by Doug Niles
When the hundredth stroke was completed, Willim put down his blade and returned to the vial containing the amanita powder, which had become hot. Long years of torture had destroyed the nerves in his stubby fingers, so he picked up the glass container without discomfort. Indeed, the faint whiff of burned flesh smelled pleasant in his nostrils.
He shook the vial, pleased to see the powder was suspended in the air within the container, swirling as a murky—and very lethal—gas. He set the vial on a shelf beside a wide variety of similar containers. Some of them contained liquids, while others appeared empty—an appearance belied by the dwarf wizard’s keen senses; his magical vision knew the lurking toxin or enchantment was masked by the clean air in the apparently-empty bottles.
For a moment Willim the Black allowed himself the luxury of relaxation. He breathed in his sulfurous air, expelling the warmth in an easy sigh while he strolled to the edge of the deep chasm, the pit where Gorathian lurked. He could feel the beast down there, waiting, hungry as always. In his mind’s eye, the wizard envisioned the creature’s powerful coils, its grotesque body and burning, hate-filled eyes. As if sensing his thoughts, Gorathian stirred, a billow of warmth, tinged with black smoke, rising from the depths.
“He fears me, you know,” he murmured as if Gorathian could understand his words. Or perhaps the beast did; at least, the sound of the wizard’s voice provoked a warm surge of energy, a glow of liquid fire that brightened the interior of the crevasse, casting a pale mirror of that shape on the lofty ceiling of the chamber once destined to be the council hall of the thanes.
“That one-eyed fool … he even named me in one of his edicts!” Willim actually giggled as he recalled his amusement.
On one of his many magical journeys into Norbardin, he had spotted the king’s new edicts. Moving invisibly, his flesh rendered into a gaseous form so he would not have to endure any physical contact, the black-robed wizard had traveled the streets and alleys and even the shops and homes of the great underground city. The dwarves appeared busy as ever, he had observed, but to him the masses also looked even more chagrined and depressed than ever before. Most walked with their heads down, avoiding contact with each other and studiously avoiding the swaggering enforcers, mostly Hylar and Daergar, who wandered about in groups seemingly everywhere, seeking any violations of the king’s increasingly long list of proscriptions and prohibitions.
Willim had been surprised to observe very few females in public, and those he observed were always escorted by a male and seemed in an unusual hurry to reach their destinations. There were none of the bands of young dwarf maids, formerly ubiquitous, who used to laugh and carouse together on the streets.
When, finally, the wizard had drifted up to the edicts posted in the city’s great central plaza, he had understood why the women and girls had become scarce. And he had read with delight that the king had specifically listed Willim the Black as a dangerous outlaw.
“If only he knew how dangerous.” The mage chuckled. Imagine if the king had known the wizard’s laboratory was right under his city, in the very grand chamber that had been excavated by order of the previous king! Oh, the irony of it all!
“I could kill him today if I wanted to,” the wizard continued, speaking aloud. “Perhaps he knows that. Perhaps that is why he names me in his edict—because he fears me, as he should.”
He giggled again, an oddly high-pitched sound emitting from his whiskered face with its sewn-shut eye sockets pinched like scars. “But I will not kill him. Certainly not yet. No, I have something special in mind for the one-eyed king. He will learn—they all will learn—in due time.”
Willim’s meditations were abruptly interrupted as magic shimmered in the upper alcove of the great chamber. It ws a spell of teleportation, but the wizard immediately realized there was no threat here. Instead, the door to his laboratory opened. Two of his apprentices returned from their hunting expedition, prodding a miserable-looking gully dwarf before them.
The mage sniffed disdainfully. A gully dwarf wasn’t much of a prize. For a moment Willim thought about Gorathian, ever hungry, ever burning, and he thought he ought to toss the empty-headed gully dwarf right into the chasm.
Then he sighed. Even gully dwarves could be useful, he knew, remembering several new potions he needed to have tested. And his Aghar cage was currently empty, the last hapless captive having been awarded to the beast several cycles earlier.
