Dark Thane

17

Tarn never tired of looking at him. He never tired of holding him in his arms or feeling his soft fat little fingers close around his own coarse one. “You will he strong, like your father,” he whispered to the infant boy.

Tor Bellowgranite, son of Tarn Bellowgranite, smiled his blank, toothless smile up into his father’s face. Crystal said he was too young to smile, but Tarn knew better. Tor was smiling because he knew his father. He shook his fists, like little balls of dough, at Tarn’s face, and began to kick. Tarn laughed without really knowing why, feeling only a deep and abiding joy unlike anything he had ever known.

Dwarf babies were, to put it simply, quite ugly. Even dwarf mothers had no illusions about the beauty of their own infants. Though usually born with a full head of hair, dwarf babies did not come into the world already fully bearded, despite popular superstitions. Tor shared the Hylar trait of golden hair, just like his father. Crystal argued that Neidar babies were also born blonde-headed, but that they soon lost their fine golden baby hair and replaced it with a proper color. Tarn was pleased that his son, just six months old, still sported a magnificent shock of tawny locks.

Suddenly, the baby’s fat little face scrunched up in a horrible grimace. Tarn stared at him in surprise, then recoiled as Tor sneezed. “He’s caught something,” he said in alarm. He turned to the open door and cried, “Auntie! Tor is ill. Fetch the healers at once.”

“He’s not sick. You’ve just tickled his nose with your beard again,” a female voice answered from the next room.

Tarn felt a tug at his chin and looked down, chuckling as the baby pulled at the ends of his long beard hairs. “Where is your beard, Tor?” he murmured to the child. “Did your mommy shave it off to make you look like an elf child? Or maybe it was wicked old Aunt Needlebone.”

“I heard that,” the female voice said from the other room. A matronly old dwarf appeared in the doorway, a rag hanging from the fist planted firmly on her hip. With her other hand, she pointed a quivering finger at Tarn. “Stop filling that boy’s head with your foolishness,” she admonished.

“He doesn’t understand what I am saying to him,” Tarn said, gazing down at Tor. “He’s just responding to the sound of my voice.”

“Don’t you count on it. This child is brilliant. I’ve never seen a more brilliant child in my three hundred and fifty years, not even his mother.” Tor blinked at Tarn; he had his mother’s gray eyes. “Sometimes he looks at you with that piercing gaze and you think he’s about to whisper great secrets. You feel like you haven’t got any clothes on, or that he is looking right through you. But the next minute, there he is a baby again. It passes like a cloud over the hill.” Her voice trailed off in a sigh of longing. Tarn had heard the old dwarf woman sigh that way many a time since she came with Crystal to live inside the mountain. The old hill dwarf nursemaid missed her home in the hills west of Thorbardin. Only her love for Crystal, and now for the boy, kept her here.

Closing the nursery door behind her, Aunt Needlebone shuffled to Tarn’s side and peered over his shoulder at infant Tor lying in his father’s arms, quiet now, peering at their faces with his large gray eyes. “Sometimes I think he really can talk already. He just hasn’t decided what he wants to say,” she said.

Tarn smiled and shrugged. “I don’t know about talking, but he’ll certainly be walking before much longer.”

Auntie laughed at the king. “Hill dwarf babies are already walking by Tor’s age. Mountain dwarves are a bit slower, I hear.”

Knowing that Auntie was only trying to provoke him, Tarn growled, “He’s as stubborn as a hill dwarf, that’s for certain. This morning, I tried to give him his wooden rattler, but he was having nothing of it. He wanted his gemstone shaker and nothing else would do. Such a voice!”

“He’ll need that voice to be heard in this family,” Auntie said.

The door to the nursery opened and Crystal entered. She was dressed formally, with golden hoops dangling from her ears and rings winking with gems on her fingers. Her face was rouged, her long auburn hair arranged with jeweled pins and combs into a tall coif atop her head. A wide belt of green felt circled her waist, into which was tucked a blouse of milky white silk. A skirt of tooled and gilded leather covered her legs, and over all she wore a robe of fine green wool lined with gray silk and trimmed in ermine.

She stopped just inside the door and looked at Tarn in alarm. “Aren’t you ready yet?” she asked.

Tarn growled something unintelligible into his beard. Crystal sighed and adjusted one of her earrings. “The delegates will be here any moment, Tarn,” she said.

“I’d rather stay here with Tor,” Tarn responded sullenly.

“Well, you can’t. You are the king. This is an important day, the celebration of the Festival of Lights, a time to honor the dead and to remember the destruction suffered during the Chaos War. You can’t hide in the nursery, today of all days.”

“Here, give me the child,” Auntie said as she gently pried Tor from his father’s arms. Tarn only reluctantly released his hold on the boy.

“I’m not hiding,” he said angrily as he rose to his feet. “I enjoy spending time with my son. Is that so wrong?”

“You dote on him too much,” Auntie said. “You’ll spoil him.”

Snarling, Tarn stalked from the nursery. Aunt Needlebone’s fuzzy gray eyebrows rose in a silent question, but Crystal only shrugged and followed her husband.

As Tarn swept into the reception hall of his residence, guards along both walls snapped to attention, their boots thundering on the floor as one. Tarn wore his full ceremonial regalia—plate armor polished to a mirror sheen, kingsword at his hip, crown of Thorbardin encircling his golden mane of hair. A long cloak of wolf fur dragged on the ground behind him as he climbed the stairs to his throne. Crystal walked at his side and took her accustomed place to his left, standing a little behind the throne with her right hand resting on its high, dragon-carved back. Mog Bonecutter emerged from a door behind the throne and took his place to Tarn’s right. Mog wore a full suit of golden-tinted chain mail, his unruly black beard poking fiercely from the circle of mail coif, a tabard of red silk emblazoned with the hammer and anvil symbol covering his chest and back.

The highest dignitaries of the Hylar clan bowed in greeting at the foot of the steps. Thane Jungor Stonesinger was foremost among them. Because the acid damage to his face had caused part of his facial hair to eventually fall out, Jungor had taken to braiding his remaining beard into three short plaits. Even today, when he and all the other dwarves of Thorbardin were dressing in their finest and combing out their beards to achieve the greatest fullness and luxuriance possible, Jungor chose to keep his severe style. With his ascetic’s beard, long gray robes, wizard staff, and golden orb winking from the hollow of his right eye, he looked almost like a sorcerer.

Beside Jungor stood the wealthy merchant Hextor Ironhaft, gold fairly dripping from his fat fingers. Several dozen generals, former priests, nobles, and artisans made up the remainder of the delegation—the cream of Hylar society, both male and female. Most were dressed either in the most expensive silks imported from the north or the richest armor forged by dwarf or man. Several years ago, Tarn’s engineers had opened several new ore veins in the stone near the North Gate. These mines had provided much of the reason for the dwarves’ rising prosperity. Because of Tarn’s policy of openness, dwarf traders from Thorbardin had begun to carry their goods all over the world. Wealth flowed through the North Gate, improving everyone’s lives.

Flowed, that is, it until Jungor convinced the Council of Thanes to seal the mountain after the disaster at Qualinost. Now, the wealth of Thorbardin was being consolidated in higher and higher levels of its society, just as it was in the old days. Gold and iron still flowed from the mines and steel continued to be forged in its foundries, but these riches no longer flowed out with traders traveling to distant lands, bringing home the mundane goods and strange curiosities that once filled the markets of Norbardin. Now, money was hoarded rather than invested. The poor grew poorer, the rich richer. Some dwarves ate off plates of gold while other had nothing to eat at all. And as long as the mountain remained sealed and the economy of Norbardin forced to feed off itself, this situation would never change.

Tarn was well aware that Jungor wanted to keep it that way. The Hylar thane had made no secret of his ambitions in the last year, while Tarn had withdrawn ever deeper into family matters. As he had said, he’d rather spend time with his son. Instead, he was forced to participate in these endless ceremonies.

Crystal nudged him, bringing him out of his dark reverie. He coughed and cleared his throat. “Clansmen and clanswomen of the Hylar, I welcome you into the home of the son of Baker Whitegranite, son of Brom Whitegranite. In remembrance of those now gone to join the Kingdom of the Dead, I wish you a joyous Festival of Lights.”

The Hylar nodded appreciatively. Although many of them had little enough love for their half-breed king, none disputed that Tarn had a remarkable talent for speaking on public occasions, especially rituals and formal ceremonies. There were many who said Tarn would have .made a good priest, an observation that only made Tarn laugh when he heard it.

“Twelve boats await us at the old wharf,” Jungor said. “The Hylar have begun to gather on the Isle of the Dead.”

“Let us go then,” Tarn said, rising from his throne. With Crystal resting her hand lightly on his proffered elbow, he descended the stairs. Mog walked behind them, his beard jutting out defiantly. But when they reached the floor, Jungor remained where he stood, blocking the king’s path.

“Do you intend to bring her?” the Hylar thane asked, pointing at Crystal. Tarn stepped back in surprise. Crystal had joined him on the Isle of the Dead for the Festival of Lights every year since their marriage. No one had ever questioned her presence before, so why was Jungor making an issue of it now?

“Of course she is coming,” Tarn said, clearly flabbergasted.

“She is a hill dwarf,” Jungor said, stating the obvious.

“She is the mother of my son,” Tarn countered, his temper growing dangerously short.

“Only Hylar may walk upon the rocky shore of our island,” Hextor Ironhaft said.

“Impertinent swine! How dare you insult the king in the king’s own house?” Mog snatched a halberd from one of the nearby guards and stepped toward the Hylar delegation. “Allow me to teach these dwarves some manners, my lord,” he snarled.

Jungor took a step back, raising his staff defensively. “Call off your dog, Tarn Bellowgranite,” he demanded.

“Mog!” Tarn shouted.

“The king can handle this,” Crystal angrily admonished the Klar captain.

But Mog remained menacingly near. “And they say the Klar are barbarians,” he growled, knuckles cracking around the haft of his halberd. Some of the delegation began to back away, and the guards along the walls grew nervous. Though valiant and loyal, Mog had a reputation for cracking heads first, begging forgiveness afterward.

Satisfied that Mog was properly restrained, Jungor resigned his position before Tarn. “The Isle of the Dead is sacred to the Hylar,” he said. “It would be unseemly for your wife to come. Though nobleborn, she is Neidar.”

“Dwarves of every clan died there that day,” Tarn countered.

“Yes, attacking us. But it was our home that broke apart and fell into the waters of the Urkhan Sea. You, as much as anyone here, should understand how we feel. The body of Belicia Slateshoulders lies unburied in the ruins there, too,” Jungor said.

These words stung Tarn to silence. He had long ago come to terms with the loss of his first true love, when a section of Hybardin that she was attempting to restore broke off and fell to the island below, carrying her and several hundred workers to their deaths. But Jungor’s audacity to speak of her here, before his wife, robbed his voice of words to express his outrage.

Jungor turned to Crystal and said, “I pray you will understand this, Mistress,” he said, bowing slightly from the hips. “But you cannot go. It is not I that must forbid it. The other members of my clan have spoken.”

“Perhaps it would be better if I stayed behind,” Crystal offered softly.

Incredulous, Tarn stared at her for a moment as though unable to believe his own ears. “You will not!” he shrieked, then turned back to the Hylar delegation, his face flushed a brilliant crimson that rose all the way up to the roots of his blond hair. “She is the mother of the future King of Thorbardin!” he raged, spittle flying from his lips.

Jungor calmly replied, “Primogeniture is our tradition, but it is not our law.”

Again, for a few heartbeats, Tarn was speechless. Could this queer, misshapen, histrionic idiot of a Hylar thane really be so bold as to challenge him in this way, through his infant son? When he found his voice again, Tarn growled, “What is that supposed to mean?”

Emboldened by the king’s frustration and Jungor’s defiance, Hextor Ironhaft answered rudely, “The people of Thorbardin will never accept a half-breed as their king.”

“They accepted me!” Tarn snapped.

“Indeed, but you are of Hylar and Daergar blood,” Jungor said smoothly. “You became king when Thane Hornfel and your father, Thane Baker Whitegranite, died during the Chaos War. Your son, on the other hand, is a hill dwarf.”

“Part hill dwarf,” Tarn protested.

“The people of the mountain will never respect a king with any amount of hill dwarf blood,” Jungor said. “They have borne many changes under your rule, Tarn Bellowgranite, but they will not bear that rupture of tradition. It is too great a thing to ask. Your son is a hill dwarf. He cannot be king. We only speak aloud what others whisper.”

Before Tarn could answer with all the venom of his heart, Crystal stepped forward and placed a cool, restraining hand on his arm. “I’ll stay here,” she said, but not to Tarn. Her icy gray eyes were upon the Hylar thane. “You go and honor your dead. I will remain behind with the living.”

A terrified expression came over Jungor’s twisted, misshapen face. Gripping the wizard staff in both hands, he hammered its butt end three times on the floor in rapid succession, chanting unintelligible words.

Tarn brushed his wife’s hand from his arm, then gripped the hilt of his kingsword. Mog edged closer, his halberd held at the ready. “What are you doing? What evil are you trying to avert?” he demanded of Jungor. “What do you think, that my wife is trying to cast a spell on you?”

“She spoke words of ill omen!” Jungor cried defensively.

Tarn’s sword nearly sprang out of its sheath. ” How dare you accuse the queen of witchcraft!”

Jungor gripped his staff tighter and faced the furious king. What he said next surprised even the other Hylar. “She may be your consort, but she is not my queen.”

“What! Get out of my house, you traitorous dog!” Tarn shrieked. “Get out! If you ever cross the threshold of this house again, I’ll have your head.”

Jungor made an obscene gesture with his hand as he turned and stalked from the reception chamber. Mog surged toward him, ready to split his head open with his halberd, but Crystal leaped between the two, stopping the Klar before he could revenge his king. The other Hylar quickly followed Jungor, angrily grumbling at the way Tarn had insulted their thane. Meanwhile, Tarn climbed the steps and flung himself down on his throne sullenly.

“You would only have made things worse,” Crystal said to Mog when they had gone. She patted him on the cheek as she released him. He flung his halberd clattering to the floor and stormed out, the door banging against the wall as he left.

Crystal then addressed the guards. “Leave us. I would have private words with the king.” Slowly the guards filed out, but not without many a backward, uncertain glance. Several of them were Hylar, and they felt torn in their loyalties.

When they were alone at last, Crystal stood at the base of the steps and glared up at Tarn. She said nothing, merely stood with one hand thrust against her hip, one foot impatiently tapping the polished marble floor. For a while, Tarn avoided her gaze. Finally, he looked up and shouted, “To the Abyss with them. To the Abyss with them all!”

“Tarn Bellowgranite, you know that you cannot afford to make an enemy of the Hylar thane,” Crystal admonished.

“I did not make an enemy of him. It is he who has made an enemy of me,” the king said, his fist slamming down on the arm of the chair. “How dare he insult you in our house, in my presence?”

“Jungor Stonesinger is the Hylar thane, and he has his own opinion about the way you rule Thorbardin,” Crystal said as she slowly climbed the steps to Tarn’s side. “He has the loyalty of most of the Hylar, whose support you need. And he is swiftly gaining followers among the other clans as well. You know as well as I do that he covets your throne. What will happen to us if you are driven from power? What will happen to our son?”

“I am thinking of our son. What would happen to him if his father were disgraced?” Tarn asked harshly. “This idiot thane pushes me and he pushes me, and I am expected to yield at every turn. Well, this time he has gone too far with his insults.”

“You must not give Jungor Stonesinger any excuse to challenge you that the Council of Thanes would support,” Crystal advised. She knelt beside Tarn’s throne and laid her head in his lap. “And… I hate to admit it, but Jungor may be right. The dwarves of Thorbardin will never accept me, and they will never allow Tor to be king. The old hatreds run too deep.”

Tarn reached out, stroking her hair. She had worked for hours preparing herself for this day, to look perfect for the Hylar delegation. Her hair was meticulously arranged, sparkling with jeweled pins. But all her work and consideration had been for naught. They didn’t see the woman eager to please them for her husband’s sake. They saw only a hated Neidar, a woman of the hill dwarves.

“I had hoped our marriage would heal the breach between our two peoples,” Tarn said in a weary voice. “I overestimated my peoples’ love for me. I thought they would come to love you for my sake and accept you as their queen. Instead, we’ve deepened the divide.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as that. We’re but two people. There is still hope. Take my pupil Haruk, for instance. He is young but wise for his years. When he looks at me, he sees his weapons master, not a hill dwarf,” Crystal said, smiling at the thought of the strong young Hylar warrior she had trained. After her marriage to Tarn, Haruk had joined their household and become her apprentice as part of an effort to ease the political tensions between Tarn and Jungor. Haruk was Jungor’s nephew, the oldest son of Jungor’s sister, a dwarf destined to be a powerful and influential leader among the Hylar. If his heart remained as pure as she knew it to be… “There is yet hope for the future,” she concluded.

“I have never regretted marrying you, though,” Tarn wistfully said. “No matter what happens, I shall always know that I did the right thing. Ours was a political marriage, but I would never have gone through with it had I not loved you, even then.”

“You hardly knew me,” Crystal laughed.

“I knew enough. I had spies in your father’s court.”

“Yes, I know,” she said.

“See! That’s why I knew that you would be a queen worthy of the title. Beautiful, wise, a formidable warrior, and your father’s most trusted councilor; nothing got by you, not even my most capable spies. I determined that I had to have you for my queen, and I always get my way,” Tarn said, grinning fiercely.

But Crystal’s face grew serious. “For once, then, listen. My advice was good enough for my father, so it is certainly good enough for you, Tarn Bellowgranite.” She lifted her head from his lap and looked long and hard into his eyes. “Swallow your insufferable pride. Go to the ceremony on the Isle of the Dead and honor the souls of the Hylar who have laid their bones in the ground. I will stay here with our son, and we will await your return together.”

Tarn closed his eyes, then nodded.

18

“You wait here,” the gully dwarf, Shnatz Ong, whispered around the corner.

“We follow you.”

“You wait here,” Shnatz repeated impatiently.

“You say follow you.”

“That then. Now, you wait here!” Shnatz spun on his heel and began to creep along the narrow, dark passageway. He had gone several feet before he heard them coming up behind him again. He stopped, turned, and stamped his foot in anger, raising a cloud of dust. Someone sneezed.

“What you doing? I say you wait there,” Shnatz hissed.

Twenty gully dwarves crept out of the shadows, cringing and mewling. One of them whined, “You not say how long we got to wait. We get scared. We not supposed to be here. This place forb… forb… ”

“Forbidden,” Shnatz finished for him. “That why you got to be quiet, stay where I put you bunch of knotheads.” Someone dropped a pickaxe clanging to the floor, and everyone, including Shnatz, cringed. The noise seemed to echo forever through the maze of dark, rubble-strewn halls and passageways that made up this part of the ruins.

When the sound finally faded, Shnatz fairly shrieked, “Who did that? Come on, who did it?” There was a brief scuffle among the huddle of gully dwarves until one, a large, dull-faced lout, was booted to the front by the others. He slipped on the dusty floor as he skidded to a stop before Shnatz, catching himself on a section of fallen stone.

“What the matter with you?” Shnatz demanded.

“It slipped,” the gully dwarf answered sheepishly.

“Oh, yeah? That okay. Accidents happen. Like now.” Shnatz lashed out and cracked the clumsy gully dwarf on top of the head with the hilt of a small dagger he carried concealed in his grubby fist. The gully dwarf clapped his hands to his pate and sank to the floor, moaning like a felled ox.

“You dumb puhungs got to be quiet. Somebody catches you here, I hate to think what they do to you. This place forbidden, and that means you no go here. ’Cept now you got to go here ’cause that’s what I tell you to do. You not do what I tell you to do, I hate to think what I do to you. You unnerstand?”

The cringing gully dwarves stared at him blankly, unresponding. Shnatz sighed and said, “You got that?” They nodded, twenty grimy, knot-bearded faces bobbing so vigorously that it nearly made Shnatz seasick—even though he had never been to sea, unless you counted the great underground Urkhan Sea lying somewhere below him at this very moment. Shnatz got seasick every time he crossed the Urkhan Sea, despite the fact that it had neither wind nor waves, tides nor currents.

“Dumb puhungs not even know what ‘understand’ means,” Shnatz grumbled as he turned and started up the passage once more. When he heard them surge into motion behind him, following at his heels, he stopped even trying to scout ahead. There was little purpose to scouting ahead, anyway. He’d been exploring this area for months, and he knew for a fact that no one had been to this part of the ruins in a dozen years or more. Dust lay thick among the crumbled walls and fallen pillars, and the only footprints he saw on the floor as he crept forward were his own from two weeks ago. Not even his fellow gully dwarves had taken up residence in the place, and that was saying something. Gully dwarves generally moved into any place where they would be left alone by the other clans.

But for some reason that not even Shnatz could name, gully dwarves had never invaded the ruins of Hybardin, the old home of the Hylar dwarves. There wasn’t much left of it, for one thing. Weakened by the ravages of the Chaos dragons forty-one years ago, most of the great stalactite that had been the Hylar city had long since crumbled and fallen to the Urkhan Sea hundreds of feet below. This had led to the formation of a huge rocky island of jumbled ruins and broken stone that the Hylar called the Isle of the Dead. As with the ruins of Hybardin, the gully dwarves also avoided the Isle of the Dead. Only the Hylar went there anymore, and then only once a year, during the Festival of Lights.

Shnatz continued to follow his own old footprints through the dust. There were two sets of footprints—one going in and the other coming out. Shnatz was glad to have the footprints to guide him, because the map he had drawn had proven itself to be worse than useless. Jungor had forced him to draw a map, but Shnatz was a gully dwarf, not a kender. He wasn’t much good with anything that had to do with paper or pens or desks or government clerks asking him what his mother’s name was. His map had started in the wrong place and led in a big circle right back to it. After the third go-round, he had blown his nose into the map and tossed it aside.

Shnatz’s footprints led through the dust of the cramped, broken passage, over piles of ruins and through narrow cracks into other halls and chambers filled with the charred bones of dead dwarves. Stripped of their flesh, one dwarf was as similar and as different as any other—Hylar, Daewar, Daergar, Theiwar, and Klar. You could not pick up any one skull and say this was the braincase of a noble Hylar lord. It might just as well be the skull of a scheming Daergar assassin, or a blood-mad Klar berserker with his face caked with white clay. Even a gully dwarfs bones might be mistaken for those of a Hylar youth.

Shnatz didn’t need to remind his band of twenty gully dwarves not to touch any of the skeletons. There was some power left in these old bones, power to chill the heart and fog the mind with terror. The gully dwarves wanted nothing more than to get beyond them. Finally, they left the scene of slaughter behind and entered a wide paved courtyard surrounded by darkly glaring windows and empty doorways. In the center of the courtyard, a fountain had once sent a stream of clear cold water jetting from the mouth of a cavorting wolf. But now the wolfs head lay in the bottom of the dust-filled basin; its tail and one of its legs were broken off and lost amid the ruin of shattered stone that had fallen from the porticos of the surrounding residences.

Shnatz’s footprints crossed the courtyard in a meandering line, like a hound upon a scent. In places, the footprints bunched up and overran themselves. But Shnatz ignored the path now and made his way directly across the courtyard, to the place where the footsteps ended abruptly at a large paving stone completely free of any trace of dust. Fresh stone showed through in chips along its edges, and several lines of footprints led away from and back to it. Shnatz stopped here and pulled a small pry bar from some hidden fold of his second-hand tunic. He inserted it along the edge of the paving stone, and on the third try, the stone tilted. He caught it and slid it to the side before it could fall into the black hole beneath.

He turned to his companions and said in as firm a voice as he could muster, “Wait here. You got it?” They nodded in unison, a sea of bobbing heads that made his stomach roll over.

He stepped to the edge of the hole and dropped in, landing with a thump some twenty feet below and immediately splaying himself out on the stone to keep from sliding down the rather severe slope of the glassy floor. After a few moments to get his bearings, Shnatz slipped down the slope until he found the ladder. It wasn’t much of a ladder. He had nailed it together from broken pieces of furniture that he scavenged from the ruins, and he certainly was no carpenter. Neither was he a stonemason, but he had managed to chip a pair of grooves out of the floor beneath the hole to set the ladder’s feet in to keep them from slipping on the steep, glass-slick floor. Nevertheless, he was quite proud of his ladder and anxious to show it off, even if only to puhungs.

That’s when he heard the first one hit the floor with a yelp and a clang of tools. He quickly stepped aside as the gully dwarf went shrieking by, sliding on his back with his pickaxe skittering and sparking behind him. Shnatz didn’t even bother to try to catch him. Instead, he hefted the ladder and rushed upslope to try to stop the next one. The cries of the first one died away behind him even as the next one slammed into the ground in front of him. He threw his ladder down and grabbed her before the unfortunate creature could gather any momentum. She clung to his arm in terror, while at the same time instinctively catching her hammer as it streaked by, spitting sparks.

“Wait!” Shnatz hissed even as he saw the next one leaning over the edge of the hole. “Wait for ladder!”

He shook himself free of the gully dwarf he had rescued, after telling her to lie still. She obeyed without question. Feeling around on the floor, Shnatz found the grooves he had carved in the floor. He set the feet of the ladder into the grooves and pulled it up until its top rested just at the edge of the hole. “Come now!” he ordered.

“Is it safe?” one of the gully dwarves asked as he edged onto the ladder’s first rung.

“Stupid puhungs” Shnatz muttered. “I not know why I bother with you stupid puhungs. Is it safe? It safer than jumping, stupid puhung.”

Once they had safely navigated their descent, Shnatz ordered them to bunch together and hold on to one another. Standing alone, one might slip and fall, bowl into his companions, and send the entire throng sliding to their deaths. But close together, there was less chance that one false step would bring them all down. Plus, Shnatz was leading them and he didn’t want to be swept up in the tide of their self-inflicted ruin.

Even so, it was a tricky and dangerous climb down the glass-smooth slope. No dwarf construction, this tunnel had been burned through the solid stone by one of the Chaos dragons that had attacked Thorbardin. After continuing downward for about a hundred feet, the passage made an abrupt right turn and leveled off. Here, they found the first gully dwarf who had dropped through the hole, the point of his pickax lodged firmly between his crossed eyes. Shnatz kicked him to make sure he was dead, then continued onward with a roll of his eyes. The other gully dwarves crept past their dead comrade, snickering nervously, death being one of their most familiar jokes, and the more absurd the death the better they liked it, unless they were the ones doing the dying.

The passage wound back and forth, as though the dragon that had burned it were chasing something that was trying its best to get away. At one point, they came to a place where a large section of the wall and a portion of the floor opened into empty blackness. “Where that go?” one of the gully dwarves asked.

Shnatz looked back over his shoulder and sneered. “Jump in and see.”

The gully dwarf peered into the hole for a moment, a crisp, wet breeze weakly fingering the matted hairs of his beard. He turned to Shnatz and said, “You get ladder.”

“Come on. We go this way. You follow me, don’t fall in.” The nineteen remaining gully dwarves didn’t need to be told twice. They gave the hole a wide berth and hurried after their leader, who had already ranged far ahead, his torch winking in the darkness like a far-off star.

Eventually, Shnatz found the place he sought and ordered them all to a halt. They thankfully dropped their digging tools and sank to the ground, panting and weeping of their weariness. “Get up! Get up!” Shnatz growled, kicking them. “We not done yet. We just get here. Now real work begin.” Moaning and snarling, the gully dwarves crawled to their feet once more.

“We do job. We follow you just like you say. What we gotta do now?” they complained.

“See this floor?” Shnatz asked. In this section of the tunnel, the slick, glassy floor and walls were covered in a huge spiderweb of cracks. Some of the cracks were a handspan or more wide. The gully dwarves examined the floor for a moment, then nodded. Shnatz continued, “You start digging here. Break open these cracks wider.”

“What we dig for?” one of the gully dwarves asked.

“Treasure,” Shnatz whispered, to get their full attention. He glanced around as though making sure no one might overhear. The gully dwarves gathered near, their grimy faces eager. “Ancient dwarf treasure of the Great Hylar, left here when Hybardin abandoned.”

“No fooling?” they sighed, all their greediest longings kindled.

Shnatz winked and poked one of them in the ribs. “You best diggers of all Aghar. That why I hire you. We all be rich, rich as kings. But you gotta dig quick, before someone find us and run us off, take all treasure for themselves.”

The gully dwarves growled angrily that anyone would dare steal their treasure after they had worked so hard to find it. They set to work with gusto. Shnatz had them spread out rather than all dig in one place. When asked why, he said, “Treasure big. You gotta dig big hole!” which doubled their enthusiasm. Picks swung and rock chips flew, and only occasionally did they do each other serious harm. The injured crawled aside to cheer on their fellows, for all were promised an equal share. Shnatz stood well hack, a grin slowly spreading across his filthy face.

It wasn’t long before one of the gully dwarves shouted for their leader. Shnatz ordered them to stop digging and approached. “You find treasure?” he asked.

“No. But something wrong with this rock,” the gully dwarf, named Hong, answered. To demonstrate, he struck the floor with his hammer. A section of the floor as large as a serving platter sank three inches under the blow.

Shnatz leaped back and began to edge away. “You do good work, better than I thought. Treasure almost ours. But you work hard, need break. Everybody take break. I be right back.”

“Where you go?” Hong asked.

“I gonna go spit in that hole, see how deep it is. You stay here,” Shnatz said, then hurried away.

Hong looked around at his companions and shrugged. Groaning, they sank to the shattered floor, stretched out their short, weary legs and began to discuss how they were going to spend their riches once they were all kings.

19

In previous years, the Festival of Lights had been Tarn’s favorite time of the year. At no other time was his city of Norbardin more beautiful. Being exquisite metalworkers and skilled in the arts of stonecarving, the dwarves delighted in creating the most fantastic lanterns and lamps they could imagine. They made lanterns from the materials they loved most—gold and silver, copper and steel, as well as all kinds of beautiful stone. As he made his way through the city, accompanied only by the captain of his guard, Mog Bonecutter, Tarn delighted in the infinite variety of lights that lined the streets. Whether hung in windows or from lampposts or strung from wires from house to house, the streets of Norbardin glittered with a beauty and a brilliance to rival the stars in the night sky.

Tarn’s favorite ornaments were the moon lamps that he saw sitting atop poles at the corners of many of the streets he passed. Carved into a hollow sphere inside which a single candle burned, the red lanterns were carved from red jade and glowed like the red moon Lunitari, the moon of neutrality. Far more popular were the white lanterns, which were carved from milky white crystal to represent Solinari, the silver moon of goodness. Though the moons of magic no longer brightened the night skies of Krynn (they, like the gods, had disappeared at the end of the Chaos War), the dwarves remembered them in their crafts and in their songs. Tarn loved to see the warmly glowing translucent globes hanging above his head once more. They reminded him of a simpler time.

At this time of the day, the celebrations of the festival were just beginning to start. Columns of dwarves paraded through the streets of each quarter of the city—Hylar, Daewar, Daergar, Theiwar, and Klar—playing harps and drums, and bearing lights to honor the dead and decorate the family shrines found in most residential districts. Each family had its own shrine, and the head of the family was its priest, presiding over a day of feasting. The dwarves celebrated their dead rather than mourning them, after the proper mourning period of six years had passed. So the Festival of Lights was a day in which a family might celebrate the lives of their grandfathers through riotous feasting and games, while at the same time wearing shorn beards and black armbands in mourning of someone who had recently passed away. It was not unusual to see a veiled widow kicking a ball in the streets with a gang of laughing children, or a grief-stricken father well into his cups singing songs with other customers at the neighborhood tavern.

