Not in even the longest memory had there been such a sight, anywhere on Krynn. Humans migrated constantly—small, nomadic bands roaming here and there—as did many of the other races. But a migration of dwarves was a thing none of them had ever seen before, and even the ogres in the cold heights shook their heads in wonder at the sight of a tribe of dwarves on the move.
On the slope above the sinkhole that had once been the mountain roof of Grand Gather, Colin Stonetooth halted them for a last look at the place that had been their home for as long as they could remember. Where once had been clean, wind-shaped mountainside, now there was the collapsed pit, its sides a deep cone of rockslide leading to the entombed depths below. Beyond, at the lower end of the hole, was the stub of the First Sentinel, a broken shaft of stone standing in its own rubble. And farther down, a stark silhouette against the umbers and golds of the valleys below, was the roof of the keep, still littered with the drying bones of human savages … mute testimony to the silent death within.
The forces of Sith Kilane—at least a few of them—had lasted for weeks, imprisoned in the keep. Some had made it to the roof, to be picked off by dwarven marksmen with slings. Some had shouted and pleaded from the balconies until sling-stones or javelins brought them down, and some—after days of suffering—had jumped. The remainder of the ill-fated invasion forces had died of thirst or starvation, their corpses still within, ignored by the dwarves. The keep remained sealed, and maybe it always would.
Above Thorin, Colin Stonetooth took a last, sad look out over the lands he had ruled, then leaned from his saddle to clasp the hard hand of his second son, Tolon Farsight. “You are Chieftain of the Calnar now,” he said, “by your own choice and the choice of those who remain here with you. I wish you hot forges and good trade.”
“And to you, Father.” Tolon nodded. “Wherever the roads take you. May you find your Kal-Thax, and may the majesty of the Calnar make of it a fine nation.”
“Not Calnar,” Colin muttered, looking away. “The Calnar are of Thorin. You are the Calnar now. We will take another name, for other places.”
“Oh? What name?”
“What our human neighbors—when they were neighbors—called us, because of where we lived. The Highest. We will take that name with us, Tolon. From this day, those of us who seek Kal-Thax are the Hylar.”
“Hylar.” Tolon thought it over and nodded. “A good name. May it serve you well, Father. May you find the way.”
Colin tipped his head, indicating Cale Greeneye, who sat nearby in the saddle of his great horse, Piquin. Cale and his scouts had returned a few days after the battle of Thorin. They had returned to a place very different from the Thorin they left.
“Your brother will lead us safely to the plains,” Colin told Tolon. “He has scouted that far and will scout for us beyond, as we travel. Ah, don’t look so downcast!” The old chieftain shook his head. “You know I must make this journey, my son. There is no place here for a former chieftain, and now it is your turn. Guide your people well and wisely.”
“All because of an old dwarf’s dream,” Tolon muttered.
“Not only that,” Colin said. “I failed in my judgement. I trusted friends and was blind to enemies. You were right, Tolon, and I was wrong. A chieftain cannot fail his people to such an extreme and remain chieftain. The laws apply to all, and the law decrees exile. I choose to make my exile a quest for prophesy, and those who follow me do so of their own free will.
“Those of us who go from here, Tolon,” the old chief added, “have lost Everbardin in Thorin. We must find it elsewhere, if we find it at all.” Once more he clasped Tolon’s hand, then reined Schoen around and trotted away, downhill toward the far valleys and the Suncradles which rose beyond. With a wave at Tolon, Cale Greeneye reined after him, followed by Jerem Longslate and the Ten, which included several new members who had been chosen to replace the brave dwarves who had died defending their chieftain.
Willen Ironmaul directed his guard companies to the flanks, then paused to gaze at Tolon the Muse. “Consider Sheen Barbit for your guard captain, Tolon,” he suggested. “He is the best of those who choose to remain. Will you try to reopen trade with Golash and Chandera?”
“Trade, yes,” Tolon said. “But not Balladine. The Calnar will never again forget that humans are savages, no matter how friendly they appear.”
“Live long and well, Tolon Farsight,” Willen said, formally, then wheeled away.
