She waved to them until she got their attention, then she rushed forward to greet them. Ragh kept a few yards behind her, his arms out to his sides and hands open, hoping they would take his neutral posture as a gesture of peace. Dhamon was close by Feril, his shadow form overlapping her own shadow.
“Merry afternoon to you, children of Reorx,” Feril said in the language of the hill dwarves. She spoke the tongue adequately, having learned it from long afternoons spent in Jasper’s company. “May I join your camp for fellowship?”
The four were typical hill dwarves—ruddy skin and bulbous noses, bristly hair, long beards on the three men—but they bore no familial similarities. They were a disparate bunch, probably none of them were related. They might have hailed from different clans.
The one closest to her, who had been rummaging around in a big canvas pack as she approached, was nearly as broad-shouldered as an ogre, though he had none of an ogre’s great girth. His hands were large and thickly callused, his arms muscular, his legs were incongruously short and slender. Of middle years, he had wide gray eyes that looked kind and were intently scrutinizing her.
Another was a stocky dwarf with pale brown eyes rimmed in a darker shade. His skin was smooth, showing he was likely just past young adulthood. His fingers were thin and constantly working, twirling around in the ends of a reddish beard that came past his breastbone and flared out. He was standing, shifting his weight back and forth between the balls of his booted feet and looking between his companions and Feril. Likely a Neidar dwarf, she guessed.
The one walking briskly toward her reminded the Kagonesti of a tree stump, his skin dark and as heavily lined as walnut bark. He waddled with a rolling gait as he thrust out a hand in formal greeting. She took his hand, feeling the roughness of his skin with dirt so embedded in the grooves of his palm that it likely never would come out. He had a pick sticking out of a pack on his back, but Feril didn’t need to see that to know these dwarves were miners. Their dirty hands and muscular arms told her as much—that and the way they squinted in the sunlight. They were accustomed to working underground most of the time.
The eldest was the only female, and she kept farthest away from the newcomers, taking off her pack and brushing dust off her trousers. Her face was broad and careworn, her hair steel-gray and braided with strips of leather. She was wearing a sleeveless chain mail shirt that was a little too big for her, and a short sword hung in a scabbard from her hip. If the band had a leader, it was the female dwarf, Feril decided. The woman’s arms were bare and covered in tattoos. More were on her neck and on the back of her hands. Feril couldn’t make them all out at this distance, but she noted emblems of war hammers and battle axes.
“Feldspar Ironbeard,” the tree-stump dwarf introduced himself. After vigorous shaking, he finally released Feril’s hand. “Odd seeing a wild elf here. Thought forests were more to your liking.”
“Ferilleeagh Dawnsprinter. You can call me Feril.” She offered a wide smile, reassuring the hill dwarves by her adeptness at their tongue. She pointed to the small ridge behind her. “My companion, you may note, is a sivak draconian. His name is Ragh, and he means no harm.”
Feldspar took a step back, setting his fists on his hips. “Odd enough to find an elf here. Odder still that she has a sivak for a companion, and one, I can’t help but notice, without wings.” His bulbous nose quivered and set his mustache to wiggling.
“She might be a sivak, too.” The female dwarf spoke suspiciously. “Them sivaks can paint themselves to look like whatever they just killed.”
“No,” Feldspar returned mildly. “She smells like an elf. The draconian…” His nose quivered a little more. “That one smells like sulfur. It’s a draconian all right. Odd set of travelers for these hills, but I’ve seen plenty of odd things in my…”
The ground began to rumble again as Feril and Ragh quickly braced themselves for the worst. The thin-legged dwarf glanced nervously up at the sheer hillside. Only dirt and bits of stones rained down and splattered in the pool.
“…long years under the mountains,” Feldspar finished, looking around warily in case another, stronger quake was coming along.
Feril nodded to each of the dwarves. “In fact, I do prefer the forest, but often my journeys take me elsewhere. Ragh and I were traveling along a pass through these mountains when that big earthquake struck.”
Feldspar chuckled. “Yeah, we don’t get many trembles in these mountains nowadays, but it happens. We were in our tunnel, working, when we felt the first tickle of trouble, and of course we headed out immediately.” He pointed to a spot above them in the sheer hillside. Feril took a closer look.
About thirty feet above the ground there was a slash in the slope, likely an exit from the dwarves’ tunnel. The hillside wasn’t exactly a hill, she realized. There was plenty of dirt, but the dirt was clinging to a stone wall. A keep had been carved into this hill a long time ago; the brickwork was smooth from age. It might have been a castle once; she’d heard that dwarves once built immense halls under the hills. She wondered how much of it was intact inside the hill.
“Come quench your thirst with us, Dawnspringer.”
“Dawnsprinter,” Feril corrected gently.
He pointed toward the narrow end of the basin, where the other three dwarves were now sitting down and relaxing, leaning back against their packs. “The sivak can come along, too—if it’s got a mind to behave itself.”
Ragh followed, choosing to sit just outside their circle. His shadow was darker than it should have been, as though Dhamon had merged with his shadow when Feril passed by. None of the dwarves noticed. They were busy passing around a jug and talking loudly. Feril, in their midst, was drinking with them, asking them questions about their mine. She took off her satchel and tucked it protectively beneath her knee as she drank and talked, gazing at the pool. Ragh knew she was thinking of using that water to scry on the scale with Obelia.
“More ale, Dawnspringer?”
She accepted the jug and took her third deep pull. It was a heady and sweet brew, but she was thirsty. She passed it to the female dwarf.
“Grannaluured,” the female dwarf said, raising the jug in toast.
It wasn’t a Dwarvish word Feril was familiar with, so, after a moment’s hesitation, she realized it was the woman’s name rather than a toast. This close to her, Feril could observe the intricate craftsmanship of her tattoos. There were images of the constellations and of a hammer suspended above a forge—a tribute to the god Reorx. Just above the dwarf’s right elbow was the grinning visage of a one-eyed gargoyle with an outstretched claw. Grannaluured caught Feril staring.
“Eh, admiring my art,” the dwarf observed proudly. “That one there…” She took a long drink, handed the jug back to Feril, and pointed to the gargoyle. “That one was quite difficult to do, me being right-handed and all. Tough to get all the details right around its eyes and ears using my left hand. Saw the beast perched high in the mountains one night and wanted to record him for posterity.”
Feril took another drink and touched the back of Grannaluured’s left hand. Etched on it was a fiery sun with a face in the center of the sun. “What does this one represent?” Another drink. The Kagonesti was finding the ale tastier with each swallow. “You spending so much time underground, I wouldn’t think you’d see the sun very often, and I notice that the light bothers your eyes.” She took another long pull and almost reluctantly passed the jug to Feldspar.
“That’s the point of it,” Grannaluured said, holding her left hand up for everyone to see. “If I put the sun on my hand I can see it anytime I want—which is usually by torchlight in the tunnels.” She waved for the jug and swallowed some more, then sloshed the jug around and scowled to note there wasn’t much left. “Feldspar, where’s your manners? Get us another!” Softer, she said to Feril, “Maybe the sun wasn’t my best idea for a tattoo, but I’d been drinking.” She passed the jug back to Feril and chuckled. “Just like now. You can finish that if you want, Dawnsprinter. We got us a couple more jugs of the good stuff. Not going back to the mine today. Want to make sure all the tremblin’s done, so we might as well drink up.” The dwarf laughed longer and deeper.