Although briefly distracted by the delight of new clothes, I had no chance to enjoy showing them off to my friends and saviors, or indeed to just take the time to relax from the hectic and tumultuous journey I’d taken to reunite with them. I had another friend to recover, and a difficult meeting to facilitate.
I’d never had the linguistic capacity to serve as a translator before, so given that my first time would be in negotiating a cease-fire that could stop a war and save thousands of lives I was feeling a whole new kind of pressure. I would have preferred to fight another pack of kajatora… provided I could get a change of clothes afterwards.
Returning to the site of the ambush and battle the steam clouds filling the cavern thickened, the calmer colors of the foliage subsumed into the ominous red glow of magma. The menacing aura emerged around the Pharyes vehicle, still trapped in place in a waterfall over a pit of molten rock. Boiling off such a huge flood seemed to be slowly solidifying the surface of the magma flow, but there was still a lot of heat and vapor around – and a giant hole to deal with. I wasn’t sure how they would get themselves free, but that would likely be one of many urgent topics for discussion once the two sides were actually talking.
Lord Uldmar was already present, and with him was Ivaldi, who was gingerly holding Echo in his undersized hands. It helped to see that Echo was safe and unharmed – as much as I wanted to trust Ivaldi and the others it had still worried me to leave them in Pharyes hands.
Nor were the Pharyes entirely trusting us either – their remaining golems and combat suits were lined up to either side of the delegation on foot. Like the surfacers, they were clearly suffering with the heat and humidity of the cavern, but neither side seemed willing to be the first to complain.
Without a chance to collect my thoughts I found myself propelled to the front of my rescuers, arrayed in a loose group of varying species and scales, facing the smaller and more uniform Pharyes opposite.
All eyes were on me in a moment, and I felt myself blushing as I struggled to think of something to say.
Perhaps he had seen my dismay, as Ivaldi was the first to speak up.
“As a… gesture of good will between our peoples, I would like to return this… your… Echo to you, Safkhet.”
“Thank you, Ivaldi,” I said quietly.
The two of us approached, stepping out from our respective lines, however before Ivaldi could hand Echo over there was a gurgling, childish roar from behind him and a ripple ran through the crowd.
“Cease this foolery at once!” called a voice. “Aulogemscire, your treasonous pusillanimity exceeds all bounds! You are nought but a craven wretch, beguiling the good Lord Uldmar with your winewords!”
The speaker, a young pharyes man with his arm in a sling and bloodied bindings over his forehead and right eye, was shoving away some sort of medic still trying to tend to his injuries and pushing past others, almost knocking one girl to the ground in his rage. Like the other pilots, he wore a leather outfit reminiscent of a flight suit, but his bore fanciful designs stitched into the chest and arms – ruined now where it had been cut open to treat his wounds. He had a small nose for a pharyes, roman in shape, and his teeth and nails glittered gold clouded with blood-red tints that matched the crimson streaks in his blond hair. Although otherwise plain, his could have been a friendly, even likeable face if not for the arrogance and fury in the curve of his lips and the poisonous words they spat.
“Have your minds turned to mush?! Where is your rectitude in this, a righteous war in the name of the King?! What of your pride as warriors of the Pharyes?! Lord Uldmar, you cannot so capriciously relinquish our sole advantage over this monstrosity and its motley band of scapegraces!”
Even I, with my supernatural linguistic knowledge, was having trouble keeping up with the fit of grandiloquent fury, but the intent was evident even for those who spoke not a word of Pharynx – the surfacers were bristling visibly.
“They have slain our bosom compatriots, and defiled our ancestral relics! This perfidy is positively treasonous and in the name of the King I, Lord Hlesey, scion of the great House Vitharr, shall not abide it!”
As he reached for Ivaldi’s arm I stepped forward to stop him, and in an instant the war machines were aiming gemstone weapons at me.
Berenike took a sharp breath at my back.
I felt tremulations of mana from Sulis and others on our side, and heard the sounds of hands gripping hilts.
Essence was gathering in the gemstones of the war machines too, and the Pharyes afoot looked petrified.
Sweat beaded on the brows of a half dozen different species, not an eye daring blink.
