Undermind

Beneath forgotten crypts lay ancient halls, newly occupied, but not yet fully awakened. Stone golems stood silent watch over empty rooms, while the newcomers sat and paced and slumbered and…did other things. One of those who slept was a gigantic troll, with skin as hard and smooth as the cold stone floor on which she lay, snoring loudly enough to set the chamber door rattling.

Saskia watched the sleeping troll on her desktop monitor, trying to remember why the creature looked so familiar to her.

“What’cha working on, Sass?” asked Fergus, standing over her shoulder.

“Testing some assets I created for Dave’s new dungeon. ‘The Stone Bastion,’ he called it.” She gave a little eye-roll as she air-quoted the name.

“Sounds a bit…I dunno, generic, don’t you think?” said Fergus. “I mean, we get it. Dwarves love rocks. But do they have to name everything after them?”

Saskia laughed. “That’s what I said!”

“Hey, dumbarse gamers eat that shit up,” said Dave, glowering at them from his desk. “Doesn’t stop them from complaining, of course: ‘Elves and dwarves, elves and dwarves, elves and motherfucking dwarves.’ So what happens when someone makes a fantasy RPG without elves and dwarves? No-one fucking buys it. They all buy that other game with elves and motherfucking dwarves.”

“You really think the average gamer’s taste is that terrible?” said Fergus. “They can’t stomach any changes to the tried-and-true formula?”

“Oh, you can make small changes,” said Dave. “Really small. Try to change too much, and if you’re really, really lucky, you might just end up with the next critically acclaimed commercial flop.”

“And if you’re unlucky?” asked Fergus.

“The critics will hate it too.”

“Wow, how cynical of you, Dave,” said Saskia.

“You know I’m right,” said Dave. “I’m not here for my winning personality. I’m here because I’m always fucking right.”

“He is right about one thing,” said a voice that sent a shiver of dread down her spine. “Flatlanders resist change at every turn. What they don’t understand, they ignore—or destroy.”

She whirled about in her chair to see none other than Calbert Bitterbee standing in the doorway.

“What are you doing here?” she said, unable to keep the exasperation from her voice. “This is my…” She glanced around at her friends’ faces, staring blankly into the void. “Oh.”

Saskia floated in that void. Tendrils of flesh and vine trailed from her body, passing through the screen and into the sleeping troll.

Calbert laughed. “Flatlanders they may be, but human minds do come up with some interesting metaphors.”

“I’m human? I was beginning to think this…” She spread her wings, sending vine-tendrils flailing. “…might be my true form.”

“Yes…and no.”

“Yes and no to which part? Human or Cthulian winged tentacle monster?”

“Yes…and—”

“…and no. I get it. You’re a real donkhole, you know that, Calbert, or Calburn, or frockever you are. I don’t think you’d give me a straight answer if I tied you to a plank.”

“Though I do enjoy toying with you, I’m not withholding information simply for the fun of it,” he said. “It will take time to properly prepare your surface mind before you can grasp the nature of our realities. Now that you’ve found your way to my Bastion, we can get started on that. But first, there’s an urgent matter we must attend to. I alluded to it in our last meeting, but time has almost run out. So I’ll just get right to it.”

The image on the screen shifted, and in place of the troll were dozens of dwarves standing on a ledge near the bottom of a tall chasm, holding wands aloft. The ground below them shuddered and split. A stream of searing white spilled from the crack, pouring upward through the shaft.

Again the view shifted. She was looking out over a forest city, surrounded by a high circle of tangled vines. The trees shook and swayed and toppled, and with a thunderous boom, a column of white light rose from the heart of the city, pouring high into the sky, consuming trees and buildings and elves in an ever-expanding conflagration.

Cracks snaked outward across the scorched forest floor, and wherever they spread, streams of white spilled into the air. Thunder crackled overhead, arcing from clouds of billowing flame and ash.

The roiling cloud spread across the sky like a burning carpet. And from that cloud fell a rain of fire.

Saskia was on her feet the moment she awoke.

That had been no mere dream, she was certain of it. And she now knew exactly what the shapers were planning. Her father had warned her about the dwarves back in the Dead Sanctum; their ‘little funnelling project,’ he’d called it. Understatement of the century. There was nothing little about this insanity.

She’d intended to gather information about the dwarven project the moment she arrived in the Underneath. But she’d been distracted by her own problems. Always distracted. Meanwhile, two weeks had come and gone. Two weeks. This was like one of those annoying timed quests in games. While she’d been dorking around with side quests, the main quest timer had almost run out!

