46. Blood of the Bersekeer
Chapter 46
Blood of the Bersekeer
18 th Day of the Blood Moon
Durakdur – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
Kira stepped out from the dark alley and onto one of the many walkways that overlooked the great waterfall of Durakdur. She moved through the crowd of dwarves and rested her hand on the parapet, allowing herself just a moment to admire the beauty as the droplets refracted the blue-green light of the Heraya’s Ward lanterns. Above, a whoosh sounded as a Wind Runner shot from one tunnel to the next. The Wind Runners Guild had sided with Kira and abandoned the Freehold cities after Hoffnar took power, but reports said Hoffnar had recruited Alamants in an effort to keep the Wind Runners operational. Many had already died in the resulting crashes, but some of the Alamants were slowly learning their way.
“I don’t like this.” Vikmar moved to stand beside Kira, pretending to look out over the city. She had recently appointed him as the new High Commander of her Queensguard in Mirlak’s place, and he had vehemently opposed the notion of Kira entering Durakdur whatsoever.
“I don’t require you to like it. I require you to keep me alive.”
“And you’re not making that easy.”
“If it were easy, anyone could do it.” Kira gave the dwarf a smile, receiving a blank stare in return. Vikmar had always been a serious dwarf with very little room for a sense of humour, but he was a fine warrior and over the years he had grown very close to Mirlak.
Mirlak had been more than the commander of Kira’s Queensguard. He had been her friend, and she missed him dearly. She supposed having Vikmar close meant Mirlak wasn’t entirely gone.
“May the fires of Hafaesir’s forge keep you warm, old friend. I may join you shortly,” she whispered. Kira spotted Erani and Ahktar stepping from an alley on the opposite side of the street. She met her sister’s gaze only for a moment, and then Erani moved on.
Kira inclined her head, and she and Vikmar followed Erani and Ahktar, staying thirty or so paces behind. She pulled her hood tighter, keeping her head down. Kira hated the idea of wearing a hood when trying to keep attention from herself. People only wore hoods when they wished to conceal their identities; it was much more practical to hide in plain sight. But the sight of her shaved head would draw more attention than any hood.
Ahead, Erani stopped by a staircase that led to a higher level, two statues framing the bottom step.
“Why has she stopped?” Vikmar whispered.
It only took a moment for Kira to understand why. A dwarf in crimson and gold robes stood atop a podium opposite the staircase, arms wide, preaching to a throng of dwarves gathered around him. “The time is now, brothers and sisters of Hafaesir. The Smith has forged our path in blood and steel. He calls us to be his hammer, to be his vengeance! Too long have we been forced to hide from the sun’s light. This mountain is our home, and so it will forever be, but so too are we destined for more. No longer will the dwarves of Lodhar stand idly by while the powers of this continent brandish their will as they please. Look to the dwarves of Kolmir, slaughtered by the Lorians upon their ascension. The dwarves of Mount Helmund, butchered in the War of Flowers. Our kin who settled in the Wolfpine Ridge, burned alive by the elves during the Blodvar for aiding the Jotnar. Our kind are always the casualties in the wars of other races. No longer. This time we will stake a claim ourselves, and we will show Epheria what it means to be dwarven!”
The crowd erupted in a chorus of cheers, and even many of those walking past stopped to add a voice.
“He’s convincing.” Kira would have liked nothing more than to climb up onto that podium and pull the dwarf’s intestines out through his mouth, but that might have caused a scene.
For some reason, hearing the preacher made everything so much worse. No longer could she imagine that those dwarves of Durakdur who followed Hoffnar did so because they were honourless traitors. They did so because Hoffnar was offering them something Kira herself might have been swayed by if she were a decade younger and a decade less wise.
“It’s best not to linger any longer than we have to.” Kira could tell that Vikmar had to actively stop himself from adding the words ‘my queen’. Kira nodded.
Vikmar followed her through the crowd as the preacher continued, the roar of the waterfall drowning him out once she got far enough away.
