Geas of the Black Axe (Legends of the Nameless Dwarf Book 2) Read online

  The Nameless Dwarf chuckled. “Ah, you got me there, laddie.”

  Nevertheless, he tried to find it once more; rummaged about in the secret spaces of his mind, but he found only the absolute emptiness of the Void.

  Shader shrugged his incomprehension, but before the Nameless Dwarf could explain, the grille on the door slid open. Muffled voices came from outside, followed by the grinding screech of bolts being drawn back, and a resounding clunk. A few more words were exchanged, the door opened a crack, and Thumil entered the cell.

  THE DOOM OF ALL CREATION

  At Thumil’s nod, the door closed. There was a resonant clunk from the lock, and the grate and thunk of three bolts being snapped into place. He faced Shader, gave a lopsided smile, and held his palms up apologetically.

  “Precautions. I’m sure you understand.”

  Thumil looked terrible. His hair was falling out in fistfuls, and he was worn and haggard. He had on the white robe of a councilor. That seemed odd.

  “We had no idea,” Shader said. “About our companion, I mean. He was a trap. A deception of the Demiurgos.”

  It was starting to seem deception was rife; that it was in the very air.

  Shader had come to Arx Gravis with someone? More than that: he’d said “our companion.” So, where were the others?

  “That’s precisely what we’ve been afraid of all these centuries,” Thumil said.

  Shader frowned and looked at his cellmate for an explanation.

  Well, he wasn’t getting one. Not that there was anything to give. There were more questions than answers bouncing around the inside of the helm. It wasn’t even clear what Thumil was doing here. He’d been marshal of the Ravine Guard, but then he’d left to do something else… Join the Council of Twelve, that was it. Thumil had been chosen as Voice. Hot on the heels of the revelation came another: and he’d married Cordana Kilderkin. Cordy.

  That didn’t seem right. Cordy had been the Nameless Dwarf’s best mate at the Ephebe, where they’d learned to fight. Then the three of them had been friends, done the round of the taverns together. That night when the baresarks had lain wait for them outside Kunaga’s House of Ale… It flashed behind his eyelids, but then it was gone.

  Only a sour taste remained.

  Cordy should have been with him, only he’d left it too late; realized too late how he felt about her. And she’d known it; he’d seen it in her eyes. Did that mean he and Thumil were no longer friends?

  Thumil and Shader’s voices droned on outside the helm.

  “I see you’ve met,” Thumil was saying to Shader. He scratched at his beard, and a clump of hair came away in his hand. “Tried talking to him?”

  He didn’t know. Thumil had no idea the Nameless Dwarf was awake.

  “Yes, but—”

  “Me too,” Thumil said. “Used to come daily. Then days turned to weeks, and weeks to months. I don’t know, I guess I just hoped he’d…” He stopped and stared at the sheared bolts on the floor beneath the bench. The color drained from his face, and he backed toward the door. “What have you done?”

  That was it: the time to say something, the time to risk finding out what was going on.

  “Hoped he’d what?” The Nameless Dwarf pushed himself up from the bench.

  Thumil yelped, and his knees buckled. He slid down the door to the floor.

  “Hoped I’d say something?” The Nameless Dwarf stepped toward Thumil. “I would have, if I’d known you’d been here. Weeks, you say? Months? How long has it been? Forgive me, Thumil, I feel I’ve been dead, and this is my tomb.”

  Thumil’s teeth chattered, and spittle sprayed from his mouth when he spoke. “It’s not possible. How can you be awake? Aristodeus said only he could… Oh, never mind. Are you… Are you…?”

  Another flashback: the three of them waiting for him on the walkway: Thumil, Cordy, and Aristodeus, holding a great helm.

  Had they all conspired against him, brought him to this? He dimly remembered them claiming they were helping him. He remembered a sea of demons flooding the walkways and plazas surrounding the Dodecagon. Everywhere he looked, vileness and corruption. But then the three figures had stepped closer, and he’d seen them for what they were. At first, they’d appeared ghoulish, ghost-like, but as Aristodeus brought him into the helm’s ambit, his vision had cleared, and he’d known them for his friends. At least, Cordy and Thumil.

