The Howling Delve - Jaleigh Johnson [20]
"Why do you dig?" Kail looked at the dwarf, and a glint of green winking from a gap in his beard drew Kail's eyes downward. "What is that?" he asked.
Garavin lifted the object-a pendant-by its chain. Kail recognized the components first: smooth carnelian worked into the shape of a mountain; nestled within it, a faceted emerald shone like a doorway.
"Dugmaren Brightmantle is why I dig," Garavin said. He pointed to the swaying pendant. "Dumathoin guides the shovel."
"Dumathoin." Kail touched the seam, the joining of emerald to mountain, and felt the scratch of electricity run through his fingers.
"I serve the gleam in the eye and the keeper of secrets," Garavin continued, "because in addition to having an awful curiosity, I've dug far enough into the earth to uncover things that should-and shouldn't-be made known to greater Toril. Dumathoin helps me with the sorting out of which is which."
"You hunt knowledge," Kail said, remembering what Garavin had told him in the forest.
"Yes-and secrets. I can find them, and I can keep them. Ye should remember that, if ever ye're needing someone to talk to." He puffed unconcernedly on his pipe as Kali looked away. "If ye do stay, Laerin could teach ye things-they all could, I'm knowing that. But first ye'd learn to dig. That rule never changes."
The sound of raucous laughter at some unheard jest drifted out to them from the camp.
"They're gods, then," Kali said, listening to the forest stir with nighttime sounds. "Dugmaren and Dumathoin."
"Of the dwarf folk," Garavin nodded. "Most of my band is of Dugmaren's mind. They are discoverers-explorers. Dwarf or human, they fit nowhere else, so Dugmaren takes them all."
"Why should a dwarf care what happens to me?" Kali said without thinking, and felt heat rush up his neck. He plunged on. "I don't want to be an explorer. I've got nothing to offer Dugmaren."
"Ye have two hands, and an active mind, as I've already noted," Garavin said. "Even if Dugmaren wasn't interested, I'd still take ye."
Kali refused to meet the dwarfs eyes. "Why?"
"Because at one time or another, we all get trapped in the place ye are now." Garavin leaned forward, his grave face filling Kail's vision. "Do ye know what we do about it?"
Kali started to shake his head, but stopped when he saw
Garavin's eyes twinkling with humor. He caught on and said, in perfect unison with the dwatf, "We dig ourselves out." Kali snorted-not quite a laugh, but something lighter than what had been in his mind. His voice only shook slightly when he said, "I'm going to need a large shovel."
"There ye go." Garavin chuckled, jostling the pipe and sending ashes flying. "Ye'll be fine, Kail."
He slept in the map room the fitst night. That's what. Garavin called the curtained off loft at the rear of the hut. The tiny room was jam-packed with maps, drawings, and rolls of parchment filled to the edges with scrawled notes. In one corner, a cot and blankets were wedged under the eaves, almost as an afterthought.
Kail lay on his back, his nose inches from a ceiling beam, wide awake. For lack of anything to do, he circled the room with his eyes again and again-past Garavin's pipe, left lying on a table next to a comfortable-looking chait, then to the oval cut-out window, with Sehine's pale glow filtering through, then back to the beam.
By the fouf teenth pass, he was up and at the window, watching the forest. His sword lay on a bench beneath the window, nearly translucent in the moon's glow. The other dirt-encrusted package and his borrowed sword sat in shadow as if in awe of the bright sword.
If anything should happen to me, Kail…
That had been his father's commandment. If anything happened, what was between the graves belonged to Kali. The only bit of magic