Chương 64: V3: Chapter 5 - The Trouble with Bubbles

Gravis Berling watched the bubbles rising in his glass of ale. Like all Berlings, he was born and bred for genius and knew that the gas was created during the fermentation process. Humans didn't understand that, but then humans didn't know much. They left brewing to their wives. These women, these alewives, had the audacity to add hops to their family gruit recipes and then call what they created bier, or beer, as if they had invented it. They had no idea what turned wort into the effervescent amber drink.

For them that brewed it, the magic was believed to be in the family stick that their mothers and grandmothers handed down. Daughters were told to only stir the wort using the magic stick. What they didn't know — what they still don't — is that the stick was caked with yeast from all the other previous batches, and it was that unseen fungi that provided the magic to get the fermentation process rolling. Fermentation was an old word, a Dromeian word.

Gravis was certain of that, and also that the term described how yeast consumes sugar to produce gas and alcohol. The gas appeared in any fermentation process and was equally responsible for the holes in spongy bread and the bubbles in Gravis's ale. When first brewed, there were a lot of bubbles, and many people liked it that way, but in a few days, all the bubbles were gone, and the drink went as flat as stale water. Sealing ale in barrels never worked. The gas always escaped.

"Master Berling." Baric Brock interrupted Gravis's study of his drink. He hadn't seen Baric approach, but he knew the voice. He was one of the in-betweens, a dwarf whose beard was tending toward gray but not yet committed to the cause. He was a middle-aged, middling meddler, who surely intended what else but... mischief. Gravis didn't reply or so much as look up. Baric persisted.

"Terrible age we live in, isn't it?" Gravis didn't care for Baric, but then he didn't care for most people. Not that Baric classified as people. He was a Brock. The whole family was a bunch of silversmiths who always made a sumptuous living while others starved. Worse yet, the Brocks were one of the northern families — those who left the peninsula and then came back. In Gravis's book, that made him one toe short of a traitor — a wealthy and insensitive toe-short traitor.

Baric leaned in, resting a meaty hand decorated with a silver ring on the counter of the bar inches from Gravis's ale — the drink with too few bubbles.

"Heard Ena died. I'm sorry for your loss. I truly am."

"Leave me be, Baric." Gravis growled the words, thinking Baric ought to at least understand what any dog would.

"I'm just offering me condolences, Berling. Just trying to be decent."

"And I'm just letting you know to sod off. Now awa' an' bile yer heid."

"You don't need to be that way. There's no call for it."

"No call for it? No call for it, you say?" Gravis's head came up, his eyes torn from the too few bubbles to lock on Baric and his too few brains, who was also freakishly tall for a Dromeian. Not just a traitor. The Brocks must have human blood in their past.

"They've banished me from her!" Gravis shouted and slammed his hand on the bar, turning every head in the alehouse.

"No one banished you, Berling. Ena just died. It happens."

"Not from Ena, you hampot! From Drumindor!"

"Drumindor?" Baric looked as dim as a dying candle. Then those eyes narrowed.

"Are you hearing yourself, Berling? Your wife just passed away, and you're still going on about the blasted towers?" Everyone was listening to them now. Scram Scallie wasn't a big place, and their raised voices echoed off the walls, killing any other talk. Gravis didn't like all the attention. Aside from Sloan behind the bar, only four additional patrons filled the room, but for Gravis, who lived a small life, it was a multitude.

And while he'd like nothing more than to take the twists out of Baric's crooked thinking and set him straight, Gravis wasn't a public speaker. He didn't do well in arguments in front of an audience. He'd never been popular. Maybe there was prejudice against his family's name, which Baric had been using like a stick to beat him with. Or perhaps people shunned Gravis because he wasn't just a little smarter than everyone else, but a lot, and people couldn't begin to comprehend his thinking.

Either way — and he felt it likely to be both — he knew he wasn't about to win minds and hearts by debating Baric. Feeling eyes on him, Gravis made a tactical retreat.

"You're a Doritheian, Baric. You don't understand, and ya never will."

