The War of the Dwarves (12 page)

“The children of the Smith!” came the shout from a hundred different throats. The words were still echoing when a bugle call
replied.

“The side entrance!” Balyndis told Tungdil. “It means they’ll meet us at the side entrance!”

“Which side entrance?” demanded Boïndil with a glint in his eyes that Tungdil knew and feared. The secondling warrior seized
Balyndis roughly by the hand. “What are you waiting for? Lead the way!”

Balyndis didn’t usually take orders from Boïndil, or anyone else for that matter, but she had witnessed his temper before.
Taking heed of Tungdil’s silent warning, she set off without a murmur, while Boïndil and the others followed close behind.

They picked their way around the edges of the avalanche and came to what looked like a sheer wall.

“It’s in case of a siege—we wanted to be able to attack on the flank,” explained Balyndis. “It’s never been used.”

“Until now,” said Tungdil, watching as cracks appeared in the rock, forming the outlines of a door four paces high and four
paces wide. It swung open, revealing a dozen waiting dwarves. Tungdil glanced nervously at Boïndil and prayed that Vraccas
had held his protective shield over his twin.
Boïndil will finish what the White Death started if Boëndal has come to any harm.

The secondling stepped forward. “Where’s my brother?” he demanded. Naturally, the firstlings were more interested in welcoming
their queen and took a moment to respond. Ireheart grabbed the nearest sentry by the collar and shook him roughly. “Where’s
Boëndal?” he roared, tightening his grip until the sentry’s face went purple.

Tungdil laid a hand on Ireheart’s arm. “You’ll hurt him!”

“Boëndal?” gasped the poor sentry. “He’s in bed. We dug him out of the snow, but…”

“But what?” asked Boïndil sharply, letting go of his jerkin. “For the sake of Vraccas, speak clearly.”

“We can’t wake him. His skin feels like ice and it’s a wonder that his heart is still beating. It might stop at any moment,”
said the firstling, backing away quickly until he was out of the warrior’s reach.

Boïndil’s eyebrows formed an angry black line. “Where is he?” he asked.

In the interests of averting an incident, Xamtys overlooked his rude behavior and ordered one of the firstlings to show him
to his brother’s bed. Tungdil and Balyndis followed, while the queen stayed behind to quiz the guards.

The party of four dwarves strode through plain-walled corridors connecting the side entrance to the stronghold proper. The
design was entirely functional—unlike the secondlings, the firstlings took little interest in fancy masonry and left the walls
of little-used tunnels unadorned, preferring to focus their efforts on metalworking.

“The damage was devastating,” said the guard when they asked about the quake. “We think the falling star was to blame. It
came from the east, raining burning boulders from its tail. Most of our fortifications were razed to the ground—then the White
Death came and swallowed the rest.”

“How many were killed?” asked Balyndis. “What about the Steel Fingers?”

“They’re fine, I think, but we haven’t heard anything from the clans on the western border, closest to where the comet fell.”
The firstling led them to a wooden platform connected to a pulley system. They got on, and the lift shot up, whizzing past
hundreds of steps before stopping to let them out in the eastern halls of the kingdom. “I’m just pleased that our queen has
returned. Four hundred of our kinsmen lost their lives in the disaster, but Xamtys will give us the strength to carry on.”

They saw straightaway that the dwarf’s description of the damage was no exaggeration. The passageways were riven with cracks,
some no wider than a whisker, others big enough for Tungdil to slot his fingers inside. He noticed that the metal bridges,
sturdy enough to carry hundreds of dwarves across rivers and chasms, had buckled in places.

“We lost one hall entirely and the ceiling in the throne room is sagging,” said the sentry. “It nearly buried our precious
sculptures and statues. It was terrible.”

They ascended a staircase and reached the chamber where they had left the wounded Boëndal many orbits earlier on their way
to the Dragon Fire furnace. He was lying in much the same position, swaddled in blankets, in a marble bed with a thick mattress.

Boïndil threw himself on his brother and flung his arms around him. He lowered his ear to his chest and listened to his heart.
“He’s cold as a fish,” he said softly. “Anyone would think he was…” He tailed off and a smile spread across his careworn face.
“A heartbeat! A good, strong heartbeat!” His joy evaporated. “Nothing again…”

“It’s what I was trying to explain,” whispered the firstling. “We think his blood might be frozen. His poor heart is pumping
ice through his veins.”

