by Dragon Lance
Approaching the giant stalactite was like approaching an upside-down mountain suspended from the sky. It was a huge, glistening mass of stone, rounded at the bottom where it almost touched the little island beneath that was its twin stalagmite, rising from the water. The distance between the stone surfaces was less than ten feet, and they were coupled now by a masonry shaft where the Hylar had installed a lift-belt, of the kind Handil the Drum had perfected in Thorin. The lift rose upward, into the main shaft where delving had begun and where the first quarters of the Hylar had been installed.
The boat creaked and nestled into a stone quay made of rubble from the delving above. Guards hurried forward from the lift to secure the lines, then stepped back as Willen Ironmaul stepped ashore and turned to lend stout hands to the others debarking. “How is my wife?” Willen asked.
“Very well, Sire,” a portal guard assured him. “But those with her say that her time is at hand. The child comes soon.”
Willen headed for the lift, but the women crowded ahead of him. “You wait your turn,” one of them snapped. “She needs us now more than she needs you. Just stay out of the way.”
“Here!” the Theiwar woman thrust her copper kettles at the chieftain of the Hylar. “Make yourself useful. Bring water.”
He handed the kettles to a guard. “You heard her,” he said. “Bring water.” As the lift stages disappeared up the shaft, carrying the women, Willen swung aboard the next stage and Mistral Thrax scrambled on beside him, clinging to Willen’s breastplate to keep from falling. Behind them, Olim and others crowded toward the next stage.
Upward through its shaft the lift-belt rumbled, and they stepped off onto fresh, hewn stone where a delve had been completed and shorings and partitions put into place. With Hylar craftsmen following them, Daewar delvers had dug an open area ten feet high and expanding a hundred feet in all directions from the central shafts. The Hylar had partitioned the space into various cubicles and enclosures, their pillars and masonry walls serving both as partitions and as braces to shore up the ceiling. The great delve, in the living stone of the stalactite, was only just begun, but already there was space enough for twenty Hylar families.
In a cubicle floored by fine carpets and hung with bright Daewar tapestries, Tera Sharn lay in her bed, radiant and determined. Dwarven women were gathered around her, and the new arrivals joined them. When Willen pushed through the crowd, Tera’s eyes brightened. “Willen!” she cried. “You’ve come back! How did it go with the Ergothians?”
“There will be a road,” he assured her, leaning over to plant a kiss on her lips. “And you?”
“Splendid,” she said. “Everything is well, my love. Our child is —”
“Mercy!” a Daewar woman snapped, tugging on Willen’s belt. “Back off, you oaf! Give her room to breathe.” Others joined her, and Willen allowed himself to be hauled away. Beyond the crowd he turned and bumped into another dwarf. It was Olim Goldbuckle.
Other boats had landed, and suddenly the little cubicle was packed with people. Slide Tolec was there, and Bole Trune leaning on his cudgel and looking thoroughly out of place, and others, everywhere.
“We heard,” the Theiwar said, “so we came. The birth of a child is a —”
“I’ll tell the lot of you what it is not!” a Hylar woman hissed, glaring at all the males packed into the room. “It is not a public spectacle! Out! All of you, out!”
Sheepishly, most of the leading citizens of Thorbardin were herded from the room by irate females. One, though, remained. Mistral Thrax refused to budge. He clung to his crutch and to a tapestry, shaking his head. “I won’t leave,” he insisted. “I am needed here.”
“Then stay out of the way,” someone said, and turned away to close the doors, shutting out all the other males. For a time the crowded cubicle was alive with bustling, chattering women doing mysterious things, then a silence fell which was broken by a slap and an angry wail. “A boy!” someone said. “A strong, healthy boy!”
The wail had carried through the closed doors, and now they flew open and people thronged in again, deep male voices laughing and chattering, aahing and oohing, hard hands slapping Willen on his armored back as he tried to see past the mob of women. In the bed, a tired and radiant Tera Sharn held her infant close to her and smiled her pleasure.
