Undermind

A bitter wind howled across the cliff face, driving snow into her face, threatening to tear her away from the slippery rocks. She slithered down a crack just wide enough to squeeze her numb fingers and toes, then stepped down onto an icy ledge, gasping for oxygen in air too thin to be truly breathable.

The ledge gave way beneath her.

She hung there for a heart-stopping moment, legs flailing over empty air. Her fingers slipped free.

Falling again. Again! Well crap. What a surprise.

This time there was no deep place or tentacle-vines or winged leviathan coming to her rescue. This time it was just her and the wailing wind and a wall of rock, whooshing past at a sickening speed.

And a soft landing on a mound of fluffy white snow, formed by a recent avalanche.

She clawed her way out of the indent her body had made when it landed. A dull pain tore at her shoulder. Her arm was dislocated, and not for the first time. She popped it back into place. Shaking snow from her hair, she resumed her journey.

The cold pressed in from all sides; inexorable, inescapable. She may have walked away from the fall, but if something didn’t change, she’d be no less dead. She needed warmth. She needed light.

Maybe there was something she could do. She’d done it before, though not on her own. Her body held a ready source of heat. It just needed to be…activated. Having her vassals draw essence out of her was one way. But maybe there was another.

She could let it leak out.

Not a lot. Just a trickle. Just enough to stave off the chill of death. Where would it go? She didn’t know, and right now, she didn’t care.

Turning her thoughts inward, she focussed on the network of filaments threading their way through her body. She gave a gentle push. A tiny glimmer of warmth stirred from within.

She pushed a little harder. Slowly, the numbness subsided. And as the night descended, a faint glow played across the ice at her feet.

Saskia snapped awake with a gasp and a shiver. Another day, another weird dream. She wondered what it signified. Maybe nothing at all. Maybe it had just been a dream—the kind that normal people had. She still had those occasionally.

Reaching for the pouch beside her bed, she took another generous pinch of arlithite. That familiar burning, crawling sensation returned; as if fire ants were nesting in her body. With it came a violent surge of hunger. Her belly groaned and burbled. Regrowing a third of her body weight in a matter of days was never going to be pleasant, but this was just…ugh.

At first, there hadn’t been much left of Saskia but sinew and bones and claws and teeth, and the bare minimum of internal organs. Now, though skinnier than before, she once again had outsides over her insides. Her new skin was a bit rougher than it had been—though not as rough as Rover Dog’s—but also thicker, stronger, harder, and chock full of arlium, courtesy of Ruhildi’s efforts rounding up elven foci and feeding them to her.

Another loud gurgle emerged from her stomach.

Yeah yeah, I get it, tummy. You need food.

Stumbling bleary-eyed from her room, she felt a warm pressure around her lower leg. She smiled down at Thorric, whose arms and legs were clamped tightly around her ankle.

“What an oddly shaped—yet surprisingly stylish—fashion accessory,” she croaked. “I think I’ll keep it.” The tinkling laughter of a child echoed through the house as she tromped down the hallway with him still firmly fastened to her leg. Seeing him like this almost brought a tear to her eye. In the space of a month and a half, he’d lost first his father, then his entire adoptive family. Keeping him entertained was the least she could do.

A delicious smell wafted from the dining hall. She homed in on its source, trying not to drool too much, and found a large cauldron of stew bubbling over the cookfire. Myrna had been working tirelessly to keep her fed throughout her recovery, while also helping with the cleanup and looking after several new orphans—Thorric included.

Baldreg sat on the floor, gazing intently into the fire. When she sat down beside him—child still attached—he looked between her and the boy and said, “Thondberg’s beard, Thorric, how many times do I have to tell you…point your feet the other way!” His voice dropped into a low grumble. “Lads these days don’t even ken how to take a proper footsie ride.”

Saskia lifted her leg high into the air. Whooping, Thorric dangled upside down from her ankle. “He seems to have the hang of it,” she said.

Baldreg looked at her blankly.

“Just a pun,” she explained. “A craptacularly bad one.”

More staring.

“I’ll…show myself out.” Her belly gave another rumble. “After I’ve eaten.”

It was going to be a while. She scooped bowlful after bowlful of meaty goodness down her throat, until her stomach was sloshing with the stuff. It gave one last contented burble, then fell silent.

Finally looking up from her meal, she saw that Baldreg had resumed his close inspection of the cookfire. His lower lip trembled.

