Megistal backed away, shaking his head. Sigamon summoned all his energy and concentrated on his spell. The dwarf’s resistance was incredible. He should have been instantly thrown out past the ledge, but instead it was all Sigamon could do to float him slowly toward the drop. As he concentrated with all his will, someone tugged at his robe.
“Excuse me,” a high-pitched voice said. “Your pot has fallen over in the fire.”
The spell snapped, the dwarf clattered to the ground, and Sigamon sagged, panting and sweating. Beside him stood a small person, no taller than his hip, gazing up with excited, happy eyes.
“A … kender,” Sigamon panted. “A … blasted … kender!”
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Shill.”
Megistal stared at the kender, then glanced up and shouted, “Sigamon! Watch out!”
Before the white-robe could react, something very solid and strong crashed into him, doubling him over and carrying him backward. Arms as thick as oak branches and as hard as quarried stone circled him, squeezing the breath from his lungs. The tall mage was carried backward a dozen feet, then lifted high, spun around, and thrown to the ground. Before he could move, the dwarf was on him, pinning his arms behind his back. Powerful fingers locked themselves in the sparse hair behind his bald pate, lifted his head, and slammed it down.
Sigamon passed out.
Amazed and fascinated, Megistal watched the dwarf stand away from the wizard and rub his hands together as though to wash away filth.
Damon turned to the third wizard. “I suppose I’ll have to deal with you, too,” he said.
“I can hardly let this go unresolved.” Megistal shrugged, almost apologetically. “But tell me, why aren’t you dead? You should be dead. Those spells were very powerful.”
“Spells,” Damon sneered. “Magic. I don’t like magic.”
“Well, whether you like it or not, I don’t understand how you managed to resist it as you did. Didn’t their spells hurt you?”
“They hurt,” Damon growled. “Like nothing I’ve ever felt, they hurt. But they weren’t actually … real. They were just magic.”
“Magic is real!” Megistal protested. “Don’t you know that? Magic can … Here, I’ll show you.” He muttered a few syllables and raised his hand. Nearby, the brush lean-to shivered, grew, and became a tall stone tower. Megistal pointed at it. “What do you see there?”
“Magic,” Damon admitted. “I see a tower … and a brush shelter. The tower is just an illusion.”
“You’re right.” The mage nodded. He snapped his fingers, and the tower disappeared. “That was only illusion, but this isn’t.” Again he spoke words, and the brush shelter raised itself from the ground, soared like a bird high overhead, and settled to earth again several hundred yards away. “That was no illusion,” Megistal said. “That was true movement.”
“I guess it was,” Damon admitted. “It was still magic, though. And magic is something we don’t want in Kal-Thax. Are you going to leave?”
“Fascinating,” the wizard muttered. “A mixture of acceptance and disbelief, of realization and revulsion, and under it all, just plain stubbornness. Are you one of a kind, or are all dwarves like you?”
“I don’t know,” Damon growled. “Now, get out of Kal-Thax!”
“Well, I’ve enjoyed talking to you,” the wizard said. “You have taught me something that I didn’t know. And I really don’t blame you about Tantas and Sigamon. Tantas is good riddance, as far as I’m concerned, and Sigamon deserved what he got. I’m really sorry that I must … Mordes motem! Chapak!”
Caught completely off-guard, Damon felt himself lifted and flung toward the cliff.
“Surprise defeats stubbornness,” Megistal said to himself questioningly. Then something hummed behind him, and a fist-sized stone bounced off the back of his head. The wizard sighed, his knees buckled, and he sagged to the ground. At the very lip of the cliff, Damon dropped, tumbled, and went over, clawing and struggling. For a moment he clung to the edge; then a small, strong hand grasped his wrist, and an irate voice snapped, “Well, don’t just dangle! Climb!”
With assistance, Damon pulled himself to safety, got to his knees, and looked directly into the wide-set eyes of Willow Summercloud.
“You!” he gasped.
“You might at least say thanks,” she pointed out. “If I hadn’t popped that man with a sling-stone, you’d be …”
“Thanks,” he said, getting to his feet.
