EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (377 page)

The sheer scale of devastation we were facing dissolved my hate. I pulled the gnome I called No-Kill towards me, wrapping my claws around her shoulders and hugged tightly, keeping her eyes away from the endless abyss. The gnome cried into my shoulder, her sobs echoing in the vast chasm.

The reality of what had happened to my own city, as surely destroyed as this one, really, truly hit home for the first time. Atikala was as gone as this nameless place, no less cast into the endless abyss, and there would be just as few survivors. No-Kill and I shared the same pain.
 

Everything we had known about, cared about, and loved was gone.

So I cried too, and Khavi as well, mourning for the destruction of civilisations, for the massacre of two races, and the hopeless inevitability that presented so many more questions than answers.
 

No-Kill was first to regain some sense of wit. She let go of me, stepped back, and pointed to the Feyeater.
 

“Kill,” she implored as she pointed at her heart, her face streaked with tears. “Kill.”

I didn’t say anything, but I felt the dagger slide from its sheath. Khavi was at my side, his claw clasped around the hilt, holding the Feyeater in both hands.

“Khavi,” I said, my voice shaking, “it should be me.”

“No,” he said. “I know you don’t want to. I’ll do it.”

A week ago I would have given everything I had to say that a whole city of gnomes were dead, that it was worth any price to bring our enemies to utter ruination. I’d trained my whole life to kill, to use weapons and magic to protect my people, and this was to be my duty. My purpose in life.

Now, though, there was another gnome here, begging for death, one more body I could add to the slaughter. But I didn’t want that. I didn’t want Khavi to kill her, either.

I wanted No-Kill to live. I wanted to find out what her name was, and maybe even be her friend. I wanted her to come with us to Ssarsdale, and explain that this gnome wasn’t evil, and then she could spend her days with us, in our new community.

But I couldn’t. No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t deny that No-Kill was a gnome, and I was a kobold.

I couldn’t say or do anything.

No-Kill slid down onto her knees, her eyes closed, and her head hung. Khavi gently nudged the dagger against her shoulder, letting the impossibly fine tip find a vein. The weapon seemed to hunger for it, sensing the presence of the creature it was enchanted to kill, and I swore the blade stretched, begging to be plunged into gnome flesh.

His strike planned, Khavi raised the blade up above his head, staring down at the gnome whose real name neither of us knew. He hesitated. The dark blade waited patiently as Khavi stared at the gnome that shared our anger and our pain.

Then he plunged the Feyeater into her neck. Blood gushed from the wound, bubbling over and splattering onto Khavi’s claws. No-Kill slumped over in a crumpled heap, her face laying in the rapidly expanding pool of scarlet.

He wiped his claws off on the back of No-Kill’s cloak, then handed the bloodsoaked dagger back to me.

No-Kill’s heart wasn’t black. It was red, healthy and living. Not evil at all.

“Thank you,” I murmured. I went to the body of No-Kill and crouched beside her, reaching out and touching her lifeless body. I was empty. Hollowed as if a piece of myself died.

“I didn’t ask her name,” I said, “or the name of this place…whatever it was.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Khavi. “She’s just a gnome. This hive of them is gone, but there are many more out there, below the earth and even on the surface. Their species is numerous.” His tone became acidic. “You’ll find no end of feylings to dote over if you go looking for them.”

Khavi’s anger was not my own, and his words couldn’t reach me. I felt nothing. I gently rolled No-Kill onto her back and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said to No-Kill’s body, although the words seemed entirely empty. I looked at Khavi. “We should bury her. She wanted that for her kin, she’d want it for herself.”

“I say we just toss the body into the abyss, so she can lay with the others. That’s as good a grave as the rest of the city got, and better than they deserved.”

“I’m still the patrol leader,” I said, “and I say we’re going to bury her.”

“You’ll do that on your own,” spat Khavi, folding his claws and turning to stare at the bottomless abyss.

Such insolence would be normally be punishable by field execution, and as patrol leader I had the authority to do it. If I did, I knew, deep in my heart, that Khavi would accept this ruling. That’s what he was. Strong, loyal, and obedient. I could make him. I could punish him if he didn’t.