A firstling appeared at the door with a tray. “He wasn’t the only one we found in the snow, but the others weren’t so lucky.”
She put down a pot of steaming tea by the bed.

“Lucky?” said Tungdil, shaking his head. “He’s barely alive.”

“Some of our kinsmen looked like they’d been flattened by a giant hammer when we pulled their poor, crushed bodies from the
snow. The rest died from lack of air. Boëndal survived, which goes to show that Vraccas wanted him to live.”

She stood at Boëndal’s bedside, decanted the piping hot tea into a leather drinking pouch, and raised it to his half-open
lips. Boïndil stopped her and laid a muscular hand on the pouch. “What are you giving him?”

“A herbal infusion. It will thaw his insides,” she said. She went to raise the pouch, but Boïndil tightened his grip.

“An infusion? A tankard of warm beer will thaw his insides faster than a bunch of herbs.”

“No,” she said firmly. “The herbs have a medicinal effect, especially in combination with hot water.”

“Wouldn’t it be more effective to give him a bath?” threw in Tungdil. He had read about methods for treating hypothermia in
one of Lot-Ionan’s books. The author was principally concerned with reviving humans who had fallen into lakes, but there was
no reason why the remedy wouldn’t work on a dwarf.

“An excellent suggestion,” she said brusquely. “But I’m afraid we tried it and it didn’t work.” She snatched the pouch away
from Boïndil. “You’re a warrior and I’m a physician. You do your job, and I’ll do mine. I wouldn’t dream of telling you how
to use an ax.” Boïndil complied begrudgingly, but refused to leave his brother’s side.

“I scoured our archives, and the infusion is our only hope. Nothing else will work.”

Tungdil knew that she was holding something back. “Is there something we can try?” he probed. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll
do it. I owe my life to Boëndal.”

The firstling looked away. “It’s a legend, nothing more.”

“Listen to me,” shouted Boïndil, as if he were interrogating a spy. “By the beard of Vraccas, I’ll do anything—anything—to
rekindle my brother’s furnace and make his spirit burn as brightly as before.” The glint in his dark brown eyes testified
to his determination to make his brother well.

“The oldest records in our archives were chiseled by the ancients on tablets of stone. They’re thousands of cycles old,” said
the firstling. “According to one of the tablets, it’s possible to fire up the soul of a frozen dwarf by kindling the embers
of his furnace with white-hot sparks.”

“What do you think it means?” asked Balyndis. “Surely you can’t use real fire to warm a soul?” She turned to Tungdil. “Do
you think we should cut him open and put sparks in his heart?”

“The wound would kill him,” said Tungdil. The legend reminded him of something, but he couldn’t quite make the connection.

“Trust a blacksmith to come up with a stupid idea like that,” growled Boïndil. “We can’t feed him with fire or put lava into
his veins.”

The firstling glared at him. “For your information, the tablets came from Giselbert’s folk. I’ve told you what I know, and
besides, it’s just a legend.”

“Dwarven legends are usually true,” said Balyndis, who wasn’t prepared to give up on the idea, no matter how unlikely it sounded.
“So you’ve tried warm baths and hot drinks. How else can you warm his blood?”

The firstling stared at the floor. “I can’t. All I can do is keep giving him the infusion and praying to Vraccas to make him
well.”

“Can’t?” Boïndil was so incensed by the plight of his frozen twin that his fiery spirit was burning out of control. “Isn’t
there any proper medicine in this joke of a kingdom?”

“Dragon Fire!” broke in Tungdil, who had finally worked out the connection between the legend and its provenance. “A white-hot
spark! It’s a reference to the fieriest furnace in Girdlegard!” He saw his friends’ puzzled faces. “I think the Dragon Fire
furnace might be able to help. It was lit by the mighty Branbausìl, remember?”

Neither he nor Balyndis would ever forget the power of the furnace: In all their experience of the smithy, they had never
encountered such tremendous heat. The white-hot flames of Dragon Fire were powerful enough to melt any metal, from pure white
palandium, made by Palandiell, to the black element of tionium, created by Tion, and the red metal of vraccasium, element
of the dwarves.

“That’s all very well,” said the physician, “but how would it work?” She put down the pouch and laid a hand on her patient’s
forehead. “We’d need proper instructions.”

