Guardians of the Flame - Legacy Read online

It would be tricky, but it could be done. Slowly, quietly, carefully.

  It must be done. And it will be done.

  One Year Before, in Wehnest:

  Doria and Elmina

  I'm worried about Karl, Doria thought.

  "Doria, Doria," Elmina chided as she shook her head, sending the cowl of her robes falling back to her shoulders, revealing the stringy black hair that had been hidden beneath.

  The fish-belly pallor of Elmina's skin would have been shocking under other circumstances, but here it was to be expected. It was almost reassuring, because it spoke of healing. Healing, even when the healing consisted only of stabilizing someone as badly wounded as their present patient, drained magical, physical, and even mental reserves; Elmina had just pushed all of hers as far as possible.

  "Worry isn't for us, Doria. Only soothing. Only restoration. Only healing." Trembling with weakness, Elmina laid a soothing hand on the arm of their patient, an unwashed peasant who had been brought to the Hand temple in Wehnest, barely alive after being carried into town by the same ox cart that had accidentally been pulled over him, its ironclad wheels shattering an arm, crushing his ribcage, rupturing his spine.

  Doria nodded. "Healing is for us," she agreed, then laid her hands on their patient.

  The farmer wasn't in good shape, but he was alive, and the damage was repairable.

  The first priority had been to prevent the screaming man's life from deserting him, and the second to quell his pain. Elmina had done both. The result left the man unconscious but safe, the pooled blood in his crushed chest refusing to either clot or flow from his body.

  "Doria . . ."

  "I know. Shhh, Elmina; be still now."

  Doria licked her lips once, and reached back into her mind and soul for the spell. It wasn't as though she was speaking deliberately; she simply let the words depart from her as she began to chant the evanescent words of healing, letting the power flow gently with the airy syllables. And, as always, she was never totally certain if the warm glow surrounding the peasant was in the air, or her eyes, or her mind.

  But, as always, it warmed her while it healed him.

  The split and shattered pieces of bone welded themselves together, while torn muscle and snapped sinew flowed gently back into their proper places around the now-reassembled substructure, joined by nerves and blood vessels snaking their way in and assembling themselves.

  The last was the blood itself. Crushed red blood cells and—worse, more difficult, more draining—shattered platelets reassembled themselves and then flowed through capillary walls, until they stood waiting, poised in place in veins and arteries, a column of soldiers waiting for the command to march to be given.

  The command was given: The blood flowed; the healing continued until the horrid, deathly pallor left the man's face and his consciousness gradually returned to him,

  "Very nicely done, Doria," Elmina said. She laid a finger across the farmer's dry, cracked lips, still flecked with dried blood and vomit. "Be still, friend. You are under the care of the Hand, and all will be well with you."

  She turned to Doria.

  "As it will be with you, sister, in one manner or another."

  Doria nodded. What the Matriarch called her "feel for the way of things" was growing daily, and that feeling pointed to a confrontation. At least one.

  And then there was the memory of the Matriarch speaking to Karl:

  Never will the Hand aid you again, she had said. Never will the Hand aid you again.

  "I understand." Elmina nodded. "But for now, we must . . ." She swallowed and swayed for a moment, then strengthened, her wan, almost transparent skin seemingly gaining thickness while it gained color. "For now," she said, her voice gaining force, "we must restore our powers. Both of us. And we will continue to do so, but perhaps someday, we will do so for different reasons, is it not so?"

  Doria nodded. "It is so."

  A Few Tendays Before, Just Outside of the Old

  Warrens: Ahira and Walter Slovotsky

  "I'm worried about Karl," Ahira said, leaning back in his rocking chair, squinting against the setting sun.

  "You worry too much. Do more; worry less." Slovotsky glared as the dwarf eyed Karl's latest letter. Again.

  Not that there wasn't enough to worry about.

  For one thing, it had recently occurred to Ahira that Walter Slovotsky's daughter Janie was getting close to husband-high, and there wasn't even anyone of the right species around.

  Ahira chuckled to himself. I don't mind being a dwarf, but I wouldn't want my goddaughter to marry one.

