“I did not fail by the lake,” Matt said, and they could all hear the bitterness, “but in every other way I did fail, for the Dwarves were not what once we had been.”

“Not your fault,” Brock murmured, looking up. “Oh, my lord, truly not your fault.”

Matt was silent a moment, then shook his head in rejection. “I was King,” he said shortly. Just like that, Kevin thought. He looked at Aileron.

But Matt was continuing. “Two things the Dwarves have always had,” he said. “A knowledge of secret things in the earth, and a lust to know more.

“In the last days of King March, a faction formed within our halls around two brothers, foremost of our artisans. Their desire, which became a passion and then, in the first weeks of my reign, a crusade, was to find and unlock the secrets of a dark thing: the Cauldron of Khath Meigol.”

A murmur rose in the hall at that. Kim had her eyes closed; there was a lot of pain, and the light was hurting now, lancing against her eyeballs. She bent all her will to Matt. What he was saying was too important to lose because of a headache.

“I ordered them to stop,” the Dwarf said. “They did, or so I thought. But then I found Kaen, the older, combing the oldest books again, and his brother had gone away without my leave. I grew wrathful then, and in my folly and pride I called a gathering of all Dwarves in the Moot Hall and demanded they choose between Kaen’s desires and my own, which were to let the black thing lie where it was lost, while we moved from spells and powers of the old ways and sought the Light I had been shown by the lake.

“Kaen spoke after me. He said many things. I do not care to repeat them before—”

“He lied!” Brock exclaimed fiercely. “He lied and he lied again!”

Matt shrugged. “He did it well, though. In the end the Dwarfmoot chose that he be allowed to go on with his search, and they voted as well that all our energies should be bent to his aid. I threw down my scepter,” Matt Sören said. “I left the Moot Hall, and the twin mountains, and I vowed I would not come back. They might search for the key to this dark thing, but not while I was King under Banir Lok.”

God, it was hurting. Her skin felt too tight. Her mouth was dry. She pressed her hands to her eyes and held her head as motionless as she could.