When they looked up once more the dwarf had gone. The monsters were waiting four hundred paces away at the entrance to the abyss, watching them.
“Go and fetch Kiras,” Goda commanded quietly. The magus had made himself invisible.
Boendalin sped off, threw the undergroundling over his shoulder and returned with her.
Then the monsters roared and charged.
They reached the barrier in the nick of time, and behind it lay the saving grace of the southern gate. Goda collected the last remnants of concentration and, with extreme difficulty, forced the red screen open for a second time.
She was the last of the group to re-enter the fortress. But when the gate closed behind her she still did not feel safe. The power of the disfigured dwarf had been far greater than she had feared.
Boendalin laid Kiras on a stretcher. “See what you can do for her, mother,” he asked, as he dampened the girl’s face with water.
The soldiers around them and up on the battlements sent sympathetic glances to the returnees; one or two were angry, critical because of the disastrous outcome of the sortie and the death of so many warriors. Boendalin gave a deep sigh.
Goda checked the undergroundling’s heartbeat. “She’ll be all right,” she comforted Boendalin and her other two children, both of whom stood at her side, quite distraught. “Apart from the burn on her face she doesn’t seem to have sustained serious injury.”
The maga did not recognize the symbol that the enemy magus had imprinted on the undergroundling’s forehead. Was it intended as a branding mark of humiliation? Why had he spared her life? Because she had been so stupidly brave?
“It’s all my fault,” said Boendalin to Goda. He sounded more than downcast. “We should have retreated after destroying the catapults. It was only because I insisted on leading the troops to the masts. That’s why they all died.” He lifted his head. “It was my fault,” he called up to the silent soldiers guarding the walls.
“Nonsense. This is war, and war kills. It kills humans, dwarves, ubariu and undergroundlings.” Goda contradicted him. “All of them knew that it was a really dangerous mission. They all volunteered to go with you.”
Boendalin was past consolation. “I should be lying out there with them.” He lowered his voice. “It is only thanks to your art that I am still alive. It wasn’t my strong arms or my skills as a commander that saved me. The name of each of the fallen will remind me that I must be a better leader.” He was about to go.
Goda touched him on the shoulder. “And yet the mission did succeed. The camp has been burned down and the catapults have been destroyed. They have not sacrificed their lives for nothing.”
“They would not have lost their lives at all if I hadn’t given those commands.” He left them and walked to his quarters.
Sanda and Bandaal came over and, in long tearful embraces, thanked her for saving their lives. Goda sent them off to rest.
She stepped into the lift to go up to the tower to survey the scene of conflict. She had not lied to them. The mission had won the defenders valuable time and the knowledge that, without outside support, they would never be able to vanquish their opponents’ magus.
Her gaze swept over the barrier, now obscured under clouds of smoke. In spite of all their losses she remained convinced that they had scored a victory over the monsters; albeit a two-edged victory.
We shall have to wait until the summer, Vraccas, she said in prayer. Her hand felt for the diamond fragments and found only four, together with a great deal of dust. The last ones…
XXI
Girdlegard,
Former Queendom of Ran Ribastur,
Former Northwestern Border,
Spring, 6492nd Solar Cycle
The air was cool and fresh but the sun was doing its best to warm the travelers. The tender golden rays shimmered through the canopy of dense foliage above their heads. There was a scent of nature reawakening and the first flowers were in bloom.
They were not riding particularly fast, not wanting to arrive in the Blue Mountains before Aiphaton and his alfar. Tungdil and Ireheart were at the head of the column, then some of the Zhadar and Barskalin, and, in the middle, Slin and Balyndar, with the remainder of the Invisibles bringing up the rear.
“Our messages will all have been delivered by now.” Ireheart blinked in the sunlight. “I wonder what Goda thinks? What will she say to our successes?”
“It won’t make any difference,” Tungdil hazarded. “She’ll still have her doubts about me? Unlike you. And I can’t blame her. In her place I’d be even more suspicious now. The victories only prove to her how evil I must be,” he laughed. “The alfar and myself, then the Black Squadron and the Zhadar as my new allies-a whole collection of bad lads.” This sounded like the old Scholar now.
If you only knew what I was thinking about. Ireheart hoped that his friend was not able to read his mind, because such thoughts had been exactly what had been going through it. Add to that those black lines on Tungdil’s face and the inexplicable changes in his eye. He had to force himself to join in the laughter. “Yes, it’s a troop Nod’onn would have given his eye-teeth for. In the old days.”
“A very long time ago.” Tungdil cast a quick look back over his shoulder. “Everything’s going our way, and some things were just handed to us on a silver plate.”
“I wonder if we’ll catch sight of the firstlings. May Vraccas make sure they find our message quickly.” Ireheart relaxed his grip on his pony’s reins and it trotted contentedly along. “The points are set now, like for the old mountain tunnel trains. I’d be a whole lot happier traveling in one of them, too.”
“That would be fine, perfect if you’re good at breathing underwater!”
“Elria could hardly have thought up a better way to punish us dwarves, could she? To get all of Weyurn’s lakes to drain down into our tunnel complex.” Ireheart looked ahead to where their road left the woods and led through the meadows. “We’ve still not seen a single human. Or anything else, for that matter.”
“Did you hear the stories Rodario was telling us about Ran Ribastur?” Tungdil grinned and, as always at such moments, Ireheart felt so happy to be at his side. As it had been in the old, old orbits… the feeling was comforting. “Magic animals, which the famuli set upon each other; a spell put on great swathes of the land; and nature drawing the traveler to his doom.” Tungdil tapped his armor for good luck. “I’m all right as long as I’ve got my armor.”
Has he ever taken it off? At any time during the whole journey? Ireheart tried to remember when he had seen Tungdil without his coat of armor. Certainly not during the journey to Lot-Ionan. But he didn’t seem to stink, he didn’t complain, he-didn’t sleep?
Hoofbeats approached and the fair-haired Ido girl came up to Tungdil’s side. “Excuse me for interrupting but I must tell you this,” she said directly. “I must speak to you, Goldhand.”
“Whatever you have to say to me Ireheart can hear, too,” said the one-eyed dwarf, and Boindil took it as further confirm ation that they were dealing with the genuine Tungdil Goldhand.
Mallenia nodded. “It’s about the queen. You should know that she has hardly any magic power left.”
Aha. It was all going so nicely till now. Ireheart’s eyebrows were raised so high they nearly touched his hairline, but he kept quiet.
“How do you know?” Tungdil asked.
“She told me so herself.” Mallenia put her hand on her sword. “I had to tell you.”
“Why didn’t she tell us herself?” Ireheart blurted out. “What use is it if we think she’s on an equal footing with Lot-Ionan only to find, the first time we meet him, that instead of an inferno we have a miserable little flicker emerging from her fingertips?”