The Tree of Story (33 page)

C
ORR STARED IMPASSIVELY AT
Finn.

“Brother,” he said with icy calm, “you know that even if I allow you to leave with the golem, you will have no chance of crossing the Valley of Fire alive, let alone reaching the Bourne. When you run out of
gaal
, how long do you think you’ll survive out there? Hours, at most.”

“I know that, Corr. That’s why we’ll be taking one of your skyships.”

Corr broke into a soft laugh.

“You’re still feverish from your wound,” he said. “You can’t believe I would give you one of my ships for this fool’s errand.”

“You will, Corr. Because if you don’t, I’ll command Ord to push every ship you have left over the edge of the pier.”

Corr’s smile hardened into a grimace of rage.

“Think carefully about what you’re saying, brother,” he breathed.

“I’m going home in one of your skyships, Corr,” Finn said, turning away. “And, Doctor Alazar, I hope you’ll come with me.”

“I will, Finn. There’s nothing more I can do here.”

“You don’t turn your back on me, boy,” Corr roared, and he gripped Finn’s shoulder and spun him around. Finn offered no resistance. The golem, who had started forward at Finn’s command, stopped and waited.

“I raised you,” Corr growled. “I taught you to hunt and fight and track. I taught you everything you know and this is how you repay me? Those Errantry fools swayed you against me.”

“It wasn’t the Errantry, Corr,” Finn said, his voice shaking. “You gave me the
gaal
, remember? You taught me about that, too. I’m only doing to you what you do to everyone and everything around you.”

Corr’s eyes blazed. He raised his fist as if about to strike Finn down. Finn did not move.

A shout came from farther up the tunnel. Everyone turned to see three Stormriders with staves striding down the ramp. Between them were two dwarfs.

“What is this?” Corr demanded.

“My lord, we found them hiding in one of the other tunnels. They wouldn’t say anything other than to demand we take them to you.”

The larger and younger of the dwarfs stared with frightened eyes at Corr and the others, his head shaking with a slight tremor that was not fear, Finn realized, but some sort of palsy. The other dwarf was very old. He was bald except for a few wisps of white hair about his ears, his seamed face crisscrossed with livid scars, his deep-set eyes two clouded and
unseeing orbs. He looked familiar, and then Finn remembered seeing him at Corr’s fortress, on the observation platform. He was the ancient-looking smith whom Nonn had asked about the repairs to the ships.

“What are your names?” Corr said, his voice calm and commanding again. He appeared to have forgotten Finn’s threat for the moment. For his part Finn waited to hear what the dwarfs had to say.

The younger dwarf stepped forward.

“I am Nar,” he said in a flat, guarded voice. His shaking head was hunched into his shoulders, as if he expected a sword blade to lop it off at any moment. “This is Tholl, my father. We weren’t hiding, my lord. We were trying to find you.”

“Why didn’t you get away with the others?” Corr barked.

“We did not know of Nonn’s plans, my lord, until he was already leaving. We did not wish to betray the Sky Lord, so we stayed behind.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re trying to save your skin now that you’ve been caught.”

“They left us behind because we are worthless and slow, my lord,” said the old dwarf, his voice deep and ponderous, like the sound of something heavy and hollow being dragged across a stone floor. “I cannot see and so Nar must be my eyes. We cannot move quickly with all the rubble and filth choking the passageways. When Nonn saw his chance to bring down the slabs and abandon you here, we were busy helping your men figure out how to work the water pumps. We could not get away in time, so Nonn left us to your mercy.”

Corr looked from father to son with a cold, calculating expression.

“I think you were left behind on purpose,” he said. “I think Nonn ordered you to stay as spies or saboteurs, believing I
wouldn’t suspect a blind old smith and his son. I should just throw the both of you over the parapet and be done with it.”

“My lord, we are not spies,” Nar said quickly, his voice hoarse with fear. “I swear to you we had no part in Nonn’s plans.”