Mistral Thrax was not watching, though. His hands ached and his heart was pounding, and his gaze was fixed on the open doorway. There was something there – barely visible – something like a whiff of smoke that grew and roiled and formed itself into the tenuous shape of a tall, human man. In dark hollows a pair of spectral eyes opened, and Mistral pushed forward to face the apparition. “No!” he shouted. “No! I forbid you!”
The “eyes” began to glow, a murky red that grew brighter and brighter.
“I killed you once,” Mistral Thrax rasped. “I’ll do it again!”
The smoke flowed but held its shape, and now all eyes in the room were on it, people backing away in fright. A voice like a whisper of smoke said, “The child. The seed. In morit deis Calnaris,” it whispered. “Refeist ot atium —”
Roaring a challenge, Willen Ironmaul threw himself at the vision … and rebounded as though he had run into a wall. The whispering voice hesitated only an instant, then repeated, “Refeist ot atium —”
Raising his crutch, Mistral Thrax flung it at the smoke. It seemed to strike an invisible shield, but it clung there and began to glow. It turned red, then brighter red, and its shape changed. The crutch became a spear – a twin-tined fishing spear in the hand of a tattered, ancient dwarf who seemed only partly visible.
“— ot atium,” the smoke whispered. “Dactas ot destis!”
Fires flew from the glowing “eyes,” fires aimed directly at the infant in Tera Sharn’s arms. But they did not get there. Like a magnet drawing iron, the spear in Kitlin Fish-taker’s hand drew the fires. They raged into its point, along its shaft, and into the spectral dwarf who flamed as bright as sunlight. He flamed, absorbing the curse, then thrust the spear forward into the heart of the smoke, and the flames flowed back from him into the specter. For long seconds the two stood motionless, sharing forces that were beyond imagining. Then the flaming shape of Kitlin Fishtaker raised its free arm over its head and opened its hand. In its palm lay a medallion – a fourteen-point star melded from seven metals. Above the roar of fire-forces, the dwarf-apparition’s voice said, “The child’s name shall be Damon. He shall be known as Father of Kings.”
A moment more the glare raged, then it flared out as though it had never been. The smoke-vision of Grayfen the Magician was gone. The spear was gone. Kitlin Fishtaker was gone, and a stunned silence lay on the packed little room.
There was a tiny thump as something fell to the floor, landing on bright carpet at the foot of Tera’s bed. Willen Ironmaul, just getting to his feet, stooped and picked the thing up, looked at it, and then held it up for others to see. It was that same amulet – the one forged by the thanes to bind the agreement among them, the one whose final weld came from the hammer of Colin Stonetooth.
“Father of Kings,” Willen muttered, shaken. He turned, gazing at his wife and their infant child, then gently laid the amulet on the pillow beside them. “Damon,” he said, touching his son’s pink brow with hard, gentle fingers. “Damon. Father of Kings.”
In a corner, unnoticed, Mistral Thrax held his hands open before him and gazed at their palms. The marks were gone. As though they had never been there, the scars of magic had disappeared. “I’m free,” the old dwarf muttered. “I am clean at last … and free.”
Without anyone noticing him, he turned and hobbled out of the room, using a guardsman’s pike as a crutch. Suddenly he had a real yearning for a mug of cold ale.
Hammer and Axe
(2128 PC)
Prologue
THE DWARVEN LANDS
They went furtively in this land of peaks and valleys, of yawning chasms and soaring heights. From the east they came, traveling sometimes af
oot and sometimes, when it was demanded, by arcane means to avoid detection. What they sought was a place that the moons said lay among these mountains: a place where high was low and low was high; where yesterday, today, and tomorrow might form a perfect circle; and where the moons of Krynn, on the seventh midnight of the seventh month of each seventh year, were the corners of a triangle whose exact center was directly overhead.
The place they sought would be suited to the building of a citadel – a Tower of High Sorcery from which to control and direct the magics of a world seeking order within chaos. Seven such places, the movement of the moons said, would be found suitable. The first was known – in the great forests of the ancient dragonlands where now were elves. The other six would be known to those who reached them, by the testing of mirrors and stones.