Tarn made a point of touring the newer neighborhoods of the Anvil’s Echo, though this took him far out of his way. On normal days, the Daergar and Theiwar never even bothered to light the streets of their home quarters; they were gifted with darkvision and had no need of lights. But on the day of the Festival of Lights, these two quarters were perhaps more brilliant than any other in the city. The Daergar made up in cleverness and dark humor for their lack of precious metals and rich stones with which to make their lamps. Instead, they had created an infinite variety of paper and wood constructions, and this material allowed them to achieve more fantastic shapes and a greater variety of colors. On one street, all the lamps were of fish, whales, and mythical beasts of the sea, shining with cool blues and soft greens that made the street look like some weird underwater grotto. Another street seemed to be on fire, with orange and yellow paper lamps shaped like open flames licking from every window and doorway. Such was the nature of the Daergar humor, which re-created the destruction of Chaos as part of their celebration.

In the Theiwar quarter, there were fewer lamps, but these were often magical in nature, burning without fire or heat, and with wildly varied colors. The Theiwar preferred to cast their magics into lamps of purest crystal and to decorate them with illusions, usually grotesque ones. Tarn’s favorite was a new one set up before the house of Brecha Quickspring, the Theiwar thane. It was a towering piece of crystal carved to look like the mountain itself. Its light shone from the open North and South Gates, while illusionary dragons flew in slow circles around its snowcapped peak.

Tarn was surprised to see so many new magical lamps in the Theiwar section of the Anvil’s Echo. Over the past three or four festivals, new lamps had been scarce, and some had even begun to whisper that the Theiwars’ magic was failing. But now, the streets seemed to be filled with glowing lights and weird illusions to delight and terrify. Tarn had a natural distrust of magic, as did most dwarves, but he could appreciate the care that had gone into the Theiwars’ decorations this year. Certainly, this proved that their magic had not waned one whit. While pleased, nevertheless he reminded himself that he needed to dig more deeply into this development and find out why.

Tarn’s wandering journey through Norbardin was of course accompanied by Mog’s constant wheedling. That street was much too dangerous; the people of this neighborhood dislike you; let me summon more guards, you shouldn’t travel alone like this; I can’t protect you from everything, I only have two eyes. …on and on. The Klar captain walked as though upon naked swollen nerves, always jumping at shadows, his hand flying to the axe at his belt at every slam of a door.

Tarn knew his job was to look as though he was comfortable enough to lie down on a bench in the seediest section of the Anvil’s Echo and take a nice long nap. That didn’t mean he wasn’t wary. In the year since the disaster at Qualinost, the good will of the dwarves of Thorbardin had definitely soured toward their king. Not in obvious ways, of course. Few spoke openly against him, but in his public audiences Tarn had begun to detect a distinct undercurrent of disrespect. Nothing he could pin down with certainty, just the occasional sarcastic remark about his “leadership.”

But more ominously, the dwarves he met on the streets no longer greeted him in their old familiar ways. They used polite formality to keep their distance from him now. In the weeks after the disaster, people had gone out of their way to greet him, to offer words of encouragement and support, seeking any excuse to shake his hand, or bend his ear. Now, people did little more than pause and bow coolly before continuing about their business. Some merely nodded, though everyone was meticulously polite.

Tarn tried not to let it bother him, but Mog, on top of all his safety concerns, was incensed by the change in public mood. He snarled and grumbled nearly constantly, promising a sound thrashing under his breath to nearly everyone they encountered. Tarn heard every word and feared the day Mog should ever be let loose on the innocent population. That was one reason why he had so thoroughly incorporated the Klar into his administration, assigning them duties at every level. With something positive to do and the honor of the king to protect and uphold, the Klar were less likely to cause themselves and others harm. Naturally, the other clans didn’t understand this, and resented Tarn’s apparent favoritism.

The Klar quarter was the one place in Norbardin where the people still greeted him warmly, sometimes too warmly. He lost count of how many times he had to free himself from being dragged into a tavern to join them in a round to toast the king’s health. The Klar had lost more warriors in the disaster at Qualinost than any other clan, but they had never grown to blame Tarn. But not even among his own people did Mog relax his guard. If anything, he felt freer here to lay about with his fists in order to clear the way when the friendly crowd pressed uncomfortably close to the king.

Having finally cleared the Klar quarter, Tarn and Mog were able to make better time. They left Norbardin behind and followed a wide passage called the First Road to the West Warrens, where the mushroom fields that fed and clothed Norbardin were located. This huge agricultural area was many times larger than Norbardin, made up of a complex of interconnected caverns filled with a soft black loam, atop which their mushrooms grew. Even so, it was still quite a bit smaller than the North, South, and East Warrens, now inaccessible beyond the ruins of the dwarven cities.

The dwarves farmed several dozen varieties of mushrooms, some for food, some for fibers to make cloth, some for their medicinal properties, or for brewing into spirits. The largest variety were among the edible mushrooms, from the small spicy purple lumpkins to the big beefsteak mushrooms that had to be chopped down with an axe and butchered like a hog to separate the edible parts from the fibrous.

The Warrens were largely unpopulated this day. Except for a few retired overseers or independent mushroom farmers who had their residences right here in the mushroom caverns, most of the workers were away celebrating in Norbardin. Guards lingered near cavern intersections, for the Warrens needed constant guarding against raids by gully dwarves and other hungry creatures of the deep places. They saluted perfunctorily as Tarn passed by, most of them already half-sodden on dwarf spirits.

The Sixth Road led out of the south end of the Warrens to a wharf on the shore of the Urkhan Sea. Here, Tarn found a boat awaiting him, a half dozen Hylar rowers already sitting at the oarlocks with their hoods pulled up over their heads against the cold, moist air. Dark water lapped and spattered against the side of the boat and the piles of the dock as Tarn and Mog climbed down and took their places on a bench. Tarn apologized for being late. Someone muttered something unintelligible in response. Tarn placed a warning hand on Mog’s arm, urging him back into his seat. The helmsman ordered the lines cast off. Oars rattled in their locks and dipped in smooth unison into the black water of the sea, as the boat turned and shot out over the glass-smooth water.

In the distance, a great bulk of darkness, dotted with lights at its near end, loomed up against the larger darkness of the enormous central cavern of Thorbardin. Few humans or elves had ever set foot inside the mountain, nor were they allowed the privilege of seeing one of the great wonders of Krynn.

The Urkhan Sea was a vast underground freshwater lake, one of the largest known freshwater lakes on the entire continent of Ansalon. Five miles across at its widest point, the lake once served as the primary conduit of transportation between the five dwarven cities of Thorbardin. Now the cities lay in ruins, uninhabited except by a few feral Klar and, of course, uncounted thousands of gully dwarves.

Travel across the sea was a rare event now, but the dwarves of Tarn’s boat had not forgotten their skills. The helmsmen softly calling out the strokes, they plied the oars with practiced care, working in unison to pull the boat across the lake as smoothly as a shuttlecock sliding between the two weaves of a loom. The lights on the distant shore grew nearer by the minute.

The Isle of the Dead rose before them, hulking and black, jagged and fearful to behold, for this was the ruins of the fallen Life Tree of the Hylar, the wreck of Hybardin. Already somber and thinking ruefully of his wife and son, Tarn’s mood darkened as they drew near. Somewhere on that island, buried under tons of rubble, lay the bones of his first love, Belicia Slateshoulders. Their marriage had been less than a month away when she died. Tarn reflected that, had they been married before the accident that took her life—when she, along with several hundred workers, plunged to their fates when the section of Hybardin they were attempting to restore broke free—his life would be very different today. Dwarves mated for life. If he had lost his wife rather than his betrothed, there wouldn’t be a Crystal Heathstone or a Tor Bellowgranite in his life today.

In a way, he was glad they had waited to marry, but he meant no dishonor to her spirit, especially on this hallowed day. In his heart, he knew that Belicia never begrudged him his conflicted feelings. Nevertheless, he sometimes felt ugly inside, as though he had betrayed her somehow.

On the near side of the island, a low spur of land jutted out into the black Urkhan Sea. Down by the water’s edge, tiny against the huge bulk of the island, the Hylar dwarves had built a small shrine to honor those doomed to lie in these ruins and thus denied a proper cairn burial. The shrine was carved out of purest white marble. Beside it stood a deep granite basin weighing several tons, resting atop a wide granite base into which was carved the names of those Hylar known to lie at rest on the island. A lesser shrine honored the Daewar who had died in defense of Hybardin during the war. Daergar and Theiwar had perished here as well, buried under tons of rubble during the first collapse, but they had died making war against the rightful rulers of Thorbardin and so received no memorial here.

Dozens of torches set atop tall poles surrounded the shrine and its small courtyard beside the lapping waters of the Urkhan Sea. Drawing nearer, Tarn saw that there were already many boats pulled up along the rocky shore or tied to the wharf. His was the last boat to arrive, and by the looks of it, the dwarves had already begun the Festival of Lights ceremony without him.

Atop the shrine burned hundreds of white and blue lamps, each made of wrought silver paned with sodalite or some other polished translucent mineral. Most were stamped or etched with some form of family crest or seal, symbolizing the ongoing dedication of the deceased’s family to their fallen kin. More than any other ceremony on this day of ceremonies, this gathering of the Hylar was dedicated to those who had died in the Chaos War.

As Tarn’s boat bumped into the wharf, he heard the deep mournful sound of dwarven voices lifted in song—a dirge for the lost dead. Tarn stood on the wharf while his rowers put away their oars. Mog remained sitting in the boat, a dour look on his face.

“I’m sorry, Mog,” Tarn said when the rowers had climbed out of the boat and headed for the ceremony. “They won’t allow you to join me on the island. Thane Stonesinger has convinced the others that this island is holy to the Hylar and the Hylar alone. There is nothing I can do to change their minds.”

“You are the king. It’s not proper for you to be without your bodyguards,” Mog grumbled. “But I will follow your wishes.”

“I am safe here, if nowhere else,” Tarn said. Reluctantly, he turned away. Mog seemed so miserable sitting in the bottom of the boat, alone, the cold, moist air seeping through his clothes and into his bones, fighting an internal battle between his loyalty to the king and his burning desire to beat some Klar sense into the fools that seemed to surround him on all sides.

“I hope this won’t take too long,” Tarn muttered.

20

As Tarn reached the edge of the crowd of Hylar dignitaries gathered around the shrine, their song was just winding down to its long, dolorous ending. Only the most important Hylar were allowed to be present at this solemn ceremony, but at least one member of every Hylar family, no matter how low in rank, were invited. Of all the bloodlines represented here this day, only Tarn’s was not of pure Hylar lineage. But he was their king, and they opened a way for him through the throng to the center of the waterside plaza.

Thane Jungor Stonesinger stood beside the shrine, his grotesque features twisted into an agony of grief. He seemed not to even notice Tarn’s arrival as he cried out, “We commemorate this day those who met their end at the hands of the shadow wights, foul creatures of Chaos, whose touch not only destroyed flesh and spirit but also memory. We know that they existed, even though we cannot remember them, because of the effect they had on all our lives.”

Clutching a beautiful white lamp to his chest and glaring balefully at the heavens with his one eye, Jungor bellowed histrionically, “I live, yet I have no mother. No one remembers my mother, not even my father, yet we know she lived. We feel her presence in every aspect of our lives. My sisters and I exist because she existed. Yet it is as though she never lived, never bore an honored name, and nowhere on Krynn will you find her tomb. It is to the lost dead of Thorbardin that I dedicate my lamp today.”

Finding his place in the ceremony, Tarn stepped up beside the Hylar thane. Atop the shrine lay a tall gilded torch, nearly twice his height and unlit. He picked it up and held its flammable end to Jungor’s lamp, lighting it from the lamp’s tiny flame. The torch burst to life, its flame warm and yellow compared to the cold white light of Jungor’s lamp. He lifted it so that all could see.

“Today we honor all our dead, those who died before Chaos, during Chaos, and after Chaos. Those whose tombs we know and those who he in nameless tombs in the deep places of the world; those slain in battles far from home, and those who ended their lives surrounded by those who loved them. To all dwarves, to the Kingdom of the Dead, we dedicate these lights of remembrance.”

As Tarn concluded his dedication, a death skald approached through the crowd. Dressed in black robes and wearing a death mask over his copper-bearded face, he was a fearful sight. This day, he represented death incarnate, the living representation of mortality, and he bore in his hand a book in which was written the names of those whose bodies lay unburied on the Isle of the Dead. This island was his place; no one knew his name, not even the king. His was a secret role assigned to his family in a time forgotten even by the dwarves—a true priest of the dead. Tarn suspected that the current death skald was none other than the merchant Hextor Ironhaft, but he couldn’t be sure. If Jungor knew, he didn’t say. In fact, it was forbidden even to ask, or to publicly speculate about the real identity of a death skald, and no one would even dare consider trying to discover his secret.

Stepping up between the king and the Hylar thane, the death skald opened a diptych and began to chant the long litany of names to be found on the pedestal under the granite basin. His voice, harsh and powerful, was nonetheless beautiful in its own way. Half song of mourning and half war cry, it spoke of the eternal grief of the dwarven peoples as well as their will to endure any hardship or loss. When he sang a name, those who had known the dead in life remembered their grief as well as their former happiness.

As he chanted, bearers appeared carrying large urns in harnesses strapped to their shoulders. Dressed like ancient priests of Reorx yet wearing none of his symbols, they approached the granite basin and bowed beside it, allowing the contents of their urns to pour into the wide stone bowl. The heady scent of fine dwarf spirits stung the nostrils of everyone gathered near the shrine.

As Tarn listened to the chanting of the names and the pouring out of libations for the dead, his mind began to drift back to thoughts of home, of his son. He wondered what Tor was doing, and not for the first time, he wished he were back home with the boy. The voice of the skald resonated with his thoughts, and when the name of his father, Baker Whitegranite, was pronounced, Tarn was overcome by a horrible vision—of himself, lighting a candle in memory of his son. Would Tor’s name one day be added to the lists of the dead during his father’s lifetime? All the nameless fears that had been tormenting him since the birth of his son were suddenly given life and form. He saw the myriad ways that a dwarf child could die abruptly—disease, violence, accident—and he knew, to his everlasting terror, that there was no way he could protect Tor from all of them. For the first time in his life, Tarn longed for a god to which to pray.

As the skald read the last name from his book, the last urn was emptied. A silence fell over the assembly. Shaken from his morose thoughts by the demand of his ceremonial duty, Tarn approached the basin, fluttering torch in hand. This was always a tricky undertaking, involving a certain degree of risk. Pure, unbridled dwarf spirits of the kind brewed in every local tavern were notoriously flammable, one might say explosively flammable. Battles had been won in the ancient past when walls were breached by dwarf spirit bombs being rolled against them and lit with flaming crossbow bolts. The king’s spirits, being of a finer grade and brewed with better equipment and ingredients, were not so volatile, but still required careful handling. As was the custom, Tarn had donated from his private stores the urns of dwarf spirits to fill the drinking bowl of the dead. This was the way the king celebrated the Festival of Light, for this granite basin filled with dangerous spirits was his lamp, the only one he was allowed to light.

Standing well back, long torch in hand, Tarn touched the flame to the edge of the bowl. A blue-white column of fire shot up, roaring like a whirlwind, a plume of superheated glowing smoke rising high into the darkness of the great subterranean chamber. Everyone scurried away from the intense heat. And, as usual, the ends of Tarns eyebrows and beard hairs were scorched and smoking as he turned his face away from the flames.

Shnatz Ong started in surprise. “That signal!” he whispered excitedly.

He sat at the edge of the collapsed section of the tunnel, gazing down into the blackness and carelessly dangling his feet over the ledge. Earlier, he had watched numerous small collections of lights cross the black Urkhan Sea and gather along the shore of the massive dark bulk of the Isle of the Dead, hundreds of feet below him. Now, he saw a jet of blue-white flame rise up from the midst of the lights. He didn’t really care what kind of sentimental ceremonies the Hylar conducted on the Isle of the Dead. Such was not his purpose in spying on them. Jungor had told him to watch for a pillar of blue-white fire, for that was the signal for him to complete his task. Leaping to his feet, he scurried off down the tunnel toward the light of the gully dwarves’ torches.

His sudden return startled the lounging gully dwarves from their ruminations, waking the others from their naps. “Hurry, back to work. Dig! Dig!” he shouted.

“What wrong?” the gully dwarf named Hong cried as he clamored for his hammer and chisel.

“Somebody coming!” Shnatz said. “We got to get treasure before they get here.”

“That just our luck,” Hong muttered and he began to hack and bang at the stone. The other gully dwarves returned to their tasks with renewed fury. Stone chips flew under their pickaxes, and then the floor began to sink visibly, the walls to crack and moan.

“Must be some big treasure chamber!” one of the gully dwarves shouted excitedly as a large section of the floor beside him dropped away. He leaned over and looked into the hole it left behind. “I see twinkles, look like shiny rocks, whole bunches of shiny rocks, way far below!”

“Dig! Dig!” Hong cried. “How much deeper, you think?” That’s when he noticed that Shnatz had disappeared again.

But of course, by that time, it was already too late.

21

Tarn shook the ashes from his hair and stood back to admire the pure elemental ferocity of the fire he’d ignited. The pillar of blue-white flame rose forty or more feet into the air and burned with a steady magnificence that was startling to behold, even for a people much accustomed to the intense flames of the forge fire and the smelting pit. He felt the heat baking the flesh of his face, almost as though he had, for a moment, stood too close to the sun.

Then, as quickly and violently as it began, the flame winked out. A few gossamer whisps of bluish fire were all that remained, dancing like elf spirits along the edges of the smoking granite basin. Even so, the dwarves could still see a great mushroom of smoke rising up and up toward the place where their city once hung. Their prayers, their hopes, their regrets, and their collective grief rose up with that swirling cloud, leaving their hearts lightened and their spirits lifted. Someone began to sing an ode to joy—one of the rarest songs of the dwarven musical catalogue. Tarn felt his own fears and thoughts of death shredded by that rising cloud of smoke. He knew it was nothing more than smoke, yet it left him feeling strangely at peace with his past as well as hopeful for the future. It had been many years, more years than he could remember, since any sort of ceremony, religious or otherwise, had affected him so deeply. It had brought him from his accustomed apathy to the depths of fear and despair in the visions of his dead son, and left him, at last, as though upon a plateau of joy.

He noticed that others felt the same emotion, and he marveled to see dwarves from families long considered enemies standing side by side, their voices lifted in song. He searched the crowd for the death skald, but he had already either disappeared or shed his mask and cloak in order to blend in with the crowd. Shrugging, Tarn added his own voice to the song. He had a good singing voice, and some of the Hylar smiled to hear him use it.

But after only a couple of stanzas, the words died upon Tarn’s lips, for the song tapered away as the crowd noticed a gathering commotion near the wharves. Suddenly, a bellow of agony stilled the voices of the last stalwart singers. Everyone turned to look what caused the interruption, including Tarn.

At first, he was relieved to see that Mog had not grown weary of waiting and had decided to join the festivities. But it comforted him little to note that Jungor Stonesinger lay at the center of the disturbance. “What now?” Tarn grumbled as he began to push his way through the crowd.

He found the one-eyed Hylar thane collapsed in the arms of none other than Hextor Ironhaft, the dwarf Tarn suspected of being the death skald. Jungor’s body was shaking with paroxysms, foam flecking his bearded lips, and his hands clutching spasmodically skywards. His staff (as preposterous a theatrical prop as Tarn had ever seen) lay on the ground next to him. Hextor clutched the thane to his breast, crying out in despair.

Seeing the Hylar thane flopping about on the ground filled Tarn with disgust. It was obvious even to a blind gully dwarf that Jungor had been taking far too many theatrical liberties of late—his missing eye and acid-scarred face, the wizard staff, his beard and queer robes. But rather than seeing this charade for what it was, it sometimes seemed that the Hylar wished to be fooled by Jungor’s theatrics. They preferred a lying charlatan promising all their dreams would come true, rather than a king who only wanted to improve the lives of all his subjects, from the lowest to the highest.

Jungor’s performance only grew more exaggerated as Tarn watched. The Hylar thane’s guard, Astar Trueshield, arrived on the scene with much bluster, bombastically ordering everyone to stand back and give the thane room to breathe. The gathered dwarves retreated respectfully, fear and concern written upon their faces. Tarn almost laughed, but held his tongue. Hextor and Astar worked over the fallen thane, loosening his robe, fearfully calling his name. Jungor continued to writhe on the ground, bawling like a wounded cave ox, heels drumming the stone.

“What’s the matter with him anyway?” Tarn asked, his voice tinged with impatience. The other Hylar glared at him balefully, but he ignored them. He would have liked nothing better than to kick Jungor in the groin and see if that didn’t set him right. In his eyes, the Hylar thane was nothing but a fundamentalist fraud, an advocate of an old way of life who was bent on dragging everyone else into the mazes of his delusion.

Soon, the thane’s gyrations lessened. His eye assumed a faraway stare as he lay back on the cold stone ground, his closest advisors kneeling worriedly over him. Suddenly, he rose up and shouted, his voice like the blare of a trumpet. “Beware! Beware! The Kingdom of the Dead brings a warning. The dead are not pleased. Danger approaches, danger from above to send a warning and clear the way.” Then he fell back, limp as a cloth doll, his good eye closed, empty eye glaring upward.

“What does he say?” Tarn demanded, leaning over Jungor’s body. “What’s this fool raving about?”

Astar stepped between the king and the thane, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword in warning, the features of his face set as though carved from stone. Tarn stepped back in alarm, but before he could challenge the Hylar captain, Hextor Ironhaft said, “The dead speak through Jungor Stonesinger. Just as the spirit of Vault Forgesmoke obeyed the thane’s command in the arena, now the dead bring us a warning of danger. We must flee the island!”

Hearing this, many of the Hylar wasted no time in hurrying toward their boats lined up along the wharf or pulled up on the stony shoreline. Astar and Hextor lifted their thane between them and hustled him toward their own boat, a large craft of sixteen oars moored beside Tarn’s boat. They didn’t even bother to gather their lamps from the shrine.

Others shared Tarn’s skepticism yet remained somewhat apprehensive, not sure whether to flee with the others or defiantly remain where they were. Tarn was of a mind to stand on the shore and shout words of ridicule to those who had fled the island so ignobly.

But then a rock the size of his fist struck the ground before him, shattering explosively and stinging his exposed flesh with tiny razor-sharp shards. Words of derision died upon his lips. Smaller stones began to fall about them like hail. Then a boulder smashed into the shrine, extinguishing the lamps in one concussive explosion. Choking dust boiled around them, casting them into sudden darkness. Tarn’s eyes quickly adjusted to the dark, but the other Hylar were hopelessly blinded, while a sudden shower of pebbles pelted them. Screams of pain and terror echoed off the surrounding ruins.

Shouting for them to follow him, Tarn led the remainder to their boats. Luckily, it was only a short dash from the shrine to the water’s edge. As Tarn rushed along the wharf toward his own boat, the stonefall slackened somewhat, though to look at the roiling surface of the Urkhan Sea, one would think it were raining inside the mountain. Mog held the boat to the wharf by threat of violence, else Tarn’s rowers would have abandoned him already. Most of the boats had already left. He could see them cutting the water with their shining oars, fearful faces glaring back toward the Isle of the Dead.

“There’s a light up there,” Mog shouted as Tarn drew near. “I saw a light, high above, but just for a moment. I…”

That is when a concussive explosion of water flung Tarn onto his back, knocking the air from his lungs. Coughing and gasping, he climbed to his feet as a fine mist of rain began to fall about him. Mixed with the rain were bits of wood, metal fittings; a bronze oar lock clattered to the ground at his feet, then the frayed stump of an oar dropped beside it.

Tarn rushed to the wharfs edge and peered down into the water. His boat, and everyone in it, were gone. He stared in disbelief at the tattered bit of mooring line still tied to the cleat.

A shout from farther down the wharf brought him slowly around. Still stunned, he climbed down into a boat that had returned to retrieve him. He didn’t even notice who the others were in the boat. He merely thanked them and sat down in the bow while the boat shot away from the island, stones raining down all around it.

A noise like a crack of thunder echoed through the vast cavern. The noise shook Tarn back to his senses. “Turn the boat around!” he shouted. “We have to go back for Mog.”

“Listen!” someone in a nearby boat cried. The rowers paused in their strokes for a moment as everyone bent an ear to hear. Tarn heard it first—a distant chorus of shrieking voices, growing ever louder, somewhere high above.

“What new evil is this?” one of the rowers asked fearfully.

“Never you mind. Keep rowing. Bend your backs to it!” shouted the boat’s helmsman.

“No! Turn the boat around! We have to go back,” Tarn said as the shrieking quickly grew louder, like a dozen banshees dropping down upon them from the darkness.

“Row on!” the helmsman roared, ignoring the king, and his rowers obeyed him. Tarn’s demands fell on ears deafened by terror. The banshee wails seemed almost atop them now. The dwarves in the boat ducked their heads even as they pulled frantically at their oars.

Then, the shrieks ended in a thunderous roar as a huge section of the mountain smashed into the island, utterly obliterating the shrine and the wharf. A concussion of hot air and blinding dust struck the boat broadside, nearly tipping it over. Tarn’s fingers dug into the wood of the gunwale as he blinked the dust and stone splinters from his eyes and stared back at the island, desperately seeking any sign of the loyal, brave Mog.

“We must go back and look for him,” he said in a voice utterly bereft of hope.

“It’s too dangerous, my king,” the helmsman said, not without sympathy. The rowers pulled their oars through the water, drawing the boat away from the Isle of the Dead. “He’s probably dead by now. Even if he survived the stone that destroyed his boat, nothing could live through that last collapse.”

They pulled in grim silence for a while, listening to the sounds of the other boats, the soft calls of the helmsmen counting out the strokes. No one spoke. All were still too numb with horror to appreciate the nearness of their escape.

Then, one of the rowers in Tarn’s boat whispered to his benchmate, his voice pitched low so the king would not hear, “Jungor’s warning saved our lives. He saved us all.” But Tarn heard him, and as he heard the murmur of awe from the other dwarves in his boat, his heart grew cold with doubt. Such thoughts, such suspicions took root in his mind, so horrible that he dared not shine the light of reason upon them.

For Jungor Stonesinger had indeed saved their lives with his warning vision. And wasn’t that marvelously fortunate?

22

Mog had never been more comfortable in all his life. His bed was large enough that his entire family could have slept in it, its wooden frame exquisitely carved with elvish designs (probably an import from Qualinesti), its coverlets of an ancient weave, but sturdy and soft as the day they were made.

Across the oddly-shaped chamber where his bed stood, a merry fire burned beneath a bubbling iron pot, from which the most delicious smells occasionally wafted. Mog found that he had acquired a substantial appetite during his absence, and whatever it was that was cooking in the pot was winning a decisive battle against the delightful languid peace that had heretofore kept him in this bed.

Where had he been, he wondered absently, not really caring if he thought of the answer. Still, it was a pleasant diversion, to sit and think of his mortal life. For naturally, he was dead, and this must be the afterlife. Nothing else could explain it. He was certain that he was dead, because he could distinctly remember dying. His legs crushed, pinned beneath a boulder, he had at last succumbed to his fate after a valiant and vain struggle to free himself. And with only a passing regret for having failed his king, he had then taken his first and only breath of the bitter cold dark waters of the Urkhan Sea.

What a way for a dwarf to die, he remembered thinking.

But at least it didn’t bar him from a pleasant afterlife, though he did wonder what had taken him so long to get here. He had the distinct impression that a substantial portion of time had passed since he first drank his death and when he awoke in this bed, only moments ago.

He stretched out his legs beneath the cool sheets, closed his eyes and watched the flames of the fire dance upon the underside of his eyelids. He was so wonderfully hungry, he didn’t want to ruin it all by actually eating, not just yet. In the back of his mind, he wondered what heavenly spirit had built the fire and prepared the meal that awaited him. At the same time, he wondered if the afterlife would bring other pleasures as well, ones he had denied himself out of duty and loyalty to his king. Mog was certain that he must have earned a wife in the afterlife, preferably one of celestial origin. No ordinary dwarf woman would do for him. He had had high standards in life, and didn’t intend to surrender them now that he was dead. Perhaps it would be better to just lie here until his wife returned, to pretend sleep so that he could observe her at his leisure. And if he fell asleep again while waiting, then so be it. He had nothing else to do, and he was fairly certain that one didn’t burn one’s dinner in heaven, no matter how lazy one was.

Perhaps he did doze off again. Mog couldn’t be sure, nor did he care. His mind seemed to slip effortlessly between waking and dreaming, as though the two worlds were really one. But now he heard the sounds of someone moving about the chamber, stirring the pot, stoking the coals. Wood crackled with flame, and he heard the tinkle of crockery.

He opened his eyes a slit, then shot bolt upright in bed. A grizzled, copper-bearded male dwarf of indeterminate age glanced up from the cookfire and smiled. “Ah, awake at last, Lazy Bones?” he cackled.

Senses fully alert now, Mog took in his surroundings in one brief flashing glance. The “bedchamber,” he realized, was really a cavern or cave scraped out of some huge jumble of ruins. One wall was covered in a brightly painted fresco of dwarves laboring at a forge, but the entire thing was upside down and half-buried in the uneven earthen floor. Statuary and broken pieces of columns and other architecture emerged like nightmares from the wall behind his bed. His bed, which he had imagined so luxurious, he now realized to be a creaking wreck, the headboard blackened by some ancient fire, one entire side of it propped up on unstable piles of stone. The cooking fire burned, not in a fireplace, but in an overturned marble privy, and the pot hanging above the flames bore the unmistakable silhouette of a chamber pot.

Perhaps he was not in heaven, but in hell. Still, the food cooking over the fire did smell wonderfully inviting, and he felt alive, his legs whole and strong. He was pretty sure they didn’t serve such good-smelling meals in the Abyss.

“Now, I would stay in bed if I were you,” the dwarf warned as Mog started to slide out from under the sheets. “You’ve only just begun to recover.”

“Who are you?” Mog asked. “And where is this place?”

The dwarf strode up to the side of the bed and extended a paw-like hand, thick, rugged, and scarred. “Ogduan Bloodspike,” he said with a broad, toothy grin that was just a bit more unsettling than friendly; the effect was a little like watching a lion yawn. “As for this place, I’m not sure what they call it nowadays. Used to be part of Hybardin.” He waved a hand at the upside-down mural on the far wall.

“The Isle of the Dead?” Mog exclaimed.

“That’s it,” Ogduan said, snapping his big thorny fingers. He tapped the side of his head. “Memory’s not so keen as it used to be.”

“Then I’m still alive,” the Klar warrior sighed.

“Looks that way, son,” the older dwarf murmured.

“But how did I survive? The last thing I remember… ”

“I pulled you out of the water,” Ogduan said.

Mog closed his eyes, trying to remember. “I do recall something tugging at me, and a face… a face!” He slapped his knee and pointed at the old dwarf. “I thought you were death come to take me.”

Smiling, Ogduan pulled a battered trunk from under the bed and flipped back its lid, revealing a carefully folded black robe, a leather-bound book, and a white skull mask. “Not death, just a death skald,” he said.

Mog shrank back from the skald in horror. ” B u t… no one is allowed to know the identity of a death skald. Why are you telling me?”

Ogduan shrugged, looking around innocently. “Who are you going to tell?”

Mog stared at the strange dwarf, pondering. “I can’t place your name, stranger, and you look like you could be just about any of the five clans,” he said. “So what clan are you from?”

