The Place
Karn Dun, the Deep Delve, is a vast city-hall carved into the roots of the mountain, and the roots are the city, and the city is the hammer. The delve runs eleven kilometers into the mountain, and the eleven kilometers is the city, and the city is the day. The deepest hall drops three hundred meters below the last living tree, and the three hundred meters is the depth of the oath, and the depth is the day. The halls are lit by the forge, seven forges set in a row along the main hall, and the forge-light is a deep orange that does not flicker, because the forge is the law and the law does not flicker. The stone is grey and white, grey where the hammer has worked and white where it has not, and the two colors meet in a line that is the delve's only honest border. The air is warm and carries the ring of the hammer, which is the heartbeat of the city, and every dwarf knows the hour by the ring. The water runs in a channel on the floor of the lowest hall, a black thread that the oath-keepers tend the way you tend a promise, because the channel is the oath and the oath is the day. It smells of hot iron and old stone, a smell that is the city and is also the welcome, and the one sound is the hammer, a ring on the stone that is the city's only word, and the word is the day. There is no landmark the way a delve has a landmark, but there is one: the Oath Anvil, a black stone anvil in the middle of the main hall, older than the mountain's death, and the anvil is the door, and the door is the oath. What makes Karn Dun itself is the keep: the oath is kept, and the keeping is the hammer, and the hammer is the forge, and the forge is the city.
How They Live
The Dwarfs keep this place in the keep, carving their halls into the mountain, chambers of bare rock and packed earth, their entrances low, and a hall is carved one meter per year, because a year is the time it takes for the stone to stop remembering the cut. Light comes from the forge, the deep orange of the seven forges, which is the only light in Karn Dun, and the orange is the color of the oath. Food is the hall: the forged metal, the grain of the surface, the small game of the deep, and the oath that keeps the hammer honest, and the honest is the meal, and the meal is the kept. Water is the channel in the lowest hall, and the channel is cold enough to keep the forge honest, and the dwarves drink the cold before they drink the heat. Heat comes from the forge, which is to say the forge does everything, and the forge is the reason the delve is deep. The defense is the hall itself: a visitor who steps into the tunnel is already in the word's path, and the word is the alarm, and the alarm is the welcome, and the welcome is the sentence. The day is measured by the hammer, because the hammer is the only clock the oath has, and the clock does not lie about the count. Every dwarf that is born must strike the Oath Anvil once before the delve will call it one of its own, and the striking is the naming, and the naming is the only thing the stone ever gives back.
People
Home of the Dwarf, whose halls are counted by hammer. Seven hammers ring at last count, and the count is kept in the ring, which is to say the count is as fixed as the stone, which is to say it does not lie. The oath-keepers lead, and rank is decided by the striking, because a keeper who can strike the Oath Anvil in a silence the delve has never heard is the keeper the ring trusts. Nothing that cannot keep a word is welcome, and the word is not needed, because the delve has an oath, and the oath has a hammer, and the hammer has a ledger. A surface traveler who once stood in the main hall, the last one to be let past the Oath Anvil, called it the only city where the air makes you strike before you take a breath, which is the truest thing he said and the thing the hammer paid the least attention to.
In Stories
The place where the oath is the only honest thing, and the thing is the hammer, and the hammer is the forge, and the forge is the end. The Forgotten have not been to the delve, but Uaellaen has read the ring once, at a distance, and the ring read him back, and the reading was the first thing he has ever paid for that he could not buy back.