#ZattyWriMo 2024

It felt as though a year had passed in the blink of an eye as the dwarven rune master studied their faces. He then pulled out a flat drum made of wood and dark leather. Katla only caught a short glimpse of the runes drawn along the rim of the drumskin, as the dwarf held it up before him. He took one of the runecarved sticks they had handed him and slid it into a small hole in the wooden frame. Katla couldn't see what it was supposed to do, but he appeared content as he plucked out the stick and dropped the next one in. The process repeated with the third and last stick. As he handed the runesticks back to Katla, he spoke for the first time:

"Your truth is proven. May you walk the mountain without fall."

Katla received the three sticks and noticed the rune master had put down the drum. But the dark leather wasn't a blank surface any more. Pale lines, slightly raised from the skin, had appeared in the leather. Pale lines in a pattern resembling... Her own face!

The dwarven rune master noticed her staring at the upside down illustration of her face and quickly snatched the inscribed artifact and hid it behind a fold in his loose tunic. It was clearly no drum the dwarf had used, but no magic Katla had heard of could explain how a wooden stick carved the night before made a drawing of her face appear. Katla speechlessly handed Solvi and Jorunn their sticks, and behind her the stone gate started to move.

Before long the four travellers were through and the guard post disappeared behind them. Eitri explained they had two or three days walk before them before reaching the entrance to the Dwarven City of the Southern Mountains.

"Be sure to enjoy the sun while we walk. Once we enter the mountain, it will be a while before we emerge from the northern gate."

That night, as they set up their camp, Katla asked Solvi in hushed voice, "Did you see what that rune master did? It was some kind of magic, I'm sure of it!"

"Of course I saw it. I've been staring at the stick Eitri carved for me every chance I got."

Solvi had stopped unpacking the wagon and was fiddling with something in her pocket.

"There's something about them, as if it's not just lines carved in wood," she continued, "but it doesn't make sense, you can't just make a few scratches and have a face appear somewhere else."

Katla grew thoughtful. "But how do we figure out how it works? Even if it's only the carvings, we could be drawing lines from now until a rock grows bored and still have learned nothing."

"No need for guessing games, I'll ask Eitri about after we get the fire going. Judging by their chattiness last night, I'm bound to learn something."

"Right. Talking to people. I forgot that was an option," Katla said with only a slight hint of sarcasm in her voice.

"It's fine, they're helping us, remember?" Solvi reassured her, "and they already said they'd teach me how to carve the runes. Maybe they're just trying not to scare us away with their gigantic magical power."

Eitri was easy to get talking about the runes and their magic. But while they spoke at length, they never seemed to explain how anything worked. The closest Katla could gather was that the shape of the runes were important, but also the knowledge of the shapes of the runes. It didn't make any sense to her, though. The dryads had magic and they did fine without shapes, patterns, carvings, and Knowing of Secrets. Not that Katla actually knew how their magic worked. Maybe they did have patterns and Knowing. Violanatheruna did use a very specific recipe when making potions for Katla, and a recipe was a kind of pattern, wasn't it? Maybe the dryads had something that could be called Knowing of Plants, like the dwarves had Knowing of Secrets. But the amulet wasn't made of plants and it definitely wasn't a potion.

The amulet Katla still carried close to her body, was made of swirling lines of a dark yellow metal. In the center of it was a deep green stone. It was mostly opaque, but when sunlight hit it just right Katla could see faint light and shadow behind it. She still didn't know exactly what it could do or how it worked. Violana had only briefly told them that she had used it to somehow receive short messages from the man with the other amulet. The man who had gone missing years ago, and who she was supposed to find by using the amulet itself. She weren't going to find anyone before reuniting with the trading caravan, that was certain. And that meant getting into, and then through and out of, the huge dwarven city hidden inside the mountain. The Southern City they called it, as if noone could find an actual name that would fit it.

Katla broke out of her thoughts and saw Solvi in full sving carving lines and crosslines into a flat piece of wood. "I'm heading to bed," Katla announced to the campfire as she rose, "my feet aren't used to mountain walks, so I should rest while I can. And so should you."

Solvi waved her off with a non-committal hand gesture, which made Eitri chuckle lightly. Jorunn sat motionless, starting into the campfire or past it towards and unseen place. She was as lost in her own thoughts as Katla had been moments before.

Katla didn't bother to get her attention, and quickly gathered her things and found her tent. She shared it with Solvi, and their sleeping blankets lay almost shoulder to shoulder in the narrow tent. Katla just hoped her tentmate would go to bed soon, or at least that she herself would sleep soundly enough to avoid waking.

Katla woke as the last person the next morning.

Outside her tent she found Eitri at a renewed campfire making breakfast in a frying pan. Solvi was almost done packing the wagon, only Katla's sleeping gear and their tent remained. Behind the wagon Jorunn was doing some stretching exercises, and she looked like she had been up and ready for the day's trek for a while. Katla yawned as she joined Eitri at the campfire. Their pan was sizzling with some kind of salted meat, and it wasn't long before they arranged some of it on a plate for Katla. To her surprise they also poked around in the embers and uncovered a wrapped package of some kind. The wrap was charred, but with care not to burn their fingers, Eitri deftly opened it up to reveal a small pile of steaming beets.