Secret of Pax Tharkas

by Doug Niles

  “Yes, what?” he asked, numbly.

  “Take your axe, and remember your house. It has not always been a legacy of bad luck, you know. Balric Bluestone was carrying that weapon when he set off to climb Garnet Peak. He was lost in the Cataclysm, but his axe was returned to us—the rescuers found it immediately, as soon as they went to look for him.”

  “I … I know the story,” Brandon replied, confused.

  “The point is, I’ve always felt that discovery meant something to us, to our family. It’s a symbol of hope, a sign that if we look toward the future, there is a promise of better things ahead. Bear it proudly, and find that future. Now go.”

  Brandon’s heart was pounding as he went to his rooms and looked at the tunics, trousers, cloaks, boots, and belts that made up his wardrobe. Buy passage on ship? He couldn’t even imagine floating on an ocean! He had a chest of tools, another of weapons, each containing implements he had used during the nearly five decades of his life as he grew to adulthood. How could he shrink it down to the few items he could carry on his back?

  He was standing there, feeling helpless, when his mother came in. Karine walked up to him, and he put an arm around her, drawing her against him, surprised by how frail, how small, she felt.

  “I understand I am losing two sons today,” she said sadly.

  He frowned. In his own wallowing, he had forgotten how his actions would affect the rest of his family. “I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to—I don’t want to—that is, Father insists—”

  “And he’s right,” she said firmly. “He told me what happened in the court. You won’t be safe here, but you should know, Brandon, that I am so proud of you.”

  “But—why? I haven’t done anything to make you proud!”

  “Shh,” she said quietly, touching a finger to his lips. “I know what you and your brother found. And I know what you did, carrying him out of the delvings by yourself. You are a credit to yourself and to our house.”

  He couldn’t speak for a moment, just held her close. Finally he waved his free hand at his wardrobe and chests. “I don’t even know what to take,” he admitted.

  “Let me help,” she said practically, bustling over to the chests, throwing the lids open, and clucking her tongue at the mess she saw in each. Yet somehow, in the space of a few short minutes, she had helped him gather together a compact traveling kit. He donned his most durable clothes, wrapped a knife, a waterskin, gloves, and a rope into a spare robe, and strapped his axe to the sheath on his back. The cook brought in some bread and cheese wrapped in dried lambskin that Brandon could carry in his belt pouch. At his mother’s advice, he put on his most comfortable walking boots, leaving both his hobnailed climbing boots and the ceremonial footwear he had worn to the palace behind.

  He said a dignified good-bye to his mother, though her courageously dry eyes made him want to cry. “Go,” she whispered into his ear, and the anguish in her voice made him understand her grief and steeled his own resolve. He emerged to find that Harn Poleaxe had come quickly and was being ushered into his father’s study.

  “I have reconsidered,” Garren Bluestone said to the hill dwarf when the Neidar and the patriarch were comfortably seated. Brandon stood inside the doorway, watching and listening as his father spoke. “I accept your terms, on two additional conditions.”

  “Excellent!” rejoiced Poleaxe before narrowing his eyes. “Conditions?” he said warily. “My offer is on the table: a hundred times a thousand steel pieces for the Bluestone.”

  Brandon tried to listen, though his head was whirling with the fast pace of events. He couldn’t even imagine a hundred times a thousand pieces of steel. And what were the new conditions? He had a feeling they involved himself, and his departure.

  “The terms don’t change,” Garren declared. “But the conditions are these: I want you to take my son with you when you return to Hillhome. And you must leave immediately.”

  Poleaxe blinked, looking Brandon up and down in blunt appraisal. “To the first, I agree,” he said. “Your young son is a hale companion, and of course I will welcome his company. But why the second?” he asked, perplexed. “Is the lad in some trouble?”

  “Precisely,” Garren replied. “He can tell you about it when you are on your way. Time’s a-wasting. Can you do it?”

  Poleaxe shrugged, the simple gesture seeming somehow grandiose, almost kingly. “I will need an hour or two to settle my affairs. And, of course, I don’t have those steel pieces readily at my disposal. It will take some time to arrange for a moneylender’s draft to be sent up here from the south. You understand, after all this time, I did not anticipate having to conclude our arrangement in the matter of a few minutes.”

