The Half Dwarf Prince Read online

  Rundo sat in Grundel’s room waiting for him to return. The way he had understood it from Grundel, Grundel had interrupted the meeting of kings yesterday, renounced his claim to his father’s throne, and committed his father to a marriage after his mother passed. After doing all of that, Grundel was given a seat on the council to elect a new king, and then he assisted in the planning to retake the fallen kingdom. Today was the day that all of the candidates for kingship would be discussed—argued about, more likely, knowing the dwarves.

  While he waited, Rundo worked on what would be his snakeskin vest. After coming out of the fairy forest he had killed a huge snake that was about to attack Anwar and Grundel. He had skinned the snake and then stretched the skin over a log. When they had returned to Evermount, he had tacked the snakeskin properly to a flat piece of wood. Once it was fully stretched, the skin was almost sixteen feet long and two feet wide—the perfect width for him to make his vest.

  Rundo had given the skin almost two weeks to dry out before rubbing all of the scales off. Once all of the scales were gone, he had washed the whole thing and then began the tanning process. The dwarves had a supply of their own oil that they used to tan leather, so Rundo had used that, rubbing the oil over the skin twice a day. Now he had a flat, tanned skin that showed a beautiful black and gray diamond pattern with little white circles in it. By itself the leather looked great, and Rundo took his time unpinning it from the board and then wiping it all down to remove any excess oil. He could picture the vest he was going to make. He had felt guilty killing the snake even though he knew he hadn’t had a choice, but now, looking at the leather and picturing the vest he was going to make, he couldn’t help but be a little excited.

  Grundel had only been gone for a couple of hours, and Rundo knew that the dwarves’ arguing over who should be the king to reestablish the fourth dwarven kingdom would take at least all day, if not days. He went to work measuring and re-measuring. When he was finally certain of the size, he cut a four-foot length off the end. Rundo’s torso measured less than two feet from his waist to the top of his shoulders, but this would give him a couple of extra inches to work with. He labored for hours cutting and measuring, then trimming and measuring. He cut a hole for his head. Then he measured a dozen times, finally drawing a line perfectly down the center of the front before carefully cutting. He had spent a lot of time drawing on the leather with a charcoal pencil trying to decide on the right design and cut for the neck and shoulders. He must have worked straight through lunch and dinner, because he was just finishing the stitching on the last side when Grundel finally walked in.

  Grundel had stood by silently for hours as the representatives of each of the kingdoms argued with the others, trying to prove that one dwarf or another from their kingdom was the best to rule Shinestone. Many of the prospective kings stood in this very room next to their own kings. After hours of arguments that led nowhere, Grundel—the youngest, the half-dwarf, the least experienced, and the only one without an agenda—spoke for the first time.

  “Is there no dwarf from Shinestone who knows the place and is capable of leading there? Surely not every dwarf from Shinestone was there at the time of its destruction. Were there no capable representatives from Shinestone at any of the other kingdoms? It seems that there is always a dwarf representative in Evermount from one of the other kingdoms.”

  The room was silent for a long time as all of the other dwarves turned their attention to the huge half-dwarf prince. At just over three centuries of life, Kraft, the king of Haufen, was the oldest dwarf in the room. He was also the one who had invited Grundel onto this council. Now he was the first to respond to Grundel’s idea.

  “There is always Frau.”

  The room burst into an uproar. Grundel didn’t know who they were referring to, but he knew Frau must be a female dwarf. A princess, too, he gathered from the pieces he was picking out of the arguments. Then Grizzle finally put his own voice to the argument, and again everyone else went quiet.

  “It has happened before, a queen in charge, and I haven’t heard of anyone who is more capable or knows more about Shinestone than she does. We should at least consider her.”

  Kraft reinforced Grizzle’s argument by making the first formal nomination of the day. “I nominate Frau Kleinod as queen of Shinestone.”

  Everyone turned and stared at Kraft. Even one of his advisors stared at him in disbelief. Then Grizzle’s voice was heard. “Evermount accepts the nomination.”

  Everyone looked at Grizzle then. Two of the three current kings had agreed on a nomination.

