TST (36 page)

“Think you can handle a little slide?” the dwarf asked. “If not, we can take the stairs.”

Azerick shook his head. “I would rather risk the pole than walk all those stairs again.”

“That’s the spirit!” Duncan laughed gleefully before leaping out over the opening, wrapping his thick arms and short legs around the pipe, and zipping down at a speed that would have left Azerick’s stomach lodged firmly in his throat.

With a deep breath, Azerick leaned out and grabbed the pole then swung his legs around it and slid down. He found the rune carver waiting patiently three floors down where another hole and pole waited several feet away to take passengers down the next five levels. After three slides down the poles, Azerick felt comfortable enough to begin to enjoy it. When they reached the ground floor a few slides later, Azerick had to ask Duncan more about it.

“What happens if someone hops on as someone else is coming down? How do you avoid accidents?”

“It’s the responsibility of the one on the lower portion to look up before jumping on.” Duncan explained. “Still, there’s been many a fight over dwarves getting knocked off their pole and falling a few floors.”

“Don’t they get hurt?” Azerick asked aghast.

Duncan shook his head. “Naw, not very often. Dwarves are made of pretty strong stuff, like the rock around them.”

Azerick took a closer look at the structure of the massive cone’s base as the pair stepped out into the enormous cavern. He saw that the base was not uniform and smooth with the cavern floor like other stalagmites he had seen and asked Duncan about it.

“This is not a natural stalagmite is it?” Azerick asked his host.

“Nope,” Duncan responded. “It used to be the peak of the mountain that we’re in now before it caved in. This entire mountain was once an active volcano. It’s calmed down and been dormant for at least a thousand years but before it did, the whole top fell in and made a nice place to carve out our homes. That’s why we got that big skylight way up yonder,” Duncan said as he pointed up towards the large iris that glowed with the pale morning sunlight.

As they walked down the worn paths that acted as the dwarven city’s streets, Azerick noticed that he drew a glance from most of the dwarves they passed but none stared openly or for more than a brief second before continuing with their own business.

The pair finally arrived at an arched doorway and stepped inside. The room beyond was full of dwarves sitting around stone tables and on stone benches eating, drinking, and carrying on a multitude of conversations in their rough and grumbling language.

Many of the conversations took a momentary lull then quickly regained their previous clamor as Duncan and Azerick found a small open table and sat down.

“Do you get many human visitors?” Azerick asked as he looked around the room. “It does not seem that anyone takes much notice of me.”

“No, we don’t get many at all. We’re not what you would generally consider hospitable nor do we invite topsiders into our warrens much. Word travels fast down here and just about everyone has likely already heard about you and why you’re here. We dwarves aren’t a curious bunch like humans and elves. A dragon could come and roost here and so long as it didn’t cause any trouble, we would go about our own business rather quickly and not pay it any further heed,” Duncan explained.

“How do you make the light in those globes?” Azerick asked as he looked at the round glowing blue orbs that were hung throughout the bar and cavern beyond.

The dwarf shook his head and grinned. “Human curiosity,” he mumbled. “Centuries ago we found a phosphorescent lichen that grew down in one of the caves. We found a way to cultivate and distill it to make the glowing liquid inside of it. Now are you gonna badger me with questions all day or are we gonna put our mouths to good use and get something to eat?”

Duncan waved to a serving woman and said something to her in his coarse tongue and she soon reappeared with two large platters covered in meat, sausage, eggs, and bread along with two tankards of beer. Azerick looked at his food with a bit of trepidation.

“Something the matter?” Duncan glanced up and asked.

“Where do you get your meat? You can’t raise much livestock underground can you?” Azerick asked hesitantly.

Duncan realized why Azerick was asking and roared with laughter. “Did Togar say something to ye? No, we don’t raise animals in the caves. We have a few hidden little valleys between the peaks of the mountains where we grow grass, grains, vegetables, and raise our livestock. The only thing on that plate is goat, beef, and pork.”

Azerick grinned, shook his head at his groundless fears, and gratefully dug into his breakfast. He was surprised to find that despite the dwarf’s compact size, Duncan ate as much as a large human even going so far as to finish Azerick’s plate when he could eat no more. The pair sat back and sipped at their beer, letting their meals settle as they talked.

“That’s quite a book you brought. I can see why you were so determined to retrieve it,” Duncan told the young sorcerer. “How exactly did you come about obtaining it?”

“What happened to dwarves not being a curious bunch?”

“I’m a bit different from most dwarves.”

Azerick nodded his understanding and proceeded to tell Duncan about his and his shipmates’ capture, enslavement, and escape. He left out any reference to Delinda’s death, not wanting to speak about that painful part of his life.

The dwarf shook his head in amazement at the young human’s experiences. “Psylings, cavern gnomes, and killed a dragon. Well, I won’t try to keep you here against your will, it just doesn’t seem healthy. I am glad you decided to stay a spell and let me study that book of yours. It’s going to be winter soon and even though we can take you under most of the passes to where ever you have a mind to go it’s still no fun traveling through the fall and winter. Like I said, the snows have been coming earlier and earlier these last couple of years and dropping more than usual.”

