Caelum guided them down the widest tunnel, while Lyanius explained, “I found Kemalok two hundred years ago.”
“How?” Neeva asked.
“I happened upon a short section of parapet the wind had uncovered,” Lyanius answered, a faintly amused smile on his wrinkled lips. “I knew instantly I had found a dwarven city from the time of the ancients. The merlons were too short for you people, and the stonecraft was far beyond anything the paltry masons of our age can achieve.”
The old dwarf went on to describe the next century and a half of excavations, working alone at first, and eventually coming to be the leader of an entire village focused upon the eventual reestablishment of Kemalok. Rikus paid him only cursory attention. Instead, the mul listened for footfalls behind them and glanced over his shoulder every few steps. The fact that the door guarding this secret city had “opened of its own accord” set his nerves on edge, and he did not place much faith in Lyanius’s body count.
Eventually they came to another bridge leading to a gate. This time, the bridge was made of wooden planks, now half-rotten and patched here and there with the wide, flat ribs of a mekillot. Caelum pushed open an immense set of iron doors, then led them through a short tunnel lined by chest-high arrow loops. On the other side, Lyanius’s dwarves had dug a series of vaults, revealing the outer bailey of a great castle.
As they passed through this area, Rikus peered into the windows of what had been the shops and homes of the castle’s smiths, tanners, fletchers, armorers, and a dozen other craftsmen. Their tools, made mostly from steel and iron, still hung in the racks where they had been neatly stored thousands of years ago. Rikus could not help gaping at the vast treasury of metal.
They passed through another gate and into the inner bailey. In the center of this courtyard, a square keep of white marble rose high overhead, the roof lost in the sand overhead. At each corner of the keep stood a round tower, its arrow loops commanding much of the courtyard below.
“This is the Tower of Buryn, home to dwarven kings for three thousand years.” Lyanius proudly opened the doors.
“Three thousand years?” gasped Neeva. “How do you know?”
The old dwarf frowned at her as if she were a child. “I know,” he answered, motioning her and Rikus inside.
On each side of the entrance foyer sat a pair of stone benches, one sized for the short legs of the dwarves and one for the longer legs of humans. In the corners stood full suits of dwarven plate, the shaft of a double-bladed battle-axe gripped in the armor’s gauntlets. Both the armor and the weapons were made of polished steel, gleaming as brilliantly as the day they had been forged.
Remembering the greeting they had received at the city gates, Rikus cautiously studied the fantastic armor. Fortunately, behind the helms’ visors he saw neither gleaming eyes nor anything but dark emptiness. Nevertheless, the mul did notice that the suits were too small for a dwarf. While they were about the right height, they were far from broad enough for the massive shoulders and bulging limbs typical of the dwarven race.
Noticing the mul’s careful study of the armor, Lyanius said, “Our ancestors were not as robust as we are today.” The old dwarf’s cheeks reddened and he looked away. “They even had some hair.”
Neeva raised an eyebrow, and Rikus bit his lips to keep from showing his own aversion. Muls and dwarves generally prided themselves on their clean skin and scalps. The idea of having their bodies covered by a matted growth of sweaty hair was considered repulsive by most members of both races.
Caelum walked into the next open area, a huge hallway running the perimeter of the keep. The floor was arranged in a pattern of polished black and white squares. At even spaces along the walls, tall white columns supported the vaulted ceiling above. Between each set of arches was a mural painted directly onto the wall.
Neeva stepped over to the nearest and inspected it closely. “You don’t exaggerate, do you Lyanius?” she asked. ‘When you said hair, I didn’t imagine anything like this!”
Rikus joined her. The painting before Neeva portrayed a dwarf dressed in a full suit of golden plate armor, a huge war-club cradled in his arms. From beneath his golden crown cascaded a huge mop of unruly hair that hung well past his shoulders. That was not the worst of it, either. His face was lost beneath a thick beard that started just below his eyes and tumbled in a tangled mass clear down to his belly.
“Come along!” ordered Lyanius. “I didn’t bring you here to gawk at my ancestors.”
He hustled them down the hall, Caelum following close behind. As they passed the other murals, the mul saw that they, too, portrayed grossly bearded dwarves. The painting usually depicted dwarves standing in the somber halls of dimly lit keeps or in the dark chambers of some vast cave.
When he reached the last mural in the line, Rikus stopped. He had no doubt that the picture depicted the guardian of the city, King Rkard. Like the figure that had met them at the city gate, the dwarf in the painting had golden-yellow eyes and wore black plate mail trimmed in silver and gold. His helm was crowned by a jewel-studded crown of strange white metal. In his hands, the picture king even held a battle-axe identical to the one carried by the gate-guardian. The weapon’s serrated blade was flecked by tiny sparkles of light.
As interesting as the king’s picture was, it was the background that fascinated the mul. Behind Rkard, the ground sloped down a gentle hill blanketed by the green stalks and red blossoms of some broad-leafed plant Rikus did not recognize. At the bottom of this slope, a wide ribbon of blue water meandered through a series of lush meadows. In those fields grew food crops of every imaginable color and shape. In the far background of the painting, the river finally disappeared into a forest of billowing trees ranging in color from amber to russet to maroon. Behind this timberland rose a mountain range, its peaks and high slopes covered strangely with white.
“Rkard is the king who led our ancestors into the world,” explained Lyanius.
“What world?” Rikus gasped, his eyes still fixed on the painting.
“This one, of course,” Caelum answered, also studying the painting. “Don’t let the mural mislead you. The artist must have been given to a certain amount of embellishment. Perhaps that green land is his idea of paradise-or maybe the after world.”
“Not so,” said Lyanius, his tone strangely morose. “Dwarven artists painted only what they saw.”
“What do you mean?” asked Neeva, wrinkling her brow at the mural. “Who has ever seen anything thing like this? It is even more magnificent than the halfling forest!”
Lyanius looked away. “Come on,” he grunted. “This is not what I brought you to see.”
The dwarf led the way around the corner and down the corridor until they reached a bronze-gilded door with the bas-relief head of a bearded dwarf. The sculpture’s blue eyes, made of painted glass, followed the movements of Lyanius and his guests as they approached.
Rikus and Neeva glanced at each other, uneasy at the sight of an animate sculpture.
Stopping in front of the door, Lyanius spoke to the head at length, using a strange language of short, clipped syllables. When he finished, the unblinking eyes studied Rikus and Neeva for several moments, looking them up and down. Finally the head’s metal lips began to move, and it replied to Lyanius’s query in the same staccato tongue. The door swung open.
As the door moved, Rikus heard the faintest scuffle in the hallway behind them. “Did anyone else hear that?” he asked.
Lyanius frowned. “I’m certain it was just the echo of the door opening.”
Nevertheless, the old dwarf passed his torch to Rikus. Motioning for the others to stay behind, Lyanius shuffled down the corridor into the murky blackness, where his dwarven vision would not be nullified by the light of the torches.