But there were no elder bahk around when the youngster stumbled upon the hole. No elders to bash the dull-witted youth over the head and drive him away. His unfinished brain could not detect the scent of the gods. All he smelled was the magic, and so he ran inside. He thought he was entering a cave.
The cave proved to be extremely different from most caves with which the young bahk was familiar. Its floor and walls were perfectly smooth, made of what appeared to be gray rock. The scent of magic was quite strong inside the cave. The bahk imagined a treasure trove of wondrous arcane artifacts hidden within. He walked and walked, searching for the treasure room, but all he found was more gray rock. He walked until he was starting to grow discouraged and frustrated, tired and footsore and extremely angry.
At that point, he bashed his fist against the gray rock, or what he thought was gray rock. It was as if he’d bashed his fist against the smooth surface of clear water. His fist went right through the rock. He could see his fingers wiggling at him from the other side.
Now the bahk was scared. He realized he’d made a dreadful mistake. He turned to flee, to leave this terrible place, only to find that the way back looked exactly like the way forward. He turned again, to look back the way he’d been going, turned around again to see if he’d got it right and, by this time, was hopelessly confused.
Panicked, the young bahk howled dismally, hoping one of the elders would come find him and take him out of this horrible gray place. No one came, and, after a time, the bahk’s throat hurt and so he quit. He sat down and wept a little, lost and lonely and scared and now hungry.
Hunger prompted him to get up and continue walking, the idea having finally struggled into his brain that only by moving did he have some chance of escape.
The bahk’s intelligence was rewarded. Light—sunlight—shone ahead of him. The bahk gave a hoarse raw squeal of pleasure and dashed forward, emerging from the gray hole into a forest. The bahk was so thankful to be free of the terrible hole that he did a little dance, a dance whose foot-thumping enthusiasm caused several small trees in the vicinity to shake loose from the ground.
Only when he was finally tired of dancing and starting to think that it was way past time for supper did the bahk actually look around. He realized, in cold terror, that this was not his homeland. This was a forest, and he did not live in a forest. He lived in a desert. A warm and friendly desert with vast expanses of sand. A desert where a bahk could see in all directions, see if his enemies were approaching.
The bahk tried to sort out in his mind what had happened. The only answer was that, in his absence, these trees had moved in and taken over his desert.
Trees. The bahk had seen a few trees in his lifetime, and he didn’t particularly like them. The elder bahk taught that trees were good. The elder bahk made weapons out of the trees, weapons they gave the younger bahk when they came of age and taught them to use. But it would be many years yet before this young bahk was deemed to have sense enough to wield a weapon.
The bahk glowered at the trees and twisted his face into a ferocious scowl, to show them that he wasn’t scared. He flexed his arms and stomped his feet to intimidate them, and, when they didn’t respond, he gained confidence and bashed a few of them with his enormous fist.
The trees waved their arms and shuddered at the blows, but they didn’t fight back. Feeling pleased with himself, the bahk moved on to his next problem—his shrunken and empty belly. He needed food, the bahk’s favorite food, their only food—the succulent fruit of the obabwi cactus, which grows plentifully in the bahks’ desert homeland.
In order to find the cacti, the bahk would have to get past these nasty trees. He started walking, sniffing the air for cactus. A scent came to him, but it was not the juicy scent of obabwi fruit. It was the foul scent of those who feed off animals, the scent of humans. Mingled with this repulsive scent was another smell, much more pleasant and far more exciting—the scent of magic.
It occurred dimly to the bahk that he’d had magic enough to last him a lifetime. But the terror he had experienced was rapidly fading from his mind, having been overtaken and beaten down by hunger. The bahk would certainly never enter the dread hole again, but he blamed the hole itself for having caused his problems, not the magic.
Humans use magic. Humans make magic work for them. Humans are repositories of lovely magical things. The bahks don’t use the magic. They don’t want the magic to serve them. They love the magic for its own sake. They like to carry magic around, like to pull it out and admire it twenty times a day. They like to adorn their bodies with magic, like to sleep with it at night, tucked beneath their heads.
The bahk ripped a sapling out of the ground to use as a club, one of the very few weapons with which a young bahk is ever trusted. Humans were almost always unwilling to part with their magical artifacts and would generally fight to keep them. The bahk wasn’t afraid. Even though he was only half-grown—about the size of two tall human males laid end to end—humans had few weapons that could hurt him. He would be much taller when he was full-grown, about the height of four humans standing atop each other, his body solid as a mountain with a hide so tough that it would easily deflect razor-sharp arrow points and turn aside the best steel sword blades.
The bahk crashed through the trees, which refused to move out of his way, though he yelled and hollered at them and eventually starting shoving them over. The magic scent was strong, filled his nostrils with its promise of excitement. He lumbered forward, snuffling the air, like a cat to catnip.
