The Hammer of Fire (8 page)

“Their size?” repeated Milli.

“Yes, their size,” said the old dwarf with a
twinkle in his eyes.

“The grand passage that cuts through the
heart of the mountain must be a hundred feet tall, the ancient
cathedrals to Davim and the other Gods, you could walk an army
through them.”

“What do you make of that?” said Fierfelm
with a little nod of his head.

“I’m not sure I understand,” said Milli, her
head tilted to one side and her nose slightly wrinkled as she gazed
at the elderly dwarf.

The First Edos smiled gently at the girl and
raised his eyebrows.

“Well, I suppose, as a girl, I always
wondered, why build such massive structures when you’re, well, not
exactly very tall,” she said. “Is that what you mean?”

The First Edos nodded his head and took
another sip of his coffee, “It’s best to make it too hot and then
it cools nicely after a bit. These porcelain cups are quite nice
for keeping the heat. Gold is ridiculous as a coffee mug, just
ridiculous; you’d think someone would think of that.”

Milli closed one eye and shook her head,
“What?”

“The coffee, best to make it too hot.”

“Yes, I’m sorry First Edos, would you like me
to put the kettle back on?” said Milli.

“What do you make of that?” said
Fierfelm.

Milli blinked three times with her long
lashes and stared at the elderly dwarf for a long moment, “The
halls?”

“Of course, what else were we talking
about?”

“I suppose …,” she started and put her hand
to her chin, “I suppose it means that they weren’t built for
dwarves in the first place.”

“Or even by dwarves,” said Fierfelm and took
another sip of his coffee, made a sour face, looked at the cup, and
frowned.

Milli stood up, went to the kitchen, put the
kettle back on the fire, and then returned to sit down next to the
First Edos, “If not dwarves, then who built all this?”

“Elementals, from the dawn of time, the
greatest elemental of them all, Gazadum, this was his seat of
power,” said Fierfelm, put the coffee cup to his lips for a moment,
wrinkled his nose, and set it back down again without drinking
further.

“But, but, but where are they now? These
elementals?” said Milli as she sat down with a thump.

“You know the story of Dar Drawhammer,” said
Fierfelm with another distasteful look at his coffee. “Did you say
you had cake?”

Milli jumped to her feet again and went back
to the kitchen as she looked over her shoulder, “I’ve heard the
story a thousand times, how Dar defeated the Elementals with the
shield … wait, you mean that story is about here, about Craggen
Steep? They never say that, they always say it was some far off
place.”

Fierfelm nodded his head and the platinum
circled around his beard bumped into the table and sent some of the
coffee in his cup slopping out. “It’s all a secret you know.”

“Let me get that,” said Milli as she rushed
back over to the table with a rag just as the kettle began to
whistle.

“You said there was cake?” repeated
Fierfelm.

“Oh, yes, I’ll get some, in just a moment, I
think I might have it around here, somewhere,” said Milli with a
desperate look at the kettle, the spill, and her cupboard.

“I thought all you halflings loved to
bake?”

“I was raised by dwarves,” said Milli as she
suddenly stopped and looked at the old dwarf with a wide smile, “I
love gold.”

Fierfelm nodded his head, “Not a bad thing
necessarily, although to extreme, it is a dangerous pursuit.
Perhaps, because I have so much, it is not as valuable to me. One
doesn’t value what one has in abundance I suppose, it’s the nature
of a dwarf.”

“What about those elementals, how does that
fit into convincing Dol to take the hammer?” asked Milli as she
finished cleaning up the mess, although her subsequent neglect of
the kettle saw boiling water slop onto the stove and hiss
violently.

“Gazadum was possibly the first of the
elementals and certainly one of the most powerful,” said Fierfelm.
“When Dar drove him from Balag Tol he fled to the southlands along
with many of the other powerful fire elementals including Hezfer
the Blue Flame who consumed Onod, his twin sister Eleniak the
Dancing Flame, and the terrible Shadak the Black Fire.”

“Balag Tol?” asked Milli as she returned with
a fresh cup of coffee and a rather malformed pastry, icing smeared
unevenly across its surface, “I’m sorry about the tart, it’s a few
days old, I haven’t been shopping, I thought we were going to take
the hammer and leave, so I’ve let things slip a little.”