Lord Uldmar’s hand cracked against the face of the still-ranting figure, hard enough that he overbalanced. Lacking the use of his arm, he fell to one knee.
Uldmar stood over the stunned pharyes.
“Cease this madness, Lord Hlesey!” he commanded. “Would you sacrifice more lives to your honor? The surfacers are not what we believed – look at them, even now they restrain themselves – because they desire peace as much as we.”
“My lord, we do not understand how you can say such things now,” spoke another, a woman behind the enraged nobleman.
Similarly dressed, her own flight suit undamaged save for a few rips around one leg, she seemed to have enjoyed a lucky escape when the machine she operated was destroyed. She was taller than Hlesey, with a bearing that insisted upon her own high birth – although the term was an oxymoron in the case of the Pharyes. Her black hair was braided into twin tails, decorative strands of gold and silver woven in to give lustrous gleam to her movements.
“The surfacers have proven their treacherous natures by turning on their own – how could we ever trust in them?”
“And we did not solicit such betrayal, Lady Idavoll? Was this invasion not our own?”
“Then you mean to trust this monster? After seeing what it did to the kajatora?! What if it turns on us too?!”
“Then we shall meet that betrayal honorably, as the scions of our great houses. But that will not occur. Safkhet and her people do not wish for this war any more than we do.”
Uldmar’s features softened as he looked back down at Hlesey, the other man’s face bloodied where his lip had split.
“You have followed me for many years, Lord Hlesey, and never have I led you wrong yet. Trust me again now, and hear out the tale behind this improbable truce. Then you shall understand the necessity of it, and the folly of this fighting.”
The pause before Hlesey responded was tortuously protracted, but at last he gave a nod, and accepted the offered hand in returning to his feet.
A few faces still looked grim, such as the Lady Idavoll, but I heard and felt mana and machinery returning to rest, and weapons being released.
With a sick chill I realized how close we had been to disaster – and how easily things could go wrong again.
“I apologize on behalf of Lord Hlesey,” Uldmar was saying, “I am sure this meeting will be as difficult for your people as it is for my own, but I speak sincerely when I say this; we cannot allow the war to continue. As such, we commence this meeting with the return of Echo to the custody of Safkhet.”
I nodded my assent as Ivaldi handed them back to me at last. It was a relief to hold them once more, and to feel the smooth, unbroken surface of their gem in my hands.
Still stunned by the near catastrophe, it was only as Uldmar gave me an expectant look and I saw Ivaldi gesturing with his head that I remembered that I was supposed to be translating for everyone else.
“Uh… sorry,” I said, turning red as I remembered all the eyes on me, and felt the pressure once more.
Turning awkwardly to half-face the others, I clutched Echo to my chest as I explained.
“Uh, everyone, this is Lord Uldmar of the Pharyes, and he says that he’s sorry. And he’s giving me back Echo as a start towards peace… only you folks have no idea who Echo is either….”
Berenike put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about explaining everything. We can just start with introductions. Relax, and repeat what each side says.”
“Lady Safkhet,” Gastores spoke, “it may not be much, but we should offer them healing. With our magic I mean.”
Sulis looked up at him with a question in her eye, but his returned the gaze confidently.
“I know we don’t know a lot about how their bodies work, but even if you just stop someone’s bleeding it would show them we want to help.”
The proposal met a lukewarm reception initially, especially when Uldmar volunteered Hlesey himself as the first to experience the alien sorceries of the surfacers with his body, however Sulis soon had the man in a good enough state to remove the bandages from his face, and even re-open his injured eye. The eye itself had been pierced by a fragment of debris when Hlesey’s borrowed machine was destroyed, but it seemed his people were unable or unwilling to treat such an injury directly.
“Miraculous,” the man muttered, blinking away water as his treatment concluded, “I can see perfectly! You have… done me a great service, my lady Sulis. I am certain I should never have recovered my full vision without this beneficence!”
His broken arm was still immobile, but the tiny man tried to take her hand with his good one.
Sulis withdrew in confusion before I could explain, and Uldmar dismissed him, commanding that he return to his cabin and change into some dry, clean, intact clothing fitting the occasion.
