Dark Thane

1

Tarn Bellowgranite hurried along the tunnel, surrounded by his personal guard of twelve dwarf warriors in jangling plate armor. A stiff, wet wind shrilled in his face, whipping his straw-colored beard over his shoulder like a scarf. Miles behind him now, King Gilthas led the last of the refugee elves away from their homeland of Qualinesti. Against the advice of his own Council of Thanes, Tarn and his dwarves had dug escape tunnels to help the elves avoid detection as they fled the green dragon Beryl. Somewhere ahead, Tarn’s army of dwarves was battling Beryl and her legions of goblins, draconians, and human Knights of Neraka. Somewhere behind, the elves they had come to save were fleeing to safety.

For a moment, the thirteen dwarves slowed their steps as they listened to the wind blowing up the tunnel. Dwarves could tell by the sighing of an underground breeze what kinds of stone it had blown through, or so it was said. It was also said that a dwarf could hear a copper coin rattle in the shoe of a troll standing in a cesspit. What Tarn heard, though, were screams. Terror, pain, anger, and the rending of stone, the scream of the very earth as it succumbed to some great force.

The floor of the tunnel suddenly dropped from beneath their feet, sending the dwarves plunging down a slope of loose gravel and soil that had not been there moments before. The thirteen heavily armored dwarves crashed in a heap on a level twenty feet below, sounding as if a tinker’s cart full of pots had been thrown down a well.

“What in the name of the Abyss!” Tarn swore as he rose, groaning and knuckling his back. The other dwarves climbed to their feet, battered and bruised, covered in dust and gravel, grumbling like the dead crawling out of their graves.

A wild-eyed dwarf with an unkempt beard jutting furiously from his mail coif leaned against the damp stone wall as though caressing it. “The very rock groans,” he hissed after a few moments.

“I can feel the strain of the earth through the soles of my boots,” Tarn said. “What I want to know is why?”

“The dragon,” one of the other dwarves cryptically pronounced. The others nodded while dusting off their beards.

“Where are we now?” Tarn asked. The collapsed tunnel had dumped them into a deeper passage, one that crossed beneath their tunnel at right angles. All around them, they smelled the soft, peaty loam excreted by the monstrous Urkhan worms the dwarves had used to delve these tunnels.

“Urkhan holding pen,” the first dwarf said. “If we follow this passage, it should lead us back to a main tunnel.”

“You know these passages better than I, Captain Mog. Lead the way,” Tarn said.

The other dwarves fell into protective positions around Tarn as they trotted off together. Mog ranged ahead a dozen yards to scout the way. The round passage led them along a meandering course through more worm pens and past the abandoned quarters of the worm wranglers. Several worm harnesses still hung from the wall of a chamber chewed from the earth by the worms’ passage. All the pens in this area were empty, as the Urkhan worms had been moved into the tunnels beneath the city in preparation for the dragon’s attack. Eventually, the tunnel led them into a wider passage.

“This is not the same passage as before,” Tarn said as he examined their surroundings. “There’s no wind here, and these walls are shored with timbers.”

“This tunnel’s not so deep as the previous one, m’lord Thane,” Captain Mog said.

“Just so long as it takes us to Qualinost,” Tarn grunted. “Lead on.”

They hurried along the passageway, their iron-shod boots tramping the soft earthen floor. Soon, they passed several wooden support beams that had fallen across the tunnel, partially blocking the way, and these they had to scramble over or under as best they could. Each damaged section of the tunnel filled Tarn with a deepening sense of unease. The air stank of the forest just a few yards above their heads, and the tunnel felt close and dank. There was an unnatural silence, as though of the grave.

Tarn and his companions traveled without benefit of light from torches or lanterns. The long dark of the tunnel was no hindrance to them, for they were blessed with darkvision. Not all dwarves possessed the ability to see in the dark—Tarn had it by his mother, Garimeth Bellowsmoke, a Daergar. His personal guard was made up of warriors from the Klar clan, who like the Daergar and Theiwar also had the gift. Tarn considered himself lucky to have been born with his mother’s eyes. She gave him little else. He might have inherited his Hylar father’s blindness to the dark, forcing him to travel in the deep places of the earth with torch or lantern light. Darkvision was a distinct advantage to those who dwelt underground.

The bends and turns gnawed through the earth by the Urkhan worms thus appeared to Tarn’s eyes as though lit by bright moonlight. His companions were outlined in warm red, especially wherever their flesh was exposed to the open air. They wore iron-shod boots to hide their footprints from other creatures of the deep earth, who could track the residual heat left in stone by a person’s tread. The Klar also painted their faces and caked their beards with white clay before battle, because white was the color of hiding among those with darkvision. To Tarn, their faces were blank masks in the dark, visible only by the heat of their open eyes; to their enemies, such faceless visages were terrifying.

Tarn guessed that they were nearing the city of Qualinost. He urged his guards to greater speed. They began to splash through muddy puddles where before there had been dry stone or moist earth.

“Are we near the tunnel entrance?” Tarn huffed as they jogged along.

“Not yet,” Captain Mog answered from the front of the party. “This tunnel will slope down to join the main passage before entering the city. But we’re close.”

Tarn grunted in acknowledgment, hiding his anxiety under his customary gruff exterior of command. He feared the worst. The evacuation of the elves had been going as planned, with the last refugees escaping into the tunnels before Beryl’s expected daylight attack. He and King Gilthas had been rounding up stragglers when a great blast of chill, wet air roared up behind them, from the direction of the city. The young elf king had wanted to return, but Tarn had urged him to lead the refugees to safety while he took his personal guard and investigated. Gilthas had reluctantly assented, marching off with his elves while Tarn turned back, the damp wind in his face speaking volumes that only a dwarf could read.

He dared not speculate as to the cause of the wind or the tunnel collapse that had dumped them into the Urkhan pen, but as he had said, he could feel the tension of the earth through his feet as he ran. The ground almost seemed to vibrate with the strain, the floor to hum like a harp string pulled to the breaking point.

They stopped at another partial collapse of the tunnel. Fallen beams crisscrossed the passage like the web of a spider, and sections of the roof had fallen, blocking the way. Captain Mog led the digging, clearing a path through the rubble for their king to follow. Tarn impatiently slapped the pommel of his sword while he watched them excavate. The Klar were not careful miners, but they were quick, strong-backed, and stubborn. They heaved beams aside or hacked through those too tightly wedged against the tunnel walls to budge. They clove through mounds of rubble with their hands, pushing, clawing, snarling, and cursing at the work. Earth, dust, and small pebbles sifted down from the unstable roof, threatening to bury them all, yet they pushed onward, needing little encouragement.

Soon, they cleared a path, but as they crawled through the last few feet of rubble, the beams around them groaned and cracked, pouring black soil, leaves, and twigs onto their heads. At the same time, something large and heavy struck the wall a tremendous blow. They clambered to their feet to find another section of tunnel collapsed not thirty feet ahead. Half-buried by tons of stone, an Urkhan worm was thrashing in pain and torment, its huge head hammering the walls, floor, and groaning roof. The monster was enormous, the largest and oldest in their stables. They had used it to burrow out the main passageways. Its tubular body was as thick as three dwarves standing on each other’s shoulders. Its three jaws were large and powerful enough to shear through granite boulders. Two horns, each thicker than Tarn’s wrist, sprouted from the creature’s enormous head. With each blow, dirt and pebbles poured through ever-widening cracks in the ceiling.

“Kill that thing before it brings down the whole tunnel!” Tarn shouted.

Four of his Klar bodyguard rushed the monster, but their axes seemed to bounce off its rubbery reddish-brown skin. One dwarf dived beneath the creature’s upraised body and stabbed with his dagger into the joint between two of its body sections. He disappeared with a sickening crunch beneath the monster as it flailed him to a pulp. Another dwarf managed to hack off one of the worm’s horns, to which was still attached a length of broken harness rein. Writhing in agony, the huge worm spat a glob of clear viscous fluid. The glob splashed over the dwarfs upraised shield, coating his face and left hip. Immediately, his flesh began to hiss and smoke. Screaming in agony, he dropped shield and axe to claw at his dissolving face. Tarn jumped toward him and jerked him out of the way just as the worm’s enormous head swept down, flattening his shield like the blow of an enormous hammer.

As captain of Tarn’s personal guard, Mog leaped in front of his thane, sword raised. The blind worm seemed to sense his movement and lashed out. Mog ducked the blow that would have crushed him then jabbed with his sword into the creature’s neck, just behind the huge misshapen skull. The worm flailed back, seeking to crush and destroy, but the Klar warrior rolled free, his sword dripping black blood that hissed on the stone. Another dwarf landed an axe blow between the creature’s horns, and the blade stuck fast in the hard bone, jerking the weapon free of his grasp as the worm reared up in agony and bashed its head against the ceiling, vomiting corrosive spittle over the weakened roof. The force of the blow drove the axe blade deep into its tiny brain. Acid saliva dripped from its champing mouth as its enormous head wove uncertainly in the air.

Mog drove in again with his sword and stabbed behind the skull. This time, his sword found its mark. The creature collapsed as though struck by a thunderbolt. The floor, shattered by its death throes, opened in a hole that swallowed both the worm and the rubble that had crushed and trapped it. No longer supported by the rubble pile, the roof followed floor and worm down, widening the chasm. Tarn tried to drag the injured dwarf to safety but had to release his hold or be killed himself, as a whole elm tree dropped roots first through the roof and smashed to the ground, branches snapping, then toppled through the hole in the floor. He and his remaining band of dwarves scrambled to the other side of the tunnel as the last sections of the floor broke free beneath their feet.

After a few terrifying seconds, the collapse ended. Hazy yellow sunlight streamed down through gaping cracks in the tunnel’s ceiling, sending dusty shafts of light probing the yawning black hole in the floor. The eleven surviving dwarves clung to the walls, staring down into the hole with eyes half-blinded by the sudden light. At the bottom of the hole black water swirled and churned like an underground river.

2

“We have to get out of here,” Tarn shouted above the roaring of the water. A fine mist rising up from the hole began to wet the walls, making clinging to their precarious perches a treacherous affair. At the same time, the dwarf leader had noticed that the water level was rising.

Where was the flood coming from, and what of the dwarves in the deeper tunnels, what of the dwarves beneath the city? This was what Tarn had feared the moment the first damp breath of wind fingered his beard earlier that morning. Had they accidentally tunneled beneath an underground stream or lake?

There was no time to answer these questions. The water was already up to the crumbled edges of the tunnel floor. Tarn’s bodyguards had worked their way up the sides of the tunnel toward the sunlight. He quickly followed. Climbing was no easy matter, even had the walls been dry, and his heavy armor only hindered his efforts. Mog was the first to reach the surface. He cut a branch and used it to pull the others to safety.

Tarn clambered out of the hole onto a leafy forest floor. Towering trees surrounded them like leafy columns in some sylvan feasting hall, marching in serried ranks in all directions. There was a strange, otherworldly beauty to the forest of Qualinesti. Leaf and moss were greener here, more vibrant, more alive. The light seemed to shine from another more ancient day. Even in war, there was peace here, so one could not imagine war ever disturbing such a place.

War there was, though, and war was near. This place was an garden, and nearby Tarn saw a house of rose quartz secreted among the trees, made to look like a natural part of the terrain. They were near the city; the hills rose behind them to the south. A haze hung over the forest, yellow and reeking with some familiar but unnameable odor. Yet there were no black pillars of smoke to be seen, not like there would have been if the city were burning. Perhaps the dwarves and elves had won after all. Perhaps Beryl had been driven off and Tarn’s dwarves were waiting in the city with those elves who had stayed behind to defend their homeland, waiting to receive him with feasting and rejoicing.

Tarn’s hopes leaped at the thought, but as he paused to glance back down at the water swirling up into the collapsed tunnel, he saw a sight that filled him with foreboding. A dwarf, ashen gray and purple-lipped with a jagged, white-edged wound splitting the crown of his head, had been twirled up by the stream. For a moment, the dead dwarf spun lazily in the water below, his beard and hair floating about his face like a dream, milky eyes staring up at a sun they could not long see, at a king they no longer revered. Then the water sucked him down again. As he sank away into the black gloom, his slack cheeks fluttered in a mockery of laughter.

Tarn looked away, his heart tightening in his chest. Captain Mog glanced up at the hazy sun to get his bearings.

“The city is that way,” he said, pointing through the trees.

The other dwarves started off, fanning out through the trees to scout the way. Mog took a moment to sidle up beside his king and glance down into the water.

“Our warriors were down there,” he whispered.

“I know,” Tarn snapped.

He tromped off, kicking up leaves in his wake. Mog dropped behind him and warily scanned the forest for enemies.

The forest floor sloped gently downward as they traveled north toward the city. The lead dwarves stumbled and swore as they pushed their way through the woods, tripping over every root and snagging their clothes and armor on any vine or thorny creeper that crossed their paths. Tarn cringed at the noise of their passage, which seemed to echo through the eerily silent forest. He’d been to Qualinost several times in the past months, and he’d never experienced such a profound silence.

They had not gone more than a bowshot when the dwarves emerged from the forest and into the hazy yellow sunlight. They hung back in the shadow of the trees and gazed in wonder and awe at what confronted them. Tarn hurried forward, but even before he reached the edge of the trees, he saw. At first, he doubted his senses. He stumbled past the last tree and stood, gaping, from the margin of the forest.

The elven city of Qualinost was gone. In its place, a vast steaming lake hissed and bubbled with yellow vapors that reeked of chlorine gas—and something worse. Here and there, a crumbled crystal spire jabbed up through the haze hanging over the lake, proving that this was not a dream. It was a nightmare come to life. The entire city of Qualinost, wonder of the western world, was drowned in a hideous swamp of greasy black water.

The dwarves choked on the gasses rising from the lake as they stood on a forest hillock overlooking the site of the destroyed city. Water lapped along the flotsam-choked shore at the bottom of a steep bank some forty feet below. At first they wondered at what they saw. The waters were littered with debris from the shore to the edge of sight—broken bits of furniture, shattered trees tossed up by the flood, and whole rafts of leaves and twigs that looked solid enough to walk atop. There were other things that they could not at first discern—low humped shapes that rode just beneath the surface of the water. Their horror swelled as the chaotic jumble of shapes began to resolve into the recognizable outlines of elves, goblins, and dwarves, floating in the water along with the other wreckage of the city, some facedown with their backs humped in the water, others facing skyward with milky, sightless eyes. By the thousands, they had drowned in the flood of water that filled the city, and now the bodies of enemies and allies alike bumped side by side in the greasy water. With tears streaming from his eyes, Tarn wrenched his gaze away from what lay below them and turned his attention to the sky. He half expected to see Beryl’s hideous, bloated form circling overhead, reveling in the destruction of the city and all its occupants.

However, the sky, though hazy, was empty of dragon shapes. It was blue, peaceful, without even a dark cloud or portent.

Tarn crept back to the relative safety of the trees while he continued to scan the skies. He couldn’t bear to look anywhere else. He half hoped that a dragon would materialize to attack them so that he could die an honorable death along with all those he had sent to their doom beneath Qualinost. He doubted now that any of his dwarves could have survived. The disaster must have come upon them without warning.

The dwarf king sagged against the bole of an enormous tree and glanced around at the horrified faces of his companions. Some stood as though struck blind, no longer even seeing what was before them. Others, like Tarn, could no longer bear to look and had turned away, beards trembling with the anger, horror, fear. Only Mog continued to stare out across the lake. The dwarf captain moved slowly up to the edge of the bank and glanced warily down at the shore. With a cry, he leaped. Tarn feared Mog had been driven out of his mind by the horror of the lake. He rushed after him, but as he reached the lip of the bank, he saw that Mog had only climbed down to the water’s edge. Some piece of flotsam had caught his eye, and now he was dragging it out of the greasy water.

“Mog!” Tarn hissed. Even though there was no one around to hear, he felt reluctant to shout. “Let the dead lie. Come back at once!”

The dwarf continued to struggle with his prize. Finally, he wrested it free from an entangling mass that Tarn realized had once been a fine carpet in some noble elf’s home. The object that Mog dragged from the lake was nearly as big as the dwarf and a dull olive in color. Its outer surface was pitted and cracked like weathered stone, but the underside was a soft pearly pink. It took a few moments for Tarn to realize what the thing was, but Mog had known as soon as he had spotted it at the water’s edge.

“It’s a dragon scale!” the Klar captain said as he struggled up the slope, dragging it behind him.

“It can’t be,” Tarn said. “It’s too big.” Even as he said it, he knew that he was wrong. It was, indeed, an enormous dragon’s scale, many times larger than the scale of any dragon native to Krynn. Tarn had only seen a few loose dragon scales in his life, but none were anything like this one.

The captain clambered up next to him and flung the thing on the ground. Tarn knelt and ran his hand along the rough, cracked edge, feeling the stonelike texture.

“It must have come from her!” Mog hissed. He flipped it over, revealing the pink underside. A ragged bit of bloodless flesh clung to the upper flattened edge of the scale. Mog drew a dagger from his boot and sliced off a piece of the stringy, waterlogged flesh. He held it up to his nose then tested it with his teeth. He turned and spat.

“Dragonflesh!”

A hissed warning sounded from the trees. Looking up, Tarn saw one of the guards pointing across the lake. He crouched lower, peering through the haze rising off the horror-filled water. Something had crept out of the forest on the far side and stood at the water’s edge. Something else joined it. The two began to creep along the shore, bending low as though sniffing the ground. Batlike wings rose from their backs, and long tails snaked behind them.

“Draconians,” Tarn said.

“Looks like someone survived after all. Probably looking for something to eat,” Mog growled then shuddered at the thought of the scavengers’ banquet floating in the lake. “We should leave.”

Tarn gazed around at the woods, the hills, the broken crystal spires rising from the lake. He was reluctant to depart without first discovering the fate of his army. Maybe some dwarves had survived. He couldn’t allow himself to believe that everyone had perished. If any did survive, they would head for the dwarves’ nearest stronghold, the fortress straddling the pass between the elven and dwarven lands.

“To Pax Tharkas, then,” he said.

Mog nodded. As Tarn scurried back to the relative safety of the trees, Mog heaved the huge dragon scale onto his back. Staggering for a moment to balance its weight, he followed his companions up the slope into the wooded hills.

Tarn paused to wait for him at the edge of the trees. “Are you going to carry that all the way back to Thorbardin?” he asked grimly.

Mog nodded under his burden. “This is proof of Beryl’s death,” he said.

“You don’t know that,” Tarn said. “We can’t assume anything.”

“I’ll make a shield out of it, then,” Mog grunted as he started off, pushing his way through the forest undergrowth. “Dragonscale armor is worth its weight in steel.”

“Reorx knows, we paid enough for that one,” Tarn muttered into his beard as he stared back at the lake. More bodies than he could count filled the water as far as he could see.

3

Crystal Heathstone paused and set aside her hammer, pushed down the leather mask protecting her face from the heat, and dragged the heavy leather gloves from her hands. Behind her, red coals pulsed and waned from the air pushed by a bellows pumped by a young male dwarf of her household. He leaned over to check the quality of her work then shook his head ruefully. He let the bellows fall, exhaling a last gasp into the forge coals.

She flung her gloves on the floor. “My forge skills never were much to brag about,” she said, “but no one here in Thorbardin knows how to make a decent pair of shears. I promised Aunt Needlebone I’d make her some shears, but these will never work.” She dragged a battered pair of tongs out of a barrel and lifted the still glowing but hopelessly warped shears from the anvil.

“This is pathetic,” she said laughing as she plopped them steaming into a bucket of water. “How many is that I’ve ruined, Haruk?”

The apprentice thoughtfully stroked his wispy blond beard. “Eleven? Or is it twelve? I forget, Mistress. Why don’t you just send me to the Hylar market to buy a pair?”

Crystal untied her leather apron and folded it lovingly before stowing it in a wooden chest. “Everything there is made for cutting leather, heavy wool, or mushroom fiber. Auntie needs something with a finer edge for delicate work. As she says, ‘leave it to a mountain dwarf to chop wood with a battleaxe.’ ”

“What sort of delicate work?” Haruk asked. He shut the cover on the portable forge Crystal had set up, then he screwed down the damper to cool the fire within. The chamber grew dark, lit only by a single candle burning on a side table.

“Just some frilly things she wants to finish,” Crystal answered quickly as she bent over and fished the cooled shears from the cooling bucket. She flung them onto a heap of scrap metal. “You know the kind of things she wears. It’s not important. Her heavy shears will have to suffice until my forge skills improve.”

“Aye, Mistress,” Haruk said. He untied the leather cord binding his hair and shook out his full golden mane. Younger than Crystal by thirty years and not yet considered an adult, he was a fine specimen of dwarf youth, already come into his full growth and able to hold his own with more mature fighters in the sparring ring. He sighed and stretched, flexing the muscles of his bare sweaty arms. Crystal smiled appreciatively and crossed the room. In the corner by the door stood two stout lengths of ash wood, polished and ready for fitting with spearheads. She snatched them up and tossed one to the young dwarf. He caught it, his lips peeling back in a fierce grin.

“How about a few rounds before dinner?” Crystal asked.

“Gladly!”

Crystal stabbed the end of her staff into a pile of charcoal, coating it with thick black dust. Haruk did the same, then the two dwarves backed several paces across the chamber to give themselves room to work.

“Spear practice,” Crystal said. “Black touch wins the round. How many rounds?”

“Best of five,” Haruk said.

Grasping her pole at the low quarter, Crystal presented her blackened end, spear-fashion. Haruk dropped into a low guard, the charcoal-dusted end of his staff weaving tight figure eights in the air. Crystal stamped toward him three steps, her staff licking out in rapid feints, which he blocked effectively with the tip of his staff. The two wooden dowels clacked together in a brief staccato that left a cloud of charcoal dust hanging in the air between them. Crystal withdrew, smiling, then shifted to her left and took up a defensive posture.

Suddenly, Haruk bellowed a charge and leaped across the room. She quickly sidestepped his headlong rush, knocked aside the tip of his staff, and dragged her own weapon across his naked bicep as he passed, leaving a black streak across the bulging muscle.

The younger dwarf swore mightily as he returned to his position.

“You fall for that every time, Haruk,” Crystal admonished. “An injury like that is as good as a killing blow. If that had been a real spear, your bicep would be severed and your arm useless.”

“I know, Mistress,” Haruk answered sullenly. He assumed a guarded stance.

Crystal advanced to within a spear’s distance and presented her own weapon, crossing his at the tip. “Begin!” she snapped.

