Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [78]
When it came, it was, by his reckoning, a turn of the glass after the turn of night. He felt increasing pressure in his head, a desire to close his eyes, lie down, sleep. He ignored that. Refusing the invitation to sleep was a basic skill all in the Thieves’ Guild learned early.
Though he listened for the chink of pick on stone, he did not expect to hear it. With pick and shovel, even rockfolk could not have delved from the inn to Gird’s Hall so quickly: they would use rock-magic, he was sure. The Guild dwarf had told him of it, but could not or would not describe what it was like. “The rock parts,” was all he would say.
A faint vibration came through his boot soles. Arvid took the bread from the bowl and poured in water. It stilled, then the surface shivered again, showing concentric rings. A faint groan, and the rings steepened.
No sound from the knights outside the door: they might have fallen asleep naturally or yielded to the rockfolks’ enchantment. Arvid slid a little buckler onto his left hand, checked once more that he could reach all his small blades, then drew sword and dagger. The groan again, then a noise like a board breaking, and a gap opened in the stone an armspan from the jewel he had placed. Two heads rose through it, one bearded, one not, one with bright eyes scanning the room, the other’s eyes closed, skin sickly pale.
“Rockbrethren,” Arvid said in their tongue. “Did I not say I had so hoped not to see you this night? It would be better to depart now, and not return.”
“Sertig’s curse on you!” the dwarf said. He glanced at the single sapphire and two gold coins. “You took it yourself and now you would mock us?”
“I never touched it since I gave it to Paksenarrion,” Arvid said. “It is neither mine nor yours. Give up this quest, for your own health, before you kill your kteknik.”
“He is not dead, merely drunk,” the dwarf said with a shrug. He had risen, finger by finger, from the crack.
“Gnomes do not drink themselves sick by their own will,” Arvid said.
“You knew we were coming,” the dwarf said. “Why did you not stand here and run us through before we could move?”
“I saw no benefit in it,” Arvid said. “So it was not my intent to kill you, although—if you sling that ax you’re trying to raise without my noticing—I may be forced to action.”
The dwarf’s shoulders drooped. “What would you have us do?”
“Go back as you came and heal the rock you wounded,” Arvid said. In their language, that sounded more powerful than in Common. “It is your charge as rockbrethren, is it not, to care for the rock as the elves care for the taig?”
“A human lectures a dwarf on his duty!” The dwarf laughed harshly, but sweat had broken out on his forehead, glittering in the lamplight. His eyes shifted about. “Besides—rock once broken like this will never be dross.”
“It was ill done, then, to injure healthy rock, and for the sake of so little. Sertig’s curse will not fall on me.”
The dwarf seemed almost to shrink, but then he burst out of the crack, letting the gnome fall back into the crevice. “You at least must die, having seen our rock-magic.” He had his ax in hand now and a blade longer than Arvid’s dagger in the other hand.
“This is foolish,” Arvid said, moving out of reach. “You and the kteknik could escape. Why attack me?”
“Vengeance,” the dwarf said. “You betrayed us; you ruined our plan; you are my enemy and the enemy of all rockfolk, for what you have seen.” He waved the ax in a complex design and spoke words Arvid did not know. In an instant, with a shriek and showers of grit, stone flowed across what had been the doorway. Even if the knights outside awoke, they could not help him now.
A moment’s panic almost cost him his life, as the dwarf charged. Arvid shifted aside just in time, taking a slice from the dwarf’s knife on the outside of his left arm. His body took over, years of training producing parries and attacks, over and over, as the dwarf, rock-strong and angry, came at him without pause.