It was Mistral Thrax who had told Quill Runebrand that Damon was destined to be the father of kings. Mistral Thrax had heard it himself from the apparition of Kitlin Fishtaker, who was legendary. Mistral Thrax had believed it, and Quill Runebrand wanted it to be true—though he couldn’t bring himself to really wish kings on his people.
But if Damon went out tearing around the wilderness lands and got himself killed, then none of it could ever come to be.
Quill stalked, muttered to himself, and worried.
There was the problem of the human wizards who had disappeared from the Road of Passage—first three of them and now, if those people on the Ergothian border could be believed, maybe a hundred or so more. What were humans doing in Kal-Thax? What were they after? And even more terrible, these were magic-users. That was as frightening to the dwarf as it was revolting.
And Gran Stonemill’s concern about the old Daewar tunnel that led through Sky’s End Mountain—that also was a great worry. Was the tunnel truly sealed? Was it proof against magic-users? And if not, could it be made so? Quill Runebrand knew little about magic, but his intuition told him that anything that had been closed could be opened.
The only way for the old tunnel to be safe, he felt, would be for there to be no tunnel at all. If it were somehow obliterated, instinct told him, then even magic couldn’t unobliterate it.
Wandering the ways of the Daebardin waterfront, Quill fumed and fretted. Something was nagging at him, some hunch or intuition that seemed just beyond his grasp. He couldn’t tell which of his many worries it was.
Could it be the fact that Northgate, though almost completed, was still an open portal? Or the fact that nothing had been heard from Cale Greeneye’s search party since they set out to track the fogbound creature?
Could it be something he had eaten?
He searched his mind for all of the many things he might find to worry about, seeking clues as to which one had suddenly raised itself in his thoughts from worry to innate dread. Mistral Thrax had always been an intuitive dwarf, often seeming to know a bit more about things than he rightly could know. It came, he had said, of having been exposed once to magic. He had recovered from the magic, he said, but some of its echoes lingered on.
And maybe some of those echoes had passed on to Quill Runebrand.
There was the question that had become foremost among the chieftains, almost from the moment Barek Stone expressed it. The point that, in emergency, Thorbardin could have only one leader. As the captain general of forces stated it, the point was obvious and in-arguable. But to Quill, as to most dwarves of Thorbardin, the idea of everybody being led by one person was a frightful thought. And worse yet, it bordered on the heretical.
Only once had anyone ever tried to be king of all the dwarves. That was the maniac Glome, ninety years ago. Glome had died for his efforts, but the episode had solidified one thing that all the dwarves could agree about. They didn’t want to have a king.
And nobody wanted to be a king, either. No sane dwarf, in Quill’s opinion, would ever seek such a job. But in case of real emergency, one must lead.
Quill scratched his beard, shook his head, and started to pace again, then looked up, and his eyes widened. He was standing at the lakeshore—the subterranean lake that was named Urkhan Sea—and as he raised his eyes some trick of light drew his gaze to the mighty stalactite descending into midlake from the shadows of the great cavern above. The stalactite was the largest natural construct of living stone that anyone had ever seen. It was probably the largest stalactite in the world. It was called the Life Tree, and within it was the rising city of Hybardin, home of Thane Hylar.
Sun-tunnels above Daebardin lighted the shoreline brightly, but out in the center of the lake there was a gloominess as though clouds were forming around the Life Tree—dark clouds that spread in all directions to obscure the distant, vaulted ceilings of Thorbardin.
Quill blinked and rubbed his eyes. A trick of the light, he told himself. But it was still there, and now a ghostly figure seemed to appear in the clouds. Huge, wavering, and barely visible, it might have been a faint mirage, but Quill stared at it in openmouthed awe. It was the vague outline of a dwarf, and it seemed to shift from one contour to another. One minute it appeared to be an old dwarf leaning on a crutch—the way Mistral Thrax had leaned on his crutch sometimes—and the next moment it was slightly different, like a tattered dwarf beset by scars and pain, holding in his hand a fishing spear.
