"These are venerable grags," said Ardent, indicating the robed figures behind him. "They have studied the Histories! They have studied the Devices! Thousands of years of knowledge stand before you. And you? What do you know?"
"You came to destroy the truth," said Bashfullsson. "You dared not trust it. A voice is just a voice, but these bodies are proof. You came here to destroy them:
Ardent snatched the axe from a miner and was flourishing it before any of the bodyguards could react. When realization caught up with them, there was a massed move forward.
"No!" said Bashfullsson, holding up his hands. "Sire, please! This is an argument between grags!"
"Why do you carry no axe?" Ardent snarled.
"I need no axe to be a dwarf," said Bashfullsson. "Nor do I need to hate trolls. What kind of creature defines itself by hatred?"
"You strike at the very root of us!" said Ardent. "At the root!"
"Then strike back," said Bashfullsson, holding out his empty hands. "And put your sword away, Commander Vimes," he added, without turning his head. "This is dwarf business. Ardent? I"m still standing. What do you believe in? Ha"ak! Ga strak ja"ada!"
Ardent jerked forward, axe raised. Bashfullsson moved quickly, there was the thud of something hitting flesh, and then a tableau as motionless as the brooding figures around the cavern. There was Ardent, axe raised overhead. There was Bashfullsson, down on one knee with his head resting almost companionably against the dwarf"s chest and the edge of one hand pressed hard against Ardent"s throat.
Ardent"s mouth opened, but all that came out was a croak and a trickle of blood. He took a few steps back, and fell over backwards.
The axe struck the white, wet, stony waterfall, and smashed through the drip of millennia. Time fell in shards around it.
Bashfullsson rose, looking shocked and massaging his hand. "It is like using an axe," he said, to no one in particular, "but without the axe..."
The uproar began again, but a dwarf, dripping with water, pushed through the mob. "Sire, there"s a band of trolls coming up the valley! They asked for you! They say they want to parley!"
Rhys stepped over the body of Ardent, looking intently at the hole in the waterfall of stone. Another piece fell down as he touched it.
"Is there something unusual about their leader?" he said in a preoccupied voice, still staring into the new darkness. "Yes, sire! He"s all ... sparkly!"
"Ah. Good," said the King. "He has his parley. Bring him down here." "Could that be a troll who knows some very powerful dwarfs?" said Vimes.
The Low King met his eyes for a moment. "Yes, I imagine it is," he said. Then he raised his voice. "Someone fetch me a torch! Commander Vimes, could you just ... look at this, please?"
In the depths of the revealed cave, something shone.
On this day in 1802, the painter Methodia Rascal dropped the glittering thing in the deepest well he knew. No one would ever hear it down there. The Chicken chased him home.
It would be a lot simpler, Vimes thought, if this was a story. A sword is pulled out of a stone or a magic ring is flung into the depths of the sea, and with general rejoicing the world turns.
But this was real life. The world didn"t turn, it just went into a spin. It was Koom Valley Day and there wasn"t a battle going on in Koom Valley. But what was going on here wasn"t peace, either. What was going on ... well, what was going on was committees. It was negotiation. Actually, as far as he could tell, it hadn"t even got as far as negotiation yet. It hadn"t got past talks about meetings about delegations. On the other hand, no one had died, except maybe of boredom.
There was a lot of history to be unpicked, and, for those who weren"t actually engaged in that delicate activity, there was Koom Valley to tame. Two cultural heroes were down there in the cavern, and all it needed was one good storm and a few misplaced blockages for a white flood laden with grinding boulders to wipe the whole place away. It hadn"t happened yet, but sooner or later the dynamic geography would get round to it. Koom Valley couldn"t be left to its own devices, not any more.
Everywhere you looked there were teams of trolls and dwarfs surveying, diverting, damming and drilling. They"d been engaged in this for two days, but it would take them for ever, because every winter changed the game. Koom Valley was forcing co-operation on them. Dam Koom Valley ...
Vimes thought that was a bit too pat, but nature can be like that. Sometimes you got sunsets so pink that they had no style at all.
One thing that had happened fast was the tunnel. Dwarfs had cut down quickly through the soft limestone. You could stroll down into the cavern now, although in fact you"d have to queue because of the long line of trolls and dwarfs.
Those in the line going down eyed one another with uncertainty at best. Those in the line coming up sometimes looked angry, or were close to tears, or just walked along looking at the ground.
Once they got past the exit, they tended to form into quiet groups.
Sam, with Young Sam in his arms, didn"t have to queue. News had got around. He went straight in, past the trolls and dwarfs who were painstakingly reassembling the broken stalagmites (it was news to Vimes that you could do that, but apparently if you came back in five hundred years they"d be as good as new) and into what had come to be called the Kings" Cave.
And there they were. You couldn"t argue with it. There was the dwarf king, slumped forward across the board, glazed by the eternal drip, his beard now rock and at one with the stone, but the diamond king had remained upright in death, his skin gone cloudy, and you could still see the game in front of him. It was his move; a healthy little stalactite hung from his outstretched hand.
They"d broken off small stalagmites to make the pieces, which time had now glued into immobility. The scratched lines on the stone board were more or less invisible, but Thud players from both races had already pored over it and a sketch of the Dead Kings" Game had by now appeared in the Times. The diamond king was playing the dwarf side. Apparently it could go either way.