race, the dwarves.
The dwarves were the miners and smiths of the Sundered Realm. Their metalwork, especially blades and armor, were renowned throughout the world. The Thailot were more skilful artificers, the Estil unsurpassed in civil engineering, but in matters involving stone or stone worked with the principle of fire to become metal, the dwarves were unexcelled.
No one knew where they came from. Some said they had lived in their mountains, which like them were short and craggy and inhospitable, when humans first arrived on the Southern Continent twenty-two thousand years before. Others claimed they predated the Hissers; still others maintained they were descended from a troupe of freaks imported to entertain a Northern Barbarian lord in the sixteenth century before the Human Era. So the stories went.
Their patron was Ungrid An, the dwarvish goddess, one of the few members of the Three and Twenty to belong to a particular race. She was a harsh, dour goddess personifying fortitude, determination and sheer hard labor. She was also goddess of political upheaval representing both repression and rebellion, which helped account for the odd political climate in North Keep.
Keep and mountain were actually inseparable. Like the Nevrymin, the dwarves made their capital inside the dominant physical feature of their domain, but unlike them they didn't work upward from ground level only. Over uncounted millennia the dwarves had burrowed deep into the roots of the mountains, some said for thousands of feet below the surface.
Fost started to rise to offer Moriana his stool. She motioned him back and went around the paper-strewn miniature desk and sat in the absent functionary's chair. Fost grinned, partly in acknowledgement of her small defiance and partly because she looked silly with her piquant face framed by her knees.
He turned to study the bust again. It had been carved recently. He could tell because Samilchut wore a severely cut tunic with a high buttoned collar. Last year at this time, her representations had been draped in a graceful toga that left one massive deltoid bare, in imitation of Jorean state garb.
Moriana started tapping her fingers on the desk. Fost allowed himself to focus on the spirits' debate.
'- obvious to anyone with the least knowledge of etiology that this couldn't possibly -' '- piffle! That doctrine was decisively refuted by -'
He sighed and let the faraway sounds of thousands of dwarves at work in the bowels of the mountain, that strangely rhythmic pulse of North Keep, drown them out again. Their argument grew more and more abstruse with each passing day. If they followed their usual pattern, in a short while they'd degenerate to name calling and, with luck, fall into silent sulking for a blessed interval until one or the other said something and started the argument afresh. 'Ahem.'
Fost jumped, blinking away the drowsiness that had been coming on him. The obvious target of the guttural throat clearing sat behind the desk holding steepled fingers to her lips.
'You certainly took your time,' Moriana said to the stumpy woman in the shapeless black gown who stood glowering at her from the office doorway. 'You have a favorable reply for us, I trust?'
A smile shoved up the tips of the official's thin, dark moustache. Inwardly Fost groaned. All too well he recognized the unpleasant triumph of a bureaucrat presented with the opportunity to put the dagger to a member of the public displaying inadequate respect for the nobility of the petty functionary's calling. If Moriana read the same message she showed no sign. Given her background, Fost doubted she did.
'No.' She had a fine baritone, Fost noted. 'Worker Samilchut has no time to spend on discarded royalty – or self-proclaimed royalty – who try to disturb the peace of North Keep with bizarre tales and schemes.' 'She won't even talk with us?' Moriana stared in disbelief.
'Not at all.' The official consulted the sheaf of papers in her hand. 'Further, I must advise you that even if all you claim is true, you can still expect no help from the dwarves. For we sympathize with the so-called Dark Ones, as we do with all those who rise up to cast off the yoke of feudal oppression.'
She snapped her fingers to summon guards to escort the visitors out. Moriana was too stunned for words, which was probably fortunate. Fost took her by the arm, helped her from the chair and led her past the smirking official into the corridor.
Both had to bend down almost double to follow their escorts, militiamen in brown corslets topped by flat- bottomed iron hats resembling inverted pie plates. Each guard carried a lead-tipped cudgel in one hand and a lantern in the other, with short-hafted throwing hammers at their belts. Dwarves hurrying in the opposite direction either flattened against the walls or backpedalled until they came to a cross corridor they could pop into.
