Secret of Pax Tharkas dh-1

by Douglas Niles

  The remainder pressed the assault, dispersing to minimize the impact of another area-effect spell but charging as aggressively before. They fired another volley, and once more Willim was forced to raise a shield spell, distracted from the counterattacks he would have preferred to launch. He did spit off a magic-missile spell of his own, greater than any his apprentices could summon, spraying the conjured arrows in a wide arc that bloodily cut down another of the attackers, but then he was forced to ignominiously dive for cover as a burst of magic exploded from the finger of one of the masked killers.

  Ochre was shaking his head, pushing himself to one knee. He locked eyes with Willim, and something in the Theiwar’s eyes convinced the wizard that, indeed, his potion was at work. “Master?” he croaked, clearly confused.

  “We’re attacked,” the Black Robe explained curtly. He gestured to the far side of the laboratory. “Kill them-but wait! Let them come to us.”

  “I shall obey,” Ochre said, bowing his head, quivering in his eagerness. He stood shakily, once again scratching at the strange wart that swelled even larger on his cheek.

  The pair was, for the moment, blocked by the large, overturned table. Willim snapped out a spell of invisibility, touching first his apprentice-who immediately vanished-then absorbing the effects himself. As soon as he had disappeared from sight, the mage scuttled across the laboratory to a cabinet where he kept a variety of potions. The attackers were momentarily disoriented and converged toward the table, behind which the invisible Ochre waited for them. From his cabinet of potions, Willim snatched a certain bottle-a potion of teleportation-but did not drink it immediately. As a last resort, he could use the magic to escape, but he was not about to leave his treasures in the hands of the assassins unless it was absolutely necessary to his survival.

  “He’s gone!” one of the attackers shouted, the first to come around the table where Willim and Ochre had been hiding. The dwarf wielded a short sword, but the wizard was more interested to diagnose the accent in the fellow’s voice: a Daergar!

  The treacherous Daergar were prime allies of the Hylar king, he knew. The monarch was inclined to employ them as agents for all manner of dirty tasks for which his Hylar minions were temperamentally unsuited-tasks such as espionage and attack expeditions and murder. The first of the Daergar was grabbed by the invisible Ochre, however.

  The Daergar screamed as he died, and the veil of invisibility fell away from the Theiwar apprentice, who turned and roared at the others closing in on him. Ochre picked up another assassin as if the dwarf were a toy, tossing him high in the air so he smashed against a stone column and tumbled limply to the floor, his back broken.

  An assassin fired a crossbow bolt directly at the apprentice, but Ochre snatched it out of the air with a gesture too swift for the eye to follow. Even in the midst of the precarious fight, Willim couldn’t help but be pleased at the clear demonstration of the potion’s power. The young Theiwar sprang forward, more like a panther than a dwarf, and bore the shooter to the floor where, with a quick twist, he broke the Daergar’s neck.

  Willim spit the command word for another spell, even though the casting caused his own perfect invisibility to shimmer, revealing himself as a hazy outline. But the attackers had their backs to him, and he didn’t care; he was not going to flee his place after all.

  He and Ochre were going to kill the Daergar.

  His spell took effect as a coil of magic swirling outward, looping about the neck of the nearest Daergar. Willim clenched his fist, and the magic cord snapped tight. The stricken dwarf clawed and clutched as his neck was constricted. The doomed villain even tore away his mask in a desperate effort to breathe. He lurched against the bench and stumbled to his knees, his pale face purpling as the magic slowly strangled him.

  Meanwhile, Ochre had grabbed another of the black-clad Daergar, spinning him around with a grip on his ankle and letting go to cast the fellow across the laboratory, right into the crack of Gorathian’s lair. Immediately, the flames percolating there flared high, followed by a rumble that shook the floor of the place as the Daergar toppled, shrieking, into the depths. The burgeoning illumination brightened the vast chamber, and the noises of the dying assassin and awakening monster shook the stone foundations and the air.