Uldmar himself would go next, as a further demonstration to his people – and probably a welcome relief for the man himself, given the burns he’d suffered. It was hardly necessary however, as Hlesey was still singing the praises of the naiad as the man left.
When I related what the young noble was saying to Sulis gave a conspiratorial grin, showing off her impressive jaws.
“I didn’t fix his eye, he just had blood and dirt in it.”
“But what about the wound you healed?” I asked in Cycloan.
“The actual injury was small enough that natural healing could handle it. I just washed it out and sped it up.”
“Don’t translate that part,” Gastores said quickly.
I couldn’t help but laugh at the two of them, already working diplomatic magic on their former enemies.
Trick or not, after that initial hurdle things went smoother. Switching between Pharynx and Cycloan was a challenge, and I slipped up more than once as I changes languages repeatedly, but as wounds were being treated introductions were made and tension eased all the same.
Others volunteered freely to experience healing magic, and anyone with the skill was quickly engaged treating a variety of ailments. They couldn’t repair bones or damaged organs, but the injuries were mostly light to begin with, and the pharyes were highly impressed to have them fixed up with relative ease.
While that was happening the leaders of both sides relocated, all eagerly agreeing to retreat away from the heat around the open pit.
We gathered together in a circle in a cooler spot beneath the light of the trees, sitting on woven mats of some sort of underworld reeds, laid out on the ground in the cavern.
Joining Berenike, Gastores and Sulis were a naga named Yadar – who reminded me not at all of the hunters I had once fled from in a panic – and my new friend Patch, herself a huntress and acting representative for the beastfolk with us.
Uldmar was accompanied by Ivaldi, an older woman named Beyla, who captained what the Pharyes called their ‘crawler’, a girl called Hylli and the Lady Idavoll, whose ‘Skidbladnir’ I had recently damaged, and whose borrowed replacement Berenike had just destroyed.
In fairness to her, while she was clearly uncomfortable, Idavoll seemed intent on hearing us out, and on our side Patch acted as a similarly skeptical counterpart.
Both sides had independently prepared items to share, and they were surprised to realize that this seemed a tradition they held in common as they offered one another a variety of foodstuffs; another show of faith and act of welcome.
As thanks for the healing magic their received, the pharyes insisted on going first, and they provided a rich assortment of food and drink.
Introducing each item, I was careful to warn everyone involved not to eat too much – with so many physiologies involved it was hard to know what might be toxic to whom, and so everyone sampled only a small amount of each dish.
Everyone aside from myself at least – I knew I had nothing to fear, and it would have been a waste to let the mushroom wine and the sweet treats go uneaten….
I was still licking the gooey sap from between my teeth when we hit another problem however.
In attempting to prepare suitable comestibles from the limited supplies that were available to them the rescue party had leaned heavily on fresh meat.
The flaring nostrils and turned up noses were all the more obvious on pharyes faces, when those extremities tended to be so large. I could hear muttered misgivings passing between Beyla and Idavoll.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Ah, I’m sorry! I know this isn’t your way,” I said, in my best Pharynx, “but please understand that, to the people of the surface, flesh is an important resource. They never kill for pleasure or consume the flesh of intelligent species!”
The pharyes side looked variously unconvinced or outright disgusted, but I had my own allies to think of too. Poor Gastores looked both crestfallen and rather panicked as he saw the reaction to the beautiful Underworld river-fish Sulis had caught, presented gutted and scaled and ready to eat on a leaf in his hands. Patch looked positively insulted seeing the response to the preserved spiced meat jerky she had offered – a delicacy to her people.
Explaining the strict vegetarianism of the Pharyes people to them was surprisingly difficult, but I managed to at least get the basic concept across.
At the same time Ivaldi was clarifying things to his side, and in the end we managed between us to assure everyone that neither party meant any offence by the offered gifts, or the reception thereof.
Yet it was still a blow for us to have portrayed ourselves as just the sort of savages the Pharyes had been told we were.
It was Gastores who rescued the situation, producing from his pack a small wooden box of candied fruits, a traditional ogre treat given as a parting gift from his brother. After initial suspicion, followed by trepidation at the strong aroma and unusual texture, the pharyes gave hearty approval, demonstrated by how quickly they cleaned the box out.
