The Gates of Thorbardin, page 15
“What else do you have in that pouch that isn’t yours?” Chane growled.
Chess peered into his pouch. “I don’t know. I lose track. Here’s a marble of some kind that I found on that old battlefield. And some nice pebbles, and a toad’s skull … a couple of candles, some twine, an earring, a twig. What’s this? Oh, a pair of nice cat-tooth daggers.” He pulled out one of the daggers. “Didn’t you used to have one like this?”
“I had two like that,” the dwarf rumbled.
“Did you? What did you do with them?”
“Give me that!” Chane growled.
Chess handed over the dagger, then closed his pouch. “If you’re going to expect me to replace everything you lose—”
“Oh, shut up!” Chane stopped abruptly and looked around. “Well, one good thing. Your spell has stopped wailing.”
The kender listened for a moment, then grinned. “He has, hasn’t he? Thank you, Zap.”
“Agony,” something voiceless mourned.
With the Spellbinder gem in his hand, Chane pointed. “There it is. The green line. It goes up the by-path.” He hoisted pack, sword, and hammer. “Are you ready?”
“Look at that!” The kender pointed upward. Overhead, great flocks of birds flew, coming from the high peaks, winging toward the valley. Birds of all sorts, a migration of panic.
Chane watched them, wave after wave coming past. “What do you suppose caused that?” he wondered aloud.
“Whatever it was, the birds are in a hurry,” the kender said. “See those out ahead? Those are pigeons. And mountain kites, and jays, and ducks, and … stand back!” Chess swiftly pulled a pebble from his pouch, fitted the sling to his staff, placed the pebble, aimed, and let go. The pebble streaked skyward, and an instant later a large bird crumpled in flight and fell, thudding to the shelf almost at Chane’s feet.
“Goose,” the kender explained. “I’m getting tired of dried cat. We’ll have this for supper.”
Chane gaped at him. “How did you do that?”
“With a pebble. I thought you saw.” He picked up the goose and slung it over his shoulder. “See if you can find some berries along the way. Snowberries will do. They’re the yellow ones on the thorny vines. Snowberries go good with goose.” Chess started up the path, and the dwarf followed, still glancing in awe at the smaller creature’s forked hoopak.
Overhead, the waves of fleeing birds continued to pass. And now Chess and Chane had company on the slope. The kender and the dwarf dodged aside as a lithe, furred creature with sharp horns bounded past them. A few yards farther along they hugged the stone wall as a line of other creatures, these with heavy coats of thick wool, surged past them, bleating in panic. At the higher ledge, where the trail cut back toward the peaks, the two dived for cover as a pair of panting wolves loped down the path, followed by several elk.
“Do you suppose winter is coming early this year?” The kender stepped out on the trail to look after the strange procession, then dodged back as more of the woolly creatures charged past him.
“They’re running from something,” Chane said. “I guess that settles it. We’ll camp here. A person could get hurt going up that path, with everything else coming down.”
Two huge highland bison charged past the ledge and veered away, following the downward path. Another elk was right behind them, cavorting in desperation as the heavier animals blocked its way. Then more of the woolly creatures. One of them wore a collar with a bell.
“Somebody’s sheep,” Chess noted. “I’ll bet there’s a pretty unhappy herder up there somewhere.”
“I think we’d better get a little farther from this path,” Chane decided. “Camping here would be like trying to sleep in a tunnelwagon turnaround. Rust, but the traffic is heavy.”
They trudged along the ledge, away from the path, rounded a sheer bend, and saw a rubble-slope ahead. After testing it, Chane began to climb. The kender followed, carrying his goose. The bird was almost as big as he was.
They were climbing by moonlight when they reached a quiet swale higher up—well beyond and above the noisy switchback with its stampeding animals. “This will do,” Chane said. “I’ll make a cookfire back there, behind that outcrop. You can cook the goose.”
“Did you get some snowberries?” Chess asked hopefully.
“I haven’t had a chance. We’ll do without.”