Slowly, they began to circle one another, staff tips crossed and touching at the axis of their circle. Their soft boots scratched on the dusty floor. Haruk lunged, but Crystal pressed the attack aside and countered, driving Haruk back to his original position. They crossed staves again and continued their circle. Haruk’s green eyes danced in the light of the single candle as he sought some weakness in her defense. The tip of her staff dropped almost imperceptibly, and Haruk immediately seized the opportunity, thrusting past it. Crystal slipped below his attack and punched him squarely in the solar plexus with the end of her pole.

Haruk staggered back, gasping for air and nearly dropping his weapon. When he had gathered his breath, Crystal said, “I did that because I know you so well. We’ve practiced together many times, and I knew you would bite the bait I dangled before your nose. It’s easy to draw you into a foolish attack with a simple feint, like a mother bird pretending to have a broken wing. Be still when you fight. Calm your emotions.”

“Uncle Jungor says I should cultivate my emotions,” Haruk said as he rested on his staff. “He says anger and fear will make my reactions quicker and my attacks stronger.”

“Your uncle, the Hylar thane, is a great arena fighter, true,” Crystal said, “but those he faces in the pit are his equals, at the height of their fighting ability, and there are few who could trick him into exposing himself. Yet a great warrior must respect every opponent. You must also learn to fight those who have little military training, for their movements will be unorthodox and unexpected. A great fighter might try to trick you with a feint, but a gully dwarf could do the same by accident and just as easily. Either way, you’re just as dead.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Hurok said.

“Ready?”

Haruk nodded. The smile was gone from his face now. He circled her warily, and Crystal could see her lessons turning over in his mind. He was alert now but relaxed. His movements slipped fluidly from one moment to the next. He was no longer fixed, rigid in his stances. His eyes no longer darted nervously from her weapon to her face and her feet. When he attacked, he almost caught her by surprise. Only a slight shifting of his feet betrayed his intention.

What did surprise her was his method of attack—the same blind spear charge she had beaten a thousand times before. Slipping to the side, she blocked his jab and… a blow to her stomach staggered her. Haruk had reversed it in mid-charge, hiding the movement with a shouting leap. The charcoal-blackened end thudded against her belly even as she, once again, dragged her own weapon across his biceps.

“Mistress!” Haruk cried in surprise, dropping his staff and falling to his knees.

Crystal rubbed her stomach, momentarily frightened by what had happened. Haruk’s blow hadn’t been a hard one, but if it had been a spear, it would have spilled her belly’s contents onto the floor. Haruk kneeled before her in abject apology.

“I never taught you that,” she complained.

“My uncle, Jungor Stonesinger taught it to me. He said I should try it on you. Please forgive my impertinence,” he said, head bowed almost to the floor.

“Stand up,” she said, touching him on the shoulder. “No harm done, I think.” She crossed the chamber and seated herself on an upturned keg. Haruk rose to his feet. “Shall I fetch Auntie?”

“I’m fine,” Crystal sighed. “Come, tell me what your uncle said. You didn’t even try to defend yourself. Yet what you did would have killed me, even as I killed you, had this been a real battle.”

“That’s what Uncle Jungor said,” Haruk said, nodding. “He said that if you cannot defeat your opponent, you should consider sacrificing yourself in order to get close enough to kill him. Thus many a dwarf has bravely died in defense of his homeland.”

“When he has no other choice,” Crystal countered sternly. “When his sacrifice may save the lives of his family or companions. It is the height of folly to throw away your life needlessly. A good fighter also knows when not to fight”

“I understand, Mistress,” Haruk said.

“I’m glad you do, Haruk. Your uncle is wise in his way, and I would not speak against anyone from your family, but he is a hard, uncompromising individual, and he holds with ancient ways and ancient traditions that are no longer always best. The world has changed, as King Tarn has said many times. New times demand new ways.”

“Any word from the king?” Haruk asked.

“No word yet,” Crystal sighed. “A messenger arrived from Pax Tharkas two days ago saying that the evacuation of the elves was proceeding well.” She rose to her feet and picked up her staff. “Now, I believe the score is two to one in my favor.”

“Are you certain you are recovered, Mistress?” Haruk asked in concern. “Perhaps it would be better—”

“I’m fine,” Crystal snapped. “It is you who must beware. I intend to give you a good drubbing. On your guard, sir dwarf.” With that, she gripped her staff and swung.

Desperately avoiding her blows, Haruk hopped across the dusty floor and retrieved his weapon just in time to block a thrust that would have unhinged his jaw. He tumbled across the floor, thrusting wildly at her feet to give himself time and room to maneuver. Crystal seemed to dance atop his weapon, nimbly avoiding his blows while shouting, “Good! Good! Just what I would do.”

He rolled to his feet and began to backpedal as the blackened end of her staff flicked again and again in his face, mere inches from his nose. He blocked each thrust only by the most heroic effort, and he knew he couldn’t keep up with her much longer. He tried to force the charcoal tip of her staff over his head so that he could step inside the range of her weapon and grapple. At that instant, she hammered his instep with the butt of her staff then leaped back, on guard once again.

Howling in pain, Haruk hopped on one foot while clutching the other injured one.

“A spear is but a staff with one end sharpened. The blunt end can be just as dangerous,” she shouted. She twirled the staff humming through the air, passing it from hand to hand. Haruk noted that she wasn’t even breathing hard. He shook his head in disbelief.

“You should fight in the arena,” the young dwarf said with undisguised admiration.

Crystal laughed, tossing her staff into a corner. “The king would flay my hide and hang it from his wall,” she said as she took Haruk by the hand and helped him to a seat atop a barrel.

“If he didn’t, I surely would!” An elderly female dwarf stumped into the room and pointed one quivering finger in Crystal’s face. “I thought I heard staff work in here. You should have better sense than this, Crystal Heathstone. Frolicking around like you are still a girl in your father’s army!”

“Oh, Auntie, I was just teaching my pupil his staves and spears.”

“Pupil? He’s supposed to be your personal guard,” Aunt Needlebone snarled then turned on Haruk. “And you, young fellow. What have you to say for yourself? Haven’t you better sense? You might have injured your queen.”

“No disrespect, Aunt Galena, but I doubt I could seriously injure Mistress. Not on purpose, anyway,” the young dwarf answered sheepishly.

The old woman glared at him then back at Crystal, but there was a twinkle in her rheumy gray eye.

“You’re probably right at that, lad,” she cackled suddenly, slapping him on the shoulder. “Ouch! Hard as stone, that is. Why, if I was a hundred years younger… ”

Haruk flushed a deep scarlet up to his ears, to the delight of both women.

4

Alone dwarf strode up the earthen ramp to the towering outer gate of Pax Tharkas. The night was dark as the deep earth, with not a star in the sky, and the warriors guarding the ancient dwarven fortress had set up dozens of torches along the ramp to illuminate anyone approaching in the night. Huge stone walls rose more than a hundred feet in the air before him, bone white in the light of the torches lining the ramp. The walls stretched away in a gentle curve on either side of the ramp, disappearing into darkness long before they reached the stony slopes of the mountain pass that Pax Tharkas guarded.

The dwarf wore a ragged assortment of plate and chain-mail armor, heavily weathered. He stopped just inside the circle of the torchlight and lifted his hands palm up to show they were empty. He couldn’t see the gate’s defenders because of the glow of the torches, but he knew they were watching him, probably down the length of a cocked crossbow.

After a few moments, he pushed back the chain-mail hood covering his head, loosing an unruly mass of greasy black hair and a jutting nest of beard. Flecks of some white substance clung to the ends of his beard hairs, while the deeper crevasses of his weathered face showed white with the same substance.

He thrust out his chest and shouted, “Open the gates!”

“Who are you, and what do you want?” a harsh voice answered from atop the battlements high above him.

“I am Mog Bonecutter, captain of the High Thane’s personal guard. The thane desires entrance,” Mog answered.

“If the king is with you, why doesn’t he show himself?” the voice asked sharply.

“He doesn’t want to be shot by accident in the dark by you night-blind Daewar dogs. I know your voice, Mason Axeblade, and you know me better than you’d like. So open this door before I hew it down!” Mog roared.

“It’ll take more than one motherless iron-throated Klar to breach the gates of Pax Tharkas,” the voice shouted in answer. “Open the gates! Wake up, you sluggards. The king has returned. Open the gates for your king, blast your hides!”

As Tarn and the remainder of his guards climbed the ramp to the outer gate of Pax Tharkas, one of the massive, ironbound valves slowly and silently swung open on its well-greased hinges. Torches appeared in the gap, held aloft by grim-faced dwarves dressed in mail. Half held loaded crossbows at the ready, the others clutched spears, and they all formed a lane to welcome Tarn into the fortress.

Mog led the way through the towering gate and into the first outer courtyard. Here between the first and second curtain walls, they were met by a hawk-faced dwarf bearing an enormous, two-handed warhammer. His meticulously groomed beard lay in a profusion of curling copper ringlets across his broad steel breastplate. As Tarn approached, the dwarf stamped down a narrow stair leading down from the battlements of the first wall.

“It is good to see you, Captain Axeblade,” Tarn said wearily as he gazed around, taking in the arrangement of the fortress’s defenses with a quick glance. Dwarves lined both outer curtain walls and stared down into the courtyard. Strict discipline held their tongues, but Tarn knew they were waiting to hear the results of the battle. He was not yet ready to speak openly of the disaster, though.

The outer defenses of Pax Tharkas consisted of two curtain walls that completely blocked the mountain pass. The two outer walls were too far apart to bridge, but narrow enough to provide a killing field for any attackers unlucky enough to become trapped between the first wall and the defenders on the second wall. The first gate was reached by a ramp leading up from the valley below. The second wall was higher than the first, as the road into the main fortress climbed up into the mountains. Beyond the second wall, the two massive square towers of Pax Tharkas rose majestically into the night sky, looming like black bulwarks with their narrow windows winking with torchlight. A third wall, taller and broader than the first two, was pierced by a massive iron gate and defended the pass between the towers.

The fortress was one of the wonders of Krynn. It had been built to guard a narrow valley through the Kharolis Mountains, which connected the high plateau of the elven woodlands with the wide plains lying before the dwarves’ mountain home of Thorbardin. Dwarves and elves had built and garrisoned it together as a sign of peace between their two peoples, but that was long ago in another time. Now Pax Tharkas was a fortress on the northern frontier of dwarf lands, a buffer between Thorbardin and the troublesome north.

Captain Axeblade led Tarn and his party through the main gate and into a broad, paved courtyard beyond. The courtyard lay in a bowl-like valley, deep in the shadows of the gigantic towers. Here Tarn saw the preparations for war were continuing even at this late hour. Donkeys brayed beneath their loads, while the caves dotting the eastern slope glowed like red eyes from the forge fires within. The dwarves guarding the walls watched the king and his party pass then turned back to their duties. Tarn’s silence told them all they needed to know. They looked now to the north, their commanders quietly telling them to be on their guard for the attack most felt was sure to come. Tarn ground his teeth in his beard. He wanted to say something to dispel their fears, but he would not lie to them, and the truth was too grim, too fresh in his memory.

“I must see General Otaxx Shortbeard,” Tarn said to Captain Axeblade.

The captain nodded and led them across the courtyard into the east tower.

“I don’t like crawling in here like a whipped dog,” Mog whispered harshly as he and Tarn waited in the general’s study. General Shortbeard was one of Tarn’s oldest and most loyal commanders, one of the few Daewar who had not followed Severus Stonehand on his mad quest to retake Thoradin in the years after the Chaos War.

The general’s quarters were located on the second level of the east tower of Pax Tharkas, but his office was within the great shaft that had been built during the War of the Lance to house the dragon mount of the commander of the red dragonarmies. The shaft had once pierced the tower from its base to its top, but the dwarves had since roofed it over and divided it into its proper levels once more.

The general’s office was spartanly furnished, as befitted an old campaigner. His desk had once been a door, looted from some ruin or dungeon during his youth. Fitted with iron bands and rivets, marred by axe blows that had since been lovingly polished, it sat atop a pair of wooden chests. An iron dragonhead ornament in the center of the door held an inkpot in its gaping mouth. A book lay open on the desk, the page marked with an ornate silver dagger. A canvas-backed chair, much sagged in the middle, stood behind the desk, and trophies of old battles hung on three of the stone walls—an ogre’s wolf-toothed club, an evil knight’s broadsword decorated with skulls, an elf’s delicate but deadly longbow. A pair of ancient wooden chairs dating back to before the Cataclysm completed the room’s furnishings.

“No disrespect, Thane,” Mog whispered, “but it was wrong of us to slink in here like gully dwarves. The lads on the walls were looking to you for encouragement.”

“I’ve no encouragement to give them, Mog,” Tarn snapped. “What did you want me to say? Half of them had friends or relatives in Qualinost. Shall I tell them how their loved ones were buried alive? Or drowned? I don’t know which is worse. I can’t get their faces out of my mind. I can’t stop imagining all the ways they could have died.”

“They’re warriors. They knew what might happen when they chose their lot in life—to die and to see your friends die. We all learn to accept it. You should have told them the truth,” Mog grumbled. “You owe them the truth.”

“What? That their kith and kin died horribly for no good reason?” Tarn snarled.

“You should have told them that they died honorably and their deaths were not in vain,” Mog said as the door opened. He lowered his voice. “They won a great victory.”

A stout dwarf stopped short within the doorway. “Victory?“ he exclaimed. “Do my ears deceive me?” He entered, his round face flushing crimson above his spade-shaped beard. “They told me you’d been defeated!”

“Shut the door, Otaxx!” Tarn barked, glaring at the dwarves crowding the hall outside. Every word he’d said to Mog had probably been overheard and was already spreading like measles through the fortress. He gnawed at the filthy ends of his straw-colored beard while the general closed the door and locked it with an iron key.

As he turned and crossed the room, General Otaxx stared first at Tarn then at the Captain of the King’s Guard. Mog only shook his head, while Tarn avoided his gaze entirely.

“What happened?” Otaxx asked he as he lowered his rotund bulk into the creaking canvas-backed chair.

When Tarn didn’t answer, Mog hesitantly said, “We’re not sure.”

“We’re sure enough that no one survived,” Tarn said in a low voice trembling with suppressed emotion.

General Otaxx’s breath escaped his lips in a long sigh. He leaned back in the creaking chair, which threatened at any moment to split apart at its canvas seams.

“We don’t know that for certain,” Mog amended. “There could have been survivors, but we never found any. We tried to get away—er, get back here as soon as possible. The woods were crawling with the remnants of Beryl’s army.”

“Remnants?” Otaxx’s face brightened. “Beryl is dead, her army scattered?”

“So we hope,” Mog said. He quickly recounted what had happened in the tunnels, their discovery of the drowned city. “I found one of Beryl’s scales floating in the flotsam along the shore of the new lake. It was not some old dried scale that dropped off her body naturally. It was tom out of her flesh, by what force I cannot begin to guess.”

“Whatever it was that flooded the city must have also killed her,” Otaxx ventured.

“We don’t know that for certain either,” Tarn snarled. He rose to his feet and began to pace the small chamber. “She may only be wounded. In truth, we know almost nothing. We don’t know why the city was flooded or what happened to those defending it. We don’t know how many of Beryl’s soldiers were killed or if they are still under any kind of central command. We don’t even know for sure if Beryl is alive.” He stopped before the door and slammed his fist into it so hard that the center wooden panel split down its entire length. He seemed not to even notice, for he immediately resumed his pacing. Blood dripped from his knuckles onto the flagstone floor.

“I cannot allow myself to hope that the Great Green Bitch is dead,” Tarn finished.

“If you had no hope of defeating her, why did you aid the elves?” Otaxx asked with a frankness that might have been traitorous had Tarn been any other king. His commanders and generals knew that Tarn valued frank advice, even if it disagreed with his plans.

Still Tarn spun and glared at the portly general, anger flaring in his violet eyes.

“I had no other choice,” he said, repeating the excuse he’d been practicing since they left the Qualinesti forest early that morning. He felt weary to the bone. He’d had no sleep in almost two days, but that was little more than an inconvenience. He’d gone far longer without rest in the days after the Chaos War, when the survival of his people had lain in the balance. He felt as though there were a palpable force trying to restrain him, to surround him and smother him, plucking at his elbows and tugging at his sword belt. Even now, he sensed it. It felt as though there weren’t enough air in the room for all three of them to breathe, as though each breath were a struggle.

“I aided the elves because I had no other choice,” Tarn repeated wearily. “To not aid them when they came begging at my door would have been immoral. Besides, since when has an elf ever begged aid of a dwarf? I could not pass up the opportunity to forge an alliance between our two people in this time of danger. And I wanted a chance to strike a blow at Beryl and her minions and also at the Dark Knights.”

“Then you did hope to defeat her,” Otaxx shrewdly observed.

“The elves’ plan was a good one. It could have worked. For all we know, it did work,” Mo said, a smile creasing his unkempt black beard.

“Their plan was foolish, and I should have seen it. Some madness blinded me,” Tarn said, waving his hands in the air before his face as though he still felt his vision and his judgment clouded. “Aiding them in their escape was the right thing to do, but helping them fight Beryl with arrows and ropes, that was more akin to catching a bird in a snare.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking.”

“You can’t trust the elves, I always said,” Otaxx murmured as his eyes strayed to the elven longbow hanging on his study wall.

“Elves!” Tarn growled huskily. “I wish to the gods I had never listened to them. If Gilthas himself were to stick his pointy head through that door, I’d chop it off.” Snarling an oath, he slapped the pommel of his kingsword and resumed his seat in one of the antique wooden chairs. The chair looked like a sentimental attempt at a throne. There was distinct elven craftsmanship in its woodland motifs—oak leaves and acorns and unicorns passant. The sight of it made Tarn’s stomach turn.

Yet it was unfair to blame his failures on the elves, and Tarn knew it. This only made him angrier. He had no one to blame but himself. How could he go back to Thorbardin and face those who had lost so much beneath the waters of doomed Qualinost?

“I must return to Thorbardin,” Tarn sighed.

Otaxx clucked his tongue and shook his round head ruefully. “You know what you will find there, my king,” he said. “The Hylar thane will seize this opportunity to challenge your authority. It’s just the sort of event he’s been waiting for.”

Tarn stared darkly across the desk at Otaxx, but said nothing.

“Perhaps it would be better to wait… a couple of days, no more, of course. If there are survivors, we should give them time to find their way back here,” Mog offered. “We can send out search parties. Maybe, with confirmation of Beryl’s death, we can lessen the impact of the news.”

“Lesson the impact?” Tarn asked incredulously. “Do you hear yourself? Thousands of dwarves died because I foolishly went against the will of the Council of Thanes.”

“But if Beryl truly is dead—” Otaxx began.

Tarn silenced him with a look. “I can’t put this off,” he said. “I’ve failed, and thousands of dwarves have died as a result. Let no one speak of what happened to the elf city until I have spoken to the Council of Thanes.”

“There are already rumors, my thane,” Otaxx said.

“Deny them,” Tarn ordered.

“Yes, my thane,” Otaxx said, rising from his creaking chair. “When will you go?”

“At first light. Before I leave, I’ll need to draw replacements for my personal guard from your garrison.”

“I’ll escort you personally,” General Otaxx said. “Evil things will be roaming the plains, now that Beryl’s army has been scattered. It isn’t safe for you to cross alone.”

5

The huge, vaulted cavern was carved in steps of concentric rings that climbed down to an oval stage at the center, but the air was so thick with smoke that it was impossible to see the opposite side of the arena and nearly impossible to see the stage from its topmost steps. Dwarves of every clan and family crowded the steps, some sitting, many standing and shouting, not a few snoring drunkenly on the rough stone floor. The acrid smell of sweaty unwashed bodies competed with the reek of pitch torches and the stomach-roiling odor of the heady alcoholic beverage known as dwarf spirits. The unmistakable ratwarren-stink of gully dwarves lay like an foundation beneath the other smells, pervading everything, much as the gully dwarves themselves lay everywhere, under everything, in the midst of everything and usually in the way, despite the curses (and worse things) hurled their way.

In the center of the arena, two dwarves battled. Stripped to the waist, their beards bound by leather cords, the pair exchanged bone-crushing blows as fast as their fists would fly. Heavy booted feet tore divots from the hard-packed dirt floor as they fought. Swearing and spitting teeth and blood, the two battlers parted for a moment to catch their breath, their pale, naked hacks heaving for air and glistening with sweat in the smoke-dimmed torchlight. All around them, the crowd roared in approval, stamping their hoots in thunderous applause that seemed to shake the very foundations of the cavern. The two dwarves stared at each other with hate-filled eyes for a moment longer.

Then one snarled, “Theiwar pig!”

“Daergar worm!” the other shouted, launching himself in a sudden wild leap that took the Theiwar by surprise. The first dwarf ducked, only to catch the heel of the other’s boot under his bearded chin. His knees buckled and he sat down then toppled over nosefirst into the dirt.

Half the arena erupted in wild screams of delight. The other half, having lost their wagers, stared grimly for a few moments before demanding an opportunity to win back their money on the next fight. A door at the edge of the sunken arena floor opened, and several dwarves rushed out to drag the limp body of the defeated away and to help the victor stagger out, his arms weakly lifted above his head in victory.

“That should settle that old feud once and for all,” Thane Jungor Stonesinger said to his morose companion. The thane of the Hylar dwarves sat in his personal box high above the arena, out of reach of the unruly, jostling crowd of common dwarves. With an amused smile creasing his luxuriously groomed beard, he extended his left hand, palm upward, and wiggled his fingers.

To his left sat a short, dour dwarf with skin the color of a fish’s belly. His cinnamon-brown beard was plaited and rolled into two thick coils beneath his chin and bound with thin copper wire. His black cloak barely covered the vest of studded leather armor he wore. Snarling, he dug into a pouch at his belt and produced a fistful of steel coins. With obvious reluctance, he counted them out onto the thane’s palm, and each clink of a coin seemed to stab him through the heart.

“Why do you always side against the Daergar in these matters?” he asked petulantly when the last coin was counted.

“I do not always side against the Daergar. I simply do not allow clan loyalties to cloud my judgment,” Jungor said with a smile as his fingers closed around the untidy stack of coins. “Your Daergar cousin was overmatched. Anyone could see that, even you, Ferro. No one forced you to accept my wager.”

He passed the coins over his shoulder to the tall, grim-faced dwarf standing behind him. “Hold these for me,” Jungor said without turning.

“As you wish, my thane,” the captain of Jungor’s personal guard answered, quickly pocketing the coins.

