Iron war, p.6
Iron War, page 6
part #4 of The Jack of Magic Series
Discordant music flooded Portia’s ears. It hurt. The pain was stronger than the stings of the scrapes of her skin from the rough stone floor or the pain from landing with such force. It pressed on her head like the crushing fingers of a giant.
Portia scrambled to her feet. The pain from the music made her feel dizzy. Far away stone walls dimly registered in Portia’s eyesight as she tried to take in all around them. Surprised faces looked out over barriers and weapons aimed where they had just emerged. Portia held out a hand over Iva, futilely trying to protect her, as if her hand would stop the gigantic weapons aimed their way.
“Are these like the short captives you spoke of?” Portia asked Iva, trying to not be overheard by the onlookers. No one had fired on them yet. That was a good sign.
“Yes, I think,” Iva said, her voice uncertain.
Portia shot her a look. Iva looked dazed and was having a hard time sitting up. She must have landed harder than Portia.
Turning back to the watching faces, Portia called out in common, “Don’t fire!” Any response they might have had for her was drowned out by the alarm horn blaring yet again. Several raised their weapons higher, aiming.
No, no, no.
Portia whirled back to face the portal. She sang the healing song as loudly as she could, holding her hands over her ears to keep out the wailing of the horns. Her hands trembled, and her heart pounded under the onslaught of noise.
The portal responded. The mist swirling on its surface sped up, twirling around faster and faster. Cries rang out from those around her as they noticed the change in the gateway to the other world. They yelled in a language she could not understand. She pushed out thoughts of the defenders and focused on the horrible circle of the splinter and sang and sang.
The only thought Portia spared from her task was the muttered prayer that it would be enough. She waited for a spear to pierce her back, her skin crawling. None came.
She sang on.
The discordant music changed. It stopped shrieking so painfully in her ears. The splinter changed with it, now the entire swirling oval swinging back and forth. They must be connected somehow. She hadn’t heard music from the other portal, but she’d only been on the far side a second before it had snapped shut.
A scrambling noise pulled at her attention. Glancing to one side, she saw several of the defenders moving towards her and Iva.
“Keep them away, but don’t kill anyone,” Portia yelled to Iva, stopping her song just long enough to get the words out, the portal screaming in protest. Fear clenched at Portia as she sang again, getting hold of the magic once again before it destroyed them all.
Iva had gotten to her feet by then. She raised her hands and waved them over the floor, from which rose a dozen small creatures who rapidly grew from the size of small rodents, then to the size of dogs, and finally to human height and size. They looked like oddly melted people made out of mud. The ground there was stone. These creatures were wholly magic.
“Protect us,” Iva commanded. The creatures ran between Iva and Portia and the dwarves around them. Portia concentrated on the portal and her singing while stealing glances at the strange creatures pushing back at the defenders. One was cut in half by a sword, and then the two pieces reformed, and both ran towards the defender wielding the weapon. Nausea pushed at Portia’s throat. At least no blood came from the stricken mud being.
Iva created more of the creatures and sent these into the portal, whose surface was now whirling at incredible speed. It was vibrating wildly, the discordant music ringing out harshly.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Portia felt the vibration of the magic resonating within her chest. Here, her magic didn’t have the swimming-through-mud feeling she’d endured on the other side of the portal. Even so, the magic of healing the portal was difficult—and not something she’d always succeeded in doing before.
She must succeed this time.
Pulling off her makeshift mask to get more air, she breathed in deeply and bellowed out the spell with more volume than she had known possible.
The defenders were getting close to Portia. Her arm hairs prickled at the proximity. Their concerned faces looked between Portia and Iva and the splinter, unsure if she was trying to help them or hurt them. Portia guessed they had held their fire because she and Iva were human, but even that was not going to be enough with the terrifying behavior of the splinter and the strange mud creatures running around the floor tripping the dwarves and biting their legs. The smallest mud beings were the hacked remains of the larger creatures Iva had conjured to defend them, having reformed themselves and continued to fight, no matter how small the pieces the defenders had cut them into.