"Bah!" Baric waved a dismissive hand, signaling that the encounter was over, then he turned around to walk away. While Gravis had been cognizant of the attention they had drawn, it was no surprise that Baric was slow in the awareness department. Why he didn't realize that everyone would be watching only sharpened the point of the argument that Gravis wasn't bothering to make. Instead, he watched it happen, knew it would.

When Baric turned and saw all the faces, the miserable sod couldn't let it go — not with people watching, not in this sacred place. Scram Scallie wasn't merely a dwarven bar — it was a historic site, and every Dromeian knew it. A literal crack in the wall, nothing more than a mousehole in the side of the grand Turian Cliffs, the little alehouse was invisible to the rest of the city, but to Gravis and his fellow Belgriclungreians, Scram Scallie was famous. The little shelter predated Drumindor.

Legend held that Andvari Berling himself carved it out as a base while surveying the bay. Trapped inside by a storm that raged for days, he had used glow stones for light and invented the quintessential invisible rolling door. When the war with the elves turned dire, and the Orinfar was discovered, Scram Scallie became the model for all the rols built as safe houses throughout the north. Now, several thousand years later, it served as a place where Dromeians could get away from the big people — hence the name.

Not wanting to look weak on even that tiny stage, Baric pivoted, whirling around with theatrical drama.

"Aye, you're right! I'm a Doritheian, and proud to be the descendant of the eldest son of Drome, one of the first thanes that founded Neith and ruled our people for nearly nine thousand years. Nine thousand, Berling. How long were the Brundenlins in charge? How long before your clan, and their kings, nearly wiped us off the face of Elan? Was it even an entire century, Berling? Was it?" Feeling vindicated and victorious, Baric once more tried to walk away, but again, he failed.

He turned back, and with a newly drawn breath, he added, "Until Linden of the Brundenlins declared himself king, that word was an unspeakable profanity. His wonderful grandson, Mideon, demonstrated exactly why that is. You want to bandy about lineage, Gravis? Keep in mind that you Berlings were right there by Mideon's side, supporting his war, his greed, and his bloated ego. And finally, that insanity with the golem! Who did that, Berling?

Mideon had lost but refused to accept that fact, so he had Andvari use the forbidden arts to summon the thing that destroyed Linden Lott!"

"That's a lie!" Gravis erupted.

"It's an unproven truth — there's a difference. But I wouldn't expect a Brundenlin to understand that... and ya never will." Baric whirled around and began to swagger out. This time it was Gravis who couldn't back down.

"There're too few bubbles, Baric!" Baric didn't stop — not immediately — he was on a triumphal march, but he slowed. Because Scram Scallie was possibly the smallest alehouse in the world, he almost reached the door when curiosity finally tackled him. The others were silent and every face expectant as Baric asked the question that they all hoped he would.

"What are you babbling about, you old fool? What do you mean by too few bubbles?" Gravis lifted his drink.

"In the ale. When first fermented, there's a fizz to it. It bubbles and froths with power, energy, and life. Drink it fresh, and it tingles the tongue. But let it sit in a barrel and the bubbles disappear, leaving the ale flat — leaving it dead, a mere ghost of its former self. You can still drink it, acourse, but the life is gone." Baric waited as Gravis indulged in a bit of his own theatrics and took a swallow from his bubble-deficient glass. He made a revolted sour face as he glared at the ale.

Then he pointed at the drink.

"We Dromeians... we were once a great people, but we have sat too long in the barrel. We're out of bubbles, Baric. We aren't alive anymore. We just exist. Not that long ago, Dromeians were great, and the humans were small. Now we look up to them like a pet to its master and wag our tails when they throw scraps. We stand and watch as they defile our temples and great buildings, turning them into alehouses and brothels. We've forgotten who we are, Baric. We need to ferment again.

We need our bubbles to rise once more."

"You're talking mince. Our days of glory are gone. We aren't a great people anymore. And who are you to criticize? You worked for them like everyone else."

"I worked for my forefathers. I labored at maintaining a legacy!"

