BECMI Chapter 167 – Elves Moving Forward with the Times

“Dwarves can be wizards?!” Messime blurted out in disbelief, the Sidheduiche elf as shocked as anyone at the fact.“Earthmages and Artificers, with a rare few able to wield fire magic,” I confirmed without the slightest flicker of surprise or distaste in my voice. “Moorish dwarves, of course. Rukheim dwarves can wield clerical magic, something the Moorish were delighted to find out, and are working on Halcyon-style implementation of it, much like Elven Wizards.”

I utterly ignored their dropped jaws as I diverted towards the work crew. “Elder Coalbender!” I greeted him politely as I came up to where he was working on directing a crew on a plumbing job.

Moorish dwarves were darker of skin and redder of hair than Rukheim dwarves, not that any of my entourage besides Messime had ever seen a free dwarf before, coming from Zanzyr as they did. The dwarven earthmage, accompanying the former Regent of the Halls here to the new world, such as it was, glanced over at me, realized who I was, and then pretended to be short with me. “Young Lady Edge,” he grunted curtly. “Bit busy now, youngster.” He gave the gaping, staring people behind me a dour look, and bits of stone began to levitate around him immediately. “Du bin dragging a bunch ov feckless tourists into mein workspace, Adept?!” he exclaimed, waving his hand.

There were grunts and groans as pebbles bounced off the heads of the dozen students and escorts behind me.

I ignored them, too. “You know the local humans, Wizard Coalbender. Can’t see a Fourth True Wizard for the Initiates in the way.”

, they all repeated silently, jaws starting to drop again, and then the spinning rocks paused again.

“Juniors greet Master Coalbender!” they blurted out as they realized they were being very rude, bowing their heads as they’d never imagined they would before a dwarf.

His dark eyes gleamed with, if not approval, at least rough acceptance. Notably, the stones began to rotate, but they did not fall down again. “Passing through again, Adept? Du elves, always on the run here und there…”

“The better to run our enemies to death, Master Coalbender,” I replied calmly. “Problems with the flow balance in the pipe design, I see.”

“Aye, knuckleheads aligned it two degrees off, und I bin haf to reshape the pipes or we haf to tear out a hundred yards ov them und put them down proper-like,” he bit off with a curse, letting out a tirade in Denthek about idiots who couldn’t get a proper reading right, inaccurate tools, and shaky hands messing crap up.

“Allow me to introduce some fellow adepts and their guards from the Great School. Fourth True Wizard of Earth Ragmar Coalbender, this is Entelia Avom, Second Adept of Air; Messime Ievynder, Second Adept; Laurentine Faernucht, Third Adept; Isadora McMikal, First Adept; Izzimaior of Warsherz, a First Adept; Nico Bastionelli, Second Adept of Alchemy; and Hammel Guntervund, Second Adept of Earth. Their guards are Miklan McMikal of Caergard, a Six; Chekwort of the Mountaires, a Five; Owshiva of the Pennacles, a Five,” the quiet silver-gray furred cat-like rakasta hired by Nico nodded silently to the dwarven Wizard, “Rika Gulles, a Four,” the young brown-haired female human archer hired by Entelia grimaced only a little at being the lowest numbered of this lot, “and Braun, a Five.” The big axeman with the naturally blank face just kind of blinked at the fact he’d been mentioned at all.

“Ho, a fine bunch ov young-uns heading out into the world to make der mark, eh?” he half-chortled, meeting the eyes of each of them in turn, including the warriors. “Where du binst to, Lady Edge?”

“The city of Siricil, by way of whatever gets in our way, Master Coalbender,” I responded promptly.

“Oh, lots of that bin coming around, it bin,” the dwarven earthmage huffed happily, holding up his fingers to draw a mark, making a short gesture. Fifty feet away, two hammering dwarves watched his hands as they tapped at the pipe there, pausing only when he cleared them. “Ho, looks like we’ve a caravan coming in.” He waved his hand, and a shoulder-high to the dwarves rose up and separated it from the rest of the roadway, and not-so-incidentally drew a narrow stone strip over the trench they’d dug so the incoming wagons could pass.

The students just gaped again at the casual ease of his spellcasting, the way the gleaming pebbles around him just danced and stilled at a moment’s thought. “Oksar! Seal it!” he barked out.

One of the tappers down there inverted his Hammer, concentrated, and the haft it of it lit up with runeforms. He tapped it down, and dark lines writhed over the formed stone, not fired clay, of the pipes, converging on the seams joining them, and meshed the ends smoothly and fully together, no breaks.

Master Coalbender took another reading via fingers, vague lights dancing on his thick digits. “Two more, lads!” he called out, received a cheerful set of curses in response, and hammers and picks were taken up again. “Off with du on dur escapade,” the dwarf said over the noise of the horses and wagons trudging on past, waving us off, the Federyn drovers and guards blinking in utter astonishment at finding dwarves in an elven city… in Zanzyr, of all places!

“Master Coalbender,” I bowed to him in reply, turning and heading off down the road, as a dozen poor tormented souls had their views of dwarves turned right on end.

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We were almost to the great gates out of the city, and had seen half a dozen other groups of dwarves seen going about on business, before the Mick managed to speak up for everyone. “M’Lady Edge, I have to be asking… the plague?” he inquired very carefully.

“What’s the solution to a problem?” I asked over my shoulder.

“Knowledge!” they piped up automatically. The required lectures in the Chapels of Thaum for all resident students had an effect.

