by Doug Niles
“Well, what happened to you, little fellow?” she asked cheerily. She raised her face, looking up the mountainside toward the lofty ridge, and she whistled as her eyes followed the path of the thunderous avalanche. “Looks like, whatever your problems, Reorx was looking out for you. And Kondike, of course.”
“G—G—Gus!” he croaked worshipfully. “I’m Gus!”
“What a nice name,” she said sweetly. “I am called Gretchan Pax, and I am very pleased to make your acquaintance. Now let’s see about getting you out of there. Then perhaps you’d like a bowl of hot soup?”
She knelt down beside him and, with the monster Kondike energetically assisting, quickly freed him from the white stuff. Gus, however, did not even realize when he was free.
In fact, he had completely swooned away.
The soup was the most exquisite food Gus had ever tasted, up to and including cave grubs. There were bits of red things and green things and white things in it, and the liquid itself was a pleasant brown color, aromatic and comforting. Gretchan had led Gus to the edge of the white ground—she called it “snow”—and effortlessly kindled a fire from some sticks and twigs she scooped up right off the ground. Now the Aghar’s teeth had finally stopped chattering, and he slurped down a second bowl as soon as he finished the first.
“Good!” he declared, licking out the metal dish. “What kind food?”
The brightness was still painfully intense, but his eyes had become accustomed to the constant glare enough that his headache was waning. She had explained to him that the blue ceiling was called the “sky,” and the fiery orb was the “sun.” Gretchan leaned back, puffing on a small pipe she had loaded with some kind of dried plant. The smoke that emerged from her nose was pleasantly aromatic, though when Gus leaned in to take a big sniff, he had been unable to suppress a wet sneeze that spattered her pretty thoroughly. With a grimace of distaste, she blotted off her face and bodice.
“Stay away from my pipe … and my face,” she chided him. “This stuff isn’t good for you.”
She was a genius besides a beauty, Gus thought. When she frowned, he wanted to do whatever he could to obey her, to cheer her up. And when she laughed, that jolly sound made his heart pound with delight. “I take it you’ve never been on the surface before,” she said. “Those are vegetables—carrots, peppers, onions. They’re fairly common up here. Did you come from under the mountain?”
“No!” Gus declared. “I come from Thorbardin!”
With his words, he was assaulted by memories of that sunless place: the terrifying wizard and his cave, the drain-plunge where Slooshy had lost her life, the Theiwar bunty hunters who cut off gully dwarf heads, his prisoner cage, all that. He sniffled miserably. “Not go back, though. Not ever!”
“Well, I don’t think they grow vegetables in Thorbardin.” She grew serious for a moment, looking into the distance. “Someday, I’d like to find out for myself,” she admitted.
“Thorbardin? I can tell you all about Thorbardin!” Gus boasted, eager to impress his rescuer. “It’s big!”
She laughed again. “So I’ve heard,” Gretchan replied. “And how does a little fellow like you get out of Thorbardin? Surely you know that the gates have long been sealed?”
“Get out?” Gus hadn’t really processed that idea yet. He shrugged, trying to think; then he remembered. “I took drink from bad wizard’s bottle. Strong drink, fizz my throat. Then I was out!”
Thinking more, he reached into his pocket, and pulled out Willim’s bottle of elixir, the bottle from the Midwarren Pale spirits distillery. “Bottle kind of like this. But drink different.”
Gretchan looked rather alarmed. She reached for the bottle, and Gus let her take it in her hands, noticing that she shivered as she touched it. Holding it up to the light, she studied the bottle, shook it so the potion swirled around inside, and set it down while she cradled her perfect chin in her graceful, surprisingly long-fingered hands.
“Good thing, if you ask me, that you didn’t drink from that bottle,” she said softly. Turning those blue eyes to the gully dwarf, she asked, “Would you mind if I carried it for you?”
Gus would have given her his right arm, or any portion of his body, if she had asked him, and he didn’t want any dwarf spirits anyway. So he nodded his assent. She wrapped the bottle very carefully in some sort of cloth and gingerly set it into her backpack.