The three had traveled far to reach this mountain land, intent upon their quest. Few knew of their passing. The skills they had learned from the Scions, the arts of weaving spells to draw and utilize the magics, had served them well. And yet, the search was difficult. The world itself told them where to look, to find the points of perfect balance of forces, but only in general terms. They knew, within a few miles, where the base of the citadel must stand and how it would relate – in many planes, seen and unseen – to other such citadels in other places. High in the western mountains lay a flat plain, bounded by towering peaks and precipitous cliffs – a place where low was high and high was low. But they must find the place, exactly. Only by testing would they know, and they must suffer the effects of their spells many times to be sure.
A hundred times in a dozen days they had repeated their ritual, here on the high meadow above the Sheercliff escarpment, deep in the land that the dwarves who lived there called Kal-Thax. The moons decreed the area, and their calculations had told them that the root-source of powers from which a Tower of High Sorcery might draw substance was here … somewhere. But the plain was miles across in all directions.
That they were interlopers in this land, trespassers without leave or warrant, was of little concern to them. They were first-order wizards, trained and nourished in their arts by the Scions themselves. The others suspected that Megistal might be one of those rare ones chosen for deeper magics, though he gave no clue to this, unless it was in the fact that, while the other two had been appointed by their peers to the present mission, Megistal seemed to have appointed himself.
Still, none of them needed permission to go wherever they chose. No one could stop them. No one could even see them if they wished not to be seen. Many times since entering these mountains they had seen dwarves, or heard signal drums, and several times Megistal had suggested that, in all fairness, they should at least let the dwarves know what they were doing. It was none of the dwarves’ business, but it might avoid conflicts later if the dwarves were to accept now that there would be a Tower of High Sorcery within their realm, whether they wished it or not.
But each time, the other two had disagreed. “It would just cause a fuss,” Sigamon argued. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them, and, besides, we’re doing this for the general good – for their good as much as anyone else’s. Magic must be ordered, for the benefit of all. It is the purpose of the citadels.”
Of course, Tantas sneered at this attitude. “Dwarves don’t matter,” he said. “But we’ll need them later, and the less they know in advance, the better. When the site is found, we’ll need laborers to set the stones. Where better to get slaves than from among these dwarves? Tell them nothing. When we need them, we shall take them.”
So the dwarves knew nothing of the wizards or why they were there. Recently Megistal had the feeling that someone was watching them, but he was certain it was not a dwarf. Whoever it was had not interfered, though Sigamon’s favorite chalice had turned up missing, and Tantas complained that he could not find his blackstone bracelet. So as the days went by the wizards labored, slept, and labored again, drawing upon their own energies to feed the magics of the search.
Megistal was tired now, as he raised bloodstone amulets above his head, one in each hand, and uttered the spell he had repeated a hundred times or more. “Dactis tat sonan!” he breathed, and felt the uncomfortable tingling in his shoulders and fingers as the amulets drew strength from him to do his bidding. Little fires arced around and between the two stones, their deep red color becoming an angry glow, like cold, blood-red fire dancing from one to the other. Megistal drew a deep, shuddering breath and commanded, “Chapak!” Abruptly the flow of light between the stones extended ahead of him, becoming a double shaft of radiance that grew and raced outward, to converge upon a spot on the ground nearly sixty feet away. Instantly, the ground there seemed to come alive, to swarm with busy, scurrying things, but he knew that was only an illusion.
“Mark the point!” Megistal called, concentrating. It took substantial effort to hold the spell in place.
Tantas and Sigamon hurried forward, Sigamon lifting his muddy white robe above his knees to sprint on long, ungainly legs, while the hunchbacked Tantas scuttled in that peculiar gait of his, clutching his black floppy hat to keep it from falling off. While Megistal stood, intent and motionless, holding the sources of the light in place, the two other wizards knelt where it touched the ground and set a stake there, driving it into the hard earth with a wooden mallet.
