The Thieves’ Guild

Chapter Five

Twenty-five. generations of Hammerfells have passed since the Founderstone was stolen from Balgard and Brimbar Hammerfell,” the dwarf growled as he tugged angrily at his snowy beard. Cael smiled wearily across the table. He’d heard this tale many times before. “We were never paid for it,” the dwarf finished.

“Not that they would have sold it,” the elf said in his gentlest voice.

“Not that we would have sold it!” the dwarf shouted, his fist striking the table so hard that their two mugs jumped into the air. Foam leaped on high and washed across the dinted wooden surface of the table. “Never! Not for any price!”

“So tell me, Grandfather, why does the world not know this remarkable tale? Why do the minstrels not sing it at every festival?” the elf asked as he sat back in his chair and gestured at the players singing in the corner of the tavern Outside the streets were alive with the noise of festivities, but inside the small common room of the Dwarven Spring, a group of minstrels played and sang a lively air to a nearly empty room. Other than the elf and the dwarf, the tavern’s only occupants were a pair of off-duty Knights of Takhisis, a young man wearing the red robes of a mage, and an Ergothian silk merchant who snored with his head on the bar. Behind the bar, the barkeep carefully stacked a pyramid of crockery mugs. Windows set high in the walls provided the room’s only illumination. These looked out at street level, presenting a fascinating view of the latest fashions in Palanthian footwear.

“Because, young Cael,” the dwarf explained, “it was forgotten. Yes, forgotten! Having stolen from Balgard and Brimbar Hammerfell their only treasure, the citizens of Palanthas promptly forgot how they came by the stone or what it meant or why it was taken from the dwarves in the first place. You see, thieves stole it from the city treasury not long afterwards, and it was never recovered. The city forgot about it, because to remember it was to remember their failure. History was rewritten and the stone forgotten.”

“Until now,” Cael commented.

“We never forgot it!” the dwarf roared. “We knew where it was all along. We tried to get it back, but we failed. Meanwhile, the city gave us a pittance in return for our ‘gift.’ To this day, we pay no taxes, though I am sure not half the fools in the Senate know why. Nor would they question it. No, the Hammerfells have always been exempt from taxation, and so it shall remain.”

“Surely, Grandfather, over the centuries your family has saved in taxes many times the value of the stone,” Cael remarked.

“That is not the point, as you well know!” the dwarf growled. “You young rapscallion, you always seem to steer me to the subject of the Founderstone. Why is that? You know how it makes my blood boil.”

“I enjoy the telling of the tale,” Cael answered. “I am an elf, after all. I never weary of remembrances.”

“Aye, that you are, my boy,” the dwarf smiled. “You and I, we are as unlike as wood and stone, yet we understand one another better than we do these humans, wouldn’t you say?” The elf nodded in agreement as he sipped from his mug.

The minstrels finished their song and set aside their instruments. One wandered over to the bar and eased himself atop a stool, while the rest stepped outside, rapidly ascending the stairs to the street and vanishing into the crowd. Meanwhile, the two Knights of Takhisis paid their bill and staggered to the door. Turning, they waved to the dwarf. “Good morrow to you, Mashter Hammerfell!” they shouted drunkenly.

“So long, boys. See you tomorrow.” The dwarf waved and turned back to his elf companion. “They keep the rings on my fingers,” he said, shrugging.

The barkeep approached the table, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. He was a slovenly man, with heavy unshaved jowls and a nap of hair clinging to his sweaty forehead. He stopped at their table and slid two coins before the dwarf. “They paid their tab in steel coin, marster,” he said.

“If nothing else, the Dark Knights can be counted on for steel coin,” the dwarf commented as he swept the coins from the table and into the pouch at his belt. “You can go now, if you like. The ceremonies will begin soon, I imagine.”

“My boy is right keen to see them,” the barkeep said, smiling with his brown teeth.

“Go on, then. I’ll close up here. Just make sure you are back by dark. There’ll be a crowd in here tonight, once the official festivities are over.”