“Put him in the cage,” the black-robed wizard commanded. Already he was making a new plan, concocting an experimental recipe. “I will have something for him to do very soon.”
Without another look at their shivering captive, who gaped in awe at his new surroundings as his captors thrust him into a vacant cage, Willim returned to his workbench, warmed another section of the stone slab, and got to work with his ingredients and his plans.
SIX
A BROTHER’S BLOOD
This could be bigger than the Haxx Delving!” Brandon declared, referring to one of the famous long-standing gold mines in the Kayolin caverns. “Let them try to ignore the Bluestone clan once we start to produce that gold!”
He and his brother were striding upward through the long dark tunnels they had so recently explored. The lamp, with the last bit of their carefully conserved oil, was burning low, but it still offered enough light that they could make good time as they wended their way back to the city.
The connecting passages to the Zhaban Delving were just ahead when the elder dwarf stopped and looked at his brother seriously.
“Remember, Brandon,” Nailer said solemnly. “We haven’t brought an ingot of gold out of this place yet. We haven’t even filed our claim in the king’s court.”
“Governor’s court, you mean,” Brandon corrected. “The only true dwarf king dwells in Thorbardin.”
Nailer chuckled grimly. “Well, that’s what tradition says. But if Regar Smashfingers wants to call himself the King of Kayolin, I suggest you don’t argue the point with him while we’re trying to establish our claim.”
“Right,” the younger dwarf agreed. “But between you and me, he’s claimed more than his due.”
“You’ll get no argument from me,” Nailer declared. “But you must be discreet with such opinions.”
“By Reorx, Nail!” Brandon protested. “This is the best thing that’s happened to our clan since … well, since before the Cataclysm! We’ve just changed a run of bad luck that’s lasted four hundred years! I have a right to be excited.”
“Sure you do. I am too, whether you want to believe that or not. I keep picturing father’s face when I tell him we’ve discovered enough wealth to get the Bluestones a seat on the Kayolin council again. Just between you and me, there’s nothing I’d like better than to make that old dwarf proud.”
Brandon felt a flush of shame. He’d been thinking about dazzling the dwarf maids by wearing jeweled rings, ornate platinum breastplates, and exotic feathered plumes on his steel helmet. He had already mapped out the floor plan of the new house he was going to commission, a dwelling that would be excavated from the virgin bedrock of the Garnet range. The parties he would host! The cream of Kayolin society would rub elbows with him!
But Nailer was right. Their discovery, a new delving of tremendous prospective value, meant much more than mere trivial wealth. It would provide for the restoration of one of the great clans of Kayolin’s history. The Bluestones had produced great miners, generals, even a governor, in the long centuries before the Cataclysm. The dwarf nation in the Garnet range had been mostly immune to that violent act of cosmic revenge, but when the gods hurled the mountain down upon Krynn, there had been several cave-ins and collapses in Kayolin. The most destructive of those had destroyed the Bluestone Delving, and in that instant the clan had been reduced to a minor player in the nation’s power and politics.
For more than four hundred years, the Bluestones had struggled along, managing small mines, branching into trade and manufacturing, but never attaining a status that ga
ve them a regular presence at court. Always they were plagued by ill fortune: a mine tapped into a submountain aquifer, drowning the workers and submerging a small treasure in silver ore; a marriage that had produced two impotent offspring, narrowing the line to Brandon’s father’s and one distant cousin’s families. One enterprising great uncle had thought to display a captured ogre for the edification of Garnet Thax’s citizenry and had been unlucky enough to use cast-iron brackets, rather than steel, to contain the beast. Although the only fatal casualty of the incident had been the uncle himself, it had been a spectacularly public example of House Bluestone’s ill-starred history.
Other newcomers, epitomized by the wealthy and ruthless Heelspur clan, had long eclipsed the Bluestones. A small smelting venture had practically bankrupted Brandon’s father, Garren Bluestone, when the Heelspurs had erected a larger and more modern factory on the same level of the undercity. With the claim that Brandon and Nailer Bluestone intended to file in the governor’s court, that long decline would be reversed.
