Secret of Pax Tharkas

by Doug Niles

  But he couldn’t focus on her tirade and, inevitably, was distracted by other things, watching the ooze and the ravine and the barricade of rocks. Many random facts flitted, unbidden and mostly unannounced, through his little brain. He thought of the rat, the tempting morsel flying through the air, the plop in the sludge. The sludge …

  The sludge was trying to go down, but it couldn’t because of the dam.

  This sludge was just like the stuff that dripped through the ceiling of his house.

  All of his neighbors had sludge dripping through their ceilings as well.

  The sludge was trying to go down, but it couldn’t because of the dam.

  A clatter of rock distracted him. He looked up just as Slooshy threw a small rock, one that had broken loose from high on the cliff. Her aim was good, and she stood right in front of him, so the jagged missile smacked him square in the right eye.

  “Ow!” he cried, clapping a hand to his face. Through his other eye, he saw the stone had continued to roll, bouncing over the uneven ground and finally landing in the sludge pond with a smacking splash.

  “Stoopy humpus bluphsplunger!” she cried, kneeling to look for another missile.

  Still, Gus paid her no attention. He was thinking. The stone, like the sludge, was trying to go down. That idea, for some reason, struck Gus as vaguely important. He watched the ripples from the splash disappear as the rock finally vanished beneath the scummy surface. He didn’t see Slooshy charging him until he felt the punch in his chest, which she landed with both fists. As the blow struck, his muddy boots slipped from the slick ledge he stood upon.

  “Ow!” The pain came from his rump as he came down hard on the solid, slippery stone. His stubby fingers clutched for a handhold, but there was nothing to grab. Instead, he skidded off the ledge, bounced painfully off of a few boulders, and tumbled after the stone that she had flung against his face.

  “Here! Grab me!” Slooshy demanded, holding out her hand. At the last moment, Gus did, and she yanked him to a stop, his feet and other hand braced against the slime-coated surfaces of the jagged rocks just above the edge of the pool.

  Just like the stone, like the sludge, like everything, the gully dwarf had nearly tumbled down.

  Everything goes down.

  Then Slooshy let him go and squealed with delight as he did a face plant on the scummy rocks. He looked up at her, grinning in excitement.

  “Everything falls!” he shouted.

  The truth hit him as hard as the rock had, and he gaped at the amazing reality that was made even more obvious by the inexorable force tugging him down the slick stone surface. The girl laughed so hard, she had to sit down, even as Gus felt stunned by the universal truth of his realization. He clawed to hold his position until his nose started to itch. When he released his grip to scratch himself, his other hand lost purchase, and he skidded down again, down and down, bouncing and tumbling over the lip of the drop to splash heavily into the thick, scummy ooze of the drainage pond.

  Gully dwarves tend to be natural swimmers, and Gus was no exception. He instantly popped to the surface and paddled over to the edge of the pond without really thinking about what was happening. Instead, he was still trying to grasp the intricacies, the beauty of the brainstorm that had dawned on him.

  Everything goes down.

  His hand brushed against something in the ooze, something limp and furry. In triumph he pulled it out to reveal the rat! Clutching his treasure, Gus climbed out of the sludge to find that he had unwittingly crossed the small pool and was perched on the loosely piled rubble left by the rockslide—the rubble that formed the dam that held back the sludge. To one side was the pond, the murky liquid lapping against the rim of the makeshift barrier. To the other side, Gus could see that the rocky slope tumbled steeply away. He recoiled from the edge, realizing that if he lost his balance, he would tumble all the way down to the dark hole where the sludgy stream disappeared into the ancient sewer extending under the Urkhan Sea.

  Everything goes down, he knew, and that would include himself.

  “Look! Got rat!” he crowed, hoisting the gamey morsel. Unfortunately his movement was too abrupt, and the slippery thing slid from his fingers, through the air, and back into the pond.

  “You one funny bluphsplunger gully dwarf, you are!” Slooshy cried, still sitting on the ground, holding her sides from the force of her laughter.

