Secret of Pax Tharkas dh-1

by Douglas Niles

  Only at the last second did Willim come to his senses. As the table gave way, he remembered the two precious bottles of potion: the deadly poison that the Aghar was supposed to have tested and the elixir that had proved so effective in enhancing Ochre’s abilities. He must not destroy them. But where were they? His hand lashed out as the table fell and he tried to catch the vials before they came to harm. He snatched the black poison out of the air but couldn’t find the elixir in the bottle labeled as the dwarf spirits.

  The pieces of the stone surface thundered to the floor, raising clouds of dust, scattering a spray of gravel-sized debris, and Willim frantically dug through the rubble. But there was no sign of the bottle. Nor, thankfully, did he see any broken glass or the Midwarren Pale label.

  He drew deep breaths through his nose, forcing himself to grow calm. Despite his recent setbacks, he had splendid powers of control-one did not command the high art of the black robes without extraordinary discipline. Slowly, methodically, he reflected on all that had transpired, tried to reconstruct what had just happened to top his very bad day.

  His spell of command had worked to perfection. The miserable little gully had been compelled to obey Willim by that enchantment, and thus, he had advanced to the table, had been reaching for the bottle and getting ready to drink the potion.

  Then Gorathian had flared, and the wizard had turned away for a fleeting moment. When he had turned back, the Aghar was picking up the bottle-only it was a different bottle. The bloody fool gully dwarf had gulped the potion of teleportation instead!

  Then, out of sheer terror no doubt, the wretch had blinked himself away. The wizard hissed an inarticulate shiver of rage, hoping that the worthless creature had blinked himself into the fiery depths of the Abyss or perhaps popped into sight in the middle of the ocean-or, even better, right into the bedrock of the earth, where he would be instantly crushed.

  Good riddance to him. But where was the elixir?

  Willim forced himself to concentrate, and he recalled the images of his spell of true-seeing almost as if they were playing like pictures in his mind, only slowed down, one after the other in a series. And that was when he saw: he saw the bottle fall into the gully dwarf’s pocket, then he saw the wretched creature disappear.

  Blasted gully dwarf!

  Suddenly, the question of the Aghar’s whereabouts assumed a whole new significance. The elixir represented a year of work and had consumed components that were, for all intents and purposes, irreplaceable (especially with so many apprentices out of commission). It was an innovative new recipe of alchemy, one that Ochre had proved worked as Willim had anticipated. And it was the key to his entire plan, the means by which he would create a company of undefeatable warriors for the master attack that would destroy Jungor Stonespringer and all his lords, allies, and guards in one blow.

  All right. He knew what he had to do: the teleported gully dwarf would have to be found. It was with a steady hand and a cold, clear purpose that Willim the Black pulled down a spellbook and, ignoring the inconvenience of his eyeless sockets, began to read.

  Several hours passed before he set the book down, having absorbed and memorized the ritual required to cast a very potent spell. He rose and stretched, ready to get to work-until he looked around, reminded of the chaos in the laboratory. The wreckage, the debris, the shattered crates and table would need to be cleaned up, but in due time.

  The laboratory would have to wait. Indeed, Willim wondered if he might have to rebuild and move his laboratory to a new location. It seemed that the king had learned of his whereabouts, and it wouldn’t do to be continually bothered by raids and assassination attempts and other nuisances. But that decision, too, could wait.

  The bodies needed tending, however. They already reeked and would soon begin to rot. With a grimace of disgust, he cast a spell and used his fingertip to whisk, one by one, the corpses of the company of Daergar attackers, as well as those of his slain apprentices, over to the crack leading to Gorathian’s lair. He let them drop into the depths, and with each additional bit of flesh, the monster flared and growled.

  Willim knew that Gorathian preferred living flesh to carrion. Even so, the beast seemed content with the bonus feeding. Perhaps it even regretted the earlier impetuous hunger that had caused it to sweep Ochre, along with Willim’s enemies, to death. At least, Willim would like to think that the beast was capable of that kind of remorse. In any event, the fire in the deep pit was banked low, a dim crimson radiating like embers from the depths of the world. And the wizard was free to turn to his task.

  He had a spell to cast. He found a large ceramic bowl and filled it with clear water. He removed a pinch of charcoal from the bottom of his storage cask-the part that hadn’t been incinerated by his blast of rage after the Aghar’s escape-and dropped it in the water.

  He considered the next component he desired and cursed. If he had retained even a drop of the magical elixir, he could have cast his spell with guaranteed accuracy. Instead he would have to settle for an approximation. Using a small pinch of mushroom powder, he added fungus to the water, stirring the liquid with precise strokes of an ivory paddle. When the contents were mixed and swirling smoothly, he concentrated on the look, the smell, the feel of his missing potion, and cast the words to the spell of location.

