The Crucible of the Dragon God (28 page)

"Nutrients, proteins. The essential building blocks of life. I would not have survived this long had I not been able to revert to a state of stasis among them."

"You're thousands upon thousands of years old," Kali breathed. "But at the same time,
so young
."

"Oh, come on," Slowhand objected. "He can pop in and out of existence, just the same as he was, every time, with all his memories intact? I may be just an old soldier boy, Hooper, but -"

"Perhaps you simply do not have all of the facts, Killiam Slowhand," the dwelf said.

As he spoke, his body
faded
into a state of translucency for a second and something that looked like a length of stretched and shimmering gold could clearly be seen coiled throughout his body.

Slowhand stared. "What the hells?"

Kali could hardly believe it herself. She thought back to her meeting with Kane in Andon, the way he used the threads as
physical
things. It seemed the Old Races had too, but in a way that even Kane would likely find hard to believe. The Old Races, particularly in their last age, had been outstanding engineers, but she had never imagined - never could have imagined - that they had begun to engineer
themselves
.

"I think that's a line of thread magic," she said. "An actual magical thread interwoven with his very being."

"Yeah?" Slowhand responded, perhaps not quite grasping the enormity of what she said, or perhaps, being Slowhand, simply asking the sensible question. "Why?"

"It is a necessary part of the process," the dwelf said.

"Necessary for what? To churn out those
things
from the pools? Or maybe just try and
suffocate
anyone who pops by?"

"The atmosphere chamber," the dwelf said. "That was not I."

"Oh? Then who?"

"No one. Your entrapment was accidental, the process automatic. However, I regret the facility was left unsealed."

"Atmosphere chamber?" Slowhand asked but Kali placed a hand on his shoulder, preferring the conversation walked before it ran.

"If you were the one that freed us, thank you," she said. "And for chasing away the k'nid, however you did."

"That is what you call the spawn? Interesting. But yes. The
k'nid
, like most organisms, are susceptible to certain harmonics and vibrations which cause them discomfort, in this case forcing them to flee."

"Harmonics and vibrations you've used before. To interrupt the absorption of those bodies out there."

The dwelf was silent for a second.

"I had no interest in saving the intruders," he said. "Only in protecting this place." As he spoke, the structure shook once more, rumbled deeply. "The birthing
k'nid
have inflicted considerable damage on the complex."

"The Faith, too, by the look of what we've seen out there," Slowhand chipped in. "Why the hells didn't you use these harmonics to get rid of them, too?"

"Because I have observed your world and know their motives, the singular, dark mission of their Church. Had my presence been revealed to them it would have served no good and perhaps have led to other discoveries. Also, my influence over the complex is no longer absolute. The damage it has sustained even without the k'nid -
naturally
over the long, long years - has left areas of it dead to me."

"Like the birthing pools - the Crucible," Kali said, and the sphere rumbled again as she spoke. "The Final Faith turned it on, didn't they?" she said, remembering Jenna's recordings. "That was what she meant by their
mistake
."

"And now you can't turn it off," Slowhand said.

"The Faith disturbed the precise calibrations of minds long since dust, spawning the k'nid in numbers not intended. Worse, the prism central to the birthing process - the same prism that could
abort
the process - became misaligned beneath their meddling hands." The dwelf sighed. "You are correct, archer. I cannot stop it."

"Stop it?" Slowhand repeated. "Why in the hells did you
start
it? For gods sakes, why on Twilight would you want to create such creatures in the first place?"

The dwelf's answer sounded regretful and - considering what it seemed he, or at least his people, were responsible for - also somewhat unlikely. "To save the world."

"News for you, pal, that's her job," Slowhand said, nodding at Kali. "So what's the real story?"

Kali wasn't as hasty in responding. The dwelf's regret had sounded genuine enough for her.

"Do you have a name?" she asked.

"I was created to be a guardian," he said. "The elven word for such a role would be Tharnak."

