The Survivors (7 page)

“There! You’ve done it again. How do you know so much about me? How do you know my name?” Bradok asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Erus said, setting his cup on the bar and leaning closer to Bradok. “When the time comes that you are forced to choose which side you’re going to be on, I think it would be a good idea if you found out just what you did believe.” Erus reached into the front pocket of his apron and pulled out a steel coin, which he spun on the bar. “Because it’s much easier to make the right choice when you know what your beliefs really are.”

“Easy for you to say,” Bradok said, genuinely confused.

Erus smiled. It was a warm, sincere, friendly look, full of compassion. “Right you are,” he said, taking a small cloth-wrapped bundle from his apron. “Here,” he said, holding it out to Bradok.

Bradok took the bundle hesitantly. From its size and shape, it might have been a pocket watch.

“Take this to the Artisans’ Cavern,” Erus said solemnly with the hint of a wink. “There you will find the shop of Silas, the cooper. You might also find some of the answers you seek.”

He got up off his stool and slung an enormous warhammer over his shoulder. “Be warned, though,” he added. “The time to choose sides is almost upon you. Don’t take too long to make up your mind.”

With that Erus turned and strode to the door, exiting into the dimly lit tunnels without so much as a backward glance.

Bradok scrambled to dig a few silver pieces from his coin purse before he raced to the door and out into the street. The narrow tunnel ran straight to either side for several hundred yards, but Erus was nowhere to be seen. Despate the dwarf’s formidable size, he seemed to have completely vanished.

Bradok opened his hand, looking at the wrapped bundle. A soft linen cloth covered the object, held in place by a length of twine that had been tied on top. He took hold of the loose end of the twine and hesitated. A strange sense of foreboding swept over him, causing a chill to run up his spine. He couldn’t help feeling that he had been handed a piece of some great and terrible destiny, and he wondered if he dared accept his fate.

After a moment, however, his natural curiosity got the better of him, and he tugged on the twine, pulling the knot free. Carefully, he removed the cloth, revealing an exquisite brass device. It looked like an oversized pocket watch with fine etching covering its every surface. Bradok had never seen etching so fine; it seemed impossibly small yet perfectly straight, as if done by the most unwavering of hands. The pattern looked basic at first glance, but as he examined it closely, Bradok saw that it wound over and around itself, like a ball of knotted string.

In the exact center of the top, a purple gem had been set. It was cut to be flat on top, with flat sides around it and, although Bradok had years of experience with every kind of gem known to dwarf, it was a stone he’d never encountered before.

As he turned the device over in his hand, Bradok spotted a small hinge, indicating that the top of the object was covered by a door of some kind. Opposite the hinge, he found a small, hidden clasp. When he pressed it, however, the lid didn’t move. He tried prying at it with his fingernails, but it didn’t budge.

Then something suddenly caught his eye. The purple stone gave off a soft glow. Fascinated, he held it up to his eye. The light from the stone seemed to reflect on certain parts of the etched surface of the top, causing some of the lines to glow.
To Bradok’s great astonishment, they formed words across the object’s face, tiny yet readable words.

“A person’s destination depends more on his choices than his direction,” Bradok read. Still puzzling over the strange saying, he slipped the device into his pocket.

He didn’t know why, but for some reason the brass device suddenly seemed more urgent than anything Arbuckle might be plotting. “I guess I’d better find this Silas fellow,” he said to himself.

Undercity, as its name implied, had been built below Ironroot proper. To keep from undermining the stability of the upper caverns, Undercity had been built down and away, gradually curving into a descending spiral. To reach the Artisans’ Cavern, Bradok had to wind his way back up, almost to Ironroot cavern, then along a side passage for almost a mile.

The connecting tunnel consisted of two parts. Along the left side ran a raised walkway, set aside solely for foot traffic. The rest of the wide tunnel contained a divided street set with rails. Metal carts pulled by donkeys moved goods in and out between a loading dock on the Ironroot side and the artisans’ shops below. The carts had been put in as a security measure to control what actually passed into the Artisans’ Cavern. Most of Ironroot’s artisans worked with steel in one form or another, making the cavern a tempting target for thieves.

Bradok watched, fascinated as a donkey pulled a row of three cars up toward the loading dock. The cars were filled with wrapped bundles, and they jumped and jostled each other as they made their way along the tunnel. A train of five cars passed, going the other way, rattling and clanking like armor dropped down a stone stairway. Since the Artisans’ Cavern had been built slightly lower than Ironroot proper, the carts could return under the power of gravity, meaning they moved faster and in greater numbers.

Unlike Ironroot cavern, the Artisans’ Cavern was not natural; it had been painstakingly carved out and provided with multiple ventilation shafts that connected to the surface.

Because of the smoke that perpetually hung over the cavern, the tunnels didn’t have long strings of lanterns for light as Ironroot proper did. The ceiling of the cavern had been built like an enormous chimney, designed to funnel the smoke of the many fires up and out. By law, all chimneys had to be higher than the top of the Ironroot tunnel, lest any smoke get passed to the city above. That left a layer of cleaner air, close to the ground where glow lanterns on short poles were hung. Because of the carts and the system of rails, elevated walkways continued out from the tunnel, keeping pedestrians above the clattering carts. Each of the walkways was brightly lit with glow lanterns every few feet, giving the impression of ghostly lanes hovering above the dark floor.

