It is the 13th of Limestone, year 256.The quill scratched clumsily against the paper in an unsteady rhythm, looking very much out of place in a gnarled hand that was accustomed to far more ponderous tools. Magnus had retired from carpenting after having provided all of the bedrooms with a cabinet each, and had left her workshop in the competent hands of Atķr. She now busied herself with the day-to-day maintenance of the fortress. Elagn had taught her how to read and write, and she had been relieved to find that Skaia had kept an accurate, if perhaps a tad verbose account of their stocks. The population of Ilrom Ziril now tallied seventy-seven beards, and their food and drink production would have to be scaled up accordingly. Several new gathering zones had been designated outside, where the peons (Dwarobaki's brainchild had caught on) were in full swing with the harvest, and Magnus had assigned one of the migrants from Goden's entourage as a trapper to keep the larder free of rats and other vermin. Of course, the fattest rat of them all remained uncaught and was still prancing about in the hallways, befouling the air with his unending complaints and ruining everyone's day. At least he mostly confined his cloaked corpus to the dining hall, whereas Magnus now dined in her office.
"Traders! We've got traders coming up the mountain!" Sibrek the hunter had barged in without knocking, but Magnus didn't mind, as long as they didn't call her "boss". "I spotted their caravan down in the woods. It looked like they were bringing all sorts of goods with them!"
"Traders?" asked Magnus and stopped manhandling the quill. "But we haven't even got a depot! Where are they supposed to unload their wares?"
"Um, I don't know. But they'll be here in a few hours!"
"Well, we'll have to build one then. Find Skaia and tell her to show them around the fortress when they arrive, that should buy us some time. I'll go talk to Neblime." Sibrek ran off towards the kitchen, and Magnus got up from her chair. The quill sighed in relief as she left the office and went around the corner to where the stonemasons worked.
"Where's Neblime?" she asked Urvad, his apprentice, who was manning the other workshop. "We need to build a trading depot."
"He's still in bed, boss!" Magnus furrowed her brow at the distasteful moniker. "I think he'll be out for a while, he's been churning out table legs nonstop for the past two days!" Of course. After they had allowed Neblime to use marble in his projects he had promptly started constructing a second longtable for the dining hall. The one already there was made of black gabbro, and the marble would complement it well, but right now the depot was more important than interior design. Unfortunately, Magnus knew that waking up a sleeping Neblime was as impossible as bending open one of his doors when the lock was on.
"I should have known. I'd better go find Taupe then, maybe she'll know what to do. And don't call me boss."
"Sure thing, chief!" Magnus grumbled and headed for the Glow.
Taupe was in the metalworks as always. She dumped a newborn copper sword into the cooling trough as Magnus approached, where it sizzled in eagerness to cleave flesh and bone. "Morning, Taupe. Sibrek tells me there's a group of traders headed up our way, and we need a depot for them, but Neblime's out for the count. Could you build one out of metal?"
"A trading depot, eh?" She looked over her stockpile. "I don't know if we have enough for that. Iamblichos has been turning all of our zinc into brass for some reason, and you can't build anything out of brass, it just bends and falls apart. And that," she pointed at the steaming trough, "was our last copper ingot."
"Oh dear," said Magnus. "I'll get a hold of Beirus and have her plan some exploratory shafts. It's high time we started a proper mining operation. But Taupe," she put her hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eyes, "that depot *has* to be ready by nightfall. You need to find some way to build it, somehow. I'm trusting you on this."
"All right, boss," said Taupe, and Magnus sighed in resignation, accepting her new title. "I'll get it done."
"Good. I'm going to find Beirus." Magnus left, and Taupe looked over at the slag pile next to the furnaces, where they dumped the unwanted byproducts from the tetrahedrite smelting. She twirled her mustache.
Beirus was not in the barracks, nor was Than402 or any of the other officers. Only the new recruits were there, sparring in the vacant hospital. One of them told Magnus that the officers had gone out on "sun patrol", apparently to prevent cave adaptation. This struck Magnus as a good idea, and she asked him when they would return. "I don't know", he replied, "they didn't say. But there's one of those kooky teenagers over in their quarters, maybe she overheard something." The recruit returned to his squadmates, and Magnus headed for the officers' dormitory.