Ferro Dunskull scowled at the tall Hylar warrior standing protectively behind his thane, one massive fist resting on the broadsword at his hip. Captain Astar Trueshield was from one of the most respected Hylar families in Norbardin, Tarn’s new city. He bore the long golden beard of a high dwarf of that clan. He returned the smaller, paler Daergar’s scowl with a haughty sneer.

In the arena below, two new combatants entered to a round of thunderous applause and roars of laughter. The first warrior bounded across the arena floor, a long sword twirling from fist to fist in a brilliant display of swordsmanship. The powerful muscles of his arms rippled beneath skin already glistening with sweat. His strong, white teeth shone in a fierce grin through his short-cropped chestnut beard. He wore a vest of mail over his broad back, and his stout legs were clad in leather greaves.

Behind him slinked a miserable creature clad only in rags and dragging a spear far too long for him to wield with any effect. At the sight of him, the crowd howled with laughter and shouted, “Ong! Ong! Ong!” the noise resounding like an iron bell in this deep subterranean cavern. At the sound of his name, the gully dwarf grinned and waved, and he tried to heft his overlong spear in salute to the crowd, only to topple over with its weight. The unruly mob of spectators only howled more loudly than ever, and he seemed encouraged by their noise, jutting out the tangled nest of his filthy beard and strutting cockily a few steps before tripping over his own feet.

His smile broadening, Jungor leaned closer to Ferro Dunskull and shouted over the noise, “Ah, this ought to be interesting. Yon Daewar warrior is Uurk Straightbeard. He claims that his opponent, the gully dwarf named Shnatz Ong, cheated him at dice and refused to return his money. He has demanded an arena confrontation according to Tarn’s Law of Redress outlawing unsanctioned revenge killings.”

“Interesting?” Ferro Dunskull snorted. “I fail to see what could possibly be entertaining about watching some dull-witted Daewar lawfully slaughter a gully dwarf.”

“You’ve already made up your mind who will win this battle then?” Jungor inquired with a taunting lilt of his basso voice.

Ferro started and stared at the Hylar thane. “You don’t mean to suggest… ” he cried. “That gully dwarf could never…”

“Of course not. He’s only a gully dwarf, after all. I simply wanted to give you an opportunity to recover your losses from the previous battle,” Jungor said quickly, finishing with another oily grin. His smile only deepened the impression of the predator in his hawkish features. His beard did little to hide the craggy angles of his face, the beaklike projection of his nose. Yet for all the fierceness of his imposing countenance, his taunting smile bore a certain charm.

“You want me to bet against that gully dwarf, don’t you?” Ferro asked, his dark violet eyes narrowing suspiciously.

“I’ll give you three-to-one odds,” Jungor said solicitously.

Ferro glared down into the arena in time to see the gully dwarf nearly impale himself on his own spear. The Daewar warrior stood at the far side of the arena, respectfully waiting for the forms of combat to be completed. His bearing and demeanor spoke of supreme confidence, and his previous display of swordsmanship left no doubt as to his ability.

Ferro darted a quick glance at Jungor Stonesinger.

“Well?” the Hylar thane asked.

“It seems a sure thing,” the Daergar began slowly, as though still pondering his decision. “Which makes me doubly suspicious.”

“It’s only a friendly wager,” Jungor said innocently.

The Hylar thane’s hurt tone only provoked the Daergar. “If I don’t take the bet and your gully dwarf falls at the first blow, I’ll look like a fool. So I’ll take your bet, and this time I’ll make you suffer for it! Five hundred steel coins is my wager! There! Ha!”

Astar Trueshield’s eyes widened in alarm at the extravagance of the Daergar’s bet, but Jungor’s smile never wavered.

“Five hundred, then,” Jungor said as he rose to his feet. Ferro shrunk back in his chair, worriedly gnawing the ends of his beard.

Jungor turned and faced the arena, and, seeing him rise, Uurk Straightbeard strode to the center of the arena and began to address him. The crowd slowly became quiet as the Daewar’s words filtered through.

“…demand vengeance. This is my right! But according to the Law of Redress enacted by our high thane, Tarn Bellowgranite, blood feud and revenge killing outside the arena is forbidden. Therefore I ask the President of the Arena of Justice, Thane Jungor Stonesinger, to sanction this combat between myself and the Aghar dwarf known as Shnatz Ong.”

“The council recognizes your right to redress, and I affirm the legality of this forum,” Jungor answered, his basso voice resounding in the thick air. He spoke with a natural authority, so that even the most intoxicated dwarf in the crowd paused for a moment to appreciate the Hylar thane’s command of the forms and procedures of law so dear to many a dwarven heart. “You have chosen weapons combat, knowing that your contest may result in serious injury or death. Let it be known that no one may claim the right of revenge for that which happens in the arena here today.”

He lifted his hand in sudden invocation. “Let the spirits of our ancestors witness these events and be pleased by the honor and courage displayed by the combatants, and let them curse those who dishonor these rites.”

Many of the dwarves in the crowd turned and stared up at the thane’s box, for these words were not part of the official ceremony prescribed by law. Uurk Straightbeard seemed momentarily taken aback by this unorthodox departure from the recognized rituals. He shuffled uncertainly, waiting for the Hylar thane to finish with the usual invocation of a blessing from Reorx, the traditional god of the dwarves.

Without doing so, Jungor summarily completed the ceremony, and, dropping his hand, shouted, “Let the combat commence!”

For another moment, Uurk stared up at the box then turned and shuffled ominously toward his gully dwarf opponent.

With many eyes upon him, Jungor resumed his seat, his beatific smile unchanged. Ferro leaned close to the Hylar thane and whispered, “What in the blazes of Chaos was that all about? Did you forget the invocation to Reorx?”

“Not at all,” Jungor said absently, leaning forward in his seat to watch the combat. “Ouch! Looks like you might win that bet after all.”

At these words, Ferro’s attention snapped to the arena floor, where Shnatz Ong was now fleeing for his life, shrieking like a murdered peacock. Ferro leaned forward and gripped the edge of the box, his eyes beginning to flame with the bloodlust native to the dark dwarves of Thorbardin. Even if it promised to be a quick slaughter of a lowly gully dwarf, the sight of violent combat stirred his blood, as well as the blood of the crowd. They had quickly forgotten about Jungor’s departure from tradition in their lust to see blood spilled onto the thirsty arena floor.

The hapless gully dwarf had long since abandoned his weapon and was running in ever-tightening circles around his opponent, his rags flapping about his knees as he ran. Uurk Straightbeard continued to jab at his opponent and close the distance, even as his fury exploded at the way Shnatz Ong managed to stay just out of the reach of his silver sword. Although in prime physical condition, the Daewar couldn’t match the dizzying speed of a gully dwarf running in crazy circles.

Shnatz stumbled. The crowd roared. Ferro surged from his seat. Uurk lunged, and the tip of his sword sank into the gully dwarfs thigh just before the small fellow rolled out of reach. Squealing in agony, Shnatz crumpled in a quivering heap, clasping his wound with his filthy hands and trying to staunch the flow of blood.

“Ha! I’ve beat you this time, Jungor Stonesinger,” Ferro exclaimed as he leaped onto the edge of the box. “Fifteen hundred steel coins! That’s what you owe me. Three-to-one odds.”

Jungor shook his head and smiled.

On the arena floor, Uurk Straightbeard hovered menacingly over his fallen opponent, his longsword raised to strike. Meanwhile, he taunted the crowd, many of whom were shouting for him to spare the gully dwarf. Suddenly, two gully dwarves dropped over the wall and crawled toward him, weeping and crying. Females, by the looks of them, they begged him to spare their father’s life.

Uurk threw back his head and laughed. Lowering his weapon, he strode toward them, spitting insults and curses. “Worthless Aghar!” he screamed, his voice rising even over the tumult of the crowd. “I should kill the lot of you.”

“Do it! Kill them all!” Ferro shouted, pounding his fist on the rail box. Suddenly, his voice stuck in his throat and his mouth dropped open in surprise.

Shnatz Ong rose quickly and silently while his opponent’s back was turned. Streaking across the floor, heedless of his injury, he launched himself onto Uurk’s broad back. One grimy hand whipped over the top of the startled dwarfs head, looping under his beard in one quick motion, before coming together with the other hand behind his neck.

Uurk’s eyes started from his face as the steel garrote tightened around his throat. His longsword fell from nerveless fingertips, and he clawed weakly at the instrument of his murder even as his knees buckled and he sank, the fiercely grinning gully dwarf riding his back all the way to the ground.

Shnatz maintained his hold long enough to be assured of his opponent’s death then slipped the steel wire free and turned grandly to accept the accolades of the crowd. The two female gully dwarves rushed out and swept under his arms, helping to support him on his injured leg even as they wantonly lavished kisses on his filthy face and beard.

Ferro turned and gaped at Jungor Stonesinger, his mouth champing soundlessly.

“They aren’t his daughters, I assure you,” the Hylar thane chuckled.

6

Jungor bellowed with laughter at his Daergar companion’s mute bewilderment. Ferro could hardly believe what he had just witnessed. Gully dwarves were universally stupid, cowardly, and craven, utterly worthless for anything but the most menial of tasks. As warriors, they were more dangerous to their allies than their enemies. The only thing that kept the gully dwarf population under control was their inability to maintain even the most rudimentary hygienic habits. If a gully dwarf infant somehow managed to survive his own parents through the first year, he was considered unusual. Many died within a few months of birth from a variety of maladies and accidents, from smothering in their family’s communal bed to being devoured by the rats that shared most gully dwarves’ warrens.

To see a gully dwarf defeat a skilled Daewar warrior in single combat beggared belief, even for Ferro Dunskull. Words evaded him as he glared at Jungor Stonesinger’s smirking face. At the same time, a new dwarf entered the box and took the empty seat next to Jungor and opposite Ferro.

“Will these young fools never learn?” the new dwarf gloated as he rattled a bag of coins hanging at his belt. “I made quite a haul on that last fight, my thane.”

“Uurk Straightsword won’t be the last dwarf to underestimate The Flea,” Jungor answered. He turned back to Ferro. “Isn’t that right?”

“You fooled me!” the Daergar spluttered.

“You fooled yourself,” Jungor countered seriously. The change in his tone was familiar to those who knew him well. The Hylar thane was fond of instructing those around him, and they did well to listen, for he was both wise and cunning.

“Uurk Straightbeard underestimated his opponent,” Jungor continued, “because he was a gully dwarf. There are more than three thousand dwarves in this arena tonight, and if he had bothered to ask even one of them, they would have advised him to be wary of tricks and to never turn his back on The Flea.

“But Shnatz knew Uurk, knew the weakness of his arrogance, and he waited patiently to use it against him. That’s why The Flea is one of the best fighters the arena has ever known. He’s never lost a bout, and I’ve never lost money on him, while I’ve made a fortune on those who, like Uurk Straightbeard, believed that when they’d seen one gully dwarf, they’d seen them all.”

“It only took once for me, my thane,” the newcomer dwarf admitted with a rueful smile. Captain Trueshield snorted appreciatively.

Jungor nodded solemnly and peered from beneath his bushy brows at his Daergar companion. “Ferro, I believe you know Hextor Ironhaft?” he asked.

Ferro tilted his head in acknowledgement “Everyone in my profession knows Master Ironhaft. He is one of Norbardin’s wealthiest merchants, a scion of the Hylar families.”

Hextor Ironhaft accepted this compliment by stroking his long, blond beard. “What is Master Dunskull’s profession, if I may be so impudent?”

“Ferro is a merchant of information, shall we say,” Jungor answered for the Daergar. “Though he bears the brand of the thief…”

Ferro unconsciously lifted his hand to cover the small scar above his left eyebrow.

“Still, he has recently turned his talents to more profitable ends,” Jungor finished.

“Most commendable,” Hextor said with undisguised conceit.

“Moreover, he is our eyes and ears in the court of Shahar Bellowsmoke, thane of the Daergar clans,” Jungor added. “On our behalf, he spends most of his time in the service of his thane. Thus his knowledge of the arena and its most successful combatants was incomplete. I am confident he will not be so easily misled in the future.”

Jungor clapped one large, heavily scarred hand on the Daergar’s shoulder, drawing him closer in a gesture of friendliness.

Ferro bowed his head. “I am in the thane’s debt. I fear I do not have the means at present to honor to our wager,” he said.

“There are other coins of the realm,” Jungor said in a low voice. “Now, tell me, what passes with my cousin, the thane? Is his loyalty to Tarn firm, or—”

His questioning was cut short by a bellowing roar.

“Jungor Stonesinger!”

The Hylar thane paused and peered through the smoke toward the source of the disturbance. The arena grew nervously silent as hundreds of bearded faces also craned to see. On the floor of the arena near the exit door, a lone dwarf stood with his hands on his hips and his pale face turned arrogantly toward Jungor’s private box high above. His beard, split into two plaits, lay over his belly almost to his belt, and he wore a vest of fine silver scales over his barrelchested frame. A heavy curved sword hung at his hip. His sallow, well-muscled arms were bare except for a pair of jeweled bracers protecting his forearms.

“I see you, Jungor Stonesinger,” the Daergar warrior roared. “You can’t avoid me any longer. I demand justice!”

“Vault Forgesmoke!” Hextor Ironhaft exclaimed. “What’s he doing here?”

“If you are not a coward, come down here and face me!” the dwarf shouted in derision, eliciting an excited roar from the previously silent crowd.

“I should have warned you,” Ferro said quickly as Jungor rose to his feet, “he’s been talking about challenging you for weeks.”

Seeing the Hylar thane rise, the crowd roared its approval. It wasn’t every day that the formidable Jungor Stonesinger returned to the arena. A veteran of its bloody floor, he had never been defeated in the five years since its construction. He was its undisputed ruler, judge of all contests of arms under the council’s laws. Almost a hundred warriors had tested his skill in the wild early days of the arena, before Tarn Bellowgranite usurped its forms and traditions in an effort to limit the clan battles and blood feuds that had reigned in dwarven society since the first dwarf carved stone.

“Allow me to deal with this rogue, my lord,” Astar Trueshield snarled as he drew his sword and pushed toward the stair.

Jungor jerked him back. “In this place, I fight my own battles,” he barked.

“But you are our thane,” Hextor Ironhaft pleaded and clutched at the hem of Jungor’s cloak. “If you should fall to this Daergar’s treachery…”

Ferro glowered at the wealthy Hylar merchant, before turning to Jungor in concern.

“He’s a dangerous foe,” he admitted.

“Not as dangerous as I,” Jungor growled obstinately. He pushed past his guard and tore free of the merchant’s grasp, then quickly descended the stair to the arena floor, accompanied by the shouts and whistles and thunderous stamping of the gathered dwarves. As news of the challenge raced upward to the inhabited areas of Norbardin, dwarves began to pour into the arena to witness what promised to he a momentous battle. The leadership of the Hylar clan hung in the balance, and as its sworn protector, Astar Trueshield hurried down the stairs after his battle-fey thane, his face a blond-bearded knot of worry.

Jungor slid over the outer wall and dropped to the hard-packed dirt floor. He slipped out of his black, fur-lined cloak of office and stripped off the golden silk shirt, baring a back rippling with well-toned muscles. His frame was longer and narrower than that of most dwarves, which made him look weak by comparison to his stouter compatriots. One look at the whipcord muscles of his arms spoke of hidden energies and deceptive power, however. His movements seemed slow and fluid, almost languid, but when he struck, it was like the strike of an adder. His hands were narrow and long, like a magician’s hands, with long expressive fingers. He preferred a lighter sword to the heavy metal weapons favored by most of his opponents—axes, hammers, heavy maces, and broadswords. Yet his great reach gave him a distinct advantage.

Unlike his opponent, Jungor wore no armor. He had not expected to compete in the arena this day, and in his anger, he had rushed to the arena floor without even bothering to grab a shield. Now he glanced quickly around the arena and shouted for someone to lend him a shield. A familiar face at the arena’s edge greeted him—the Theiwar thane, Brecha Quickspring. Shouting his name, she tossed a battered steel buckler at his feet. Dented and worn, it was still a serviceable piece of armor.

Stooping, Jungor slipped the buckler over his left arm then drew his short sword as Vault Forgesmoke edged toward him, curved broadsword held in a guarded position, round shield pushed forward defensively. Nearly a foot shorter than the tall thane, the Daergar warrior respected Jungor’s reach and skill well enough to make full use of his stout iron shield.

“Six months ago, you murdered my brother in the arena after he begged mercy from you,” Vault Forgesmoke formally pronounced, following the rules of the arena.

“I offered your brother mercy, but he repaid my chivalry by trying to jab me with a poisoned needle as we clasped hands,” Jungor responded.

“That’s a beardless lie!” the Daergar warrior shrieked as he leaped. He drove his shield against Jungor’s side, trying to force his opponent back while at the same time stabbing under it with his broad blade. The tall Hylar thane spun past this obvious tactic, his lighter blade flickering in a quick succession of lunges that Vault barely blocked with his shield. As the two fighters separated, the crowd screamed in delight. Usually, the arena saw only clumsy brutality—entertaining, to be sure, but nothing compared to the artistry of two skilled sword wielders.

The Daergar shook back his black mane of hair and dared Jungor to attack, taunting him by holding his shield aside and exposing his breast. Jungor circled grimly, his face expressionless, feinting half-heartedly at the proffered opening, while watching his opponent warily. The crowd grew restless and shouted for blood. An empty bottle sailed out of the stands and landed with a chink near the two warriors. For a split second, Vault’s attention shifted, and as quickly Jungor launched his attack.

The Daergar leaped back in response, easily avoiding the sword blade licking at his throat and laughing at his escape, only to find that the leather strap of his shield had been neatly severed just above his forearm. The shield dangled uselessly from his fist. He angrily tossed it aside.

“Now we are more evenly matched,” Jungor said to him.

“A lucky blow!” Vault Forgesmoke blustered, but a note of fear had crept into his voice.

The Hylar thane only smiled wolfishly and continued to circle. Now his movements were light and fluid, and his feet hardly seemed to touch the ground. He feinted untiringly, forcing his opponent to continually defend against a sword strike that never fell. The Daergar warrior’s own movements grew desperate, his blows wild. Like most dwarf warriors, Vault sought to plant his feet and swing with all his might, to kill with a single blow, whereas Jungor’s attacks were designed to chip away at his opponent’s confidence and strength, to force him to wear himself out, to use his strength against him. He never remained in one place for long, moving east and attacking west, as the old military scholars liked to say.

“You fight like an elf,” Vault Forgesmoke growled after missing yet another vicious sword blow.

Jungor darted in while the Daergar was still complaining, his right hand raised for a devastating overhead swing. Meanwhile, he switched his sword to his left hand and drove in low with the blade while Vault was lifting his own sword high in defense. The point scraped against the metal scales of the Daergar’s vest and slipped harmlessly under his armpit. Jungor caught Vault’s sword arm before he could counter the blow, and Vault trapped Jungor’s weapon under his arm. Grunting furious oaths, feet stamping on the hard-packed floor, the two warriors grappled in a dance of death to howls from the crowd.

Vault was the more muscular of the two, but Jungor’s height gave him leverage over his opponent. He began to force his opponent’s sword arm into an awkward position over his head. In response, the Daergar spat full in Jungor’s face. Blinking through the spittle, Jungor only bent his arm more pitilessly than before, muscles cracking and joints straining to the breaking point.

Suddenly, Vault’s knees gave, and he dropped to the ground with a cry of agony. Normally Jungor would have followed up with a killing blow, but his alert senses detected deception in that bellow of pain. Vault had fallen before his strength had given out. Jungor released his grip on the Daergar’s sword arm and leaped back.

At the same time, Vault scooped up a handful of dust and flung it in the Hylar thane’s face. Jungor turned aside and threw up one hand against the cloud of dust, while slashing in a wide arc to prevent his opponent from following up on the blinding attack. Something wet and sticky struck him on the right side of the face and clung there like tar.

Immediately, the flesh around his right eye began to sting horribly. He clawed frantically at the burning substance even as he slashed blindly with his sword, desperately trying to hold back his opponent while he fought to clear his vision. Some clinging vitriol was even now eating away at the flesh of his face, sizzling in the wet tissues of his right eye. Jungor ground his teeth against the hideous pain and fought to see through the haze. In the gray blur of his vision, he detected movement and little else. He turned, his sword held defensively before him.

A sharp blow knocked the weapon from his hand, and he ducked instinctively as his opponent’s blade whistled over his head. He caught up a double handful of dirt and flung it blindly upward. Hearing the Daergar splutter in rage and surprise, Jungor rolled free and came to his feet in a stumbling run.

He careened blindly across the length of the arena, blundering to a stop against the wall. Members of the crowd hung over the wall’s edge, howling with fury and bloodlust, pounding the stone with their fists. He stared up at them, blinking through his ruined right eye. He felt the flesh on the right side of his face begin to sag, and darkness clouded his vision, but after a few moments, he was able to make out the individual faces of those leaning toward him. There were dwarves from all the clans. Some taunted him, more shouted encouragement.

Jungor glanced quickly around, still blinking furiously against the stinging pain. His right hand and wrist burned where he had used them to try to wipe away the clinging acid from his face. He searched for his bodyguard and found him, pinned to the second tier of seats by members of the crowd who wanted to prevent the captain from interfering in the combat. Across the arena, Vault Forgesmoke was shaking the last of the dust from his eyes and spitting curses that were lost in the uproar.

Jungor reached for the dagger he usually wore at his belt, but he had left it in the royal box in his haste. His sword lay on the ground on the other side of the arena. Weaponless, half blind, and weak with pain, he knew he had little chance of besting an armed foe as determined as Vault Forgesmoke. He had but one tactical choice—to accept a wound in order to come to grips with his opponent.

Jungor steeled his resolve and started to advance toward his opponent when something fell at his feet. At the same time, he heard a voice cry his name over the din of the crowd. He looked down and saw an ornate staff lying before him. He turned toward the voice and saw that once again the Theiwar thane Brecha Quickspring had come to his aid. She leaned over the barrier wall, crying his name and urging him to pick up the staff she had thrown to him.

Jungor had seen the staff in her hands at many meetings of the Council of Thanes. It was a wizard’s staff, for Brecha Quickspring was one of the more powerful sorcerers of her clan. The Theiwar had an innate magical ability that allowed them to cast spells, unlike most dwarves, who feared and distrusted magic. The staff was made of some unidentifiable dark wood and mounted with a large round red stone set in gold.

Jungor reluctantly picked up the staff. Although he bore a natural prejudice against magic and doubted that it would prove much use against his Daergar opponent’s heavy sword, he had few options. The staff felt surprisingly light in his hands, which only deepened his distrust. Surely it would shatter at the first blow. A staff was no weapon for a true warrior.