The ogre looked a little pained at the vanishing of what was apparently a whole year’s share, but he made himself keep smiling all the same, and offered other treats such as plainer but still rare dried fruits.
~~~
After the exchange and the shows of goodwill it came time for explanations.
Gastores had started by asking about the object being returned to Safkhet’s care. She had refused to set it aside for any reason, and claimed that it was actually somehow alive, a person and friend she had found along her journey, who had been captured alongside her by the Pharyes.
It was a strange tale, and Gastores struggled to imagine how a gemstone, carved and inscribed as it might be, could be alive, however Safkhet seemed sincere. The way she held Echo was proof of their great worth at least in her eyes – cradling them in her hands with a motherly tenderness that Gastores found the oddest part of the scene, given her reputation for battle and destruction, and the menacing aura that seemed to ooze from her.
That was her essence he assumed. Detectable even to himself at this range, it was hard to imagine the sensation it must carry for those sensitive to mana. Perhaps it was no wonder the Pharyes were terrified of her.
They seemed resolved not to show it however, Lord Uldmar in particular putting on a stern, unmoved face as he took the lead once more. He was as far from Gastores’ conception of a noble as was possible, tiny rather than towering, masculine rather than elegant, with not a feather or flourish about his form. Even so, the man had the education and upbringing befitting his title, and he was exercising both in giving his account of how and why events had reached their strange juncture. Safkhet was straining under the load as she tried to keep up.
Gastores quickly forgot about the language barrier entirely however; as Uldmar got to the crux of his tale the Chasmites were gripped in horror and astonishment at the revelation of their betrayal and the Priestess’ conspiracy, trading away the gemstones and territory the Pharyes needed in return for their own ascension to rule over the Empire.
Yadar’s tail twitched anxiously as he pondered the revelation, stroking his chin unhappily.
“My people… feel little love of harpy rule… but could they truly do ssso dreadful a thing? When there hasss been peace and sstability for all these yearsss?” he asked of no-one particular.
“It can’t be,” Berenike muttered, shaking her head slowly from side to side.
Gastores looked over to Sulis, but the naiad was silent, lost in thought as she stared down at the flowing frills of her dress.
“It can be.” Patch spoke with a snarl. “Nobles like Feme never cared about us lot, beastfolk, naga or even lowborn of their own kind. Don’t see why the priestess should be any different.”
“But the priestess is our connection to the Goddess! The Stormqueen’s own cousin,” Berenike said, the disbelief clear on her face, the Valkyrie, such a force on the battlefield, stunned into paralysis. “She couldn’t sacrifice her own family….”
Gastores didn’t blame them. After everything the Pharyes had done, how could the Chasmites so easily believe in the words of the enemy?
“How do we know this is true?” he asked. “You’re saying that our rulers are conspiring together against their own people. That’s not easy for most of us to believe.”
Uldmar had been primarily addressing Berenike, and seemed surprised that it was the young ogre who spoke for the Chasmites now, but Gastores met his eyes, staring down at him as Safkhet related the question.
Understanding of his answer was delayed a moment by the translation, but there was no sign on the man’s face of faltering as he articulated his reply – no hesitation or unease, just simple and sorrowful truth. That or Lord Uldmar was a skilled liar indeed.
Safkhet spoke.
“Think of how easily the attacks went. We knew exactly where and how to strike, and waited until the Stormqueen was away to move on the most critical target first. Then it was only once forces were dispatched into our waiting ambush at Southtown that we moved on Grand Chasm. Even if you wish to ascribe it all to luck, you have seen the gulf between our world and the surface above – can you imagine us fighting through the countless layers of enemies to reach you without already knowing what we should find?”
Sulis met his eye. The others were still overwhelmed, but she at least was in agreement.
He turned to Berenike, placing a hand on her drooping wing. She stirred from the stupor with a start, and then gave a reluctant nod.
“It is… it would explain everything,” the captain admitted slowly.
Gastores cleared his throat as he turned back to Uldmar.
“We can assume that you’re right, and that the priestess really has betrayed the Empress for the sake of seizing power. But what about in your kingdom? Do you know who’s behind it all?”
For the first time Uldmar hesitated, shying from his gaze to peer down at the ground between them. It was the woman named Beyla who spoke instead.