“Thank you, sire,” the barkeep said. He left them, tossing his apron on the bar as he hurried out the door. The last minstrel finished his drink and followed him up the stairs.

“Now where was I?” the dwarf asked when they had gone.

“The Founderstone,” Cael offered.

The old dwarf stroked his long white beard while he eyed the elf with some curiosity. He seemed a mere youth, a lad of no more than twenty summers but reckoned handsome as far as elves go.

“The Founderstone,” the dwarf continued after a pause. “Your talk always seems to come round to that, young Cael. You’ve ideas better forgotten.”

“I only wanted to hear the story again, since we are about to go and see the precious thing,” Cael protested innocently.

“Well, you know the rest as well as I. It was stolen by the Thieves’ Guild not long after Bright Horizon was renamed Palanthas, a long time ago even for dwarves. The city thought it better to forget that the stone had ever existed than admit its greatest treasure had passed beyond its grasp. The Guild, damn their greedy fingers, were untouchable. No one knew where to find them, no one knew how to stop them. Every attempt to recover the stone failed, and offers to purchase it back were ignored. So the city pretended it didn’t exist, and in time it was forgotten by everyone… except the Hammerfells.”

“And now it has reappeared,” Cael said, finishing the story. “Found amongst the ruins of a Guild House when it was destroyed by the Knights of Takhisis four years ago. And the city has suddenly remembered the heritage of its greatest treasure, thanks to the researches of Bertrem, head of the Aesthetics of the Great Library. And today…”

“Today it sees the light of day once more, after over two thousand years of darkness,” the dwarf said. “The Founderstone of Palanthas shall flower again. Though it grieves me to see it in the hands of another, I shouldn’t miss this for the world. Shall we go?”

As the two rose from their chairs, the young mage in the corner dropped a couple of coins on his table. Nodding to dwarf and elf, he strolled out the door and up the stairs to the street. The old dwarf locked the door behind him, while outside, a fanfare of trumpets resounded above the city. “There’s the signal,” the dwarf said excitedly. “We’d better hurry.”

“What about him?” Cael asked of the Ergothian silk merchant still snoring with his head on the bar.

“Let him sleep it off,” the dwarf said, dismissing the fellow with a wave of his hand. “Come along. We’ll go out through the smithy.”

They passed through a low door behind the bar, the elderly dwarf waddling ahead, the young elf limping behind, leaning heavily on his black staff with each step. They entered a storeroom filled with barrels and burgeoning sacks. A few candles in sconces near the door provided a dim light. In the center of the room there stood a wide pool, like the walls of a well, but it was filled to the brim with crystalline water that rolled and bubbled. Set into the water was a pair of tall wooden kegs, with their taps dangling over the pool’s lip. This was the Dwarven Spring, which gave the tavern its name. The water was not boiling but icy cold and rolling with a current that brought it up through one crack in the floor and out through another. The carefully joined stone walls of the pool captured the water for a brief moment on its subterranean journey and cooled the keg of beer and tun of wine set in it.

The dwarf took a bucket from a stack of others and held it under one of the taps. He filled it until suds slopped over the side and spilled on the floor. “Grab yourself a bucket,” he said to the elf.

“A skin of wine would suit me better,” Cael said.

“Fill her up then. Hurry. I have a place on the stage for the unveiling of the stone. You shall stand with me, my old friend.”

Cael filled a large goatskin with wine and slung it over his shoulder. Then together, they ascended a stair of rough wooden planks to a door that opened into a low roofed smithy. The dwarf locked the door behind them and, taking the elf by the elbow, led him quickly through the close, hot darkness, winding amongst a wilderness of anvils and bellows, piles of scrap iron, and stacks of finished products ranging from horseshoes to delicately wrought railings destined to grace the balcony of some noblewoman’s sitting room. A fire roared somewhere deep within the smithy, visible only as a wan red glow reflecting off the gently sloping ceiling. An intermittent hammer clanged out an awkward rhythm.

