The route back to the mountain home of the dwarfs was quiet. No demon insects assailed them in the tunnels, and no dread illusions descended from the darkness to torment them. The yawning chasm still smelled terrible though, and as they crossed, Konrad heard the lazy flap of wings as the harpy ascended and settled on a nearby rock.

"Grand Archavist," the harpy said, touching his forelock and pointedly ignoring Konrad.

"We’re heading back now, Bernie, some of the dwarfs will likely be down later if that’s okay with you," Alice replied as if she were chatting to one of the farm hands in Fallow Vale.

"How come you let her pass so easily?" Konrad demanded.

"She asked," Bernie replied.

"I asked!"

"She asked nicely. Don’t think I forgot about you, neither lad, a proper title, or I eats the boy."

"Whatever deal Konrad made, we’ll honor Bernie. Someone will come down later," Alice said smoothly.

The harpy flapped back down into the darkness, muttering to himself and giving Konrad a very rude gesture.

"Making deals with demons is generally not advised, Konrad, even if they are small," Alice said.

"I promise you, it was better for his health than the alternative. Is everyone going to treat you like that, with all of the bowing and scraping?" Konrad asked.

Alice drew herself up and glared down her nose imperiously at Konrad. "I think it’s appropriate, given my station as Grand Arcavist."

Konrad’s laughter elicited a broad smile from Alice, and together they re-entered the city of the dwarfs under the mountain.

The crowd of dwarfs and adventurers that had filled the tunnel had fled, driven away by the tremors in the stone and the crashing sounds from the destruction inside the cavern. In their place, a group of well-armed dwarves had created a barricade at the entrance to the inside of Burly Mountain, and it took several frantic moments of shouted conversation before they lowered their weapons and gazed in wonder at the bedraggled group before them.

By now it was no surprise that many of them stared openly at Alice before holding their fists to their breasts and bowing deeply to her and more curious dwarves appeared from various hiding places to hear the news.

"Grand Archavist, we heard a mighty battle in the cavern; is the blight coming?"

"Is it really gone?" Alice murmured out of the corner of her mouth.

Konrad nodded. He hadn’t told Alice about the deal he had struck with Persicus, the entity from the abyssal plane. Alice had ridiculed him for making a deal with the harpy; she would be less than impressed that he had gotten himself indebted to some kind of archdemon.

"Thanks to the strength of my brave companions, the blight of the lost caverns has been driven off," Alice announced to jubilant cheers.

The dwarves cheered and hugged each other.

"The wrights will want to see you as soon as possible; we will escort you," one of the guards said.

The group was led through the mountain to the cheers of the dwarves. Spirit wagged her tail and kept close to Rolo, who staggered and stumbled along, still unable to speak clearly.

"Archavist! You succeeded in driving off the evil?" asked a well-dressed dwarf as he hurried forward.

"The abyssal blight is gone, Master Finehammer, but I couldn’t have done it without the help of my companions. This is Konrad, a champion of the gods."

The dwarf shook Konrad’s hand, but his eyes remained fixed on Alice. "You must tell us every detail of what you found. We are sending a work party, obviously."

"You might want to warn them that there’s a colony of cave lice that have moved into the main cavern," Alice said.

While they were talking, Rolo wandered off slightly to the side and began prodding at a carved fresco in a wall that depicted a line of seven dwarfs leading a woman through a forest.

Alice noticed Rolo and held up her hands to forestall Finehammer's questions. "Perhaps we can find somewhere for my friends to recover from their ordeals?"

"Of course, of course," Master Wright assured her, giving rapid instructions to his assistants.

"I don’t really need a rest, but if it’s okay, I’d like to speak to Master Wright Stendhal," Konrad said.

Finehammer looked slightly perturbed. "This is highly irregular, Grand Archavist; are you sure you trust this champion?"

"There’s no one I trust more," Alice replied without hesitation.

"I will take you myself, although I doubt Master Wright Stendhal will wish to see you," Finehammer snapped at Konrad.

Alice was already deeply in conversation with a crowd of dwarves and Konrad motioned to Spirit to stay with Rolo before Finehammer led him up the stairs that spiraled up the inside of the mountain. Most of the houses in the mountain had two entrances, one facing into the hollowed-out center, the other facing outwards onto the valley and the ocean. Twisting lanes and small squares with fountains linked what seemed to be separate neighbourhoods.

