“If this is good-bye, lad, I have to say it’s been a pleasure knowing you.”
“Likewise, old man,” Bradok said. Then he turned and vaulted up the steps to the front door.
Moments later he threw an old suit of traveling clothes and a heavy cloak into a worn leather pack with battered silver buckles. In his younger days, Bradok had traveled to faraway cities to complete his training as a master jeweler, and he still had his old travel kit. He unrolled the kit and laid the cloth out, quickly filling its many pockets with things he would need: a straight razor, folding knife, small stick of wax, and other sundries. When he finished, he rolled the kit up and tied it closed.
Satisfied that he had everything he needed, he changed out of his dress boots into a more comfortable and well-worn pair. His next stop was his study, where he grabbed a pen and a bottle of expensive black ink. His journal and a book on the finer points of the jeweler’s craft went into his pack next.
Finally, Bradok headed down to his workshop on the ground floor. He had just stepped off the last stair and into the foyer when he heard a grating voice behind him.
“Just where do you think you are going?”
Sapphire.
“I’m leaving, Mother,” he said with a sigh, looking back up to the balcony where she stood, watching him. “I think for good.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “Why would you do that?”
“The council plans to kill the believers in one week if they do not renounce their faith,” he said. “I rather doubt many of them will, so I’ve renounced my council seat and I’m leaving this town. I’ll not be a party to the murder of good, honest dwarves.”
“What murder?” Sapphire demanded, her voice rising to a screech. “Those believers have gotten out of hand. They are everywhere now, preaching doom and gloom. They have brought this on themselves. It’s about time the council did something about them.”
“You wouldn’t understand, Mother,” Bradok said. “They’re not monsters; they’re people, dwarves like you and me.”
“They’re religious fools who don’t deserve the indulgence we have granted their foolishness,” Sapphire screamed.
Bradok paid his mother no heed. He turned his back and passed down the narrow hallway that separated the house from his workshop. After unbolting the door, he lit an oil lamp and hung it on a hook that dropped down on a chain from the ceiling. The light revealed a small, neat room with workbenches, rows of tools on hooks, bins of metal rod stock, and a large iron safe with an elaborate lock in its center.
He crossed the room to one of the workbenches and picked up the rolled leather kit that held his jeweler’s tools, slipping them into his pack. From his belt, he withdrew a ring of keys and, selecting a small, rather plain- looking one, stepped to the safe. Ignoring the enormous lock, Bradok moved the brass plate with the name of the safe maker to one side, revealing a small keyhole. He quickly unlocked the safe and pulled open the heavy door.
The ornate lock was a trap, of course, designed to foil unwary thieves.
Inside the safe were stacks of velvet-lined cases holding his best work. Bins of raw jewels filled a shelf, along with several thick folios that detailed Bradok’s business holdings.
Bradok selected a few of the velvet cases and moved them to a nearby workbench; then he withdrew the safe’s only other item: a gilded sword. Leaving the safe standing open, he clipped the sword to his belt, enjoying the sudden weight of the weapon. With a deft move, he pulled it from its scabbard and held it up in the lantern light. The sword shone brilliantly. The blade was broad and beveled, with a concave rill running along its center. The crosspiece had been shaped to resemble dwarven hammers and was etched with elaborate knots, each etching done over in gold. Black leather, stained by years of sweat and oil, covered the hilt, giving it a sure grip. On the pommel sat a ruby the size of a quail’s egg.
His father had given him the sword on his twentieth birthday and Bradok had treasured it ever since. With a practiced flourish, Bradok slipped the blade back into the scabbard and slid it home with a click. His father had told him the sword was magical, made by some elf wizard-smith, but Bradok had never found any proof of that. The magic in the blade had always been the feeling of the father who had given it to him. It was one of the rare times he’d enjoyed being with his father, one of the few times he’d ever even thought of Mirshawn as a father.
Bradok pushed the bitter memories aside and returned to the task at hand. From a cabinet above a workbench, he pulled out a small sack and a long strip of soft cloth. He opened the velvet boxes and laid out the jewelry pieces they contained. Each one was a masterpiece, the pinnacle of his art and even though he doubted he’d need them wherever he was going, neither could he bear to leave them behind. He carefully laid each piece out on the soft cloth and folded it into a flat, walletlike pack that he stowed in the little bag, which then went in his pack.
With a last look at his orderly workshop, the place that had been the center of his life for more than twenty years, Bradok cinched his pack closed, slung it over his shoulders, and walked out, shutting the door behind himself.
When he reached the foyer again, he found Sapphire there, waiting for him. At the sight of the sword on his belt, her face fell. Some of her haughtiness melted away.
“It’s true, then,” she sniffed. “You’re really planning to leave.”
“Yes, Mother,” he said. “There’s a cooper in the Artisans’ Cavern who had a vision. He’s building a boat, or he was until they arrested him. It’s partly my fault that he was arrested. I want to make amends. I’m going to his shop to finish the boat.”
“Madness!” Sapphire scoffed. “You’ve always been a sensible boy, Bradok. You know there’s no such thing as visions.”
“No, I don’t really know that, Mother,” he said, turning to look her square in the face. “I’m beginning to doubt everything I thought I knew. Perhaps I don’t know anything much at all.”
“Well, I can agree with you on that,” she returned. “But what makes you think this cooper has any answers? What makes you think helping him will make one bit of difference?”
“It’s just a feeling I have in my gut,” Bradok said, opening his front door. “I guess it’s something you’d have to take on faith.”
He left Sapphire standing in the hall with her mouth agape as he turned and strode briskly down the steps to the street. In his haste, he didn’t even shut the door.
CHAPTER 7
We should have grabbed him when we had the chance,” Jon Bladehook said one week later, pacing around the front of Mayor Arbuckle’s office. “We had a nice, easy plan until he came along.”
“I agree,” the mayor said easily, leaning back in the hard, wooden chair behind his desk. “But it’s too late for that now. We just have to let things play out. Bradok and the rest of those fools can’t stay barricaded in the Artisans’ Cavern forever.”
“They don’t have to,” Bladehook fumed. “Today is the deadline, and anyone who doesn’t renounce their beliefs needs to be dealt with. If Bradok Axeblade can defy us, even for a single day, it will sow the seeds of rebellion among the people. They’ll see us as weak.”
“How will they see us if we lose twenty or thirty guardsmen in an assault on that barricade?” Arbuckle demanded. “The whole guard is only one hundred or so dwarves. How will we be seen by our enemies if a third of our soldiers are killed?”
Bladehook scowled but made no answer. He doubted Bradok and his little band of boat-builders could or would kill thirty guardsmen, but he had to agree with Arbuckle: it wasn’t worth the risk.
“So we’re just going to leave them down there?” he asked.
Arbuckle nodded. “They’ll get hungry sooner or later,” he said, smiling broadly. “Besides, every day that passes without any ‘wrath’ from their god only makes them look more and more foolish. I predict it won’t be very
