The White Fox (25 page)

They followed the two elves out and down a few passages and a flight of stairs. They crossed the entrance hall and went through another larger door Jack hadn’t noticed before. This chamber was about the same size as the East Guest Hall, with lines of benches filled with dwarves and a crackling fire in a grate in the center. At the opposite end, a stone plinth rose up with a single stool on it. The walls were hung with animal furs and the same fine cloth as the soldiers’ tunics, woven into meshed, swirling patterns.

The four of them took seats at the back of the hall. Jack recognized several of the soldiers from their expedition, now in ordinary clothes, and the king’s nephew. They were all talking loudly, and frothing flagons were passed around, splashing over the stone floor.

“What are we waiting for?” Lucy called over the racket.

“You’ll see,” Hakim replied, smiling, turning to talk to a dwarf in the row in front.

Several minutes passed uneventfully, during which a few more people arrived. Then from somewhere in the mass before them, a dwarf took the stage, emanating a wave of expectant silence. He was the oldest person Jack had ever seen. His beard was almost pure white, reaching down to his boots and tucked into his belt along the way. His eyes were grey and ridden with cataracts, but he fixed his audience with an encompassing gaze as he took his seat on the stool and began.

Jack had been obliged to take English literature at school, and he had been reasonably good at poetry. He could tell a ballad from a sonnet, a haiku and blank verse, and could give you a B-grade answer on Tennyson or Wordsworth. But this was poetry as he had never heard it. Perhaps it was the language ring, but he could hear the rhythm and shape of the language in the original
and
understand its meaning.

It was the story of a dwarf who saved his kingdom from a marauding swamp monster and descended into the Wastes to tackle the monster’s kin. He became king, enjoying a long and rich reign, only interrupted by the attack of a fire-breathing dragon. He slew the dragon, casting its body into a chasm, but sustained a mortal wound and died soon after. Jack could not tell how long it lasted, maybe five minutes, maybe five hours, but he didn’t care. The dwarf’s voice cracked when he finished, and there was silence. He nodded and returned to his seat.

Slowly, the noise began stirring up again.

Jack turned to Hakim, lost for words.

The elf smiled. “You enjoyed that, then?”

“Yeah … ,” he managed, blinking. He looked around to Hakim’s other side. Adâ appeared impressed. Lucy was flopped against the wall, eyes closed and mouth open, sound asleep.

East of the fortress on the edge of the Stórr Mountains in the valley of Sitzung, a solitary figure stood on the edge of a cliff. The peaks spiked up behind him and curved around to the left; to the right they dissolved into plains and misty marshland. The blade of the wind followed the curvature of the scene, slicing above through the peaks and down across the open plateau. Here, nothing grew well, only sparse, inedible roots and a few disparate shrubs. This marked the border between Thorin Salr and the Wastes.

Camps spread out under the cover of the mountains. The fiercest gales came from the south, yet they still blasted through the valley like thunder. The edges of taut, tattered tents flapped noisily in the breeze, and the wild boars, tied by the necks to deeply driven posts, grunted and shuffled their feet. More posts all around were lit at the top, the flickering flames barely penetrating the pitch darkness.

Despite the camps, no goblin was taking shelter. All were outside, the valley full of shadowy, bow-legged reptilian figures hunched together in almost complete silence. All pairs of bulbous, snakelike eyes were fixed upon the crest of rock high above, where a cluster of thirteen black tents, subtly styled with silver symbols, was pitched. The corn-yellow moon swam above it, casting its ghostly glow into the oily reflection of those thousands of eyes.

The figure stood on the crest of the rock, gazing down on his assembled forces. Twelve more of his fellows stood behind him, their black cloaks fluttering in the wind. The leader judged the time to be right. He spoke, his voice magnified a hundred times over the gale. “Brothers! Greenskins!”

Every creature in the valley broke into growls and cries of anger.
Greenskin
was a derogatory term that could be used to refer to any creature, though particularly goblins, which was an enemy of the “civilized” species.

“You have come from every corner of the Wastes, rival tribes and clans all gathered here, and for what purpose? You have come to avenge yourselves on those who drove you out of the mountains! Those who would call themselves your enemies yet treat you like animals! Who are they?”

Roars of rage erupted from several groups. The different tribes could be clearly seen—groups of goblins huddled together under tents displaying different totems and banners. But as the screams grew, the tribes took to their feet. The noise rose out of the valley and upwards into the starry night like a billowing sky beast, and the tribal differences were washed away by the cascade of rage and purpose. Thousands of voices blasted out in a barely discernable howl: “The dwarves!”

“Yes, the dwarves,” replied the leader, his boom still overcoming the shouts, “and now we know how to enter their kingdom. Go, brothers! March to Thorin Salr!”

The screams rose to a crescendo, the sky beast purring in pleasure as its form was augmented by the waking cries of hulking giants, chained in one edge of the valley.

The leader smiled to himself. This was too easy. He was a populist by nature—he could metamorphose even the most indolent crowd of divided moderates into a revolutionary mob with a few sentences—but this was barely a challenge. He turned to face his twelve fellows. “I think we’ve incensed them enough.”

Several of the figures laughed cruelly.

“We will
all
lead the march.”

The surrounding figures nodded and turned to packing up the tents, quenching the fire, readying their own mounts—not pigs, but lizard-like reptiles they had acquired in this world—and dispatching orders to the goblin chieftains.

