The Mine Lord: A Dwarven Survival Base-Builder

Onyx abruptly lowered the mesh of gold.

“Peridot,” she said. “Go see if your father needs anything.”

“Ay yes, mother.”

Peridot rose. She was not going to question the opportunity. It was odd for her mother to interrupt in the middle of a task, but these errands attending to her father had occurred more and more frequently of late. She carefully rolled her wire and stored away her tools on the shelf.

“Take him food and drink,” Onyx said, “I doubt he has eaten enough today.”

“Ay, yes, mother,” Peridot said. Iolite didn’t bother looking away from her work as Peridot slipped out the door.

Peridot hurried to light the coals of the brazier, then prepared the cavebread dough in a ceramic bowl. Cavebread was a flakey, speckled fungus that grew upon stone underground. It was scraped from the rock, and most dwarven stoneholds kept colonies of it growing in damp shelves closed off from the light, for it would not grow in the light of lamps or even strong Miner’s Eye. It offered some nutrition but could be used as flour to fry flatcakes. Her father preferred his fried in lamb grease with diced garlic, and it did not take Peridot long to have a stack of them ready. As she did this, she also added coals to the samovar and stoked it in case he should request tea or hot mead. She ate one small cake herself as she finished the batch, then poured a pitcher of maple beer.

Her slippers of soft lambskin barely made a sound as she walked the inner passage. She passed through the back alcove and saw her father standing, his leg lifted off the ground. He rubbed the thigh with one hand while the other palm was planted on the stone table. His head hung down, eyes closed.

She stopped and stared. She knew that his old wound often troubled him, but there was something else wrong, and at first she could not make sense of it.

It was the wrong leg.

Whether she had made a sound, or something else alerted him to her presence, Chargrim put his foot down and looked over his shoulder. He straightened. It was clear he had not wished to be seen.

“Daughter,” he said. “Thank you.” He motioned to the table, directing her to set down the food and drink. She obeyed.

“What is wrong with your leg?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re lying.”

“Are fathers not permitted to lie to their gilna?”

“No.”

“So we must tell all?”

“Concealment is not the same as lying,” she answered. “You may say nothing, or rebuke me for asking, but not lie.” Something about the deception had riled her and made her bold.

“And yet, by lying I have told you more than silence.” He smiled and sat. Picking up the pitcher, he went to fill his old mug.

“No,” Peridot said, taking the pitcher from him and filling the new mug she had brought. She slid the dirty mug away from him and set it on an empty platter. She would take it back to the hold and clean it. There was no telling how long he would drink from the same mug if given the opportunity.

His eyes were bleary and red again. After taking a drink, he tore a piece of bread. “So will you stand there judging me?” he asked.

Peridot went to the shelf and retrieved the Ingots stone and pieces.

“Care to wager?” she asked, setting them on the table.

“Wager?”

“Ay, yes. If you win, I say nothing to mother that you are lying about being hurt. If I win, you tell me the truth.”

Chargrim grinned.

“My gilna challenges me,” he said, and nodded to the stone. Peridot hurried to set the ingots in their places. Peridot had come far enough that she did not always lose. At least, she had won a few times, mostly when he was distracted. Victory was still a long chance. At least, she would get a game from it.

The first moves progressed in a familiar pattern.

“When do you think the wardens will return?” she asked.

He shook his head and laid his fingers across his lips to call for silence. Clearly, he was not ignorant that she often sought to distract him with conversation. Her father concentrated on the stone, but Peridot did not miss the slight grimace, or the moistness of the skin of his forehead. With his full concentration bent on the stone, she struggled to counter his onslaught. One of the Mine Runners, perhaps summoned by the smell of lamb grease, sat erect on the table, swishing its tail and watching the proceedings. Peridot did not see the second Mine Runner stalk up to the edge of the table. With a pounce, it snagged the first cat’s tail and with a great yowl, the Mine Runner darted forward, spinning the Ingots stone and scattering the ingots across the table and the floor.