At the edge of the cliff, the little kender teetered precariously, looking down. “Wow!” she shrilled. “That was pretty close. Aren’t you glad I brought my dwarf? This is …” She glanced around. “Oh, do you two already know each other?”
Damon peered at the fallen Megistal curiously. The man had tried to kill him, that was certain. But just in that instant, the dwarf had sensed a reluctance, as though the wizard was not trying nearly as hard as he might.
8
The Lorekeeper’s Omen
Tag Salan knew, within minutes of entering the crevice under Sheercliff, that he had found what they came to find—the origin of the fog-thing that had wiped out three villages.
The stone-fall on the slope outside the crevice had not been delved from outside. It had been pushed out from within by something very powerful. And there were still marks in the crushed gravel made by the thing’s feet.
Tag rolled tight balls of grass around the ends of sticks, wrapped them with burr-vines, and wove them tight. The resulting bundle of torches—which some dwarves called Theiwar lamps—would give no great light, but each small flame would last for a while. With his first light ignited, Tag drew his blade and entered the dark hole.
The tall, narrow tunnel wound its way into the cliff, turning here and there where scour and erosion had opened faults, but generally going westward and down, deeper and deeper into the stone, hundreds of feet below the mesa. Along most of its length the crevice was no more than a sequence of natural, downward erosion channels, rarely more than a few yards wide, but often so tall that Tag could not see the ceiling. In some places the channels plunged away into dark nothingness both above and below, forcing him to find precarious paths across blind abysses—or to make his own paths. Only where the natural openings were very narrow did he find evidence that something had passed this way. In several such places, stone had been broken away to make the opening broad enough to accommodate something that was at least ten feet wide. In one such place he paused to taste the raw stone of the expanded opening. It was freshly exposed, not more than a month or two at most.
It was slow going, but Tag kept at it. His Theiwar ancestors had been cliff-dwellers who lived in the natural caverns high on sheer mountainsides, and negotiating perilous crevices was as natural to him as working mine shafts to a Daergar, or delving to a Daewar.
By the time the tunnel changed, he could only guess at where he was, but he knew he was at least half a mile into the stone, and many hundreds of feet below its surface.
He barely glimpsed the change in the tunnel before his most recent torch flickered out, and he had to kindle another. But when he had light again, his eyes widened. The erosion channels ended abruptly at a wall of far harder stone, and in this wall was a perfectly round opening, and beyond the opening a perfectly round tunnel angling upward. He estimated the hole to be fifteen feet across.
Stepping into it, he found an obstacle—an ancient, eroded plug of stone that had worn away with the passing of time and fallen inward. It lay now in two pieces, split down the middle, and the break tasted fresh. Whatever had come through here had been blocked by the fallen “gate” and had broken it and gone over it.
Although the break was fresh, the surfaces of the gate were immensely old—as old, Tag guessed, as the mountains themselves. The sides of the tunnel were equally old, though exquisitely delved. They were perfectly smooth, without so much as a tool mark anywhere to indicate how such a thing had been created. The only flaw in the tunnel was a ragged trough running along the bottom of it,
crusted with limestone. Water had run here in the past—slowly, but for a very long time. Tag looked around at the mystery and shuddered. It was as though the gods themselves might have made this tunnel, long before there was anybody else around to do it.
Fascinated, he went on, climbing steadily as he followed the strange hole. Upward and onward, the tunnel was as straight as a drawn cable. A quarter mile, then another quarter mile, and suddenly he was at its end. Here another stone gate had eroded and fallen, had lain for untold centuries, then had been smashed aside by something very large and very strong.
Beyond the crushed gate was a large vaulted area, a sphere of glistening, shaped stone except for its floor, where limestone had crusted over the granite, filling a fourth of the cavern. Near its center, the floor had been broken away. Odd bits of broken limestone were scattered about, encircling a jagged ridge of broken stone like a small volcanic ring.
