Secret of Pax Tharkas

by Doug Niles

  Even when he saw his Neidar companion, sitting across the smoldering remnant of the great bonfire, grinning cheerfully at him, he didn’t remember what had happened. Only when he took in the other dwarves, a full dozen of them, armed and armored as if for battle, did he begin to comprehend the betrayal. The newcomers were casually seated around Poleaxe, clearly no threat to him. Two of them sipped mugs of steaming tea, while several more leaned against tree trunks, their booted feet propped casually on rocks near the fire.

  The Bluestone luck! He’d been betrayed and captured. Complete understanding dawned when he recognized the hollow belt pouch, the sleeve containing the venerable Bluestone, held casually in Harn Poleaxe’s hands.

  With an inarticulate cry of rage, Brandon tried to hurl himself across the camp. His futile effort ended in a pathetic thump onto his face when he couldn’t free his hands and, at the same time, discovered that his legs were tightly bound together at the calves and ankles.

  “Here now, son,” Poleaxe said genially. “Take care you don’t pull a muscle or plant your face in the fire. Those coals are still plenty hot, you know.”

  “Filthy thieving bastard!” Brandon spit, wrestling himself around, once again sitting up clumsily. He was trembling with rage, furious at his own impotence.

  “Now watch your tongue, or I might just have to hit you again. Harder this time.” Poleaxe patted the hammer he wore at his belt, and Brandon understood why his head was throbbing so badly. Poleaxe addressed one of the others, who—the prisoner guessed—were obviously his fellow hill dwarves. “I tell you, these Hylar can’t handle strong drink. They should stick to lemon water or iced beer.”

  His witty remark was greeted by chuckles but aroused Brandon to fresh, and fruitless, struggles against his painful bonds. “You tricked me!” he declared. “That was more than dwarf spirits in that bottle.”

  Harn Poleaxe laughed and gave a mocking little half bow of thanks, as if he had just been complimented. “I wouldn’t have had to if you’d just drunk it like a dwarf. But instead, you sipped it like an elf maid so, yeah, I had to doctor the recipe a little.”

  “You brought me all this way just to rob me?” Brandon asked, astounded at the treachery and mystified as to his former companion’s behavior.

  “In a word, yes,” Poleaxe said. He was clearly enjoying himself. “But you should know that this is much, much more than a simple robbery. Do you know how hard it was to follow you and your brother through the caves under Garnet Thax? I had to track you all the way! Then, after you fought the troll and found the vein of gold, I knew that your father would never sell the stone—he had no need of my payment, not if you could file your claim.”

  “No!” Brandon protested in disbelief. “It was you? You were there—”

  “Ah, comes the dawn,” said the Niedar with a wicked chuckle. “I hastened to get word to Lord Heelspur, so that his fellows could meet you and Nailer. Of course, I had to make sure that one of you survived, and that Heelspur got to claim the new vein. All in all, I put in a lot of work to make this happen.”

  “But—why?” demanded the Kayolin dwarf.

  “You see, we’re going to make a war, and you—or your family’s stone, more properly—is going to help us.”

  “A war? Against who?” demanded the Kayolin dwarf.

  For the first time, the Neidar’s genial front cracked. “Against your own cousins down here!” he spat. “The mountain dwarves who’ve been the bane of my people’s existence since before the Cataclysm. No longer content to cower behind the gates of Thorbardin, they dare to battle us on the surface.” He hefted the beautiful blue wedge. “This is part—one part—of the head of a hammer that will smash the gate of Thorbardin wide open. It will be like pulling off the top of an anthill. Just imagine the mountain dwarves’ consternation as the Neidar army pours in. We’ll send them on their final march to Reorx!”

  Brandon sat back, stunned and focused. So many bad things had happened to him recently, he had thought he was over the worst. But the full scope of the disaster that was striking his family began to dawn on him, and his throat tightened with a mixture of self-pity and despair. First, Nailer Bluestone had been murdered at the moment of hope and possible redemption. Then he, himself, had been forced into exile, carrying the last hope of the clan represented by the stone that rested in Poleaxe’s possession. He saw that Harn had even stolen his axe—the axe Balric Bluestone had carried on the surface when the Cataclysm stuck. The weapon had been strapped into Brandon’s pack, but it lay on the ground beside the arrogant Neidar.

