Dragons of the Dwarven Depths

by Margaret Weis

  Verminaard had died at the hands of Tanis and Sturm Brightblade. The magical sword of the legendary elven king, Kith-Kanan, and the hereditary sword of the Solamnic knight, Sturm Brightblade, pierced the Highlord’s armor and stabbed deep into the man’s body. Up above them, two red dragons fought and two red dragons died, their blood falling like horrible rain upon the terrified observers.

  Tanis and the others had acted quickly to take charge of the chaotic situation. Some of the slaves had wanted to take out their revenge against the monstrous draconians who had been their masters. Knowing their only hope for survival lay in flight, Tanis, Sturm, and Elistan had persuaded the men and women that they had a god-given opportunity to escape, taking their families to safety.

  Tanis had organized work parties. The women and children had gathered what supplies they could find. They loaded up wagons used to carry ore from the mines with food, blankets, tools—whatever they thought would be needed on their trek to freedom.

  The dwarf, Flint Fireforge, had been born and raisedin these mountains, and he led Plainsmen scouts, who had been among the slaves, on a expedition south to find a safe haven for the refugees. They had discovered a valley nestled between the Kharolis peaks. The tops of the mountains were already white with snow, but the valley far below was still lush and green, the leaves barely touched by the reds and golds of autumn. There was game in abundance. The valley was crisscrossed with clear streams, and the foothills were honeycombed with caves that could be used for dwellings, food storage, and refuge in case of attack.

  In those early days, the refugees expected at any moment to be set upon by dragons, pursued by the foul dragon-men known as draconians, and they might well have been pursued, for the draconian army was quite capable of scaling the pass leading into the valley. It had been (astonishingly) Raistlin’s twin, Caramon, who had come up with the idea of blocking the pass by causing an avalanche.

  It had been Raistlin’s magic—a devastating lightning spell he had learned from a night-blue spellbook he had acquired in the sunken city of Xak Tsaroth— that had produced the thunder clap that had shaken loose mounds of snow and sent heavy boulders cascading into the pass. More snow had fallen on top of that, fallen for days and nights, so that the pass was soon choked with it. No creature—not even the winged and claw-footed lizard-men—could now enter the valley.

  Days for the refugees had passed in peaceful tranquility, and the people relaxed. The red and gold leaves fell to the ground and turned brown. The memory of the dragons and the terror of their captivity receded. Safe, snug, and secure, the refugees talked about spending the winter here, planning to continue their journey south in the spring. They spoke of building permanent shelters. They talked of dismantling the wagons and using the wood for crude huts, or building dwellings out of rock and sod to keep them warm when the chill rain and snows of winter would eventually come to the valley.

  Raistlin’s lip curled in a sneer of contempt.

  “I’m going to bed,” he said.

  “Found it!” cried Tasslehoff, remembering at the last moment that he’d stuck the feather in a safe place—his brown topknot of hair.

  Tasslehoff plucked the feather from his topknot and held it out in the palm of his hand. He held it carefully, as if it were a precious jewel, and regarded it with awe.

  Raistlin regarded the feather with disdain. “It’s a chicken feather,” he stated.

  He rose to his feet, gathered his long red robes around his wasted body, and returned to his straw pallet spread out on the dirt floor.

  “Ah, I thought so,” said Tasslehoff, softly.

  “Close the door on your way out,” Raistlin ordered. Lying down on the pallet, he wrapped himself in his blanket and closed his eyes. He was sinking into slumber when a hand, shaking his shoulder, brought him back awake.

  “What?” Raistlin snapped.

  “This is very important,” Tas said solemnly, bending over Raistlin and breathing garlic from dinner into the mage’s face. “Can chickens fly?”

  Raistlin shut his eyes. Maybe this was a bad dream.

  “I know they have wings,” Tas continued, “and I know roosters can flap to the top of the chicken coop so they can crow when the sun comes up, but what I’m wondering is if chickens can fly way up high, like eagles? Because, you see, this feather floated down from the sky and I looked up, but I didn’t see any passing chickens, and then I realized that I’d never seen chickens fly—”

  “Get out!” Raistlin snarled, and he reached for the Staff of Magius that lay near his bed. “Or so help me I will—”

  “—turn me into a hop toad and feed me to a snake. Yes, I know.” Tas sighed and stood up. “About the chickens—”

  Raistlin knew the kender would never leave him alone, not even with the threat of being turned into a toad, which Raistlin lacked the strength to do anyway.