Quill stared, gulped, and looked around to see if anyone else had noticed the phenomenon. But none had, it seemed. People came and went around him, hurrying this way and that as people always did, but even those who glanced toward the lake in passing seemed to notice nothing odd. Yet when Quill turned back, the shifting cloud-image was still there for his eyes. Now voices spoke in his mind, voices that whispered in unison.
“What one fears is not the teeth of a dragon, nor the tail nor the talons of a dragon,” the voices whispered. “What one fears when the mind envisions dragons is the whole dragon.”
“What?” Quill asked aloud. Around him, several dwarves glanced his way, raised curious brows, then went on.
“It is not this scroll or that scroll that contains wisdom,” the voices whispered in his head. “Wisdom is not in any scroll … but it is in all scrolls.”
Quill frowned, flapped his arms, and shouted. “What in the name of Reorx does that mean?” Around him people stopped, stared at him, then hurried away, hoping whatever afflicted the lorekeeper was not contagious.
The cloud-vision shifted, from crutch-leaner to spear-holder and back. “A spoke is not a wheel,” the mind-voices whispered. “A point is not an arrow, nor is grain bread. Knowledge is not wisdom, Quill Runebrand, nor is the part the puzzle.”
“Is that supposed to make sense?” Quill shrieked. “What does it mean?” Members of a guard company passing nearby looked at one another and shook their heads. The keeper of scrolls was becoming stranger by the day.
The mind-voices were silent for a moment, the vision shifting and swaying. Then a single voice, a voice halting and oddly inflected, whispered to him, “Your concerns are well founded, Quill Runebrand. Thorbardin is in peril. Beware.”
Before he could react, the voice changed to another voice, and Quill gasped. “What did I teach you?” the voice of Mistral Thrax hissed in his mind. “What was the first, fundamental thing I tried to get through your thick skull?”
Then as quickly as it had appeared, or seemed to appear, the vision was gone, though the impression of dark clouds over Thorbardin remained. Maybe the lorekeeper had seen a vision, and maybe he only imagined it, but suddenly the vague dreads in his mind became sure knowledge. He turned away, his face as pale as winter ice.
The fundamental thing! Wisdom is not a knowledge. Wisdom is all the knowledge one has, speaking in its own way, telling the mind things that are beyond knowing.
Intuition, Mistral Thrax had told him many years ago, is wisdom trying to get through the narrow places in the mind.
Quill knew now what had been bothering him. It was not just the mystery of the mages, not just the killing beast that stalked the mountains, not just the question of how to meet an emergency. It was all of those things combined.
Somehow they were all connected, somehow all interrelated, and they were the parts of the danger that Quill sensed.
Thorbardin was in peril, and the dark clouds he sensed were an omen!
A time of storms was at hand.
“Barek Stone was right!” Quill announced to no one in particular, as startled passers-by turned to stare at him. “The mages will come to Thorbardin, and we will have to fight them! And the beast of the fog is out there because of the mages!”
Scattering bystanders in all directions, Quill Runebrand ran as fast as his quick, short legs could pump, heading for the pavilion where the chieftains of the thanes were just facing the question of how to meet an emergency that could threaten the entire fortress and the realm it protec
ted.
As he approached, Quill was shouting, “Listen to me! Listen! We don’t need a king, but we do need a … a … Oh, rust, what’s a good word? A … an executive! A council can rule, but one must order!”
In the pavilion, puzzled faces turned toward him.
“What the blazes is the scrollmaster jabbering about?” Olim Goldbuckle snapped, turning to Willen Ironmaul. “He’s Hylar, Willen. Does he make sense to you?”
For a moment, Willen Ironmaul didn’t answer. Then, slowly, he nodded. “Yes, he makes sense. And, by Reorx, he’s right!” Willen stood and raised his hands for silence. “I propose a regency,” he said when he had their attention. “We all agree, Thorbardin needs no king. But we must have one who can direct all when necessary. A regent could have full authority to lead and command, and still not be a king. He’d just be a chief of chiefs.”
They thought it over, and Slide Tolec asked, “On what would such authority be based?”
“On the approval of the council,” Willen said. “Approval given in advance, for certain actions under certain conditions.”
