The Fate of Thorbardin

by Douglas Niles

  “Down below where?” he wondered, thinking of the whole massive, irregular surface of the island. There were thousands, probably millions of places where a rod of wood could be concealed.

  “I think there’s some kind of space hollowed out on the hilltop, not too far down,” she told him, her voice whispering but urgent. “Like a network of caves or a series of rooms. There are at least two entrances, and I think he would keep it in there.”

  Once he was holding her, Brandon wanted nothing to do with leaving Gretchan alone again in her cage, but he could understand the rationale of her plan. “Your father came here with me; he’s still climbing the hill. I’ll have him help me look!”

  “Yes, yes—but please, hurry!”

  The Kayolin dwarf scuttled back to the edge of the hilltop and slipped off the crest. Otaxx was a dozen feet below, red faced and puffing, but still laboring upward. Quickly, Brandon told him what they were looking for. “You go around that way,” he said. “I’ll take the other direction. If you find an entrance, go inside and start looking.”

  The old Daewar nodded and immediately moved off to the left on a lateral search. Brandon went the opposite way, dropping down to peer under an overhanging boulder, scrambling sideways and up to investigate a shadowy niche.

  In only a few minutes, miraculously, he found it: a flat, smooth floor beneath a square mantel of doorway. Without hesitation, he plunged into the dark space. His eyes, already attuned to the almost lightless vault of the Urkhan Sea, quickly adjusted, and he saw that there were several arched corridors leading out of the entryway.

  Which way? He almost groaned but then he felt a conviction, a thought insinuating itself into his subconscious: go to the right! He obeyed the instinct and found himself in a small room. Next to one wall was an array of scrolls and books scattered across the floor. It was not there, but he spun around and saw what he sought almost immediately.

  The Staff of Reorx leaned against the wall in a niche between two stones. Quickly Brandon grabbed it and raced back outside. Holding the shaft in one hand and his axe in the other, he picked his way carefully back up to the summit. He saw Gretchan watching for him with wide, perfect eyes. She gestured him toward her, and he broke into a run.

  Then he heard something soaring through the air, something that was flying but didn’t have any wings.

  Gus and his girls mingled as much as possible in the celebration currently sweeping across the great plaza of Norbardin. They couldn’t locate any of their friends in the chaotic, frenzied throng, and naturally the strangers were less than enthusiastic about sharing their food and drink with mere gully dwarves, so in the end, the trio was forced to revert to time-honored Aghar tactics: stealth; theft; and speedy, panic-fueled flight.

  Surprisingly, they were able to stick together (loosely speaking) and gather at the appointed meeting place, a niche under the palace wall, with an assortment of bread crusts; cheese rinds; one large, marinated mushroom; and several mugs that still had some tasty ale, not much tainted with backwash, sloshing in the bottom. There, relatively safe from discovery, they settled down to share, with no more than the usual bickering.

  “Dwarf folk pretty happy,” Slooshy said.

  “Big party!” Berta agreed.

  “Thorbardin always happy place,” Gus intoned knowingly. “Lotsa big party here, alla day, every day.”

  “Gus bluphsplunging stoopar!” Berta retorted. “Last time come here, alla time killing and fire. Big dragon try to eat Berta!”

  “Yeah!” Slooshy remembered. “We runnin’ from big, kill’em dwarf too. Wanna stick Slooshy and Gus with spear! No party, two times! Not dat day!”

  In truth, Gus did have a vague memory of the events the two females were recalling. When he stopped to think about it, he also recalled being a prisoner in a cage in the black wizard’s laboratory and running for his life from the Theiwar bounty hunters that stalked around the shore of the Urkhan Sea, looking for gully dwarves so they could kill them and cut off their heads. That was all pretty long past, he thought, scratching himself.

  Then he remembered finding the Redstone, almost in that very spot. The fire dragon had tried to kill the old king, who had been holding it. Then he sneaked through the magical blue door in the old magic-users’ shop. Those two Theiwar, Peat and Sadie had been their names, had sure been surprised when three gully dwarves came strolling into the back room of their little store! Gus still remembered his adroit duck and dodge as Sadie had hurled unmentionable things at him while he fled out the door.