“Quite all right, my dear,” said Fierfelm and
he looked at the misshapen little tart with a glance and then
raised the coffee cup to his lips.

“What is Balag Tol?” repeated Milli.

“What’s that?” said the First Edos.

“Balag Tol, I’ve never heard of it,” said
Milli.

“Oh, that’s Craggen Steep, of course,” said
Fierfelm with a little wave of his left hand as he sipped from the
cup and grimaced again. “That’s what it was called before, at least
so the chronicles say. They say Gazadum ruled there for a countless
years while he and his fellow elementals shaped the world. It is
his residual heat that still fires the Deep Forge all these
centuries later.”

“What does all this have to do with the
Hammer of Fire, and Dol?” said Milli as she leaned forward, “Not
that I mind hearing the stories.”

“Gazadum,” said Fierfelm as he nodded his
head.

Milli looked at him expectantly but the old
dwarf just took another sip from his coffee.

“What about Gazadum,” said Milli.

“Haven’t I told you?” said Fierfelm, a
puzzled expression on his face.

“Maybe I missed it,” said Milli with a little
grin and put on the smile that always got her what she wanted. She
patted the old dwarf on the back, “repeat it for me, please?”

“I’ve found out where he fled. It’s in the
south, the far south, a place called Koalhelm Tol,” said Fierfelm
with a silly little grin.

“Yes?” Milli.

“Don’t you see?” asked Fierfelm the many
wrinkles on his forehead multiplying at an alarming rate.

“No,” said Milli with a shrug of her
shoulders as she poked at her pastry in a rather desultory fashion.
It didn’t look very good.

“Even Dar Drawhammer with the Great Shield
could not slay Gazadum, but the hammer, Kanoner, was forged by Orin
Firefist. It was the first thing created on the Deep Forge by dwarf
hands, and inside is the essence of Gazadum himself. The haft is
the bottom half of the Staff of Faelom taken from the elf king by a
great dwarf warrior. It was fashioned from the first and most
powerful of the shepherds. With this weapon a dwarf could slay the
greatest of the fire elementals. And the dwarf who did that, he
would live forever in the stories.”

Milli looked at the old dwarf for a long
moment as the light of recognition shone in her sparkling yellow
eyes, “I think Dol might like that.”

“Now you’re ready to steal the thing but it’s
too late,” said Brogus as he glared at Dol across the small table,
and the tall dwarf stared impassively back at him without any sort
of expression at all on his face. “What do you have to say to
that?”

Dol said nothing, nor did he change his blank
expression.

“They’ve got it locked up in the Hall of
Relics and there are guards on it twenty-four hours a day, seven
days a week,” continued Brogus as he pounded the table with his
fist. “Pikemen, the High Council’s guard, they wear the gold
helmets. The finest warriors in all of Craggen Steep. We can’t
overpower them. It’s lost, if you had only listened to me yesterday
Dol, you dolt.”

“Inside voice,” said Milli at her usual place
between the two dwarves and with her usual glass of elf wine in
front of her. “We don’t want everyone in Craggen Steep to know our
plan, do we, Brogus?”

“They already know,” said the heavyset dwarf
with a scowl. “We’re the laughing stock of the mountain. Everyone
on my floor was laughing at me yesterday. Even the lowest of the
apprentices from the worst families. I can’t stay in Craggen Steep
now, with or without the hammer, we have to get out of here. We
could have had it easy just yesterday but now, it’s impossible.
Impossible! What does it matter if everyone knows what we wanted to
do?”

“It’s not impossible,” said Milli in a quiet
voice as she glanced around the crowded room. A number of young
dwarves smiled and tried to catch her eye but she ignored them and
turned back to her two companions. “I know you don’t like him,” she
said with a glance to Brogus, “but Uldex can help us. His uncle
Borrombus is in the inner sanctum and he knows how the hammer is
guarded. What forces, how many and where, the location of
reinforcements, the passageways to take to avoid them.”

“The Hall of Relics?” said Brogus. “How are
we possibly going to get in there, steal the hammer,” here he
lowered his voice, “and get back out again? There are hundreds of
Council Stalwarts guarding it all the time.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” said Milli with a shake
of her head that sent her hair flying, “it’s hardly hundreds and
there are plenty of times it’s not guarded.”