"And look where it got ya." Baric grinned and searched the room for the agreement he knew would be waiting. Gravis pointed a finger at him as if casting a curse.

"You're why we will never be great again. It's people like you, who accept mediocrity and see nothing wrong with good enough, that are dragging us down. You're why the ale has no bubbles."

"Oh, I see." Baric nodded.

"You have all the answers, don't ya? Of course you do. You're a Berling. So, tell us, Gravis, what would the celebrated Berling have us do?"

"Teach them a lesson they won't ever forget," Gravis said.

"Give them a reminder of who we were and, Drome willing, may be again." The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"And how do you expect to do that?"

"They don't deserve Drumindor," Gravis replied.

"I'll take it back."

"You're daft." Baric snickered.

"Ya going ta trot up there and ask them to hand it over, are you? Tell them it's your name on the deed? Or will you battle them for it?" Baric put up his fists like a prize fighter.

"Gonna smite 'em all, and kick 'em out. I don't see how else you can do it, Berling. The towers are a bit too big to steal, don't ya think?"

"I have my ways."

"You're full of yourself, is what you mean." From behind the bar, Sloan clapped a pair of mugs on the counter loud enough to catch the room's attention.

"Leave him be, Baric." Scram Scallie was Sloan's place — at least as much as it could belong to any one person. Sloan was a Bel. Her clan originally hailed from West Echo. But her family had come to Tur in the Silver Age of King Rain, back when the Bels were so important that their name came first. Some of them left when the Belgric Kingdom was accepted into the Novronian Empire and citizenship was granted to all.

But out of commitment to a tradition older than any of her family, she and hers stayed to run the tiny heritage site. Then, when her father died, she took over. Now, some forty years later, it was just her. She wasn't all that old, but Sloan was as respected as an elder and one of the few dwarfs Gravis could stomach. While Baric was an idiot, he wasn't stupid, and the dwarf wisely refused to lock antlers with Sloan the Bel — not in her own place. He yielded the field with a cowed look.

Sloan proceeded to serve Kiln the Miner his ale, sliding the drink down the bar and leaving a trail of wet that she wiped away with her towel. In all the years he'd known her, Gravis never once saw Sloan without the towel, either in her hand or over a shoulder. He often wondered if she slept with it. She certainly isn't sleeping with anyone else. Many had tried to woo The Lady Bel of Tur, but to his knowledge, that was one peak that had yet to be conquered.

"The big folk aren't all bad, Gravis," she said in a soft, calming voice.

"They invited us ta Delgos, didn't they? No ghettos, no pogroms, no restrictions on where we can go, or what businesses we can open. They welcomed us as equals."

"And why did they do that? Not out of the goodness of their hearts, I don't think."

"Yer so smart ya can plumb the depths of human hearts, can ya?"

"They needed water." This bit of genius came from Trig the Younger, who because Scram Scallie was too small for tables or chairs, stood elbow to elbow with Kiln at the bar. The words were less proclaimed to the room than pronounced into his drink. Because he was the son of the water system administrator, however, no one was likely to doubt him no matter how he said it.

"They have no idea how to turn a crank. Couldn't even if we drew them a picture. They're too big to fit in the access tunnels." This made a few people chuckle, Baric being the loudest. But children and the simpleminded were easy to amuse. The laughter quickly faded, killed by the lingering tension.

"They also need the roads repaired," Kiln spoke up, "but none of them have a clue how to lay the stone properly. And they don't know how to work our quarries to get the required resources." Covered with powdered-stone dust from a hard day's work, Heigal and Loc, who stood at the other end of the little polished counter, raised their drinks toward him and nodded.

"They've been replacing dwarfs in tier two positions for years," Kiln went on.

"Now, they've done it to Berling and the rest of them at the towers." He shook his head over his mug.

"Never thought they would. Since Drumindor was created, there has never been a time when a Berling wasn't in it. Isn't that right?" Gravis was pleased to see that this wasn't a disputed fact.

"Those towers are everything to this place," Kiln went on.