  “Chickens are not eagles. They cannot fly,” said Raistlin.

  “Thank you!” said Tasslehoff joyously. “I knew it! Chickens aren’t eagles!”

  He flung aside the screen, leaving it wide open, and forgetting his lantern, which shone right in Raistlin’s eyes. Raistlin was just starting to drift off, when Tas’s shrill voice jolted him again to wakefulness.

  “Caramon! There you are!” Tas shouted. “Guess what? Chickens aren’t eagles. They can’t fly! Raistlin said so. There’s hope, Caramon! Your brother is wrong. Not about the chickens, but about the hope. This feather is a sign! Fizban cast a magic spell he called featherfall to save us when we were falling off the chain and we were supposed to fall like feathers, but instead the only thing that fell were feathers—chicken feathers. The feathers saved me, though not Fizban.”

  Tas’s voice trailed off into a snuffle as he thought of his sadly deceased friend.

  “Have you been pestering Raist?” Caramon demanded.

  “No, I’ve been helping him!” Tas said proudly. “Raistlin was choking to death, like he does, you know. He was coughing up blood! I saved him. I ran to get the water that he uses to make that horrible smelling stuff he drinks. He’s better now, so you don’t have to fret. Hey, Caramon, don’t you want to hear about the chickens—”

  Caramon didn’t. Raistlin heard his twin’s large boots clomp hastily over the ground, running toward the hut.

  “Raist!” Caramon cried anxiously. “Are you all right?”

  “No thanks to you,” Raistlin muttered. He hunched deeper into his blanket, kept his eyes closed. He could see Caramon well enough without looking at him.

  Big, muscular, broad-shouldered, broad-smiling, genial, good-looking, his brother was everybody’s friend, all the girls’ darling.

  “I was left to the tender mercies of a kender,” Raistlin told him, “while you were out playing slap and tickle with the buxom Tika.”

  “Don’t talk about her like that, Raist,” said Caramon, and there was a harsh edge to his generally cheerful voice. “Tika’s a nice girl. We were dancing. That’s all.”

  Raistlin grunted.

  Caramon stood there shuffling his big feet, then said remorsefully, “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to fix your tea. I didn’t realize it was so late. Can I— Can I get you anything? Do something for you?”

  “You can stop talking, shut what passes for a door, and douse that blasted light!”

  “Yeah, Raist. Sure.” Caramon picked up the latticework branch screen and set it back into place. He blew out the candle inside the lantern and undressed in the darkness.

  Caramon tried to be quiet, but the big man—a muscular and healthy contrast to his weaker twin— stumbled into the table, knocked over a chair, and once, to judge by the sound of swearing, bumped his head on the cavern wall while groping about in the dark, trying to find his mattress.

  Raistlin grit his teeth and waited in seething silence until Caramon finally settled down. His brother was soon snoring, and Raistlin, who had been so weary, lay wide awake, unable to sleep.

  He stared into the darkness, not blinded by it as h
is twin and all the rest of them. His eyes were open to what lived inside.

  “Chicken feathers!” he muttered scathingly and began to cough again.

  2

  Dawn of a new day.

  The longing for home.

  anis Half-Elven woke with a hangover, and he hadn’t even been drinking. His hangover came not from spending the night in jollity, dancing, and drinking too much ale. It came from lying awake half the night worrying.

  Tanis had left the wedding early last night. The celebratory spirit grated on his soul. The loud music made him wince and glance uneasily over his shoulder, fearful that they were revealing themselves to their enemies. He longed to tell the musicians, banging and tooting on their crude instruments, not to play so loudly. There were eyes watching from the darkness, ears listening. Eventually he had sought out Raistlin, finding the company of the dark-souled, cynical mage more in keeping with his own dark and pessimistic feelings.