By the time the goose was roasted, both the white moon and the red stood above the peaks, giving their dichromatic glow to the steep slopes and the forest-tops of the distant valley. The two ate in silence, except for occasional outbursts of commentary and chatter by the kender, most of which Chane Feldstone chose to ignore. The dwarf sat deep in thought, occasionally rubbing his forehead, which tingled when the light of the red moon touched it. A secret way into Thorbardin, and Grallen had learned of it. Like a third gate, he thought. One that nobody knew about.
He thought of Thorbardin, exploring in his mind all of the myriad ways and working clusters of the undermountain kingdom—as much of it as he had seen and could recall. Clearest to him in memory were the city of the Daewar, the only home he had ever known, and the warrens where he had worked for his keep from time to time—first tending fields, then helping with the constant delving by which the dwarves sought to expand their underground crop lands. Clearly he recalled Twelfth Road, which he had passed so often as a child. Less distinctly he knew the Tenth, Eleventh, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Roads, by which Daewar conducted commerce with other cities of Thorbardin.
Dimly, from one brief visit, he recalled the awesome Life-Tree, home of the Hylar. Their city was delved into a giant stalactite above the great, subterranean Urkhan Sea. As an orphan Chane had possessed the appearance of Hylar in his build and features, and later even in the manner in which his beard lay back against his cheeks rather than hanging resignedly downward. The Hylar, he had thought as a child, had a fierce and noble appearance—and undoubtedly some among them had such qualities, though there were plenty of Hylar who in practice were no more noble than the average Daewar.
Still, Chane’s beard grew in the Hylar manner, and it did not displease him that it made him look as though he were standing sturdy and proud, facing down a strong wind.
The Valley of the Thanes, noblest place in all of Thorbardin, Chane had seen only once. He wondered briefly if the supposed “secret way” could lead there. The valley was sacred to the dwarves, for it contained a magical floating tomb—final resting place of the great King Duncan, some said. And the tomb of Grallen, which lay nearby on the lakeshore, was, after all, the only place in Thorbardin that was open to the sky. Yet the only accesses to the Valley of the Thanes were three roads from within Thorbardin itself. And certainly if there were the slightest passage-point through the Guardian Walls, somebody within would have noticed it.
Not the Valley of the Thanes then, Chane decided.
And not Southgate, which was the common entrance to Thorbardin since the Cataclysm, nor likely the mostly abandoned Northgate, with its shattered portal ledge. Northgate might be unused, Chane told himself, but it’s not undefended. It was equipped for the same impenetrable defenses as Southgate.
Possibly some long-forgotten tunnel or shielded pass breaking through into one of the warrens, or one of the lower cities? Kiar, Theiwar … Daergar? It didn’t seem likely to him. Surely someone would have noticed.
“There’s a creature with long, flexible arms and not a bone in its body.”
Chane looked up. “What? Where?”
“In the Sirrion Sea,” the kender said. “Aren’t you paying attention? That’s what I’m talking about. The Sirrion Sea. They also say that there is a gigantic island out there, just far enough from the Isle of Sancrist to be out of sight, that isn’t an island at all. It’s really a gnomish ship, hundreds and hundreds of years old, that was supposed to drive itself by a geared rod with a weight atop it. The reason it’s in the sea, they say, is because the gnomes who built it set out westward and that was as far as they got before the falling rod buried itself in the ocean floor. They’ve been working on it ever since, trying to iron out all the bugs, and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger.”
With a low growl, Chane Feldstone returned to his own thoughts. The First Road? One of the Halls of Justice? There was so much to Thorbardin, so many different parts and places in the kingdom beneath the Kharolis Mountains. Chane Feldstone had seen so few of them, and almost none of the outside perimeters and capping peaks that protected the dwarven kingdom.
Chane sighed and tried another tack.
Grallen had learned … so the Irda said … that there was a secret entrance, and that Thorbardin would be threatened by invasion because of that entrance. But where was it? Grallen had not been in Thorbardin when he learned of that; he had been outside, fighting in the Dwarfgate Wars. Grallen had not returned alive, but he had tried—or at least intended—to find the secret passage and block it somehow.