Kira led Vikmar along the walkway and down a set of staircases that led to the lower levels, Erani and Ahktar following close behind in the crowd. The lower levels of Durakdur were just as cramped as those closer to the centre and near the Heart. Much of the lower section was residential with a mix of taverns and shops, with tunnels leading deeper into the mountain. Quedahar they called it, and the dwarves who lived in this quarter of the city were often those who worked the mines, the refineries, and the forges that lay even deeper still. They were the backbone of the dwarven world, the cogs that kept everything turning. There was no greater call than that of the stone and all that lay within it.
“Not far,” Kira said, gesturing to an alley up ahead. “What do you think of what the preacher said?”
“I am yours, from this moment until my last moment. If there was only one certainty in this life, that would be it.”
“I do not question you. I want to know, what do you think?”
“I think any words that stir a fire in your belly are words worth thinking on. Our people have suffered in the wars of the elves, the Jotnar, the humans… That cannot be denied. And the idea of ensuring that, when a new world is formed from the ashes of this one, our voices will be heard? That is something that stirs a fire in my belly.” Vikmar paused, considering. “But another thing worth thinking on is the soul who speaks the words. Hoffnar speaks of unification, of honour and glory, and yet he is a traitor to our kind. Eight hundred years had passed since dwarves had gone to war with dwarves. And he shattered that peace. He slaughtered my brothers and sisters of the Queensguard, slaughtered Mirlak. He has consolidated his power with the blood of honourable dwarves. To me, that sounds like someone who wishes to be remembered. And I have found that there are two kinds of leaders – those who wish to be remembered, and those who refuse to be forgotten. He is the former. You are the latter.”
“That’s the most I’ve ever heard you speak.”
“I don’t speak unless I have something worth saying. There are enough people who do the opposite.”
Kira smiled at that, drawing her hood tighter and dropping her head as they passed a group of miners singing and drinking outside a tavern.
“Good evening,” one of the dwarves called out as Kira and Vikmar tried to pass. He was older than Kira by a few years, his beard thick and red and laced with gold, silver, and copper rings. There were few in the dwarven kingdoms with more experience fighting kerathlin than miners. “Drink with us, friends! The ale is cheap, and the night is long.”
“Another night maybe,” Vikmar said as Kira lowered her head beside him.
“Ahh, friend, come!”
“I am not your friend.” Vikmar’s voice was sharper this time, and he tried to push past, but the dwarf stepped into his path.
“Round here we speak to people with more respect.”
Kira moved to place a hand on Vikmar’s shoulder before the situation got out of hand, but something bumped into her shoulder and caught her off balance. She stumbled a step, her hood slipping back just a fraction.
Vikmar was across faster than Kira’s eyes could follow. He grabbed the throat of the dwarf who had bumped her and slammed him against the wall.
“It was an accident,” the dwarf stammered.
The other dwarf, who Vikmar had been speaking to, narrowed his eyes and looked at Kira. “My queen?”
Vikmar spun and at the same time slipped a small, polished axe from a belt beneath his cloak, which he brandished at the dwarf who had spoken. “Whoever you think you saw here this night, you are mistaken. I expect you to choose your next words very, very carefully.”
The dwarf looked past Vikmar, staring instead at Kira. “My queen, I sought council with you once. When the mine shafts at the Ungbad outpost needed repairs. You granted my request in the same time it took for me to take a breath. I’d not forget your face, even at a glance.”
“You would want to learn to forget it. Or I will have to carve it from your memory.” Vikmar moved a step closer. As he did, Erani and Ahktar caught up, drawing their axes.
“Watch them.” Erani pointed an axe at the other miners, Ahktar stepping between them and Kira. “What is happening?”
“Stop.” Kira pulled back her hood, eliciting gasps. “Let him be, Vikmar.”
Vikmar gave an acknowledging grunt but didn’t lower his axe.
“My queen, your hair…” The red-haired dwarf came a step closer to Kira, pain in his eyes and shock in his voice. Vikmar pressed a palm to his chest. “Your rings… King Hoffnar did this to you?”
Kira nodded slowly. “He did.”
“Hafaesir crush him.” The dwarf rested his hand on Vikmar’s arm, shaking his head. “That is not necessary, my friend.”
“I am still not your friend, but if you press me, I will be the one who prays to Hafaesir when you are returned to the stone.”
“Easy. We are the queen’s.” The dwarf dropped to a knee. “We never believed a single word, my queen. Never.”
The other dwarves followed suit.