  All hope was gone, finished.

  “What are you going to do with me?” he demanded with as much bluster as he could fake.

  “That’s an interesting, but a tough, question,” Harn replied. He pushed himself to his feet and strode back and forth, glancing at his new companions. Brandon studied them too and didn’t like what he saw. They were a lot of ruffians and outlaws, he guessed. One wore an eye patch, while several proudly displayed the scars of battle on their faces or bare arms. An older Neidar spit ostentatiously, his eyes never leaving the prisoner’s.

  “I know for a fact this one’s a spy,” Poleaxe declared loudly for everyone’s benefit. “He’s here to scout our towns and report back on our preparations. Why, at Flatrock, he claimed to be one of my own clan-mates. He’s a scoundrel, I tell you.”

  “You lying bastard!” protested Brandon, flailing uselessly. “You know as well as I do why I came here … and why I claimed to be a Neidar in Flatrock!”

  “A confession!” Harn crowed triumphantly. “See!”

  Poleaxe stopped pacing. He pointed to a pair of the hill dwarves, burly fellows with bristling beards and stout shields. Each wore a short sword at his waist and, as if understanding the treacherous Neidar’s command, they drew their weapons at his gesture.

  “Kill him,” Poleaxe ordered, and the two dwarves raised their blades and stepped forward. Brandon, though he knew it was useless, continued to strain and struggle against his bonds, feeling the leather cords cut into his wrists, the blood flowing down onto his hands.

  “Now wait a moment, Poleaxe,” declared another dwarf, a grizzled warrior with his own heavy shield and a war axe tucked into his belt. “That’s mebbe going a little too far. We can take his treasure; we need it, and I know that as well as you do. But he represents no threat to us now. And perhaps he doesn’t deserve death in cold blood.”

  “Who are you to say that, Fireforge?” growled Poleaxe, clearly irritated at the challenge. “I brought him here. I know the darkness in his soul.”

  “It’s cold-blooded murder!” retorted the one called Fireforge.

  “Not murder. Merely execution of a criminal.”

  “Then what’s his crime?” demanded the stubborn advocate.

  Poleaxe looked at Brandon with a sneer of contempt. “He’s a mountain dwarf spy!” he declared. “I told you, and you yourself heard him admit it. Ain’t that crime enough?”

  “That’s a lie!” shouted Brandon. “You know it is!”

  “You think I don’t know about your secret mission? The maps you were supposed to make for your mountain dwarf king?”

  The captive struggled vainly for a second, his tongue as tied as his arms and legs, fury dropping a red haze across his vision. The two executioners looked at Poleaxe expectantly, though one of them cast an uneasy glance at Fireforge.

  Brandon understood that the latter, for whatever reason he was defending him, represented his only chance at survival. “He stole my father’s life-fortune with his treachery,” he protested desperately. “I come from Kayolin. Why would my governor, who is no king, have interest in provoking an attack on the hill dwarves of Kharolis?”

  “Good questions,” Fireforge noted. His hand still rested on his axe, though he had made no move to draw the weapon. “At the very least, they deserve to be settled in trial. You might be the clan chief, Harn, and we all know your reputation and your courage in battle, but I won’t stand for a
cold-blooded execution, not here and now.”

  Poleaxe flushed, grinding his teeth behind the tangle of his beard. He took a step toward Fireforge, towering over the other dwarf, as he did every one of the other members of the band.

  But there was something in the grim determination of his opponent’s steady, and eerily calm, gaze that held his hand. Poleaxe turned and spit in Brandon’s direction, the spittle hitting the mountain dwarf’s outstretched boot. Finally he shrugged, a gesture of casual, if insincere, acquiescence.

  “Have it your way,” he said sullenly. He glared at the two dwarves he had ordered to kill Brandon. “Untie his feet and pick him up. But watch him carefully. He’s a snake, that one.”

