They travelled up one such valley near sunset, looking for a good campsite, when the valley opened up into a vast depression in the land like a great bowl with a flat bottom. The bottom of that wide valley-like feature was dotted with boulders and rocks strewn about the floor of it like children's toys, and rock spires, hundreds of them-
– -not rock spires. Towers!
It was a ruin! The remains of a great city were hidden in those crisscrossing valleys, a city that had completely filled up the depression in which it had been built. The city was buried in sand here and there, and it was obvious that a recent sandstorm had carried away much of the sand that had once buried the city. A city built of the same sandy colored stone that filled most of the desert, but it was a city that was remarkably well preserved. Buildings still stood here and there, and they stood out against the fallen debris that cluttered what had once been wide avenues. The architecture of those buildings were blocky, with many right angles, and as he and Sarraya approached them, he began to realize that the builders of this vast city weren't human.
The doorways to those buildings were only about six spans high.
Tarrin reached the edge of the city, and looked at the nearest building still standing. It was three stories high, but its compact construction made it only as tall as a human's two story building. It was made of sandy colored stones that showed the erosion of the years, but the wearing away did nothing to hide the exacting precision with which the stones had been fitted together. The architects and builders of this place had been engineers of the highest degree. These sprawling ruins put modern cities to shame with the durability and craftsmanship of the buildings.
"Who made this place, Sarraya?" Tarrin asked, looking at one of the buildings.
"I don't know," she replied. "The doorways are small. If I were a gambling Faerie, I'd say it was one of the Lost Races. Maybe Dwarves, or Gnomes."
He'd heard those names before, but they belonged in bedtime stories. The Dwarves and Gnomes had lived a long, long time ago, but had been wiped out during the terrible Blood War. The Gnomes had died out by attrition, but the Dwarves had fought to the very last man, even their women, fighting to protect the world from the dark evil of the Demons. Even now, five thousand years after the fact, the heroism of the Dwarves was honored in song and story from one side of Sennadar to the other. The Race of Heroes, they were called. Both races were supposedly short. The Dwarves were stocky and strong, the Gnomes thin and willowy. Both races were respected as stoneworkers and builders without peer. If this place was built by one of their races, it was no wonder that so much of it had survived the destruction wreaked upon it by the years and the harsh desert sands.
He looked down at the doorway, which came up to the his chest. There was no way he'd be able to get into one of those buildings in his current form. But looking down caught his eyes on a small bright object partially buried in the sand. He knelt down and picked it up, and found it to be a small knife. A knife held in a skeletal hand.
A little excavation revealed a skeleton of a short, heavy-boned bipedal creature, wearing a massive set of plate armor-at least massive for the skeleton's size. A broken battle axe rested underneath it. The creature had died with a knife in its hands, fighting on to the last breath. The metal worn by the skeleton was clean and unblemished, a sign of being buried in scouring sand with no humidity. That, or the metal wasn't steel, wasn't subject to rust.
"Looks like a Dwarf," Sarraya said after the skeleton was unearthed.
So small, but obviously tenacious and brave. Like a wolverine.
"You want to camp here for tonight?" Sarraya asked.
"We don't have much choice," he replied. "But I don't think we should go into the city to do it. Let's pull back a ways."
"You afraid of ghosts?" she asked with a smile.
"I'm afraid of what might be hiding in those ruins," he replied soberly. "Sandmen are the least of our worries. A kajat could be hiding in there, and I don't fancy the idea of having one pay a visit after dark."
"How can something so big hide so well?" Sarraya complained as they turned around and started back up the incline.
"Practice," he replied absently.
They set up camp against a steep hillside, to at least narrow the avenues of possible invasion. The sand covered hill reflected the light of the fire quite nicely, illuminating much of their surroundings in the ruddy firelight. Sarraya ate her customary dinner of berries, nuts, and breads and pastries pilfered via Conjuring as Tarrin roasted a small umuni he had hunted down just before sunset. Umuni wasn't very tasty, but he was rightly tired of not having any meat. The poisonous lizard was a better meal than another Faerie dining experience. Tarrin looked down at the large city, wondering at who had lived there, what kind of people those Dwarves were. They had to be brave, if they were willing to sacrifice their entire race to stop the Demons. Very brave indeed. They had to be very smart and skilled to build such an impressive city. He had a feeling that they were a race of honor. He wasn't sure how he knew that, but he was pretty sure of it. Probably nothing like the Selani or Vendari, whose honor was their lives, but still very honorable. They had to be tough fighters as well. It was sad that an entire race was snuffed out in the Blood War-not just one, for that matter-but at least those who were saved by the sacrifice of the Dwarves still honored their memory, and honored their heroism.
They still sang the songs. Songs of the Battle of the Line, the titanic clash between the Demons and the natives on the arid steppes of Arak, where the Dwarves had pushed back an army of darkness that would have run back over land that the natives had managed to reclaim from the Demonspawn. Songs of the what was simply called Last Battle, the last of the great battles that had caused the extinction of the Dwarven race, who had rallied to the last man, woman, and child around the banners of the native peoples, then marched headlong into death singing songs of glory. They had shown no fear, shown no regret for what they had done. They had thrown themselves against the Demonic horde, and though they had lost their people, their courage had won the war.
Trying to imagine doing such a thing was hard. He had no idea how he would react if he was called upon to sacrifice not only himself, but everything that he held dear, everything in the entire world that mattered to him, in order to stop something so terrible that there was no other way. It was a terrifying thought. He had no regard for throwing his own life away, but to do so knowing that all his family, all his friends, everything that he had ever known was going to die with him… it was something one did not even think in jest. Such a horrendous cost.
But the memory of the Dwarves lived on, lived on in the songs of the survivors, songs that were still sang to this day. So long as the songs called out over fires and within parlors and taprooms, the Dwarves would never be forgotten, and their memory would live on.
"You're quiet," Sarraya noted as she took a long drink from a tiny cup.
"Thinking of them," he said, motioning back towards the city. "I can't even imagine what they sacrificed."
"I don't want to imagine it," Sarraya said with a shudder. "But they saved us all, Tarrin. No matter how high the price they paid, it's something that we should never forget. We owe them that much."
"Amen," he nodded.
The rest of the night passed in relative peace and calm, but not for Tarrin. The twinge in the Weave was getting closer and closer, and he had a feeling that it was indeed Jegojah. He still couldn't pin a location to it, but it was coming towards him from the northwest, the direction he was going. That meant that any movement forward was going to bring it faster, and he may not be ready when the time came. What he was feeling was very vague, so he had no idea if it was half a desert away, or just on the other side of the ruined city. It told him that if he was going to move, it had to be back the way he came, to buy himself time.