“Hmm. It is a mystery how you got here,” she said. “A mystery worth pondering. But now what am I going to do with you?” she added pensively. “I can’t very well send you home—of course, if I knew how to enter Thorbardin, I’d take you there myself!”
The thought of going home to Agharbardin suddenly seemed like a bleak and hopeless prospect to the forlorn gully dwarf. “Maybe I stay with you? Here in snow place?” he asked eagerly. “Gus big help! Finds lotsa food! Fight bad dwarves!”
She smiled gently, and his heart melted. “Well, I guess you can come along for now. I have some work to do, but I don’t think you’ll get in the way. And sooner or later we’ll meet some other gully dwarves. There are plenty of them out here in the real world too, you know. I bet you’ll be quite a hero to them, with all you’ve gone through.”
“Yes! Me hero gully dwarf. Spit in eye of him say not!” Gus crowed.
Delightedly, he hopped to his feet as Gretchan turned to go, striding beside the female dwarf and Kondike, who was not a monster but a “dog,” he had learned.
Kondike was a very big dog: his head was higher off the ground than Gus’s, and even underneath the heavy coat of shaggy black hair, there was a body of powerful sinew and long, graceful legs. Gus was grateful that Kondike seemed to consider him a friend.
Only once, as they crested a snowy ridge and started into the next valley, did Gus have a shuddering memory of the horrible minion that had stalked him the night before. He wondered where it had gone and whether it would be coming back to chase him.
But he decided it was better not to say anything about the ghastly fiend to his new friend. After all, he didn’t want to worry her.
TWELVE
INTO THE KHAROLIS
Brandon staggered off the single-masted sailboat, down the rickety wooden pier, and onto the hard-packed dirt of the anonymous little fishing village. There, he dropped to his hands and knees, where he gazed lovingly at the solid, unmoving ground.
“Never again,” he groaned as Harn Poleaxe sauntered merrily after him.
“What?” asked the hill dwarf innocently. “It was just a little fresh breeze and some sprinkles—nothing like when I sailed north. Then we went through some real storms!”
“We had water pouring over the deck! Half the sails tore away! If that wasn’t a storm, I’ll eat my axe!”
“At least it’s all overland from here—down the coast of the Newsea and into the hills of home.” Chuckling, Harn helped Brandon to his feet, and they looked around the village.
The place was a far cry from the bustling port of Caergoth. In that Solamnic city, ships with masts and galleys with oars had steadily made their way in and out of the broad, deep channel. A long curve of waterfront had included docks, warehouses, markets, and an extensive shipyard, where three new hulls were busily being constructed.
In contrast, the seashore village was a cluster of huts with one long rickety building that seemed to be a smokehouse for fish. A couple of small fishing dhows were pulled up on shore, and another, larger boat rested at anchor in the small bay.
“Doesn’t look like there’s an inn worthy of the name,” the hill dwarf said in disgust.
“But there is a stable,” Brandon noted happily. After all that time rolling and rocking on the waves, the prospect of a long stretch in a saddle didn’t seem so bad.
Two hours later they were on the road. Brandon’s head was clear, and his lungs relished the taste of dry air, free of the taint of salt. Bouncing on his horse, he felt almost comfortable. He even allowed himself to hope that, there on the dry land of the south, away from Ka
yolin, his luck might be about to improve.
Though he was acutely conscious of the treasure he bore, still wrapped in the pouch he wore at the small of his back. The Bluestone Wedge was heavier than just a stone. To Brandon, it was the weight of the legacy of his father and his grandfather and the whole of his family’s house.
After an hour of contemplation and analysis, Willim decided he would not move his laboratory, even though the king and his agents knew where it was located. He inspected the seal of the original tunnel, found it to be as air and water tight as ever. Detection spells, with wafts of smoke as his feelers, determined that no holes had been drilled or otherwise established that would allow access to the underground chamber from any other direction. Let the king teleport in more toadies if he would; Willim could defeat an army of dwarves! And if hard pressed, well, he could always resort to a teleportation escape, a magical flight that would be impossible for his enemies to pursue.
