The Last Thane cw-1

by Douglas Niles

  Baker gasped in agony as he tore the bronze helmet off of his head. With a groan, he clapped a hand to his sweaty forehead. "That thing was in my mind searching, trying to destroy. It would have killed me!"

  Tarn drew the silver sword he had taken from the assassin, feeling as though the weapon was no more than a toothpick in his hand.

  "Get out of here! All of you, flee!" cried Axel, pushing Belicia out the door. He grabbed Baker, who was still clutching the scroll and the helmet, and shoved him too. "Use what you learned! You'll know what to do!"

  The monster roared, fetid breath reeking like death through the vast chamber. The taloned foot set down heavily, and the floor shook as if under the compression of a monstrous weight.

  Tarn, sword in his hand, ran to Axel's side as the older warrior pulled the huge axe down from the wall. The elder's face had a martial gleam, a gleeful battle-fury brightening his eyes. He pushed his horned helmet down tightly onto his scalp, raised the long weapon, and all but growled at the hideous creature.

  "I'll try to distract it, draw its attention over here!" shouted the half-breed. "You can get after it from behind!"

  With another roar, the monster advanced a step closer. Dust rose in clouds from the floor as the thunderous crash of its footstep caused cracks to shoot through the walls and spiderweb up the walls. The beast took another step and a beam across the ceiling cracked, bending downward with a piercing shriek.

  "No!" cried Axel, staring at Tarn, his face crazily distorted. The great axe, taller by far than the Hylar warrior, gleamed brightly in his hands. "You stay with my daughter and your father! They will need you!"

  "But-"

  "Do it!" snarled the elder in a voice that brooked no argument.

  Tarn backed to the door, as Axel, with the massive axe in his hands, advanced to battle the beast of Chaos. Again it bellowed, darting forward, then pausing.

  The axe swung through the air, a dazzling display of silvery light.

  And then the roars of the beast rose to a stone-shaking crescendo, echoing in Tarn's ears as he urged Baker, Belicia, and Regal to go and go fast.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  To Highest Hybardin

  Belicia and Baker halted in horror as soon as they burst through the outer gates of the thane's quarters. Tarn and Regal, hurrying after, bumped into the pair and then they, too, froze in shock and grief.

  Where they had left the guards outside they saw only a mess of blood and scattered lumps of debris. With a groan of horrified dismay, Tarn realized that these lumps were the remains of dwarves, torn and rent by a force almost beyond comprehension. He saw the upper half of the captain of the guard, the brave Hylar's eyes glazed but wide open, his teeth clenched and sword grasped in the lifeless fingers of his hands.

  "This was Capper Whetstone," said Baker, kneeling and reverently closing the sightlessly staring eyes.

  Even the Aghar had been mauled. Regal sniffed loudly as he looked at the remains of his companions. All the gully dwarves who had stayed here with the Hylar guards had been reduced to ragged bundles, bloody and still.

  A savage roar emanated from the throne room, and more crashes shook the air. Through the din they heard the battle cry of a charging Hylar and knew that Axel Slateshoulders still fought.

  Belicia looked back toward the throne room. "You go ahead," she said quietly. "I'll catch up."

  Tarn gently put his hand on her shoulder. "Come with us now," he said softly. "There's nothing more to be done for him and every second is precious. You know that's what he wanted."

  Shaking her head, tears streaming from her eyes, Belicia nevertheless followed his suggestion. The four of them fled the carnage, jogging down the street. Now even the fleeing dwarves were gone, leaving Level Ten with the air of a long abandoned ruin. In fact, to all appearances the place was utterly deserted of living inhabitants. Limp corpses lay like rag dolls in the street. The route of the great fire dragon was a clear path of melted rock, shattered gardens, and gory pieces of bodies.

  Tarn started toward one of the main stairwells connecting this level to those above and below, but a block away from the place they heard shouts of barking dark dwarf sergeants and the sounds of many tramping bootsteps.

  "Daergar!" hissed the half-breed in warning. "They're coming this way!"

  "The dark dwarves are this high already?" Belicia asked in despair.