These thoughts whirled through her head as she tore into the room next door, where Baldreg and Freygi were sleeping. Or…not sleeping, as it turned out. But she was too wired to care what they were doing.

“The shapers!” she blurted. “I know what they’re doing up there!”

“W-what are you…?” spluttered Baldreg, fumbling to extricate himself from his wife. “Caesitor you may be, but you could larn to knock!”

“Or mayhap you’d care to join in,” suggested Freygi, spreading her arms wide.

“I’ll…go wake the others,” said Saskia, hastily backing out the door. “You all need to hear this.”

They all gathered in the dining hall, where Saskia told them about her dream vision of fire and death. The dwarves’ initial reactions were not quite what she’d been hoping for.

“Good,” said Baldreg. Kveld looked sheepish, while Freygi and Ruhildi nodded slowly in agreement.

Saskia stared at them, aghast. “Are you joking?”

“If the shapers want to destroy a city full of leaf-ears, I say good for them,” said Baldreg. “Let the bastards burn!”

Ruhildi flashed Saskia an apologetic look. “What Baldi means is the leaf-ears would do the same to Torpend if they had the chance. ’Tis misfortunate that some of their little’uns have to die for the crimes of their parents, but such is the price of this never-ending war.”

“Okay, first, I can’t believe you’re advocating the mass slaughter of innocents for any reason,” said Saskia. “Second, I don’t think you understood what I told you. It’s not just one city that’ll go kabloowie. I saw fire raining from the sky all across Ciendil; the ground cracking apart. Real end-of-the-world level stuff. And third, the part I hadn’t gotten to yet: Calburn made it very clear to me that the plan would backfire. ‘It is not the salvation they think it is. It is their doom.’ Those were the words of your precious demon king.”

This of course resulted in a flurry of questions as to how exactly she could have spoken to her dead father. Probably shoulda brought that up earlier, she thought to herself as she struggled to explain his presence in her dreams.

When she was done, they just sat there, staring at her as the silence stretched into awkward territory. Ah awkward, my old friend, she thought. So good to see you again.

“Aye well that changes things,” said Ruhildi, finally breaking the silence.

Baldreg frowned. “I don’t understand. The Underneath should be safe from almost any calamity that befalls the alvari up top.”

“I can think of at least one way it could play out,” said Saskia. “What if Abellion doesn’t take kindly to the slaughter of countless followers? What if he decides to intervene directly?”

“’Twould be the Desecration all over again,” said Ruhildi. “You may be right, Sashki. Though part of me relishes the thought of facing the tyrant in battle, we just aren’t ready for that. ’Twould bring about the annihilation of our people.”

Freygi nodded. “More than anything, I want to shove a dagger in old Abbi, but even I can see how that would turn out.”

Ruhildi rose to her feet. “Though it pains me to do this, I’ve put it off long enough. ’Tis time to pay my pap a wee visit. See if I can beat some sense into him. He’s the one behind this fool plan of theirs, I’m sure of it.”

“Be careful, Ruhi,” said Freygi. “Mangi doesn’t ken you’re alive. A martyr serves his purpose well enough, but a living, breathing symbol…”

“’Tis a risk I’ll have to take.”

“I could go with you, if you like,” suggested Saskia.

Ruhildi smirked at her. “Och, ’twould almost be worth having you crawl through the tunnels of Spindle, just to see the looks on their faces. But no, Sashki. Those corridors would be too much of a tight squeeze for one of your…stature.”

Saskia frowned. “Are you calling me fat?”

“Not fat, no. Just…”

“Gargantuan,” said Kveld.

Freygi and Baldreg and Ruhildi burst out laughing. “So says the giant,” said Freygi.

Ruhildi wasted no time heading out to confront her father. Freygi went to Myrna's house to update her on their situation. Saskia still wasn't entirely sure of Myrna's affiliation with the band of miscreants, but she guessed the old dwarf stood in that murky area somewhere between landlady and co-conspirator.

With Saskia's permission, Kveld spent his time glued to the keystone, while she, Rover Dog and Baldreg set about the task of cleaning up and restoring their new base of operations. Later that morning, she almost leapt out of her skin at the sight of six stone golems marching down the hallway toward her.

“Kveld,” she muttered, rushing to the control chamber.

