SEVERKIN AND Elkana approach the building with the snake over its door cautiously. Severkin can feel eyes on them—not just the guards in front of the building, but from all around, watching the foreigners step up to the dwarven guardhouse. But this is where they’d been told to go. Elega was going to tell them how to find the Spear.
They walk up to the guards under the snake, and Severkin clears his throat.
“We’re, uh—” He stops as the dwarves silently part to let them pass.
“Anyone can just walk in, then?” Elkana asks.
“We knew you were coming,” one of the dwarves says. Their helmets cover their faces and make their voices echo, so it’s impossible to tell which dwarf said it. Severkin and Elkana pause, not sure if they should just walk in. “You are Severkin and Elkana,” one of the dwarves says—possibly the same one. “We were told what you look like, we were told you would be arriving, and we were told to allow you passage. Go quickly. Elega is not a patient warrior.”
Severkin nods and pushes open the huge doors behind them. They’re heavier than they look and he has to use both arms.
The inside is remarkably similar to the guard hall of the gray elves, but darker. There’s no pomp here, no carpets and carved columns. Instead the columns are made of chipped onyx, and the floor is bare granite tile.
Reunne waits inside, leaning against one of the columns.
“That was fast,” she says. “Follow me.”
She walks down the hall, but at the end of it there is no throne, only a table and chairs, all empty. She turns down a side hallway and leads them downstairs and through narrow metal doors. Eventually they come to a large room lit with covered torches but still dark because the walls and floor are nearly black. At one end of the room is a huge desk, and behind it is a dwarven woman, her head covered with a black skullcap, her iron-colored hair pulled back in a braid. She has a large nose that turns down slightly and eyes that seem to reflect what little light is in the room like mirrors. She stares at them as they enter, expectant.
“Come, sit,” she says. She motions to the chairs in front of her desk, four of them, one already occupied, though the occupant doesn’t turn to look at them. Reunne does as the woman—Elega, Severkin assumes—asks, and Severkin and Elkana do the same. Elega does not stand, but she lays her hand on her desk, her fingers curled as if she’s clutching a sphere. “Reunne says you’ve proven useful, so we accept you into these hallowed halls,” Elega says. She speaks quickly and with a voice like an old man clearing his throat. “But you must understand that this information we have acquired is secret. If you reveal what we are about to tell you, we will hunt you down and kill you, ally or no.”
“I think Rorth would raise some objections to that, yeah?” Elkana says.
“Rorth doesn’t care about you, troll.” The words fly out with a little spittle, and Elega laughs. “And besides, the way we’d do it, he wouldn’t know it was us. You’d just disappear.”
“We understand,” Severkin says.
“You too, Reunne,” Elega says, and nods at her.
“Of course,” Reunne says. Elega stares at her for a beat, her eyes moving up and down Reunne’s face like she’s doing a math problem.
“Good. This is Efem,” she says, nodding her head at the occupant of the fourth chair, and Severkin glances over at him. He’s a clean-shaven dwarf, which is unusual, and his hairline is high. He has a long, thin frown like a bridge, and the wrinkles on his face and around his turtle eyes suggest the frown is his default expression. But despite all that, he is strangely forgettable.
“I am in charge of the Sword and the Shield,” he says in a low voice that carries. There’s a cold silence. “This is one of the secrets you are not allowed to tell.”
Reunne nods, and Severkin imitates her. After a moment, even Elkana nods slightly.
“One of the things we do is run a prison,” Efem says. “For provocateurs who spoke out against our war with the overworld, back when such a war was happening, of course. We believe one of our prisoners knows where the Spear is. We will take you to her, and you may question her yourself.”
“Why is she still in prison?” Elkana asks. “The war with the overworld is over. Shouldn’t she be set free?”
“Technically,” Efem says, “Sindry did more than just speak out. She led an entire colony in revolt, trying to escape to the overworld and begin a town there.”
“I still don’t understand,” Elkana says. “Dwarves go ta the overworld all the time now.”