Vault Forgesmoke lifted his heavy curved sword and charged across the arena, bellowing a battle cry that eclipsed the deafening crowd. Jungor readied himself, still trying to blink away the last of the acid. Vault switched his blade to his left hand as he closed. Jungor turned to meet him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the dagger appear in the Daergar’s right hand and dart toward his unprotected left side.

Jungor dived under the Daergar’s sword, away from the slashing dagger. At the same time, he swung around, smashing the butt of the staff into his opponent’s left leg. Vault Forgesmoke stumbled with the momentum of his own attack, crumpling from a shattered kneecap. Jungor turned the staff and swung it with all his might against the Daergar’s back before he had even hit the ground. As the staff slammed into his back, a flash of scarlet light burst from the red stone. Steel scale armor shattered like glass, and his spine sank beneath the blow, a sodden pulp of bone, meat, and nerve. Vault Forgesmoke dropped like a poleaxed hog.

As he fell, he rolled onto his back, his arms thrown wide to either side. He lay before Jungor, panting, paralyzed, his dark violet eyes wide with terror as he looked up at the Hylar thane’s acid-stained visage. The crowd fell silent at the suddenness and violence of the attack.

“Mercy!” the Daergar cried weakly.

Snarling, Jungor tossed aside the staff and picked up the dagger his opponent had dropped. He knelt on Vault Forgesmoke’s chest and with a violence that shocked even the most hardened warriors among the crowd, plunged the blade into his helpless opponent. Not satisfied, he sliced open the dwarfs body, reached inside, and dragged out his red, still-beating heart.

Jungor rose and approached the silent, horrified crowd, the Daergar’s heart dangling from his fist.

“You want blood?” he screamed. “I give you blood!” With a wail of rage, he flung the organ into the stands. Blood spattered the faces of those in the front row, but they barely flinched. They sat mesmerized.

Jungor returned to stand over his vanquished opponent. His fists covered in gore, his right eye a milky ruin, he glared down at the dead Daergar warrior. “As thane of the Hylar, I bar your entrance to the Kingdom of the Dead, Vault Forgesmoke. For your treachery, your ghost shall wander the houseless mountains beyond the doors of Thorbardin forever!”

He turned and stalked toward the exit. As if released from a spell, the crowd erupted in wild cheers. Dwarves poured over the wall and into the arena, some to gather reverently around the Hylar thane, others to drag Vault Forgesmoke’s body out of the arena. Astar Trueshield surged past them and raced to Jungor’s side, Thane Brecha Quickspring following closely in his wake.

The Theiwar thane stopped only to retrieve her staff. To anyone who would listen, she cried, “I have the sight, and I saw Vault Forgesmoke’s ghost obey Thane Stonesinger’s command! I saw his ghost bow in obedience.”

Those who heard her turned to Jungor with awe written into their features. “The dead obey him!” Thane Quickspring shouted over and over again, gleefully.

7

Jungor slapped the doctor’s hand away from his face. “Clumsy oaf!” he spat, then snatched the bloody towel from the doctor’s grasp and clapped it to his ruined eye. “Must I do everything for myself?”

“The wound must be cleaned, my lord,” the doctor insisted as he tried to pry the towel from Jungor once more.

“Just do it, then,” Jungor snarled. “Stop pussyfooting around. I’m not some nobleborn fainting at the thought of a hangnail, whose brow you pat to cool his fevered brain. I won’t have your head lopped off if it hurts. Just do your job and be done with it!”

“As you wish, my lord,” the Daewar doctor said, bowing. He picked up a leather bag from the floor, set it on a chair, and began sorting through various gleaming metal probes, knives, pliers, and other instruments of torture and surgery. Jungor lay back on the examination table, sighing angrily while he pressed the crimson-soaked towel to his face. The table was as sturdy as a butcher’s carving block. It had seen enough meat carved upon it in its day. The doctor’s examination room lay one level beneath the arena at the bottom of a staircase leading directly up to the arena floor. Those wounded in the arena were usually carried here by orderlies, but Jungor had made the descent on his own feet, refusing to be coddled.

Hextor Ironhaft nervously paced the chamber, trying to oversee the doctor’s work. Astar Trueshield stood beside the closed door, his hackles up and still angry at being prevented from protecting his thane. Jungor glanced at him and snorted. “You would have disgraced me,” he said. “Interference isn’t allowed.”

“You are the thane!” Astar shouted angrily, forgetting himself for a moment.

“If I had been attacked in some alley of Norbardin,” Jungor said, “I would have your head on a pike for failing in your duty to protect me, Astar Trueshield. But in the arena, there are rules—”

“Nevertheless, you shouldn’t have risked your life in this wasteful manner,” Hextor Ironhaft interrupted. “Rules be damned. There is more at stake here, my thane.”

“Do not preach to me, Hextor Ironhaft,” Jungor said in a low, dangerous snarl that brought the wealthy Hylar merchant to a stop. “My honor was at stake. What do you think would have happened if I had been dishonored by that Daergar?”

Cowed, Hextor shrugged and resumed his nervous pacing. “Those who prevented Captain Trueshield from going to your aid may have been part of the conspiracy.”

“I assure you, they now regret their mistake,” Astar said.

Jungor chuckled appreciatively. “Yes, I know. The doctor has already seen them in the other room. I expect nothing less from you, even though they were merely enforcing the rules of the arena,” he said. “I’m glad you didn’t kill them, though.”

Jungor smiled grimly and turned his attention to the doctor, who was still rummaging through his surgery bag and laying out various instruments, the use of which was beyond guessing. “By the gods, how many knives does it take to pluck out one eye?” the thane snarled at him.

I can do this quickly, or I can do it correctly, my thane,” the Daewar doctor said, rising up with a pair of metal tongs in either hand.

“They’re probably already saying I am dying down here,” Jungor grumbled. He toweled his eye one last time and tossed the bloody rag on the floor. Though a veteran warrior of many battles, Astar winced at the sight of the thane’s vitriol-scarred face. Hextor clapped a hand over his lips and turned away. The skin around the eye was hideously marred and bruised a dusky purple, like rotted meat, while the raw flesh showed through in places where the skin had fallen away entirely. The right eye was the color of watery milk, and a sickening wheylike substance oozed down the thane’s face and into his beard. He seemed not to notice the pain, which must have been excruciating. He lay on the table as though waiting for the physician to remove a splinter.

Suddenly, the door banged open. Astar started out of his study of the thane’s face, his sword already in his fist. Ferro Dunskull ducked aside as the captain of the guard came leaping around the door.

“It’s me!” he shrieked, lifting his hands defensively.

“What do you want here, Daergar?” Captain Trueshield demanded harshly as he sheathed his blade. Outside the door, dozens of dwarves huddled in the hall, awaiting some word of Jungor’s fate. Astar blocked their view with his body, filling the narrow doorway, but the look on his face discouraged their efforts as much as the breadth of his shoulders. Many turned away and pretended interest in the quality of the floor’s stonework.

“Let him in, Captain,” Jungor sighed from the table.

Astar closed the door and resumed his post. Ferro sneered at him and approached the examination table. When he saw Jungor’s face, his sneer changed to a pained smile. He glanced quickly at Hextor, who merely shook his head as though still trying to recover from his bout of nausea.

“What passes above, in Norbardin?” Jungor asked. “Do they think me dying?”

“Quite the opposite, my lord,” Ferro answered without looking the thane in his remaining eye. He couldn’t pull his gaze away from that milky white orb resting in its bruised flower of flesh. “The testimony of… um… of Thane Quickspring… that is to say… ”

“Spit it out!” Jungor barked impatiently.

“Does it hurt?” Ferro asked, edging closer. He reached out one hand and gingerly touched the ruined flesh of Jungor’s cheek.

The thane jerked away as though touched by a snake. “Like the unholy blazes of the Abyss. Now get on with your report!” he shouted.

Composing himself, Ferro continued. “Thane Quickspring continues to spread word of her vision.”

“Who asked her to meddle in this affair?” Jungor asked, his gaze turning to Hextor.

“Her staff proved quite useful,” Ferro remarked. Jungor scowled at him, but then his face grew thoughtful.

“This vision of hers may prove more useful still,” Hextor said in a soft voice.

Jungor nodded slowly and motioned for Ferro to continue.

The Daergar cleared his throat. “All known accomplices, acquaintances, and family of Vault Forgesmoke are being rounded up as we speak.”

“Find them. Hunt them down to the last dwarf,” Jungor said through clenched teeth. “I want to question them myself. Tarn Bellowgranite arranged this, mark my words. He arranged it to happen while he is away, to remove any possible link back to himself. That link is there, and I want you to find it!” In his fury, he sat up on the table, eliciting vehement protestations from the physician.

Jungor turned his rage against his healer. “Dig this thing out of my face or I’ll have you replaced. Permanently!”

Shrugging, the doctor picked up a black pottery bottle and removed its stopper. He tipped its liquid contents onto a handkerchief. Jungor’s nose wrinkled at the pungent aroma. “What is that?” he demanded.

“Something to make you sleep while I operate,” the doctor said.

“Put away your potions. You won’t use any magic on me,” Jungor said. Shrugging, the doctor set aside his anesthesia and picked up a long, narrow-bladed knife and a pair of thin tongs from the table. Climbing up on the table beside the thane, he set one knee across Jungor’s thigh and commenced probing the ruined orb’s socket.

After a few moments of watching, Hextor’s knees buckled. He sank beside a washbasin. Astar closed his eyes, but Ferro continued to observe the procedure with professional fascination.

Meanwhile, Jungor sat stoically under the doctor’s ungentle ministrations. He said through gritted teeth, “The people love me, they look to me for leadership, not Tarn Bellowgranite—that half-breed whelp of a Daergar bitch, may his father’s bones rot.”

The doctor popped Jungor’s ruined eye from its socket and dropped in with a wet plink into a bucket beside the table. The thane didn’t even wince, but Hextor gripped the edge of the washbasin as though the room were turning over. Astar shook his head in disbelief, and Ferro giggled nervously. Jungor snatched a rag from the table and began toweling out the empty socket.

“I should cleanse the wound with dwarf spirits,” the doctor said.

“I’ll do it myself,” Jungor growled.

“I’m sure you will,” the doctor responded as he began to gather his instruments. “Have a care that you don’t pour the dwarf spirits directly into your brain pan.”

“Thank you. You’ve done quite enough,” Jungor sneered. “You have other patients, I’m sure.”

“The king couldn’t have arranged this without the aid of Thane Shahar Bellowsmoke,” Ferro said.

“What do you know of Vault Forgesmoke’s family?” Jungor asked. “Is there a connection to the thane?”

Ferro tugged his chin whiskers in thought, slowly massaging his thick lower lip. “The Forgesmoke clan are cousins to the Bellowsmoke, so there is the familial connection. Thane Bellowsmoke is cousin to the king… but if Tarn ordered this, it will be difficult to prove. It is dangerous to challenge us Daergar at this time. Most of our warriors refused to go with Tarn on his mad adventure to save the elves, but Shahar is said to be loyal, if any Daergar can be called loyal.”

“Present company excluded,” Jungor interjected.

Ferro smiled, revealing a row of uneven brown teeth. “Of course!”

Somewhat recovered, Hextor said, “Thane Bellowsmoke has little love for you, my lord, and that makes him a friend of the king. If a confession were arranged, it could be used to overthrow Tarn Bellowgranite.”

The doctor dropped one of his metal instruments in surprise, its sharp metal clatter punctuating the look of horror on his face. He quickly gathered it up and stuffed it into his bag.

Jungor leaped down from the table and accosted the Hylar merchant angrily. “Who said anything about overthrowing the king?” he shouted. “Did anyone here even mention rebellion? May the gods forgive me for saying so—if Tarn Bellowgranite is behind this murderous attack on me, the evidence will be presented before the full council, in accordance with the law. I am a loyal thane of Thorbardin. My well-known dispute with Tarn Bellowgranite is restricted to the Council Hall. Let no one speak treason before me.”

“Forgive me, my lord,” Hextor cried, bowing low, almost to the floor.

Jungor turned to the doctor, smiling with his face like a mask of death. “Again, I thank you for your services. Forgive me if I was impatient.”

“Not at all, my thane,” the doctor answered nervously. He clutched his surgeon’s bag to his chest as Astar led him to the door.

When the doctor had gone and the door was shut, Jungor spun back to face Hextor. “Fool!” he hissed. “Do you want to give everything away? Leave us! Astar, clear those people away from the door and await me at the stair.”

Grudgingly, the two Hylar departed, leaving the thane alone with Ferro Dunskull.

Jungor returned to the examination table. Kicking over the bucket that still contained his lost eye, he sat down wearily and leaned his head against the leg of the table. A few drops of blood trickled down his face like teardrops from his gaping socket. Ferro came closer and stooped beside him, his hand nervously fluttering over Jungor’s shoulder as though he were afraid to touch him.

“Is everything prepared?” Jungor asked in a low, tired voice.

“It is, my lord,” Ferro whispered eagerly. “My scouts on the plains report that Tarn has left Pax Tharkas with a small party of guards. Everything is in readiness.”

“Be careful,” Jungor cautioned. “If anything should go awry, you know what must be done. It cannot be traced back to me.”

“Nothing will go wrong, Thane Stonesinger. Tarn Bellowgranite will not reach Thorbardin alive.”

8

Captain Ilbars Bleakfell stopped before the tent and muttered a curse as he scraped a clod of clinging black mud from his boot. Around him, half a dozen campfires burned wanly in the misty twilight, each with its company of five or six miserable dwarf warriors huddling near it against the damp and cold. Though still several hours before sunset, the sun had already been swallowed by the thick mist that hung perpetually over this place. Known as The Bog, this swampy region lay on the Plains of Dergoth north of Thorbardin, between the mountain and the ruined magical fortress of Zhaman.

“They call this a road?” Ilbars swore. “If this is a road, I’m a gully dwarf.”

“You stand now on a wandering ridgeback of land that stretches from the plains in the north to Thorbardin in the south,” Ferro Dunskull said as he exited the tent, wiping his mouth on the back of his dusky hand. The pungent aroma of dwarf spirits wafted before him, and he belched a contented sigh. Waving his hand at their gray, dripping surroundings, he continued, “To either side of this road stretch endless miles of sucking bogs, strangling mud, quicksand, and bottomless pools.”

“Bah! Ridgeback of land!” the Daewar captain snorted. “There’s a pool of water under my tent. And the flies!” He swatted the air about him, momentarily scattering the humming swarms of tiny bugs that hung perpetually around his head.

“You don’t get out of Thorbardin much, do you?” Ferro commented in disgust.

“That’s funny coming from a Daergar,” Ilbars said with a sneer. “I thought you and your Theiwar were going to melt in the sun this morning.”

“We suffer so that we may be the first to greet our king,” Ferro answered dryly.

“An honor guard of Theiwar, led by a Daergar, come to welcome a Hylar king back to the mountain!” Ilbars laughed. “Why didn’t they send gully dwarves and make a parade out of it?”

“You forget that Tarn Bellowgranite is half-Daergar by his mother,” Ferro muttered as he pushed past the Daewar captain and edged close to their fire. Two Theiwar warriors grumbled as they made room for him.

“Now we Daewar, I can understand sending us to welcome the king,” Ilbars continued, nodding his shaggy head toward a squad of the doughty warriors squatting around the next fire. “We’re loyal and trustworthy. By my mother’s beard, I wouldn’t trust a Theiwar any farther than I could throw a spear.”

Ferro spat into the fire and glanced at the two Theiwar warriors sharing their camp. They glared into the crackling flames, obviously holding their tongues firmly in their teeth. Because Captain Bleakfell had been ordered by the Council of Thanes to meet the king and escort him back to Thorbardin, they dared not challenge him directly. He was well known as a brash and arrogant commander of the Council Guard and a close friend of the Daewar thane, Rughar Delvestone.

“Well, at least we don’t have any arrogant Hylar to deal with on this trip,” Ilbars said, laughing.

“That is a blessing,” Ferro agreed. The two Theiwar snorted appreciatively but continued to say nothing. Ferro picked up a damp stick and began to poke at the fire, stirring up a plume of sparks that rose a few feet into the damp air before they died. Ilbars pulled his cloak closer around his shoulders and shuddered.

“Is it summer yet?” he asked.

“It’s hard to say,” Ferro sighed.

“What a miserable place. I hope the king arrives before dark, if it ever grows completely dark here. I think it is never dark nor light, just this miserable interminable gray.”

The mist seemed to have drawn closer, fading to ghostly outlines of the stunted trees lining the opposite side of the road. Wisps of fog crept along the ground like ethereal serpents, nosing into the scattered tents of the Theiwar and Daewar guards.

“Haven’t we a Theiwar sorcerer who can dispel this fog?” Ilbars asked.

Ferro shook his head in exasperation then looked up as they heard a sentry shout in challenge. After a few moments, a Theiwar scout hurried toward their campfire. Long strands of dank gray hair hung over his face, and droplets of oily water clung to his beard. His boots were spattered with black mud, his cloak tattered and filthy. He knelt beside Ferro to deliver his report, ignoring Captain Ilbars for the moment.

“A large force is approaching from the north—” the scout said in a hurried whisper.

“I am in command here,” Ilbars angrily interrupted.

The scout glanced disdainfully at the captain, but Ferro nodded his head. His lips curled in a sneer, the scout continued his report, now to Captain Ilbars. “They are not more than a league away.”

“How many?”

“I could not tell in the mist. It was a large force, more than two score,” the scout answered.

“That will be the king’s company,” Ferro said, rising from the fire and straightening the short sword hanging at his belt. “I anticipated his arrival within the hour.”

“You might have told me that you had information as to the king’s schedule,” Ilbars said to Ferro.

The Daergar ignored him, instead dismissing the scout and ordering the Theiwar guards to prepare for the king’s arrival. Before he had finished, several tents were already being collapsed and packed away.

Ilbars watched the activity in a confused fury. The Council of Thanes had sent him, after all. Ferro Dunskull was merely an advisor of scouts attached to his command by Thane Jungor Stonesinger. Yet ever since they had left the north gate of Thorbardin, the insufferable Daergar had acted as though he were in command. Ferro had chosen the location of their encampment in what Ilbars suspected was the most sodden and desolate part of The Bog, long leagues from Thorbardin. They might have awaited the king’s arrival back in the foothills surrounding the mountain, high up above the stink of the bog and with good solid stone to rest their backs against. Against his better judgment, he had allowed the Daergar to lead them into this reeking morass, to make their camp amid the mud and the flies and the serpents.

Ferro reappeared from the mist, followed by Ilbars’s personal guard of six Daewar warriors. The captain approached him angrily, thrusting out his curly beard.

“I am in command here,” he said.

“Of course you are, Captain. I shall see to the arrangement of the Theiwar troops while you take your warriors to greet our king and show him the way to our encampment,” Ferro said hurriedly. He ducked into a tent then reappeared wearing a steel helmet with a bronze nasal and silver rivets.

“I shall go ahead and welcome the king while you remain here,” Ilbars said to him.

Ferro bowed deferentially then hurried off to continue his supervision of the packing. Satisfied, Ilbars ordered his six guards into line and marched off into the mist.

When they had gone, Ferro paused, listening. At a sharp word, the other Theiwar ceased their bustling activities and lined up in defensive ranks, hands on their weapons, faces staring grimly along the path Captain Ilbars and his guards had taken.

Ilbars marched at the head of his company, his heavy boots slogging through the muck, pleased to have left Ferro Dunskull behind. He didn’t like sharing the glory with anyone, especially a Daergar—not that there was much glory to be gleaned from this ceremonial duty. Still, the king would probably welcome the sight of a friendly face appearing unexpectedly as if by magic out of the gloomy mist, welcoming him home from his long and dangerous journey.

He was within earshot of Tarn’s company before he remembered why the king had gone in the first place—to rescue the Qualinesti elves. Ilbars reminded himself to be sure and ask the king how everything had gone. Not that it really mattered. The elves were no concern of his.

Hearing the clank of armor approaching through the fog, the captain stopped his company and searched the road for a dry spot in which to kneel before the king. There wasn’t one, and he supposed that a sweeping bow would have to satisfy the demands of protocol. He planted himself in the center of the road, his warriors arranged in a line behind him, their weapons held in salute, while he twitched his cloak out of a puddle and tried to brush the mud from his leather vest.

Looking up with a broad smile splitting his beard, he saw a large group of shadowy figures approaching through the mist. Being Daewar, he did not share his Daergar and Theiwar cousins’ ability to see the outline of heat that surrounded any living body, and at first he couldn’t put his finger on it, but then it occurred to him that they were too tall, considerably taller than most dwarves.

“Elves!” he muttered in disgust. “I hope the king hasn’t brought a bunch of elves along. He’s too generous, really.”

His warriors shuffled nervously. One of them cleared his throat and said, “Captain, I’m not so sure…”

His voice trailed off as the mist parted, revealing a rank of armored reptilian creatures with leering faces and loaded crossbows poised for firing. At sight of the dwarves, they loosed a volley, cutting down half of Ilbars’s force in one swipe.

“Draconians!” the Daewar captain shouted, stumbling over one of his fallen guards.

He fell facedown in the muck as another volley of crossbow bolts shrieked over his head. He struggled to his knees and tore frantically at his sheathed sword. Suddenly, a silver-scaled, clawed foot sank into the mud between his knees. Ilbars looked up, his sword half drawn, blinking through the muddy water running into his eyes, as the screams of his dying comrades shrilled in his ears.

9

Ferro turned and watched the faces of his Theiwar soldiers as the first cries of battle sounded through the thick mist. He was pleased to see sly grins spread across many of their faces, though a few looked as though they suffered a bad taste in their mouths. He had selected this band because he knew they could be trusted so long as they were sufficiently compensated. Among his own clan, Ferro couldn’t be sure who might be on the payroll of their thane, Shahar Bellowsmoke. Shahar would not approve of what he was doing this day, not that the thane had a weak stomach for assassination. He was Daergar, after all, and Daergar drank intrigue with their mothers’ milk.

No, Shahar would oppose it because Tarn’s premature death would help Jungor Stonesinger. Jungor wanted to return Thorbardin to its old ways, to its old hierarchies of the clans. For centuries, the Hylar had been the lords of Thorbardin. With the support of their Daewar lackeys, they had relegated the powerful and ancient Daergar clan to an inferior status, even calling them “dark dwarves,” along with the magic-using Theiwar.