Sighing, she rose to her feet. He looked up at her, and suddenly his expression crumpled.

Crap, she thought, blinking away her own tears as she fled the room. I must have set him off.

Baldreg was taking Freygi’s death about as well as could be expected. That is to say he seemed to oscillate between levity and complete meltdown on a minute-by-minute basis.

For Saskia, the dwarf woman’s death was only just beginning to sink in. She’d known Freygi for barely over a month, but even in that short time, she’d come to think of her as family. Now there was a huge gaping void where once there had been light and laughter.

On Earth, though she’d had her share of troubles, her only experience of grief was the loss of pets. The death of her dog, Cerberus, had hit her especially hard. But that hadn’t been like this. She wondered if this was what her friends and family were feeling about her, since presumably they all thought she was dead. A sudden pang of homesickness swept over her. Maybe she should…

No. No, she couldn’t abandon her new friends. They needed her more than the ones back on Earth.

“Why have you stopped?” asked Thorric.

She glanced down at him, still clinging to her ankle. “Oh, nothing. Want to take a look outside?”

At his enthusiastic agreement, she stepped out the newly-refastened front door of Myrna’s house. They’d been staying here rather than the Stone Bastion because a lot of eyes were on them right now, and they didn’t want people following them to their super-secret lair. She suspected it wouldn’t remain a secret for much longer in any case, following the not-so-stealthy emergence of the golems from a certain building on the west side of town.

One of those golems was hard at work helping Kveld clear debris off the street outside. Only two of the hulking automatons had made it out of the battle intact. Ruhildi might be able to restore a few more to working order if she got some time in the Stone Bastion foundry. The rest were write-offs.

“They still obey your orders?” she asked the giant dwarf.

“Aye,” said Kveld. “This fellow obeys only me. I can no longer assign him to anyone else. Not after…”

Kveld, like all the stoneshapers except Ruhildi, had lost his ability to access the keystone and adjust the golems’ programming. He may not have been a full-fledged stoneshaper, but his magic, like that of all the others, had come from the seed of stone. And the seed of stone was no more. Thiachrin’s last act may very well have crippled the dwarves. Her only consolation was that the elves were in no position to take advantage of their enemy’s weakness, having lost almost all of their own spellcasters—and most of their warriors—in the catastrophic invasion.

Of course, there was one blindingly obvious thing Saskia could do to help the former stoneshapers. As Saskia’s vassal, Ruhildi hadn’t lost access to her magic, so it seemed likely any other stoneshaper who became her vassal would have their own magic restored. Saskia just wasn’t in a hurry to take that step. It’d be weird making vassals out of people she didn’t know—or worse, actively disliked. One frenemy vassal was quite enough already, thank you. On top of that, she could imagine what would happen if a bunch of vassals all decided to furiously cast spells at the same time. Flambé de Troll, anyone?

As for Kveld, she could do worse than make a vassal out of him—if he were willing to be tied to her in some mysterious, slightly terrifying way. She didn’t know how it would work with Kveld, though. He had no focus for her to absorb, and now the seed of stone was gone, it was unlikely he could bind himself to one. Maybe they could link up in their sleep, as she and Ruhildi had done?

Anyhow, there was no need to rush things. She’d test the waters with Ruhildi and Garrain for a while, before she even considered bringing Kveld or anyone else into the fold.

“I see you’ve picked up a wee passenger,” said a familiar voice behind her. She turned to see Ruhildi standing in the doorway with a smile on her face. Her friend seemed to have weathered this ordeal better than any of them. Despite the loss of her father and one of her closest friends, it was as if a huge burden had lifted off the dwarf’s shoulders. Whatever had happened to lighten her spirits, Saskia was happy for her.

“Passenger? What passenger?” Saskia frowned in mock puzzlement. “In completely unrelated news, I acquired this delightful piece of elegant anklewear. Do you like it?” She lifted her leg with Thorric still attached. He gave another whoop.

“You going to wear that to the ceremony?” said Ruhildi, her smile widening. “I think it might be frowned upon.”

The smile froze on Saskia’s face. Ah. The victory ceremony. She’d been quietly dreading today’s big event.

“She can wear whatever she likes—or naught but her skin,” said Myrna coming up behind her. “She’s a trow. You on the other hand…” She directed her gaze at Ruhildi. “You’re the venerated Vindica, saviour of Torpend. You have standards to uphold.”