But I knew that I had to do this.

“Fine.”

So I did. I wanted to dig a grave for her, much as we had done for her kin, but then I had a better idea. I carried No-Kill’s corpse to a spot near the wall and cleared the dirt and dust away from a section, deep and long, scraping away the soil. I prepared a suitable resting flat stone shelf, then I withdrew the scroll. I unfurled it and began to read.

The scroll’s light was almost painful. The earth itself bent to heed my words. The ground rose up into steps, five in total, then a raised platform with a rectangular box. I had no idea what I was making; I simply imagined the burial mound we had placed No-Kill’s kin into, then tried to make something better and more elaborate, something more deserving of her.

The writing on the scroll faded away to nothing. I stupidly had forgotten a lid for the tomb, so I fetched rocks from the gateway and piled them near the box until I was certain I had enough to cover it.

I gently placed No-Kill’s body within, then one by one, I placed the heavy stones into the tomb, sealing her body within. To be certain, I piled on lumps of glittering crystal from the tunnel further back. I found a large flat stone near the entrance, formerly a trapdoor to defensive tunnels, and used the magical dagger’s tip to inscribe upon it in the language of dragons.

Here lies the gnome with no name, last of her kin.

She faced life with courage and death with the same.

We never knew what her name truly was,

but in another life I would have called her friend.

I placed the plaque at the head of the mound of crystal, taking care that Khavi would not see what I had done. I knew he would hate it. I had taken the only real weapon we had, the only thing stronger than my spells and our steel, and used it to give a proper grave to his enemy. In my mind, though, we had intended to use the scroll to bury gnomes.

In the end it had been used for that purpose.

I joined Khavi staring out at the emptiness that was the abyss, the place where a city of gnomes had once lived and breathed.

Kobolds did not bury their dead. They were incinerated in the city’s furnaces, burned to ashes, used as fuel to heat the nurseries, and sustain the growth of new life. But I knew that gnomes and other species treated the dead with veneration, and for the first time, I began to understand why.

“Where do we go from here?” asked Khavi, his quiet voice echoing faintly from the other side of the cavern walls.

For a moment I didn’t answer, then I shouldered my backpack and breathed deeply of air too sweet and fresh to be from a place that had seen so much death.

“The only way is up,” I said.

We left the dead city, continuing our long climb to the surface.

Act II

Passage to Salvation

T
HE
END
OF
A
TIKALA
KILLED
our hope, but the destruction of our enemies at Stonehaven took with it something else.

Our hate.

There is a saying amongst my people that reflects this. Within every heart lives two dragons, a dragon of Hope and a dragon of Hate, both mighty and powerful in equal measure. They war constantly, always struggling for dominance to be the rightful ruler of your heart.

You feed them with your actions.

All that drives us in life is fuelled by either hope or hate. Hate is the dark mirror of hope, empowering our hearts with the same fire and energy but striving for different ends. Hate drives us to bring those above us to ruin, while hope exalts us to raise ourselves up beyond where we are. We want to better ourselves, or drag down someone else so we are on top.

The destruction of the gnomes had taken with it the dragon of our hate, but hope could not flare up to take its place; hope was already dead within us. We were soulless, cast adrift and ready to settle down to wait for death. I remember these times as being some of the hardest of them all, not because of pain, or suffering, or loss…but because I no longer felt anything at all.

Both dragons lay dead, and my heart was a barren wasteland cloaked in winter. While this wounded me greatly, it was better than the alternative. I said many things, did many things, that I regret in this time of my life, but I always feel the slightest bit of pride that at that moment, right when I had nothing, I didn’t feed Hate and nurse it back to health.

Most manage to find an equilibrium in their hearts between Hate and Hope, controlling the former while encouraging the latter, and for most, this is a happy and content existence. Some find that Hope’s strength overpowers Hate easily, and that they are able to do noble things effortlessly and naturally simply by following their intrinsic sense of righteousness.

