The Dwarves (24 page)

One corpse, a male body crumpled not far from the tree, excited their particular attention. A circle of scorched earth bounded
the patch of grass where the dead man was lying, pierced by arrows. By the dwarves’ reckoning, seven orcs had perished in
the towering ring of flames.

Tungdil was as good as certain that magic had been involved. “I think we’ve found Gorén. He probably conjured the ring of
fire to defend himself.”

Hands trembling, he searched the dead man’s pockets and brought out a small metal tin engraved with Gorén’s name.

“He would have done better with a shield,” Boïndil said dryly. “I always said that magic can’t be trusted.”

His brother’s gaze was fixed on the rustling trees that were shedding their leaves furiously in spite of the season. “There’s
something wrong with this place,” he decided. “If we hang around much longer, those trees will tear up their roots and attack
us. We’re leaving.”

“What about Gorén and the others?” objected Tungdil. “Don’t you think we should —”

“What about them? They’re dead,” Boïndil said breezily.

“Elves, elf lovers, and orcs.” Boëndal set off at a march. “They needn’t concern us.”

As far as the twins were concerned, the matter was settled, so Tungdil fell in behind them, hurrying through the ruined village
in the direction from which they had come.

Before they reached the path, he glanced round to bid the wizard and his mistress a silent farewell and apologize for leaving
them without a proper burial. It was then that he saw something strange.

An easel,
he thought to himself in surprise. In spite of the surrounding wreckage, it was standing upright, as though the painter would
be back at any moment. Tungdil felt sadder than ever at the thought of the elf maiden or one of her companions abandoning
their work in terror. The unfinished painting was a silent testimony to the moment in which the invaders had arrived.

I wonder what she was painting.
“Back in a minute!” he told the others as he clambered over the charred timber, curious to see the elven artwork.

Boëndal sighed resignedly, setting his beard aquiver. “We’ve got our work cut out with this one.”

“You can say that again,” Boïndil said testily, wiping his sweaty brow with the end of his plait. Muttering under their breath,
the secondlings hurried after their charge.

They caught up with him in front of the easel. There was something very obviously wrong with the picture: It showed the settlement
in the aftermath of the attack.

There was no denying that the artist was incredibly gifted. The scene had been painted entirely in shades of red, every detail
of the destruction reproduced with chilling precision on the smooth white canvas: corpses, the burned-out shells of buildings,
scorched trees.

Tungdil peered at the work more closely.
There’s something funny about that canvas.
He walked to the back of the easel and paled. The reverse of the painting was a damp, shiny red. He reached out gingerly
to touch it, then whipped his hand away.
Skin!
The scene had been painted on skin so flawless that it could only belong to the mistress of the glade. Tungdil had a nasty
feeling that the paint was far from conventional too. He showed his grisly discovery to the twins.

Two smaller pictures had been propped up nearby. The first showed the tortured face of the elf, her eyes dull with pain and
fear. The second depicted her crucified body in all its gory detail. Tungdil knocked them over in disgust.

“It’s still wet,” said Boëndal, peering at the easel. “The freak who painted these pictures could be back at any time.”

“So much the better,” growled Boïndil. “We’ll see how he likes to be flayed alive.”

“I’ve never seen anything so monstrous,” said Tungdil. Any admiration he still felt for the artist’s talent was overshadowed
by his revulsion at the foulness of the work. He shouldered the easel and hurled it into the burning embers of the fire. The
two smaller pictures met the same fate.

Silently they turned to leave the village, but were halted by an aggressive snort. It was followed by angry neighing and a
furious whinny.

A black steed left the forest and stepped into the clearing twenty paces to their right. Its eyes gleamed red, and white sparks
danced around its fetlocks as its hooves clipped the ground.

Mounted on the shadow mare was a female älf, tall and slim with long brown hair. She was clad in mail of stiff black leather
with polished tionium trimmings.

“What do we have here?” The hilt of her sword was visible above her head and in her right hand she held a curved bow. A clutch
of unusually long arrows of the kind favored by älfar protruded from a saddlebag. Tungdil needed no reminder of their murderous
force.