Beside him, on her own mount, Tera Sharn glanced back at her brother. They had said their goodbyes earlier in private, for each knew the parting would be forever. Tera nodded and turned to look ahead.
Skirting the edge of the great sinkhole, Colin Stonetooth and the Ten in the lead, the people who were now Hylar began their journey. Three and five abreast, the procession was more than two miles long.
Among them were drummers, and as the first of these came abreast of the sinkhole he loosed his vibrar and began a slow, steady beat—a dirge, or a salute. Then others behind him joined in, and, as the procession crept past the sinkhole, the mountains echoed the steady, minor-key thunders of great drums saying a last farewell to the greatest drummer of them all. For the Hylar, as for the Calnar, there would always be the memory of Handil the Drum.
The procession wound downward, past the death-stink of the silent keep and out onto the war-littered terraces. On a hillside in the distance, a little band of humans raised their hands in salute, then turned away, and Colin Stonetooth knew that Garr Lanfel, the Prince of Golash, had made a final gesture in honor of a friendship that would never be again.
Down the terraces, toward the valleys of the Hammersong and the Bone, the new clan of the Hylar marched to the sound of its drums, eyes raised to the Suncradles and the distances beyond.
Never once did Colin Stonetooth turn to look back at what had been Thorin-Everbardin. But some did, and their whispers were bittersweet on the winds.
“Thoradin,” they muttered. For the people who were now Hylar, Thorin was gone. What remained was Thoradin—a memory of the past.
Part II:
The Tribes Of Kal-Thax
The Land of Kal-Thax
Kharolis Mountains
Century of Wind
Decade of Oak
Year of Brass
12
Land of Conflict
The smoke of a hundred morning fires hazed the early autumn air above the eastern foothills of the Kharolis Mountains. As far as the eye could see, peering eastward from the slopes beyond, little wisps of smoke rose to the north and south, a solid crescent of smoke that rose skyward, then feathered on the breeze to lie like low clouds in the distance.
For weeks it had been like this. Hardly a day passed without sign of the bands of human wanderers who pressed westward, across the plains of central Ansalon until they came to the rising spires of the Kharolis Mountains. And always, then, they pushed toward the great pass below Cloudseeker Peak, and their camp smoke hazed the foothills below. Slide Tolec had learned to predict when the next numan assault would come simply by the smoke over the foothills.
Except for a few remote camps of ogres and goblins, the people out there were a mix of human-kind. Most of them were refugees and wanderers, bands and whole tribes driven westward by the spread of the dragon wars far to the east. They sought places to rest, places to hide, places to resettle, but they were not welcomed in the hills and plains east of the mountains. That was part of the far-reaching realm of Ergoth, and the Ergothians didn’t want hordes of strangers crowding into their land. Thus the knights and armed bands of wardens from Ergoth pushed the travelers onward, toward the mountains.
Refugees and displaced tribes—many of them he had seen at close quarters, when they came up the slopes only to be driven back by dwarves—appeared harmless enough, except for being human. The dwarves of Kal-Thax had learned long ago what happened when humans were allowed to scatter through these mountains. In certain seasons and in certain places—fertile valleys here and the
re—they managed to survive, for a time. They would spread and multiply. But then the food supplies and the shelter suitable for humans would be too little. The seasons would change and there would be famine, and then the raiding and the looting of the Einar—the dwarves—would begin.
Slide had thought about the harsh sanctions the dwarves had created. No other races were welcome in Kal-Thax. Kal-Thax was for the Einar. Kal-Thax was for dwarves and no one else. Like every dwarf in Kal-Thax, Slide agreed that it was a necessary law, especially where humans were concerned. If humans could just pass through, some had reasoned, maybe it would not be necessary. But humans did not “pass through.” They would come in, if allowed, and they would spread and colonize, and the old troubles would begin again.
A shadow fell across the ledge where Slide squatted, and a wide-shouldered, bandy-legged figure draped in furs scrambled down from the ledges above to drop lithely—and almost soundlessly—beside him. Slide scowled behind his mesh faceplate. It was only one of the many unnerving habits of Glome the Assassin, this penchant for showing up silently and always unexpected. Slide said nothing, though. Those foolhardy enough to offend Glome the Assassin sometimes wound up dead.
