«The truth!» Slanter spit. «There is no truth in the lizards!»
«Revenge against those he feels have wronged him may bring out the truth. We can offer him that revenge — a trade, perhaps. Think carefully. He must know the secrets of the Ravenshorn and Graymark. Those mountains were once his. The castle was his.»
«Nothing was ever his!» Slanter came out of his chair with a lunge, stiff with anger. «They took it all, the lizards did! Built their castle on the bones of my people! Made slaves of the Gnome tribes living in the mountains! Used the dark magic like the walkers! Black devils, I would as soon cut my own throat as give them an instant’s trust!»
Jair thought to intercede, rising as well. «Slanter, what… ?»
«A moment, Ohmsford,” Foraker cut him short. The fierce countenance turned again to Slanter. «Gnome, I give the Mwellrets no more trust than you. But if this one can help, then let us take whatever help we find. Our task is difficult enough as it is. And if we find that the Mwellret lies… well, then we know what can be done with him.»
Slanter glared down at the table in front of him wordlessly for a moment, then slowly reseated himself. «It is a waste of time. Go without me. Use your own judgment, Foraker.»
The Dwarf shrugged. «I thought that this would be preferable to being left under lock and key. I thought you might have had enough of that.» He paused, watching the dark eyes of the Gnome snap up to find his own. «Besides, my judgment is useless in determining whether or not the Mwellret speaks the truth. You are the only one who can help us with that.»
For a moment, no one spoke. Slanter’s eyes remained locked on Foraker. «Where is the Mwellret now?» he asked finally.
«In a storage room that serves as his cell,” Foraker answered. «He never comes out, even to walk. Doesn’t like the air and the light.»
«Black devil!» the Gnome muttered in response. Then he sighed. «Very well. You and me.»
«These two as well, if they choose.» Foraker indicated Jair and Edain.
«I’m coming,” Jair announced at once.
«And I,” the Elven Prince agreed.
Foraker rose to his feet and nodded. «I’ll take you there now.»
Chapter Twenty
They went from the terrace gardens down into the bowels of the locks and dams of Capaal. From the gray light of an afternoon rapidly fading into dusk, they descended stairwells and passageways that curled deep into stone and timber. Shadows gathered about small pools of hazy light given off by the flames of oil lamps dangling from iron brackets. The air trapped within the massive rock of the dam was stale and damp. Through the silence that pervaded the lower levels came the distant rush of waters flowing through the locks and the low grinding of great wheels and levers. Closed doors came and went as the four passed deeper, and there was the sense of a beast hidden somewhere within, stirring in response to the sounds of the locks and their machinery, caged and waiting to break free.
They came upon few Dwarves within these levels of the fortress. A forest people who had survived the Great Wars by tunneling within the earth, the Dwarves had long since emerged from their underground prison into the sunlight and in so doing had vowed never again to return. Their abhorrence of dark, closed places was well known among the people of the other races, and it was only with some difficulty that they managed to endure such closures. The locks and dams at Capaal were necessary to their existence, vital in the regulation of the waters of the Silver River as they flowed westward to their homeland, and so the sacrifice was made — but never for long and never more frequently than was required. Brief shifts to monitor the machinery that they had built to serve their purposes were followed by hasty exits back into the world of light and air above.
So it was that the few faces the four companions did come upon as they made their way downward bore a look of stoic endurance that barely masked an abiding distaste for this most unpleasant of duties.
Elb Foraker evidenced a trace of this, though he bore his discomfort well. His fierce, dark face was turned forward into the maze of corridors and stairwells, and his solid frame was erect and purposeful as he took his companions through lamplight and shadow toward the storage room yet further down. As they went, he told Jair and Edain Elessedil the story, of the Mwellrets.
They were a species of Troll, he explained in beginning his tale. The Trolls had survived the Great Wars above the earth, exposed to the terrible effects of the energies those wars had unleashed. Mutated from the men and women they had once been, they had altered in form, their skin and body organs adapting to the frightening conditions the Great Wars had created over almost the whole of the earth’s surface. Northland Trolls had survived within the mountains, grown huge and strong, their skin toughened until it had taken on the appearance of rough tree bark. But the Mwellrets were the descendants of men who had sought to survive within forests that the Great Wars had turned to swamp, the waters poisoned, the foliage diseased. Assuming the characteristics of creatures for whom swamp survival was most natural, the Mwellrets had taken on the look of reptiles. When Slanter called them lizards, he was describing them in truth as they now appeared — scaled over where skin had once been, arms and legs grown short and clawed, and bodies grown as flexible as snakes.
But there was a greater difference yet between the Mwellrets and the other species of Trolls that occupied the dark corners of the Four Lands. The Mwellrets’ climb back up the ladder of civilization had been more rapid, and it had been marked by a strange and frightening ability to shape–change. Survival had made fearful demands upon the Mwellrets, as upon all of the Trolls; in the process of learning the secrets of that survival, they had undergone a physical transformation that enabled them to alter body shape with the pliability of oiled clay. Not so advanced in their art as to be able to disguise their basic characteristics, they nevertheless could shorten or elongate all of the parts of their bodies and could mold themselves in ways that would allow them to adapt to the demands of any environment in which they found themselves. Little was known as to how the shape–changing was done. It was enough to know that it could be done and to know that the Mwellrets were the only creatures who had mastered it.
Few beyond the borders of the Eastland knew of the Mwellrets, for they were a reclusive and solitary people who seldom ventured beyond the shelter of the deep Anar. No Mwellrets had come forth in the time of the Councils at Paranor. No Mwellrets had fought in the Wars of the Races. Withdrawn into their dark homeland, within forest, swamp, and mountain wilderness, they had kept themselves apart.
Except where the Gnome people were concerned, that was. Sometime after the First Council at Paranor, a time more than a thousand years earlier, the Mwellrets had migrated up from swampland and broken forest into the wooded heights of the Ravenshorn. Leaving the dank and fetid mire of the lowlands to the creatures with whom they had shared those regions since the destruction of the old world, the Mwellrets had drifted into the higher forestlands inhabited by scattered tribes of Gnomes. A superstitious people, the Gnomes had been terrified of these creatures who could change shape and who seemed to command elements of the dark magic that had been brought to life with the advent of the Druids. In time, the Mwellrets began to take advantage of that fear and to assert their authority over the tribes living within the Ravenshorn. Mwellrets assumed the role of chieftains, and the Gnomes were reduced to slaves.