Thornhold

by Elaine Cunningham

  The destruction of Thornhold and the reclamation of Dag Zoreth’s birthright.

  Six

  When she neared the top of the winding path, Bronwyn slid from her horse and stood, looking up at the fortress her father commanded.

  Her father. She had said the words often in the silence of her mind and had even practiced them aloud a time or two on the way to Thornhold.

  The trip had been indecently short. Two days’ ride was all that had separated her from the truth of her past. Worse, she had long known of this stronghold of the order of paladins, had known exactly where it lay; not far north of Waterdeep, on the sea cliffs, north of Redcliffs and the Red Rocks, straight west of Kheldell and south of the Mere of Dead Men. She could have come here any time had she but known what she would find.

  Bronwyn took a long, steadying breath and took stock of her surroundings. The fortress was impressive, forbidding. It was built of gray stone, set against and near the top of a hill that swept up high, and then fell in a nearly sheer drop to the sea. She could smell the sea and hear it, too—a distant, restless crashing against an extremely inhospitable and rocky shore. A few sea birds circled overhead, and their poignant cries gave voice to the inexplicable loneliness that swept over her in waves.

  It was a strange feeling, no doubt inspired by her bleak surroundings, but still utterly at odds with the coming reunion. Bronwyn shook off the dark mood and studied the fortress itself. A thick wall surrounded the keep in a tall, curving sweep—no corners to obscure the watchmen’s vision, no dead areas where arrows could not reach potential invaders. Two tall towers rose high over the wall, each crowned with the blue and white banner of the Knights of Samular. There was no other ornamentation; unlike the small city castles of Waterdeep and the exotic keeps Bronwyn had seen in the southern lands, this one was somber and stolid, build for strength and nothing more. There were no glass-covered windows, no balconies, no ornamental stonework—nothing that would provide a handhold or an entrance for an enemy intent upon escalade. The arrow slits were exceedingly narrow. Crenellations were spaced evenly along the top of the wall and fitted with wooden shutters for extra security.

  After several moments of this scrutiny, Bronwyn began to wonder where an observant eye ended and a coward’s hesitation began. She gathered up the lead reins of her horse and walked toward the massive wooden gate. There was a smaller door in the gate; this opened to her knock, and an elderly man came out to greet her. It seemed to Bronwyn that he was surprised, probably because she was a young woman traveling alone. She had read that some of the holy orders had little to do with women and thought of them, when they thought of them at all, as weaker beings requiring protection. But she could not fault the old man’s manners. In courtly tones, he asked her name and what aid she required.

  “I have business with Hronulf of Tyr,” she responded politely. “My name I will tell to him alone.”

  The paladin studied her for a moment, his rheumy eyes intense. Then he nodded. “There is no real evil in you,” he said. “You may enter.”

  Bronwyn bit her lip to keep it from turning up in a wry smile. No real evil. That was a resounding endorsement if ever she’d heard one. Oddly enough, that carefully qualified praise had a familiar ring to it, one that was shadowed by a vaguely remembered emotion. Bronwyn tried to find words to describe that emotion. Quiet despair? No, that was not quite right. It was, however, uncomfortably close to the mark.

  She pondered this as she followed the old paladin. He turned her over to another man, also well advanced in years, who led her through the bailey courtyard. Here, at least, was bustling life, and Bronwyn gratefully gave her natural curiosity free rein.

  Perhaps a score or more servants, common folks tending the tasks needed by any community, busied themselves in and around the small wood and plaster buildings that were set against the interior wall. Clustered about the bailey—the castle courtyard—were animal pens, a brewery, and a chandler’s workshop pungent with the scent of melting tallow and cooling candles. The scent of lye soap was heavy in the air, and a pair of servants, arms bared to the elbows, leaned over large wooden tubs and scrubbed garments up and down rippled washboards. A wheelwright was melding the broken spoke on a cart’s wheel, while the anxious merchant stood by offering suggestions. Through another open door, Bronwyn caught sight of a loom bright with the blue and white design of the order.

  Oddly enough, there appeared to be no women among the servants. That puzzled Bronwyn. After all, her very existence proved that the Knights of Samular was not a celibate order.