“She broke the law,” Elega interrupts. “The fact that the law she broke has since been repealed is irrelevant. Her sentence stands.”
“That doesnae seem right,” Elkana says.
“Our laws are our laws,” Elega says, her hand inching toward Elkana like a spider. “You are here to help stop the giants. We don’t want your opinion on anything else.”
“Also,” Efem says, “as we mentioned, the existence of this prison is secret. Who is in it is secret. If we just started letting them go, then it wouldn’t be secret anymore.” His hands, which have been immobile and folded in his lap, raise slightly, like they’re inhaling.
“So no one knows that the prisoners are in prison?” Severkin asks.
Efem nods.
“They just disappeared,” Reunne says softly. Severkin looks over at her, but her expression is unreadable, empty. Severkin knows she’s thinking of her father. He wonders if she might explode at them, demand to know where he is, but she stays quiet. Becomes quieter, even, as though her body is perfectly still.
“Precisely,” Efem says.
“But why bring us to this prisoner at all?” Reunne asks. “Surely you could get all the information you want from her?”
“She’s particularly obstinate,” Efem says, his tongue rolling inside his mouth as though trying to rid himself of a bad taste. “We think seeing overworlders may convince her to help.” He nods slightly at Elkana.
“Ah,” Elkana says. “Now I see why I’ve been invited along. She’s never seen a troll before, eh? It’ll make her believe us when we say you’re at peace with the overworld now and we need her help with the giants.”
“Exactly so,” Efem says. “Our interrogators told her the truth of the matter flat out, and she laughed at them. Our other usual techniques did nothing. We think you may be able to convince her of the truth.” Severkin frowns, trying not to think about what the “usual techniques” must be.
“And why do you think she knows where the Spear is?” Severkin asks.
“Records,” Elega says. “She and her fellow provocateurs were part of an excavation colony. We sent them into a cave where we thought there’d be resources to hollow it out in preparation for a new colony. They did their jobs for a while, but then Sindry found something—something that matches the description of the Spear. Shortly thereafter, they tried to escape—started digging a tunnel to the surface. Assumed no one was monitoring them.”
“That was incorrect,” Efem says. “A loyal dwarf revealed their plan, and now they all reside in Number Seven.”
“Seven?” Elkana asks. “So there are six others?”
Efem stares at her silently until they realize he won’t be answering.
“But we couldn’t find the Spear,” Elega says. “She hid it somewhere.” Severkin and Elkana stare at each other in the silence. The black walls make Elkana’s skin seem to glow like the algae monsters he and Reunne had fought.
“Can we…,” Reunne starts. She purses her lips then opens them again. “Can we promise her freedom? In exchange for what she tells us?”
“You can promise her whatever you want,” Efem says, his hands inhaling again. He pauses, waits for his exact meaning to sink in. “Any other questions?” No one says anything. Severkin shakes his head. “Good, then we’d best be off. We’ll take some tunnels out this way,” he says, standing. He’s not wearing any armor, just black breeches and high-collared jacket. “Number Seven is well hidden, so it may be a long journey.”
“Bring back the Spear,” Elega says, but she’s staring at papers on her desk.
Severkin, Elkana, and Reunne stand, and Efem leads them out the way they came, then down another hallway and more stairs. Halfway down the next hall, he presses a brick and the wall swings open. The doorway is low, so they must duck to enter it, and once inside, it’s pitch black. Efem takes out a torch and lights it, then closes the hidden door behind him. They walk, bent over and silent, a few hundred feet before the tunnel opens up and they can stand straight again.
“This will be a long walk,” Efem says. “I have more torches if you’d like.” He hands out torches to Severkin and the others, who light them and follow him in silence. The road is roughly carved into the underground, the ceiling low and gnarled like natural earth, not the neat stone ceilings of the undercity.
Severkin hangs back from Efem and waits for him to get a little ahead before whispering to Reunne, “Are you okay with this?”
