Harbingers: A Novel of Lasniniar

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Down the Rabbit Hole

Paige staggered as the ground lurched beneath her feet. She blinked. She was standing at the foot of the Jagged Mountains, only a short walk from the entrance to Dwarvenhome.

“Galrin’s gonads!” she gasped. Only a few moments earlier, she had been leagues away in Belierumar.

Claire lowered her hand from Paige’s shoulder with a frown. “Who is Galrin? And why do you bring up the subject of his genitalia?”

“Who’s Galrin?” Paige shook her head in disbelief. “Well, he’s only the First Father of the dwarves. As for the other part...” She flushed. “Well, it’s just an expression.”

“I see.” Claire turned her head to inspect the mountain range towering overhead in the morning light. “This is the right place? It looks like what I saw in your memory, but one mountain looks much the same as another.”

Paige snorted. “To anyone other than a dwarf, maybe. This is the place. How did you do that, anyway? I didn’t really think it was going to work.”

After deciding to accept Claire’s offer for help against the demons—for the time being, at least—Paige had thought to set out for Dwarvenhome on foot, but Claire had offered a less conventional method to save time.

“Translocate us, you mean?” Claire asked. Paige nodded. Claire shrugged. “It is a gift of my kind.”

“A handy one at that, even if it does give me the collywobbles.” Paige shuddered.

“I can will myself wherever I want to go, but it becomes more difficult with a passenger.”

“The Unborn can do it too, but I don’t think it works the same way,” Paige said. She had witnessed it in her travels, freeing the Unborn spirits that had been trapped for selfish purposes. “I think they use the Void when they do it.” She gave the demon woman a speculative look. “What else can you do?

Claire met her gaze. “I can move objects without touching them. But it requires a certain amount of concentration.”

“Hm. Well no tricks once we’re inside Dwarvenhome,” Paige said with a stern look. “Dwarves are a practical lot. We don’t have much in the way of magic of our own, so we tend to be suspicious about what we can’t understand.”

Claire gave a solemn nod. “I will behave accordingly.”

Paige grunted. “Good.”

She led the way to the entrance of the underground city. A pair of bearded dwarf sentries eyed her and her ‘human’ companion as they approached.

“Paige?” one of them said as he recognized her. There was a trace of puzzlement in his voice, as if something about her appearance disturbed him.

“Yes, and this is my friend, Claire,” Paige said with a nod.

“Humans do not come often to our city,” the sentry said in a hesitant voice. “You will vouch for her?”

“I will.” Paige didn’t correct his assumption that Claire was human and hoped she wasn’t making a mistake. “Have you seen Barlo recently?”

The sentry started, his brow furrowing. “Recently? Of course not. Are you feeling all right?”

“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” Paige said, her eyes narrowing in confusion over the strangeness of his reaction. “I hope the rest of your shift is uneventful.” She hurried past the sentries with Claire following behind her.

“What was all that about?” she muttered to herself.

“Are you speaking to me?” Claire asked. “If you are, I’m afraid I don’t understand the language you are using.”

Paige shook her head. She had lapsed into Dwarvish the moment the sentry had spoken to her.

“Something strange happened back there,” she said in Common, keeping her voice low as other dwarves walked past them through the wide, high-ceilinged halls that formed the streets of Dwarvenhome beneath the Jagged Mountains. Several dwarves gaped at Claire as they passed.

“You said something that disturbed the sentries,” Claire said. “I assumed it had something to do with allowing me to pass.”

Paige kept walking. “I asked whether they had seen Barlo recently.”

“The friend we have come here to find,” the demon woman clarified.

“Yes. I didn’t really expect to find him here, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to check before heading to Melaquenya. He visits here sometimes.”

“The sentries had not seen him,” Claire said in her matter-of-fact voice.

“No,” Paige said. “And they seemed... I don’t know. They were disturbed that I had asked.”

“So where are we going?”

“We’ll go talk to Fidar,” Paige said. “If he hasn’t seen or heard from Barlo, we’ll try Melaquenya.”