Inside, she found a leatherclad dwarf standing in front of the staircase to Thob and Rovod's supply tunnel, in which Neblime had installed a heavy, firmly locked basalt double door. Wallace kept the only key to that door on his person, and the tunnel was strictly off limits to anyone but him, a law that this dwarf seemed to blatantly ignore. Magnus frowned. This new trend was not entirely to her liking. Some of the younger peons had taken to calling themselves The Lycans, and spent their time off work meandering around the Beasts' prison, or the Changing Room as the soldiers called it. They all wore black leather coats, and on rainy nights they would run outside and make howling noises at the moon, or just stand there in the darkness and look serious while the rain poured down on them. More than once, Wallace had been forced to shoo them out of the barracks, where he would find them striking elaborate poses and growling at one another, or talking in deep, somber voices while flourishing training swords with both hands, or practicing overly complicated, ineffectual martial arts maneuvers involving a lot of hoo-ing and hah-ing. "The barracks is for SOLDIERS, not CIRCUS ARTISTS!" he had yelled at the sulky dwarves as they shuffled down the stairwell, some of them whimpering theatrically like puppies. "Either join the military or find a job!" But he knew they would be back the next day. And they all refused to eat their vegetables. Magnus was hoping it was all just a fad, and not a serious mental illness.
This one looked like one of them. She had a grim, serious expression on her face and was glancing at her reflection in the walls, evidently very concerned about her appearance. "Morning," said Magnus and asked if she had heard the officers mention when they would be back from their patrol. The Lycan threw her hair back, and at first made no reply. Then she spoke, in a deep, monotone voice: "Greetings. I do not know when the Dwarves-At-Arms will return. Perhaps they will all perish under The Sun's cruel rays."
"Nonsense," said Magnus. "You missed a spot, by the way." The Lycan had powdered her face with what looked like plaster powder from the hospital, and her hair and beard had been dyed black with dimple cup extract, but she had apparently forgot the eyebrows, giving her a rather comical appearance. She checked her reflection again, and gave Magnus a scalding look. Magnus gave her a reproaching one in return. "What are you doing here anyway? Shouldn't you be out picking pears, get some fresh air?"
"The Change is tonight," the Lycan replied. "I must watch over The Forbidden Door, lest a Dwarf wander inside and be devoured by our Masters." Then she flashed her teeth and hissed.
"You'd better worry about your masters breaking down that door and slaughtering the lot of us," replied Magnus in a stern voice. "If you believe they'd spare you just because you've dyed your hair black and talk funny, you're very much mistaken. That door is locked for a
reason. Now get out of here. Go do your job. I don't want you or any of your friends hanging around this tunnel anymore, understood?" The Lycan hissed again, and strode out of the room with a disinterested "whatever". Magnus shook her head. She really had to do something about these youngsters. It was not as if they lacked work to do, and she had made sure there were plenty of stepladders to go around. Grumbling, she left the dormitory and headed down the stairwell. She still had to finish her bookkeeping duties.
The Lycan hurried towards the dining hall and found the Leader there along with the rest of the pack. She told her what had happened, and the Leader frowned. "We must not let this hinder us. The Shrine will be completed soon, and then our Masters will know freedom again. A new future, one where Dwarves and Beasts live together in harmony, where the strong shall not be enslaved by the weak! May the Moon guide our hands and our picks, and may our Masters give us their strength!" The Leader laid her woodcutter's axe on the table and raised her mug. "To the moon!"
"TO THE MOON!" they all shouted, and raised their mugs with a howl.
Upon returning to her office Magnus saw that Goden was there, and immediately regretted her decision. "This is an
out-rage!" he exclaimed and shot his stubby arms out to the sides. "My bedroom is much too small!"
"What do you mean?" asked Magnus. "It's got a cabinet and everything."
"Yes, and so do all the others! The rooms are exactly identical! As the Mayor of this fortress, how can I possibly be expected to dwell in such squallor? Oh, the ignominy!" He spoke in the slow, deliberate voice he always used when trying to explain the causes for his erratic demands, and as usual it drove Magnus murderously mad, but she kept her calm.
"We all do have the same bedrooms, you know? Mine is just like yours." Goden grew positively furious, and gestured around in the office. "Just like mine?! You call this... this... gorgeous... magnificent, deliciously decadent," he licked his lips wistfully, "
palace, a bedroom just like mine?"
"Oh!" laughed Magnus. "This isn't my bedroom. It's my office! I sleep upstairs. Northwest corridor, third door on the right."
The door opened and a peon came in, puncturing Goden's reply before he could speak. "Boss, it's Erib! He's got that strange possession thing going on, just like you and Melbil! You've got to come help, he says he wants logs, and nobody knows where Atķr is, and Mafol said he would brew us into peon schnapps if we ever touched his barrels again!"
Magnus turned back to Goden. "Thank you for bringing your troubles to my attention, Goden. I assure you the situation will be dealt with immediately." She curtseyed, and left him standing utterly surprised. "Decadent, hmph!" she mumbled to herself as she followed the peon over to Erib in the workshop. "The dwarf's gone insane! What's so special about my office anyway?"
