The Last Thane cw-1

by Douglas Niles

  When she called again, he forced himself to look.

  Now he discerned movement in the base of the tunnel leading upward into Hybardin. He saw several dwarves squirreled away in the far corners, and dimly realized that they were clinging to the rungs of a ladder mounted directly into a stone. With a flash of hope he saw that they were lowering ropes, three or four lines that dropped among the Aghar atop the hill.

  And finally he recognized her, eyes shining as she looked at him from the dimness of the shadowy tunnel.

  Belicia Felixia Slateshoulders was not only alive, she was hovering overhead like a messenger from Reorx, a vision of hope, promise, and rescue.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  An Army Unleashed

  "Get into that tunnel, you gully dwarf-spawned bastards!" shouted Darkend, waving his mace over his head and menacing the file of Daergar warriors. Most were already advancing into the confined assault route, but their thane still cursed and lashed, uncaring of complaints as his spiked weapon gouged into the back of his warriors.

  Still fuming, he whirled upon his sister who had just emerged with him from the tunnel that led up to Hybardin's Level Four. All around him was a ruin of molten rock, rubble-strewn streets, and pulverized landscape. A whole sector of valuable smithies had been smashed into unrecognizable garbage and soot beneath the power of fiery wing and crushing talon.

  "Why didn't he wait here? Isn't that what you told him to do?" the thane demanded.

  "Yes, that is what I told him!" insisted the female dark dwarf. "But he clearly had ideas of his own!"

  Even as she spoke, Darkend noticed that his sister looked fretful. The strain of the long climb and the frustration at finding events reaching beyond their control had tightened the nerves of both Bellowsmokes. For several moments the brother and sister glared at each other. Darkend's gaze shifted, and as he fixed his stare at the bronze helm that gave Garimeth the ability to understand beings even as strange as the daemon warrior, he finally understood.

  He was tempted to swing his mace against Garimeth right now, but some deep vestige of self control prevented him from taking the dire action. And he still could not be sure. Besides, Garimeth still had uses-or she would, if they could ever catch up to the rampaging daemon warrior.

  Herein was the crux of his problem. Zarak Thuul had apparently taken to the thane's orders with passion, using his great serpent to bore a wide hole through the bedrock of the Life-Tree. Already thousands of Daergar and Theiwar had advanced along that route. But these attacking dwarves had found the city already reduced to waste. There were no conquered Hylar to show him honor. All of them were either dead or had fled into the highest levels of the city Even the vast silver smithies with their great vaults of precious metal had been burned so thoroughly that the stockpiles of the argent metal had melted like water and vanished into the porous rock. This had been one of the great treasures of Hybardin, and Darkend had planned to turn the minting process to his own uses. But now, like so much of this accursed city, it was nothing but ugly wreckage.

  And, from the look of things, there was still no sign that the Chaos lord was planning to slow down his onslaught or that he had any intentions of cooperating with the dark dwarf assault. Instead, the daemon warrior continued to take matters into his own hands, forging upward and onward on his own. Though advancing companies of dark dwarves hastened in his wake, the stocky, short-legged warriors were climbing much more slowly than the fiery harbinger of Chaos. Now Darkend's greatest fear was that he would conquer this city of wonders, only to find that the entire place had been destroyed beyond salvage by the depredations of his unpredictable, uncontrollable ally.

  Worst of all, Darkend could think of no way to counter the daemon warrior's power or his implacable will. He dared not take his frustrations out on Garimeth-at least not now, for he saw that his sister might be his only chance to somehow still rein in that capricious power.

  "My lord thane! My lord!" cried a Daergar warrior in great excitement.

  "What is it, man?"

  "A royal armory, lord! And it's still intact!" The dwarf pointed along the street. "We've set a guard on it, but it hasn't been burned yet! And it looks like the Hylar cleared out too quickly to take any of their treasure."

  "This is more like it," growled the thane, allowing himself to feel the first hint of conqueror's pleasure. Darkend followed the other dwarf down a wide avenue toward a vast structure with a colonnaded portico and doors of reinforced steel.

