Ithanash

[Seraph]

Ithanash

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   Alban gazed down the tunnel into the intestines of the mountain, the cavern walls rolling in a succession of narrower and wider segments that except for a few stubborn regions were high enough for an Ithai to walk'"but always large enough to crawl'"and most were high enough for even a human to move unhindered.  The steady plinking of his kinsmen's hammers and picks had worn the walls off to a smooth texture that nearly gleamed with a wetness that was the signature of Alban's clan.  Alban's people had long ago perfected their mining techniques, and had learned to harness not only the ores and metals offered up by the earth, but also the subterranean rivers and lakes.  They had developed a manner of wet-cutting the rock more smoothly to avoid cave-ins and thus any loss of life or resources.  Alban himself could not attest personally to the efficiency or superiority of this technique, having never experienced a cave-in, but took that in itself to be evidence enough that it was true. He had heard of cave-ins before though, and he knew that they did occur.  A rival clan, Vaterheim had lost three good strong men when a section of their emerald mine collapsed.  This unfortunate occurrence was attributed to the employment of inferior mining techniques, at least among Alban's own clan Eisenmach.  Vaterheim had a rather dubious reputation of pumping out shoddy products from poorly refined minerals and also of taking minimal care of their workers, pushing them hard and doing little to protect their well-being.  Alban took pride in his own clan's dedication to quality and precision.  A dwarf properly taken care of could attend the mines for much longer and much more efficiently than a new young whelp of a boy could, and there was a certain prestige to be had from belonging to a clan that placed such heavy emphasis on workmanship and attention to detail.  

   Alban had the greatest respect for the Ithai who worked the forges.  His own vocation was to work the mines, following the wet-cutting method passed down through the generations.  Occasionally, however, he had the opportunity to man the cart of ore taken from the mountain and wheel it into the city, where the craftsmen worked the forges.  It was a responsibility he took as often as he could manage, as it was barely work to him, so excited would he get to see the forges.  It thrilled him to watch the strange and hard, yet subtle beauty of the red-hot steel of a new warhammer in the forge, a master working diligently, pounding it into it's perfect prism shape, like the lethal cube were not so much a weapon as a work of art, and its functionality only added to its beauty. Then he would watch them with awed ecstatic pleasure as they inlaid the gold filigree into the weapon.  The thought that something so beautifully and lovingly made could be used for something as ugly, gruesome, and terrible as war had a strange allure to him that he could not describe.  Its dichotomy fascinated him and aroused in him his adoration and his masculine desire to prove his worth on the field of battle, poetically killing beasts with beauty.  He felt all this with each voyage he made to see the forges.  He felt a disappointed satisfaction to think that if he were to view the forges of his rival he could have no such reaction to the non-existent splendor of the pinnacle of clan Vaterheim's smithy.  It saddened him to know that Vaterheim was outselling his own clan with their inexpensive products, whilst the exquisiteness of Eisenmach's inventory went unnoticed.

   On one such trip, Alban noticed to his astonishment, a cavalcade of official looking Ithai, marching in step into the city and passed the master smiths.  He caught sight of a gnome amongst the Ithai and recognized him as Burdel, an alchemist he knew by reputation because it was well known that Burdel was working on some project for the benefit of the Empire.  Why Burdel would be here, Alban did not know.  He did not, however, have to wait long to find out.  One particularly stout Ithai stepped forward from the group to make a proclamation:

   'People of Eisenmach, we are sent by special dispatch of King Melech Issach.  The Empire has long been working with the gnome alchemists in Gambodel to experiment is certain special materials whose properties, properly manipulated, could deliver to us an advantage in battle or in trade.  We have heard of a discovery in the mines of Eisenmach that may prove such a material.'

   'You mean the hot air?'  Alban had not meant to shout or to draw attention to himself, but in his excitement it had slipped out.  He had heard of what had happened: somewhere in the mines a pair of his kinsmen had been mining for the metals with which to forge the armor and weapons that Alban so loved, when a stroke from a pickaxe exposed, not a vein of iron ore, but a vein of pressurized gas that shot from the hole formed by the pickaxe and launched both dwarves at least two feet backward.  One of the two suffered minor burns and the gas left the mine with a pungent ammoniac smell.  The other miners were able to seal the hole, but the shaft was closed as a precaution nonetheless.

   'That,' said the gnome, breaking away from the others with the air of a teacher allowed to boast of his expertise to admiring students, 'is no air.'

(To be continued)