“We can’t wake him. His skin feels like ice and it’s a wonder that his heart is still beating. It might stop at any moment,” said the firstling, backing away quickly until he was out of the warrior’s reach.
Boïndil’s eyebrows formed an angry black line. “Where is he?” he asked.
In the interests of averting an incident, Xamtys overlooked his rude behavior and ordered one of the firstlings to show him to his brother’s bed. Tungdil and Balyndis followed, while the queen stayed behind to quiz the guards.
The party of four dwarves strode through plain-walled corridors connecting the side entrance to the stronghold proper. The design was entirely functional—unlike the secondlings, the firstlings took little interest in fancy masonry and left the walls of little-used tunnels unadorned, preferring to focus their efforts on metalworking.
“The damage was devastating,” said the guard when they asked about the quake. “We think the falling star was to blame. It came from the east, raining burning boulders from its tail. Most of our fortifications were razed to the ground—then the White Death came and swallowed the rest.”
“How many were killed?” asked Balyndis. “What about the Steel Fingers?”
“They’re fine, I think, but we haven’t heard anything from the clans on the western border, closest to where the comet fell.” The firstling led them to a wooden platform connected to a pulley system. They got on, and the lift shot up, whizzing past hundreds of steps before stopping to let them out in the eastern halls of the kingdom. “I’m just pleased that our queen has returned. Four hundred of our kinsmen lost their lives in the disaster, but Xamtys will give us the strength to carry on.”
They saw straightaway that the dwarf’s description of the damage was no exaggeration. The passageways were riven with cracks, some no wider than a whisker, others big enough for Tungdil to slot his fingers inside. He noticed that the metal bridges, sturdy enough to carry hundreds of dwarves across rivers and chasms, had buckled in places.
“We lost one hall entirely and the ceiling in the throne room is sagging,” said the sentry. “It nearly buried our precious sculptures and statues. It was terrible.”
They ascended a staircase and reached the chamber where they had left the wounded Boëndal many orbits earlier on their way to the Dragon Fire furnace. He was lying in much the same position, swaddled in blankets, in a marble bed with a thick mattress.
Boïndil threw himself on his brother and flung his arms around him. He lowered his ear to his chest and listened to his heart. “He’s cold as a fish,” he said softly. “Anyone would think he was…” He tailed off and a smile spread across his careworn face. “A heartbeat! A good, strong heartbeat!” His joy evaporated. “Nothing again…”
“It’s what I was trying to explain,” whispered the firstling. “We think his blood might be frozen. His poor heart is pumping ice through his veins.”
A firstling appeared at the door with a tray. “He wasn’t the only one we found in the snow, but the others weren’t so lucky.” She put down a pot of steaming tea by the bed.
“Lucky?” said Tungdil, shaking his head. “He’s barely alive.”
“Some of our kinsmen looked like they’d been flattened by a giant hammer when we pulled their poor, crushed bodies from the snow. The rest died from lack of air. Boëndal survived, which goes to show that Vraccas wanted him to live.”
She stood at Boëndal’s bedside, decanted the piping hot tea into a leather drinking pouch, and raised it to his half-open lips. Boïndil stopped her and laid a muscular hand on the pouch. “What are you giving him?”
“A herbal infusion. It will thaw his insides,” she said. She went to raise the pouch, but Boïndil tightened his grip.
“An infusion? A tankard of warm beer will thaw his insides faster than a bunch of herbs.”
“No,” she said firmly. “The herbs have a medicinal effect, especially in combination with hot water.”
“Wouldn’t it be more effective to give him a bath?” threw in Tungdil. He had read about methods for treating hypothermia in one of Lot-Ionan’s books. The author was principally concerned with reviving humans who had fallen into lakes, but there was no reason why the remedy wouldn’t work on a dwarf.
“An excellent suggestion,” she said brusquely. “But I’m afraid we tried it and it didn’t work.” She snatched the pouch away from Boïndil. “You’re a warrior and I’m a physician. You do your job, and I’ll do mine. I wouldn’t dream of telling you how to use an ax.” Boïndil complied begrudgingly, but refused to leave his brother’s side.
“I scoured our archives, and the infusion is our only hope. Nothing else will work.”
Tungdil knew that she was holding something back. “Is there something we can try?” he probed. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. I owe my life to Boëndal.”
The firstling looked away. “It’s a legend, nothing more.”
“Listen to me,” shouted Boïndil, as if he were interrogating a spy. “By the beard of Vraccas, I’ll do anything—anything—to rekindle my brother’s furnace and make his spirit burn as brightly as before.” The glint in his dark brown eyes testified to his determination to make his brother well.
“The oldest records in our archives were chiseled by the ancients on tablets of stone. They’re thousands of cycles old,” said the firstling. “According to one of the tablets, it’s possible to fire up the soul of a frozen dwarf by kindling the embers of his furnace with white-hot sparks.”
“What do you think it means?” asked Balyndis. “Surely you can’t use real fire to warm a soul?” She turned to Tungdil. “Do you think we should cut him open and put sparks in his heart?”
“The wound would kill him,” said Tungdil. The legend reminded him of something, but he couldn’t quite make the connection.
“Trust a blacksmith to come up with a stupid idea like that,” growled Boïndil. “We can’t feed him with fire or put lava into his veins.”
The firstling glared at him. “For your information, the tablets came from Giselbert’s folk. I’ve told you what I know, and besides, it’s just a legend.”
“Dwarven legends are usually true,” said Balyndis, who wasn’t prepared to give up on the idea, no matter how unlikely it sounded. “So you’ve tried warm baths and hot drinks. How else can you warm his blood?”
The firstling stared at the floor. “I can’t. All I can do is keep giving him the infusion and praying to Vraccas to make him well.”
“Can’t?” Boïndil was so incensed by the plight of his frozen twin that his fiery spirit was burning out of control. “Isn’t there any proper medicine in this joke of a kingdom?”
“Dragon Fire!” broke in Tungdil, who had finally worked out the connection between the legend and its provenance. “A white-hot spark! It’s a reference to the fieriest furnace in Girdlegard!” He saw his friends’ puzzled faces. “I think the Dragon Fire furnace might be able to help. It was lit by the mighty Branbausìl, remember?”
Neither he nor Balyndis would ever forget the power of the furnace: In all their experience of the smithy, they had never encountered such tremendous heat. The white-hot flames of Dragon Fire were powerful enough to melt any metal, from pure white palandium, made by Palandiell, to the black element of tionium, created by Tion, and the red metal of vraccasium, element of the dwarves.
“That’s all very well,” said the physician, “but how would it work?” She put down the pouch and laid a hand on her patient’s forehead. “We’d need proper instructions.”
Tungdil looked at the secondling’s rigid body. “The key to the legend lies in the fifthling kingdom. My friends and I are going there anyway, and we’ll take Boëndal with us.” He turned to the physician. “You’ve done everything you can for him, but he won’t get better here.” After a short silence, he went over to Boïndil. “I’m not giving up on him,” he said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Vraccas cured him of the arrow wounds and rescued him from the avalanche, and now it’s our task to wake him from his sleep. You mark my words: The Dragon Fire furnace holds the answer, and I’ll scour the fifthlings’ archives to find out how. The old Boëndal will be back before you know it.”