THE STONE KING -- book two of The Chronicles of the First Age

Chapter Seven

They came to the dwerka city of Ogofdinas in the mid-afternoon of the second day. The only known entrance lay at the base of a range of mountains just north of The Hidden Valley. The Hidden Valley lay east of the Pelavale between the High Meadows were the tribesmen grazed their animals in the summer and the Arshan Plateau where no one went or, at least, from which they never returned.

"Great," Garanth muttered as they paused before the yawning entrance in the stone. He had grown used to life in the field. "From one hole in the ground to another."

Ogofdinas was substantially more than a hole in the ground. Garanth's first clue was the broad sloping avenue that led gently down into the heart of the mountain. As the tireav marched down its smooth and well-lit stone passages, he noticed deadfalls, covered pits and sliding barriers designed to seal the passage against anything, like angorym or drwg, which might threaten them.

They passed a couple of portals consisting of massive stone slabs set on rollers in deep grooves in the floor. Once the temporary bridges over the grooves were removed and the stone slabs dropped into place, it would take hundreds of dwerkan excavators thousands of hours to break through. No angorym-or anyone else for that matter-was likely to be a threat once the city was sealed.

Passing through the last portal, they entered a square antechamber which opened into a space so vast Garanth thought they had crossed through the mountains into a shadowed valley beyond. Below them hundreds of buildings, some towers quite tall, spread out beneath the gentle pastel glow of phosite crystals embedded in the ceiling. Ramps and stairs rose and fell while balconies and galleried bridges crisscrossed from building to building in what looked, from Garanth's high vantage point, like gossamer webs of stone. Over it all the colored phosite gems waxed and waned with the eddies of the invisible flow of karis. If it weren't for the varied colors, it would have looked exactly like the beams of light moving across a city as they pierced through drifting clouds.

"Quite some hole." Harkin snickered as he passed.

Garanth stood frozen in awe. "They didn't build Har-Tor like this."

"That's because they were building for men." Karux paused and inspected the view. "Though individually short, they see their race as having greater stature and so build to reflect that."

The heads of the trade guilds, who competed in all things, each attempted to out-welcome their guests from the surface. Everyone ate massive feasts of expensive and imported meat and bread and beer.

"We need to be careful around these allies," Harkin said after a second course of food had been taken up and a third lain out before them. "I think they are trying to kill us with food."

"This is my kind of fighting," Garanth agreed.

The tables also included traditional Dwerkan delicacies swimming in strange soups and sauces. Many of them consisted of roots, mosses and mushrooms but others were far less identifiable. Garanth fished out something that looked like a kidney-shaped white nut except for its segmented ridges. He held his spoon up to a servant bringing out more bread. "Excuse me, can you tell me what this is?"

"We call that pryfed. It's something of a delicacy. Its flesh has a subtle flavor; I think you will like it."

"Flesh? Is it meat?"

"Oh yes," the dwerka nodded. "It's larva."

Garanth set the dish aside, his appetite somewhat abated.

"Try this soup, Garanth," Corha urged. "It's quite savory."

Garanth tried to smile back at her and trawled through the soup with a spoon. It seemed relatively bug free, though there will little specks he couldn't identify. He hoped they were only herbs.