  She was tempted to ask her guide about this but upon second consideration decided that he was not the confiding sort. When told to take Bronwyn to the fortress commander, he had responded with folded lips and a curt bow. He had bid her to follow him and then turned away. Not a word had he spoken since, and Bronwyn had seen frowning faces less eloquent than the stiff lines of his back and shoulders. Not the confiding sort at all. She hoped that her father would be more approachable. At this point, though, and for no reason that she could express or explain, Bronwyn felt unwilling to place many coins on that bet.

  Her guide led her through the bailey and to one of the towers. They climbed a broad stone staircase. Near the top, her escort stopped before a door fashioned of stout oak planks banded with iron.

  “This is Hronulf’s chamber. He should be finished with his devotions by now.” With that, the paladin turned and left Bronwyn alone in the hall.

  This was it. She had waited for this moment for over twenty years—longed for it, worked for it. Suddenly she felt strangely reluctant to proceed. Muttering an imprecation, she lifted a hand and knocked.

  Almost at once, the door swung open. A tall man, taller than Bronwyn by at least a head, stood in the portal. Although he was of an age when most men would be accounted elderly, he was still in fine trim, and he stood with the balanced poise of a warrior. Broad shoulders and powerful arms declared his prowess with the sword that hung at his hip, and he wore a tabard of white linen emblazoned in blue with the symbol of Tyr—a balanced scale, set upon the head of an upright warhammer. His hair was thick and iron gray, as were his mustache and neatly trimmed beard. Keen silver-gray eyes peered kindly at her from a ruddy, comely visage that wore its years exceedingly well.

  Before Bronwyn could speak, the color drained from the paladin’s face. He sagged and grasped the door lintel. Instinctively, Bronwyn reached out to steady him, but he quickly recovered himself, shaking off the moment of shock.

  “Forgive me, child. For a moment you reminded me of someone I once knew.”

  “Who?” she asked. The word spilled out before she had time to consider.

  “My wife,” he said simply.

  My mother, she thought.

  The silence stretched between them as the paladin waited courteously for her to state her business. But Bronwyn’s facile speech utterly deserted her. Finally the paladin spoke. “Surely, you did not come to listen to an old man’s tales of the past. How may I help you, child?”

  Bronwyn took a long breath. “Sir, I came from Waterdeep to speak with you. I have gone over what I wished to say many times in my mind, but that didn’t seem to help. I don’t know quite how to tell you.…”

  “Simple words are best,” he said. “A straight arrow flies truest.”

  The words stirred a memory in some distant corner of her mind. She had heard them before, and others like them. “I was raised in Amn as a slave, taken there when I was very young. I do not remember my age, or my village, or even my family’s names. All that I carried with me was my given name and a small birthmark on my lower back that looks a bit like a red oak leaf. My name is Bronwyn.”

  The paladin turned so pale that for a moment Bronwyn thought he might collapse. She gently, but firmly pushed him back into the room and into a chair.

  He gazed up at her for a long moment, his expression utterly incomprehensible. It occurred to Bronwyn that he might be testing her, as the guard at the fortr
ess gate had done—the man who had found “no real evil” in her. Bronwyn decided that she could not bear and would not abide another such grudging acceptance.

  Her chin came up and her shoulders squared. “I am told that you lost a child of my age, a child who bore a similar name and birthmark. I am told that I am she. If this is so, I will be content to leave this place with the truth. If I have been misinformed, I will seek my family elsewhere. Either way, I ask nothing from you. If you have any doubts about my intent, test me in whatever manner you see fit. Take the truth from my heart in fair exchange, for the truth I ask.”

  As she spoke, she studied the old knight’s face. She might not have a paladin’s god-given insight into the minds and hearts of others, but she possessed finely honed powers of observation and instincts that had been right more often than not. So she noted the slow return of color to Hronulf’s face, and the return of light to his eyes. She dared to hope that simple shock, not suspicion, colored his silence.

