Chapter 9 – Part 18

The dwarf turned in his pallet, then turned again.

His tent was protected somewhat from the cold and wet by an infusion, and his blankets were warmed by the same, but his old bones were aching nonetheless. Aching from memory if not from the temperature.

He hated the almost-dreams. The thoughts that intruded and swirled about when he was nearly asleep. That kept him from falling into real sleep, but instead rolled him about in a perpetual restlessness.

He kept seeing his brother’s faces. Davv, the littlest one, with a crossbow bolt’s head poking out of one eye. The killer was from another clan, and Davv was to be married the next week. John, his uncle, had raised Van after Van’s father died of heartstop. Van had come back to the hold to find John dead, his skull split open by a jealous business competitor.

And Saul. Poor Saul. The shrieks of Van Deers d’Kundarak’s older brother still rang in Van’s ears nearly two centuries later as the conjured acid ate away his hands, and without them gripping the cliff wall, Saul fell hundreds of feet to his death.

Every death a murder. Every murderer another dwarf. Every one hideous and unnecessary.

Van Deers had said publicly that being conquered by the Karrns had saved more dwarven lives that anything else. And he’d argued against independence as a result.

The subsequent attempts on his life had been only half the reason that his House sent him to the West. He’d agreed because he’d hoped to forget.

Some days were harder than others. Van Deers had mostly given up on sleeping at night.

Suddenly he awoke. There was a chiming. The old dwarf sat up, blinking and looking about. The chiming was coming from a chest where he kept a miscellany of devices, most of which he’d never really had a practical reason to use.

Slippers on his feet, he rubbed the bridge of his nose, and walked to the chest. The chiming was getting more insistent. He moved about the various bits of interest – they could never be junk to him, and idly noted their function. A sculpted reptilian scale set in amber which supposedly detected dragon-mice hybrids. A cracked tile with an indecipherable glyph that someone had found in a sunken ship of unknown design, covered in the silt of decades. A string of spheres and wires that could be set to spin and predict phases of the moon.

And a crystal rod, maybe a foot long, with Elvish script on one side, in a font no elf on Khorvaire used, and a gnomish character inscribed on a blue dragonshard set in the middle. It was supposed to be used to detect elemental bindings.

Van Deers was confused, and overly tired. The dragonshard was pointing up. He shook his head and willed it to shut off, then went back to bed.

Van Deers had never really examined the rod, and therefore was not aware that it had an extreme range setting.

Nor did he know that the long-ago drow wizard who’d crafted the thing had been worried about airborne raids. Having never heard of drow, why would he be thinking about it?