Haven 5 Blood Magic BOOK (14 page)

A clear example of this natural behavior might be the warrior company that had followed Hallr into the breath of Fafnir, powered by Pyros. More than willing, nay, with
eagerness
they had followed their clan leader into hopeless battle. The reason they changed so drastically when they had chosen a monarch, she decided, lay in the fact that the Kindred were a folk normally divided into thirteen clans. Only when they had a monarch did the center of their existence change. No longer were the Kindred just one of thirteen striving groups, but rather there rose up a single individual to whom all of them owed their total allegiance. They replaced a diffuse organization with a single focus for their prideful, honor-filled eagerness. Their king, (or in this case, their queen) by his or her very existence, drove the Kindred to great heights of activity. All rivalries ceased, all quips and snubs were pointless. Everyone was instantly on the same side, and all anyone cared about was the current goal of the monarch.

For good or ill, they had chosen her—or fate had. She had borne many great burdens in her long life, including for a time, two of the Jewels of Power. But this was by far the greatest burden of her difficult life. She had no choice but to lead, and lead she would. But she worried, especially at night when the repaired vents of the Earthlight were reduced to three dim red lines on the horizon, that Pyros would impair her otherwise excellent judgment at a critical juncture. She was sure her people would follow her, marching into the magma itself if she led them there. She had no doubts of their strength, honor and loyalty. But she doubted herself at times, at quiet times, when the Jewel whispered disturbing things to her.

She could see no flaw, however, in rebuilding the Kindred army to new heights. Their allies she trusted, but no farther than the reach of her axe. Their enemies—she trusted them, too. She trusted them to try to steal from the Kindred the glory, wealth and power they had so recently gained. She knew they would covet Pyros, and think she was weak and unable to properly wield its flame. They were wrong. And she would instruct them most
harshly
when they came to test her mastery of the Orange Jewel.

She expected to be attacked, and soon. It only made sense. Why wait until she had a firm grasp upon the Orange? Why not strike while they tarried to repair the damage Fafnir had done? Oh yes, she knew their plans. She was supposed to happily rebuild brass and stone, bending a thousand backs to pointless toils. All the while the enemy snuck up from the Everdark and gathered in the darkest regions of the Black Mountains and the Deepwood.

 “Warriors, report!” she ordered, slamming an open hand down on a six-inch thick oaken table. She sat in the ruins of the citadel, where the rubble had been cleared out, but the carven stone furniture still lay broken. They had no time for re-cutting the great stone table that had once been sculpted up from the basalt interior of the citadel. Instead, she had ordered a heavy wooden replacement.

The reports came in from every sector. None of them were good. The kobolds below and the gnomes down still deeper were very busy indeed, constructing traps and moving about in great numbers. In the trees that huddled against the feet of her Black Mountains, more gnomes, elves and even goblins had been sighted, meeting in quiet moonlit glades.

Of her allies, Brand was the only one she had the slightest trust in. He was a boy, but naturally gifted as a leader. He would come to her aid, she felt sure, when the time came. The Wee Folk were little better than knaves, and might or might not lend a hand, depending on their fickle calculations of the state of affairs when the time came. But she didn’t have any plans to depend on the people of the Haven for salvation. In fact, she rather thought it was the elves and gnomes who skulked about her mountains—in, under and around them—who might be the ones needing help, ere long.

 “What are we doing about all this enemy activity?” she demanded.

The new clan leader of the warriors stood. He was a relatively young fellow, barely four centuries old. His beard, however, despite his youth, reached the top of his boots.

“My Queen,” he said. “We have begun training our troops to follow the brass walking machines, but they blow so much steam into our faces as to obscure our vision. We request a new tactic, to spread out to the sides of the machines, to support them on a wider front.”

“Denied,” said Gudrin sharply. The warrior looked surprised, but she had no time for softening her opinions. “The battles will often proceed underground in places where there will be no way to flank anything. We must find another expedient.”

