The Covenant of the Forge

by Dan Parkinson

  Barely aware of the murderous humans sweeping down on him, Handil the Drum stood and swung his vibrar under his arm. An arrow buried itself in his thigh, but he hardly felt it.

  The humans were only yards away now, rushing at him, but when he turned to them, they slowed, stunned at what they saw in his eyes. In that instant, a few of them may have realized that they were looking at their own deaths. Handil raised his mallets and brought them down, and the Thunderer began to sing.

  No Call to Balladine was this, no glad song of the high peaks. The rhythm of the big vibrar was a dirge, and it filled the great hall of Grand Gather with sound so intense that the humans reeled back from it.

  Another arrow struck Handil, and then another, but the mallets increased their tempo, and the vibrar thundered. All around, hewn stone took up the vibrations and began to disintegrate. The cavern roared and bellowed, and huge chunks of broken stone showered down from above, crushing everyone and everything beneath them.

  And above it all the sun of Krynn approached the zenith of its solstice day.

  The DRAGONLANCE® Saga

  Chronicles Trilogy

  Dragons of Autumn Twilight

  Dragons of Winter Night

  Dragons of Spring Dawning

  Tales Trilogy

  The Magic of Krynn

  Kender, Gully Dwarves, and Gnomes

  Love and War

  Heroes Trilogy

  The Legend of Huma

  Stormblade

  Weasel’s Luck

  Preludes Trilogy

  Darkness and Light

  Kendermore

  Brothers Majere

  Meetings Sextet

  Kindred Spirits

  Wanderlust

  Dark Heart

  Steel and Stone

  The Companions

  Dwarven Nations Trilogy

  The Covenant of the Forge

  Hammer and Axe

  The Swordsheath Scroll

  Legends Trilogy

  Time of the Twins

  War of the Twins

  Test of the Twins

  Tales II Trilogy

  The Reign of Istar

  The Cataclysm

  The War of the Lance

  Heroes II Trilogy

  Kaz, the Minotaur

  The Gates of Thorbardin

  Galen Beknighted

  Preludes II Trilogy

  Riverwind, the Plainsman

  Flint, the King

  Tanis, the Shadow Years

  Elven Nations Trilogy

  Firstborn

  The Kinslayer Wars

  The Qualinesti

  Villains Series

  Before the Mask

  The Black Wing

  Emperor of Ansalon

  The Art of the DRAGONLANCE Saga

  The Atlas of the DRAGONLANCE World

  Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home

  The Second Generation

  THE COVENANT OF THE FORGE

  Dwarven Nations • Volume One

  ©1993 TSR, Inc.

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  Published by Wizards of the Coast LLC. Hasbro SA, represented by Hasbro Europe, Stockley Park, UB11 1AZ. UK.

  DRAGONLANCE, Wizards of the Coast, D&D, their respective logos, and TSR, Inc. are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

  All Wizards of the Coast characters and their distinctive likenesses are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

  Cover art by: Tim Hildebrandt

  eISBN: 978-0-7869-6352-2

  640-A1855000-001-EN

  For customer service, contact:

  U.S., Canada, Asia Pacific, & Latin America: Wizards of the Coast LLC, P.O. Box 707, Renton, WA 98057-0707, +1-800-324-6496, www.wizards.com/customerservice

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  www.DungeonsandDragons.com

  v3.1

  To Randy and Jenny Scott

  With special thanks to Pat McGilligan for his patience,

  to Harold Johnson for sharing his knowledge

  of the dwarves of Krynn,

  and to Sue Weinlein for a touch of sunshine.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books in the Series

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Prologue: A Glimpse of Prophecy

  Part I: The Drums of Thorin 1: First Blood

  2: Song of the Drums

  3: Grayfen Ember-Eye

  4: Portent of the Sword

  5: The Heart of Everbardin

  6: The Betrayal

  7: Night of the Last Moons

  8: The Attack

  9: Battle of the Keep

  10: Bloody Solstice

  11: The Exiles

  Part II: The Tribes of Kal-Thax 12: Land of Conflict

  13: The Defenders

  14: The Price of Treachery

  Part III: A Taste of Chivalry 15: A Knight to Pass

  16: A Debt of Service

  Part IV: Urkhan’s Legacy 17: The Undermountain

  18: The Blood of Ambition

  19: The Deeps

  Part V: The Life Tree People 20: Forging Bonds

  21: Elven Encounter

  22: The New Neighbors

  23: A Call to Covenant

  Part VI: Thorbardin 24: The Covenant and the Assassin

  25: Sealed in Blood

  26: The Road to Reason

  27: Tharkas Pass

  28: Father of Kings

  About the Author

  Prologue

  A Glimpse of Prophecy

  Except for the dragons, who sprang from the world itself, the first people of Krynn were the elves. This was a conclusion reached by Mistral Thrax early in his search for certainties among the complexities of an uncertain world.

