Book 6: Chapter 36 - Bronzegate Hold (RAW)

*Was a bit tempted to put a status update, but there hasn't been much in the way of big moves except for one attribute. I need to plan this to be an audiobook, so too many status pages become annoying in the extreme.

The assay is the appraisal of a metal or ore to determine its ingredients and quality—the test of purity. Among the Dwarves, this word carries a sacred weight. In Bronzegate Hold, the most heinous of their condemned are brought to the Assay for their final judgment. Less a judgment than a sentence.

They climb to the pinnacle in sacrifice for their sins, each step meant to strip away the dross of mortal imperfection. They climb naked but for a strip of cloth to cover their modesty and a single weapon, that they might die fighting. At the summit waits one of the Runed who strikes them down. Some whisper the Runed are not Dwarves at all, but something of the other.

- The Fanciful Travels by Beron de Laney, 376 AC.

And so they brought me ahead of Damien’s Dragon, up the red rock of the mountain, to stand for judgment. Judgment, they called it, though I saw only the farce of malformed, stunted creatures who were less to me than cockroaches. Still, their laws bound this land, and so I played my part. Only Cordelia was permitted at my side, her blade peace-bound with bands of copper. She was to act as my counsel, though I had no real need of a legal defense. My defense would be made in steel, not words.

The men behind me wore unease upon their faces. Some whispered that Damien had given me up, cast me off to appease our squat employers. Yet my calm smile, the assured ease in my bearing, smothered much of their disquiet. De Savant is not to blame, I told them, again and again, until it became a litany. But though I said it, I did nothing to staunch the growing dislike that welled in the ranks against the Dwarves of Bronzegate. Let that current flow. It served me well.

With time aplenty, I paused to check how much experience I still needed before reaching my next level, already planning ahead for it. The casual slaughter of the jungle’s living things had brought me close—barely a thousand points short. I was eager to finish my current quest, certain it would push me past the threshold.

The only sour note was that my organic gains amounted to a mere single point in Charisma, a disappointing result despite my best efforts. Some players made the mistake of scattering their attribute points as they leveled, diluting their power until the gains were almost imperceptible. No, that was folly. Even if one intended to spread attributes eventually, it was always wiser to focus on a single stat at a time.

The path twisted upward, laid in smooth, black volcanic stone. For all their backwardness, the Dwarves built well. Terraced fields clung to the mountainside, green with rice. Where the water came from, I could not guess—springs hidden deep within the stone, perhaps. Bent-backed farmers glanced at us, then bent lower still to their work. Among them in the fields moved shapes of rough-hewn stone: giants lumbering slowly, ancient runes about their backs and shoulders.

“What are they?” I asked idly.

Cordelia’s blue eyes softened as she looked upon them. “Automata,” she said. “Remnants of a lost age. The Dwarves claim they can still fashion them, though they say it is difficult even for their skilled hands. Were that true, I think we would see many more, difficult or not.”

“I see.” 

I let my vague interest pass, though a part of me wondered how many wars might have been won if such things still walked in numbers.

The climb grew colder, thinner. At last, the gates of Bronzegate rose before us—taller than the Feathered Gates of Al-Lazar, and twice as forbidding. Yet it seemed that in this age, they were not bronze at all, but a silvered steel inscribed with runes that prickled the skin, making my thoughts itch if I stared too long. Through those great jaws of metal passed the traffic of a city, flowing in and out in a constant stream.

“Welcome to Bronzegate, Manling,” one of my escorts sneered. He had a nose like a squashed plum and a face begging for my fist.

I marked him. A name added to my ledger of vengeance and grudges.

“Horothric,” I called, my voice steady and firm.

“You will use my title, Manling,” he snapped, anger bright in his dark eyes.

“And you will cease to call me Manling, stunted one,” I answered. “If you have quarrel with me, let us settle it here and now, without this play-acting, this song and dance.” 

I laughed at him. “I have a question for you.”

His mailed fists clenched, jaw trembling. It pleased me to see him so riled.

“We are a people of laws,” he growled. “Laws that bind. It is forbidden to harm one who submits to our justice.”

Cordelia’s voice flowed, smooth as song. “That much is true.”

His fellows glared their hatred, but I pressed on. “How convenient for you. For even now, I see you quaking in your boots. Tell me, little man—do you know a Dwarven woman named Evenes Coal?”