Reunne nods slowly, her eyes fixed on Efem’s silhouette. “Let’s get the Spear,” she says. “Then maybe I can learn something about…that.” Her voice is barely a whisper, more like an exhale with notes.
They walk ahead in silence for a long while, Efem leading them down twists and turns so numerous and dark that Severkin loses all sense of where they are. They’re outside the undercity, that much he knows. But in what direction, or how far, he can’t be sure.
Finally the tunnel’s roof rises slightly and the ground underfoot becomes more polished. There is a large metal door built into the side of the wall and Efem produces a key from somewhere in his robes and unlocks it. They all follow him inside.
Here, the air smells not like dirt but like metal, and the room is large enough that Severkin imagines he can feel a breeze. It is lit by a huge chandelier and torches, but it still feels glum, dark. The marbled tiles on the walls have a green tinge. The staircase that dominates the room seems to glow gray. A guard in a uniform Severkin hasn’t seen before is standing in the center of the room. When Efem enters, he nods slightly.
“The prisoner is already in the interrogation room, sir. Number three,” the guard says. He wears no helmet and his chain mail is black. The same Sword and Shield emblem is at his collar.
“Very good. I’ll take them.” The guard nods and disappears through a door in the side of the room. Efem walks up the staircase, and they follow him. Severkin looks at Reunne, but her eyes are blank, reflecting the light of the room like glass.
“We have very careful systems in place. Most of the prisoners haven’t seen any other prisoner for years. They have no contact with the outside world besides the guards. We have total control over their lives.” He leads them up the stairs and through a door into another room. A few guards patrol the perimeter looking at what Severkin first thinks are windows, but then he remembers they’re underground, and he sees that while the walls are coated with glass, they’re not windows. At least not in the conventional sense. The room is a dome, and the walls flicker with magic, showing fuzzy, faded images of prisoners in cells. Small cells. Most of the prisoners are dwarves, but a few of them are gray elves. The rooms are all identical. Windowless, cramped, with a bed that looks like a plank and a small hole in the ground that Severkin assumes is a toilet. The walls are stone but covered in a ribbing of some sort, like veins.
“We can see all the prisoners from here,” Efem says.
“That’s some magic,” Elkana says.
“Yes,” Efem says. “And you’d be wise not to try to replicate it. We lost more than a few mages creating this room. But it’s worth it. Everyone is constantly surveilled this way.”
“And it’s limited to just the prisons?” Severkin asks, remembering the feeling of being watched in the undercity.
“Do you see the ropes along the walls of each cell—coating the walls?” Efem asks, ignoring Severkin’s question. “The slightest tug on those, and a bell rings in the halls. If a prisoner tries to kill themselves, or becomes violent, we can stop it immediately. Some prisoners we keep perpetually drugged, or enchanted—keep their minds fuzzy, so they can’t even think of escape.” Severkin doesn’t ask his question again. He knows no answer is forthcoming. Efem walks along the wall, his palm outstretched, hovering over the images of the cells and prisoners until he comes to one and stops. “This is where you’ll be going,” he says. The room the illusion shows is different—black walls, a table in the center, and a dwarven woman sitting at it. “That’s Sindry. I’ll take you to the interrogation room now. The walls are coated in thick leather—it cleans easier—but there are the ropes underneath the leather. If anything goes wrong, just press down anywhere on the walls and the guards will come in.”
He leads them out of the room at the opposite end they entered from. The corridor here is wide but low. The doors are all dark, with small rectangular windows covered with bars. There isn’t a single sound besides their footsteps and prisoners breathing short, whimpering breaths.
“And we can promise her freedom?” Severkin asks Efem when he stops in front of a door. Efem turns and looks Severkin in the eye, a smile curling up into his cheeks like syrup being poured into stirred porridge.
“You can promise her whatever you need to,” he says.
“So you said,” Severkin says, “but will those promises be honored?”
Efem lets his lip curl up, amused. “She’s a traitor. You might not understand what that means down here, but I’m sure Reunne does.” Severkin turns to Reunne, who stares at the floor. “Reunne, will promises to traitors be honored?”
