At the pier below Daebardin’s main way, Mistral Thrax hobbled across to where a cable-boat was tied. The boatman — like most boatmen working the new cable-ways from the shores out to the lower end of the great stalactite that was being delved for the Hylar — was a sullen-looking Theiwar. The Theiwar had proven adept at handling cables and winches, and many — unlike most dwarves of other clans — could swim. Thus they often bartered service in the cable-ways, and particularly the waterways. Their skills they bartered for the skills of Daewar to delve living spaces for them, of Hylar to construct walls and doors, and for materials from the Daergar mines and forges.
It was a system that had evolved in recent times, this trading of skills among the clans, and most of the dwarves felt it worked well enough, except for the resultant necessity to deal with people for whom centuries of enmity were not easily forgotten. Daewar delvers riding the boats or cable-carts tended to ignore the Theiwar who operated them, as though they were not there. The Theiwar, in their turn, did all they could to make their Daewar passengers uncomfortable.
As for the Daergar, delivering loads of ore to the furnaces and foundries, they simply ignored everybody unless someone happened to bump them or get in their way. Hardly a day went by in Thorbardin without some major dispute that in many cases had to be resolved by the Council of Thanes. Already, plans were being drawn for a Hall of Justice, because of the pugnacious attitudes of the people who had come to live — more or less together — in Thorbardin. And there were more people each day, as Einar from outside came to join the undermountain clans.
At pierside, Mistral Thrax poised himself on his crutch, then hopped down into the big cable-boat, causing waters to lap along its sides and drawing a frown from the Theiwar at the winch.
“What do you want?” the boatman snapped.
“What do you think I want?” Mistral growled back, seating himself in the stern. “This is a boat, and I’m a passenger. I want to go to the stalactite.”
“Well, that’s good,” the Theiwar said, “since that’s the only place this boat goes. Hardly worth the effort, though, just for one old gimper. Gonna work, might as well have a load.” He glared at the old Hylar, and lounged pointedly against his cable housing.
“I didn’t ask your opinions on the subject of efficiency!” Mistral glared back. “Get that winch going!”
“What will you give me to take you across?” the Theiwar asked.
“It’s what I’ll give you if you don’t that should concern you!” Mistral raised his crutch like a cudgel.
The Theiwar sighed, then cast off his moorings and grasped his winch handles. “At least you’re no gold-molding Daewar,” he muttered. “I hate taking orders from Daewar.”
Mistral lowered his crutch as the boat began to move. “If you don’t like this job, why do it?”
“It beats digging rock,” the boatman allowed. “There’s a team of delvers slaking out a dig for me and my family in Theibardin. So I’m over here hauling this scow.” A trumpet sounded, and he looked up. “Oh, now that’s more like it,” he said, reversing the winch. Immediately, the boat stopped and started going backward, back toward the Daebardin pier.
Mistral turned. There were people at the pier, waving frantically. Among them were Willen Ironmaul and Olim Goldbuckle, a brace of panting guardsmen, and a pair of aging Hylar women carrying bundles of cloths. There were also several Daewar women, and a Theiwar woman carrying copper pots.
As the boat approached the landing, the crowd pushed forward. “Hurry up, Chard!” the Theiwar woman called to the boatman. “We are wanted over there!”
Even before the boat had nestled against the dock, people were piling aboard, pushing and shoving for space. The last to board were the chieftain of the Hylar and the prince of the Daewar. “Hurry, boatman!” Willen snapped. “It’s time!”
The Theiwar gazed at him impudently. “And what time is that?”
With a surge and two strides, Willen was in the bow, pushing the Theiwar out of the way. The big Hylar took the winch-handles in hands like iron sledges, and the boat plowed water as it headed out across Urkhan’s Sea.
“You and your attitudes!” the Theiwar women snapped at the boatman. She brandished her copper pots at him. “Don’t you know what these mean?”
He stared at her stupidly, then his eyes widened. “Ah?” he said. “Ah! That time!” Staggering forward, he joined the Hylar chieftain at the winches, and the boat fairly raced for the tip of the stalactite in the middle of the lake.
Mistral Thrax frowned, shoving for space between two of the females. The women always know, he thought, the women with their cloths and their serious expressions, the copper pots for heating water — probably they knew even before the drums sounded from the Hylar quarters. It was time for a child to be born. His palms tingled and itched, and he clung to a wale to keep from being pushed overboard as the women shifted their positions in the boat impatiently. “Hurry!” one of them demanded. “Can’t you people pull faster?”
Muttering an oath, Mistral Thrax tapped his crutch against the timbered deck, then stared at it, blinking. For an instant, the crutch had seemed to glow. And in that instant it had seemed not like a crutch, but more like a fishing spear — a spear with twin tines. Mistral looked up. Apparently, no one else had noticed anything. He noticed that other boats were coming from other piers around the big lake, all pulling toward the center.
Approaching the giant stalactite was like approaching an upside-down mountain suspended from the sky. It was a huge, glistening mass of stone, rounded at the bottom where it almost touched the little island beneath that was its twin stalagmite, rising from the water. The distance between the stone surfaces was less than ten feet, and they were coupled now by a masonry shaft where the Hylar had installed a lift-belt, of the kind Handil the Drum had perfected in Thorin. The lift rose upward, into the main shaft where delving had begun and where the first quarters of the Hylar had been installed.
The boat creaked and nestled into a stone quay made of rubble from the delving above. Guards hurried forward from the lift to secure the lines, then stepped back as Willen Ironmaul stepped ashore and turned to lend stout hands to the others debarking. “How is my wife?” Willen asked.
“Very well, Sire,” a portal guard assured him. “But those with her say that her time is at hand. The child comes soon.”
Willen headed for the lift, but the women crowded ahead of him. “You wait your turn,” one of them snapped. “She needs us now more than she needs you. Just stay out of the way.”
“Here!” the Theiwar woman thrust her copper kettles at the chieftain of the Hylar. “Make yourself useful. Bring water.”
He handed the kettles to a guard. “You heard her,” he said. “Bring water.” As the lift stages disappeared up the shaft, carrying the women, Willen swung aboard the next stage and Mistral Thrax scrambled on beside him, clinging to Willen’s breastplate to keep from falling. Behind them, Olim and others crowded toward the next stage.
Upward through its shaft the lift-belt rumbled, and they stepped off onto fresh, hewn stone where a delve had been completed and shorings and partitions put into place. With Hylar craftsmen following them, Daewar delvers had dug an open area ten feet high and expanding a hundred feet in all directions from the central shafts. The Hylar had partitioned the space into various cubicles and enclosures, their pillars and masonry walls serving both as partitions and as braces to shore up the ceiling. The great delve, in the living stone of the stalactite, was only just begun, but already there was space enough for twenty Hylar families.
In a cubicle floored by fine carpets and hung with bright Daewar tapestries, Tera Sharn lay in her bed, radiant and determined. Dwarven women were gathered around her, and the new arrivals joined them. When Willen pushed through the crowd, Tera’s eyes brightened. “Willen!” she cried. “You’ve come back! How did it go with the Ergothians?”