  Then he turned to the prisoner, and again his face was transformed by that mocking smile. “You’ve got a lot of walking to do,” he declared before turning and mounting his horse.

  FOURTEEN

  THE DWARF WHO ONCE WAS THANE

  The Kharolis mountain range sprawled over an immense distance beyond the lofty ground of the High Kharolis, from its center around Cloudseeker. The prominent ridges ran generally north to south, with a slight lean toward the east in the north and the west in the south. Some of the escarpments extended into Abanasinia, reaching almost to the Newsea at the northern end of the range, while others, in the south, formed frowning bluffs overlooking Ice Mountain Bay and the cold waters of the southern ocean. In their whole extent, the mountains of the Kharolis presented a formidable barrier between south central Ansalon and southwest Ansalon.

  In between those great ridges existed many different types of terrain. A wide lowland, generally flat but scored with gullies and ravines and steep, rocky ridges, extended for dozens of miles north of Thorbardin. Called the Plains of Dergoth, the lowland was flooded extensively during the depredations of dragon overlords and the forces of chaos. The southern portion of the former desert was called, simply, the “Bog” and was crossable by only a single, narrow track, and even that during only the dry season.

  The ancient fortress of Zhaman, ruined during the Dwarfgate War of the post-Cataclysm dark age, dominated the plain, with its high bluff, scarred into the eerie image of a death’s-head. The humans, and many dwarves, called the place Skullcap, and most avoided it completely under the not-unbelievable impression that it was dangerously haunted.

  North of Skullcap and the plain, another great tangle of mountains arose. These summits were not so high as Cloudseeker, but they were manifold and featured extremely steep crags and sheer ridges. Trees and streams marked the valleys, which could often be traversed—to a certain extent. Eventually, even the most promising routes terminated against the impassable barrier of the sheer wall. Those heights were so formidable, they could be crossed only on foot, and even then the precipitous paths were limited to the hardiest of climbers, traveling light.

  The one exception was the Tharkadan Pass, a long and winding vale that cut generally southeast to northwest through the mountain barrier. A good road followed the pass, and for years it was the lone land route connecting not just Qualinesti and Thorbardin, but the two large sections of the continent wherein those two nations coexisted.

  Firmly astride that road, right in the middle of the long pass, stood the fortress known as Pax Tharkas.

  Built as an impervious barricade across the pass, the fortress was essentially a great wall flanked by two massive towers. Oriented to defend primarily against attack from the north, two additional curtain walls barred approach from that direction. Each of the curtain walls was pierced by a single gate, and the roadway approached each gate via a long, utterly exposed upward ramp. An attacker would have to penetrate both of those lesser defenses just to reach the formidable bastion itself, and the whole route was exposed to view—and to barrage with arrows, rocks, flaming oil, or even garbage—from the heights of the walls and towers.

  Despite its strong orientation against northern attack, the fortress was no easy objective to an attacker coming from the south. Though it lacked the two curtain walls to delay an approach, both the main wall and the two towers loomed high over the floor of the pass, and any army coming from that direction would likewise be exposed to a ruthless barrage as it set to work against the massive stone gates that allowed access to the interior of the Tharkadan Wall.

  The twin spires of Pax Tharkas, immense and blocky, mountainlike in their appearance, rose to either side of the long, broad battlement that connected the pair of lofty eminences. The Tharkadan Wall itself was a defensive battlement unmatched anywhere on Krynn. The two towers that flanked it to the right and left were joined, at their bases, to the sheer cliffs that flanked the valley, ensuring that anyone who was not a mountain goat had to pass through the fortress to travel north or south along the road.

  Each of those square-walled spires was a fortress in its own right, with walls forty feet thick formed of tightly wedged stone blocks. They were divided into levels and contained the living quarters for, at that time, some one thousand inhabitants. The interior of the Tharkadan Wall, while also a huge and enclosed space, was not used for anything except as a training room for the military garrison.