“The stinking groundlings have ruined my pictures, have they? In that case, I’ll need some fresh paint.” She sat up in the
saddle to get a better look at the dwarves. With her delicate features and fine countenance she could have passed for a creature
of Palandiell, save for the gaping eye sockets that proved she was no elf.

“I hope your blood doesn’t clot too fast,” she said, reaching with her free hand for an arrow. “I won’t be able to paint the
finer details unless it’s nice and fluid.”

“I was beginning to think we’d been cheated of our battle.” Boïndil grinned. “Quick,” he instructed in dwarfish, “make for
the ruins or she’ll shoot us down like rabbits.”

The first arrow came singing toward them just as they were ducking behind a timber wall. It passed through the wood as if
it were parchment and struck Boëndal’s mail with a
ping
. The black tionium cut a gouge in the metal, causing the dwarf to curse.

Keeping low, they scurried deeper into the smoldering village, hoping to throw off the älf, then attack her from behind.

Tungdil peered around the next corner and spotted the slender nose of the mare. There was something feline about the way it
slunk through the ruins, branding the ground with its hooves. The earth gave a low hiss as the false unicorn passed over it,
nostrils flaring as it tracked its prey.

Suddenly the dwarf had a terrifying thought. The mare’s saddle was empty.
Where’s the rider?
The älf was at large in the village. He closed his eyes, trying to forget everything he knew about her race.

When he opened them again, Boëndal and Boïndil were gone. He wasn’t afraid anymore; he was panicked.

“Psst,” he hissed, “where are you?” He tightened his grip on his ax, cursing the twins for abandoning him in the ruins.
First they tell me I’m no warrior; then they leave me at the mercy of a shadow mare and an älf!

Someone touched his arm. Tungdil started and lashed out with his ax. The blade buried itself just below the man’s rib cage.
The dwarf stared at him in horror. “Gorén? I thought you were dead.”

The wizard looked at the wound distractedly and ran his fingers across the gaping flesh. He fixed his gaze on Tungdil. “Nothing,”
he moaned softly. “I feel nothing.” He plucked an orcish arrow from his body. “Nothing,” he said again, this time more desperately.
He reached for a wooden beam, locking the dwarf in his empty stare. “All I can feel is hate…”

“Hang on, Gorén, I…” Tungdil leaped aside as the wizard brought the beam crashing toward him. It smashed into a wall.

The din was enough to alert everyone to their presence. There was a clatter of hooves and the shadow mare whinnied.

Tungdil made his escape by crawling under a sunken ceiling. Anything would be better than being discovered by the mare.

“Nothing…” Gorén straightened up and swayed drunkenly out of the ruined building, dragging the beam behind him.

The shadow mare leaped toward him, trampling him to the ground. Tungdil watched as its forelegs crushed the wizard’s abdomen
in an explosion of sparks. To the dwarf’s horror, Gorén rolled over and picked himself up.

The truth hit him in a flash: Greenglade had fallen to the Perished Land.
Any who die here will rise again as revenants!
The forest wasn’t grieving for the elf maiden; the canker had spread into the soil, poisoning the tree roots and filling
the trunks and branches with malice.

But that’s impossible! Unless…
Tungdil realized with horrible certainty that the girdle had failed.
I can’t go to Ogre’s Death without warning Lot-Ionan that the shield has been breached. If the Perished Land has encroached
this far, it might be advancing on other fronts as well.

But first he faced the immediate problem of leaving the glade alive, and the odds were stacked against him.

The shadow mare had picked up his scent and was heading his way. Its hooves struck Tungdil’s hiding place and the timber erupted,
crackling with light. The steed was intent on driving the dwarf into the open.

Tungdil had no choice. He rolled out, hoping to throw himself under the nearest piece of debris, but the shadow mare was faster.

In a single powerful leap, it soared over the wreckage and landed beside him, its head shooting forward to seize Tungdil’s
right shoulder in its jaws. The dwarf’s chain mail saved him from its sharp teeth, but the pressure was excruciating.

“Get your filthy teeth off me!” Tungdil’s fighting spirit came to the fore, and he forgot his terror, swinging his ax at the
steed.