“Caesitor, I’ve worked it out!” said the dwarf. “’Tis like ward magic, only…not. This thing lets me tap into the heartstone matrix, without the need for… Just as well, that, because I can’t form my own essence patterns. Ruhildi could do it, mayhap. But for me, I have to rely on an external source of—”

“Whoa slow down,” she said. These were more words than Kveld had ever spoken in her presence. “You’ve figured out how to control the stone guardians, I can see that much. Is it something I could learn to do too?”

“I don’t…I mean, only if you are a stoneshaper—or even a half-shaper like me.”

“Nope,” said Saskia. “Oh well. I guess you're on golem duty then. For now, how about you station two of them at the entrance as guards, and have the rest help us clean this place up. I hope they’re good at lifting things.”

“’Twould be my honour, Caesitor.”

“None of that Caesitor crap. Just Saskia, please.”

“If…if you say so, Caes—kia.”

By mid-afternoon, with the help of the golems, the place was looking much more habitable. Freygi returned with Myrna in tow; the latter of whom had insisted on coming to inspect their new abode. The golems almost stepped on the poor lady, until Kveld hurriedly ordered them away, and Saskia rushed her to the control chamber to add her to the guest list.

Evening came and went without any sign of Ruhildi. Saskia was getting increasingly worried, and she could tell from the dwarves’ sombre expressions that she wasn’t the only one.

“She should’ve been back bells ago,” said Freygi, voicing everyone’s concern. “If those shapers have hurt her, I swear I’m going to go up there and put holes in every last one them!”

This anxious waiting was worse than staring down the barrel of a gun. She needed to do something. But what?

Stalking off to her room, she slumped down on the floor and consulted her minimap. It barely reached the pillar of Spindle, and the place was so covered in map markers that it was impossible to tell what was really going on in there. Although…

What if there were a way to see inside Spindle? Her minimap—and any map, really—was just an abstraction that gave her a broad overview of what things looked like at a distance. But this ability must be getting its information from the world itself in a rawer, less abstract form, before translating it into something her brain could process. That was, after all, her leading theory for why she saw this game-like interface in the first place.

The fact that she could see through Garrain’s eyes and occasionally experienced visions of the past meant there was more than one way to peer through space and time. In Garrain’s case, there was the obvious connection to his focus. But maybe that was just a shortcut; something that had allowed her to make the leap sooner and more easily than she otherwise might have achieved. Absorbing his focus into her body had complicated things, and she couldn’t tell whether the newest developments—her ability to speak into his mind, and control his magic—were oracle powers or something else entirely. But the original ability to see through his eyes; that seemed like the kind of thing an oracle might be able to do with or without such a connection.

It was worth a shot. But how to build a connection to someone else—someone she’d probably never have met before? Staring at her minimap for a while, she focussed her attention on one of the markers moving about inside Spindle.

What are you seeing right now, my little orange blob? she thought.

Saskia reached out with mental tendrils and…

Suddenly, she was walking through a long corridor of dark, smooth stone, lit by crystal spheres dangling from the low ceiling. Through windows set along the outer wall she looked down upon the flickering lights of the nearby city streets. Not particularly high up yet; the vertical reach of her minimap was quite limited when it came to enclosed structures like this.

But this important thing was that it had worked! It had actually worked! She felt like clapping, except she was not the one in control of these hands; hands that were thick and calloused, and attached to a body that was clearly male. Cautiously, she pulled up her minimap. Would the owner of this body see it too, as had Garrain?

Nope. The guy didn’t react in the slightest, thank dogs. So this was a one-way connection then, as had been her original link to the druid.

The minimap was now centred on this dwarf’s location inside Spindle. From here, she could zoom in closer and go up floor-by-floor. The structure appeared to have a hollow core, with tunnels shaped like rings and spokes cut into the solid rock of its thick shell. There was no sign of her friend’s telltale blue marker on the nearby floors, so she reached for one of the other markers higher up.

A moment later, she was seeing out of another dwarf’s eyes. He stood on a balcony overlooking the immense shaft that ran up the centre of Spindle. There were metal cages rattling their way up and down the sides of the shaft on rickety chains.

Huh, so they’ve invented elevators, of the white-knuckled variety, she thought to herself. You wouldn’t catch me stepping into one of those jankarific deathtraps, even if I could somehow fit inside.