  “Ah, those was days,” he sighed, leaning back on a jagged pile of bricks and sighing contentedly. Contented to a point, that was, until he remembered they had drained the last of their partial ale mugs.

  “Hey,” he said, kicking a bit of cheese out of Berta’s hands. “Girls get Gus more beer. Who gets biggest glass get to rub Gus’s feet!”

  Surprisingly, that enticing bit of persuasion didn’t result in any takers. Instead, the girls actually laughed at him and went right back to chewing. Gus sulked for a little while, listening as the celebration in the plaza grew ever more raucous. There were certainly two dwarves, and maybe two more, out there, whooping and singing and cheering the new king. Everyone seemed to want Tarn Bellowgranite to live a long time—at least, they kept yelling that he should do that.

  Finally, Gus realized that if he were going to get more beer, he would have to do it himself. He’d had plenty to eat and drink already but wasn’t so bloated that he couldn’t move, so he pushed himself to his feet and climbed up over the lip of the hole where he had been hiding.

  The plaza truly was a scene of chaos and delight. Large fires burned here and there, and dwarves were dancing and singing wildly. The Kayolin drummers were moving through the crowd, pounding out different beats, so the whole mingling of sound was a rousing thunder, a steady rumble that seemed to underscore the shared joy of the celebrating, liberated Thorbardin.

  “Hey, Gus no sneak off!”

  One of the girls—he didn’t even bother to see which one—tugged at his right arm, and the other tugged at his left. He smiled contentedly, realizing that, at last, he had come back to where he belonged.

  That thought triggered an even stronger one, a memory of a little house off of a sewer pipe, on the steep cliff face above the Urkhan Sea. He remembered the affectionate wallops his pap used to give him, the way his big brothers would always steal his food and his mam would kick him out of the house to find more. A tear surprised him by welling up in his eye, and he felt a strange urge, something he’d never known before.

  “Come this way,” he said, striding across the plaza, toward one of the tunnels leading down to the lake.

  Perhaps there was an unusual pleading tone in his voice, for his order was greeted with not bickering and argument, but meek compliance. The two females accompanied him, hurrying along in silence for a full two minutes, until Berta spoke.

  “Where Gus goin’? Where we goin’?”

  “This way,” he said, pointing a stubby finger. “Gus going home!”

  Floating in the air, Willim admired his handiwork: he had taken one of the fire dragon’s teeth and punched it into the solid rock in the vast ceiling of stone spanning the Urkhan Sea. It was almost invisible stuck there, except for the faint glow it emitted, the merest suggestion of the power lurking within that potent artifact.

  Satisfied, he flew along under the ceiling, first to Sadie, who had done as he had instructed and sank her tooth into a different part of the ceiling, then to Peat, who had done the same thing. The three fire dragon teeth, each infused with the power stored within the Staff of Reorx—the power that once had been Gorathian—formed a triangle on the top of the cavern with equal sides nearly a quarter mile apart.

  “Why are we doing this?” Peat whispered to Sadie, loudly enough for the black wizard to hear. The old female merely shrugged and pointed to her master. Willim had already determined that the two assistants didn’t need to know the purpose of the exercise.<
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  “Come—we fly back to the Isle of the Dead now,” he said.

  Their task completed, Willim, Sadie, and Peat glided downward on the wings of the flying spells that had borne them aloft—Willim through his own casting, and the two elderly Theiwar by dint of the potion he had given them to drink. The black wizard was satisfied that, soon enough, he would leave his mark on Thorbardin in a way that history would never forget.

  He wondered for a moment where he would choose to go after his task was done. He didn’t have a place in mind, but he knew that his power would carry him anywhere, allow him to become the master of any place he chose to reside. He considered, briefly, visiting the Tower of High Sorcery in Wayreth Forest. Willim the Black, together with Dalamar the Dark and a host of other wizards of all three orders, had been instrumental in reclaiming that enchanted spire from the powers of corruption that had seized it earlier in the Fifth Age.

  But there were likely to be other wizards there, strangers, powerful wizards, and Willim was not inclined to share his time with the likes of them.

