“Yes, well, that’s something you wouldn’t know: They don’t need a female,” Tungdil explained. “They can all lay eggs, so that makes them a real plague. On the other side, too. Unless you get them under your own control.” He leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head. His eye was focused on the ceiling. “It’s incredible. I come home after two hundred and fifty cycles, exhausted from the constant battles I’ve had to fight. I’m desperate to find a quiet corner. But there’s more turmoil here than there ever was on the other side of the magic shield.” He kicked the underside of the table and this time the tankards and bottle toppled over. Boindil tried to stop the spilled brandy affecting the lines drawn on the map. “So there’s nobody in the whole of Girdlegard man enough? What about the long-uns? Does it have to be me again? Have I got to raise in anger the weapon I heartily wished to chuck into the depths of Weyurn’s lakes?”
Ireheart gave an embarrassed little cough. “I forgot to mention that Weyurn isn’t a land of lakes and islands anymore. When Lohasbrand came to Girdlegard he dug a massive passage and all the water escaped through the tunnels. The Dragon must have caused other leaks as well…”
With a wild roar Tungdil sprang up from his chair, grabbed hold of the corner of the heavy table and flung it, one-handed, across the room to hit a wall seven paces away. The solid wood broke as easily as if it had been rotten timber.
Boindil watched his friend open-mouthed. No normal dwarf, however strong, would have been capable of that feat.
Tungdil gave a groan and put his head in his hands, sinking back down onto his seat and cursing in a language that Boindil did not understand. Runes on Tungdil’s tunic started to glow softly.
The guards came rushing in at the clamor and turned to their general. He waved them back out. There would be talk.
“D’you see?” groaned Tungdil through his hands. “That’s what I meant when I said there would be doubts. You’re wondering how I managed to chuck a heavy table around like a sack of feathers.”
“I suppose… you’re right there, Scholar!” the dwarf agreed. You did it with one hand! That’s quite something.” He made an effort to appear jolly. “You wouldn’t have been able to do that in the old days. That would have improved our chances with the pig-faces: Orc shot-put!”
Tungdil took his hands away from his face and looked at his friend. Round the golden eye patch thin black veins were disappearing into the skin. The word alfar came into Ireheart’s head. “I can’t explain,” said Tungdil tiredly. “Not yet. I need you to trust me.” He stretched out his hand. “Will you do that? I swear I will not abuse your trust and I shall not disappoint you; I swear it by all we have shared in the past!”
Boindil took his hand after hesitating a moment. He assumed it would be the best way to help his one-time comrade-in-arms. If Tungdil could be sure he had a dwarf by his side whom he could trust he’d be certain to find his feet faster and soon be his old self again. What happened to you? “By all we have shared,” he repeated the formula. “Ah, I’m sure Boendal would be delighted to see you again.”
“Boendal?”
“My twin brother!” exclaimed Ireheart in surprise. First Balyndis, now Boendal.
Tungdil hit himself on the forehead. “I’m sorry; my memory is still swimming in the dark.” He stood up, picking up the tankards that had survived their flight through the room. He filled them with black beer, handing one to Boindil and keeping the other for himself. “When will I see him?”
“See who?” asked a baffled Ireheart.
“Boendal, of course,” he replied, happily. “Now that you mention him I can picture his face.”
“Tungdil, my brother is long dead.” Ireheart’s lips narrowed. What horrors have you gone through that you could have forgotten all that? How much has your mind suffered? Is it to do with that scar on your head?
Tungdil stared at the floor. “Forgive me. It’s…” He sighed.
“What about Sirka? Have you forgotten her as well?” Ireheart could see by the expression on his face that Tungdil had no idea who he was talking about. He took him by the shoulders. “Scholar, she was one of the undergroundlings! She was your great love! You mean to say you could forget something like that?” He stared in his friend’s one eye, searching for an explanation, an excuse, an answer. The eyelid closed before the brown eye could divulge any secrets.
Tungdil turned his head away. “I am sorry,” he repeated in a hoarse whisper. With a jerk he shook off his friend’s hands and walked over toward the door. “We’ll speak again in the morning, if that’s all right. I need more time…” His boots crushed the fragments of the shattered table.
Ireheart got the impression that he was about to say more, but he opened the door and left without saying another word. “By Vraccas, what has happened to him?” he repeated under his breath, as he searched in the mess of splintered wood for the map of Girdlegard.
The map was useless, the brandy having destroyed the painstaking work of the cartographer; names and contours were blurred and illegible.
Boindil put his head on one side and looked at the heading: Girdlegard. The alcohol and the swelling of the paper had turned the word, with a bit of imagination, into Lostland.
“How true,” he muttered, casting the map to the floor again. An opaque turquoise jewel caught his eye. He’d noticed it on his friend’s belt buckle. It must have come off when he had pulled his table-throwing stunt.
Ireheart picked it up and started after Tungdil to hand it back. It was valuable. Gem cutting was not one of his strong points but he knew enough to be able to estimate the jewel’s value. Smoke diamonds were extremely rare.
“I’m getting forgetful, too. I didn’t tell him about the fourthlings. Or the freelings.” Two more reasons to disturb his friend again before he went to sleep.
It all still seemed like a joke on the part of Vraccas that the realm of the fourthlings, smallest of the dwarves and presumably least well versed in the arts of fighting, should have managed to repel all invaders. The thirdlings had waged campaign after campaign against them but had been unsuccessful. The freelings had been able to resist conquest, too.
“He’ll be surprised to hear that,” he told himself as he pushed open the door to Tungdil’s chamber after knocking several times. “Ho there, Scholar! I’ve got something of yours here. You’ve been throwing expensive diamonds around, did you know?”
Tungdil was standing with his back to the door and did not seem to have noticed him come in. He had removed his tunic, thus unintentionally giving Boindil a full view of his bare back.
The skin was criss-crossed with scars.
Some were small puncture marks, others were long, reaching round to the front, narrow and broad, some of them jagged, some smooth, some caused by weapons, others made by teeth or claws. The scars had destroyed the tattooed runes and images.
Boindil took a deep breath. His own body bore witness to sword fights and battles but what he saw here was uniquely terrible. He knew his friend to be a skilled fighter, so could not imagine what foe he must have faced to have these injuries. What would a warrior have to fear from combat with the kordrion?
Tungdil had still not noticed him. His head was bowed and he seemed to be staring down at his own chest. Then he threw a bloodied cloth into a bowl of water; he stifled a groan, and then a glow appeared before him.
Boindil put the jewel soundlessly onto the chamber floor and withdrew swiftly from the scene.
He had disturbed his friend and witnessed something no one was intended to see. The dwarf left those quarters of the fortress and tried to combat the doubts in his mind by humming a tune. But he could not wave his qualms away, being particularly troubled by the appearance of those black veins around the missing eye. An insistent niggling suspicion made him want to lift that eye patch. What was it hiding?