The Inheritance

Chapter 13

"I’m following gods."

The voice came out of darkness, and it sounded both near and far away. Elansa walked stunned, all her senses reduced. It was hard to see in the barely lit tunnel. She should have been able to discern the red outlines of her companions, the edging glow of their lifeforces. She could not. Only strangely-near and far, then near again and far again-she did hear the voice of the one who claimed to follow gods, the voices of those who scoffed or groaned in pain or exhaustion. A metallic taste filled her mouth, slick and coppery, and she knew that was blood. She had bitten her tongue, her lips to bleeding when she'd engaged the magic of the sapphire phoenix. Someone held her in his arm as she walked. She wanted to pull away, to cry out for the pain that caused. The ogre who'd gripped her had left a mass of bruises.

"Ah," said the one who held her, "nothing's broke, girl. Keep walking."

Brand. His impulse, his arm, his own strides moved her, not her own will. Left to herself, she would have crumpled to the ground.

She said so, once. "Let me go. Let me fall." In her heart she'd cried, Leave me behind!

All her bones screamed, as though they had been separated from their joints, wrenched from their sockets. She hadn't worked healing magic with the talisman. She had called upon the god to let her speak with the earth, the rock of the world, and that had been granted. She had not asked for healing. She had asked for breaking. As her body had known how to gather the illness of trees and then feel the healing of the sapphire phoenix, now her body felt the breaking, the tumbling of stone, the cracking of rock. She had rent a piece of the earth and felt all the tearing pain in her body.

"Na," said Brand, "na, now, girl. You go on. You can."

Ah, she must have whispered that plea she'd thought had been a silent scream in her heart. She went on. She had no choice. He would not let her stop.

"I am following gods."

Char said that, and recognizing his voice felt like a triumph. Elansa looked up, looked around, and saw the dwarf standing head-cocked and looking up at Brand.

"I’m following gods, and if y’ had but the one eye I do, you'd know it."

No one had the one eye Char had. No one had the ability to see in almost complete darkness as even a one-eyed dwarf could. Faint beams of light shivered down from the ceiling of the close tunnel; there were cracks above. This light, barely discernable to humans or elves, was enough for Char to find his way, enough, it seemed, for him to find something to follow.

"So y’ just trust me," the dwarf said, his jaw jutting, his dark beard bristling. "I’m what y’ got in here, Brand, so just trust me."

Brand held her, but absently, keeping her on her feet by holding her against him. It was the way you'd hold a sack. But leaning against him, she felt the breath he took, the considering breath. She felt his answer in the relaxing of his muscles.

"I trust you," he said, very quietly. "But all this talk of gods-" He tilted his head toward Elansa. "They liked the killing of the ogres, Char. They didn't like the way it was done, the magic and the crying out to a god."

Char made a sound far back in his throat. He sounded like his hound. "Then they're idiots. The rock fell, the stone cracked, a god lifted his hand. Blind fools."

Brand shifted his grip, his arm slid lower, circling Elansa’s waist. She breathed a little easier for the lessening of pain.

"Might be," Brand said, his voice chill. "Doesn't matter. You spook them any more, and things aren't going to be easier."

"Ain't so easy now," the dwarf muttered. "Ain't been gettin’ easier for a while."

He didn't say it hard. He didn't accuse. He spoke, and the tone of his voice touched Elansa like sadness. There had been a plan, a grand scheme between these two, to stand against their old enemies, to settle the feud with the goblins forever. He'd bargained in good faith with Kethrenan, or he had intended to. She believed, standing there, that if Keth had kept to the letter of the bargain, Brand would not have done less. He had no feud with elves, for all he thought of them as heartless neighbors. Maybe his plan would have worked, but Keth hadn't been minded to hand over a trove of weapons. Then goblins had come roaring onto the false field of exchange….

Elansa’s knees wobbled, and she began to sag in Brand's arm. Ah, gods, if only she could lie down, or even sit.

Brand shook his head, not conceding. "Listen to me, Char. There's enemies all around. Ogres in the caves and elves outside, and someone stole our weapons and sealed all our bolt-holes. Tell me later if you think our plan has turned in my hand. Now, get us to Pax Tharkas."

The dwarf turned. A thin drift of light showed his face, worn and weary, eyes sunken, skin gray. It was how he looked when he knew there was no drink to be had. His last lay in the ruined cavern among the corpses of two friends, ogres, and hounds.

