Water gushed into his mouth, soaking his bristling beard, causing him to choke and sputter — but still he guzzled desperately.
"Hey, don't drink it all!"
Cantor felt those small fingers touch his hands, and he growled a wet, splattering exhalation fierce enough to drive the figure of his rescuer hastily back a couple of steps.
"Well, I guess you can drink it all if you want," said that same voice, with a sigh of resignation. "Still, we might be better off saving a little for later — that is, if you want to. Well, I guess you don't."
Cantor, in any event, needed no permission. Indeed, he would have been halted by no command. When the skin was empty, he sucked on the small spout, chewing frantically, as if he would devour the very vessel itself.
"Wait! Don't wreck it!" Insistent now, the small hands came out of the darkness, seizing the drained waterskin and pulling it away.
The dwarf made an effort to resist, but his gut was taken by an abrupt spasm that wrenched him into a ball, then threatened to send all that precious water spuming back out of him. Clenching his jaws, tightening his gorge, Cantor resisted the nausea with the full strength of his will, forced the life-giving sustenance to remain in his belly. Gradually, over the course of minutes, he felt the water seep into his limbs, his brain, invigorating his thoughts, restoring some measure of acuity to his eyes, his ears, and his skin.
Finally Cantor Blacksword took note of his companion. The stranger was traveling light and alone, so far as the dwarf could see. The fellow was not as tall as — and far more slender than-a dwarf. His face had high cheekbones and was narrow and weathered, lined now by furrows of concern as the twin eyes regarded the dwarf cautiously. He had a great knot of hair tied atop his head, a sweep that extended in a long tail across his shoulder. That mane flipped gracefully as the visitor looked to the left, then the right, then back down to the dwarf.
"What are you?" Cantor Blacksword demanded, fingers instinctively inching toward the bone-handled knife concealed at his belt. His voice was still a rattling croak, but at least his tongue and lips seemed to move.
"Emilo Haversack, at your service," said the fellow, with a bow that sent the topknot of hair cascading toward the dwarf.
With a whimper, Cantor recoiled from the sudden attack, until he realized that it wasn't an attack at all. His blunt fingers firmly clasped around the knife, the Theiwar tried again. "Not who-what are you?"
"Why, I'm a traveler," said Emilo. "Like yourself, I guess-a traveler across the Plains of Dergoth. Though I must say that I've traveled to a lot of different places, and every one of them was more interesting than this. Most of them a lot more interesting."
The dwarf growled, shaking his head, sending cascades of water flinging from his bristling beard. His eyes, huge and pale by normal standards, glared balefully at his diminutive rescuer.
"Oh, you mean what, like in dwarf or human!" declared Emilo with an easy smile. "I'm a kender. And pleased to make your acquaintance."
Once again the stranger made a threatening gesture, thrusting a hand forward, palm perpendicular to the ground, fingers pointing toward the Theiwar's chest. This time Cantor was ready, and the knife came up, the black steel carving a swooshing arc through the air.
"Hey! You almost cut me!" cried the kender, whipping his fingers out of the path of the assault. "Haven't you ever shaken hands before?"
"Keep your hands away from me." Cantor's voice was a low growl, barely articulate, but apparently impressive enough to deter the menacing kender, who took a half step backward and cleverly regarded the dwarf behind a mask of hurt feelings and morose self-pity.
"Maybe I should keep all of me away from you," sniffed the long-haired traveler. "I'm beginning to think it was even a mistake to give you my water. Though I guess you would have died here if I hadn't. And anyway, I can always get more." Here the kender shivered slightly, looking nervously over his shoulder. "But I guess I'll have to go back to those caves to find it again."
"Caves?" One word from the kender's ramblings penetrated the Theiwar dwarf's lunatic mind. "There's a cave? Where?" Cantor tried to scramble to his feet, but his legs collapsed and he fell to his knees. He reached forward to seize the kender, but the little fellow skipped back, causing the dwarf's hands to clasp together in an imploring posture.
"Why, over there. In the big mountain that looks like a skull. The one they call Skullcap."
