Stormblade

1

Though in times past, in the years before the Cataclysm, it had been a city exactly like every other dwarven-built city. Thorbardin, the last of the once-great dwarven kingdoms, was now unique in Krynn. Built inside the mountain, in a cavern spanning twenty-two miles from north to south, fourteen from east to west, Thorbardin was both a great city and an almost unbreechable fortress. Southgate, with its fortifications and several secondary lines of defense, guarded the city at one end. The ruins of Northgate, destroyed during the Cataclysm and now only a slim, five-foot ledge above a valley one thousand feet below, warded the way to Thorbardin from the Plains of Death.

Here the mountain dwarves had lived for centuries among their smithies and taverns, temples, shops and homes, and even parks and gardens. They grew their crops in the farming warrens deep below even the city itself, having abandoned the fields outside Southgate long ago, after the Dwarf gate Wars. Their light came from crystal shafts, sunk deep in the cavern’s walls and ceiling, which guided the sun’s light into their city and farms from the outside.

Though Thorbardin itself was called a city, it was composed of six smaller ones, one for each of the six thanedoms, or realms, which lay within the mountain. All but one bordered the edges of the dwarf-made body of water called the Urkhan Sea.

The sixth, and most beautiful, was the Life Tree of the Hylar. Shaped like a stalactite, it rose from the sea itself in twenty-eight levels. In this central city, approachable only by boat, the business of government was conducted. The council of Thanes sat there, presided over by its nominal leader, Hornfel. It was the only ruling body Thorbardin had possessed for three hundred years.

The politics and policies of six dwarven realms were woven there, tangled there, and sometimes fought for there with all the ferocity of a fierce and independent people. The dwarves watched vigilantly over their rights and freedoms and would not suffer them to be encroached upon. Thorbardin was the ancient home of the mountain dwarves. All else, even their own lands outside the mountain, were the Outlands. There were places below the great city of Thorbardin where none but the derro Theiwar mages went. These were the Deep Warrens, and they were far below even the dungeons and the farming warrens, beyond the wide, high delved cavern that cradled the city in the mountain’s heart. Magic was done in these places, and all of it was black.

Deep in the mysterious realms of the Theiwar lay the Chamber of the Black Moon. Torchlight, like transparent blood, splashed across the walls of the high-ceilinged cavern and vanished into the heights. Though upon first view the place seemed to be a wholly natural and virtually untouched cavern, the chamber was in truth the result of many years of skilled labor. On the walls were gilded metal cressets shaped like tightly woven baskets. These cressets fit neatly into stone niches carved from the living rock of the walls. The walls themselves were smooth, the stone polished to display its natural colors in all their striated variety. The floor at first appeared to be jagged stone. Upon closer inspection, it proved to be as smooth as polished wood. A thick layer of glass overlaid the contours of the stone. Poured as liquid fire from a vat, guided by the arts of magic, it had not settled in the depressions made by the natural rock, but formed as a clear, thick sheet an inch above the floor’s highest point.

Despite the use of four centuries, no place could be found where the glass floor was damaged. It was said that the glass would never scratch, not even under the tip of the hardest diamond.

In the center of the floor, crafted by the same magic art, was a simple, round dais of solid black marble. Upon the dais, as though suspended in air, rested a thick-legged clear glass table. Behind that table was a deep seated chair, dressed in soft black velvet.

It was here that Realgar, thane of the Theiwar, studied his ancient magical tomes, worked his spells, and plotted murders.

This night, while Stanach and his master watched a crimson heart of fire beat in a sword made for Hornfel, Realgar did not plan a murder. This night he planned a theft. The murder, he thought, smiling, would come later, when history would call Hornfel’s death a traitor’s execution. A Kingsword had been forged for the Hylar.

The informer had used no such word as ‘Kingsword.’ He didn’t seem to know what the strangely marked blade really was. He had simply been repeating tavern gossip carried by the bucket-lad who served at Isarn’s forge.

“According to the lad, the sword was strangely marked,” the informer said. “Red-scarred steel. Not the perfect blue-silver that usually comes from the master’s forge.”

No, Realgar thought now. Not the perfect blue-silver, but a steel blade with a heart of fire, as the legendary Duncan’s was said to have. But was this a Kingsword, made to invest a high king and then be entombed with him when he died? No dwarven smith had forged a Kingsword since Duncan’s had been buried with him three hundred years before; since Kharas, Duncan’s champion, had hidden his god-forged hammer and rendered the dwarves kingless until it could be found again. But the gods were abroad now, ranging in the worldly plane, and would manifest their strivings, Good against Evil, in the war some said would soon rage across Krynn. Dragons, dark creatures of Takhisis, had been seen on the mountain and coursing the night sky. Realgar bared his teeth in a slow smile. This night a god may well have visited Thorbardin. Had Reorx touched Isarn’s forge fire? Had he transformed simple steel into a Kingsword?

