Visiting a House Below

by Rudi Dornemann

Although Freya had grown up in one of the deep cities, she hadn’t been inside a dwarf’s house since she was little. She hoped she remembered the etiquette.

Always refuse food or drink twice, but then take more than you want, because that compliments your host’s generosity. It’s OK to stare, but then you have to stare at everything equally. Always answer a question with a question, and never be surprised by the answer.

The green-cake was excellent, loaded with raisins, the way she liked it, so piling a second and third piece on her plate was no trouble.

“Is it good?” said her host, who had said his name was Hjelmer.

“What could be better?” she said.

He’d offered her a chair in the corner, and she couldn’t remember if that meant anything. On the wall was a flat chip of gray stone, about the length and width of her thumb, set in a gilt frame. A cross-hatching of fine lines covered the stone.

“That’s a fragment of the Khozoghoaqil,” said Hjelmer, “an epic rune-poem. Very famous.”

“One of the nine sagas?” Freya blushed, realizing she’d preempted his host’s right to ask questions.

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” said Hjelmer, which didn’t sound any more like a proper half-riddle than her question-answering question had.

“The runes are all packed together like that?” She tried to phrase it as a statement, but couldn’t quite keep the question from her voice.

“It’s actually part of a cave floor that’s about a few standard leagues square,” said Hjelmer. “Couple thousand years ago, scribes untangled and deciphered thousands of lines written in a style that was already ancient back then.”

“Supposed?”

“Recent research suggests the marks are tracks left by a certain species of sightless cave centipede scuttling around in the silt at the bottom of a shallow pool that dried up millennia ago.”

Freya wasn’t sure if she should laugh. Hjelmer seemed unlike what she expected dwarves to be, but still, her grandmother had always said how sensitive they were about anything historical. Seeing the glint in his eye, she risked another question.

“So what’s it about — supposedly?” she said.

“The origin of the sun, the fate of the moon,” he said. “The usual. But there’s one ironic thing.”

Freya stayed silent, but thought her expression was probably question enough.

“Ghoaqil, the hero, is described as armored, many-armed, and blind.”