Disenchanted (20 page)

The driver had mentioned “getting to Buren-Gandt before nightfall.” Boric had never heard of such a place, but he assumed it was the location of the mine. He could only hope that the driver’s estimate of his arrival time was roughly accurate — and that there weren’t any other stops along the way. He listened intently for any sign that the train was slowing or approaching any sort of settlement or outpost, but he heard nothing but the rhythmic clomping of hooves on the gravel and the occasional squeak of a metal wheel on the rails. For several hours they seemed to be on a slight upward slope that gradually grew steeper. Then they reached a long downhill grade.

He smelled Buren-Gandt before he heard it: the scent of burning coal filled the air. Venturing a glance from under the tarp, he saw that the sky was dark with soot. There was no sign of any sort of settlement yet, but it had to be close. The sun had disappeared behind the mountains and the light was growing dim. Boric climbed out of the cart and dropped onto the tracks, shielding his eyes from the remaining daylight.

He was in a valley in the middle of the Feldspaal Mountains, with great snowy peaks towering on all sides. Boric continued along the track, following the mule train at a hundred paces or so. He doubted the driver would look back, and in any case would be unlikely to make him out in the dying light. The smoke grew thicker and echoes of clanging machinery filled the valley. Soon the track began a precipitous drop; the mules were no longer pulling the train so much as breaking its descent. Here the track was sunk in an ever-deepening crevice carved into the rock, and he could see that ahead the valley fell away into a vast canyon with sheer rock sides. The track disappeared around a corner to the left and Boric could see that it continued on the other side of the canyon, spiraling ever downward. Rather than follow the train down through the crevice, Boric remained at the top of the canyon, creeping stealthily toward the rim. He noticed that the dust clinging to his boots was red. Reaching the edge, he peered over into the chasm below.

The sight filled him with awe. The canyon was probably a mile deep at its deepest, roughly circular and maybe a mile wide; it had been excavated to varying depths in different places and each level swarmed with dwarves. Some were swinging picks; others were digging with shovels; still others were moving piles of rock with wheelbarrows. In the middle of it all, about a half a mile down, sat a giant metal machine that was unlike anything Boric had ever seen. There was a great revolving wheel some fifty feet high, and next to it a huge cantilevered metal beam that rocked up and down like a giant hammering a nail. Alongside this was a riveted iron tank the size of one of the Kra’al Brobdingdon’s massive guard towers. Below the tank was a gigantic furnace that blazed with such intense heat that Boric could feel it at the canyon’s rim, and with such light that it illuminated the entire canyon almost as if it were day.

Four metal chutes ran to the furnace, each chute manned by a score of dwarves, who were frantically shoveling coal into them. At the same time, other groups of dwarves were delivering wheelbarrow loads of coal to keep the dwarves on the chutes supplied. A third set of dwarves rested out of the way of the commotion, drinking and dousing themselves with water from a trough. Every so often a group of the resting dwarves would take the place of the coal-delivering dwarves, the coal-delivering dwarves would take the place of the chute-filling dwarves, and the chute-filling dwarves would head to the resting area. No whistle or bell sounded, but somehow the dwarves all knew exactly where they were supposed to be and when they were supposed to switch places. After some time, Boric realized that they were all working in time with the movements of the giant beam. Every switch was ten beats apart, and the schedules of the workers at each of the four chutes were staggered by ten beats. The shrewdness of this system was instantly evident: the workers shoveling coal were always fresh, so they could keep the furnace roaring at full capacity; none of the workers ever got in each other’s way; and everyone knew what they were supposed to be doing at all times. It was still unclear what the machine actually did, of course, other than cast a hellish glow over the canyon, belch foul smoke into the air, and throw off nearly as much heat as the midday sun, but Boric was convinced that whoever had designed this scheme — not to mention the machine itself — was some kind of diabolical genius. Brand, he thought. It had to be.

He was still trying to figure out what Brand was trying to accomplish with his infernal machine when he was gripped by both arms and thrown into the canyon.

Boric stared at his own body lying broken on the canyon floor. Two figures in black stood over him, growling, hissing, and poking at his corpse. Boric wanted nothing more than to float away, to leave his wretched carcass and this accursed place, but there was no denying the inexorable pull of Brakslaagt. No matter how hard he fought, he couldn’t get away, and suddenly it wasn’t some inert hunk of flesh the wraiths were kicking and poking; it was Boric.