“We believe so, and we have evidence of the conspiracy,” came her answer, “but we still need to investigate. If we’re correct members of the council directly serving King Jotunn are planning a coup – a careless accusation could see even Lord Uldmar imprisoned. Until we are certain we have to keep the matter as discrete as possible.”
Gastores couldn’t help but glare at her – the Pharyes had been happy to name names in accusing the surfacers, yet now they were cagey with their own supposed traitors.
“I’m pretty sure Ivaldi said who’s behind it all,” Safkhet said, apparently not translating for anyone this time. “H-something. Helmar?”
Uldmar’s face darkened, perhaps realizing what Safkhet was talking about, but another, Ivaldi, was the first to speak up, looking panicked at hearing his name.
“Please try to understand, this is a very difficult situation for us! Until recently only myself and a few others were even aware of the possibility – and we had nothing but suspicions and concerns you see. It was to find hard data that I left the capital.”
Safkhet didn’t relate the hesitant, stilted speed of the nervous little fellow, but it was clear to see as he spoke the original Pharynx words.
“The head of the conspiracy is already aware that I and others on the council have been investigating. Lives have been threatened, including my own and that of my sister, so please let us discuss the identities of the suspects later, privately.”
There was a pause after the plea was relayed, then Safkhet spoke again.
“I know it’s not up to me to decide, but I believe him. Uh, speaking as myself… Safkhet I mean. I’m not translating anything right now.”
The blushing girl held the strange precious gem in her hands closer as she spoke.
“I think we can trust Ivaldi, and, well… I may not like him but I think Uldmar is honest too. Even if he’s a pompous jerk, I think he wants what’s best for his people.”
For a moment Gastores worried that the other side would take offence at her remarks, but then recalled that it would be up to her to translate them, and gave a laugh. It served as a much-needed relief amid the tense discussion.
“I suppose we have to believe what they’re saying,” he replied. “Unless things have changed a lot on the surface we need peace a lot more than they do.”
It could all still be a trick of course. From what he knew of her Safkhet could be fooled as easily as he, and there was no way they could check anything the Pharyes were saying until reaching the surface – perhaps not even then – but they could only take the chance.
Turning to the others at his sides as he spoke, Gastores saw no dissent. They were all prepared to follow his judgment, even the usually headstrong Patch.
From there they began actual negotiations. Or so Lord Uldmar named the process of laying out his expectations.
“Peace cannot be achieved without thwarting the plans of the treasonous elements operating within our respective demesnes. As such the first step must be to expose and root out all those involved. To that end, once you have assisted us in freeing our crawler, Safkhet shall return with us to the heart of the kingdom, where we mean to confront the conspirators behind the war and put to rest their schemes,” he announced.
Safkhet herself looked distinctly unconvinced even as she spoke the words for him, but Uldmar wasn’t finished.
“The others from the surface must return there, where they shall similarly thwart the planned coup of their priestess, and convince the Stormqueen of the need for an end to the hostilities. Once this has been accomplished diplomatic contact can be established once more via Safkhet, and plans can be made for formal peace.”
Despite the height difference, Uldmar could look down on Gastores as well as any harpy. The ogre doubted that the arrogant man would have dared speak that way to another noble, but short of openly voicing his displeasure he had no idea how to stand up to such behavior. These were the games of the powerful and highborn, and Gastores was neither.
Patch and Berenike were staring at the little man with open hostility. Yadar, though harder to read, looked distinctly unimpressed.
Sulis was eying him with the same disdain she had shown an especially repugnant worm that wriggled out of a fish she was eating a few days past, and might well have been pondering meting out a similar fate to the pharyes noble as she had to the parasite.
“And when do you suggest the Pharyes return the occupied territories and release the captives taken in your attacks?” Gastores asked.
He had tried to keep his tone level and calm, but his blood was boiling as he thought of all the people who had already been hurt or killed. Safkhet couldn’t keep her own anger from her voice either, as she gave Uldmar the translation.
“Naturally all prisoners will be freed and the occupied surface settlements returned once peace is made,” Uldmar assured them quickly.
“And the occupied territory beneath the surface? What about that?”