Portia closed her eyes against the activity around her. Pouring her energy into the healing magic, her head felt light and loose. The world spun, but she didn’t dare open her eyes. She didn’t need to see the portal to feel its wild vibrations. It shook the ground in its desperate fight to not be destroyed.
Clenching her fists and screwing her eyes tight, Portia pulled the music of the spell from deep within as her body was thrown from side to side like a rag doll.
She pushed at the portal, willing it to close.
It shook the ground around them harder.
Portia sang, demanding it close.
It screamed its protest.
Finally, the discordant music from the portal resolved into one high-pitched squealing harmonic that pierced her ears with a shooting pain and then silenced. The splinter snapped shut, only to explode outward in a wave of burning hot air that knocked Portia off her feet as it passed.
As one, the defenders stopped moving and stared where the portal had once been, half of them already knocked to the ground. A tiny mud man ran into the shin of one of the defenders, flopped back on the stone floor, and then disappeared in a puff of dust.
Water dripped on the far wall of what Portia now realized was a cave, while Iva sank to her knees.
Someone dropped their sword with a clatter.
The labored breathing of a defender came from behind Portia. She turned to face him. It was a dwarf. Or at least what she thought was a dwarf.
Suddenly, it came to her that she might have made a gigantic mistake. What if they were not back in her world? Did the portal lead to someplace even worse?
No, she shook her head to clear the thought. There was no place worse than where she had just come from—a world where humans were enslaved.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, she thought. These were definitely not friends to the Dragonoids.
The dwarf approached Portia. He came to her shoulder but must have weighed twice what she did, being so wide and well-muscled. He had a paunch and gray hair, as well as a decorative gray braid on his dark blue uniform. If it weren’t for the flickering torches lighting the cave and the white in his hair, he would have blended into the dark rocks, the uniform a perfect camouflage.
He stopped several paces in front of Portia and gave her a small bow while Iva scrambled to her feet. A few words in an unfamiliar language rang out from someone in the back, and he turned and spoke harshly back in the same language to them, his face apologetic when he turned back to Portia.
Portia shrugged her shoulders. She could try the translation spell she learned from the Elven librarian but wasn’t sure if her casting it on him would be taken as aggression. It had enraged the Dragonoids she had used it on. The dwarves surrounded her and Iva. Offending one would not be a wise move.
He cocked his head for a moment and then spoke again, this time in the human common tongue. “What did you do?”
“I closed the splinter,” Portia said, hoping that was what he meant.
He flapped his arms for a moment, looking around, and then faced her again. “Yes, we see that. I mean… who are you? How did you do that? No—” he stopped himself. “There are too many questions.”
“My name is Portia, and this is Iva,” Portia said, gesturing as Iva came to her side. They both towered over the dwarf, who backed up a step while several of his soldiers came closer. The hair on Portia’s arms rose. She continued on in a conciliatory tone. “We mean no harm. We just didn’t want them to come after us.”
The dwarf rubbed the back of his neck. “That is understandable, even if it might now be a problem. Can you open it again?”
Portia shook her head slowly. Had she done something wrong?
“Ack, never mind. My name is Kerat. I’m the commander of these troops.”
Iva pushed forward to get his attention. “Where are we?”
“Morgani,” he said.
“No,” Iva said, despair in her voice. “No, no, no.”
Portia put a hand on Iva’s arm and spoke in a reassuring tone. “Morgani is south and west of the human kingdoms.”
Iva sucked in her breath and breathed out in relief.
Kerat nodded at Portia. “That it is. And where are you from that you know such a thing?”
“Haulstatt,” Portia said, leaving it at that. She didn’t want to volunteer too much, and certainly not that she was a Jack of Magic and had special status to her queen and her kingdom. They were in a cave, perhaps deep below the surface, and surrounded by dwarves. Information was the only currency she had, and it needed to be conserved until they were in the safety of her own kingdom.
