Chapter 21: Ch. 021 – (Then) Khaghrumer

Jonathan was shaken awake hours later. It was just enough time to wake up tired, but not enough time to feel like he’d rested at all. Boriv brought his fingers to his lips before casting his gaze around to indicate all the other sleeping dwarves scattered throughout the room. Jonathan got up as quietly as he could, and then helped Boriv wrestle their luggage outside to a waiting cart that had his brother already chained to it. It was only when they got outside that he finally asked. “What happened? Has there been a change in plan?”

“Change? No lad. The train will be here soon, that’s all, and if we miss it we’ll be here for four more days while we wait for the next one, so we’d best get a move on.” So they walked ahead while a porter pulled the cart down to the platform. Jonathan almost asked why they didn’t have donkeys down here to do that sort of work before he kicked himself. ‘And what do ye think they would they feed an animal like that so deep underground?’ he could practically hear the old dwarf lecturing him. If Jonathan had actually asked such a dumb question, being mocked would have been only fair though. 

Thankful that he held his tongue, he just kept on doing it when they arrived at the platform and Jonathan saw some of the strangest dwarves he’d ever seen waiting for the same train. Most of them looked like he was used to. They had thick beards, heavy cloaks, and fur trim. The others though - at first he’d thought that they were more female dwarves, but after a moment's study he realized they weren’t, well - shapely enough. A male dwarf that was clean shaven though? He’d never heard of such a thing, and the ones without beards, they even dressed differently too - wearing tunics of wool or linen that were elaborately embroidered in colorful patterns. The desire not to sound stupid outweighed the desire to discover something new for now, so Jonathan stood there quietly and observed. He’d wait until they were next alone to ask he decided. He was used to being mocked by Boriv in private, but didn’t much like the idea of being laughed at by a whole crowd of dwarves. 

Boriv left the two brothers and their cases alone for a few minutes only to return after a brief exchange of words and coin with what had to be the station master. Jonathan spent the time looking at his brother, wondering why he didn’t at least try to escape instead of sitting there, but whatever the dwarves had done to him seemed to have truly broken Marcus. It was hard to feel any pity for him, but Jonathan felt almost duty bound to try until Boriv interrupted the moment with the heavy tromp of his feet. “I’ve got good news and bad news lad.” 

“What’s the bad news?” Jonathan grimaced, not sure he wanted to know. 

“Both carriage cars are full, so ye and I will spend the last leg of our trip in freight.” Boriv answered. “Hell of a thing to make a fellow stationmaster ride into Khagrumer this way too. I think he enjoyed it.” 

“What’s the good news then?” Jonathan asked after a moment, trying to derail the complaining that would quickly become fuming if left alone. 

“The good news is he’s givin us a bucket for when ye need to go.” Boriv pronounced very seriously, staring at Jonathan with a deadpan expression for several seconds before he laughed uproariously. 

“Oh - you’re kidding,” Jonathan smiled, finally, chuckling along with his master. 

“This is no lad,” Boriv said, “I’m deadly serious - but that don’t mean it ain’t funnier than a pig in shite.” 

Jonathan spent the next half an hour worrying about the arrangements that Boriv described, but he needn’t have bothered. When they finally opened up the freight car for them to board Jonathan saw that they would have a full third of the car to themselves; if anything it would be much less cramped than the carriage had been. He didn’t say any of that out loud though, because Boriv was still grousing about ‘th principle of th thing’ even after the train started to move. That turned out to be the second benefit. Unlike the passenger carriage, he could actually hear Boriv in here thanks to the complete lack of windows. 

Soon enough the train was moving, giving Jonathan plenty of time to consider the trade offs as the rails once again went ever downward. Laying on the floor of the freight car was about a thousand times more comfortable than trying to sit on one of those tiny couches, but the hot stuffy air combined with the complete lack of light made it feel like he was trying to hide from a warm summer's day in a shallow root cellar. On the whole it was probably an improvement, but when he woke up a few hours later from some much needed sleep, he reconsidered. “It’s getting awfully warm in here, don’t you think Boriv?” 

“Aye - it’s gettin rather nice, but ye ain’t seen nothin yet boy.” He said, obviously enjoying the change. Even without being able to see the old dwarf’s face, Jonathan had long ago learned to read the small changes in his tone in an effort to stay on his good side. 

“No? Does it get warmer the deeper we go then?” Jonathan asked, trying to understand. He’d known for years that dwarves had to live somewhere warmer than the Dulcine valley, because they always dressed like it was the middle of winter, but he’d never paused to consider how warm that might be. “How warm is it where we’re going then?”