"The scallie have to know that, don't they, Sloan? They must realize that if something goes wrong, it's over — for them, for us, for everyone here. So, if they think they can get by without a Berling in Drumindor — a maze of a million levers — no one is safe, are they?"

"It will all happen here like it has every place else," Trig said. He spoke like a loved one delivering a eulogy.

"The ghettos and the pogroms, the laws and restrictions — if we don't fight back now, all of it will follow."

"Fighting isn't the answer," Sloan was quick to say.

"If ya don't believe me, come here on Doritheian Day. Auberon always visits fer a drink around sunset. Ask him what he thinks about fighting for our rights. Listen ta him for five minutes, and I guarantee ya will change yer mind."

"Not the answer? We're up against the sea here. Are you saying... do you think we ought to just give up?"

"It won't happen here," she said.

"You're being naïve," Trig said sharply.

"Why would here be any different?"

"Because this is Tur Del Fur, the Jewel of the Belgric Peninsula."

"Not anymore," Gravis said.

"This is Delgos now, Land of Trade and the Unholy Trio." She shook her head.

"This is Belgric, home of the old kingdom. That's in stone and can't be changed, and that's why here is different. I know what's happening. I'm not blind. This is our last stand. If we lose Tur... there's nothing left fer us... not here, not anywhere. I don't understand the curse that's been laid on our people, but don't think fer a moment that I don't know about it." Sloan wrung out her towel, squeezing it hard. She hesitated, bowing her head so that her nose nearly touched the bar top.

She took a breath and straightened up and gave the room a stare.

"Look, I don't talk about it, but a few of ya know that not long ago, me sister and her husband were killed up in Vernes. Lovely couple. Kind, generous, and the sort ta always see the best in everyone. They were walking home from the market when they were beaten ta death in the street. The murderers called them gronbachs, and when it was done, bystanders applauded." Sloan shook her head slowly, pinching her lips together.

"People actually stood by and clapped while me sister's blood pooled before them. It's hard ta keep breathing after something like that, hard not ta hate, and just about impossible ta hope."

"So why —" Gravis started, but Sloan held up a palm.

"Because when I walk outside"— she gestured at the invisible Andvari Berling door — "when I go ta the end of the tier, ta the turnout — ya all know the one I mean — and I look down at the bay, guess what I see? Those two beautiful towers still standing in all their glory. But I don't just see Drumindor. I see how all of it once was. Drumindor, the rolkins, the domes, the tiers, and the bay. They are all reminders etched in stone that we aren't cockroaches ta be stepped on.

We aren't vermin ta be driven out fer the greater good. Here we stand, drowning in evidence that we deserve respect. And that's why here is different."

"I get that, Sloan," Kiln said.

"I do. But we still see it happening, and if we do nothing, then nothing will change."

"So we'll do something, but fighting has never worked fer us. It only destroys, and we aren't good at breaking things — but we are exceptional at building. The proof is all around us. Our greatest legacy has always been what we create. So that's what we'll do. We must build, but not fortresses or weapons. We need bridges and respect."

"And how do we do that?" Baric asked.

"Complain to the Unholy Trio?" Several laughed at this, but there was no mirth in it, just a sad desperation.

"We could remind them why they welcomed us in the first place." Sloan looked at the towel in her hand.

"They've fired the whole lot from Drumindor, haven't they? And yer right; they have been replacing all the supervisors in every position of importance all over the city. And doing that hasn't gone well, has it? They're trying ta figure out how ta survive without us. So, what if we give them what they want — but all at once with no time ta prepare. Why don't we let them see what it would be like, and in the process announce loud and clear that it's all or nothing?

Either we are full citizens with equal rights, equally deserving of respect and appreciation or"— she held the hand holding the towel out over the edge of the bar and dropped it to the floor — "we all quit." This is the problem, Gravis thought. In the days of Mideon, the world quaked at the sound of dwarven boots. Now, we have leaders like Sloan, females, who tell everyone that being good little dwarfs is the best way.

"Doing that won't work," Gravis said.

"That sort of thing has been tried over and over."

"But this isn't Vernes, or Rochelle, or Dithmar," she replied.