The Dwarf stopped as if struck. His eyes widened. His hand rose, halting the procession.

“What do you know of my good lady wife?” he demanded, his voice gone cold as winter.

I laughed again, long and loud. They could not touch me. Not here. Not bound by their own sacred laws. Happenstance or Fate itself had placed this jewel in my grasp. Serendipity still smiled upon me.

“Only that I carry the grudge of her brother,” I said, savoring each word. “Durhit Coal. He knew of your treachery, even at the end. He cursed you both, a thousand deaths, a thousand dooms. Treacherous, as all of your kind are—but I called him a friend once. I swore to see his vengeance done. And here I am, brought to Bronzegate by fate and by the will of the Goddess. Mine is a holy cause.”

The fear that crept into Horothric’s eyes was a vintage I knew well.

“You speak lies and madness,” he snarled. “I’ll not hear it! Laws be damned, I’ll have my satisfaction now. Am I not in the right?” He turned to the others.

“Aye!” they shouted, iron voices ringing in the air.

“So much for a people of laws,” I chuckled.

“Then let us settle it.” Horothric spat, unstrapping his shield and drawing his axe. “As warriors would. I have held axe and shield since before you were born.”

“Very well,” I said, laughing again. “When do we begin?”

“Now, Manli—”

The word had not left his tongue before Rushstrike carried me forward. My blade kissed the air, its deadly tip pausing a hair’s breadth before his eye. Divine speed, divine judgment. It was done before it began.

With a flourish, I slid the sword back into its sheath. His life hung on the thinnest thread, and I held the shears. “I have my satisfaction,” I told them, voice cold as morning ash. “You people make for poor warriors if that is all you can do. But perhaps another wishes to test their luck? Come at me together if you like. It matters not to me. The end will be the same.”

The Dwarves muttered, their courage shriveling. None stepped forth. Their leader’s face was pale as milk.

Cordelia’s eyes shone as if she had witnessed some sacred rite. “You have seen what comes of breaking your laws. Let this be a lesson,” she said.

The Dwarves shuffled, unsettled, their anger forced to hide behind their whispers. At last, Horothric found his tongue, croaking orders to move on. I looked at him as one might look at a worm unearthed, and the old dwarf dropped his eyes.

How easy it was to humble those who stood in the wrong.

Now, with the wind blown out of their sails, the Dwarves pressed on, dragging me in their wake. To the casual eye, they might have looked like gaolers, yet I fancied them more an honor guard, their squat armored bodies clanking like a company of ill-shaped tin soldiers.

I fixed my eyes forward, refusing to gape like a country bumpkin. I would not give them the satisfaction. So it was with studied indifference that I passed beneath the arch of the gate.

Bronzegate proper revealed itself beyond, and here I could not help but marvel. The city had been hewn whole from the mountain’s living heart, a cavern vast enough to swallow small cities. The roof stretched so high above that distance blurred it, yet from that shadowed vault hung massive daggered teeth of stone. Stalactites, but not dead and dark—these gleamed with the ghostly light of Zajasite, each gigantic shard of the luminous crystal casting down a cool blue. And, beneath that sapphire canopy sprawled the work of centuries.

The Dwarves built not with arches nor columns, but with blocks of flawless stone stacked in clean, severe lines. Palaces of granite and obsidian rose like monoliths, tier upon tier, some so tall they nearly brushed the cavern’s ceiling. Each block fit its neighbor with such cunning that no mortar was needed. Minimalist, perhaps, yet grand in their austerity. To see it was to understand a little of the stubborn pride of the Dwarves.

Nor was this place of perfect stone lifeless. The air thrummed with industry. From deep lanes I glimpsed the glow of forges, the firelight painting the stone walls red and orange, sparks leaping like fireflies into the blue haze above. The ring of hammers carried far, beating an endless rhythm against the anvils of Bronzegate. Here, a smith’s apprentice darted past, dragging a barrow heavy with ore; there, a sweating team rolled barrels banded in iron, watched over by a Dwarf with a whip coiled at his side.