“The problem remains, though,” Vog Ironface rumbled. “There may be a day when Daergar will follow Theiwar, or Theiwar follow Daewar, but that day has not come yet. Why would a Daergar follow one who is not Daergar, or a Theiwar one not Theiwar?”
“Because they follow their own chieftains,” Willen said. “And a regent would speak not just for the council, but for each chieftain among us.”
“Klar followed Hylar once,” Pakka Trune observed. “We did not regret that. Would Willen Ironmaul be regent?”
“I have no wish to be regent.” The Hylar shook his head. “Olim Goldbuckle is senior here. Let him be regent.”
“Not me!” Goldbuckle snorted. “The rest of you are chieftains. I am prince of my people. Were I to become regent, as sorry as I am to admit it, the Daewar might become truly insufferable.”
“They already are,” a Theiwar on the sidelines muttered.
“Don’t look at me.” Slide Tolec pushed back from the table as glances turned his way. “I’m no regent. I never even wanted to be chieftain of the Theiwar.”
Vog Ironface removed his iron mask, his grizzled fox-face wrinkling in a squinting frown. “I refuse to be considered,” he rumbled. “I am Daergar. I will never be less … or more.”
“Well, we’re not leaving this table until somebody is regent,” Olim Goldbuckle snorted.
“Reorx,” Quill Runebrand muttered. “And I thought I had a good idea.”
9
The Shaft of Reorx
When Willen Ironmaul of the Hylar—much against his better judgment—was made regent of Thorbardin, it was by vote of five to one. His was the only opposing vote. It was Olim Goldbuckle’s argument that clinched the decision of the chieftains. Having once been Calnar, the Daewar prince pointed out, the Hylar had the cultural experience of operating and defending a great dwarven stronghold. Thoradin had been their home. Second, he argued, it had been the Hylar who brought the other thanes together under the Covenant of the Forge, and it might be assumed that the people who created a bond were the best equipped to maintain that bond. And, finally, the wily Daewar pointed out—his eyes twinkling as he sealed the Hylar’s fate—the Hylar was the only thane in Thorbardin that other thanes did not have ancient reasons to hate. The Hylar hadn’t been in these mountains long enough to have collected grudges. Therefore, he proclaimed, the only logical choice for regent of Thorbardin was Willen Ironmaul.
All things considered, Willen took the outcome of the vote fairly graciously. He stormed around for a few minutes, accusing his fellow chieftains of everything from treachery to complicity, then resumed his seat and pounded the table with a heavy fist. “If I am to be regent,” he thundered, glaring at one and then another of the chiefs, “I shall begin with some proclamations.”
His first proclamation was that any dwarf who approached or addressed him in the way one might normally approach or address a ruler had better be ready to meet him in the pits. He would no more tolerate the trappings of royalty than would any other sane dwarf.
His second proclamation was that completion of Northgate was the highest priority task within Thorbardin and should be accomplished as quickly as was dwarvenly possible.
His third order was that the old Daewar tunnel—the original route of exploration into the undermountain realm—should be thoroughly inspected, its seals reinforced, and that, if possible, the external end of it—fifty miles north of the first warren on the northeast slope of Sky’s End Peak—should be not only sealed but obliterated for all time. To dwarven logic, the only truly impenetrable tunnel was no tunnel at all.
“That tunnel took a decade to delve,” Olim Goldbuckle said. “How do you propose to obliterate it in less time?”
“I give your best delvers one week to find an answer to that question.” Willen glared at the Daewar. “If they have not done so in that time, then, by Reorx, I’ll come up with an answer myself!”
The new regent turned to the other chieftains, his gaze thoughtful and serious. “I believe, from the reports we have, that Thorbardin will face grave threats very soon. I want an inventory of every means and mechanism we have for defense.”