  Few would recall his early pronouncements regarding the sequence of origins, because in those days Mistral Thrax was considered to be full of strong ale and vagaries, and because few among the people of the high mountains really cared about such things as who came first and why. Such thoughts were for the very old, who had nothing better to do than think them. Even then, when he began his studies of lore after being maimed in a rockfall, Mistral Thrax was more than two hundred years of age.

  Thus little note was made of his reckonings. But the logic of his conclusions satisfied Mistral Thrax and led him onward in his studies.

  The elves, he believed, were the first attempts of the gods—particularly of Reorx the Life-Giver—to create people of their own design upon the world which before that time had only its own creatures, the dragons, and the animals which were their prey.

  So the gods discussed it and created the elves. The elves were beautiful, Mistral Thrax admitted, in an elvish way, but it was his belief that the gods grew disappointed after a time because the elves—being elves—were essentially decorative but not particularly functional. They were content simply to live long lives and to exist. They did nothing of real value, in the opinion of
Mistral Thrax. In all his studies, the old dwarf found only one thing that the elves had done that was worthy of note. They had claimed the forests of Silvanesti as their home, thereby upsetting the dragons, many of whom considered Silvanesti as their own.

  This, according to Mistral Thrax, was why so much of history was punctuated by periodic skirmishes and at least one full-scale war, starting with dragon attacks against the elves.

  In their concern for proper balance, the gods tried again. This time, they created the ogres. And again, as time passed, they grew disappointed. The ogres had been a promising race—though unimaginative and boring—but with time they began to deteriorate in their culture and eventually they became the ogres of the present—great sullen, surly brutes who were at best a nuisance and could be a real threat.

  Various gods, Mistral Thrax decided, had then tried their hands at designing a better kind of people. Which gods might have originated such monstrosities as goblins and minotaurs and the like was a question Mistral Thrax ignored, on the assumption that those particular gods were probably ashamed of what they had done, and it was not his business to lay blame.

  But Reorx the Life-Giver seemed to have recognized the problems besetting his world and turned his full attention to designing the perfect race of people. As Mistral Thrax viewed it, Reorx must have created humans next, using the basic model of the elves but instilling within the new creatures great energies, driven by the realization of short life spans. Again, in Mistral’s opinion, it was a good try but not yet perfect. Humans proved to be far too chaotic a race for Reorx’s taste, he was sure, and somehow even managed to so distort their basic strengths that some of them turned into gnomes and, possibly, even kender (though there was some evidence, Mistral conceded, that kender might have originated from some unexpected deviation among the elves).

  His intention and his vow—in his two hundredth year—had been to devote the rest of his life to the study of lore. Thus, a hundred years later, being still alive, he was still at it. Copious armloads of scrolls did Mistral Thrax produce through those years, dwelling on the mysteries of the world and dealing with them one by one, using good, dwarven logic. But the thread through all of his theories was that Reorx, once determined to create the proper race of people, did not stop trying until he had done so.

  The true race—the masterpiece of the life-giver—was all that any god could have wanted in a chosen people. Not as tall and awkward as humans, and neither as short-lived as humans nor as indecently long-lived as elves, the new race was equipped with all the skills people needed. They made fine tools and excelled in using them. Sturdy and strong of limb, they could hew stone as other races might hew soft wood. They had the imagination and inventiveness that ogres lacked, the sense of progress and stubborn determination that elves lacked, and the continuity of purpose that humans lacked.

  Through trial and error, Reorx in his wisdom had finally created the proper people for the world of Krynn—the race of dwarves. Legends held that Reorx was so pleased with his best people that, originally, he named them all Smith, though that proved so confusing that they gave themselves other personal names as needed, and eventually none of them—so far as Mistral Thrax knew—were named Smith.

  Thus did Mistral Thrax clarify the origin of the dwarven race, for any who cared to consider it.

  From there, being now more than three hundred years old and still alive, he went on to summarize the history of the world to date.

  The dwarves in the early times had scattered over the face of the land, seeking the highest places, and tribes had become separated. There were legends of a place called Kal-Thax, where many had settled, and maybe other such places as well, but the dwarves of Mistral Thrax’s acquaintance—the Calnar—had all wound up in the realm of Thorin and had been there for a very long time.

  Fact and legend became very confused on many points, but some things were clear:

  —The race of humans had spread and multiplied until no one knew who or where they all were.

  —The race of elves had clung to the forests of Silvanesti through a dozen dragon sieges and one full-scale war, though some elves had migrated to the west and now lived somewhere else.

  —There were still ogres here and there, including a large colony to the south of Thorin, at a place called Bloten. The original architecture of Thorin was of ogre design, but had been abandoned long ago, and after a few skirmishes with the Calnar, the ogres tended nowadays to leave the dwarves alone.