“Now is the time,” said Dol as he contributed
to the conversation for the first time. His face was still a mask
of impassivity but his eyes glowed black and he nodded his head.
“Now, they think they’ve won.”

“Dol’s right,” said Milli. “Their confident
now that our plan was foiled and they’ll relax. With Uldex helping
we can get in and get out. You still have a plan to leave Craggen
Steep, right, Brogus?”

The burly dwarf nodded his head, “I’ve got
friends in the lower levels who know about an old breakout section.
Somebody split rock through to the surface years ago and it was
patched up, but it’s only a few inches thick, there was an
earthquake or something. We’ll poke a hole in it no trouble and be
on our way. I can even have mules waiting for us. But I don’t know
much about the outside world, I’ve only been with one caravan and
that was when I was a kid. We don’t even know where this Koalhelm
Tol is located.”

“It’s in the south,” said Milli, “as far
south as you can get in a region filled with volcanoes. Fierfelm
said …,”

“Fierfelm!” interrupted Brogus with a sudden
exclamation that sent his beer slopping out of his mug, “I thought
you said it was Uldex that told you all this.”

Milli paused and leaned back in her chair
with a little twinkle in her eye and small grin on her face, “I may
have led you to believe that, but I never said it.”

“What?” shouted Brogus, standing, putting
both hands flat against the table, and leaning over so that his
considerable bulk loomed directly above Milli. “You don’t think we
should have known that?” He asked with a look over at Dol who sat
impassively in his own seat. “Don’t you think little miss pretty
should have told us that, Dol? Don’t you?”

Dol shrugged his shoulders and stared back at
Brogus with calm black eyes, “What difference does it make where
the information comes from, as long as it’s accurate. I want that
hammer, I want to be the one remembered for killing Gazadum. You
can either watch me to do it, or you can help.”

Brogus stood for a few long seconds as their
eyes bored into one another and then he looked up at the ceiling
and shook his head, “There’s no stopping you, once you’ve made up
your mind. I’ve known that since we were kids. Remember when I
broke your nose for eating more than half the brownies that
time?”

Dol nodded and a small smile appeared on his
face.

“What did he do to you?” asked Milli, looking
quickly back and forth between the two.

“He ate all the brownies the next time,” said
Brogus with a snort as he collapsed back in his seat. “I could have
beat him some more, but what was the point? Then he’d probably just
eat all the pie too. You can’t win with Dol.”

Milli laughed aloud, the sound almost like a
song, “That’s our Dol. Now that we’ve settled the what, we need to
figure out the how.”

“They’ll expect us to wait a few days at
least to see the guard routines,” said Brogus with his hand on his
chin as he looked at Milli. “I think Dol might be right. We should
do it as soon as possible. If they knew about us stealing it in the
first place they might have found out about my escape route too. It
wouldn’t take a team of miners more than an hour to brick up that
narrow break and we’d never get through.”

“So, we do it tonight then?” said Milli in a
whisper.

“Why not now?” said Dol and suddenly stood
up.

Milli’s eyes opened wide and she stared at
her thick-haired friend with her mouth agape, and then she shut it
with a snap. “Why not now?” she went on more to herself. “They
certainly won’t be expecting it. We just run into the hall and grab
the thing.”

“They’ll catch us quick enough,” said Brogus.
“They can communicate through the tunnels and have a hundred
stalwarts waiting for us whichever direction we go.”

“Uldex can help with that, he can send false
messages, get them all confused, we’ll be half way to Das’von
before they know we’re even gone. Once we’ve joined up with
Corancil’s army they can’t stop us, not without revealing Craggen
Steep’s location at least and they’ll never do that.”

“Is it decided that we’re joining up with
Corancil, then?” asked Brogus with a grin on his face as he
imagined the glories of the marching armies, the booty stolen from
defeated towns, the young girls willing to do anything for a
powerful soldier.

“How else are we going to get all the way to
the southern continent, do you know how far that is?” asked Milli
with a little shake of her head. “The First Edos told me what to
look for geographically, five volcanoes, along the southern shore
of a huge peninsula, but he didn’t tell me how to get there. We
need Corancil, they say he’s built portals, transportation gates
that can take a dwarf from one side of the continent to the next in
a blink of an eye.