Two things had changed all that. The Chaos War had so decimated the population of Thorbardin that no clan was powerful enough to rule over the others, and had any tried, they might have warred their race into oblivion. The Daewar revolt and exodus back to the ancient dwarf home of Thoradin, led by Severus Stonehand several years after the Chaos War, had left the remaining Hylar without their strongest allies. Historically, the Theiwar and Daergar had been too suspicious of one another to band together against the Hylar and Daewar. With most of the Daewar gone, the Hylar were left even more vulnerable than before.

After the Daewar exodus, Tarn had welcomed dwarves of all clans to join him in the new city he was carving from the ruins of the North Gate complex—the least-damaged portion of Thorbardin after the destruction of the forces of Chaos. Most dwarves had gladly accepted. The Chaos dragons that had attacked their mountain stronghold had so undermined the foundations of all the dwarven cities that they were literally crumbling around their ears. Even Hybardin, the great city of the Hylar, carved from a huge stalactite that hung over the Urkhan Sea, had been abandoned after large sections had broken off and fallen, taking hundreds of Hylar to their deaths—including Belicia Slateshoulders, Tarn’s betrothed.

Ferro knew that his thane would oppose his actions on behalf of Jungor Stonesinger. He also knew that with Jungor Stonesinger as high thane of Thorbardin, there might be a new thane of the Daergar. He nodded to his Theiwar mercenaries and drew his own blade before turning back to the road.

In the misty distance, the horrible sound of slaughter gradually diminished. Soon, dark figures appeared on the road, crouching and slinking forward through the fog. In a low voice, Ferro ordered the Theiwar to hold their ground but take no further action. After a few seconds, the draconian scouts disappeared. Silent minutes passed, during which the dwarves could only hear the dripping of water or the sigh and gurgle of marsh gas escaping from the mud.

A shadow appeared from the mist, followed by another, then a dozen. Tall, gangly creatures, reptilian, with batlike wings and long, powerful tails, the draconians approached the dwarves’ camp warily, curved swords in their hands and crossbows at the ready. They were a mixed group wearing a motley collection of armor, shields, and helms scavenged from a dozen battlefields. Their weapons represented nearly every race on Krynn, from a straightbladed Solamnic broadsword, to a dwarfs heavy battleaxe, to a massive club once wielded by an ogre. A few even wore remnants of blue dragonarmor of a style not seen since the War of the Lance.

Their leader stood out among his lesser companions. Unlike the darker-scaled draconians, this one was covered in silvery-gray scales that looked almost white in the foggy twilight. He was taller than any of the others by more than a head, powerfully built, with the scars of countless battles visible on his arms and nightmarish reptilian face. He was dressed in black armor, with an ironblack breastplate covering his chest, but his armor had obviously been made at great cost to fit him snugly. Interlocking leaves of black steel protected his flanks and back while allowing full range of movement for his large silvery wings. He was a sivak, one of the most dangerous of the five races of draconians.

Ferro warily watched the draconian brigade approach, softly encouraging his warriors to hold their positions and to make no sudden moves. As they neared the camp, several of the smaller draconians disappeared into the swamp to either side of the road. Ferro guessed that they were good swimmers, as these wore no armor and carried daggers clamped between their razor-sharp teeth.

This rendezvous was extremely dangerous for the dwarves. The draconians outnumbered the dwarves by almost three to one, and Ferro had no way of knowing how many draconians there truly were. Perhaps there were many others out there in the bog watching them. The foul creatures might decide to go back on their agreement, in which case Ferro and his dwarves would likely be killed to the last dwarf for their armor, weapons, and clothes. Or one of his dwarves might speak something out of place, offend one of the draconians, and start a battle that had no end. He was thankful he’d had the forethought to hire Theiwar mercenaries, who did not share the hotheaded nature of their Daergar cousins.

The sivak leader of the draconians stopped a spear’s throw from the camp and peered ahead with his black, soulless eyes. No one spoke, and the draconians made no move to approach closer. Finally, Ferro sheathed his sword and swallowed in a throat suddenly parched dry as the Plains of Dust then stepped toward the draconians, empty hands raised palms outward. At his movement, a dozen crossbows were turned to train their sights on him. His step hesitated for only a moment before he muttered, “Ah, to the Abyss with it,” and walked boldly forward.

“Welcome, General Zen. I trust you had no trouble on the road,” the Daergar said in affected friendliness.

The sivak hissed in amusement and stepped out to greet Ferro, reaching out one huge clawed hand to clasp the dwarfs smaller one. Ferro winced at the draconian’s strength, but continued to smile through gritted teeth.

“It was as you said it would be,” General Zen said in a voice that slithered like scales scraping over stone. He released the Daergar’s grip and made a sharp motion with his hand toward his company of draconians. Ferro tensed until he saw them lower their weapons and appear to relax, though they remained well outside the camp. The ones who had slipped off the road still hadn’t reappeared.

“I killed the loud one,” Zen said as he stepped past Ferro and approached the fire near the Daergar’s tent.

“Excellent,” Ferro said nervously as he followed the draconian. Zen stopped near the fire and spread his huge powerful wings, stretching them out to catch the heat from the glowing coals. Ferro ducked under the draconian’s wings and moved to the other side of the fire.

“Won’t you come into my tent so that we may discuss… things,” he said.

The lids of the draconian’s eyes lowered, and his black eyes seemed to grow somehow blacker. Folding up his wings, he stooped through the low opening of the tent. Ferro squeezed in behind him and tugged a cord, loosening the flap and allowing it to fall over the opening, closing them in.

There was hardly enough room for the huge draconian to turn around. Zen crouched opposite the cot, his folded wings scraping noisily against the canvas wall every time he moved. An oil lamp sat on the floor, smoking heavily in the damp air. The only other furnishings in the tent were a large leather chest studded with silver rivets sitting in the middle of the tent floor and a long wooden coffer lying in one corner with the lid thrown back, revealing a variety of dwarf-made weapons. Zen eyed these with undisguised envy. His own troop’s armaments weren’t half as good as these extras that the Daergar had brought along out of habit.

Ferro sat on the cot and realized that he was closer to the draconian than he cared to be, but there was no choice now. In any case, he made an effort to keep one hand near his sword at all times. He’d never before had an opportunity to observe a draconian so closely, and what he saw only increased his nervousness. The creature’s black eyes seemed to look at him as though he were some choice morsel that it might consume, its teeth superbly designed for ripping flesh. The sivak was easily twice his size.

Part of his warrior training had taught him how to defeat much larger opponents. Nearly everything on Krynn was larger than a dwarf. As dwellers of the deep earth, the Daergar had to learn how to defeat hobgoblins, ogres, trolls, giants, and any number of much larger and more powerful opponents. Ferro was no shabby swordsman. He had beaten opponents larger even than this draconian. Nonetheless Zen’s draconic features, his scaly flesh and batlike wings, would inspire fear in even the doughtiest warrior. It was said that all draconians had hidden abilities, magical powers of a surprising nature, and that they could kill even after they were dead.

Ferro didn’t have to wait for the draconian to begin the dialogue. Straight and to the point, Zen said, “You did not ask me to bring my gang here to kill that fool we met on the road.”

Ferro nodded, appreciative of the draconian’s businesslike manner. There was no guile in this creature, he could see that as plain as the end of his nose. The draconian was used to taking orders, a creature bred to the mercenary life, something Ferro could well understand, having dealt more often that he cared to remember with members of the Daewar clan-dwarves like Ilbars Bleakfell. Ferro wondered what had become of their hapless leader, but he thought it better not to ask. The draconian’s fangs were not made for idle talk or chewing quith-pa (a form of elvish dry rations composed, according to the dwarves who had been forced to eat it, of bark and twigs).

“Indeed, I did not. My agents hired you for a greater purpose. I need you to kill a certain dwarf,” Ferro said.

Zen glanced at the weapons locker lying in the corner. “I do not think you need our help just to kill a certain dwarf,” he said shrewdly.

“Naturally, his death cannot be traced back to me,” the Daergar amended.

Now the draconian nodded his great silver-scaled head. “I understand,” Zen said. “Who is to be killed?”

“The king of Thorbardin, Tarn Bellowgranite,” Ferro answered. He watched the draconian’s face for any betrayal of surprise, but if the creature was taken off guard by the enormity of his task, it did not show. The draconian merely closed his black eyes and nodded again.

“And in return… ?” Zen said, his voice trailing off inquisitively.

Ferro leaned forward and threw back the lid of the leather chest sitting in the middle of the floor, revealing a treasure of steel and gold coins. Zen only looked at the coins for a moment, blinking with boredom.

“Money,” he hissed as though he had swallowed something sour.

“If not money, then what?” Ferro asked sharply.

Without pausing, the draconian stated, “There is an abandoned fortress north of here. We passed it on our way from Newsea.”

“Zhaman?” the Daergar asked in surprise.

“It looks like a human skull,” Zen said.

“The humans call it Skullcap. It was once a Tower of High Sorcery, but it was largely destroyed during the Dwarfgate Wars. No one has lived there for hundreds of years,” Ferro said, “except the ghosts.”

“The spirits of humans and dwarves do not concern us,” Zen scoffed.

Ferro asked, “What do you want with that haunted ruin? My masters will not agree if you plan to use it as a base of operations to raid dwarven lands.”

“I have been wandering the face of Krynn since I left the egg,” Zen explained, “always taking commands from others, fighting someone else’s wars. Now I have a band of stout lads under my own command. I want a base, a place to defend. We will not raid to the south.”

“If you’d rather have some tumbled-down old fortress than a chest full of coins, that’s your business. My masters will see to it that you are not harassed in the fortress by dwarf war parties, so long as you do not raid our lands,” Ferro said.

Nodding, the draconian extended his large clawed hand in a curiously human gesture, betraying the long years he had spent among them. Ferro reluctantly shook it, inwardly cringing at the scaly texture of the creature’s reptilian flesh.

Withdrawing his hand from the draconian’s grasp, Ferro closed the chest and pulled a scroll from his leather vest. He unrolled it and laid it atop the chest. It was a map of The Bog, with all its waterways and twisting paths and deathtraps precisely drawn to scale. Down its middle wandered a dark line that was the road. Pressing his finger against a certain spot, he said, “You will be able to ambush the king’s party here.”

A sudden burst of laughter interrupted his train of thought. Lifting the tent flap, he saw that the larger body of draconians had entered the camp and were now passing around a bottle of dwarf spirits that the Theiwar had produced. The brotherhood of mercenaries is universal, he thought.

Ferro turned back to the map and continued, “The road is narrow here, with shallow bogs on either side where your group can hide.”

General Zen leaned over and examined the map, nodding. “I will approach the king alone,” he said. “After I kill him, the others will attack and destroy their force to the last dwarf.”

Ferro intended to ask how Zen proposed to get close enough to the king to kill him, but he froze, his jaws snapping shut, at what happened next. The huge, silver-scaled draconian suddenly began to shrink before his eyes. At the same time, his scales receded into his skin and his reptilian features transformed into the likeness of a dwarf. In moments, the Daewar captain Ilbars Bleakfell stood before him, identical in every way to the dwarf Ferro knew was dead, from the top of his shaggy brown head to the decorative tooling on his boots.

10

The first half of the journey from Pax Tharkas had been uneventful.

An hour or so ahead of their baggage train, Tarn, Otaxx, and Mog had reached an ancient well near the ruined fortress of Zhaman, halfway between Thorbardin and Pax Tharkas. Otaxx had been collecting supplies for Thorbardin for some months, and their train of mules and ox-drawn wagons carried a small fortune in iron ore, Abanasinian grain, timber, and bolts of close-woven woolen cloth.

The dwarves did not approach the ruins any nearer than the well. Zhaman was said to be haunted. Long ago, it had been a fortress of the Conclave of Wizards, one of their places of study and training. Zhaman was far removed from human lands, and so the wizards found it a convenient laboratory for their more arcane and bizarre experiments, ones too dangerous to conduct near populated areas.

In the years before the Cataclysm, the wizards abandoned their fortress as they retreated from the persecution of the Kingpriest of Istar. For a hundred years after the Cataclysm, Zhaman had stood empty, until the archmage Fistandantilus led an army against Thorbardin during a time later known as the Dwarfgate Wars. While hill dwarves and humans battled the armies of Thorbardin on the Plains of Dergoth, Fistandantilus loosed powerful magic that not only destroyed both armies, but also Zhaman, and himself along with it. So mighty was this magical explosion that the plains had sunken and become The Bog, while the towers of Zhaman collapsed upon themselves and melted into the fearful skull-like visage that it now bore.

Tarn and his company had made camp an hour before sundown near the large ancient well in the hills north of The Bog. From their campfire, they could see Zhaman in the middle distance, while some distance behind it loomed the great profile of their mountain home. Even before they had finished setting up tents around the well, a runner arrived with news that the wagon train was under attack. The king and his company of more than a hundred dwarf warriors grabbed their weapons and arrived in time to drive off a party of goblin archers who had pinned down the trains in a narrow defile, killing most of the mules and oxen while the dwarves took cover under their wagons. Mog led a band of Klar into the hills and easily drove the goblins away without further losses, but the attack left them without the means to transport their supplies. Otaxx was loath to leave such valuable goods behind, but Tarn was moody and impatient to hasten his return to Thorbardin. He wouldn’t allow the general to send to Pax Tharkas for more beasts of burden, and in the end, the dwarves themselves took the supplies and divided them up to carry on their backs. Only the timber was abandoned, along with the wagons.

This added burden severely slowed their progress through The Bog the next day. Tarn had originally planned to traverse it in a single march and arrive back at Thorbardin before nightfall, but storms had soaked the perpetually waterlogged ground and turned some sections of the road into an oozing morass. With their heavy burdens, the dwarves were forced to slog forward at a snail’s pace, further deepening Tarn’s black mood. They were still some distance from the foothills when the sun began to sink into the mists above the swamp.

Already deeply concerned about the risk of passing through The Bog, Mog watched the sun fade into the fog with growing alarm. He had no desire to make camp in the swamp, but traveling through this place after dark was more dangerous. With the majority of Beryl’s forces still unaccounted for, there was no telling what might be lying in ambush on the road ahead.

Not for the first time that day, Mog said, “You run far too great a risk, my king. Let me scout ahead.”

“We’re almost home, Mog,” Tarn growled. “There’s nothing to worry about here. Soon there’ll be good stone beneath our feet and you’ll feel better.”

“That is what concerns me,” his captain said. “They always hit you just when your guard is down.”

“They? Who are they?” Tarn asked. “You are paranoid, my old friend.”

“It’s my job to be paranoid where the king’s safety is concerned. The road here is more muddy than any we’ve seen so far, and I wonder if perhaps some large force has passed this way already. We’re almost home now, and if I were lying in ambush, this is where I’d set my trap. Look how the road narrows up ahead. At least allow me to scout there.”

“There is no need. Someone has already scouted it for us.” As Tarn said this, a lone dwarf emerged from the fog and strode briskly toward them. “Maybe this stranger knows who churned the mud,” he said.

Mog called a halt to await the newcomer’s approach. Because he was a dwarf, Tarn’s guards kept their weapons sheathed but ready. Mog’s axe, however, never left his hand. He held it at his side and watched the stranger struggle and stumble through the mud, curses exploding from his lips every time he nearly fell. Finally he was close enough for all to see his face.

“Ilbars Bleakfell,” Mog said in surprise. “How did they get you to stick your nose outside the Gates of Thorbardin? This is a rare day!”

Ilbars nodded curtly to Mog and continued his approach. “I was sent to welcome the king back to Thorbardin and to ease his journey,” he said to Tarn, stopping a moment to deliver a sweeping bow. “Our camp is not far ahead.”

“Ah, very good,” Tarn said. He extended his hand to the Daewar captain. Ilbars strode forward to greet him, but suddenly Mog stepped in front of him, blocking the Daewar’s progress with his axe.

“Mog, what—” Tarn barked as the Klar seized him and pushed him to his knees. Ilbars stopped short, a snarl of anger forming on his face.

At that moment, bowstrings twanged from either side of the road, and Mog pushed Ilbars away.

“Draconians!” the Klar shouted as arrows and crossbow bolts clanged and pinged off the dwarves’ armor and shields. Two of Tarn’s guards dropped immediately, the swarm of arrows having found chinks in their armor. The others quickly formed into a circle around the thane, their round shields locked together, as more arrows poured into them.

Mog shielded Tarn with his own body, grunting as arrows pummeled his mailed back. Tarn swore and cursed at him to let him up, to let him fight, but the captain maintained his protective position. Another volley of arrows tore through their ranks, dropping three more dwarves. The others closed up the spaces, drawing back to tighten their circle around the thane. They hunkered behind their shields beneath the relentless rain of arrows. Scrambling to find protection, Ilbars picked up a shield from a fallen dwarf and crouched behind it, swearing furiously as he inched closer to the king.

Under cover of their missile fire, draconians began to climb up out of the bog onto the road, crawling up through the mud with their swords in their teeth. These were the smallest of their kind, known as baaz, a race of cruel and rapacious fighters. Without even waiting to form ranks, they assaulted the dwarves’ defensive circle, throwing themselves into the chaotic fray. As the first baaz crashed into the dwarven circle of shields, the last volley of arrows fell among both friend and foe, and kapak draconians appeared from the swamp to join in the assault. This species of draconians poisoned their blades with spittle before entering battle.

Quietly, Mog loosed his hold on the thane, pointing. A dwarf to their right fell, his head split to the teeth by a draconian sword, opening a space in their ranks. With a nod to the king, Mog threw himself into the empty space, his axe flashing out, separating the draconian’s head from its neck in one blow. Its body slumped to the ground and immediately turned to stone.

Tarn quickly clambered to his feet. A good head taller than any of the other dwarves in his company, he could see the whole battle from his protected position within the circle. Still, this made him an obvious target, and he knocked aside one spear with his sword, while trying to figure out his best move. All around him, his dwarves were battling furiously, some of them engaging two or three opponents at once. In one glance, he knew that they couldn’t last for very long. More and more draconians were climbing onto the road, while his dwarves were slowly being cut down before his eyes. Ilbars Bleakfell rose up beside him, sword drawn, and eyes blazing.

Then a gap opened as a dwarf fell with a spear through his heart. Tarn grabbed Ilbars by the shoulder and rudely thrust the surprised dwarf into the gap. He turned and looked back the way they had come. There didn’t appear to be as many draconians attacking from the rear. He might be able to slip out of this trap, but only if he acted swiftly, before the draconians cut off their escape route.

Tarn was about to shout orders that would shift his dwarves into a column when he heard words of magic being chanted.

“Wizard!” he shouted, seeking out the source of the eerie words.

Too late, he saw the bozak draconian standing at the road’s edge, its brown robes caked with mud. The creature lifted its hands, and as it did so Tarn threw himself to the muddy ground. Crying in surprise and rage, nearly a third of Tarn’s dwarves suddenly found themselves engulfed in thick sticky strands of web.

Tarn scrambled to his feet, brushing clinging fibers from his arm and beard. Mog was instantly at his side, pulling him away from the battle. Half the draconians attacked the entrapped and helpless dwarves, slaughtering them mercilessly. The other draconians surged toward Tarn and the others, who had fallen back in disorder at the actions of the magic-user.

Tarn barked a quick series of commands that brought the dwarves together in an inverted V shape just in time. The bozak came up, already casting another spell. Tarn braced himself and shouted for shields to be raised. Two bolts of white energy exploded from the draconian’s fingertips and streaked toward Tarn. Brave Mog threw himself into their path, but the gesture was futile, as the bolts wove past him and the shields to strike Tarn full in the chest. They seemed to burn through both layers of his armor, searing into his flesh like gouts of molten metal. He sank to one knee, screaming in agony.

Mog stared in horror at his fallen thane then turned, his face flushing crimson. He knew that the bozak must be stopped, but the few dwarves who had been armed with crossbows had long since switched to axes or hammers. Casting about, he saw a spear lying half trampled in the mud. Jerking it free, he hefted it and rushed the advancing draconian line.

Those draconians who had shields lifted them to their shoulders, but Mog halted halfway and flung his spear. It sailed over their heads and thudded into the bozak magic-user’s chest. So forceful was Mog’s throw that the head of the spear burst out a good arm’s length from the creature’s back. Its eyes widened in surprise as it clutched the shaft and staggered forward.

Mog then dropped back, ordering the others to retreat. He quickly reached Tarn’s side and lifted his gasping thane under one arm, retrieving his war axe with his free hand. Tarn struggled to stand on his own feet, even as the smell of his own burning flesh filled his nostrils. Nevertheless, he fought through the pain. He didn’t have the luxury of hurting.

Meanwhile, the dying bozak, clutching the spear that transfixed its body, wasn’t done. It half ran, half staggered toward the dwarves, its hideous reptilian mouth champing a bloody froth. The other draconians parted to let it pass, then closed ranks and held their ground. The dwarves at the head of the inverted V eagerly awaited the bozak magic-user, and, when the wounded creature got close enough, swarmed forward and hacked him to pieces. Strangely the other draconians merely watched their leader die under the dwarven axes. Blinking through the pain, Tarn watched, baffled. It almost seemed that the draconians were smiling.

As the bozak fell to the ground, its flesh instantly turned to dust, leaving behind a gleaming draconian skeleton. One of the dwarves stooped to retrieve Mog’s spear, dragging it free of the hollow rib cage. At that instant, the bones exploded violently. The dwarf stooping over it vanished in a glowing golden ball of fire, his gore spattering the survivors. Others were flung back, their bodies riddled with bone fragments. The rest fell back in horror, utterly amazed and routed. With a shrill, inhuman cry, the draconians charged again. They fell upon the confused and dazed dwarves like wolves among thunderstruck sheep, slaughtering left and right.

Mog battled valiantly to keep them away from his injured thane. There seemed no end to the draconians. They swept around the surviving dwarves, cutting off their retreat. At last there were only four dwarves, drawn together shoulder to shoulder, Mog, Tarn, and two young Klar warriors barely into their beards. Their swords and axes wove a deadly net of steel that piled stony baaz corpses about their feet. Tarn thrust his blade through the chest of one and failed to withdraw it quickly enough. As the draconian fell, its body turned to stone, trapping Tarn’s sword and yanking it from his grasp. He quickly picked up a curved draconian blade.