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“In Khagrumer?” The dwarf paused to come up with an answer. “Think of the hottest summer day that Dalmarin ever had, and add a few degrees. It’s not hot like it is in the deeps - but it’s always nice temperature out. Humans can’t really go much deeper than where we’re headed. Yer kind is much too fragile.” Jonathan swallowed hard at the news. Dalmarin was high enough to have pretty mild summers, but even so, he didn’t relish the idea of it being 85 or 90 degrees day after sweaty day sounded like pure misery. The idea that it could get even hotter, though - well, it sounded like if they dug any deeper they’d find themselves in one of the nine hells. 

“Think of it like this.” Boriv continued, “The very center of the world is a raging ball of infinite fire, surrounded by a sea of molten stone. The hard stone we’re in now, well that floats on the liquid stuff like a boat on the sea, but the deeper you go, the closer you get to the fire.” 

“So why was it so cold at our first stop?” Jonathan was trying to wrap his head around the idea of the whole world constantly being on fire. 

“Well, the further ye get from the fire below, the more yoe rely on the sun to warm things up. Hundreds of feet below the surface ye are too far from either to stay much warmer than a chilly spring day.” Boriv answered. “I don’t know why that is. It’s just enough to know that it is.”

“Is that why some of the dwarves dressed so differently?” Jonathan asked, switching to the topic he most wanted to know about now that he’d gotten his mentor talking.

“Ye noticed that, did ye lad? Good eye.” Boriv sighed, like it was a sore spot before finally saying, “There are lots of rifts and separations in dwarven society. Clan. Family. Guild. Profession. Ye name it, and we fight about it. The biggest one though, the biggest divide in the whole kingdom is between dwarves that actually go up to the surface and get things done, and those that stay home, all cozy in the deeps to enjoy the good life.” 

“Is that so,” Jonathan said, not sure why any of those things should matter too much. 

“They call us surface dwarves, if ye can believe it. Surface dwarves!” Boriv said, exasperated. He’d obviously touched a sore spot. “Like anyone ever heard of a dwarf that wanted to live up in the snow and the cold. They look all the way down their noses at me and mine, but they’d starve without us up there to make sure they got fed and the trains ran on time.”

“It’s true,” Jonathan said, but he wasn’t really sure if it was. He’d wanted to ask about the beards next, or the differences in style at least. He worried that if he angered Boriv any more than he already had, the old dwarf might just keel over from a heart attack. So, instead he just sat there, commenting noncommittally while Boriv ranted about lumberjacks, how the real action took place in the tunnels where the wheel meets the track and whatever else he rambled on about. Jonathan would try again later, but for now he just waited for his mentor to stop talking so he could try to go back to sleep as the train rocked back and forth. 

It took an eternity of such moments punctuated by bouts of sleep for them to finally pull into a slow stop at Khagrumer. Jonathan could feel that it would look a lot different from their last stop just by the amount of light that was leaking in around the freightcar door. He was utterly unprepared for what he saw though. He’d been six when they left Lloren, and he barely remembered its white towers or crowded streets but his siblings had told him about it enough times that he felt like he did. That grandeur was put to shame immediately by the size and scale of Khagrumer. The railyard alone had more than a dozen rail lines and sidings, complete with loading platforms, and trains were at half of them, loading and unloading gods knew what. As hard as it was to wrap his head around that though, Jonathan’s mind truly boggled at the city that stood in stark relief above and behind it.

The city itself was in a huge cavern  with some buildings stretching all the way to the ceiling like giant support pillars. That’s what Jonathan had thought they were at first, but as his eyes adjusted he could see them dotted with doors and windows, hinting at their true purpose. Everything was square and smooth and made of stone. The idea of houses stacked one on top of the next until they reached the roof seemed impossible, but it was impossible to ignore what his eyes were telling him. He couldn’t really be mistaken either, because the whole cavern was lit as brightly as dawn, with thousands of glow stones big and small dotting every building and platform in an effort to hold back the darkness of the tunnels that fed into the cavern at regular intervals. 

Jonathan could have looked for another hour, but Boriv finally interrupted him when he’d hired a porter and gotten their luggage loaded onto a cart. There were no beasts of burden here either. No horses or mules pulled anything. Instead everything was powered by dwarf or by steam. The rich seemed to be carried around by bearers on small palanquins, but most everyone just walked. Once they were well clear of the rails, Jonathan glimpsed another smaller train that was built for standing room only going up a steep hill, but before he could ask Boriv about it, it was gone. There were a thousand small differences to a human city though. The size of the stories would have made it nearly impossible for him to enter most buildings for starters. A three story dwarven house wasn’t even as tall as a two story human one. It was one more detail that would make life for him that much more impossible, and he wondered how they were going to deal with that, but in the moment he was much more concerned with soaking up all the strange sights and sounds as he followed Boriv down the narrow street.

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