Fost and Moriana stood blinking in brilliant sunlight as the massive iron western gate slammed shut behind them. Fost yawned, gazing out over the Outer Town and the oily gray heaving of the North Cape harbor. With the hooked tip of the Cape itself shielding the bay to north and east, and the added protection of a long stone breakwater projecting south from the rocky, gull-decked headland, the harbor should have provided decent anchorage. It didn't. The breakwater was too short and too low, disappearing completely just before high tide each day. After a southwesterly gale, the dwarves made handy sums dragging ships off the stone docks and refurbishing staved-in hulls. Fost suspected the arrangement wasn't exactly coincidental.
At the moment, a dozen craft chanced the unseasonal southeasterly blow. Largest was a lethal and lean war-dromon flying the red and black flag of the Tolviroth Maritime Guaranty company.
'If,' Moriana said, speaking with the slow deliberation of anger, 'if and when I am restored to my throne and powers, I will come back to this North Keep and repay the dwarves for their friendliness and hospitality. By pulling their damn mountain down around their hairy ears!' 'No, you won't,' Fost said louder than he intended. 'What did you say?' she snapped. With that look in her eyes, his only defense was the truth.
'I said you'll do no such thing. Even if you – and humankind -loses this new War of Powers, life in North Keep will go on pretty much as always. Forever, if the Vridzish have any sense. Northernmost is a fortress no amount of mining, bombarding or ramming will bring down. The dwarves can and will fight for every inch of every tunnel with the ferocity of a cornered weasel. In the days of the Barbarian Dynasty, somebody estimated that there were more miles of passageway in their Keep than there were miles of Realm roads on the entire continent. They go down for miles.
'And I'd think even the Hissers' pet Demon would think twice about going down too far in the shafts of Northernmost Mountain. There are things lurking in the roots of these mountains that are only a little younger than the planet. Some of the things living there the dwarves made peace with; others they keep at bay with sheer ferocity and arts not even you can guess at. If they get loose aboveground, not even the Hissers are going to want the Realm.
'Other than that, I'd imagine you can just stroll in and take over anytime you please.'
'Quite impressive,' complimented Erimenes. 'You display hitherto unsuspected depths of erudition.'
Fost had the uncomfortable feeling Moriana was trying to decide whether to cinder him or merely turn him into a newt. A gull wheeled overhead, crying down mockery on both man and dwarf. Abruptly, Moriana laughed.
'Come along,' she said, grabbing Fost's arm. 'Let's get back to the inn before dark. I'm tired of watching the proletarian regime in action.'
The gradually opening door brought Fost awake with all senses wire-taut. A greenish dawnlight spilled across the floor from the partially shuttered window. Outside, a handcart creaked and thumped over the potholes in the street.
A hesitant footfall sounded; another. Fost lay still, forcing himself to breathe with the metronomic regularity of a sleeper, while he mentally estimated distances. In a leap he came to his feet, broadsword snatched from the scabbard hung at the bed's head post.
'Eek!' The innkeeper cringed back against the doorpost, eyes popping, trying to pull his head into the collar of his jerkin. He looked like a frightened turtle. 'P-please, gentles. I meant no harm!'
Fost became acutely aware that he stood naked in the middle of the floor menacing a three-foot dwarf with a sword nearly as long as the dwarf. Moriana stirred on the bed, wondering drowsily why her nude body was so precipitately uncovered. 'Fost, what's – oh!'
His initial fear dissolved into embarrassment. He resorted to the old masculine position: blustering rage.
'What do you mean by this, sneaking into our rooms? Come to murder us in our beds, no doubt!'
If the dwarf shook any harder, pieces of his body would come rattling to the floor. 'No, no!' he moaned.
'Aha! You voyeuristic scoundrel! Come to peep at the Princess Moriana in her nakedness, then, are