Erib had quite obviously been taken by the same strange mood as Magnus. He was pacing around in the workshop, singing quietly to himself and sketching out pictures of gemstones and wood. Magnus seemed to recall that she had done something similar when she had created The Morose Tenderness. "You stay here and watch him," she said to the peon. "I'll go butcher some trees."
Later that day:"Aaand here's our drawbridge! Isn't it just soooo cool? Actually it's just a wall right now because we've raised it, but there's a lava pit on the other side! I remember our drawbridge back in Bouldermechanisms..." Mörul closed his eyes and began massaging his temples. When he had heard that a liaison had been sent to the new barony he had smelled a trading opportunity and readied his caravan, but now he was regretting it deeply. First he had suffered a month's hazardous travel through that godforsaken, goblin-infested swamp, then he had been forced to leave his carts in the woods when some woodcutter had felled a tree in their path,
then he had been made to wait for
hours in a makeshift hospital, where a bunch of strangely dressed adolescents had made growling noises at him all the while - and now this. Mörul did not know what he had done to deserve this garrulous broker who had been inflicted on him, nor did he know where Bouldermechanisms was, but presently he was intensely wishing both it and her straight to Hell. Although, he had to admit she was rather cute.
"Skaia!" said a voice. Apparently the leader of this fortress had come to meet them. She was carrying a woodcutter's axe and looked rather ordinary for a Mayor. "Taupe just told me that the depot is ready now. Why don't you go down and show it to our guests? I'm sure you guys have a lot to talk about. Oh, and welcome to Ilrom Ziril, by the way. I'm Magnus." Mörul recognized her as the woodcutter who had stranded his carts. "I'm Mörul. Let's get this over with." He motioned for his party to go and fetch the pack animals, and when they returned they were all led into the fortress by the woodcutter, who kept whistling a happy tune that annoyed Mörul to no end.
The hospital turned out to have a moving wall that receded into the floor when Magnus hit a certain note, and the area beyond was apparently a barracks. A group of dwarves, some of them in uniform, were standing around a central stairwell and looking worriedly at one of the walls. Suddenly a great, terrible roar sounded from the adjacent room, and shook Mörul out of his misery. What sort of beast could make such an unholy noise? A series of loud thumps now shook the wall, as if a giant was pounding it with all his might on the other side, and a fine cloud of dust fell from the ceiling. Mörul decided that he did not want to know.
"You go on ahead, Skaia," said the woodcutter. "I'm going to stay here in case there's trouble." Skaia led Mörul and his entourage down into the stairwell, and left Magnus in the barracks.
"Think it'll hold?" she asked Elagn, who was standing there with Wallace and Neblime.
"Oh, the walls will hold. I'm not sure about the bed, though." A muffled noise of crushing stone could now be heard from the Changing Room, and Neblime winced. It sounded like the fortifications had gone.
"Don't worry. I steamed the wood for three hours, and coated it with five layers of resin, and then I hardened it in the furnace for Armok knows how long. There's not a force in this world that can harm The Morose Tenderness." A series of angry roars came from the Room, followed by what sounded like a tender object being tossed around morosely. "I'd better go see if Erib's done with his creation." Much to Neblime's chagrin, Erib had been occupying his workshop the whole day. Neblime was the sort of dwarf who believed in hard work over divine inspiration, but he had grudgingly admitted that whatever this project was, it looked promising.
"Is it done, then?" asked Magnus as she entered the masonry workshop for the third time today. She had heard a commotion from the other side of the hall where the trading depot was, but decided to satisfy her curiosity first. She was not disappointed. Erib sat atop a monstrous creation, a throne worthy of a king, no, a
god.
"Good lord, that is most impressive." Erib had no answer but a content smile. "It's a good thing you asked for wood before the Peak iced over, a couple of months from now it would have been impossible to get through the snow. Winter is coming, you know." Erib nodded in agreement and ensured Magnus that he would repay the fortress for the materials he had taken. "An Oilelder always pays his debts."
It was a bizarre situation that awaited Magnus in the newly constructed trade depot, cast entirely out of fine silver, or "rubbish" as Iamblichos called it. The grumpy merchant and his entourage were rolling around on the floor, screaming in high-pitched bursts as if they were on fire. A black, viscous liquid oozed out of their mouths, and their hands were covered in the stuff. The horses whinnied nervously. Skaia was standing by the negotiating table, watching the display with morbid curiosity. Magnus hurried over to her. "What's going on? What happened! Don't tell me you poisoned them!"