“What do we know about the plague?” I asked further, as we were waved through gates which could handle caravans of titans, let alone humans and elves. My entourage was momentarily thrown off by the wide road extending out before them… and the wall paralleling it away from the river, stretching away from the city of Launcel as well, with grassy, bush-strewn slopes between it and the road.

“Uh… it’s spread by dwarves?” Hammel managed brightly.

“Partially true,” I replied without looking back, zipping down the road as they contemplated the amount of terraforming that had been done to create the slope and the slowly increasing height of the wall next to them, a wall which was effectively creating a mountain slope not unlike that across the river! “What is the full, correct statement?”

There were several guesses before Entelia piped up, “The plague is spread by those infected by it!” she declared.

“Excellent. That is true. Human, goblin, dwarf, orc, elf, hyn, kobold, gnoll. Whoever is infected with the plague spreads it. So, dwarves are neutral in that regard to the plague. Why the focus on dwarves?”

There was some merry discussion, most of it not complimentary, and most I just shot down as racist drivel, especially in regards to cleanliness, dirt, and likewise.

“The dwarves can carry the plague without really being affected by it?” the Mick finally summed up after a bunch of hostile drivel was thrown out.

“That’s correct. The earthpower that gives dwarves their resistance to magic, disease, and poison means that the plague basically comes down to a case of gum disease that can be chased away by drinking hard liquor, which is far from difficult for a dwarf. Among them, it is called ‘blackgum’, and the cure to it is to get roaring drunk, enough to give a dwarf a hangover, and kill off the stuff.”

“Isn’t that one of the ways to treat the plague? Strong spirits?” Nico piped up. Alchemists also doubled as the best of Zanzyr’s healers, barring certain monkish orders who were seldom bothered with such mundane affairs. They were often called on, if the afflicted didn’t come to Erendyl.

“If caught quickly, yes. It is also one of the ways it spreads, mostly by unwashed tankards and cups not properly sterilized in public drinking hostels, shared among many folk, or at parties and the like.

“The spores that form the Darkrot plague also like to grow in wet, damp places, which often includes areas where alcohol is stored in wooden barrels.

“Go on? Other details that are relevant?”

There was a lot of speculation around, but the Mick basically rolled his eyes and waved them to silence. “Alright, geniuses. It’s plain m’Lady has done her research on the plague, and ye all have not. Ye’re just like me, took the common word as the truth, and looked no further than the end of yer noses fer the answers.” He looked all the embarrassed Adepts in the eye, and just snorted. “M’Lady, educate us all, as it pleases ye,” he asked sincerely.

“The Darkrot Plague does not exist in its lethal form outside Zanzyr,” I went on, making them all straighten up. “It mutates when exposed to the unique magical field that permeates Zanzyr.”

“The Radiance,” Laurentil murmured in a soft voice, all the Adepts nodding slightly.

“And what does that mean?” I went on smoothly.

Surprisingly, it was Chekwort who spoke up. “It is only lethal in Zanzyr? Than… it is only a weapon here in Zanzyr? Against those dwelling in Zanzyr?” the rather cute and shaggy lupin gaped. “Someone made the plague to strike against Zanzyr?”

“One of the Orcish Immortals, if word I’ve received is correct, the one nicknamed ‘Ghoul Hands’ for his mastery of disease.” Or Yeggtru, but let’s not name an Immortal and have them listening in. “Very good, Mountaire.” He promptly looked so bashful that Laurentine had to give him a hug of solace. I noted he was VERY good at generating impromptu hugs for himself, but the Mountaire were a social breed…

“An ORCISH Immortal designed the disease?” the outlander Izzimaior repeated in shock, Hellenic accent evident. “But… the dwarves?”

“The initial spreaders of the disease were actually the orcish and goblin natives of the Bleaklands, where it originated. The dwarves fought them before Zanzyr did, and the plague spread to them. When the infected Bleakers come to Zanzyr, they were typically slaughtered and their corpses burned, and the plague never spread here, since the effects looked so minor at the time, or at least spread slowly enough that it didn’t matter, and routine hygiene kept it contained.

“But the dwarves were carriers of it throughout Zanzyr, this minor gum disease that took on a life of its own once it came here.

“The primary vectors of the plague were humans infecting other humans through shared drink and social settings, including kisses, hugs, handshakes, shared utensils, and communal drinking vessels. But dwarves carried it throughout the country, were identified as carriers and spreaders of the stuff who weren’t susceptible to it themselves, and so were blamed for it and hounded out of Zanzyr, since the true sources, the orcs and goblins, were far away or already dead.

“It was actually the correct decision, as the dwarves were spreading the disease, albeit completely unknowingly. The stupidity of it was that if the proper cause was known, dwarven Clerics would have been mightily motivated to prevent the spread of it, and could have saved thousands of Zanzyran lives that were lost to Zanzyr’s ban against Clerical magicks and new anathema for the dwarves.

“The Darkrot Plague still exists as blackgum among the dwarves, orcs, and goblins alike, and the threat of it won’t ever go away. However, the dwarves of Rukheim now know of the plague, of the source of it, and if you know aught about dwarves, they hate being used as patsies by others.

“They are also taking steps to reduce the incidence of the disease with proper cleaning and purification effects. This is not being done to aid Zanzyr, of course, but merely to destroy a weapon of the orcs.”

There was silence as a bunch of mages and warriors of Zanzyr tried to reconcile everything they’d heard about dwarves with that news, and the fact there were now dwarven mages.

It was really shaking up their worldview of the proper order of things!