“I’m not exactly of any clan,” the dwarf said. “I’m a death skald, after all.”

“But who are the Bloodspikes? I’ve never heard the name before.”

The old dwarf shrugged as he returned to his place beside the cooking fire. “I’m not surprised,” he said, lifting a battered pewter ladle from its hook and dipping it into the pot. He leaned closer, shielding his face from the heat of the fire as he stirred and stirred.

Resting his hands upon the coverlet, Mog waited for what the old dwarf would say next. “So you live here alone?” he finally asked.

“Mostly,” came the gruff reply. “I expect you are hungry.”

Mog nodded. “How long have I been here anyway?”

The old dwarf shrugged. In the corner beside the fire, an old cabinet leaned upon three legs, one of its doors hanging from one hinge. Ogduan opened it, and removed a pair of pottery bowls. “One day runs into another out here,” he said as he carefully ladled each bowl full of steaming stew. He crossed back to the bedside and set one bowl in Mog’s lap. He produced a pair of wooden spoons from a pocket of his somewhat tattered garments, then sat down on a low stool beside the bed.

Mog lifted his bowl and inhaled the aroma of the stew. He couldn’t remember when he’d ever been so hungry, nor when he’d smelled anything so delicious. “I-I-I thought my legs were crushed by the stone,” he managed to stammer. “They seem fine now, so I must have been mistaken.”

“Oh, they were badly crushed alright,” Ogduan answered over a mouthful of stew.

“Surely I didn’t sleep through the entire healing process,” Mog said in surprise. “It would have taken months for me to heal.” Ogduan merely shrugged and continued to blithely shovel spoonfuls of stew between his copper-bearded lips.

Mog tasted the stew and found it even more delicious than it smelled. Several different types of meat swam in a hearty thick brown broth. Some bits were so tender they fell apart in the mouth, while others had some bite to them, chewy but pleasant. “If I’ve been here for months, why didn’t anyone come to look for me? Surely you told the people who bring your supplies to let someone in Norbardin know that I was here.”

“No one brings me supplies,” the old dwarf explained. “No one comes here at all.”

Mog paused, the spoon lifted halfway to his lips. “Then where do you get your food?” he asked, somewhat alarmed.

“There’s food to be found just about anywhere, if you know where to look,” Ogduan answered.

Mog stared in horror at the bowl resting between his legs, at the strange little clumps of meat floating in it. Steeling himself, he asked, “What kind of meat is this, may I ask?”

“Gully dwarf.”

Mog felt a solid column of gorge rise to the back of his mouth. A rank belch nearly gagged him. He set the bowl aside, biting back nausea.

Ogduan bellowed with laughter. “By my bones, you must think me truly depraved if you think I’d serve you gully dwarf just when you are beginning to heal.”

Mog eyed the old dwarf suspiciously. “Well, what is it, then?” he asked.

“Urkhan eel and feral mushrooms. Didn’t anyone ever cook Underdark Stew when you were a boy? By my beard, I shudder to think of the poor quality of practical survival education young dwarves receive these days,” Ogduan said, his cheeks stuffed with stew and rich brown gravy dribbling into his beard.

“It’s been a long time since I encountered Underdark Stew. I had forgotten,” Mog chuckled as he resumed eating. Despite his hunger, he found that his appetite had been severely dampened by the old dwarfs joke. Though he knew well enough that he wasn’t eating gully dwarf, a niggling doubt remained in the back of his mind.

“Besides, I finished off the last of the gully dwarf weeks ago,” Ogduan added with a wink.

Mog set his bowl down. “I’d better take it easy,” he said. “Too much rich food.”

The old dwarf nodded in agreement as he continued to wolf down his meal. Between mouthfuls, he said, “Out here in the perimeter there are no markets, just stone and water and darkness and earth. There’s the ruins and what you can scrounge for and dig for. When you’re starving, you’re not above boiling bones. Dwarves these days don’t really know what hard times are like.”

Mog snorted. “What about the Chaos War?” he asked.

“Chaos War? And how long did that last?” Ogduan replied, pointing at him with a dripping spoon. “It’s been forty years now and what have you all learned? It was nigh on to three hundred years of misery after the Cataclysm before things started to improve. Forty years? A mere twinkle in the eye of Reorx! I piss in the milk of your miserable forty years.”

“You talk like you’ve lived forever,” Mog said, growing steadily irritated.

“And what if I have! Who are you to question me?” the old dwarf shouted, his own temper rising.

“You’re crazy,” Mog answered, dismissing him with a wave of his hand. “What are you, feral Klar? Bloodspike sounds like a Klar name.”

“Klar? Klar?” Ogduan practically shrieked. “I piss in the milk of the Klar.”

“Exile, then. A Hylar exile. Who exiled you?”

“No one exiled me. I was deceived. I was robbed and did not know it! Oh, wicked deceiver, evil temptress!” Ogduan was busy railing to the heavens. Mog sighed, realizing that he’d been rescued by some half-mad untamed Klar who had cast off dwarven civilization. Known as feral Klar, these pitiful creatures preferred to live as the ancient Klar had done, wild and free barbarians of the deep earth. Mog was only lucky that Ogduan hadn’t murdered him in some pique of rage, after having bothered to rescue and heal him.

From now on, he’d have to be careful.

His dinner forgotten now, Ogduan raged up and down the room, raining down curses upon the heads of enemies both real and imagined. “Oh, foul vermin that should invade my home!” he screeched, pointing at a dark empty corner of the chamber. “I shall feast upon thy flesh and spit thy bones into my fire!”

Mog watched in growing curiosity as Ogduan crept to his makeshift fireplace and reached behind a pile of broken bits of wooden furniture (fuel for the fire). From some hiding place in the woodpile, he withdrew a gleaming silver warhammer. Hefting the massive weapon, he edged toward the dark empty corner in which he had spied his enemies.

Mog was both surprised and awed by the beauty of the weapon. At the same time, he felt some old memory niggling at his consciousness, a feeling that he had seen this weapon before. Surely so magnificent a weapon had once been the property of a dwarf of great power and influence. To see this mad dwarf stalking the ghosts of his dementia with such a noble weapon filled him with dismay. Flinging back the bedsheets, he tried to stand and grab it away. The floor tilted beneath his bare feet, dumping him back in the bed.

Meanwhile, Ogduan continued to silently stalk his unseen adversary. Lifting the hammer above his head, he brought it thundering down upon the shadows inhabiting the empty corner, bellowing a mighty war cry as he swung.

Mog heard a squeak cut short by a sickening thud. “Ha, that got you!” the insane old dwarf shouted. “What, another?” A small dark form shot out of the corner and scurried toward the bed. Ogduan leapt after the large rat, his giant hammer already streaking down. It smacked the floor just behind the rat, shattering the floorstone into a spiderweb of cracks. He raised it again, staggering toward Mog’s bed, under which the rat had fled.

“Ai! Ai!” Mog shouted in alarm. “Do not crush me, fool. It’s only a rat!”

“Only a rat?” Ogduan shrieked, the hammer still lifted above his head. “Why, that’s our breakfast!”

“Give me the hammer, old one” Mog urged. “Please. Before you do me or yourself a harm.” He held out his hands, palms upward, like a supplicant begging favor from a god.

“Aye, you’re right, lad,” the old dwarf sighed, the light of lucidity momentarily returning to his gray eyes. He pressed the massive weapon into Mog’s eager grasp. “A hammer’s no weapon to be a-hunting rats from under beds. One needs an ax, or tongs! Aye, that’s it! The tongs the thing!”

Ogduan rushed out of the chamber, shouting for his tongs, his tongs, “My kingdom for a tongs!”

Mog gaped in bafflement at the mad dwarfs caperings. Then he turned his attention to the splendid old weapon in his hands. Of marvelous balance, the heavy warhammer was too large for any ordinary dwarf to ever hope to wield. It needed tremendous strength and skill, but ah! what havoc it could wreak in the hands of a skilled warrior. Mog gazed at it lovingly, for this indeed was a weapon worthy of a thane. A king, even. To think it had been so ill used, for hunting rats; it filled his sold with shame.

As he examined the warhammer, Mog noticed a fine etching in the silvered surface of its weighty head. Here were dwarf runes of an ancient style. Mog’s formal education had been less than complete. He could read and write well enough to get along, but only common runes. These ancient letters took some time to puzzle out. He mouthed the sounds, fitting them together like a dwarf child in school, until he was certain he’d got it right.

He nearly dropped the weapon in his surprise. “Kharas!” he exclaimed.

Ogduan rushed into the room, a rusted old spear in his hands, and dove under the bed. “Rats!” he swore, rising up in disappointment. “He got away. Did you see him?”

“Where did you get this?” Mog demanded.

“They’re everywhere. Lucky for you. What do you think you’ve been eating for the last week?”

“Not the rats, you old fool!” Mog shrieked. He grabbed the old dwarf by the tattered collar of his shirt. “The Hammer of Kharas! Where did you get the Hammer of Kharas?”

Ogduan looked at the huge warhammer lying on the bed. “Oh, so that’s what it is,” he said, a smile bunching up the wrinkles around his eyes. “I found it lying around here somewhere.”

“But it wasn’t… it was with… it was lost!” Mog stammered in bewilderment. “How did it even get here?”

“That’s a question I’m sure I can’t answer,” Ogduan said in sudden seriousness. “I’ll thank you to let go of my shirt.”

Mog released his hold on the old dwarf and sank back on the bed. “The Hammer of Kharas!” he sighed longingly. “Returned, and just when it is most needed by the king. I must get to Norbardin. I have to take it to Tarn.”

“Come with me,” Ogduan said, holding out one hand in assistance. As Mog slid from beneath the sheets, he felt a momentary dizziness, but the old dwarfs strong hand was sturdy as a rock. He leaned his weight upon him, still too weak in the legs to walk under his own power. Ogduan led him to the mouth of the chamber and outside onto a small landing high up the rubble-strewn slopes of the Isle of the Dead.

“That way lies Norbardin,” Ogduan said, pointing north into the blackness. “It is a three mile journey through the icy waters of the Urkhan Sea. Can you swim?”

“No,” Mog said hesitantly. “But surely boats must…”

Ogduan shook his head. “No one crosses the sea anymore, except to come here, and then only once a year. But I have a feeling even that tradition might finally have come to an end.”

“But Tarn needs the Hammer of Kharas. It is the symbol of dwarven rulership. With it, all dwarves will acknowledge him as their king and he can end, once and for all, the challenges to his authority by Jungor Stonesinger,” Mog said, the dismayed words spilling out in a rush.

Ogduan nodded his shaggy head. “Aye, he who bears the Hammer wears the Crown,” he quoted. “And yet here it is. The gods are indeed capricious.”

“The gods!” Mog snorted. “There are no gods.”

23

Orchag Bootheel minced past the watchful eyes of the Hylar merchant, his hands carefully tucked into the voluminous pockets of his tattered, baggy trousers, studiously ignoring the piles of doorknob mushrooms piled upon the merchant’s cart. Only when Orchag was well past the cart did the merchant turn his attention to a pair of Hylar goodwives shopping for their family’s supper. Orchag looked back over his shoulder at the merchant, a promise of murder flickering in his eyes.

Zen hated the way the other dwarves of Norbardin treated the gully dwarves. He hated having to take the form of a gully dwarf, but it was the only way to safely move about the city. With the other clans, it was too easy to be recognized. The magic that allowed him to take on the outward appearance of anyone he killed did not grant him their memories or insights into their personality. A relative or close friend might quickly identify him as an imposter. In the first month of his “captivity” in and around the environs of Norbardin, Zen had had three close calls while masquerading as various Daergar. Since then, he’d spent the better part of his time as one or another nearly nameless gully dwarf.

The problem was the same here as in any other large city that he had infiltrated during his long mercenary career. He had to kill his victim to take its place, which meant that sooner or later, the victim would be reported missing or its body discovered. And then, if he were spotted, he was sure to be questioned. Which meant he’d have to flee and find a new victim to mimic, sometimes without being able to take the time necessary to properly study and stalk his victim, which often led to mistakes or accidents that forced him to flee again, and find yet another victim.

With so many gully dwarves living in the city, he was relieved of this burden. No one ever reported a gully dwarf missing, for one thing. And if they found a dead gully dwarf, they didn’t take the time to find out who he was. Gully dwarves died all the time from an infinite variety of maladies. Like the farmer said when he found a dead rat in his cupboard, “now there’s one less rat to eat my cheese.”

Also, to other dwarves, gully dwarves looked as alike as grains of corn. They simply didn’t take the time to study them well enough to discern an imposter among them. The gully dwarves were the soft underbelly of the dwarven kingdom of Thorbardin. But Zen was not surprised that no one had ever tried to exploit this weakness. It was a singularly useless weakness, for the gully dwarves were a singularly useless race. One could not recruit spies among them, for they could not relay even the simplest of information. One could not bribe their leaders to fight on your side because they could not follow even the simplest orders. They were inherently cowardly, shy, and devious, utterly untrustworthy even as bribed allies. They had no cultural identity that could be exploited to motivate them, no enemies they hated enough to attack. In a word, useless.

Zen found no pleasure in killing them whenever he needed to assume a new form. It was like killing a cat—a hideous, ugly, noisy affair, that was best gotten over quickly. He even pitied the species a little, which did not ease his conscience whenever he was forced to murder them. He justified the murder by telling himself that he was putting the creature out of its misery. The saddest thing of all was that he was right—a gully dwarf probably was better off dead.

Zen had come to know the gully dwarf point of view all too well. He had felt the hatred and anger directed toward them because he had lived as them, walked among them, and shared their miseries. The other dwarf clans treated the gully dwarves little better than rats. They wouldn’t go out of their way to kill a gully dwarf, but neither did they consider it a serious crime to kill one, either by accident or design. The only thing that kept the gully dwarves moderately safe among their larger, stronger, and smarter kin were Tarn’s strict laws, coupled with the fact that there was so little point in killing a gully dwarf, no one bothered.

Exploring the city in the guise of a gully dwarf, then, Zen was forced to endure the injustices heaped upon all gully dwarves whenever in the company of their cousins. He couldn’t buy food at a merchant stall, nor beer at a tavern, not even if he had the money, for no one would serve him. What he ate he begged or stole. He was allowed on some streets, but not all streets, and some buildings were strictly off limits. He dared not retaliate against those who slighted him, lest he be captured and his true identity revealed.

The sewers, on the other hand, were free to use as he wished. Combined with a vast network of dark alleys and cramped staircases, he was able to move pretty much anywhere within the city’s three levels, but it had taken well over a year for him to learn them well enough to not get repeatedly lost. Once, he’d been hopelessly lost for three long days in the maze of sewers beneath the Anvil’s Echo. Changing identities left one with a ravenous hunger, and he’d been forced to eat his victim to keep from starving. He still hadn’t recovered from the taste of raw gully dwarf.

Zen/Orchag turned into an empty alley and quickened his stride. He knew this alley well, knew that no windows looked down upon it, and so he felt confident in shaking off the mincing, crouching posture of a gully dwarf and he deliberately loosed his stride. Slick with offal and rotting garbage, most dwarves avoided the alleys. Yet it was the swiftest path to the edge of the Hylar residential area on the second level of Norbardin.

He was in a hurry. Jungor Stonesinger was holding audience from his rooftop, as he did most days at this time, and Zen was already late. He tried to come each day, not to hear Jungor preach, but because he was stalking his next victim. The same victim he’d been stalking for the past eighteen months, the dwarf who had betrayed him and murdered his lads that evening in The Bog.

They had made a deal. Ferro Dunskull had broken it.

Ferro was the most difficult mark that Zen had ever had the pleasure to stalk. The Daergar master of scouts (a euphemism for master of assassins) was wily and intelligent; an accomplished assassin himself, Ferro knew how to avoid assassination. And Ferro knew that Zen was stalking him, so he took extra care. He continually altered his habits, never traveled by the same road twice; there were numerous entrances to his house, all of them well guarded. Ferro had few discernible patterns to his life. He was surrounded by a tiny cabal of close confidants, and all others were kept at a safe distance. He and Zen had been playing a game of cat and mouse for eighteen months now with neither having made significant progress.

For his part, Ferro had been stalking Zen as well, but his early efforts were unorganized and crude. Ferro’s agents had beaten the bushes, so to speak, many a time and always came away either empty handed or clutching the red herrings Zen had left in their path. In all likelihood, more innocent gully dwarves had died by Ferro’s hand than by Zen’s. But of late, the agent’s methods had improved somewhat. Zen was forced to take greater precautions, to change forms more often, and to avoid other gully dwarves whenever he could. He had had to stop watching Ferro’s house entirely; the guards were becoming too wary, questioning anyone who strayed near.

So Zen had switched tactics. He knew that every mark had a weakness. He had only to find it. It had taken him eighteen months, but he had found it at last.

The alley emerged in the Hylar quarter of the second level, between an armory and a warehouse belonging to Jungor Stonesinger. Zen found this entrance much to his liking, because there was always some activity around the warehouse—wagons arriving laden with crates and leaving empty, warriors drilling in the commons between the warehouse and Jungor’s residence. A small crowd of dwarves was usually to be found outside the gates to Jungor’s house as well—supplicants and worshipers in his rising cult of personality, as well as the curious and the skeptical. Once a day, Jungor appeared behind the rooftop battlements of his house to address the ever-growing crowds, to give them moral instruction. Dwarves brought their children to hear him speak of the glory of former days, for in his words those glorious times seemed reborn in the hearts of those who heard him.

As Zen left the alley, he once more assumed the crouching, obsequious mannerisms of a gully dwarf amid his larger and stronger cousins. Few gave him a second glance, and those who did quickly turned their noses away. A mixture of fresh dung and rotting meat, kept in his pockets and smeared on his clothes, was enough to convince most of his authenticity and send them lurching away, pinching their noses. A sizable crowd stood at the far side of the commons, gazing upward and listening in rapt awe to Jungor’s speech. Zen was glad he hadn’t arrived too late, but this was another of his precautions—a gully dwarf loitering about, waiting to hear Jungor speak, was sure to arouse suspicions. Especially if one were on the lookout for suspicious-looking gully dwarves.

Now Zen was able to sidle up to the rear of the crowd and surreptitiously observe his mark.

“But how long shall the clans be forced to remain here in this second-rate city?” Jungor asked. “Norbardin? That is too grand a name for the North Gate complex. For three thousand years it has been the North Gate. Why should the king wish to change that as well? Haven’t we borne enough change? Haven’t we suffered enough already?”

Zen barely even paid attention to Jungor’s cries. Instead, he scanned the faces of those surrounding the Hylar thane, his inner circle of advisors and close confidants—captain of the guard Astar Trueshield, replete in silver armor and beard of spun gold; Hextor Ironhaft, fat and greasy eyed with money stains on his fingers; Thane Rughar Delvestone ever worshipful; Thane Brecha Quickspring, unofficial high priestess of Jungor’s unofficial cult; and Ferro Dunskull, Jungor’s master of scouts. There were also guards, and select citizens invited to join Jungor on the rooftop because of their wealth or familial connections. But Zen ignored everyone, focusing his attention solely upon Ferro Dunskull. He barely even heard Jungor’s continued exhortations.

“When was the last time the king sent engineers and survey parties into our former cities? Too dangerous, he tells us. Dangerous for him, perhaps. Dangerous that we should resume our former lives in our former homes and thus move away from these cramped domains, away from his ability to control every aspect of our lives. We are not disloyal dwarves. We only wish to live free, as once we did. So I ask you again, how long has it been since the ruins were surveyed? How do we know that it is not now safe for you to return and begin rebuilding your lives?”

Zen smiled inwardly to see the dwarves around him nod emphatically, as though Jungor were but speaking aloud the secret desires of their hearts. “Yes, yes, what he says is true.” Zen could have answered Jungor’s question in two words, for he had been forced to retreat to those ruins many a time in these past eighteen months.

Death trap. That’s what awaited anyone attempting to return to the ruins of Theibardin, Daerbardin, Daebardin or Klarbardin. Walls continually crumbled, floors collapsed without warning. He could not begin to count the number of gully dwarves and feral Klar he had seen buried alive over the past month alone. Whole sections of the cities were nothing more than jumbled mountains of ruin, their streets buried under tons of rubble and still endlessly collapsing down bottomless holes.

“You dwarves of the Theiwar, Daewar, Daergar, and Klar clans have homes you can return to,” Jungor declared. “Only our home, Hybardin, is completely lost to us. The rest of you can rebuild. We must build anew. But build we shall, one day. One day you shall return to the homes of your grandfathers, and there you will find the mortar to fill that empty place in your hearts. We want to be dwarves again, dwarves of the mountain. Here, in Tarn’s city, we live little better than hill dwarves, a people the king loves despite their history of treachery. I fear that one day we shall hear the tramp of hill dwarf boots in our streets.”

“No! Never!” the crowd shouted, driven to a frenzy by the Hylar thane’s meandering diatribe. The speech lasted for nearly an hour, but Zen had already slipped back to the alley before Jungor dismissed the crowds with a benediction that left them weak and warm. Zen marveled at the one-eyed dwarfs skill. The effect was complete—from the eyepatch to the tattered robes to the wizard staff, Jungor looked part prophet, part shaman, part ghost. Zen could appreciate Jungor’s masterful manipulation of the crowd. Jungor would have made a good Dragon Highlord, Zen reckoned.

“He’ll certainly be king someday, unless Tarn wises up,” the draconian in gully dwarf disguise muttered under his breath. Zen knew that he was in a unique position to decide the fate of this miserable mountain and its miserable people. He held information that would ruin Jungor if revealed and assure Tarn’s seat forever. But he wasn’t particularly inclined to favor Tarn, either. In fact, he didn’t care one way or the other who was king of all these filthy dwarves. All he wanted to do was to make Ferro Dunskull pay for his treachery. After that, he might see who was most willing to buy his information or his silence. He hadn’t really planned that far ahead.

There was enough to occupy his mind in the present. He crouched in the shadows, watching the crowd break up. Opposite him across the commons, another alley passed between the home of Hextor Ironhaft and the east wall of Jungor’s estate. This alley was much wider than the one in which Zen hid, and no one used it for their middens. Doors opened into it from both sides, and windows on the upper levels overlooked it. Six alert Daergar guards stood at the alley’s entrance, crossbows held at the ready while they warily scrutinized anyone who wandered near. Zen dared not approach them, for he knew by their familiar faces and their livery that they were Ferro’s personal guard. They had orders to shoot on sight any gully dwarf who came within thirty yards.

As Zen expected, Ferro emerged from a door letting into the alley from Jungor’s estate. It would be indecorous for a Daergar to be seen exiting through the front door of the Hylar thane’s house. Ferro was accompanied by a thin Daergar female wearing black leather breeches and a hardened leather breastplate. Her arms were bare, smooth and milky white, her black hair long and bound in a single loose braid that hung down the center of her back.

Ferro and the female Daergar consulted for a moment in the alley, then parted, Ferro heading toward his guards, the female strolling in the opposite direction, her hips lolling languidly from side to side. Her name, Zen knew, was Marith Darkforge, and she was one of Ferro’s closest “advisors.”

Zen pushed aside a pile of garbage and lifted a small iron grate from an opening into the sewer. As swiftly as any gully dwarf, he vanished down the hole, pulling the grate back into place above him. He landed with a splash inside a low, round sewer tunnel, quickly glanced both ways to make sure no other gully dwarves were around, then started off.

The sewer tunnel ran directly beneath the commons to the alley beside Jungor’s estate, which it followed for some distance before splitting off into a larger sewer. Zen passed the place beneath which Ferro had stood only moments before, then continued down the sewer tunnel, where he followed the larger branch until it reached a wide collection pool. Here, the water and raw sewage surged and spumed down a drain to an even larger pipe some distance below. Pale brown rafts of foam raced each other in circles round and round the chamber. The sewage lay just below the level of a narrow access walk that led from the entrance pipe to a ladder cut into the stone wall and leading up. Zen crossed over and swiftly ascended the ladder, pushed aside a grate, and emerged in a carter’s yard in the midst of a milling herd of yellow cave oxen. The sleepy beasts hardly even noticed his appearance, while their enormous bodies hid him from the sight of anyone who might happen by. He was lucky that none of oxen had been standing on the grate, and that the muckboy wasn’t at this moment hosing down the stableyard.

Replacing the grate, Zen crawled between the legs of the cattle until he reached a low wall. He crouched behind it on his knees for a few moments, softly counting under his breath, “One-fifty one, one-fifty-two, one-fifty-three. When he reached one-sixty, he stood just in time to see Marith Darkforge disappear around the corner of the building directly in front of him.

He leaped over the wall in one bound, crossed the crooked street crowded with laden wagons, and quickly ascended a narrow staircase cut into the side of the building. At the top of the staircase he found a small servant’s door propped open by a lump of coal the size of a child’s fist. He ducked through the door and entered a long, dark hall, removing the coal as he passed so that the door closed firmly behind him, its latch locking into place with a loud click. Pausing, he heard footsteps ascending a nearby staircase. He shrunk into a dark corner beside a closed door, ducked his head between his shoulders and began to make small retching noises.

As the footsteps reached the top of the stairs, they paused. He heard a sharp intake of breath, then a relaxed exhale. “Stinking gully dwarf,” a female voice muttered as the footsteps continued, entering the hall and approaching him. “Is this what I pay good rent money to come home to?” Zen kept his head lowered, even as he felt a sharp kick to his shins.

“Gods! What a smell,” she exclaimed. Zen rocked forward, clutching his bruised shins and mewling pitifully. This gave him the opportunity to shift his weight onto the balls of his feet. Another kick landed on his jaw, snapping his head back. “Get out of here, you filthy, stinking rat. How did you get in here?”

Zen heaved with dry retches, spittle flowing into the matted hairs of his beard. “Mercy,” he moaned. “Me sick.”

“Well get sick somewhere else,” Marith yelled as she opened the door to her apartment. Zen heard the groan of the heavy door on its hinge and reacted immediately.

The swiftness of his attack caught Marith Darkforge by surprise. She had just turned to enter her apartment when Zen bowled into the backs of her legs, throwing her face first into the carpet. In an instant, she had rolled to her feet, two long, wickedly curved daggers in her fists.

Still in gully dwarf form, Zen closed the door and put his back to it Marith gazed at him, her dark eyes sparkling with hate. “Why you miserable little gully dwarf!” she snarled. “What can you possibly hope to… ”

Her sneering bravura died as she watched the gully dwarf swiftly transform into the gleaming, silver-gray body of a sivak draconian nearly seven feet tall. Zen towered over her, each of his fists nearly as large as her whole head, the muscles of his thighs thicker than her entire body.

His clawed feet dug into the black carpet covering the floor as he readied himself for her attack. He knew Marith Darkforge. He had studied her for weeks, had followed her through every routine of her life. He had watched her eat, watched her go about her daily duties, watched her train; he had followed her while she worked the gully dwarf warrens searching for him. He knew her reputation, her preference for two daggers, the way she always led with high right-handed feint while the left hand drove in low to the groin. She liked to spill the bowels of those she killed. Her martial skills were excellent if predictable. Surely she was one of the better opponents Zen had faced in his long and violent career; plus, he was weaponless and wore no armor, which meant this would be an interesting encounter.

She recognized her advantage, but she had not yet gotten over the shock of the draconian’s sudden appearance. She had been hunting for this very one for the better part of a year. “You!” Marith hissed in surprise.

Zen smiled, parting his reptilian jaws to reveal long rows of back-curved fangs. This was one of the most alluring dwarf women he had seen in his eighteen months here. Adult female dwarves were mostly stocky and stout as though built out of bricks with too much mortar by a careless mason, neither handsome, nor ugly nor particularly well made. Utterly unremarkable. Human males lusted after female elves, but no one lusted after dwarf women. Not even dwarf men.

This one was different. There was something positively coltish about her legs. Her smooth, bare arms were muscular without being overwrought. Her black hair gleamed like the feather of a raven. Her chest, encased in its hardened busty torso of leather armor, heaved with excitement.

“My master has been searching for you,” she said. Her lips, a moist dusky rose, parted in a nervous smile. “He urgently needs to talk to you.”

Her right hand flicked up and forward, the blade winking in the dim light of the room. Zen ignored the feint and struck down with all his force, snapping the bones of her left wrist as she sought his belly with her blade. Her dagger clattered to the floor as Marith sank to one knee. Biting back her agony, she lashed out with her remaining weapon at the draconian’s exposed knee. But her blow went astray as his claws sank into the back of her neck. He lifted her bodily from the floor, legs kicking, no longer silent, shrieking in agony and panic, dangling like a doll from his fist. Her small, wiry frame felt like a toy in his hands. He flung her across the small apartment, headfirst into the stone wall. She struck with a dull thud and slid between her bed and the wall, her screams cut short. She lay folded behind the bed, stunned and moaning.

Zen jerked the bed away from her, and she fell forward. She lifted one arm as though to ward off his next blow, but her hand hung limp and at an impossible angle from the jagged bones of her wrist. Blood tricked down her forearm to her elbow. He caught her around the throat and lifted her into the air again. Still dazed, she clawed weakly at the hard fingers tightening around her windpipe. Holding her aloft by the throat, he bent over and righted the bed, then flung her down on it. He stood over her a moment, admiring the awkward beauty of her limbs, even the shattered one with its bones sticking out of her flesh.

Glancing around the chamber, Zen spotted a bottle of dark brandy standing on a bookshelf. He jerked the cork loose with his teeth, poured half its contents down his own throat, then knelt beside her on the creaking bed. He pried open her jaws and slopped some of the brandy into her mouth. She gagged, coughed, then swallowed. Revived somewhat by the fiery Daergar brew, she glared up at her captor, all the pain and shame distilled to boiling hate in her dark eyes.

“Why don’t you kill me?” she asked.

“In time,” Zen said, his voice as cold as a wind off the Urkhan Sea. “But first, we shall have a talk. Look at your beautiful broken wrist, how delicately it hangs from the last tattered strands of your flesh. Your wrist and I will have a conversation. I shall ask it questions, and it will answer. If it doesn’t answer, you must answer for it. Do you understand?”

With a snarl, she tried to rise, her lank legs kicking wildly. Frowning, he pressed her back into the bed and then gave her wrist a tweak that instantly stilled her protests. “That was not the correct answer,” Zen said. “I shall ask it again.”

“Brandy!” Marith gasped. A dribble of blood trickled down her chin; she had bitten through her lip. Zen obliged, pouring a gout of dark brandy into her open mouth, then emptied the remainder into his own. The empty bottle thumped on the floor.

“More,” Marith said. “I need more. There’s another bottle… ” Zen retrieved it from the bookshelf, pulled the cork, and held the bottle to her bloodied lips. She drank its contents greedily, her throat rising and falling with each swallow, then flopped back on the bed, sated and exhausted.

“Now,” Zen said, setting aside the half-empty bottle, “let us talk about you. Let us talk about Ferro Dunskull. But most of all, let us talk about you and Ferro Dunskull.”

“You’re going to kill him, aren’t you?” she asked, writhing on the bed. The blood from her wrist soaked the sheet. Zen watched in undisguised admiration. This sweet morsel would wash the last vestiges of gully dwarf from his mouth.

“I am going to kill him, with your help,” the sivak draconian corrected.

“I wish I could be there to see you spill his rotten guts, she moaned.

“You will be, my dear,” Zen said, reaching for the bottle of brandy. He took a long pull, then wiped his reptilian mouth with a bloody corner of the bed sheet. “You will be.”

