"Indeed," the thane replied dryly. "But tell me, what news of events in my cities? Tell me of this mysterious scourge. How was it manifested in Daerforge? And did it strike Daerbardin as well?"
"Your city here fares well enough. A few houses were taken down, and there is wreckage such as this throughout the city. As to things inland, there has been no word of occurrences there. Aside from the fiery dragons you no doubt observed, the attackers were strange creatures, cold and dark as our own shadows. They killed some, but no one seems to remember much about the fallen. It is as though the killing takes all thoughts, all memories of the slain when their life essence is destroyed."
"But the monsters did not stay in our city?"
"No. It seems that they move through air and water with equal ease. Those that struck Daerforge soon moved into the lake. They seem to be gathering in the direction of the Life-Tree."
"And what of the fiery dragons?"
"We saw some over the sea," replied Slickblade. "One of them came to Daerforge, bored a tunnel that destroyed a few smithies and apartments, then emerged into the air again and-I am happy to say-flew away."
"This may yet become a matter we can turn to our own ends," Darkend speculated. "But I must know more about these strange beasts. What are their origins, their nature, and their ultimate intentions?"
"I am not privy to these facts, but there may be one in Daerforge who could answer your questions."
"Speak."
"Ironically enough, he is your own nephew, come here upon the orders of his father, the Hylar thane. He was sent to carry word to you about this mysterious threat. A 'Storm of Chaos,' so he said."
"Where is he?"
"It seems that he went to his mother's house. Garimeth Bellowsmoke drugged him and imprisoned him there, ensuring that he could not bring his message to you."
"What?" The thane's pulse raced with the news, the familiar sensation of betrayal rising to create a red film over his vision. His sister would be tortured and executed according to an excruciating method.
Yet at the same time he had to admire her deviousness. Garimeth had made herself invaluable to him, had presented him with real intelligence about the Hylar defenses, and had assured him that the Hylar army was absent for an extended interval. For some reason she must have decided to conceal the true reason for that absence. Darkend was impressed by her ruthless tactics. She even betrayed her own offspring! If the opportunity arose, she wouldn't think twice about betraying a brother. What was her ultimate goal?
"Your information is good?" he asked Slickblade.
Slickblade sniffed disdainfully. "You don't need to ask that. But yes, drawn from a source within her very house. And there is more, as well."
"More?" Darkend was truly curious.
"I have learned within the past hours that your sister's plan has miscarried. Her son, held prisoner in the house of his mother, has escaped."
"No!" The thane forced a chuckle, but the sound was dry and menacing, utterly devoid of any humor. "That is not good news. Especially for my sister. She will have much to explain, much to account for."
Darkend took a deep breath, bringing his raging emotions under control only with great difficulty. He trusted no one, expecting duplicity and betrayal at every turn, and yet the fierce urge for vengeance was almost overwhelming.
But finally he calmed himself.
Across the water he could see the inverted mountain of the Life-Tree, crackling with spots of flame, dripping and glowing and shimmering. More boats were making their way back to Daerforge, some of them pretty banged up. All were filled with cowed and bedraggled Daergar. Dark-end was certain that the survivors among his landing force were holding on to their position in Hybardin. But how many had survived? How many had avoided being crushed by the massive rockfall?
These cowards currently arriving would be sent back to the fray, packed into boats, and he would lead them toward the foe, toward ultimate victory.
But first he had a personal matter to take care of.
"Come, Slickblade," he said in a voice that was a lethal whisper. "Let us pay a call to the house of Garimeth Bellowsmoke."
Chapter Sixteen
The Weight of a Throne
Somehow in the chaos of the battle Baker Whitegranite had lost his glasses. He crouched next to the garden wall of a fine Hylar manor, feeling along the ground, trying to find the place he'd fallen when the bizarre shadows had first attacked. It was then that his spectacles had been knocked off of his face, though in the grip of confusion and terror he hadn't noticed the loss immediately. Still frightened, he tried to stay low as he scooted along the ground, hearing screams and shouts and clashing weapons nearby.
