Dragon Blood (Hurog #2)(72)

He was young to be king, only four hundred years old, but his father had been one of the first to die of the series of plagues that had nearly destroyed the dwarves. His mane of red hair swept the ground. It was loose because a dwarf only braided his hair to go to war. In his neatly trimmed beard there was a bare hint of gray. King Lorekoth wore plain gray robes trimmed in black. Only the fabrics, silk and linen, reflected his rank.

"Who comes?" he asked slowly, the only person I'd ever heard with a voice deeper than mine. Axiel said that he could use the deeper tones to conjure fear in anyone listening to him, a useful trick on the battlefield.

I bowed, one ruler to another. "I am Wardwick, Hurogmeten of Hurog Keep, where dragons once more fly."

"Why do you come before me, Hero of Hurog?"

I didn't flinch in embarrassment at the title, but it was a near thing. "I ask repayment of the debt your people owe me. We fight a war above. A great evil has been unearthed to work its magic among mankind. Jakoven, High King of the Five Kingdoms, holds Farsonsbane in his hands."

"Does any person here deny him his debt?" the king asked.

Silence answered him.

"What do you wish of us?"

"I need an army," I said. "What human army could stand against the dark men, the stone men?"

And so the negotiations began. Dwarves, perhaps because they are a long-lived race, do nothing in haste unless dire need forces them. My tired bones told me that the sun had risen again high in the sky before someone mentioned the dwarvenways casually. Another hour passed before I brought them up again.

Stories were told of dwarven bravery, and Oreg and Axiel told tales of my life to match them that were so blown up that several times they bore no resemblance to any memory I had of past deeds. Not that the stories were false ... just exaggerated. I had carried a horse two miles in a blizzard - but it was a newborn foal. Blood and severed body parts played a role in most of the stories, each storyteller becoming more and more graphic as the hours trailed by.

In the end I had an agreement that I could transport no more than ten people at a time through the dwarvenways. The list of people who could use them was not long - no one wanted the ways to be common knowledge - but Kellen and his man, all those of direct Hurog descent whom I deemed trustworthy, Alizon, Haverness, Tisala, Stala, and Garranon were among them. Axiel was to come with me because he knew how to use the ways.

"Most gracious king," I said with a bow that was more jerky than I would have wished, but at least my stiff muscles allowed me to rise. "I have a small gift for you, in thanks for this audience."

A gift, the king's note had said, would make it impossible for his courtiers to complain about human manners. An exotic animal, he'd suggested, as his menagerie was famous among his people. It had taken me about five minutes to come up with the perfect animal.

"I have in my lands," I said, "a basilisk, sometimes called a stone lizard. Oreg, my wizard, has enchanted it truly to stone in order to keep it safe. If you have a sanctuary for it, I will have it brought to you. Oreg can dispel the enchantment when and where you wish it."

Silence fell upon the dwarves. Shock rather than contemplation, I thought. The basilisk was the dwarven royal family's animal, a totem second only to the dragon who belonged to no one family, but to all of dwarven kind. Axiel had told me that during our trip here when I explained what I intended to do - I was not such a fool as to give the king a gift that might be an embarrassment, so I checked it out with his son. The king even had the perfect place to release the basilisk, a huge island without a harbor that was reachable only by the dwarvenways.

A slow smile spread across the king's face. "A generous gift, Lord Wardwick. I am honored to accept."

I bowed once more and left before I did anything to undo what we had accomplished today.

"I didn't think that even my father could get them to agree to allow humans to travel freely in the dwarvenways," commented Axiel as we waited for the waters to calm in one of the crossroad chambers. His younger brother wasn't with us because the raft was to await passengers at Hurog.

"He didn't think he would, either," said Oreg with a pleased smile. "I suggested to your father that if Ward started with a big enough demand - one that really would cancel the debt owed to him - then the rest of the dwarves would be more than ready to give him this small concession."

"The best part," I said, "is that your father will be taking the basilisk off my hands and Oreg will quit asking me where we can release it."

Tychis was waiting for us at the bottom of the first flight of the stairs to the dwarvenways where Oreg's wards to keep out casual visitors held him at bay. Even fleshed out a bit he looked like a half-starved wolf - a cold, half-starved wolf. I don't know how long he'd been there, but he was pale and shivering.

"What'd Ciarra do?" I asked, briskly wrapping him in my cloak. "Tell you to find me and then let you fend for yourself?"

He bridled at my criticism of Ciarra, though he pulled my cloak around him. "She said it was necessary for you to come as quickly as you could."

"Tychis?" My sister's voice preceded her. "Are you down here?" She turned the corner and saw the four of us. Ciarra looked more respectable than she had as a young girl, wearing dresses now instead of torn-up hunting leathers - but I suspected that when she was eighty-five she would still light up a room with her energy. "Ah, there you are, Ward. Nice of you to tell people where you're going. If it hadn't been for Tosten and me, Uncle Duraugh would have been sending out search parties."