The wynding had been cold and dark last time. Now its ceiling radiated heat and all along the crown of its walls ancient runes shone faintly as if they were rendered from hot iron. They described tales she had never heard in places unknown to her. Khaz kept slowing to read them and she kept dragging him along. Her da wasn't too far now. Somewhere above he was calling to her. She needed to be there. It never occurred to her that the [armiger] wouldn't go to the delving until they came to a junction where the wynding split in two. There the stones set in the walls spoke their memories and she [listened] and knew.
"They went that way," said Khaz.
"Delvin's the other," she said.
"What are ye thinkin?"
"Ye know what's down that way?"
"No. Never been."
She looked up the corridor to the delving. She needed to get to her da. He was asking for her. She needed to get to him before it was too late.
She looked down the corridor the [armiger] had gone. Perhaps too late was the lie. Perhaps it always had been. Such was the myth of the stone of the earth and its scattered fragments: the dwarfstone, the elfstone, the orcstone, the manstone. Of imbuement, of vivification, of creation, of life everlasting. She looked up one corridor and down the other. Up to her da and her duty. Down to her hopes and their lies.
Khaz touched her arm. "I know ye don't want te hear it and yer sick te death of me askin about it so I won't ask. I'll just say that I want ye te know I'm happy te get on after the armiger alone so ye can attend yer da."
"Thanks," she said. "Stay close."
She led them down. Deep into the mountain. The faint runes faded and the way darkened. Behind them they saw the small square window of light shrink. The wynding turned sharply and it was gone. She felt as though they had entered the white mountain's black soul.
"Got another light?" said Khaz.
"I'd rather not," said Daraway.
"Ye seen her hands?" said Mym.
"Aye."
"Does it look like that feels good?"
"Alright, I hear what yer sayin."
She felt Daraway's hand on her shoulder. "It's alright love."
"Sorry Khaz," said Mym.
"I get it," he said. "It's hard walkin away from where ye mean te be."
"Aye."
"I'll make sure te pack flares next time."
They walked on. Sometimes she heard water dripping and sometimes it sounded as if a whole river poured on the other side of the wynding's walls. Then the wynding turned upwards and she felt warm air against her face and her searching hands felt gaps in the walls at regular intervals. She smelled the musty odor of ancient things long cold and damp. Now warming. Now waking.
"What do ye think they are?" said Khaz.
"Mineshafts," said Mym. "Storerooms."
"There sure are a lot of em."
"Aye."
"Wonder what their old delvers were chasin."
"Wonder if they ever found it."
"Stop a moment and look to the right," said Daraway. "Ready?"
The woman [threw] a flash like sheet lightning and by the flicker Mym saw the storeroom with its latticed stone cabinets full of broken machines and dusty tools and clouded glass and the imprints from where wool had decayed to dust, and ancient stoneworks with half finished heads and broken shoulders and bulbous noses and closed eyes. As if all things were created as humans believed and all the mistakes of that creation had been discarded to this place, and their instantaneous shadows fled long and away like vermin who hate the light. Then all was dark again.
"What is this place?" said Mym.
"Myth of a myth," said Khaz.
They walked on in rule-straight stretches between switchbacks, back and forth and back and forth, until they saw light ahead. There the wynding opened into a chamber as wide as the delving and twice as tall with twin colonnades of stout square pillars each carved to look like dwarves lifting dwarves lifting dwarves all the way to some unseen ceiling. Curious oilless lamps hung two dwarves up on the right hand colonnade. A copper wire ran from lamp to lamp and they dimmed together and brightened together as if the wire bound them to a common purpose.
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Mym had never seen anything like it. Nor had she heard familiar talk rendered so uncouthly as when a nearby woman said, "Go on ahead ya fatass doofs. Ya ain't gonna do no good back here."
Nor had she smelled a living creature so foul as the pale skinned two headed monster that ducked into the wynding at the chamber's far side.
Nor had she seen a stone carving so large and ornate as the [sentinel] standing at the chamber's center. It was sculpted in the image of a dwarf but three times the height of a man. Its limbs and body and head and beard made from smooth granite, its eyes and tremendous [hammer] the fuligin black found only in the shard of the sky. The sight of the [sentinel] recalled in her a memory she had never made as if it were a feature passed from mother to daughter, like humor or tenor. Or a memory she had but could never know, like that of her birth.
"The doomstone," she breathed.
Khaz nodded beside her. "Aye."
The [sentinel] appeared to be gazing down at the woman who had spoken as they entered, now sitting against a column on the far side of the chamber.
Mym called out, "Oy!"