The dwarf rubbed his chin. Where, then, did Grallen go? Using his crystal, Chane could see a green line that he intended to follow. It was, he trusted, Grallen’s path. And yet, where did it lead?
“Five unicorns,” Chestal Thicketsway said.
Again the dwarf glanced around, startled. “Where?”
“What?”
“You said ‘five unicorns.’ Where?”
“Oh, all over,” the kender shrugged. “I’m not even sure I believe him, you know. Capstick Heelfeather has been known to exaggerate. But that’s what he says. He says he has personally seen five unicorns. So far, I’ve only seen one.”
“I wish that wizard would come back,” the dwarf muttered.
“Why? I thought you didn’t like him.”
“I don’t. I wouldn’t trust that mage as far as I can spit, but he knows a lot of things about outside that I don’t know.”
“Is that all?” The kender brightened. “I’ve been outside all my life. What do you want to know?”
“Well, to begin with, where exactly was Grallen when he died?”
“I haven’t the foggiest notion,” Chess said happily. “Ask me something else.”
Shaking his head in exasperation, Chane went back to his puzzle. How am I supposed to find a secret entrance if no one has a clue to its location? he wondered. And even if there is a secret entrance, and I find it, what am I supposed to do about it? Apparently the only one who ever knew anything about any of this was Grallen, and he died a long, long time ago and never told anybody … did he?
Chane shook his head. If Grallen did tell someone about the entrance, why didn’t somebody do something about it back then? Or since? Why me?
“Dwarves and humans,” the kender said. “At least that’s what I—”
“Will you please be quiet?” Chane stormed. “Can’t you see I’m trying to think?”
“I’m just trying to tell you, there are dwarves and humans down there.”
“Where?”
“On the path, where all the animals were. But the animals are mostly past now, and there are people over there, going down that path as fast as they can. Some of them are bleeding, too. I wonder what’s going on.”
CHAPTER 16
———
FROM THE TOP OF A ROCK OUTCROP, CHANE AND Chess had a view of the path. It was below, and some distance away, and the moonlight cast eerie shadows where the slopes rose above it. But it was a view, and Chane crouched there, staring in wonder at the dark shapes moving down the cutback slope. Dozens were in view, people of all sizes. Some were dwarves, and some were taller—humans, perhaps. Some scampered along the downward path, turning often to look back. Some moved more slowly, clinging to one another; some supporting others, some being carried.
Behind the first wave of refugees came a small knot of figures brandishing spears and swords, moving slowly. A few were shouting at those ahead, urging them on. Others at the rear faced back up the path, their weapons at the ready.
“Somebody’s chasing them,” Chess said. “That’s their rear guard. I wonder who’s after them.”
Slowly the fleeing people made their way down the angled by-path, disappearing by twos and threes as they reached the cutback below and rounded the shoulder there. Shouts and cries carried upward, distorted by the spires and tumbles of the mountainside and by distance.
“Let’s get closer,” Chane decided. “I can’t tell anything from here.” He rose and turned to find the kender already gone, scrambling across tumble-slopes, leaping from stone to stone, heading for a better view of the path. Chane hurried after him.
For long moments the dwarf and the kender were out of sight of the path, but then they emerged on a ledge directly above it and looked down the length of the sloping angle between cutbacks. The path was empty now, as far as they could see. But just opposite the two, in a shadowed canyon from which the path emerged, something was moving, coming toward the turn. Heavy footfalls crunched in the rubble of the path. Footfalls … and a deep, harsh voice that broke into cruel laughter.
“See ’em run!” the voice rumbled up from the shadows. “Blood an’ gore. Me, I go an’ find me more. Bash ’ere skulls an’ break ’ere bones! Let ’em go? Haw! Not me. Not Loam!”
The figure that emerged from the darkness was huge—a massive, wide-bodied thing that loped down the path on bowed, gnarled legs. It carried a huge club in one hand, which it flailed as though it were a twig.
“Make ’em run!” the thing bellowed as it passed directly below the dwarf and the kender. “Make ’em flee! Make ’em die … in agony. Hee, hee!”
It skidded in the rubble, faltered for just an instant, and changed course, heading down the cutback where the fleeing people had gone.