Bradok exited the tunnel and went left at the first fork he came to. He didn’t know exactly where Silas the cooper might be found, but he knew that most woodworkers would be clustered together down one of the left-hand passages.

A few inquires directed him to a freestanding wooden structure in the corner of one of the deeper side passages. He would have known it even if he hadn’t asked, as it had an enormous barrel for a doorway and a crowd of people milling around it.

Bradok hesitated for a moment. He was a public figure, and it probably wouldn’t be good to get mixed up in whatever had drawn the crowd to Silas’s shop. Still, the memory of Erus’s words, telling him that Silas might have the answers he sought, rang in Bradok’s mind.

The cool, smoky air of the cavern swirled around Bradok as he struggled with indecision. Finally, taking a deep breath, which he blew out with a growl, he set off toward the crowd. When he reached them, he saw that they weren’t doing anything in particular; they were just standing idly on
the walkway, trying to get a look at the simple wooden building.

“What’s all this,” Bradok asked a scruffy, soot-covered dwarf.

“When you find out, you tell me.” The fellow chuckled. “Some say the cooper has gone mad; others say he’s had a vision,” he said. “Either way, it’s the darndest thing you ever saw.”

“What is?” Bradok asked, craning his neck to look over the crowd.

“That,” the scruffy dwarf said.

As Bradok followed the dwarf’s pointing finger, his jaw dropped open. He hadn’t noticed before because he’d been focused on the crowd, but one side of the building had been completely torn down. Thrusting out from the space where the wall should have been was a huge framework of wood that looked for all the world like the skeleton of some enormous creature. The entire apparatus ended in a long wooden spar that stuck straight out into the cavern.

Bradok had never seen an ocean, but he knew about large bodies of water. Likewise he knew what that was without ever having actually seen one. There, more than a mile beneath the surface, in the heart of a mountain, Silas the cooper was building a boat.

B
radok had to push his way bodily through the crowd until, at last, he found himself in front of the curved shop door. A sign to one side read
Silas & Son, Coopers
.

Not really knowing what else to do, Bradok put out his hand and rapped smartly on the door.

A moment later it opened.

In the opening beyond stood someone who could not be Silas or his son. Instead a human appeared, tall, like all members of his race, and pudgy, wearing a smock. Dust and wood shavings covered his clothes, hair, and apron, making it impossible for Bradok to determine the man’s age or appearance. Humans were not terribly unusual in Ironroot, but to see one so obviously apprenticed to a dwarf craftsman was additional cause for curiosity.

“May I help you,” the human said in a mild voice.

“I’m looking for Silas,” Bradok said.

The human’s face turned sour. “Master Silas is far too busy to entertain visitors,” he said grumpily. “If you just want to gawk, you can stay out here with this lot.” He nodded in the direction of the milling crowd.

He began to close the door, but Bradok shoved his foot into the jamb to keep it from closing.

“It’s really rather important,” he said.

The human appraised Bradok for a moment, looking him up and down with his dust-colored eyes, then stepped back from the doorway. “Then you’d better come in, Mister …”

“Axeblade, Bradok Axeblade.”

The human nodded, shutting the door behind Bradok. “I am Perin,” he said, indicating himself, though Bradok didn’t know if that was his family name or his given. “I am the first assistant to Master Silas. If you will follow me, please.”

Perin turned and opened a door just off the entryway. Steam and the smell of washed wood and fire billowed through the opening as the two passed into the workshop. A small forge had been built on one side, and two young dwarves were pumping the bellows while a smith heated a long, curved iron band for pounding on a nearby anvil. Along the opposite wall were workbenches where a burly dwarf shaped and planed wooden slats smooth. Next to the forge stood the steaming box where the slats would be cooked to make them flexible enough to bend.

Bradok took it all in with a single glance. Like most dwarven shops, the cooper’s operation was neat and well ordered.

The only unusual thing was the giant boat. Its curved wooden ribs ran all the way up to the ceiling, and Bradok could see why the side wall of the shop had been torn out: The boat took up the entire length of the shop and then some.

“What in the undermountain is this about?” Bradok squawked once he’d gotten over his astonishment.

“I assumed that is why you were here, Mister Axeblade,” Perin said in an even voice.

Just then a squat, solid-looking dwarf in a clean apron came around the back end of the boat. He had bristly brown hair and a beard that had been braided and thrust under his apron for safekeeping. His eyes were blue, and he had a long, beaklike nose.

“Who have we here?” he said to Perin.

Bradok stuck out his arm before the human could answer. “Bradok Axeblade,” he said. “I assume you are Silas?”

“Silas Weatherstone,” the dwarf said, clasping his arm firmly. “Welcome to my shop.” He gestured around at the work stations that weren’t obscured by the half-completed ship. “Are you here from the council in some official capacity?”

That last bit caught Bradok unawares. As far as he knew, he’d never met Silas nor done any business with him. How did he recognize him as a council member?

“Gossip gets around quickly in the Artisans’ Cavern,” Silas said with a smile. “Everyone’s heard of Ironroot’s new councilman.”

“Harrumph,” Bradok replied, not very sensibly. “No, I’m not here on behalf of the council.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the brass device. “Someone told me you might know what this is?”