  Tanis had paid for it, too. When he had finally fallen asleep, he dreamed of horses and carrots, dreamed he was that draft horse, plodding round and round in a never-ending circle, seeking vainly for the carrot he could never quite reach.

  “First, the carrot is a blue crystal staff,” he said resentfully, rubbing his aching forehead. “We have to save the staff from falling into the wrong hands. We do and then we’re told this is not good enough. We have to travel to Xak Tsaroth to find the god’s greatest gift—the sacred Disks of Mishakal, only to discover that we can’t read them. We have to seek out the person who can, and all the while, we are being dragged deeper and deeper into this war—a war none of knew was even going on!”

  “Yes, you did,” growled a largish lump, barely visible in the half-light of dawn that was slipping through the blankets covering the opening of the cave. “You had traveled enough, seen enough, heard enough to know war was brewing. You just wouldn’t admit it.”

  “I’m sorry, Flint,” said Tanis. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I didn’t realize I was talking out loud.”

  “That’s a sign of madness, you know,” the dwarf grumbled. “Talking to yourself. You shouldn’t make a habit of it. Now go back to sleep before you wake the kender.”

  Tanis glanced over at another lump on the opposite side of the cave that was not so much a cave as a hole scooped out of the mountain. Tas had been relegated to a far corner by Flint, who’d been grumpily opposed to sharing his cave with the kender anyway. Tanis needed to keep an eye on Tas, however, and had finally persuaded the dwarf to allow the kender to share their dwelling.

  “I think I could shout and not wake him,” said Tanis, smiling.

  The kender slept the peaceful and innocent sleep of dogs and children. Much like a dog, Tas twitched and whiffled in his sleep, his small fingers wiggling as if even in his dreams he was examining all sorts of curious and wondrous things. Tas’s precious pouches, containing his treasure trove of “borrowed” items, lay scattered around him. He was using one as a pillow.

  Tanis made a mental note to go through those pouches sometime today when Tas was off on one of his excursions. Tanis regularly searched the kender’s possessions, looking for objects people had “misplaced” or “dropped.” Tanis would return said objects to their owners, who would receive them in a huff and tell him he really should do something about the kender’s pilfering.

  Since kender had been pilfering since the day the Graygem’s passing had created them (if you believed the old legends), there wasn’t much Tanis could do to stop it, short of taking the kender to the top of the mountain and shoving him off, which was Flint’s preferred solution to the problem.

  Tanis crawled out from beneath his blanket, and moving as quietly as he could, he left the hut. He had an important decision to make today, and if he remained in his bed, trying to go back to sleep, he would only toss and turn restlessly thinking about it, risking another outraged protest from Flint. Despite the chill of the morning—and winter was definitely in the air—Tanis decided to go wash the thought of carrots out of his mind with a plunge in the stream.

  His cavern was just one of many that pocked the mountainside. The refugees of Pax Tharkas were not the first people to dwell in these caves. Pictures painted on the walls of some gave indications that ancient folk had lived here before. The pictures depicted hunters with bows and arrows and animals that resembled deer yet had long pointed horns, not antlers. And in some there were creatures with wings. Enormous creatures breathing fire from their mouths. Dragons.

  He stood for a moment on the ledge in front of his cave, gazing down at the floor of the valley spread out before him. He could not see the stream; the valley was shrouded with a low-lying mist rising off the water. The sun lit the sky, but it had not yet risen over the mountains. The valley remained nestled in its foggy blanket, as though as loathe to wake up as the old dwarf.

  A beautiful place, Tanis thought to himself, climbing down from the rocks onto the wet grass in the misty half-light, heading toward the tree-lined stream.

  The red leaves of the maple and the gold of the walnut and oak trees were a brilliant contrast to the dark green of the pines, as the gray rock of the mountains was a contrast to the stark white, new-fallen snows. He could see tracks of game animals on the muddy trail leading to the stream. Nuts lay on the ground, and fruit hung glistening from the vines.

  “We could shelter in this valley through the winter months,” Tanis said, doing his thinking aloud. He slipped and slid down the bank until he came to the edge of the deep, swift-flowing water. “What harm would there be in that?” he asked his reflection.

