Dark Thane

by Jeff Crook

  "Wait!" Shnatz hissed even as he saw the next one leaning over the edge of the hole. "Wait for ladder!"

  He shook himself free of the gully dwarf he had rescued, after telling her to lie still. She obeyed without question. Feeling around on the floor, Shnatz found the grooves he had carved in the floor. He set the feet of the ladder into the grooves and pulled it up until its top rested just at the edge of the hole. "Come now!" he ordered.

  "Is it safe?" one of the gully dwarves asked as he edged onto the ladder's first rung.

  "Stupid puhungs" Shnatz muttered. "I not know why I bother with you stupid puhungs. Is it safe? It safer than jumping, stupid puhung."

  Once they had safely navigated their descent, Shnatz ordered them to bunch together and hold on to one another. Standing alone, one might slip and fall, bowl into his companions, and send the entire throng sliding to their deaths. But close together, there was less chance that one false step would bring them all down. Plus, Shnatz was leading them and he didn't want to be swept up in the tide of their self-inflicted ruin.

  Even so, it was a tricky and dangerous climb down the glass-smooth slope. No dwarf construction, this tunnel had been burned through the solid stone by one of the Chaos dragons that had attacked Thorbardin. After continuing downward for about a hundred feet, the passage made an abrupt right turn and leveled off. Here, they found the first gully dwarf who had dropped through the hole, the point of his pickax lodged firmly between his crossed eyes. Shnatz kicked him to make sure he was dead, then continued onward with a roll of his eyes. The other gully dwarves crept past their dead comrade, snickering nervously, death being one of their most familiar jokes, and the more absurd the death the better they liked it, unless they were the ones doing the dying.

  The passage wound back and forth, as though the dragon that had burned it were chasing something that was trying its best to get away. At one point, they came to a place where a large section of the wall and a portion of the floor opened into empty blackness. "Where that go?" one of the gully dwarves asked.

  Shnatz looked back over his shoulder and sneered. "Jump in and see."

  The gully dwarf peered into the hole for a moment, a crisp, wet breeze weakly fingering the matted hairs of his beard. He turned to Shnatz and said, "You get ladder."

  "Come on. We go this way. You follow me, don't fall in." The nineteen remaining gully dwarves didn't need to be told twice. They gave the hole a wide berth and hurried after their leader, who had already ranged far ahead, his torch winking in the darkness like a far-off star.

  Eventually, Shnatz found the place he sought and ordered them all to a halt. They thankfully dropped their digging tools and sank to the ground, panting and weeping of their weariness. "Get up! Get up!" Shnatz growled, kicking them. "We not done yet. We just get here. Now real work begin." Moaning and snarling, the gully dwarves crawled to their feet once more.

  "We do job. We follow you just like you say. What we gotta do now?" they complained.

  "See this floor?" Shnatz asked. In this section of the tunnel, the slick, glassy floor and walls were covered in a huge spiderweb of cracks. Some of the cracks were a handspan or more wide. The gully dwarves examined the floor for a moment, then nodded. Shnatz continued, "You start digging here. Break open these cracks wider."

  "What we dig for?" one of the gully dwarves asked.

  "Treasure," Shnatz whispered, to get their full attention. He glanced around as though making sure no one might overhear. The gully dwarves gathered near, their grimy faces eager. "Ancient dwarf treasure of the Great Hylar, left here when Hybardin abandoned."

  "No fooling?" they sighed, all their greediest longings kindled.

  Shnatz winked and poked one of them in the ribs. "You best diggers of all Aghar. That why I hire you. We all be rich, rich as kings. But you gotta dig quick, before someone find us and run us off, take all treasure for themselves."

  The gully dwarves growled angrily that anyone would dare steal their treasure after they had worked so hard to find it. They set to work with gusto. Shnatz had them spread out rather than all dig in one place. When asked why, he said, "Treasure big. You gotta dig big hole!" which doubled their enthusiasm. Picks swung and rock chips flew, and only occasionally did they do each other serious harm. The injured crawled aside to cheer on their fellows, for all were promised an equal share. Shnatz stood well hack, a grin slowly spreading across his filthy face.