“Who is that?” the elf asked. “You’ve someone working today?”

“That’s just Gimzig,” the dwarf answered with annoyed scowl. “Gimzig!” he shouted. The hammer continued its weird cadence.

“Gimzig!” the dwarf roared.

The hammer ceased, and a few moments later a squat figure shuffled out of the shadows. Cael staggered back, covering his nose with his sleeve and coughing.

The figure was shorter even than the dwarf, lighter boned, his movements quick and deerlike. The lower half of his face was covered with a thick mat of beard that was once white, as evidenced by the snowy fringe around the lips, but was now black with soot and the gods only knew what else. The upper half of his face was nearly hidden by a pair of billowing eyebrows, colored much like his beard, but tending towards gray rather than black, which hung sheepdog-like over his face. His eyes, twinkling with merriment, appeared and disappeared behind them with each movement of his head. The top of his head was quite bald, with only a thin halo of hair standing straight up from his scalp, as though he had been frightened as a baby and never recovered.

As he appeared from the shadows, he wiped his grimy hands across the breast of the filthy apron dangling around from his neck. His beard split into a wide toothy grin at the sight of the dwarf and his companion.

“Reorx’s bones, Gimzig!” the dwarf exclaimed as he covered his nose with a handkerchief. “You smell like a hive of gully dwarves. Don’t you ever bathe?”

“OfcourseldowhentheneedarisesalthoughlatelythethoughthasescapedmeIadmit,” the gnome answered in one breath.

Hammerfell rolled his eyes and gestured for the gnome to slow down.

“Oh. I have been working,” the gnome enunciated as carefully as he could, “on some improvements to various time-saving devices. Would you like to see them?”

As a race, the gnomes of Krynn were a curious lot. First and foremost, they were inventors-of machines, devices, appliances, and bureaucracies, none of which ever worked as originally designed. They lived furiously busy lives, always planning, devising, creating, inventing, repairing, and reinventing their (more often than not) faulty first, second, third, ad infinitum, designs. Even their speech was rapid. To the unfamiliar, it sounded like a different language, but they simply spoke the common tongue at eight or nine times the rate of human speech. What was more, two or more gnomes could talk at once and understand each other perfectly. Gimzig had been a resident of Palanthas for approximately eighty-five years (like dwarves and elves, the gnomes were a long-lived race), and because of his more frequent dealings with humans, he had learned to slow his speech to a more intelligible rate. Because of this, whenever he met gnomes from his homeland of Mount Nevermind, they thought him slow and dull-witted.

The gnome continued, “Of course you are one to talk, being a dwarf after all. Dwarves are notorious for their bathing habits or lack thereof. I have often considered conducting a study to determine exactly how often… oh! say, Cael tell me how did the self-extending portable pocket curtain rod work?”

“Perfectly,” the elf answered through his sleeve. “I am so glad. I had some concerns about it, because the last three versions displayed some rather remarkable projectile tendencies.”

“What’s this?” the dwarf asked, looking from one to the other. “You’ve been using his gnomish contraptions? For what? Certainly not to hang your clothes.”

“My inventions have multiple uses that-” the gnome began to protest.

Kharzog cut him off. “Enough! I don’t want to hear it. Are you or are you not coming to the Spring Dawning festival? I have a place on the stage. I don’t want to be late.”

“Yesofcoursejustamomentletmegetmythings,” Gimzig said as he hurried away.

“You aren’t coming with me smelling like that!” the dwarf shouted after him.

The gnome’s voice floated back to them from the darkness. “Of course not. Just let me step into my newest invention, a speed-washing bathtub. The water is superheated and pushed through nozzles at a high velocity in order to yeeeeoooowwwwwwwww!”

A cloud of steam boiled from the back of the smithy, carrying with it an odor of boiled meat. Cael staggered away, gorge rising in his throat. The dwarf swore a string of curses.

“Gimzig, you dolt, are you still alive?” he shouted.