The [sentinel]'s gargantuan head and shoulders turned soundlessly to face them. Its body shifted after and it set the head of its [hammer] on the floor between its feet and rested both of its huge hands on the pommel.
"He's a walkin talkin spittin slab of somethin," said Khaz.
"Stone given life," said Daraway.
"Doomstone isn't any more alive than the forge," said Mym.
"It looks alive to me."
"It's just made te move different."
"I have never seen anything like it."
"The art te make em was lost before da was born. Before Thayne even. I thought it was just somethin they made up te keep lads and lasses from wanderin into the wyndins."
"Aye," said Khaz.
"Been rethinkin a lot of those thoughts these past hours."
"Aye."
The sitting woman whistled at them and waved. She sat against the column with one leg thrust out before her. Its trouser was torn open below the knee and a great pink and purple welt was coming up just there. She grimaced or grinned as they came and it was plain to Mym that the woman was drunk.
"Y'all come on over. I tried telling em it was only a matter a time before y'all came alooking for em. Tried telling em dwarves don't take kindly to interloping. Reckon not a single one of em have ever seen a real live one. Course I've known plenty. More than most. One or two anyway."
Mym watched the [sentinel] as she walked past and it didn't move again though it seemed as though its glinting black eyes followed her.
"Y'all are here for the moodstone?" said the woman.
"Doomstone," said Mym.
"Getting all red when he's mad and blue when he's blue."
"It's called the doomstone."
The woman put her hands up and fluttered her fingers as if playing an instrument. "Get the pitch just right and he breaks the world?"
"Doom. Stone."
"Y'all live under a rock." She looked at her busted leg and her teeth flashed from the pain of it. She put her hands down and pushed herself a little more upright but she was already about as upright as she was going to get. "But really. Y'all are too easy. Takes all the fun outta it. Listen, if y'all get on up the way and find my biggun ya remind em to do whatever the boss man says. We gots a lotta gold riding on this. Enough for a lady ta retire on."
"Then yer with the armiger."
"Sure as shit I ain't. That goddamn armiger sent orcs through my pit to clear his way here. I'm with myself and mine. I only aim to recover my share. Y'all should think of doing the same."
"The share yer after is ours."
"Yeah that's a puzzler ain't it. I'd tell ya to ask the armiger directly, but ya can't twist silver outta a turnip."
Mym turned to Khaz and Daraway. "Lets go."
The woman half raised a hand. "Well now bout that. Ya try getting on and that right tall beastie is gonna smack ya flat as a panfried cake. Now maybe y'all can stand it what with ya being halfway there already, but I'd lay gold ya can't. I sure as hell couldn't." Her hands began to tremble and her face was losing color.
Daraway said, "Easy there." She felt the woman's forehead then looked at Mym. "She's in some kind of shock."
"How'd the others get round?" said Khaz.
The woman's eyes followed Daraway's hands. "It weren't up when they passed. Damn thing was dead as mule's donger til the armiger started a talking to it. Bastard did it on purpose. Just yesterday he's bleeding on bout my ogre, saying they're his since he bought their dying but they never did. Well that ain't my fault. He had plenty of chances to come and check but did he ever? His head's got too big for us small folk."
"Da don't have time for this," said Mym.
Khaz turned from the woman to the [sentinel]. "Oy ye lovely lout. We're the kids of yer makers and we're needin by."
The [sentinel] watched but didn't move or reply.
He took a step forward and spoke in [tones] to calm the stones.
"Care there Khaz," she said.
"Don't trouble yerself for my foolin. He moves te me ye slip on past."
He took another step.
All at once the [sentinel] came with both hands swinging the [hammer] in a great circle around then behind then overhead then straight down at Khaz, and the dwarf braced his feet and raised his [alpenstock] and [Thayne's longarm] one crossed over the other with his beard flowing behind him and his eyes narrowing above and his jaw flexing and elbows bending to take the blow that would end his life. Daraway thrust Mym forward as it landed with a clang of metal on metal and the snap of bones and the whump of the air coming out of him like the snow compressing before the avalanche, and Mym fell and rolled into the next wynding as the [hammer] struck again the place they'd stood an instant before. She couldn't see back into the chamber. The [hammer]'s head blocked the entrance.
"Khaz," she called and she put her palms against the head as if to push it aside.
She heard the woman's muffled voice. "Nothing left of him to bother with. Go get yours. I'll make sure he ain't never alone. Can't fucking go anyplace else."
She felt Daraway's hands pulling her arms, pulling her away. Pulling her away from what'd happened.
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> +1 [Stonespeaking]: Once she was back where they speak our dialect she didn't wait te put te use everythin she'd discovered abroad... (9/10)