"Oh, they looked hungry, so I gave them a bite to eat." Magnus looked back at the trading party. One of their animal handlers was on his back, fondling what looked like an invisible pair of breasts in the air. The merchant who had introduced himself as Mörul was gyrating rhythmically against the floor, and the guards had embraced each other in a loving kiss. Magnus remembered the noises she sometimes heard when walking past Mafol and Kadol's bedroom, and she realized that the traders were not screaming in pain.
"What... did you give them, exactly?"
"Well, I've never been to the Still Shield, and I didn't know if people there are like, cannibals or something, like how the Elves eat their dead, did you know that? Actually that's gross. Or maybe they're like, vegans, and I'd have to be reeeally careful not to put any meat in it, cause sometimes I forget the difference, you know? Aaanyway, I couldn't decide, so I just gave them some leftovers from last week." Skaia nodded towards a gigantic casserole that stood on the table. It was full of the same ominous, tar-like substance that was covering the traders' faces. The chairs were tipped over, and a pair of spoons lay on the floor.
"Oh, no. You did not give them the Mystery Stew."
"Hey, only the best for our guests, right? It's nice to meet someone who appreciates my talent for once!" She shook her hair and gave Magnus a triumphant look. Mörul swallowed the goop in his mouth, and drooled out a speech. "ghrllb... I... I never... the taste..." He groaned in ecstasy and smacked his lips with a loud pop. Skaia clapped her hands together. "Awww, I'm glad you liked it, boys! I can put the rest in a bag for you to take home if you want? Don't worry about it spoiling, it'll keep and keep and keep!"
The merchant looked at her and said, completely exhausted, "Take... take what we have. All of it... it's yours."
"All of it?" asked Magnus. The merchant did not reply. He had closed his eyes and was fumbling for his tobacco pouch, but before he could get it open he had fallen asleep.
"Well, isn't that typical. Boys!" Skaia put her hands on her hips and shook her head. "I'd better go get some bags."
"I've been meaning to ask you, what's in the Mystery Stew? Do I even want to know?"
Skaia gave Magnus a secretive wink over her shoulder. "Don't ask, don't tell!" She continued towards the kitchen, and Magnus began taking stock of the traders' goods, which now belonged to Ilrom Ziril. Her eyes went wide.
Two weeks later:Mörul was feeling fantastic, and was very sad to leave this fortress. The trip had definitely been worth it, and he had promised them he would return next year. "One day", he thought, "I'm going to settle down here and marry that Skaia." One thing that had bothered him was the way the furnace operator had reacted when the woodcutter had called her in to examine one of the items he had brought. Had she really tried to copulate with it? And how could she have carried it out of the depot on her back alone, that thing weighed almost a ton! Then the blacksmith had come, and she had also been a strange one, prostrating herself on the floor in front of a regular everyday tool that the Still Shield had hundreds of. No matter. The weather was fine, and Mörul looked forward to the ride home.
Taupe swung her hammer against the steel anvil, and it sang. The wonderful noise reverberated from the crater walls and filled her with joy. Her new apprentice, Kadōl, had received her old iron anvil which had served them in solitude all this time, mercifully rescued from their goblin masters' cart so long ago. To the day it was two years since Ilrom Ziril had been founded, right here in the Glow. No dwarf could be more proud of what they had accomplished than her.
She turned around and faced Iamblichos, who had approached along with Peregar. They were carrying a heavy item between them. The hour was at hand.
"Has it been prepared?" Taupe asked.
"Yes, it is ready," Iamblichos replied. "Peregar here spent the better part of a week prying all the jewelry out of it. There are no impurities left, as far as I can tell."
"Then let us begin." And they worked for several, sweaty hours.
"MAGNUS!" Goden's unmistakeable voice rang through the bedroom hallways, as shrill as a cock's cry, waking up Mafol and Kadol's newborn baby (who they had named Kadol after her mother), and further cementing its owner's unfailing ability to make an ass of himself. Goden had awoke late as always, and was now rather angry, as usual, but instead of taking up space in the dining hall, as he was wont to, he had continued past the stairwell and was now heading for the northwest corridor, third door on the right.
Magnus yawned, and stretched in her bed as he hammered on the door. "Yes, what is it?"
"What have you done?! This is terrible!" She could hear him jumping up and down outside.
"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, my dear Goden."
"The rooms! What have you done to the rooms?!"
Magnus opened her bedroom door, and looked around the corridor. "Ohhh, yes, now I see what you mean. Well, it's all for your sake, really. Some of the peons were getting restless, so I put them to work last night. And your room is completely unique now!" She gave the apoplectic Goden a friendly pat on the shoulder and strode past him towards the stairwell. "I'll be in my office if you need me."
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Topic: Ilrom Ziril: The Peak of Fire (Read 32730 times)