Upon Vanerak's proclamation, the silence in the hall deepens even further. Not a single breath is exhaled or inhaled. Time itself has stopped in shock.
At last, one of the dwarves in the front row cannot bear it:
“Impossible!” she screams. “It's not possible!”
“It is,” Vanerak says, in an oddly kind tone.
“I will not believe it!” she screeches. “I will not!”
“Silence!” snaps Nazak.
“No,” says Vanerak. “I permit her to speak. She gives voice to what many feel, and as your Runethane I must reply.”
The runeknight, in titanium armor of about fourth degree quality, levels a long-bladed spear at me.
“How could this scum have been given such a gift?” she says.
“I am as eager to find out as you are.”
“I cannot believe it.”
“You soon will. The runes he creates will be made public knowledge.”
“He cannot escape punishment like this!”
“He will not escape. He is a prisoner—an eternal prisoner.”
“He should at least be tortured.”
“I am afraid I cannot risk that. I do not know how his powers might be affected by too much damage to his flesh.”
“But he must suffer!”
“He will not enjoy his imprisonment.”
“Imprisonment is not a fitting punishment for what he did. Not even if it lasts a hundred eternities.”
“How about a thousand eternities?”
“Not even then. He must suffer pain like we did. Burning pain, then death.”
“You will never forgive him?”
“What kind of a question is that?” She flinches. “I'm sorry, my Runethane. Those were rash words.”
“I do not mind—now. You only speak what is in everyone's hearts.”
“Thank you, my Runethane. To answer your question, no. I will never forgive him.”
“There is no way he can atone?”
“Unless his runes can bring back the dead and burned, our friends and kin, then no.” She glares at me, the look in her eyes as sharp as her spear. “Can they, traitor?”
I shake my head. “Not to my knowledge.”
“Not to your knowledge? Yes or no!”
“I cannot use my powers well yet, but I cannot imagine any rune that might bring back life to ashes. I am sorry. All I've done from that moment forward has been—”
“I'm not interested!” she spits, and I shut up. She turns back to Vanerak. “There is indeed nothing he can do.”
“Even if his power brings us to the very roofs and roots of the world?”
“Yes. He cannot bring back our friends and kin.”
“But his power could make a glorious future for our descendants. Our future kin. Have you considered that?”
She is silent for a few seconds. “I must say that I have not, my Runethane.”
“Then do so.” He looks out over all the gathered runeknights. “All of you, do so. Consider what this power means for us. Even if it remains usable only to the traitor, new scripts—which could well prove to be more powerful than the old—will be a great boon to us, both in combat and in peace. We will perform great feats and create greater wonders.”
“Even so—”
“That will be all, runeknight,” Vanerak says coldly.
She closes her mouth and sinks back into the crowd, bringing her spear back up as she does so.
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“I hope my words allay your anger somewhat,” he says to the hall. “If they do not, know this: no harm is to come to him. Not a single cut or bruise. To touch him means death. You may think of him as a tool which will be used harshly, but never to breaking point, and a tool for my use alone, though whose fruits I will share to all. Do you understand me, my runeknights?”
“Yes, my Runethane!” they chorus.
“Do you truly?”
“Yes, my Runethane!” they scream.
“I still see hatred in your eyes. I suppose that cannot be helped. But do not act on your feelings, under pain of a tortuous death.”
“Yes, my Runethane!” they scream yet again.
But I can see in their eyes that Nazak was right: for some, hatred of me outweighs their fear of Vanerak.
----------------------------------------
“This way, traitor,” says Nazak. “The Runethane has tasked me with bringing you to your new home. I was glad when he told me of its location. You will not find it a comfortable place to dwell.”
“I am thankful for whatever lodgings he finds fit for me.”
He sneers. “Of course you are. Come along now, traitor.”
With five other guards, he leads me out of the palace and down the banded road. We make a right turn onto a somewhat rougher trail that leads along a streak of black stone. It continues across to the far wall, into which a rough archway appears. Beyond is blackness, and pouring from this dark is hot, dry air, thick with smoke and sulfur.
Like the very gateway to hell. No—it is the gateway to hell, for Vanerak said that I may soon face demons. I am being taken to the magma seas, where dwell boiling horrors of untold ferocious power. What else are the seas but hell, even if hell is whispered to lie even deeper underneath?
“Hurry along, traitor!”