  Two Daergar were rushing at Ochre with blades extended, but he parried the blows with a swipe of his fist, knocking one of the swords out of the attacker’s hand and forcing the other back to the wielder’s face. That Daergar retreated two steps, overwhelmed by the apprentice’s enhanced physical strength, ferocity, and fearlessness.

  One of the remaining Daergar boldly tried to distract the wizard, hurling himself at Willim with an upraised sword. The Black Robe struck him down with a simple gesture, a paralyzing stab that rendered the dwarf’s limbs weak and caused him to crumple on the spot.

  Only two were left alive. Those two skirted the edge of the chasm, battling Ochre, trying to maneuver him into a mistake. The apprentice, growing more powerful by the minute thanks to the experimental potion, punched to the side, knocking one assassin down with a single blow of his fist, then wheeled to glare at the other. That Daergar, not unsurprisingly, hesitated. But his real enemy did not stand before him, for Gorathian, as ever, lurked in the pit.

  The beast had been following the progress of the battle, its flaming tendrils lashing upward, seeking, probing, snapping like whips over the rim of the chasm. Two of those flame fingers wrapped themselves around the ankles of the two remaining Daergar, constricting like a snake and pulling with inexorable force. The two dwarves buckled, one of them losing his sword as he clawed futilely, sliding across the unforgiving stone. The other kept his grip on his blade and tried to hack at the tendril, as thick around as a dwarf’s arm. However, his keen steel melted away as it made contact with that otherworldly flame.

  Willim saw, to his horror, that a third tendril had wrapped itself around Ochre’s waist, searing the apprentice while dragging him toward the chasm.

  “No! Stop!” cried the wizard, rushing forward. “Not that one! Release him!”

  But the beast was determined to have its prey, and Willim’s command had no effect. The three victims were pulled slowly toward the rim. The dwarves shrieked and screamed, the fools even begging mercy from Willim. But the wizard could only stand and watch as the doomed assassins and his own loyal assistant were inexorably drawn to the edge. There Gorathian seemed to toy with its prey, even loosening the grip of its tentacles slightly, giving the dwarves the brief illusion of hope. They clawed and tried to crawl away.

  But there was no hope. Again those powerful fire-limbs constricted, and the beast did not stop until the three dwarves had vanished over the lip of his prison, their screams echoing for a very long time as the trio plunged into the depths.

  Willim found himself trembling with barely suppressed rage. He counted the bodies of his nine apprentices, all dead, and thought of the immense amount of work he had invested in their training-all work wasted.

  Stalking angrily but purposefully through his laboratory, he came to the Daergar he had stricken with the choking spell. The dwarf’s tongue and eyes bulged from his head, but he still clawed at the invisible noose, still clung to life. With a snap of his fingers, Willim dispelled the enchantment, watching with contempt as the would-be assassin drew a ragged breath then coughed the air back out. For long seconds the wretch struggled to breathe, his bloodshot eyes gradually focusing on the eyeless Theiwar who stood over him.

  “Please…” croaked the attacker, raising a beseeching hand.

  “Surely you don’t expect mercy?” demanded the wizard.

  “No… I beg you…”

  Willim placed his boot on the dwarf’s chest and stepped down, snapping bones and driving the air from his lungs. Then the wizard released the pressure of his weight and watched impassively as the Daergar was racked by another fit of painful coughing.

  “Who sent you?” demanded the Black Robe when the other dwarf finally drew a breath.
>
  “It… it was the council of thanes-and the king himself! He fears you!” croaked the doomed one.

  “As well he should,” Willim answered dryly. “But how did you find me?”

  “A traitor… one of your apprentices. He revealed the location of this place for payment in gold and the promise of high office when you are dead.”

  “Liar!” snapped the wizard, once again stomping down on the dwarf’s chest, in his fury grinding his heel into the rib cage. Yet even as he accused the fellow of lying, he was analyzing, thinking, contemplating.

  And he knew that the enemy dwarf must have spoken the truth. He was appalled, sickened at the notion that one of his trusted students would have betrayed him, but there was too much fear and despair in the dwarf’s eyes for him to be lying. Who had it been? He couldn’t know, couldn’t even begin to imagine, as he pondered that cruel revelation.