With the delay of translation, Gastores got to examine Uldmar’s reaction in detail as Safkhet related the question. The nobleman stiffened, as if finding himself caught out unexpectedly.
“The precise details of territorial boundaries can also be examined in detail as part of that process,” was the best answer he could muster.
Absurd though it was, Gastores found himself thinking about the box of candied fruits Petrino had given him.
The offer had been his idea of course, an attempt to diffuse a tense moment, but the Pharyes had been quick to take advantage of the offer and leave him nothing.
A petty grudge he knew, but it gnawed at him, splitting open barely-sealed wounds. Why did it have to be he who led the negotiations, who remained calm and level-headed, when all he wanted was to scream in rage and beat the smug, superior little pharyes senseless for what they’d done?!
It was nothing to do with candied fruits, not really. They had already taken so much more than that… the peace of his home and his simple life, the security of his little brother…. And they had taken Captain Encheiro, when he had failed her. He could still see the tripod she faced down, its weapon spearing through her shield and into her flesh….
Now they wanted more, even as they were preaching peace… when they could never make amends for all the horrors they had already inflicted. Why should the Empire do anything to help them?! They should be the ones suffering, the ones to be left hurt and full of remorse, wondering if they would ever see their loved ones again!
In the distance he heard a voice.
Safkhet was speaking to him.
Gastores dragged his thoughts back to the moment, taking a long, hard breath.
There was no time for self-indulgence or regrets.
If… if Encheiro had survived, it was as a prisoner. He could look for revenge, or take this chance to free her – and Sulis’ brother, and all the rest who were taken. If the negotiations succeeded they could prevent any more of their people suffering the same fate.
“Gastores?” she asked again. “Uldmar wants to know when we’ll be ready to depart.”
The girl must have been as unhappy about the plan as any of them – it would see her remaining in the depths of the Underworld, alone and in peril – but it seemed she was prepared to go along with it all the same.
“We won’t be departing.”
Safkhet looked confused.
“Tell Lord Uldmar we’re refusing his terms.”
Safkhet hesitated, then gave Uldmar the translation. The man puffed up his chest in clear indignation, but whatever he had started to say, went ignored as Gastores cut him off.
“We can’t accept such a one-sided offer. Our people can never trust or support yours while you have our loved ones as hostages. If we’re going to work together it can only be after the prisoners are released – and Safkhet has to be free to return to the surface with us too. We’ll also need your word that all occupied territory will be given back at the end of the war, above and below ground. In return… we’ll commit to supplying your people with gemstones, as many as we can mine.”
Lord Uldmar’s diminutive features hardened, while Ivaldi at his side leant away from the man, as though bracing for an outburst.
None came however. Instead Uldmar gave a haughty chuckle that needed no interpretation.
“I underestimated your sort, Gastores the Ogre,” was his eventual response. “We thought your kind naught but ignoble miners and laborers; mere muscle for the harpies… yet here you sit speaking for them. It seems there is much we have yet to learn of one another.”
Uldmar paused, as though waiting for an answer, but Gastores knew what the man really wanted. He was making a tactical concession, paying a compliment and giving a veiled apology for his domineering approach… without retracting any of his demands.
The silence stretched out, Safkhet between them looking from one face to another anxiously. Eye locked with the noble, Gastores couldn’t see the faces of Berenike or the others, but he could imagine their unease mirrored his own.
“Very well.”
It was Uldmar who spoke first.
“It is as you say, we ask too much in expecting your trust in full. But while I can promise my support for your cause and claims, even if we succeed it is unlikely to fall to me to make the final determination – I am but a servant of his majesty, King Jotunn.”
“Then you won’t promise the return of the territory you’ve occupied?”
“For your vow to supply our people I will promise to do everything within my power towards that end. Nothing more can I offer in good faith. There must also be an exception for the gemstone veins we are currently mining; they are vital to the continued survival of our people.”
“It’s true that we can’t really guarantee anything more than that, and, well, we do need the gemstones, yes,” Ivaldi was saying from the man’s side, “but that doesn’t mean we need the actual mines themselves, does it? If we trust in the surfacers to supply us at a fair rate then we can simply trade for their gems.”