  Hronulf slowly rose to his feet. Bronwyn noticed that though his face was composed and his bearing tall and proud, one white-knuckled hand gripped the back of the chair as if for support—or, perhaps, as a tangible sign that he was not yet ready to let go of the “truth” he had believed for twenty years.

  “Of your own will, you would step into the scales of Tyr’s justice?” he murmured.

  “I will.”

  He nodded thoughtfully and his grip on the chair eased a little. “None but the righteous would make such bold claims. I do not require such tests.”

  “But I do,” Bronwyn said urgently. Until this moment, she had not fully realized how desperately she needed to know. “I have long heard that a paladin can discern truth. Will your god tell you if there is truth in the story that brought me here?”

  “I can but ask.” The paladin’s eyes grew distant once more, as he sought in prayer a level of insight and enlightenment that only his god could give him.

  Moments passed, long moments that were heavy with the weight of Bronwyn’s twenty years of exile. She waited, scarcely breathing, until the unseen vision faded from Hronulf’s eyes, and his gaze once again focused upon her. Bronwyn knew, before a word was spoken, what Tyr’s answer had been.

  “Little Bronwyn,” Hronulf murmured, studying her with desperately hungry eyes. “Now that I see the truth of it, I understand that my heart knew you at once. You are the very image of … of your mother.”

  This both pleased and saddened Bronwyn. She lifted one hand to her cheek, as if seeking in her own face what she had lost. “I do not remember her.”

  Hronulf took a step forward, both hands outstretched. “My poor child. Can you ever forgive me for what you have endured?” he asked, his voice quavering, pleading. “The fault is mine, though I did not lightly let you go. When you were not found among the slain, I … I sought you for many months. I would never have given up … until the day I wept over the remains of a girl child that I believed to be my own.”

  His terrible guilt smote her heart, and she took both his hands in hers. “I don’t blame you,” she said hastily. “For many years I’ve been trying to find the truth of my past. There weren’t many paths to follow, and every one ended against an alley wall. I make a living finding lost things, things that most people despair of finding. If I could not find my way back to my own past, how could you, who had every reason to believe your quest had ended, be expected to do better?”

  Hronulf smiled faintly. “You have a good heart, child, your mother’s heart.”

  “Tell me of her,” she urged.

  They sat down together, and the paladin began to speak of the past, slowly and with strange awkwardness. At first Bronwyn thought the source of the difficulty was the barrier formed by lost years, but soon she realized that the reason ran deeper still. Hronulf had been seldom at home, and thus he had few memories of her in the scant time they had been a family. He did not know her. She wondered if he could ever have known her better, even if the raid had never occurred.

  Not much time passed before he ran out of remembrances. He rose, looking relieved to have some plan of action in mind. “Come,” he said. “I will show you the castle.”

  * * * * *

  Ebenezer’s luck, which had been notably bad of late, took a happy turn. At just the right time, he had met up with a southbound caravan and arranged with its master to have the paladin’s horse returned to the Halls of Justice at Waterdeep. It took some talking and some coin, but the dwarf parted company with the merchant satisfied that all would be done as he had asked. Ebenezer headed north with a clear conscience, his debt discharged. It seemed likely that sooner or later, the young man who was so all-fired fond of Tyr would end up at that god’s temple and would there reunite with his lost steed. No harm done him, other than a bit of wear to his boot soles.

  Ebenezer veered off the trade road into the foothills. The entrance to the Stoneshaft tunnels was not far off the road and so cleverly hidden that only a dwarf could see it. He found the place—a steep hillock surrounded by a dense stand of young pines—and ran his hands over the rocky wall until he found the subtle pattern in the stone. He put his shoulder to the rock door, heaving and grunting until it eased inward. He ducked quickly through the opening, which slid shut behind him with a solid thud.

  He stood for a moment or two, giving his eyes a chance to adjust to the darkness and rubbing at his numb backside with both hands. He hadn’t been on a horse for some time, and his legs and rump burned with fatigue. But he shrugged off the stiffness and took off down the tunnels at a steady, rolling run. Most humans Ebenezer knew thought of dwarves as slow and quick to tire, but any dwarf worth a pile of fingernail pairings could roll along at a smart pace for as long as he had to.