Reunne looks up and at Severkin. “She’s never getting out of here. She’s never going to leave—no matter what we do. The only thing we can do is try to get the Spear. Even if that means lying.”
Severkin looks Reunne over until she stares at the floor again. She’s always seemed so strong, but now she seems flattened, crushed under the weight of the mountain. He wants to get her out of here. He wants to bring her to the overcity and show her what freedom can feel like.
“You can do whatever you want to her,” Efem says, causing Severkin to look back up at him. “But find out where the Spear is.” He gestures at the closed door, palm open and up. “She’s waiting.”
Severkin isn’t sure whether the “she” he refers to is Sindry or Elega, but he opens the door and walks in. He’ll probably have to take the lead, he thinks. Reunne seems practically catatonic, and Elkana doesn’t have his nuance. He walks into the room.
It’s circular, and the walls are coated in oil-black leather that glimmers in the light from a caged set of torches on the ceiling, too high to reach. There’s a table in the center of the room, and behind it sits Sindry. Severkin takes a moment to study her. Her hands are manacled to the table and are thin and bony. Her face is, too, her cheekbones rising like the curve of a shovel over a ditch. She looks like she hasn’t eaten in years. Her hair is a dull gold color and cut short. Her eyes are thin, suspicious lines, but they widen into blue surprise when she spots Elkana.
“Hi,” Severkin says.
Sindry keeps staring at Elkana, then turns to Severkin, her eyes narrowing again.
“I think you know why we’re here.”
“No,” Sindry says, her voice deep and scratched.
“We’re looking for something we need to put the giants to sleep again. We think you know where it is.”
“Oh, this story again. The giants are awake, are they?”
“Yes,” Severkin says, “and the under- and overcities have made peace.”
Sindry snorts. “Why am I still in here, then?”
Severkin looks at Reunne and Elkana. None of them has an answer.
“You committed a crime,” Reunne says finally. She doesn’t look up at Sindry. “That it is no longer a crime doesn’t mean you didn’t commit one.” Severkin wants to reach out and take Reunne’s hand. She could be talking about her father, for all she knows.
“I admit,” Sindry says, trying to lean back, but the manacles on her wrists keep her in place, “the troll costume is impressive.”
Elkana raises an eyebrow. “Ain’t a costume.”
“You’re a real troll?”
“Aye. From the overworld. The giants are real, and we need your help puttin’ ’em back to sleep.”
Sindry stares at Elkana.
“It’s a spear,” Severkin says, hoping for an opening. “You found it while excavating.”
“Not exactly a spear,” Reunne says. “More like a huge spear tip or an arrowhead. Four edges like a cross…” She looks at Elkana. “Got paper and charcoal?” Elkana nods and hands Reunne some from her bag. Reunne puts them down on the table and sketches a detailed drawing of a tall arrowhead with sharp edges and prongs, lines along the middle. Severkin wonders for a moment how she knows the item in such detail and why he doesn’t but assumes it’s because Rorth didn’t want him to know.
“Yeah, I remember it,” Sindry says, still staring at Elkana.
“Ye wanna tug on my ear or something?” Elkana asks.
“Can I?” Sindry says. Elkana’s eyes go wide, and she glances at Severkin, who nods.
“Fine,” Elkana says, and leans over the table so Sindry can touch her ear. Quickly, Sindry darts in and bites Elkana’s ear. Elkana yells out, pulling back. Sindry’s mouth is red with blood, and Elkana has one hand on her ear and the other glowing with fire.
“Sorry,” Sindry says quickly. “I’m sorry…I just had to make sure you’re real. Not an illusion.”
Elkana stares at Sindry a moment more before letting the fire in her hand dissolve. “Real enough, then?”
“Yes.” Sindry nods. “So is it true? You’re from the overworld?”
“Aye,” Elkana says. “Him, too. Not her, though. But we trust her.”
“And we really do need the Spear to stop the giants,” Severkin says.