Ruhildi scowled at the woman. “Don’t remind me.”

The dwarves held the so-called victory ceremony that afternoon outside the city hall on the west side of Torpend. It sure didn’t feel like a victory, and indeed the ceremony was less a celebration than it was a mass funeral. Nearly half of the population of Torpend and the surrounding villages had lost their lives. It was a sombre occasion, where they honoured the sacrifice of those who had died defending the Underneath. Grindlecraw gave a stirring eulogy for Mangorn, while Ruhildi stumbled through a speech honouring both her father and her friend, Freygi.

Saskia stood quietly at the back with the rest of their little fellowship, trying to ignore all the stares being sent her way. Afterward, she placed a cairn of white rocks for the adorribles. Thorric seemed to get the reference, because he started bawling, and clutched at her.

She arrived back at Myrna’s house to find Rover Dog reclining in the sun room. Buck naked. Because of course he was.

When she’d first awoken after her ordeal, Saskia had feared the troll might have been crushed or suffocated when she teleported away from him. But it turned out the expansion that had occurred prior to her shift into the between had dislodged enough of the debris that he’d soon managed to pull himself clear. Aside from puncture wounds and the earlier loss of his hand (already regrown), he’d come out of the battle unscathed.

Still weak from her own injuries, it was only with his help that she’d managed to climb down what remained of Spindle. That had been two days ago. Since then, he’d been out hunting down some of the elves who had fled into the northern wilds.

“So how’d it go?” asked Saskia, struggling to keep her eyes from wandering to…that. Heat went to her cheeks.

Seeing her obvious discomfort, Rover Dog laughed. “Not be ashamed, princess. Only natural. If princess want more than look, I ready any time.”

“Answer my question!”

He put his hands behind his head. “Squishies squished.”

“All of them?” said Saskia, raising her eyebrows.

“All I find,” said Rover Dog. “Many hiding in hills. Not find every one.”

No surprise there. Only a tiny percentage of the elven invaders had escaped the city, but there were enough of them to cause problems for years to come. The dwarves had been quick to cut off their escape route out of the prime passage, which meant they had nowhere to run. They’d resort to banditry, for sure.

Sighing, she slumped down beside him. “This is never going to end, is it?”

“Not be troubled over morrow,” said Rover Dog. “Now is what matters.”

Saskia turned to him, and once again found her eyes wandering to places they shouldn’t. Her breath quickened, and her face grew hotter still.

“You know what?” She unbuckled her armour. “You’re absolutely right. I need to stop worrying and enjoy the journey for once.” Wriggling out of her pants, she let her eyes go where they willed, feeling a sharp thrill of anticipation—and terror. “You said…you said there’d only be a little pain?”

Rover Dog’s smile spread from ear to ear. “Good kind of pain. You will see.”

And he was right. It was the good kind. Oh so good.

Days and weeks marched onward while the cleanup continued and the rebuild begun. The dwarves settled into a new equilibrium; one without Spindle, and without stoneshapers, but also without imminent threat of invasion. A feeling of hope permeated the air, amidst the grief.

But Saskia, for all her contentment, remained uneasy. Earthquakes continued to wrack the land. Nothing severe enough to cause lasting harm, but troubling, given that Arbor Mundi didn’t have tectonic plates. Worse, an unseasonable cold spell was sweeping across the Underneath, in the midst of what should be high summer.

And it wasn’t just happening down here. When she visited Garrain’s head, she found him splashing through an ice-rimmed swamp, with a teeth-chattering Nuille held close, and a bedraggled Morchi stalking ahead of them.

“You too?” she said, suppressing a sympathetic shiver.

“A dire wind sweeps across Ciendil, Saskia,” said Garrain. “I fear the end may be coming for us all.”

Bringing up her minimap, Saskia saw that they had moved south, into the swamp surrounding Fellspur, the place she’d first entered this world.

“What are you doing all the way down there?” she asked.

“It is worse further north,” said Garrain. “We hope to find shelter with the swampfolk for a time.”

“Do you know any way we might fix this?”

“No, Saskia. Fire, then ice. It is how our world ends.”

“Well aren’t you just a bundle of laughs,” she said. “I refuse to believe there’s nothing we can do. In the meantime, hang tight, okay?”

That night as she ate with her friends, she told them, “It’s going to get worse. The quakes; the cold—its all connected to what’s happening up on Ciendil. This may very well be a prelude to the doom my father talked about.”