“Nonn is my sister’s son,” the blind dwarf said, “but he has no love for us, his own kin. I lost my sight from years hunched over a workbench, crafting gears, ratchets, pins so fine that few could match them. My son, Nar, was my apprentice, but Nonn forced him to work in the tunnels below the fortress, scraping and scratching for just a little more of the
gaal
. There are poisonous fumes deep under the earth, and what they did to Nar you can see for yourself, Sky Lord. He can no longer carry on the work I trained him for, the craft that has been passed down in our family for generations. We have your precious
gaal
to thank for that.”

“Father …” Nar said warningly.

“You may not know or care, Sky Lord,” the old dwarf went on without heeding his son, “but mighty furnaces and bellows alone do not keep your ships in the sky. They would not obey the hand at the wheel so readily without hidden workings of great subtlety and precision. But the knowledge of these intricate devices will soon be lost, because Nonn tosses his tools away when they get old and worn out—tools like my son and me. He cares only about weapons. Crude, unskilful things good for nothing but killing.”

“I knew nothing of your work, Tholl,” Corr said, “but if my ships fly because of it, then you have my thanks.”

The old dwarf bowed.

“I have served our people for longer than Nonn has been alive,” he said. “He styles himself the heir of the Eldersmiths of old, but his greed has driven him mad. Rather than share Adamant with you, he made a pact with the enemy. He will
destroy the Ironwise. I curse him, Sky Lord, and I turn my back on him and his followers, and so does my son.”

Corr studied the two dwarfs again without speaking. Nar kept his shaking head bowed, but Tholl’s seamed, scarred face was raised toward the Sky Lord.

“What were you doing in the tunnel where my men found you?” he asked at last.

“When Nonn brought down the slabs, your men ran and left us, my lord,” Nar said hastily. “We were on our way to find you and warn you. There is grave danger for you and all your men. Now that Nonn has relit the forges, he has the means to destroy your ships.”

“How can that be? If he’s sealed off all the doors, he can’t harm us any more than we can him.”

Just then the sound of frantic shouting and running feet came from above. At first the shouts were all a confused babble of voices. Then one word was clearly heard above the din.

Fire!

Corr stood frozen, and to Finn it seemed that for the first time he saw fear in his brother’s eyes. Then he turned to Kern.

“Finish questioning them,” he said. “Grath, with me.”

Corr wheeled around and strode up the tunnel with the mordog lieutenant. Finn and the doctor, for the moment, had been forgotten. They glanced at each other and then followed.

They walked out onto the parapet to a scene of frantic disorder. Some Stormriders were shouting orders, others rushing with buckets to the water troughs and back to the ships.

Small burning objects were rising out of the central well, hundreds of them, like a cloud of glowing fireflies. They were hard to make out in the smoke and darkness beyond the torches, but they appeared to be small metal braziers filled with bright, leaping fire and kept aloft by whirling wooden blades.

The braziers were rising on the updraft of hot air from the forges, Finn realized. And now that they had reached the colder air of the upper circles the blades were slowing down. The braziers were starting to fall, and the ships were directly below them.

With the others Finn hurried after Corr, who was roaring to his Stormriders to form into lines to pass the buckets hand over hand to the ships. And then Finn stumbled over something and looked down and saw a Stormrider lying dead on the black stone with an arrow in his chest. An arrow with black fletching.

He peered across the gap to the other pier and saw furtive figures there, crouched among the scattered stone rubble. Figures shooting up from concealment, drawing back bows, loosing arrows.

“Nightbane!” someone cried as another black-feathered shaft whistled past Finn’s ear and clattered across the stone behind him.

But now a few of the braziers had fallen into the rigging and spars of one of the skyships. When they struck, they spilled their blazing contents, and sails and cables burst into hungry flame.

Corr’s flagship was closest to the edge of the pier and its furled sails were already a mass of crackling flame. Blackened cloth was falling onto the deck, and Stormriders were scurrying about with water buckets and wet rags to put these new fires out, some frantically stamping at them with their boots.

Then the falling braziers reached two more of the skyships and their sails and decks began to burn. Other Stormriders on the pier had formed into lines as Corr had commanded and were handing along buckets from the water troughs. But black-fledged arrows were flying thick and fast now from the
Nightbane on the far pier, and every so often a Stormrider would cry out and drop with an arrow in him. The wounded had to be carried to the shelter of the stairways and sentry towers, which left fewer men to fight the fires.