  One by one, all eyes drifted toward Bergmann, the king of Tiefes Loch. He scanned around the room, looking at each dwarf, before finally looking to Kraft and smiling. “It’s a kingdom of gem cutters, why shouldn’t they have a queen to rule over them and their pretty rocks?”

  Then came another hour of arguments over minor details. The dwarf they were all talking about wasn’t in Evermount. She was supposedly on the way to join the expedition to take back her home kingdom, but nothing further could be decided about that expedition until a king, or queen in this instance, had been established, and they couldn’t move forward or even try to change their mind on who that would be until Frau arrived to complete the nomination process. A nomination of king or queen that was agreed upon by a council of kings could not be revoked. But neither could it be approved until the nominated dwarf had accepted or denied the nomination, and then the dwarves of that kingdom were afforded the opportunity to dispute the nomination. In case of dispute, the dwarves who did not agree would make their arguments to the members of the council of kings, but in the end it was up to the ruling kings to decide. This was less relevant in this case, since there weren’t many residents of Shinestone left to dispute the nomination, and none of them were likely to dispute the nomination of the only Shinestone dwarf who was qualified—and still alive. After a few final remarks, the council adjourned. Grundel stood and watched as his father walked out of the room. A few of the others stood and talked for a minute. Grundel looked over at Kraft, who simply nodded at him with what he interpreted as proud approval. It made him feel good but uncomfortable at the same time. He nodded back and then left the room.

  When he got back to his apartment he found Rundo standing there with a snakeskin vest in his hand. The thing was pretty extravagant. Well, under the mountain it would be considered quite extravagant. In a city it would likely be seen as stylish. In the wild it would actually blend in pretty well. It would also probably keep predators away. Not many animals would mess with a snake, and not many would likely get close enough to determine that the wearer of this snake pattern wasn’t actually a snake. Granted, Rundo could communicate with animals to a degree now that he was becoming a druid, so the vest was probably just because he liked it. He wasn’t really sure how it all worked. Actually, after talking to Rundo he realized he didn’t really understand it that well, either.

  The fairy forest had awakened something inside of Rundo, Grundel knew. Rundo had somehow connected more intimately with nature. After that Rundo had committed himself to Kalise, the goddess of nature, and had begun his path to becoming a druid. The thing was, experienced druids usually trained new druids. It was like an apprenticeship, served alone in some forest somewhere. Supposedly a lot of the druids were quite anti-social, which would help explain the ease with which they connected to nature in lieu of humans. Rundo didn’t have a druid teacher, though: he was figuring everything out on his own.

  “So how did it go? Is there a new king of Shinestone yet?” Rundo asked.

  “No, there is going to be a queen. I think somehow that was my idea, even though I’m not sure how it happened,” Grundel responded.

  “What do you mean, and who did you recommend?”

  “I didn’t actually recommend anyone. I recommended that we try to agree on a survivor of Shinestone. Apparently there is a survivor from the king’s bloodline, but it’s a woman. All the kings agree on her, but somehow it see
med like everyone was putting the whole thing on me. I have never even met this dwarf.”

  “So she is the queen, then,” Rundo asked.

  “No, not yet. She is on her way here. Then she has to accept the nomination, and there has to be a reasonable amount of time for the dwarves of Shinestone to argue against it.”

  “But there are hardly any dwarves of Shinestone left alive,” Rundo replied.

  Grundel just shook his head. “I know, but it is tradition. And we need a ruler for Shinestone before we can start planning to reestablish it, so it will have to happen fast. When Frau gets here, she will probably have the idea thrown on her, not have a chance to deny it, and then a day later she will be queen.”

  Rundo laughed. “Well, nothing we can do til then but wait. What do you think of the vest?”

  Grundel couldn’t help but smile. Rundo had a way of making everything seem like it would just work out. His upbeat lightheartedness was contagious. “It looks just like something a halfling would wear. Won’t it make it easy for people to identify you when you’re climbing out their windows, though?”

  Rundo raised an eyebrow and fired back with a sly grin, “As if anyone would even know I was there.”