After a few moments, a voice answered him from the darkness. “Yes… um… maybe you had better go without me.”

“Do you need aid?”

“No I think not. Perhaps a little butter.”

“I haven’t got any butter, you doorknob!” the dwarf cursed. He grabbed the elf and led him through a door that brought them under a low shed. Cael ducked under the eaves and followed his companion into the narrow alley beyond.

“Why must Gimzig always smell like a dung heap?” Cael asked.

“He spends most of his time in the sewers.”

“But why?”

“You’re asking me?” Kharzog snorted. “Why does a gnome do anything? Whole books have been written about it, mostly by other gnomes. Hurry up. We’ll miss everything.”

They turned a corner, entering an alley slightly wider than the one they’d just left. A few people hurried along ahead of them, one bearing a picnic basket, another a jug of wine big enough to souse a small army.

Despite his greater stride, the elf began to fall behind his dwarven companion. “How is your limp?” Kharzog asked sarcastically of his struggling companion.

“Better. I hardly think about it now,” Cael answered. His staff beat a rapid pace on the slick stones of the alley.

The dwarf scowled. “You know how I feel about that,” he said.

“It keeps the fingers in my rings,” the elf said with a laugh.

“And how does your shalifi, Master Verrocchio, feel about it?” Kharzog asked angrily. Without waiting for a response, he continued, “You know how I feel about such deception, not to mention your profession. Your master would be ashamed if he were alive.”

“He is alive, somewhere,” Cael answered grimly. It was obvious that he had no desire to continue the conversation. Wagging his beard in frustration, the dwarf continued on his way.

They drew near the end of the alley. Revelers thronged the street beyond, some of them spilling into the alley, where they danced in small groups to the beat of a fife and drum corps. The dwarf elbowed a way through them and forced his way into the street. “By my father’s black beard, this is the largest crowd I’ve seen in ten lustrums,” he shouted above the noise. All around them, people were dancing in the street. The air was filled with the competing sounds of bands, voices raised in song, laughter, and shouting. Noisemakers, crackers, and whistles frightened dogs and small children and sent them barking, howling, or screaming through the crowds. All the while, the people danced, huge masses of them dancing together, so that all that could be seen were their heads or hats going up and down. There was no getting through them. They filled all of Horizon Road, so that the elf and dwarf were forced to detour down sidestreets and alleys.

All along their way, people tried to pull them aside in a friendly fashion, pushing flagons of wine and foamy ale into their hands. “We want to drink with a dwarf!” they shouted stupidly.

“Out of my way, you drunken fools,” the old dwarf laughed, as he pushed his way through them. He’d lived in Palanthas all his life, and he was used to the Palanthians’ insensitivity to “outsiders,” meaning any nonhuman, or for that matter any human not from Palanthas. It wasn’t that they were mean-spirited. They just didn’t know any better. “We have business in the Old City,” he shouted when they plucked at his sleeves.

The elf fared no better, and perhaps worse, as curious women clung to his elbows and invited him to a quiet place for a private word. He’d gracefully dislodge them, almost reluctantly, for he knew the old dwarf, despite the smile in his beard, was impatient to get to the Great Plaza. Meanwhile, Cael resisted his natural inclination to relieve those he met of their superfluous wealth, but only to spare himself the dwarfs ire.

Palanthas was built upon a design meant to reflect the perfection of the heavenly spheres. In the center of the city lay the Great Plaza-a vast marble courtyard surrounded by the city’s most important buildings, including the Lord’s Palace, the Courthouse, and the barracks of the City Guard. Roads led out from the Great Plaza like the spokes of a wheel, while secondary roads were laid in concentric circles, spreading like ripples in a pool. All roads from the Great Plaza led outward.

Not long after the city was founded, a great wall was built around it, and over the years it was modified and improved until it was reckoned one of the architectural marvels of all Krynn. Where the roads passed through the wall, there stood seven mighty gates, with gate towers rising over three hundred feet above the streets of the city.

