Dragon Blood (Hurog #2)(71)
"King Lorekoth will meet with you tonight," he said, looking up from the book he was reading to hand me a note.
I'd sent Oreg to the dwarven king.
Jakoven had proven that he could attack Hurog despite the winter as long as he controlled Farsonsbane. He'd sent this creature after Garranon for spite, but the Bane was capable of far more harm. So Kellen had to leave Hurog, and the fastest way to do that was through the dwarven waterways beneath the earth. For that, I needed the dwarven king's permission.
The hidden stair that led to the dwarven ways was still half buried in rubble. There weren't very many entrances to it from above ground; I knew of only one other in Shavig and three in Oranstone, though I could make an educated guess at four or five more - the keeps that had traditionally been famous for their dwarven trade.
As we neared the dwarvenway, the sound of the water became deafening, proof that a delegation awaited to escort us to the Dwarvenhame where the king held court. Without dwarven (or Oreg's) magic, the water was still and quiet. Only when a raft was hurtling through the tunnels did the water roil.
The door opened before we had quite reached it and a slender-built man stepped through. His beard and hair were dark, with only a hint of gray threaded through it, though I knew that he had been born before my grandfather.
"Axiel," I said, and picked him up in a bear hug. "It's good to see you."
He laughed and slapped my back. "Put me down, you overgrown runt, before you infect my brother with your poor manners."
I set him down and turned to his companion, who had watched us with wide eyes.
"Ward, this is my brother, Yoleg. Yoleg, Wardwick of Hurog."
The man he introduced me to was a hand shorter than Axiel, but he outweighed him by five or six stone. Axiel could pass for human when he wished, but this one could only be dwarven. He wore no beard, so he wasn't much over a century old, just a lad for the long-lived dwarves. Yoleg, I knew from conversations with Axiel, was the heir to the throne.
I bowed. "Prince Yoleg, good of you to come and offer me escort."
He bowed to me as well. "Hurogmeten. It is our honor to ride the ways with you and bring you to our father."
Royalty or not, the craft we seated ourselves on looked no more seaworthy than any other I'd seen in the ways. Axiel told me that most of them had been made before the illnesses had plagued his people - so at least two hundred years ago.
I sat on a seat not meant to accommodate a man of my size and pulled the leather harness tight around my middle. Riding the ways was rough, and falling off the raft meant you had to swim for a very long time.
I could feel the pulse of ancient magic as it caught our raft and flung it wildly down a narrow tunnel so fast it was hard to catch my breath. Spray hit my face and left small bruises, like the first touch of frostbite. Sometimes the tunnel was lit with a million stars - dwarvenstones spelled to light the way. But the dwarves had been weakening for hundreds of years, and in some places the magic had faded and we were engulfed in absolute darkness. There, the sound of the water hitting the rock became almost painful.
There were chambers in the ways, crossroads where Yoleg decided which tunnel to follow. We had to wait until the water calmed and the magic died down before we could set off again. I'd traveled these ways before, but each time the sight of the chambers rendered me dumb.
One chamber was coated in crystal gems. Backlit by dwarvenstone, emerald columns rose from the ground to cross over our heads. It was difficult to judge distances in caves, but the columns looked colossal, the base of the nearest one longer than our raft.
Another chamber held gray stone carved in countless shapes. Small statues crowded the water's edge and climbed over the tunnel. I could have stayed there a whole day, but we were off again with a rush of water magic.
As we waited in a place that smelled of mint and glittered with gold, something large bumped our boat twice. Yoleg looked concerned, and Axiel held up a hand for silence. We all crouched motionless until whatever it was gave up and swam off in waves of midnight fins.
The raft came to rest gently against one of a series of docks in a cave I hadn't seen before - although I had been to Dwarvenhame several times. Our raft was alone in a port obviously built for a hundred, and the dock we tied to was the only one I'd have trusted with my weight.
"This is the formal dock," said Axiel, answering my unasked question. "Before we took you as a visitor to my family. But you come tonight as Hurogmeten to petition the king, and that requires we tie up here."
Axiel organized us so that Yoleg led, followed a half-step later by me on his right. Axiel and Oreg flanked me on either side.
Yoleg brought us into a large chamber, irregular in shape but flat floored and walled. Gold and gemstones were conspicuously absent because dwarves don't mix pleasure and business. That this hall in the Dwarvenhame was barren except for mounds of stone to serve as seats told me that this was very serious business indeed.
Plain-clothed dwarves packed the room in a way that reminded me forcefully of my own great hall yesterday. But there was a stillness that lay over this room that would never be a part of a gathering of wild Northmen. It felt as if the dwarves had internalized some part of the stone of the room into themselves.
On the far side of the room, Axiel's father, Lorekoth the dwarven king, rose from his seat and looked at me as if he'd never laughed at my table or dug through the broken stones of Hurog to pull books tenderly out of harm's way.