  Immediately the components in the swirling liquid came together in a snakelike mass, writhing against the direction of the water’s flow. A black image took on a solid aspect, first as a coil but gradually straightening itself into an arrow. The arrow spun like the needle of a deranged compass, but as the water’s swirl gradually settled, the arrow grew still. The tail dropped to the bottom of the bowl, and the tip pointed almost straight up.

  For several seconds it remained fixed until the water ceased its movement and the arrow dissolved, leaving a pale-brown mixture, completely still, in the bowl.

  And Willim had all the information he needed-at least, all he could gain from his imperfect components.

  Thoughtfully he leaned his head back, turning his eyeless face toward the ceiling of the lofty cavern. So the idiot Aghar had teleported himself-and the potion he unwittingly carried in his pocket-almost straight up. That would simplify matters. Since the imperfect spell revealed the direction of the object sought but not the distance, a compass bearing such as north or south could have meant that the wretched thief had teleported one or even one thousand miles in that direction. However, since the direction was primarily upward, it seemed likely that the gully dwarf was somewhere high in the peaks of the Kharolis Mountains, the lofty summits towering over all of vast Thorbardin.

  “Good,” Willim declared.

  For a moment he considered teleporting after the Aghar himself, but he quickly discarded the tempting thought. No, it would take some searching, perhaps a lot of searching, before the fool was discovered. Much as Willim would have relished making that discovery himself, he had too many other things to do back there in his lair.

  So he would have to cast another spell.

  That one required heat, and again he grimaced, remembering that in his rage he had smashed his favorite granite worktable. He would have to use a bench that had been carved from the bedrock of the mountain, a stone cube near one wall of the laboratory that had once been intended as the dais for a thane’s throne. He touched it with his hand and murmured the spell, and immediately the stone glowed red. As Willim concentrated on the magic, the illumination gradually faded to yellow, and finally the stone was white hot. So intense was its radiance that the wizard, generally immune to such discomfort, was forced to take a step back.

  Quickly he went about assembling the rest of his components, gathering them in a medium-sized iron cauldron. Scales and dried blood were tossed in, as well as the eyes of insects and other, even less pleasant, ingredients. When he came to the final, and most vital, ingredient, he cursed aloud, remembering the dwarf corpses he had fed to Gorathian. If he had only remembered to save one of them!

  Searching a
round, he surveyed his chamber, his eyeless face turning this way and that as his spell of true-seeing swept the half-destroyed room. It came to the cage where the two elves had died, slain by the cloudkill spell, and immediately the dark dwarf nodded to himself: an elf corpse would work just as well as a dwarf.

  With a flick of his finger and a muttered word, he lifted the rigid body of the male elf and brought it over to the cauldron. A few more manipulations placed the heart and the brain of the corpse into the vat; the rest of the drying flesh was discarded. Finally, he set the metal kettle on the white-hot stone of his workbench and stepped back to work another incantation.

  The raising of a minion was not something to be done casually or quickly. For more than an hour, Willim stood before the cauldron, working the spell, sweat pouring from the Theiwar’s face, trickling through his beard, causing his robe to stick to his skin. Never, however, did his intense concentration waver, and finally the kettle began to smoke then to burn. Flames shot upward, at first yellow and bright, then gradually fading to pale blue flickers barely extending over the rim, and at last fading away.

  The cauldron continued to smoke, however, and that smoke grew thick, black, and strangely opaque. It rose in a column, but instead of dispersing through the chamber, it held together, coalesced, and in fact seemed to concentrate in on itself as more and more churning vapor surged into the cloud. Very slowly, the smoke emerging from the cauldron diminished as all of the components were consumed. Finally, there was nothing left save for the tall, amorphous pillar of black murk lingering in the air over the black kettle.

  “Minion-awaken!” Willim commanded, his voice booming through the chamber. At the same time, he clenched both fists, and the smoke column contracted, writhing and, increasingly, wailing as the magic wove it into a physical presence. It floated to the side, then settled down onto the floor of the chamber. Two slender legs, ending in taloned feet, extended downward to support its weight. A pair of black, batlike wings extended from its shoulders. Finally eyes appeared: almond shaped and wide set, like the eyes of an elf.

  But those eyes were red and glowing with hellish heat like the blazing coal within a hot forge.

  Willim concentrated his thoughts; then, without speaking, he conveyed to his minion a mental image of the gully dwarf and instructed it to follow in the direction the Aghar had gone away from there. Only then did the Black Robe give voice to his command.