Saskia continued her search, leaping from person-to-person as she gradually ascended the giant stone pillar. It seemed as if Spindle had formed when a colossal stalactite and an equally huge stalagmite fused in the middle. It tapered into a narrow column at its centre. Here, the structure was no longer hollow, and it was here that she found something that gave her pause.

From the eyes of a dwarf woman, she looked upon a large open chamber with a shimmering pool of crystal blue water at its centre. A spiral of stone columns rose from the pool at varying heights, like one of those jumping puzzles in platform games that annoyed the hell out of her.

There was no jumping going on here though. At least not the kind of jumping one did standing up. Atop several of the pillars lay naked dwarves, entwined together and engaging in some very vigorous…uh, horizontal exercise.

Wow, okay, she thought. I think I know what this room is…

Her host’s gaze turned upward to the huge crystal of shimmering midnight jutting from the high ceiling.

Yup, that must be the seed of stone. And this is what Ruhildi called ‘the humping chamber.’

The room itself, minus the humping dwarves, seemed vaguely familiar to her, though she had no idea why. She’d obviously never been here before.

Trying to ignore the scene playing out before her, Saskia searched her minimap for…

There! Just a few floors up. Her friend was in a small room on the western side.

Leaping into Ruhildi’s head produced a moment of panic. Here, she could see nothing but darkness. A darkened room or…?

No, there wasn’t just darkness. Every now and then, images would light the dark for the briefest of moments. A young dwarven girl, grinning mischievously. A male dwarf shouting at her, his cheek torn and bloody. An elf child sprawled on the ground with an axe in his back. At one point Saskia’s trollish face appeared, smiling down at her with not a hint of teeth showing. And there was Baldreg, laughing uproariously.

Ruhildi must be asleep, or perhaps something deeper than sleep. Even those times when Saskia had spied on Garrain’s dreams hadn’t been quite like this.

There was another map marker in the same room, so she hopped into that one, and found herself looking down on Ruhildi’s unconscious form, strapped to a bed. Her chest rose and fell in slow, regular breaths.

Saskia’s view spun about, and then she was facing a different dwarf who had just entered the room; a smooth-skinned guy with salt-and-pepper hair, a slightly unkempt beard and a frown on his face. His map marker was deep red, almost violet, which implied a truly dangerous level of power.

“How is she?” he asked.

Only now did it occur to Saskia to be surprised that she could hear things as well as see them. It hadn’t been like this, at first, with Garrain.

“Stable, Honoured Chancellor,” said a woman’s voice—that of the dwarf in whose head she resided. “She’ll be out cold for six bells, leastwise.”

Chancellor? So this was Ruhildi’s father, Mangorn.

“Give her another dose at five bells,” said the Chancellor. “We can’t risk her waking up until we’ve extracted that thing from her chest. It may already be too late to save her from the leaf-ears’ corruption, but one way or another, I’ll end my daughter’s suffering.”

“Of course, Honoured Chancellor. Though I must warn you again of the risk of extraction. The arlium is jammed right up against her heart. It might even have punctured—”

“I ken the risk, medica. Were she in her right mind, my daughter would ask us to do this, no matter the risk. And at first light, we will do this.”

Without waiting for a reply, Mangorn spun about and left the room.

Saskia reached out and severed the connection. She ran to find the others. Before she’d even finished speaking, the dwarves sprang into action, fetching weapons and gear.

“You’re going after her,” she said. It wasn’t really a question.

“Aye,” said Baldreg. “Tell me where the bastards are keeping her.”

She described what she’d seen as best she could, concluding with, “It’s really high up. How are you gonna get there?”

“It may sound strange to you, but this won’t be the first time we’ve infiltrated Spindle,” said Freygi.

“Aye,” said Baldreg, with a chuckle. “Remember the time I planted a dead kwibber under the Proctor’s pillow? That were a lark worthy of a—”

“A silly wee lad,” interrupted Freygi.

“Aye, but I’m your silly wee lad,” said Baldreg, reeling her in for a kiss.

“Is this really the time for…?” muttered Saskia.

Kveld gave a dwarven shrug. “They always get…like this. Afore heading into danger.”

No sooner had they broken the kiss than Baldreg and Freygi became all business once again. Over their armour, the three dwarves donned what they assured her was typical shaper garb. They each carried metal wands tipped with what looked like real arlium. Actually, she suspected those were real wands, taken from real stoneshapers. Saskia didn’t ask what had happened to their original owners.

