4.32 Highstone

By the time they’d hiked back up, fetched the others and returned, the chamber was cool enough that the others didn’t need magical protections. Several Karil’Dirin goblins accompanied them to confirm that the way really was open again. Their shaman, whose name was Grannang strode up to what remained of one of the tunnels near the far side, grumbled something and kicked at the glassy stone blocking it.

Nirlig cleared his throat. “He says – ”

“Yes, yes. I’m not an idiot.” Dalbrand interrupted and raised his right hand, his strange jewelry-like focus glimmering along his fingers as he sketched something in the air. With a low groan, the stone shifted, compressing down into the ground and the walls and reopening the tunnel. The old goblin took a hurried step back and shot a glance at the archmage before leading the way down, which curved around gently before curling into a steep spiral staircase that plunged down into the earth.

The trip down to the Duergar border wasn’t nearly as long as Bernt had expected. Just twenty minutes later, they emerged into a bare room lit by clear light crystals – the same kind that grew in the mine they’d passed through before. That, at least, cleared up what the goblins might be trading to the Empire. Two pike-wielding Duergar guards stood in front of the only exit at the far side of the room, dressed in identical runed steel armor, obviously enchanted. Flanged maces and even more heavily runed bucklers hung from their belts.

The one on the left shifted his grip on his weapon and called out in a warning tone, prompting them to stop. Bernt didn’t understand what he was saying, but apparently Grannang did. The goblin replied in Duergar, speaking for a good minute before gesturing toward the humans in the group. The dwarf grunted something to his partner and clanked down the tunnel.

The goblin nodded to himself with a satisfied air and turned to Xul’evareg. After a short exchange, in which Grannang offered a few respectful-sounding words while completely ignoring the humans, he and the other Karil’Dirin goblins left, heading back up the way they’d come.

“So… what do we do now?” asked Elyn, glancing uneasily over at the guards, who were eyeing her with a bit of suspicion of their own. Maybe they didn’t see half-elves very often?

Archmage Dalbrand raised a hand and with it, a massive blob of stone from the floor that quickly flowed and shaped itself into a beautifully carved stone table. “Now we wait to be properly received.”

***

Ambassador Taresh wiped his palms on his silk jacket as he disembarked into the Highstone border station and irritably waved away a customs agent who tried to question him. As if the private train car wasn’t enough of a clue. The overeager bureaucrat stood there, watching for another moment until the ambassador’s retinue emerged, clarifying their relative status. He bowed in apology and retreated, leaving him to his work.

Taresh been warned that he might be meeting a delegation from the sunwalkers, but he hadn’t believed it. This was a dead end, career-ending post for an imperial diplomat. This near to the surface, the only meaningful relationships he could cultivate were with the odd goblin tribe and a single enterprising group of lizardmen who had made contact in the extreme northern portion of his consular district. Even this particular trade route had been closed for weeks – some kind of monster incident. Nothing ever happened here.

That hadn’t always been the case, of course. This was the uppermost settlement in the entire Igneous Dominion. The infrastructure here had been built specifically to support large-scale trade and diplomatic contact with the Madurian Empire. Now it only moved crystals, a few ores, and livestock from the surface. Despite how lucrative that latter one was, Highstone’s role in the scaling industry hadn’t proven to be enough to keep the entire city going long-term.

In the centuries since their fall and the closure of the humans’ primary access tunnels to the Depths, much of it had fallen into disuse, but the cavernous size of the storage bays, the multiple rail lines and broad tunnels still spoke of the trade volume they’d lost – and the stunning potential that restoring such a profitable relationship might have to offer.

Considering all that, he couldn’t be faulted for feeling a little nervous. The route was open again, apparently, and they were back – not just the goblins, but an actual Madurian diplomat from the kingdom of Besermark!

Checking to make sure that none of his beard hairs had escaped his neat braid, Taresh signalled to his bodyguard to take the lead and went to meet the newcomers. There were three goblins and five humans present, all seated at a stone table on stone seats that had been raised to accommodate their various sizes. The furniture wasn’t supposed to be here, but he’d met his share of mages. They could never resist showing off. The table even had decorative patterns in it.

One of the humans, a tall, dark-haired young man in a gray robe, was pouring tea from a stone pot when they noticed his arrival. One of the human women rose smoothly from her seat and offered a precise bow as the others got to their feet. She addressed him in accented Duergar, which was impressive considering how rarely they interacted.

“Ambassador, I am pleased to extend to you greetings from Duke Renhild of Norhold in the name of King Renias of the Kingdom of Besermark. My name is Jesra of Teres, and I come on a matter of some urgency, namely to discuss the recent aggression of your northern neighbor, King Grundrik, and his use of greater demons to effect the destruction of one of our cities.”

The older man, obviously a mage, gestured with his hand, which prompted Taresh’s bodyguard to step in front of him and raise his shield. When he stepped aside again a moment later, the stone table, chairs, cups and even the teapot were gone. The younger mage had taken a step back in surprise, finding the front of his robes had been soaked with steaming hot tea. He wasn’t shouting and didn’t appear injured, which suggested some decent defensive enchantments on his clothing. Steam rose in a cloud from him, and he waved a hand to clear it well enough to see.

How odd.

“Jesra of Teres” he replied in his best imperial Madurian, “I welcome you and your retinue to the Igneous Dominion and the Duergar Empire. I believe I can offer you a more comfortable venue for tea, if you wish.”