“You already have that,” Slide Tolec pointed out. “We have garrison troops, we have the guards, and the Roving Guard.…”
“Yes, I know.” Willen nodded. “And we have the gates—one of them, anyway—and Anvil’s Echo behind each gate. We have murder holes and guard stations. All of these are for the purpose of defense. What I want is an inventory of what else we have that could be used as weapons if necessary. In Thoradin, our people had a saying: ‘When there are enemies, look to the left sides of your tools.’ It means that every tool can serve as a weapon, if the one wielding it knows how to use it so.
“I also want the garrisons doubled. Set drum and flare stations at every mile of every cavern, warren, and way, so that we don’t have to wait on runners and flash-signals in case of emergency. I want daily drills of all fighting units and a reserve unit ready to back each regular unit.”
Barek Stone, captain general of forces, smiled his cold smile at that. Willen Ironmaul was talking his language.
“We made a wise choice, Olim,” Slide Tolec whispered to the prince of the Daewar. “This one takes charge when he has to, and he knows how to think like a warrior.”
Olim nodded vaguely and returned to his own frowning thoughts. How was anyone, he wondered, going to simply obliterate a tunnel that had taken the finest Daewar delvers ten years to create?
By the time Megistal had freed himself of his bonds and begun untying Sigamon, they were alone on the plateau above Sheercliff. The dwarves—the one called Damon and his companion, and the female who had joined them—were long gone. They had gone down the face of Sheercliff and into the rough breaks to the east. Had Megistal been able to cast a trace spell while they were still within sight, he would now know where they were. But with his hands bound and his mouth stifled, he had been unable to use ordinary magic. As for the kender female, she had just wandered off somewhere.
Now Sigamon sat up, pulled the gag from his mouth, and whimpered, rubbing his wrists. “That dwarf nearly killed me,” he whined. “Why didn’t you destroy him?”
“I came closer to that than you did.” Megistal turned away. “Fascinating,” he muttered to himself. “That dwarf could truly resist magic. He struggled against it and survived. I would never have thought that anyone could do that.”
“Stubborn,” Sigamon hissed. “Proud and stubborn and … and just plain selfish!”
“Selfish?” Megistal glanced at him.
“Of course, selfish! Magic is important! The channeling of magics—through the towers—is vital. Yet these dwarves have the effrontery to put their own interests ahead of the common good.”
“Oh.” Megistal shrugged. “Well, there is no need to worry about a Tower of High Sorcery here anymore. Without the Stone of Threes planted beneath it
s center, a tower would not respond to its occupants or know how to protect itself. It would be just another building. The Stone of Threes is the source of a tower’s life. And now the Stone of Threes is gone.”
“Then we’ll just have to get it back,” Sigamon snapped. “Where did they go with it?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Megistal said. He turned away again, talking mostly to himself. “Is that dwarf exceptional, or are they all resistant? And just how resistant are they? I would like to make a study of those dwarves.…”
“Study!” Sigamon scoffed. “You study, then, red-strap! I have better things to do.” Standing erect on long, awkward legs, the white-robe crossed his arms in front of himself, lowered his head, and chanted, “Degat tonin ot …” He hesitated, taking a deep breath. “I hate this spell,” he whined. “It always makes me nauseous. Degat tonin ot tonosos! Chapak!”
Where he stood, the air shimmered, and abruptly he was gone. Megistal shook his head. To resort to a transport spell, the wizard must have been truly upset, because, wherever he was now, he was certainly upset as a result of it. Transport spells were hard on the strongest of stomachs, and Sigamon’s was not very strong.
Muttering to himself, Megistal gathered up a few supplies, put them into a pack, and stepped to the edge of the cliff. He paused, noticing movement in the distance, and conjured a viewing ring. When the image was clear, he frowned. It wasn’t the dwarves. There was no sign of them. The image in the view-ring was only a man—a plains barbarian of some kind, riding a horse.
But it occurred to the wizard that a horse might be a useful thing. Traveling by horse was faster than traveling by foot and was far more pleasant than a transport spell. Casually, the wizard pointed a finger at the image in the ring and muttered an incantation. Both the horse and the man seemed to freeze where they were and remained motionless. Megistal hoisted his pack and stepped off the edge of the cliff. With simple levitation he lowered himself to the ground below and set off eastward, toward where his horse awaited him.
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