Gudrin spun half around to face the Mechnician clanmaster, who recoiled slightly, having known the Queen’s scowl would turn to her next.

“We are working on it, milady,” said the mechnician. “With new exhaust fittings, the steam shall be ejected upward, not backward. But, I must add, in a tight tunnel the entire area will be affected anyway.”

Gudrin nodded. “We’ll try the new fittings. What of the killing arms? Are they strong enough yet to move stones? I’ll not have obstacles stopping my forces so easily.”

The mechnician rustled her scrolls nervously. She took a breath and selected one to read from. “Our tests show improvement in this area, but the length and sharpness of the tines will be affected if we continue to make them thicker and more powerful. They can’t be optimized for piercing thrusts and digging work at the same time.”

Gudrin pursed her lips. “Strive for a happy medium. I want them to perform both functions competently.”

Next, she turned to her own talespinner appointee. He was a young male, who kept his beard trimmed scandalously short. Most disapproved of him, she knew, but she had to have someone for the job. She could not very well lead her clan and run the kingdom at the same time. She had put a waif in charge, one who many thought was exceedingly young for the job, but who she knew was a genius at quick adaptation. She had no need now of some hoary librarian from the central scroll repository. She didn’t want someone who was interested more in dusting their knowledge than using it.

“Talespinner. What of our efforts to capture a sufficiency of elementals from the magma?”

This one was so nervous he spilled his scrolls when addressed. They splashed over his boots and his lap like a hurled deck of cards. “Ah,” he said, snatching at scrolls.

The warrior clanmaster rolled his eyes to the ceiling, clearly unimpressed.

Gudrin slammed her hand down on the table again. This time, her hand had formed into a fist, and a gush of flame scorched the table where she struck it. For several long seconds after the booming report of both the blow and the blossoming flames, her fist continued to burn. It blackened the table surface, bubbling the varnish from a new patch, one of many such scars the table displayed. She wondered distantly if this sort of thing was the very reason her forebearers had always built council chambers out of pure stone.

“Leave the scrolls, man! Report!”

Flustered, the talespinner stammered something about finding enough flame elementals, but almost none of the molten earth types. Gudrin calmed while he spoke, and when the flames on her fist were down to a bare flicker she rubbed her bare cheek.

Everyone watched quietly, seeing clearly that the flames had no effect on her whatsoever. She let them stare. A powerful monarch gave them faith in her leadership.

Finally, the talespinner offered his resignation at the end of his report. He sat with his dejected face aimed downward at his avalanche of scrolls, which still fluttered around his seat.

Gudrin snorted. “Request denied. I’ll decide when you are relieved of your position. It is none of your affair.”

“Thank you, my Queen.”

“Don’t thank me! This is no time to play with scrolls! Get out there and catch more elementals! We must have them to provide the heat source for our steam-driven machines. And pick up your flapping papers before I burn them all by accident.”

Gudrin left the council to their muttering and went to inspect the construction pits.

The crawler in the pits was a prototype, an early model based on scrolls that crumbled with age. There were many improvements to be made, but the thing was still deadly. One could sense, in its presence, it would be wicked indeed in combat. She eyed it critically. So long had it been since her people had marched behind such things. Seeing the evil of it, she no longer doubted why the Kindred council had seen fit to destroy the old ones nearly a millennium ago.

The crawler had a central torus of shining brass. The body of it was pot-bellied, in the general shape of a teakettle. But this teakettle had six multi-jointed steel legs like a giant crab. Also like a crab, two killing tines thrust forward, resembling claws, but each of them were sharpened to perfect spear-like point. They could thrust forward with startling rapidity, and were capable of piercing any armor, or even punching through stone.

As well, there was a rotating cap atop the metallic monster. Inside the turret sat one of the mechnicians, fully dressed in his thickest heat-resistant leathers. A nozzle attached to the rotating cap was able to spew flame or superheated steam with equal facility.