Megistal, though exhausted, noticed again the odd, distant rumbling sound that seemed to become more pronounced each time they ran their tests. It was as though something, somewhere, was reacting to the magic of the search. What it was none of them knew, or really cared. The blood-red light winked out as the wizard lowered his arms. “That’s one corner,” he said. “Who’s next?”
Tantas paced a distance from the stake, scuttling as he always did, and drew his blue-black seek-stones from his pack. As Megistal had done earlier with his bloodstone seekers, the dark wizard lifted his arms, holding the stones high. “Dactis tat dervum!” he commanded. Inky mists grew around his hands. “Chapak!” From the dark mists, brilliant lightning streaked outward, sizzling and scorching the ground where it touched. Sigamon and Megistal ran to mark the spot, and again the meadow seemed to rumble angrily. Within the past two days, the sound had become quite loud.
The spot chosen by Tantas’s lightning was thirty yards from the point where Megistal’s red light had struck. Sigamon paced the distance, then placed himself directly between the two points. His mark would complete the triangle, but only by testing could they know which direction the triangle should point. Sigamon pulled out his clear, glittering gems and raised them. “Dactis tat osis!” he said. “Chapak!” Blinding white light flowed from his hands and shot out behind him. Where it struck the ground frost formed. The other two ran to mark the place, and once again the very earth seemed to growl.
“I wish we knew what was causing that,” Sigamon remarked. “The Scions didn’t mention anything like that occurring.”
“I wish I knew where my bracelet went,” Tantas grumbled.
“Magic is a new art.” Megistal shrugged. “There is still much that isn’t known. But once the Towers of Sorcery are in place, the learning can proceed more rapidly.”
*
In a dark place deep beneath the surface, cold mists stirred and swirled to echoing roars of pure, intense anger. Like a sleeper beset by insects, she had hissed and grumbled, clinging to sleep, shutting out the torments. But they had continued too long – the stings of unseen aggravation that annoyed her – and now that she was awake, her roar was like the only name she had ever had. Rage.
How long had she slept? She had no way of knowing, but she knew it had been a very long time. Ages of time. Where once there had been an ice cavern, deep within a mountain, now cold mists swirled. And where once she had been trapped within the ice – imprisoned there by forces beyond imagining – now she lay half-encased by a shell of stone, limestone that had formed around her with the gradual melting of the steel-hard ice. Ages had passed. Eons had come and gone while she slept.
But now she was awake, and her name was Rage, and rage was all of her. Her bondage was over. She had been imprisoned because the creatures of her world feared her, with good reason. They were living things, and Rage was death to them. She had rampaged freely among them, exulting in her power to kill. There had never been another like her. It was as though the forces that created her had regretted what they had done and turned against her, imprisoning her forever in the ice. But now, it seemed, forever was over.
Now she was awake again, and free. How, she didn’t know, but she was. Were there still creatures in this world? Were they still the soft-bodied, screaming things that had so delighted her, things that held warmth within them and writhed in agony as they died? She didn’t know, but she meant to find out. Rage stirred, and the limestone cracked away in the swirling mists that surrounded and clung to her like a silver-dark cloak.
It didn’t matter to Rage how she came to be awakened. All that mattered was that she was awake. She slowly studied the stone around her until she found a crack large enough to permit her passage. With the mists flowing about her and following after her, she went looking for the outside world. Eventually she emerged into moonlight near the base of a great wall of serrated stone, a sheer cliff hundreds of feet high. Before her lay a mountain world of peaks and valleys, of stark slopes and vast vistas.
Turning her back to the cliff from which she had emerged, Rage went hunting.
*
Several hundred miles to the east, where rolling plains began and within view of the eastern range of the mountains of the dwarven realm, high tower windows looked out on the teeming ways and climbing roofs of a great walled city. In the crowded streets below the tower, throngs of people vied for space and for bits of the wealth that was released occasionally by the overlords to sustain the city and its populace. Among them, everywhere, dark-armored and bright-pennanted, marched the companies of grim guards who kept order and enforced the dictates of the overlords.