  Glumly, Gus looked at the place where the rat had vanished. He saw that more of the liquid, churned by his fall and subsequent swim, had spilled over the lip of the dam, running in gooey rivulets down the surface of tumbled stone.

  Even as the thought possessed him, the loose pile of rocks underneath him shifted slightly. Gus scrambled to the side, kicking frantically to climb higher. He made it to safety with a single lunge, but his efforts knocked a couple of stones off the pile. They clattered downward, chased by a small spill of sludgy liquid as a bit of the pond scum trickled through the notch in the dam created by the falling rocks.

  And in that instant, everything became really, really clear to the startled gully dwarf.

  The sludge in the pond, like everything else in the world, wanted to go down. But the dam was stopping it from following the course of the stream. Instead, it sat there in the bowl of rock, and tried to go down a different way—the way that led through the ceilings of all the Aghar houses that happened to lie directly beneath.

  “Hey!” he cried, hopping to his feet, quickly circling the small pond. Slooshy looked at him in confusion. “Hey! The sludge wants to go down!”

  “That not so funny,” she replied. “You fall in again?” she added hopefully.

  “Everything falls down!” he shouted, throwing back his head.

  A few Aghar were higher up on the sides of the ravine, climbing or descending within his view. They stared at him in surprise, startled by the outburst. Most of them simply ignored him, though one hefty, young fellow tossed a sharp rock in Gus’s direction. He ducked, then shouted out in glee as the stone hit the liquid and, naturally, vanished.

  “See! Everything goes down!”

  “What? You crazy bluphsplunger now, you are!” Slooshy said, backing away. “Go away!”

  She started climbing up the sloping ground, stopping to throw a rock at him every few feet. He gleefully skipped out of the path of each missile. “See! Goes down!” he cried when each errant stone vanished into the pond.

  “That crazy talk! Stoop humpus bluphsplunger Aghar, leave me alone!” Slooshy shouted back. She threw one more rock—another he easily avoided—from the top of the ridge before vanishing from his view.

  He didn’t care. He raced back up the ravine floor to the tunnel leading down to his neighborhood, skidding and sliding down the steep shaft. He almost couldn’t control his momentum until he caught a flash of movement on the ground, something slithering along at the base of the wall.

  It was a cavebug!

  Gus stopped the only way that he could: he sat down on the hard stone ground. Ignoring the pain in his bruised rump, he reached down and grabbed the bug with his stubby thumb and forefinger. Hoisting it, feeling the hunger gnawing at his belly, he almost popped it right into his mouth.

  Then he remembered: sting thumb, not tongue!

  That axiom of cavebug dining had been passed down through generations of gully dwarves, and Gus remembered it just in time. The little, wormlike bug wriggled in his grasp, the numerous legs—at least two on each side—flailing for purchase. At the tail he spotted the sharp stinger, erect and thrashing. Squinting, carefully concentrating, Gus held up his thumb and let the wicked-looking barb plunge into the pad of flesh.

  “Ow!” he shouted as fiery tendrils of pain shot through his thumb, his hand, and up his arm. The stinger itself detached from the bug to jut from the gully dwarf’s skin. Knowing his prey was disarmed, Gus popped it into his mouth, breaking the segmented body with a crunch of his teeth and quickly swallowing the still-wriggling parts of the doomed creature. He smacked his lips
and enjoyed the sensation of delicious food. If he was not exactly full, neither was he starving, and starving was a very pleasant thing not to be doing.

  For a few moments, he inspected the floor of the alley, looking, hoping, seeking another one of the bugs. But he was lucky to have found the one creature and was unsurprised that no more were in view. He smacked his lips again, ignoring the searing pain in his thumb, wishing Slooshy would come along so he could brag about his precious discovery.

  Only after two minutes did he remember that precious discovery, his mission, his crucial news. Then he hopped to his feet again and started down the steeply sloping alley toward his house, which was right around the next bend. Tumbling to a stop before the Fishbiter residence, he burst inside—fortunately, the Aghar family had no use for a front door—and immediately collided with Birt, who was lunging to outmaneuver Ooz to claim the rock that Pap, dripping with sludge, had once again vacated.