"Come on then," he said, not to Brand, but to all those dark shapes gathered, breathing and muttering, and some groaning with hurt and weariness. "Come on. Let's walk."

Brand shifted his grip again. Elansa winced, but she made no cry. They followed Char, the line of them winding through the darkness. When pale glimmers of light sifted down from the ceiling, they saw the tunnel changing, the walls growing wider apart. Their own weary legs told them the way was rising now.

"We're getting close to the surface," someone said, whispering and hopeful. It sounded like Nigh-toothless Kerin. And Ley-she knew his voice, for it spoke in the accents of home-said he thought that was the case.

They stopped twice for water, to cup their hands under little rills running down the walls. It tasted sharply of minerals, but no one complained. Each filled up his or her hands with it and drank gratefully. Only Char didn't, wanting something else, and he kept his distance from his fellows, a surly space. He didn't stop talking about his godly guides though, and he took a sour satisfaction to see how that worked on his companions. Most, he seemed to take grim satisfaction in Arawn’s sneering.

"He's mad. The damn dwarf’s gone mad, and that’s what they said happened the first time-"

Not more than that did Arawn say, though, for Char had stopped and turned. He didn't drop his hand to the throwing axe at his belt or make any other threatening gestures. He lifted only his head.

"Come along, Arawn," Char said, his voice a low mockery of coaxing. "Come along if y’ have the guts, and see where gods are leading me." He laughed, but it sounded hollow. "Might be our raggedy little princess knows. Might be she could tell you what waits."

Whispers rustled in the passage, like the shuffling of bats’ wings. Arawn said nothing. He was not one to bluster, but Bruin muttered, and Pragol hissed. Brand told them all to shut up, he said he'd bind the next one who wasted his breath on threat or challenge and leave him in the dark. Satisfied, Char turned and walked ahead, up the rising way and into the dim light that did not increase and did not fail.

As the outlaws marched on, it could be seen that Char did indeed follow gods. Here and there, barely seen, felt by hands reaching to steady a walker, hands reaching to find a place to stop and rest, were images chipped into the stony walls-a dwarf with a warhammer, a dwarven smith at an anvil, more like those. These were not the works of an artist with time to make them perfect. They were the offhand works one sees when men are idle and their hands resent the stillness. Dwarves had been here, thinking of Reorx, thinking of the god and the images they most liked to create.

The rough god, peering out from shadows under her hand, comforted Elansa. Here had been folk who knew the right of the world, who knew that gods lived. In the long ago days of this rough craft, the gods had walked with their children. They had visited Krynn in guises fair or dark. The great families of deities had been deeply involved with Krynn. Now, they were not. They were gone, but these little images, the faith in the hearts of those few races who remembered, argued that gods did exist, even if they were long gone from this realm.

The sapphire phoenix hung round Brand's neck caught a gleam of gray light and shot it back to her eye. He saw it too, and he slid the talisman back into his shirt.

Following gods, they walked, and as the ceiling of the tunnel dropped low, tall humans bent to make their way. After a time Nigh-toothless Kerin said, "Why, them's tools!’ and the voices of others echoed to agree. Here and there, in corners, up against the narrow walls, lay the heads of hammers, rusted chisels, picks whose wooden handles had long rotted in the damp air under the ground.

Brand slipped his arm beneath Elansa’s and helped her to stoop. "Bend low, girl. Head down. I don't think it’s far now," he said, his lips right beside her ear. "See, there's light ahead. The way is climbing. Hang on."

Like a voice out of far memory, Char’s drifted back, Crying, "Ho! Come on! Come ahead!"

She stumbled, and Brand lifted her up. He moved her to the side, pressed her back to the wall while the rest filed by. They passed, and in each she felt the urgency of their need to be out of the cramping tunnel, to see what Char had found. Her legs sagging, Brand let her sit. As the last of them passed, he crouched next to her.

"Can y’walk?"

"In a moment."

He grunted, then sat beside her. He lifted her blouse and winced to see what the ogre had done. "Damn me if you aren't all luck, girl. Your ribs should be broken." He eyed her keenly. "But that ain't the worst, is it?"

Elansa leaned her head against the stone, and a thin trickle of water crept down her neck. "No, the magic hurt the worst. It’s better now. I'm tired."

He looked like he wanted to ask about that, but all he said was, "Only a little way now. Come on, get up." He took her hands and pulled her up. She stood, and he held her against him again, but not as strongly now. He helped her through the low passages, and when they came out he stopped.

"Ah, gods," he breathed, who didn't believe in gods. "Look at that, will you?"