"This is Tur Del Fur, our ancestral home." She walked over to the wall and laid a hand on it.

"Our people built this place, and they did so fer Dromeians. These are our tunnels, halls, and mines. Here, unlike everywhere else, we have the advantage." Gravis didn't agree, but he said nothing more on the subject. They could do as they liked. He had his own plan, and he didn't need anyone's help. Gravis Berling had lived in a wooden shack down by the docks. Four weathered walls with a shingled, sloped roof. He had made it himself years ago. It wasn't the first.

He'd built dozens — all in the same place, more or less. He constructed the first one when he was a mere child of twenty-two. Still an apprentice working the cog room in Drumindor, always under his father's critical eye, he longed to be free. The shack was his answer. He'd constructed the first one from what he'd found along the coast, driftwood mostly, and scrap from the shipyards: planks, mast poles, and canvas.

He'd even scored a discarded cabin door that served as his entrance and made the whole thing look grand. The shack listed to one side and leaked when it rained, but it was his, and he was proud of it. Then the first big storm came. Gravis was working at the time, and down in the bowels of Drumindor, he hadn't the slightest clue that the gods of wind, rain, and ocean were having a tempestuous tussle. When he went home, it wasn't there. The whole thing, door and all, had been wiped clean off the face of Elan.

He remembered standing on the depression left behind. A light rain continued to fall from an indifferent sky as he looked at the dark and angry sea. He didn't ask why. He was a Dromeian. His people had stopped asking questions hundreds of years ago. Instead, he went looking for his missing door. Gravis never found it, but he'd discovered a host of other treasures. The storm, it seemed, hadn't just targeted him. The gods had attacked everyone.

Strewn along the coast were the shattered remains of dozens of poorly sheltered ships. He found four new doors — two in nearly perfect condition. He snagged a full-sized window frame out of the sandy surf. Two of the four glass panes were cracked, the third shattered, but one was perfect. With these and more, he started rebuilding his seaside castle. This time he chose a more sheltered spot — a place where the storm seemed to have had difficulty reaching.

Oddly, it was farther out on the arm of the headland, a stone's throw from the North Tower. That one lasted nearly a decade before the ocean took it. By then, he had advanced out of the cog room and was courting a lass named Ena Schist. Ena always wanted him to buy a rolkin. Nothing big or grand, just a little hole in the wall with turquoise shutters and a flower bed. Gravis could have gotten one farther up the tiers, but he wanted to be close to Drumindor, and real estate near the water was priced out of reach.

Years later, after his father had passed and he was appointed chief supervisor, Gravis still stayed in the shack. By then, it was home for both of them. He spent his honeymoon within those walls. Nearly died of fever there, too. He and Ena had wept rivers of tears and laughed themselves sick on that little square of rock and shoal that shook with even a light breeze. But it had only been a few days ago that Ena had taken her last breath beneath that slanted roof.

Gravis had spent most of his life inside Drumindor, but the best times — few as they were — had been lived inside that shack. Standing in the dark and looking at the old place, Gravis couldn't even go inside — not anymore. In two hundred and forty-six years, Gravis had never been required to pay rent. They told him that was because he had been an employee, and it was one of the privileges they chose to grant him.

He'd never told Ena, but he was sure if he had, she would have laughed herself even sicker to hear that someone thought their shack on a rock was a privilege. He was grateful she died before the eviction notice came. Gravis stood in a light rain, staring at his home. The place was empty. He knew it would be — it would always be. No one else would ever want to live there. The Port Authority had driven him out for no reason other than spite. Gravis couldn't stay. Lord Byron would have someone watching the place.

If he lingered too long, men with blades would come and say he was on PA land and he must move. If he put up a fuss, they would drag him away. And if the commotion was too unruly, they'd likely drag him to the ocean. Gravis wiped his eyes and looked up at Drumindor. Unlike Sloan, he didn't see hope in those two towers. All he saw was pain. And if he could figure out a way to get back inside, he would whistle a merry tune as he waited on the full moon and the end of everything.