  The face that looked up at him grinned in answer. He had elven blood in him, but one would never know by looking. Laurana accused him of hiding it. Well, maybe he did. It made life easier. Tanis scratched at the beard that no elf could grow. Long hair covered his slightly pointed ears. His body did not have the slender delicacy of the elven form but the bulk of humans.

  Stripping off his leather tunic, breeches, and boots, Tanis waded into the stream, dispersing his reflection in ripples, gasping at the shock of the cold water. He splashed water onto his chest and neck. Then, holding his breath, he braved himself for a plunge. He came up huffing and blowing water from his nose and mouth, grinning widely at the tingling sensation that spread throughout his body. Already he felt better.

  After all, why shouldn’t they stay here?

  “The mountains protect us from the chill winds. We have food enough to see us through the winter, if we are careful.” Tanis splashed water into the air, like a kid at play. “We are safe from our enemies—”

  “For how long?”

  Tanis had thought himself alone, and he nearly leaped out of the water in shock at hearing another voice.

  “Riverwind!” Tanis exclaimed, turning around and spotting the tall man standing on the bank. “You scared me out of six years of my life!”

  “Since you are half elven with a life-span of several hundred years, six of those years is not much to worry about,” Riverwind remarked.

  Tanis looked searchingly at the Plainsman. Riverwind had never met or even seen anyone of elven blood until he had encountered Tanis, and though Tanis was half elf and half human, Riverwind found him wholly alien. There had been occasions between the two when such a remark about Tanis’s race would have been meant as an insult.

  Tanis saw a smile warm in the Plainsman’s brown eyes, however, and he smiled in return. He and Riverwind had gone through too much together for the old prejudices to remain. The fire of dragons had burned up mistrust and hatred. Tears of joy and of sorrow had washed away the ashes.

  Tanis climbed out of the water. He used his leather tunic to dry himself then sat down beside Riverwind, shivering in the cold air. The sun, beaming through a gap in the mountains, burned away the mist and soon warmed him.

  Tanis eyed Riverwind in concern that was half-mocking and half-serious. “What is the bridegroom doing up so early on his wedding morn? I did not expect to see you or Goldmoon for sev
eral days.”

  Riverwind gazed out over the water. The sun shone full on his face. The Plainsman was a man who kept himself to himself. His innermost feelings and thoughts were his alone, personal and private, not to be shared with anyone. His dark visage was normally set in an expressionless mask, and so it was today, but Tanis could see radiance shining from beneath.

  “My joy was too great to be contained within rock walls,” said Riverwind softly. “I had to come outside to share it with the earth and the wind, the water and the sun. Even now, the wide, vast world feels too small to hold it.”

  Tanis had to look away. He was glad for Riverwind, also envious, and he didn’t want the envy to show. Tanis found himself longing for such love and joy himself. The irony was that he could have it. All he had to do was banish the memory of curly dark hair, flashing dark eyes, and a charming, crooked smile.

  As if reading his thoughts, Riverwind said, “I wish the same for you, my friend. Perhaps you and Laurana …”

  His voice trailed off.

  Tanis shook his head and changed the subject.

  “We have that meeting today with Elistan and the Seekers. I want you and your people to attend. We have to decide what to do, whether we stay here or leave.”

  Riverwind nodded but said nothing.

  “I know this is bad timing,” Tanis added ruefully. “If ever there was a joy-killer, it’s Hederick the High Theocrat, but we have to make a decision quickly, before the snows come.”

  “From what you were saying, you have already decided we should stay,” said Riverwind. “Is that wise? We are still very close to Pax Tharkas and the dragonarmies.”

  “True,” said Tanis, “but the pass between here and Pax Tharkas is blocked by rocks and snow. The dragonarmy has better things to do than chase after us. They’re conquering nations. We’re a ragtag bunch of former slaves—”

  “—who escaped them, giving them a black eye.” Riverwind turned his penetrating gaze full on Tanis. “The enemy must come after us. If the people they conquer hear that others threw off their manacles and walked free, they will begin to believe they can also overthrow their masters. The armies of the Dark Queen will come after us. Maybe not soon, but they will come.”