Tungdil looked at the secondling’s rigid body. “The key to the legend lies in the fifthling kingdom. My friends and I are
going there anyway, and we’ll take Boëndal with us.” He turned to the physician. “You’ve done everything you can for him,
but he won’t get better here.” After a short silence, he went over to Boïndil. “I’m not giving up on him,” he said, laying
a hand on his shoulder. “Vraccas cured him of the arrow wounds and rescued him from the avalanche, and now it’s our task to
wake him from his sleep. You mark my words: The Dragon Fire furnace holds the answer, and I’ll scour the fifthlings’ archives
to find out how. The old Boëndal will be back before you know it.”

Boïndil took his hand and squeezed it gratefully. “We’re lucky to have a scholarly friend like you.” He loosened his grip
and stroked his brother’s cheek. Then he fetched a stool and settled down to wait.

“You should get some rest,” said Tungdil, following Balyndis out of the room.

“So should you,” she said firmly. She asked the physician to fetch some provisions for Boïndil and make sure he had somewhere
to sleep. “Come on,” she said to Tungdil. “Let’s get some food and go to bed.”

“Not until we’ve spoken to Xamtys.”

Balyndis’s plaits whirled around in circles as she shook her head vigorously. “The queen will send for us when she needs us.
Her advisors will be briefing her on the damage to the stronghold and it won’t be long before she retires to bed. The rest
can wait till the morning.” She pulled him through the corridors to her chamber.

It was the first time that he had seen her quarters in the firstling kingdom. Someone had obviously taken care of the cleaning
in her absence because the chamber was neat and tidy. Balyndis took a couple of blankets from the closet and laid them over
the bed.

Then they kneeled in front of the shrine that Balyndis had erected in Vraccas’s honor in the corner of her room. After praying
to the Smith on Boëndal’s behalf, they took off their heavy mail shirts, undressed to their undergarments, and lay down in
bed.

Balyndis looked at Tungdil, her eyes filled with love. He gazed back at her tenderly, returning her unspoken affection with
a kiss on the lips.

“They’re talking about us, you know,” she said with a tired smile.

“No wonder—we’re famous.”

She burst out laughing. “Not because of
that
. They’re talking about us because we don’t hide our love.” She realized from his expression that he didn’t understand. “I
think the twins may have forgotten a couple of things when they were teaching you to be a dwarf. Our union hasn’t been sanctioned,
Tungdil. We’re not supposed to show affection for one another until we’ve been melded. Any word or gesture that oversteps
the bounds of friendship is a violation of our mores. Strictly, you shouldn’t be here at all.”

He grinned at her. “It’s all right, Balyndis, the rules are different for heroes. Besides, it won’t be long until we’re joined
by the iron band.”

Balyndis wasn’t the least reassured. “Even heroes are bound by our mores. It’s a serious matter, and that’s why my kinsfolk
are talking. Besides, no one shows affection in public—it isn’t the dwarven way.”

“I don’t remember the twins saying anything about that,” said Tungdil, nestling closer. “Let them gossip, if they want to;
we’ll soon be melded.”

They snuggled up to each other and fell asleep.

I
t was exactly as Balyndis had predicted.

Queen Xamtys II allowed them to sleep off their tiredness and sent word that she expected them in the throne room in the course
of the following orbit.

In the meantime, they took the opportunity to have a long bath—in separate bathtubs because they hadn’t been melded. Tungdil
didn’t care if his kinsfolk gossiped about them, but he tried not to cause a scandal for Balyndis’s sake.

Later, she cooked for him and, in the course of conversation, it came out that she had almost been melded to someone else.
Her clan had picked a partner for her, but the poor dwarf had fallen in battle before they could forge the iron band. It was
lucky for Tungdil because a dwarven union was permanent unless both parties agreed to break the band, which, as far as Balyndis
could remember, had never happened in the history of the dwarves.

“And then you turned up and stole my heart,” she said, turning her attention to the stove. After orbits of dried food, she
couldn’t wait to have a proper dwarven meal. Soon their plates were piled high with steaming potatoes in mushroom ragout.
Fried fudi-fungi slices and cranberry compote were served on the side. After a while Balyndis noticed that Tungdil had hardly
touched his food. “Isn’t it spicy enough?”