The Last Thane

by Doug Niles

  “We don’t have any choice,” Baker declared. The thane stood straight, and Tarn saw that his father’s eyes were in fact glinting with determination, even if they lacked a little focus. “I have learned I might be a little stronger than I look.”

  No sooner had Tarn entered the tunnel than he heard the presence of marching dark dwarves, hundreds of them to judge by the sound, pillaging through the avenues and passages of Level Ten. These warriors were even ransacking the rude hovels of the Aghar, perhaps because the fire dragons had destroyed virtually everything else of value. He took some grim satisfaction as several Daergar, to judge from the sound of their screams, apparently stumbled onto one of the rampaging, flaming serpents. But when the smell of burned flesh reached him, he could find no solace even in the deaths of his enemies.

  He crawled after, just behind Belicia’s boots, moving as quickly as he could. Before too long he found the others gathered in a small, circular chamber regarding several narrow passages that offered different routes.

  “We should take the biggest,” Tarn suggested, pointing to a tunnel that actually had stairs carved into the rocks.

  “Not there,” Regal replied with a firm shake of his head. “Smells like dark dwarves up ahead.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” Tarn answered. “Which one do you suggest?” Though he couldn’t smell anything unusual, he remembered that Regal’s nose had enabled him to differentiate between the half-breed and the Daergar. He was unwilling to counter the Aghar’s conviction.

  “This way,” Regal said, indicating the passage veering sharply to the right. “This best way.”

  Once again they plunged into a narrow passage, crawling upward on hands and knees. Tarn and the Aghar had no difficulty seeing, but he felt sympathy for Baker and Belicia, knowing that the two pure-blood Hylar were all but blind in such utter blackness. Neither of them complained, however. Slowly, steadily, the little group made its way upward.

  Remembering the long journeys that had brought them to this point, Tarn was deeply saddened to realize that only Regal, Belicia, and his father remained from all their original companions. The doughty gully dwarf proved himself helpful again and again, smelling their enemies—dark dwarf or Chaos creatures—at each juncture in the winding progress of their upward passage. Always they found a way through, steadily continuing higher and higher through the dying city. At each level they looked into the streets and the vista was relentlessly unchanging: destruction and fire were everywhere. Smoke even seeped into the tunnels, though the vapors were never thick enough to choke them.

  Tarn speculated that these winding, concealed passages must have been used all along by Aghar to get around the Life-Tree. It amazed him to think that there was such a network of tunnels that had existed entirely unsuspected in the midst of the Hylar city. He saw more clearly than ever how the little gully dwarves had managed not only to survive but to thrive amid the nations of their larger and more powerful cousins. He regretted again the hatred and prejudice that drove so many of Thorbadin’s dwarves to despise and abuse the hapless squatters.

  Some time later they all collapsed from exhaustion, uncertain how many levels they had climbed, knowing that the rack and ruin of the Life-Tree continued all around them. Utterly drained, they lay in a dark passageway, drinking a little water from a pool. Slowly, their gasps faded to more normal breathing. Unspeaking, they lay in numb silence, trying to let some of their fatigue melt away.

  Belicia whimpered suddenly, and Tarn realized that she had fallen asleep. Gently he touched her. She sat upward with a jerk, crying out with a despair so deep that it tore Tarn’s heart just to hear it.

  “Don’t,” he consoled. “You’re safe here, for now at least. I’m with you.”

  She cried softly, and finally sniffled and looked at him, her eyes bright in the near total darkness. “It came crashing down: tons of rock, falling all around me. Why did I live? What right did I have to survive when so many died?” she demanded.

  Tarn said nothing, just pulled her against him. Firmly she pushed herself away.

  “I don’t know why I wasn’t killed,” she said. “I should have been. All my dwarves—Farran, Raggat—all of them: they’re dead! Why was I the one to live?”

  “They will have a legacy somehow,” Tarn suggested awkwardly. “And you have to stay alive to make that happen.”

  “Aye, girl,” Baker said. “He’s right.”