She looked up and saw a flicker of puzzlement on Claire’s features.

“Fidar is Barlo’s youngest son,” Paige explained. She made certain no one else was in earshot before continuing. “Or at least he was, in Barlo’s first life. Fidar is Barlo’s father in Barlo’s current incarnation.”

Claire frowned. “It seems like a confusing arrangement.”

Paige rolled her eyes. “You should hear what it’s like with some of the elves who have been around the block a few times... Anyway, please don’t repeat what I just told you about Barlo and Fidar. Barlo is the only dwarf to ever be reborn. None of the other dwarves know about it. They just think he’s the original Barlo’s grandson and namesake.”

“I see.” Claire paused for a moment before continuing. “Dwarves are much more complicated creatures than they appear on the surface.”

“Just don’t mention it, all right?” Paige raised her hand to knock on Fidar’s front door.

A few moments later, it opened, revealing a dwarf with friendly, blue eyes and a smile under his dark beard.

“Paige?” His smile froze as he spotted her on his doorstep. His voice held the same puzzled note she had heard from the sentry. He stepped aside. “Please, come in.”

Paige walked past him into the living room. Claire followed in her wake.

“Tralan is off at the market,” Fidar said. “She’ll probably be gone for some time.” He flashed a rueful smile. “Would you like some ale?”

“Yes, please,” Paige said. “Oh, and this is my friend, Claire.” She switched to Common. “Claire, this is Fidar.”

“Hello, Claire,” Fidar said in the same language before hustling toward the kitchen. “Please, sit down, both of you.”

He returned a few moments later with three foaming tankards. Once everyone had their drinks, he settled himself in a worn armchair that stood beside the couch Paige and Claire were perched on.

“What brings you to Dwarvenhome?” he asked Paige after they had all taken a sip. Claire’s bronze face was expressionless as she swallowed her ale.

“I’m looking for Barlo,” Paige said. “Have you seen or heard from him recently?”

Fidar nearly spat out his drink. His eyes watered as he forced the ale down his throat. “What?” he asked in a choked voice.

Paige watched him carefully. “Barlo. You know, your son? Have you seen him?”

“My son?” Fidar gave a bewildered shake of his head. “But Tralan and I have no children. I mean, we’ve talked about it, and we agreed that if we ever had a boy, we would name him after my father, but how could you possibly know that?”

A strange feeling fell over Paige as he spoke. Why did she think Fidar had a son named Barlo?

“I—I don’t know,” she said.

“It’s very odd,” Fidar said. “After all, you never even met my father. He died long before you came to live in Dwarvenhome. Did Tralan tell you?”

“What? No. Well, maybe...” Paige closed her eyes for a moment. “She must have. It’s the only thing that makes sense. But why do I feel like Barlo was there when I escaped from Lord Waterbrook with the rest of the dwarven slaves?” Her eyes flew open as a vague memory of a familiar dwarf with a brown beard coming to her rescue surfaced in her mind.

Fidar shrugged. “Iarion was the one who rescued you. He and Barlo had always been close. He must have told you stories about him. Maybe you got them mixed up with your own memories? Growing up in slavery couldn’t have been easy on you, and your escape would have been a traumatic experience.”

Claire remained silent, but her green gaze flickered back and forth between Paige and Fidar as they spoke. She left the rest of her ale untouched.

“I suppose that makes sense...” Paige shook herself. “But I don’t know how I could have gotten everything so confused. I’ve been feeling strange ever since we arrived here.”

“Where did you come from?” Fidar asked.

“Belierumar,” Paige said, her mind still struggling to make everything fit into place.

Of course, Barlo was dead. What had she been thinking? And yet, something inside her rebelled at the idea...

“You’ve come a long way. Perhaps you’ll feel better if you lie down for a bit.” Fidar stood. “You can both rest in the guest bedroom, if you don’t mind sharing.”

“Right,” Paige said in a numb voice. “Maybe that will help. It can’t hurt, at any rate.”