  "You worry too much," the big man repeated, whittling at a piece of green pine as they sat on their benches at the entrance to the Endell warrens, waiting for the night to come on. "Particularly at the end of the day. I thought you were a dwarf, not a human. You're supposed to enjoy dusk."

  "There's some truth in that, at least." Ahira nodded. Evening was the best time of the day, as the annoyances and labors of the day vanished into the oncoming night.

  Or were supposed to, at any rate. That was the trouble with Slovotsky; while he tried to get along, he didn't have a dwarf's feeling for timing.

  Not his fault.

  Blood and bone are just clay; the world wears them down,

  With a moan and a grind, a grunt and a groan,

  A shudder, a quiver, a frown.

  So let the world go away, at the end of the day—

  —the old evenchant began; a simple reminder that night was a time for rest and sleep, and that the worries of tomorrow could well wait until tomorrow.

  A simple idea, but dwarves were good at understanding simplicity. It came with the territory.

  Timing was a part of that simplicity.

  As the two friends sat chatting, the dwarves who lived in the so-called Old Warrens—although they were not the oldest warrens in Endell—were finishing their day, preparing to return to the warmth and safety of the warrens for the night.

  Some astride small ponies and others afoot, they all made their way home to this entrance to the warrens, preparing for the onset of darkness. Some sweaty and dusty from the day's work in the King Maherrelen's fields, a rare few returning home with wagons laden with trade goods from the south—all managed to make the final or only leg of their journey so that they arrived at the entrance just before sunset, no later.

  Dwarves had a talent, a gift, for timing, the way that humans excel at swimming. Dwarves didn't swim, of course. Dwarves couldn't even float.

  Humans, after all, were only barely less dense than water, and barely able to float; dwarves' greater density of muscle and bone would make a dwarf sink like a stone.

  That was a loss. James Michael Finnegan had always had pleasurable associations with swimming; supported in a flotation vest, the pool had been one of the few places his disloyal body couldn't betray him.

  Swimming was one of the few things that Ahira missed from his days as a human. Perhaps the only thing. It was hard to think of another. But swimming . . .

  Humans swim as well as they commit treachery and cruelty, Ahira thought, and then was suddenly ashamed of himself.

  Some of his best friends were human, after all. Of all the people he loved, the ones he loved most dearly were humans: Walter, his wife Kirah, Janie—always special to him—and little Doria Andrea Slovotsky. If D.A. wasn't the cutest baby in the universe, then it was because Janie had just edged her out.

  And then there was Karl Cullinane, who had brought him back, quite literally, from the dead—Karl was human, too. As had been Chak, and all the others. . . .

  And he had been human, once.

  He had been the crippled James Michael Finnegan, once. Nevermore, thankfully, nevermore.

  Humans weren't all bad, though. But still . . . dwarves were different. As was where they lived, and how they lived.

  Night was a dangerous time north of the Eren regions. One of the few things that the large, clumsy humans were good at was killing creatures they thought
dangerous; dwarves preferred to avoid dangers when they could, to fight when they must. A crusade—be it the rabid imperialism of some of the Popes on the Other Side or what Ahira's human half still felt was Karl Cullinane's completely justified crusade on This Side—was something foreign to dwarves.

  Moderation came naturally to dwarves, but even that was modified with judiciousness: moderation in moderation. Violence was bad, of course, but still, one sometimes fought in self-defense. The dwarven north was a cold land, with a short growing season; sometimes it was necessary to fight for pay, as well. But only when necessary.

  Only when necessary.

  "Time to go in," Ahira said.

  With a groaning that suggested a much greater age than his less than forty years, Walter Slovotsky got to his feet, and belted his outer coat more tightly around himself.

  "I am," he announced, "getting far too old for this."

  "You are," Ahira said, "full of shit."

  "True, true," Slovotsky said as they walked past the outer doors, nodding genially down at the guards armed with their pikes and hornbows. They passed into the warrens. "It's one of my many charms."

  "Right."