  “Everything goes down!” Gus cried.

  “Hey! That my rock!” Pap cried, knocking the momentarily triumphant Birt out of the way.

  The patriarch resumed his place of honor, just as another dribble of goop gathered below the crack in the ceiling. Gus watched, waiting, knowing that it wouldn’t be long. The globule grew heavy, distended, drooping ever further downward while Pap, once more king of his household, glared sternly at his wife and sons.

  Plop.

  TWO

  WILLIM THE BLACK

  The chamber was far beneath the summits of the Kharolis, well below the reinforced bastion that was the north gate, underneath, even, the teeming city of Norbardin. In fact, the very lowest portion of that city, the slum known as Anvil’s Echo, was far above the deep and isolated cavern, the large space that had been excavated at great expense from the very solid bedrock under the nation of Thorbardin.

  That place had once been intended as the new Council Hall of the Thanes, the seat of Thorbardin’s government in the wake of the Chaos War’s devastation. It had been designed at the commission of King Tarn Bellowgranite—he who was called the Failed King—and many years of labor, including complicated architecture and engineering, had gone into its creation. Though it had never been used for the purpose for which it had been intended, it had been almost completely finished before being abandoned. Each throne had a lofty dais that, even incomplete, overlooked the circular floor of the chamber. Proud columns lined the distant walls, and broad stairways provided access to the upper rim that extended around the whole periphery of the huge room.

  Along one wall a broad ramp extended upward. At one time the ramp had connected to the environs of Norbardin, but no longer. Barely a quarter mile from the vast chamber, a solid wall of rock, tight-fitting stones installed by dwarf craftsmen, blocked all passage. The barrier was so well made that even air and water couldn’t penetrate and so thick that the pounding of a hammer on one side of the barrier would be inaudible to a listener on the other.

  To the rest of Thorbardin, the chamber was an ill-omened place, and most did not care to remember it or acknowledge its existence. Shortly before its intended completion, a rare earthquake had shaken the normally stable dwarven kingdom. Damage and injury had been minimal, except there, in the intended council hall. Along the base of the vast chamber, a great crack had scored the floor, opening up an apparently bottomless trench and releasing fires in the bowels of the world up into the realm of the dwarven kingdom.

  When the new king had banished the Failed King, he had ordered that place sealed, closed off, and forgotten. The wall had been built, the roads above realigned to avoid even the dead-end passage, and the story of the grand hall was officially dismissed as just one more of the Failed King’s unrealized dreams. According to the decree of the new king, the hall would remain forever unused, isolated, and forgotten.

  But it was not.

  Instead, one had come there who had no need to travel down roads, who found thick walls no barrier, who feared no fire, and who would be intimidated by no obstacle. He was a powerful wizard of the Theiwar—in his own mind he was the most powerful wizard of the Theiwar—and he had claimed that place as his own.

  His name was Willim the Black, and he had been a powerful wizard for a very long time. He was ruthless and cruel. He delighted in the suffering of his enemies, so he had made many enemies indeed. When, decades earlier, the gods had taken leave of the world after the Chaos War, and the gods of magic departed with their other immortal kin, Willim—along with every other wizard of Krynn—had lost his magical prowess. His enemies had seized him and secured him in the deepest dungeon of the Theiwar quarter, gouging out his eyes as part of their punishment. He had languished in that prison, given only enough food and water to keep him, and his suffering, alive. And through all those dark years, his hatred had grown and grown, and his desire for vengeance had driven him to survive.

  Until, finally, there came the summons he had awaited. The gods of magic returned! And when they did, the long-absent powers of their wizards had been awakened and revitalized. Willim had broken his bonds, killed his nearest and most dire enemies, and joined the rest of the wizardly orders in their fight to reclaim the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth Forest. Black, red, and white wizards had fought in unison to drive out the forces of wild magic and corruption that had claimed that sacred place. And finally, the true orders of magic had reclaimed their rightful status. The Wizards’ Conclave was restored, and the practitioners of the magic arts had gone their separate ways.