  She talked of the courage displayed by her young company—the way they had stood at the docks and the stairways, the disbelief that had seized them all when the forces of Chaos had erupted into Thorbardin. The others let her talk, knowing that she needed to explain to herself as much as to them. Finally she breathed more easily, and they knew that she slept again. Tarn let himself drift off for a short time as well. He awoke to an awareness of movement around him.

  “Are you ready?” Belicia asked softly. He grunted his assent.

  Stiffly the thane got to his feet nearby. “I guess we’d better get going again.”

  For hour after hour they made their plodding way upward, passing through innumerable bleak, ruined levels of the Hylar city. Virtually all the dwarves had gone, either fleeing farther upward or already dead. The effects of the Chaos horde were everywhere. Whenever they passed a long transport shaft or connecting tunnel they heard the chants and pounding cadence of dark dwarves on the march.

  Then they could climb no further. The tunnel emerged into the mushroom yard of one of the city’s grand gardens. Dimly, Tarn recognized that they had climbed to Level Twenty-eight and had emerged fairly near to the quarter where his father had his house.

  But his attention was quickly drawn away by his father, who indicated the nearby street.

  “Here! This way!” said the thane.

  Regal, Belicia, and Tarn hastened to keep up as Baker Whitegranite led the way down the avenue. They met a few frightened Hylar who Baker urged to keep climbing—to take to the tunnels in the ceiling that the Klar had used.

  “Father, wait,” cried Tarn, at last determined to speak his mind. “The Grotto’s not going to help us. Our best bet is to keep on climbing, to do what you’re telling these others and find a way out of the city.”

  Belicia added her own arguments. “Those tunnels in the ceiling are a good idea. We should go!”

  Baker turned and looked at his son and the brave dwarfwoman. “It will be your turn, soon,” he said. “But first—please—come with me. See what it is I have been seeking for all these years.”

  “There’s still hope that we can escape!” Tarn replied, struggling to understand his father’s irrational behavior.

  But as he looked at his father, Tarn realized that the elder’s dwarf’s fatigue had melted away, his mood seemed positively bouyant. Baker was tall, clear-eyed, and stern. Tarn wanted to grab him, to slap him into some awareness of their situation, but he didn’t have the heart. Instead, he listened as his father tried to explain.

  “The Grotto—and the platinum egg, if it’s there—is the only hope for any kind of survival for our people, for all of clan Hylar,” Baker Whitegranite said in all sincerity. “That egg comes from the stuff of Chaos. It was said, by Chisel Loremaster himself, that a true ruler of the dwarves could release that power.

  “If we were to flee, our enemies would continue to chase us. The ending would be the same. But these are beings of Chaos that are destroying our city. Doesn’t it seem that they might be matched, even driven away, by that same power?”

  “So we let them kill us in an ancient dragon lair instead?” demanded Tarn.

  “I don’t have time to explain further.” Baker now stopped, and Tarn realized that they were in front of their own house. “I have to find that egg!”

  “Come in here with me,” said Baker Whitegranite. “If I’m guessing right, we’ll want to head right down into the cellar.”

  Unwilling to argue, but feeling even more hopeless than before, Tarn felt that he had no choice except to follow.

&
nbsp; A Queen of the Dark Dwarves

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Pounce Quickspring stared through the dusty smoke, trying to find some semblance of order in the teeming mass of Theiwar. Everywhere dark dwarves choked the crowded corridors, a mass of attackers that should have carried through every vestige of resistance. They had pushed and charged, followed the daemon warrior and killed the Hylar. By rights, the dark dwarves should have been approaching their moment of ultimate conquest.

  But instead they were stuck here, pinned so tightly that the Theiwar had turned against each other, dwarf killing dwarf in an effort to make a little breathing room. The Daergar of Darkend Bellowsmoke had taken a different route, vanishing into the maze of this dying city. For once Pounce longed for word from his allies, for some sense of how the other dark dwarf clan fared. But there was nothing but this press of Theiwar, an attacking wedge that had somehow compressed itself into this narrow passageway.

