The Crucible of the Dragon God

candle.'

'Slowhand, let him fin — '

'No, Hooper. Think about it. What isn't ringing true here? Apart from this heavens rubbish? If this project of theirs was so damned important — so vital to the future of both their races — why is it stashed away up here at the top of our world, hidden in a secret valley behind the Dragonfire? I'll tell you why. Because it's a farking loony bin, is why.'

'My friend has a point,' Kali said, biting her lip. 'If elves and dwarfs were working together, in a time when there were only elves, dwarves and a handful of primitive humans who would have posed no threat, who exactly were you hiding yourselves from?'

'Many of our peoples were against what we would achieve.'

'Hardly surprising,' Slowhand said.

'Do you imagine that because we were races who had attained greatness, that we did not have as many fundamental divisions among us as divide the peninsula today? There were those who ignored the threat to us, those who courted, even welcomed it, and those who actively sought to prevent us stopping it, for their own reasons, insane as they may have been. We were called blasphemous, sacrilegious, and even within our own ranks there was doubt. Doubt that could only be assuaged by my creation. A living compromise between elf and dwarf factions, a believer of both sides.'

'So the Crucible was built in secret?' Kali said. 'Your rulers, governments, churches, knowing nothing about it?'

'For three years our people — those who believed — worked with and within them, utilising their resources and hoping, also, to recruit some to our cause. But — as is the case with your own Final Faith — the ideals and aims and beliefs of most were too intractable, entrenched to change. Had we been discovered we would have been banished, or worse. Still, our people managed to establish a chain of contacts, supplies and the means to transport them, the cooperation of sympathisers to our cause and, eventually, began to establish their presence, here, in the Drakengrat Mountains.'

'The waystations,' Kali said.

'Constructed, again, in secret, and as defended in their time as the Crucible itself. Not only a means to ferry our materials but designed to intercept any who might wish to stop what the Crucible hoped to achieve. Some of the airships therein were fighters.'

'Fighters? It sounds like a war.'

'More than just a war. A holy war. We had no wish to spill the blood of our own but we had to protect the complex whilst its purpose was achieved.'

'A holy war?'

'As I said, the k'nid were designed with a specific purpose and that purpose was to destroy the deity in our heavens.'

'Destroy the deity?' Slowhand echoed. He almost laughed. 'Are you saying their purpose was to kill God?'

'Some called it God.'

Kali found herself almost physically staggering. 'Deity,' she said. The dwelf had spoken in the singular so presumably he was not referring to the various Gods whom most on Twilight had worshipped before the coming of the Final Faith. Was he, therefore, speaking of their god, the one god? If that was the case, did that mean the Old Races acknowledged its existence literal ages before the Faith came into being — as an actual entity? That it might be real was something she struggled to accept. 'Tharnak are you talking about the Lord of All?'

The dwelf almost spat his response, so vehement was it. 'I am talking about the Lord of Destruction, the Lord of Nothing!'

Kali frowned. Lord of Destruction? Lord of Nothing? What the hells did those phrases mean? Were these just other terms for the Lord of All, or for something else entirely? She was about to ask when another tremor ran through the Crucible, more violent than any that had come previously, and she was forced to steady herself against the sphere as growth fluids sloshed about inside. Even Tharnak himself seemed concerned.

'Would that I could show you,' the dwelf said with a sigh. 'Make you understand. But there is so little time.'

Tharnak's weary resignation made Kali realise that she was unlikely to get any further with this line of questioning for the moment and, while she still didn't understand the meaning of the threat, there was something becoming increasingly obvious to her — something made inherently clear by the fact that the Old Races were no more.

The threat, she thought. Is this what happened to the Old Races? My Gods. Is this how they died?

'Your attempt to eradicate this deity,' she said, 'it failed, didn't it? Why?'

'Hubris, arrogance, foolishness. At that stage in our civilisation, though we possessed the technology to do what we did, it was not enough. We needed the magic, too. But the magic, by then, had become weak, for we had destroyed those who made it whole.'

'Destroyed? Destroyed who?'

'The Dra'gohn.'

'The Dra'gohn? You mean the dragons?'

'If that is what you call them, yes.'

Kali didn't have a clue why the absence of dragons should affect the magic — make it whole — but that hardly seemed the point. The Old Races were the reason they had gone away?

'How?' she asked. 'Why? What happened?'

The sphere shook again and the dwelf's weariness returned, almost as if he were dying with the Crucible. 'Cowardice… greed… does it really matter? They were gone — and with them, our only chance to survive.'

'But this place,' Kali protested, aware as she spoke of how naive the question seemed. 'All of its potential — couldn't you have somehow remade them, brought them back?'

The dwelf actually laughed, although the sound was guttural and bitter. 'How many times over these countless, lonely years do you think I have been tempted to try? To rectify our mistake, and to apologise to them, even though it would have been too late? No, it would have been an empty exercise, for that is why we failed. The magical threads that bind our creations are weak. Nothing made here can survive for long if it leaves the Crucible.' The dwelf paused. 'How could I bring the dra'gohn back knowing that when they took to the skies I would once more be responsible for their end — that they would die?'

'You mean like the yassan, you bastard?' Slowhand said. 'How do you think they feel — out there, changed, unable to leave that frozen wilderness they call home? Tell me, Tharnak, did you really need to make them part of your soup or were you just playing games?'

'We took no pleasure in our experiments on them. It was our wish that, when we left, we gifted this valley to them in return. But, of course, we did not leave.'

'And that's meant to make things all right?'

''Liam, don't,' Kali said. She stared at the dwelf. 'If that's the case, why are the k'nid able to survive?'

'They are not. Their capability for self-replication grants them a longer life span than others but eventually they, too, will revert to nothing. They would not have reached the heavens. Beyond this valley they have, perhaps, a matter of days.'

Which we don't, Kali thought. 'Then, please, is there a way to stop them?'

'The prism above the birthing pools. It holds upon it the runics capable of reversing their creation, removing them. Combined with the magic of your Three Towers — if your men of magic channel their threads of destruction through them — the plague upon the peninsula will be ended.'

'It's that simple?' Slowhand said, beginning to revise his opinion of the plant.

Easy for you to say, Kali thought. She calculated she had some hours before the next wave of k'nid were spawned but, from what she'd seen of them, that didn't necessarily make the birthing pools any less dangerous. 'So this is the bit where I risk life and limb in some potentially lethal hellshole to save the world