  He focused in on Thumil’s half-formed question.

  “Am I what? All right? I don’t think so? Myself? Definitely not.”

  Thumil gripped Shader’s wrist, pushed his back into the door, and got his feet beneath him. “You remember your name?”

  “That’s where I thought you could help.” He gave the helm a sharp rap. “It’s in here somewhere, I’m sure of it, but it won’t show itself.”

  Thumil sighed and lowered his head. “I’m sorry, old friend.”

  “But you remember it, surely?” Shader said. “Tell him what it is.”

  Thumil looked up, eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I can’t.”

  “You can’t?” Shader said. “Don’t you want to—”

  “It’s gone.”

  “What do you mean it’s gone?” Shader said. “Surely—”

  “Gone for all time. Gone from all time, as if it never existed. As if he—”

  The Nameless Dwarf backed away and flopped down on the bench. “Should have killed me, Thumil. You should have sent me to the seethers.”

  Oh, shog, the seethers. That’s what they’d done to his brother—the Council’s special cohort, the Krypteia. He could hear echoes of the screams.

  “I couldn’t,” Thumil said, the tears running freely now. “You were… you are…”

  Thumil’s tears were a mirror of truth. But it was a dark mirror, and the truths were fleeting shadows.

  Thumil steadied himself by taking hold of Shader’s arm, and together they came back across the cell.

  “They call him the Nameless Dwarf now,” Thumil said.

  Shader shook his head, not understanding.

  “It struck me, so clear, so forcefully,” Thumil said. “As if that’s what he’d always been known as. It was like an echo back through time, and then this being, this Archon, came and—”

  Shader gripped him by the shoulders. “The Archon was here?”

  What did he mean, “an echo back through time?”

  The Nameless Dwarf was suddenly staring at his own blood-spattered face reflected in the Scriptorium window, the place his brother had studied the Annals of Arx Gravis obsessively.

  Thumil nodded in response to Shader’s question about the Archon. “Last year, though it seems a lifetime ago. He and the philosopher argued. He wanted to kill…” He indicated the Nameless Dwarf with a nod. “Said one day it would be a cursed name.”

  “Is now,” the Nameless Dwarf said. “That’s the point of it.”

  Thumil grimaced. “The worst punishment a dwarf can receive.” He looked up at Shader. “We are a people steeped in tradition, in history. Names are very important to us. They are recorded by our families, all the way back to the Founders. One gap in the roll of names brings dishonor to the whole lineage. Most dwarves would prefer death.”

  “There’s still time,” the Nameless Dwarf said. “Grab a spear and come straight back. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “That’s enough!” Thumil barked. It conjured memories of the Ravine Guard barracks when they had served together.

  The Nameless Dwarf gave a mock salute and lay back on the bench.

  Thumil let out a sigh and raised his eyes in what looked like silent prayer.

  Without warning, the Nameless Dwarf was in the underworld of Gehenna. He saw a shadow-formed axe barely discernible against the darkness. Feelers of fuligin sprouted from its blades, quested toward him. He recoiled, but then the axe was in his hand and blazing golden.

  Mention of a name he recognized drew his attention back outside the scarolite helm: Maldark. Had Shader just claimed he
was a friend of Maldark the Fallen, a dwarf who’d lived more than a millennia ago?

  “Rubbish,” Thumil said. “That’d make you old enough to be my great, great, great, great—”

  “There isn’t the time for this,” Shader said. “I am a knight from a far away place. I am pledged to the Ipsissimus, ruler of the Templum—”

  He’d said as much before, that he was a knight. There had been stories of humans riding horses into battle in the earliest Annals. Stories his pa had read to him as a child. But those tales had been legends, not history, same as the ones about dragons and the Sanguis Terrae Monster.

  Thumil and Shader went on talking, but it was too much to take in; there were too many questions of his own begging answers. Still, the Nameless Dwarf may as well have not been there, for all the notice they were taking of him. That may have been a good thing. Perhaps it was better to keep quiet, listen and learn what he could, work out who he could trust.

  He pretended to snore, and watched through the eye-slit.