  “I do understand. Brandon will carry the stone until you have the draft sent. Will that be adequate?”

  Harn Poleaxe stroked his beard, his handsome features marked by a pensive expression. “Yes, I agree. We can leave as soon as I’ve settled my affairs; I travel light, and I have nothing that I can’t leave behind for another trip.” He looked at Brandon then rested a hand—a hand that thumped down with the force of a felled tree—on the younger dwarf’s shoulder. “What about you, young Bluestone? Are you prepared for an arduous journey?”

  Brandon, speechless, could only nod his head in the affirmative.

  Garren cleared his throat then rose to his feet. He removed a key from beneath his tunic, one that he wore on a chain around his neck, and inserted it into a niche in the wall that Brandon had never before recognized as a lock. With a quick turn, he released the catch then pulled open the heavy stone door to reveal a large safe. Within was a single object, wrapped in soft leather, that looked to Brandon to be about the size of a hammer’s head. He set the thing on his desk and slowly, reverently, unfolded the wrapping.

  Though, throughout his life, Brandon had seen the Bluestone Wedge depicted on tapestries and shields, on the family’s front door and on his father’s ornate breastplate, but he had always thought it to be an abstract symbol. He had never laid eyes on the precious artifact itself. He was moved by the sight of the actual heirloom. It was just as portrayed: a simple wedge, wide and blunt at one end, while tapered and narrow, though not sharp like an axe blade, at the other. As he had surmised, it was about the size of a regular hammerhead, smaller than the head of a warhammer.

  But it was not the shape nor the size of the object that took his breath away. Rather, it was the color. It was not just a turquoise or bluegranite, but nearly the infinite, perfect azure of a sapphire. He imagined he could stare into that stone for hours and never see the same image twice, as if there were countless facets and unique features, dazzling details that would compel him to keep seeking, confound him with wonder at each new discovery.

  He shook his head, and it was almost like breaking out of a trance. Harn Poleaxe, he saw too, was similarly transfixed. Garren Bluestone was ignoring the Neidar, watching his son with an expression, Brandon hoped with a pang, that indicated he was proud and satisfied with the object of his scrutiny.

  Finally, with a curt gesture, his father pulled the wrapping over the stone again, and the spell was broken.

  “Here you go,” he said, hoisting the bundle and handing it to Brandon. “It’s time you two were on your way.

  “Now this will be Caergoth, coming up,” Harn Poleaxe said ten days later, gesturing expansively to the large community ringed by fortified walls and towers and crowned by a massive castle, that had been gradually materializing before the two dwarves during their past three hours riding along the road. “Greatest port in southern Solamnia—though they say it’s no match for Palanthas, way up in the north.”

  Brandon looked up, startled out of a reverie that had involved both the barmaid Bondall and the heiress Rona Darkwater. He was relieved to see the Neidar hadn’t noticed his inattention.

  “So this is where we hire a ship to take us south, across the Newsea?” he asked.

  It had been a long, hard ten days. His rump
was so sore, he thought he’d never want to sit down again. How could a horse be so damned uncomfortable? And wobbly? And just plain cantankerous? As if to mock him, the animal underneath him shivered and lurched a bit, sending new jolts of pain through his buttocks and lower back.

  He squinted, impressed in spite of himself with the vista of the great, fortified city ahead. But it was so confounded bright out there on the plains; he had a constant headache, it seemed, just from trying to cope with the sunlight and the wide vista of sky. Of course, he’d been outside of Kayolin before, exploring the mountains of the Garnet Range, but most of his forays had been through the lush pine forests, and even when he’d been up on the rocky ridges, there always seemed to be stone and cliff and frowning overlook looming over him, intermittently blocking out the blistering rays. For four days they had been out in the wide open, and it seemed as if the clouds had decided to stay permanently out of sight. For four days he had suffered the full blazing glory of the sun.

  “So we’re going right to the docks when we get there?” he asked hopefully.