  Willim would have to be more careful in the future. For the moment there was one last puny act of vengeance. He reached down and seized the Daergar by the beard, his deceptively powerful arm pulling the wretch to a sitting position and finally to his feet.

  “Your master has made many mistakes-this is but the latest-and he will make more in the short time left to him. For you should know, Daergar, know before you die, that the reign of Jungor Stonespringer will soon come to a terrible end. I will end it, as I will end him, and place myself on the throne. The next high king of Thorbardin will be the greatest, and he will be Theiwar, and he will be a mage of the black robes!”

  With that, Willim hurled the would-be assassin aside, sending him tumbling across the floor to the rim of the pit. He halted there at the edge, blubbering, frantically trying to move away.

  Then Gorathian’s tentacle touched him, and he was gone.

  EIGHT

  The Throne Of Kayolin

  What are we going to do, Father?” Brandon asked. He felt like a young, wide-eyed lad again, helpless against the chaotic events of the “grown-up” world. Garren Bluestone had ever been his anchor in that world, and even as an adult dwarf warrior with a number of successful fights under his belt, he needed his father’s strength and advice as never before.

  “We’re going to put on our formal garb and go to the king’s palace. There, we will file your claim.”

  Brandon nodded, for once not even bothering to correct the improper use of the governor’s title. “What about Nailer’s murder?” he asked.

  Garren’s eyes shone with rage and grief, but he placed a cautioning hand on his son’s shoulders. “Listen, Brandon,” his father said finally with a sigh. “Nailer must be-will be-avenged. But we don’t know enough to embark on a vendetta-not yet, anyway,” he added grimly. “So we will work on the first task we should accomplish and endeavor to learn more before we act on the other. Now I suggest you go talk to your mother for a few minutes while I have the servants assemble our garments.”

  Brandon nodded, wondering if it was his own exhaustion or his father’s clear rationality that had knocked the stuffing out of him. Numbly, he went into the next room, where Nailer’s body had been laid out on the bed. His mother and several of the servants were tenderly combing his hair and beard, weeping softly. When her younger son entered, Karine swept him into an embrace, clinging to him, sobbing into his beard. Her grief, somehow, made Brandon feel stronger, and he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, letting her anguish slowly drain away.

  “I–I’m sorry, Mother,” he said when her tears had dried.

  “I know,” she whispered. “We all are. Now go with your father. Make us proud.”

  He saw Garren was standing in the doorway of the room, waiting for him. Gently disengaging, he followed his father to the anteroom, where the servants had laid out formal capes trimmed with bear fur and a fresh tunic to replace Brandon’s torn and bloodstained shirt. He sat down and exchanged his miner’s boots for the formal black footwear preferred at court, and they were ready to go.

  A small crowd of neighbors and friends was waiting quietly in the street when they emerged from the front door, and one by one those gruff dwarves and teary-eyed dwarf maids offered condolences as the two Bluestones started down the street.

  “Terrible,” one muttered sadly.

  “Our condolences,” said a pair, husband and wife, holding hands.

  “It’s that old Bluestone luck,” whispered an old dwarf to his nearly deaf companion, the words carrying clearly to Brandon’s ears.

  “I’m so sorry, Brandon,” said Bondall, the barmaid who ran the Cracked Mug-the level’s most popular tavern. She gave him a long, shuddering hug, and he held her tenderly, feeling his own eyes grow wet. Finally, sensing his father’s growing impatience, Brandon thanked her and broke away to enter the great stairwell.

  They climbed the long, spiraling stairway connecting the city’s levels in grim silence, the air of foreboding surrounding them clearing any dwarves they encountered out of their path. At many places the stairwell gave out onto wide plazas, popular gathering places with inns and gaming floors and fungus gardens, but the two Bluestones took no note of those popular diversions as they climbed ever higher.

