Greyfax Grimwald (7 page)

Otter was not pleased at the thought of taking tip abode in a country with no river close at hand, but resigned himself wearily. Bear merely grunted his disapproval of so unlikely a wood for housing, and set about making himself one last sandwich. As the company made ready to part, Greyfax drew Dwarf aside, and the two held a hasty conference out of earshot of the others.

“Whatever could be so interesting?” said Bear, through a mouthful of tuck.

Otter made no reply, but felt that no good would come of it, whatever it was.

Froghorn held up his hand after their own fashion in parting, and the three friends watched the two disappear into the waning sun.

“Let’s get to our own travels quickly, before it’s too dark to steer,” said Dwarf, and they turned their backs on the now fading shadows of the riders as they passed on into the forest and out of sight.

“Where shall we make for?” asked Bear, grumbling and already hungry again, his mind running over distasteful images of lying starved under a breakthorn patch. The prospects, it seemed to him, did not look very cheering, and his mind ran ahead to the morning. “Gnawing old bark, and drinking rainwater, I should say,” and after a pause, looking at a distant gray haze growing near across the horizon, “That what’s not soaked us to the bone.”

“We’ll at least stop the night with Creddin. A roof, but not much more, from what Greyfax said.”

“Better that than nothing,” chimed in Otter, looking back wistfully over his shoulder at the invisible river away beyond the forest’s end.

After an hour’s walk, they reached what was left of old Tubal Hall, its gates now broken and rusted in the fading gray light of dusk, its once wide paved road cracked with tree roots and disuse, and the many aboveground windows of the hall itself darkened and lifeless. A deep, open well lay in the courtyard, many fathoms to its near-empty bottom, and Bear, looking up at the dismal dark form of the building, knocked a rock over its edge, and it echoed hollow and distant for a long time before they heard the almost inaudible splash.

“A good thing it was a rock and not you,” scolded Dwarf. “I thought bears had night sight.”

“Enough to know a dwarf when they see one,” said Bear. “Especially one that has a wagging tongue.”

Bear had been badly frightened by his near escape.

“Stop this silly nonsense, you two,” admonished Otter, tugging Dwarf by his coat sleeve. “A light just came on there.”

At one dark end of the north side of the hall, a flickering light now glowed dimly from a lower-story window, and a creaking voice called anxiously out of the shadows, “Is that you?”

“It is I, Broco, Dwarf, lore master, cousin to the late and glorious owners of these halls, Tubal, sire, Bani, son, come to seek shelter for myself and friends, two animal lords from beyond Calix Stay.”

Darkness fell thick and heavier than before as the light was extinguished. All closed into silence. Bear’s great hackles raised, his eyes flamed, and he bared tooth and claw and began his war rumble deep in his throat.

“Here you, you lowly thief, speak out your name and business where you have none. These halls stand no dishonor, even in ruins. Come forth, or feel the wrath of Bruinlth, bear lord and stout heart,” cried Dwarf. “Speak.”

Creaking, old, and breaking, the voice called back, “If you be who you say, step forward that I may see you.”

Fearing ambush, from they knew not what, the three friends cautiously advanced. Bear was raised to his full height, and alert, expectant.

“Hold, that’s close enough,” croaked the voice. Suddenly a blaze of light drowned them, blinding their dark-seeing eyes.

“Well, upon my beard, it’s as you say.” The voice had lightened. “Come in, come in, old Creddin speaks, Cousin.” And a shuffling, knobby figure advanced out to meet them, head bowed, shaking paw and hand alike.

“I fear any who go about these parts, day or night,” he explained. “And one can never be too careful who he lets through the door. I’ve got this part of the hall bolted and airtight, so nothing save an army could batter it down once I’m locked in. Come, there’s mulberry tea and a loaf or two if you’re hungry.”

Creddin led them into his fortress, bare and stark with but a table and chair before the fireplace, but farther down the room they saw broken and tattered pieces of the old furnishings stacked neatly. The rooms were actually larger than they appeared; a doorway opened off to the right onto what turned out to be the galley where Creddin prepared his simple meals, and another door to the left stood closed. “My sleeping quarters,” he explained, bobbing back and forth, bringing up three more chairs and placing them by the fire.

