old parchment or a threadbare tarp stretched too wide over its frame. ‘The oldest living runelord of the Karaz Ankor. Knowledge is my legacy and I am to bequeath it to you so the greatest secrets of our craft do not die with me. But I am yet to be convinced if such power is for your generation of dawi. If I pass on my wisdom to you, I will be putting god-fire into your hands, Morek. Are we not too belligerent, so that such a thing would destroy us? But if I don’t, and allow this power to fade, to be consigned to dust and memory, then the dawi will fade as well. One is a slow demise, the other a flare of fire, ephemeral but bright.’

The talk of mortality and destruction sent Morek into a grim quietude. He got the impression of a great weight upon his master, a burden of which he had confessed but a little. Of course, he knew there was much below the forge halls, in the lowest deeps of Lord Silverthumb’s chambers, that he had never been privy to. Giving of knowledge, especially that which comes also with power, implied trust — but not only in the wisdom of the receiver, but also in his ability to keep such power safe and for what it was intended. How many had fallen to corruption and ruin where the pursuit of power was concerned?

Known as ‘Furrowbrow’, after his father and his clan, entire harvests could have been planted in the deep ripples lining Morek’s forehead at that moment.

Ranuld Silverthumb seemed not to notice his apprentice’s dilemma.

‘The High King has asked for a weapon and armour for his son. A gift if he is worthy of it, and token of his father’s esteem. Gotrek Starbreaker too, you see, has a legacy to hand down. All of us, we dwarf lords, carry that burden. You will forge them, az and klad, inscribe the master runes and speak the rites.’

Morek briefly bowed his head. ‘Tromm, master. It is a great honour.’

‘No, apprentice, it is your duty. To me, to your king, to your race. Legacy, lad, is all we veterans have left to us in the end.’

The last fifty steps were descended in silence until Morek asked just before they reached the lower deep, ‘You were gone for several days, master… Did you find what you were looking for?’

Lord Silverthumb shook his head. ‘No, lad, I didn’t. Old magic is getting harder to find.’ He scratched his beard as if pondering why. Unable to reach an answer, he carried on. ‘But I fear the world is changing because of it. Something lurks in the air, the earth. I fear it will change us, that it is changing us even now.’

Morek frowned and the furrows deepened. ‘Old magic?’

Ranuld Silverthumb shrugged. ‘Magic is magic, I suppose. It’s what’s done with or can be harnessed with it that makes some of it feel old. We dawi know magic. Its dangers are known to us too, so we trap it within stone and steel in order to control it, lest it control us and we become as stone.’

Morek didn’t fully understand, but chose to ask no further questions. His master had answered; he had to fathom its meaning for himself.

They were walking the slab-stoned passage that led to the iron forge where the clattering of hammers sounded and bellows wheezed in time with every strike of metal against metal. Bordering the threshold of the forge hall, Lord Silverthumb’s expression darkened as a cloud passing over the face of the sun.

‘Trouble is coming. It’s been coming for thousands of years but we’ll see it in our lifetime, Valaya have mercy. A great doom, lad, and a terrible darkness from which there may be no light.’ With the premonition bright like azure flame in the runelord’s eyes, he retreated into himself but spoke his inner monologue aloud. He rasped, voice barely rising above a whisper, ‘A gathering must be made, a conclave of the runelords.’ He shook his head, his faraway eyes no longer seeing the fuliginous dark of the forge or the lambent orange glow of embers at its yawning cavern entrance. ‘Won’t be easy. Some might be dead, others lost or asleep. Some can sleep for years at a time. It feels like an age since I last slept… Ancestors, all of us. Too old, too thin and past our time. Been centuries since the last conclave, but the wisdom of the ages can no longer be left to slumber. I fear it will be needed in the end…’

Ranuld Silverthumb blinked once and his voice returned to as it was before. ‘What are you staring at, wazzock? Look like you’ve seen one of those talking rats those two ufdis were blathering about.’ He snapped his fingers and made Morek jump. ‘Wake up, wannaz. Now,’ he added, heading into the forge, ‘Snorri Lunngrin, now Halfhand, needs a gauntlet fashioning. Find him before you begin the rune rites, examine his wound and see what’s to be done.’

Morek was half agape, unable to follow his master’s capricious nature in the slightest.

‘Well, go on then, zaki,’ said Lord Silverthumb, shooing his apprentice away like he was a beardling. ‘Bugger off and find the prince. And do it fast, the anvil calls.’

Ranuld had brought him all the way down to the grongaz only to dismiss him and send him back up its steps again. He was about to ask why but his master was gone, swallowed whole by soot and shadow.

Scratching his head, more furrow-browed than ever, Morek went to look for Snorri Halfhand.