At the very top, inside what would be the peak of the mountaintop, was a dark space lit by flickering torchlight. The air here was cold, and Konrad felt the Cold Bite watching attentively, perhaps sensing a familiar motion of icy wind on snow-capped peaks. A vast wall of stone greeted them, so high that it disappeared into darkness. The facade of a grand temple had been carved directly into the stone, with tall, elegant columns, murals, and detailed sculptures in nooks that seemed to come alive in the flickering torchlight. It seemed so old that Konrad felt as if he were discovering the site of the most ancient of civilizations. At the bottom was a small doorway that led into the rock.

"This is the Rose Hall, or the History Hall," Finehammer intoned as they stepped into a cavernous space. The dwarf took a small oil lamp from a rack and lit it deftly with a small silver tinderbox.

Inside, hundreds of columns soared up into the darkness like a forest of stone. Here and there, dwarfs stood on skinny ladders, diligently chipping away at the stone columns. Each of the dwarfs worked by the light of a small lamp and the gentle balls of light high around them, and the gentle clinking gave the space a feeling of reverent industry.

Konrad passed close to a column and noted the intricate carvings, images, and dwarven script that covered the entire cylindrical surface in a spiral pattern.

In the center of the vast space, the gentle light from Finehammers' oil lamp revealed an older dwarven woman who had been standing in complete darkness at a work table covered in books, papers, and scrolls.

"Master Wright Stendhal, you have a visitor. The Grand Archavist insisted," Finehammer said.

"Bah, Grand Archavist indeed. Go away young man; I’m busy," Stendhal muttered.

"Excuse me, but I need help; my friend Pääbo told me to come and speak to you," Konrad said quickly.

At these words, Stendhal turned; both of her eyes were milky white, yet Konrad felt rooted to the spot by her searching gaze. "How do you know Pääbo?" she asked.

"We traveled together; he was a great help to me and my companions. In the Western Cape he saved many people."

"Pääbo should have stuck to stone; he could have been the best, but he wanted to meddle with metals. Still, I’m curious to know what Pääbo thought important enough to send you here. You can go, leave the lamp," she said to Finehammer.

Master Wright Finehammer looked as though he had swallowed a roasted cave lice larvae, but before he could respond, Stendhal dismissed him with a gesture, and he turned on his heel, storming away.

"Now, what do you want, young man?" Stendhal asked.

"I showed this ring to Pääbo once, and he said it was important."

Konrad didn’t mention Cloda, as he wanted to see what the old dwarf would make of the ring. As soon as Stendhal ran her thumb over the small engraving on the white stone, she looked up sharply.

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"Where did you find this?" She asked, her voice tight.

"It was given to me by someone who used to live close to here."

"In Elu," Stendhal finished his sentence.

"You know about it?"

"We can’t speak here; come with me."

Stendhal snatched up the oil lamp, and Konrad followed her to the back of the huge chamber. A stone archway led to a staircase that descended into darkness, and when Stendhal placed her oil lamp in a recess, the light seemed to be drawn out into a line that flowed down the staircase like molten lava.

"Amazing," Konrad whispered.

"It is isn't it, shame it wasn’t us that did it. Now, few outsiders are allowed to enter this place; it is only because Pääbo was once my student that I am allowing you this courtesy," Stendhal explained as they descended.

"What can you tell me about Elu?" Konrad asked.

"Be patient," was all she said in reply.

The staircase ended at a smaller wooden door, plain and unadorned but seemingly so ancient that Konrad was surprised it didn’t crumble to dust when it was opened.

Through the door, Konrad couldn’t help but gasp. The far wall of the small stone chamber ahead of him was made up of a gigantic, vivid purple crystal. A crude tunnel had been hacked into the precious stone, leading into the gemstone's heart.

The space inside was the size of a barn, bathed in a soft purple light that emitted from the crystal itself. The floor had been cut smooth, and purple crystal shards reached down from the ceiling. Curiously, around a dozen gray stone columns were arrayed around the space, like a forest of bare tree trunks. Similar to the large carved columns back in the Rose Hall, these were covered in images, but unlike the others, these were much older—ancient in fact.