Tag approached, held his torch high, looked into the core, and whistled. This was where the thing had come from. Within the limestone was a perfect imprint of a great, curled body. He could see the clear impression of a huge, taloned foot. Part of the deep concavity where a big haunch had lain blended into the larger concavity where its body had been molded in limestone. Its head—he could see few details, except that its jaws were very large and contained a lot of sharp teeth—had been nestled on one forearm or wing, and its long, sinuous tail had been curled around it.
“It slept here,” he told himself. “It slept here, and the stone grew around it. Then it woke up.”
For a while he searched, but there was nothing more to see. Whatever the thing was, it had been alone. The cavern was entirely empty, and the only way out was the way he had come. With his last two torches, Tag Salan retraced a mile or more of passages, finally emerging into the open air where he had started. The sun was over the escarpment. More than half the day had passed. He followed the wall northward to where Damon Omenborn had made his climb, and started up. He had noticed that the upper level of the cliff was sheer, smooth stone. Damon would have had to cut holds there. Tag could use the same holds.
Atop Sheercliff he found his Hylar friend—and much more. Damon was no longer alone. In addition to a dead wizard and two live ones, he had acquired a very pretty dwarven girl and what could only be a female kender. The small creature was the first to notice Tag’s approach. She stared, then ran to meet him.
“Goodness!” she said. “Another dwarf! But you missed all the fun. There is no more magic being done here right now. I’m Shill. Well, actually I’m Shillitec Medina Quickfoot, but you can call me Shill. And I guess you’re Tag. Damon said you’d be along directly. Are you looking for Damon? He’s right over there with Willow—she’s my dwarf—packing mirrors and things. He has already packed the wizards, see?”
She pointed, and Tag stared. Two men, one rather badly bruised, lay side by side, thoroughly bound hand and foot. Their mouths were covered with gags. A third man lay sprawled nearby, obviously dead.
At a pile of packs and bundles, Damon Omenborn glanced around, stood, and turned. The girl with him also straightened, glaring at the newcomer.
“Don’t remove those people’s gags,” Damon warned. “They’re magic-makers, and their mouths are their main problem.” He came forward, looked Tag over, and asked, “What did you find?”
“I found its nest,” the Theiwar said. “Or its bed. That thing was down there a long time before it woke up.”
“Any others like it?”
“Only the one. Somebody had sealed it into a cave, long enough ago for a half-mile of mountain and several feet of limestone to grow around it. What’s been going on here?”
“Wizardry,” Damon snapped, his eyes narrowing. “Those three have been up here surveying, if you can believe that. They intended to occupy this plateau and build some kind of magic place on it. A tower of sorcery. But I’ve put an end to that. I invited them to leave, but they chose to fight. I wish you’d been here. I could have used a little help.”
The dwarf girl had approached, and now she snapped, “You had help, in case you’ve forgotten! If it hadn’t been for me, you’d be dead now.”
“Sorry.” Damon nodded. “Yes, I had help. Tag, this is Willow Summercloud. She’s from Windhollow, and …”
“I remember,” Tag grinned, bowing slightly.
“… and she followed us when we came west.”
“I brought her here,” the kender girl chirped. “She had never ridden a bird before, but she has now. Cawe wanted someone to do something about these wizards, so we went looking for a dwarf, and she was the first one we found. Do you two know that you both have scorched beards?”
“What do we do with the wizards?” Tag asked Damon.
“I don’t really know, but we can’t leave them here. They’d just start building towers again.”
Tag drew his short sword. “No problem,” he said. “I’ll just cut their throats.”
The wizard in the dirty robes looked as though he were about to faint, but the nearest wizard, a bearded man with buckskin breeches and a red strap, struggled and strained at his bonds, his muffled voice audible behind his gag.
“He wants to talk,” the little kender said.
“Of course he does,” Damon sneered. “He wants to say a spell.”
The wizard shook his head urgently, trying again to speak. Damon squatted beside him. “You have something important to say?”
The man nodded.
“No spells?” Damon demanded.
The man shook his head earnestly.
Damon thought it over, then beckoned to Tag. “Remove his gag,” he said. “But stay at his side, and if he says one word … one single word … that you don’t understand, kill him.”