After the initial onslaught, the baaz draconians fell back a pace from the four dwarves. Then several kapaks came forward, armed with crossbows. Neither Tarn nor Mog had a shield, and of their two young companions, one’s life was quickly escaping through a spear wound in his thigh. Yet this young one grimly stood his ground and raised his shield to protect his king with the last of his strength. Tarn gripped the unfamiliar sword, all the dark rage of his mother’s Daergar blood rising in him. His chest wound forgotten, his neck muscles standing out like cords, he prepared himself for his last moments on Krynn. Unbidden, the memory of his wife, Crystal Heathstone, came to his mind. Her face seemed to float before him, smiling in that particular way of hers. He laughed suddenly, emboldened.

Mog joined him, a sudden bellow of unbridled mirth erupting from his lips, as though somehow he had shared Tarn’s vision. Tarn looked at him as though the Klar warrior had lost his mind. Then he heard what Mog had heard, and now the king’s laughter changed to a cry of challenge. The draconians paused and with furrowed brows, looked north.

11

Ferro’s face drained of blood, leaving his pale skin an even more sickly shade than before. He watched in utter horror, unable to tear his gaze away. The slaughter was terrible to behold.

The draconians had slain all but four of the dwarves—unfortunately not Tarn, nor his captain, and two Klar guards wearing the livery of Pax Tharkas. They had the four surrounded, and kapaks were just about to end the king’s life in a hail of heavy crossbow bolts. But then… !

Disaster was too small a word to describe it. Ferro turned to the Theiwar scout who had just brought the bad news and, drawing his dagger, plunged it furiously into the scout’s throat. The other Theiwar warriors shifted uncomfortably as one of their own was murdered before their eyes.

Ferro turned to the others, hissing, “Why didn’t anyone warn me that Otaxx Shortbeard was following with half the warriors in Pax Tharkas? What do I pay you people for?”

There was no time for any reply.

The roar of the charging dwarves shook droplets of water from the surrounding trees. As quickly as Tarn’s small band of dwarves had been decimated by the larger draconian force, now the draconians were falling back in disarray. Leaderless, baaz joined with baaz and kapak with kapak, fighting as two separate forces against the united might of Otaxx’s Hylar and Daewar force. A wedge of dwarf fighters drove between the two groups of draconians. The baaz were forced into the swamp, where they were quickly slaughtered or drowned, dragged down by their armor. The kapaks managed to hold together and retreat along the road, directly toward Ferro and his Theiwar mercenaries.

“We’re in a tight place!” the Daergar exclaimed in frustration. He removed his helm and ran his fingers through his oily black hair, pushing the dank locks back from his face before settling the helm securely on his pate. “If Tarn and the others catch us here, they’re sure to suspect we were involved.”

“We could run,” one of the Theiwar said, voicing the opinion of his fellows.

Ferro looked at him as though he were a stone that had suddenly found its voice and spoken. The fellow shrugged nervously and glanced toward the fighting. “Or we could hunker down and try to hide here.”

“Great god below, can you be any more stupid?” Ferro almost shrieked. “Be my guest, run for it. If you aren’t seen, our campsite certainly will be found, whether we run for it or hide. They’ll wonder who was camped there, and as soon as they reach Thorbardin, they’ll know. The plan was for us to arrive too late to save Tarn and then to barely escape with our lives.” He looked back up the road toward the fighting, which was drawing ever closer. “We’re in a tight spot for sure,” he muttered.

The kapaks were holding together, and they fought valiantly. Wherever one fell beneath a dwarven weapon, its body quickly dissolved into a large pool of acid, which slowed the dwarves’ assault somewhat, since the road was extremely narrow here. Ferro and his band of Theiwar crouched in the underbrush at the road’s margin, watching hopelessly.

“There’s nothing for it,” Ferro said. “We can’t just sit here. When the draconians draw near, we’ll rush out and attack them from behind. I’ll deal with Tarn’s questions afterwards. I should be able handle him. Make sure you leave no draconian alive. There can’t even be one survivor to expose us. Do you understand?”

The Theiwar nodded, faces set in grim lines as they watched the retreating draconian line. Ferro glared at them, looking for any sign of weakness or second thoughts. He saw none but added for good measure, “I certainly hope you do understand. If Tarn finds out about us, I hate to think what his Klar will do to your families.”

Ferro smiled to see the look of desperate determination on their faces now. The Klar clan had been fiercely loyal to Tarn ever since the days after the Chaos War, when he had forgiven the very people who had slaughtered so many of his father’s clan. In the ruins of the war’s aftermath, a great and lasting friendship had blossomed between Tarn and the Klar thane, Tufa Bloodeye. The new Klar thane, Glint Ettinhammer, had renewed that friendship when he took his seat on the Council eight years ago. The Klar were among Tarn’s most resolute supporters.

As a race, though, the Klar were also known to be unstable at times. It was as though Reorx had formed their brains of different stuff than the other clans. Even Tarn could not control them completely. They were known to avenge him even against those he himself had already forgiven. The thought of their families falling into the hands of blood-mad Klar slayers caused the Theiwar mercenaries to take their task with utmost seriousness. An hour ago they had shared dwarf spirits with some of those draconians. Now they were ready to stab them in the backs without mercy.

Tarn’s powerful voice rose above the din of battle, shouting for the surviving draconians’ surrender. The kapaks continued to fight as they retreated. Ferro realized that the creatures might see the futility of their situation and throw down their weapons at any moment, something he couldn’t allow to happen. Drawing his short sword, he leaped into the road, his Theiwar troops silently pouring out behind him. Ferro plunged his weapon into the nearest kapak’s back and ripped upwards, shearing through muscle and bone. The creature fell and immediately began to dissolve into a pool of acid. Ferro jumped back as his Theiwar slammed into the rear ranks of the astonished draconians. In seconds, all met similar fates.

Ferro and his Theiwar warriors picked a path through the steaming pools of acid left behind wherever a kapak had died, slogging forward to meet Otaxx’ss surprised force. He saw Tarn at the rear being tended by a healer, and Tarn’s captain, Mog Bonecutter, crawling through the mud and the bodies, looking for survivors. Other dwarves were busy clearing the road or retrieving weapons from the stony corpses of slain baaz draconians.

Then, to Ferro’s amazement, Ilbars Bleakfell appeared, his shaggy hair and beard matted with white spiderwebs. Ilbars strode purposely toward Ferro, an axe dripping with draconian blood in his fist. Ferro stepped back in alarm, knowing the draconian general would be furious at his apparent double-cross. He hesitated, unable to figure out how to expose the sivak without explaining how he could see through the draconian’s disguise.

“Ferro Dunskull!” Zen shouted in Ilbars’s voice. Tarn looked up from the bandages being wound about his chest wound.

“What took you so long?” Ilbars demanded. “They very nearly killed the king!”

Ferro’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. What kind of game was this sivak playing?

Mog hurried up, his face curious. “How did you survive, Captain Ilbars?” the Klar captain asked. “I saw you engulfed in webs and hacked to pieces with the others.”

“I tripped as the spell was cast. Dead bodies piled on top of me before I could rise. The draconians must have assumed I was already dead. I only just managed to extricate myself,” Ilbars said as he brushed spiderwebs from his beard.

“You were very lucky,” Ferro said in a voice dripping with menace.

“Yes, I am blessed with an abundance of luck,” Ilbars/Zen responded. “That’s how I’ve survived this long in such a hostile world.”

Mog watched this exchange with curiosity, but he had no time to give it deep thought. Day was swiftly turning to night, and the fog was growing thicker by the minute. He didn’t know how many more draconians might be out there in the swamp, and he would shave his beard before he’d allow the thane to spend the night here. He hurried away, shouting orders for the bodies of the fallen dwarves to be gathered and prepared for transport home to the mountain. Otaxx already had a dozen dwarves lashing spears together to make stretchers for the dead and injured.

Behind his back, Ilbars and Ferro exchanged venomous glances. The draconian seemed to be daring the Daergar to betray him. Knowing there was nothing he could do, at least not at the moment, Ferro bit his tongue and stalked away.

12

Tarn refused to be carried into Thorbardin, though Mog and Otaxx argued all the way to the mountain’s door. The entrance into Thorbardin was made to look like the rock surrounding it, so that when it was closed, it was invisible to those who did not know its secret. The morning of Tarn’s return, the massive valve, several feet thick, had already been opened. Hundreds of dwarves crowded the streets near the gate, awaiting their king. A drum and pipe band stood just within the entrance. Their enormous bronze kettledrums looked more like weapons of war than instruments of music.

But though they had come prepared for a celebration, the mood swiftly darkened upon Tarn’s approach. Tarn had insisted that those slain in the battle with the draconians, and those too wounded to walk, should proceed ahead of him into the mountain. These long lines of litters dampened the spirits of the crowd, and so did the walking wounded. They were followed by the soldiers from Pax Tharkas, many of them returning home for the first time in years.

Last of all came Tarn, walking slowly and grimly, with Mog, Otaxx, Ferro, and Ilbars in attendance. Tarn’s face was pale from the wound to his chest, but also from the deeper wound to his soul. The people had come expecting a triumphant return, with the king leading his army of thousands. Fewer than a hundred actually passed through the gates of Thorbardin, and most of those returning were either wounded or carrying some wounded or dead member of their party. Many of those waiting at the gate shook their heads in dismay. “So few?” some muttered. Others hoped that the majority of the army was still in the forest, helping the elves hunt down the last of Beryl’s army. But most realized that to be a vain and empty hope. They began to grumble among themselves.

Once through the gate, the survivors entered a broad hall carved into the heart of the mountain. Streets, alleys, and doors opened into it at regular intervals, and windows lined the way, filled with dwarven faces staring down at them anxiously. Tarn ordered the gate closed, while the various groups quickly split up—the wounded toward the houses of healing, those bearing the dead toward the clan centers where their families were already gathering to claim them. Otaxx led the soldiers from Pax Tharkas to temporary guard quarters on the third level. Tarn, accompanied by Mog and a small squad of guards, followed the wounded. Ilbars stuck close to Tarn. Ferro was not far behind.

Tarn’s new city of Norbardin was not so grand and humbling as the cities it sought to replace. Before the Chaos War, all the different clans had had their own cities scattered around the great cavern and underground sea that lay at the heart of the mountain. The Daergar had lived in Daerbardin, far to the south across the black Urkhan Sea, while the Daewar inhabited Daebardin on the sea’s eastern shore. The Hylar, hereditary rulers of Thorbardin, lived in a magnificent city carved from an enormous stalactite that hung over the Urkhan Sea. Called the Life Tree of the Hylar, it had been one of the marvels and wonders of all Krynn. But now the Life Tree was dead, most of it having broken off and fallen into the sea following the Chaos War. Chaos dragons of fire had burned tunnels through the solid rock, weakening it structurally until it could no longer hold its own weight.

Tarn had carved his new city from the area known as the North Gate complex. Once its halls and galleries had served to house those guarding the North Gate of Thorbardin, and for hundreds of years it had remained largely unoccupied except for a few soldiers, for once the massive gate of Thorbardin was closed, the mountain was virtually impregnable to assault. Under Tarn’s direction, the dwarves had expanded the halls and houses, built shops and markets, and carved new tunnels into the stone. But most of the new construction consisted of filling the vast area known as the Anvil’s Echo with new warehouses, barracks, strongholds, residences, and butteries. The Echo had once been a vast pit crossed by a narrow bridge. But the dwarves’ immediate need following the Chaos War was for living space, and the Anvil’s Echo had first served as a refugee camp, then gradually the temporary structures were replaced with permanent ones. The soaring bridge had fallen during the war and was never rebuilt. The Anvil’s Echo was now the location of the Daergar and Theiwar quarters of the city, a dark region with close alleys and narrow streets, and high defensive walls separating the people of the two clans. The son of a Daergar mother, Tarn felt as much or more at home here as in the lamplit, glittering marble-paved boulevards of the Hylar section.

There was a new Council Hall to replace the one lost in the ruins of the South Gate complex. New mines had been sunk, providing the dwarves with the metals they needed for their crafts, new caverns opened and cultivated with the mushrooms that were the staple of the mountain dwarf diet.

Such as it was, it was home, but it wasn’t Hybardin, and those who lived here knew it. They knew that they were living in a diminished age, in a time when glories of the past were becoming fading memories. They were comfortable, they were safe, and after the terrible destruction of the Chaos War, that was enough for most.

There were dwarf children playing in the streets as Tarn made his way toward the new Council of Thanes, after seeing that his wounded soldiers were being properly settled in the houses of healing. He refused medical care for himself, for he had one final duty to perform before he found the rest he so sorely craved. But the sight of the children made Tarn smile, for here was the future of his people. Traditionally, dwarves were slow to reproduce; some dwarves never even married—not because of a shortage of mates, but because their standards were often above their stations. In the past, dwarf marriages had been conducted like business dealings, the merger of two families arranged for mutual profit, and no dwarf wished to marry below his or her station, as this was seen as a loss, both of wealth and honor. Naturally, this system produced a disappointing number of marriages and therefore few children, though no one had ever seemed to mind. It helped to keep the dwarves from outgrowing their mountain home.

But so very many dwarves had died in the Chaos War; whole extended families were destroyed in the breath of one dragon, whole clans and all memories of them annihilated by the touch of the horrid shadow wights. Tarn’s mother and father had died, fighting on opposite sides of the battle—Garimeth Bellowsmoke was slain by the daemon warrior leading the forces of Chaos; Baker Whitegranite had been consumed by the magical gem he used to destroy the Chaos armies invading their home. Even after the war, die dying and destruction had continued, as Tarn led the surviving Hylar and Klar back into the mountain and found it held by the survivors of the Daergar and Theiwar clans, who were not ready to quickly give up what they felt :hey had won during the war.

And then, the damage wrought by the chaos dragons continued to take its toll on those still living in the cities. Walls collapsed and floors gave way, killing dozens. Tarn lost that which he held most dear. His fiancée, Belicia Slateshoulders, had died when a section of Hybardin that she and several hundred workers were trying to restore broke off and plunged hundreds of feet to the Urkhan Sea below. It was this incident that prompted Tarn to abandon the old cities and start building a new one out of the North Gate complex. He called his new city Norbardin. Norbardin was everyone’s home now, dwarves of all the clans, but at the same time it never really felt like home, not even after forty years.

So many had died that in the years after the Chaos War, the clans could no longer afford the luxury of hating and distrusting one another. They needed one another just to survive, especially after Severus Stonehand led most of the remaining Daewar on a mad exodus to the ancient dwarven homeland of Thoradin. Now, after nearly forty years, the population of Thorbardin was finally beginning to grow. Dwarves had continued to marry largely within their own clans, but many dwarves were glad to find any eligible mate. The realm had begun to prosper.

There was a whole new generation of young dwarves who had never known the former glory of Thorbardin, however. They experienced it only through the tales of their parents and grandparents. They were strong, having been forged during a time of great hardship, and they were eager to win new glories.

It was this generation that Tarn had led to disaster beneath the elven city of Qualinost. Once more, as he approached the Council of Thanes, the enormity of his failure descended upon him. A generation lost, all because he had been too eager to win honor and glory, too hasty to build a new alliance between the elves and the dwarves. He had abandoned caution when caution might have served him best. He had accepted the swiftest course as the wisest, decided that he who hesitated was lost, for this philosophy had served him well in the past. He had agreed to help the elven king because he was eager to forge new ties with the elves.

He wished now that he had listened to the Council of Thanes and waited to see how the elves’ conflict with Beryl and the Dark Knights would shake out. He had argued that they could not afford to wait, for if the elves were defeated, there would be nothing standing between Thorbardin and the green dragon Beryl. Yet he had never had much hope that Beryl could be stopped. So why had he aided them?

That was the question revolving in his mind as he climbed the broad marble stairs leading up to the old temple of Reorx. His wound bothered him little, if truth be told, but he found the climb arduous. The North Gate’s old temple had been converted into a new Council Hall for the Council of Thanes. Its steps were as broad as a dwarf is tall and rose over forty feet to the columned portico that surrounded it. Six marble walls white as milk rose up to form a towering hexagonal structure, which supported a dome of rose quartz from Qualinesti—likely the last standing structure of that material left on Krynn, now that Qualinost was drowned and destroyed. Each of the six walls contained an entrance into the Grand Gallery, which, like the portico, ran the entire circle of the structure, but on two levels. In the portico and Grand Gallery, dwarven philosophers had once expounded on the mysteries of creation and the nature of law; now they were crowded with dwarves awaiting Tarn’s arrival at the Council of Thanes.

Word had spread quickly through Norbardin. There were no celebratory cheers or derogatory jeers at Tarn’s arrival. The citizens watched in silence as Tarn climbed the steps. Tarn had led them successfully for forty years and the people had trusted his judgment. Without widespread support, especially the support of the younger generation, he couldn’t have mounted such a large operation—delving tunnels beneath Qualinost to aid in the elves’ evacuation from their city. He had betrayed his supporters.

Tarn seemed to have aged a century in the fortnight he had been away from Thorbardin. Though his footsteps never faltered, they were slow, as though each boot were soled with lead. Behind him walked his captain of the guard, Mog Bonecutter, grizzled and wary, with bloodshot eyes staring out of his half-mad Klar face. He bore some large, disk-shaped object wrapped in a travel-stained blanket. The two were accompanied by a strange pair—the Daewar captain of the Council Guard, Ilbars Bleakfell, and a Daergar that most recognized as the master of scouts, Ferro Dunskull. Captain Ilbars seemed oddly nervous, searching the silent crowds as though expecting to see an enemy awaiting him, while Ferro walked slightly behind with his dark eyes glued to Ilbars’s back.

As Tarn reached the top of the stairs and passed into the torchlit portico, the crowd parted, opening the way to the Hylar door into the temple. Each of the clans had its own door—Hylar, Daewar, Daergar, Theiwar, and Klar. The sixth entrance was not an entrance at all—it was actually a false entrance meticulously carved to represent a partially opened door. So cunning was its craftwork that even dwarves often felt compelled to touch it just to disprove the illusion. This door was for the Kingdom of the Dead, and through it only the dead could enter. The door faced the Road of Thanes, a road that led directly from the new Council Hall in Norbardin to the Valley of the Thanes, where the dwarves of Thorbardin buried their dead.

The Aghar, otherwise known as gully dwarves, merited no recognized entrance of their own, though some said that the entrance to the catacombs beneath the temple counted as a seventh door. Certainly, gully dwarves came and went from the Council Hall at will, and through no door that anyone could observe.

Tarn entered the Grand Gallery from the portico and found it thronging with restless dwarves of every clan. The new Council Hall was considerably smaller than the old hall at the South Gate. That place had been built to house thousands of dwarves, while the new hall did well to contain more than five hundred. Those who were too poor or of too low a rank to obtain a seat within were forced to stand in the Grand Gallery or the portico outside and there they could listen to the Council’s proceedings from afar. Tarn had started a new Council Hall beneath the first level of Norbardin near the Shaft of Reorx, but it was not yet complete; in majesty and scope, it was intended to eventually rival the old Council Hall.

The hall was constructed like a great bowl, with six sets of stairs leading down from each entrance to a circular dais at the center. Concentric rings of benches surrounded the dais, climbing up the bowl’s sides. The six stairs divided the Council Hall into sections, and each section was occupied by the most important members of the six clans. Wealthy merchants and craftsmen, generals and captains, guild leaders and dwarves who had won fame or renown filled the benches. The Aghar section, however, was first come, first seated.

Eight chairs were arranged in abroad circle around the edge of the dais, facing inward—six for the thanes of the six clans, one chair for the king, and an empty chair for the unseen representative of the Kingdom of the Dead. Each of the six thanes’ chairs faced their own clan’s section across the dais, and each thane sat with his back to another clan. From the highest to the lowest: the Hylar thane, Jungor Stonesinger, sat with his back to the Aghar section of the audience. Looking like an old bag of dirty laundry, the Aghar thane, Grumple Nagfar, filled the chair before the Hylar section. Shahar Bellowsmoke, thane of the Daergar, nervously sat with his back to the unpredictable Klar audience, while the Klar thane, Glint Ettinhammer, cleaned his nails with a dagger and studiously ignored the black glares of the eighty or so Daergar behind him. Thane of the magic-using Theiwar clan, Brecha Quickspring sat in a chair which was within an easy axestroke of the Daewar clan. The Daewar thane, Rughar Delvestone, sat half turned in his chair so that he could keep one eye on the Theiwar behind his back.

The chair of the king of Thorbardin sat at the bottom of the Hylar stair and faced the entrance of the Kingdom of the Dead, to remind him that all dwarves are mortal. The eighth chair, the empty chair reserved for the dead, sat at the bottom of the stair leading from their door and faced the Hylar entrance and the king. This unique arrangement of chairs, with each thane sitting with his or her back to their traditional clan enemy, was the only new part of the design of the Council Hall and had been imposed at Tarn’s insistence, as a show of faith and brotherhood among all clans.

The ancient altar to Reorx—a great iron anvil on which a flame burned continually, remained at the center of the dais, not because the dwarves expected the temple to be used again one day (Reorx, like the other gods, had willingly departed Krynn in order to save it from Chaos), but because Tarn had never intended to make permanent use of the temple as the new Council Hall. For that reason, he had made no other alterations to the temple, and it stood much as it had since it was first built, uncounted centuries ago. And this was one of the few places that the forces of Chaos never defiled in their attack some forty years ago.

With regret swelling within his heart, Tarn passed through the Great Gallery and entered the Council Hall through the Hylar entrance. He paused at the top of the stairs for a moment. Five hundred silent dwarf countenances were intently turned upon him. He would rather have walked into the fire.

13

Jungor Stonesinger looked up from his musing as the crowd in the Council Hall grew silent. For the first time since he began his rise to the thanedom of the Hylar clan, his spies and informants had failed him. No one had been able to tell him what news—dire or otherwise—Tarn brought home with him from Qualinost. There were rumors aplenty, but Jungor knew that rumors were about as useful as a third boot. His own analysis of the situation as he understood it offered no firm conclusions.

He knew only that Tarn had returned with a small force mostly made up of soldiers from Pax Tharkas; he knew that Tarn brought with him several dozen dead and injured dwarves, and that he himself had been injured in some way, though not severely. But one could draw two completely contradictory conclusions from this:

That Tarn and the elves had been utterly defeated and Tarn was returning with his tail between his legs, bringing the few survivors and the bodies of those survivors who had died along the way. Or:

That Tarn and the elves had been utterly victorious, as evidenced by the low number of returning casualties. So great had been the victory, perhaps, that Tarn had replaced much of the garrison at Pax Tharkas with soldiers from his expeditionary army, and returned to Thorbardin with the Pax Tharkas garrison, many of whom had not been home in many months.