"Was is this place?" He asked, surprised to hear that his words were taken away as soon as he spoke them, leaving only a memory.

"We call this Lathorok."

"The silent chamber?" Konrad asked.

"You speak dwarfish?"

Konrad had realized over the past few weeks that his request for Avram to be able to read and write extended far beyond his own language. So far, he had come across elves, dwarves, and gnomes and understood them all perfectly. When he spoke to them, he used the words that he knew, but the sound that his lips and mouth produced was in their language.

"This will be much easier to explain in my language anyway," Stendhal replied, switching to her native tongue.

"This is a silent chamber; the resonance of the crystals is able to block anything from entering or leaving. There is no way to penetrate this field, nothing magical, or divine."

She placed particular emphasis on this last fact.

"The gods can’t hear us in here?"

"This is correct, but more than this, nothing escapes this place—no intentions, thoughts, ideas, or deals. We don’t know everything, but it is suggested that fate will not be affected by them."

Stendhal indicated a column that was covered in imagery. "You have surprised me so far; what do you make of this?"

Konrad studied the column, holding out his hand tentatively and receiving a small nod of permission from Stendhal. The stone was cold to the touch, and the carvings were irregular, as if it were the combined work of generations of sculpters, each adding their own images and intricate dwarven runes into the stone.

"This one says that this is some time before a time?" Konrad said.

"Close; this is the story of our origins, it begins here." She pointed to a section near the top.

Now that he knew where it started, Konrad began to read. The story told about how the first dwarves lived deep underground. They lived so deep that they were close to the place where the mortal world and the abyssal plane met. Their lives were a constant battle against a creeping darkness they called the blight. It was tinged with red that would leak out and infect their holds.

Chased by the darkness, the dwarves traveled up and found the empty mountain ready for them to live in, and they emerged for the first time to see the sun and the sky. Konrad had to read the column several times. According to the story here, the mountain was already carved out when they arrived. When the first of the dwarves stepped out onto the summit of the Burly mountain, they looked to the sky, and a figure appeared. A woman dressed in white with golden hair. He couldn’t read her name, as the rune had been scratched out of the stone.

Konrad frowned at the image. "The Mother came to them?"

Stendhal shook her head and pointed to the rune that had been defaced. "There have been several keepers of dwarven history; some felt that it was better to hide our shame. I believe that the name that has been removed is Cloda."

The next column depicted Burly Mountain prospering under the stewardship of the dwarves. Cloda had provided the dwarves with the mountain and the fertile valley and taught them how to tend and eat the fruits that grew there.

Word of Cloda’s benevolence and wisdom spread, and soon the humans of the nearby settlement of Elu were also learning about Cloda’s wisdom. Temples devoted to her began to spring up there too, and the mountain and the city both prospered in the east of Parthenea for hundreds of years. Cloda was a small god, and so her influence did not extend outside of these areas, but it was clear that she was beloved.

"The columns following this one are available in the history halls. They are open to the public and describe times of hardship and plenty, action and stillness, peace and war. Then we have a period around eighty years ago that is depicted on this column."

The column was a mess. It looked like it had been scratched out and re-carved so many times that, in some places, the column was as thin as Konrad’s wrist, with huge chunks missing.

"There is some debate about what happened here," Stendhal admitted.

Konrad began to read the mix of runes and images. The darkness under the mountain began to grow again, and Cloda instructed her champions to fight it. The champions were dwarves and humans. They fought and died in the depths, but none of them could beat back the darkness. In the end, Cloda herself went down into the caverns and never returned, but the darkness was held at bay.

Konrad looked for the rest of the story, but there was no more. He hurried to the next column, but it began by chronicling disputes with the humans living in Elu that eventually lead to a war against them.

"That’s it?" Konrad asked.

Stendhal was very still. "What did you expect?"

"More than this, what happened to Cloda? What did she tell the priests? Did she die?"

"Why do you want to know?" Stendhal asked, her milky eyes fixed on him intently.

Konrad considered the question. His first quests had been given to him by the small gods long ago in Fallow Vale, but he had also made two promises, one to his own father—a promise to look for his brother—and the other to an old sheep herder called Erwan, who had given him the ring and told him to find out the truth behind why his people had been forced from the East.