Men had spoken that way as they entered the stony forest where the battle with the ogres had taken place. Their voices hushed with wonder, they had stared around them at that deep place sculpted by time and rivers and the hands of dwarves. The hardest among them had admitted they’d seen little to match the beauty. There was not that much of beauty here, but there was more of wonder, for all that lay before them was created by mortal craft. Ley walked the perimeter, looking up, looking out. He was of Qualinesti, and Elansa didn't know what his station had been-tradesman, craftsman, servant. His eyes met hers, and she saw it: He knew the lore, knew he stood on the doorstep of a wondrous place.

It was, indeed, a doorstep, and not a lovely one. They stood in a smelting cave, high-sided and long deserted. At one end rose a shaft, and from this light poured down as once, a long time ago, ore had, shoved from the open pits above. Great iron vats, gone to rust and ruin now, lined the sides. A pungent odor clung to the stone walls, strong enough to make Elansa’s eyes water. Far across the cavern a tall, broad opening gaped, like a mouth opened to scream. From there cold air drifted, carrying a fresher scent, the perfume of air that had never lived below ground, that only knew sunlight and starlight and the sweet breath of the seasons.

Elansa looked behind her, back the way they’d come. All those tunnels, all those dark ways, had been known to the dwarves who'd made Pax Tharkas and delved the open pits of the Tharkadan Iron Mines, that army of stonemasons and sculptors and smiths who had made real what kings had dreamed. Some of the tunnels they must have discovered and used, perhaps they even dwelt there for a time, for the making of Pax Tharkas had not been accomplished quickly. Perhaps they had delved some of those tunnels, though Elansa doubted they would have wasted much time at that. Through these tunnels the dwarves had traveled, roads beneath the surface of Krynn, unknown to any but them. One of those dwarves, she knew, had gone back and forth to Qualinost, perhaps by those underground ways for as far as they would take him, then overland. He'd seen the marks of the Lily of the Night, a king's lovely mistress. Perhaps the dwarf had crafted those lilies himself, small works of beauty to relieve an artistic hand that spent most of its time hacking a martial fastness out of the mountains.

Elansa’s skin prickled with chill, and her breath caught in her throat. She stood in the least lovely part of the great fastness whose name meant Peace of Friendship, yet she could not help but feel awed. She had heard many tales of Pax Tharkas, and she had never thought to see the place.

She took a long breath. It hurt to do that, and yet the breath strengthened her. She breathed in a place known to her oldest kin, and it seemed to her that some of their strength yet lingered here for their distant daughter to borrow. She moved away from Brand, standing on her own. He let her go, and the look he bent on her was that same complicated look he'd given her on the night he'd shown her the sapphire phoenix.

Now, as then, she couldn't interpret it.

Turning, he shouted, "Hey! Char, where’d you bring us?"

He asked, knowing the answer. He asked so others could hear the dwarf’s reply and acknowledge the feat he had performed.

"We are in a fastness of kings," Char said, his voice gone formal. The heavy gray sullenness fell from him, and his face lighted as Elansa had never seen it, graced by wonder and pride.

"What fastness is that?" Arawn asked, his voice thin with disbelief. "Ain't no king in the mountain, Char. Ain't no dwarf king. Ain't no elf king." Some of the others muttered agreement, Bruin and Loris. Ballu shifted a glance at Pragol, then away. Arawn’s lips twisted in a sneer as he glanced at Brand. "Ain't no king at all."

Ley stopped pacing. His hand rested on the grip of his sheathed sword, then he looked at Brand and let his hand fall.

As though Arawn hadn't spoken, Char swept his arm wide, taking in all around. "We're in the ancient smelting cavern of Pax Tharkas." He pointed to the shaft rising high at the far end. "There is where the ore from the famous Tharkadan Mines was dumped into here. See the vats-" He sniffed deeply. "You can still smell the ore melting."

Char grinned, and he walked across the stony floor, not looking at his companions as they stepped aside for him, never looking at Arawn who stood in sulking silence apart from the others. The dwarf stood before Brand, his friend, and he winked his one good eye. Then he slid a glance at Elansa and nodded.

"There's a prettier place to rest than here, though, ain't there, missy?"

She stood there, a moment silent, and Char nodded, just once to say he didn't mock.

"Yes," she said. "There is a better place to rest than smelting caves." She lifted her head and stood as tall as aching bones and groaning muscles would allow. It had been a long time, a long time since she'd stood in elven precincts, a long and sorry season. "Make ready to enter Pax Tharkas," she said, as though granting permission.