Neither she nor Claire dispelled the idea that they had just arrived from a long journey. They both followed Fidar to the spare room. Paige did a double take when Fidar opened the door.

The inside held a treasure trove of items she recognized: Galrin’s ax hanging on the wall, a pair of ogre tusks on a leather thong, a dust-covered Bristle Brawl trophy for Best Beard, and a familiar clan tartan among them.

She walked toward the bedside table and picked up the tusks. “Barlo used these to disguise himself as an ogre,” she said in a wondering voice.

“Iarion would have told you that story, I’m sure,” Fidar said with a wistful expression.

“What are all your father’s trophies doing in this room?” Paige asked in a wondering voice.

Fidar shrugged, a slight frown marring his features. “We had to store them somewhere... Now why don’t you get some rest. I’ll wake you in a few hours for some lunch.”

“All right,” Paige said. Her gaze still lingered on the tusks even after she set them back down.

Fidar left the room and closed the door behind him.

Claire sought Paige’s gaze and held it. “Something is not right here.” They were the first words she had spoken in some time.

“What do you mean?” Paige asked.

“We come here to find your friend Barlo, who you tell me has secretly been reborn as Fidar’s son, but now it is as if he had never been reborn at all.”

“Did I really say that?” Paige’s lips twitched in a bemused smile. “I must really need that nap.”

Claire placed a hand on her shoulder. “What is wrong with you? Why do you not remember Barlo all of a sudden?”

Paige shrugged her hand aside. “Fidar is right. I just got confused.”

“You are confused now. You did not believe your friend to be dead until Fidar said as much.” Claire raised her head and looked around the room. “You say your kind do not practice magic often, but this place reeks of it.”

“So you can sense magic too?” Paige asked in a dry voice. “You didn’t mention that special skill earlier.”

“It is an instinct demons have,” Claire said as she began to walk around the bed.

“If we’ve all been ensorcelled to forget about Barlo, as you seem to be suggesting, then why aren’t you affected?” Paige asked as she crossed her arms. “Is that a demon thing too?”

“Yes.” Claire placed a hand on the bed. “We are immune to most kinds of magic. But what I sense in this room is not the same as what happened between you and Fidar. That was like some kind of virus that passes from one person to the next.” She shook her head. “Something else happened in this room. Someone was here.”

“Who?”

Claire closed her eyes. “Not a dwarf. Who else would visit this place?”

Paige bit her lip as she considered for several moments. “Maybe Iarion. He was Barlo’s closest friend. He’s like an uncle to Barlo’s children. They don’t get many outsiders here.”

Claire gave her a piercing look. “What kind of creature is this Iarion?”

“An elf,” Paige said.

“If it was Iarion, he was not alone. Another creature was with him.”

“Creature?”

“A non-human,” Claire said. “Some kind of animal.”

“There is a wildcat who is friends with Iarion,” Paige said, speaking slowly as her thoughts churned. “Golhura. But if Iarion was here, he wouldn’t have been the source of any magic you’re sensing. He might be a Light Elf, but he barely has a connection with the Quenya as it is.”

Claire’s green eyes unfocused. “Maybe he was looking for Barlo as well.”

Paige rolled her eyes. “I’m sure Fidar would have told Iarion the same thing he just told us. Still...”

Paige mulled over the idea that Iarion had been in Dwarvenhome recently. It would be easy enough to confirm. And if Claire was right, Iarion would be a good person to tell about the looming threat of Focalor and his demon army. The elf would have a much easier time of getting in to see Iadrawyn and Valanandir and convincing them there was a problem...

“Can you follow Iarion’s... scent?” Paige asked, for lack of a better term as she wrinkled her nose.

“Yes,” Claire said. “Shall we leave now?”

“That depends,” Paige said. If there were other demons roaming the countryside, it wouldn’t hurt to take some precautions. “Would a blade of pure starsilver harm a demon?”

Claire shuddered. “Yes.”

“Then I think we’d better make a stop in the forge district first.”