They sat long, eating and talking, refilling their cups with the slightly tart mulled drink, exchanging what news they had, omitting only the part of seeing Greyfax and Froghorn, for all the three friends knew better than to speak of wizards’ journeys.

“And you, Master Otter? How come you to be traveling with my illustrious cousin?” Creddin’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, although he spoke in an oily, kind voice.

Otter, his mouth full of buttered bread, had to chew quickly before answering. “I’m not at all sure why, although it seemed the thing to do when Dwarf was talking. And then he sang that song, and it seemed as if I was remembering something. I can’t remember what, but it was beautiful, yet scary at the same time, if you know what I mean.”

“Exactly, old fellow,” agreed Bear. “That’s what I’ve been trying to say myself. It seems as if I’d been waiting across the River for something, and then you and Dwarf came by my camp, and all of a sudden here I am.”

Bear fell silent, a slightly concerned look creeping across his broad muzzle, and he repeated the last words.

“And all of a sudden here I am.”

“It goes deeper than that, I’m sure,” encouraged Creddin, refilling the tea mugs all around.

“Not really,” went on Otter. “I only know that I spent quite some time in the Meadows of the Sun. I know I have a mother and father somewhere, or many of them, but that was all long ago, and I barely recall them.”

“Crossing the River often does that, according to Greyfax,” put in Dwarf, then hastily corrected himself. “At least that’s what it says in any of the lore I ever read.”

“I guess it must,” Bear grunted. “I can’t for the life of me tell you about anything except the time I spent across the River. But those things I saw in the fire, about all those things, they made me feel all funny inside, like I was watching things happen to me in a dream.”

“That’s what I felt, Bear. Like it was me, but me a long way away,” chittered Otter.

“And you, dear Coz? These are terrible times to be out upon these roads.”

Creddin refilled their mugs as he spoke, and his old eyes glistened in the cheerful firelight.

“I’m not sure, yet I do feel as if there is a reason. It’s like trying to remember something that’s right on the tip of your tongue. It’s all right there, but it’s as far away as last spring’s pancakes.” Dwarf was feeling ill at ease as he spoke.

“Well, enough for now. Let’s have a cheery note to go on. Master Bear, how was it in the Meadows, or wherever it is you say you hail from?”

Creddin’s old hand shook nervously as he lit a blackened stump of a pipe from a blazing coal he had taken from the fire with a pair of tongs.

Bear knitted his brow, and sought to recall the place the old dwarf asked of.

“It seems I’ve forgotten much of it,” began Bear, “although it hasn’t been even a full day since we crossed.”

“Then you’ve only just crossed?” asked Creddin quickly.

“Well, so to speak. Yes and no. I mean it’s all confused.”

“It feels that way, doesn’t it, Bear?” chittered Otter, rolling his empty mug about on his smooth gray stomach. “I can hardly recall how those berries we had for breakfast tasted. But I remember perfectly well how the travel tuck tasted.”

“Travel tuck?” queried Creddin suspiciously.

“Some we’d baked for the journey,” put in Broco. “But come, tell us of how you’ve come along these past years.”

“It’s a sad lot, that tale,” croaked Creddin, “and one that hardly bears the telling.”

“Were they slain in battle?” chirruped Otter, holding his mug out to be refilled again by Bear.

“No in one case and aye in another, Master Otter. Cousin Bani was killed by the Dragon Hordes at Last Battle. Cousin Tubal lived on for a great many years, prospering in many ways, and building up a great commerce with all kind in these realms. There was lumber to be traded with Mankind, and ores to swap for the fine jewelry and cloaks from the elfin hosts who dwelled in these parts.”

Creddin’s old eyes sparkled as he spoke, and his voice grew stronger as he told of the years of plenty.

“But then began our fall,” he snapped, and the light went out in his eyes. “Dealing with men and elves soon led to trouble, and one after another, wars broke out on our boundaries. Small at first, but leading to longer sieges.”

The old dwarf banged his mug on the arm of his chair.

