“The gods must love fools,” Dartimien hissed, filling his hands with daggers. “Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many of them.” With a snarl as fierce as any cat’s, he vaulted through the broken grate and into the fray.
Soft, slanting sunlight washed the wooded hillsides west of the Vale of Sunder, filtering through the umbrella of leaves to paint myriad, flickering patterns on the forest slopes beneath. Soft breezes in treetops made the patterns dance, a subtle, intricate kaleidoscope of tiny motion obscuring the huge, graceful movements of the creature beneath the high boughs.
In her first life Verden Leafglow had shunned the daylight. A creature of stealth and deceit, she had preferred the dark hours to the bright. But now she found that the sunlight was a comfortable warmth, and the Tightness of it reminded her of how much she had changed in recent times. She was not the same dragon she had been, either in that past life or in the early portions of this one. Rippling scales that had once been emerald green now were a rich brown in hue, iridescent across the warm spectra with overtones of scintillant gold.
Little by little, the god Reorx had worked his magic upon her, always by her own choice it seemed but never with any clear options in that choice.
In her dreams and her deepest soul the visage of Reorx spoke to her. Free will, it said. The poisons of evil remain, and the antidote lies not in the frozen serenity of blind good. The true enemy of evil is free will. They must resolve their conflicts in their own way, and you must wait.
Your task is not the disorder of human minds, Verden Leafglow. Your task is greater. There is an evil beyond evil, an ancient grotesquery left over from other reckless games, long ago. That is your mission, Verden Leafglow. You will know when the time is at hand. You will have the chance to prove yourself.
Prove myself to whom? Verden’s question raged in her mind, for a god to hear if he cared to. I have nothing to prove!
Prove yourself to yourself, the dream-response came, quiet and sure. You chose to cast off your subservience, Verden. You rejected evil.
Evil rejected me! I only accepted that.
And craved vengeance, the dream-voice pointed out. As you still do. Crown your vengeance with wisdom, dragon. The true punishment of evil is its failure to succeed. You made a choice and a pledge, Verden. You chose free will, and rejected evil.
I pledged it only to myself!
Then you owe it to yourself, the voice said, seeming amused.
Verden shook herself, chafing at the torment of the uninvited voice which goaded and guided her. Impatiently she stirred her great body on the forested hillside. But even as she spread her languid, lustrous bronze wings to catch the patterns of the forest sunlight, she growled deep within her mighty chest.
I could just blast them all, she thought to herself, angrily. Those humans-those petty, soft things-I could kill them all without effort. Her huge fangs glinted at the thought, and her talons twitched. Deadly vapors trickled like foul smoke from her nostrils, and a powerful, devastating dragon spell formed itself in her mind.
But in her dreams a voice like distant thunder, silent beyond her own ears, spoke. Your magic is of this world, Verden Leafglow, just as you yourself are of this world. The thing you must defeat is not. Prepare yourself, Verden Leafglow. Your test is at hand.
Deep inside she knew that whatever was going to happen, whatever task the god had set her to do, it would come very soon. It had already begun. Spreading gold-brown wings, her rear talons thrusting with huge, powerful grace, the dragon launched herself once more toward the battered fortress of Tarmish.
In the deepest caverns beneath Tarmish, the combined clans of Bulp were settling in. Foragers had found a seep that provided an adequate water supply, and there were miles of crevices, tunnels and vermin-infested sumps to be explored, not to mention the most productive pyrite mine any of them could recall having seen.
Nobody knew why the Aghar were so enchanted with pyrites. The sulphur-colored iron nuggets, found here and there in old limestone formations, were useless as far as any other race of people knew. The metal melted poorly, tolerated little stress and had few of the qualities of good iron. But it was yellow, it was shiny and to the gully dwarves it was a fine treasure.
While various members of the clans foraged for food, all of which went into a new batch of stew that some of the females were brewing in makeshift pots over a central fire, others continued to clamber here and there on the west wall, gouging out chunks of pyrite-laden stone to be delivered to the former Highbulp Glitch, who was happily embarked on his new career as Keeper of Shiny Rocks and Other Good Stuff.
Everybody in the place knew where Glitch was. He was where the shiny rocks were being assembled. But when Sap descended from places above, looking for him, he couldn’t find him.
Even the Lady Lidda, pulled away from supervising the stew by Sap’s complaints, was a bit mystified. Glitch should have been right there with the shiny rocks. That was where she had last seen him. But now there was no sign of him.
Within a few minutes, every gully dwarf in the immediate vicinity was busily searching for the ex-Highbulp, peering into every corner, crevice, crack and shadow in the area. As minutes passed, some of them wandered off, forgetting what they had been doing.
But others kept up the search at the Lady Lidda’s insistence. Having her husband retire from being Highbulp was one thing. Having him simply disappear was another, and she was becoming very concerned until she noticed that the largest pile of fresh pyrite was quivering. She stepped close to it, scratching her head in puzzlement as its top shifted slightly and a few bits of stone rattled down its slopes.
Then, distinctly, she heard a snore. It was a snore she recognized, and it came from the pile of shiny rocks.
“Bron!” she called. “Get over here!”
When Bron was at her side, she pointed at the pile of stones. “Dig,” she said.
“Okay,” Bron said. Using his broadsword like a spade, he began to dig, flinging pyrite pebbles this way and that. He had reduced the pile by a third when the remaining top of it shivered, parted and a disheveled head poked through from beneath.
“What goin’ on here?” Glitch demanded.
“Ol’ Dad!” Bron pointed at the head, then squatted for a better look. “What you doin’ in there, Dad?”
“Dunno,” Glitch admitted. “Sleepin’. I guess.”
Hearing the patriarch’s voice, Sap hurried over from across the cavern. “There Highbulp,” he pointed.
“That not Highbulp,” the Lady Lidda corrected him. “That jus’ Glitch.”
“Glitch not Highbulp?”
“Used to be Highbulp.” Glitch struggled free from the piled pyrites and stood atop them. “Quit, though. Too much responsi … resp … thinkin’. Dumb job. Let somebody else do it.”
“Oh.” Sap thought this over, then asked, “Then who I tell Highbulp stuff to?”
“Got ’nother Highbulp now,” Lidda said. “Go tell him.”
“Okay,” Sap said. He turned away, then turned back. “Who is Highbulp?” he asked.
Several of them scratched their heads, trying to remember, Then Bron snapped his fingers. “Ol’ what’s-’is-name. Uh, Clout. Clout Highbulp now.”
Sap frowned, truly perplexed. “Then how I tell Highbulp ’bout Clout, if Highbulp is Clout?”
“Might write it down,” Scrib offered, but the others ignored him.
“Dunno,” Bron said. “That a real problem. Lotsa luck.” Shouldering his broadsword, the designated Hero wandered off in the direction of the stew.