Thud! - Terry Pratchett [143]
“Is there something unusual about their leader?” he said in a preoccupied voice, still staring into the new darkness.
“Yes, sire! He’s all…sparkly!”
“Ah. Good,” said the king. “He has his parley. Bring him down here.”
“Could that be a troll who knows some very powerful dwarfs?” said Vimes.
The Low King met his eyes for a moment. “Yes, I imagine it is,” he said. Then he raised his voice. “Someone fetch me a torch! Commander Vimes, could you just…look at this, please?”
In the depths of the revealed cave, something shone.
On this day in 1802, the painter Methodia Rascal dropped the glittering thing in the deepest well he knew. No one would ever hear it down there.The Chicken chased him home.
It would be a lot simpler, Vimes thought, if this was a story. A sword is pulled out of a stone, or a magic ring is flung into the depths of the sea, and with general rejoicing, the world turns.
But this was real life. The world didn’t turn, it just went into a spin. It was Koom Valley Day, and there wasn’t a battle going on in Koom Valley. But what was going on here wasn’t peace, either. What was going on…well, what was going on was committees. It was negotiation. Actually, as far as he could tell, it hadn’t even got as far as negotiation yet.
It hadn’t got past talks about meetings about delegations. On the other hand, no one had died, except maybe of boredom.
There was a lot of history to be unpicked, and, for those who weren’t actually engaged in that delicate activity, there was Koom Valley to tame. Two cultural heroes were down there in the cavern, and all it needed was one good storm and a few misplaced blockages for a white flood laden with grinding boulders to wipe the whole place away. It hadn’t happened yet, but sooner or later the dynamic geography would get around to it. Koom Valley couldn’t be left to its own devices, not anymore.
Everywhere you looked, there were teams of trolls and dwarfs surveying, diverting, damming, and drilling. They’d been engaged in this for two days. It would take them forever, because every winter changed the game. Koom Valley was forcing cooperation on them. Dam Koom Valley…
Vimes thought that was a bit too pat, but nature can be like that. Sometimes you got sunsets so pink that they had no style at all.
One thing that had happened fast was the tunnel. Dwarfs had cut down quickly through the soft limestone. You could stroll down into the cavern now, although, In fact, you’d have to queue, because of the long line of trolls and dwarfs.
Those in the line going down eyed one another with uncertainty at best. Those in the line coming up sometimes looked angry, or were close to tears, or just walked along looking at the ground. Once they got past the exit, they tended to form into quiet groups.
Sam, with Young Sam in his arms, didn’t have to queue. News had got around. He went straight in, past the trolls and dwarfs who were painstakingly reassembling the broken stalagmites (it was news to Vimes that you could do that, but apparently if you came back in five hundred years they’d be as good as new) and into what had come to be called the Kings’ Cave.
And there they were. You couldn’t argue with it. There was the dwarf king, slumped forward across the board, glazed by the eternal drip, his beard now rock and at one with the stone, but the diamond troll king had remained upright in death, his skin gone cloudy, and you could still see the game in front of him. It was his move; a healthy little stalagmite hung from his outstretched hand.
They’d broken off small stalagmites to make the pieces, which time had now glued into immobility. The scratched lines on the stone were more or less invisible, but Thud players from both races had already pored over it and a sketch of the Dead Kings’ Game had already appeared in the Times. The troll king was playing the dwarf side. Apparently, it could go either way.
People were saying that when this was all over, they’d seal the cave. Too many people