“What in tarnish is that?” Chane whispered.
“Ugly, isn’t it?” the kender said. “They’re even uglier in front. Here, I’ll show you.”
Before Chane could react, the kender stood, drew his hoopak-sling, and sent a large pebble flying after the monster. The pebble bounced off the thing’s skull with a distant thud. Howling, the monster slapped a massive hand to its insulted head and spun around. Moon-red eyes in a massive, heavy-browed face darted this way and that, then came to rest on the dwarf and the kender.
“Oops,” Chess said.
With a roar that reverberated off the mountain peaks, the great creature started up the path toward them, swinging its club.
“Anyway,” Chess said, “now you have a better look at it. I’ll bet you’ve never seen an ogre before. Have you?”
“Puny things!” the ogre roared, gaining momentum. “Throw rock at me? Loam last thing you will see!”
“What did you do that for?” the dwarf growled. “Now look what—”
“I didn’t expect him to be quite so cranky,” Chess explained, interrupting. His hoopak-sling sang and another pebble—this one larger—smashed into the advancing ogre’s face, full on his wide nose. Dark blood spurted, then dripped downward, veiling the thing’s grotesque mouth. The ogre roared again and sprinted toward them.
“I think he’s really angry,” the kender said. “This one’s yours. I’d better look around and see if there are others.”
“What?” Chane turned, but the kender was already gone, leaping nimbly from one rock to another, upslope, pausing here and there to peer down into the shadowed pathway below.
“Rust and tarnish!” Chane stared at the advancing monster. The thing was tall enough to reach him with its club, even from the path below the rock where he still crouched. And it was coming fast. He fingered the hilt of his sword, then decided against it and unslung his hammer.
“Kharas aid me now,” the dwarf breathed.
Backing up a step from the edge of the rock, Chane glanced quickly at its moonlit top, then knelt and swung. He struck stone with the spike-end of his hammer. Again he swung. Then the dwarf ducked as a hand the size of his back appeared above the stone and swung a massive club that whuffed over him.
Chane’s hammer rang again on the surface of the stone, and again. The great club rose above him and descended, crunching into the stone beside him with a sound of thunder. Again the cudgel was raised aloft, and this time Chane had to throw himself to one side as it smashed down where he had been. He rolled, righted himself, and swung his hammer again. The weapon’s spike sank into stone, making another hole in a precise line of holes that—he hoped—followed a faint flaw line in the rock.
Just beyond and below the rock outcrop, the ogre leaped upward. For an instant its eyes were level with Chane’s. The dwarf dodged, and the club descended again, raising a cloud of stonepowder. The ogre’s roar was a rising, echoing thunder of rage. The club thudded here and there, searching for Chane … then paused. The sounds beyond told the dwarf that the monster was climbing. He sighted on the fault line and swung again.
The top of the ogre’s head came into view, then its eyes. The creature bellowed in huge pleasure when it saw that the dwarf was trapped there with sheer cliff at his back and no place to go. The ogre clung to the stone and raised its massive club. Chane scooped stone dust and threw it into the huge, grinning, bloody face.
The ogre roared in rage, lost its hold, and dropped from view. Quickly, though, it started climbing again. Chane’s hammer rang. The sound of its impact was different now, a slight, hollow echo accompanying each stroke. And the spike sank deeper into the stone with each swing. Again the massive hand appeared with its club, and descended a blow that would have flattened and crushed the dwarf, had it found him. Chane panted, concentrating on his work. The scrabbling sounds of clumsy climbing began again, and the ogre’s head came into view.
Chane raised his hammer one last time, whispered, “Reorx, guide my maul,” and brought it down against the stone. The sound of the impact seemed to go on and on, the ringing strike becoming a deep, low grinding sound as the fault opened … a hair line that became an inch, then another inch … then a cleft a foot across, that widened abruptly and crashed away into the walled pathway below, carrying the ogre with it. Chane crept to the newly sheared edge of the outcrop and looked down. The pathway beneath was a jumble of fallen stone, its walled opening filled halfway to the top. A cloud of stone dust hung above it, veiling the moons’ light.