24

Tarn sat up in bed, hearing the last echoes of a cry. “Tor?” he wondered aloud. “Crystal, did you hear…” But Crystal was not beside him on her side of the bed. Maybe she was with the baby. He swung his legs out from the covers and stood, feeling the cold stone floor beneath this feet.

“Where’s the carpet?”

“Where are my slippers?”

Tarn glared around the room, all his senses suddenly alert. He reached for the dagger beneath his pillow, but it, too, was not there. And this wasn’t his pillow. It wasn’t even his bed! And this wasn’t his bedchamber either.

Or was it? It looked vaguely familiar, like something out of a dream. It was his bedchamber after all, for there in the corner hung a suit of chain mail that he had worn when he was a young lad of only twenty years. His old battleaxe hung on the wall by the door, too. But the door was on the wrong side of the room, as was his bed. The bed was too small.

It suddenly dawned on him that he was in his old room, the bedchamber of his childhood, in his mother’s house in Daerbardin. But that was impossible. His mother’s house was a heap of slag and ruin, destroyed by the Chaos dragon. Yet everything here was exactly as he remembered it. He walked to the door and opened it, half expecting to see the old familiar servants bustling about their morning duties, or his mother come to scold him for sleeping late again.

Instead, the hall was empty. But not silent. He heard someone hammering, somewhere deep within the house. Somewhere else, he heard a childish voice humming a wordless song, a busy song without meaning or end, just a series of notes repeated to no purpose. Da da dee da dum da dee, la dum la dee, da lee da dum.

The hammering matched the rhythm of the song, as though the same person were producing both sounds. But the singing came from somewhere to the right, while the hammering was somewhere to the left. Tarn chose the singing. It sounded strangely familiar.

The hall outside his bedroom was barren and dusty, as though no one had ever lived here. Its clean rectangular lines stretched into infinity before him, but doors lined the hall to right and left. He stopped at each door to listen, then moved on, for the singing always seemed to be just ahead of him somehow. He wondered if it would lead him forever to nowhere.

But finally, he found the source. He opened the door to his old nursery. It was as barren as the hall, but in the middle of the square chamber sat a boy with his back to the door, dressed in pajamas, leaning over something with his long golden hair hanging down over his face, and humming the tuneless song. As Tarn entered, the boy stopped singing and looked over his shoulder. He looked familiar, like someone he had once seen in a crowd.

“Who are you?” Tarn asked him.

“Who are you?” the boy parroted.

“What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for you,” Tarn said.

The boy smiled a familiar smile, a familiar twinkle in his gray eyes. He turned away. “There is a crack in the floor here,” the boy said.

“Really? Let me see.” Tarn was interested in spite of himself. He approached and knelt beside the boy. Between his small, knobby knees was a small, black crack in the stone of the floor. The boy put his fingers over it and it began to whistle. As he moved his fingers, the whistling became the tuneless song. Da da dee da dum da dee, la dum la dee, da lee da dum.

“That’s very good,” Tarn laughed. “Where did you learn to do that?” The boy shrugged. Tarn placed his hand over the crack and felt a stiff, hot wind rising from it. In the deep earth, a hot wind is a sign of trouble. Cold wind you can expect. Hot wind means fire.

“We had better get out of here,” Tarn said urgently. He stood and took the boy’s hand. Together, they left the nursery and started back the way Tarn had come. The sound of hammering grew nearer, the closer they got to Tarn’s old bedroom. It sounded like someone carving stone, like a hammer tapping a chisel. He had left his bedroom door open, and as he neared the door, it sounded like the hammerer was inside his room. He approached the door cautiously, keeping the boy well behind him, in case it was dangerous.

As he peered into the room, he saw that it wasn’t his bedroom at all. It was the nursery again, and in the center of the nursery an old, red-bearded dwarf was busy widening the crack. The hot air rose up around him, blowing his beard into his eyes so that every few moments he stopped to brush it back down. But it was a pointless gesture, for as soon as he bent to his work again, the wind blew his beard up into his eyes again.

During one of his pauses, the old dwarf spotted Tarn standing at the door. “Ah, there you are, my lord. There is something wrong here. I have to get to the bottom of it.”

“You fool! Who told you dig up this floor. Don’t you feel that hot air coming?”

The old dwarf nodded as he removed a bright red handkerchief from the pocket of his coveralls and mopped his sweaty brow. “There’s something wrong here, and I have to get to the bottom of it.”

“Stop digging, I say. Wait…” Tarn turned and saw that the boy had slipped away. “Wait. Let me see where that boy went to. Don’t widen that hole any more until I get back!” Tarn ordered.

The worker tucked his handkerchief into his pocket and said as Tarn hurried away, “There’s something wrong here, and I have to get to the bottom of it.”

Tarn moaned as he heard the tap-tap-taptap of the hammer resume behind him. There was nothing for it, however. He had to find the boy first. He couldn’t let Tor get lost here.

He stopped. Tor? Was that his son, Tor? He hurried on, his panic growing. He began to call his name, “Tor! Tor! Answer me. Don’t hide from me, boy. Tell me where you are!” But there was no sound, nothing, not even the sound of hammering this time. He hurried down the dark, empty, echoing hall, his footsteps stirring the dust but leaving no footprints. He stopped to open every door, but found all the rooms empty, barren, silent.

Ahead, he saw an open door, and he knew as he approached it, that it was the nursery again. He felt a cold dread come over him, but forced himself to the door. Inside, the worker was gone but the crack remained. It was wide enough for a child to fall into. His throat constricted in terror. What would he see lying at its bottom? His dead son? He forced his feet to keep moving, and when he was beside the crack, bent his quivering neck.

A long sigh escaped his lips. The hole was empty, and only a few feet deep. But a hot wind blew up in his face, tinged with the smell of sulfur. “Tor!” Tarn cried, turning on his heel and heading for the door again.

A tinkle of laughter brought him short. He heard it again, mocking, snickering, like a child pleased to have fooled his father. Tarn looked over his shoulder and saw there was a window in the wall opposite the door. He remembered that his nursery had had just such a window. Why hadn’t he noticed it until now?

“Tor?” Tarn cried.

A titter of laughter answered him, and a small, goldenhaired head passed beneath the window on the outside.

Tarn rushed to the window. Outside lay the streets of Daerbardin, thronging with Daergar dressed for battle. At the far end of the street was some commotion. Tarn saw halberds waving, the glint of steel. A banner, black with a golden ring upon it, wavered and fell.

The Daergar began to retreat. Retreat turned to panic, and then to rout. Dwarves flew wildly down the street, casting aside their weapons, horror etched into their faces. And behind them marched a mob of shadows, an army of fear. Tarn knew them. He’d fought them in the Chaos War forty years ago and in his nightmares ever since. They were shadow wights, beings of pure chaos whose touch ruptured the bonds of life and flesh and memory, obliterating not only the life but all memory of that life from those who knew it.

And then Tarn saw Tor, giggling and looking over his shoulder, dart from behind a pillar and rush into the street. The mob of terrified Daergar swept over him and the shadow wights descended upon his tiny broken body. Tarn screamed and threw himself against the window.

The floor beneath his feet lifted, then dropped away. The crack opened into a gaping black maw. At its bottom lay a swirling pool of fire. Tarn clutched the window ledge, his legs dangling over the pit, bellowing Tor’s name so that he would not forget, so he would never ever forget.

25

Tarn sat up in bed, hearing the last echoes of a cry. “Tor?” he wondered aloud.

Crystal grabbed his shoulder. “What was that?” she asked, her voice tight with fear. “Did we just have a groundquake?”

Without answering, Tarn leaped from the bed and threw back the door. Light spilled into the bedroom from the antechamber beyond. Mog’s replacement, a young captain named Ghash Grisbane, stood in the doorway, his face wild with excitement. “My king, there’s been a groundquake!” Ignoring him, Tarn thrust past, running naked out into the hall.

The servants were all awake and stumbling out of doors, half dressed, fuzzy-headed from bed. Tarn raced past them, his beard flying, naked feet slapping the floor. Around the corner, startled faces flashing by in his vision, he slid to a stop at the nursery door, his feet squeaking across the slick marble floor.

Aunt Needlebone awaited him, blocking the doorway with her body. “He’s fine,” she whispered. “He slept through the whole thing.”

“Let me see him,” Tarn demanded in a low voice.

“You’ll wake him up, and then who will have to rock him hack to sleep?” Auntie said. “Let him sleep.”

Crystal trotted to a stop behind Tarn. Her long, auburn tresses hung almost to her waist, framing her face in molten bronze. She had thrown a robe around her shoulders, and carried one for Tarn. “Put this on,” she scolded her husband.

That is when Auntie noticed Tarn was naked, turning her face away with a shriek. “Reorx’s bones! I didn’t need to see that!” she exclaimed. “Mountain dwarves have no shame.”

Tarn thrust his arms through the sleeves of the robe and tied its belt in a quick knot around his waist, all while peering into the darkened nursery. His darkvision only slowly adjusted, hampered by the lights in the hall. Everything seemed to be fine, though, just as Aunt Needlebone had said. Tor slept soundly on his belly with his little bottom hiked up in the air and fists tucked at his sides. His toys, ranged along shelves on the wall, were only slightly disordered; one or two had fallen harmlessly to the floor.

Then, with a sharp intake of breath, Tarn shoved past Tor’s nanny and entered anyway. Crystal angrily whispered after him, “Don’t you wake him, Tarn Bellowgranite!” swiftly echoed by Aunt Needlebone, who was busy collecting her bruised dignity.

Tarn ran his hands along the wall behind Tor’s crib until he felt what his eyes had seen—a small dark crack. He followed it to the floor, where it widened to a finger’s width beneath the crib. “What’s the matter?” Crystal whispered from the doorway. Like the Hylar and Daewar, their closest cousins, the hill dwarves did not have the gift of darkvision and could not see the danger. Tarn appeared suddenly before them, the sleeping baby in his arms.

“Now wait just a damned minute,” Aunt Needlebone protested.

“Where are you going?” Crystal asked.

“I’m taking Tor to our bed,” Tarn said, elbowing his way past them. “There’s a crack in the wall and floor.”

Alarmed, Aunt Needlebone stepped across the hall and snatched a candle from its wall sconce. She entered the nursery with Crystal at her heels. Together, they examined the crack. It seemed harmless enough, a weakness of the masonry, nothing that couldn’t be repaired with a slap of mortar. Aunt Needlebone shrugged. “He’s a mountain dwarf. Maybe those weird eyes of his saw something we cannot.”

Crystal sat back on her heels and ran a hand wearily though her hair, pushing a loose strand out of her face. “Auntie,” she said in a soft voice. “I don’t know what’s come over him of late. Ever since that accident during the Festival of Lights, when Mog was killed, he hasn’t been the same. He’s afraid of shadows, and all he seems to want to do is be with Tor.”

“He’s a new father, my dear,” Auntie said in soothing tones, patting her on the shoulder.

“No, it’s more than that. I can’t put my finger on it. I don’t know what to think anymore,” Crystal sighed.

“You listen to old Galena, now, like you used to do,” Auntie Needlebone said. “You know Tarn, but there is something about him that you have to realize. You know it in your heart, but you never really considered it. He’s lost everything he’s ever loved—his mother and his father, his first betrothed, his good friend Thane Bloodeye, all his fine young army that you and he trained, and most recently, his right arm, Mog Bonecutter. Why, those two were inseparable even before we came to the mountain.”

“I know all that,” Crystal said sullenly.

“So what’s he looking at now? He’s got you, Tor, and this place. Every day, that insufferable one-eyed prig steals just a little more of this city from him, turns the hearts of a few more of his subjects away from him. The dwarves he sacrificed everything to save now look at him with suspicion.”

“Not all of them. Not even half of them. It’s just that the few who hate him seem to be the only ones talking,” Crystal said.

“And then there’s the two of you. He knows you can take care of yourself, lass. You are better than he is with the spear and staff, if truth be told, and you can command in battle nearly as well as he. But how did that Belicia Slateshoulders die? Restoring Hybardin, that’s how. They weren’t married, yet she was actively involved in rebuilding the kingdom. Are you?”

“I do my part,” Crystal said defensively.

“Were you with him at Qualinost?” Auntie snapped back. “She would have been. He keeps you here, inside the Fortress where it is safe.”

“I train his guards,” Crystal protested. “I fulfill a vital role.”

“There’s no one else in all of Norbardin who can train his guards, then?” Aunt Needlebone asked. When Crystal made no response, she continued, “You see what I mean. He wants to keep you safe. And now he has Tor to look after and worry over, too. Never has a father loved a child so dearly. I’ve never seen the like in all my years. Tor is so very young, and dwarf babies die every day of one malady or another. As king, he knows that better than any of us. He grieves along with the mothers and fathers.”

Auntie stood and dusted the knees of her tattered woolen nightgown. “It’s living shut up in this mountain!” she finished, swearing. “The clean air can’t get in here to flush the place out. Pestilence breeds in the dark, and it is so very dark here sometimes. This place could use a good dose of sunshine. A bolt of lightning wouldn’t do it any harm, neither.”

“I’d better go see what Tarn is doing,” Crystal said as she started for the door.

“You mind what I told you, girlie,” Auntie called after her. “He’s suffering inside, but he can’t let it out or he won’t be a leader of his people anymore, he thinks. But don’t you coddle him. You’ll ruin him for sure if you coddle him. He needs a swift kick more than a soft word.”

The halls were still filled with milling, overwrought servants. Crystal did her best to calm their fears. It had only been a small tremble, not even enough to knock the tapestries off the walls. Yet a groundquake was such a rare occurrence in Thorbardin that no one could remember the last one. For a people whose lives were measured in centuries, this meant no such event had occurred here in a very long time. Despite her assurances, the servants remained edgy. “What does the king say about it?” many asked.

When she reached her bedchamber, she found the door closed and Ghash Grisbane waiting in the antechamber, nervously pacing the floor with an axe in his fist. “Put away your weapon, Captain,” Crystal said in what she hoped was a friendly voice. She attempted a laugh. “What good is it against a groundquake?”

“I feel better with a weapon in my hand,” the young Klar warrior responded sullenly. But he returned the battle axe to its place on the wall.

“Where is the king?” she asked.

“Inside.” He nodded toward the door.

“Call the king’s escort, then. Have them ready,” she said. “Tarn will need to go to the Council Hall.”

“He said he was returning to bed,” Ghash said, a worried look passing over his face. “And he has the young prince with him.”

“The king must go to the Council Hall,” Crystal said firmly. “Summon the guard at once.”

The young captain’s features brightened at her assurance, and he hurried off to do her bidding. She waited until he had gone before opening the door. The light from the antechamber spilled into the darkened bedchamber, illuminating a large hump on the bed covered in blankets. Sighing, she took a candle from a sconce beside the door, entered the room, and began lighting candles on the walls and shelves.

Tarn looked up from the pillow, his brow furrowed. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Tor can go back to sleep between us. There’s plenty of room.” He gazed down at the boy peacefully sleeping beside him.

“He can go back to sleep, but you’re not,” she said brusquely, as she moved about the chamber, lighting still more candles. She wanted the room brilliantly lit. “You’re going to hurry down to the Council Hall.”

Tarn sat up carefully, so as not to wake Tor. He pushed back the hair from his face and watched his wife, a puzzled expression on his face. Crystal saw him out of the corner of her eye, and his bafflement only made her angrier. She plopped the candle down on a dressing table so violently that hot wax splashed on her hand. Hissing, she slapped the droplets from her skin, then sucked the back of her burned thumb.

“Tarn, we’ve just had a groundquake. The people need to be reassured by your presence. You have to go out and survey the damage. They need to see you in the street, unafraid, seeing to their needs and wants, and trying to solve their problems. You are their king. Even your own servants are frightened, and here I find you cowering in bed,” Crystal said in disgust.

The injured look on Tarn’s face nearly broke her heart, but she continued as Tarn reluctantly folded back the covers. “What’s the matter with you, Tarn Bellowgranite? I shouldn’t have to say these things to you. I’ve never had to tell you what to say or do before. Most of the time, darn it, you act without even seeking my advice. But lately… ”

“I had the dream again,” he said in a low voice. He remained seated on the edge of the bed. Tor stirred and sighed, and Tarn turned to look at his son, at his small round sleeping face. “I can’t help it. Every time I leave this house, I wonder if it is the last time I will ever see him.”

Crystal crossed the chamber and joined him on the edge of the bed. When she lightly touched her husband on his broad, muscular back, he jerked slightly as though startled. She realized that his whole body was alive with jangled nerves. His violet eyes darted nervously under drooping lids. A muscle along his jaw writhed, setting his beard into motion.

“Tor’s a strong, healthy boy, like his father,” she said gently. “There is nothing to fear.”

“I never feared anything in my life,” Tarn said angrily. “Until now. Until I became a father. Something terrible is going to happen. I can feel it in my bones, in the roots of my teeth. And it has to do with this boy, our boy, our only son.” He rose from the bed and walked to the dressing table. He stood before the table a moment, looking at the cosmetic bottles and vials of perfume that had been upset by the groundquake. He raised his hand as though about to sweep them all to the floor, but he stopped himself at the last instant. His hand sank to his side. He turned.

“And now the groundquake and the crack in Tor’s nursery. It’s all straight out of my dream, but what does it mean?” he moaned in frustration.

“That’s a question for the philosophers and the engineers,” Crystal said. “The only thing you have to worry about now is making sure your people are safe, their fears dispelled. Now get dressed and prepare yourself to do your duty. You can’t let your fears show.” A bustle and rattle of armor outside the door announced the arrival of Ghash Grisbane and Tarn’s escort of guards.

“Tor and I will be fine,” she said. “I won’t let anything happen to him.”

Surrendering to her will with a nod and a sigh, Tarn began to dress.

26

His escort of six Klar guards followed him to the gate. Ghash ordered it opened, and outside they found a crowd already gathering. The relief of seeing their king emerge spread visibly though the crowd, like a pebble thrown into a pond. Young and eager to prove himself, Ghash barged forward to prevent anyone from coming too close to Tarn.

Yet the crowd greeted him with friendliness that barely covered their nervousness. Tarn resented them only a little, because in his heart he knew the fear that they felt. Yesterday, most of the people at his gate wouldn’t have wished him a good morning. Now they were gladly shouting his name. There was no getting through them easily. Tarn ordered Ghash to wait while he heard them out. The Klar captain sighed and nervously fingered his axe while standing close behind his king, his eyes scanning the crowd.

“First of all, is anyone injured?” Tarn asked in a booming voice.

A chorus of cries answered him.

“Grinder’s mother cut her foot on a piece of broken crockery.”

“I’ve bruised my hip from where I fell out of bed. I thought it was only my husband snoring!”

“There’s a crack in my wall and now my door won’t close.”

Tarn raised his hands for silence. “We can deal with the damages later. The main thing now is to see to the injured and to make sure everyone is accounted for. Send Grinder’s mother to the healers. Do you need someone to look at that hip?”

“It’s nothing serious, my lord,” the matronly dwarf woman answered with a smile and a curtsy. She gathered her children and turned away. “I’ll go check on my neighbors.”

“That’s an excellent idea,” Tarn shouted. “Everyone see to your neighbors. If no one is hurt, check your own homes for damage. I am going to the Council Hall now. If you have any problems or concerns, bring them to me there and I’ll address them swiftly.”

The crowd began to break up. Tarn and his guards slowly made their way through the people until they were into a clearer street. All along the way, in every neighborhood and market, they attracted a crowd. Again and again, he stopped and urged the citizens to see to the welfare of their neighbors, to take care of one another until some order and plan could be put into place. If they had serious and immediate concerns, they should follow him to the Council Hall. And though crowds gathered around them wherever they went, Tarn was relieved to see that only a few were following him to the Council Hall, and these seemed mostly to be the curious and the bored.

Tarn saw few signs of serious damage anywhere along the way; a toppled lamppost here, a jagged crack in the pavement there. One street near the Council Hall had flooded when the sewer pipe backed up, but engineers were already busy effecting repairs. At another place, the way was blocked by a herd of lowing cave oxen who had escaped their pen when its walls crumbled. Children stood in doorways, staring around sleepy-headed but excited by all the commotion; their mothers and fathers hovered near, reliving their experiences with their neighbors.

Tarn took the straightest route possible to the Council Hall, but all the interruptions and detours meant a considerable delay. By the time he arrived, he found Jungor Stonesinger there ahead of him, already holding audience on the Council steps outside, a throng of dwarves filling the plaza. Tarn heard Jungor’s voice, deep and resonant, even before he saw him.

“There is nothing to fear,” Jungor was saying. “All indications are that it was only a small groundquake. Such things are to be expected, every once in a while, even here in Thorbardin. Everyone should just go home and go back to bed. We’ll take care of everything.”

Growling a curse, Ghash Grisbane cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “The king is here! Make way for the king!”

The crowd split apart like the wave before the bow of a boat. Here at the Council Hall, the faces that greeted the king were not so friendly as those in his own neighborhood. Many stared at him as though he were an unwelcome intruder rather than the king. What was more, Tarn was the last of the Council Members to arrive. All the other thanes were already gathered on the steps—even Grumple Nagfar, the wayward thane of the Aghar.

As Tarn approached the steps, a wry smile twisted Jungor’s acid-deformed face. “Ah, good! The king has come at last,” he said in a voice dripping with sarcasm. “I just sent my master of scouts, Ferro Dunskull, to look for you.”

“You needn’t have bothered,” Tarn answered coldly as he mounted the steps. Glint Ettinhammer greeted him with a smile and an apologetic shrug. Shahar Bellowsmoke ignored him, while Brecha Quickspring glanced at him briefly before haughtily turning away. Rughar Delvestone sat on a step at Jungor’s feet, scribbling like a secretary in a large black logbook spread upon his lap. The Hylar thane stood above them all in his usual tattered robes and wizard staff and one-eyed hideousness. Unlike the other thanes, Tarn included, whose hair and beards were still rumpled from sleep, Jungor looked like he had never even gone to bed. Indeed, it made Tarn wonder, what had the Hylar thane been doing that he should still be up at this horn—of the night?

Tarn climbed to a step higher than where Jungor stood, then swept his eyes round, casting a swift glance over the crowd before turning his attention to Jungor. Though he said nothing, his baleful gaze told Jungor to step aside. Jungor returned his stare with a cold eye, then bowed, moving aside for the king. But the smirk on his face promised that he would not always do so.

Satisfied, Tarn crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Now, what do we know? Were many folk injured? Anyone seriously?”

Thane Ettinhammer stepped up, elbowing past the Hylar thane. “So far, there have only been reports of minor injuries. The houses of healing are still taking a count, but to this point, we seem to have come through this relatively unscathed.”

“We should begin taking an account of the damages to buildings,” Tarn said.

“We had already begun to do so before you arrived,” Jungor said briskly, turning to the Daewar thane sitting on the step below him. “Thane Delvestone, please continue to record the reports as they come in.”

Tarn glowered at Jungor for a moment. “Then perhaps he could read to me what he has recorded so far,” he said through gritted teeth.

The Daewar thane looked up at Jungor, who nodded his assent. This, more than anything else, infuriated Tarn—that Rughar should seek permission from Jungor to follow the king’s order. Tarn’s cheeks flushed scarlet to his heard, and the hot blood throbbed so loudly in his ears that he barely heard Rughar’s voice.

“Engineers are still inspecting the transportation shafts. The entire Klar quarter of the Anvil’s Echo has been flooded to a depth of several inches, we’re not sure why. We’ve sent a team of engineers down to the first level to investigate a report of damage to the site of the new Council Hall, which is still under construction, as you know. Other than that, we seem to have suffered widespread but only minor damage to streets and buildings.”

“Thank you, Thane Delvestone,” Tarn growled. He stroked his beard for a moment, pondering his next move, then addressed the crowd. “I’m ordering that the engineers’ office remain open throughout the night, to assess damage reports and begin to recommend repairs. Anyone in need of medical assistance should report to the houses of healing on their level. I will remain here to observe and assist as needed.”

The crowd milled uncertainly, many of them staring up at Jungor, who silently leaned on his staff, his head bowed as though in thought. Tarn’s blood began to pound in his ears again. “Everyone, I order you to return to your homes,” he said a little too shrilly.

Jungor lifted his head and raised his hand, drawing everyone’s attention. The crowd grew silent. “Anyone in need of any assistance whatsoever should come by my warehouses in the Hylar quarter of the second level. I have been storing food, water, medicine, bandages, bedding, tools, and other supplies in preparation for just such an emergency as this. Those in need may draw from my stores free of charge.”

A cheer went up from the crowd. “I suggest that the other thanes return to their own quarters of the city to see to the needs of their people, especially Thane Ettinhammer, whose realm has been flooded. Everyone else should return home as the king suggests. What can be done is being done. We’ll know more in the morning.” Another cheer went up. The crowd began to disperse and the thanes hurried away to their homes.

Jungor turned and smiled up at the king. Tarn ground his teeth in frustration, but there was nothing he could say. Once again, Jungor had not directly challenged him, but had still somehow managed to wrest control from his grasp and leave him gaping like a landed fish. The people weren’t in serious need of medical supplies, food, or water. It had been, after all, only a minor groundquake. But by offering them that which they didn’t even need, Jungor had both managed to create a need in their minds and then satisfy it at the same time. Meanwhile, the king’s thorough, efficient, and practical manner of resolving this crisis had been greeted with less favor.

Seeing the king’s frustration, Jungor climbed to the step just below Tarn’s. Still smiling innocently, he said, “Perhaps you should return home as well, my king. There is nothing more for you to do here.”

Tarn clenched his fists, his beard quivering, but somewhere in the back of his mind, he could hear Crystal warning him—strike him and you give him the excuse he wants to act more boldly. Slowly, Tarn relaxed, and with a last baleful glare at the Hylar thane, he began to descend the steps, his thoughts already returning to his son. But a question niggled in his mind, like a worm on a hook. Why had Jungor been stockpiling supplies? What sort of disaster was he preparing for? Food, medicine, water, bandages, bedding—these were all things needed by refugees.

Or an army.

27

Ghash met Tarn at the bottom of the stair, his face grim. “Where to, m’lord?” he asked.

“Home,” Tarn answered shortly. Though most of the crowd had already left, a few remained behind in the temple courtyard, gathered in small groups talking about what had happened. Most fell silent as Tarn and his captain passed, and not a few shot disdainful glances their way. Ghash made a point of haughtily ignoring them, even when one group burst into laughter behind their backs. For once, Tarn wished his Klar captain would forget his manners and crack a few heads.

Having left the plaza surrounding the Council Hall, they turned north. Here, near one of the major transportation shafts that connected the various levels of the city, they found the houses of healing for the second level of Norbardin. Not far away stood Jungor’s warehouses, and from the intersection of two streets, Tarn could see the crowd that had already gathered to receive the distribution of goods. Though obviously not in dire need as a result of the groundquake, the dwarves were not about to pass up free blankets and food. Tarn could not help but think that Jungor was buying the favor of the populace.

But this did not concern Tarn so much at the moment. What more readily attracted his attention was the large number of people waiting in the street outside the houses of healing. Most bore only minor bruises and scrapes, and he saw no one with truly serious injuries. But there were far too many of them, and Tarn noted that most were Daergar or Klar. Fifty or more stood on the curb outside the door and the line stretched around the far corner.

Tarn turned aside and entered, Ghash hurrying in his wake. They found the lobby more crowded than the street, with dozens of dwarves angrily demanding attention for their wounds from the undermanned staff. Tarn glanced around until he spotted a young female Hylar wearing the white robe and brown belt of a healer’s apprentice. She was hurrying toward him with a tray of bandages balanced on one hand while she fended off the grasping hands of the patients who swarmed around her. Tarn pushed through until he reached her side, then took the tray from her hand and passed it to Ghash. “Distribute these,” he ordered. The Klar captain stared at him in confusion for a moment before lowering the tray to within the reach of those clamoring around him.

“Wait just a moment. Those are for the doctor!” the apprentice healer shouted angrily. Tarn turned back to her, and it was only then that she realized who he was, so frazzled were her nerves. “Pardon my impertinence, thane. I did not see you enter. Are you injured?” She performed a quick curtsy.

“Not at all. Tell me, what has happened here? Why are there so many injured citizens on this level?” Tarn asked.

The girl pushed her hand through the mop of dirty brown hair hanging in her eyes. Her cheeks were flushed with exertion, her hair dank with sweat. “Oh, my king,” she sighed. “The houses of healing on the first level have been flooded. We’re getting patients from both levels now, and there aren’t enough of us to handle them all.”

“Where are all your healers, then?” Tarn asked, well aware of the precise number of staff assigned to each of the healing houses. “There should be more than enough healers here to handle this. And I was told that there aren’t any serious injuries to speak of.”

“That’s true, my lord, or would be. There are only two doctors here. The rest of the staff is made up of apprentices and novices. Most of our doctors were ordered to the third level to deal with Hylar wounded,” she said in annoyance. “That was before the first level houses of healing became flooded. Now we can’t recall them.”

“Ordered? Who ordered this?” Tarn asked, though he thought he already knew the answer.

“Thane Stonesinger,” the girl said, confirming his suspicions. “Forgive me, my lord. The doctor is waiting for me.” Curtsying again, she hurried away.

“Send the head doctor to me, when he has a moment!” Tarn shouted after her, and she waved to show that she had heard before vanishing through a doorway.

Tarn found Ghash standing by a window with an empty tray in his hands. Two other Klar stood nearby, and the three leaned together, speaking swiftly in their choppy, guttural dialect. Tarn noticed that the two newcomers were still wet up to their waists and dripping water onto the floor. One wore a blood-soaked bandage wound about his shaggy head, the other leaned upon a makeshift crutch. As Tarn approached, they ceased their whispered conference and turned to bow. Tarn immediately noticed a distinct aroma of sewage that surrounded them. They smelled like they had been wading in a latrine. The other patients had already identified the source of the odor and retreated to the other side of the chamber.

“My kinsmen,” Ghash said, introducing them to the king. “Garn and Boros Bloodfist.” The two bowed again. Tarn could not help but notice how much the one wearing the head bandage, Garn Bloodfist, looked like a younger version of his old friend Mog Bonecutter. Looking at him was like seeing a ghost from the early days of his rule.

“What passes on the lower level?” Tarn asked, trying not to stare at the young dwarf.

“The entire Anvil’s Echo is flooded, my thane,” the older of the two brothers answered. He shifted his position on his crutch, wincing when his foot touched the floor.

“It’s the sewers,” Ghash said. “They’re backing up everywhere down below.”

“I can’t believe the sewers have failed this badly after such a small groundquake,” Tarn said. “They’re newly built and reinforced, after all.”

“It wasn’t the groundquake at all,” Boros said. “The sewers didn’t start backing up until the engineers began to inspect them for damage. My brother and I were assigned to these very duties. I can’t speak for what happened to the others, but we discovered magical wards had been placed at the confluence of the sewage system beneath the first level houses of healing. One ward exploded while we were trying to remove it. That’s how we were injured, and how the healing house came to be flooded with sewage. The entire pipe collapsed. We barely escaped with our lives.”

“We’ve heard that there were other explosions, too,” Garn added as he rubbed his bandaged forehead.

Tarn pondered their strange news in silence. Could it be? Magical wards had been set to collapse the sewers beneath the Anvil’s Echo, thus flooding the most densely populated region of Norbardin with raw sewage. The place would be uninhabitable for months, until they could clean it up and repair the sewers. Who could have set those wards? There was no question as to who had the capability, much less the motive. Among all the dwarf clans, only the Theiwar had the skill to use magic, and the Theiwar were aligned, through their thane, Brecha Quickspring, with Jungor.