And everywhere there was movement. Stone carts rumbled on iron-bound wheels. Chains clanked as pulleys lifted goods up to higher tiers. Smoke from forge chimneys twisted into the vaulted air, where it mingled with the shimmering blue light, blurring the cavern in a dreamlike haze. The whole city was alive, a vast living creature of stone and fire, laboring ceaselessly under the mountain’s hide.

It was then I noticed them. A scattering among the throng: Gnomes. In Al-Lazar, they were a respected race, called Titans. Here, however, they looked anything but.

They were small and beaten-looking, with hunched shoulders and broken stares. Their garb was roughspun, patched, and stained. I saw one of their number limp badly as he pushed a laden cart up a slope, sweat streaking his sooty face. A merchant shouted at him in a harsh tongue, and when he faltered, the lash cracked—just once, a serpent’s hiss in the blue-lit air. None spared him a glance. The Gnomes kept their eyes downcast, and the Dwarves around them looked past them as though they were no more than the wheels of their carts. Chattel then.

The grandeur of Bronzegate loomed all around, a monument of stone and pride, but it was the Gnomes who clung in my mind. The cavern sang with hammers and glowed with Zajasite fire, yet beneath that beauty, the rot was plain to see. 

There was a dark injustice here that was in need of correction. I was sure more than ever of my moral superiority. I had been brought here for a reason.

Later, I thought. Quest first. 

There would be time enough to slaughter a city after I got my experience points. Surely there were enough Dwarves here to harvest to get a level or two.

As such grim and calculating thoughts coiled through me, a child’s piping voice broke my reverie. A squat little Dwarfling pointed at me with a stubby finger, eyes round as saucers. His mother’s form drew my gaze: garbed head to heel in black cloth, with only the stone-grey glint of her eyes left bare to the world. Nor was she singular—most of the women I passed wore the same shrouding garment, their femininity hidden behind veils. Interesting, I thought. The Dwarves proved more conservative than even I had guessed.

My armor drew stares wherever we passed. Black and gold, gleaming in the blue, I must have seemed some demon knight out of an old tale. Farmers outside had glanced and turned away, but the city-folk of Bronzegate were bolder. They gawked openly, pausing in their errands, whispering behind beards as thick as drapery. Behind me, I left a flood of gossip, a deep lake enough to sate their tongues for days.

“We have arrived at the Assay…” Horothric began, puffing himself up with solemnity. But I heard only half his words, for my eyes were fixed upon the thing that lay before me.

The Assay was unlike any Dwarven work I had yet seen. It bore none of the neat, square severity of their city, none of the seamless order of their quarried blocks. This place was older, far older. It hunched near the cavern’s heart like a slumbering god, hewn from dark stone that drank the Zajasite glow and returned nothing. Where Dwarves prized right angles and clean lines, these walls rose in sloping terraces, step upon step, a brooding pyramid that seemed to worry the cavern roof with its peak.

The air about it lay colder, heavier, as if the stone itself smothered breath. Each block was carved—not with runes—but with cruel reliefs: gods with serpent jaws and taloned hands, feathered diadems and unblinking eyes that followed a man even when he would not be looked at. Twin stairways climbed the face, their balustrades fashioned as scaled coils; at the base, fanged heads thrust from the stone as if to swallow the unwary whole. This was not Dwarven craft. This was something that had taught the Dwarves to fear. Perhaps it was apt, for justice was to be feared.

A paved court capped the summit, square by the count of courses at a glance. No doubt that was where they meant me to fight.

“Here,” Horothric was saying. He had begun well enough, but when he felt my eyes upon him, his voice thinned. “Here you will be stripped of all arms and armor, that you may enter as pure as the day you were born. You may bear one weapon, no more, so that if you die, you may yet die with steel in hand. That is our last grace, and should you meet your end with courage, you will be granted another turn at the…”

The word curdled on his tongue. His jaw trembled; fear showed plain upon his face—the fear of a man who knows the laws he invokes are a poor shield.

“He speaks true, Lord Herald,” Cordelia said, her voice a soft bell in the cold air.

“I need neither weapon nor armor to best whomever, or whatever, you send,” I told them. “My build is better than that.”

Horothric blinked, confusion warring with worry.

I gave him a jester’s smile. “For the telling, Horothric, I extend you grace. Answer me one thing, and I’ll gift you something in return. Oh… and you had best bid your men step a little farther off,” I added, sweet as poisoned honey. “What follows is not for their ears.”