“Do you think the new mine might be as rich as the Third Delve?” asked the younger brother, remembering the tales of the mine that had brought the Bluestone family its first epoch of glory, some seven hundred years earlier. Indeed, it had been a bedrock strata of sapphire-infused rock that had caused their ancestors to adopt Bluestone as the family name.
“How in Reorx’s name should I know?’ Nailer snapped. But then he paused to consider the question and shrugged. “Maybe. It just might be, you know!”
“Yes, I know!” Brandon exulted. “Just imagine it! We could start a whole new house!”
“And what’s wrong with the House of Bluestone?” demanded the elder, glowering.
“Well, nothing.” Brandon cheerfully waved away his brother’s concern. “I mean, I’m just talking. I don’t want to start a new house, anyway. Especially if this means that our luck is changing. But if we were that rich, we could!”
“And if I had wings, I could fly to the Lords of Doom,” Nailer retorted. “That doesn’t mean I would.”
“I would!” Brandon replied delightedly. “I mean, don’t you want to try some new things, go new places? Maybe places dwarves have never gone before?”
“My home under the mountain is all the place I’ll ever need. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll come to the same conclusion. You remember old Balric Bluestone, don’t you? How he just had to climb that mountain?”
“Sure I do.” It was a story that every scion of the Bluestone family learned as a lesson in youth. “And I always loved his sense of adventure. I mean, not too many dwarves set out to climb any mountains, much less Garnet Peak.”
“And he was the only one who happened to be doing it when the Cataclysm struck!” Nailer reminded his brother. “They never even found his body. Just his axe, the one you’re carrying right now. Now come on. Let’s get out of here. We’ve got a lot of work to do before this gets settled.”
“Should we go see father first when we get back to Garnet Thax?” Brandon wondered. Indeed, once he thought about it, winning approval from crusty old Garren Bluestone would bring him a flush of pleasure deeper, more significant, than any that could be aroused by the building of new houses or collection of gem-studded jewelry.
“I’d like to,” Nailer replied. “But I really think we should go right to court. Once the claim is recorded, there’ll be plenty of time for celebration.”
“Right,” Brandon agreed. “Let’s go to the palace first.”
Another ten minutes of climbing brought them to a narrow passage almost blocked by tumbled rocks. The gap forced them into single file, Nailer leading the way as he used his hands to pull himself up. At the top the passage became almost a chimney. “Here, take the lamp and hold it up for me,” the elder dwarf requested.
“Sure.” Brandon held the flickering lantern high, watching as his brother wedged himself into the chimney. After a few moments, the sturdy dwarf braced his hobnailed boots against the stone walls and started pushing himself up and through the crack connecting to the massive Zhaban Delving.
Above them sprawled an ancient network of mines that had produced silver, lead, and some gold for the wealthy Heelspur clan over the past six hundred years. Their access point was in a shaft that had been long abandoned—and, in fact, was vigorously avoided by sensible dwarves since there had been many unexplained and fatal encounters there over the years. The cave troll, the brothers knew, had been the reason behind the “hauntings,” and they were rightfully proud of the courage that had led them to challenge the beast and earn the spoils of their hard-fought victory.
At the top of the chimney, Nailer turned and reached a hand down. Brandon passed him the lantern, which he set on the floor at the edge of the gap, then reached down again to help Brandon up the last stretch. With a last kick and a pull from his brother’s strong arm, the second dwarf rose up from the gap and set his boots, once again, on a stone floor that was plotted and mapped in the official surveys of Kayolin.
For a moment the two dwarves stood, breathing heavily, resting for the long walk back to Garnet Thax, Kayolin’s great capital city.
Then the shadows moved.
Brandon opened his mouth to cry out a warning, but a black-cloaked figure behind his brother was already lunging, wielding a black steel blade. Nailer grunted, sounding surprised, and Brandon saw the blade emerge from his brother’s chest and felt drops of liquid spatter his face.
“Nailer!” the younger Bluestone shouted. He pulled his axe from its belt sling even as he caught the slumping dwarf and felt his brother’s warm blood soaking through his shirt.