  Ebenezer figured it was getting near to sunset by the time he reached the river. He strained his ears, trying to hear something, anything, over the infernal din of the rushing water. The closer he got to the clanhold, the more anxious he felt about his kin. Quickening his pace and ignoring the treachery of the wet, uneven path, he sprinted full out past several caverns and passageways toward the tunnel that led to the heart of the dwarven clanhold.

  The smell hit him suddenly, twisting his stomach and sending his heart plummeting into his boots. There was no mistaking that smell; any dwarf who had ever raised an axe in battle knew it well. Coppery, heavy, strangely sweet, and utterly sickening—the smell of spilled blood turned black and dry, bodies gone cold.

  Terrible, numbing dread swept through Ebenezer like a winter storm, robbing him of strength and will and forward motion. He skidded to a stop. A single keening cry burst from his throat—the first and last mourning he would allow himself before he knew the whole of it. He forced himself into a run while he could still trust his legs to carry him where he needed to go.

  He stopped again at the entrance to the Hall of Ancestors, stunned by the destruction of a monument that had stood for untold centuries. The ancient stone dwarves had toppled and lay in broken pieces among the dwarves their fall had slain.

  Ebenezer stooped by the nearest dwarf and clamped his jaw shut to bite off a cry. The Stoneshaft patriarch, his Da, had led the charge. The old dwarf had not been killed by the falling statues; that was horrifyingly clear. Stone dwarves did not wield swords and spears with such slow, cruel expertise.

  Ebenezer lifted his gaze, blinking hard to clear his suddenly blurred vision. Several humans lay sprawled nearby, bearing the unmistakable marks of a dwarven axe. Ebenezer took some comfort in this. His father had not died easily, but he had died well.

  He rose and wandered through the chamber, his rage building with every dwarf he identified—and growing hotter still with each dwarf that he could not. Ebenezer was no stranger to battle, but the carnage here was of a sort seldom seen. The stamp of unmistakable pleasure, of long and lingering evil, was upon each cold and tormented dwarf.

  Ebenezer found more of the same inside the great hall. Not a single dwarf lived. Stoneshaft Hold had been decima
ted, and the bodies of his brutally slain kin left to molder in the empty halls.

  Grief numbed him, mercifully slowing his wits and numbing his heart. He moved in a daze through the devastation, tending the dead, marking their names in his memory. Time slowed down, became utterly without meaning. His face was as set as granite, his eyes dry and hard as he gathered the bodies of kith and clan into a single grave.

  Hours passed. In some dim corner of his mind, Ebenezer marked the time, and knew that far above him, a plump waxing moon rose over the Sword Mountains. But in this place, the dwarf knew only darkness and the terrible task before him. He did not stop for rest until all of Clan Stoneshaft had been decently laid to rest beneath a pile of mountain stone.

  When the task was done, he slumped to the ground and tried to put words to the nagging fear in the back of his mind.

  The ruined face of young Frodwinner rose up in memory. Of all the Stoneshaft dwarves, he had died the hardest and best. He’d taken enough wounds to kill a trio of dwarves and kept on fighting. Seven humans and four half-orcs had fallen to his axe. Of course, Frodwinner had more to lose than nearly anyone else in the clan. He was just two days into a wedding feast, wed to the prettiest, feistiest dwarf maid in a hundred warrens. Frodwinner and Tarlamera should have had centuries of life before them. Frodwinner had been barely fifty. He was just a kid. Just a kid.

  And with that lament, Ebenezer found words for his concern:

  There had been no children among the slain.

  This realization slammed into Ebenezer like a hobgoblin’s fist. His first response was relief—like most dwarf clans, his had not been blessed by many children. He loved kids, loved every one of the rowdy little scamps. But if they were not here, where were they?

  As the dwarf thought about this, he also realized that he had not accounted for several adult members of the clan, including some of his own near kin. His Da rested in the cairn, beside the cantankerous, beloved dwarf woman who had borne him nine stout children. Most of these offspring, Ebenezer’s brothers and sisters, also slept beneath the stone. Tarlamera was not among them.