The wall was, in fact, two walls, one inside the other, with a deep muddy trench between them. It ran in a great circle, and everything within the wall was called the Old City. All the oldest and wealthiest families of Palanthas lived within the Old City, the Great Library was built here, as was the now-vanished Tower of High Sorcery. All that remained of the ancient tower was a strange pool surrounded by a small forest of magical trees-the Shoikan Grove. In the Old City also stood the Temple of Paladine, as well as the more recently constructed Shrine of Takhisis.

However, the original city planners had failed to appreciate how large and important Palanthas would grow to become. As the city outgrew its first wall and spread outward, houses and businesses began to fill up the valley between the surrounding hills and to dot their slopes. The city outside the first wall was called New City, though much of it was as old or older than many of the buildings in the Old City. In New City could be found the main markets, as well as the Old Temple District and the University. Here also lay The Dwarven Spring, the ancient public house belonging to one of the oldest families of Palanthas-the Hammerfell dwarves.

This day, the day of the Spring Dawning Festival, the streets of New City were packed with people from all over Krynn. They had come by way of the seven roads leading into the city, but most had traveled the Knight’s High Road-the only overland passage through the Vingaard Mountains, an impregnable natural barrier that surrounded the city and protected it from the outside world. A great many more had arrived by ship, finding port in the calm waters of the Bay of Branchala. They filled Palanthas’ inns and public houses, wine shops and streets. Those who couldn’t find lodging camped in the parks and plazas, any place where a tent could be pitched or a blanket spread. Coins of steel and silver fairly rained into the merchants’ pockets. Vendors packed the city’s markets with their stalls like so many fishermen along a pier, casting their lines into the surf of humanity rolling along their shores. Hundreds of wagonloads of provisions flowed into the Merchandising District every morning, only to flow out again by midday to fill orders arriving from the city’s inns. Only the bakers complained, for they were kept elbow deep in dough morning, noon, and night.

The Spring Dawning Festival was also one of the few times of the year when the Knights of Takhisis relaxed their control over the city’s traffic. Flow into and out of the Old City was usually carefully watched at the seven gates, but on the day of the Spring Dawning Festival, when many thousands were crowding their way to the Great Plaza, not even the formidable Dark Knights could track every person passing through. Over thirty years had passed since the Dark Knights had wrested the city from the hands of the Knights of Solamnia, but the city continued to prosper. Indeed, some people thought business prospered because of the Knights. It seemed their greatest concern was maintaining an iron-fisted rule over the city. Though the Knights’ laws were more strict than any the city had ever known, and their punishments more ruthless than civilized folk were used to seeing, there were not a few citizens who were glad of it. The level of lawlessness was at an all-time low. The city’s jails were filled, and the ancient and seemingly untouchable Thieves’ Guild had been destroyed. In the last ten years, the Spring Dawning Festival had grown from a civilized celebration to a veritable carnival.

Although the Knights maintained a show of force at the seven gates, this day. they did more gawking than guarding. The Spring Dawning Festival was a holiday for them as well. Many looked forward to a magnificent feast to be held that evening in their barracks’ mess halls, while their officers prepared for the social functions to be held throughout the night in the homes of nobles or aboard yachts anchored in the bay. All through the day, discipline was relaxed for one and all. Officers and soldiers laughed and joked among themselves as they lounged around the gates, leaning on their pikes, pointing out colorful characters in the crowd or sneaking cups of wine behind their shields. They kept only a casual watch for weapons and other contraband. The strict policy of checking identification papers was relaxed.

Cael and his dwarven companion eventually found themselves squeezed into the crush at the Horizon Road Gate. Cael’s leg had tired him a bit, so his coppery hair clung damply to his pale flushed face, but the old gray-bearded dwarf fairly panted. His bucket of beer was empty, and his dwarven patience was as thin as the hairs covering his flushed pate. He cursed and shoved, trying in vain to hurry the crowd through the gate. While they waited, a tremendous boom shook the buildings, and looking up, they saw beyond the city walls a fireball hanging in the sky.