  The spellcasters among the Theiwar clan had exhausted their magic. A few of the arcane dwarves had vanished, using what spells they possessed in order to disappear. Others stared wildly around, eyes bright and mouths wide as they neared a state of frenzied panic. Weapons flashed here and there as the anxious warriors were quick to use violence against each other.

  The blaze began at one end of the choked tunnel, a crimson wash of heat that blistered even from such a distance. The brightness was already painful, an assault against the dark-tuned eyes of the Theiwar. As it grew brighter, the light became heat, and the nervous fear grew to a mind-numbing terror.

  When the dragon roared closer still, the intense heat seared through flesh and melted armor. Dark dwarves screamed and burned as they died, the stink of charred flesh spreading down the corridor and preceding the killing serpent by a mere fraction of a second. The monstrous, flaming creature flew down the narrow corridor over the heads of the Theiwar, rushing along like an explosive fireball that destroyed everything in its path.

  Pounce Quickspring shrilled his cry of hatred, watching the death of his army until the flames embraced him.

  In that grip of fire he perished.

  “How many more of these stairs are we going to have to climb?” demanded Darkend as he slumped against the stone wall in an effort to draw several ragged gasps of breath. Behind him the legion of dark dwarves paused, taking advantage of their leader’s fatigue to get some much needed rest for themselves.

  “No more than five hundred; we’re almost there,” Garimeth said, infuriated with his all-too-visible fatigue. Couldn’t he see? Didn’t he understand? “We’ve got to keep moving! We don’t have any other choice!”

  In truth, Garimeth was more than angry. She was utterly terrified. Would the daemon warrior even notice her, much less hear her, now that she had lost the bronze artifact? She almost wailed aloud at the memory, the image of the Helm of Tongues stolen by a gully dwarf who had somehow tripped her and snatched it off her head. The thought still caused her to tremble with deep, abiding fear.

  What if she did find Zarak Thuul, only to discover that he no longer knew who she was? She refused to let herself consider that possibility. Perhaps the helmet had enabled her to attract his attention, but surely they had established a bond that would not be sundered merely by the absence of a piece of metal, however arcane!

  “Just keep climbing if you want to see anything left of your conquest. We have to get above Zarak Thuul to meet him before he destroys everything.”

  “As if there’s any chance of that!” muttered Darkend.

  She agonized over the deeper questions that she dared not voice aloud, questions that nevertheless were constantly whispering in her mind. Would the daemon warrior want her, even speak to her now that she did not wear the artifact of House Whitegranite?

  In their wake came Slickblade and dozens of armored Daergar warriors, the elite cadre of Darkend’s palace guard. The assassin muttered something to the thane, and Garimeth whirled under an onslaught of fresh suspicion.

  “What is it?” she demanded.

  “Slickblade suggests again that you betrayed me, and that you now betray us all,” Darkend said coolly. “I am wondering if he is right.”

  “He’s a fool who’s afraid for his own life,” Garimeth retorted sharply. She allowed herself a hint of a smile, pleased with the self control that allowed her to mask her deepest doubts. The assassin was terrifyingly vague behind his mask, and she wanted nothing more than to kill him right now. “Remember, it was he who lied to you in Daerforge.”

  “Don’t listen to her!” barked the assassin. “I tell you, lord, she is not to be trusted!”

  “Thus speaks the failed killer, failed bodyguard!” she spat back, turning her back contemptuously to resume the climb.

  After a few more steps she stopped and whirled back accusingly. “How could you let your master be attacked by a half-breed and a mob of Aghar?” She demanded scornfully, then fixed her purple eyes on Darkend. “And even then he let my son escape. I ask you, Brother: who is the traitor?”

  “Enough! Keep going!” commanded the thane.