“Ugh!” Chargrim grunted, then sighed, watching the two Mine Runners dart around the chamber. Peridot hurried to pick up the ingots. “Well,” he said. “We’ll have to rematch.”

“No,” she said. “I have the victory.”

“What?” he asked. “I was winning.”

“It doesn’t matter. They are your kulhan, and they disrupted a fair wager. Your claim bears responsibility by law.”

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“Mine Runners are not kulhan. They have sworn no oath.”

“But you shelter them, feed them, and they are the descendants of those brought to the claim by your hand, born in these halls. Their folk even serve your wardens. You are their Irik-Rhûl.”

“But no oath.”

“Is it not written in the Sayings of the Wise that the mute is proven by his deeds?”

He stared at her with a blank expression for a moment.

“Well,” he said, starting to grin. “I am glad to see the tutelage was not all in vain. You, my gilnaleku, have just forged your first arbitration. You have struck ore. I am afraid I am forfeit, and the victory is yours.”

“Now you must tell me the truth, and I won’t tell mother.”

“I’ll tell you the truth, and it is that you are foolish to think you know me better than my wif. It is not hidden from her, nor would I ask you to keep a secret from the wif of my hold. That would not be wisdom, as you should recall if indeed you read all the Sayings of the Wise.”

“Then why did you agree to the wager?” she asked.

Chargrim shrugged.

“AnIrik-Rhûl should not appear stingy.” The shadow of a smirk flickered at the corner of his mouth. Peridot knew that her father rarely referenced his position with total seriousness—at least not to her.

“Another game?” he asked.

“You have to tell me. That was not the truth we agreed.”

“It was worth a try,” he said, and leaned back. “The truth, then? Very well. I struggle to sit for long hours. It is painful.”

“Then why do it? Why not mine with Shineboot?”

Certainly, it must be the inactivity. He was a dwarf in his prime, only eighty-six years old. He was too young for such pains.

“I must sit. There is much to do, though I admit, I am eagerly distracted these days.”

“How can I help?”

“I am not sure you can.”

Peridot finished setting the ingots back in place and turned the stone. She made the first move.

“I can write for you,” she offered. “Teach me the tasks.”

“I can always appoint a new clerk.” Chargrim shook his head. “It is not the reading or writing of runes or the doing of sums that makes the difference.” He made his first lateral move.

“What does?” She countered with a stack.

Chargrim sat back in his chair, leaning away from the stone. He stared at her, as if he had lost all interest in the game.

“What is it?” she asked.

“My honor rebukes me,” he said. “I made a wager with you, but I have only half fulfilled it.”

Peridot did not reply. It was clear that her father was wrestling with something, so she waited.

“My mother,” he said. “You have heard me speak of her?”

“Not much.”

“No. The memories are not kind. But I told you she was a glüsht-na-fen, ay yes?”

A wif-of-craft.

Peridot nodded.

“Did I tell you why she married?” he asked.

“She had the bone wasting, and she could no longer weave.”

A sense of dread washed over her even before the thought fully formed.

“You have it?” she blurted.

“What? No. At least. . . No. It is just a fear. But sometimes when these pains come upon me, I do fear.”

“How long did your mother have the affliction?”

“Decades,” he said. “From the time she could no longer craft, she married and bore your uncle and me. I was yet young when she died. They say it killed Queen Jade as well, so she was in good company.” He stared off across the chamber, and Peridot knew he was not seeing the shelves of ledgers.

“How old was she?” Peridot asked.

“I am not exactly sure,” he answered. “Either one hundred thirty or one hundred thirty-one.Do not look so frightened.” He patted the table. “It is merely a fear, and fear cannot rule our lives. Should not. See, I regret my wager.” He leaned forward again, searching the table for his pipe. He found it beneath some papers, packed some hill-smoke, and lifted the chimney off the table lamp. He lit a narrow piece of resin-wood and puffed his pipe into life. All the while, Peridot tried to take in what she had just heard.