"Tharnak it is, then. Tharnak, please, I don't understand. How would creating these
things
save the world?"

"Our world faced a threat foretold in tomes of as great an age as divides our civilisations now. A threat both from the unknown and unknown in essence. Though both elven and dwarven races knew of its coming, we knew also that it was
alien
to us. We did not know what could stop it because we could not know what its weaknesses were. And so we constructed the Crucible. Its purpose was the creation of a singular life form specific in its purpose - to combat
any
threat."

"Must have been a pretty unique threat."

"It was. As unique as the solution we devised. The creatures you call k'nid were the result of complex manipulations of Twilight's life forms - extracting from them those elements which brought them victory in the survival of the fittest. In the process we gave birth to
other
creatures, and these, too, became part of the process. Our survival was at stake and so we had to create the ultimate defence. A life form capable of surviving any environment, of winning and
transforming
that environment and becoming its dominant life form. The
only
life form."

"So overwhelming it would spread like some disease," Kali said, "consuming the enemy. Tharnak, we're not the enemy and your creations aren't saving our world, they're
destroying
it."

"Because," the dwelf said, "they were never meant to be unleashed here."

"Unleashed
here
? I don't understand."

"On this world."

"
What?"

"The k'nid were destined for the heavens."

"Okay, pal, that's it," Slowhand cut in. "Hooper, don't waste breath on this guy. He's a short wick in a long candle."

"Slowhand, let him fin -"

"No, Hooper. Think about it. What isn't ringing true here? Apart from this
heavens
rubbish? If this project of theirs was so damned important - so vital to the future of both their races - why is it stashed away up here at the top of
our
world, hidden in a secret valley behind the Dragonfire? I'll tell you why. Because it's a farking loony bin, is why."

"My friend has a point," Kali said, biting her lip. "If elves and dwarfs were working together, in a time when there were only elves, dwarves and a handful of primitive humans who would have posed no threat, who exactly were you hiding yourselves from?"

"Many of our peoples were against what we would achieve."

"Hardly surprising," Slowhand said.

"Do you imagine that because we were races who had attained greatness, that we did not have as many fundamental divisions among us as divide the peninsula today? There were those who ignored the threat to us, those who courted, even welcomed it, and those who actively sought to prevent us stopping it, for their own reasons, insane as they may have been. We were called blasphemous, sacrilegious, and even within our own ranks there was doubt. Doubt that could only be assuaged by my creation. A living compromise between elf and dwarf factions, a believer of
both
sides."

"So the Crucible was built in secret?" Kali said. "Your rulers, governments, churches, knowing nothing about it?"

"For three years our people - those who
believed
- worked with and within them, utilising their resources and hoping, also, to recruit some to our cause. But - as is the case with your own Final Faith - the ideals and aims and beliefs of most were too intractable, entrenched to change. Had we been discovered we would have been banished, or worse. Still, our people managed to establish a chain of contacts, supplies and the means to transport them, the cooperation of sympathisers to our cause and, eventually, began to establish their presence, here, in the Drakengrat Mountains."

"The waystations," Kali said.

"Constructed, again, in secret, and as defended in their time as the Crucible itself. Not only a means to ferry our materials but designed to intercept any who might wish to stop what the Crucible hoped to achieve. Some of the airships therein were fighters."

"Fighters? It sounds like a war."

"More than just a war. A holy war. We had no wish to spill the blood of our own but we
had
to protect the complex whilst its purpose was achieved."

"A holy war?"

"As I said, the k'nid were designed with a specific purpose and that purpose was to destroy the
deity
in our heavens."

"Destroy the deity?" Slowhand echoed. He almost laughed. "Are you saying their purpose was to
kill God
?"

"Some called it God."

Kali found herself almost physically staggering. "Deity," she said. The dwelf had spoken in the singular so presumably he was not referring to the various Gods whom most on Twilight had worshipped before the coming of the Final Faith. Was he, therefore, speaking of
their
god, the one god? If that was the case, did that mean the Old Races acknowledged its existence literal ages before the Faith came into being - as an actual entity? That it might be real was something she struggled to accept. "Tharnak are you talking about the
Lord of All
?"