She watched as the pilot drove the clanking, hissing monster around the construction pit. This one was finished and ready for action, although it had a dozen design flaws that would be fixed in the next unit. Steam puffed behind from the rear exhaust vents. She could see how it would cause problems in an enclosed space. They would have to improve that design point.

She knew that inside the heart of the machine, a tiny being of living flame was imprisoned. To cause the machine to move, the elemental was tormented lightly with sprays of water from the central brass boiler. The resultant steam drove pistons and clockwork gears, moving the legs and providing locomotion. The machine would have to carry a vast amount of fuel to operate without the elemental inside it. There was no more efficient source of compressed heat available, other than her own Jewel. She wondered vaguely, while inspecting the machine, if she could easily power and drive one of these contraptions herself, with the help of Pyros, of course.

“Milady!” cried a voice from the top of the pit.

She craned her neck and saw a messenger. She waved her forward, and the young messenger came without hesitation, sliding down the side of the pit. Shale trickled and clattered in a tiny splash of loose stones at the bottom.

“Yes, yes, what’s the hurry?” Gudrin asked.

The messenger picked herself up, limped closer and held out a scrawled note.

Gudrin eyed the note. “Just tell me.”

“The kobolds, milady. About a hundred of them. They were seen in the night hours. They burned out two farms in the far eastern caverns. A full raiding party it was, with elders in the group. It was no random group of spratlings. One of the tribal chiefs must have ordered it.”

“You’ve come from there?”

“Yes, the watch commander sent me, he said—”

“Of course. You did well to find me quickly. What of the families?”

“All slain, milady.”

Gudrin nodded. She put her hands behind her back and clasped them. Where her two hands touched, a circle of orange flame appeared and flickered. She marched slowly in the bottom of the pit, pacing around the monstrous thing her mechnicians had constructed.

“Milady? What are your commands?” asked the messenger.

“So it has begun,” she said, as if she had not heard the other. She pointed up to the killing tines. Inside the metal monster, she could hear the ticking of gears and the gentle hiss of released steam. “What do you make of those, girl? What do you see?” she asked the messenger.

The young face looked up at the brass horror and eyed the killing tines critically. “Fine workmanship.”

Gudrin nodded again. “Just so.”

With a heavy heart, she ordered the mechnician to pilot the machine. She summoned the warriors who would form a company behind it, to follow it on patrol.

Gudrin ordered them to find the war party that had attacked the farm. They were to track them into the Everdark and destroy them all, but to pursue no deeper than a kilometer deepward. Farther than that would require a full company of the machines.

She heaved another sigh. The killing she had known was near at hand had finally begun. Part of her exulted, while part of her despaired.

The Orange Jewel, she knew, was the part of her that caused her face to split into a wide, excited grin. For Pyros, the nearness of battle was a thing of joy.

Chapter Eleven

To Coax the Hound

Mari had rested for hours, and had even begun to worry when finally Piskin returned to her. She had thought of running. In fact, she had thought of little else. But she was in the Twilight Lands, with only a few drifting wisps to keep her company. Even they seemed to be growing bored with the novelty of her.

Where would she run to? There were horrors moving in the distance, seemingly in every direction. To the east, where the forest and the Berrywine River should be, were she in still Cymru, hulked blue mountains. They bore caps, not of white snow, but of a greenish material. She knew not what it maybe, perhaps islands of grass grew up there.

To the west and north were huge trees. These were trees of impossible size, she could tell that even at this distance. They stood so tall they thrust up above the clouds, as if they were themselves mountains. Around the base of those trees moved shadows, what must be living things, but creatures so great in size they stood hundreds of feet tall. In the south, at the end of plain flatter and wider than any she’d ever seen in her life, a sea sparkled distantly, reflecting the endless starlight. She knew the sea was supposed to be to the west, not the south, and that there were mountains in her world between these places. But there were the waves, plain to see.