“Get on your feet,” Erani hissed, dragging the red-haired dwarf upright by his armpit. She turned to Kira. “And you, pull your hood up.”
“The people of Quedahar belong to Queen Kira of Durakdur,” one of the other dwarves said. “You will not find traitors here.”
“You will find traitors everywhere,” Erani snapped. “Kira, we need to keep moving. This was risky enough before you started pulling down your hood.”
“They need to see I am alive.”
“No,” she corrected. “They need you to be alive. Which you will not be if we stay here. You are my queen, but I need you to start listening to me.”
“You cannot fight for something you think is gone.” She grasped her sister’s arm. “I will listen to you, but I am right in this. Trust goes both ways.”
Erani bit at her cheeks but nodded.
“My queen.” The red-haired dwarf pressed his hand over his heart. “May your fires never be extinguished and your blade never dull. We will fight for you. Just say the word. Tell us where to go, and we will be there. By Hafaesir’s hammer, I swear it.”
“For now, do nothing,” Kira answered. “Wait. I will not be idle. And when the time comes to rip the usurper’s heart from his chest, I will have need of your steel.”
“You will have it, from now until we are returned to the stone.”
As Kira and the others pressed on, Erani insisted on doubling back on themselves multiple times and forging false paths, twisting and turning to the point that Kira almost lost all sense of where she was.
“It’s your fault,” her sister said as they turned a corner. “That was stupid. I don’t care what you say.”
“Watch your words.” Vikmar glared at Erani, his stare cold and hard. “You speak to your queen.”
“I speak to my sister, whose naked arse I helped wash as a babe. I will speak to her how I please.”
Vikmar made to argue, but Kira waved him away. There was no sense in it. Erani was as stubborn as a rock at the best of times. There was truth in her words – which would only make her more stubborn – but Kira also believed in what she said. Her people needed to know she lived.
“It’s here,” Kira said after what had felt like an eternity of wandering alley after alley. She stopped in front of a metal door that looked no different to the other six hundred or so metal doors they had already walked past. But she knew it. She had been there several times across her years as queen. Always alone. And even before then, she had seen it in the memories of the past rulers. This would be the first time in hundreds of years that any soul except for the ruler of Durakdur would set eyes on what this house contained.
Vikmar and Ahktar took up positions on either side of the door while Kira produced the key from her pocket and turned it in the lock.
“Light?” She held out a hand to Vikmar.
The dwarf reached into his pack and produced a small brass lantern with a hand loop. He pulled the cover from the circular opening, blue-green light spraying outward from the handful of Heraya’s Ward within.
Once the others had stepped over the threshold, Kira locked the door behind them and led them through the antechamber and into the main room.
The home was decorated with the finest of furniture: hand-carved stone tables with rubies set around the rim, reliefs worked into a ceiling twice as tall as it needed to be, and busts on pedestals that displayed the depictions of kings and queens of old. On the eastern wall there was even a clock crafted entirely from arisenim – a crimson gemstone, deeper in colour than ruby, that could be mined in deposits as large as twenty feet wide. That clock would have been worth twenty times its weight in gold. And yet, for all the opulence, thick layers of dust had gathered on every surface.
“This place is like a tomb. Are you sure you’re not lost, sister?”
“I had the key, Erani.”
“Hmmm…” Erani ran her finger over the top of a stone counter, drawing a line through the dust. “Then perhaps you’ve simply lost your mind? Because there’s nothing I see in here except an abandoned home of an old king.”
“That’s the point.” Kira stepped past her sister and over to the back wall. She pulled a knife from her belt and ran the blade over her left forearm, drawing a thin stream of blood. She brushed her right hand through the blood and then placed it onto the stone.
“Are you sure you’ve not lost your mind?”
“Patience, Erani. Something you’ve always lacked.”
A moment passed, then a whoosh sounded and dark lines formed in the stone, air rushing out around them. The creak of cogs and wheels echoed in the wall, and the door pulled back and receded into the wall.
“The blood of the ruler leads the way,” Kira said, repeating a passage spoken to her when she first took the Rites of Leadership after King Turak had returned to the stone and passed into Hafaesir’s forge.