  Perhaps he would go east. He’d heard that many changes were occurring there, including a new wave of minotaur invasion. That would surely result in some nicely chaotic circumstances, just the sort of thing that was appealing to Willim.

  He saw the priestess, Gretchan Pax, gazing up at him as he swooped down to land on the hilltop. He smiled, admiring her beauty, and his emotions stirred with the kind of feeling Facet used to arouse in him. Perhaps, before he killed Gretchan, he would slake that lust, either against her will or with her magically compelled compliance.

  So intrigued was he by those prospects that he didn’t notice the other dwarf until it was almost too late.

  Bluestone! Where did he come from all of a sudden? The Kayolin dwarf was sprinting onto the hilltop, racing toward the cage. And he had Gretchan’s staff!

  “No!” barked the black wizard. He pointed his finger and launched a stream of magic missiles, sparkling darts that streaked unerringly at the Kayolin dwarf. The first one struck Brandon in the left shoulder, knocking him down. The staff tumbled from his fingers, falling—or was it thrown?—a dozen feet short of the cage.

  Brandon twisted, crying out in pain. His left arm hung uselessly, the joint shattered, and he lay on his back with the Bluestone Axe across his chest. More and more of the magic missiles spewed from Willim’s finger, sparking and sizzling as they struck him right in the heart. By the time Willim had settled to the ground, the spell was exhausted, but the Kayolin general had been smashed with more magical power than any mortal could survive.

  Willim smiled as he landed, a hideous grimace creasing his features. Behind him, he heard Gretchan sobbing, her voice raw with grief.

  “You think you are suffering now,” he said to her. She looked up at him, hatred glaring from her moisture-shedding eyes.

  “Just wait,” he promised as he took a step toward the cage.

  Otaxx Shortbeard was gasping for breath. His chest felt as if it were being squeezed in a vice, and he could barely see. Damn his old age! He didn’t have the endurance of a young child anymore.

  Still, he pushed himself up the last bit of the hilltop, each breath rasping in his throat. The sound of his blood pulsing was a roar in his ears, and he shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Finally he clawed his way over the lip of the summit and pulled himself to his knees and finally to his feet.

  The first thing he saw was Brandon Bluestone, lying on his back, his shoulder and chest shiny with blood. Then he saw the black wizard, advancing toward Gretchan, still trapped in the cage. She rose to her full height and spit at the Theiwar magic-user, and Otaxx wanted to rush to her, to stop her from antagonizing the brutal wizard.

  But of course, it was too late. Willim raised his hands, reaching toward the cleric, and Gretchan gasped and fell, rolling on the ground as if she were being physically attacked, though the wizard stood several feet outside of the cage.

  The scene was too much for the old general. He drew his short sword and lumbered forward as fast as his tired legs could carry him.

  “You leave her alone, you bastard!” he cried. “You leave my daughter alone!”

  Then the wizard turned that hideous face toward Otaxx, and he knew he was doomed.

  Sadie watched the old Daewar charge, and she knew that he was going to die, that Willim would kill him as certainly as he had killed Facet and Brandon … and would kill Gretchan Pax, and undoubtedly her and Peat after that, probably sooner rather than later.

  The old woman felt a strange mix of emotions. Fatigue was high among them: it had been too long that she had known fear every minute, every day, every step she took, every breath she took. She looked to the side, where Peat had come to rest on the ground beside her, and recognized the same fear, the hopelessness, in his eyes.

  He had just come back to her, less than an hour past, and it was all going to end. Even more powerful than fatigue was the crushing sadness: she had managed to get Willim to reverse the spell that had condemned him to the glass bell jar, but for what?

  Only to die on the rocky hilltop. That place was all too appropriately named, she reflected bitterly.

  The Isle of the Dead.

  She looked again at Willim, who had driven the old Daewar onto his back with a blow from a force spell, like a powerful punch that required no physical contact on the wizard’s part. The elderly dwarf, his face already reddened to an unhealthy degree, was grunting as the wizard’s intangible blows swatted him back and forth. Willim was taking a long time to kill the old fellow, she realized. Probably he was enjoying it.