His human counterpart accepted, and moved to go past the border guards. Only then did Taresh notice that the goblins were moving to follow.

“Ah, excuse me,” he said. ”Do you have business with us as well?” 

The eldest of them, a wrinkly old woman with an old stone knife on her belt, squinted at him sourly.

“We are not from Karil’Dirin.”

“They’re Beseris,” one of the women said, stepping in front of the goblins protectively. “They negotiated our way through the goblin tribe, they’re part of our security arrangements.” The strange human wore an odd assortment of armor and belts with many small pouches on it. She towered over him, and the tattoos on her face lent her an unsophisticated, savage air.

Taresh raised an eyebrow at her lack of decorum and looked over to the rest of the human delegation. When none of them objected, though, he smiled tightly and offered them a tiny bow.

“Of course, my mistake.”

***

The Duergar ambassador led them through the narrow tunnel, emerging into a guard station that opened up into a much larger cavern. Nearby, massive storage bays had been carved into the cavern wall, sitting opposite to what had likely been massive warehouses at one point. Only the storage bays closest to them were active, filled with light crystals, ores, and what looked like unprocessed animal hides. There was a modest pile of packaged crates sitting on the ground nearby, ready for shipment.

The roof was supported by countless, beautifully carved stone columns that seemed too narrow for how tall they were. But it was dwarven work – who knew what they were capable of?

As Bernt watched, an enormous metal machine on wheels rolled by on its own power and picked up the entire stack of crates at once. Then it ponderously turned and made its way back the way it had come. It was a noisy, clanky thing with several bright red cylinders at the back, arranged in two rows.

The ambassador led them along one of the walls to the right, pointing at things and explaining something about logistics and trade to Minister Jesra. Bernt could understand imperial Madurian for the most part, but the dwarf’s accent was strange and difficult to follow. At least Jesra didn’t seem to be having any trouble.

There were hundreds of Duergar moving around here working, eating, buying and selling goods at a few stalls, but the enormous space still felt mostly empty. It was just too huge. There were shops, homes and industry everywhere, but it didn’t feel like a living city. The inhabited homes were clustered together, surrounded all around by empty husks that, by the looks of them, might have never been inhabited at all.

After only a few minutes, they arrived at a large stone building at a large intersection that apparently marked the edge of the inhabited residential area of the city.

“My residence in the city,” Bernt thought the dwarf, whose name was Taresh, said as he ushered them inside. A nervous looking Duergar woman in an apron bowed in greeting as they entered and began barking orders to two other Duergar, obviously servants. They scrambled to obey, one rushing up the stairs and the other hurrying into what looked like a kitchen. Within a few minutes, most of the group found themselves sipping on some kind of earthy-tasting drink on an expansive balcony overlooking what looked like an uninhabited portion of the city. The ambassador and his bodyguard, Jesra and Dalbrand had split off from the main group before they’d even sat down, retreating to another room to conduct their business.

“So, what did you promise to research for the elemental, exactly?” Elyn asked once they were alone – as much as they could be, in a foreign dignitary’s home. The question drew curious looks from Estrid and the goblins. With Jesra and Dalbrand gone for the moment, they could speak more freely. “Does it want to summon more of its kind?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s trying to understand how life works on the material plane… or how it relates to fire and the kind of life and magic that it knows from home. I’m not sure what it’s about, really – a lot of it went over my head. But it gave me a spellform to use.”

“You just… promised to help and it left?” Nirlig asked disbelievingly. “Why would it trust you like that?”

Bernt smiled sheepishly. “It was inside my head. That’s partly what the spellform was for, I think. It knows that if it keeps giving me secrets like that, of course I’ll come back. If I understand it right, this’ll give me a way to create new fire elementals. I didn’t even know that was possible!”

Estrid hummed in disappointment. “Not new sorcerers? Did you ask?”

“I did, actually. I learned something there, too…” Bernt launched into a quick explanation, relating his encounter with the elemental. Just as he was starting to explain about the strange kobold the creature had examined, Nirlig stood up, eyes wide and rushed to the balcony’s railing.

“Dragon!”

“Yes, the elemental tried to manipulate its spirit, but of course that’s not…” the words died on Bernt’s tongue as he turned his head to see what Nirlig was staring at. The goblin stood at the side railing facing the cavern wall – where the street that they’d come down intersected one that ran perpendicular to it.

A red-scaled dragon emerged into the cavern, shuffling down that second street, its wings awkwardly half-furled to reveal torn skin hanging limply from its bones in ribbons. It wore a steel collar so bulky that the creature’s neck bowed under its weight, bolted to an enormous muzzle. Liquid flames dribbled out between the gaps, but it came nowhere near the Duergar handlers hauling on its chains. Everything, from the collar to the muzzle to the chains hobbling its feet and the ones the gray dwarves were holding, were heavily enchanted. They would have to be, to contain even a young dragon, which this certainly was.

It was a huge creature, but it couldn’t have been more than a third as long as the elder dragon Bernt had glimpsed underneath Halfbridge last summer. Still, it was a dragon. Not a drake or a wyvern.

“Look at its hide – and the horns!” Ina cried in horror. Its horns were mostly missing, reduced to irregular nubs where they were just starting to grow back. Its hide was oddly leathery, covered in patchy scales as though it had some kind of disease, but the longer Bernt looked, the more injuries he saw. Its claws had been completely removed, and its eyes were sunken and gray. Its tail ended in a blunt stub.

“They’re… they’re harvesting it,” she said, sounding horrified, “while it’s still alive!”