  "There's a trove of coin in here!" shouted a captain of heavy infantry, clapping his fist in salute as Darkend strode up the steps. The thane stalked down a wide, marbled hall, past more saluting Daergar, all of whom grinned with anticipation.

  "In here, my lord-feast your eyes!" declared the messenger, standing aside to allow his thane to proceed.

  The great vault was encased in thick plates of solid steel, but the doors had been forced open; one of the great slabs lay on the floor while the other tilted awkwardly on its single remaining hinge. As Darkend reached the end of the hall and saw the great room opening beyond, he knew that here at last was one prize worthy of his conquering army.

  The vault was as large as his own throne room and was crowded with neat rows of crates and boxes. Darkend beheld a wealth of riches, coin of steel, platinum, and gold. Several Daergar were already moving amongst the packages, prying off lids and shifting some of the heavier crates onto the floor. They snapped to attention as the thane arrived.

  "See here, my lord," cried one, who wielded a small axe. "They're all like this!"

  The dwarf smashed his blade into the side of a crate, breaking the boards and releasing a cascade of silvery coins.

  "These are steel, lord-but there's all kinds of coinage, imprints from across the face of Krynn!" The speaker smiled crookedly. "We've even found a set minted in Palanthas, bearing the image of Gunthar Uth Wistan himself!"

  "The Knights of Solamnia are making a contribution to my treasury," Darkend declared, chuckling at the irony. "Do you have a count of the worth yet?"

  "No, lord. But look over here! These bins are full of gems-diamonds and rubies of incalculable worth! And over there, emeralds-some of them bigger than your eye!"

  "Indeed!" The thane, very pleased, was about to step into the vault when he heard cries of alarm. A blow shook the floor under his feet, and the air reverberated.

  "What's that?" he demanded, staring about.

  There was another great smash, and this time the vault rang like the inside of a drum, a deafening resonance thrumming in the air. Darkend stared in disbelief as the steel wall at the far side of the great chamber bulged inward, then began to glow a dull red. The thane recoiled, feeling a blast of heat against his face. He watched in dumbstruck horror as the metallic barrier brightened to yellow, then to pure, hot white.

  And then fire was everywhere, exploding into the vault, roaring in Darkend's ears. He threw himself flat on the floor, crawled toward the doorway, and finally hurtled into the comparative coolness of the outer hall.

  A tail of crackling oily flame lashed across the treasures-his treasures! Walls of steel and stone dissolved, and Dark-end groaned in abject misery as he saw piles of coins turn to ash. A fire dragon surged past in an ecstasy of destruction, crushing a king's ransom in gems to dust as its inferno of heat melted coins of steel and gold.

  "Fight, you worms!" cried Darkend, sending more of his warriors into the path of that killing blaze. "Save my treasure!"

  A few obeyed and died, burned to powder by the touch of wing or claw. Others threw themselves flat on the floor, cowering and miserable, risking the wrath of their thane rather than facing certain death from the infernal wyrm.

  And then the monster was gone, leaving an eerie, smoking silence. A great cavern yawned in the wall, marking the passage of flaming Chaos.

  "My thane, we must hurry!" hissed Garimeth. "Our only chance is to keep climbing, to find Zarak Thuul."

  "But, my baubles, my coins, my gems!" moan
ed Darkend.

  "She's right." Slickblade was suddenly back at his side, oddly speaking in agreement with Garimeth. "We must go!" he urged.

  "Why? What's the point?" Darkend looked at the singed and soot-covered survivors of his troops. He wanted nothing more than to have them executed slowly, while he sat and watched.

  "There will be other treasures, I promise you. And your life means everything, does it not?" asked the assassin.

  Darkend looked back once to see the vault shrouded in the same red smoke that permeated so much of this city. "What of Tarn Bellowgranite?" he demanded. "Tell me: is he dead?"

  "No!" spat the assassin. "He is lost in the maze of this dying city. I have not been able to find him."

  "Then come with me as we climb," snarled the thane. "We must catch the daemon warrior and stop him!"

  "How can you hope to do that?" Slickblade asked.

  "How should I know?" demanded Darkend. He pointed at Garimeth. "You may as well ask her!"