  It wasn't long before one of the gully dwarves shouted for their leader. Shnatz ordered them to stop digging and approached. "You find treasure?" he asked.

  "No. But something wrong with this rock," the gully dwarf, named Hong, answered. To demonstrate, he struck the floor with his hammer. A section of the floor as large as a serving platter sank three inches under the blow.

  Shnatz leaped back and began to edge away. "You do good work, better than I thought. Treasure almost ours. But you work hard, need break. Everybody take break. I be right back."

  "Where you go?" Hong asked.

  "I gonna go spit in that hole, see how deep it is. You stay here," Shnatz said, then hurried away.

  Hong looked around at his companions and shrugged. Groaning, they sank to the shattered floor, stretched out their short, weary legs and began to discuss how they were going to spend their riches once they were all kings.

  19

  In previous years, the Festival of Lights had been Tarn's favorite time of the year. At no other time was his city of Norbardin more beautiful. Being exquisite metalworkers and skilled in the arts of stonecarving, the dwarves delighted in creating the most fantastic lanterns and lamps they could imagine. They made lanterns from the materials they loved most—gold and silver, copper and steel, as well as all kinds of beautiful stone. As he made his way through the city, accompanied only by the captain of his guard, Mog Bonecutter, Tarn delighted in the infinite variety of lights that lined the streets. Whether hung in windows or from lampposts or strung from wires from house to house, the streets of Norbardin glittered with a beauty and a brilliance to rival the stars in the night sky.

  Tarn's favorite ornaments were the moon lamps that he saw sitting atop poles at the corners of many of the streets he passed. Carved into a hollow sphere inside which a single candle burned, the red lanterns were carved from red jade and glowed like the red moon Lunitari, the moon of neutrality. Far more popular were the white lanterns, which were carved from milky white crystal to represent Solinari, the silver moon of goodness. Though the moons of magic no longer brightened the night skies of Krynn (they, like the gods, had disappeared at the end of the Chaos War), the dwarves remembered them in their crafts and in their songs. Tarn loved to see the warmly glowing translucent globes hanging above his head once more. They reminded him of a simpler time.

  At this time of the day, the celebrations of the festival were just beginning to start. Columns of dwarves paraded through the streets of each quarter of the city—Hylar, Daewar, Daergar, Theiwar, and Klar—playing harps and drums, and bearing lights to honor the dead and decorate the family shrines found in most residential districts. Each family had its own shrine, and the head of the family was its priest, presiding over a day of feasting. The dwarves celebrated their dead rather than mourning them, after the proper mourning period of six years had passed. So the Festival of Lights was a day in which a family might celebrate the lives of their grandfathers through riotous feasting and games, while at the same time wearing shorn beards and black armbands in mourning of someone who had recently passed away. It was not unusual to see a veiled widow kicking a ball in the streets with a gang of laughing children, or a grief-stricken father well into his cups singing songs with other customers at the neighborhood tavern.

  Tarn made a point of touring the newer neighborhoods of the Anvil's Echo, though this took him far out of his way. On normal days, the Daergar and Theiwar never even bothered to light the streets of their home quarters; they were gifted with darkvision and had no need of lights. But on the day of the Festival of Ligh
ts, these two quarters were perhaps more brilliant than any other in the city. The Daergar made up in cleverness and dark humor for their lack of precious metals and rich stones with which to make their lamps. Instead, they had created an infinite variety of paper and wood constructions, and this material allowed them to achieve more fantastic shapes and a greater variety of colors. On one street, all the lamps were of fish, whales, and mythical beasts of the sea, shining with cool blues and soft greens that made the street look like some weird underwater grotto. Another street seemed to be on fire, with orange and yellow paper lamps shaped like open flames licking from every window and doorway. Such was the nature of the Daergar humor, which re-created the destruction of Chaos as part of their celebration.