For a second, Glome crouched beside Slide Tolec, studying him with quick, close-set eyes beneath a heavy brow that seemed to radiate the force of his presence and the strength of his arms. Then he turned and peered off into the distance, toward the plains where the smoke mounted from alien fires. Only for a moment did he scan the human camps. Turning to his right, he shaded his eyes to look off southward across the expanse of the high meadows which were the crest of a mighty shoulder of Cloudseeker Mountain. In that direction too, there was smoke—not as much as on the distant plains, but nearer by miles. A camp was there, and there were hints of movement and bright colors.
Glome pointed. “Daewar,” he growled. “They camp on Theiwar territory.”
“They’ve been there for a week.” Slide shrugged. “They are here to help us repel the outsiders. Beyond them are Vog Ironface and the Daergar, as well.”
“Forget about the humans,” Glome growled. “I think it is time we dealt with the Daewar. We have wasted too much time.”
Without another word, Glome turned and disappeared into the caves behind the ledge—silently, as usual.
Slide shivered slightly. Even now, with thousands of human invaders massing at the foot of the mountains, Glome still dwelt on his primary ambition, to wage war against the Daewar.
Or was that his real ambition, Slide wondered, to fight the Daewar? Or was it just a means toward some greater, darker ambition lying within the assassin’s mind?
No one really knew where Glome had come from. Somewhere in Kal-Thax, of course, from one or another of the many little bands or villages of the widespread Einar, but no one knew exactly where. Glome had not been Theiwar originally. He had just appeared one day, shortly before the time the old chieftain, Crouch Redfire, disappeared.
No one knew what had become of Crouch Redfire, but Glome had walked into the home lairs of the Theiwar and established himself immediately as a leader, through bullying, threats, and—many suspected—outright murder in several cases. He had an uncanny knack for seeking out all the malcontents in the tribe and getting them to accept his lead. Within a very short time, Glome had a substantial following among the Theiwar. Some had thought that Glome intended to take over as chieftain, but the succession had already been claimed by Twist Cutshank and—surprisingly—Glome had backed him against challengers. Twist Cutshank was a strong, brutal person—not overly smart, but crafty in his way. Now Twist was chieftain, and Glome was his chief advisor, and Slide Tolec wondered what Glome’s ambitions really were. He had the feeling that they went far beyond merely being chieftain of the thane of Theiwar.
Slide turned his gaze eastward again, toward the distant smoke. Always, outsiders had come in the warm seasons—humans and others—trying to enter the closed land of Kal-Thax. But never had he seen so many.
Refugees from distant wars—yet among them would be the raiders and the looters, humans who found in the chaos of war the excuse and the opportunity to take what they could get.
And there were other camps out there, too, other smoke apart from the human crescent facing the pass. Far north, barely visible, was smoke from the dark, oily fires of what might be a goblin encampment. And nearer at hand, on high ridges aside from the human camps, were the little tendrils of what might be ogre fires.
Slide Tolec felt little sympathy for any of them. They did not belong in Kal-Thax.
Squatting beneath the stone overhang that shaded the Theiwar outpost caves, Slide peered outward, estimating the fires, and idly fingered the blade at his side. The numbers were increasing out there. Soon they would come, some of them at least, trying once again to penetrate the mountain lands.
There were so many this year! Slide felt that maybe it was well that the Daewar had come—from their own lairs far north on the hidden face of Sky’s End Mountain—to aid in the defense. Slide had no more use for the arrogant, jovial “gold-molders” than did any other Theiwar. The Daewar were upstarts—only within the past century had they formed a thane—and yet they seemed to thrive. And they didn’t hesitate to display their success. Every Daewar he had ever seen wore a fortune in the finest of armor and the gaudiest of attire.
And they could fight! While the Theiwar were expert at sabotage and ambush, and while none could match the dark-sighted Daergar in a night attack, few would dare to challenge the gold-molders in direct battle. The old Theiwar chief, Crouch Redfire, had badly weakened the Theiwar when he tested them by sending them into Daewar territory. The Daewar captain, Gem Bluesleeve, and his “Golden Hammer” elite troops had decimated the Theiwar raiders.