  Willim’s path had brought him back to Thorbardin shortly after the Failed King had been banished and the new one installed. Such political realities were of little consequence to the Theiwar mage, who fostered his hatreds on a more personal basis. It just so happened that one of those hatreds, dating back to long before his imprisonment, was aimed at the new king, and it pleased Willim to know he worked toward his enemy’s destruction in the very chamber that once had been intended as the seat of the king’s power.

  Willim the Black had much to do to effect his goals.

  He sensed a stirring deep within the crack in the floor, and he knew that Gorathian was awake. The black-robed wizard perceived the movement of his pet, and he welcomed the presence as a more mortal dwarf would have welcomed a long-lost lover.

  Willim had no need for lovers, however.

  Gorathian was different. Gorathian was mighty—mightier even than Willim, in some ways—but Gorathian was also trapped, a creature bound by a stricture not of its own making. Willim held the key to Gorathian’s trap, and Willim had promised that, someday, Gorathian would be set free. But that day was far in the future, and before then the beast had much to do to aid the wizard in achieving his ends.

  The soft light of the beast’s awakening was beginning to suffuse the dark lair, the deep place where, when Willim had magically come there, he had discovered Gorathian. It had occurred some years before, and the Theiwar mage had not been ready yet to employ an ally as powerful, but uncontrollable, as Gorathian. So Willim had ensured that Gorathian stayed down in its foul hole, lurking somewhere close to the very bowels of the world. Willim had taunted the creature, had fed it morsels to whet its appetite, had provoked it with tales of the evils done to the beast and its world. Gorathian had been roused to fury, but as yet William had kept it from emerging from the deep lair.

  Willim wandered through the maze of his lab toward the deep, virtually bottomless, crevasse carved through the floor. The dwarf’s eyelids were sewn shut, but he saw more clearly than any of the several Theiwar assistants who scuttled out of his way. Enlightened by a spell of true-seeing, Willim’s mind perceived not just the variations of light, but heat, spiritual presence, objects masked by utter darkness—in short, everything there was to see and many things that could not be seen by ordinary beings. His powers were such that the spell was a permanent feature of his consciousness; the loss of his eyes was by then merely a long-ago unpleasantness, one that had been thoroughly avenged.

  He wore the loose robe of black
silk that was the symbol of his order. Though numerous runes of power had been woven into that material, the symbols were as dark as the silk itself and, thus, invisible to anyone who looked at him. His skin was almost albino pale, like many of his race, though his wiry beard bristled with gray. He wore soft boots that allowed him to walk silently even without the assistance of magic. His beard was long and black, tucked into the belt where he also wore a pair of short, needle-sharp daggers. He caressed the hilts of his weapons as he approached the great crack through the floor of his laboratory.

  The deep fires burning in the pit where Gorathian lived warmed the place, and the radiant energy felt good on the dwarf’s face and hands, the only parts of his body that were exposed around the enveloping cloak of his black wizard’s robe. The heat grew more intense as he approached the crevasse until he had to murmur a magical word, conjuring a spell of protection against that infernal warmth. His flesh cooled slightly. His robe was immune to such temperatures, though a garment of normal cloth would have smoldered or worse as he stepped closer to the chasm.

  Stopping at the very edge, he let the fiery embrace wash over him. The intensity there would sear normal flesh and kindle wood into instant flame, yet the wizard of the black robe was merely comfortably warm in the presence of the deep, subterranean inferno.

  “Gorathian, my pet. The time will be soon,” he whispered, lying and taunting as ever.

  He sensed the movement deep within the pit, a writhing of serpentine coils, a shapeless body rearing, reaching, straining upward with limbs of pure fire. The end of a sinuous tendril, a slithering rope of flame, extended out of the pit and wrapped itself around the Theiwar dwarf’s boot in an almost tender stroke. Willim smiled. He sensed the need, the hunger, in that incendiary touch, and he knew Gorathian’s well-stoked frustration and fury would serve the dark dwarf very well indeed.