“I wish I could come with you,” she said. “I just can’t stand being so useless, while you’re out there risking your necks for her.”

“Useless is not a word I’d ascribe to you, Caesitor,” said Baldreg. “You’ve given us the information that will allow us to save her. That’s more than enough.”

While they finished their preparations, Saskia drew them a rough map of each floor she’d seen, with careful attention to the one where Ruhildi was being held.

And then they were off. Saskia was left alone with Rover Dog and Myrna and the golems. At least in body.

With Freygi’s permission, she rode along inside the dwarf woman’s head, and watched as they made their way up out of the crypts and across the darkened city streets to Spindle.

Once there, they simply marched through the front door. The guards barely gave them a second glance.

Most of the shapers were away…starting an apocalypse, apparently, and it was late at night, so the corridors were pretty empty as they made their way to the inner shaft, where an elevator waited. On the gate of the elevator cage was a stone plate with a black gemstone at its centre, and unfamiliar symbols carved in a circular pattern around it.

Kveld whipped out a small knife and scratched a couple of additional lines on top of one of the symbols. He pressed his palm against the gemstone and closed his eyes. A moment later, the gate popped open.

“What would we do without a Kveldi?” said Freygi.

“Er…take the stairs, methinks?” said Kveld.

“’Twere a rhetorical question, you numbwit,” said Freygi.

Inside the cage, Kveld pressed his hand to another gemstone on the floor. The gate swung shut, and the cage began to rise.

And rise, and rise, and rise. It was as slow and juddery as it had looked from the outside. Saskia wasn’t even in the thing, and she could feel her teeth rattling in sympathy.

When they stepped out of the cage at the top of the shaft, they were just a few floors shy of Ruhildi’s location. Consulting the maps Saskia had given him, Baldreg led them up several flights of stairs and through the silent corridors that led to the room containing the sleeping prisoner.

Two guards stood outside the door. One was clearly half asleep, while the other stood picking his nose. Saskia tensed as Freygi stalked toward the nose-picker, daggers drawn. Closing the final few metres, the dwarf woman pressed her arm over his mouth and drew her daggers across his throat. As she lowered the twitching body to the floor, the other guard jerked to alertness. Crossbow bolts went through his throat and open mouth, spraying the wall with his blood.

Sickened, Saskia watched Kveld and Baldreg drag the bodies out of sight. She’d never get used to the dwarves’ casual attitude toward killing, but in this case, to do anything else would have risked having the guards raise the alarm. Maybe they could have talked down the guards, but…no, that was just wishful thinking. There had been no other way.

Mercifully, the only person inside the room was Ruhildi herself, who remained unconscious and strapped to the bed. Freygi lowered a vial to her lips and gently slapped her on the cheeks, until her eyes rolled open, groggy and half-focussed.

“Wha…?” she murmured.

“We’ve come to get you out,” said Baldreg. “Can you walk? Or stumble, leastwise?”

Ruhildi nodded, and as she struggled onto shaking feet, her eyes widened. “That bollocking shite! I’m going to kill him.”

“If you still feel that way when next we see him, I’ll help,” said Freygi. “But not here. Let’s be away.”

Freygi took the rear as Baldreg and Kveld half-led, half-carried Ruhildi down the corridor, toward freedom.

It was then that Saskia spotted red-violet marker in a large room on the floor above the one where they’d been keeping Ruhildi. Without even consciously considered what she was doing, Saskia leapt into his head.

Through Mangorn’s eyes, she could see he had his back pressed against the wall of the sumptuously decorated room. Saskia heard him draw in a series of deep, shuddering breaths.

“What did they do to you, lass?” he whispered.

There came a knock at the door. “Honoured Chancellor, ’tis I, Inglevor. May we have a word?”

Sighing, Mangorn opened the door. “What is it now, Second Rector?”

“’Tis about what Vindica said. I’ve been reviewing some of the calculations, and I believe there may be some truth to—”

“You can stop right there, Rector.”

“But, with utmost respect, Honoured Chancellor—”

“I said stop. I won’t say it again.” He sighed. “We couldn’t prevent this even if we desired it. The messengers would never reach our crews in time. Before the fiveday is out, there will be a reckoning. The leaf-ears will burn. And if the world burns with them, then so be it. It is done. We are done. Now begone!”

Ice settled into Saskia’s stomach. Five days. Just five days to…the apocalypse, essentially.