“Reorx’s beard! We’re late! That’s the signal for the joust,” the dwarf snarled. As though to reinforce his words, a fanfare of trumpets floated to them on the fine spring breeze. A second fireball exploded in the sky, shaking them to their bones, but a third, appearing as a point of light streaking up from the center of the city, sputtered and failed.

“Look at that!” someone behind them commented. Turning, they saw a small group of young men and women, all dressed in robes of red, pointing at the failed fireworks. “It is as I said,” one hissed. They huddled together, whispering.

Cael looked at the old dwarf with a puzzled expression.

“Magic,” the dwarf spat. “Not to be trusted, I always said, and now I’m proved right. There’s a rumor that magic is failing, that magicians’ spells and incantations are losing their power. And it not thirty years since the new magic was discovered after the old spells ceased to work, after Chaos stole the moons of magic. Good riddance, I say. They’d do better to use real gnomish fireworks, dangerous as they may be.” He snorted, waving his hand at the failed fireball’s pitiful smear of oily smoke now shredding in the breeze.

They inched their way toward the gate, passing finally beneath its massive arch into a ‘short roofed passage between the walls. It was pleasantly cool and dark after the warm spring sun and the close air of New City’s streets and alleys. However, the drums of a fife corps thundered within it, while the dancers jumped up and down like pistons in a gnomish engine. People grabbed the dwarf by the shoulders and dragged him into their dance, and in the crush Cael lost sight of his companion, though he was able to track the dwarf’s progress by the occasional bellowing curse heard above the pounding of the drums. However, it was not long before he was himself caught up by the dancers and dragged into the fray. He was jostled, pummeled, pinched, pressed, elbowed, poked, and finally spun like a chip on the flood out the other end of the tunnel into the open air of the Old City. Somehow, he’d managed to keep hold of his staff. The old dwarf was nowhere to be seen.

“You there! Hey you!” a voice shouted. Looking around, Cael spotted a contingent of Knights of Takhisis standing in the shadow of the gate’s southern tower. One Knight motioned for the elf to approach. Cael slowly hobbled through the streams of people. As he neared, the Knight who had hailed him winked. “Come over here,” he said.

“May I be of service, Sir Garrud?” Cael asked of the winking Knight.

“I thought that was you, Cael,” the Knight said. “Going to the party?”

“Eventually,” the elf answered as he watched for his companion.

“Here, try a little of this, “ the Knight said. He proffered a small brown bottle behind his shield. Grinning, Cael stooped, took the bottle and tilted it to his lips. Immediately, a fine silver mist erupted from his lips, filled the air with a potent odor of pure alcohol.

“Dwarf spirits,” the Knight laughed. “The best.”

“Indeed,” Cael gasped.

“What’s all this then?” shouted a voice behind them. The old dwarf appeared from the crowd. “Cael! So here you are. Confounded idiots! I thought they’d be the death of me.” He stopped beside his friend and, planting his heavy dwarf boots wide apart, glared up at the Knight.

“You, what are you up to?” the dwarf demanded of Sir Garrud. “Why pick Cael out of the crowd? It’s because he is an elf, isn’t it? I suppose you’ll be wanting to see my papers next. Do you know who I am?” he said, wagging his finger at the Knight’s nose.

“We have orders to arrest someone fitting Cael’s description, Master Hammerfell,” the Knight said sternly. “Fortunately, his documents are in order. I’m glad of it. I wouldn’t want to have to arrest an old friend. Cael and I are old friends, aren’t we Cael?

“Friends we are,” the elf smiled tolerantly.

“Yes, yes. That’s all good and well,” the dwarf growled. “If you are finished with him I’d like to go. We have a place on stage for the joust and the unveiling.”

“You’re already late. The joust has begun,” Sir Garrud said as he clapped Cael on the back, sending the chuckling elf and the old dwarf, sputtering with curses, on their way.