Brand quirked a smile, but Char didn't. The dwarf nodded again, for he knew that none here had a better right to grant that permission than a princess of the Qualinesti House Royal, she whose ancient kinsman-by-marriage had caused this place to be built, Kith-Kanan who slept the long sleep in one of the deepest chambers of Pax Tharkas.

In a dark chamber of Pax Tharkas, a high hall and many-columned, in a place now long unlit and home to creatures no dwarf or elf or human who lived in the time of the Peace of Friendship had ever dreamed existed, two things stirred.

One was a gully dwarf, one of that lice ridden, flea-infested tribe of dwarves known as the Aghar. People down the ages knew about these pests, beings regarded by most of Krynn as no more than vermin, held in contempt by all clans of dwarves as disgusting two-legged rats.

This gully dwarf’s name was Ygtha, and she was part of the plague of gully dwarves-"colony" she might have said had she known the word-who inhabited the ancient fortress. She'd been separated from her fellows, and in the space of moments utterly forgotten that she had, in fact, had companions at all. She'd come into this dark hall through a crack in the walls, momentarily thought she'd stumbled into a forest of stone whose trees either grew up from the floor or down from the roof. Then she saw the columns made a long aisle from one end of the vaulted hall to the other. A mile of an aisle, she thought, though she had no way of measuring that. The words just sounded good, and in her head they ran more like "aisle-mile," the rhyme jogging in and out of her mind.

Then she forgot the rhyme or the distance, for she became aware of high, wide doors on either side of the aisle. She pattered through the dust on ‘the floor, and then forgot the doors, for the dust bore the marks of small creatures-the little dark piles of rat dung and the tracks of the rats themselves. Ygtha decided she'd come into a treasure hall, for what greater treasure could there be than food, and she saw sign of that-fat delicious rat!-all around her. Alas, she saw only sign, no matter how hard she looked, and a few little skeletons from which the flesh had long ago fallen.

She picked up a bone and sat down on the floor, soothing her disappointment by sucking the brittle bones for marrow. Though she sat in near darkness, she wasn't unhappy about that or disturbed. Ygtha had learned that sooner or later light comes back again, either because it comes to you, or you wander out to it. One or the other thing would surely happen again, the coming or the wandering, and so she settled into the darkness of the mile of aisle, with all the doors around her, and sucked on rat bones.

When she heard the second thing stirring, she didn't give it consideration. She was eating, and if Aghar society had any commandment-that is, of course, assuming such a thing as Aghar society could exist at all-it would be that no one stops eating, no matter what.

And so the second thing that stirred, one of the doors along the far wall creaking, inching open, didn't trouble the gully dwarf’s feast. She didn't hear the click or scrape of brittle feet on the marble floor. She didn't hear the tall thing sigh through very lean jaws, or notice its breath, cold though that was and filling the hall with winter's breath.

She sucked on bones, humming happily to herself, and she didn't know herself caught until she felt a cage of bones close around her.

The skeletal hand grasped. Flesh hung in shreds from long-lifeless fingers. The gully dwarf squealed, looking right into eyes that flamed with fire the same color as lightning. Unfleshed jaws gaped wide, and yellow teeth snapped. In an eerie, voice, like that of stormwind, the undead creature lifted the gully dwarf and listened to her screech and scream for a while, then ripped off her head and flung the corpse against the wall.

It did this not because it disliked gully dwarves. It did this because if it and the others of its fellows who slumbered behind the many closed doors of this hall had a commandment, it would have been to kill as often as it could.

When it was finished with the gully dwarf, the undead thing, clothed in the last rags of its own flesh, hung in the rotting silk and leather of a warrior's funeral gear, looked around for more to kill. Finding none, it went back to where it had been sleeping. It entered the crypt behind the opened door, lay down upon its bier, and fell into a dark well of dreamlessness. All around it, in other crypts, behind other doors, more of its kind lay undreaming, unaware. Some had been elves in life. Some had been human. Some had been dwarves, and they all lay in stillness until something living, smelling of blood and flesh, came into the chamber. Then one or another of the creatures would sense the presence of something that needed killing. The urge that guided it, the killing urge, would rise up to wake the sleeper, to send it looking for the living thing that must not be allowed to live.

