Prologue
{ String 257 }
A fissure wounded the face of the living rock, a cruel gash that looked like a smile marred by jagged granite teeth.
“What is that, father?”
Harclimar stepped back. His pick was raised, ready to strike, but he lowered it at the sound of his son’s question. The truth was, he didn’t know, but a trickle of cold ran down his spine.
His dark eyes narrowed as he studied the rock. There was much in dwarfish lore about the mood and character of stone, and Harclimar was well studied in his lore. The rock could tell you what forces had formed it, what it was composed of, what lay beneath it. And if your eye was sharp, the stone could tell a dwarf about himself—about his depths, the places he was brittle, and even the means by which the copper in his own blood would someday rejoin the metals still in the mountain.
“It could be many things,” Harclimar said. He stepped away from the fissure and adjusted the lens of his lantern. He motioned for his son to step closer to the face of the rock. “But I want you to read it for yourself, min kära. What is the stone saying to you?”
Harcligan’s eyes narrowed as he stepped closer to the rock face. His beard was wispy, just now beginning to jut beyond his chin. He was bright, but given to impulse. His father was grateful for an opportunity to invite him to pause and discern carefully.
He watched his son read the stone in the traditional way, from right to left, and then from bottom to top. “It is gråstensten,” he said.
It was—a very common kind of stone, gray and strong, but brittle.
“But there is a glimmer of something else, just here along the lip of this seam. Realgar, maybe?”
“Could be,” Harclimar agreed noncommittally. “We’ll need to knock some out to tell.”
“Well, if it is, the oyarsin would say the combination augurs a tragedy just out of si—”
“The oyarsin couldn’t tell an agate from an arsehole,” Harclimar interrupted him. “Tell me about the rock.”
“The combination—if I’m right—probably means there’s zinc around, too.”
Harclimar grunted. “That is the lore, but in my experience it’s as wrong as it is right.”
Then Harcligan did something his father did not expect. He slapped the rock.
“Here, now, what are you—?” The rock could be chipped or hewn, but a slap was the traditional insult among dwarfs. To slap the rock was like slapping Father Mountain himself.
“Just…listen.” Harcligan did it again.
Harclimar listened. There was an echo. His bushy brows bunched and his eyes met the eyes of his son. Harcligan smiled, showing his own jagged teeth beneath his nascent mustache.
“There’s nothing in the rock to suggest a cavern behind it,” Harcligan thought aloud, studying the rock face with new eyes. He turned to face his son. “How did you know?”
Harcligan shrugged. “It was just a feeling.”
Harclimar scowled. He did not like the idea of affirming his son’s impulsive nature, but he could not deny it had paid off in this case. The dwarf raised his pickax and tapped along the fissure, listening. Finally, with one well-placed stroke, he smote the stone, just above the gash, and smiled with satisfaction as the rock gave away behind it, shards tumbling into darkness. Inserting the tip of the pick, Harclimar widened the hole, now punching at the rock, now pulling at it, testing the places it wanted to give and wanted to hold.
The dwarfs had more than six thousand words for rock, stone, and metal, ways to describe even the subtlest distinctions between them, and the variations within each species. But none of these words sprang to Harclimar’s mind as he dug. He was one with the mountain as he tore at the seam, opening a way for passage, for discovery, for wisdom. Every dwarfish child was taught that there was no knowledge in the universe that could not be learned from the mountain, and the mountain was on the verge of a revelation—to him. Harclimar’s pulse raced.
Soon the hole was wide enough to shine the lantern into it. Harclimar placed the lamp next to his cheek and felt the heat of it on his wide nose as he gazed into the gloom. He gasped.
“What is it, father?” Harcligan asked.
“Grab your pick. Dig.”
The young dwarf did as he was told. He tapped at the stone with his pickax a few feet away from the hole his father had started and struck at the stone. It fell away from his ax with almost no effort. He struck again and again, pausing now and then to tug at the edges with his pick, testing as he had watched his father do.
Before long, they had widened a hole large enough for a small dwarf to step through. Just beyond it was a small cavern—a pocket in the mountain, it seemed to Harclimar, as he did not see any tunnels leading away from it. It is too early to tell that, he reminded himself. The mountain likes to hide its secrets, just as much as it delights to reveal them.
“Let me go in, father,” Harcligan said. “I can fit easily.”
It was true. His son was slim, as most young dwarfs were. They did not acquire their girth until their children arrived. The dwarfish saying was mostly true, “When a wife is with child, the whole family grows fat.”
Harclimar nodded. “In you go, then. Make sure to test the floor.”
“I’m not a fool, father.” Harcligan looked momentarily wounded.
“No, kära, you’re not. Love sometimes speaks with a sharp voice.” That was another well-known dwarfish aphorism. “Forgive me.”
Harcligan nodded his absolution, squeezing his father’s forearm.
“Go in, and I’ll hand the lantern through.”
Harcligan passed his pickax through and tested the floor of the cavern. It was jagged but solid. He nodded at his father, and then placed one tentative boot on the lowermost lip of the hole they had made. His father hoisted at the young dwarf’s belt, and tipped his balance inward. Harcligan stepped down and then reached back for the lantern.
Harclimar gave it to him. He fought down his own impulsive impatience. “What is Father Mountain revealing?” he asked.
“There are no tunnels. The floor is untrod. I feel dripping…from above.”
Harclimar saw the shadows stretch ominously as the young dwarf moved the lantern around. “There is a shaft…straight above me. Its end is dark, but it is about three hands wide.”
The divinatory implications began to rush through Harclimar’s brain, and none of them were good. He pushed them aside.
“I…I think I see what you saw, father.”
Harclimar closed his eyes and calmed himself. In his bones, he knew that Father Mountain was about to bestow a boon like none Harclimar had ever encountered before. His hairy ears twitched as he heard the scrape of a stone being lifted from its resting place. Harclimar opened his eyes to see a vision passing through the hole in the rock wall. With trembling hands he received it.
The stone was two hands wide, black as pitch and shiny. In the middle of it was a fiery red eye that seemed to be deeper than the stone was. The eye seemed to shine with a light of its own, but Harclimar knew that it must be an illusion. Somehow it was concentrating and refracting the dim, reflected light available. He longed to see it in the full light of day. He wondered if he would be able to tolerate its brilliance. He could not wait to find out.