  “Nah,” Harn said breezily. “There’s an inn I know in the castle district. Friendly folk, even some dwarves. Like as not we’ll be able to rustle up a game or two of knucklebones. You know, a little social activity before we head out on the water.”

  Harn gave an involuntary shiver at the word water, and Brandon sympathized. The idea of travel by sea held little appeal for any dwarf. They were traveling by ship because there was no other way to get back to Harn’s hill country, in the rugged foothills of the Kharolis Mountains, which wasn’t too far from fabled Thorbardin itself.

  Yet despite his reluctance to leave dry land behind, Brandon was even more reluctant to stay in the Solamnic city any longer than was strictly necessary.

  “Remember what happened in Garnet?” he prodded, noticing that Harn had produced his flask of dwarf spirits and was leaning back to swizzle a long gulp. Brandon glumly shook his head when his companion generously extended the bottle toward him.

  “Of course I do,” the Neidar declared irritably. “I told you, it was vital that we buy horses! And it was. Sore as your ass is right now, trust me, you didn’t want to walk that long road on foot. We’d still be coming up on the Kingsbridge, fifty miles back!”

  “It took two hours to buy horses,” Brandon pointed out. “We were in Garnet for four days!”

  Although he was complaining, Brandon had to admit that the days—and, especially, the nights—in the bustling city at the foot of the Garnet range had been an eye-opening experience and not without its share of good times. Three days after walking out of Kayolin’s main gate, the two dwarves had emerged from the foothills and entered the first city, other than Garnet Thax, that Brandon had ever visited in his life.

  The sights and sounds and smells had been overwhelming—tantalizing and thrilling, even. The population was mostly human, but the people were very amenable to dwarves—and dwarven coin. Harn had led his young companion immediately to his favorite inn, where the Neidar had proceeded to get drunk and make friends with everyone in the place. Brandon had been preoccupied taking in the sights, talking to the first humans he had ever met—the women, in particular, seemed taken by his broad shoulders and friendly, easygoing grin—and sampling some of the meat and bread and cheese that wasn’t available in sunless Kayolin. Besides he couldn’t keep up with Poleaxe on a drink-for-drink basis.

  That was just as well because the Neidar overdrank and needed Brandon’s help just to walk from the first inn to another of his favorite places, where Harn got even drunker. In his third favorite inn, Brandon had pulled his companion out just before a fight erupted, and in the fourth, when the fisticuffs inevitably commenced, Brandon had simply joined in the fun, and the two dwarves had triumphed over all comers in an exhilarating brawl.

  But when the same pattern repeated itself the following night, and the night after that, Brandon began to feel a little concerned and restless. Harn kept assuring him he was shopping for the right horses, but the young dwarf grew increasingly skeptical, mainly because they never visited any stables or farms. Finally, on the fourth morning, he had let Harn sleep it off in their boardinghouse room, and Brandon himself had gone in search of a livery stable. Since there seemed to be one on about every other block of Garnet, his search hadn’t taken long. He had purchased a pair of serviceable, if not spectacular mounts, and tipped the stable boy enough that the lad cheerfully showed him how to saddle and bridle the horses, how to stay balanced on said saddle, plus a few tips on food and water requirements for the mounts. The transaction cost him ten of the eighty coins his father had sent with him, but he deemed the investment worth it. By the time Harn had woken up, groggy and hungover, Brandon was waiting outside their lodgings with the horses raring to go and all their possessions packed into their saddlebags—except for the Bluestone, which Brandon always kept wrapped and bound in a secret bundle he tucked into the small of his back.

  Brandon shrugged and decided not to argue the point. If truth be told, he was hungry and thirsty, and the inn below Caergoth Castle proved to be a convivial place. Brandon was pleased to get a hot meal into his companion before Harn started on his second bottle of dwarf spirits. The young Hylar, by comparison, decided that he would stick with beer, which—much to his surprise—the humans had proved capable of brewing with commendable quality.

  As Caergoth was the second human city he had visited, Brandon felt almost like a sophisticate as they wolfed down a hearty meal and listened to a pair of minstrels playing their exotic lutes over in a corner. The two dwarves struck up a conversation with a quartet of pikemen, in uniform but unarmed, who were eating and drinking at the next table.