  The party scuttled around a corner, crouching in the shadows as they watched rank after rank of their enemies charge through the streets. Some of the Daergar moved into a nearby stairwell and continued the upward charge through the Life-Tree.

  "We have to find a better route so we can go all the way up to Level Twenty-eight," Baker said. "That's where we have to go. It's what I learned from the writing on the scroll!"

  "You think one more clue is going to lead you to the Grotto?" Tarn asked, trying to contain his exasperation.

  "I know it will," his father replied.

  "And then what?" The younger dwarf's patience was frayed beyond reason. "What will we do besides see it once before it is destroyed?"

  "Trust me. There is hope, there. Our only hope."

  Tarn bit his tongue. He didn't see how finding the ancient lair of the good dragons was going to have any practical effect. Still, his own instincts suggested that they needed to climb. If this faerie quest gave his father motivation to attempt an ascent involving thousands of steep steps, then that was good enough for Tarn.

  They darted down a side street and ran along a darkened, narrow byway. The buildings to either side were empty, dark, and abandoned though they hadn't yet been ransacked or destroyed.

  Still moving at a fast trot, Tarn found himself in a section that was unfamiliar to him. The roads were narrow and winding here, with tiny alleys connecting blocks of buildings in unpredictable ways. Houses were small, with entries that were low and rounded, almost like burrows.

  "Look! Aghar tunnels!" Regal cried in sudden delight.

  "Come to think of it, there always were a lot of gully dwarves in this part of town," Baker noted.

  "Where are they now?" Tarn asked. The alleys and slumlike dwellings seemed as empty and abandoned as every other part of this level. He hoped that, like the Hylar, the gully dwarves had the good sense to keep on climbing.

  "Who cares?" Regal asked. "They got lotsa tunnels. We find a way up."

  "Where? Show us the way!" said Baker, with a surprising amount of eagerness.

  "Smells like people go this way," Regal declared cheerily, dropping to his hands and knees and crawling into a low hole in the side of the wall. "Goes up, too!" he called back as his feet disappeared from sight.

  "Do you think you can make it?" Tarn asked his father, noticing for the first time the signs of Baker's age, the bleary eyes, the lines of fatigue and grief etched into the elder dwarf's face. Tarn questioned the wisdom of taking a tunnel used by gully dwarves. He didn't know if there was any way that Baker Whitegranite would have the strength and endurance to get through a constricted, steeply climbing passage.

  "We don't have any choice," Baker declared. The thane stood straight, and Tarn saw that his father's eyes were in fact glinting with determination, even if they lacked a little focus. "I have learned I might be a little stronger than I look."

  No sooner had Tarn entered the tunnel than he heard the presence of marching dark dwarves, hundreds of them to judge by the sound, pillaging through the avenues and passages of Level Ten. These warriors were even ransacking the rude hovels of the Aghar, perhaps because the fire dragons had destroyed virtually everything else of value. He took some grim satisfaction as several Daergar, to judge from the sound of their screams, apparently stumbled onto one of the rampaging, flaming serpents. But when the smell of burned flesh reached him, he could find no solace even in the deaths of his enemies.

  He crawled after, just behind Belicia's boots, moving as quickly as he could. Before too long he found the others gathered in a small, circular chamber regarding several n
arrow passages that offered different routes.

  "We should take the biggest," Tarn suggested, pointing to a tunnel that actually had stairs carved into the rocks.

  "Not there," Regal replied with a firm shake of his head. "Smells like dark dwarves up ahead."

  "Thanks for the warning," Tarn answered. "Which one do you suggest?" Though he couldn't smell anything unusual, he remembered that Regal's nose had enabled him to differentiate between the half-breed and the Daergar. He was unwilling to counter the Aghar's conviction.

  "This way," Regal said, indicating the passage veering sharply to the right. "This best way."

  Once again they plunged into a narrow passage, crawling upward on hands and knees. Tarn and the Aghar had no difficulty seeing, but he felt sympathy for Baker and Belicia, knowing that the two pure-blood Hylar were all but blind in such utter blackness. Neither of them complained, however. Slowly, steadily, the little group made its way upward.