Not far from the hole, he found the human and the magic.
The human lay on the ground. His eyes were closed, his breathing harsh and ragged and gasping. He was wearing armor. The bahk recognized it as armor, though it was shining black. The human’s helm lay on the ground at his side. The black armor was itself magical, and the bahk started to seize it, to rip it off the human. But the armor burned his fingers when he touched it, burned them painfully. Snarling in outrage, the bahk snatched back his burned hand and thrust the fingers in his mouth, sucking on them. He bashed the human a few times with his club in a fit of temper.
The human moaned. His head rolled in agony. His eyelids opened, fixed upon the bahk. He stared at the creature looming over him in horror and astonishment. The bahk paid no attention to the human, who was certainly not a threat. The bahk had found the source of the magic, held fast in the human’s hand—a bright and shining diamond.
This magic was gentle. This magic wouldn’t hurt the bahk. This jewel, which was smooth-sided and triangular in shape, was the most wonderful thing the bahk had ever seen. Entranced by its beauty, the bahk reached down to seize it.
The human cried out and struggled and tried to stand. He was too weak. He fell back, gasping in pain. The bahk seized hold of the human’s hand, which was clasped tightly around the magical diamond. The human, wounded though he was, fought to keep the jewel. He clasped his fingers around it so tightly that it cut into his flesh. Blood ran from his hand, but he would not let loose.
The bahk crouched down beside the human. Lifting the human’s hand to his mouth, the bahk crunched the hand between his teeth. Bone cracked, the human screamed. A terrible taste flooded the bahk’s mouth. He spit out blood and bits of bone and flesh, peered down at the hand, and grinned in triumph. Amidst what was left of the human’s broken and mangled fingers shone the wondrous diamond, the loveliest thing the bahk had ever seen.
He plucked the diamond free, dropped the human’s arm carelessly to the ground, and stood up to his full height.
The human actually tried to rise, seemed intent on trying to take back the jewel. The bahk struck the human with the club a couple of times and the human—his face covered with blood—sank to the ground and did not stir.
The bahk stood gazing with elation and awe at his prize and then, urged on by the rumblings of his stomach, he wandered off through the trees in search of food.
Acknowledgments
For years, ever since we first w
orked on the Dragonlance project together, we have been telling stories to fantasy artist Larry Elmore. Then one day, Larry Elmore told us a story. He told us a story about a wondrous realm where paladins of good, wearing magical silver armor, fight vampyric paladins, whose cursed armor is dark as the bottom of a well of darkness. In this world, dragons battle huge creatures known as bahk. Elves live lives dedicated to honor and the sword. Orken sail the seas in pirate ships. Dwarves ride shaggy ponies across vast plains. Humans build castles of rainbows. Wizards draw magic from the air and the ground, from fire and water and the darkness of the Void.
We were entranced with this world of Larry Elmore’s creation. We wanted to meet the people who lived there and share their lives and their adventures with those of you who also enjoy exploring strange and mysterious and wonderful realms of fantasy. We are pleased to bring Larry Elmore’s vision to life in this first book of the Sovereign Stone trilogy.
And for those who would like to find their own adventures in this realm, we invite you to play the Sovereign Stone role-playing game, created by Lester Smith and Don Perrin.
In conclusion, all of us who have been involved in this project want to thank you, Larry, for creating this world and for inviting us to go adventuring in it with you.
—Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
About the Authors
Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman are the New York Times-bestselling authors of more than thirty books, including Dragons of a Vanished Moon; the Sovereign Stone Trilogy; the Star of the Guardian series; the Death Gate Cycle; the Darksword Trilogy; and the Dragonlance series. For more information on the Sovereign Stone Trilogy and the Sovereign Stone game, please go to www.sovstone.com.
The Sovereign Stone Trilogy by
Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
WELL OF DARKNESS
GUARDIANS OF THE LOST
JOURNEYING INTO THE VOID
Praise for Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman and Well of Darkness
“A rich and vibrant fantasy world populated with various races and complex, believable characters.”
Library Journal
“Weis and Hickman are now definitely up at the same level as Dave Duncan or David Eddings, using conventional fantasy elements on the grand scale to produce excellent reading.”
Chicago Sun-Times
“A classic tale…touched with originality.”
Publishers Weekly
“Sturdy sword and sorcery, well-controlled, with good characters and intriguing developments.”
Kirkus Reviews
“We wait with breathless anticipation for the next book from Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.”
The Hindu
Credits
Cover illustration by Larry Elmore.
Copyright
Thanks to Joy Marie Ledet for the artwork on the chapter and part openers, and Stephen Daniele for the interior map.
This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places, and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
WELL OF DARKNESS. Copyright © 2000 by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, and Larry Elmore. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition September 2003 eISBN 9780061755620
First HarperTorch paperback printing: September 2001
First Eos hardcover printing: September 2000
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