"Take me there!" Cantor screamed, lunging forward. The promise of darkness, of shade from the merciless sun, was a more enticing prospect even than the thought of more water.
"I'm not sure I want to go anywhere with you," declared the kender, his narrow chin set in a firm line. "Didn't you just try to kill me? And after I saved your life, to boot. No, I don't think-"
"Please!" the Theiwar croaked the unfamiliar word, a reflex action that achieved its purpose: For the time being, the kender stopped talking about leaving the wretched dwarf here in the middle of the plain.
For his own part, Cantor Blacksword tried to force his newly revitalized mind through some mental exercise. This was a foreign creature, more dangerous by far than the hated Hylar and Daewar of the other mountain dwarf clans. Every enraged fiber of his being, every treacherous and double-dealing experience from his past, told the Theiwar that this kender was a threat, an enemy to be defeated, one whose valuables rightfully belonged to the one who killed him.
Yet right now the greatest of those valuables was knowledge, an awareness of a place where a cave, and water, could be found. And despite the dark dwarf clan's propensity for torture, for theft and illicit acquisition, no Theiwar had ever figured out a way to pry knowledge from a corpse.
And so, for now, the kender would need to stay alive. That settled, the dwarf tried to focus on the current of prattle that seemed to issue from the kender's mouth at such an impossibly high speed.
"It was awfully nice meeting you and all, I'm sure," Emilo Haversack was saying. "But now I really must be going. Important wandering to do, you understand… have to see the coast, as a matter of fact. Do you know which way the ocean-oh, never mind! Actually, I'm sure I can find it myself."
Cantor croaked a response that he hoped was friendly.
"Anyway, I can see that you have matters of your own to keep you busy. As I said, it really has been pleasant, at least by the standards of a chance meeting during the dark of night in the middle of a desert…"
"Wait!" The Theiwar articulated the word with a great effort of will. "I–I'd like to talk to you some more. Won't you join me here in my camp?"
He gestured to the featureless, cracked ground around him. It was the place in this gods-forsaken wasteland where he had collapsed, nothing more, and yet the kender beamed as if he had been invited into a grand palace.
"Well, I don't mind if I do, really. It has been a long walk…" Emilo shivered suddenly, looking over his shoulder again, and the dwarf wondered what could make this clearly seasoned wanderer so nervous. "And I could use some company myself."
The kender crossed his legs in a fashion no dwarf could hope to mimic as he squatted easily on the ground.
"I hope you're feeling a little better after the water. You know, you really should carry some with you. After all, a person can die of thirst out here."
"I wanted to-" Cantor started to speak in his habitual snarl, to tell this kender that he had desired nothing but death.
Yet now, with the wetness of water soothing his throat and the knowledge that there was a cave somewhere, perhaps not terribly far away, the Theiwar admitted to himself that he did not want to perish here. He wanted to survive, to go on living, even if not for any particular reason that he could name at the tune.
"That is, I wanted to bring enough water to drink, but the desert was bigger than I thought it was," he concluded lamely, looking sidelong at the kender to see if he would swallow the lie.
"I see," Emilo Haversack said, nodding seriously. "Well, would you like a little hardtack?" He offered a strip of leath
ery meat, and the dwarf gratefully took the provision, chewing on the tough membrane, relishing the feel of saliva once again wetting his mouth.
"I meant to ask you," the kender continued, speaking around a tough mouthful of the jerky, "why doesn't your sword have a blade?"
Cantor gaped in astonishment, which quickly exploded to rage as he saw the kender examining the broken weapon. "How did you get that?" the dwarf demanded, making a clumsy lunge that Emilo easily evaded.
"I was just looking at it," he declared nonchalantly, allowing Cantor to snatch the weapon back.
Suspiciously the dwarf patted his pouch, finding flint and tinder where it was supposed to be. As he did, he remembered some of things he had heard about kender, and he resolved to be careful of his possessions.
"If you feel well enough, perhaps we should get going," Emilo suggested. "I've found that it's best to do my walking at night, at least here in the desert. If you want to come with me, I think we can get back to Skullcap-er, the caves-before sunrise."