“Hey!” he yelled. “Cut that out!”

“You see,” said one of the wraiths. “He is like us. The Master summoned him, and he came.”

“No one summoned me,” growled Boric, getting to his feet. “I am here to learn the secret of the curse of the Seven Blades of Brakslaagt. So that I can be free. So that we can all be free.”

“Are you?” said a voice behind him. Boric spun to see another man approaching. He was tall — certainly not a dwarf, and he looked to be quite young. He was dressed in a simple tunic with no visible sign of rank but somehow managed to convey an unquestionable air of authority. His complexion was fair and the glow of the furnace gave his hair and face a hellish sheen.

“And who might you be, lad?” challenged Boric. “Some eager young sycophant of His Insolence Lord Brand?” The wraiths moved closer to Boric, gripping his arms tightly.

The young man smiled. “His son, actually,” he replied. “My name is Leto. I run the mining operation here.”

“His…” Boric started. Could this really be Brand’s son? He didn’t really look that much like Brand, but it was difficult to tell in the harsh red light. Half of his face glowed like crimson and the other half was in shadow.

“Now, Boric, is it?” said the young man. “Why don’t you tell me about this curse you’re so desperate to break.”

“Don’t toy with me, lad,” growled Boric. “You know full well the curse I speak of. These other good men and I have been cursed to walk Dis as dead men.”

“Really?” asked Leto. “Gentlemen, is this true? Have you been cursed?”

“No, m’lord,” said the wraiths in unison. The one to Boric’s left added, “We wish only to serve Lord Brand.”

“OK, well they’re pretty far gone,” said Boric. “But I still remember what it was like to be human, and I don’t appreciate being jerked around like a puppet.”

Leto laughed. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” he said. “You spent your life treating others as puppets, and now that it’s your turn, you chafe at the wires. Tell me, Boric, what would you do if you were free?”

“I’d leave this petty world and go to my reward in the Hall of Avandoor,” said Boric.

“Oh, the Hall of Avandoor!” cried Leto. “And what will you do there? Boast about the ogre you slew and the trolls you minced?”

“Well, yes,” replied Boric. “And you know, eat mutton and drink mead, that sort of thing.”

“And tell me, oh Boric the Implacable, just how do you think you rate amongst the giant-killers and dragon-slayers?”

“I don’t have, like, an exact number, if that’s what you’re looking for,” said Boric. Yes I do, he thought: eighty-seven.

“Still, wouldn’t you like an opportunity to bump your score up a bit, as it were? Kill another bugbear or two?”

Boric shook his head. “It doesn’t count because I’m already dead. Besides, I’m not sure bugbears are worth much.”

Leto stared at him. “Do you even listen to yourself when you talk?”

“What?” Boric asked. “I’m just saying, they don’t count it as a slaying if you’re dead. Frankly, the rules are pretty arbitrary. I’m totally getting shafted out of an ogre slaying
and
a dragon slaying.”

Leto shook his head. “Wow. My mother was right about you. I thought she was exaggerating, but she was totally right, as usual. Tie him up and throw him on the next train the Brandsveid. I’m done with him.” Leto turned and began walking away.

“As you wish, m’lord,” said the wraiths, gripping Boric’s arms tightly.

“Wait, your mother?” asked Boric. “Who’s your mother?”

“I believe you met her once,” said Leto, stopping to face Boric. “Her name is Milah.”

TWENTY-TWO

Boric spent the next three days tied up in a cart bound for Brand’s stronghold. The journey was uneventful; the Wastes of Preel consisted of nothing but hundreds of miles of salty muck. Legend held that the Wastes had once been a sea. There were no settlements and no animal or plant life to speak of. It was difficult to traverse by foot, and even if Boric could have worked his way out of the ropes, the two wraiths were traveling with him to prevent his escape. He was going to meet Brand, whether he was ready for him or not.