The question was, why? Why flood the Anvil’s Echo? Who lived there? Daergar, Theiwar, and Klar, for the most part. A few Daewar had homes in the Anvil’s Echo, but no Hylar would lower himself to live in that slum. Forcing the Daergar, Klar, and Theiwar out of their homes would only aggravate the clan rivalries in Norbardin, as they would all be forced to share an even smaller amount of inhabitable city. Tarn had only managed to keep the peace in Norbardin for these forty years by allowing the different clans to build their own enclaves within the city. Force them together now and it was sure to end in clan-on-clan violence. That must be the plan.

Did Jungor really desire the return of internecine war in the streets of Thorbardin? Should a civil war erupt, Tarn didn’t have the manpower or the resources to stop it. He’d been holding the tiger by the tail for forty years now, living on borrowed time while he worked to break down clan hatreds. And prosperity, more than anything else, had helped to keep the peace. But in the eighteen months since the gates were closed, prosperity had faltered. Tarn knew that each day, the tinder beneath their society became a little drier, a little more ready for the spark that would light it into a conflagration.

All the while, Jungor had apparently been scheming, planning, preparing to take advantage of this disruption in the delicate social balance.

Tarn cursed himself for a blind fool. Now the dozens of reports and hints that had passed across his desk in the past year came flooding back to him. He only half read most of them, deeming them unimportant, and he had never connected the dots, until now. In the past months his son had been the only thing he really cared to attend to, and therefore he had neglected the duties of the king, while Jungor built up a sizable militia of Hylar and Theiwar warriors “in preparation for Beryl’s attack, or any other emergency”; while he stockpiled food stores and blankets in his warehouses; while he commissioned dozens of new fountains to be built in the Hylar quarter that would provide plenty of water in case of a siege.

Perhaps it was not too late for Tarn to act. Maybe the groundquake had saved him from an even greater disaster. It had exposed the magical wards set to collapse the sewers beneath the Anvil’s Echo, obviously before Jungor was ready to use them. Tarn felt a cold chill pass down his spine. Jungor must already be aware that his machinations had been laid bare. The Hylar thane couldn’t afford to wait and see if Tarn would put the last pieces of the puzzle together and discover the extent of his treachery. He was probably already moving his forces into position to seize control of vital streets and transportation shafts, stairways and sources of water, prisons and centers of government. All he needed was an excuse to act, and Tarn had no doubt that Jungor could improvise such a contingency. A few acts of clan violence, a little rioting in the streets, some looting and arson to go with the flooding of the Anvil’s Echo, and Jungor Stonesinger would be ready with his army of soldiers, ready to restore civil order and be proclaimed king of Thorbardin.

“We have to get back to the fortress,” Tarn said in a low voice that Ghash knew was ominous. Instinctively, his hand flew to the axe at his belt.

“What’s wrong?” Ghash hissed.

“There’s no time to lose.” Tarn started for the door, but a commotion in the street brought him up short. Ghash leaped in front of the king, axe in hand with a snarl peeling his lips back from his teeth.

A litter bearer stumbled through the doorway, tripping over the threshold in his hurry and nearly dumping the litter’s occupant unceremoniously on the ground. The bearer at the other end of the litter fought to stabilize their burden while his companion regained his balance. Weaving a path through the other patients, they shouted frantically for the doctor.

Concerned, Tarn stepped nearer. Two apprentice healers appeared and swiftly knelt beside the dwarf on the litter. One peeled back the damp sheet covering him to reveal his naked body. His skin had turned a brilliant scarlet color and was covering with pustules from the middle of his chest to his knees. A few tatters of blackened clothing still clung to his flesh around his wrists and ankles.

“He’s been burned,” one of the apprentice healers said to his companion other. “Fetch a doctor at once.” He then lifted one end of the litter, and with the help of one of the litter bearers hurried the patient from the room. The other patients, many of whom had been moaning pitifully about their cuts and bruises, grew silent at the sight of the horribly burned dwarf.

Tarn grabbed the other litter bearer and pulled him aside. Seeing who it was who had accosted him, the young Daewar dwarf swiftly knelt before the king. Tarn pulled him to his feet “What happened?” he asked.

“A… a… an accident at the s-site of the N-new Council Hall, my king,” the young dwarf stammered.

“Was it the groundquake?” Tarn asked impatiently.

“No, sire. I don’t believe so. He was one of the engineers sent to investigate the crack in the foundation caused by the groundquake,” the litter bearer answered.

Tarn’s blood went cold in his veins—it was just like his recurring nightmare—the crack in the nursery floor, the hot breath welling from it, and the gaping chasm of fire. And each time, that dream had ended with Tor’s mangled and broken body being torn to shreds by shadow wights.

“Crack? What crack?” he asked through lips suddenly gone numb.

“I can’t say, my lord. Someone found him beside the crack, his skin scalded nearly from his bones but still alive. Of the other engineers, there was no sign.”

“Wait, my lord!” Ghash shouted as Tarn bolted through the door.

28

Though nearly complete, Tarn’s new Council Hall still had a good two years of work ahead before it would be ready to hold its first meeting of the Council of Thanes. Its architect, Gaul Quarrystone, had chosen the location to take advantage of a natural bowl-shaped cavern uncovered by silver miners a few years after the Chaos War. The cavern lay a hundred feet beneath the lowest level of Norbardin at the end of a broad sloping passage that wound snakelike into the heart of the mountain, following a thin vein of silver that could still be seen sparkling in the tunnel’s walls. For the better part of ten years, two hundred of Thorbardin’s most skilled stonemasons had chiseled and chipped and cut and polished until the cavern had become a thing of unmatched beauty. In their diggings, they had uncovered deposits of golden-hued quartz crystal, which they cut into panes to form the lamps that would one day fill the Council Hall with warm golden light. But for the most part, the dwarves sought to reshape the caverns as little as possible, and what they did alter, they used all their skill to make it look natural.

Were it not for the scaffolding rising to the ceiling a hundred feet overhead, the piles of stone dust waiting to be carted away, and the discarded tools of the workers littering the floor, one might have mistaken the chamber for a natural amphitheater. Only the stairs were too regular, the seats too evenly shaped, and the dais at its center was too perfectly rounded to be an accident of nature. The dwarves sought to improve upon the perfection of nature whenever they could. This philosophy had been the inspiration behind the wondrous Life Tree of the Hylar, their great city built within a single huge stalactite hanging over the Urkhan Sea. With Tarn’s enthusiastic support, Gaul Quarrystone had envisioned re-creating just a little of that former majesty here in the new Council Hall.

Tarn had no doubt that the brilliant young architect would succeed in his aspirations. Though the Council Hall followed the traditional design, this was a place unlike any the dwarves of old had ever imagined. Natural rock blended perfectly with shaped stone to form a fluid whole of surpassing beauty.

But there was one flaw in Gaul Quarrystone’s design—apparently, the Council Hall rested over a significant fault in the bedrock. The groundquake had opened it, neatly splitting the central dais almost through its center. Tarn and Ghash now stood at the edge of the gaping black hole, peering down into a seemingly bottomless chasm from which wisps of steam steadily rose.

Even more ominous, dried bloodstains and tatters of burned clothing lay around the crack. Bloody palm prints and streaks on the inside edge of the hole told of the surviving engineer’s desperate attempt to escape. The fire from below was intense, and dwarves feared fire more than any other hazard of the deep earth. But whether the engineers had accidentally stumbled upon a pocket of methane gas, igniting it with their lamps, or whether they had encountered molten rock pushing up into the mountain, neither ›Tarn nor Ghash could tell. Either way, this was a great danger.

“Ghash, I want you to go and fetch more engineers. Bring Gaul Quarrystone here at once,” Tarn said, adding when he saw the captain begin to protest, “Now, do as I say. Time is of the essence, and we must know what happened here.”

“All the more reason that you should come with me, m’lord. It is too dangerous for you to remain here. If the Hylar thane’s soldiers were to discover you… ”

“They won’t find me,” Tarn snapped. “I’ll be safer here than on the streets. Bring a squadron of my personal guard with you when you return. There is no telling when Jungor might… .” His voice trailed off as a faint sound rose from the crack in the floor. At first he thought it nothing more than the hissing of steam. But then a voice, distant yet clear, cried, “Someone help me! Please!”

“There’s someone still alive!” Ghash exclaimed as he knelt at the side of the hole.

“Hello down there!” Tarn shouted. His voice was amplified by the empty chamber.

A faint, inarticulate cry answered. Without even considering the danger, Tarn sat at the edge of the hole and swung his legs over the side. The shattered rock provided plenty of handholds and ledges to place his feet, so that he had little difficulty negotiating his descent. Grumbling into his beard about the risk, Ghash followed even more nimbly than his king. The younger Klar was an accomplished mountaineer and soon was able to pass his king.

After about forty feet, the air became sweltering, the stone under their hands grew uncomfortably warm. “If it gets any worse, we’ll have to turn back,” Ghash said. Tarn said nothing, continuing his swift descent. But they had not gone much deeper before the rocks grew too hot to touch for very long. Both dwarves felt the pads of their fingers slowly being seared, their faces and chests baked by the heat. Even worse, the air scalded their lungs with each breath. Steam mixed with noxious vapors seeped from the stone around them, even as the crack narrowed and grew more steep.

“We have to go back,” Ghash said in a strangled voice.

“There’s someone alive down there,” Tarn said. “If he can survive this long, we can stand it long enough to try to rescue him.”

“And what if he is trapped? What is he can’t escape? If we join him, we’ll be trapped, too.”

“Then we’ll be trapped!” Tarn shouted angrily as he continued downward. After a dozen more feet, he felt the close air open around him and knew that they had entered a larger cavern. The smoke and mist prevented him from seeing much with his darkvision. He felt truly blind in the dark. The slope leveled off and soon he found himself standing at the bottom of the chasm. Ghash joined him, coughing and retching from the poisonous fumes.

By feeling their way along the wall, they discovered that they had entered a tunnel, roughly circular, with smooth walls that seared their fingers. Both knew immediately that no dwarf had delved this tunnel. Some more elemental force must have burned its way through the rock. Guessing that the tunnel was not very wide, Tarn pushed off from the wall and moved blindly ahead. Almost immediately, he stumbled over something on the floor. The sickly sweet odor of cooked flesh assaulted his nostrils.

He and Ghash found six more dwarf bodies lying in the immediate area. They didn’t need to see to know that all of them were horribly burned. But the last body that they found stirred when Tarn touched it. “Here he is!” Tarn cried to Ghash.

“I can’t see!” the injured dwarf moaned. “My eyes! My eyes are gone!”

“Lie still and quiet,” Tarn said as soothingly as he could. “We’ve come to rescue you.”

He and Ghash each took the injured dwarf by one arm and tried to lift the poor fellow to his feet, but as they stood, his skin slipped loose from the flesh of his arms and he toppled to the floor again, groaning pitifully.

“This is hopeless!” Ghash cried in horror as he shook the loose folds of skin from his fingers. “He’s as good as dead already We must leave, my king.”

“King!” the dying dwarf shouted deliriously. “Must warn… !”

“Warn of what?” Tarn demanded. “What happened to you down here?”

A gurgling sigh was his only answer.

“He’s dead, m’lord. We must go now,” Ghash insisted. He began to pull at Tarn’s arm, dragging him away from the bodies.

Tarn lashed out and struck the Klar’s hands aside. “We’ll go when I say,” he shouted angrily. But almost as soon as he said it, Tarn regretted having not listened to his captain.

For behind them, a great red glow began to swell. A hot rising wind scorched their faces and started their beards to smoking as they turned toward the light. Now they saw this was no tunnel. It was a vast subterranean chamber, many times larger than the new Council Hall, but of similar proportions. It was like a great bowl that had somehow been burned out of the rock. The walls and floors were smooth as glass, except where the crack above their heads broke through, forming this tiny ledge high up the wall of the chamber. Had they not tripped over the bodies of the dwarves, they might have walked blindly over the edge and fallen hundreds of feet to their certain deaths.

But even this was preferable to the horror filling the bowl of the chamber below them. A vast winged serpentine form, seemingly composed of molten rock yet somehow alive and stirring, came into view. Its sinuous, catlike movements appeared to stoke the fires of its flesh, for it began to glow even hotter and brighter as they watched, abruptly heedless of the smelting furnace heat that assaulted their flesh. The two dwarves felt suddenly very naked and small. A deep, rumbling purr trembled through the stone beneath their feet as the dragon settled back to its slumber. And its fire began to dim.

By their dying flames, Tarn saw ropes dangling over the ledge, still tied to several pitons hammered into the stone. As he backed away from the ledge, he began to understand what must have happened to the engineers. They must have discovered the ledge and tried to descend into the chamber beyond, only to be overcome by the heat of the slumbering dragon’s body.

For this was no ordinary dragon, nor one of the feared dragon overloads, like Beryl and Malys, who had appeared after the Chaos War. This was a chaos dragon, a creature of living fire, maybe even one of the very chaos dragons that had attacked Thorbardin during the Chaos War. Tarn had thought them all banished or destroyed when the gods defeated Chaos. But apparently, one had survived, spending the past decades slumbering away unsuspected in the heart of their mountain. Or had Chaos returned, and with him his minions? Either way, Thorbardin was in grave danger. The gods were no longer here to save them from Chaos, and all the dwarves in Thorbardin couldn’t hope to defeat one of his fire dragons.

A terrified-looking Tarn, battered, scorched, and pale with fear, burst into the nursery, nearly frightening Aunt Needlebone half out of her frowsy, moth-eaten nightgown. “Where is Crystal?” he demanded.

“In the next room with your son. He just finished his breakfast. You’re lucky Tor wasn’t asleep. You come storming in here with your beard all in a knot, looking half crazy and dead, demanding this and ordering that at the top of your voice,” Tor’s nanny scolded the king.

“Shut up, old woman! Start packing Tor’s things. Take only the essentials,” Tarn ordered as he crossed the floor toward the door Auntie had indicated.

The humor vanished from the old hill dwarfs face. “So it has begun, has it? The beginning of the end? We’re under attack?”

“No. Worse than that,” Tarn said as he jerked the door open.

“What could be worse?” she asked after him. “And what happened to your face? You look all sunburned.”

Tarn found Crystal in the sewing room bending over a piece of needlework, Tor playing at her feet. She looked up, smiling to see him, but the smile quickly faded from her face. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“We have to leave. We have to go, now. Pack only what we cannot live without,” he said.

“Where are we going?” Crystal asked as she tossed aside her needlework and picked up the baby. She clutched Tor fearfully to her breast, afraid because she saw the same emotion clearly writ in her husband’s face. “You always said we’d be safe here.”

“Nowhere is safe now,” he barked. “Be ready for when I come back. Be ready to leave immediately.”

“But where are we… are you going?”

“To see Jungor,” he answered grimly as he stared at his infant son in her arms. For a moment, she saw his resolve waver. She clutched her baby tighter and hardened her heart.

“Tarn, tell me what has happened so that I can know how to advise you,” Crystal demanded. “What is happening? Where are you taking us?”

Quickly but without sparing details, Tarn recounted his discovery of the chaos dragon in the crack beneath the Council Hall. “Reorx help us!” Aunt Needlebone, standing behind him, exclaimed.

“Reorx is gone, old woman,” Tarn snapped. “We have to help ourselves now. We’re leaving the mountain before the dragon awakes. There’s no time to spare, but I must warn the other thanes, beginning with Jungor.”

“How can we leave a mountain sealed from the outside world?” asked Auntie Needlebone.

“Not by standing here flapping our gums, but first Jungor must hear this news from me and listen to reason.”

“He won’t, and you know it. But I’m going with you,” Crystal said as she handed her son to his nanny. “We have servants to do the packing.”

29

Jungor pushed hack his empty plate, sighing contentedly. That was the first decent meal he’d eaten in weeks, and he couldn’t remember the last time he slept. He missed his meals sorely, but the lack of sleep was a mere nuisance. All he had to do was imagine himself wearing the crown of Thorbardin and the weariness slid from his shoulders like oil from a hot anvil. The crown seemed almost within his grasp now. His preparations were complete, his forces hovering.

Certainly, the groundquake had forced him to act more quickly than he had originally planned. The discovery of explosive mines in the sewers beneath the Anvil’s Echo was unfortunate, but perhaps inevitable—not really so huge a disaster that it couldn’t be overcome. Everything was already in place. All he lacked was the catalyst to set things in motion. And that would come soon enough. Whether Tarn challenged him of his own initiative, or events allowed Jungor to assert his right to rule in Tarn’s place, the crown of Thorbardin would be his.

Having finished his repast, Jungor nodded to a servant waiting beside the dining room door. “Let them in now,” he said. The servant bowed and opened the door, allowing those waiting in the antechamber beyond to enter.

The first to enter was Rughar Delvestone, thane of the Daewar. In preparation for this day, he had changed to battle gear and wore a warhammer at his side. Next came Brecha Quickspring, her dark eyes burning with fervor even as her skin seemed to have only grown more pallid. Behind her, Hextor Ironhaft entered, wearing the robes of a Hylar thane. Jungor raised his eyebrows in alarm at the portly merchant’s premature assumption of the seat promised to him, but decided to let the fat old dwarf enjoy himself. He was in too good a mood to reprimand anyone, not even Ferro Dunskull, who entered next, followed closely by one of his trusted assassins, a female Daergar who interested him not only for her mastery of the deadly arts.

Jungor usually didn’t show much interest in the opposite sex. To his mind, women were for marrying and improving oneself politically and financially. But this Daergar minx had long ago caught the Hylar thane’s eye. Not that he would ever disgrace himself by dallying with a dark dwarf, but even he had to admit that she was a singular creature upon which to rest his gaze. As she entered, he stared at her, and she caught Jungor’s eye, returning his frank appraisal with a haughty coldness that he found particularly appealing. He pummeled his brain to remember her name—Marith something.

Astar Trueshield entered last and closed the door, dismissing the servants after they had cleared the table of the breakfast dishes. Jungor remained seated at the table, contentedly picking the last bits of his breakfast from between his teeth with the nail of his pinky finger, making the others wait. The conspirators settled into chairs along either side of the long dining table, only casually pausing to admire the fineness of the wood paneling covering the walls or the tapestries hanging between marble busts of Jungor’s grandfathers.

When all were seated, Jungor at last stood and pushed hack his chair. “Please, remain seated my friends,” he said patronizingly, when they started to rise as though to follow him. “Do not trouble yourselves.” He strode slowly around the corner of the table and thoughtfully placed his hand on the first marble bust standing on its granite pedestal beside the wall. Rughar was the first to notice that this was Jungor’s own, almost-forgotten image, carved before the vitriol attack in the arena that had destroyed his right eye.

“I am glad you have come,” Jungor said, somewhat distracted in contemplation of his own bust. Sighing with perhaps a tinge of regret, he turned toward the others. “Because the time has come to make our move. Last night’s groundquake is a clear sign of the revolution sure to shake the mountain to its foundations.” The Hylar thane returned to the end of the table and stood, leaning forward on his fists, his one eye glittering excitedly. “Thane Quickspring’s mines beneath the Anvil’s Echo have been discovered, unfortunately, but the groundquake has given us the opportunity to display the quality of our leadership while showing everyone how weak and ineffectual is the king. We have won many friends today. The people will support us, especially after Tarn is dead… at the hands of his cousin, the Daergar thane.”

“What!” Hextor exclaimed. “Do you mean to say Shahar Bellowsmoke has chosen to join us?”

“Quite so,” Jungor said with a predatory smile. “Only he doesn’t know it yet.”

Ferro Dunskull made a show of tossing a small, ornate dagger on the table. The others stared at the dagger, little more than a handspan in length, its narrow blade tapered to a needle point. Its hilts were decorated with skull and rose motifs, for Shahar Bellowsmoke had taken it from the body of an emissary of the Dark Knights of Neraka who had come some years ago to try to recruit the Daergar to their side. “I have borrowed this dagger from my thane’s personal treasury. You are all familiar, I am sure, with the story of how Shahar Bellowsmoke killed the ambassador from Neraka. When Tarn Bellowgranite is found with this dagger in his throat and its poison in his veins, no one can but doubt that it was the Daergar thane who executed the deed. Nor will very many care to investigate the king’s fate, for we feel confident the populace has turned against Tarn, thanks to our careful work.”

“Good! Very good!” Hextor chuckled to himself. “I compliment you on a master stroke, Master Dunskull.” Ferro returned the praise with an appreciative nod.

“Are you prepared, then?” Jungor asked.

“We are,” Ferro answered, rising from his chair. He picked up the dagger from the table and returned it to his belt. His comely companion joined him as he strode from the dining hall, only pausing once to cast a curious gaze at the others before quietly closing the door behind her.

When they had gone, Jungor turned to Brecha. “And are the Theiwar prepared?”

“We are, my king,” she answered fervently. “A nursery has been prepared for the young prince. When Tarn and his witch wife are dead, I will take Tor and raise him as my own child, with you acting as regent until he reaches the age of majority. That should pacify any skeptics until, of course, the child succumbs to a mystery illness or tragic accident”

“Excellent. Well then, we have only to wait for news from Ferro…” Jungor’s voice trailed off as he caught sight of the dour expression on Captain Trueshield’s face. The Hylar warrior seemed to have swallowed something that disagreed with him.

“Whatever is the matter with you Astar?” Jungor asked.

“Forgive me, my lord,” the captain answered without meeting Jungor’s eye.

“Are you sick?”

“Only of dark dwarves, my lord.” Brecha shot the Hylar captain a murderous glance, which he returned with the frigid glare that was the birthright of his clan.

“Well, that cannot be helped for now,” Jungor said, a trifle disconcerted.

“But my lord—” Astar started to say. A knock at the door cut off his words. Rising from his chair, he crossed to the door and opened it.

Jungor waited impatiently while the captain conferred in low voices with one of Jungor’s servants. After a few moments, the captain returned. “Glint Ettinhammer is in the street outside, demanding to see you, my thane,” he announced.

Jungor’s remaining eyebrow rose in surprise.

30

As Tarn and his wife neared Jungor’s residence, they could hear the voice of Thane Ettinhammer bellowing about something. Crystal glanced at Tarn in surprise, and they quickened their steps, forcing their company of bodyguards to hurry after them. Crystal had insisted upon the escort despite Tarn’s protests, and it was well that they had brought along the twenty wild-eyed Klar warriors. This was, after all, the center of Jungor’s realm of influence, and the dwarves they met on the streets here looked upon the king practically with murder in their eyes. Without their bodyguards, they probably would not have made it this far.

Rounding the corner, they entered the plaza that lay between Jungor’s splendid mansion and his warehouses. At the far side, Glint Ettinhammer stood upon the steps leading up to Jungor’s door. Two steps above him, the Daewar thane, Rughar Delvestone, held his ground, backed by three of his personal guard. Glint was alone, but one look at his massive arms and the double-bladed axe in his hands was enough to keep the others at a safe distance.

Tarn arrived in time to hear Rughar angrily shout, “He doesn’t have time to see you now! Come back tomorrow when you are sober, Thane Ettinhammer.”

“By the gods, I wish I were drunk. You won’t see tomorrow if you don’t let me in!” Glint roared as he surged up the steps. The Daewar retreated in alarm.

Leaping up the steps, Tarn caught the Klar thane by the arm before he could swing his axe. Wild-eyed, Glint turned on him and nearly struck him before he realized that it was the king.

“Ah, forgive me, my lord!” he shouted, half laughing as Tarn ducked the blow that probably would have broken his jaw.

“King Tarn!” Rughar angrily cried. “Take this drunken fool away before he gets himself killed. The Hylar thane has no patience for Klar antics today.”

Glint spun, spittle flying from his bearded lips as he shouted, “The only fool likely to die today is this pathetic toady.”

“Be quiet, Glint!” Tarn ordered. “We’ve no time for this.”

“Bah!” Glint spat in frustration. “That fool wouldn’t know when to wipe his own arse if Jungor Stonesinger wasn’t there to tell him.”

Crystal climbed the steps and quietly slipped a hand under the Klar thane’s arm. The effect was remarkable. At her touch he gave a start, but then he looked down at her and smiled. His berserk fever seemed to cool.

“Where is Captain Grisbane?” she asked the Klar thane in a low voice as Tarn climbed the steps to the door.

“Looking for you. He brought me the news and I came here at once, but he insisted on going back to the Fortress to find Tarn,” Glint answered.

Tarn had reached the door to find it still blocked by Rughar Delvestone and his cadre. “Out of my way, Rughar,” he growled. “I must speak with Jungor.”

“Thane Stonesinger is indisposed,” Rughar stubbornly maintained. “Come back tomorrow.”

“Listen, you miserable dog—” Tarn began, his blood rising into his cheeks, but a voice from behind the door cut him off.

“It’s all right, Thane Delvestone. The king has honored us with his presence. We mustn’t refuse to see the king.” With these words, Jungor appeared in the doorway, leaning upon his staff as though the weight of the mountain rested upon his shoulders. Rughar bowed and slipped to the side, pulling his guards with him. Crystal glanced around and saw that a crowd was gathering behind them. She noticed that a fair number were warriors armed for battle. Clutching the Klar thane, she pulled him up the steps to stand with their king. Meanwhile, Glint eyed the Daewar thane and fingered his axe.

Jungor stepped over the threshold and greeted Tarn with a bow that was all but an obvious mockery of respect. Tarn ignored the insult. “I must speak with you,” he said in a low voice, even as Brecha Quickspring appeared in the doorway behind Jungor. “Alone,” he added.

“Come now, we can speak freely here, can we not?” Jungor asked solicitously as he stepped past Tarn and spoke so that his voice would carry to the crowd below. “We have nothing to hide from the people of Thorbardin. And unless my eye betrays me, we have a majority of the Council of Thanes in attendance as well. How very convenient.”

Glowering, Tarn said, “Very well then. I have come to say that we must put aside our petty differences because—”

“I couldn’t agree more!” Jungor loudly interrupted.

Tarn raised his voice and continued, “… because we are all in grave danger!”

Jungor looked at him in genuine surprise. “Grave danger? What kind of danger? Is the king having more bad dreams?” he asked.

“That was no groundquake that shook the mountain last night!” Tarn said angrily. “It was a fire dragon slumbering in the depths of Thorbardin.”

Silence descended on the plaza as everyone stared up at the king in shock. It was as though a spell of fear had been cast over everyone, fear born of their memories of the Chaos War. Even Jungor seemed momentarily taken aback, until he shattered the silence with a hideous peel of laughter. “A fire dragon!” he shrieked. “By Reorx’s bones and boots, that must be some fire dragon if it can shake the whole mountain!”

Slowly, others began to chuckle, none with more smug glee than Rughar Delvestone. Growling deep in his throat, Glint’s fingers tightened around the haft of his axe. Crystal slipped her hand from his arm to the dagger secreted in her sleeve. The Klar thane glanced down at her, and she returned his gaze with a grim expression.

Jungor continued, “Are you sure it isn’t Beryl?” he asked the crowd. “No, we’ve heard not a peep from the great green bitch, despite the king’s most dire prophecies. Maybe it was Malystryx, then.” The crowd began to roar with laughter.

“It was a chaos dragon I tell you!” Tarn shouted, his voice cutting through the levity like an axe stroke. “My captain and I discovered its lair beneath the new Council Hall. You can go and see for yourselves, if you don’t believe me. It is asleep now, but stirring. It may awaken at any moment. We must evacuate the mountain.”

Jungor glared at Tarn for a few moments, his misshapen face writhing. “A chaos dragon? But the chaos dragons were all destroyed. As you yourself have attested, all the minions of Chaos were destroyed, and by your own father when he released the power of the Platinum Egg. May the name of Baker Whitegranite,” he added quickly, “be forever praised!”

“Go and see for yourself, I tell you!” Tarn responded. “But I warn you, when that beast awakens, it will be the horrors of Chaos all over again.”

Jungor ignored the king. “So now you would have us abandon our homes once more, to make your father’s sacrifice a vain and empty one!”

“Are you the only one who has seen this supposed dragon?” Rughar Delvestone asked accusingly.

“No, Ghash Grisbane, Captain of the King’s Guard, also saw the dragon,” Glint said as he stepped nearer the Daewar thane.

“And where is he, pray tell? Not here to confirm the king’s words, I notice,” Rughar sneered. “There is only you, Tarn’s ever-loyal lackey.”

“I’ll only warn you once to keep a civil tongue between your teeth, Thane Delvestone,” Glint growled.

“Don’t speak to me of civilities Thane Ettinhammer. How many innocent Hylar and Daewar did you slaughter during the Chaos War? Their blood still cries for vengeance!” Rughar shrieked.

“Very well then,” Glint said as he calmly hefted his axe.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Rughar hissed as he fumbled at his own sword.

“I told you I would only warn you once,” Glint said.

“Glint! Wait!” Tarn cried as he leaped for the Klar thane, but too late. Glint’s huge, double-bladed axe swept up, cleaving through armor, bone, and flesh. Rughar’s head leapt from his neck in a spray of blood that doused both Jungor and the Theiwar thane.

Tarn swore furiously as madness seemed to erupt. His guards retreated to within a few steps below him, forming a defensive barrier of steel to protect their king. Jungor’s forces poured in from every side of the plaza and fought their way through the frenzied crowd. Glint swung again and cut down one of Rughar’s bodyguards even as Crystal drew her dagger and slammed it into the throat of another. As the dwarf fell, blood spurting around the blade in his windpipe, she snatched the spear from his fist.

The third bodyguard drew his sword and attacked Tarn. His own sword still in its sheath, Tarn managed to dive beneath the blade and slam his shoulder into the dwarfs belly. Standing up suddenly, he lifted the Daewar warrior and flung him down the stairs, ripping his sword from its scabbard at the same time.

He turned as a sibilant whisper of magic froze his blood. Jungor now filled the doorway behind Brecha Quickspring, his face contorted with hatred. Lost in the ecstasy of her magic, Brecha seemed not to hear Jungor’s warning shout. Her words shivered the air, drawing power as the spell found shape and substance around the amber rod in her hand. But the spell died on her lips as Jungor grabbed her by the belt and pulled her through the doorway an instant before Crystal’s spear would have skewered her dark Theiwar heart. Instead, the missile thudded into the doorframe and stuck quivering in the wood, just as Jungor unceremoniously slammed the door.

Tarn leaped after him, but as his hand closed around the ornate bronze knob, a bolt of electricity arced from the metal to his fingertips. He jerked his hand away and wrung his numb fingers.

“That witch has magicked the door,” Glint shouted over the din of battle. “We have to get out of here before she has time to do worse.”

Tarn nodded as he switched his weapon to his left hand. Crystal jerked her spear free and dropped in behind Glint as he strode down the stairs, bellowing orders to Tarn’s guards. They quickly formed up in a defensive wedge, with the Klar thane at the point, and drove into the first of Jungor’s soldiers to reach the stairs. So ferocious was the assault of the battle-mad Klar warriors that they easily clove through the disorganized resistance they met.

Fleeing the shrieking Klar charge, the crowd was met on the other side of the plaza by Astar Trueshield, leading a large force of Hylar and Theiwar warriors—the best of Jungor’s troops. Swirling in confusion, the crowd coiled upon itself for a moment, then turned and fled back the other way, quickly colliding with Tarn’s small group of warriors. In seconds, he and Crystal found themselves separated from their bodyguards. Glint’s voice roared about the din of the mob as he was carried away, axe flailing. Crystal clung desperately to Tarn’s arm to keep them from being pulled apart, even as he laid about with the flat of his blade, to little avail. Soon, they found themselves swept into a close, cramped alley stinking of garbage, pressed murderously on all sides by the panicked mob and Jungor’s troops. While clinging to one another and fighting to keep their feet beneath them, the tide swept them along, but to where, they did not know.