Sindry is quiet for a long while, staring at her hands. The blood dries and crackles on her lips, and she licks them, smearing it in a streak.
“I haven’t seen anyone else in so long,” she says. “Just the guards. What’s the undercity like now? Now that we’re at peace?”
Severkin looks at Reunne, who is still staring at her hands.
“Much the same,” Reunne says finally.
Sindry nods. “Things are slow to change,” she says. “They look fast, but they’re not.”
“But if we stop the giants,” Severkin says, “this joint force of under- and overworld, maybe that’ll bring us a step closer.”
Sindry shakes her head. “No. Not down here. Down here, the high protect themselves and only themselves. The Sword and Shield will protect the Sword and Shield. You’ll never convince them of peace.”
“They’ll fall in time,” Reunne says softly.
Sindry sighs, the sounds like dead leaves. “Maybe,” she says. “But hope lies with above, not with below. Below must change into above. And this thing you want to find…”
“The Spear,” Severkin says.
“Yes,” Sindry says. “It’s powerful. It lets you…not control others’ minds, but plant thoughts in them. And understand what they feel, which lets you argue to their beliefs more persuasively. It’s how I convinced the whole colony to try to escape. It let me…peer into them. You can’t let the Sword and Shield have it. You can’t let anyone have it.”
“We’ll be careful,” Severkin promises. “But we need it to stop the giants. Afterward, we’ll hide it again.” He knows this isn’t true. The side that ends up with the artifacts will want to hold onto them to keep the other side in check. But maybe he can persuade them that the best way is to split them apart and hide them again. That would be the best for everyone. “But we need it. Or else all of Wellhall, above and below, will come toppling down.”
Sindry wipes a bit of Elkana’s blood from her lips and stares at it on her hands.
“I wonder if that would be so bad,” she says so softly Severkin can barely hear it.
“There’s hope now,” Severkin says, and reaches out for her hands. He takes them in his, and they feel light, like dried reeds that could crumble under his touch.
Sindry looks up at him. “You promise?” she asks. “That there’s hope?”
“I promise,” Severkin says. He realizes it’s the one promise he can keep.
“I hid it in the clay pits,” Sindry says after a moment, and as she says it, it’s like part of her leaves her. She seems even thinner somehow, without her last secret. Severkin wonders if it was the only thing keeping her alive, and whether now that he’s just made her give it up, she’ll die. And if she does, will he ever know? He knows the answer to that question: no. He’ll never know anything about her again.
“Thank you,” Severkin says.
“We shut the clay pits down,” Sindry says. “There was an infestation of mud flies. I hid it in their nest—the highest one. Don’t let them have it, when you’re done. Steal it back, throw it to the deepest part of the ocean. Promise?” She tries to reach out, but her hands are still manacled to the table.
“I promise,” Severkin says.
And then they sit in silence a moment more. Sindry stares at her hands, and Severkin wishes there were something else he could do. But he knows that there isn’t. She’ll be here until she dies, and she’ll probably be buried here, under an anonymous gravestone.
“Thank you” he says, and turns to go. Reunne and Elkana follow him outside, but before closing the door, he looks back at Sindry—pale and sharp angled, hair like old gold, a forgotten statue, crumbling apart underground.
Outside, Efem is gone. A guard—possibly the one from earlier—stands in his place, waiting.
“I was told to give you this map. It will tell you how to get to the abandoned colony and then how to get back to the undercity after that.”
Severkin takes the map and unfolds it. It shows their starting location as a cavern far from the city.
“Is this where we are?” he asks, looking up at the guard. But the guard has a face mask on, and suddenly there’s a strange smell in the air, and Severkin feels his eyelids droop and his body fall to the ground.
SEVERKIN OPENS his eyes in a large cavern lit only by torches on the wall, clearly not anywhere in the prison. In his hand, on top of the map, is a note, which he opens and reads:
Sorry for the dramatics, but it was the best way.