“Do you think I can learn some of your rune magic?” Azerick asked.

“I can try to teach you but I can’t guarantee that you can learn more than the theory of it.”

Azerick was in no particular hurry to go anywhere at the moment and staying with the dwarves would give him a chance to learn something that few would ever have a chance to. Even if he was unable to learn to use rune magic, he could learn of it and of the secretive dwarves as well.

He thought about Zeb and how he might be concerned with Azerick’s whereabouts but he would just have to deal with that himself. Right now, being ensconced under millions of tons of rock and away from the rest of the world sounded like a good place to stay and plan his future.

Duncan continued to quiz Azerick about his own discoveries of the book’s contents and Azerick in turn inquired more into what was required to create magical runes. Azerick sipped at his mug of beer while Duncan downed far more than Azerick thought appropriate given the early hour, but left it to Dwarven customs.

After a tour of the forges, smithies, potters, weavers, and other various shops that filled many of the caves, the pair returned to Duncan’s home and shop where they each sat and exchanged knowledge.

The first week of Azerick’s stay consisted mostly of learning the history of the dwarves and their rune carving art. Duncan explained how all runes were comprised of representations of a natural element and these elements were often combined to create the desired effect. Other than that, there were few rules to rune carving. Azerick saw that it was very similar to his sorcery in that the rune carver’s imagination and interpretation decided the shape of the runes and were not fixed in any set form. There existed a multitude of runic combinations that would cause the same effect, the shape of which was left strictly to the carver.

“Duncan,” Azerick asked, interrupting the dwarf’s studies. “I can’t help but notice some similarities between rune carving and sorcery. Each carving is generally unique to the carver much the same way sorcerers shape their spells in a way that best suits the individual.”

“That’s my understanding, yes,” Duncan replied without looking up from the book.

“And you can create a nearly unlimited number of effects by shaping and blending different runes, correct? It’s mostly limited by the skill and imagination of the carver.”

“Correct again.”

Azerick looked at the dwarf puzzlingly. “If the method of the two magics is so similar, why are sorcerers limited in the spells they can master?”

Duncan looked up from his book and returned Azerick’s puzzled look. “Who says they are?”

“My former master told me I needed to choose my spells carefully because there was a limit to what I can learn, unlike wizards that can learn any spell they have the skill to cast.”

Duncan took in a deep breath, held it while he thought, and then slowly let it out. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you what you can or cannot do. Too often people use their own limitations as a basis for what can and can’t be done. From what I know of sorcery, which ain’t a lot, it takes time, imagination, and skill.

“Sorcerers use what I would call intuitive magic. It’s their intuition that guides them in creating their spells and there is just so much a person can keep straight in his head. I see no reason why a sorcerer can’t do just about anything he wants with the Source as long as he has the imagination to shape it and the strength to control it.”

Azerick nodded along at the rune carver’s statement. “I’ve always had a really good memory and it seems like I already know more than what Master Devlin said I should know at this point in my studies but I thought that was because of what the psyling did to me.”

“Could be part of it but I’d wager it’s mostly because you are uniquely talented. I’ve heard bards that have been singing and playing all their lives and they sound good. But every once in a while, a young man or woman will come along and their ability to sing and play a musical instrument goes beyond anything you’ve ever heard and they might not be any older than you are. That’s why you have to decide what your limitations are, not someone else.”

“You really think I’m unique?”

“You want flattery, get a woman. Look at what you’ve done already. I’m saying you have talent.”

“Do you think sorcerers are deliberately taught not to experiment and if so, who is trying to hold them back; other sorcerers or the wizards?”

“It could also be that master sorcerers don’t want a bunch of wet behind the ears apprentices practicing new things before they master the basics. Imagine the trouble a young sorcerer could cause experimenting with the Source. Such a thing is best left to those with a great deal more practice.”

Azerick thought about what he had done to Travis that day in class and how he had nearly killed them both. What Duncan said made a lot of sense.

At the start of the second week, Duncan gave Azerick several shallow, glass discs filled with a hard, dark wax, several small chisels, and a list of runes. The dwarf had Azerick practice carving various runes in the wax until he mastered the form. Each time he carved a rune in each of the wax vessels, Duncan would inspect them before holding each one over a candle and melting the wax smooth again so Azerick could start all over. Azerick found that he had deft hands, possibly a side effect of his own spell casting experience and requirements. 

While the sorcerer was busy carving his wax runes, Duncan identified several areas of interesting text that he marked by sliding a slip of velum between the pages. Once the rune carver identified the passages of interest, he began studying them in earnest.

Duncan began to think that the tome itself was magical in that it seemingly contained more knowledge than even its numerous pages should allow. There were entire treatises on dwarven history and lore that had been lost ages ago and was no longer found in the libraries or even the memories of the short statured but long-lived race.

Looking up from the tome, Duncan looked at the human meticulously carving the small wax disc. He was impressed at the young man’s diligence and attention. His focus was quite remarkable for one of such an impatient and impetuous race. It made the rune carver realize that it was about time he took on an apprentice and pass on his knowledge to ensure that the next generation kept his craft alive.