We walk into the archway. The glow of the lanterns turns yellow, green, sometimes reddish according to the kind of the billowing fumes. The air grows still hotter as we walk down a steep tunnel. It's a dry heat, though thankfully it has none of the malice that dragon's heat has.
Bits of rock crunch under my plain leather shoes. The sensation against my soles unnerves me. I do not feel safe without armor here.
Where is my armor now, I wonder? Doubtless Vanerak is examining its runes, and maybe I will never get it back. Will he let me forge new armor, or if I will be forced just to write runes upon paper for him and his underlings to use and abuse as they see fit? Though he said he wanted me to be free to at least some degree, I cannot believe him.
The tunnel bends slightly and a reddish glow appears at its end. Could that be the magma sea? Just a few short minutes later and I can see that it must be. The smoke and fumes shift now and again, revealing the true color beyond, orange and yellow, and I can also see thin sheets of black obsidian which form, are subsumed, and form again.
The heat increases as we approach, then when we pass through another archway, it becomes unbearable, far hotter than I remember it being on my journey to the fort. Back then I viewed the seas from a high cliff—but the ledge we emerge on to is a mere twenty feet above the magma. There is only a low barrier alongside it too. A hard enough push and that would be my end.
“Come along now!” says Nazak. “Let's get out of these fumes. I'm used to them, but you aren't yet.”
We trek along the road a short distance then enter another tunnel. It's slightly cooler, and the fumes are being drawn up a hole in the ceiling a few paces in. This place at least has ventilation. Vanerak doesn't want his dwarves choking to death in their sleep, even miners.
The tunnel straightens then turns sharply to the left. Bright light shines through a window of thick quartz. Nazak grabs my shoulder and pushes me against it.
“Look well,” he says. “This will be your only view of the world outside your cell for the next few centuries.”
I look. Beyond the window is the magma ocean in all its boiling glory, and with the heat and fumes lessened now that we're inside, I can take in the full shimmering spectacle.
It is perhaps the grandest sight I have ever seen. The expanse of shifting black, orange, yellow and red seems to continue on forever. The colors warp and blur into each other, and in the far horizon the heat-shimmer makes the magma look like roaring flames.
Eyes sore from the burning light, I look up from the inferno and see, many hundreds of feet above, the black roof. Spinning columns of fumes are being drawn up into it in some places, while from other places, the highest places, clear air is falling down and blasting the fumes away. Here and there the ceiling is so low that it brushes against the sea. From these points, I know from reading, magma is drawn up into chasms and tunnels of the underworld above in vast and complex systems.
There are flecks flitting here and there—magma wyrms, perhaps, or salamanders, or perhaps they are the demons Vanerak mentioned. Something huge breaches in the middle-distance. It is a black salamander with five pairs of legs and a great frill around its neck.
The corridor shivers slightly and I brace myself against the quartz. A mile or so out, a black plane of obsidian breaks apart and the magma below bulges up. The bulge bursts suddenly and grandly, spraying yellow and white molten drops right up to the ceiling. They seem to travel slowly. A moment later, the sound of the explosion reaches us. The quartz window rattles at the booming.
I flinch back. Nazak laughs.
“That was only a small eruption. Fortunately the larger ones are mostly far out.”
“Mostly?”
“Sometimes magma bursts right against the wall here. The beach-combers have to run in fast when they feel a strong tremble.”
“The what?”
“Look at the shore.”
I look down to where he gestures and see that up against the base of the wall is something akin to a surface shoreline, except instead of the blue sea and bright white sand illustrated in the tomes I've read of the surface, there is bright yellow, molten rock, and broken black glass as sharp as can be.
It is hard to believe that anyone might tread there before the molten waves, but there they are. Beach-combers—I assumed he meant some kind of animal, but no. Dwarves in suits of shining foil dig into the glass with long-handled shovels. One reaches into the hole he just dug and pulls out a semi-melted shard of something. He tosses it back.
Vanerak mentioned that the caves here contained lost knowledge. Is that what these beach-combers are looking for? There's many dozens of them, all along the shore for hundreds of feet. A few in enruned suits might be overseers, though they hold no whips, just shovels like everyone else. They are paddling in the yellow molten rock itself. One has a net of thin wire. He casts it, but dredges up nothing.
“Let's move on,” says Nazak. “What they're searching for doesn't concern you.”
Lost knowledge in the magma seas?
I get the feeling that their work concerns me very much indeed.