  Despite its appearance, so square and blocky, so suggestive of dwarven stolidity, the fortress was in fact a cooperative work of both the dwarf and elf peoples. Constructed shortly after the great elf king Kith-Kanan had formed his new nation of Qualinesti, Pax Tharkas had become a testament to the long peace between those two ancient peoples and the nations of Thorbardin and Qualinesti. It was only during later years, after the Cataclysm had set dwarf against dwarf and elf against human, that the fortress had fulfilled its promise as a bastion of war. Even when—due to the utter obliteration of the elven realm—the race war was a far distant memory, Pax Tharkas stood as a monument to dwarf implacability.

  Tarn Bellowgranite knew the exalted history of the place, and he thought of those stories often as he walked the top of the Tharkadan Wall alone, as he did at the start of every day. He had read the tales of the builders who had labored so hard and so diligently to create Pax Tharkas. The staunch masonry was a testament to dwarf skill, but the location and the design had been the work of elves. The two races had worked together to create the mighty fortress, and all had regarded it as a symbol of amity. For a millennium and a half, the two nations had garrisoned Pax Tharkas together, elf and dwarf soldiers rubbing shoulders as they manned the battlements and watched the pass, ready to meet any potential enemy, sharing the belief that a foe to one race was a foe to both.

  Then the gods had hurled their wrath upon the world in the form of the Cataclysm. The elves had fled to the depths of their forest home, and Pax Tharkas had become the gateway—very stoutly barred—to Thorbardin. Internecine warfare had rocked the dwarf world as the mountain dwarves refused to shelter their hill dwarf cousins under their mountain. Pax Tharkas was manned by the mountain dwarves, but it had been carried by storm when the wizard Fistandantilus and his army had attacked Thorbardin during the Dwarfgate War. That war had ended in disaster for both sides and left the two kin clans of dwarfkind licking deep wounds and nursing even deeper grudges.

  Two centuries later, during the War of the Lance, the dwarves, mainly Neidar, had held Pax Tharkas against the onslaught of the dragonarmies, allowing many thousands of refugees, including humans and elves in great numbers, to escape southward, evading certain and horrible death. Following that war, the Neidar had for the most part returned to their villages, leaving Pax Tharkas, again, to the mountain dwarves of Thorbardin.

  Key to the fortress’s imperviousness was the ingenious defense mechanism that had closed the gates against Verminaard’s dragonarmy: the interior of the Tharkadan Wall was hollow, penetrated by only a single massive gate in the north face of the wall and an equally large, lonely gate in the south. The space within the wall, and above the two gates, had been filled with many tons—a small mountain’s worth—of heavy boulders. When the enemy had threatened to breach the defenses, those rocks had been released and fell in
to the gap between the gates, forming a solid and intractable barrier.

  That fill thwarted the attackers, and it had remained in place for many decades, blocking passage from north to south, a sturdy reminder of the darkness that had befallen the world with the coming of the Dark Queen’s legions. Nearly a century after the War of the Lance, the world had finally changed enough for a reopening to be considered.

  The lone dwarf on the rampart felt a thudding through his boots and knew that the important work never ended. Another ton of rocks had been cleared from inside the gates and carted upward to arm the great trap again. His workers, those of the day shift, were already busy after relieving their colleagues who had labored through the night, for it was a task that continued, under the orders of Thane Bellowgranite, around the clock.

  Tarn Bellowgranite felt the vibration, heard the rumble of rock, and he was pleased. His was a life that had been occupied with many vital tasks, but he had convinced himself that none of them were so crucial as that, the job that he would see completed in the twilight of his days. The road through Pax Tharkas would reopen, and it would be Tarn—well, the dwarves of Tarn’s clan, more accurately—who would make it happen.

  They called him the Tharkadan Thane, his loyal dwarves did, even though the title was vaguely embarrassing. He had once been a true thane, leader of the Hylar clan in Thorbardin—an unusual and exalted post for him because he was an exotic blend, descendent of a Hylar father and a Daergar mother. Both of his parents were long gone, killed during the Chaos War. For a time, the son who bore their legacy had seemed to have exceeded even the promise of his twice-noble birth: indeed he ascended to become the high king of Thorbardin, the highest-ranking noble in all dwarvendom.