“How are we to be supplied?” Uldmar scoffed. “Will the Harpy Empire fight past the Formorians to delivery each shipment? Or are we to bear all the risk and suffer all the losses each time?”
Gastores felt more out of his depth than ever – he knew dangerously little about the geography or military situation of either state, and a half-baked solution could do far more harm than good.
With both sides fallen silent, Uldmar looked ready to proclaim the idea impossible, but Safkhet came to the rescue in that moment.
“I, uh, might know somebody who can help there actually,” she suggested, first in Cycloan, then Pharynx. “While I was travelling through the underworld I met a caravan of traders who are able to travel through Formorian territory. Their species is called the Mycoth, and they’re super friendly – I bet they’d be willing to help us out! They’d probably want paying too, but that’s got to be a lot cheaper and safer than fighting, right?”
Uldmar and Ivaldi were both dumbstruck by the serendipity of the proposal, and while none present had actually encountered such a thing as a ‘mycoth’ it was hard to imagine Safkhet making them up.
“Then… if we can track them down with Safkhet’s help, and convince them to work with us… do we have a deal?” Gastores asked hopefully.
“We know nothing of this species,” Uldmar said, sounding wary even before Gastores heard the translation. “What if they refuse?”
Safkhet spoke up for herself again. “I don’t think they will, but if they do I can bring the gemstones myself, at least until we can work out an alternative. I won’t let your people starve, Lord Uldmar.”
It took a moment for the girl to repeat her offer in both tongues, but when she did it seemed to have a positive effect, Ivaldi and Hylli looking delighted, while Beyla seemed cautiously optimistic.
Lord Uldmar remained unconvinced however.
“Assuming this were all possible, and we established such a trade route, who would set the rates of exchange?”
“We can negotiate a fair trading policy as part of the process of returning our mines,” Gastores suggested. “Provided you can commit to giving them back, the details are something that, well, people other than us should probably work out.”
He was putting it mildly, given that Gastores hadn’t the faintest idea what a gemstone was worth in trade, especially for goods he had never seen before in his life, but Uldmar seemed mollified at last by the proposal.
“Very well…,” the man said, with a long sigh. “As I warned you, I can only pledge my own advocacy for this agreement, but my house carries the weight of many eons. You shall have my support in this.”
Ivaldi also piped up to confirm both his own commitment towards the same promise, and the support of his own house, with its two seats on the royal council.
Gastores gave a glum nod, concealing the grin that threatened to spread across his features. It might not be all he wanted, but it was the best he could hope for.
“Then once our people are freed you’ll have all the help we can give you,” he said, doing his best to sound reluctant.
Uldmar seemed confused at that, and Safkhet had to repeat the translation for the man, only for him to hold his bandaged head in dismay.
“You know well that I lack the power to make such unilateral arrangements!” came the predictable protest.
“You mean you don’t have the authority to order their release,” Gastores corrected.
“What else could I mean?”
Gastores allowed his grin to shine through, in his best impersonation of Sulis.
“We never came here to negotiate their release – we came here to break them out by force.”
“You can’t mean-”
Gastores cut the translation off.
“Wherever they’re being held, and whatever security there is, there’s no way they’d turn away your lot – normal guards know better than to say no to the highborn. Well, noble-born in this case. And once we’re inside you can help us free everyone and escape.”
Uldmar groaned as he heard Safkhet speak.
“This is… it’s impossible, insane…. We would be traitors to our own kingdom!”
“Your kingdom has already been betrayed – your people are fighting and dying for a lie, same as mine. This is just setting things right. If you can sneak us inside no-one has to know you let us in or helped us on purpose either, and once our people are free, once you do this for us, we’ll know that you really are honest, and you really do want peace.”
“But if we’re caught-”
“If we’re caught you can tell them we held you hostage or whatever lie works. But if we aren’t caught then when we return to the surface it will be with our people safe and willing to fight for peace instead of more killing.”
“I’m telling you it would be a needless risk – we have no desire to enslave your kind, all shall be free at the war’s end!”
He felt his hands balling into fists, but Gastores made himself hold them in his lap and at his sides, channeling the anger into eloquence instead of aggression.