  In the Theiwar quarter, there were fewer lamps, but these were often magical in nature, burning without fire or heat, and with wildly varied colors. The Theiwar preferred to cast their magics into lamps of purest crystal and to decorate them with illusions, usually grotesque ones. Tarn's favorite was a new one set up before the house of Brecha Quickspring, the Theiwar thane. It was a towering piece of crystal carved to look like the mountain itself. Its light shone from the open North and South Gates, while illusionary dragons flew in slow circles around its snowcapped peak.

  Tarn was surprised to see so many new magical lamps in the Theiwar section of the Anvil's Echo. Over the past three or four festivals, new lamps had been scarce, and some had even begun to whisper that the Theiwars' magic was failing. But now, the streets seemed to be filled with glowing lights and weird illusions to delight and terrify. Tarn had a natural distrust of magic, as did most dwarves, but he could appreciate the care that had gone into the Theiwars' decorations this year. Certainly, this proved that their magic had not waned one whit. While pleased, nevertheless he reminded himself that he needed to dig more deeply into this development and find out why.

  Tarn's wandering journey through Norbardin was of course accompanied by Mog's constant wheedling. That street was much too dangerous; the people of this neighborhood dislike you; let me summon more guards, you shouldn't travel alone like this; I can't protect you from everything, I only have two eyes. …on and on. The Klar captain walked as though upon naked swollen nerves, always jumping at shadows, his hand flying to the axe at his belt at every slam of a door.

  Tarn knew his job was to look as though he was comfortable enough to lie down on a bench in the seediest section of the Anvil's Echo and take a nice long nap. That didn't mean he wasn't wary. In the year since the disaster at Qualinost, the good will of the dwarves of Thorbardin had definitely soured toward their king. Not in obvious ways, of course. Few spoke openly against him, but in his public audiences Tarn had begun to detect a distinct undercurrent of disrespect. Nothing he could pin down with certainty, just the occasional sarcastic remark about his "leadership."

  But more ominously, the dwarves he met on the streets no longer greeted him in their old familiar ways. They used polite formality to keep their distance from him now. In the weeks after the disaster, people had gone out of their way to greet him, to offer words of encouragement and support, seeking any excuse to shake his hand, or bend his ear. Now, people did little more than pause and bow coolly before continuing about their business. Some merely nodded, though everyone was meticulously polite.

  Tarn tried not to let it bother him, but Mog, on top of all his safety concerns, was incensed by the change in public mood. He snarled and grumbled nearly constantly, promising a sound thrashing under his breath to nearly everyone they encountered. Tarn heard every word and feared the day Mog should ever be let loose on the innocent population. That was one reason why he had so thoroughly incorporated the Klar into his administration, assigning them duties at every level. With something positive to do and the honor of the king to protect and uphold, the Klar were less likely to cause themselves and others harm. Naturally, the other clans didn't understand this, and resented Tarn's apparent favoritism.

  The Klar quarter was the one place in Norbardin where the people still greeted him warmly, sometimes too warmly. He lost count of how many times he had to free himself from being dragged into a tavern to join them in a round to toast the king's health. The Klar had lost more warriors in the disaster at Qualinost than any other clan, but they had never grown to blame Tarn. But not even among his own people did Mog relax his guard. If anything, he felt freer here to lay about with his fists in order to clear the way when the friendly crowd pressed uncomfortably close to the king.

  Having finally cleared the Klar quarter, Tarn and Mog were able to make better time. They left Norbardin behind and followed a wide passage called the First Road to the West Warrens, where the mushroom fields that fed and clothed Norbardin were located. This huge agricultural area was many times larger than Norbardin, made up of a complex of interconnected caverns filled with a soft black loam, atop which their mushrooms grew. Even so, it was still quite a bit smaller than the North, South, and East Warrens, now inaccessible beyond the ruins of the dwarven cities.

  The dwarves farmed several dozen varieties of mushrooms, some for food, some for fibers to make cloth, some for their medicinal properties, or for brewing into spirits. The largest variety were among the edible mushrooms, from the small spicy purple lumpkins to the big beefsteak mushrooms that had to be chopped down with an axe and butchered like a hog to separate the edible parts from the fibrous.