  —And somewhere in the now-distant past—at least four hundred years ago, by the reckoning of Mistral Thrax—magic had been introduced upon Krynn. Some said that Reorx himself had done it, led astray by other gods. Some said magic came in the form of a gray gemstone that descended upon the world and was captured for a time by humans, then released by gnomes. There was even a legend of a brave and tragic dwarven fisherman who had stood in the path of the source of magic and had tried to stop it by knocking it down with his spear.

  But wherever it came from, magic had come upon Krynn, and for the dwarves it was the ultimate abomination—a power without logic, a force without the rational, comfortable rules of stone and metal, light and dark, moons and mountains, and the rhythm of hammers and drums.

  The dwarves wanted no part of magic, and they ignored it. But its effects were felt.

  This latest dragon war in distant Silvanesti, for example, was far worse than the any of the previous disputes there. This time, the dragons had attacked using magic, and the results were widespread. Little was known in Thorin about the war itself, except that as the elves clung to their forest and fought back, the war spread to other realms. Everywhere now, throughout the known lands, great migrations were under way, and the dwarves and their neighbors were much concerned. Evil was afoot, and everyone knew it.

  On a spring evening, when the light from the sun tunnels began to dim, Mistral Thrax pondered over his scrolls and what they all might mean. Within the threads of fact and legend which he attempted to weave—as one might weave a tapestry of many colors in order to see the pictures it would reveal—were puzzling, disturbing hints of more to come. Mistral Thrax had attempted to capture history, and in grasping it realized that it went both ways—back through time to what had been and forward somehow to hint at what might yet be. And not all of what he saw there pleased him.

  He sensed that change was at hand—a change that would be painful for all of his people. He sensed that, somehow, magic might touch the lives of the Calnar, and that nothing would ever again be the same.

  High-dwellers, their human neighbors called the Calnar. People of the high peaks. In the dwarven manner of speech, the word for that was Hylar, and somehow that word held special meaning in the threads leading toward the future.

  That, and a tiny piece of legend he had found, which seemed to fit nothing in the past and therefore tasted prophetic—a legend that somewhere, some time, someone very important was to be named Damon. That, the legend said, would be the name of the Father of Kings.

  As he had so many times in the past when pondering such things, Mistral Thrax sighed and rubbed hard old hands against his aching skull. Then he put away his scrolls, picked up his crutch, and turned down the wick of his lamp. It was a long walk from his cubicle to Lobard’s establishment on the main concourse, but at the end of the walk little comforts awaited him, as they did each evening—a mug of good ale, pot meat, and a half loaf of rich Calnar bread.

  Never in all the years he had been searching had Mistral Thrax found real answers to his questions in the ale at Lobard’s, but it eased his aches and did no harm.

  Part I:

  The Drums Of Thorin

  The Dwarven Realm of Thorin

  Khalkist Mountains

  Century of Wind

  Decade of Oak

  Year of Iron

  1

  First Blood

  Sledge Two-Fires eased back on the reins as the patrol entered Crevice Pass, and Piquin responded. The big horse slowed his mile-e
ating trot to a fast walk, then slowed again as the silver bit on his tongue retained its slight pressure. The oiled saddle on his back creaked softly, and the fine steel mesh of his skirt whispered with the shift.

  Behind Sledge Two-Fires, the others also slowed, turning bright-helmed heads as they studied the rising slopes on either side of the trail. Just ahead, the slopes closed in and became the steep, brushy cliffs that gave the pass its name. Sledge Two-Fires glanced back the way they had come. Late sunlight slanted into the pass, and shadows were climbing the backtrail as the sun lowered toward the jagged peaks of the Suncradles in the distance.

  Two hours of daylight remained, time enough to make it through Crevice Pass and make night camp on the far side, where the sugar fields began. From there, in evening, the lights of Thorin would be visible across the Hammersong Valley. Enough daylight remained, providing the ride through the narrow pass was uneventful. But Sledge Two-Fires felt the hackles rising beneath his helmet and raised himself high in his tall saddle to peer around, squinting and frowning. Something seemed out of place—something that for a long moment he could not identify, then did. It was too quiet. On a bright midsummer evening like this, with the sun above the Suncradles by the width of a fist, there should be sounds in the mountain wilds. There should be eve-hawks wheeling and whistling above and cliff pigeons homing from the fields. There should be squirrels a-chatter and rabbits scurrying through the brush—a whole chorus of muted wilderness sounds.

  But there was nothing. It was as though the world had gone silent, and the silence gave the closing cliffs ahead an ominous feeling.

  Sledge had never cared for Crevice Pass. The place was perfect for ambush, a narrow defile where enemies could lurk unseen above the trail and attack at will. Once, long ago, the Calnar themselves had used it so. Still, not since those long-ago times had such a thing as ambush ever happened to a Thorin border patrol.