“Well, that’s certainly one way of hiding something.” Erani stepped past Kira into the corridor beyond, staring at the doorway from the other side – likely trying to decipher its mechanisms, as she had a habit of doing. When they were younger, Erani was forever in trouble for dismantling and reassembling anything she could get her hands on.
“Come, sister. There is much more to see.”
Erani traced her fingers over the seam in the wall into which the door had receded, trying to see within. “Are they theruvan crystals? They couldn’t be, could they? How else could they have recognised your blood?” It had not really been a question. At least not one for which Erani awaited the answer. She had a tendency to ask questions of herself out loud. “I’ve never seen one with my own eyes. The books say they were all destroyed in the great wars. All except the three in the mountains of Marin.”
“Erani.”
“What?” Erani was feeling the grooves in the stone with her fingers.
“Leave the door.” Kira turned towards the long corridor, pulling the light of the lantern with her. The ray of blue-green carved through the near-complete darkness, illuminating a second door in the solid wall at the far end of the chamber.
Once more, Kira placed her bloody hand on the stone, and the door revealed itself with a rush of air.
“More theruvan crystals?” Erani stepped up beside Kira with a face that spoke more anger than awe. “Kira, these… In the name of Hafaesir and all the gods.”
As the door pulled back and receded into the wall, golden light spilled from the chamber, accompanied by a low hum.
The chamber was circular in shape and over a hundred feet across, the walls rising ten times Kira’s height. An enormous column of hewn stone occupied the room’s centre, stretching from floor to ceiling. Rows and rows of glass vials lined the column, each filled with a pearlescent black liquid veined with glowing gold. Plants with thick black leaves grew from the chamber’s walls, completely covering the rock. Glowing veins of gold ran through the leaves.
Two long desks stood on either side of the column stacked with various apparatus for grinding, mixing, and extracting the blood of the plants.
“With my own eyes.” Vikmar walked behind Kira as they entered the chamber. “I did not doubt you, my queen, but never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined this.”
Vikmar stared up towards the ceiling, turning to look around.
“This has been here all this time?” Erani stood by the door, her jaw slackened.
“Ever since the accords after the Great Wars. King Baldrik had it built in secret and then killed each and every dwarf who had laid eyes on its construction with his own hand. He knew it was folly to destroy our greatest weapon, a weapon the dwarven people might one day need. The elves and humans have their magic and their dragons. The Uraks feast on Efialtír’s strength. Hafaesir forged the blood of the bersekeers into our people so that we may have the strength to wield his hammer.” Kira walked towards the column and pulled a vial from its place, holding it up in the air. The pearlescent black liquid swished and swirled within, the veins of gold shimmering. “And in the eight hundred years since the accords were struck, every ruler of Durakdur has stayed faithful to Baldrik’s wishes. The Rockblood has been harvested but never wielded. Waiting patiently until a time when it is our people’s only hope, when the Kingdom of Durakdur is so threatened that Hafaesir will offer his hammer once more.”
Erani moved so she stood beside Kira. She reached for the vial, and Kira relinquished it.
“Once this is done, it cannot be taken back.” Erani held the vial in the air, examining the shimmering light.
“It is not the blade’s fault for the blood it spills, but the hands holding it.” Vikmar knelt, resting both hands on his knee. “The bersekeer blood runs in my veins, my queen. I volunteer to be the first.”
“You’ve heard the stories, Vikmar?” Erani raised an eyebrow, holding the vial out in front of her.
“I have.”
“And yet you are so quick to volunteer yourself? You must know that even among those with bersekeer blood, many who drink the Rockblood are dead within the hour. And from the histories I’ve read, the death is not a quiet one. Bones twist and snap, organs turn to rock within their bodies, blood runs hot as molten steel.”
“Less than half.” Kira let out a long, laboured sigh. “Less than half survive, even with bersekeer blood. Without, it is lethal as Nightfire. None survive.”
“Half,” Vikmar repeated. “If we do not stop Hoffnar, how many of our people will die in his name as he launches a crusade on the continent? More than half, I reckon. Ours will be the first. He’ll send the axes of Durakdur in the van. Besides, we all die eventually.”
Kira grasped Vikmar’s forearm and pulled him to his feet. “With any luck, the Rockblood can remain dormant still. But if it is needed, you will not be the first. I will.”