—Efem
Severkin crumples the note in his hand and looks around for Elkana and Reunne. Elkana is just a few feet past him, starting to stand, shaking her head as if dizzy.
“Not very hospitable, was that?” she asks, when she sees Severkin. “We’re just out of there, right? Not trapped in some new prison or something?”
“I think so,” Severkin says. “Do you see Reunne?” They peer through the dimness of the cavern, and Severkin sees some movement at the far end. “There, maybe,” he says, and they walk toward it.
It’s Reunne, waiting at the end of the cavern, doing what appears to be exercises with her spear, fluid motions one into the other, almost dancelike.
“Reunne, you all right?” Elkana asks. “This isnae some kinda seizure, is it?”
Reunne stops and puts her spear back in the scabbard on her back. “Exercises,” she says. “I needed to…think.”
“Was all that difficult?” Severkin asks, meaning their seeing the prison, her seeing a place like where her father is probably kept. Was probably kept. It sounds stupid as soon as he says it, but Reunne is kind enough not to glare.
“Let’s move on,” Reunne says. Severkin nods and opens the map. The colony doesn’t look to be very far from their starting position, and he wonders how far they are from the prison and how long they were unconscious.
They start walking and along the way find themselves fighting off the occasional creature—giant rats, mouths foaming white, and huge bats like living shadows. Nothing overpowering, though, nothing unexpected. They’re soon on what looks to be an abandoned main road, or main tunnel, he supposes. It’s well paved, but the stones are dusty and the air smells stagnant. Spiderwebs hang like lace arches over the road, and sometimes large spiders climb down them and Severkin and the others fight them off.
“So,” Severkin says quietly, “do you think your father is being held in one of those prisons?” He turns to look at Reunne. She doesn’t look back at him. For a moment, he’s not sure she even heard him.
“Maybe,” she eventually says. “Or he’s dead.”
“You want to break him out?” Severkin asks. “I’ll help. Maybe he’s been kept drugged. There must be a way, though.”
“I don’t know,” Reunne says. “I don’t know if he’s being kept, or how, or where.” She spins on him. “How can I save him when I don’t know anything?”
“I…,” Severkin says. “I don’t know. But you can still try. Make plans.”
“I’ll try,” Reunne says, turning back to the road. “Once the giants are asleep again, I’ll do more than try.”
They walk on a while more in silence until the road ends at the colony. There’s an arch and a sign over it in Dwarvish that names it Far Northeast Colony. Dwarves aren’t much for interesting names, apparently. They go through the arch and look around at the ruins of a colony that was never completed. It’s lit by a gentle glow of purplish mold on the high ceilings. It would have looked like a small version of the undercity, if it had been finished. But the walls of buildings are only half up, and machines lay rusting on the roads. The cavern, at least, was hollowed out. And there’s one large building in the center, with a domed roof and a few statues in front. There are street signs for streets that never existed. It feels like a city, if a city were a thought you’d just forgotten.
“I don’t like this place,” Elkana says. “Let’s find the clay pits and be out of here.” Severkin looks down at the map, which is sectioned off into zones: algae ponds, brick workshop, housing, clay pits. The clay pits are across the cavern, so they set off, walking down the barest outlines of streets.
“Why’d they need clay pits, anyway?” Elkana asks. “Dwarves use it fer their skin or some such?”
“Bricks,” Reunne says. “It’s a special sort of clay, but if you find it, it can be strained and mixed with algae to create bricks that are strong and that glow slightly. It’s not hard to find, but we use it up pretty quickly, so all colonies are built near clay pits.”
As they get closer to the clay pits, Severkin hears a buzzing, at first like a background hum, but then growing louder.
“She said there was an infestation, right?” he asks. “Mud flies?”
“They build nests from mud or clay,” Reunne says. “Nasty things—they bite. But I can’t imagine they’ll be too much trouble. We can burn them out if we need to.”
Another arch marks the entrance to the clay pits. The buzzing is loud now, so loud Severkin needs to shout.