  That made them both laugh. They constantly berated each other using the stereotypes of their races. Rundo had the upper hand, though. Grundel had two races’ blood in him, and so Rundo had twice as much to harass him about. It helped that Rundo was wittier, too.

  With the one-liners at an end, Grundel looked over the vest in earnest. There was nothing else to do to prepare for their trip to Shinestone until the unsuspecting queen arrived.

  Chapter Two

  Orcs and Dragons

  Fredin, leader of the remains of the orc horde, walked through the tunnel that was the entrance to Shinestone. The mountain, much smaller than Evermount, was also far less fortified. The entrance was a twenty-foot-wide opening at the base of the mountain. Higher up there were other entrances that opened out on wide ledges where the dwarves had kept large gardens. Orcs were mostly carnivorous, so now the openings were mainly just other places where an enemy might gain entrance. He couldn’t do much about the main entrance being so accessible, but he had the orcs working to block all the other openings.

  Fredin had made Gescheit his advisor. Before the battle at Evermount he had forced the clan chief of Gescheit’s clan into challenging him. He had killed the clan chief and absorbed the orcs of that clan into his own. He had lost many of them at Evermount, but Gescheit was still with him. Intelligence was an uncommon trait among orcs, and when Fredin saw it in Gescheit, he acted quickly to bring him into Fredin’s counsel. Fredin defeated Gescheit’s clan chief in battle, absorbed those orcs into his horde, and offered Gescheit a place at his side.

  Now Gescheit followed him through the tunnels explaining the improvements made in the week since they had inhabited the mountain.

  “The demon of the chaos god ruined a lot, they are saying. They have cleared out the goblins and kobolds that inhabited the lower levels. It will still be a few months before all of the rubble is clear and even longer to reconstruct those areas that collapsed. But there is still enough room for close to fifty thousand of us. Once the areas that collapsed are rebuilt, it could hold three times that. That is obviously a long-term forecast. There is still the issue of the other clan chief. We are only twelve thousand. Narren is the chief of five of those twelve thousand. It would be better if we were all Dungins. With your son falling, your position is less safe. You will need another son. Your grandson should be on his way by now—we have sent for the women and children of the Dungins, and he should be here in another couple of weeks. He is young, but he will be big enough to dissuade any challengers before age ever weakens or slows you enough to have to worry. We will need to protect him now, though.”

  Fredin thought about that. He did need to get his grandson. They needed the women as well. Now that they had a home they needed to send for the women and children. Boys would not grow into fighters if women raised them. They needed the women anyway, as they had lost too many trying to take Evermount and they needed to start repopulating. His numbers would continue to grow—he would make sure of that. In a few years this mountain would be full, and the Dungins would be unstoppable.

  “Let me know when the women and children start to arrive. I want to know whenever we have new clans—any new arrivals will be reported to me immediately, and the leader of the group will be brought to me directly. We lost a lot of males, so there will be ten women to each male. Each male will take at least two or three. The biggest female from each clan that comes will come to me. I need sons,” Fredin told his advisor.

  “What about the humans? More have come. At first it was only the three. Now there are eleven. Can they help with the reconstruction? There are a couple areas that, if rebuilt, would make movement through the mountain a lot easier. We have cleared them out the best we can, but we can’t go any farther without reinforcing them.”

  Fredin considered that for a minute. The wizard had somehow got word out that he was here. Others of the Black Dragons—a guild of wizards and assassins who served Delvidge, the god of chaos—had already come. The Black Dragons had guild houses in all of the major cities, and agents in the smaller ones. The organization was big, powerful, and dangerous. Delvidge had sent the Black Dragons to help the orcs take Evermount and kill Anwar and all of his friends, but Delvidge had underestimated the wizard’s power. If the rumors were true, Anwar had actually pulled Delvidge into the mortal plane and had been ready to kill him when the other gods came down and intervened. After the failure at Evermount, none of them had received any sign from their god. As far as they knew they were on their own. They didn’t know if they were being punished or—as the Black Dragons were hearing on the streets of Ambar—if their god had been forced to stay out of the activities of the mortal plane. The leader of the guild, holed up in Evermount, had told Fredin that he’d send out a couple of wizards to make sure that Fredin would have word if there was any movement by the dwarves or the crazed mage who had destroyed his army, but other than that, the humans hadn’t made any contributions to Dungin Mountain.