Was it true that Leto was Milah’s son by Brand? And was Milah with Brand now? The thought made him feel sick. How could she do that to him? Didn’t she realize what Brand had done to him? Or had she been in league with him all along? It did seem a little suspicious that he met Milah only two days after meeting Brand. But what had she been angling for? What did her magic mirrors have to do with Brand and the Blades of Brakboorn? Clearly he was missing something, but what? And who did Leto think he was, anyway? What was he getting at with his dismissive talk about Boric’s curse? It figured that a pretentious upstart like “Lord Brand” would sire an uppity brat like Leto. Boric planned to kill both of them at the first opportunity. Well, after figuring out how to break his curse, of course.

Twice the train stopped and made camp. No one bothered to check on Boric, and why would they? Presumably he was still dead. Occasionally, for shorter intervals, the train would stop so the driver could water the mules. During some of these stops, Boric heard voices and what sounded like another train passing. He couldn’t make any sense of this: there was only one set of tracks. It was possible, of course, that there were side rails that the driver could direct the train onto, but how would he know when to pull over? Even if the drivers used a flag system like that used by the signalmen in the army of Ytrisk, flags could only be seen at a distance of a few miles. Unless there were side rails every couple of miles, the trains would constantly be backtracking to get out of each other’s way. But the passing occurred without incident every single time. Could it be that the schedule of the trains was kept as precisely as that of the dwarves in Buren-Gandt? It seemed impossible. There was no giant hammer here to help them keep time, and how could any such system account for unexpected contingencies like bad weather or a mule with a broken leg? It made no sense.

Nor could Boric figure out why Brand needed such a gigantic mining operation. Assuming the mine at Buren-Gandt was the source of the material used in the swords, what could he possibly need such a vast amount for? Was he making swords to enslave every man in Dis? The possibility filled him with sudden dread. Of course. He recalled the swords of simple but excellent workmanship that half the nobles in Ytrisk were using — the same sort of sword used by Clovis the Technical Dragon-Slayer. Having enslaved the former kings of the Six Kingdoms, Boric had moved on to the dukes and counts. When they died, he would have a wraith army composed of the greatest swordsmen and tacticians in Dis — men who knew the defenses of every castle in the land. There would be no stopping him. The fact that Clovis hadn’t turned into a wraith militated against this line of reasoning, but maybe his sword had been defective. There was no other explanation: Brand intended to enslave all of Dis. All the more reason for Boric to kill him.

On the evening of the third day, the train finally stopped amongst the sound of the clanking of metal and men shouting in a strange, harsh-sounding language. The tarp on his cart was removed and he was hauled out and thrown on the ground by the wraiths. They cut his ropes and pulled him to his feet.

Boric was once again on the floor of a valley surrounded by mountain peaks. But this place had a more desolate, barren feel than Buren-Gandt. Rather than reddish-brown, the ground was as gray as ash, and the peaks were jagged and treeless. In fact, no trees or other plant life could be seen.

The wraiths gripped Boric’s arms and spun him around, dragging him toward a massive edifice built into a near-vertical cliff wall. It was easily double the size of Kra’al Brobdingdon, with towers that rivaled Avaressa’s tallest buildings. In front of the castle was the source of all the commotion: a goblin army, easily ten thousand strong, broken into regiments that were marching in formation around the vast and barren valley floor. Was this the army that Brand intended to use to conquer the Six Kingdoms? If so, he wasn’t as smart as Boric had thought: goblins were unruly and undisciplined, excelling only at hit-and-runs and other guerilla tactics. Marching a goblin army across the Wastes of Preel would be like trying to push a chess set across a sandbox.

The wraiths ushered Boric through the marching ground and across a drawbridge that was lowered over the semicircular moat barring access to the front of the castle. Looking down, Boric saw that the moat was actually a chasm in the rock. It appeared to be hundreds of feet deep. Brand had picked the location for his castle well: anyone falling down there wouldn’t be getting up again. Once across the drawbridge, they entered the castle and walked through a long hall lined with goblin guards wearing plate armor and bearing halberds. Reaching the end of the hall, one of the guards pulled aside a sliding metal gate and shoved Boric into a small, square, windowless room. The wraiths followed closely behind.

“Top floor,” said one of the wraiths.

“Huh?” said Boric. He turned to see a small goblin standing in the corner of the room. He leaned into a horn-like device protruding from the wall of the room and shouted, “TOP FLOOR, STAN!”