“Sounds like more than just an infestation!” he yells. There are two statues on either side of the archway, of noble dwarves standing in finery, weapons in front of them. But they’ve been colonized. Along the curves of their faces, in the angles of their necks and chins, are long clay tubes, like panpipes, with holes along their sides. As Severkin stares, a fly the size of his thumb darts out of one and into the archway. Severkin shines his torch after it. He can see a thousand flies, easily, filling the air like a cloud.
“Ye want me ta just burn ’em?” Elkana asks.
“Can you think of a better idea?” Reunne asks.
Elkana rolls her head on her shoulders and steps forward and raises her hands, letting loose a tide of fire through the arch. For a moment, the buzzing seems to soften, but then it grows loud again as hundreds of mud flies come out through the arch, dodging Elkana’s flames. Severkin raises his hands to his face, expecting them to bite, but instead they all fly to one area, a little way off, and assemble. They contract as one, like a heartbeat, and pulse out again, this time not as a cloud but as a shadow—a shadow of a dwarf. Severkin feels his skin shiver, and quickly draws an arrow and fires at the fly-dwarf, but of course the arrow goes right through it. There are more of these dwarf-shaped swarms forming and charging them.
“How are they doing that?” Severkin asks. No one answers. One of the fly-dwarves is upon him and jumps at him with such force that Severkin stumbles backward, hit all over by a hundred stones. And then the stones start to bite. They’re not mere flea bites, sting and itch. They’re the bites of sharp axes or arrows. He can feel blood running into his eyes.
“This ain’t working!” Elkana shouts. She’s being swarmed, too, and so is Reunne. Severkin tries running into the clay pits.
“Let’s just get the Spear and get out!” he shouts. Reunne and Elkana follow him, Elkana letting off bursts of fire now and then, trying to keep the flies down.
The clay pits are slippery and wet. The floor is ankle deep with gray water, and beneath that, the clay underfoot squelches. All around them, mud-fly nests rise from the ground like organ pipes, coating the walls, the columns the dwarves had put up, the machines they used to harvest the mud. Carts, sieves, conveyor belts, all misshapen, coated in thick tubes of clay like armor.
“She said she put it in a nest,” Severkin says, trying to swat more of the insects away. They bite his hands and neck, every bit of exposed skin. He can feel himself growing tired with pain.
“So which nest?” Elkana shouts, blasting more of the insects with fire.
They try to see through the swarms of bugs and the darkness, but not even Severkin’s night vision can see past the flies. They try climbing some of the nests, but the tubes fall away in their hands, and more mud flies stream out of them, angry and buzzing.
They take different forms—the dwarf shadows again, and the shapes of giant flies—but always in a swarm, always delivering the feeling of a thousand needles to the face and hands. Elkana has to stop throwing fire to cast her few healing spells on herself, Reunne, and Severkin.
Severkin sees a glint in the darkness only because he’s turned his head upward, hoping the flies won’t sting his eyes that way. It’s at the top of one of the largest nests—a thick column of pipes as tall as a house, and on top, a pointed roof that shines slightly at the peak.
“There!” he shouts, and points. Elkana lets loose a blossom of fire, to clear out the flies for a moment in hopes of seeing the object clearly. But in the dark, all they can see is a metal point.
“How can we get up there?” Reunne shouts. “I can’t climb it with my spear—the clay is too soft.”
“And I can’t climb it with my hands,” Severkin says. They’ve clustered around the base, and Elkana has put a ring of fire around them. The smoke seems to keep the flies away better than the actual fire. But outside the ring, the strange dwarven silhouettes wait, something between a swarm and an army.
“What about that?” Elkana asks, pointing at an old machine. It looks to be a large metal grate on a wheel, designed to scoop the clay up and hold it in the air to drain it. Two handles wind the grate—like a platform—up or down around a central bar, like an orbit. But it clearly needs to be hand-wound now, the engines all long dead.
“If I stood on that and leapt,” Reunne says, “I think I’d be able to grab it and tear it down, yes.”