31

Having at last escaped the mob as it dissipated into the maze of streets and alleys of Norbardin, Tarn and Crystal hurried along a darkened street, hand in hand, each encouraging the other to greater speed.

Their fortress home was near enough now that they no longer kept to the shadows. The section of the third level nearest the fortress had remained loyal to Tarn through all the difficulties of the past year. Perhaps it was the inherent nature of neighbors to support their own. Dwarves were fiercely loyal to clan and family, but in Norbardin, many of the families had been forced to live in different sections of the city due to space limitations. There were, for instance, four Klar quarters of Norbardin and seven small enclaves of the Daergar clans. In some places, especially around Tarn’s fortress, Klar and Daergar, Hylar and Theiwar lived side by side, shopped at the same markets, drank in the same taverns. Over the course of nearly forty years, they had begun to feel the same fierce loyalty for their neighbors that they had formerly reserved only for clan and family.

This had been Tarn’s dream for his people all along, but it had only been manifested thus far in a few scattered portions of the city. Now the dream seemed lost. Jungor had succeeded in polarizing dwarven society into its ancient castes. But more important, he had brought together the disparate clans in a way Tarn could only dream of doing, though not for the mutual good of all. Though Jungor longed to return the Hylar to their place at the top of dwarven society, his followers were united by their mutual hatred. Tarn wondered if the whole world hadn’t gone completely mad.

Here in his neighborhood, at least, things still seemed sane. Jungor’s revolt had not spread, and the people, worn out with worry over the groundquake, had finally returned to their beds to catch an hour of sleep before the morning watch announced the new day. The street leading to the fortress’s main gate was empty, but not completely silent. A child wept behind some door, its mother’s soft voice crooning a lullaby. An alley behind a bakery grumbled with the snoring of contented gully dwarves.

Across the way, in the shadow of a tannery wall, something crouched on the ground, mewling pitifully. Tarn and Crystal skirted it warily, hands on their weapons. Probably it was only some drunken gully dwarf crawling home from his beer-mopping job. At the far end of the street they could see the torches burning beside the entrance to the fortress, and the guards in their hauberks and iron helms walking their watches.

A soft cry from the miserable creature stopped them. Tarn peered into the shadows for a moment. “That’s no gully dwarf,” he hissed. “It’s too big. Stay here.”

“Call the guards first,” Crystal hissed after him.

But Tarn had already approached the creature, sword drawn. He nudged it with the toe of his boot, causing it to writhe like a snake. “What’s the matter with you, old one? Too much dwarf spirits?” Suddenly, Tarn dropped his sword and fell to his knees with a cry. Crystal rushed to his side.

Tarn knelt on the walk, hugging Ghash Grisbane to his breast. The Klar warrior’s body shuddered with spasms, bloody foam poured from his mouth. He clutched at Tarn’s shoulder, finger’s digging into the king’s flesh. His distended, bloodshot eyes rolled in their sockets. Horrible purple veins streaked the flesh of his throat from beard to breast.

He tried to speak, his words a long tortured groan. “I came back for you, but you had already gone. Someone—”

“What happened, son?” Tarn cried. But Ghash was already gone. His wracked body slowly relaxed, his head sank back, the mouth open in a horrible, silent scream. “Ghash!” the king wailed, rocking back and forth with the corpse in his hands.

“Come, my love. It’s too dangerous here,” Crystal said softly, gently trying to pry Tarn’s hands from the dead Klar’s body. “We have to leave. We can come back in force to recover his body. But whoever killed him is probably still around.”

A low, murderous chuckle seemed to answer her suspicions. Two figures slunk out of the alley opposite, one short and powerfully built, the other taller, leaner, and obviously female. “Indeed, we are still around,” the shorter figure laughed as he advanced toward Tarn and Crystal. His female companion followed just behind and to his right, sword drawn.

Tarn rose to his feet with a roar. He snatched his sword from the pavement and lunged toward the two. Crystal spun her spear around into an attack stance. “So the two of you murdered him,” she shouted angrily. “Let’s see how you fare against the king and his woman.”

The tall female dwarf lifted her sword and charged. The shorter figure only laughed and raised a hollow tube to his lips to shoot a poisonous dart. His cheeks puffed out and he expelled a breath of air in a sharp cry, however, as his companion’s sword unexpectedly cleaved through his shoulder, ribs, and heart to wedge itself in his spine. His dart, weakly blown and knocked askew, bounced off Tarn’s hauberk and fell with a ping to the paving stones.

Already dead, the shorter dwarf fell between the strange female and the king. Crystal circled to her right, spear ready for throwing or thrusting at this turncoat. Dumbfounded by this turn of events, Tarn waited. He knew that Daergar were treacherous, but he sometimes forgot how treacherous they could truly be, and this could be a trick. The dead dwarf had fallen, face up, and Tarn recognized him as one of Jungor’s most trusted advisors—Ferro Dunskull. But the female dwarf was a stranger to him.

“Why did you kill him?” Tarn asked.

“He betrayed me,” the female dwarf answered simply. “I’ve waited a long time to avenge my companions. Now was a good time.”

“If he betrayed you so, I am surprised he allowed you behind his back,” Tarn said. “Ferro Dunskull was never one to make a mistake about his friends.”

“He thought I was someone he could trust,” she answered. She folded her arms across her breasts. “The price I paid for that trust has only fanned the flames of my revenge.”

“I thank you for saving us.” He stamped his boot over the tiny silver needle, shattering it and driving its point between the paving stones.

“My only thought was vengeance. I am sorry your friend had to die, for he was not part of my designs,” she said, nodding toward the body of the Klar captain.

Tarn’s face darkened. “Yes, my friend. And what are those designs?” he asked suspiciously.

“Our fates are intertwined, Tarn Bellowgranite. I was hired to kill you by this dwarf, but he betrayed me before I could finish the job,” she said.

“I knew it—Ferro was working for Jungor!” Tarn cried excitedly. “If you will tell your story before the Council, Jungor’ll be exiled for the traitor that he is!”

But the female dwarf only shook her head and laughed. “They will not believe me,” she said.

“Why not?” Crystal demanded. She stepped closer, threatening the Daergar with her spear.

“Because I am not a dwarf,” Zen answered. Both Tarn and Crystal stepped hack in alarm as the female dwarf transformed into a gleaming, seven-foot-tall sivak draconian.

“I killed the woman Marith Darkforge so that I could take her form and get close to Ferro. My revenge is now complete. What happens next is no concern of mine. I only want to get out of this madhouse,” Zen said, his voice a reptilian growl.

“No, you killed Ferro in my presence for a reason,” Tarn said, sheathing his weapon. “You wanted me to see you do it. You could have murdered him a dozen times before now, I imagine.”

“Yes, it served my purpose to gain a powerful ally, should I need one,” Zen acknowledged. “Only a king or a thane can order the gates of Thorbardin opened, and I’m sure that Thane Stonesinger won’t oblige me once he learns I have killed his assassin and exposed his plots to the king.”

“Tarn, you can’t let this monster go free,” Crystal urged in a low voice.

“Be quiet, woman!” Tarn snapped, then immediately regretted his words.

Crystal grew livid. “How dare you! I am not some scullery maid to be ordered about.” Glaring at him, she cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted for the guards. Her voice carried down the length of the street. Several gate guards paused in their patrols and stared, pointing.

Hurriedly, Tarn said to the draconian, “I will order the gates opened, but there is a price.”

“Tarn!” Crystal said in surprise.

Tarn ignored her. “You can take Ferro’s form and get close to Jungor, am I right?” In answer, the draconian swiftly shrank, his silvery skin taking on the pale hue of the Daergar’s flesh. In moments, his appearance exactly mimicked that of his victim.

Tarn nodded appreciatively, but Crystal gasped in horror. “Tarn, you can’t mean to do this,” she said, catching him by the arm. “You can’t mean to hire this monster to stalk your rival.”

“As long as Jungor is around, the people will never leave the mountain.”

“This is wrong, Tarn. Jungor tried to have you murdered, and so you have decided to return the favor? What of your precious laws, Tarn’s celebrated Laws of Redress? Will you now cast them aside?”

While they argued, Zen conducted a swift operation on Ferro’s corpse with the heel of his boot. Soon, the dead Daergar’s face was an unrecognizable, bloody pulp. He removed the dagger that Ferro had intended to plant on Tarn’s murdered body in order to implicate the Daergar thane. It was only a small blade, but deadly. He slipped it into a hidden pouch in his cloak.

“This is our way,” Tarn said, his anger rising. “So it has been for thousands of years in Thorbardin.”

“It’s not my way,” Crystal returned cooly. “And it won’t be the way of our son. The Law is the same for both king and commoner, or it is no law at all.”

A company of twenty guards arrived at that moment. Their captain stared in wonder at the two bodies lying at the edges of the street, then at the king. Tarn glared at Crystal, but said nothing. She stepped close to him and fiercely pleaded, “You mustn’t sink to Jungor’s level. I beg you. For Tor’s sake! Let’s just gather what we can, take those loyal to us, and leave this place.”

Finally, Tarn relented. “But I do not care to expose the draconian yet,” he whispered back. “I may yet need his assistance.” Crystal sighed but nodded in agreement. She turned to the guards.

“Ferro Dunskull and his accomplice have attempted to murder the king. Arrest him,” she said. The guards surged forward and swiftly pinned Zen’s arms behind his back. He didn’t resist them. Instead, he focused all the hate of his draconian being onto the one who had betrayed him. Not Tarn—who turned his head away, but Crystal. She shuddered to look into his black, soulless eyes as the guards wrapped his arms in tough cords of mushroom fiber. She knew at that moment that this creature would stop at nothing to kill her.

“Do not take him to the fortress,” she declared, as they started to drag him away. The thought of the draconian locked up within the same walls as her family filled her with terror. “Imprison him in one of the first level dungeons.” Nodding, the guards started in the other direction. Half the guards remained behind to escort the king the remaining distance home and to see to the bodies of the dead.

32

Jungor’s fist struck the table, splitting it down its length. Glassware and crockery leaped into the air and crashed down, spilling their contents.

“It all comes of trusting a Daergar,” Hextor Ironhaft yawned. He righted his glass, then motioned for a servant to refill it and clean up the mess.

The news had interrupted their breakfast. Jungor hardly looked at his food. Not that he ever ate much; he drank copious amounts of mushroom brandy, and took little else for nourishment. Since his disfiguration in the arena, the Hylar thane had lost weight, his already predatory features gone thin and gaunt. The flesh of the right side of his face looked as lifeless as wax that had melted and then hardened into a hideous mockery of flesh.

But at times of extreme emotion, the curdled flesh flushed with blood and seemed almost to pulse. As the servants hurried forward to clean up the mess, Jungor grabbed the edges of the table and flipped it onto its side. Hextor sighed and stood, crossed the chamber to the fireplace, and took a crystal decanter from the mantle.

“That fool of a Daergar has failed me for the last time,” Jungor swore. He sank into his chair while servants scuttled all around him, collecting broken crockery and mopping up the mess. He watched them for a few moments, a sneer curling the left side of his face. Most took care not to come within his reach, but one young maid made the mistake of forgetting where she was. Jungor’s boot lashed out, smashing into her hip and sending her flying across the room.

Hextor stepped over her prostrate body on his way to the couch. A servant quickly dragged the weeping maid from the room so as not to disturb the thane any further. The others finished cleaning up and hurried away. As the last one exited the dining chamber, Astar Trueshield entered, a sheaf of papers tucked under one arm.

“Bad news. I hear that Ferro Dunskull was captured,” he blurted out.

Hextor winced and placed a finger to his lips. Astar paused, then bowed in gratitude for the warning. “Our troops are nearly all in their positions,” he said, swiftly changing the subject to more positive matters. “Once word of Tarn’s demise… oh!” His face flushed red. “I mean…”

“Oh, he says,” Jungor snarled. “Yes, it finally dawns on him that we can hardly move to take control of the city if the king is still alive and in command. And Ferro might betray us after all. He is Daergar.”

“I warned you not to take any dark dwarves into your confidence,” Hextor said as he sipped his brandy.

“Your tongue will cost you your head one day, Hextor Ironhaft,” Thane Brecha Quickspring cautioned from the dark corner where she had been sitting the entire time, a spellbook open upon her lap. “Just as Thane Delvestone’s cost him his.”

“My lord, are you going to allow this Theiwar witch to threaten me, a Hylar of your own clan?” Hextor protested.

“This Theiwar witch is a thane of the Council,” Brecha haughtily responded. “For forty years, we Theiwar have scraped and scratched for our rightful place here. We will not be ignored.”

“Fine words,” Hextor snapped back. “How much did Tarn Bellowgranite pay you to say them?”

“Do you dare accuse me of double-dealing?” the Theiwar thane cried as she leaped to her feet. She turned to Jungor. “My lord, I demand—!”

“You will demand nothing!” Jungor roared, leaping to his feet. With one swipe of his long arm, he sent her crashing back into her dark corner, her spellbook flying from her grasp to land in a disordered heap. Two long strides brought him to the couch. Hextor Ironhaft cowered before him.

Jungor bent over him and shrieked into his face, “Shut up! Shut up! The both of you must end your bickering, or I will end it for you! I cannot think clearly for all your endless prattle!” He spun and stalked away. Nursing a bruised jaw, Brecha climbed to her feet and righted her chair. Neither she nor Hextor dared to speak, much less apologize.

“None of you seem to realize our imminent danger,” Jungor said as he walked to the window and looked out over his garden. As swiftly as it had flared, his anger disappeared. He realized what he must do, and now spoke calmly, rationally.

“Shahar Bellowsmoke will demand the right to question Ferro, once he is informed of the attempt on Tarn’s life. If he is allowed to exercise the full talents of his interrogators, Ferro will confess everything that he knows and probably much that he doesn’t know. We cannot let that happen. The problem of Ferro must be solved.”

“Of course,” Hextor Ironhaft said.

“We cannot rescue him,” Brecha said cautiously. “That would only incriminate us in the assassination attempt.”

“Who said anything about a rescue?” Jungor asked with a shrug.

“What, then? We can’t kill him, for the same reasons. And if he has already confessed, it won’t matter what we do,” Astar said.

“Exactly!” Jungor exclaimed. “We must assume that he has already told everything. I want you to concentrate your efforts on securing the dungeon where they are keeping him. We’ll need those cells. But do not touch him yet. He has disappointed me for the last time. I want that miserable Daergar for myself.”

Astar’s face grew pale and he dropped the sheaf of reports he’d been holding. “Take the dungeons? Now? But that means…”

“War,” Jungor said, his scars flushing red. “The time of Daergar plots is ended. We fight now for control of Thorbardin. Our soldiers were trained to quell a civil war, not start one. But they are ready and willing, and the populace supports us. After Tarn is defeated and dead, or driven from our sacred home, the people will embrace my rule. Those who do not love us will learn to fear us. But they will embrace our rule.”

33

The third watch of the morning had just been called when Tarn strode into the courtyard. Fully armored now, his sword at his hip, long golden beard brushed and braided for battle, he looked every bit a king. A roaring cheer went up from his soldiers gathered along the walls and mustered in the courtyard.

Tarn greeted them with a joyfulness that he did not feel in his heart. Word had come within the hour of fighting in the Daergar quarter of the Anvil’s Echo, in the Hylar and Daewar markets of the first and second levels, in the Klar quarter of the second level, around the Council Hall, and at all forges and dungeons on the first and second levels. Jungor’s followers had struck everywhere at once, it seemed, in a marvelously coordinated assault that achieved many of their objectives with little or no loss of life.

Tarn reviewed his maps as the reports came in. Jungor had moved to cut off the third level at all the transportation shafts, isolating Tarn from his food supplies and his armories. The Council Hall had fallen without a fight, the majority of its guards being loyal solely to the Council of Thanes. Since the majority of the Council were allied with Jungor, the guards had merely turned over control of the Hall to Astar Trueshield. Now, Jungor’s captain was using it as a base of operations and communications center to coordinate the takeover on the southern half of the second level. The northern half-containing the largest concentration of Hylar and Daewar in Norbardin—was already under control. Those council guards still loyal to Tarn had slipped away before Astar’s appearance on the scene and now had joined their king at the fortress. Among them was General Otaxx Shortbeard.

Tarn was heartily glad to see his old friend, even under such difficult circumstances. They greeted one another with a boisterous embrace before Tarn pulled him aside for a brief exchange beneath an arch. “Old friend, I honor your loyalty, but you risk much in defying your own clan in this.”

The old general burst out laughing, shaking his gray beard. “You should know that the Daewar are divided now that Rughar Delvestone is dead,” he said. “Some remain loyal to Jungor and would have him select the next Daewar thane. How that can be considered loyalty, I’ll never know. Others have sided with you, but they are scattered and confused. It will take some time for them to gather their wits and come along here. Some fool has even suggested that I would make a good thane! Hah! So now my fortunes rise or fall with you, my king. If you fail, then so do I.”

Tarn greeted this news with a fierce smile. “Good! I knew I could count on you,” he said. “Ever have you come to my aid in time of need, Otaxx Shortbeard.”

“And may it ever remain so,” the old general responded.

Clasping hands, they returned to the courtyard. There they found Crystal Heathstone and Thane Glint Ettinhammer surrounded by a band of the thane’s handpicked Klar guard. Tarn shouted to them in greeting. Tarn and Crystal embraced briefly. She had changed into a shining mail hauberk and leather greaves, with a mail coif. She carried a stout spear in her fist. Glint wore his usual battle-scarred plate armor and carried a black mace resting on bis massive shoulder. Rather than a helm, he wore a gleaming ivory-colored bear skull on his head, with a bearskin cape dangling at his heels. Like all the Klar gathered around him, Glint’s face was coated in dull white clay, but the circles of his eyes and his lips were stained deep purple, almost black, giving him a terrifying, death-like visage.

After clasping hands with his loyal thane in greeting, Tarn surveyed the courtyard, taking a swift mental count of their forces.

“So few?” he asked with dismay, under his breath.

“We were caught unprepared,” Glint answered frankly. “We have this many ten times over, but they range throughout the three levels, many of them bottled up in their neighborhoods. Thane Stonesinger knew what he was doing, that’s for sure, when he cut them off from us here.”

Tarn smiled grimly, slapping the hilt of his sword. “We’ll have to make do with what we have for now. But we need reinforcements to help us break out and relieve our allies. Shahar Bellowsmoke has sent word pledging the support of the Daergar if we can reach him. Jungor has him cornered in a tight place in the Anvil’s Echo, and he can’t break out. If we can join up with the Daergar, we can march through the city and take on Jungor’s forces in small groups before he has a chance to consolidate them.”

“There are Klar aplenty in the ruins,” Thane Ettinhammer suggested.

“No one is supposed to be in the ruins,” Tarn admonished him. “Are they under your command?”

“Strictly speaking, they aren’t under anyone’s command,” Glint said. “They’re feral Klar, beyond any law or loyalty. But if we can get word to them that there is fighting to be had in the city, they’ll come out of kinship, and they’ll come for the sheer love of violence.”

“Hmm. But how will you control them once they are here?” Crystal asked. “They could prove a double-edged sword.”

“Oh, they’d better follow me,” Glint bellowed, eyes glittering dangerously from his death mask face. “But I’ll have to be there to meet them when they arrive, else they’ll join up with the first force they meet.”

“That means we have to get control of the south transportation shafts on the second and third levels. And at the same time, we’ll have to try to retake the Council Hall,” Tarn said. “Who can you send to rally these feral Klar?”

“I have just the fellow,” Glint said with a fierce grin. Reaching out, he grabbed one of his guards and pulled him toward the king. His painted face and beard could not hide his youthful features. “Captain Garn Bloodfist, one of my very best. Bow to the king, boy!” The young captain managed a clumsy bow without dropping his axe.

“The Captain and I have met already,” Tarn said with a ferocious grin. “How is your head?”

“Better, my king. It was only a scratch,” the young captain answered quickly.

“You know what we need of you?” Tarn asked, more than ever keenly aware of how much the young Klar looked like his old friend, Mog Bonecutter. “Gather as many as you can, spread the word, and return before the day is out. Delay is death for us. We must strike a blow today or strike none at all.”

“I will not fail you,” the captain said, bowing again to both the king and his thane. He hurried away, already wiping the paint from his face and stripping off his heavier armor.

A cry from the gate brought them round. The gate opened a crack to allow a party of scouts through. Several bore strange wounds, burns and scores that were caused by no sword or steel arrowhead forged by dwarves. One was shown straight through to the king to give his report. He bowed, clutching his side to ease a cramp. His chest heaved like a bellows.

“Theiwar battle mages have seized the transportation shaft south of the fortress,” he said. “Their magic is taking a terrible toll. We can’t get near them.”

The four experienced leaders glanced at one another, all sharing the same thought. Jungor had anticipated that they might seek help from the feral Klar and thus had moved to block their path. Tarn and Crystal shared a grim glance. Otaxx nodded solemnly while stroking his beard. Glint growled in frustration. “Everything we think of, he’s a step ahead of us.”

“Jungor began this game months ago, I now see,” Tarn said. “I underestimated his ambition. The groundquake was a coincidence, but he has used the confusion and chaos it caused to his advantage. If only I had been paying closer attention instead of lollygagging!” Once more, his violet eyes met the cool gray eyes of his wife. Silent words passed between them.

“I need to stay here,” Crystal suddenly said. Tarn sighed in relief. He could think of no safer guardian for his son, and felt grateful that his wife, a formidable warrior who wanted to fight the coming battle as badly as any of them, had read his mind; she would stay behind and protect their child.

“I hadn’t considered the Theiwar,” Tarn continued grimly. “After forty years, I had grown accustomed to discounting their weakened magic. I should have remembered our lessons from the Chaos War, when Theiwar battle mages decimated our ranks with their fireballs.”

“When wizard practices his art, archer loose thy feathered dart!” Glint quoted from ancient dwarven wisdom. “What we need are dozens of archers to go against wizards. But you have too few here, I fear, my king.” The courtyard was filled with foot soldiers. The only archers in the fortress were posted on the walls, and these could not be spared from the defense.

“There’s a Daergar enclave on the second level near the transportation shaft,” Tarn said. “If we could break them out of their siege, they could join us in an attack against the Theiwar. The Daergar have plenty of archers. They do not consider it a cowardly weapon, unlike some.”

Tarn turned to the general. “Otaxx, you take a third of our forces and move to within sight of the transportation shaft on this level,” he said. “But approach no closer and do not threaten them immediately. Fortify your position. They will think you plan to hold them there. Meanwhile, Thane Ettinhammer and I will take another third of our dwarves and descend to the second level by way of the stairs. When you see the Theiwar dissolve in disorder, you’ll know we are threatening their rear. Launch your assault then. The last third will remain here under command of Crystal Heathstone.

Otaxx nodded, beginning to order his troops. Tarn addressed the company. “Kill only those you must, take captives when you can,” he implored, his voice rising above the din. “These are your neighbors, your own kin that you are fighting, and when this is over, you will have to live with them again.” But even as he said it, he knew his words were pebbles tossed down a well.

34

Tarn and Glint waited in the dark alley, soldiers crowding around them. Orin Bellowsmoke, younger brother of Thane Shahar Bellowsmoke, knelt at Tarn’s side, repeatedly stabbing a dagger into the dirt between the cobblestones at his feet. The two limbs of his crossbow jutted up behind his back, and a battered quarrel box hung by a thin leather cord from his shoulder.

All the alleys on either side of the street were similarly packed with anxious soldiers. Nearly a third of their number was made up of newly liberated Daergar, eager for a chance to strike a blow against the forces of Jungor Stonesinger, who had bottled them up in their small enclave and besieged their thane in the Anvil’s Echo. Tarn had promised to help them lift that siege, and so they eagerly followed him.

Orin Bellowsmoke was about as untrustworthy a Daergar as had ever lived, but Tarn needed all the allies he could muster. This Daergar was a creature of Norbardin’s dungeons, having spent a good part of the past thirty years occupying them for one crime or another. The “enclave” that Tarn and his forces had rescued was really nothing more than a band of cutthroats, murderers, and thieves loyal to Orin Bellowsmoke because his brother, the thane, could offer them some protection from Tarn’s law. But every one of them could pin a cockroach to a wall from a hundred paces. Some of them poisoned their arrows. Tarn pushed this knowledge to the back of his mind along with a hundred other issues he had neither the time nor the luxury to ponder.

Word had reached him that Jungor’s forces had secured the first level dungeons. That meant the draconian assassin was now in Jungor’s hands. Tarn couldn’t be sure if Jungor had taken the dungeons for this purpose, but he had come to learn that nothing the Hylar thane did was by accident. Tarn’s last resort for dealing with Jungor was now no longer even an option. Feeling desperate, he wished now he had not thrown it away so carelessly.

But Jungor had foolishly divided his forces into numerous small sieges scattered throughout the three levels of Norbardin. If he could attack these one at a time but in rapid succession, he could defeat them all with a smaller force than Jungor’s combined army. But success depended on three things—speed, access to at least one transportation shaft, and the arrival of the feral Klar. Without the feral Klar, he wouldn’t have enough reinforcements. Without the transportation shaft, he couldn’t move large forces rapidly from level to level. He’d be forced to send his forces down the numerous small stairs that led from level to level. And the stairs, being narrow and steep, were marvelous places for ambush and disaster.

With each delay, Jungor had the opportunity to intuit his strategy and respond by massing his force for a single decisive onslaught. Tarn couldn’t allow that to happen. Speed was imperative, too much delay spelled doom. And now the street leading to the transportation shaft was blocked by some kind of invisible wall of force. The Theiwar had indeed grown powerful in their magical abilities in the past months. Tarn sent scouts into all the alleys ahead to see if they could find a way around the invisible wall.

Glint Ettinhammer ground his teeth in frustration. He knew the futility of assaulting the Theiwar’s magical defenses, but at the same time he hated all this slinking about. He preferred a straight battle, nose-to-nose with his enemy, and longed to crush some skulls. He didn’t share Tarn’s desire for minimal bloodshed, nor did he have the patience to take captives. The king probably planned to pardon their captives when all this was over, anyway. It was simpler and easier to come to grips with your enemy as quickly and directly as possible, then kill him. That way you didn’t have to fight him twice.

The Klar thane’s warriors were as restless as he was, and they did not enjoy sharing the cramped alley with a bunch of Daergar brigands, either. Old feuds between their clans threatened to boil over at any moment. Only their shared danger kept them from slitting each other’s throats.

Glint cracked his knuckles impatiently. Tarn smiled and shook his head, putting a finger to his lips even as he leaned around the corner of the building to make sure their force had not been spotted by the Theiwar garrison less than a hundred years away. A low murmur erupted at the other end of the alley. Glint stood and glowered over the heads of the soldiers packed like gully dwarves into the cramped passage. The soldiers grumbled as they were forced to make way for a returning scout. Tarn eagerly awaited his arrival. Glint tested his mace’s weight for perhaps the hundredth time.

The short, pasty Daergar crouched at his master’s side, quickly delivering his report. Orin nodded, then turned to Tarn. “All the alleys are blocked or guarded, but he has found another way,” he said.

“It’s about time!” Glint growled.

The Daergar scout led them via twisting alleys and through empty courtyards about a hundred yards farther north of the transportation shaft, out of sight of the Theiwar guards. Next, he took them by a cross street to a road that ran parallel to the one they had just left. Then, he started south again. Glint jerked him to a stop.

Orin Bellowsmoke snarled, “What’s the matter with you?”

“This road doesn’t lead to the transportation shaft,” the Klar thane said.

“Of course it doesn’t, stupid Klar!” the Daergar scout spat “If it did, it would be guarded. But they are only watching the streets and alleys, while their back door stands open.”

“Stop speaking in riddles and tell us what you mean,” Tarn demanded.

“What lies to the west of the transportation shaft?”

“Nothing. A few warehouses.” Glint said.

“Three warehouses with back doors facing this road and front doors facing the transportation shaft,” the scout said.

“Surely the doors will be locked,” Tarn said.

“Locks!” the Daergar snorted, shaking his head.

“If memory serves, those warehouses have three floors, and each floor has several windows,” Glint ventured, a smile growing on his painted white face. “Windows from which archers could provide covering fire while we rush the Theiwar position.”

The Daergar scout nodded.

“I’m beginning to see the value of your plan,” Tarn said. “But we must move swiftly and silently. When we arrive, I will lead the way through the middle warehouse. Thane Ettinhammer will take the right-hand warehouse and Orin Bellowsmoke the left. Archers should fill the windows and be ready to fire upon my command.”

His orders were swiftly relayed to the warriors and their officers. Daergar archers divided themselves among the three columns. When everything was ready, they set off at a quick march. Within minutes, they had reached their objective without being noticed. Orin Bellowsmoke and several of his companions made quick work of the locks. Huge double-valved doors swung wide to admit the three columns of dwarf warriors.

Stacks of crates rose from floor to ceiling, forming a narrow passage down which Tarn and his warriors cautiously advanced. An identical set of double doors stood at the opposite side of the warehouse, leading out into the transportation shaft courtyard. Near the entrance, stairs led up to catwalks that crisscrossed above them. The Daergar archers swiftly ascended and made their way to the second and third-story windows, their hobnailed boots ringing on the metal walks. At the lowest level, all the windows were blocked by crates, but the higher windows provided a clear field of fire for the Daergar archers.

The Daergar archers lining the catwalk above Tarn’s head watched for danger. Crouching behind the door, the king waited until he felt his two other commanders had had enough time to move into their positions in the other warehouses. Then he looked up, checking with the Daergar at the windows. The scout who had led them to this point rose up on his knees and peered out of the window for a moment, scanning the courtyard beyond. Then he looked down at the king and nodded. All was ready.

As Tarn reached for the door, it opened of its own accord, pulled wide by a Theiwar warrior among the force waiting beyond it to surprise them. Above him, the Daergar turned their crossbows against their allies, two score deadly shafts poised to wreak havoc among the warriors packed in the narrow lane between impassible stacks of crates. At the same time, the rear doors swung wide. Hylar and Theiwar soldiers poured in, sealing the trap.

Snarling a curse, Tarn spun, ready to hack a way through to the transportation shaft. The sounds of battle would bring Otaxx’s attack on the third level, and that might be enough to draw off the Theiwar sorcerers and allow his dwarves to escape. “It’s a trap!” the king roared and lifted his sword. But as he led the charge into the courtyard, his battlecry died in his throat, his muscles froze. Eerie words of magic seemed to surround him, binding him in invisible cords until he was no longer able to move. Around him, his soldiers were cut down by arrows or struck senseless by Theiwar spells. A strangled cry of frustration and rage burst from his lips as his sword fell from his fingers.

Meanwhile, the warehouse in which Glint Ettinhammer and his Klar warriors awaited the signal to attack was largely empty except for a row of crates stacked against the windows of the first level. This arrangement prevented him from seeing into the courtyard, an inconvenience that he could not help but notice. Above him, two dozen Daergar archers crouched along the metal catwalk beneath the open windows of the second level. He didn’t like having those untrustworthy brigands above him, but there was little he could do. They dared not try to move the crates from the first floor windows lest they be spotted by the Theiwar guarding the transportation shaft.

