Hidden Spark (Dark Magic Enforcer Book 6) (6 page)

I turned back to Ulod. "You first."

"Fine," he said, and launched himself over the railing with a grace a stubby man in way too much leather and various heavy duty utensils hanging from his belt should have no right to accomplish. "Come on, over you come."

I joined him on the other side, and with a quick look around to ensure nobody was watching, he spat into the hole, mumbled what to me sounded suspiciously like a prayer in the dwarven tongue, and was gone.

"Why do I get the feeling this is a very bad idea?" I muttered before I closed my eyes and stepped into emptiness.

Life in Freefall

Roughly hewn walls of rock whizzed past, at least I assumed they did, I still had my eyes clamped shut as tight as a dwarf's wallet. My clothes flapped noisily and I wished I'd buttoned up my jacket, and my tie kept hitting my face. Air billowed up my trouser legs, cool and refreshing if it wasn't for the adrenaline and downright wrongness of the situation making me hot.

On and on it went, falling ever deeper. As far as I was concerned, the drop should take a mere few seconds, but as I approached terminal velocity, and we continued to fall, I eventually had to take a look.

Whereas I'd expected blackness, or just a hint of light from the hole far above, everything was lit with a ghostly gray-brown light that allowed me to see perfectly well. We weren't in a narrow shaft as I'd assumed, rather in a wide one, with walls as polished as Grandma's ancient table in the dining room no-one ever ate in.

I was vertical, so I craned my head up and was greeted with only the smallest pinpoint of light indicating the surface far above. We were down deep and it seemed like we weren't arriving any time soon. Looking down was just more and more of the same, the body of Ulod spreadeagled like a professional skydiver, me catching up with him fast.

Wanting to avoid a collision, I tried to lean forward and copy his position but ended up tumbling head-over-heels, almost crashing into the walls. Somehow, I managed to avoid that particular fate and found myself now facing downward, and I may have let out a little yelp—okay, a scream—as plummeting headfirst into the unknown has that effect on me.

After a few more false starts I got into position, arms and legs splayed, wind tearing at my clothes, face battered by strong forces as the air parted to make way for a rather amazed enforcer.

In the end I just grew bored. How deep was this damn tunnel and where did it lead? More to the point, how did you get back out? We kept going, the tunnel morphing, getting wider, carvings appearing in the rock. From crude depictions of dwarves with hammers, changing as we descended, until I became fascinated by the intricate and incredible beauty of both abstract and realist imagery that blended seamlessly in a dizzying display of craft.

These were tales, recordings of the place and the dwarves that have occupied this netherworld since the beginning of time. A history from their first attempts at decorating their homes right up to present day at the peak of their art.

Then I understood how I was able to study the work in such detail. We were slowing, no longer plummeting, buoyed by a cushion of air that fought our descent. I changed position so I was standing on air, descending like in an old elevator taking me down to meet those that had requested my assistance.

What was I doing here? I must be mad to take on a job like this. Dwarves didn't deal with human Hidden in this way, and what was with Ulod? He was an odd one, for sure. His kind never spoke the way he did, with so many words. Was that why he was up top, working in his little pawn shop? I bet it was. A punishment for straying from the way of the dwarf too much. A penance, a sentence until he proved worthy somehow?

My musings were interrupted as I slowed even more and caught sight of Ulod below me, standing on solid ground.

Bracing for the impact, I landed with fingertips splayed on the warm rock, one leg bent at the knee, the other behind me. Yeah, Matrix-style on terra firma.

Ulod tutted beside me, hint of a wrinkled brow beneath eyebrows he really should get trimmed, or better yet, gone over with a powerful lawn mower.

"Is this him?" came the booming voice of somebody definitely in charge. Would it be a Head of some kind? Dwarves were secretive about their leaders, always seeming to send someone different as representative to Council meetings, although, admittedly, it's very difficult to tell them apart.

"It's the human known as Black Spark, Princess Dekosli. He—"

"Quiet, you utter fool," spat the dwarf sat on a stone throne on the raised dais, a seat each side of her, slightly lower in position also occupied. "Dare you give our secrets to a light-dweller? Take him."

