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 Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 7:34 pm
>> the kingdom under the ground
Kanariel hovered at the edge of the field, her back to the solid rock wall, pipe clamped firmly between her teeth. Around her, the sides of the cave arched upwards and met high above her, except for a wide gap in the center, a skylight-hole. Vines and roots slid over the edges of the skylight-hole from the forest above, and sunlight poured down to be caught and redistributed by a complex system of mirrors and gears. The soft hum of the ancient suncatching machinery was constant in the fields.
And thus was dwarfkind fed.
Kanariel kept herself on the side, mostly out of notice. The farmers would have it out with her if they spotted her smoking so close to the precious crops, but at the moment she didn't care. She would be careful - always was careful - and the massive field-cave was one of her favorite sights after a long interval's work. A perfect marriage of dwarf cavern (frequently stuffy, nearly always caked with the remains of centuries of dwarven life) and the surface world (far too bright, far too empty and open).
So soothing, after the warrens filled with ash, the stink of her own sweat, and the roar and bright flame of the dragons she hunted.
The dwarf took a deep breath and held the smoke in until she was near to bursting, then exhaled in a long plume. "Hmmm."
This was exactly how she preferred the surface world to be - just at one remove, but near enough that she could enjoy it. Her angle gave her a view of the sky, the forest above kept clear in a wide arc around the skylight-hole by virtue of arrangement with whoever owned the surface. It was tacitly understood that anything below a few feet or so belonged to the dwarves, and anyone who said otherwise was liable to find their house suddenly sinking those few feet into the earth. It usually worked quite well.
She took another deep breath.
A shout made her pause in mid-exhale; she swallowed the smoke with a cough and clapped her hand over the bowl of her pipe. Were they yelling at her?
No. There was something above, something stuck in the net that stretched across the skylight-hole to stop animals from flying or falling in. It was white, and large, and thrashing about wildly. A deer? The farming dwarves had stopped their work and were staring up at it; a moment later, one broke away from the group, heading for a side tunnel.
Kanariel quickly put out the embers in her pipe and tucked it away in her bag before moving to the nearest path. She walked briskly to the group of dwarves, ignoring the wheat that grew on either side of the path, focusing her attention on the creature stuck in the net. The foreman nodded at her gravely as she approached.
"What is it?" She shaded her eyes with one hand and peered up; bits of dust flashed in the sunlight. They were directly below whatever-it-was now.
"Some kind of bird," the foreman said, after a moment. Kanariel didn't recognize it; most dwarves knew little of birds and other sky-dwellers, since such creatures lived in a realm so completely separate from the tunnels and caves of their home.
"Eagle?" another dwarf guessed, warily.
"What do we do?" It was thrashing quite hard, and its movements seemed to Kanariel to be related to the frantic panic-throes of cornered, wounded dragons. Nearing exhaustion. Trapped.
Doomed.
"I sent Agi to go fetch the darkwalker. She'll see to it."
Kanariel bit her lip. The thrashing was getting more and more desperate. She slipped off her pack and crouched to rummage through it. There was her blowpipe, and there her darts...
"What are you doing?"
She stood up and slipped a dart into the pipe. "Move aside. If I miss, I don't want this sticking you." It was a tricky shot, extreme vertical, but she'd done worse - and there were no scales to pierce on this target. "It's sleep poison. If it doesn't hurt itself, if it hasn't already, we might not need to kill it." She vividly remembered the deer that had shattered its leg in the fall; the darkwalker had killed it and brought it down with her arts. It had been delicious, but depressing. It hadn't deserved to die; it hadn't been hunted, just unwary.
Unfortunate.
The other dwarves scattered quickly. Kanariel aimed her shot, took a deep breath, and blew. The amplifier stone in the blowpipe's stock changed her breath into a sharp gust, and the dart flew upwards with a swift whipping sound. For a moment she was sure she had missed, but one wing flailed just so-
There was a squeal, one last frantic flail, and then a slow droop into silence, stillness.
Kanariel lowered the blowpipe with a sigh of relief. "There. It will sleep for a time. Let the darkwalker take its measure. At least it will not suffer in the meantime."
The other dwarves nodded. After a moment, the foreman dispersed the other farmers back to their duties, then came to stand by Kanariel. "Nicely done, dragonslayer."
"It ate no one. It didn't need to hurt," she said, simply, and settled herself on the ground to wait for the darkwalker.
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Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 7:36 pm
>> rescue in the darkness
The darkwalker was named Izrel, small even by dwarf standards, old and collapsed in on herself like a tunnel whose spars were rotten. But she moved firm like the stone, and her eyes were bright like jewels in a cave wall - at least according to the dwarven bards, who were ever so eager to sing her praises, hoping for attention and favor. Kanariel jumped to her feet as Izrel came near.
"Good evening, Izrel."
The darkwalker nodded, then tilted her head up to peer at the silent white shape in the net above. Darkness was falling, and a few stars blinked in the sky beyond the net.
Izrel looked for a long time, long enough that even Kanariel coughed quietly. "What do you see, darkwalker?"
Izrel did not move. "I see a mystery," she said, after another long moment of silence.
"A... a mystery?"
"Indeed. The shape we see is not the only shape." Izrel clasped her wizened hands around her staff. "We dare not kill it."
"I was hoping to avoid that," Kanariel said, quietly.
"I know. I see your dart and your sleep on it." The darkwalker planted her staff in the ground with a surprisingly sharp movement, then raised her hands. "I will bring it down."
Kanariel took a respectful step back. Izrel chanted something low under her breath; a soft darkness began to form underneath the net, growing thicker and thicker until it was entirely opaque, a twist and writhe of shadows. The Deepdark, the blackness from the heart of the world that only darkwalkers could seek and command, the thing that lurked in the ends of tunnels and bottomless pits that no light could illuminate.
The net snapped, and the white shape dropped into the embrace of the Deepdark. The shadow moved downwards until it rested in front of Izrel, with not a trace of its burden visible. Then it dissipated, and the white bird slid onto the ground. It was massive, a bit taller than Izrel with its long neck, easily the largest avian Kanariel had seen in her limited experience.
Izrel let out a long, slow breath. "It bears the skin of a swan. That is what they call this sort of bird, Above."
"A swan." Kanariel tried the word on for size, then shrugged. "And now?" Her dart still shone silver where it had caught in one wing; she reached down and plucked it free, wrapping the tip in cloth before putting it back in her bag to be refilled and reused later.
"And now we return. We will see what skin it really wears. Bring it, Kanariel Dragonsbane. Continue to show it kindness as you have begun."
The darkwalker tugged her stick out of the ground, then nodded to Kanariel and shuffled off. The dwarf blinked for a moment, then swore under her breath and bent to lift the 'swan' up, swinging its long limp neck over her shoulder as she gathered it into her arms. The wings were floppy, disinclined to fold. Troublesome.
Izrel paused, waited until Kanariel had the bird well in hand, then beckoned her to follow.
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