If Haulstatt was still a human kingdom and not already in possession of the Dragonoids.
Portia’s curiosity overrode her caution. “Which kingdoms have fallen to the Dragonoids?”
At his puzzled look, she pointed to where the portal had been. “The ones coming through the splinter.”
Comprehension crossed his face. “You mean, has Haulstatt fallen?”
Portia nodded slowly, desiring and not desiring the answer at the same time.
“To my knowledge, Haulstatt still stands, if just barely. Ships attack there regularly. Lusatiana’s capital has fallen, and war has overtaken the land,” Kerat said.
He watched several of his men checking themselves for injuries and herding the rest of the mud creatures to a central location. The mud beings no longer harassed the dwarves. Portia told herself to ask Iva about them when they were alone, if that ever happened. Kerat motioned another dwarf over, one also with a gray braid on his uniform. He opened his mouth to give a command and then abruptly turned to Portia.
“Will that,” he waved his hand to where the splinter had been, “hold?”
Portia nodded, a nagging prick of anxiety in her stomach at that promise. She felt no scar where the splinter had been. It should be gone forever.
Eyeing her carefully, his eyes slid around the room again and considered his men before finally turning back to the dwarf he had motioned over. “Set a guard and a watch, as always. Get the wounded out and that out as well.” He motioned to a large spear sent through the splinter by the Dragonoids. It had impaled a dwarf and then continued on to pierce a large wooden shield and catapult directly behind it.
Pulling her eyes away from the carnage of the fallen dwarf, Portia turned to Kerat. “We would like safe passage to Haulstatt.”
“You have to speak to our queen first.” His eyes glinted.
Kerat personally escorted them through the tunnels, a group of his men following, fanning out behind Portia and Iva, who limped slightly. Pulling Iva’s robe from her shin, Portia had found a long gash where an arrow had skimmed Iva’s leg.
“I’m fine,” said Iva, glancing at the watching dwarves.
Portia nodded and rose from examining Iva’s leg. It was a shallow wound, and the bleeding had already stopped.
The dwarves had taken Iva’s pike, which would have been difficult to carry through the long tunnels anyway. Portia subtly touched the baldric of her sword, still hidden underneath her robes. The dwarves had not demanded it, either through courtesy or ignorance of its existence. She would not have given it up in any case, not unless forced to.
The vast tunnel the splinter had been in gave way to narrow but tall passages. Portia wondered at the height of the cave until she saw another tunnel high above cutting across the passage they were walking in. An arched stone bridge above them connected the two openings from her left to her right. Ladders carved into the stone wall allowed passage from the lower level to the upper. There must be a network of tunnels crisscrossing everywhere. She had no sense of where they were nor of how deep below the ground.
Suddenly, more than anything, she wished to see the sun and feel the breeze in her hair. The weight of the earth above her sent a sudden panic down her spine. She forced her eyes to the back of Kerat’s head and concentrated on breathing in and out deeply while placing one foot ahead of the other.
Iva shuffled along, seemingly unbothered by the tunnels. She stretched her arms and rolled her neck, catching Portia’s eye and giving her a half smile.
“What were those things?” Portia asked, keeping her voice low. “I thought you couldn’t do magic.”
“Well, not in that other place, but here feels, well, it’s home, isn’t it? I could do magic at home,” Iva said.
“You could’ve told me,” said Portia. She didn’t understand why she felt so frustrated by Iva’s surprising abilities. It helped them, after all.
“We were a little busy. Those things are golems. They’re to protect us. They worked,” Iva retorted, her voice defensive.
“Yes,” said Portia. “I just was surprised. I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“Had you ever been to Jukhnovo?”
“No,” Portia admitted.
Iva shrugged.