“You say that now. You say you want to stop the fighting and make things right. Well our people can never trust yours, or set aside our hatred after everything you’ve done, all the people you’ve hurt and killed. Not while you’re still keeping our loved ones as prisoners. I wouldn’t ask Sulis or anyone else to do it, and I won’t do it either. If you want peace this is the price. This is the only way it can work.”
Lord Uldmar looked almost as shocked as Gastores himself felt, but even as his heart pounded in his chest he kept his eye locked on the smaller man’s two, staring him down, resolute.
“I shall… require a short recess from these negotiations.”
Spoken with a tone of weariness rather than anger, the request had been the last thing Gastores expected, but he quickly assented. It would give him a chance to quell his own trembling hands, and to speak with Sulis and the others.
“Wow…” Berenike said, once the two sides had separated. “Didn’t think you had it in you, kid, you were like a genuine highborn back there!”
Gastores felt his nostrils widening self-consciously, relieved by her approval of his risky approach.
“You don’t think I was too… aggressive then? I was worried he might just refuse entirely.”
“I wanted to punch him in his smug little face,” the Valkyrie retorted simply.
“You were amazing, Gastores,” Sulis said quietly, her fingers intertwining his own and squeezing tight. “Thank you for fighting for Calidae.”
“For everyone what they took,” Patch said. “Ain’t right, them making fancy promises when they got hostages. Can’t trust no-one as got a knife to your throat.”
“For what it’s worth, I think they’re right,” Safkhet said, smiling. “And I really really didn’t want to go with them instead of going back to the surface….”
“No way that was happening,” Berenike said, patting her shoulder.
Imparting enough force that Gastores would have been knocked to his knees, the tiny girl received the impact as a mere tap. Putting her free hand atop Berenike’s, the women locked eyes and she gave a happy, relieved smile.
Gastores attention was drawn by a very different discussion however.
Across the way, back towards the heat and clouds around the crawlers, whispering voices rose loud enough that for a moment all could hear the words, even if they couldn’t parse Pharynx. Beyla and Idavoll were in a discussion as heated as the steam, while the retiring Ivaldi struggled to voice his own thoughts with the help of his aide Hylli.
He wanted to ask Safkhet what everyone was saying, but there were too many voices speaking at once for the poor girl to have stood a chance at relating everything, even if she could hear them clearly.
Uldmar himself was oddly quiet in the debate, until finally captain Beyla seemed to make a decisive point.
Idavoll was still unsatisfied, but it appeared to be enough for Uldmar to bring his group back.
Returning themselves, the surfacers sat once more to hear the answer the pharyes had for them.
Lord Uldmar cleared his throat, a painful rasp that made Gastores thirsty even in the humid air.
“We have… discussed your demands,” he began.
Gastores simply nodded, wishing Safkhet could translate a little faster.
“Your proposal is foolhardy in the extreme, perilously likely to end in us all captured and our kingdoms in ruin… yet it seems we have no choice but to assent to this absurd scheme of yours.”
The ogre’s features broke into a beaming smile.
“The Pharyes and the people on the surface cannot remain enemies, or the suffering will be immense. On my name and honor as Lord Uldmar of House Hreidmar, I swear to do all in my power to assist you in freeing those captured and held at Northastr.”
“Then it’s a deal!” Gastores proclaimed, holding out his right hands to shake those of Uldmar.
The noble looked at them on confusion, and the ogre felt his nostrils dilate with awkward embarrassment as he remembered that, even if the Pharyes understood the idea of an Ogre hands-shake, the man’s singular left arm was in a sling.
“Ahem. I… I promise, once we’re back on the surface, we’ll do everything we can to end the war,” Gastores said, recovering, “Safkhet’s the Stormqueen’s girlfriend, she’ll have to listen to her.”
The woman in question gave him a look thick with withering exasperation, but he didn’t miss the bashful hesitation behind it. He wasn’t sure why she reacted that way, but she translated the speech all the same.
With that the accord was sworn, and all present gave their own vows.
After that it was just a matter of getting the Pharyes’ crawler unstuck and repaired, escaping the magma table, surviving the journey though the Underworld past roving Formorians and packs of wild monsters, and then mounting a successful gaol-break on a heavily fortified Pharyes bastion to rescue over a thousand people.