They had been the honor guard of a king, a long time ago when Pax Tharkas was new and Kith-Kanan came often to stay there. Upon his death, he was buried here, and each of his beloved guard was awarded a crypt outside the great king's burial chamber, one and another to take up their charge in death as they had in life: to guard the king. Their place had been only ceremonial, an honored burial for those who had served faithfully. But in these after days, when gods had turned their faces from the world, when the races of Krynn had turned their faces from each other, dark magics crept and crawled, and the corpses of elves and dwarves and humans, who had lived by shining codes of honor and faith, became corrupted into beings made to kill.

In the shadow of the rising hill they rested. Beneath a broad shoulder of the Kharolis Mountains, Kethrenan stopped and gave thanks to gods for the water they found there. A shallow stream darkened the stone, barely managing to pass the rocks. It ran from nowhere. Rather it sprang. Even as he thought so, Kethrenan decided that was too strong a word for it. The water seeped, oozing up from the earth. The weary horses dipped their muzzles into the thin stream, and the gulping sounds of their drinking echoed against the rocks. Bridles and bits jingled, and Demlin’s mount shook its head and drank again.

Demlin took the water bottles, his and Kethrenan’s, and filled them. It was a slow process, the trickle of water seeping in. One filled, he stopped it with great care and handed it to the prince. Patient, he began the next. They'd found little water in these days past. Kethrenan looked at the dark horizon, the pall of smoke hanging in the west. He shaded his eyes against the glaring of noon's sun.

"My lord prince, there’s a great burning out there. How close to our forest, I wonder?"

How close? Kethrenan couldn't guess. The wind spread the smoke all over the sky, saving the darkest pall for the distance. There, he saw the work of the hobgoblin Gnash. In the night they'd seen the ruddy glow of fire on the sky, and Ithk said he reckoned Gnash was marching up and down the borderland. "Making goblin towns. He does that best."

Making goblin towns and manning them with his army. Kethrenan didn't bother to ask if the army increased in proportion to the goblin towns. He knew it did. He'd been fighting goblins off his border for many long years. They liked fighting, and they would be drawn to a powerful leader like Gnash as steel is to a lodestone.

His eyes on the pall hanging over the west, Kethrenan knew it wouldn't be long before that army would turn upon itself… unless it had a purpose. Lindenlea would keep them off Qualinesti’s borders, and they would flow south, or north into Abanasinia to rampage among the humans.

Kethrenan shrugged. That wasn't his problem.

Wind moaned across the stonelands, raising grit and biting cold. Even so, it had the smell of spring on its chill breath. Somewhere in the forest surely the first blush of a kinder season quickened, the stirring of buds still furled, not green yet, no-red, and only faintly so. There in the forest, Kethrenan thought, the air must smell like hope, and the birds must be more active. There, it had snowed well in winter, and the grasses in the meadows would soon begin to thicken. Here, in the borderland, they had not felt rain in all the while they'd been riding south. Ithk looked withered, puckered, and weary. Demlin was like skin stretched over bones, and it seemed they spent most of their searching looking for water. Kethrenan, though, was a knife, gleaming and sharp, and he would not rest until he had spilled the outlaws’ blood.

Kethrenan’s horse snorted, dancing a little, restless. The best of Qualinost’s stables, this one did not weary though they had been long days quartering the rocky land, searching for sign of the outlaws. The prince took up the reins and looked at the goblin, still on his knees drinking.

"You," he said. Ithk looked up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. They hadn't kept him tethered in days. He never showed sign of wanting to leave them. "How far to the last cache?"

"Not far." Ithk pointed east, and high up the slope. "In there. Do we go?"

Kethrenan said they would, and they tethered the horses and climbed. Wind dragged at them, and their fingers grew numb on the cold stone. The cave’s entrance hid beneath an overhang of stone, a small slit in the mountain no one could see from below. They had to tum sideways to thread it, even the goblin. The elves had to duck, going bent into a small passage. When they could stand again, Demlin lit a torch, using flint and steel to ignite rags soaked in fat. It wasn't a good torch. It sputtered and stank, but it gave light. The cache lay far back, not in the first cave but in a smaller one beyond. Weapons, the keg of dwarf spirits, all were covered in oily rags.

Demlin’s lip curled in disgust, and he toed the rags from the pile of swords and axes. This was a smaller cache, the last of what had been dragged here. By the sputtering light, Kethrenan took the count of what Brand had stolen.

"Do we destroy them?" Demlin asked.