“The invading leaf-ears weren’t doom enough?” said Baldreg.

“Obviously not,” said Saskia. “We’re still here. Abellion sent his Chosen, but he didn’t show up in person to wipe us out. Maybe this is how he’ll get his revenge—by freezing us to death. Or maybe it’s something else entirely. Any ideas?”

“Have you asked…him?” said Kveld.

“My father?” said Saskia. “Haven’t heard a peep out of him. He wouldn’t leave me alone for a month, and now…nothing.”

“I have theory,” said Rover Dog. They all turned to him as if he’d just grown antlers. Undeterred, he continued. “Branch above bleed into sky; bleed branch dry. Blood carries air. Less blood: less air. Less air: less heat. Slow death for all.” He tilted his hand in the troll equivalent of a shrug, before adding, “Just theory.”

“My dog—I mean, holy crap, I think he’s right!” Saskia turned to Ruhildi. “Remember when you told me why the inner parts of the branch aren’t flooded? You said arlium—the blood of the world tree—draws in the air. Maybe it does, or maybe it generates it. Either way, the air is thicker around molten arlium. But if you take the arlium away—bleed the branch dry…”

“The air goes away,” said Ruhildi, looking thoughtful. Turning to Rover Dog, she asked, “How do you ken this?”

“I…” Rover Dog frowned. “I not remember.”

“So can we plug the hole?” said Saskia. “Stop the bleeding?”

“No,” said Ruhildi. “Mayhap the rift beneath Elcianor will close on its own, in time. But there is naught we could do to hasten the closing. Not even if the stoneshapers still had their magic. The shapers who opened the rift all burned in the fire they unleashed. Now that it has been opened, no-one could get near enough to shift the argnum around it, even if they were willing to die in the attempt. The arlium burns too hot.”

Saskia frowned. “Maybe there’s some kind of armour or magic that could withstand that heat.”

“There’s naught can withstand the fires of molten arlium, save the beings who dwell in the Inner Hollows,” said Ruhildi. “Those creatures burn with the same heat. They’re of no use to us.”

“There must be something we can do,” said Saskia, looking pleadingly at the dwarves and Rover Dog.

“I don’t ken how to undo what’s…” said Kveld. “But there is something we—the dwarrows, I mean—could do to survive. We could leave.”

“Leave the branch?”

“Aye—no,” said Kveld. “Well…mayhap, but I don’t ken how we might do that. But I do ken we could leave the ’Neath. Venture into the depths of Ciendil, closer to the arlium, where the air will last a long while longer.”

“Dwallondorn,” breathed Saskia. “Or, dogs forbid, Wilbergond.”

“Aye,” said Kveld.

“He may be right,” said Ruhildi. “In the Outer Hollows we might survive until Ciendil renews itself. Or if its fate is to become another Deadlands, we may last long enough to find a solution—to stop the bleeding, or get everyone away to a new branch.”

“Abandon our home?” said Baldreg. “The home we fought so hard to protect? The home my bonnie died—” He choked off his words.

“Frey died to protect us, Baldi.” Ruhildi spoke in a soft, calming voice. “Our people.”

“Aye,” said Baldreg, gazing once more into the flames of the cookfire. “Aye, she did.”

“We won’t be able to convince everyone to leave,” said Ruhildi. “But we can make a start. Let us found a colony in Dwallondorn. The worse it gets down here in the ’Neath, the more will join us. We can prepare the way for them.”

“I have a further proposal,” said Saskia. “But I’m afraid you’ll find this idea…controversial.”

A few minutes later, after she laid out her plan, they all stared at her, open mouthed.

“You want to invite the leaf-ears to join our colony?” said Baldreg, his eyes bulging in outrage. “The ones who just about wiped us out? Who tortured and enslaved our people?”

“To be fair, your people just about wiped them out as well,” said Saskia. “Everyone’s been doing an awful lot of wiping, and look where it’s gotten us. And no, the ones we’d be inviting to join our colony wouldn’t be the ones who just tried to kill us, or who kept dwarrows as slaves. Though…some of them did try to kill me.”

“Sashki, surely you ken there’s just no way we’re going to be able to convince our people to live side-by-side with the alvari,” said Ruhildi.

“You may have to,” said Saskia. “Unless you plan to wipe every last alvar off the face of Ciendil. In which case, good luck with that, but I’ll have no part of it. You want to commit total genocide, you’re on your own.”

