dwarves in the first place.”
“Or even by dwarves,” said Fierfelm and took another sip of his coffee, made a sour face, looked at the cup, and frowned.
Milli stood up, went to the kitchen, put the kettle back on the fire, and then returned to sit down next to the First Edos, “If not dwarves, then who built all this?”
“Elementals, from the dawn of time, the greatest elemental of them all, Gazadum, this was his seat of power,” said Fierfelm, put the coffee cup to his lips for a moment, wrinkled his nose, and set it back down again without drinking further.
“But, but, but where are they now? These elementals?” said Milli as she sat down with a thump.
“You know the story of Dar Drawhammer,” said Fierfelm with another distasteful look at his coffee. “Did you say you had cake?”
Milli jumped to her feet again and went back to the kitchen as she looked over her shoulder, “I’ve heard the story a thousand times, how Dar defeated the Elementals with the shield… wait, you mean that story is about here, about Craggen Steep? They never say that, they always say it was some far off place.”
Fierfelm nodded his head and the platinum circled around his beard bumped into the table and sent some of the coffee in his cup slopping out. “It’s all a secret you know.”
“Let me get that,” said Milli as she rushed back over to the table with a rag just as the kettle began to whistle.
“You said there was cake?” repeated Fierfelm.
“Oh, yes, I’ll get some, in just a moment, I think I might have it around here, somewhere,” said Milli with a desperate look at the kettle, the spill, and her cupboard.
“I thought all you halflings loved to bake?”
“I was raised by dwarves,” said Milli as she suddenly stopped and looked at the old dwarf with a wide smile, “I love gold.”
Fierfelm nodded his head, “Not a bad thing necessarily, although to extreme, it is a dangerous pursuit. Perhaps, because I have so much, it is not as valuable to me. One doesn’t value what one has in abundance I suppose, it’s the nature of a dwarf.”
“What about those elementals, how does that fit into convincing Dol to take the hammer?” asked Milli as she finished cleaning up the mess, although her subsequent neglect of the kettle saw boiling water slop onto the stove and hiss violently.
“Gazadum was possibly the first of the elementals and certainly one of the most powerful,” said Fierfelm. “When Dar drove him from Balag Tol he fled to the southlands along with many of the other powerful fire elementals including Hezfer the Blue Flame who consumed Onod, his twin sister Eleniak the Dancing Flame, and the terrible Shadak the Black Fire.”
“Balag Tol?” asked Milli as she returned with a fresh cup of coffee and a rather malformed pastry, icing smeared unevenly across its surface, “I’m sorry about the tart, it’s a few days old, I haven’t been shopping, I thought we were going to take the hammer and leave, so I’ve let things slip a little.”
“Quite all right, my dear,” said Fierfelm and he looked at the misshapen little tart with a glance and then raised the coffee cup to his lips.
“What is Balag Tol?” repeated Milli.
“What’s that?” said the First Edos.
“Balag Tol, I’ve never heard of it,” said Milli.
“Oh, that’s Craggen Steep, of course,” said Fierfelm with a little wave of his left hand as he sipped from the cup and grimaced again. “That’s what it was called before, at least so the chronicles say. They say Gazadum ruled there for a countless years while he and his fellow elementals shaped the world. It is his residual heat that still fires the Deep Forge all these centuries later.”
“What does all this have to do with the Hammer of Fire, and Dol?” said Milli as she leaned forward, “Not that I mind hearing the stories.”
“Gazadum,” said Fierfelm as he nodded his head.
Milli looked at him expectantly but the old dwarf just took another sip from his coffee.
“What about Gazadum,” said Milli.
“Haven’t I told you?” said Fierfelm, a puzzled expression on his face.
“Maybe I missed it,” said Milli with a little grin and put on the smile that always got her what she wanted. She patted the old dwarf on the back, “repeat it for me, please?”
“I’ve found out where he fled. It’s in the south, the far south, a place called Koalhelm Tol,” said Fierfelm with a silly little grin.
“Yes?” Milli.
“Don’t you see?” asked Fierfelm the many wrinkles on his forehead multiplying at an alarming rate.
“No,” said Milli with a shrug of her shoulders as she poked at her pastry in a rather desultory fashion. It didn’t look very good.
“Even Dar Drawhammer with the Great Shield could not slay Gazadum, but the hammer, Kanoner, was forged by Orin Firefist. It was the first thing created on the Deep Forge by dwarf hands, and inside is the essence of Gazadum himself. The haft is the bottom half of the Staff of Faelom taken from the elf king by a great dwarf warrior. It was fashioned from the first and most powerful of the shepherds. With this weapon a dwarf could slay the greatest of the fire elementals. And the dwarf who did that, he would live forever in the stories.”
Milli looked at the old dwarf for a long moment as the light of recognition shone in her sparkling yellow eyes, “I think Dol might like that.”
Chapter 6
“Now you’re ready to steal the thing but it’s too late,” said Brogus as he glared at Dol across the small table, and the tall dwarf stared impassively back at him without any sort of expression at all on his face. “What do you have to say to that?”
Dol said nothing, nor did he change his blank expression.
“They’ve got it locked up in the Hall of Relics and there are guards on it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” continued Brogus as he pounded the table with his fist. “Pikemen, the High Council’s guard, they wear the gold helmets. The finest warriors in all of Craggen Steep. We can’t overpower them. It’s lost, if you had only listened to me yesterday Dol, you dolt.”
“Inside voice,” said Milli at her usual place between the two dwarves and with her usual glass of elf wine in front of her. “We don’t want everyone in Craggen Steep to know our plan, do we, Brogus?”
“They already know,” said the heavyset dwarf with a scowl. “We’re the laughing stock of the mountain. Everyone on my floor was laughing at me yesterday. Even the lowest of the apprentices from the worst families. I can’t stay in Craggen Steep now, with or without the hammer, we have to get out of here. We could have had it easy just yesterday but now, it’s impossible. Impossible! What does it matter if everyone knows what we wanted to do?”
“It’s not impossible,” said Milli in a quiet voice as she glanced around the crowded room. A number of young dwarves smiled and tried to catch her eye but she ignored them and turned back to her two companions. “I know you don’t like him,” she said with a glance to Brogus, “but Uldex can help us. His uncle Borrombus is in the inner sanctum and he knows how the hammer is guarded. What forces, how many and where, the location of reinforcements, the passageways to take to avoid them.”
“The Hall of Relics?” said Brogus. “How are we possibly going to get in there, steal the hammer,” here he lowered his voice, “and get back out again? There are hundreds of Council Stalwarts guarding it all the time.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” said Milli with a shake of her head that sent her hair flying, “it’s hardly hundreds and there are plenty of times it’s not guarded.”
“Now is the time,” said Dol as he contributed to the conversation for the first time. His face was still a mask of impassivity but his eyes glowed black and he nodded his head. “Now, they think they’ve won.”
“Dol’s right,” said Milli. “Their confident now that our plan was foiled and they’ll relax. With Uldex helping we