Before long, the leader was left alone on the crest of rock. Far below, campfires were being dissolved and replaced by flickering torches hoisted in the arms of marching soldiers. There was a general surge away from him, as the mob looked to quit the valley through the narrow gorge opposite the cliff face. He snapped his fingers.

A shadow materialized out of the darkness next to him—this one in hulking armor, hunched over a black horse. Most notably, where its head should have been, there was just a stump of severed cloth.

“Go and kill a few. That should give them the energy to last the night.”

The shadow gave no noticeable sign of recognition but whipped its horse into action, spurring it forward and off the cliff.

The next few weeks were very busy for Jack and Lucy.

Before their first lesson, Sardâr took them aside with a grave look on his face. “You must understand the significance of this. You may have already seen, but Thengel is something of a revolutionary amongst his fellows. As a member of the Apollonians, he understands fully the importance of interworld cooperation against the Cult. Traditionalist dwarves have disagreed with him, calling him weak. Even his own nephew, Bál, is distasteful of his stance. Many dwarves take pride in their racial stereotype—being extremely proud, quick to anger, and particularly hateful of alchemy. It is the highest betrayal of these principles for alchemy to be used in their own fortress. It is extremely inconvenient for Thengel for us to be doing this, so you must show him the utmost respect. Is this understood?”

They both nodded.

“Alchemy,” Sardâr began, “is a science and not so mysterious as it may seem. As I said before, the Cult manipulates the yin in existence—the primal Darkness—which is inherent in all things. We—by which I mean those of us who align ourselves with the Light—choose to tap into the yang, which equally permeates our world. Whilst Darkness is destructive and negative, Light is creative and positive.”

At this point, he pushed aside a large ceremonial rug in the center of the room, revealing a circle surrounded by symbols etched in charcoal on the flagons. He motioned to each one of the four symbols, each at a compass point, in turn. “Light is made up of four elements: fire, water, air, and earth. These are not the elements of which objects are
physically
constructed—that is the territory of chemistry and physics—but rather the essence that sleeps within them that can be manipulated by sorcerers.”

Jack nodded, but Lucy seemed less sure. He wondered what Dr. Orpheus would make of this.

They only briefly touched on Dark alchemy.

“The basis of Dark alchemy,” Sardâr said gravely, “is the exploitation of the negative—moral or natural evil—to the ends of the sorcerer involved. Whilst it may initially seem more powerful than Light alchemy, the consequences for the soul are dire. It draws its power from the Darkness, tempered by anger, greed, lust, envy, or hatred from within the person who uses it. There is no such thing as defensive Dark alchemy; it can only cause pain and suffering.” That was all that was said on the subject.

“We live in a Realm of Light. Everything in nature is a mixture of the four alchemical elements; a tree is rooted in earth and water, whereas clouds are linked to water and air, and stars with fire and light.”

They were both taught how to recognize which elements composed different natural objects, something Sardâr said was vital to effective spell-casting. Jack’s curiosity was piqued at this, having been interested in comics at a younger age. Lucy, on the other hand, was becoming increasingly bored. Her interest in trees, beyond their capacity to be seated under at a party with a member of the football team, was nonexistent.

They arrived in the study on the sixth day of their lessons to find the desk, bookcases, and chairs cleared to the side of the room to leave a large open space in the middle.

“Today you will begin to practice alchemy for real.”

“Now?” Lucy exclaimed.

“Yes. It will be hard, but I’m confident that you can get through it.”

And the lessons did indeed live up to his word. Jack, who had been hoping for an easier ride with the Seventh Shard, was told to take it off. “You need to learn how to use alchemy before its power is magnified a thousand times. The incident with the volcano demon was extremely lucky. I’m surprised something didn’t go disastrously wrong.”

“Alchemy is not something that can just be pulled out of thin air. It takes great effort to draw it out of the natural world, far more to shape it into a form that isn’t lethal to the user. Observe.” Sardâr made Lucy jump as a fireball appeared in his hand. “In an unskilled sorcerer’s hands, this fireball could have been an inferno that would burn down the entire fortress. Excess is just as easy as deficiency. Control is the mark of the strongest sorcerers.” He then let Jack and Lucy have a go.

They spent most of the following lessons with Sardâr seated in two identical circles to the one he had shown them on the first day. They sat cross-legged in a meditation position, whilst objects were placed in front of them and they were told to bend its power to their will.

Jack had been thinking a lot, and he had come to the conclusion that the only other time he had used alchemy, when fighting a demon, was in a fit of momentary (and uncharacteristic) courage. It was much harder now. He thought it was something like searching for the end of a roll of tape. It was very difficult to find, and once you had it, it was very difficult to hang on to. A couple of times he felt the same surge flow through him, but in his excitement he let it fade away again.

Lucy was having no such luck. According to her, she had never once felt the slight pull of alchemy when she got near it. By the end of their first lesson, she was red in the face and extremely irritable.

This continued until the sixth day of their lessons. At about ten thirty, at this point with a lit candle placed in between his knees, Jack got hold of it. Determined not to lose his concentration this time, he focussed on it and pulled with his mind. It was as if he’d been plugged into an electric mainframe; he felt an incredible surge of dynamic energy alight every one of his nerve endings and burst through him. “I’ve got it!”