  “Do you serve in the army of the king of Solamnia?” asked Brandon. He was buzzing enough with the effects of his beers that he took no offense when the men reacted with laughter.

  “We have no king in Solamnia,” one scoffed. “Haven’t for years.”

  “Yeah that’s right, Bennett,” said his companion. “We got something better: an emperor!”

  “Guess you ain’t heard,” the one called Bennett said to the dwarves. “We’re an empire again! Why, me and my blokes here, we helped to make it so. Didn’t, we boys?”

  “Aye,” said another. “We fought the horde of Ankhar the half-giant when Jaymes Markham was our lord marshal, and we fought him again after he was made emperor! If Ankhar wasn’t dead, I’d be ready to go to war with him and fight with the emperor a third time tomorrow.”

  “Aye, and me too,” pledged the fourth pikeman, who looked morosely into his empty glass. “There’s not been a merry war for nigh on a year now!”

  “Here, let me buy you lads a round,” said Harn Poleaxe, waving a barmaid over and securing a pitcher of beer for each table. Brandon was quietly glad his companion was eschewing the stronger dwarf spirits, at least for the time being. “Tell us about this war.”

  Brandon knew a little something about the campaigns of the Solamnics against the barbarian horde of the half-giant, Ankhar. Regar Smashfingers had sent several companies of dwarves to the emperor’s aid, and his forgers made quite a profit, so it was said, selling strong spring steel to the humans so they could build some newfangled kind of weapon, a bombard it was called, that had proved a decisive factor in the wars. Of course, that highly profitable activity had been limited to the king’s inner circle; the Bluestones hadn’t been involved. Still, since many of the goblins and ogres of Ankhar’s army had been drawn from the valleys of the Garnet Range and had perished in the war, the outcome of the conflict had had a beneficial effect on the dwarven kingdom.

  “So how big is this empire?” Brandon wondered, thinking about how much ground he and Poleaxe had covered since they left home. It was a big world, he was beginning to realize, but it was startling to think they had been traveling in one nation that whole time.

  “Why, Garnet and Caergoth are just the far south,” Bennett explained. “We got Solanthus and Vingaard and Thelgaard.
The empire goes all the way to Palanthas, way in the north. That’s where the emperor has his palace.”

  “Say, you fellows wouldn’t be interested in a little wagering, would you?” Harn said casually, pulling out the small bag holding his knucklebones. He rolled the shaped ivories onto the table, smiling as each settled with three points turned up. “I have a few steel coins been burning a hole in my money pouch.”

  Before Brandon knew what was happening, the two tables had been pushed together and each of the four men and two dwarves had a small pile of coins stacked before him. Ever mindful of his family’s luck, the young mountain dwarf decided to limit his gambling to twenty steel pieces. They took turns rolling the bones, making bets, passing their steel pieces back and forth, and drinking from the never-ending stream of pitchers that Harn Poleaxe kept ordering.

  Brandon was having a great time, even though he was down to his last two coins after a couple of hours. He noticed, vaguely, that the four soldiers were also short on coins, while Harn Poleaxe had somehow amassed a rather impressive pile of the valuable steel pieces. Perhaps Brandon was aware that the emperor’s men were not having as much fun as he was, but he was still surprised when the fight erupted.

  For some reason, Bennett broke his mug over Harn’s head, an act that did little more than get the big Neidar to freeze, raise his eyebrows irritably, and rise to his feet with a grin and a roar—somehow sliding his coin stack into his purse at the same time. Poleaxe swung a wild punch at the pikeman. The blow failed to connect with its intended target while knocking out the soldier sitting directly to Bennett’s left.

  Another of the men lunged at Brandon, who defended himself instinctively, first breaking the fellow’s hold around his neck then clocking him with a punch that smashed his nose into a flat purple bruise. Harn, meanwhile, grasped the necks of both Bennett and the fourth man and pulled, crunching the two heads together and letting the men flop, unconscious, onto the table.