“We have eaten their food, Baltazar.” The prince smiled faintly. “The least we can do in return is answer their questions. Besides, what does it matter if they are spies? Let them take our story back to Necropolis. We have nothing to hide.
“The realm of my people is … or was … up there.” Edmund glanced upward beyond the shadows of the cavern ceiling. “Far, far up there . ..”
“On the surface of this world?” Haplo asked.
“No, no. That would be impossible. The surface of Abarrach is either cold and barren rock or vast plains of ice shrouded by darkness. Baltazar has traveled to that realm. He can describe it better than I.”
‘Abarrach means world of stone in our language as well as in yours.” Baltazar nodded at Haplo and Alfred. ‘And it is just that, at least as far as the ancients—who had the time and talent to devote themselves to study—were able to determine. Our world consists of rock through which penetrate countless caverns and tunnels. Our ‘sun’ is the molten heart burning in Abarrach’s core.
“The surface is as His Highness described it. It supports no life nor any possibility of life. But, beneath the surface, where we had our homes. . . ah, there the living was very pleasant. Very pleasant.” Baltazar sighed over his memories.
“The colossus—” he began.
“The what?” Alfred interrupted.
“Colossus. Don’t you have them in your world?”
“He’s not certain,” said Haplo. “Tell us what you mean.”
“Gigantic round columns of stone—”
“That support the cavern? We saw those outside.”
“The Colossus do not support the cavern. Such support isn’t necessary. They were created by magical means by the ancients. Their purpose was to transfer the heat energy from this part of the world up to us. It worked. We had bountiful supplies of food, water. Which makes what happened all the more inexplicable.”
‘And that was—”
‘A drop in our birthrate. Every year the number of children being born to us decreased. In some ways, however, the phenomenon proved fortunate. Our most powerful wizards turned their attention to the secrets of creating life. Instead, we discovered—”
“—the means of extending life past death!” Alfred exclaimed, voice quivering in shock and disapproval.
Fortunately, perhaps because of the language differences, Bal-tazar mistook shock for awe. He smiled, nodded complacently. “The addition of the dead to the population proved most beneficial. Keeping them alive does leech much of our magical power, but—in past days—we had little need for magic. The dead provided all physical labor. When we noticed that the magma river near our city was beginning to cool, we thought little of it. We continued to receive energy from below, heat traveled up through the colossus. The Little People mined the rock. They built our dwellings for us, and maintained the colossus—”
“Wait!” Haplo stopped Baltazar. “Little People? What Little People?”
The necromancer frowned, thinking back, “I don’t know much about them. They are gone now.”
“I recall hearing stories about the Little People from my father/ Edmund said. ‘And I met them once. They loved more than anything to dig and delve in the rock. They coveted the minerals they found there, calling them such names as ‘gold’ and ‘silver/ and brought forth jewels of rare and wondrous beauty—”
“Dwarves?” Alfred ventured at a guess.
“That word sounds strangely in my ears. Dwarves.” Baltazar looked to the prince, who nodded thoughtfully in agreement. “We had another name for them, but that is near the mark. Dwarves.”
‘Two other races are believed to populate this world,” Alfred continued, either ignoring or simply not seeing Haplo’s attempts to stop the Sartan from saying too much. “Elves were one, humans another.”
Neither Baltazar nor Edmund appeared to recognize the names.
“Mensch,” suggested Haplo, using the term by which both Sartan and Patryns referred to the lesser races.
“Ah, mensch!” Baltazar brightened in recognition. He shrugged. “Reports exist in the writings of our grandfathers. Not that they ever saw any, but they heard of them from their fathers and their fathers before them. These mensch must have been extremely weak. Their races died out almost immediately after they came to Abarrach.”
“You mean… no more remain on this world! But, they were left in your care.” Alfred began in severe tones. “Surely you—”