  “Look, nothing happens quickly here,” Thumil said to Shader. “By the time the Council is ready to see you, it’ll likely be the Feast of Arios. Takes us weeks to agree an agenda. I’ll root about in my study, bring you some things to read.”

  “Maldark was helping me,” Shader said. “Helping me to avert a cataclysm that will come to pass long before your bloody feast day.”

  The Nameless Dwarf almost said something then. Maldark, helping Shader? Unless there was another Maldark—which was extremely unlikely, given that the name had been dropped from usage on account of the Fallen’s unpardonable sin.

  “Listen to me,” Shader said. “Have you heard of Sektis Gandaw?”

  The Technocrat? The lunatic the Annals said dreamed of unweaving the whole world of Aethir, and everything else that existed, and recreating it according to his own megalomaniac design.

  “Who hasn’t?” Thumil said. “According to history, he’s the reason we shut ourselves away down here in the first place.”

  “Well, he’s still alive,” Shader said.

  “I know that. Out of sight, out of mind is our way. We’re no threat to Gandaw and his experiments, and from what I hear, he keeps himself to himself, for the most part.”

  “And what does your history tell you about Maldark? About his Fall?”

  Thumil scoffed. “Nearly brought about the Unweaving, that’s what. If it hadn’t been for that shogger betraying the so-called goddess—”

  “Careful,” Shader said. There was barely-suppressed anger in his tone. “I watched him die trying to atone for the past. There’s no one braver, no one more honorable.”

  Thumil sighed and wrapped his arms about his chest. “Forgive me. Even in our legends, Maldark made amends, but it is said he never forgave himself for delivering Eingana to the Technocrat. When Sektis Gandaw reduced her to a statue and commenced the Unweaving, it was Maldark who saved her. But afterwards, when the Fallen set himself adrift on the black river that runs from the depths of Gehenna through the heart of the Abyss, the Statue of Eingana vanished. To this day, no one—Gandaw included—has a clue where it went.”

  “Urddynoor,” Shader said. “My world. The world Gandaw hails from. He’s found it, Thumil. Found the pieces of the statue and assembled them. The time of the Unweaving is upon us.”

  The Nameless Dwarf gasped, and almost broke his rhythm of fake snores. And then he wondered if they were fake snores. Maybe he was really sleeping, and dreaming he was pretending to snore. That made more sense than what he was hearing.

  The Unweaving of all the worlds was upon them? The cataclysm that Maldark had at once triggered and averted was beginning again? No, that couldn’t be true. It was his mind playing tricks on him, an aftereffect of being asleep for so long.

  “Urddynoor?” Thumil said. “You sound like that shogging philosopher, Aristodeus. He was always claiming he came from Urddynoor. The pair of you must think we were born yesterday. Urddynoor’s no more real than the lost city of Arnoch. I don’t know what your game is, Shader, but the idea of Gandaw finding the statue on Urddynoor is as believable as me finding a cask of mead at the end of a rainbow.”

  Aristodeus… Yes, the philosopher had said he was originally from Urddynoor, and the Nameless Dwarf recalled snippets of a conversation about how the philosopher was so fluent in Old Dwarven, a language scarcely anyone but scholars used these days. Apparently, a similar tongue existed on Urddynoor.

  “I’m not joking,” Shader said. “Urddynoor is every bit as real as this world of Aethir.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you? Even if you’re deluded, you believe what you’re saying.”

  “I can assure you, I’m not deluded, Thumil.”

  “Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you? It’s what defines delusion. Listen, if Gandaw really had the statue, how come we’re all still here? Don’t you think he’d have started the Unweaving by now?”

  “I think he has started. When we left the Sour Marsh, there was a brown cloud above the Perfect Peak.”

  “You’ve been to the Sour Marsh?” Thumil said. “All the way up to the Dead Lands? Then why didn’t you put a stop to it, rather than bring your problems here?”

  Shader inhaled sharply. When he spoke, there was a quaver in his voice, as if a great deal hinged upon what he said next, and how it was received.

  “The mountain is guarded by silver spheres that spit fire. The only way we’re going to get inside is through the tunnels you dwarves used for—”

  “The scarolite mines?” Thumil said. “You want to use the tunnels that run from the mines to the Perfect Peak? They’ve been closed for years.”

