He would have cried, but it was not in the nature of a Dark Knight. So he silently mourned and forced down a sob. The half-elf had never been one for burdening himself with personal objects, so he hadn’t lost a considerable amount of goods. The Order provided clothes and food and more coin than he could spend-particularly at his posting. He disdained knickknacks or jewelry or art objects. He was a relatively simple man in terms of physical trappings.
But his magic-his scrolls and spellbooks and vials upon vials filled with prized arcane powders and enchanted liquids-that was all lost to the quake. Years of research had been sacrificed, notes on arcane experiments and diagrams of magical objects he’d intended to fashion-those were all gone. A tome of spells-a singular copy-from decades ago when he studied as a Black Robe with the Conclave, obliterated. He felt the color drain from his face and his chest constrict. His life was in ruins at the bottom of that crevice.
The rare magics learned while he was with the Conclave, the ones from before he joined the Dark Knights, those and much more were in the crevice. The spells that allowed him to call lightning from the sky and let him read passages in ancient, foreign languages, the spells that created spheres of acid out of air, helped him to breathe water, or stay awake for days at a time, the one that summoned an invisible force to clean his workshop and bring him food-he hadn’t cast some of them in years. Without that tome and his other spellbooks to consult, to stir his memory and to renew his knowledge, he doubted he could ever cast such magic again.
“All of it lost. My research.”
The destruction of his notes might extract the greatest toll. He’d so meticulously written down his evolving theories on strengthening steel and giving it arcane properties. He’d been so very close to an amazing breakthrough, something that would benefit the entire Order and propel him to fame and a prime posting and promotion up the ranks. Grallik was certain he could recall many of his notes, but it was years and years of note taking, and his memory couldn’t absorb everything.
For nearly five decades, Grallik had served the Dark Knights, a long time even for a half-elf. A Thorn Knight, he commanded only one talon, nine men, all of them Lily Knights. But given the years, his title should have been marshal or warder, and he should have been assigned to a place where no silly act of nature, no earthquake, would have deprived him of his research and diagrams and books, especially the old Conclave tome. He deserved a more favored post.
“Sir N’sera?”
The half-elf didn’t stir until he’d heard his name and title spoken a third time. He looked up to spot a member of his talon standing where the doorway had been.
“Sir, the commander-Marshal Montrill-is injured. Skull Knight Ramvin is tending to him. But until Marshal Montrill is able …”
The rest of the words were unimportant, so Grallik shut them out and rose up, brushing futilely at his robe and picking his way out of the remains of his workshop.
Until Montrill was able and fit … until that time … then Grallik, because of his seniority, would take charge of all of what he thought of as Chaos Town. It was the responsibility Grallik had dreamed of even a moment ago, but in truth he was not prepared for it. At least the demands of the new job would keep his mind so busy he couldn’t dwell on his utter loss.
“How many wounded?” Grallik asked, deciding that taking stock of his charges was the first proper order of business.
The knight drew his lips into a needle-thin line. “At least a third, Sir N’sera. Wounded or dead, all of that’s being sorted out now. Between the quake and the hatori, falling buildings and the like …”
Grallik straightened and squared his shoulders, gesturing for the knight to move aside. “Then I place you in charge of the tally. See to it immediately. We must know our current strength.” He paused. “And our weakness,” he added under his breath, too softly for the knight to hear. He raised his voice to a normal level. “Marshal Montrill. You said he is hurt. How badly?”
A part of Grallik wanted Marshal Montrill to be very badly hurt, so he could at least be heartened by his promotion, but he shoved those malign thoughts away. For the good of the Order and the good of the annihilated camp, Montrill needed to survive. He was a capable leader.
“I don’t know, Sir N’sera. Shall I …?”
“Find out?” Grallik shook his head. “No, I’ll see to Marshal Montrill. Start with the others. Begin your count.” Grallik watched him go, wondering how the knight would approach the task and knowing whatever numbers he came up with would not be wholly accurate. The once-orderly mining enterprise was gone. In its place was a void of death, injury, and destruction that would take time to calculate.
No building stood truly intact, with unruly mounds of rubble replacing the familiar structures. Laborers and their families either milled about listlessly in disbelief or were rushing around in panic. Raised voices and shrill bleats and whinnies filled the air. Knights were assembling into formations on the west side of the camp. To the east, more knights were rounding up goblins and hobgoblins and repairing one of the five slave pens.
He’d cast warding spells and laid glyphs on the ground outside the slave pens shortly after his posting there and had refreshed them every third or fourth month as a precaution. But the quake tore up the ground they’d been placed upon, rendering some of the wards and glyphs useless.
Possibly all of them.
Grallik would have to pray for the precise warding enchantments so he could cast them correctly again. It would take days to restore all the enchantments to keep the slaves from escaping. Several of them, he recalled fondly, shot pillars and walls of flame into the air, incinerating potential escapees.
Of course, no slaves had tried to escape for several months. The Dark Knights had made examples of offenders in the past, catching those not burned to death by Grallik’s wards and glyphs and torturing them before slaying them in front of the others. The Dark Knights had sufficiently beaten down the goblins’ and hobgoblins’ spirits and tore away their sense of self-worth to the point that likely none of them entertained thoughts of fleeing anymore. The threat of ogres, and some minotaurs, in the nearby mountains further hindered them.
My precious pillars of fire.
He’d have to replace all of them to be certain the pens were escape-proof. But he couldn’t start doing it during the day when the slaves in the pen could clearly see what he was doing. He didn’t dare risk letting them figure out that the wards and glyphs might have been rendered useless.
Their numbers were too great …
Grallik looked to the pens and shuddered. There were far more slaves than knights, ten times as many, and without the wards? Were the goblins smart enough to realize the wards might be gone? Just the day before, he’d heard a skinny female goblin hollering in the common tongue about something bad coming to the mine. He hadn’t paid any attention to her babble.
Had she been babbling about the quake?
How smart were the goblins?
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted two knights carrying a badly injured knight on a makeshift stretcher. Grallik set off after them, hoping they would lead him to the infirmary and the wounded Marshal Montrill.
7
Direfang managed to squeeze through one passage after another, at times stymied by cave-ins, forced to retrace his steps, stopping to brace sagging timbers with broken ones he’d picked up along the way, tearing off goblin limbs that protruded from rock slides, and demanding, again and again, that Mudwort help him with his laborious rescue mission.
“Cannot save any more goblins,” Mudwort insisted finally. “Not here. Not in this part of the mine. Too much of it has collapsed. Why Direfang not give up?”