Once again the dwarf heard that tremor in the kender's voice, but he took no note. The promise of a cave over his head before cruel dawn! The very notion sent a shiver of bliss through the dark-loving Theiwar, and he pushed himself to his feet with a minimum of pain and stiffness. Again he felt alive, ready to move, to fight, to do whatever he had to do to claim the part of the world that was rightfully his.
"Let's go," he said, making the unfamiliar effort to make his voice sound friendly. "Why don't you show me where those caves are?"
CHAPTER 7
Skullcap
251 AC
Third Adamachtis, Dry-Anvil
"There-didn't I tell you that it looked like a skull?" asked Emilo Haversack. "And doesn't it make you wonder how it got to be this way?"
Gantor leaned back, allowing his pale, luminous eyes to trace upward across the pocked face of the mountain, past the eye sockets and mouth that gaped as vast, dark caves. The visage did indeed look ghastly, and so realistic that it might have been the work of some giant demented sculptor.
"It might," the Theiwar said agreeably, "except I've heard a lot about this place, and I know how it was made. It serves as a monument to ten thousand dwarves who died here and an emblem of blame for the mad wizard who brought them to their doom!"
"Really? That sounds like a great story! Won't you tell me? Please?"
The kender all but hopped up and down beside the Theiwar, but Gantor brushed him away with a burly hand. "Time for stories later. I think we should head inside before the sun comes up."
They had plodded steadily through the remaining hours of darkness, with the kender claiming that he could see the pale massif of the garish mountain rising against the dark sky. This had been the first clue to Gantor that creatures on the outside world had much farther-ranging vision than did the Theiwar dwarves. Of course, even under the moonless skies, the under-mountain dweller had been able to make out every detail of his companion's features, and he had realized that his own eyes seemed to have a greater affinity for the darkness.
In fact, to Gantor, the ground underfoot had been clearly revealed. The dwarf had once pointed out a shadowy gully that the kender had almost rambled right into. Without missing a beat in his conversation, which consisted for several uninterrupted hours of preposterous stories of wandering and adventure, Emilo had hopped down into the ravine and scrambled up the other side. Still overcoming his stiffness and fatigue, Gantor had followed, pondering the difference between Theiwar and kender, not only in perceptions but in balance and movement as well.
Now, however, they stood at the base of the white stone massif, and Gantor did not need the slowly growing light of dawn to reveal the skeletal features, nor the gaping black hole-the "mouth" of the skull-that offered protection from the imminent daylight.
"Well, this is it," Emilo announced, drawing a slightly ragged breath. "Though I'm not sure that we have to go in. In fact, I'm pretty certain we can find water around here somewhere else, if we look hard enough. Now that I mention it, it might even be better water. I don't know if you noticed, being so thirsty and all, but the stuff I got in there was kind of bitter."
"I'm going in," Gantor announced, with a shrug of his shoulders. Faced with the nearby prospect of shade and water, he didn't care whether the kender came with him or not.
But then his thoughts progressed a little further. No doubt the kender knew his way around in there. And the place was certainly big, there was no denying that. Who knew how long it might take him to find the water once he started looking?
Furthermore, though the dwarf wouldn't consciously acknowledge the fact, there was another reason he desired Emilo Haversack's company. Perhaps it was just the grotesque appearance of the mountain, but there was something undeniably spooky and unpleasant about the place. Gantor didn't want to go in there alone because, in all utter, naked truth, he was afraid.
"Why don't you come along?" he asked. "You can show me where the water is and finish telling me that story about your cousin Whippersink and that big ruby he found in… what was that place again?"
"Sanction was the place." Emilo sighed in exasperation. "But you're not getting any of it right. First of all, he was my uncle! Uncle Sipperwink! I told you-his mother was my grandmother's older sister! Or younger sister, I'm not sure which. But it was an emerald, not a ruby, that he found in Sanction. And it was in a temple of the Dark Queen. You know, like in the days when there were still gods, before the Cataclysm."
"I'm afraid you lost me again," Gantor declared. "But why don't we find that water and make ourselves comfortable? Then you can tell me all about it."