  “But you can get us into them?”

  The Nameless Dwarf stopped his pretense of snoring. The mines where his pa had worked. Something had happened in the mines. Something terrible that he’d been part of. Shader wanted access to them, so he could get to the Perfect Peak, Sektis Gandaw’s scarolite mountain?

  Thumil rubbed at his beard, frowning as strands came away in his fingers. “They could be unblocked, I suppose, but shog knows what you’d find inside. According to the Annals, back when we were mining for him, Gandaw had the tunnels infested with giant ants to keep the scarolite from being stolen. The only reason our boys weren’t eaten is because he made an ant-man to control them. Horrible thing, by all accounts, and I pity the poor bastard he took and melded into it.”

  “I’ll deal with that hurdle if we cross it,” Shader said. “The question is, will you help us?”

  Thumil puffed his cheeks up and blew out a big breath. “That’s putting the cart before the goat, I’d say. Council still needs to meet to decide what to do with you after that business outside. Then, and only if they reach a decision, which is by no means certain, I could propose admission to the tunnels, but the problem there is that it would constitute an action that may have ramifications in the world above the ravine. Last thing the Council wants is to be implicated in anything that might come to Gandaw’s attention. You see, everything we do is fraught with peril. One action leads to another, and before you know it—”

  “That’s just ridiculous,” Shader said. “You can’t hide away from the world.”

  Thumil shrugged. “For some, Arx Gravis is all there is.”

  “Then convince them they need to get a move on,” Shader said. “Tell them about the Unweaving.”

  “You’ve yet to convince me,” Thumil said, “and I can assure you, the Council will take a lot more persuading.”

  Shader raised his arms, turned in a circle, as if he could find more sense in the walls of the cell. “Forget them, then. If they’d rather debate while the worlds return to nothing, let’s bypass them. You could get us into the tunnels. You are the leader of the Council, aren’t you?”

  Thumil looked horrified. “That’s the sort of attitude that leads to tyranny. I’ll not do it. No dwarf would.” He turned away and raised his fist to knock on the door.

  “I would,” the Nameless Dwarf s
aid.

  Thumil stiffened, then turned to face him.

  The Nameless Dwarf stretched and yawned inside his helm, then swung his feet to the floor and stood. “Seeing as you won’t kill me, and seeing as I could get very, very bored holed up down here now I’m awake, I might as well make myself useful.”

  “No,” Thumil said. “No, that won’t help at all.”

  The Nameless Dwarf folded his arms over his chest, the eye-slit of the great helm focused squarely on Thumil, the friend who had betrayed him by taking Cordy for his wife. No, he reminded himself, before the thought blossomed into anger. He’d forgiven them both, said they could still be friends, promised to defend their marriage.

  But he hadn’t caught himself soon enough. Thumil must have sensed the change in the atmosphere, because he turned back to the door, muttering as he knocked.

  “I’ll speak with the Council,” he said, “tell them of the urgency; but don’t get your hopes up. They are fatalistic, at best, Shader, and they don’t want to be blamed for anything.”

  “My brother used to say it’s been more than a thousand years since Maldark’s betrayal,” the Nameless Dwarf said. “Surely we can start to take baby steps into the world once more.”

  Surely you can give me this chance to make amends.

  Even as he had the thought, he saw it for what it was: vain folly. Amends for what? All he knew was that it must be something too bad to put into words. A dwarf wasn’t stripped of his name without reason. Outside of the morality tales in the Annals, no dwarf had ever been punished in such a way before. It was considered too cruel; too shameful. Ignorance did nothing to mitigate the guilt.

  And even if he were permitted to aid Shader, and they succeeded in stopping the Technocrat’s plan for unmaking all that existed, it would be an infinitesimal drop in the ocean compared to whatever he must have done.

  “Lucius,” Thumil said. “Your brother’s name was Lucius. And yes, you are right about what he used to say, but look where it got him.”

  The door swung open, and spears bristled across the threshold.

  “Everything all right, my Lord Voice,” a gruff voice said from out in the corridor.