  Garnet Thax was the capital city of Kayolin and the one great city in that nation. It was aligned vertically, with levels and half-levels and terraces and tunnels all arrayed around the wide, virtually bottomless pit called the atrium. The deep-levels were the lowest of those, centers of manufacturing, smelting, and refining. Those were the smoky neighborhoods that Brandon had passed through while bringing Nailer’s body up and out of the delvings, which were the vast mining networks extending far out and below the city. The midlevels, where the Bluestones dwelled, were numerous terraces of houses, shops, inns, and other places of business, where the majority of Kayolin’s population resided. They were the heart of the city.

  As they climbed through the upper-levels, they approached the nerve center where the important decisions in Kayolin society were made. The inns at the landings became more exclusive, the crowds less teeming, the dwarves behaving more quietly and wearing better clothes. Brandon knew his family’s house once had been located on those exalted floors, but as he looked at the aloof dwarves-mostly Hylar-seated in their comfortable chairs near the atrium, he was happy he had lived his life in a more humble place.

  All dwarfkind could be found in Kayolin. Unlike the Thorbardin of lore, wherein each clan maintained its own separate city, Garnet Thax was host to all types and clans. True, there was a Theiwar quarter on a number of the deep-levels, and the hapless Aghar maintained their miserable warrens wherever they could dig enough living space out of the rock. But for the most part the Daergar, Daewar, Hylar, and Klar lived beard by jowl with each other, pervasively in the midlevels. Of course, as was ever the case among dwarves, some of the Hylar considered themselves better than the rest of their kin and maintained their own exclusive lodgings in the best, and highest, levels.

  Brandon thought briefly and ruefully of his grandfather, who had been the last patriarch of the Bluestones to live up there. Then a question started percolating in his brain. He gave voice to the query as he and his father continued on the long climb.

  “Father, what did Harn Poleaxe mean when he said that ‘now was the time to do it’ or something like that? What does he want you to do?”

  Garren looked sideways at his son, even as he continued his measured, ascending steps. For a time the elder dwarf said nothing, but Brandon got the impression he was considering his reply.

  “You’ve heard the history: how our family was named for the sapphire infused rock strata that led to the Third Delve?” his father began.

  “Yes, of course,” Brandon replied. “That’s why we’re called House Bluestone.” He saw that Garren was looking at him strangely. “Isn’t that true?” he asked.

  “No, it isn’t-at least, not entirely,” replied the elder dwarf, startling his son with the revelation. “In fact, we possess an actual wedge of bright blue rock, an artifact that our ancestor Galric Axeb
lade discovered, and brought back to the city with him. He knew it was valuable, and unique, and so he invented the tale of the sapphire strata to keep the existence of the real Bluestone a secret.

  “But the story is partly true, as well, insofar as Galric Galric Axeblade discovered it when he was exploring the mine that would become the Third Delve. He changed his named to Galric Bluestone and founded our house with the wealth he gained from those mines.”

  “I never heard that,” Brandon declared. “I always believed the story of the official history-that the sapphires, and the rich mines, were the source of our house’s foundation, and fortune.”

  Garren shook his head. “It wasn’t just the Third Delve that made Galric a wealthy dwarf. It was the stone itself. It’s a powerful talisman in its own right. Now it’s all we have left of the wealth that once exalted our family; the rest was lost in the Cataclysm and its aftermath as my father tried to stay in business, to pay his workers and his loyal clients even after his mines had been destroyed.” There was something in Garren’s tone that showed he approved of his own father’s decision, and Brandon felt a stab of fierce family pride.

  “Harn Poleaxe wants to buy the Bluestone from me,” Garren said quietly, his steps still steady as they spiraled up the wide, stone stairs. “He is offering me a tremendous amount of money; he’s been raising the offer for more than year, every time he sees me.”

  Brandon knew Poleaxe had visited his father at least every five or ten intervals over that time. He struggled to digest the information. “Why does he want it so badly?” he asked finally.

  “He says it’s part of a hill dwarf legacy, one the Neidar have only recently uncovered. There are several of these stones, all of them dating back to the days of the Graygem. His clan, the Neidar, already possess the green one, which he calls the Greenstone. He assures me if he could return home with the Bluestone, his status among his people would be permanently cemented. He would become a virtual lord.”