With the gag removed, Megistal cleared his throat, then told Damon, “It won’t do you any good to kill us. With Tantas dead, Sigamon and I cannot continue our project. It requires three.”
“Then there will be no tower?” Damon asked.
“Oh, there will be a tower,” the man said. “Others are following us. They’ll finish the project, whether we’re here or not.”
“Like rust they will,” Damon growled. “Thorbardin will see to that.”
“You can’t stop the Orders of High Sorcery.” Megistal sighed.
“We can certainly try. And with all your survey stakes removed …”
“It makes no difference now. We have completed the testing of the stones, and the Stone of Threes is planted at the center point. All that remains to lay the foundation perimeters for the tower is the testing of mirrors. The others will find the Stone of Threes and complete the tests. Then building will begin, and nothing you or all the dwarves of this land can do will stop them.”
“Tell me where the Stone of Threes is,” Damon growled.
“No.” Megistal lowered his eyes. “Kill me if you will, but I won’t tell you that.”
The kender girl stood beside Damon. She reached into the pouch at her belt and withdrew a bauble. “Is this it?” she asked.
“Put that back!” the wizard gasped, his eyes bulging in disbelief. “That isn’t yours, you little … purloiner!”
Abruptly, Tag’s blade went across the wizard’s exposed throat, and Damon had to grab quickly to stop the cut. “Wait!” he said. “What are you doing?”
“He said a word I don’t understand,” Tag explained, shrugging.
“It just means ‘thief,’ ” Damon growled. Turning, he grabbed the bauble from the kender’s hand and looked at it. It was an oval gemstone, a polished thing of many facets. Its color seemed to change constantly as he turned it in the sunlight, shifting from clear to milky white, to various shades of red, to gray, to inky black.
“I’d say, offhand, that this is the Stone of Threes,” the dwarf said. “What’s it for?”
“Put it back!” Megistal shouted. “You don’t know what you’re doing! There are only seven of those. One for each Tower of High Sorcery. Without it … Without all seven towe
rs, magic will never be properly balanced!”
“Tough,” Damon mused. Casually, he held the changing gem to the light, then tasted it with his tongue. His nose wrinkled in disgust. The thing didn’t taste like a normal, natural gem. It tasted terrible.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Megistal demanded.
“I’m putting you out of the tower business.” Damon stood, put the gem into his own belt pouch, and sealed the flap.
“Hey!” the kender chirped, “that’s mine! I found it!”
“Do we kill them now?” Tag asked Damon, replacing the wizard’s gag.
“No.” Damon hesitated. “We probably should, but … no. Maybe they will spread the word that wizards don’t belong here.”
“What are we going to do with them?”
“Leave them,” Damon urged. “By the time they get loose, we’ll be well away from here.” He turned to Megistal. “Be grateful for your life, human,” he said. “Just remember, you have been ordered out of Kal-Thax. I suggest you leave as soon as you can move.”
While the leaders of the thanes of Thorbardin—meeting in extraordinary session on a cleared stone shelf above the Daebardin docks—got down to the business of hearing the reports of Gran Stonemill and Mace Hammerstand, Quill Runebrand wandered around the area like a small, dark cloud. Head down and hands clasped behind him, he stalked here and there muttering to himself, sometimes causing people to dodge aside to keep from being bumped into.
Deep in concentration, he tried to assemble his thoughts in practical, logical order, as any good dwarf might do when something is bothering him. But it seemed to do no good. Oh, there were things bothering Quill, all right. He wasn’t happy about the informal meeting of the council. Quill loved pomp and ceremony, and the chieftains had just dispensed with all of that and gone straight to business.
The business of the killing thing that had launched itself upon Kal-Thax worried him, too. It was frightening and unsettling that there could be such a creature, right here in the mountains of the dwarven clans. What was it? Where did it come from? Were there others like it out there somewhere? And what was Damon Omenborn thinking of to go off on some wild mission to search for such a thing’s nest? Damon Omenborn was to be the “father of kings,” if there was anything to the old stories about his birth. Now he was out there in the wild, somewhere, almost as though he were inviting his own doom.
Hammer and Axe Page 10