Ulod moaned and bowed, protested and did rather a lot of quivering, but two burly guards wrapped in chain mail grabbed him and took him away, feet dragging behind him until they were lost to darkness.

Who knew they had princesses? Who knew what would happen to Ulod? Who knew what would happen to me?

"Now," said the princess, "let's see if you are worthy of the task we require. Bring out the gimp," she declared—I think she was trying to sound ominous.

"Gimp? You cannot be serious? What is this, a joke?"

"Not gimp, you dimwit," said a dwarf to the princess' left. "The Dimp."

"Oh, right. Well, that explains it all."

For some strange reason I had a rather bad feeling about the Dimp. As they focused their attention behind me, I turned and understood exactly what the Dimp was. My bad feeling changed to a time-to-go-home-running-all-the-way feeling. No stopping for snacks on the way.

The Dimp roared and charged. I began my running away.

"Look out!" came a shout from the shaft above.

"Oomf!" Mithnite landed on top of me and we crashed to the ground in a heap. "Bad timing, dude. Very bad timing."

The Dimp kept on coming.

The Dimp is Out

How to describe the Dimp? Think of how you picture a dwarf—short, swarthy, generous helpings of hair and beard. All of them have powerful bodies with forearms the size of a human's legs, hands like shovels, writhing with veins and calloused as the Foot Fiend of Cthulu.

Now, take that image but imagine a corrupted version. One where the stature is slightly increased so it stands maybe four and a half feet tall rather than three, but there the similarity ends.

This dude was out of proportion in an utterly freakish way. I've seen giants, heck, I know the Chemist—ghoul of ghouls—and I've seen more Hidden than Madge has cooked greasy breakfasts, but this was a new one on me.

Señor Dimp was wider than he was tall, with shoulders that looked like they could move mountains aside with a gentle shove and a grunt.

He was stripped down to a brown leather kilt so his muscles were more than evident. There wasn't an ounce of fat on him. Again, the opposite of your usual dwarf, who usually look like they've been to a pie shop and refused to leave until they'd emptied the place. His shoulders were like balls, his chest like two slabs of beef, six pack to die for—maybe literally—and I'm not even going to talk about the size of his arms and the freaky as hell veins that criss-crossed like poisoned rivers.

The Dimp had strange markings on his body, runes etched directly into his skin that I knew weren't just for show, and if that wasn't enough he'd really gone to town on the whole, "if one weapon is good then loads is brilliant," look.

Strapped over his shoulder, now wielded in one hand, was a battle axe that looked as sharp as Intus' infinite scythe. Around his waist were hammers, knives in scabbards, and even his knee pads had spikes, all the better for impaling wayward dark magic enforcers upon if they got too close, which I had no intention of doing. And now I had Mithnite to deal with.

Unscrambling our bodies as fast as possible, I jumped up and pulled him to his feet. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I thought I could help. And anyway, it was boring up there."

"What! You were only up there for a minute, if that. Now look what you've done." I pointed at the Dimp. "They let the Dimp out."

"The Gimp, as in Pulp—"

"No, the Dimp."

"Grrr," he shouted, and I grabbed Mithnite roughly by his dirty shirt, popping a button or two—which served him right—and dashed in the opposite direction, wondering if I could use magic to get back out the tunnel lost in darkness high above our heads.

The princess and her consorts laughed and she shouted, "So, this is how humans defend themselves? And who invited that?"

"I'm just warming up," I called back over my shoulder. "Gotta find my groove. I thought we were friends, princess? Oh, and this is Mithnite. He's a very naughty boy, aren't you, Mithnite?" He said nothing. I think he'd realized maybe it wasn't such a good idea to hurl himself into a black hole without knowing what to expect. I know I was feeling less than groovy about the decision.

"We are not friends," she snapped, as I sped up then dodged when the lumbering, yet infuriatingly fast Dimp swished his axe at me, missed, then almost got Mithnite before I shoved him away.

"Shame. I could have shown you how we treat people we wish to employ, and it's not like this."

"You must show your courage if you are to be of service. No cowards may survive in our world, Black Spark."

"I'll kill him," I warned.