Finally the sounds faded, and Baker crept back to the place where he had first fallen. Through his blurred vision he saw a hint of crystalline gleam and finally put his hands over the familiar golden frame. Touching the twin lenses, he breathed a sigh of relief as he discovered that they were unbroken.
Baker quickly wiped his spectacles on a corner of his stained tunic, then put them back onto his face. His sight was still bleary, and one of the lenses seemed to have been permanently scuffed, but they were clear enough to confirm that things on Level Twenty-eight looked as bad as they sounded.
And that was very bad indeed.
The fight had moved on from here, though the echoes, smells, and gore still lingered heavily in the air and on the ground. He saw dead dwarves who had been locked in combat with each other, Hylar and Klar intermingled, mouths gaping and eyes bulging in mute testimony to the horror of their last moments. In other places he saw empty lumps of armor and clothing, weapons lying nearby. There was no sign at all of the dwarven flesh that had worn the pathetic remnants only minutes-or was it hours? — before. These were the places where the horrifying chill shadows had slithered past.
Baker heard shouts and screams and the occasional clash of a sword or shield coming from down the street. Looking up, he saw a hint of the shadowy attackers, manlike beings of pure darkness that moved steadily away from him.
He tried to reconstruct the last few minutes since the wall had melted and the wave of horror had surged into Thorbardin. But details were curiously vague in his mind. He recalled dark and shadowy beings, intangible but very deadly nevertheless. They had emerged in countless numbers, breaking right through the stone walls to sweep into the ranks of the battling dwarves.
One thing was certain. The shadowy invaders were no friends of the Klar. The crazed dwarves, already frenzied from battling the Hylar, had turned with fresh fury to fight the dark forms. The dwarves had been swept aside, eradicated like a nest of pesky rats. Although the mere touch of the shadow beings proved instantly fatal, this did not prevent the maddened Klar from pressing home their suicidal attacks.
Hylar had also fallen victim to the horrific onslaught, and Baker had seen many of his countrymen slain before his eyes. At least he thought he had-though when he tried to recall the battle, to put faces on those brave fighters, everything was terribly confusing. He looked at the wrecked Ferrust house. He clearly remembered old Black-beard Ferrust, the prominent coal seller. Beside that ruin had stood another once-great house, emptied without visible damage by the shadow attack. It was a mighty edifice, and Baker was pretty sure that a very influential clan of Hylar had lived there. Yet that family had been annihilated by the shadow warriors, and now the thane couldn't recall their names, their roles in the city, or anything else about them.
Slumping against the stone in weariness, he wondered about his son. Was Tarn dead too? Was he caught in the onslaught of Chaos? Or had he joined ranks with the dark dwarves? Angrily the thane shook his head at the last notion. He refused to believe that Tarn's loyalties would be so easily twisted. Closing his eyes, he breathed a silent prayer to Reorx, pleading that the young dwarf remained unhurt.
Leaning against the wall, feeling the familiar burning in his stomach, Baker felt like giving up. But instead he listened again to the growing silence and
then again heard the hint of sounds. Groans came from beneath a section of the wall that had fallen flat into the street. Baker hurried to the place and tried to move the heavy slab. Though he tore off one of his fingernails in the attempt, he could not budge the heavy weight. Once more he heard a fading moan.
Standing up, he was able to spot an elder Hylar kicking through the rubble of a nearby building. From his silk vests, shiny leather boots, and the magnifying eyepiece he wore on a gold chain, the thane deduced that the fellow was a gem cutter.
"Help!" he called, and the other dwarf hastened over to lend a hand with the flat piece of stone. But after they had moved it, they could only look down helplessly at the blue-faced corpse of a young dwarfmaid.
"She suffocated before we could get her free," Baker said, feeling horribly guilty.
"There were more noises over there," reported the jeweler, pointing to the nearby rubble where Baker had first seen him.
