“What do you think, Drakis?” Braun said as he stood in the center of the room.
“I think we need to find our Octian and. .”
“No,” Braun snapped, an angry edge to his voice. “Do you see the picture? There’s a large flat platform inside the window. There. . back there. . is a carved stone counter and behind it. . can you see it?. . there are three ovens.”
Awaken the ghosts long forgotten. .
Recall the loved dead. .
Drakis began to sweat in the chill room. “It’s a. . a kitchen. . a kind of dwarf mess hall. . a place to eat. .”
“You look, but you don’t see!” Braun urged, stepping closer to Drakis. “The spirits still breathe whispers of their passing in this place. Their voices shout to us from the silence, and you! You hear nothing!”
They eat here. They love here. They laugh here.
Better if left and forgotten. .
Nine notes. Seven notes.
“I hear enough.” Drakis swallowed hard. “Leave me alone, Braun!”
“It isn’t what is here, Drakis; it’s what isn’t here that you need to see!” Braun swept past Drakis to the window. “Here on this shelf were the wares of this shop: baked goods, breads, meats-can you smell them still in the air? There. . there in the archway that we came through, there is no door. There have been no doors in any of the openings or halls through which we have come in the three days we have been wandering down here in our graves. By all accounts, the dwarves love their gems and their precious metals and their stonework-we are told they are all even more covetous of such things than our righteous elven masters. Why, then, are there no doors between the dwarves?”
We kill without cause. We kill without thought.
Five notes. . Five notes. .
“What difference does it. .”
“And this room,” the Proxi continued. “The floor is cleaner than any plate I’ve ever eaten from in the Centurai barracks of our great Lord Timuran. No dust. No dirt. But where are the chairs? Where are the tables? There are images of them carved into the wall facing the archway, but there’s not a stick of either to be found inside. Look, Drakis! See! There are hooks in the ceiling above the counter, but where are the pots, the pans, the kettles, or the spoons? Where are the tools? Where are the kegs and the stores of grain or tubers or roots or whatever the dwarves fed upon?”
“Stop it, Braun! I don’t care. .”
The Proxi turned again to face Drakis. “Where are the children who squealed through the streets with joy, Drakis? Where are the women who breathed life into this place? Where are the gray-bearded elder dwarves with their frail bodies and their wisdom aged like fine wine?”
“I don’t. . I don’t know!” Drakis answered.
“No, you don’t,” Braun said, stepping toward him with a strange twisted smile on his face. “You don’t know. . I don’t know. . but at least I’m beginning to understand just how much I don’t know!”
Drakis reached behind him, feeling for the archway as he carefully backed away from the wild-eyed Proxi.
“It’s all unraveling, Drakis,” Braun said softly. His tongue flicked to the corner of his mouth, drawing in the spittle that had formed there. “Here in the darkness I can see. . here in these rooms that are so like you and me. Perhaps it is the distance from the Aether Well of House Timuran, perhaps it is the three days we have gone without renewing our Devotions. Maybe it has something to do with being so deep beneath the mountain of the dwarves. I don’t know, but whatever it is, the cords, soft and silken as they have been, are unraveling from my mind, and I am beginning to see the picture of truth at last.”