A sharp explosion of steam belched from the lead car’s undercarriage, and the glow brightened to a steady, hot yellow.
The tram’s whole chain of cars inched forward with a metallic scrape of wheels along the ruts. In moments, it picked up the speed of a trotting horse. As it bore into the tunnel, the sharp glow in the lead lit the way, and Chap heard its wheels’ rhythm building steadily. Within a few breaths, it vanished from sight.
Chane stood watching after it as well.
“Crystal power ... some kind of arcane engine,” he whispered, and then pointed to the other platform. “That will be ours.”
Chane stepped ahead, but Chap lingered. This was going to be worse than the lift up the mountainside. Reluctantly, he followed.
Another stationmaster, a female, walked the platform and herded passengers into the cars. The Cheku’ûn, “Bay-Side,” tram filled quickly.
“Here,” Chane said, entering a car and dropping onto the nearest empty bench.
Chap crept in, resisting the urge to growl at other passengers. The female dwarf—still directing people—glanced at him.
“How long to Cheku’ûn?” Chane asked her.
“No stops on this run,” she answered in a deep voice, “so by Night-Summer’s end.”
She went off to the next car in the line, and Chap was left wondering what that time frame meant. He glanced up at Chane.
“The trip will take about a quarter night,” Chane explained.
Chap grew even sicker. He had hoped to finish their task here and be gone with the third orb by dawn. That was not going to happen, and he sank onto the tram’s floor as Chane piled his packs and the chest on the empty side of his bench.
The car lurched, and Chap could not hold back a whimper.
Chane would never admit it, but by the journey’s end, he felt sorry for Chap. As the tram pulled into Cheku’ûn station, Chap was still flattened upon the floor with drool dripping from his jowls. Shade had also grown ill to the point of vomiting during her first tram ride.
However, she had never urinated all over a lift.
“It will pass soon,” Chane said shortly, slinging both his packs and then balancing the chest again. “Your daughter suffered worse on these vehicles, but she never left Wynn’s side.”
Chap looked up in a mix of wariness and puzzlement.
Chane could not suppress another flash of pity for the majay-hì, but without further comment, he rose and followed other passengers off the tram into another way-station cavern. When he glanced back, Chap was trying to wobble around the thick legs of dwarves hurriedly disembarking. Chane waited.
Once Chap stumbled down the platform’s ramp, Chane led the way through an arch in the right stone wall, down several crowded passages, and out into the almost impossibly enormous market cavern of the Cheku’ûn. When he paused to check on his companion, Chap’s ears flattened as he stared all around the place.
A thinned forest of sculpted columns the size of small keep towers rose to the high domed roof of this smoothly chiseled cavern. Even at night, the chaos of vendors, hawkers, peddlers, and travelers echoed as the dome caught all noise and rained it down on everyone.
All forms of goods were being carted to and from and traded at stalls and makeshift tents. Dwarves and humans of varied shapes and sizes, and perhaps a Lhoin’na quickly lost in the crowd, bartered for everything from meat pies and tea to small casks of ale and sacks of honey-coated nuts.
In the avenues between columns, large glowing crystals steamed atop stone pylons. Smoke from portable braziers and steam escaping around crystals filled the great cavern with a hazy orange-yellow glow. Directly across the vast place was another opening so tall one could see it clearly over the crowd.
“There,” Chane said, lifting his chin. “Let us leave this chaos.”
He stepped off to break through the crowd with an occasional glance back to see that Chap followed. He towered over nearly everyone, even the human merchants and travelers, and more than a few people glanced their way as they passed. Chane ignored them and strode straight for the archway. Once outside in the cool night air, he heard Chap take a deep breath and release it.
Here, they had a full view of the stone city built on a mountainside. The main road snaked tightly upward between buildings of stone and scant timber. Moonlight barely revealed slate, tile, stone, and a few shakes or plank roofs. Only short and steep side streets aimed directly upward, and most were built of wide stone steps and multiple landings. All of it was behemoth-like—rather like the dwarves themselves.
Dwellings and inns, smithies and tanneries, and other shops spread out, around and above them in a muddled maze.
“It can be daunting at first,” Chane said. “I remember my first time.”
As soon as the words escaped his mouth, he would have flushed with embarrassment if he had had warm, pumping blood to do so.
Why should he care if the majay-hì was daunted?
Chane strode up the street’s gradual slant, deeper and higher into Bay-Side and to one of the few places where he was known and welcomed. That in itself was strange for him.
He was rarely welcomed anywhere but the temple of Bedzâ’kenge—“Feather-Tongue.”
Dwarves practiced a unique form of ancestor worship. They revered those of their own who attained notable status in life, akin to a human hero or saint or rather both. Any who became known for virtuous accomplishments, by feat and/or service to the people, might one day become a thänæ—one of the honored. Though similar to human knighthood or noble entitlement, it was not a position of rulership or authority. After death, a thänæ who had achieved renown among the people through continued retelling of their exploits over decades or centuries, might one day be elevated to Bäynæ—one of the dwarven Eternals.
These were dwarves’ spiritual immortals, the honored ancestors of their people as a whole.
Feather-Tongue, their paragon of orators and historians, was the patron of wisdom and heritage through story, song, and poem. From what Chane understood, for as long as any history remembered, the dwarves kept to oral tradition rather than the literary ways of humankind. In that, at least he saw Feather-Tongue as the paragon of paragons.
Chane paused briefly at an intersection. Looking up a stone staircase, he spotted a tan banner hanging above a wide oak door. The banner depicted a map, and the shop was a landmark he remembered.
“Nearly there,” he said.
They climbed past the mapmaker’s shop and several others, all the way to the main street’s next switchback. At the next intersecting stairway, Chane turned upward again but stopped halfway to let Chap catch his breath on a landing with a sculpted miniature fir tree in a large black marble urn. He pressed on to the next switchback of the main street.
Across the way was a familiar structure emerging from the mountainside.
Its white marble double doors were set back beneath a high overhang supported by columns carved like living trees. He peered up the steps rising to the temple, where its frontage emerged from the mountainside and twin granite columns carved like large tree trunks framed the landing’s front end. Even so, the structure hardly seemed large enough to house its shirvêsh, but he knew this to be an illusion.
A heavy oblong arc of polished brass hung between the front columns like a gateway. Suspended from the roof’s front by intricate harnesses of leather, its open ends dangled a shin’s length above the landing’s floor. Its metal was formed from a hollowed tube and not a solid bar.
Chane stepped up to it, grasped a short brass rod from a bracket on the left column, and struck it against the great brass arc. Though he knew what to expect, his whole body clenched as a baritone clang assaulted his ears. He rang twice more as Chap flinched beside him. As the third tone faded, one of the doors began to open.