"I'm not even sure you want to hear it!" snapped Emilo, a trifle peevishly.
"Well, what about my story, then? I can tell you about Skullcap."
The kender brightened immediately. "Well, that's something to look forward to. All right. It's this way."
Emilo stepped up the sloping approach to the vast cavern, the gap that, even at this close perspective, looked so very much like a sinister maw waiting to devour an unwitting meal. A smooth pathway, like a great, curving ramp, allowed them to easily approach the dark, sinister cave.
The dwarf clumped heavily along beneath the lofty overhang, instantly relishing the coolness of the eternally shadowed corridor within. The air was drier here than in Thorbardin, but for the first time since his banishment, Cantor Blacksword had the sense of a place that was fully, irrevocably underground. Each breath tasted pure and good, and the Theiwar's wide, pale eyes had no difficulty seeing into the darkest corners of the vast rubble-strewn cave.
Overhead, tall stalactites jutted sharply downward, like great fangs extending from the upper jaw of a preternatural mouth. Cantor saw piles of great rocks heaped across the floor, many of them showing jagged cracks and sharp edges, establishing that this was a cavern of violent creation. And that, of course, matched well with the stories he had always heard.
"Let's try this way. I think the path was around here somewhere," the kender suggested.
"You-you don't remember?" growled the dwarf, spluttering in suspicious indignation. "How can you forget something like that?"
"I remember." Emilo's tone showed that his feelings were hurt. "It was this way, I'm sure. Pretty sure, anyway."
He led the way before the Theiwar could make a further protest. It took perhaps an hour of wandering, of guessing between this passage and that, before Emilo had rediscovered the small circular chamber enclosing a pool of still water. The two explorers had descended a steep passage of stone, where a few steps remained visible through the wreckage of boulders and gravel that had tumbled onto the floor. Cantor Blacksword wondered idly how the kender had managed to make his way through the impenetrable gloom, for he noticed that Emilo was likely to stumble over rocks and other obstacles that stood clearly revealed-to Theiwar eyes, at least-in their path.
Perhaps it was by sound. There was, in fact, a faint trickling that penetrated the deep chamber, suggesting that th
e water in this pool was subject to some sort of flowage. Still, the surface was utterly still, free of ripples or waves, as if it had been waiting here for a century and a half for no other purpose than to quench the thirst of these weary travelers.
"Why did you say a century and a half?" asked Emilo when Cantor, his thirst quenched, had belched, leaned back, and voiced his supposition.
"'Cause that's how long this place has been here-as Skullcap, I mean." The dwarf, feeling sated and expansive, decided to grant the kender the privilege of the story that was the birthright of every dwarf born beneath Thorbardin's doming cap of mountain. The Theiwar exile gestured vaguely to the massif rising far over their heads. He was in a fine mood, and he decided he would let the kender live for now.
"What was it before?" Emilo had settled nearby. Chin on his hand, he listened intently.
"This wasn't a mountain. It was a huge tower, a complete fortress, Zhaman by name. A place of mages, it was. We dwarves left it pretty much alone. Even the elves"-Cantor said the word as if it were a curse- "were content to halt at Pax Tharkas. They, like us dwarves and the humans, gave the fortress of Zhaman to the wizards and their ilk."
"Why would anyone want to come here, into the middle of a desert. I mean, anyone except a kender who really had to see what it was like?" asked Emilo seriously.
"Well, this much I know: It wasn't a desert back then. That parched wasteland out there was one of the most fertile parts of the kingdom of Thorbardin. Farmed by the hill dwarves, it was. They brought the food in barter to the mountain dwarves for the goods-steel, mostly- that they was too lazy or ignorant to make for themselves."
Emilo nodded seriously. He pulled the end of his topknot over his shoulder and chewed on the tip, his eyes far away, and Cantor knew that he was visualizing the scene as the Theiwar described it.
"And just like that it would have stayed, too, 'cept for there came one of the greatest banes of Ansalon since Paladine and the Dark Queen themselves." The Theiwar spat to emphasize the truth of his words.
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