“Is it not fear that makes us prepare?” she asked.

“There is a fine line between fear and wisdom,” he said, blowing out a stream of smoke. “I have long straddled it. These days, I wonder if I have not been afraid enough.”

“Do you have another pipe?” she asked.

He motioned with his head toward one of the cubbies in the wall. She stood and found a long-stemmed clay pipe there, its bowl fashioned into the form of a beehive kiln. Returning to the table, she worked to pack it from the pouch of hill-smoke. Chargrim slid the remaining bit of cedar resin-woodtoward her, and she lit it. She was not practiced—especially not so practiced as her father—but she had smoked before. Hill-smoke was a luxury among the dwarves, but one which was common in the Owner’s Drift.

“What do you fear?” she asked after she had taken a number of draws.

“I simply fear for our folk, that is all. For the future. Yours, and Rightauger’s, and the rest.”

“Perhaps it is good that Rightauger seeks to become a warrior, if he is to be the next Irik-Rhûl.”

“Oh,” Chargrim said, shaking his head. “No. He has not the temperament to be Irik-Rhûl, I fear. No more than your uncle Sledgefist. I think Rightauger must forge his own hearth, not tend mine.”

“But he is your eldest son.”

“We are not like the humans, Peridot. The oaths were spoken to me, not Rightauger, and the Owners will decide when I am gone. Heredity mattered once, back in the days of kings and queens, but those days are stories, now. The folk will not submit to the happenstance of birth alone.” He motioned to the bookshelf behind him. “Claim law rules us.”

“But the folk will respect the Owners, if they choose Rightauger.”

“The Owners do not have claim to the whole of the Red Ridges. The folk willingly submit to Glint’s arbitration and protection, and that alone binds the range together. It was your mother who showed me that.”

“They submit to you.”

“They do, by the beard, and I often wonder why.”

“Don’t say that. You know why.”

“And what happens when I am gone?” He placed his hand on his thigh.

“Father!” she said. “It is only a fear. You do not have your mother’s disease.”

“I am sure you are right, but it means merely the difference of a hundred years, and that is nothing. I do not wish to alarm you, my daughter, but our folk are in more danger than they know. The wilds are full of ürsi, and the humans in the west are populous and hungry for lands and wealth. Disunited claims cannot resist our foes. If we lose the Waste and the Ridges, where can we go? Where can we ever be safe?”

“What if you chose the next Irik-Rhûl?”

“It is not so easy as choosing. Our folk do not respect hands that have not labored for a thing. This place forged us in the fires of its making. It forged me. By its labor we have become more than just a claim. The Red Ridges are ours. No one contests our arbitration north of East Spire.” He planted a hand on the table. “Glint is the hearth of the law of these mountains. It is the law that holds our folk together, that binds them into something more than scattered claims, and which holds them captive as well. But the law must be arbitrated, and to be arbitrated, there must be an arbitrator. There must come another who the folk will respect. New hands must take up the mantle and serve the folk, long before ever I fail.”

“So the folk must love them?”

“They must heed them.”

“How is that done?”

“I don’t know.”

“But they heed you!”

“For reasons that cannot be replicated or understood, I’m afraid.”

“So who?”

“I don’t know. I am not sure I can know. Not until the fire in their heart-forge shines brightly enough to be seen. Or until the facets of their soul catch the light.” Chargrim smiled at her with more than a little sadness. “My gilna, it is a hard lesson to learn that your father does not know or cannot teach you all. Maybe I have made that known to you too soon.”

“It is alright,” she said, though she didn’t feel it. It felt as if she had found cracks in the pillars of the world in the course of one conversation, and now she was unsure of the stone beneath her feet.

“Courage,” he said. “Come. Ingots has never been so necessary.” The game was already lost for her. He spun the stone around. “You begin.”