  Gretchan was sobbing, tugging on the bars of her cage as if that would do any good. She called out to the Daewar, called him “Father” in a tone full of grief and heartache. Sadie actually felt sorry for her.

  Only then did she notice the staff on the ground, lying very near her feet, where Brandon had dropped it when Willim’s magic missile barrage had smashed him down. Sadie looked up again. The wizard was fully engaged in his gradual, deliberate murder. He was paying no attention to his elderly apprentice or to her equally elderly husband.

  Slowly, not sure why she was doing it, Sadie reached down and picked up the Staff of Reorx. She caressed the smooth wood, which felt very nice and solid in her hands. And she noticed that the priestess had stopped crying.

  Instead, Gretchan was looking at Sadie with wide, disbelieving eyes.

  Gretchan was almost blinded by grief. She could see Brandon’s bloody, immobile form on the ground and was watching the black wizard pummel her father to death. Those two images were enough to make her want to blind herself, to tear out her eyes.

  Then a strange calm possessed her, and her grief slowly dissipated.

  She felt the presence of Reorx, a benign and comforting embrace, easing her despair, somehow even infusing her with a measure of hope.

  It was then that she looked around, spotting Sadie a mere ten feet away. The old Theiwar woman was holding the sacred staff, looking at it in wonder. Perhaps she, too, felt the presence of Reorx, Master of the Forge, Father God of All Dwarves.

  “Please!” Gretchan begged, her voice a hoarse croak. “Give me the staff!”

  Sadie stared at her for what seemed like a lifetime but was perhaps only five seconds. Then she inched closer and extended the staff, anvil head first, and the cleric seized it as if it were a lifeline thrown to a drowning woman. She pulled the sacred artifact to her, clutched it to her breast, and spun around to locate the wizard.

  Willim stood over her father’s body, gloating. Then the wizard turned his eyeless face toward Gretchan, his expression distorted with fury.

  “He died!” cried the wizard in a monstrous rage. “He died before I could kill—”

  Abruptly he stopped, growing stiff and still. “Oh, your staff,” he said calmly. “Do you think that will save you? It won’t. But it will make your dying all that much sweeter … for me.”

  He took a step toward her, and she plan
ted the butt of the rod on the ground and seized the middle with both hands. “Oh, mighty Reorx,” she intoned. “Father God of All Dwarves! Free me from this unholy cage.”

  As the bars burst apart around her, Willim the Black took another step closer and raised his hands for the casting of yet another mighty, lethal spell.

  Brandon lay on the rocky ground, his body wracked with pain. This is what dying feels like, he thought. The Bluestone Axe he still held in his right hand, the only hand he could use as his left shoulder had been smashed to a bloody pulp by the wizard’s deadly missiles.

  At least they would have been deadly if the Kayolin dwarf hadn’t been able to pull up his axe as he fell and use the wide, Reorx-blessed blade as a makeshift shield. The last dozen of Willim’s bolts had blasted into the metal axe head and been absorbed there without inflicting further damage to their target.

  Still, he was brutally wounded. It was all he could do to keep his eyes open, to watch the events swirl around him. He knew that Otaxx was dead; the old Daewar had sacrificed himself to distract the wizard’s attention away from Brandon.

  Then he had watched with numb disbelief as Sadie had snatched up the staff and handed it to Gretchan. He had seen the cage burst to pieces as the power of the god was made real. And he witnessed Willim, his back to Brandon, slowly advancing on Gretchan. The priestess did not seem to be afraid, but the Kayolin dwarf knew that neither could she hope to stand, to survive, in the face of the wizard’s murderous rage.

  Gasping from the pain, Brandon tried to move. His left arm was on fire, and his shoulder grated sickeningly as the broken bones shifted and twisted against each other. Somehow he managed to block out the agony, to use his right arm to push himself to a sitting position while he rested the axe in his lap. When next he looked up, Willim was only two steps away from Gretchan. She held her staff before her, as if to ward off the villainous wizard, but her power couldn’t match his. With a single, sharp gesture, Willim the Black swept his hand to the side, and the staff was torn from Gretchan’s hands. It went clattering helplessly onto the rocks of the hilltop.