“All right, then,” Elkana says, and hurls a fireball at the grate. The clay nests embedded in it shatter, and it creaks loose.
“You’ll need to hold the grate just right,” Reunne says. “Otherwise it won’t be high enough.”
“Let’s do it,” Severkin says. He rushes forward, the flies swarming him like a clinging rain. Reunne jumps onto the grate, and Elkana and Severkin stand on either side of it, where the handles are.
“Now!” Reunne shouts, and both Severkin and Elkana turn the handles on their sides. They turn slowly, grinding through decades of old mud and rust, groaning against Severkin and Elkana’s efforts. The flies sting at his fingers as Severkin turns, and the blood runs over his hands, making them slippery.
“Careful,” Reunne says. “Almost there. No, too far, back!” Severkin switches direction, winding the platform back toward the top of its orbit. “There,” Reunne says, and he holds the handle in place, even as it strains to go back down. He hears a clang from above him and feels the platform push back, and he lets go. He looks up, and through the fog of flies he can see Reunne dive for the Spear and grab it, pulling it down and into the muddy nests with her.
And suddenly the insects stop.
They’re still there, buzzing and biting, but their intelligence seems to be gone. They take no shapes, and their bites become less strategic, less frequent. Severkin runs over to where Reunne has landed in the mud, the Spear below her. She lies there on her stomach, and for a moment, he thinks she’s dead, but when he kneels beside her, she shifts and rolls over, the Spear clutched in her hands. It’s not as big as he thought it would be, only the size of both his hands together.
“You all right?” he asks. Elkana runs over and puts up another circle of fire, but this one is weaker, Severkin notices, the flames lower.
“I’m fine,” Reunne says.
“Then let’s get out of here,” Severkin says, and pulls her up out of the clay. They run for the arch, and the flies don’t follow when they leave the clay pits.
When they’re safely away from the nests, and the buzzing is just in their imagination, not their ears, they stop and catch their breath. Reunne is coated in clay, a paler gray against her blue-gray skin. It covers her armor and hair, too, so she looks like a living statue.
“That was unexpected,” Severkin says. “I never thought flies would be such a problem.” He looks at his hand, which is bubbling with red spots as if diseased. He wonders if Reunne isn’t better off coated in clay.
“I can take care of the bites,” Elkana says. “Just give me a moment ta meditate.” Severkin nods, and Elkana sits and starts quietly chanting. Severkin and Reunne walk a little way off.
“Can I see it?” Severkin asks. Reunne pulls the Spear out of her bag, where she must have put it as they ran. It looks exactly like the drawing she’d shown him—it even gleams, despite having been stuck in the mud all those years. She hands the Spear to him. It feels cool in his hand, but nothing happens. “I thought, touching it…I’d feel that…that mind thing Sindry talked about,” he says.
“According to records, she had it in her home for a while,” Reunne says. “I think it takes a few days to kick in.” She pauses, peels some of the clay from her face. “But I can tell you what you’re thinking without it.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. You’re wondering how you can convince me to let you take it to Rorth, instead of letting me take it to Elega.”
Severkin smirks. “Maybe,” he says.
“You don’t need to convince me,” Reunne says. “After today…that place. I don’t think the gray elves are much better, but they have to be better than that.”
“Well…,” Severkin says. “Yeah. That went easier than I expected.”
“Just tell them you grabbed it from the nest—don’t say I turned it over to you.”
“Are you sure? You could get Rorth to honor you in some way.”
Reunne shakes her head. “Your being honored is enough for me. I’m proud of you.”
Severkin feels his skin warm at that, and not just from the fly bites. He looks at Reunne, the wrinkles in her face highlighted by the clay she couldn’t scrape off, and he wants to say a hundred things, but knows he can’t, and instead just says “Thanks.”
“All right,” Elkana says, coming over. “Line up fer Doctor Elkana’s magical disease-ridding cure-all.”
Severkin and Reunne look at each other and chuckle, and then Elkana raises her hands and Severkin can feel all the poisons leaving his body like rising steam.