“What must be done?” the elf lord asked.
“I am the chosen for our cause. You will champion us and your land,” Vorynn said. “If you lose, my adversary and his minions will keep this forest. If you win, you and your people will be free of the beast-men. This is the bargain we have made.”
“You need a champion?”
“It is our way. We menace and threaten, and throw bolts of lighting, but we do not battle each other.” Something in the voice of the strange being seemed to be saying, “Not yet.” A feeling of foreboding came over Drien. The last thing he wanted to see was a battle between those titans of power.
From the south came a distant rumble of thunder, and Vorynn raised his head to listen. When the sound died away, his fierce gaze turned back to Drien.
“Speak, Sidhelien. Say if you champion your land. There is no time to lose. Our adversary is about the task of making a powerful weapon. If it is completed and put in the hands of your enemy, you will surely die and your land be destroyed for your enemy’s pleasure. If we can possess it, you will as surely win.”
“I stand for Sielwode,” Drien said, realizing he could do nothing less and keep faith with his people.
He had hardly finished speaking when a tendril of the cloud reached out and gathered him up. He rose above the forest with the white entity. They sped through the air faster than a bird could fly.
Far below, he saw his woodland as no elf had ever seen it. The deep green of the ancient forest was seamed with silvery streams, dotted with lakes and the pale green of swamp grass in the bogs. Many areas appeared brown, but the color was deceptive, caused by the height and speed of his passage. He was seeing the blurred colors of the forest leas, meadows with green grass mixed with a profusion of red and yellow flowers.
Their direction was southeast, and Drien had only just caught his breath after the first wonders of the journey when they began their descent into northern Baruk-Azhik. The mountainous country was a land of dwarves, which seemed fitting since the short, stocky cavern dwellers were famed for their weapons.
Dwarves, though seldom overfriendly with outsiders, were known to be a gregarious people who liked the company of their own. But a few, so dedicated to their skills that they had no time for others, lived as hermits. It was to the caverns of a solitary dwarf that Vorynn took Drien.
They whisked through mountain valleys and into an underground passage that wound through the inside of the mountain in a tortured path. Vorynn traveled at breathtaking speed until they reached a large cavern.
Set on his feet and with the freedom to look about him, Drien shivered. Across the chamber, the roiling blackness that hid Azrai was not the only cause. The cavern was stifling, the air foul, and the heat oppressive. The darkness was only partially dispelled by the torches on the wall and the forge of glowing coals.
Standing by the forge was what must have been a dwarf, but he was more than eight feet tall. His arms and legs bulged with muscles that were out of proportion to his size.
As Drien and Vorynn entered, the dwarf picked up a pair of tongs that seemed like a toy in his large hand and drew a glowing red-hot sword from the fire. The blade was more than six feet long. The giant dwarf picked up his hammer and began beating out the shape as if he were unaware of the intruders. His eyes were glazed, as though he were in a trance.
Drien looked back at the huge sword again and up at his strange ally.
“The blade is overlarge for an elf,” he said quietly. He did not want to admit he would hardly be able to raise such a weapon, much less use it effectively.
“There is magic and magic,” Vorynn replied, dismissing Drien’s doubts.
Across the chamber, a rumble came from the dark column of cloud. An insubstantial tendril, like wayward smoke from a torch, stretched out from the column. Fire flew from it directly toward the sword, which was even then on the anvil. As the fire moved across the blade, a dark rune appeared on the side of the blade. Drien had no knowledge of this strange magic, but his mind recoiled from the evil of that mark.
Before the dark rune had been completed, Vorynn thundered at his enemy. He sent out a slim tendril of white smoke and a thin shaft of blue fire. It, too, wrote on the blade, leaving a glowing, silvery white rune.
Azrai thundered back, and the chamber reverberated with noise and power. Drien was forced back against the wall, and across from him, only dimly seen behind the shadow of the evil god, a beast-man—part cat, part humanoid—pressed back against the far wall. Drien lost all hope as he saw the size of the creature. It stood more than twelve feet tall, more than twice the height of the elf.
With the dimness and the roiling mist that shrouded both the gods, Drien could discern little of his opponent save its size and its yellow eyes, which reddened and glowed as it glared at the elf.
But the elf had little opportunity to worry about the enemy he would face later. The two gods stood on opposite sides of the forge, each more than ten feet from the fire and the anvil. Their thunder caused the stone of the mountain to tremble. The power that sprang from them seemed to eat up the breathable air as rune after rune, dark overlaid with silvery white, appeared on the blade.
The thunder increased; the atmosphere of the underground chamber closed in on the elf lord, as if the mountain itself pressed its weight against his chest. The air was thick with sparkles of fire that bounced off the blade and danced around the cavern like living creatures.
Black flames and white chased each other around the walls and through the air. The light produced by the white was consumed by the black, though an eerie glow escaped. Where the two touched they died, but the air was full of tiny potential battles.
The dwarf kept hammering the sword, his mighty arm and hand that held the child-toy hammer rose and fell. His chest heaved in rhythm as if he, too, found it hard to breathe. He continued to work in his trance, seemingly unaware of the contest that was being recorded on the weapon he fashioned.
The making of the sword was as much a part of the contest between these two gods as the battle would be. And they would need other champions if they kept up their part of the contest, Drien thought. He wondered if he could live through the pressure in the chamber much longer. Then he saw the giant beast-man stagger and slump against the opposite wall. The lights in the cavern began to swim in and out of the elf’s focus. No living being could withstand the force of that entrapped power for long.
Both gods thundered out at the same moment:
“I name you Deathirst!” Azrai shouted, but his words mingled with Vorynn’s.
“I name you Starfire!”
The power that filled the chamber was greater than anything that had come before. The breath was forced from the elf lord’s lungs. He felt as if his bones had been crushed to powder and was astonished that he was still alive.
Not even the stone of the mountain could bear the force of power in the chamber. With a crack so loud it deafened him to even the thundering of the gods, the mountain split apart. Light fell into the cavern, suddenly open to the air and sun. With it came a shower of small stones, but by the power of the gods, the debris disappeared before it reached the floor of the chamber.
Pale gray smoke rose from the forge, where the fire had died under the force of the exerted power. The dwarf lay on the floor, reduced to his original size—fewer than four feet in height. He was not dead; his fingers weakly clutching the handle of his hammer. Against the far wall, the beast-man had also lost size. Still, it would overlook the elf by at least a foot and had to be twice Drien’s weight.
On the anvil lay not one, but two swords. They too had been reduced to their natural size. One gleamed with dark runes, and the other seemed blank.
Vorynn reached out with a more substantial tendril and whisked up the blank blade, thrusting it into the hand of Drien in a movement too quick to see. He reached for the second as well, but Azrai was before him.