For Ranuld, the dark brought with it a sense of peace. Even with the hammers of the grongaz flattening and shaping, he found tranquillity in his own domain. Breathing deep of the soot and ash, of the metal and the heat, he sighed.

The words spoken in the ruins of Karak Krum had come unbidden. They were also not meant to be heeded, but fate had other ideas it seemed. Briefly, he hoped he hadn’t begun a landslide with his trickling rock. Deciding it was done and could not be undone, he sagged in his ceremonial armour and began removing it. Unbuckling straps, uncinching clasps, he walked over to a stone effigy of a dwarf’s body. There he released the breastplate, followed by the rest of the cuirass. Resting it reverently on the armour dummy, he took off his helm and did the same with that. Then he grabbed a leather smock, stained with the evidence of forging, streaked black and scorched with burns. He passed through a dark chamber, beyond his forging anvil. No other smiths were present, Ranuld was alone. The sound of hammers echoed from the upper deeps, from the foundries and armouries above. Passing a weapons rack, he took up his staff and looped a hammer to his belt.

Smoke parted before him and the firelight of the forge itself cast deepening shadows, pooling in his craggy features. Through a narrow aperture in the stone, he crossed a small corridor to a door hewn from petrified wutroth. Ranuld merely presented his staff and a sigil hidden upon the door’s surface glowed. With the scrape of rock against rock, the portal parted wide enough for the runelord to enter. A muttered incantation and the solid door closed behind him again, sealing off the new chamber like a tomb.

It was dark within, darker even than the rune forge, and no sound reached its confines. Warmth radiated from inside, even standing at the threshold. Lifting his staff, Ranuld ignited the first braziers set into the flanking walls. Like ranks of fiery soldiers they came alight, first six then ten then twenty then a hundred. A chain of fire burst into life down both walls and threw an eldritch glow upon the contents.

‘Duraz a dum…’ he intoned, releasing a breath of awe.

No matter how many times he had seen them, they never failed to impress him.

Six immense anvils sat in front of Ranuld, arranged in two ranks of three. Silver flashed in the brazier light, the anvils capturing the potency of the magic used to ignite them and using it to set their own runes aflame.

Ranuld read each and every one, careful to speak them in his mind and not aloud. The rune hammer in his belt hummed with the proximity of the artefacts, and the runelord patted the weapon to calm its spirit.

Anvils of Doom were one of the single most powerful weapons the dwarfs had in their arsenal. Legend held that Grungni had forged them in the elder days, as a means of harnessing the elements. Mastery over lightning, earth and fire were the reward of any runesmith dedicated and skilled enough to mount an Anvil of Doom. Six more resided in each of the major dwarf holds of the Worlds Edge Mountains, presided over by their chief runelords.

Muttering oaths to Grungni and Valaya, Ranuld ran his hand over the surface of one. Its inner glow grew brighter still and a thin veil of lightning crackled across the metal. It fed to the others, leaping from anvil to anvil until all six were wracked by the same storm. Shadows that were impenetrable to the brazier light retreated before the magic and revealed further runic artefacts in silhouette and half-light, immense war gongs and battle horns the size of ballistae. Behind them, at the back of the chamber slumped onto their haunches, were statues. Stone golems, like the other artefacts in the room, were relics of the elder days. Even with the unfettered fury of the anvils crackling loudly before them, the golems did not stir. Magic was leaving them, fading just like the knowledge which had created it.

A last artefact caught Ranuld’s eye, a massive war shield turned on its edge and polished to a mirror sheen. Runes circled around a plane of pellucid silver in which the runelord could see his own image reflected back at him. He tried not to linger on the thought that he looked older than he remembered, so much so that he almost didn’t recognise himself any more.

‘A great doom, indeed,’ he muttered, recalling his earlier vision, and recaptured the lightning of the anvils back into his staff where it would dissipate harmlessly.

Approaching the shield, he spoke an incantation under his breath and the silver shone, rippling like a pool.

Only the Burudin were capable of harnessing its power. There were eight ancient lords of the rune that yet lived in the dwarf realm and one of those belonged to the expatriate hill dwarfs of the upper hold-forts. Over the centuries, many had perished through war or old age. Ranuld had known each and every one, just as he knew their like would not return and he like the remaining Burudin would be the last of an era.

Feldhar Crageye, Negdrik Irontooth, Durgnun Goldbrow, these were the ancients that Ranuld sought next. Agrin Fireheart was second in venerability only to Ranuld. He had already answered the summons and was on his way from Barak Varr, but more were needed.

Ungrinn Lighthand, Jordrikk Forgefist, Kruzkull Stormfinger… Leagues upon leagues separated the distant holds but through the shield that would be as nothing. Ranuld wondered how many more would heed the call and come to the conclave. With regret, he realised that some would not, that some would already be dead. Old magic was leaving the world, never to return. And like all who are privy to secret knowledge, he feared what would happen when it did.