  On one level they emerged from the stairs to seek water and rest their weary muscles. Here they found a whole rank of Daergar armor and weapons. The clutter of black metal had been cast across the street where the shadow-wights had claimed the flesh of the dark dwarf warriors. They saw movement, black and soundless forms slinking toward them from the alleys and streets of this level. The thane’s party hastened back to the stairwell, preferring the interminable climb to battle with an apparently unstoppable foe.

  “They’ve been everywhere. This is no conquest I am leading; we are merely the caretakers of disaster,” Darkend moaned, utterly despairing.

  Garimeth only kept climbing, step after endless step. Where was Zarak Thuul? Would he come? She didn’t know, but understood that if he didn’t, she would have no reason to continue living.

  “This is it,” she finally announced after an interminable interval.

  The dark dwarves’ legs were numb. The exhausted party all but stumbled as they emerged onto the wide avenue of Hybardin’s Level Twenty-eight. Everywhere was silence and death.

  “We’re too late!” cried the female, looking up and down the street with a groan of despair. Where was he? Would he come to her? He must!

  “My city! My splendid conquest! It’s a ruin!” wailed Darkend, miserable at the knowledge of the lost riches, the treasures, the secrets, the potential slaves, all of it had vanished with the tide of Chaos.

  Everywhere smoke swirled and broken rock littered the roadways and gardens. Dead dwarves—Hylar and Klar in equal numbers—were all over. An eerie silence filled the air with a sense of impending disaster. More and more frequently they found no bodies—only clothes, or armor and weapons scattered on the street where the owners had been sucked into nothingness. The shadows seemed to display no preference, sucking the lives of Hylar and dark dwarves with indiscriminate hunger.

  “Follow me!” Garimeth somehow found the strength to run. She lurched weakly through the littered streets, turning down a side lane after she paused for a moment as if to make certain of where she was.

  “Where is he? Zarak Thuul?” she cried.

  Darkend stumbled along behind as they emerged into a large square where two wide streets came together.

  “I used to live down there.” Garimeth pointed down the street and frowned as she saw the front of Baker Whitegranite’s house still standing.

  “Never mind that. Where are we going? Where is Zarak Thuul?”

  The Daergar gathered around the murky waters of a half-filled basin, looking, questioning, waiting for a decision.

  “This was once a reflector pool,” Garimeth said scornfully, though Darkend found it hard to imagine anything mirrored in the dark, sludgy liquid. “A watery trinket, kept for mere ornament.”

  “An utter waste!” declared the dark dwarf thane.

  “And now it seems my husband hasn’t tended to his city in my absence,” she added
with a twisted grin. “He has failed without me. He needed me in ways that I never needed him!”

  “Forget that! We have to find Zarak Thuul!” demanded Darkend.

  “Sire, could it be that she doesn’t want you find him?” suggested Slickblade.

  “That’s ridiculous!” Garimeth was strangely terrified of the notion that she would never see the daemon warrior again. “I—we have to find him!”

  “Do we?” the assassin questioned, his eyes shining through the slit of his black cloak. “I say to you, my lord, that you have trusted her too much.”

  “Aye, perhaps I have let myself be fooled,” Darkend Bellowsmoke declared, swinging his mace free from his belt. “Kneel, Sister.”

  “Allow me to strike the blow, my lord,” declared Slickblade eagerly.

  “No, she is my sister,” the thane said solemnly. “I will do the killing!”

  “But I did not betray you!” Garimeth moaned, sinking to her knees, looking up, pleading. “You saw with your own eyes. Zarak Thuul worked my will. I know he will help us again!”

  Darkend raised his mace, his tusked helm stark and frightening as he stared down at his sister. With a sudden gesture, he whirled and brought the weapon down on Slickblade’s head.

  The assassin fell, killed instantly. The rest of the Daergar warriors gasped softly, astonished by the dire turnabout.

  “Let that be the end of his whispering,” the thane observed coolly. “He forgot that whispered words, like a snake held by the tail, can turn on the whisperer.”

  The dwarfwoman didn’t pause to reflect on her miraculous survival. Instead, she rose and gestured to the house. “You have made the right decision as always, brother. I am grateful. Come with me.”