The dwarves glared at her, and she returned their glares tenfold. Finally she sighed. “Look, if what we think is gonna happen, happens, the surface—both down here and up on Ciendil—will soon become uninhabitable. The Outer Hollows and the tunnels around them will be the only places anyone can survive. Do you think the alvari won’t figure that out as well? Won’t come knocking at your door? If we don’t come to some sort of arrangement, that will mean only one thing. Another war. A war neither side will survive. A war over the last dwindling scraps left over from the last war. Don’t you see what it has cost you?”

“Princess convinced me,” said Rover Dog. “Short-sighted, obstinate squishies. Should listen to princess.”

Baldreg scowled. “You would say that, trow, lest you find yourself without a bedmate.”

Ruhildi patted the dwarf on the arm, and he turned to her with a slightly guilty expression. “I’ll…talk to some people,” she said. “See if I can warm them to the idea. It won’t be easy, but Sashki is right. We must try to find another way.”

Over the weeks that followed, they quietly passed the word around that Vindica was going to found a new colony in Dwallondorn; that anyone could join them; that it might be their only hope for survival; and finally, that they must be prepared for the possibility that their former hated enemies might become their neighbours.

Saskia, meanwhile, contacted Garrain and told him of her plan. He agreed, grudgingly, that it might be their only option. Fellspur was the only major enclave to have refused to take part in the invasion of the Underneath. When she asked him why, he replied, cryptically, that they had their reasons. Regardless, this made them ideal candidates to join the new colony.

In the end, just over a thousand dwarves signed up to join the colony. A small fraction of the total surviving population, but they were being asked to leave their homes and everything they knew, with no proof that things would ever be any better up in Dwallondorn than they were down here. It was a start. A modest one, but they had to start somewhere.

The colonists would arrive in waves, beginning with the hundred fittest and strongest, who would establish defences and start building homes for those who would follow. Saskia and her friends joined the first wave—all except Myrna and Thorric, who would be among the third wave, set to leave in a month’s time.

Also joining them were a gaggle of adorribles from the cave Thorric had showed her on the day they met; likely relatives of the ones who had died fighting the fire mage. If there was one species that might be able to survive the brutal winters to come, it was the adorribles, but she wasn’t about to turn them away. She owed their kind a debt she could never repay.

The journey up the chasm of the prime passage took two and a half hair-raising weeks. Ruhildi had been right. It was worse going up than down. Doubly so because of the size of the expedition, the gear they had to haul with them, and the fact that ice covered the path near the base of the chasm. As they climbed higher, the air became warmer, and the ice gave way to the mud and water-slicked rocks she remembered so well.

Getting children and elderly up the chasm was going to be a nightmare. And the longer they waited, the worse the journey would become. But they would do it, somehow, because it was the only way they could survive.

They settled on the rise overlooking the waterlogged ruins of Inglomar. The ruins would give them plenty of building materials with which to jump-start the colony. To Saskia, it seemed almost sacrilegious to dismantle the relics of a lost civilisation, but the dwarves didn’t see it that way.

For now though, the early buildings would be made from wood rather than stone. They’d provide some basic shelter and that was it.

Construction of these simple lodges proceeded at a slow but steady pace, and by the time the second wave of a hundred settlers showed up, there were just enough houses waiting for them.

It was near the end of the first month when a motley assortment of weary elves came splashing across the shallow lake—the same route Saskia and Ruhildi had taken when they first entered Dwallondorn. Garrain and Nuille walked at the head of the pack, eyes flicking nervously at the circle of crossbows aimed in their direction.

“Would you look at that,” said Baldreg, watching Garrain with raised eyebrows. “We could make a house out of him.”

Saskia laughed. It was true, the druid now resembled some kind of dryad or ent more than an elf. Then her eyes drifted to the other elves gathering behind him, and her own eyebrows shot up. Most carried bows and spears and wore standard fare for elves—flowing cloaks and boiled leather armour and embroidered dresses. But there were a few…oddities.

Something very much like a cowboy hat adorned the head of a certain gangly young elf. Another wore glasses. And was that a nyan cat stitched into that girl’s tunic!?

The wannabe cowboy stepped forward, and spoke in strangely accented English. “We do be coming in peace.” He tipped his hat.

Squinting at his face, Saskia drew in a sharp breath, and exhaled it as a delighted laugh.

“Hello Dallim,” she said. “Welcome to New Inglomar.”