Already there were more shadows moving, dark-cloaked dwarves attacking from his left, and he was forced to let Nailer fall while he defended himself, his axe clashing into a pair of thrusting blades, snapping one off at the hilt and deflecting the other.
The attackers were strangely silent, breathing harshly as they closed in. Brandon counted five of them and quickly dropped one, splitting his skull with an overhand blow. He parried attacks from both sides, standing over Nailer’s bleeding form. When the four dark dwarves pulled back for a moment, he rushed forward two steps, swinging his axe through a half circle.
The two to his right backed away, a clear attempt to get him to charge and expose his back, and it almost worked. A red haze of battle seemed to film Brandon’s vision, and he lowered his head, ready to charge. Only as he started to lunge did he realize the danger, halting then spinning around to parry the double stabbing blades slicing toward his back. With a resounding clang, he knocked the blades away.
“Assassins!” he cried at the top of his lungs, his voice ringing out even louder than the dueling steel weapons. “Help!”
It was a futile plea in those abandoned passages, and he knew this fight would come down to his own prowess. He charged the two dwarves to his right, but they fell back, and Brandon was forced to pivot again to avoid exposing his back. One of those black blades sliced into his arm, and he grunted in pain, at the same time swinging his axe hard, severing the swordsman’s arm at the elbow. With a shriek of pain, the stricken attacker dropped away.
But the three who remained were skilled, and they worked together to push Brandon back. He stepped across Nailer’s motionless form, his heart breaking even as he struggled not to slip on his brother’s slick, rapidly expanding pool of blood. His boot stopped at the edge of the chimney as he used the niche as some measure of flank protection. The attackers pressed hard, blades slashing in high and low, and Brandon’s elbows banged against the walls of the narrow confines as he tried to swing his axe.
He teetered at the brink; then his boot slipped. He felt himself falling backward as three black blades lunged for him. The tumble into the chimney was the only thing that saved him, even though he bashed painfully into a protruding rock and dropped his axe as he clawed to arrest his fall. The precious weapon, a family heirloom more than four hundred years old, clattered into the darkness below, while Brandon cl
ung precariously to a ledge of rock in the narrow vertical passage.
A large stone, thrown from above, bashed into his head, and he slipped, skidding another dozen feet downward. More rocks followed, a punishing barrage, and before he could wriggle out of the gap at the bottom of the niche, a heavy boulder clanged off his helmet, knocking him into a blackness that was even darker than the lightless caverns under the world.
Brandon gradually became aware of a consuming, pounding pain in his skull, and it was that agony that finally told him he was still alive. He lay still for a very long time and gradually reconstructed the events that had brought him to that place. Groaning as he remembered his brother, stricken in the corridor a few dozen feet overhead, he tried at last to move and cried out as a searing pain stabbed through his shoulder.
Gritting his teeth, cursing his attackers, pleading for strength from the great god Reorx, he pushed himself up to his hands and knees. He tried to open his eyes, but they would not respond, and he was terrified at the thought that he had been blinded. It was only when he had finally pushed himself to a sitting position, freeing his hands, that he was able to touch his face and find that his forehead was crusted with dried blood. That sticky fluid had dribbled over his eyes, and his lids were sealed shut.
Each scrape was agony, each probing finger brought renewed stabs through his skull, but he slowly clawed the dried blood away until he could open his eyes. Though it was pitch dark in the deep delving, he tried looking around in the murk and was almost pathetically relieved to see the blurry silver glow of his axe blade—the weapon that had once been Balric Bluestone’s axe. He pounced on it and picked it up, ignoring the pain provoked by the sudden movement, and he began to feel a little better.
He felt better, at least, in that anger was beginning to supplant grief in his churning emotions. He slung the axe onto his back and stood, shakily at first but with growing strength. The chimney was full of rocks, blocking his escape, but he set to work pulling them away. Dragging and clawing until his fingers were raw, he cleared away the blockage, aided by gravity as the last of the stones finally rolled free into the deep cavern. Hand by hand, his boots jamming against the walls for traction, he pulled himself upward, finally emerging into the upper corridor, the ancient connection to the Zhaban Delving.