The thane accompanied the gem cutter, and they were quickly joined by more Hylar, young and old, males and females, who seemed to appear from nowhere. In a few minutes they had freed a mother and two children who had been buried alive, saved from being crushed by an overhanging shelf of what had once been their ceiling.
"Let's get them down to safety," Baker suggested, wondering if in fact any place in Hybardin was free from danger right now. "Does the lift still work?" he asked the group.
"The chain was broken when I passed it an hour ago," said one of the rescuers, a burly smith by the look of him. "They was workin' to get it fixed, though."
"Then let's get the injured to the station and see what can be done."
Willing hands lifted those unable to walk, while others limped along with the group.
For the time being the battle had seemed to settle into a quiet stasis. Baker stopped to take a look around his beloved city's highest level. He could see some of the creatures he called shadow monsters, far down the street from him, slithering around the ruins of several structures. The shadows glided like cats or oozed along the ground.
Baker turned toward the lift, surprised to note that the big blacksmith and several other brawny Hylar were waiting for him.
"What's your name?" asked the thane, grateful for the company.
"Capper Whetstone, my lord thane, at your service. I would be grateful for the chance to stand at your side.
I say with all respect, lord, that you should not be walking around here without protection."
"Yes, thank you." He briefly wondered about his earlier bodyguards. He had met them and conversed with them, of course, but now he couldn't recall their names or anything about them.
"I'll stay here and keep watch, my lord thane," offered a new voice, and Baker was surprised to see the Hylar jeweler, his single-lens viewer still hanging from its golden chain. "I've got a good eye, and I'll keep it on those marauding shades down there. I'll give a holler if they start coming this way."
Baker was touched by the fellow's loyalty. "That would be a good service. Just make sure to run while you're hollering," he replied.
And then he was struck by a question that suddenly seemed very important. "What's your name?"
"I am called Emerald-Eye the Younger," said the Hylar, touching his neatly trimmed beard with his fingers as he performed a deep and formal bow.
By the time Baker and his escort of a half dozen Hylar had neared the lift station, the engineers had made their repairs, and the great cage was rattling up to its landing. Baker was relieved to see that Axel Slateshoulders was returning from his mission of inspection. The veteran captain seemed strangely dazed, failing to react until the thane called him twice.
"What's the word from below? How does Belicia fare on the dock?"
A closer look at Axel's face cut off Baker's question and confirmed that the news was bad-bad as could be.
"The bottom levels are lost," Axel began, forcing words out with an effort that brought the veins bulging from his forehead. "The whole bottom of the Life-Tree broke loose and fell onto the docks and plaza. It's all buried. And Belicia. By Reorx, it should have been me!" The veteran commander staggered with a groan of pure misery.
Baker caught Axel by his broad shoulders and felt that sturdy body heaving in a tide of grief. The thane searched without success for words to bring him comfort. He settled for the solace he could offer with his embrace, even as his own despair threatened to overwhelm him.
"What happened?" Baker asked, utterly drained, but knowing the answer might well be important-if anything could ever be important again.
The question seemed to bring Axel back to some measure of awareness. "No one knows. My lord, there were no survivors. The First and Second levels were cut off, buried under a million tons of rock. The Third is full of corpses or worse. They're all dead. The Lift can't go lower than Level Four. I did the last descent by one stairway that hasn't yet caved in."
Baker tried to absorb the loss. Axel's daughter, their beautiful city, perhaps even his son were all gone.
For the first time he took note of the forty or fifty dwarves who had accompanied Axel in the lift. Some of them bore fine weapons. A few carried only big sticks, but it Was clear that all were ready to do battle for their realm. They stood around waiting, looking at the wreckage that marked every one of the four avenues leading away from the lift station.
Baker spotted several apprentices from the palace library. They were young dwarves, and now they held swords and knives in hands that had been trained to use writing utensils.
"You dwarves," he said quickly. "Do you have quill and parchment?"