Glint was suspicious; worse, he was worried. The entry into this place had been far too easy. He had trouble believing that Theiwar careful enough to block every alley with a spell would overlook such an obvious hole in their defenses. Tarn had divided his own forces for the plan, and was now blind to the movements of his enemy; plus he was separated from his friends. Glint was heartily sorry that he had not advised a more careful reconnaissance of the terrain. Impatience had clouded his thinking.

The Klar thane’s nerves were on edge. After he had waited what he thought was plenty of time for the others to get into attack position, Glint couldn’t sit still any longer. “I’m going up to have a look,” he said to the Klar captain at his side. “If the signal comes while I am upstairs, you lead the charge. I’ll he right behind you.”

“Yes, my thane!” the captain said, excited to be given such an honor.

Slipping swiftly and relatively silently along the wall, Glint had just reached the stair leading up to the catwalk when he heard Tarn’s shouted cry. The words were faint, muffled by distance and by the walls that stood between them, but the old Klar warrior knew what it meant. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Daergar stand and point their weapons down on those beneath them. Both sets of doors banged open. Theiwar and Hylar warriors poured through.

Glint crouched in the shadows for a moment. His warriors clustered together on the floor, shields raised against Daergar crossbow bolts that fell like winged hail among them. Theiwar sorcerers stood in the courtyard, casting their spells through the doors, felling warrior after warrior with bolts of energy and magical sleep. After that one strangled cry, no further sound or sign of his king had reached his ears. The door to the street stood open only a few yards away. His soldiers were being cut down before his eyes, the Daergar traitors were howling with laughter as they ceased their fire to allow the Hylar and Theiwar warriors the pleasure of mopping up the survivors.

That is when Glint leaped into the open doorway and with one blow of his huge mace felled both Hylar warriors standing guard outside. He turned back, laughing into the surprised faces of those within the warehouse. “Klar! To me!” he roared.

Roused by their thane, the Klar came alive. Glint held the door open against a dozen foes until his soldiers hacked a way through to him. Together they poured into the empty street, where they immediately fled like gully dwarves in a dozen different directions to baffle pursuit. In the twinkling of an eye, the street was once again empty save for a few confused and stunned Hylar who had stumbled out too late to give chase.

35

Mog Bonecutter awoke with flames leaping around him, his bed afire. Ogduan Bloodspike stood at the foot of the burning bed, the torch still in his hands, his mouth stretched open in a peal of hideous laughter. Mog yanked the flaming sheets off the bed and flung them aside, but to his horror saw that the remainder of their small chamber, dug from the ruins of Hybardin, was already engulfed in flames. The exquisite upside-down fresco sputtered and popped, the ancient faces of the dwarves at their forges melting into madhouse smiles. Thick black smoke hung halfway to the floor and poured through the uneven entrance to the chamber.

Mog snatched the Hammer of Kharas from the wall above the bed, then leaped over a rising column of flames, landing on his bare feet already running. “You crazy old fool!” he screamed. But Ogduan had already fled shrieking and giggling from the chamber. Mog had been waiting for weeks for the insane old Klar to try to kill him, but he never imagined he’d burn down his own house at the same time!

Mog escaped the burning ruins wearing only a loincloth, the Hammer of Kharas swinging in his fist. The jagged ruins cut and bruised his feet as he leaped and bounded down the hillside in pursuit of his marooned comrade on the Isle of the Dead. Behind him, flames belched out of the cavern like fire from a dragon’s mouth, illuminating the shattered ruins of Hybardin down to the water’s edge.

For a moment, Mog lost sight of his quarry, then spotted the old dwarf crawling down a wrecked staircase only twenty yards below, a battered box clutched to his chest. He set off again, down a slope of scree that reached down to the shoreline. Slipping and sliding in the loose stones, Mog reached the narrow, pebbly beach just as Ogduan rolled down the last few steps, still laughing hysterically, his box flying from his hands to land in the black water of the Urkhan Sea.

Mog caught up to him before the old Klar could regain his footing. Stepping on Ogduan’s leg to hold him still, he lifted the Hammer of Kharas over his head and swung. But the ancient weapon, glistening with moisture, slipped from his grasp and went sailing off into the rocks beyond.

Heedless of its loss, Mog knelt on Ogduan’s chest and began to throttle him, his fingers squeezing around his windpipe to choke off the life of the one who had rescued him from drowning only to attempt to murder him with fire. Ogduan continued to laugh as long as he could draw breath, even as his face turned purple and his lips swelled with blood.

“Hello on shore!” someone cried. “Is there anyone there?”

Releasing his grip, a startled Mog spun and raced to the water’s edge, flailing out until the cold, black Urkhan Sea was up to his waist. “Here! Here!” he cried joyfully. “Is someone there?”

“There!” he heard someone shout. “Row for that point beneath the flames.”

A long sea boat hove into view, one of the old merchant craft that had once plied the waters of the Urkhan Sea. Towed by miles-long cables, these vessels had carried supplies and passengers between the five cities of Thorbardin. Oarlocks had been fitted to the boat, since the cables had long ago broken and sunk to the bottom of the sea. Now, a dozen Klar warriors guided the boat into shore, while a score more scowled at one another in the hold.

Mog gripped the edge of the boat and walked along with it the last few feet to shore, his joy as boundless as his surprise, a thousand questions getting in the way of one another and momentarily leaving him unable to voice even a single word. A young Klar captain commanded the craft from the bow. With his boat safely beached, he stepped forward.

Now it was his turn to be rendered speechless. After a few moments of stammering, he managed to cry, “Captain Mog? Mog Bonecutter?”

“Bloodfist? By the gods! What are you doing sailing out here on the Urkhan Sea?” Mog asked in turn. “Surely not looking for me?”

“No, we thought you dead these two months.”

“Two months? Has it only been two months?” Mog asked in bewilderment. How could he have healed of his injuries in only two months? Nay, one month! He’d woken fully healed a month ago. But these questions were immediately driven from his mind by Captain Bloodfist’s next words.

“I was out recruiting among the feral Klar and headed for home when we spotted your fire,” he said.

“Not my fire!” Mog said, turning and looking at Ogduan. The old Klar had struggled to his feet and stood at the edge of the ruins rubbing his neck. “Why, that old fool tried to burn down his own house with me in it!”

“We’d never have stopped here if we hadn’t seen it. Not even feral Klar are known to live on the Isle of the Dead.”

“But what sends you out among the feral Klar anyway?” Mog asked.

“The king desperately needs their help. Jungor Stonesinger has risen in revolt. By the gods who are no more, the king will be glad to see you!”

“Whether by fortune or design, I’m glad you’re here,” Mog shouted. He climbed up into the ruins, searching for the Hammer. After a few frantic moments, he found it wedged between the broken curb of a pool and a shattered pillar.

By the time he returned to the boat, Ogduan had already climbed aboard and seated himself among the feral Klar as though nothing at all had happened. He gripped his dripping-wet box to his chest and watched as the flames and smoke rose from the mouth of the cave that had been their home this past month, a merry smile on his demented old face.

“What’s he doing coming with us?” Mog asked, angrily pointing at Ogduan with the Hammer of Kharas. The other Klar oggled the magnificent weapon, their beards dropping open in astonishment.

“He begged leave to join us,” Captain Bloodfist answered distractedly. “The king needs every possible ally. By the gods who are no more, where did you get that hammer? I’ve never seen its like in all my days.”

“That old fool found it in the ruins and was using it to kill rats,” Mog explained as he clambered into the boat. He stood in the prow and held the hammer aloft for all the dwarves to see. “This, my cousins, I believe to be the Hammer of Kharas. Lost in the Chaos War and presumed forever buried at the bottom of the sea, the Hammer of the heroes of old has returned to a fresh war. To Tarn Bellowgranite it shall go. Let us take it to him.”

“Aye, this is a great day!” Captain Bloodfist exclaimed. At this command, the dwarves backed water and swung their boat around. Shouting out the strokes, they steered north rather than west, toward the ruined docks of Theibardin, where the feral Klar, hungry for war, had begun to gather.

Mog sat in the stern, the Hammer resting on his knees as he stared at the backs of the rowers. Beside him, Ogduan Bloodspike stirred restlessly and opened his box a crack to peer inside. He glanced at Mog under the hanging locks of his unkempt hair as though about to speak.

“Do not talk to me, old fool,” Mog growled before he had the chance to utter a word. “I still plan to kill you when this is over.”

Ogduan sighed. Reaching inside his box, he removed a flat oval of pure white ivory, from which clung two ribbons of black silk. “I wanted to give this to you. I think it would serve you well for the work ahead you,” Ogduan said in low voice.

Mog glanced down at the death skald’s mask resting in the old Klar’s hands. A flicker of a smile played across his face as he took it. “Indeed it will,” he said.

36

Someone had dragged an old chair into the chamber in preparation for Tarn’s arrival, obviously intending it to serve as a mockery of a throne. But by the time Brecha Quickspring and her minions had grown weary of taunting the king and had dragged him to the dungeon, the jailer was too drunk to do his job properly. He chained Tarn to the battered old throne too loosely before stepping back to admire his handiwork, swaying and squinting in the dim light of his torch. In the hall outside, a half-dozen Theiwar guards waited to see that the door was closed and locked before departing, else Tarn would have slipped his bonds immediately and relieved the jailer of his keys.

Instead, he was forced to silently endure the jailer’s drunken gibes. Frustrated by not getting a rise out of the king, the jailer coughed up a mouthful of cloudy phlegm and spat it into Tarn’s face. Tarn turned away, his fingers digging into the wooden arms of the throne to keep from casting aside all reason and murdering this disgusting beast on the spot.

The jailer laughed uncertainly. He had hoped for better sport from the high and mighty Tarn Bellowgranite, King of Thorbardin. Turning, he ducked through the low portal and pushed the swollen door shut with his shoulder. Pausing at the grate to take a final look at the king, he spat again. “You were never my king,” he snarled.

With the torchlight gone, Tarn waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Soon, he could see the general outline of his cell, the door and its grate, and the chains hanging loosely about his limbs. Grasping them in his hands, he twisted and pushed until he was able to slip his upper body through its strictures, then went to work on the chains wrapped around his legs. In scant moments, he was free. Weaponless, locked inside a chamber somewhere in Norbardin, bruised and battered, but free. All he needed now was to escape. Somehow. He sank heavily onto the throne, chin resting on his fists, while the silence of emptiness echoed around him.

It took some time before Tarn recognized this was no ordinary dungeon cell, cramped and rank with sewage, dead bodies, and rotten straw. The ceilings here were high and vaulted, upheld by crafted pillars. His throne sat atop a sort of dais, with steps leading up from the dusty floor. They had carried him here blindfolded, but he now knew exactly where he was—an old training hall for the guardians of the North Gate. There were still holes in the walls where racks of weapons once hung. The floor was worn into deep tracks where centuries of feet had pounded the tiles.

Why had they put him here? Tarn wondered. Why not a more secure dungeon cell? The answer was immediately obvious. Jungor wanted a large audience when he came to taunt the king. He very well couldn’t lord it over Tarn Bellowgranite in a tiny cell which forced him to limit his witnesses.

Tarn wondered how long it would be before the Hylar thane arrived with his fellow traitors and lackeys. A chamber this large could easily hold fifty or more Hylar dignitaries and their retinues.

Tarn had no intention of waiting around to count them. One thought was uppermost in his mind—the dragon. Even now, it might be stirring in its sleep, roused by all the commotion. The dwarven nation couldn’t hope to fight such a creature, neither could they seal off its lair, for chaos dragons could pass through stone as easily as air. All those innocent fools, he thought ruefully, they had laughed when he warned them of the dragon.

At least Tor was safe. Crystal would not long remain in Thorbardin once she learned of Tarn’s fate. But what would happen to Tor once he was gone? Would Tor, years hence, even remember his father? Would Jungor be satisfied with exile for the son of the king of Thorbardin, or would he have the child murdered to prevent any future claims to the throne? The thought of that innocent child lying dead, hacked apart by cowards, brought Tarn to his feet. His heart pounded in his chest, gripped in sudden panic.

He knelt down. “Oh Reorx, save my son,” the dwarf king prayed, perhaps for the first time since the Chaos War. Though he knew that the gods had left Krynn at the end of the war and could not answer his prayers, still he prayed. “Oh, gods, please save my poor dear innocent boy!”

But after he prayed, he jumped up and considered his options. The ancient wood door was not only locked, but swollen so that the jailer had had to force it shut with his shoulder and kick it several times just to get the key to turn in the rusty lock. The chamber had long ago been stripped of its contents, but he eventually found an old stone baton lying in a corner under heaps of dust. Once used in drills for strengthening arm muscles, it would make an effective if crude weapon. He thought about using it to batter down the door, then gave up that idea as too noisy. The guards would only return, and the next time they wouldn’t be so careless with their chains.

Tarn resumed his seat and rested the stone club on his knees. What he really needed was rest, but he couldn’t risk closing his eyes for a moment; he might fall into a deep sleep. He had to get ready. If nothing else, he would spend his life to see Jungor Stonesinger’s brains splattered all over the floor.

He jerked awake and caught the stone baton as it rolled off his knees. He wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep. But he heard footsteps coming, and then the key rattling in the lock. Thinking quickly, Tarn rested the baton next to his thigh while he slipped the chains back around his legs.

The door groaned on its rusted hinges to admit the jailer. He was soberer now than he had been, though in much worse temper. He carried an old bucket and a large sponge in one hand, a smoking torch in the other. As he entered, slopping water onto the floor and cursing, Tarn noticed that the jailer was alone. The hall outside appeared to be empty.

The jailer crossed the chamber and stopped at the bottom of the steps, setting his bucket down. Soapy gray water slopped over the sides. He dropped the sponge into the bucket, then started up the short flight of steps to Tarn’s throne.

“Jungor has sent word to make you presentable. He wants you pretty, it seems, so you don’t offend the Hylar sensibilities. I have to rinse the piss stains from your trousers,” he growled. “But first let me see to your chains. I…”

The jailer gaped as Tarn rose up before him, his chains sliding from his limbs. Before he could shout or scream, the stone baton had crushed the dwarfs skull to the earholes. Tarn stepped over him, stooped to the bucket, and washed the dried phlegm from his beard. Then he took the jailer’s keys and ghosted from the chamber.

Slipping into the hall, Tarn paused. To his right, the passage descended sharply downward for about forty feet before entering a wider room lit by flickering torches. Twenty yards to his left, the passage ended at an ironbound door, which stood partially open, revealing a dark staircase heading up. He knew that the downward passage led to an old dungeon level, little used these days. But the stairs led to a tower of the North Gate fortifications. He didn’t relish the idea of trying to fight his way through a garrison of troops loyal to Jungor Stonesinger. Just as well to sit in his cell and wait, than to try to run that gauntlet. But the dungeons didn’t offer any better prospect.

He started for the stairs. At least that was a way out, even if not a very certain one. But the quick thunder of boots on the stairs sent him scurrying back in the other direction. He hurried down the sloping passage and into the room at the bottom just as dozens of dwarves tumbled down the stairs and slammed the door behind them. Tarn heard shouts and curses, and something heavy began to pound on the door. “Kill the king before they break through!” one of the guards shouted.

Tarn cast a quick glance around the small subterranean room. Chains and manacles hung from pegs on the walls, while a large, battered table surrounded by benches occupied the center of the chamber. This was another guardroom, luckily unoccupied at the moment. Opposite the entrance, a rusted metal gate blocked the entrance to a narrow passageway lined with doors—more prison cells. The door to his right was, in all likelihood, the jailer’s quarters.

Tarn raced to the metal gate and tried the largest and most ornate of the keys he had taken from the jailer. It twisted in the lock with surprising ease; apparently someone had recently oiled the mechanism. But in his haste, Tarn dropped his weapon. The stone baton, bloody and slippery with the jailer’s brains, broke cleanly in half on the hard stone floor. Swearing, he glanced around the room for another weapon. A bench or a length of chain would prove singularly useless against the swords and axes of trained warriors, but the jailer’s room held the promise of something more suitable.

He found the door unlocked and quickly entered, silently closing it behind him. The room was tiny and unlit, and it stank to the heights of heaven with the odor of unwashed dwarf. A bent dagger lay on a dressing table beside the sagging wooden bed. Several whips and a cat-o-nine-tails hung inside a wardrobe beside the door. But on the opposite wall, a shield and a pair of goblin swords were displayed atop a cabinet which housed a dented horsehair-crested helm—testimony of better and more honorable days perhaps, when the jailer had served in the king’s army. Tarn ripped the shield and one of the swords from the wall. The shield’s leather fittings, old and dry rotted, crumbled as he thrust his arm through the strap, but the sword seemed serviceable enough, if ill-balanced and poorly forged. Thus armed, he crept to the door and leaned against it, straining his ears to hear.

The guards had poured into the small chamber outside the jailer’s door. Seeing the open gate, several raced through, the shouts of their fellows encouraging them. “Find the king! Don’t let him escape!” Tarn smiled grimly and tightened his grip on his sword.

Just then, in the passage above, there was an explosive noise—the wooden door guarding the stairs bursting from its hinges. Footsteps pounded, and dwarven voices roared battle cries that shook the stone. Tarn opened the door a crack. The guards—a dozen hard-bitten Hylar warriors—had thrown up the table and benches to form a sort of breastwork across the entrance. They crouched behind it now, gripping crossbows and spears. Six Theiwar hung back with loaded crossbows, anxiously watching the gate. By his black robes and belt of pouches, one of them appeared to be a sorcerer. Tarn eyed this one narrowly, knowing him to be the most dangerous.

“Come out, you dogs, and submit to the king’s justice!” a voice roared from the passage above. Tarn smiled to hear his old friend Glint Ettinhammer, thane of the Klar, who had somehow rushed to his rescue.

“The king is dead,” one of the Hylar guards shouted back. Just then, the four dwarf warriors sent down the prison hall to search for Tarn returned, sliding into the chamber with baffled expressions on their bearded faces.

“Nothing but prisoners. He’s not among them,” one said to the Theiwar sorcerer. The magician gaped in surprise for a moment before his dark eyes narrowed. He turned his pale visage toward the door to the jailer’s room. Tarn stepped back from the door. He picked up the shield, useless for defense to be sure, but an effective distraction if flung into someone’s face.

Outside, the Hylar guard’s words were met with cries of dismay from above. One in particular rose above the rest. “Kill them all then! Traitorous dogs, assassins! No mercy for anyone with the king’s blood on his hands.” Tarn started, wondering whether his ears were deceiving him, or if the dead had joined the living to revenge their king. For surely that was the voice of his old friend Mog Bonecutter, leading the charge.

Tarn jerked open the door, surprising the Theiwar warriors slinking toward it, crossbows at the ready. At his sudden appearance, the sorcerer lifted his hands and began to chant a spell. Tarn flung the shield. The closest warrior ducked the goblin shield, discharging his crossbow into the ceiling in his excitement. The shield careened off the sorcerer’s shoulder, staggering him momentarily, and breaking the intense mental focus so vital to spellcasting. He was forced to begin his spellcasting anew.

Tarn slammed the door shut just as a half-dozen crossbow bolts shuddered and splintered into the wood, then nearly snatched it from its hinges as he swiftly charged out, bellowing, “Thorbardin!” His goblin sword cleaved the closest Theiwar warrior to the spine. His next blow shivered the brittle goblin-forged blade to splinters over the iron helm of one of the Hylar warriors. Momentarily stunned by the impact, the dwarf was powerless to prevent Tarn from yanking the war axe from his belt. Before the other Theiwar could reload their crossbows, Tarn was among them, laying about with the flat of the axe blade, cutting down Hylar and Theiwar alike.

Despite surprise and a valiant effort, the king would quickly have been overcome where it not for the simultaneous assault led by Mog Bonecutter and Glint Ettinhammer. As Tarn slashed a path toward the Theiwar spellcaster, the contingent of Klar rescuers slammed into the hastily erected barrier and cast it aside. For a few brief moments, seasoned Hylar veterans grappled beard to beard with half-mad Klar shock troops, before the rescuer’s momentum and superior numbers overwhelmed the Hylar guards. Those who could broke and ran, sweeping past the remaining Theiwar, who quickly followed them into the dead end of the prison section. Their passage jostled the sorcerer just as he was about to cast another spell. Before he could recover, Tarn felled him with a blow to the jaw; as the sorcerer dropped to the floor, a handful of glistening black powder spilled from his fingers.

A dozen Klar warriors pelted after the guards, Glint Ettinhammer in their lead. Half mad with battle lust, Tarn cast about for another foe. What confronted him chilled his blood—a dwarf wearing the mask of the death skald and bearing a gleaming warhammer in his scarred fists. Feeling the ancient dread of the skald, Tarn backed away from this new enemy, war axe warily lowered. But then the dwarf dropped to one knee and tore aside the mask, revealing the tear-streaked face of his old captain of the guard, dead these two months and thought buried under the ruins of the Isle of the Dead.

“Mog?” Tarn asked, his hackles bristling in horror. “Have you returned to haunt me?”

“I am sorry flesh, my king,” Mog wept with joy. “I live. So long as you have need of my sword, I will smite your enemies, even unto my own death.” These were words from the ritual that Tarn used to induct new members into his personal guard. Hearing them now struck him to the soul.

“My old friend, I did not believe miracles possible anymore,” Tarn said, his voice cracking with emotion.

“There’s still one or two miracles left to this old world,” one of the Klar warriors said with a laugh. He was older than any of the others by more than a century, and Tarn wondered why they had even bothered to bring him along.

At his look of bafflement, Mog answered the king’s unspoken question. “My lord, this is Ogduan Bloodspike, the true death skald of the Isle of the Dead. He saved my life,” he said with a barely suppressed sneer. “How he came to follow us here, I don’t know.”

37

Glint strode down the narrow prison hall toward the sound of fighting. As he passed each cell door, he stopped and peered through the narrow grate. So far, all the cells were empty. But as he turned a corner and saw his warriors cutting down the last of the resisting Hylar guards, he found one cell that still contained an occupant. He stared through the tiny metal grate into the lightless cell. A small, weak voice spoke from the far corner.

“Help me. I am a loyal dwarf wrongfully imprisoned.”

“Loyal to who?” Glint asked as he stepped back. With a single swipe of his war axe, he shattered the rusty lock. He shot back the bolt and pulled the door open on its ancient creaking hinges, then stepped inside.

Flickering light from torches in the hall illuminated the interior of the tiny cell and its miserable occupant. Beaten and battered, his pale skin bruised purple around his lips and eyes, Ferro Dunskull blinked painfully.

“Ah, here’s the traitor now!” Glint said with glee. “How I’ve longed to cleave your scrawny neck.” He strode across the floor of the cell in two steps and jerked the cringing Daergar to his feet.

Ferro slumped against him, mewling in terror and clinging to the Klar thane’s arms. “Please, have mercy on me,” he whined.

Furious, Glint tried to untangle himself. “Stand up, you coward! Stand up and take it like a dwarf. I want to get a clear swing at your neck. Ah!” Glint leaped hack in surprise, his eyes nearly popping from their sockets as he stared at the hilt of a small dagger protruding from between the overlapping plates of his chest armor. “Ah, you dog! You stabbed me!”

Lifting his axe, the Klar thane intended to end the life of this miserable traitor at once, but his weapon felt strangely heavy in his hand. His fingers grew numb and his vision began to narrow and darken. His knees buckled and he sank to the floor, his axe clattering on the stones. “Damn it all to hell!” he swore thickly. “And such a pitifully small dagger.” He toppled back, his great shaggy head smacking the hard stone floor.

Zen picked up the dead thane’s war axe even as his arms lengthened and grew more muscular, his pale skin flushed with a healthy glow. His lank black hair became bushy and red, his beard full and bristling. Prison rags changed to gleaming plate armor. Hefting the axe, he stepped into the hall and closed the cell door just as the Klar warriors were returning from the slaughter. A few bore evidence of the valor of Hylar arms.

“Did you get them all?” Zen asked in Glint’s jovial booming voice.

“Aye, Thane Ettinhammer. Not a one escaped!” one of the Klar soldiers answered.

“Good. There’s nothing in there but a Theiwar, dead more than a week,” Zen said, pointing with his thumb. “Gods, what a smell! Let’s find the king.”

Striding ahead, the draconian led them back along the prison hall and into the small chamber. The Klar loosed a thundering cheer when they saw Tarn alive. The king smiled to hear them and welcomed them with open arms. They surged around him and tried to lift him onto their shoulders, despite his protests. Angrily, Mog began to lay about with his fists, driving them back. Half the group were feral Klar, and he barely trusted them more than their enemies. The Theiwar sorcerer glowered from a chair in the corner, his hands tightly bound behind his back with mushroomfiber cords, a rag stuffed in his mouth. A large purple knot rose from the side of his face. Zen stepped past him quickly, in case the wizard still had some spell in effect that might reveal that the draconian was now disguised as Glint.

“Thane Ettinhammer!” Tarn shouted. “Where are you going?”

Zen stopped short, just within the exit. Remembering Glint’s excitement at finding him in his cell, he quickly responded, “Ferro Dunskull is not here. I hasten to search the other dungeons for that miserable traitor.”

“Leave off. We have larger concerns than him,” Tarn answered. But the Klar thane had already gone.

Brecha Quickspring, thane of the Theiwar dwarves, stood on a rooftop overlooking the North Gate plaza. This high vantage point gave her an excellent view of the situation, which was deteriorating. Below her, a hundred or so Hylar and Theiwar warriors faced a mob of two thousand dwarf citizens of every clan. Most of those in the crowd were well armed. Here and there a spear or halberd pricked angrily above the sea of bearded faces. The dwarves of Thorbardin had a long history of maintaining a well-armed populace. It was a dangerous world and each dwarf was expected to be ready to defend his home and homeland at a moment’s notice.

Brecha made a mental note to speak to Jungor about changing the law, once his position as king was firmly established. An armed populace was a dangerous populace, independent and difficult to govern, as amply demonstrated by the scene unfolding below her. Word had spread that Tarn Bellowgranite had been captured and taken to the guard tower on the north side of the plaza. The tower lay conveniently near the Hylar district on the first level of Norbardin. It seemed that the crowd had formed largely without any express purpose—curiosity more than anything else. And no one knew yet how to react to the sudden seizure of power by Jungor Stonesinger and his allies. But in some quarters of the city, Jungor’s forces had not yet gained control, especially in the fortress area of the king’s residence. There were also pockets of resistance in Klar and Daergar neighborhoods.

This large mob filled Brecha with misgivings. Normally content to allow their leaders to lead them, they could turn dangerous if sufficiently provoked. Brecha didn’t think it was word of Tarn’s capture that had stirred them up. The king was too unpopular. Some other power was at work here, and she had quickly sent word to Jungor of the crowd gathering. She stood on the roof, her hands folded into the sleeves of her black robes, while she waited for her agents to return with their reports. Jungor was still in his home on the second level, where he and a dozen loyal Hylar leaders had gathered before coming to pay their “respects” to the captured king.

A movement of the crowd below brought Brecha to the roofs edge. A party of armed dwarves had suddenly poured out of the guard tower, joining the Hylar and Theiwar guards ringing the tower’s base. As the crowd drew back, Brecha swore bitterly and slammed her fist against the stone ledge. “Fools! What idiot ordered a sortie? Surely they don’t mean to force… ”

Her voice dwindled away as the noise swelled up from the plaza below. The dwarves from the tower weren’t joining the guards; they were attacking them! Brecha quickly spotted in their midst the unmistakable golden mane and towering frame of Tarn Bellowgranite. A massive silver warhammer gleamed in his fist as he struck right and left. Now the crowd had reversed its direction and was sweeping toward the guards battling for their lives. In moments, the Hylar and Theiwar were overwhelmed.

Brecha clutched the roof battlements to steady herself. The words to a teleportation spell came unbidden to her mind, but she hesitated. The news of Tarn’s escape needed to be delivered to Jungor without delay. Yet at the same time, she was in a perfect position to strike him down from above. She knew several spells that could kill the king from this distance. But would Jungor mind if Tarn died thusly? Was it the wise thing to do?

While she hesitated, she saw that the battle was already over. Surrounded by the cheering mob, Tarn crossed the plaza and climbed the steps to the building whose roof Brecha occupied. The Theiwar thane peered between the battlements, unseen by the fickle crowd, now celebrating wildly. Brecha spotted numerous Hylar and Daewar in the crowd, even a few of her own Theiwar. Had how Tarn pulled off this unlikely resurgence?

A fireball would kill him, the Theiwar thane decided. By the time the people in the crowd recovered from the explosion, she would be long gone, lofted away on the wings of a teleport spell, and safely at Jungor’s side, explaining everything. Digging a ball of bat guano from her pouch of spell components, she mouthed the words to the spell, silently rehearsing to make sure she recalled the proper cadences and pronunciations. She leaned out over the battlements, holding the ball of dung mixed with sulfur aloft, looking down contemptuously as Tarn lifted his silver warhammer above his head, drawing yet another thunderous cheer.

With her mind now focused on the magic, Brecha almost didn’t hear the surprising words shouted by those below her. “The Hammer! The Hammer of Kharas!” Tarn thrust the mighty weapon over his head, holding it to its full height so that everyone in the mob could see it in his hand.

The ball of dung fell from Brecha’s fingertips, the words of the spell slipped from her mind. She staggered back from the battlements, silently thanking every god that she could name that she hadn’t cast that spell. The Hammer of Kharas! He who wielded that famed dwarven relic was the true king, and no dwarf would dare challenge his rule. Its powers were many and little understood. In all likelihood, her fireball would have slain everyone around Tarn but left the one holding the Hammer unharmed. She had no way of knowing, and the main thing now was that Jungor must know this news.

Whispering a quick word of magic, she brought to mind an image of Jungor Stonesinger and vanished, just as another thunderous roar swept over the battlements.

“To the Hall of Thanes!”

38

Crystal paced the wall that ran along the north entrances of her fortress home. A cap of steel on her head and a spear in her fist, she looked no different than the hundreds of other dwarves lining the battlements or filling the courtyards. Yet the silent dwarves defending the fortress snapped to attention as she passed, returning to their vigilant watch when she moved on.

Tarn had been gone what seemed an eternity when Glint Ettinhammer returned with a handful of Klar and the news of her husband’s capture. Despite their failure to capture the transportation shaft on the second level, Otaxx Shortbeard had managed to take the third-level shaft, and to hold it against the Theiwar sent to dislodge him. The general was a veteran warrior and had fought the Theiwar during the Chaos War. He knew how to battle magic, and his foothold was enough to secure the southern half of the third level. Right now, though, she had no reserves to relieve him. And she must hold the north gate of the king’s fortress, as this was the other major entry to this district. As yet, they had not been attacked. But with Tarn captured, Crystal knew it was only a matter of time before Jungor challenged her.

She was still numb to the dire reality of her predicament. Whenever she thought of Tarn being held prisoner in a cell somewhere, she could barely stand to bring that image of him to her mind. Her heart refused to accept such a defeat. She felt as though he were merely away on an errand, and more than once caught herself thinking, “When Tarn returns, I need to speak to him about…”

The idea that Tarn might never return lurked at the edge of her thoughts. She knew that if she seriously entertained that notion, she would break down utterly and be unable to continue. And she couldn’t allow herself that luxury. Tor needed her, and so did the forces watching her as she paced nervously amidst them. She was the last thing standing between her baby and Jungor Stonesinger’s fanatic minions. What they would do to the son of the king, she didn’t dare to guess. She only knew that they would reach him only over her own dead body. Perhaps, if she held out long enough, she could strike a bargain that would allow their escape into exile… .

