Occasionally, the hewn face of Thungi, lesser ancestor god of runesmiths, would glare at them from some sunken reliquary or shrine. Lord Silverthumb seemed to ignore it but his lips moved in silent oath-making as he passed by the patron of their guild and profession. Morek felt cowed by every stony glance, feeling more unready and unworthy than his master surely already believed. After the four hundred and fifty-eighth step, he found his voice again.
‘No, master. But I am unsure of what you want me to say.’
Lord Silverthumb grumbled another insult under his breath, hawked and spat as if the stupidity of his apprentice left a bitter taste in his mouth.
‘Aren’t you wondering,’ he said, ‘why I brought you to the rinkkaz?’
‘I… um…’
‘You are the second ufdi to refer to yourself as “um” in as many days.’ Ranuld Silverthumb came to an abrupt halt, bringing Morek to a stop too. So sudden was it that the apprentice nearly tripped and fell trying to avoid clattering into his master, who stood in front of him like a craggy bulwark and glowered.
‘Come here,’ he snapped, and seized Morek’s chin in an iron grip that had more in common with a vice than a dwarf’s fingers. Even the gnarled leathern skin of the runelord chafed and the apprentice barely stifled a yelp.
Lord Silverthumb pulled open Morek’s eye, using thumb and forefinger to check the sclera. His own eyes narrowed as he made an observation.
‘Are you a doppleganger wearing the flesh of Morek as a dwarf would wear a coat of mail? Hmm, well? Speak, fiend, if that’s what you are!’
Ranuld Silverthumb let him go, carried on walking.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I think you are him.’
Morek shut his open mouth, an answer no longer needed.
His master continued. ‘I shall tell you then why I brought you.’
Scents and sounds wafted and emanated from below as they closed on the deep. Morek discerned metal, the heady aroma of soot, the tang of heat pricking his tongue. Hammer rang on anvil, creating a monotonous but dulcet symphony that had oft been used to send beardlings to sleep. But there was something further… Old stone, dank, but which had seen and endured more than one age of the slowly turning world. Every time Morek placed his hand upon it to steady himself when a step was too broad to descend safely without being braced he felt the resonance within the rock, the sweat and earth of the dwarfs who had also once traversed this passage. Magic was thick in the air, and not just on account of the runes engraved into the walls. It saturated the corridor, bound to the rock, to the earth.
‘Master?’ Morek ventured after a few minutes of silence.
Lord Silverthumb scowled, flashed a scathing glance in his apprentice’s general direction. ‘What is it now, wazzock? Always talking… chatter, chatter, chatter,’ he said, mimicking a flapping mouth with each of his hands. ‘You’re no better than a rinn.’
Reddening beneath his beard, Morek said, ‘Why did you bring me to the rinkkaz, master?’
Lord Silverthumb sniffed either with regret or rueful derision, Morek couldn’t tell which.
‘Do you know how old I am, Morek?’ he asked.
‘I… um…’
‘Again with this “um”. Our noble ancestry has been watered down to a clutch of would-be lordlings and princes who when confused can only think of “um”. You and the prince, “ummers” both. Must be chuffing catching or something.’
Ranuld Silverthumb had lit a pipe and was blowing intricate smoke rings in the shape of runic knotwork through the flickering half-darkness. ‘I am venerable,’ he said, and now he sounded weary, thin like old parchment or a threadbare tarp stretched too wide over its frame. ‘The oldest living runelord of the Karaz Ankor. Knowledge is my legacy and I am to bequeath it to you so the greatest secrets of our craft do not die with me. But I am yet to be convinced if such power is for your generation of dawi. If I pass on my wisdom to you, I will be putting god-fire into your hands, Morek. Are we not too belligerent, so that such a thing would destroy us? But if I don’t, and allow this power to fade, to be consigned to dust and memory, then the dawi will fade as well. One is a slow demise, the other a flare of fire, ephemeral but bright.’
The talk of mortality and destruction sent Morek into a grim quietude. He got the impression of a great weight upon his master, a burden of which he had confessed but a little. Of course, he knew there was much below the forge halls, in the lowest deeps of Lord Silverthumb’s chambers, that he had never been privy to. Giving of knowledge, especially that which comes also with power, implied trust – but not only in the wisdom of the receiver, but also in his ability to keep such power safe and for what it was intended. How many had fallen to corruption and ruin where the pursuit of power was concerned?
Known as ‘Furrowbrow’, after his father and his clan, entire harvests could have been planted in the deep ripples lining Morek’s forehead at that moment.
Ranuld Silverthumb seemed not to notice his apprentice’s dilemma.
‘The High King has asked for a weapon and armour for his son. A gift if he is worthy of it, and token of his father’s esteem. Gotrek Starbreaker too, you see, has a legacy to hand down. All of us, we dwarf lords, carry that burden. You will forge them, az and klad, inscribe the master runes and speak the rites.’
Morek briefly bowed his head. ‘Tromm, master. It is a great honour.’
‘No, apprentice, it is your duty. To me, to your king, to your race. Legacy, lad, is all we veterans have left to us in the end.’
The