  The Warrens were largely unpopulated this day. Except for a few retired overseers or independent mushroom farmers who had their residences right here in the mushroom caverns, most of the workers were away celebrating in Norbardin. Guards lingered near cavern intersections, for the Warrens needed constant guarding against raids by gully dwarves and other hungry creatures of the deep places. They saluted perfunctorily as Tarn passed by, most of them already half-sodden on dwarf spirits.

  The Sixth Road led out of the south end of the Warrens to a wharf on the shore of the Urkhan Sea. Here, Tarn found a boat awaiting him, a half dozen Hylar rowers already sitting at the oarlocks with their hoods pulled up over their heads against the cold, moist air. Dark water lapped and spattered against the side of the boat and the piles of the dock as Tarn and Mog climbed down and took their places on a bench. Tarn apologized for being late. Someone muttered something unintelligible in response. Tarn placed a warning hand on Mog's arm, urging him back into his seat. The helmsman ordered the lines cast off. Oars rattled in their locks and dipped in smooth unison into the black water of the sea, as the boat turned and shot out over the glass-smooth water.

  In the distance, a great bulk of darkness, dotted with lights at its near end, loomed up against the larger darkness of the enormous central cavern of Thorbardin. Few humans or elves had ever set foot inside the mountain, nor were they allowed the privilege of seeing one of the great wonders of Krynn.

  The Urkhan Sea was a vast underground freshwater lake, one of the largest known freshwater lakes on the entire continent of Ansalon. Five miles across at its widest point, the lake once served as the primary conduit of transportation between the five dwarven cities of Thorbardin. Now the cities lay in ruins, uninhabited except by a few feral Klar and, of course, uncounted thousands of gully dwarves.

  Travel across the sea was a rare event now, but the dwarves of Tarn's boat had not forgotten their skills. The helmsmen softly calling out the strokes, they plied the oars with practiced care, working in unison to pull the boat across the lake as smoothly as a shuttlecock sliding between the two weaves of a loom. The lights on the distant shore grew nearer by the minute.

  The Isle of the Dead rose before them, hulking and black, jagged and fearful to behold, for this was the ruins of the fallen Life Tree of the Hylar, the wreck of Hybardin. Already somber and thinking ruefully of his wife and son, Tarn's mood darkened as they drew near. Somewhere on that island, buried under tons of rubble, lay the bones of his first love, Belicia Slateshoulders. Their marriage had been less than a month away when she died. Tarn reflected that, had they been marri
ed before the accident that took her life—when she, along with several hundred workers, plunged to their fates when the section of Hybardin they were attempting to restore broke free—his life would be very different today. Dwarves mated for life. If he had lost his wife rather than his betrothed, there wouldn't be a Crystal Heathstone or a Tor Bellowgranite in his life today.

  In a way, he was glad they had waited to marry, but he meant no dishonor to her spirit, especially on this hallowed day. In his heart, he knew that Belicia never begrudged him his conflicted feelings. Nevertheless, he sometimes felt ugly inside, as though he had betrayed her somehow.

  On the near side of the island, a low spur of land jutted out into the black Urkhan Sea. Down by the water's edge, tiny against the huge bulk of the island, the Hylar dwarves had built a small shrine to honor those doomed to lie in these ruins and thus denied a proper cairn burial. The shrine was carved out of purest white marble. Beside it stood a deep granite basin weighing several tons, resting atop a wide granite base into which was carved the names of those Hylar known to lie at rest on the island. A lesser shrine honored the Daewar who had died in defense of Hybardin during the war. Daergar and Theiwar had perished here as well, buried under tons of rubble during the first collapse, but they had died making war against the rightful rulers of Thorbardin and so received no memorial here.

  Dozens of torches set atop tall poles surrounded the shrine and its small courtyard beside the lapping waters of the Urkhan Sea. Drawing nearer, Tarn saw that there were already many boats pulled up along the rocky shore or tied to the wharf. His was the last boat to arrive, and by the looks of it, the dwarves had already begun the Festival of Lights ceremony without him.