Only after making his decision did he allow himself the luxury of cleaning up the debris from the battle and its aftermath. Casting a spell of levitation, Willim rose from the floor until he floated in the air, high above the floor of his laboratory. From there, he could see better what needed to be done. Wielding his magic as if it were a team of laborers, he slid a heavy bench across the room and righted several shelves and bins that had been upset during the melee. He repaired boxes and barrels that were damaged, plucked stray arrows from his wooden table and benches. Finally, he repaired his granite table, using the gesture of a finger to weld a seam through the crack his tantrum had wrought in the hard, smooth stone.
Then he drifted around the great vault of the chamber, mindful of security. He set spells of alarm to create noise and light if any intruders appeared or if any sound of digging or boring was detected through the walls. He installed traps he could activate by a simple command word, devices that would send granite columns and great shards of stone shooting through the chamber if they were triggered. He rigged the entire vast hall with a powerful spell of stone-shattering, ensuring that, if he were forced to retreat from a fresh army of attackers, he could bring the roof down on their heads even as he made his instant escape.
Just he was settling back to the floor, he felt a tingle of alarm and sensed the presence of another. But the newcomer was no threat: his minion dropped through the ceiling, spreading its black wings as it came to rest before him. The gaunt minion, with its Abyss-red eyes, pressed itself obsequiously to the floor, paying homage to its lord.
“Where is it?” hissed the Black Robe. “The flask!”
“The Aghar is destroyed,” replied the minion. “But his body was lost, frozen in an avalanche. I searched and searched but could not discover him in the cold vastness before the sunrise drove me underground.”
“Fool!” snarled Willim, raising his fist. He twitched irritably; whatever blow he delivered would make little difference to the soulless being. “I don’t care if you spend the entire year up there, you must go back as soon as it is night and look harder and find his body. Most importantly of all, bring me the thing that he carries!”
“As you wish, lord,” replied the creature, spreading its wings as it prepared for departure.
“Wait,” declared the wizard, holding up his hand. “Let me seek him again—that way, I might be able to confirm that he is dead and where his body may be found.”
Once more he went through the spell to locate an object, swirling the liquid in the bowl, watching the position of the enchanted arrow. His eyeless face creased into a frown as the indicator took shape, marking a line that pointed more toward the northeast than before.
“See! He is not dead. He has moved, fool! You have been tricked and eluded by a gully dwarf! Now hunt him down—destroy him!”
“As you wish, lord.” His minion took flight, its ghastly shape rising through the cavern, vanishing into the bedrock of the Kharolis Mountains as it pursued its prey.
Willim went back to work, muttering to himself about stupid minions.
He had a long list of things to do. He would need new apprentices, more components for spells and potions, new test subjects to lock in his empty cages. The Aghar didn’t matter at the moment, for he had an army to raise and a king to destroy.
Days and weeks on the trail had introduced Brandon to a host of new, and for the most part fascinating, experiences. After the constant nausea of the sea crossing, Brandon welcomed firm land as though it were a long-lost relative, enjoying the glimpses of wildlife, the earthy smells, the ever-changing landscape. They journeyed from village to village down the coastline of Abanasinia, staying on a simple dirt road that meandered along about ten miles from the coast—the terrain along the shore being for the most part marshy and impassable. Each night they stayed at an inn if the village had one, or they paid a copper coin for the right to sleep on the floor of a cottage or in the haystack of a local’s barn.
The people who dwelled along the coast were humans for the most part, though occasionally they encountered a hill dwarf working as a carpenter, bartender, or blacksmith among the humans. Apparently the social life of village taverns didn’t appeal to Harn quite as much as did the lively establishments in the cities up north. Though they quaffed a few ales when the opportunity afforded, the big hill dwarf avoided drinking marathons and fights and was ready to resume their journey each morning with the dawn.