"That's why he's here. Dimp has come to die, but only if you can beat him."

"Fine," I said with a sigh, and stopped. I turned and faced the hellish heavyweight, lifting a finger and waggling it in his direction. "Look here, dude, I don't want to harm you but if you don't stop chasing me then... er... Ah! Yeah, it's a Faz Special." Look, I was out of practice with the cool one-liners, okay?

I don't think he heard me, as rather than cower and retrace his steps, he snorted and charged like a bull in a china shop, the only delicates in the area being one rather soft-centered wizard enforcer and one idiotic Mithnite Soos.

Almost upon me, I saw a rune on his left pectoral snap to bright red and it was as if he turned everything up to eleven. He kind of exploded in size, and yes, I do mean that literally. Now he was as tall as me and if I'd thought he was freaky before then now I thought he was ridiculous.

It was so beyond scary it was out the other side. He was so disfigured, such a balloon of a dwarf, puffed up and inflated like a bodybuilder who'd decided the best way to look good was to inject vast amounts of synthol directly into the muscles.

I couldn't help myself, I began to laugh. Even as my eyes darkened and beautiful magic roared into my body from the temptress that is the Empty. My ink swirled dangerously as hardly controllable forces readied for action, I laughed and couldn't stop.

Unable to understand what was happening, Dimp stopped dead in his tracks, axe of destruction—probably called Deathgiver or something else unimaginative since dwarves aren't very good at original names—raised in the air.

"You look like a donut with a skin disease," I managed to say as I bent double and chuckled until my cheeks hurt.

In hindsight it was probably a little rude, as no doubt he'd spent many centuries training to be such a formidable fighter and user of magic, but I think after everything I'd been through I simply couldn't find a fear bone left in my body.

So while I laughed, lost to the ridiculousness of the situation, he took advantage, the cheeky blighter, and swung down his axe as he growled, "Deathseeker shall taste human blood this day."

See, I told you they're crap with names.

The Joy of Battle

I wasn't sure what the new magic locked inside me was capable of, but hundreds of pounds of sharp steel descending toward my head made now the perfect chance to find out. If I was wrong I was in big doodoo, but here went nothing.

As time slowed and magic enthralled me, I straightened, all mirth vanished, and slapped my hands together above my head at the perfect moment. The axe was caught between my palms that crackled with magic, double their normal size. "Two can play at that game," I hissed, as Dimp's eyes grew wide and angry under weighty brows, one split by a scar that ran down from forehead to cheek. He tugged, then yanked, then heaved, muscles rippling across his torso, but I held on tight to the blade as though it was paper.

Strength of a giant was mine now, there to call at will, but I could feel myself wavering as the law of thermal dynamics came into play. Energy was expended at a phenomenal rate since this was power from within, not taken from the Empty, and I felt the scant body fat I had to spare burn away in an instant—I'd be rich if you could bottle this stuff.

Calling forth stolen energy to preserve my own body, I forced magic through my hands and with a heave shunted myself to the side as the ancient steel melted. It dripped through my protected hands and down to the stone floor in a puddle of silvery delight where it began to harden immediately in a blob of uselessness.

Dimp stumbled back with the release and fell to the floor, staring in utter horror and dismay at the solidifying pool. He did a double-take of the shaft he held in his hands, not believing what had happened. "You ruin Deathseeker," he screamed, pitch higher than a sixties model's hemline.

"You tried to stick it into my head," I said, matter-of-fact. That's fair, right?

"My axe," he wailed. There were tears, I was sure.

I kind of felt bad. "Look, um, I'm sorry, I know how attached you get to your axes. Er, and your hammers and chisels, but what else could I do?"

"Could let me cleave in skull," he mumbled, but I knew he didn't mean it, not really. I bet he was a very nice guy, or gal, under different circumstances.

"Sorry," I said again. I let magic recede, and then it was just me. Damn, I felt good. Better than good, I felt awesome. Like I'd had a bath in faery dust and been allowed a lick of an earlobe as a treat.

"Argh," he mumbled, heart not in it, sounding more like a sick pirate than a magic-rich, warrior dwarf. Honestly, they shouldn't get so attached.