But the shadow mare had no intention of relinquishing its quarry. Jerking its head, it shook Tungdil back and forth like a
doll. Without warning, its jaws flew open and he sailed through the air, landing on the ashen grass with a thud. The shadow
mare whinnied, carving deep furrows as it pawed the ground. Tungdil was still coming to his senses when it thundered toward
him.

The twins sprang into action. As the mare drew level with them, they burst out of their hiding places on either side of its
path.

“Here, horsey, horsey,” shouted Boïndil, driving an ax with both hands into the steed’s right knee. Boëndal’s crow’s beak
carved into its left foreleg.

The black beast staggered and fell, tumbling along the ground in a pother of ash. In spite of its obvious agony, it tried
to drag itself up again, but the dwarves rushed in.

“You’re not a horse anymore, you’re a pony,” Boïndil yelled at it. “How do you fancy fighting eye to eye?” The shadow mare
lunged at him and was rewarded with an ax blow to the jaw. “Try sinking your teeth into that!” The mare jerked away, thereby
sealing its fate.

Boëndal embedded his beaked war hammer into its long bony nose and hauled the beast in. Not for nothing was Hookhand his second
name. Triceps bulging and heels digging into the ground, he dragged the mare closer so that his brother could sink an ax into
its neck.

“So you want to bite me, you worthless bunch of bones,” cried Boïndil, hefting his ax to strike again. The blade severed the
shadow mare’s spinal cord and it slumped to the ground.

Boëndal put one foot on the steed’s nose and levered the crow’s beak out of the corpse.

His brother grinned at him. “Now for the pointy-eared rider!” He signaled to Tungdil to stay hidden. “Make yourself scarce,
scholar, and watch how it’s done!”

They crouched next to the mare’s fallen body and waited. Tungdil started to tell them about his encounter with the revenant,
but they waved him away. All that mattered for the moment was dispatching the älf.

Before long an unnatural scream, more drawn out and high-pitched than the voice of any human female, rent the air.

Waggling his eyebrows in gleeful anticipation, Boïndil straightened his plait and steeled himself for combat. “Music to my
ears.”

Boëndal listened intently, then leaped to his feet. His brother followed.

I should be out there helping, not watching like a coward.
Tungdil felt compelled to do something, even if only to act as a decoy. Sighing, he was about to emerge from his hiding place
when two skeletal hands grabbed him from behind and thrust him to the ground.

“Who are you?” a musical voice demanded. Damp, foul-smelling bones fingered his face. “A small man or maybe a groundling…”

The dwarf was rolled onto his back and found himself looking into the tortured face of the once-beautiful elf. She too had
become a revenant. Robbed of her eyes by the älfar, she had torn herself from the trunk of the beech and was groping blindly
through the ruins.

“Let go of me!” shrieked Tungdil, reaching for his ax. His arms were clamped so tightly that he went for his dagger instead.
The blade clunked harmlessly against her rib cage.

“Who gave a dwarf permission to enter my glade?” she demanded imperiously. A bony hand tightened around his throat. “Are you
in league with the älfar? Do you hate us enough to ally yourselves with these monsters?”

Tungdil fought back his fear and realized that there was something different about her tone of voice. Unlike the wizard, she
seemed to be in possession of her will. “Listen to me, my lady,” he pleaded. “Lot-Ionan sent me here to return some items
belonging to Gorén.”

She turned her fathomless gaze on him. “I’m changing,” she whispered fearfully. “Something’s happening to me. They killed
me, but my soul… my soul…” She trailed off. “You say Lot-Ionan sent you? My beloved Gorén thought highly of his magus.” She
released her murderous grip. “You’ll find a book in the house; it’s in the library. Gorén was going to send it to your master,
but then the älfar attacked and —”

“I’ve got it already,” he broke in excitedly.

“Don’t let them have it!” she instructed. “Take it to Ionandar and give it to the magus; he’ll know what to do as soon as
he reads the letter.” Her skeletal fingers clutched at him again. “Swear you’ll do it!”

Tungdil stammered out a solemn oath, swearing first by Vraccas and then by the magus. The elf seemed satisfied and backed
away.

“Now behead me,” she said softly. “I can’t allow the Perished Land to steal the little I have left.” She stretched out her
bony arms. “Do you see what they’ve done to me? Without your help, I’ll be yoked to their evil forever, a blind servant of
destruction.”