The term “gold-molder” was intended as an insult—implying that the Daewar were as soft and malleable as the bright metal that was the color of their hair and beards, and which they favored for ornamentation. But only an idiot or a suicide would so insult a Daewar to his face.
Though Slide resented the brightly clad sun people, now, seeing the smoke of the human campfires above the foothills, he was glad that the Daewar were here, and that they were part of the treaty of exclusion which kept Kal-Thax closed to aliens.
From the shadows behind him a deep voice rasped, “Slide! Have you gone to sleep there? What do you see?”
Scowling, Slide turned slightly to glance back into the depths. “I’m looking at what you told me to look at, … Sire. The outsiders are massing more and more in the foothills. They will be coming soon.”
“Soon?” Twist Cutshank’s voice mocked him. “Soon? What does ‘soon’ mean? This morning? Today? Next month?”
Slide stifled a sigh of disgust. How did the chieftain of the Theiwar expect him to read the minds of humans? “Today, maybe,” he answered. “There are at least a hundred fires out there now. They’ll have to move soon or starve.”
“A hundred fires?” He heard the stomp of heavy boots and knew that the chieftain and others wanted to see for themselves. “All together?”
“No, they’re scattered over many miles. But they’ve discovered now that they can’t pass the gorge, and the cliffs of Shalomar block them to the south, so they are massing below the pass. Like they always do, except now there are many more.”
As Twist Cutshank emerged onto the shelf, adjusting his mesh faceplate over craggy, sullen features, Slide moved aside for him, as people usually did. Twist Cutshank was not tall—he stood barely more than four feet high—but he was massive, with huge shoulders and almost no neck at all. His arms were as thick and knotty as the boles of mountain pines, and at least as long as his stubby, powerful legs.
“Fugitives,” he rumbled, then shielded his eyes against the morning sun to peer into the distance. “Rust!” he said. “There must be thousands of them!”
“I told you,” Slide Tolec muttered, then raised his voice. “They’ll be coming soon, up the valley.”
That was the one c
ertainty, here in the eastern border lands of Kal-Thax. Intruders, when they came, would push westward across the foothills and into the wide, climbing valley that pointed toward the crest of Cloudseeker Mountain. It was the route they always followed. The way to Kal-Thax from the east was like a funnel. Across the plains of eastern Ergoth, migrants held to the narrowing “corridor” of wild lands, avoiding the northerly routes which led to the human city of Xak Tsaroth, where thieves and slavers waited to take their toll, and avoiding the ice barrens to the south. From the wilds, they slipped into the settled regions and were harried there by knights and companies of armed wardens, protecting the villages.
Reaching the foothills, the wanderers quickly found that the Grand Gorge was impassable to humans, and the Cliffs of Shalomar were unscalable by humans. So they set their eyes on the three crags atop Cloudseeker—those massive, upright fangs of stone that the dwarves called the Windweavers—and entered the narrowing valley that was their only route. And there, for more years than even the dwarves could remember, they were attacked and driven away or killed.
It was the only thing that every thane, tribe, and band of dwarves in Kal-Thax agreed on: Kal-Thax was closed to outside races and must remain so.
The “funnel” led directly into the territory of the Theiwar and was the reason that the Theiwar had become the first thane—or organized, land-holding nation—in Kal-Thax. Originally just small tribes of Einar, the Theiwar were cliff-dwelling people and had found fine profits in waylaying the humans and others who occasionally wandered into these mountains. Ambush, slaughter, and looting of outsiders had become a major industry in times past, and Thane Theiwar had profited from it.
Most travelers from the bog-lands and the plains never realized they had entered Kal-Thax until they were many miles up the rugged path among the foothills, and none realized that the path toward the three crags was a trap. Just below Galefang, the largest of the Windweavers, the path veered southward between high walls, directly into the canyon below the Theiwar caves. By the dozens and the hundreds, strangers had died there, and the Theiwar had looted and disposed of their bodies.
The Covenant of the Forge Page 11