Her detention in Oeragor had been luxurious in comparison. Once she had recovered enough bodily strength to swallow her food unaided she had been strapped into a metal chair deep within the citadel’s dungeons. Warding runes had been engraved in the walls, sapping any residual sorcery that might still have lurked in her battered body. A dozen guards stood outside her cell at all times, two of which were always mages. When the asur entered to give her food they glared at her with stony, hatred-filled eyes, clearly itching to do her violence but never giving in.
She could not move, she could not use her art, she could not even speak unless the gag was taken from her scabrous mouth. The whole thing was a humiliation; a spell of honest torture might have been preferable.
Liandra didn’t deign to speak to her for two days. When she finally did descend to the dungeon, closing the door behind her with studious relish, Drutheira wondered whether death had found her at last. She certainly didn’t blame the mage for wanting to kill her – the antipathy was, after all, entirely mutual.
Once again, though, her expectations were confounded. Liandra looked sleek and rested, freshly supplied with a new staff and pristine mage’s robes. She ripped Drutheira’s gag free, checked her bonds were secure, then stood before her, arms crossed. For a long time she did nothing but examine her, as if trying to ascertain whether the pitiful creature before her could really have been responsible for so much suffering.
‘No questions?’ Drutheira croaked eventually. Her strained voice sounded odd in the dank, echoing cell.
‘What could you tell me,’ said Liandra coolly, ‘that I do not already know?’
Liandra’s voice was a surprise: it was temperate, restrained even. Everything Drutheira knew about Liandra promised impetuosity, but perhaps being deprived of her creature had bled the fire from her.
‘Plenty, I judge,’ Drutheira said.
Liandra’s expression didn’t change. It was contemptuous more than anything.
‘You were sent to Elthin Arvan by Malekith,’ she said. ‘We were guarding the sea-lanes, so the best you could do was land in secret. You were here for years, hiding out in the wilds, doing nothing. Only when orders from Naggaroth came did you act, starting the violence that turned the dawi against us. You killed the dawi runelord. You ambushed the trade routes.’
Drutheira couldn’t help but smile. When listed like that, the tally of achievement was rather impressive.
‘We didn’t do it all,’ she said. ‘Plenty of you wished for war.’
‘You are right. I was one of them.’
‘Then you should be pleased.’
‘How little you understand us.’ Liandra crossed her arms, threading the staff under an elbow. ‘You sit there, smirking, content in small malice. Nothing you have done here will hasten Malekith’s return to the Phoenix Throne. He will remain an outcast for the rest of his days, howling his misery into the ice.’
Drutheira inclined her head in putative agreement. ‘Maybe, but he has his war. Nothing can stop that now.’
‘You know less than you think. They are talking again, and the dwarfs know of the secret war. All they need now is proof, and that is why you have been suffered to live – so I can drag you to Tor Alessi where, under the hot irons, you will be made to speak. Truth-spells shall be wound around you. All shall hear it. Your last action, before I finally kill you, will be to weep for the ruin of all you have sought to achieve.’
Drutheira couldn’t prevent a faint quiver of doubt showing on her face then. Liandra might have been lying, of course, but she sounded unnervingly confident. Recovering, Drutheira glared back defiantly.
‘Wishful,’ she said. ‘You know the chance has long gone. I sense the hatred boiling away within you even from here – you loathe the dawi.’
Liandra drew close to her then, so close that Drutheira could smell the fragrance of her robes and make out the freckles on her pale cheeks.
‘I do,’ Liandra whispered, bending over her almost tenderly. ‘I wish to see every last one of them driven back into the mountains, but how much more do I loathe you.’
The intensity of hatred then was unmistakable. Drutheira tried to pull her head away but her bonds held her tightly.
‘When you burn, witch, I shall be watching,’ Liandra whispered coolly. ‘For the sake of those you killed, I will revel in your agony.’
Drutheira couldn’t look away. Two blue eyes glared at her from the gloom, unwavering in their passionate intensity.
For the first time in a long while, no words came to her: no acid riposte, no withering put-down. She was alone, shackled, held in the vice by those who hated her, and there was nothing much left to say.
Then Liandra sneered, her message delivered, and withdrew. The mage swept from the chamber, not looking back, and slammed the heavy door behind her.
Alone again in the darkness, Drutheira heard the bolts lock home. Then silence fell again, as complete as the outer void.
This, I admit, she thought to herself mordantly, is getting difficult.
The drum beat with a steady, driving rhythm. Even as the dark trees clustered close, their shaggy branches hanging low across the path, the beat continued – heavy, dull, dour.
Morgrim enjoyed the sound of it. It reminded him of the beating of hammers in the deeps, the ever-present sound of the sunken holds. Its steady pace spoke of certainty, resolve, persistence.
He marched in time with it, as did all of his retinue. Five hundred dwarfs of the bazan-khazakrum kept up the punishing pace, hour after hour, pausing only for snatched meals of cured meat washed down with strong ale. They carried their supplies on their backs,