They trekked down the western shore of the Newsea. Brandon quickly realized that the world was drier down there than it was in the Garnet Mountains or even in the part of Solamnia they had traversed on their way to the port on the Newsea. Harn told him that that was nothing, and he described the Plains of Dust. That, Poleaxe said, was a desert that swept off to the south for hundreds of miles. Brandon was amazed to think of such a vast expanse, barely moistened by rain, crossed only by a very few streams and one river.
He found himself fascinated by the variety of birds, especially the great raptors, the eagles and the vultures, that drifted on currents so high overhead, covering great distances without any appearance of effort. Only carrion birds were common in the Garnet Range; others were rare and precious. Antelopes and great wild buffalo, long of leg and fearsome of countenance, commonly regarded them from the forest thickets beside the road.
They camped for one night at the great ruins of Xak Tsaroth, where Brandon was barely able to sleep. Instead, he stayed up nearly until dawn, admiring the sketchy outlines of ancient walls, imagining the towers and battlements that once must have dominated that place. It startled him to think about how those ancient glories had been eroded by the effects of wind and rain and other natural forces—effects that were virtually unknown underground, where an abandoned battlement might look pretty much the same after a thousand years of neglect as it did when the last dwarf marched away from it.
Following the coastline past the beginning of the Kharolis Mountains, they turned inland as they neared the southern end of the Newsea. There they entered more rugged country and slowly began to climb. Brand’s heart gladdened to the faint suggestion of lofty mountains rising before them, and he swelled with dwarf pride when Poleaxe confirmed that, yes, they were in fact the summits of the High Kharolis.
“Ah, smell that air—the breath of home,” Poleaxe declared finally after some five weeks of steady travel. “The first hills, at least. It will take us a few more days to get to Hillhome, to be precise—finest town in all the Neidar lands in my opinion.”
“Are we that near, then?” Brandon asked, swinging easily along in the saddle that had seemingly become comfortably attached to his anatomy.
“Less than a week, anyway,” the hill dwarf informed him.
The next village they encountered, as the landscape rose around them, was Flatrock, and it was the first community where the population was primarily hill dwarves—though a scattering of human families lived there as well. Harn had friends—many friends—in Flatrock, and they welcomed their long-lost comrade with a long night of celebration. Brandon seemed
as popular as Harn and enjoyed the festivities immensely, though he was puzzled that the Neidar had introduced him as a clan cousin.
“Ah, but you don’t understand,” Harn said the next day when the two were back on the road after a late start. “Hill dwarves and mountain dwarves: where you come from, they may not be the best of friends, but they’re rivals, not enemies. Down here, around Thorbardin, you have to remember there’s a blood feud that has lasted more than four hundred years, since those treacherous mountain dwellers locked my ancestors out during the Cataclysm.”
“Well, but like you said,” Brandon pointed out, “that was four centuries ago. There aren’t any dwarves around who were even alive back then!”
“No, but there are plenty who heard the tales from their folks and grandfolks—those who actually did remember. And it’s a scar that runs deep—hasn’t even begun to scab over yet.”
“But you live right next to each other!”
Harn shrugged, eyes narrowing as he regarded Brandon thoughtfully. “Thorbardin might as well not be there, as far as we Neidar are concerned. The gates are sealed and have been for these past ten years. The only mountain dwarves we concern ourselves with are the refugees in Pax Tharkas.”
“What about them?” Brandon wondered, surprised at the news of a settlement of mountain dwarves living in exile aboveground.
“Well, they got huffy and left after some kind of civil war. They’re a bad lot—their thane is a Hylar, Tarn Bellowgranite, and he used to be king of the whole place. When they kicked him out, he brought some real ruffians. He’s got a company of Klar who like nothing more than raiding Neidar towns.”
“But if it’s just a small band of exiles, how can they stand against all the Neidar?”
“You don’t know Pax Tharkas,” Harn said in disgust. “Thane Bellowgranite has maybe a thousand dwarves in there, but half that many could hold it against twenty thousand attackers. It’s a stronghold and they’re crazy fighters.”