However, some embrace that hateful dragon within them, that boiling black pit of rage that simmers and bubbles out of sight, ushering them into darkness and wickedness too numerous to count. They embrace this powerful ally and use it to great effect.

Sometimes my surface friends wonder why anyone would do this, would willingly plunge themselves into shadow and wrath. Even humans, that most flexible and different of species, almost universally espouse the idea that good is preferable to evil, and that it is better to be noble than to be malicious, even when they do not believe it. Why would anyone listen to that whisper from Hate, the dark voice urging them to abandon Hope and to take the selfish path, the destructive path, the path of darkness?

Kobolds know. Kobolds know because the voice of Hate, the black dragon within, is seductive. It promises that all things are relative, and that by listening, one can reach the summit of their dreams easier and faster. Hate promises much—power, wealth, revenge for slights real and imagined. When the choice is made between humble Hope and eager Hate, it is Hate’s words that have the most strength, and its promises are greater.

But greater too, is Hate’s hunger, and you can only feed a dragon for so long before it grows too large for the meals you bring. Where Hope would grow fat and content, sleeping most of its days and dreaming of pleasant things, Hate grows ever more ravenous.

When the food grows too meagre for its bulk, Hate turns its greedy eyes upon you.

— Ren of Atikala

Chapter IX

Two weeks later

W
E
WANDERED
THE
DIMLY
LIT
tunnels of the underworld without a goal, walking for the sake of walking, the plan to make for Ssarsdale long gone from our minds. We moved from tunnel to tunnel, from cavern to cavern, the regiment of our disciplined upbringing gone. We set no watches, made no schedules, and didn’t determine a pace or direction. We rarely spoke, exchanging less than a dozen words a day, mindlessly walking in the endless dim light of the underground.

We slept, ate rations we salvaged from the gnome battlements, sipped water, and walked. We did not recall our daily lesson; we did not practice or clean our equipment or make a proper camp. We did nothing but simply exist in the timeless, seasonless underworld, letting time slip away from us.

Finally, one day, Khavi simply would not wake up.

He was not asleep. His eyes were open, but he remained curled in a ball, unmoving and silent, his breathing slow and even. His gear lay strewn around in a disorganised pile, his sword half out of its scabbard, thin scabs of rust forming over the blade. It hadn’t been cleaned or oiled in some time, an almost unthinkable lack of diligence for a routine loving kobold.

Almost as unthinkable as my complete lack of caring about it.

“It’s time to get up,” I said, unable to keep the weariness from my voice. “We need to get going.”

Khavi didn’t stir. I reached out and poked him in the side. He still didn’t move.
 

“Khavi, come. We’ve slept long enough.”

“Have we.”

“Yes.” I couldn’t force energy and life into my flat and lackluster tone.“It’s been a full sleep cycle. It’s time we moved on.”

“To where?”

To where indeed? I searched my mind for the answer. “Ssarsdale of course.” The words seemed foreign to my tongue. “Are you all right?”

“How do you know Ssarsdale still exists, and if it does, how can they help us? Why would they bother?”

I was weary. I had slept more than adequately; too much, in fact, letting the hours pass without care. I was tired of Khavi and his attitude. I was tired of the endless tunnels throughout the underworld. I was tired of wandering without a point, tired of everything, tired of living.
 

“Ssarsdalians are our cousins. Our kin. They will heed the news of Atikala’s destruction, and they will send help, whatever help they can spare. They, unlike us, are not neighbours to any gnomes; the nearest gnome settlement was No-Kill’s.”

The name of the dead gnome bought some life back into Khavi. He managed a dry smile, just with the corners of his lips. “
Was
being the important word, isn’t it? Those gnomes are long dead now. So there’s some victory in all of this.”

I rested my hand on his side. “That is something.”

“Not enough for me to consider moving.” Khavi closed his eyes, trying to sleep once more. “And I don’t feel right about that. Don’t misunderstand; I’m glad that the gnomes are gone, and I hope that a colossal ball of a dead god’s shit falls straight through onto their city, but I can’t help but feel that it’s all so…pointless. They’re dead, we’re dead, who wins from that?”