  Remembering the long journeys that had brought them to this point, Tarn was deeply saddened to realize that only Regal, Belicia, and his father remained from all their original companions. The doughty gully dwarf proved himself helpful again and again, smelling their enemies-dark dwarf or Chaos creatures-at each juncture in the winding progress of their upward passage. Always they found a way through, steadily continuing higher and higher through the dying city. At each level they looked into the streets and the vista was relentlessly unchanging: destruction and fire were everywhere. Smoke even seeped into the tunnels, though the vapors were never thick enough to choke them.

  Tarn speculated that these winding, concealed passages must have been used all along by Aghar to get around the Life-Tree. It amazed him to think that there was such a network of tunnels that had existed entirely unsuspected in the midst of the Hylar city. He saw more clearly than ever how the little gully dwarves had managed not only to survive but to thrive amid the nations of their larger and more powerful cousins. He regretted again the hatred and prejudice that drove so many of Thorbadin's dwarves to despise and abuse the hapless squatters.

  Some time later they all collapsed from exhaustion, uncertain how many levels they had climbed, knowing that the rack and ruin of the Life-Tree continued all around them. Utterly drained, they lay in a dark passageway, drinking a little water from a pool. Slowly, their gasps faded to more normal breathing. Unspeaking, they lay in numb silence, trying to let some of their fatigue melt away.

  Belicia whimpered suddenly, and Tarn realized that she had fallen asleep. Gently he touched her. She sat upward with a jerk, crying out with a despair so deep that it tore Tarn's heart just to hear it.

  "Don't," he consoled. "You're safe here, for now at least. I'm with you."

  She cried softly, and finally sniffled and looked at him, her eyes bright in the near total darkness. "It came crashing down: tons of rock, falling all around me. Why did I live? What right did I have to survive when so many died?" she demanded.

  Tarn said nothing, just pulled her against him. Firmly she pushed herself away.

  "I don't know why I wasn't killed," she said. "I should have been. All my dwarves-Farran, Raggat-all of them: they're dead! Why was I the one to live?"

  "They will have a legacy somehow," Tarn suggested awkwardly. "And you have to stay alive to make that happen."

  "Aye, girl," Baker said. "He's right."

  She talked of the courage displayed by her young company-the way they had stood at the docks and the stairways, the disbelief that had seized them all when the forces of Chaos had erupted into Thorbardin. The others let her talk, knowing that she needed to explain to herself as much as to them. Finally she breathed more easily, and they knew that she slept again. Tarn let himself drift off for a short time as well. He awoke to an awareness of movement around him.

  "Are you ready?" Belicia asked softly. He grunted his assent.

  Stiffly the thane got to his feet nearby. "I guess we'd better get going again."

  For hour after hour they made their plodding way upward, passing through innumerable bleak, ruined levels of the Hylar city. Virtually all the dwarves had gone, either fleeing farther upward or already dead. The effects of the Chaos horde were everywhere. Whenever they passed a long transport shaft or connecting tunnel they heard the chants and pounding cadence of dark dwarves on the march.

  Then they could climb no further. The tunnel emerged into the mushroom yard of one of the city's grand gardens. Dimly, Tarn recognized that they had climbed to Level Twenty-eight and had emerged fairly near to the quarter where his father had his house.

  But his attention was quickly drawn away by his father, who indicated the nearby street.

  "Here! This way!" said the thane.

  Regal, Belicia, and Tarn hastened to keep up as Baker Whitegranite led the way down the avenue. They met a few frightened Hylar who Baker urged to keep climbing-to take to the tunnels in the ceiling that the Klar had used.

  "Father, wait," cried Tarn, at last determined to speak his mind. "The Grotto's not going to help us. Our best bet is to keep on climbing, to do what you're telling these others and find a way out of the city."

  Belicia added her own arguments. "Those tunnels in the ceiling are a good idea. We should go!"

  Baker turned and looked at his son and the brave dwarfwoman. "It will be your turn, soon," he said. "But first-please-come with me. See what it is I have been seeking for all these years."

  "There's still hope that we can escape!" Tarn replied, struggling to understand his father's irrational behavior.