  “I will see what they can do to help. It is time they pulled their weight around here, even if that doesn’t amount to much.”

  Gescheit nodded and took off down the tunnels to continue running the day-to-day operations of the mountain. Fredin had to admit having someone who was intelligent and who spoke with his authority made things a lot easier, especially in a less-than-organized orc society. Now he needed to go find the wizard and make sure the humans were contributing. On the other hand, he might be able to use the fact that they weren’t doing anything to help him with his other problem. If Gescheit whispered about the lazy humans to the Narrens, he might just be able to get the clan chief to complain about that. If the Narren clan chief raised a concern, Fredin would take it as a challenge and force him into a fight. Once Narren had challenged him he would have no choice but to fight, and then he would kill the other clan chief and claim his orcs as Dungins.

  Vingaza, wizard and guild master of the Black Dragons, had to admit he was impressed. Fredin had taken a huge hit at Evermount. No one could have predicted that Anwar had become so strong. Fredin had acted quickly, gathering a sizable force and immediately moving to the best possible location. There was still one other clan, but from the sound of it Fredin had plans to unite all the orcs under his leadership. Vingaza wasn’t excited about the prospect of staying with the orcs, but he didn’t have much of a choice. All of the strongest Black Dragons in the area were dead or running scared. He had gathered a few here, but they hadn’t heard from any of the others. He wouldn’t be able to show himself openly until he got a feel for things. He didn’t want to leave himself unprotected, but he also needed to know what was going on. He would have to send Malvagio and Cattivo back to Ambar to find out what was happening. The orcs around him really weren’t a threat. Even Fredin couldn’t really harm him.
This was the safest place for him until he knew how the dwarves planned to retaliate and what Anwar was going to do.

  That was the biggest question. Vingaza had killed Anwar’s brother, and so he knew Anwar would seek revenge. But Vingaza couldn’t fight Anwar openly—he was too strong. Vingaza’s only option had been to run. Being here in the mountain would allow him to escape if Anwar came: he would make his escape while Anwar was distracted with the orcs. If Anwar didn’t come, then Vingaza would help the orcs as best he could until he could come up with a plan to reestablish the Black Dragons here in the north. He could always send for some help from the southern cities, but he wasn’t sure how that would play out. He wasn’t ready to risk the possibility of someone else taking charge yet. He knew that there were at least three other wizards in the Black Dragons organization who had the potential to rival him, and Vingaza knew that one of them was capable of besting him: Dirigente was the most powerful wizard alive, well, except for Anwar and the Father. He was sure of that now. Anwar had the power to challenge the gods, and he had done just that by challenging Delvidge. For now Vingaza needed to worry about his own situation, though. He would keep the other wizards close for now. He would send one of them with his assassins, Malvagio and Cattivo, to help them travel magically. That wizard would be able to relay the information those two gathered by instantly traveling back here to report to him.

  He found the assassins sitting at a table in their small apartment playing cards. They had been offered separate quarters, and then they were offered the much larger apartment next to Vingaza’s. But they had taken this one instead. He hadn’t questioned them. He understood their thinking perfectly. They were always on their guard, and this smaller apartment had only one entrance, so they would know immediately if anyone entered and the intruder wouldn’t have much space to work with. Anyone foolish enough to come looking for a fight with these two would not be able to move around. They had also set the furniture up so that it canalized anyone who entered and prevented a mass flooding of forces into the room. One long dresser was set up next to the door so that a visitor could only move between it and the wall as he entered. The other dresser in the room was a few feet in front of the door so the room couldn’t accommodate more than four people in the area between the dressers and the wall, and the only way into the room was between those dressers. It was paranoid, but clever. That was why these two were so effective, and that was why Vingaza had retained them in his service.