Isarn must have thought so. Though the master himself had gone from the smithy in exhaustion to rest, he left his apprentice to hilt the blade and, according to the bucket-lad, charged the apprentice to stay all night with the sword.

If it were a Kingsword, Isarn Hammerfell would not leave it unattended, but would set a guard. Realgar’s hand fisted. Aye, guard it well through the night and present it to their thane in the morning, newly forged and hilted. A mark of the god’s favor.

A Kingsword would not make Hornfel high king. Nothing but the Hammer of Kharas would do that, and even Hornfel could not believe that the hammer could be found now. Too long lost, too secretly hidden, the hammer would never again invest a dwarven high king.

But a Kingsword, gleaming with the forge’s light, could invest a king regent, and the thane invested would be Hornfel.

Many on the Council of Thanes would welcome Hornfel’s investiture. If any could tame the quarrelsome council, it was the Hylar. True, even he would not be able to tame them often. Yet, even now, with only a hereditary right to head the council and no more rank than the other five thanes, he did so more frequently than any other. Far too often the Council of Thanes moved as Hornfel wished them to move. As king regent, Hornfel would rule the council. Though none would call him high king, he would rule Thorbardin.

Realgar hissed a curse. The desire for power had always sung in him, like the wash and sigh of his own blood through his veins. He had advanced to the thaneship of the Theiwar not by hereditary means, but along a wide path cut by murder, deceit, and dark magic. He hated the Hylar, son of ancient high kings, as naturally as he loathed sunlight. Slowly, Realgar unclenched his fist. He moved his hand in a graceful gesture of magic and whispered the words of a summoning spell. A clutch of shadows pooled before the glass dais, became thicker, and took on a smoky substance.

“Aye, Thane,” a voice whispered in the moment before the shadows had fully become form.

Realgar did not speak until the thief knelt before him. When he did, he spoke only briefly, gave the thief his charge, and dismissed him. Alone again, he turned to the planning of Hornfel’s death.

Isarn might think it a sign of his god’s favor that a Kingsword had been created at his forge. Realgar, who worshipped a dark and evil goddess, felt Takhisis’s hand moving in the currents of the night. By morning, he would have the Kingsword and be king regent of the six dwarven realms. Skarn was Realgars thief, but not Realgars man. He wiped the blood from his hands, thought about killing the apprentice where he lay unconscious on the stone floor of the smithy, and then saw the sword. Stanach was forgotten.

Newly hilted, straight and slim, its blade was the color of Solinari itself. The steel’s heart was streaked with the sun’s red light. It lay on the anvil’s face where it had been when Stanach, bending over it to smooth some final work, had fallen to a blow from the hilt of Skarn s dagger. Skarn’s plan came fully formed. Realgar owed him a debt of vengeance. ‘Master,’ he called the thane, but had never thought of him as such. Skarn thought of him always as the one who had caused the death of his son.

A carelessness with magic, Realgar had said. It was no apology, barely an explanation for why Tourm had died.

Though the derro were a race inclined to the dark arts, Realgar did not permit mages about him. He was too jealous of his own power. He did, from time to time, train as assistants those talented enough to learn the skills for simple spells. Magelings, he called them, and spoke the word always with a proud sneer.

Tourm had been one of these. He could have been more. With the proper training he could have gone into the Outlands, traveled to the Tower of High Sorcery, and taken his Test with the masters of the Black Robes. He would have passed that Test. The fire of magic had burned in his soul, the desire to dance with its flame was the thing by which his life had been ruled.

And Realgar had known that. He must have sensed the potential of Tourm’s power. Sensing that potential, he recognized a threat. He’d asked Tourm—no, commanded him—to work a spell he knew his mageling had no skill to control. Realgar had watched him die screaming, while formless things of darkness and shadow, born in the Abyss, gnawed the flesh from his bones and tore the soul from his body. Tourm had worked the spell, it was true, but worked it at Realgar’s command. Tourm’s was a death Skarn had been waiting many years to avenge. Now he’d found the path to vengeance.

Skarn lifted the sword from the anvil and smiled coldly. Realgar wanted this sword. The thief didn’t know why, and he didn’t care. He only knew that when the thane had spoken his orders, his desire for the blade lay naked in his eyes. More than desire, Skarn thought now. Realgar needed that sword.

There were secret ways out of Thorbardin, shadowed paths across the Outlands that even the border patrols didn’t know. Skarn knew them. He left Stanach lying where he’d fallen. By the time Realgar knew that the Kingsword was not coming to him, Skarn was gone from Thorbardin.