“And that’s what led to this,” he said in a wheezing voice, throwing his other arm wide to indicate what was left of the ruined hall. “When the darkness began to move, the end wasn’t far beyond.”

“The darkness?” echoed Bear, his heart frozen, remembering for some reason the vision in the wizard’s fire, the icy emptiness he had felt. Yet as soon as he’d thought it, the other vision of the dazzling white flame drove out the chilling memory of that vast white frozen abyss.

Creddin closed his story abruptly, and amply said he now stayed on in hopes of better days. He made no mention of how he had come to be spared while the rest perished, nor said anything of who it was he had been expecting when he first called out to them in the darkness of the courtyard.

When at last they went to the beds Creddin had prepared, Bear decided that he would pass the night on watch, although he said nothing to the others. Something, he could not say exactly what, kept making his hackles tingle, and if there was no clear, definite scent of danger, there was another, deep and disturbing, as formless as the terror they had seen in the wizard’s fire.

The night passed, and nothing happened, but toward the first gray streak of dawn, Bear thought he heard voices far off in the hall somewhere, but when he’d cleared his ears of drowsiness, all was a deep, foreboding quiet. As the sun rose, red and dim through the window of sky above him, he fell after a time into a troubled sleep, resting more easily when he at last heard Otter snort-snuffle and begin stirring about, and Dwarf clearing his throat on his way out from under his covers. When they asked if he weren’t ready for a bit of breakfast, he replied he would rather get a little more sleep, which struck them as odd, but they left him there, beginning to snore, sliding off again into the unknown dangers of his dreams.

B
elow the great hall of Tubal, deep in shafts that wound away, reaching out for die roots of darkness; walked Creddin. His gnarled old body moved with amazing speed, stooped and shuttling, not with the speed of sturdy dwarf legs, but with spider agility. His old joints creaked as he moved farther and farther into the mines of old, where once gold ore glittered like fingers of light run through dark, deep, unstirring thought. Creddin’s dim lamp smoked and cast long shadows on the grim walls, Darren now of all save the tombs of its masters of old. At intervals, the tunnel branched into other chambers, soundless rooms filled with the dread of those long dead, treasure troves and burial vaults together, now plundered and broken by invading soldiers, themselves long since perished.

His old, bleary eyes caught sight of bones, stark white in the surrounding blackness, a man skeleton, face down in a crosspath of shafts, lost in death as in life, perished in the unknown depths in greed and horror. Creddin chuckled sourly, muttering, “Dwarf gold, eh, a glittery seal of doom for the likes of you.” So saying, he went down along the tunnel from which the man long ago had crawled up, hopelessly lost in the dark labyrinths of the mines, starved to death, his eyes filled with the sight of immeasurable wealth that could never be squandered.

Coming to the end of this tunnel, Creddin raised his stooped frame, reached out a bony hand, spoke two words in ancient Dwarfish, and touched a spot on the higher part of the wall The huge rock that stood before him rolled back slowly on the stone hinges wrought in forgotten ages, and the shadowed light of his small lamp leapt into dazzling brightness, spun and whirled in that chamber in a dull, golden explosion. The chamber was immense, rising to a height that devoured the light, leaving the tops of the carved pillars that ran in twos down the center in dark shadow, and the walls, at the farther edges, darker than if no light had wakened their slumbering gray-black forms. He lit three torches that stood on the near wall, and turned, eyes glittering with the fire of aging madness. Before him stood row on row of casks filled with gold bar and coin, diamonds set and unset, in platinum or silver, or other precious metals. Each was wrought as thin and fine as a gauzed web, sparkling stones set to enhance their brilliant beauty. There were arms and scepters brought from ancient kings and forefathers, the treasures outlasting their owners. At long last, die might and fortune of forgotten kings and halls belonged to him, Creddin the Old, Creddin the Wise, Master Creddin of Tubal Hall, wielder of such wealth as no man had ever beheld before, and few dwarfs; Creddin, who all had laughed at or pitied, scorned or shunned, he who was waited upon to die. Now he alone remained, outliving the lot of them.