The Dwarven Sorcerer

The Dwarven Sorcerer Ch 20

The sun was blindingly bright. Thrack's hood did little to block its intense glare. He squinted his eyes as tight as he could, but still, the light was too much. He looked over at his father and saw him doing the same thing. The air was different, thinner, but there was a freshness to it. It was cooler than the caves, but not unbearably so. He had spent his entire life in the regulated environment of the dwarven kingdom; temperature, light, everything was controlled and uniform around the entire kingdom.

The outside world smelled different than he was used to. There were none of the dwarven smells that he was so familiar with: the dusty rock, the oily machinery, the hot steam were such a part of his existence that he never noticed them until they were gone.

It was uncomfortably quiet out here; the tunnels were filled with the clang of machines, the distant ringing of stone being cut, and the chatter of thousands of dwarves living nearby. Thrack even missed the way his boots echoed off of the walls when he walked.

Thrack rubbed his eyes until they adjusted to the bright light and finally got his first look at the world around him. He was high in the mountains, but still well below the tree line. The stone was a lighter grey than it was in the heart of the mountain; it was also irregular shaped, jutting stones and loose rocks from years of abuse by the elements, dotted the landscape. The stone inside the caves was smoothed by the skilled hands of the mountain folk that lovingly cared and crafted the walls and pillars that surrounded Thrack's life.

The wind blew through the sparse pine trees and hardy bushes, it sounded hollow to Thrack somehow, the world was emptier than the caves in spite of it being so crowded with trees. The road was made of individual bricks that were all the exact same size, each one died a bright vivid red and shaped by expert hands so that they could be fitted together without mortar. They fit so tightly that no weed could grow between them. The bricks laid so flat that not even a dwarf could feel the difference in height between them; Thrack expected nothing less from his dwarven brethren.

"Come on, son," said Durim. "We've got a long way to go." Thrack found his feet.

They walked for hours, Thrack felt the warm sun for the first time in his life and it was terrible. It heated his body beyond anything he had ever had to deal with before and hurt his eyes with its brightness. He took his cloak off at one point but found that the cold wind became unbearable and he had to put it back on, but soon he became too hot again. There was no way to dress for the weather.

The only saving grace was the road itself; to say that it was straight would've been a terrible understatement. Straight by human standards would still be a jagged mess to a dwarf. Unlike human or even elvish roads that adjusted to its surroundings, letting nature depict where the road went, moving around rocks or large trees, the Red Road ran straight. The dwarves didn't build their roads around the world, they moved the world around their roads.

It cut through hills, rocks, trees, it was elevated over valleys and rivers. It descended at such a steady rate that it was difficult for even Thrack, a dwarf that spent his life digging and measuring elevation, to sense the steady descent.

And to think, there are seven roads just like this one.

They broke for their midday meal of dried goat, hard bread, and harder cheese. Thrack also took the time to don his armour through Durim's encouragement.

"You're gonna have to get used to wearing it every day, me boy," he said to his grumbling son. "You ain't gonna be walking through no dangerous world unprotected."

"Right you are, dad," responded Thrack, without enthusiasm.

In spite of Durim's injury, he didn't slow their progress in the least, but he did let out a long groan as he sat, taking his weight off of his mechanical leg and leaned his cane on a nearby tree that grew right up to the road. They stopped at one of the many rest stops that the dwarves had built at regular intervals, that bulged out from the road. It didn't have more than a couple of stone benches for travellers to take brief stops but it was enough to rest tired legs. There were also larger rest areas that had fire pits and room to make camp so travellers could rest overnight.