The prince considered it. The weapons were of finest elven make, the steel more treasured than gold or jewels in these hard days. In the weeks past, he'd caused so many of their like to be broken, the blades made useless, the arrows shattered and axe heads broken. And this hoard, this last one, lay untouched. Brand had not been here.

Neither had he shown himself in the world outside the mountain. The elves had quartered the ground between the caches, like hounds searching after game. They'd seen no sign, not even a cast-off boot or the dark mark of a campfire. He'd kept within the mountain. Yet how had he hunted? How had he fared? He had a dozen men at last count. How did he feed them?

"Where is he going?" Demlin asked. He looked around at the slick cave walls, the dust on the floor. Tracks marked the dust-booted feet had passed here but not lately, not in a very long time. "He has to know all his other caches are broken, but he hasn't come here."

Kethrenan nodded, and he thought of the map he'd had Ithk make. The point of the triangle had looked south, right to Pax Tharkas. Could he get there? Kethrenan didn't know. Would he try? And why?

In the flickering light, the eyes of his servant and the shifting glance of a goblin on him, Kethrenan closed his eyes, considering his questions and receiving his answer.

Brand would try for Pax Tharkas. Kethrenan knew it, because he knew that if he were in the same position, beset by enemies, he would try for a place like Pax Tharkas. He would run there because there was no way to keep alive in the caverns, even if he knew all the ins and the outs. Sooner or later, he'd have to hunt, and the risk of that was too great. Brand wouldn't know who'd destroyed his weapons, goblins or elves. Outside, he was a hunted man. Wherever he turned, he was beset and outnumbered.

Kethrenan smiled. This one, this outlaw, knew the outnumbered man on the high ground still had a chance.

"Demlin, douse the torch and follow me."

They went out into the cold and stood on the highest part of the slope, a flat place above the mouth of the cave. Wind whipped their hair, and the goblin clutched his bearskin tight as the elves looked south across the stoneland, shading their eyes. The arms of the Kharolis Mountains reached out into the plain, dark and long. Because he knew his history, Kethrenan knew the fortress of Pax Tharkas spanned the gap between those reaching arms.

"Tell me," the elf prince said to the goblin. "Tell me all the ways you know to Pax Tharkas."

But Ithk shook his head, seemingly puzzled. "None, none. Go south, I only know that. Ain't never been to the Fortress of Ghosts. Don't go there. No one does."

The goblin wore the deepest look of sincerity, yet Kethrenan believed him not at all. Ithk knew ways-maybe secret roads through the borderland, maybe dark paths through the heart of the mountain itself. He could be forced, Kethrenan knew. He began to consider ways of doing that, of bending the goblin to his will, when Demlin’s cry rang out.

"Prince!" He pointed north and a little west. Something bright ran along the stony earth, a swift horse on a stretch of an old road long forgotten. Sunlight leaped from a shining helm and a bright shield. "A rider. It's one of ours, my prince!"

The rider ran against the wind, bright against a pall of dark smoke. Kethrenan nodded to his servant, and Demlin went bounding down the hillside, nimble as a mountain goat, leaping from stone to stone until he reached the low ground and the horses.

On the high place, the goblin shifted from foot to foot, and the elf prince watched his servant ride to meet the warrior. He heard him call out in their native language, shouting, "Friend!" He saw them meet, and he saw them confer. Demlin pointed upward and back to the prince where he stood overlooking the borderland. They turned their horses and rode to the little stream.

Kethrenan felt something on the air. He felt something like a shift in the wind, a change in fortune. He was not superstitious. He was not so devoted to the tending of gods as his lost wife was. Still, he felt something moving, luck or fate.

He went down the hill and kept the goblin at his side. When the messenger said he had word from Lindenlea, Kethrenan tethered Ithk and moved out of earshot. This he did because Demlin reminded him to.

"You think he's one of us, like us in his need for vengeance. He isn't, my lord prince. He's a goblin. I know what your cousin said about how the Stone in the temple showed him to be a liar about something. Don't mistake him, he isn't serving you."

Kethrenan didn't mistake the goblin. He tethered him and went aside to hear the warrior’s message. It was from Lindenlea.

"Have a care, cousin. The hob Gnash is taking his army to Pax Tharkas, all of them burning along the way. If you go much farther south, you'll be caught between the fortress and him."

Kethrenan heard, and he looked once at Demlin, maimed Demlin who had ridden this quest beside him since the first snow broke the grip of the killing cold. "I know," said the servant to his master. "We must go back to the army."

They had to, for they must stop the hobgoblin before he reached Pax Tharkas.