The dwelf almost spat his response, so vehement was it. "I am talking about the Lord of Destruction, the Lord of Nothing!"

Kali frowned. Lord of Destruction? Lord of Nothing? What the hells did those phrases mean? Were these just other terms for the Lord of All, or for something else entirely? She was about to ask when another tremor ran through the Crucible, more violent than any that had come previously, and she was forced to steady herself against the sphere as growth fluids sloshed about inside. Even Tharnak himself seemed concerned.

"Would that I could show you," the dwelf said with a sigh. "Make you understand. But there is so little time."

Tharnak's weary resignation made Kali realise that she was unlikely to get any further with this line of questioning for the moment and, while she still didn't understand the meaning of the threat, there was something becoming increasingly obvious to her - something made inherently clear by the fact that the Old Races were no more.

The threat
, she thought.
Is this what happened to the Old Races?
My Gods. Is this how they died?

"Your attempt to eradicate this deity," she said, "it failed, didn't it? Why?"

"Hubris, arrogance,
foolishness
. At that stage in our civilisation, though we possessed the technology to do what we did, it was not enough. We needed the magic, too. But the magic, by then, had become weak, for we had destroyed those who made it whole."

"Destroyed? Destroyed who?"

"The Dra'gohn."

"The Dra'gohn? You mean
the
dragons
?"

"If that is what you call them, yes."

Kali didn't have a clue why the absence of dragons should affect the magic - make it whole - but that hardly seemed the point. The Old Races were the reason they had gone away?

"How?" she asked. "Why? What happened?"

The sphere shook again and the dwelf's weariness returned, almost as if he were dying with the Crucible. "Cowardice... greed... does it really matter? They were gone - and with them, our only chance to survive."

"But this place," Kali protested, aware as she spoke of how naive the question seemed. "All of its potential - couldn't you have somehow
remade
them, brought them back?"

The dwelf actually laughed, although the sound was guttural and bitter. "How many times over these countless, lonely years do you think I have been tempted to try? To rectify
our
mistake, and to
apologise
to them, even though it would have been too late? No, it would have been an empty exercise, for that is why we failed. The magical threads that bind our creations are weak. Nothing
made
here can survive for long if it leaves the Crucible." The dwelf paused. "How could I bring the dra'gohn back knowing that when they took to the skies I would once more be responsible for their end - that they would
die?
"

"You mean like the yassan, you bastard?" Slowhand said. "How do you think they feel - out there,
changed
, unable to leave that frozen wilderness they call home? Tell me,
Tharnak
, did you really need to make them part of your
soup
or were you just playing games?"

"We took no pleasure in our experiments on them. It was our wish that, when we left, we gifted this valley to them in return. But, of course, we did not leave."

"And that's meant to make things all right?"

"'Liam, don't," Kali said. She stared at the dwelf. "If that's the case, why are the k'nid able to survive?"

"They are not. Their capability for self-replication grants them a longer life span than others but eventually they, too, will revert to nothing. They would not have reached the heavens. Beyond this valley they have, perhaps, a matter of days."

Which we don't
, Kali thought. "Then, please, is there a way to stop them?"

"The prism above the birthing pools. It holds upon it the runics capable of reversing their creation,
removing
them. Combined with the magic of your Three Towers - if your men of magic channel their threads of destruction through them - the plague upon the peninsula will be ended."

"It's that simple?" Slowhand said, beginning to revise his opinion of the plant.

Easy for you to say
, Kali thought. She calculated she had some hours before the next wave of k'nid were spawned but, from what she'd seen of them, that didn't necessarily make the birthing pools any less dangerous. "So this is the bit where I risk life and limb in some potentially lethal hellshole to save the world once more, right? Fine. I'll go get it."