  "I don't know!" she screamed wildly, irrationally. "But he's right. We have to try. Can't you see that?"

  "What does it matter? What does anything matter? We're conquering a mess here! By the time we do anything, all that will be left of Hybardin is rubble, dust, and smoke!"

  "We will catch him, but not until we can get to a higher level in the city," Garimeth said, her tone growing calm and surprisingly soothing to the agitated thane. "If necessary we will climb to the top of this miserable Life-Tree and find him there. We must stop him before it is too late!"

  Darkend cursed but knew he had no choice but to follow her.

  "Let's go, then," Garimeth said, fixing him with a steady glare. "But my lord, first I have a demand."

  "How dare you!" Darkend's temper flared again, but he forced himself to listen. "What is it?"

  "I need your promise-a bonded word-that you will not kill me when this is over."

  "Very well, as Reorx is my witness, you have my word." Darkend gave the oath reluctantly, knowing the strength of the god's name. He might still choose to renege upon his word, but if he did so his treachery would surely cost him. It galled him to admit that he still needed Garimeth, needed the power she possessed with her artifact, the power that gave them their only hope of arresting the insane havoc of Zarak Thuul.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Love and Chaos

  "By Reorx, I thought I'd never see you again," Tarn declared weakly, embracing Belicia with one arm while he held the rung of the ladder with the other.

  Similarly suspended, she returned his hug without speaking. Tarn could feel her shuddering and could hear her soft sobs as they desperately clung together.

  Above them the Aghar, all of whom had scampered up the ropes without difficulty, were making great progress climbing the shaft. Playing leapfrog, swinging by single hands, and otherwise acting in a fashion more like monkeys than dwarves, they moved steadily away from the ruins of lower Hybardin. Hooting and jeering, clambering over each others' backs and shoulders, they bounded quickly and eagerly upward-though at any moment it seemed to Tarn that at least half of them were a hiccup away from a fatal plunge.

  "I think we'd better do some climbing ourselves," Belicia said, indicating the enraged dark dwarves swarming below. The two were still at the bottom of the shaft with the long transport tunnel extending straight above them. A thirty-foot drop to the crest of the rubble pile yawned beneath them. "We're out of sword range, but I wouldn't be surprised if one or two of them have crossbows."

  "You go first," Tarn insisted, then followed as Belicia hastened up the ladder.

  One missile knocked into the heel of his boot and several more clattered off of the walls nearby, but in moments the two dwarves were safely above the lower terminus. Looking around, Tarn realized that this must have been the route for a small cargo lift. The tunnel was only ten feet or so in diameter and was marked by rails in all four corners as well as these rungs that formed a permanent ladder.

  "How high does it go?" he asked. "Are the Hylar making a stand on Level Three?"

  "You're out of touch," she said sadly, looking down at him from the rungs immediately over his head. "And so am I, I'm afraid. I know we're going to have to climb at least as far as Level Five before we get off this ladder."

  "You lead the way."

  "Actually, your friends are leading the way. Those are your friends aren't they?" Belicia asked, pausing while several Aghar swung, apelike, from the rungs just above her.

  "And good friends, too," Tarn confirmed.

  Grimly the half-breed labored upward. They soon reached a small lift station leading to Level Three, but the terminal was masked from the area beyond by steel doors that had been bolted and barred shut from the inside. The air was thick with pungent smoke, and there were no distinguishable noises coming from beyond the heavy metal barrier.

  They stopped here only long enough to rest and catch their breath. Tarn tried to find out what had happened to the dwarfwoman, but Belicia's descriptions were curt. Her company had retreated from the plaza when the Chaos horde had swept into Hybardin. Many dwarves on both sides had been killed when the bottom of the Life-Tree had collapsed and sent tons of rubble cascading onto Levels One and Two. The rest of the Hylar had tried to fight on Levels Three and Four but had been expelled with heavy losses. Breaking into this transport shaft, Belicia and a handful of survivors had been prepared to risk a climb to safety when a sharp-eyed scout had noted Tarn and his companions trapped below. The half-dozen Hylar remaining from her band had already made their way upward, she explained, preceding the Aghar in the ascent.