He had wanted to find out for Erwan initially, to discover why his people had been driven halfway across the continent and forced to live in poverty, working land that they didn’t own. But there was something else now. He had met the gods—the small gods anyway—and they were nothing like he had imagined. He also knew that nothing was ever straightforward with them. Cloda marching selflessly into the abyss was too neat, too convenient.

What he wanted to say might only be said in this chamber. "I don’t trust the gods. I want to know the truth."

Stendhal smiled for the first time. "A good answer."

On a worktable at the back of the chamber, various carved fragments had been arranged, and Konrad immediately realized that they were the broken pieces from the column he had been reading.

"These were made by a human; he was already old when he began the work. He was the last champion of Cloda."

Konrad ran his hand lightly over the carvings. They were simple and workmanlike, and although they lacked the skill of the dwarves, there was an honesty to them.

The champion was from Elu, and he descended into the caverns for the first time with a dwarf, a friend, and also a champion of Cloda. They fought against the fiends from the abyss, and the dwarven champion was killed and the human was forced back.

The dwarves were enraged. The darkness had been growing for too long. Other voices began to speak out in opposition to Cloda; there had always been followers of the Father on the mountain, and now their influence grew. Then a human appeared at the gates of the mountain; he was a champion of the Father and he had been sent to help the dwarves in their hour of need.

Cloda’s champion was reluctant to work with the champion of the Father, but finally he agreed to descend once again. In the darkest depths of the caverns, the fiends from the abyss attacked them. Though their enemies were numerous, the demons only attacked Cloda’s champion, leaving the champion of the Father unharmed. Then, when Cloda’s champion was down on one knee, the champion of the Father struck.

The champion of Cloda describes the betrayal and how, just as he was at risk of being killed, Cloda appealed to him to let her take control of his body. He was weak and desperate, and he was devoted to Cloda, and so he allowed it.

Cloda took control of the champion's body, holding back both the dark fiends and the champion of the Father. But the champion of the Father struck again, and this time his sword was white, and though Cloda held out her hands to block the blow, the sword was thrust into the body of the champion. The sword did not bite the flesh, but Cloda was cut from existence.

The champion of the Father fled, and darkness consumed the champion of Cloda down in the depths far beneath the mountain.

The champion briefly explains weeks of agonizing travel through the depths of the caverns where the dwarves used to live, hiding from enemies. Eventually he emerged and traveled back to Elu, only to find that the city had been destroyed, it’s inhabitants scattered. Later he would learn that the dwarves had been whipped into a frenzy by the champion of the Father who claimed that it was the humans of Elu that had made a pact with the demons of the abyss and that it was them who had betrayed Cloda.

Konrad stepped back from the table his hands shaking. "Is this true?"

"Who’s to say? Hundreds of years of lies and coverups. But I believe that this champion told the truth; he had no reason to lie."

"Why didn’t he fight back? Why didn’t he find us and tell us?"

"I have thought long about this. He went through an ordeal that must have been terrible. We know what happens to those champions who have their powers stripped, but to be inhabited by a divine spirit and have that spirit killed while it is within you? I imagine the strain fractured his soul; we cannot blame him for giving up."

Whatever Konrad had expected to find here, it wasn’t this. But he should have expected it. Behind every injustice lay the hand of the Father.

"Who knows about this?" Konrad asked.

"Most of the Dwarven Wrights are aware of this version of events, some dismiss it, some believe. Some fail to see it as relevant at all. We are a practical people, and this happened long ago."

Konrad took off the ring and touched the etching on the flat surface of the white stone set into it.

"In the images here and on the ring," Konrad began, speaking slowly as his thoughts swirled.

"They resemble the Mother," Stendhal finished his thoughts.

"What does that mean?"

"I have a theory, nothing more."

Konrad waited in silence for her to speak again.

"I believe that the god that we call the Mother is a creation of other powerful gods; the worship she receives is channeled to them."

"You’re talking about the Father and the Brother? But the timing doesn’t work out. This only happened less than a hundred years ago; the Mother must be much older than that."

"Says who?" Stendhal countered.

"Says…"

"Says the priests of the Mother, and of the Father, and of the Brother. Cloda was popular because she represented a nurturing and wholesome sense of renewal and cooperation. The devotion that this inspired was too powerful to waste. If you look closely enough, there is a correlation between the demise of Cloda, and the rise of the Mother."