  But as he looked at his father, Tarn realized that the elder's dwarf's fatigue had melted away, his mood seemed positively buoyant. Baker was tall, clear-eyed, and stern. Tarn wanted to grab him, to slap him into some awareness of their situation, but he didn't have the heart. Instead, he listened as his father tried to explain.

  "The Grotto-and the platinum egg, if it's there-is the only hope for any kind of survival for our people, for all of clan Hylar," Baker Whitegranite said in all sincerity. "That egg comes from the stuff of Chaos. It was said, by Chisel Loremaster himself, that a true ruler of the dwarves could release that power.

  "If we were to flee, our enemies would continue to chase us. The ending would be the same. But these are beings of Chaos that are destroying our city. Doesn't it seem that they might be matched, even driven away, by that same power?"

  "So we let them kill us in an ancient dragon lair instead?" demanded Tarn.

  "I don't have time to explain further." Baker now stopped, and Tarn realized that they were in front of their own house. "I have to find that egg!"

  "Come in here with me," said Baker Whitegranite. "If I'm guessing right, we'll want to head right down into the cellar."

  Unwilling to argue, but feeling even more hopeless than before, Tarn felt that he had no choice except to follow.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  A Queen of the Dark Dwarves

  Pounce Quickspring stared through the dusty smoke, trying to find some semblance of order in the teeming mass of Theiwar. Everywhere dark dwarves choked the crowded corridors, a mass of attackers that should have carried through every vestige of resistance. They had pushed and charged, followed the daemon warrior and killed the Hylar. By rights, the dark dwarves should have been approaching their moment of ultimate conquest.

  But instead they were stuck here, pinned so tightly that the Theiwar had turned against each other, dwarf killing dwarf in an effort to make a little breathing room. The Daergar of Darkend Bellowsmoke had taken a different route, vanishing into the maze of this dying city. For once Pounce longed for word from his allies, for some sense of how the other dark dwarf clan fared. But there was nothing but this press of Theiwar, an attacking wedge that had somehow compressed itself into this narrow passageway.

  The spellcasters among the Theiwar clan had exhausted their magic. A few of the arcane dwarves had vanished, using what spells they possessed in order to disappear. Others stared wildly around, eyes bright and mouths wid
e as they neared a state of frenzied panic. Weapons flashed here and there as the anxious warriors were quick to use violence against each other.

  The blaze began at one end of the choked tunnel, a crimson wash of heat that blistered even from such a distance. The brightness was already painful, an assault against the dark-tuned eyes of the Theiwar. As it grew brighter, the light became heat, and the nervous fear grew to a mind-numbing terror.

  When the dragon roared closer still, the intense heat seared through flesh and melted armor. Dark dwarves screamed and burned as they died, the stink of charred flesh spreading down the corridor and preceding the killing serpent by a mere fraction of a second. The monstrous, flaming creature flew down the narrow corridor over the heads of the Theiwar, rushing along like an explosive fireball that destroyed everything in its path.

  Pounce Quickspring shrilled his cry of hatred, watching the death of his army until the flames embraced him.

  In that grip of fire he perished.

  "How many more of these stairs are we going to have to climb?" demanded Darkend as he slumped against the stone wall in an effort to draw several ragged gasps of breath. Behind him the legion of dark dwarves paused, taking advantage of their leader's fatigue to get some much needed rest for themselves.

  "No more than five hundred; we're almost there," Garimeth said, infuriated with his ail-too-visible fatigue.

  Couldn't he see? Didn't he understand? "We've got to keep moving! We don't have any other choice!"

  In truth, Garimeth was more than angry. She was utterly terrified. Would the daemon warrior even notice her, much less hear her, now that she had lost the bronze artifact? She almost wailed aloud at the memory, the image of the Helm of Tongues stolen by a gully dwarf who had somehow tripped her and snatched it off her head. The thought still caused her to tremble with deep, abiding fear.

  What if she did find Zarak Thuul, only to discover that he no longer knew who she was? She refused to let herself consider that possibility. Perhaps the helmet had enabled her to attract his attention, but surely they had established a bond that would not be sundered merely by the absence of a piece of metal, however arcane!