"Aye, lord thane. We all have our writing tools."
"I want you all to take down the names of every dwarf here," Baker said. "And find the others, the groups of Hylar that are scattered all around this level. From now on I want a record-a written record-of everyone who fights against these shade creatures."
The young scholars quickly obeyed. Meanwhile, Axel found several veteran warriors among the throng of Hylar and appointed them sergeants. In a short time they had sorted the volunteers into a semblance of units, their number growing as more of the scattered patrols returned to the lift and added their number to the group.
Still the Hylar were disorganized and unprepared for the shock of a fresh attack when Baker heard the unmistakable cries of battle-ready Klar. The sound rose like a roar and rumbled through the whole city quarter. Within seconds, bands of frenzied attackers swept down two of the wide streets and rushed toward the lift station. Spittle flying from their grinning lips, they thundered closer with whoops and shouts of insane glee.
"Back, my lord!" cried Capper Whetstone, taking the thane's arm with a powerful grip. "Into the lift!"
"Wait!" snapped Baker, his voice sharp enough to pierce the din. His mind whirled. The lift was too small to hold more than a fraction of the Hylar gathered at the station.
Before he could issue further orders, the warriors of the two clans clashed in a barrage of blows. Many Klar tumbled away or writhed on the ground, halted by the stout Hylar defense. But many more frantic attackers pushed through the melee, desperate to stab, to kill. Baker held his little sword ready, standing just behind the dwarves in the front line. A Hylar fell, gouged deeply in the leg, and a leering Klar rushed through the gap to charge the thane. Baker cut down the wild-eyed berserker, surprised at the satisfaction he found in the bone-crushing swing of his weapon. He stepped forward, bashing at another opponent, then tumbled to the floor as something sharp and hot smashed him in the face.
He heard the fight raging all around and feared that he had been blinded-a dread that suddenly struck him as far worse than death. He clasped a hand to his face, wiping away blood and the broken pieces of his spectacles.
And he could see light! Wiping again, he discovered that he could see, though his vision was clouded by the blood that spilled into his eyes. He stood, trying to shake off a feeling of utter helplessness. Squinting, he realized that the Hylar had formed a protective r
ing around him as more Klar poured around corners to join the fray.
"Axel!" Baker cried urgently. "Come here! I need your eyes!"
"My lord, I can do nothing. May Reorx strike me dead as I stand-"
"Come, damn it! Tell me what you see down those streets!" Baker pointed around the lift station, into the avenues that were ominously silent. Unfortunately, anything more than a short stone's throw away was a mere blur in his vision.
"Down that street I see a mass of those shades-two, maybe three blocks away. The other street is quiet. No sign of dwarf or darkness."
"Up the street toward the shades-can we get away from the Klar by falling back that way?"
Axel looked around in astonishment. "For now. They'll have that side cut off in another minute."
"What if we were to run toward the shadows?" Quickly he outlined his daring idea.
Axel hesitated for only a fraction of a heartbeat, then his teeth flashed in a warlike grin. "Aye, my lord." In another moment his voice was a commanding roar. "Hylar! Fall back on my point! Double time! Break!"
Instantly the defenders swept back from the attacking Klar and poured around the side of the lift station as the pursuers tangled into a mass. A few of the frenzied warriors tried to sweep around the flank, but Baker used his sword and began slashing at the Klar who stood out from the blur. He drove the few maddened dwarves back with cuts and stabs.
The Hylar moved in a mass, following Axel's clumping lead without question. Soon they were running down the street, hundreds of howling Klar in pursuit.
"How far?" the thane gasped to Axel as he strained to breathe over the unfamiliar exertion of a full run.
"Two blocks," panted the venerable captain, keeping up remarkably well despite his gout. "Now one after this lane, here."
Baker spotted the gaps of a narrow alley connecting the right and left of the avenue. Just beyond he now saw the indistinct shapes of utter darkness and knew that the Chaos shades were hungrily awaiting the onrushing dwarves.
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