She returned to Freygi’s head just as they entered the elevator. They laid Ruhildi down on the floor, and the cage began its juddery descent.

They were halfway down when there came a shout from across the open shaft. Everyone tensed, fingers darting to weapons, until it became apparent that the shout hadn’t been directed at them. Saskia watched, bemused, as a white-haired dwarf tore strips out of a pair of young boys who had been caught sneaking out of their dorms after curfew.

By the time they reached the ground floor, Ruhildi had woken up enough to stumble along without assistance. That was just as well, because as they were stepping out of the cage, the blast of a horn sounded from above.

Baldreg grimaced and drew his crossbow, nocking a bolt in each slot. “Just as I were beginning to think this would be a clean escape. Keep your eyes sharp and your blades sharper.”

A short distance down the tunnel, Saskia wanted to scream at them to take cover. Four yellow markers came hurtling around a corner toward them.

Baldreg must have heard something, because a crossbow bolt was already in the air as the guards rounded the corner and…

The bolt punched through the hand of a very startled young stoneshaper, who dropped his wand and slumped to the ground, wailing and clutching his bloody fingers. His three companions halted in their tracks, faces ashen. “You shot Vanglebrower!” one of them blurted. And it was then that Saskia realised she’d seen these guys before. They were the novices who had attacked her and Rover Dog—the ones whom Ruhildi had so thoroughly schooled.

Ruhildi placed her hand on Baldreg’s shoulder, and he lowered his weapon.

“A misfortunate error,” said Ruhildi. “You’d best go to the medica, and be quick about it, novices! ’Tisn’t safe for you here. We’re hunting a group of dangerous intruders.”

They stared at Ruhildi for a long moment. Unlike the last time they’d met, her face wasn’t shrouded beneath a hood.

“Is that…? It can’t be!”

“The one from the paintings. The statue!”

“Vindica…? But she’s dead!”

“We don’t have time for this,” growled Freygi, stalking toward the novices. “Get you going, lads, afore we make another mistake.”

Startled, the novices turned and ran in the opposite direction. The injured one didn’t even bother to collect his wand.

Rather than heading for the front door, the dwarves hurried up a flight of stairs and climbed out a window on the second floor. Outside, they dashed between walls and hedges and stone spires ducking out of sight of several guards searching the nearby streets. In movies and games, it was here, just as they thought they were home free, when they’d be spotted, and start a fight or chase scene would ensue.

None of that happened tonight, to Saskia’s relief. They made their way back across the city and down into the Stone Bastion without incident.

As they sat around the cookfire discussing the long day’s events, Ruhildi spoke with barely contained rage. “When I asked him to call halt to his folly of a plan, he accused me of being in league with the leaf-ears. Me! Working for them! Things got a wee bit heated, and I may have tried to sink him into the floor…”

Saskia groaned silently. Ruhildi-style diplomacy at its finest.

“Next thing I kenned, I’d a poisoned dart in my neck. I don’t ken what would have happened if you hadn’t come for me.”

“He was going to extract your focus from your chest,” said Saskia.

Her face turned ashen. “But that would have…”

“Killed you,” said Saskia. “Yeah I figured as much. The medica tried to talk him out of it. He pretty much said he’d rather have you die now than live on with the alvari ‘corruption’ inside you.”

Ruhildi let out a long breath. “He’s lost his mind. Pap weren’t always easy to be around, and I weren’t the most compliant daughter. After Nadi…we couldn’t see eye-to-eye after that. But ’twere never this bad afore.”

“It’s been a long time, Ruhildi,” said Saskia. “All that time, he thought he’d lost you. I think he’s been channelling his grief into this funnelling project. Vengeance against the elves, at all costs. He’s not going to let go of that easily.”

“Aye, there’ll be no talking him down now,” said Baldreg. “And the other shapers still answer to him. We just made enemies of the whole Guild.”

“I don’t think it matters,” said Saskia. When the others glared at her, she clarified, “Well obviously it sucks that Mangorn is being such a loony about all of this, but I overheard him talking to one of his underlings. He said there’s nothing he could do to halt the shapers even if he wanted to. Whatever they’re doing, it’ll happen before any messengers could possibly reach them.”

“If there’s nothing we can do, why did Calburn send you that dream?” said Ruhildi, looking defeated.

“There’s nothing we can do,” said Saskia. “But there may be someone who can do something. And I’m sorry, you’re not going to like this pointy-eared someone.”