Corr had already charged among his men, directing the work of saving the ships, seemingly oblivious to the arrows whistling around him. A few of the Stormriders had crept as close as they dared to the edge of the pier with their lightning staves, but the crackling white bolts they loosed fell short of the Nightbane. There were archers with longbows among the Stormriders, as well, and they clambered up the sentry towers along the parapet and launched their own volleys at the Nightbane.

The doctor was soon busy looking after those who had been struck by arrows or burned by the falling fire. Finn stayed close to Corr, and the golem strode along behind him. He had a plan to take a company around the parapet to come at the Nightbane archers from behind. He was about to share his thoughts with Corr when he saw another obstacle: massive pillars had fallen across the parapet on either side of the pier, likely deliberately brought down by Nonn’s people. The far side of the upper circle of Adamant could only be reached by climbing over the fallen pillars, and their flanks were too tall and smooth for that to be a simple task. The golem might be able to lift or move one, Finn thought, but by that time it would be too late. All the Nightbane had to do was hinder the attempt to save the ships, and then the Stormriders would be out in the open and nearly helpless, for the pier was now cut off completely from the rest of the city.

Just then an arrow tore through Corr’s cloak. He didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were fixed on the flagship and he hastened toward it, shouting at the Stormriders who were scrambling down the gangplank, coughing and shielding
their eyes from the smoke, commanding them to stand their ground and save the ship. One of them ran blindly past him.

“Corr, we have to stay back,” Finn said, clutching his brother’s arm. He looked around for Alazar, wondering where the doctor had gone, but he couldn’t see him anywhere.

“The
gaal
,” Corr breathed. “We must save it.”

“There’s only a little of it left, you told me. It’s not worth your men dying for.”

“No, you don’t understand. In the hold of the flagship—there’s a secret compartment filled with the ore. Enough to keep the ships aloft for days. I kept it hidden from Nonn in case he ever betrayed me. If the fire reaches the hold, the
gaal
will go up. The pier … the camp … everything will be destroyed.”

Corr halted, his face stricken as he watched the flames consuming the flagship’s sails and spreading along the masts and spars.

“We can raise the ships,” Corr said, speaking more to himself than to Finn. “Take them up above the rim of the city. Yes, we must raise the ships.”

“It’s too late,” Finn said. “They’re only death traps now.”

Corr turned to him with a look of rage and it seemed for a moment he didn’t recognize his brother. Before he could speak, somewhere nearby a man cried, “The water!” and they both pivoted at the shout.

“The water’s stopped flowing!” another Stormrider called to Corr.

Finn glanced down at the narrow trough underfoot. Where once there had been a steady stream, now there was nothing left but a thin trickle.

“What’s happened to the water?” Corr roared at the nearest of his men. The Stormrider stared back at him blankly.

There was another shout, but this was a cry of amazement and relief, and Finn saw several men pointing at the
two towering bastions on either side of the gates. From the gaping mouths of the dragons came frothing white plumes of water, falling like a miraculous rain on the ships. Finn’s gaze swept over the entire circle of the city and he saw now that there were dragon-headed bastions all around the great curve of the parapet and that water was gushing from these spouts, too, and splashing and cascading over the walkways below. And now he understood why the dragon heads had been carved facing inward: they were there to protect the city, not to warn away enemies.

“Who’s done this?” Corr said in wonder as the braziers that were still hovering among the ships were struck by the falling water, their flames going out with a hiss and gush of steam. The water fell upon the decks and spars of the burning ships, as well, and the fires were dimming and going out.

In a short time the jets from the dragon mouths drew off to a weak drizzle, but it had been enough. There were only a few small fires left burning on the decks of the ships and among the tents on the pier, and Corr’s men had rallied and were rushing to put those out. Even the Nightbane across the circle seemed to have been dismayed by this unexpected turn of events, for the volley of feathered shafts fell off to a few scattered arrows and dark shapes could be seen scurrying away into the shadows.

“Who has done this?” Corr said again, gazing up at the mouths of the stone dragons. Then he turned to Grath. “Where is the old dwarf and his son? Find them and bring them to me.”