If the first was true, then where were the other dwarves of Tarn’s army? Jungor had a low opinion of Tarn Bellowgranite, considering him nothing but a vile half-breed. Daergar blood had never ruled Thorbardin until Tarn Bellowgranite sat on the throne. The Hylar blood that flowed in Tarn’s veins did nothing to offset the Daergar taint, at least in Jungor’s opinion. Tarn’s own mother had been a leader in the revolt against the last true thane of Thorbardin, Baker Whitegranite, Tarn’s own father, no less! Jungor’s opinion of Tarn was deeply colored by his clan prejudices, but even he did not believe Tarn so incompetent that he could lose his entire army. He dared not believe it. Such a disaster had not happened since the Dwarfgate Wars.

But if they had won and Beryl was defeated, why did Tarn seem so strangely subdued, like a vanquished hero returning home in disgrace? Jungor had received word of the curious reception at the gate, or lack of one. Tarn had personally seen to the disposition of the wounded in the houses of healing, meanwhile keeping the Council of Thanes and thousands of anxious dwarves awaiting his tidings. Why? Truly, a king must love the soldiers who follow him into battle, or he is not a king. But a king must also send soldiers to their deaths, knowing they will die. He cannot unhinge his mind in mourning for those who fulfill their destiny on the field of battle.

If there was one thing Jungor abhorred, it was uncertainty. He liked to have everything neatly ordered and planned. His own plan was to take the throne and unseat Tarn Bellowgranite and that had been in place for years, all carefully ordered, all neatly scripted with a patience to rival the gods’ own. Jungor was in no rush. He knew that, in time, he would be king.

Apparently, however, the first step had already gone awry, for Tarn had returned alive to Thorbardin. Thus Ferro Dunskull had failed him, and Jungor was deeply disappointed. Failure was not entirely unexpected, and he would not have been much of a thane if his entire scheme had hung on the competence of one Daergar, would it? Still, he was disappointed.

But even Jungor Stonesinger was not prepared for what he saw as Tarn entered the Council Hall, followed by Mog Bonecutter and Ilbars Bleakfell. Ilbars Bleakfell? The Daewar captain should have been the first to die in the ambush, according to the plan. So how had he survived? Had Ferro turned against him and informed Tarn of Jungor’s plot? It would be just like a Daergar to stab him in the back. Was that why Tarn was so subdued, because he knew that he must confront Jungor before the Council of Thanes and accuse him of the ultimate crime—treason?

Jungor’s eyes narrowed when he spotted Ferro enter behind the thane and his escort. The wretched Daergar traitor was purposefully not looking at him. Jungor almost sprang out of his chair in his anger, but he checked himself and covered his upset by crossing his legs, forgetting Thane Quickspring’s staff leaning against his thigh. He had only recently taken to walking with it, after the battle in the arena and the loss of his right eye. It clattered noisily to the floor at his movement, breaking the pall of silence that had gripped the audience. Slowly, then, the people arose to greet the return of their king. Jungor looked up at Tarn and saw the king glance at him, a look almost of thanks on his worn and weary face. Jungor picked up his staff and rose as well, joining his fellow thanes, except for the Aghar thane, Grumple Nagfar, who was asleep, or drunk; it was hard to tell which.

Tarn reached the bottom of the stairs and paused a moment to bow to each of the gathered thanes. Mog remained at his side, but Ferro slipped past him and made his way to the Daergar section. As he did so, he met Jungor’s eyes for a flicker of an instant. What Jungor saw there was not betrayal, but what was it? Something too brief to assess, but the Daergar thane was closely watching his subject. Meanwhile, Ilbars Bleakfell seemed at a momentary loss as to where to sit. Jungor thought this extremely odd, but few noticed it other than Ferro, the rest being absorbed by the actions of the king. Finally, someone in the front row of the Daewar section made room for Ilbars, and awkwardly he took his seat among them.

Tarn bowed first to the Hylar thane. Jungor was taken aback by this sly maneuver. It was clearly intended to catch him off guard, and it did—it was a moment before Jungor remembered to return the bow. He noticed that Tarn did not seem at all surprised or horrified to see that he had lost his right eye, and he wondered if the king’s spies had kept him so well informed of everything going on in Thorbardin during his expedition to Qualinesti. Jungor had already gotten used to, and even begun to enjoy and make use of, the surprise and horror of those seeing him for the first time since his injury.

But more importantly, Jungor’s hesitation had made him seem discourteous. He made up for his hesitation with the depth of his bow. He then made it a point to watch the other thanes as Tarn greeted them.

Next was Tarn’s cousin, Shahar Bellowsmoke of the Daergar clan. Shahar returned the king’s bow with a cool nod, which seemed to indicate that he was not, after all, in alliance with Tarn. Jungor’s agents had yet to wring a confession from any of Vault Forgesmoke’s accomplices, and Jungor had already begun to suspect that Shahar had acted alone in the attempt on his life in the arena. The frostiness of the Daergar’s greeting only confirmed his suspicions, though he did not discount the possibility that Shahar was merely acting indifferently to throw Jungor off the scent.

Next, Tarn greeted the Daewar thane. The Daewar were the weakest of the six clans. Most had followed that visionary fool, Severus Stonehand, off into the blue, trying to reclaim the lost kingdom of Thoradin. The Daewar had long been the Hylar’s greatest ally, but now there were so few of them that Jungor had been forced to recruit among the other clans in order to consolidate his power. Still, Rughar Delvestone maintained the traditional Daewar loyalty to the Hylar clan, and to their thane. Thane Delvestone was also a purist, and like most Daewar, suffered fanatical tendencies that clouded his judgment at times. Jungor had long ago learned to exploit those tendencies, and so the Daewar thane greeted Tarn with haughty reserve.

Next was the Klar thane, Glint Ettinhammer. Jungor didn’t give the Klar a second thought. If the Daewar tended toward fanaticism, the Klar embraced it wholly and without reserve. After the Chaos War, Tarn had won the Klar’s undying loyalty by unconditionally forgiving them for joining in the Daergar revolt, led by his mother and his uncle, Darkend Bellowsmoke. Their thane at the time, Tufa Bloodeye, had pledged undying loyalty to Tarn and Tarn alone, and his successor, Glint Ettinhammer, had renewed that pledge in the usual grisly Klar manner, by slicing open his hand and smearing his blood on Tarn’s sword hand. Jungor had never even tried to woo the Klar to his side. They were a scattered, disorganized clan, anyway. More than half of them didn’t even live in Norbardin. They still lived out in the ruined cities, preferring darkness and the constant danger to the light and safety of civilization. Jungor had plans for the Klar once he became king.

Tarn then greeted the other thanes by rank of seniority. Naturally, this offended the entire Theiwar clan, since he chose to bow to the suddenly resuscitated gully dwarf, Grumple Nagfar, before greeting Brecha Quickspring, thane of the Theiwar. Brecha was reckoned the youngest of the six thanes. Although no one could be entirely sure of the age of any gully dwarf, Grumple Nagfar certainly looked old enough to predate the mountain itself (as the saying goes).

Jungor knew that he could count on the support of Brecha Quickspring. The staff in his hand was hers; it had saved his life in the arena, and she had pledged the support of her clan soon after. Jungor suspected that the crazy dark dwarf sorceress might even be in love with him, and if that aided him in his efforts by assuring the support of the Theiwar, he wouldn’t actively discourage her aspirations. Neither would he encourage her, as the thought of a Theiwar wife literally made his stomach churn. He had no time for wives or thoughts of marriage. When he was king, then he’d need a wife because he would need an heir to solidify Hylar supremacy on the Council of Thanes. But by then, he’d have his choice among the most powerful Hylar families. He could always deal with the Theiwar after he was king.

As for the gully dwarves, Jungor never even considered them. Few did.

Last of all, Tarn bowed to the empty chair of the Kingdom of the Dead. Jungor noticed that Tarn’s gaze lingered perhaps a moment too long on that place, as though the king’s thoughts were preoccupied with the dead. Glancing around at the crowd, Jungor noticed that many were now looking at him, and waiting for him to speak, or act.

A mystique had begun to surround him after he defeated Vault Forgesmoke in the arena. Without really knowing why, he had cursed his dead opponent’s soul, speaking in the heat of his anger and his pain. Brecha Quickspring had built upon this incident by claiming to have seen the spirit of the dead dwarf bow in obedience. Dwarves who met him on the streets of Norbardin now shrunk from his scarred cyclopean visage, not out of fear, but from reverence. People whispered that he could speak to the dead and they obeyed his commands. Only a few days had passed, but already a cult had begun to grow around him. Its mistress was Brecha Quickspring.

After honoring the Kingdom of the Dead, Tarn sank into his chair. For a few moments, his chin rested on his bandaged chest. With a deep sigh, he then pulled himself erect and gripped the ornately carved arms of his chair. At his movement, Thane Rughar Delvestone rose from his own seat and spoke in tones rich with formality but empty of true feeling.

“The Council of Thanes welcomes King Tarn Bellowgranite home from his travels and adventures, and begs that he delight us with the tale of the honor and glory he won while abroad,” Rughar said, then resumed his seat. Though the phrases were nothing more than mere formality, Tarn’s face blanched when he heard the words “honor and glory.” His will seemed to waver for a moment.

Sensing weakness, Jungor spoke. “I think the king is too ill from his war wounds to continue,” he said, thumping his staff on the floor. “Perhaps we should reconvene when he has recovered his strength.”

This stung Tarn back to his senses. “My injuries are of no concern,” he said as he stood and walked to the center of the dais. “Indeed, I hardly feel them. I only wish that I could not feel the pain of what has occurred. I bring grave news before the Council of Thanes today.”

Jungor’s hand tightened around the arm of his chair as he leaned forward. The room grew deathly silent, so silent that even those in the Gallery outside could hear the depth of Tarn’s sigh.

“I have failed,” Tarn said. “My army is lost. Qualinost is destroyed, the home of the elves is gone.” His last words were lost in the eruption of shocked cries. Tarn closed his eyes and allowed the thunder of voices to sweep over him and pummel him like hurled stones.

Jungor flew out of his chair and pounded the butt of his staff on the floor, demanding silence. Gradually the crowd noise died down to a low murmur, punctuated by faint roars as the crowds outside the Council Hall learned the news. “King Tarn, how did this happen?” Jungor demanded when he could be heard by most of the crowd. “Surely when you say that the army was lost, you do not mean that all were slain. Surely you only mean that you suffered a minor defeat in Qualinost.”

Tarn shook his great blond mane. “All were lost, except for the dozen or so who were with me when the disaster befell us.”

“And how did the king survive while thousands were lost?” Rughar Delvestone shouted, leaping to his feet.

Tarn tried to explain, speaking at some length, with frequent pauses to wait for the crowd noise to die down. He tried to explain how he and King Gilthas had plotted to destroy the green dragon Beryl and save the homeland of the elves. While the majority of the residents of Qualinost had escaped through the tunnels Tarn and his dwarves burrowed beneath their city, several thousand elf warriors had remained behind, and, with the aid of some rebellious Dark Knights sympathetic to the elves, they prepared to lure Beryl into a deadly trap. Their plan was to draw Beryl in close and then launch strong strands of rope over her body, entangling and trapping her wings and forcing her to the ground. Tarn’s army of dwarves waiting in the tunnels were expected to rise and up and slay the dragon once she was brought down.

Tarn explained that he had been with King Gilthas, leading the last refugees to safety, when the disaster struck. He told of what had happened to him and his guards in the tunnels, the collapses and the flooding that had nearly drowned them. “We found the elves’ city drowned beneath a vast new lake. Our tunnels beneath the city must have been flooded, and the dwarves in them either crushed or drowned. To be perfectly honest, I do not yet know their fate. Some may have survived, but if they did, I could not find them.”

Jungor turned to the other thanes, a horrified expression on his face. Many of the gathered dwarves tore their beards in anger and sorrow. Tarn’s army had consisted largely of the newest generation of young warriors of Thorbardin. Among the youth he had found his readiest allies in his bold plan to aid the elves. Few families in the Council Hall had not given a son or daughter, nephew or niece, especially among the Hylar, Klar, and Daewar clans. Now the sight of their grief was terrible to behold, the sound of it like the roar of the wind in a tunnel. Jungor staggered, dropped his staff, and clutched at the hems of his fine silk robe—his own shock part genuine, part charade.

Tarn shouted over the crowd, “I cannot replace your lost children. I regret having gone against the wisdom of this esteemed Council of Thanes. I am not worthy to be your king. And therefore I must offer my resignation.”

Jungor paused in the act of ceremoniously tearing his robes. His mouth fell open and he turned slowly to stare in surprise at Tarn. The other thanes, who had likewise been preparing to publicly demonstrate their grief and displeasure, were struck silent in amazement. The rest of the crowd was more slow to respond, as most of them had not been able to hear Tarn’s declaration. But as word spread, a pall of silence spread over the dwarves.

“What did you say?” Jungor asked in disbelief.

Tarn cleared his throat and seemed to sway on his feet for a moment. “I am not worthy to be your king,” he repeated after a moment.

Jungor’s mouth snapped shut. He glared suspiciously at Tarn as the crowd erupted. Many began to cry, “Here! Here! It is time for a new king!” But this was quickly met by opposing voices shouting, “Never! Tarn is our king!”

“Tarn has failed us.”

“He has led us well.”

“My son is dead. My daughter is dead. He deluded his followers.”

“Do not dishonor them with grief. Tarn is their king still.”

“Let the Council vote.”

“We demand a new high thane.”

“Tarn Bellowgranite is our king!”

Tarn raised his hand, enjoining the crowd to silence. It took some time before they ceased their arguments long enough to hear what he had to say. Jungor had stalked back to his chair, his mind a confused wonder.

Finally the crowd grew quiet enough for Tarn to speak. Hundreds of grim faces looked down at him, standing alone in the center of the dais, surrounded by the six thanes. He cleared his throat, then spoke solemnly. “My mind is made up. I shall surrender my authority at the Council’s convenience. When they have chosen a new king, I shall step aside. This is the least I can do to repay you for the disaster I have brought upon Thorbardin.”

“Disaster?” Mog Bonecutter shouted angrily. Stepping up on the dais, he turned quickly to his clan’s thane, Glint Ettinhammer, and asked, “May I address the Council?”

The Klar thane nodded his shaggy head.

Mog approached Tarn. He still carried the strange disk-shaped object wrapped in its blanket and resting on his back. “The king says that his plan to save the elves ended in disaster,” Mog declared loudly. “But I say that a glorious victory was won. Most of the Qualinesti elves did escape, after all.”

“As good as that is to hear, I hardly think the price we paid was worth it,” Jungor interrupted. Not a few members of the crowd voiced their agreement.

“Very well. Then was it worth it to kill Beryl?” Mog angrily asked as he unslung his mysterious burden and flung it on the floor. Flicking back the tattered blanket, he revealed the huge olive-green dragon scale they had found.

This revelation struck the assembly like a lightning bolt. The cry “Beryl is dead!” rippled out into the Gallery and portico. Jungor was beside himself in his consternation. Why had news of this not yet reached him? He needed time to prepare for this news. Perhaps this was Tarn’s game after all.

However, Tarn seemed to dismiss the claims of his own captain. “I am not yet convinced that Beryl is dead,” he said in a low voice.

Mog grinned and shook his head, turning once more to the excited crowd. “We found this scale floating in the flotsam at the lake’s edge. As you can see, there is still dragon flesh attached to it. No other green dragon on Krynn boasts scales so large, and Beryl does not drop them so casually, nor with her precious hide still attached.”

Jungor rose from his chair and bent to examine the huge scale. He could not deny what Mog said. The scale was enormous and obviously came from a green dragon, and it had been ripped violently from the flesh of that creature. But…

“Did you see her carcass?” he asked the Klar captain.

“N-no, but—” Mog stammered.

“Never count a dragon dead until you have personally beheld her bleached white bones,” Jungor said meaningfully. He then turned to address the crowd. “I think the king is correct in this matter,” he said. “We cannot assume that Beryl is dead simply because we have found one scale.”

Mog began to protest, but Jungor spoke over him, thumping his staff on the floor. “Indeed, such an assumption could well prove dangerous. Beryl might only be injured. She might even now be nursing her wounds and plotting the destruction of Thorbardin for the king’s part in her injury.”

“I agree!” a voice shouted from the Daewar entrance. All eyes turned to see General Otaxx Shortbeard descending the stairs. He was one of Thorbardin’s oldest and most respected tacticians. Everyone knew that he was fiercely loyal to Tarn, so it came as a surprise to the king’s supporters that the general should be arguing in favor of Jungor and against Mog.

Otaxx reached the dais. “I agree that we cannot assume that Beryl is dead. She may well be alive and planning our destruction. Which is all the more reason why it would be foolish, utterly foolish, to change leadership at this delicate and uncertain time!” A cry went up from the crowd upon hearing these words, and Otaxx stroked his beard in smug satisfaction. Jungor glared at him, but the old general only returned his stare with a smile.

He continued, “As general in command of Pax Tharkas, I know more of the outside world than anyone here. Let me tell you that there are rumors of huge armies marching in the north under the banner of a human girl, conquering in the name of the One God, whoever that might be. And even as our party drew near to Thorbardin, the king was ambushed by a large force of draconians. Draconians, very nearly on our own doorstep!”

Mog took over from there, striding about the dais with his wild hair flying and his bloodshot eyes starting out of his face. “Yes, we need a strong king to lead us now. This is no time to elect a new king, not when we face so uncertain a world outside our doors. When the armies of humans have finished fighting their battles, and when we know for sure that Beryl is dead and no longer a threat to us, then perhaps Tarn can rest, if he still wishes it. But not before!”

Suddenly, the crowd was turning in Tarn’s favor. Several voices cried out, begging him not to abandon the dwarves of Thorbardin in their hour of greatest need. Jungor sank into his chair, shaking his head in wonder and disbelief. He almost felt compelled to applaud, though some might think him disrespectful, when actually he had nothing but the deepest admiration for Tarn’s masterful performance. Yet he did not panic. He had never planned to win the throne at this time and place anyway. The hour of his victory was still in place, and nothing really had changed to upset his master plan.

14

As the cries for Tarn to remain king grew louder, Tarn looked around the faces of his numerous supporters. Here he had come before the council in shame, begging their forgiveness and asking to be allowed to surrender his power to some more worthy dwarf. And in return for the disaster he had brought upon his people, they now begged him to remain as king. Their support humbled him, made him feel pity for himself—but also pride.

To think that forty years ago, few of the dwarves now gathered here would have given him an old pair of shoes if he had been barefoot and destitute. And to think that forty years ago he wouldn’t have asked for a crumb from most of them, even if he were starving. Forty years, a war that nearly destroyed them all, the deaths of his father, mother, and promised wife, and a revolt among the Daewar that almost ripped all the clans apart, had changed him profoundly. The crown of Thorbardin had been thrust upon his reluctant brow by the death of his father, Baker Whitegranite, himself a reluctant king. He had learned, and learned grudgingly to love these, his own people—people who so often distressed him with their eternal clan strife, who brought him grief and expected him to bear it alone, who blamed him for everything that went wrong, and who claimed for themselves his victories and successes.

Now, seeing this upswelling of support despite his great failure, Tarn was nearly unstrung. He could have wept, if he had any tears left. Instead, he felt a cold thrill course the length of his body, making his hair stand on end and his beard bristle. The weariness seemed to fall away from him as the energy and love of the crowd flowed into his limbs. He grinned broadly.

Lifting his head he saw a face in the crowd looking back at him. She smiled lovingly and lifted her hand to him, and he was at once struck by how much he had missed her, and how he had not realized how much he needed her. He had been searching the crowd for her since the moment he entered the Council Hall, without even realizing it. Now that he had found her, it felt as though a burden was lifting from his bowed back. He felt whole again.

He returned her wave, kissing his fingertips in token of greeting. He noticed that she sat alone in the midst of the Hylar clan: Crystal Heathstone, his wife, daughter of the Neidar king, a princess of the hill dwarves. An empty circle surrounded her, not because she was the wife of the king but because the others were avoiding her—simply because she was a hill dwarf.

His smile fading, Tarn realized that there was still much for him to do as king.

Steeling himself, he shouted, “I relent. I will remain your king, so long as you will have me!” The roar that greeted his words shook the foundations of the old temple. Tarn paused, as Mog bowed before him and Otaxx Shortbeard approached and vigorously clasped him by the shoulders. “I knew you wouldn’t let us down,” the old general joyfully said.

Jungor stood and lifted his hands in the air, begging the audience for quiet, crying, “Dwarves of Thorbardin! Listen to me! Listen to me once more!” Gradually the tumult died down while Mog retrieved his dragon scale and Otaxx found a seat among the Daewar.

Jungor had been quiet all this time, but now he gestured to indicate that he was ready to speak. His strange scarred visage was terrible to behold; his hand tightly clutched the weird staff, as though he were some sort of cursed Theiwar wizard and not the thane of the proud Hylar people. Though he wore a small bandage over the empty socket of his right eye, the horrible acid-burned flesh of his face was plain for all to see. Tarn had been initially surprised to see that Jungor had suffered such a horrible wound, but he had held his natural reaction in check. Now, looking at the Hylar thane, he could hardly suppress a shudder of revulsion.

“We are indeed glad that the king has chosen to lead us through these most difficult times,” Jungor declared. “But because these times are so perilous, and we continue to be in danger, I must insist that we seal the North Gate without delay. It is the only way we can be safe.”

The Hylar thane had led the Council’s opposition to Tarn’s plan to aid the elves, and he had been advocating for years to seal the mountain. Those who followed Jungor were of the same mind—they hated and distrusted the outside world. But those who had been born after the Chaos War were particularly open to his arguments, because they could see all around them how stone had failed to protect them during that terrible conflict. Also, they had no memories of the glory of Thorbardin to cause them to long for its return. They looked to their own future, not the past of the grandfathers and so they supported Tarn.

“No!” Tarn shouted furiously. “I forbid this. The gate must remain open.”

“No?” Jungor asked, stepping closer to Tarn and peering at him with his remaining eye. His gaze was almost hypnotic. “You forbid it?” Jungor asked. “These are strong words from one who just moments ago was ready to abdicate his throne.”

Tarn tore his gaze from Jungor’s strange eye. He looked at the crowd, his eyes almost pleading with them. He knew that most of the dwarves felt as Jungor did. They preferred isolation and distrusted the outside world. Yet he had fought for years to build alliances, often against the wishes of his own people, because he believed the dwarves could no longer ignore the world.

“Too often have we turned our backs on the outside world,” Tarn declared. “True, we live in perilous times, but there are too few of us to defend our homes against the forces of evil now loose in the world. The dragonarmies of old pale in comparison to the might of dragons like Beryl and Malys. We must have allies if we are to survive.”