  The floors and walls of the Old Warrens were worn smooth by centuries of use; the floors in the Grand Concourse were repaved with fresh flatrock every few decades, as the endless tramping of innumerable dwarven feet could wear away even the hardest stone.

  "You really worried about him?" Slovotsky asked as they turned into the King's Tunnel, pausing only a moment to exchange a few words with one of the king's courtiers, who listened respectfully, then hurried away. King Maherrelen valued the services of both of them, but particularly Slovotsky; there was only one Ag School-trained person anywhere on This Side, and that caused Walter Slovotsky to have almost as much value to a sometimes-hungry Endell as Lou Riccetti had to Home.

  "I am," Ahira said. "I am worried about him. You read his letter."

  Ahira held back an urge to run for the cave entrance and shout for someone to saddle a horse. The vision of himself climbing aboard a pony and galloping away pulled him with a force almost physical. Ahira didn't at all like the implications of Karl's suggestion that he and Walter see if they could get some information in Pandathaway.

  Both panic and Pandathaway are supposed to be history to me, he thought.

  His second reflex, his contrary impulse, was to go to his rooms and dash off a letter—

  Dear Karl,

  Not only no, but hell, no.

  —but even if that was what he finally decided to do, there was no point in hurrying with an answer. The letter from Karl was five, maybe six tendays old, and it would take that long for Ahira's response to get to Holtun-Bieme.

  While there was a fast and effective postal service in Holtun-Bieme—often known as the Dragon Express due to its famous, if irregular, carrier—messages sent by trader took a long time to get from Biemestren to the Old Warrens. It would have been nice if Ellegon could have made his way this far north more often, but in order to do that, the dragon had to detour, to avoid flying over populated territory; what with his other obligations, they were lucky to see Ellegon once a year.

  Dwarves understand timing, he thought.

  Then he chuckled as he once again caught himself blaming his human half for the tendency to panic.

  "He really might go for the sword," Ahira said, bringing a bitten thumbnail up to his mouth and chewing on it for a moment. "My info is the same as his; there've been rumors in Pandathaway that he's going to make a play for it."

  Ahira shook his head. Could Karl really be halfwitted enough to announce an intention to try to get the sword? That couldn't possibly make sense; it'd be like a general sending a signal to the enemy saying, "Our army is coming through; please plant landmines here."

  "So?"

  "So . . ." Ahira shook his head. "You weren't there the last time. It's spooky. I don't like any of it."

  "Magical." Slovotsky reached up and tinged a fingernail against an overhead glowsteel. "I've run into magical things before. As have we all."

  "But you weren't there. I was. I don't like swords that tell their bearer to keep them, and I don't like swords that were made by that crazy bastard Arta Myrdhyn to kill wizards with, and I particularly don't like the fact that the breach between Pandathaway's Wizards' Guild and the Slavers' Guild is opening a chance for Karl to making a run down Melawei-way."

  "Melawei-way? Yik."

  The dwarf shrugged as he doffed his outer coat. He tapped the fresh hogshead in the corner, and tipped it to pour himself and Slovotsky each a cool pitcher of ale. While dwarf ale wasn't great, it was okay; you got used to the bitterness after a few years.

  "I don't like the idea; you don't like the words." Ahira drained his pitcher and poured himself another.

  "So?"

  "So," Ahira said, pounding his fist against the tunnel wall, "what are we going to do about it?"

  Slovotsky dropped into a chair and took a long pull at his ale. "We've chewed this over a hundred times before, and I still don't see more than a few choices."

  "And they are?"

  "Well, we could put our heads together on another letter and try to talk Karl out of whatever nonsense he's planning—which isn't going to work; he's as stubborn as you are—or we could just keep working on improving Maherrelen's yield and chewing over what we're going to do until we are too old to do anything, including chew our own food, or we could try for the sword ourselves or try something equally impossible, go charging in like a couple of bulls in a china shop. Or . . ."

  "Or?"

  "Or we could make sure that your godchildren and Kirah—"

  "—your children and your wife—"

  "—will be taken care of in case things go to hell, then get ourselves a team together and get back in business—nose around Pandathaway like Karl asked."