Despite having traveled through Haulstatt and Lusatiana, and having survived the Dragonoid land, Portia suddenly felt very small. There was so much she hadn’t seen. Did Professor Terfel know about golems? Portia wanted to ask more but was distracted by changes in the tunnel.
The passage ahead widened, the tall narrow way blossoming out into a wide, long galley filled with statues on either side—dwarves carved from a light red rock and set high on pedestals lit with suffused light from glowing golden moss growing on the walls and ceiling. Water flowed and shimmered over the walls, collecting into long channels along the base of each wall. Flat tribute squares lay at regular intervals next to the water, covered with offerings of carved objects that Portia longed to examine closer.
Portia counted a dozen statues as they passed them before finally calling to Kerat. “Who are these people—” At his sharp look, she corrected herself. “Dwarves. There are so many of them.”
“Rulers. They are the life force of our kingdom. As is the water.”
Looking at the cool water, Portia swallowed and felt for her waterskin. It was gone. Seeing her actions, Kerat motioned her to one of the tribute squares. He pulled a small carved creature from a pouch on his hip and placed it on the wide flat stone near some similar carvings, and then picked up a cup lying next to the square, dipping it into the cool water until it was full. Portia’s mouth watered as she watched. He took a small sip and then handed her the full cup with two hands. Unsure, she gave him a small bow and then accepted the cup. He motioned for her to drink. She tipped it back. The water was cool and tasted of sunshine and spring flowers trickling down her throat. Meaning to stop halfway, she lowered the cup and was surprised to find it empty. Portia’s face burned red, but Kerat only laughed and dipped the cup again to share with Iva.
The cavern was long, stretching into the distance past Portia’s vision, with light from the abundant moss revealing statues as far as she could see. The echoes from their footsteps had died down when they stopped. The silence pushed at Portia, almost feeling like a substantial thing wrapped around her.
“How could there be so many?” Portia asked, under her breath.
“We have been of this land for a long time,” Kerat answered practically in her ear, knowing immediately that she spoke of the statues. Portia jumped, not expecting either the answer or his proximity. Somehow, he didn’t seem as short in this cavernous place, as if this chamber gave him stature.
“Do you not live… I mean—” Portia stammered, regretting what she had almost said out loud: that she wondered if the dwarves were exceedingly short-lived. Iva silently laughed at her from behind Kerat’s back, having guessed at her thoughts.
He stared at Portia with not a hint of a smile.
“Never mind,” Portia said, her voice almost imperceptible.
“We live a long time. As long as humans.”
That being so, the dwarves had been there a long time indeed, judging by the generations of rulers immortalized by the statues. Portia’s mind struggled to comprehend the span of ages the silent carvings represented.
“Morgani’s likeness is at the end.” He waved to the dim distant end of the cavern.
“Are all the rulers named Morgani?”
He shot her a puzzled look. “No, of course not.”
“Well your land is named Morgani, and the ruler’s name is Morgani—”
“Our queen.”
“Your queen,” Portia said, “is named Morgani. I was just wondering if they all were named the same.”
“Our land takes the name of our ruler,” Kerat said, his tone like that of one explaining to a child.
Iva sucked in her breath. “Isn’t that confusing?”
“Not to us,” Kerat said.
Iva and Portia pondered that as they continued walking down the corridor. Portia wanted to stop and examine some statues more closely, but she didn’t feel the freedom of a guest to do so. The dwarves didn’t treat them exactly as prisoners, but Portia wasn’t sure they were allowed to explore all the same.
They turned off into a smaller passage before reaching the end of the large cavern. They walked in the narrow cave only briefly before it too opened up into another vast cavern, also with a second level of openings carved into the rock and joined together with ladders from level to level. Some sections of the cavern were three levels high. Dwarves of all ages walked through the openings while others sat on the narrow ledges before the dwellings working on crafts or simply watching the business of others. Portia scanned the crowd for guards but saw no others besides the ones walking with them.