“Not the elves!” Jungor shrieked. “You haven’t invited the elves here, have you?”

“No, certainly not the elves,” Tarn replied, to the relief of nearly everyone in attendance. Jungor sighed, but Tarn couldn’t tell if the Hylar thane was pleased or disappointed.

“There are other dwarves in the world,” Tarn continued. “With the destruction of our army and the growing threats in the world, we need every axe and hammer we can muster.”

The Daewar thane, Rughar Delvestone, rose from his chair, his round face flushing red. “I pray you aren’t suggesting we invite the hill dwarves into our mountain,” he hissed, nearly spitting the words “hill dwarves.”

Jungor nodded and took a step closer to Tarn. “Long have we tolerated your infatuation with that tribe of rebels,” he said as he lifted his hand and pointed at the king accusingly. His gaze strayed beyond the king to the female dwarf sitting alone on the front row of the Hylar section. Seeing the direction of Jungor’s gaze, Tarn knew that the Hylar thane was looking at his Neidar wife, Crystal Heathstone. He felt his blood boil. Would Jungor dare to insult the wife of the king before the assembled council?

“We will not open the gates of Thorbardin to more hill dwarves,” Thane Rughar said, stamping his boot for emphasis. “I’d rather share my bed with an elf.”

This was going too far. Tarn was on the verge of demanding they speak their minds truly, so that he could have the honor of calling them out. But Glint Ettinhammer, thane of the Klar and Tarn’s most loyal ally on the council, pushed his bulk up out of his seat, and said, “I must agree with my fellow thanes. We cannot hold the mountain passes against a determined invasion, especially if it is led by Beryl or any of her brood.” He shrugged his great shoulders apologetically to Tarn, then resumed his seat. Tarn turned and saw Mog staring at his clan’s thane with a look of disbelief. Tarn then looked to Otaxx, sitting in the Daewar section, who nodded sadly.

“Ten gully dwarves could hold our gates against an army of dragons,” Jungor persisted, seeing Tarn’s determination begin to dissolve.

“Two gully dwarves!” Thane Delvestone added, rousing a laugh from the crowd. Even the gully dwarves chuckled. Brecha Quickspring added her voice, readily agreeing that the North Gate should be closed. Last of all, the Daergar thane Shahar Bellowsmoke cast his vote with the majority. No one bothered to ask Grumple Nagfar what she thought.

With almost the entire Council of Thanes against him, Tarn could not follow his best instincts—not again, not after what had happened in Qualinost. With a deep sigh, he ordered guards away to close the North Gate at once. Then, with the business of the Council completed, the assembly began to break up. Crystal rose from her seat and rushed to Tarn’s side, slipping an arm around him to help the weary dwarf king stand. He leaned against her gratefully, feeling old, sad, and defeated even at home.

As they left the Council Hall, they passed Jungor Stonesinger surrounded by a mob of freshly admiring dwarves. “Now that my will has prevailed and the North Gate is closed, we’ll be safe,” Jungor pronounced.

“It didn’t stop the armies of Chaos,” Tarn muttered under his breath.

15

Tarn held on to his wife’s arm while they were waiting for a column of wagons to pass in the street. The wagons were laden with ingots of raw iron newly smelted in the forges two levels below. They still smelled warm from the forge fire, the scent of hot metal lingering about them. The wagons, pulled by teams of shaggy, gray cave oxen and driven by Daergar teamsters, passed slowly with much shouting and cracking of whips and creaking of wheels. It did Tarn’s heart good to see them. The cycle of life continued, and the dwarves of Thorbardin were still earning fair coin. He’d spent far too much time lately living with war, with fear constantly plucking at his sleeves, with the need to hurry and finish, with the sadness of the elven refugees fleeing their homes, with his grief over the dwarves he’d led to their doom.

He had almost forgotten what it was like to stand quietly with his wife, to nod to the people he met on the street, to not be in a hurry to go anywhere, or to do anything. He could not remember when he’d last had time to sit and enjoy a truly fine horn of ale, or to eat a home-cooked meal. He was sick to death of elf food. He wanted a good beefy ox steak, something that would bleed when he cut it, and a platter smoking with mushrooms swimming in butter. He wanted bread that he could tear with his teeth. He wanted to be able to sit at his own table and eat and slurp his beer and belch, and not have to worry about offending some elf’s delicate sensibilities.

He clung to his wife’s arm as though she were a rock in the stream that threatened to sweep him away. She bore him well and gladly, smiling to feel his hand gripping her elbow. Crystal was a good, stout dwarf woman, hardy, tough as horn, soft as butter, sweet as elf wine, regal as a queen of old, shrewd as a witch, with eyes like diamonds and a smile to melt the ice from the coldest greed-bitten dwarven heart. As the daughter of the hill dwarf king, she’d been trained to fulfill a variety of roles, from housewife to councilor to warrior to queen. Whether seeing to the domestic affairs of her husband’s household, or advising the king in his war councils, she had long ago proven herself an invaluable companion. She hadn’t replaced Belicia Slateshoulders in Tarn’s heart, but then again she had never tried to. Tarn loved Crystal, and standing there at the roadside listening to the teamsters cursing at their recalcitrant beasts, and seeing her smile, he was reminded why.

Tarn leaned over and kissed his wife on her soft cheek, drinking in the smell of her hair. Crystal patted his cheek indulgently and let her fingertips linger in his beard for a moment. “There, the way is clear,” she said. “We can cross the street now.”

Tarn’s residence was located on the third level of Norbardin within an area known as the Fortress, for it was, quite literally, a fortress built as the last line of defense against invaders of the North Gate. Tarn had chosen this location for his residence in the years before his marriage. There were finer homes elsewhere in the city, homes of greater beauty and luxury than his dark, windowless castle. He might have moved to one of these after his marriage and made a better home for his young bride. But Crystal had taken to the fortress almost from the start. Having grown up in a castle herself, she seemed to prefer cold stone walls, battlements, cavernous fireplaces, and paved courtyards that rang constantly with marching dwarfboots and the shouts of weapons instructors.

As the king and his wife made their way home along the streets of the third level of Norbardin, though, Tarn was taken aback by the signs of mourning already being displayed—doors glistening with fresh black paint, windows of houses and shops with dark curtains drawn, or the sight of a single candle gleaming in a black room. They encountered other reminders: dwarves with freshly shorn beards going about their daily business, and orphaned children being led to their new homes by aunts and cousins. Yet only a few of those they met on the streets cast dark glances their way. Most nodded respectfully and continued on their way; a few even stopped to greet their king and warmly welcome him home.

One young widow, her face streaked with tears, stopped to speak to him. “I know my husband died bravely,” she said in a voice trembling with emotion. “I am glad he was with you, and that his sacrifice was not in vain.” Tarn found himself without words to respond. He took the widow’s head in his hands and pulled her close, kissing her on the forehead to still the trembling of his own lips. Relatives gathered her in their arms and led her away, fresh tears on her face, but now a smile shining through her grief. As Tarn turned to continue on his way, Crysal slipped her hand into his and gave it a squeeze.

“Who was she?” his wife asked.

“I… I don’t know,” Tarn answered, choking.

There were other such scenes before they reached the gates to their home. Though weary to the marrow of his bones, Tarn diligently stopped and paid his respects to everyone who approached, hearing their stories of grief, or answering their questions about how their husbands, sons, and daughters had died.

Mog Bonecutter and Tarn’s other guards, ever near, watched the supplicants warily, but there were no incidents, no angry accusations. As they neared the castle, Crystal pressed close to Tarn and whispered, “Thee people seem genuinely happy to see you.” Tarn nodded, his jaw muscles tightening, and she knew that he was exerting all his will just to hold himself together for public view. But he would not allow her to hurry him, nor to keep his people away, and the crowds at their gate were larger than any they had seen since leaving the Council Hall. It took nearly an hour for them to work their way through the throng of well-wishers and grieving families.

Finally inside the castle, they then had to run the gauntlet of the castle’s guard. The soldiers, many of them too young or too old to have accompanied Tarn on his mission to Qualinost, had turned out in all their finery to welcome him home. With weapons polished and armor gleaming, they awaited his inspection in the courtyard. The king dutifully walked their lines, stopping occasionally to speak to an old friend, with Crystal remaining at his side, gently and inconspicuously supporting him by one arm. She was most pleased to find her apprentice, Haruk Mastersword, standing at the head of his squadron of young trainees, his beard brushed and gleaming like spun gold, his brilliant green eyes watching her intently through the slits in his helm. He looked the epitome of fierce dwarf warrior pride. Tarn clapped the young dwarf on the shoulder and asked him how his lessons were going.

“My master grants no quarter, nor expects any,” the young Hylar warrior answered crisply.

“Good! Very good!” Tarn laughed before moving on. Haruk had missed being old enough to join the king’s expedition by only a year, a mere puff of time for the long-lived dwarves but an eon for those who felt left behind. Tarn was now heartily glad for this quirk of fate. Crystal winked at her favorite student as she passed him, but Haruk maintained his formal warrior’s countenance. It would not have been seemly to smile in the king’s presence.

Next, they had to make their way past the welcoming servants. Here, too, Tarn saw signs of mourning in the form of black armbands and black ribbons tied in beards, for some of his servants had boasted sons and nephews in Tarn’s army. Each symbol of grief that he saw plucked Tarn’s own heartstrings all the more. But he was the king, and the king couldn’t allow himself the luxury of showing weakness or vulnerability; he must appear strong for his people. So he greeted them heartily as they led him through the stately halls of his home to his family chapel.

Here, a family priest awaited them. As was his custom, Tarn lit candles to his father and mother, as he did whenever he returned from a journey away from Thorbardin. He also lit a candle to the spirit of Belicia Slateshoulders, his first love, the woman he had planned to marry before her untimely death more than thirty years ago. Crystal lit a candle to her grandfather, Connor Heathstone, while the priest chanted a hymn to the dead. It was one of the Hylar dwarves’ oldest and most beloved songs, recalling those who had died in the long march from Thoradin to Thorbardin back during the Age of Light. Its refrains mourned anyone so unlucky to have died before setting eyes on their beloved mountain.

When the priest had done singing, Tarn and Crystal rose and left the chapel by way of their private entrance. A long candlelit hall led them to their living quarters. Though a warm fire and a delicious repast awaited them in the private dining room, Tarn entered their bedchamber. Crystal closed the door. When she turned, she found her husband had sunk to the floor, his head slumped against a bedpost, his back heaving with silent sobs. She knelt by his side and gathered him into her arms. He moaned garbled words, but she did not need to decipher them to know what was in his broken heart. She responded by rocking slowly, crooning a wordless tune and stroking his long golden hair.

They huddled together in this manner for what seemed hours. When Tarn’s grief had poured itself out, they then spoke together in low voices for quite some time longer. He told her in detail what had happened and how he blamed himself for the deaths of so many noble young dwarves. She did her best to comfort him, but his heartache was still too fresh to be salved by mere words.

When, finally, Crystal saw that nothing she could say or do could make his pain any less, she rose and sat on the edge of the bed. Holding out her arms, she drew him to herself. He wrapped his arms around her and rested there, listening to the sound of her breathing. That is when he felt her grow suddenly tense, and the hand stroking his hair became awkward and heavy. He wondered what was bothering his wife, but he had little energy to inquire. She needed her own time to say what she was about to say.

Finally, Crystal sighed and said, “Even in times of great sorrow, great joy is born.”

Tarn was silent for a moment, then asked, “What do you mean?”

She laughed nervously. He sat back and looked up into her cool gray eyes. They were moist, but not with tears. Her lips trembled with a smile. “What is wrong?” he asked. “What did you mean?”

“Just this,” she said, her voice catching in her throat. She touched her fingers to her lips to calm herself, then continued, “By this time next year, you shall hold your son in your arms.”

16

Thane Jungor Stonesinger sat in his private study, his eyes roaming among the battle trophies he’d won over the years. Behind him, a broad window stood with its shutters thrown wide, while outside the window, twin gouts of water shot from the nostrils of a marble dragon’s head, filling a deep granite bowl before spilling over into a stream. The stream flowed though the private gardens of Jungor’s second level residence near the old temple of Reorx. A skylight cut through the living rock of the mountain let light in from the outside, filling his garden with sunlight and allowing his exotic collection of plants and trees to grow.

But at the moment, night ruled outside the mountain and moonlight was too wan to illuminate his garden. Instead, torches burned in golden sconces strapped to the trunks of the trees, flickering gaily in the pools formed by the stream and throwing their light in an ever-changing pattern against the white marble walls of his home.

Jungor sat facing the window, slowly removing the bandage from his empty eye socket, blind to the beauty of what lay before him. Behind him, his loyal guard captain, Astar Trueshield, and the Daewar thane, Rughar Delvestone, shared a couch near the fireplace. Thane Delvestone was sampling Jungor’s brandy, while Astar contemplated the flames dancing in the grate, a dour look on his face.

Jungor tossed the used bandage onto his desk and turned to face his guests. They looked up at the movement, then recoiled in horror at what they saw. Jungor laughed. “Don’t you like it?” he asked, pointing to the polished round agate resting in the bruised empty socket of his right eye. The gleaming black stone gave his already hellish visage an even more diabolical look.

“As you wish, my lord thane,” Rughar said with obvious uncertainty. He sipped at his brandy nervously. But Astar had no such compunctions.

“Reorx’s bones! Take it out, thane, before someone sees you,” Captain Trueshield exclaimed.

Jungor laughed again, tilting his head forward until the stone rolled out of his face and dropped to the desk. It rolled slowly across the polished mahogany surface before dropping soundlessly to the soft carpet. “I am thinking of having a golden orb made,” the Hylar thane stated with a jolliness that seemed incongruous with his recent defeat in the Council Hall. “Of course, I’d want it etched to look like a real eye, perhaps even with a blue enamel iris and a bit of black onyx set into the gold for a pupil. What do you think?”

“I think Tarn Bellowgranite should have died in those tunnels with his army,” Rughar said grumpily, then tossed back the last of his brandy. His face flushed with the heat of the strong liquor.

“Naturally, my new eye shouldn’t appear too real,” Jungor said as he leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “I think gold is just the thing. It won’t tarnish or rust or crack, and it can be polished to the smoothness of butter.”

“I don’t see how you can sit here and make jokes at a time like this, Thane Jungor!” Rughar exclaimed. “Tarn defied the Council and look what has happened—the loss of an entire army. What was gained by this sacrifice? A rumor of Beryl’s death? A piece of loose dragon scale that may have fallen off as she razed the city of Qualinost down to its foundations?”

“It would take ten armies and more elves than there are in all Krynn to kill Beryl,” Astar Trueshield scoffed. “What galls me is that Tarn was defeated and lost his entire army almost to the last dwarf, and yet we have practically begged him to remain as king!”

Jungor leaned forward in his chair and rested his elbows atop his desk. He pointed languidly at the Daewar thane. “You asked how I could make jokes at a time like this. How can you not? This has been a banner day in dwarven history. A spectacle, a well-written play, memorable theater if you like! I thought I’d continue the celebration with a little levity among conspirators.”

“Thane Stonesinger, you go too far!” Rughar exclaimed.

“Oh, I haven’t even begun, and you’ve no idea how far I’ll go,” Jungor said, his voice deadly calm. “I say this was a day of high theater. So masterful was the director that we all played our unwitting parts in Tarn’s little play. It is as you say, Astar. Tarn returned in defeat and should have been stripped of his crown and tossed from the North Gate in disgrace, yet in the end we begged him to remain as our king! What inspired drama!”

He burst out in such a mad fit of laughter that it was some minutes before Jungor could catch his breath. His two companions looked at him as though he had gone completely insane. This only made him laugh the harder to see the foolish looks on their faces. “Oh, are your hearts so cold that you cannot admire him? Hate him, yes, for what he has done to us, for what we have become under his rule—a diminished people of diminished expectations. But still, you must admire his boldness. I could not have scripted a more sensational drama, and the people were mightily pleased by it. His confession and redemption before the Council were worthy of the Palanthian stage. Did you not want to applaud?”

“I must admit that I did not see it in that light before now,” Thane Delvestone said skeptically.

“That is only because you are such a fool,” Jungor laughed. “But I need such fools as you, Rughar. Please do not take offense.”

“None taken, my lord,” the Daewar thane conceded with a bow of his head.

“But what are we to do now?” Astar cried, slamming his fist down on the arm of the couch. “Have we lost everything? Has all this been for naught?”

“Have a care with the furniture, Captain Trueshield,” Jungor chided. “Do not worry about the future. Nothing has changed, except perhaps that we are in a better position than we were before. Yes, even better!”

At his companions’ dubious looks, Jungor shook his head in dismay. Could they be so blind? Like a teacher instructing children, he said, “The people needed comfort today. Any upheaval coming on the heels of their tremendous loss would only have made our jobs more difficult in the long run. But mark my words in stone, they will not always feel so kindly toward the king who led their sons and daughters, wives and husbands to their deaths. Give them time to mourn their dead, and to brood. In a few months, they will begin to wonder if the elves’ rescue was worth the price we paid. And if they should not begin to wonder, then we shall remind them. We shall renew their grief, keep it fresh.”

Rughar smiled as he began to understand where Jungor was leading them. The Hylar thane nodded. “Yes, you see now, don’t you? I never expected Tarn to lose his entire army. Defeat seemed inevitable, but who could have imagined that so many should die so suddenly? We were going to have to create a crisis to exploit, but now a disaster has been dropped into our laps—and like a gift of the gods, greater than anything we could have arranged.”

Jungor rose from his chair and stood looking out the window. His gaze was not on the beauty of his garden or the light of his torches. He was gazing into the future and its many possible paths. “And though I have lost my eye in the arena, this too has only added to our chances, enhanced my mystique. With all the things we have already arranged, plus with Thane Quickspring leading my cult, my power and influence will continue to grow while Tarn’s erodes under our ceaseless campaign of propaganda. He will not even know that it is happening until it is too late.”

A soft knock at the door ended Jungor’s lecture. He motioned for Astar to open the door. With a scowl, the Hylar captain stood aside to allow Ferro Dunskull to enter. “Ah, Ferro, good of you to come. Thank you, Thane Delvestone, for stopping by. Everything will proceed as intended. Do not be frustrated or impatient. Remember that Thorbardin was carved one chip at a time. Captain Trueshield, will you show the thane to the door?”

Rughar bowed and took his leave, and Astar closed the door behind them as they left Ferro dropped back to the corner farthest from Jungor, his dark eyes nervously darting around, taking in every object and item of furniture, every avenue of escape. Jungor eased around the desk and settled himself on the couch beside the fire. He pointed to a crystal decanter on a silver tray on a table by the wall. “That’s very good brandy,” he said. “Have some.”

“No thank you, my lord. Brandy unsettles my bowels,” the Daergar softly answered from his dark corner.

Jungor turned, his one eye twinkling in the firelight. “Then sit down and tell me how you… failed.”

Ferro slunk around the wall until he reached a small chair standing beside the table with the decanter of brandy. He seated himself on the chair’s edge, his hands nervously fidgeting at the edges of his studded leather vest.

“Don’t be shy,” Jungor said. “I know you have something to tell me, some tidbit of explanation. If I thought you had betrayed me, you would already be dead, dear Ferro.”

Ferro started in his chair, nearly bolting for the door. With a supreme effort of will, aided by his stubborn Daergar pride, he was able to control his fear. “The draconians that I hired attacked Tarn’s party before my agent could deliver the killing blow to the king. Stupid, stupid of them! Still, things might have gone as planned if General Otaxx had not appeared with a large force of the Pax Tharkas garrison. He was traveling behind the king, his soldiers being burdened with a large consignment of supplies for Thorbardin. When he heard the fighting, he quickly gathered his troops and rushed to the attack, turning the tide of the battle.”

“So, what you are saying is, you failed to properly reconnoiter the situation and see what forces were arrayed against you,” Jungor said with a pleasantness that belied the edge in his voice.

“I am afraid so,” Ferro reluctantly admitted.

“I cannot abide a fool, especially if he is to be my master of scouts, Master Dunskull,” Jungor said. “I assume all the draconians were killed to prevent them telling who hired them.”

“We ourselves attacked the last group from the rear,” Ferro said, “to cover our mistake.”

“Commendable. And this agent, this assassin, what about him? He was eliminated as well?”

When Ferro did not immediately answer, Jungor sat up, glaring at him in the firelight. Finally, a small voice said from the shadows, “Not exactly.”

“What do you mean? Where is he now?” Jungor demanded.

“You saw him today in the Council Hall,” Ferro answered. “Ilbars Bleakfell.”

Jungor’s jaw dropped open. “You corrupted that pompous Daewar buffoon? By the gods, Ferro, I underestimated you.”

“You do not understand, my lord,” Ferro said nervously. “Captain Ilbars is not himself. The real Ilbars is waiting out eternity at the bottom of a bog, most likely. What you saw today in the Council Hall was a sivak draconian named Zen. He was the leader of the band I hired to kill Tarn. He indeed killed Ilbars and took his place, as was the plan.” Jungor nodded, listening. He had heard of the sivaks’ ability to assume the shape of anyone it kills. He was also keenly aware of how dangerous such a creature, loose in Thorbardin, could prove. If Tarn were to discover him…

Ferro continued, “The draconians sprang their ambush before Zen could get close enough to the king to kill him. But Zen survived the battle somehow and accompanied us back to Thorbardin, still in the guise of Ilbars Bleakfell. I have not had the opportunity to speak with him alone, therefore I am puzzled… that is, I am unclear as to his ultimate intentions.”

“Unclear? Your euphemisms are tiresome,” Jungor said, his patience worn thin. “So where is this failed assassin now?”

Again, it was some moments before Ferro was able to answer. Finally, his words came blurting out. “After the Council, he slipped into the crowd and disappeared. I don’t know where he is. My agents are searching for him as we speak. All I know is that he’s somewhere in the city.”

Steeling his patience, Jungor rose from the couch with a deep sigh and slowly strode to the window. With his hands clasped behind his back, he stared out into the torchlit darkness of the garden. “I trust that your agents will find him,” he said at last.

“Of course, my lord,” Ferro said hurriedly. With Jungor’s back turned, Ferro lifted the brandy decanter and poured a third of its contents down his throat. Coughing on the potent liquor, he said, “But with his shapechanging ability, Zen could be someone else by now. He could be… anyone.”

Jungor nodded and hissed without turning. “Pray that you find him before he finds you. And may the gods who are no more help you if you fail this time.”