  "I don't think we can." Ahira shook his head. "We don't have the money to hire and outfit a team."

  "Wrong, short one. . . . You think Maherrelen's going to try to stop us from leaving?"

  "No, of course not." Fealty and ownership are different concepts; dwarves made lousy slaves, and worse slave-owners. Doing anything that smacked of ownership would never occur to the king and would be dismissed more in puzzlement than in anger if someone else brought it up.

  "You think he's going to let us go out and get killed?" Slovotsky raised an eyebrow.

  Their Other Side knowledge made the two of them very valuable. The fact that both Home and Holtun-Bieme would extend both hospitality and trust—and, if necessary, succor—to anyone carrying a safe-conduct signed by either of them added to their value. Granted, absent the two of them, Home would not necessarily put an embargo on wootz sold to the dwarves, but it might not be so easy for someone without a letter of introduction from Slovotsky or Ahira to deal there.

  And where else was Maherrelen going to get wootz besides Home?

  Risk doing without wootz? No way—dwarven blades had long been among the best around, but wootz, Lou Riccetti's recreated raw Damascus steel, was the source of even finer weapons than had been possible before: lighter, suppler, stronger blades than This Side had ever seen.

  "No, he doesn't want us to go out and get killed," Ahira said. "And he's not going to stop us. So?"

  "So, I think we can count on our patron providing us with some help."

  "Eh?"

  "Well, I think our lives are worth a bit of insurance—the premium being a decent-sized team of dwarf warriors for our escort."

  "That could work." Ahira nodded. "But you're dancing around the subject. Do you want to, or not?"

  "You want it formal? Fine: I move we head Home with a load of blades, trade them in on a bigger load of wootz, and then head for Pandathaway, trading the wootz for less distinctive merchandise as we go. I further move that we nose around Pandathaway, find out what we can, and then make our way to Biemestren and talk to Karl. Your vote?"

  "Mmm . . ." Ahira sipped his beer. "It has bee
n a while since we've been back Home, and far too long since we've seen Andy and the boy."

  "You giving in?"

  Why Slovotsky needed Ahira to take the responsibility for their going back into harm's way was something that the dwarf didn't comprehend.

  On the other hand, why Ahira needed Slovotsky to take responsibility for their sticking their faces back into the buzz saw was something the dwarf didn't understand, either.

  Ahira nodded. "I'm giving in. Happy?"

  "Yup." Slovotsky laughed. "Besides, I kind of miss Lou."

  "You and Riccetti were never all that close."

  "I didn't say I'm as fond of him as I am of you, little friend, just that I miss the Engineer. He is, in case you haven't worked it out, the most important of us all."

  Ahira shook his head. Arta Myrdhyn didn't believe that; he'd made it clear that the most important one of all of them was Jason, the one who the sword was waiting for.

  Slovotsky smiled. "And en route, I'm going to teach the dwarves that song that you hate so much."

  "What song?"

  "You know, the one that goes 'Heigh-ho, heigh-ho . . .' "

  "Like hell you will."

  "Like hell I won't."

  "Like hell—"

  "James?"

  Ahira started. Walter almost never called him by his former name. "Yes, Walter?"

  The big man stood and stretched. "I've got to tell you, I love my family and I like our life here, but—dammit, man . . ." Slovotsky shook his head and sighed.

  "But you feel more alive now than you have in a long time, eh?"

  "You too, huh?" Slovotsky raised an eyebrow. "Yeah."

  "Not me, too—it may be necessary, but I don't like it. Just remember how much fun you thought it'd be later on, when you're dancing on the end of a spear."

  Slovotsky smiled. "I'll try real hard."

  "You would."

  "You betcha. It'd be my last chance." Slovotsky drained his ale. "Now?"

  "And now, shut up and have some more ale. Then let's go spend some time with your wife and my godchildren. Enjoy them while we're here—and let's get really drunk tonight. We're going to go back into training in the morning—right after we talk to the king."