She went cold at that desperate thought, her heart hammering in her chest. Sooner or later, she knew, she would have to accept that Tarn was doomed if he was in Jungor’s hands. He was probably already dead. She had no hope that Glint Ettinhammer and Mog Bonecutter would succeed in their mad scheme to rescue the king, but she hadn’t dared to try to stop them.

The appearance of their old captain of the guard, believed dead since the Festival of Lights celebration, had surprised her when she thought she could no longer feel any emotion. And for a few brief moments, she had felt hope rekindled. True to his character, the Klar thane had tried to encourage her by pointing out that Jungor’s forces had merely captured Tarn, while they had slaughtered everyone else. They must therefore want Tarn alive for a reason.

But ever since Mog, Glint, and their company had departed, the bleak reality had returned to shadow her. The Hammer of Kharas already seemed a figment of her imagination. The Hammer was not a relic as much revered by the hill dwarves and so she placed little faith in its powers anyway. Nor was she particularly comforted by the assurances of the strange old Klar who had gone off with the rescue party. Before leaving, he had patted her hand and said in a gentle voice, “Don’t you worry, lass. He won’t go and get himself killed just yet.” She wasn’t sure if the old dwarf had been talking about Tarn or someone else, and he had slipped away before she could reproach him.

At least Tor was safe. Right now, he was deep inside the fortress with hundreds of feet of stone between his room and their enemies. And he could have no more formidable bodyguard than Aunt Needlebone, though Crystal had been sure also to place her most trusted guards outside the door to the nursery—dwarves she had trained herself in the years since her marriage to Tarn.

It was the darn waiting that really grated on her nerves. Though she had little hope that Glint and the others would succeed, still that tiny spark of hope tormented her. She restlessly walked the battlements, her boots stamping on the stone, cursing the darkness of this underground city and its walls that prevented her from seeing very far in any direction. She missed the wide open spaces of her homeland, the wild hills and the wind rippling through fields of grain. For perhaps the thousandth time, she peered down the dark street leading away from the gate, looking for any sign of dwarves massing for an attack. But for the thousandth time, she saw only an empty street that disappeared into darkness beyond the light of their torches. A dwarf operating a large bull’s-eye lantern from atop the postern gate swept the nearer shadows, but no, she couldn’t even detect a gully dwarf in its light.

A clatter of dwarf boots in the courtyard below distracted Crystal from her thoughts. She turned to look and saw a pair of Klar talking animatedly with one of the Daewar guards assigned to this entrance. The Daewar turned and pointed up at her, and she felt her heart stop.

“What is it?” she cried, running for the nearest tower without even waiting for an answer. In moments, she had descended the stairs and had joined the two Klar. The dwarves lining the battlements watched, their faces also dark with worry. “What has happened?” Crystal asked breathlessly.

“Thane Ettinhammer is at the south entrances,” one of the Klar guards said.

She felt her hands go cold and numb. “Alone?” she asked.

The guard nodded.

Her passage through the fortress was a blur. Her feet hardly seemed to touch the ground. Word spread quickly through the residence that Glint had returned alone, and others followed behind her as discreetly as possible. It seemed to take an age to reach the south entrances, and then even longer to go from entrance to entrance until she found the Klar thane.

As soon as she saw Glint’s pale, drawn face and slumped shoulders, she knew the worst. She hardly recognized him. The Klar thane had been a figure of brash confidence since the day she had first met him. Now, she found him slumped on a curb near the southwest entrance. A dozen guards stood nearby, trying not to stare at him. When Crystal appeared, they looked away from her as well. She stood for a moment beneath a stone arch, too frightened to move, wondering if she would ever be able to draw breath again. It was some time before Glint looked up and noticed her. A strange expression passed across his face, a strange rictus grin that she didn’t fathom. His pallor was bloodless. He rose wearily to his feet to meet her.

Crystal greeted him silently, taking his old scarred hand in hers and pressing it. She could tell by the way he avoided looking her in the eye that this was perhaps the most difficult thing he had ever done. “Is there… someplace we could… go?” he asked in a voice strained with emotion.

Nodding, she led him into a passage between the entrance courtyard and an inner court. There, they found a stout, ironbound door, which opened into a small armory. Little remained of its contents; the shields, armor, and weapons had been almost entirely distributed among the troops loyal to Tarn Bellowgranite. Only a few spears and an old battle axe remained.

Crystal swung the door shut on its silent hinges and then leaned her back against it. She drew a deep breath, as her mind reeled. Was there even a need to ask? The story was writ plain enough on the Klar thane’s face.

He turned to her, eyes downcast, his great shaggy head sunk almost between his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he blurted, choking back a sob. Crystal flew into his arms, a wordless moan wrenched from her breast. She clung to his thick neck, her face buried in his chest. He wrapped his huge, burly arms around her and pressed her tight, endlessly repeating, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” It was as though he had been robbed of the ability to speak any other words.

She didn’t know how long she clung to him. He bore her weight patiently, even though he seemed on the verge of collapsing with weariness. He shifted, gathering her with one arm while the other hung limply at his side. Perhaps he had been injured, though the thought barely penetrated Crystal’s consciousness. Gradually, her sobs lessened, though she doubted her grief would ever be dulled. Every time she would look at their son from now until death claimed her, she would be reminded of his father.

She needed to hear the words spoken, no matter how painful.

“So Tarn is dead then,” Crystal asked, her face still pressed to the Klar thane’s chest.

“He will be soon enough,” Zen disguised as Glint answered. “As will you.”

Crystal looked up to see the rictus grin had returned. Glint’s pale eyes hardened to dark pinpricks; his face took on an explicable reptilian pallor.

The door creaked open. It was enough distraction to give the draconian assassin pause. The dagger in his fist hesitated just inches from Crystal’s throat.

It was Haruk Mastersword standing in the doorway. “Mistress, here you are. Graps said you had… Mistress!” Crystal saw light flicker off the dagger in the Klar thane’s hand. With warrior’s reflexes, she reacted instantly, striking the blade up and aside even as the hand that wielded it plunged toward her throat. The point of the blade gouged a furrow beneath her chin but otherwise passed harmlessly aside. Zen swore a dwarven oath.

Crystal twisted out of his grasp as he reversed the blow with a backhanded slash. She ducked beneath the attack so that it merely scraped shrilly across her metal armor, throwing a spray of sparks into the air. She had left her spear back at the north entrance. But before Glint could renew his attack, Haruk stepped between her and the thane, his sword drawn.

Shrugging off the form of the Klar thane, Zen once more assumed his natural shape—that of a sivak draconian—astonishing the two dwarves now confronted with his seven-feet-tall form. Taking advantage of their surprise, Zen snatched a battle axe from the weapon rack on the wall behind him and struck.

Haruk barely managed to fend off the attack at the last instant. The power of the huge draconian’s blow numbed his arm, but he maintained his grip on his weapon and parried another devastating slash. Sparks exploded in the air as the two weapons collided like a thunderclap. Haruk staggered, trying to maintain his position between the draconian and his mentor.

Meanwhile, Crystal dragged a spear from a barrel. It was ill-made and too lengthy for her, but she had to help Haruk somehow.

Zen swung his axe in a low arc. Once more, Haruk parried it, but this time his numb fingers could no longer maintain their grip. His sword torn from his grasp, the force of the slash sent him staggering back. Crystal stepped to her left and slipped past him. A quick thrust of her spear distracted the draconian long enough to allow Haruk to move out of the creature’s reach. Haruk shook his hands to try to regain some feeling, while Crystal’s drove the draconian back a step with a series of lightning feints.

But the draconian was fast. Crystal feinted once too often. Timing his attack perfectly, he slashed out with the axe, lopping off her spear just below the steel head. His next blow was aimed to do the same to her head.

Picking up his sword, Haruk shrieked his battle cry and leaped at the draconian. Crystal instantly recognized Haruk’s habitually futile reaction to an opponent he could not defeat, knowing that he intended to sacrifice himself in order to strike a major blow. The young dwarfs attack was slow, clumsy, and easily thwarted, yet it was intended to distract the creature. Crystal seized the moment and struck with the staff portion of her spear, shattering the draconian’s knee. Zen cried out and stumbled, his axe dropped, and Haruk, off balance and swinging wildly, tumbled over him.

Before Zen could recover, Crystal tossed aside her by now useless weapon and grabbed another spear from the barrel. Zen struggled to rise, but Haruk had become entangled with his legs. Crystal thrust with all her might, not knowing how thick the draconian’s scaly hide might be. The sharp spear head sheared through scale and muscle to emerge an arm’s length from the creature’s back.

Black draconian blood erupted from Zen’s mouth. Feeling the imminence of death, he spoke now in the language of dragons, which few mortals knew or understood. But the import of his words and the hatred with which he spoke, spitting blood and phlegm with each phrase, was all Crystal needed to hear to know that the creature was calling down its blackest curse upon her head. An involuntary shudder passed down her spine.

With his last, dying words, Zen laid his great reptilian head down on the cold stone floor stained black with his own blood. For eighteen months he had lived by his wits undetected in the halls of Thorbardin, slaying at will until his revenge was completed. And now he had been killed by a woman and a mere child. His shame knew no bounds, and he prayed to whatever god would listen that his curse be granted. His prayer ended unfinished.

Crystal dragged Haruk away from the filthy creature. Though it no longer seemed to breathe, neither did it seem to be entirely dead. Its muscles continued to twitch, its mouth to champ. Even as they watched in horror, the creature began to transform once more. But this time, it took on the appearance of Crystal herself. After a few moments, they found themselves looking at her own dead body stretched out on the floor with a spear wound in her chest. Crystal stared at it a moment longer until she was nearly overcome with revulsion.

She turned to Haruk and quickly looked him over. “Are you badly injured?” she asked.

“What is that thing?” the young dwarf answered absently as he continued to stare at her corpse.

“Haruk, listen to me,” Crystal demanded. The tone of command in her voice broke through his shock. He jerked to attention, just as he had done from the first days he was a lowly student in her spear class.

“N-no, I am uninjured,” he stammered.

She breathed a quick sigh of relief. Multitudinous questions boiled in her mind, but she asked the most obvious one first. “Haruk, what are you doing here? I thought you were with your uncle.”

“I am, or, I was,” he said. “Uncle Jungor sent me here with a message, knowing that you would be obliged to see me.”

Crystal frowned in disappointment but nodded that she understood. Perhaps this was the bargain she had hoped for, the trade that would allow her to escape into exile with their son. “What does the Hylar thane have to say?” she asked.

“He offers a trade,” Haruk answered ashamedly, and sheepishly too, the words leaving a bad taste in his mouth.

“Very well. What does he want for Tarn’s freedom? Whatever it is, we’ll pay it. I hope you understand, Haruk, that I bear you no grudge. But I am sick to my soul of mountain dwarves and their wars and intrigues.”

“Tarn’s freedom?” Haruk asked in confusion.

“Yes, what does he want in exchange for the king?”

“But Tarn… that is, the king is already free. He escaped. I… I thought you knew,” Haruk stammered.

With a shriek of joy, Crystal wrapped her arms around the young Hylar warrior and lifted him off the ground. “Escaped, you say?” she cried as she set him on his feet. “Escaped? Then what could Jungor possibly want to trade for?”

“The Hammer of Kharas,” Haruk answered solemnly, gathering his dignity. Hearing the sounds of battle, several dwarves had gathered at the door. They gaped to see the two Crystal Heathstones—one dead and sprawled on the floor, the other quite alive. Not a few wondered which was the real one.

“The Hammer? And what does the Hylar thane offer for it?” Crystal said.

Haruk’s face blanched, and he seemed to struggle to produce the answer. Finally, he said in a cracking voice, “My uncle offers… the life of your son, Tor Bellowgranite, in exchange for the Hammer of Kharas.”

39

Tarn hurried north toward the fortress. With the Hammer of Kharas in his hands, he had marched through district after district, rallying the people of Norbardin to his banner, quickly relieving the besieged Klar and Daergar quarters in the Anvil’s Echo with hardly a fight, so great was the mob that swarmed to follow him. Arriving in the Council Hall, he and his force were met by Shahar Bellowsmoke, standing amidst a scene of bloody slaughter. The Daergar in his command had killed hundreds of dwarves loyal to Jungor Stonesinger, many after their surrender. Among the dead were Shahar’s own brother and Astar Trueshield, captain of Jungor’s personal guard, slain by Shahar’s own hand in single combat on the council steps. Shahar, still drunk on revenge and murder, greeted the thane with a soot-stained face and gore-soaked hands, grinning fiercely.

Not a few recalled that the Council Hall was once a temple dedicated to the god Reorx, father of the dwarven race. No one dared to guess how Reorx might have viewed the fratricide in his own hallowed halls. Tarn walked among the carnage for nearly an hour, horrorstruck by the depth and ferocity of the Daergar vengeance; the sweetness of his rescue and victory was forever tainted. The death skald, Ogduan Bloodspike, sat on the temple steps and wept so pitifully that even Mog had tried to comfort him.

Little now remained of Jungor’s resistance, however. The last remaining Theiwar had fled their defenses at the transportation shaft Here, Tarn found more bodies piled up—the bodies of those who had followed him into the trap. And here also he met Otaxx Shortbeard. The old general looked worn with care and grief, for he bore ill news. Something had happened at the fortress—an attack of some sort. He wasn’t sure, and he dared not speculate before the king, for the reports he had were merely rumors. Some said that Crystal was dead, others that Tor had been killed.

The Hammer of Kharas swung forgotten in Tarn’s fist as he strode up the short street from the transportation shaft to the southeast entrance of the fortress. Crowds thronged both sides of the street, though they were silent for the most part. A few tried to rouse a cheer for the king’s return, but these were met with frowns. This, more than anything else, confirmed Tarn’s deepest misgivings. The gates swung wide in greeting, the way lined with his warriors. Otaxx Shortbeard trudged along behind Tarn, his chin nearly on his chest, while Mog Bonecutter and his Klar silently brought up the rear. They passed though the tall entrance, through a wood gate and beneath a massive iron grate into a courtyard flanked by towers. An archway led a short distance into another court beyond. Here, they found dwarves carrying something on a litter from the gate’s armory.

Stumbling forward, Tarn ordered the litter bearers to a halt. They set their burden on the ground and stood back. Tarn glanced at them without recognition as he knelt beside the litter and flipped back its covering sheet.

The powers that had set themselves against him were indeed cruel, he now knew. There was no reckoning with them. He rose to his feet and noticed that the Hammer of Kharas was still in his hand. The Hammer created in recognition of the gallantry of the heroic dwarf Kharas had come to represent all that was good and noble about the dwarves. It was the symbol of his right to rule Thorbardin. Only the Hammer could forge a true dragonlance, a blessed weapon of the gods. It had never been used for evil purposes.

But now, Tarn felt the blood well in his heart and burn like the fires of the molten earth bursting up through rents in the stone, searing through reason and sanity. Even his fears of the chaos dragon sleeping in its chamber beneath the city vanished in his lust for revenge. One thought remained to him. He would see Jungor Stonesinger dead for the murder of his wife. He would crush the Hylar thane’s skull with the Hammer of Kharas, even if the blood of a fellow mountain dwarf defiled the holy weapon beyond any atonement.

“Death to Jungor Stonesinger!” he roared. “Death to all traitors!” He started toward the gate, outside of which a huge mob of dwarves waited for him to lead them on a rampage of revenge through Norbardin. Forty years of unresolved feuds boiled just beneath the surface, awaiting any excuse to explode.

But Ogduan Bloodspike stepped into his path. The old dwarf laid a restraining hand on the king’s arm. And at his touch the red haze of battle evaporated from his vision, as though icy water had been dashed into his face. Tarn stepped back, fear and wonder in his eyes.

“That’s not your wife,” the old dwarf said. “I’ve been trying to tell you, but you are possessed.”

“Wha… ?” Tarn glanced at the faces of the dwarves around him, noticing that one of the litter bearers was Haruk Mastersword.

“Haruk? What are you doing here?”

“This is not your wife,” the young dwarf said. “This is a draconian that she and I killed. It was trying to murder her, and took her form in death.”

“Draconian?” Tarn exclaimed. “Then Crystal is still alive?”

Haruk nodded, but his face was etched with lines of grief too deep for someone so young. His eyes, once so youthful, had the look of someone betrayed.

“Where is she?” Tarn demanded.

“Inside the residence.”

“With Tor?”

No one answered. Haruk hung his head, his face flushed scarlet with shame. Tarn grabbed him by the shoulders and shook the young dwarf violently. “Tell me. What has happened to my son?” he cried.

40

The Hall of Thanes stood empty, its great echoing dome rising into the shadows high above. Tarn paused at the entrance and gazed around the rows of benches. In all his years, he had never seen this place not filled to capacity, the air thick with torch smoke and the reek of unwashed bodies. Now, the halls and balconies outside were vacant and dark.

A pall of fear hung over Norbardin. Its streets were silent save for the tramp of Jungor’s soldiers. Patrols of Hylar and Theiwar warriors were scorning the streets and alleys, enforcing martial law with brutal efficiency. His people cowered in darkened rooms with their families gathered about them, behind bolted doors and shuttered windows, fearful of looking out and violating the laws of the new king of Thorbardin.

Tarn had doomed his people to this fate by agreeing to Jungor’s terms. The Hylar thane had wasted no time seizing power, even before the Hammer of Kharas was delivered into his greedy hands. Martial law was ordered, dissenters and troublemakers imprisoned “for their own safety.” From the ranks of dwarves still loyal to him, Jungor chose new thanes for the Hylar, Klar, Daergar, and Daewar clans. Dwarves who had always enjoyed the privilege of voting for their thanes or seeing them chosen in trials of combat learned of their new leaders by way of official proclamation.

Tomorrow, Jungor had promised, martial law would be rescinded and the normal daily activities of Thorbardin would resume, but Tarn didn’t deceive himself that the new king would be a just ruler, nor that those already imprisoned would ever be released. The Council was filled with his puppets, the streets crowded with his soldiers.

Many of Tarn’s own house guards had been “recruited” into Jungor’s service. Less than a score of dwarves had volunteered to accompany Tarn to the empty Council Hall to complete the act that would hand over final power to the new king of Thorbardin.

His wife, Crystal Heathstone, was at his side, of course. Her face was stricken with grief and worry, so that he hardly recognized the beautiful young Neidar princess whom he had married not that many years ago. Though Jungor promised that Tor would not be harmed and would be handed over in exchange for the Hammer, she no longer trusted the decency or honor of any mountain dwarf, not after the brutal way they murdered Aunt Needlebone while kidnapping her son.

Mog Bonecutter carried the Hammer of Kharas before him, wrapped in a cloth of gold that had been stained black with the blood of Tor’s nanny. Also in Tarn’s small party was the ever-loyal Daewar general, Otaxx Shortbeard, whose own fortunes had risen and fallen with his king’s. Haruk Mastersword escorted them as the representative of Jungor’s new government. The others in their party consisted of a mixed dozen of Klar, Daergar, and Daewar warriors. Shahar Bellowsmoke, former thane of the Daergar and cousin of the king, walked at their rear beside the death skald, Ogduan Bloodspike.

This was all that was left of the thousands who had marched just two days ago through Norbardin, following the Hammer of Kharas to victory over Jungor Stonesinger’s fanatic rebels. Tarn believed that, with the Hammer in his hands, he could have swept into Jungor’s palace and killed the rebellious Hylar thane, and his people would have cheered him for it. But Tor would have been killed. Without the Hammer, he could never again be king, but without his son he didn’t know that he could continue living. The choice was easy for him. He only delayed in order to try to win concessions for his followers and for the people he would leave behind. But he had failed in this as well. Jungor considered it an even bargain—the Hammer of Kharas for the life of his son, and in the end, Tarn was forced to accept.

Now, as Tarn began to descend the stairs toward the center of the empty Council Hall, a light flared to life on the floor below, a brilliant white glow that emanated from the stone atop Jungor’s staff.

The new king of Thorbardin sat upon the throne of the dead, a seemly chair, Tarn deemed. The golden crown of the king looked small and preposterous on his skull-like head. Beside his throne stood the Theiwar thane, Brecha Quickspring, a large basket resting at her feet. To their right and left sat the new thanes chosen by Jungor to lend an illusion of legitimacy to his dictates. Tarn didn’t even recognize most of them—petty functionaries or merchants of minor wealth who had somehow wormed their way into Jungor’s graces. However, he was not surprised to see Hextor Ironhaft occupying the seat of the Hylar thane. Tarn silently hoped he enjoyed his new position, for he had probably paid enough for it. Of the thane of the gully dwarves, there was no sign. Even her chair had been removed.

Haruk Mastersword paused at the door to allow the others to enter, for Jungor had ordered that no one be allowed to witness what transpired in the Council Hall this day. As Crystal passed him, the look of shame on his face nearly tore her heart from her chest. But she said nothing, knowing all too well that Jungor Stonesinger was keenly watching his nephew and would punish any sign of weakness. She touched his arm for a moment before moving on. The young dwarf turned away and fled to hide his tears.

As they neared the floor of the Council Hall, Tarn kept a keen eye on his captain. Mog was the only armed member of their group, and this only because he had been chosen to carry the Hammer of Kharas. Tarn feared that Mog might be planning some final act of defiance. Yet he could not deny his captain the honor of carrying the weapon he had brought back from oblivion, even if his job today was to hand it over to their worst enemy.

He breathed a heavy sigh of relief when, as they reached the floor, the Klar captain stepped to his right, unwrapped the Hammer of Kharas from its gruesome shroud, and presented it to Tarn. Tarn took it in his grasp and stepped up onto the dais.

A greedy hiss escaped Jungor’s lips when he saw the fabled weapon in Tarn’s hands. No dwarf of the mountain could look upon the Hammer of Kharas and not feel his soul stirring. They drank its legend with their mother’s milk and dreamed of its power into their last doddering years. No other icon so perfectly symbolized their ties to their mountain home, to their history, to their god, and to everything that made them dwarves. The Hammer represented honor, might, righteousness, and the covenant of the dwarves as the chosen people of Reorx.

Jungor rose to his feet and pushed the glowing staff into Brecha’s hands, while his own hands curled into claws that began to twitch in anticipation. Biting back the column of bile that rose in his throat, Tarn started toward him.

“Stop!” Jungor shrieked, holding up one claw-like finger. “Come no closer, Tarn Bellowgranite. I do not trust you.” Tarn grabbed Mog, who had started forward, too. Crystal stepped onto the dais, fiercely whispering Tarn’s name.

“Be quiet!” Tarn hissed over his shoulder. “No one move.”

“Lay the Hammer on the ground,” Jungor ordered.

“First, where is my son?” Tarn demanded in return.

“He is here, and unharmed,” Brecha Quickspring answered with an evil smile. Holding one hand above the basket, she closed her eyes and chanted a brief spell. A disk of greenish light formed beneath the basket, then rose, lifting it into the air.

“Such a noisy boy, like his disagreeable nanny,” she sighed. “I am glad to give him back.”

“Now put the Hammer on the ground,” Jungor said. Tarn laid the weapon on the ground at his feet, then rose up and glared at Jungor across the dais.

“Step away from it,” Jungor ordered.

“My son,” Tarn said firmly, refusing to move. Jungor nodded to Brecha, who sent the glowing disk of green light floating toward Tarn. He stepped away from the Hammer and grabbed the basket as it passed near to him. Setting it quickly on the ground, he threw back the blankets to reveal his infant son, soundly asleep in a deep nest of rich blankets. A shudder of relief passed through his frame. He moved aside as Crystal plunged her hands into the basket and swept her son to her breast, sobbing hysterically.

When Tarn turned back to the council, he saw that Hextor Ironhaft had already grabbed the Hammer. The new Hylar thane knelt and ceremoniously presented the holy weapon to his new king. As Jungor’s fingers closed around its haft, he seemed to stagger under its weight. But he quickly regained his composure, glaring triumphantly at the other thanes. Last of all, his hawklike visage turned to the king he had finally replaced.

“Before I go,” Tarn said. “I want to warn you one more time. I want to warn all of you that you are in great danger.” Several of the new thanes rolled their eyes and shook their beards in disbelief. Even defeated, the half-breed would not give up.

Infuriated, Tarn continued. “No! You will listen to me this one last time. There is a chaos dragon asleep beneath the new Council Hall being built. Captain Grisbane and I saw it with our own eyes. I beg you to take the architect and make an investigation. The creature is a monstrous—”

“Gaul Quarrystone is dead,” Jungor interrupted, laughing as he spoke. “As is Captain Grisbane. Conveniently, no one other than you has seen this creature.”

“The creature is there. Go and look for yourself, if you have the courage,” Tarn angrily fired back.

“I have looked,” Jungor responded patronizingly. “There is nothing there but an old lava tube, which will, unfortunately, force us to abandon the construction of the new Council Hall. Like all your other machinations, Tarn Bellowgranite, the new Council Hall was ill-planned and poorly executed. Its empty shell will serve as a monument to your rule.”

“Nothing there?” Tarn asked disbelievingly. “You saw no dragon?”

“The lava tube was empty and quite cool,” Jungor said.

“Don’t you see what this means?” Tarn cried. “The dragon is awake and on the move! You must abandon the city at once, before it attacks!”

“Begone from this city, you babbling fool!” Jungor shouted, pointing with the Hammer of Kharas toward the north. “No longer will we listen to your gibbering cries of danger. The dwarves of Thorbardin shall return to their former homes and rebuild our kingdom under my rule. As king of Thorbardin, I banish you from the mountain and the realm of the dwarves forever. You and all your ilk! If ever I see your beard again, I shall order it, and the head that grows it, spitted on a pike atop the Isle of the Dead!”

41

Carrying his son on one arm, Tarn led his group through the silent streets of Norbardin. No soldiers accompanied them, no curious onlookers hung out their windows to watch him pass. If not for the occasional thump or muffled cry that they heard behind doors, they might have thought they were passing through a realm long abandoned by its dwarven occupants.

Tor was awake now and clung to his father’s beard and shoulder. He peered about curiously with his wide gray eyes. As he was still only an infant, the little boy scarcely understood what was happening to him. For a few moments, Tarn felt a sudden pang of grief that Tor would never know this place except in the stories of his father and mother. Thorbardin was the birthright of all dwarves, he truly believed, and as much pain and grief as this place had brought him, it only caused him to love it the more.

When they reached the North Gate, Tarn was surprised to find more than three hundred dwarves had gathered. There were whole families from every different clan, except the gully dwarves. They had gathered their belongings and stood in the North Gate plaza with their carts pulled by lowing cave oxen, loaded with such boxes and bundles that they could gather on short notice. These were all the dwarves of Thorbardin who had chosen to follow Tarn into exile. But he knew that for every dwarf here, there were several hundred more who might have followed him, but were more afraid of leaving Thorbardin than of dying in their mountain home.

Several hundred of Jungor’s most fanatical Hylar warriors stood nearby in close ranks, weapons at the ready, watching the crowd of exiles with wary disgust. At Tarn’s arrival, their captain ordered the North Gate opened. The huge mechanism began to turn and the door, a great plug of stone shaped to be undetectable from the outside, slowly revolved backward on its great steel screw. Finally, it tilted and rolled into an alcove, opening the way to the outside. Sunlight streamed into the mountain for the first time in nearly two years.

Slowly, the exiles began to file out under the close watch of Jungor’s troops. As he waited his turn in line, Tarn glanced around one last time at the city he had rebuilt out of the ruins of the Chaos War. Somewhere among the many blank windows that looked down upon the plaza, he knew Jungor Stonesinger was probably watching, gloating, hunched over the Hammer of Kharas as though it were a prize he had won in the Arena.

Now, he truly felt sorrow for those he was leaving behind to suffer under Jungor’s rule, however long it might last. The chaos dragon would bring all that to an end, probably more quickly than any of them dared imagine. He deeply regretted his many failures, but none more so than to have disappointed his people and allowed Jungor Stonesinger to wrest the throne from him. That Hylar fool would lead the dwarves of Thorbardin to no good end.

His followers went first. Tarn and his close companions were the last to exit through the gate. They stopped to watch the door slowly screw back into place. Then Tarn turned and looked north toward the wide sodden plains that stretched between Thorbardin and the former elven realm of Qualinost. The other exiles continued to file down the narrow path away from their homeland. Reaching up, Crystal tickled Tor under the chin and said, “Look! The sun is setting. Tor has never seen the sun before.”

Tarn smiled to see the look of wonder and delight on his son’s face as he gazed at the brilliant reds and golds painting the western sky. He himself had not seen the sun for two years, had scarcely given a thought, he was ashamed to admit, to the world outside Thorbardin. What had happened to the elven nation, and to all the troubles of the realms above ground?

He was filled with a sadness and loss that knew no bound. He knew that his duty lay with his people still inside the mountain. Yet there was no time for regrets. He must begin at once to plan a refuge for his followers.

“I know what you are thinking,” someone said behind him. Tarn looked over his shoulder to see Ogduan Bloodspike leaning his back against a boulder.

“What’s that you say, old one?” Tarn asked.

“I said I know what you are thinking,” the death skald answered.

“Tell me then. Because I don’t know what I am thinking, myself.”

“You should probably go to Pax Tharkas,” Ogduan said.

“And why is that?” Crystal asked.

But Tarn’s thoughts were already elsewhere. He walked to the edge of the path and looked down toward the exiles. “Where is Mog?” he asked. “Has anyone seen Mog?”

Otaxx shrugged, then turned back to the old dwarf. “I agree. Pax Tharkas is where we should go next.”

“Mog did not choose to come with us,” Ogduan said to Tarn.

“Why not?” Tarn asked in surprise.

“He asked me to tell you, because he knew you wouldn’t approve of his decision,” the old dwarf shrugged. “He’s going feral, plans to lead a guerilla war against Jungor Stonesinger from within the kingdom.”

“That fool!” Tarn snarled. “You bet your beard I wouldn’t have approved. I gave my word that we would all leave.”

“He has to follow his own destiny, Tarn Bellowgranite, just as you must follow yours,” Ogduan said as he pushed away from the boulder. The North Gate had nearly closed. “You don’t have to worry about Beryl anymore—the great dragon is dead. Go to Pax Tharkas. There will be elves waiting for you there, maybe even King Gilthas. There are other, more worthy challenges waiting for you also, Tarn Bellowgranite.”

“How do you know all this, old one?” Tarn scoffed, raising an eyebrow.

“The world has changed since last you poked your beard outside the mountain,” Ogduan laughed. “The gods have returned. Look for them. Meanwhile, make a new home for your wife and child. Crystal will need a safe place to have her baby.” Saying this, he stepped quickly through the narrow gap of the closing gate and vanished from sight. Moments later, the gate silently sealed itself shut, and even those who knew it well could not distinguish its lines from the surrounding stone.

Tarn and Crystal looked at one another in surprise. “A baby?” Tarn whispered. She nodded, her gray eyes pooling with tears.

“But how did he know… ?” asked Crystal. Shaking his head, Tarn enveloped her with one arm and pressed her close, losing himself in both joy and sadness as he looked into the calm, certain eyes of his young son. Tor blinked at him and smiled his toothless grin.

Otaxx slapped Tarn on the back and pummeled his shoulder in congratulations. Then he stole Crystal away from the king and squeezed her to his huge, round belly. “Pax Tharkas is a fine idea,” he shouted happily. “It has seemed more like home to me than Thorbardin for a long time. I can’t remember the last time a dwarf child was born there. It’s a good omen, I say.”

Crystal shrugged out of the Daewar general’s bear hug, complaining that she could barely breathe. “Well, after all, Pax Tharkas is close to my father’s own kingdom,” she said as she smoothed her tunic, “and we will be welcome there.”

“Hill dwarves?” Tarn jibed as they started down the mountainside.