“It’s not me so much I am worried about—all right, that’s a lie, I am worried about me—but I am really scared for Tam and Sal. What will happen to them if I don’t come back?”
“They’ll survive. I did.”
“You had Master Malan to look after you.” Kormak thought about that. He remembered how invincible Malan had seemed, so stern and just but reassuring at the same time.
“True.”
“If anything happened to me down here, there will be no one to look after them. Tam needs medicine. Sal can barely look after herself.”
He looked down at her. There were tears running down her face. She was fighting back sobs.
“Nothing’s going to happen to you. I won’t let it. I gave Tam my promise.”
“You could at least try and sound convincing,” she said.
“I am not likely to come back if you don’t.”
“That’s much more convincing and even less reassuring.”
“Apparently, I am not very good at this.”
“You are a little too honest.”
“You think?” Kormak thought of the many deceptions his life as a Guardian had forced him to perform, the many lies he had told to people he had later killed. Her words seemed like a joke to him and he was about to say so then he noticed her breathing was soft. Her eyes were closed. She was asleep. Exhaustion had finally caught up with her.
Kormak gently laid her head down on his pack, shifted his weight and kept his eyes on the door. He thought about young Tam. He thought about his own father. He thought about oaths he had sworn and promises he had made. Sasha had not taken his words seriously but he had meant them. If he could he would keep her alive. Now the only question was who was going to do the same for him?
Tired as he was, he stood guard until his watch was over. Only when Boreas had woken himself did he allow himself to drop headlong into deep, deep sleep.
Chapter Fifteen
KORMAK SAW THE city as it had once been. The streets teemed with dwarves, proud and noble. They were broad and powerful and they did not walk like men. Sometimes they lowered their long, strong arms to the ground and moved on all fours. Around the dwarves, moving in packs, were numerous other creatures, smaller, with tiny bodies and spindly limbs, adapted to moving through the narrow pipes and corridors, working at tens of thousands of menial tasks. There was something familiar about them suggestive of goblins, although these small beings were less savage, more docile, seemingly happy with their work and the positions of utter servitude. Among them, the Old Ones stalked like princes, surrounded by retinues of creatures glittering and monstrous, none more so than themselves.
Kormak knew he was dreaming. He wondered if he was seeing something real, some echo of the past caught within the endless geomantically shaped corridors of the city, or whether this had all been conjured up out of his own mind from the sights he had witnessed. The thought vanished, forgotten instantly as the scene changed.
War came to the world outside the city. The Old Ones fought among themselves with terrible weapons. Refugees sought sanctuary in Khazduroth bearing the seeds of its destruction. Plague was unleashed and the dwarves died. Their small servants changed. They had become smaller of head and torso, longer and spindlier of limb. They seemed more and more numerous as if breeding faster and faster.
There were fewer and fewer Old Ones present and those who remained looked different, more brutal, as if they had adapted themselves to war. There were fewer dwarves too and they looked haggard and haunted as the war raged on through their city. They wore armour now and they carried weapons that blazed with terrible runes. Madness took them and they fought with each other. Some fled the city through the open gates. Some stayed and were changed utterly.
Years became decades. Decades became centuries. Hordes of monstrously mutated menials and companies of armoured dwarves stalked through the near-abandoned city. The lights were dim. Many of the potent runestones had been defaced. Rubble blocked streets as if the whole place had been hit by an earthquake. He knew somehow that the destruction had affected the potent geomancies of the city, blocked the flows of magical energy, tainted them, added to the deaths and mutations.
The war built to a blazing crescendo. The dwarves were led now by a single surviving Old One. The menials by another. Both of them were changed from what they had been. The female leading the dwarves looked pale and ill although she still blazed with magical power. The male leading the mutated menials looked ever more like them but far larger, and he bore more than a passing resemblance to Graghur. The two Old Ones fought with the intensity of lovers turned enemies. The one that might have been Graghur wounded the female with a terrible runic weapon. She in turn cursed him with a power and vehemence that sent him fleeing from the city, filled with terror, body becoming ever more twisted.