Page 246 of Dragon Avenger (Age of Fire 2)

“Oh, I lost track of the time,” King Fangbreaker said. “If the barge is already out, let’s not keep the crowds waiting. Come, Oracle. By the way, do you have a name?”

“Those close to me call me Tala,” Wistala said. “I would be glad to hear it from you, King.” For the best place to strike an enemy is close enough to gut, as Father used to say.

“Very well, Tala, up the Hall of Invention and to the balcony over Thul’s tomb.”

They passed along another wide hall with many short antechambers, each filled with devices of metal and steel and cable, some even in motion, though whether it was to amuse or accomplish something Wistala could not say. She saw daylight ahead at the opening of a very finely wrought gallery atop a huge slab of solid red granite that read THUL in both Elvish and Hypatian scripts. There were other icons and scriptings, as well, though she did not know the tongues.

Curving stairs ran up the sides of the tomb to the gallery above. Dwarves in splendid cloaks and caps were already gathered there, and bowed low but did not throw themselves to the floor as King Fangbreaker climbed up to join them.

Not a few looked at her in wonder as she approached, but most of the others jostled for a place next to the king at the balcony rail, draped with purple velvet, Wistala noted.

She climbed atop Thul’s coffin and some of the dwarves leaned their heads together at that, eyes heavily shaded, but most were still throwing elbows and hip-blocking to gain or keep a position near Fangbreaker at the rail.

Wistala looked out and down at the finger of water running between Thul’s Hardhold and Tall Rock. A small barge looked to be fixed just downstream—if current flowed in the lake—from the Titan bridge where a crowd, but nothing like the crowd at the King’s barge trip, had gathered to watch events.

“None at Vassa’s balcony, you see, my mighty king,” one of the dwarves said in Fangbreaker’s ear.

Wistala didn’t know which was Vassa’s balcony, and didn’t care. She looked down the sheer side of rock at the barge. A dwarf, shorn of his hair and beard and stripped to a loincloth, was staked out in the daylight, no mask on his face. It looked as though he had something wrapped around his head, but it was at the mouth level.

Five dwarves in black capes, with black great-axes, stood around him, at each limb and the head.

A dwarf on the Titan bridge was reading from a scroll box, but Wistala didn’t understand the words.

“What is this?” she asked Fangbreaker. A long neck had its advantages for reaching over crowds.

“Justice. That fellow spoke against me in his guild hall. Dozens of ears heard it; there’s no doubt as to his guilt. Oh, the poor fool. It’s like a madness; it’s struck some of the best families with balconies on the Ba-drink.”

“He’s gagged?” Wistala asked as the ax-men, at some signal, lifted their blades.

“We used to let them say last words, but it led to tedious and insulting speeches. Now we open their mouths and give them just enough time to scream.”

The dwarf at the staked-out figure’s head nodded at some signal from above, and bent to remove the gag. Wistala heard a shout in Dwarvish from the staked-out man, and Fangbreaker thumped the balcony rail.

In quick succession the ax-man at his right arm brought down his blade, severing the limb, and four regular strikes followed on the stained wooden deck of the barge. The assorted bits danced a little, like landed fish.

Some cheering broke out, loudest at the king’s balcony, or so it seemed to Wistala’s ears. She wondered what his limbs might be used for, but they were simply dumped in the Ba-drink.

“A traitor’s burial,” one of the lordly dwarves said in Parl, perhaps wanting to please the king by explaining.

“Hmpf,” King Fangbreaker said. “Dismembered and dead in five tics. And with his last words he called me brutal!”

Chapter 25

The dwarves took her across the Titan bridge to the sloping top of Tall Rock and established her in the second highest tower there. The only higher tower was that of the watch-guild, who kept the time of the hour-bells and looked for riders at each end of the pass through secret optics.

She found herself in the care of a blighter slave named Yellowteeth. Yellowteeth indeed possessed oversize incisors the color of dried hay, top and bottom. He kept them polished by dipping his finger in ash and rubbing his teeth, then rinsing his mouth out with water.

He grumbled a good deal in Parl, for the dwarves spoke their tongue only among themselves and taught few its secrets, save for a claw-count of pleasantries and greetings and oaths that were public knowledge anyway.

She soon learned that the dwarves used three different languages, and not surprisingly to anyone who has spent much time around dwarves, ranked them.

The lowest was Parl, the language of servants, slaves, and those who engaged in commerce. Above that was Dwarvish, “the golden letters that unite us all,” according to a dwarf-philosopher Wistala had read somewhere or other. The dwarves of the guilds spoke specialized dialects—there seemed to be guilds for everything, from armor-making to woodworking. Wistala even heard whispers of a Guild of Assassins—she guessed the Dragonblade headed that one. The choicest and most talented dwarves studied the high language, that of mathematics, according to dwarvish legend the only remnant of the perfect world that existed before darkness filled the holes.

Her tower had once been an observatory. Like the council chamber she was trying to forget, writing covered the walls, at the top star charts, moon graphs and planet tracks, beneath them explanations in the cryptic styling of the dwarves.

The star-guild had left not only numerous charts and symbols painted on the floors but on her high perch, as well, a platform designed to be lifted right up and out of the tower.

She could just get her head out the hole in the roof, which could be shut by a sheet of reinforced tin by working a bezel running around the ring-hole. (The dwarves and Yellowteeth used a pole with a hook to work it, Wistala could reach it without rearing up on her hind legs.) There were eight windows with thick shutters and curtains set around the observation room. A fixture directly beneath for some sort of apparatus stuck up from the floor below the platformlike toadstools, but all had been disassembled before they moved her into the perch.

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