  Level Four was another hundred feet, with the fifth a similar distance beyond. The gully dwarves continued to scamper merrily into the higher darkness, while Tarn needed all of his concentration to keep his grip and move his cramped hands and aching arms upward. Periodically he stopped, linking his elbows through the rung before him while he panted for breath. Even this restful position quickly became uncomfortable, so he followed Belicia higher and higher.

  "Soon now. Close," Belicia finally said, the effort of the climb audible in the staccato delivery of her words.

  Tarn saw a gleam of illumination up above, and he watched the gully dwarves scramble off the ladder and disappear from his view. Obviously they had reached another lift station, and he allowed himself to anticipate the blissful sensation of a solid floor under his feet.

  "Hey! We good guys!" came one indignant cry, followed by a volley of Aghar insults and the deeper, stern tones of Hylar guards.

  "Ouch! You stoppit!"

  "Get outa here, you runts!"

  Finally Tarn and Belicia reached Level Five to find Regal Everwise locked in a furious argument with a burly Hylar who seemed quite ready to pitch the gully dwarf and his scruffy companions right back down the shaft.

  "No, don't! They're on our side," Tarn explained hastily, climbing off the ladder to join the others on a small, crowded lift platform. He turned to Belicia, glad to have both his feet planted on solid stone. "Without them I never would have made it back from Daerforge."

  "Then we owe them a lot," Belicia said. "Now, let's find your father and see how things stand. I'm sure he can use us somewhere."

  "Wait. There's something else," Tarn said, blurting out the idea that had been taking shape in his mind ever since he had heard of that unholy war conference in Daerforge. "My mother took something from my father-an artifact that I think she's using somehow to control that daemon who's leading this whole attack. She brought it here to Hybardin."

  "What can we do about it?"

  "I saw her with the elite guard of the dark dwarves. Her brother is the thane, and no doubt he's leading the charge. I saw them with the attackers pouring into that dragon tunnel down below."

  "You've come to the right spot," declared the Hylar guard. His grim tone was underscored by the bloody bandage on his right arm and the singed, sooty state of his beard. "That very fire dragon came through here not long ago, burning a big hole t
hrough the floor. Haven't seen any Daergar yet, but I'm pretty sure they won't be far behind."

  "The dragon already got this far?" Belicia seemed stunned by the news.

  "Level Five's all but gone-just a few places left, like this station. We're holding out 'til the last of us move up. Fact is, I was about to start the climb myself before your lot came along."

  The dwarfwoman seemed immune to grief; she merely shook her head in despair. "Do you want to try and waylay your mother?" she asked Tarn.

  "We have little choice but to try. We've got to get that helm back for Father." He paused, then shifted his gaze to the guard. "Is my father-I mean, the thane-is he all right?"

  "He's fine, young fellow, and what's more, he's proved himself a good thane too. Now if you want to find that dragon-tunnel I was talking about, head down First Granite Road. Though I don't know what you can accomplish with them helping!" He looked askance at the gully dwarves, but then added, "Good luck."

  When they left the lift station, they couldn't help but stare in horror at the devastation of Level Five. The place was no long recognizable as a city. Instead, it was more like the ruins left in the wake of a volcanic eruption. Rocky edifices had puddled into slag while molten lava still trickled from the piles of several ruins. Steam and choking vapors swirled through the air, sometimes thick enough to reduce them to choking and gagging.

  "Look out!" cried Regal as a dark shape suddenly moved near them.

  The shadow-wight reared back, tendrils of darkness coveting Belicia, who stared transfixed at the lightless visage. Tarn struck quickly with his silver sword, slashing through the intangible shape and quickly reducing it to evaporating mist.

  "Wh-what was that?" asked the shaken female.

  "Pure chaos," Tarn answered, "and I sent it back to where it came from. Now, this must be what's left of First Granite Road."

  The yawning cave was unmistakable, even from a block away, for every one of the nearby buildings had been utterly destroyed. They could see little through the swirling smoke, yet the cadence of marching dwarves was audible as they drew nearer to the dark hole. Flames still flickered along the rim, and it felt as though they were entering an oven.