  “Pursue the gully dwarf until you catch him. When you do, kill him and bring me everything he carries.”

  The minion bowed deeply, those eerie elf eyes pressing all the way to the floor, in obeisance. Then the black wings spread and the horrid creature, taller than a tall man, took flight. It rose, met the stone ceiling of the vast cavern, and continued on through the bedrock of the world.

  TEN

  Heading South

  Garren Bluestone, pushing Brandon before him, rushed through the front door of his family’s manor. “Send for Harn Poleaxe,” he ordered his doorman. The young dwarf, a lanky Daewar, departed at once.

  “Father!” complained Brand. “I was telling the truth; I deserved to be heard!”

  “You deserved to be heard, maybe. But your actions were more likely to get you arrested, even killed!” declared the elder in exasperation. “Don’t you understand who wields the power in this nation? The power, whether you want to believe it or not, of life and death?”

  “I saw the death part,” growled the son.

  His father’s face fell, looking as though he had been struck a physical blow, and Brandon immediately regretted his tone. But Garren’s voice when next he spoke was steady, almost calm.

  “I only have one son left. We have to get you out of Kayolin,” he said bluntly. “As soon as possible.”

  “Do you think the governor will try to kill me right here in Kayolin? First they’ll have to arrest me, give me a trial!” Brandon blurted in disbelief.

  His father glared sternly at him. “The king, I keep telling you, can do anything he prefers to do. And if it can’t be done legal and nice, Lord Heelspur has plenty more of his thugs to throw at you. One will pick a fight; others will be lurking. Your temper is not without some renown.” Garren looked wistful as he regarded his youngest son. “And everyone knows about the Bluestone luck. Whatever your fate, many people will say that you provoked it and you got what you deserved. Others will say it’s simply the curse that follows our house. We are in a real pickle here. My son, I would like to fight them too, but we have to keep you safe while we build up our case, muster allies and supporters.”

  “But- leave? You tell me I must leave Kayolin?” Like most of the nation’s mountain dwarves, he had done his share of exploring the peaks and valleys of the Garnet Range. But the land beyond those lofty summits was completely unknown to him. “Where would I go?” he asked, finally.

  “That’s where Poleaxe comes in. Now collect a few traveling things-just the essentials-and be here the moment he arrives. I’ll have a purse of about eighty steel coins for you; you’ll have to use it pay expenses, book passage on a ship, and so forth. We have no time to waste. And Brandon-”

  “Yes, what?” he asked, numbly.

  “Take your axe, and remember your house. It has not always been a legacy of bad luck, you know. Balric Bluestone was carrying that weapon when he set off to climb Garnet Peak. He was lost in the Cataclysm, but his axe was returned to us-the rescuers found it immediately, as soon as they went to look for him.”

  “I… I know the story,” Brandon replied, confused.

  “The point is, I’ve always felt that discovery meant something to us, to our family. It’s a symbol of hope, a sign that if we look toward the future, there is a promise of better things ahead. Bear it proudly, and find that future. Now go.”

  Brandon’s heart was pounding as he went to his rooms and looked at the tunics, trousers, cloaks, boots, and belts that made up his wardrobe. Buy passage on ship? He couldn’t even imagine floating on an ocean! He had a chest of tools, another of weapons, each containing implements he had used during the nearly five decades of his life as he grew to adulthood. How could he shrink it down to the few items he could carry on his back?

  He was standing there, feeling helpless, when his mother came in. Karine walked up to him, and he put an arm around her, drawing her against him, surprised by how frail, how small, she felt.

  “I understand I am losing two sons today,” she said sadly.

  He frowned. In his own wallowing, he had forgotten how his actions would affect the rest of his family. “I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to-I don’t want to-that is, Father insists-”

  “And he’s right,” she said firmly. “He told me what happened in the court. You won’t be safe here, but you should know, Brandon, that I am so proud of you.”

  “But-why? I haven’t done anything to make you proud!”

  “Shh,” she said quietly, touching a finger to his lips. “I know what you and your brother found. And I know what you did, carrying him out of the delvings by yourself. You are a credit to yourself and to our house.”

  He couldn’t speak for a moment, just held her close. Finally he waved his free hand at his wardrobe and chests. “I don’t even know what to take,” he admitted.

  “Let me help,” she said practically, bustling over to the chests, throwing the lids open, and clucking her tongue at the mess she saw in each. Yet somehow, in the space of a few short minutes, she had helped him gather together a compact traveling kit. He donned his most durable clothes, wrapped a knife, a waterskin, gloves, and a rope into a spare robe, and strapped his axe to the sheath on his back. The cook brought in some bread and cheese wrapped in dried lambskin that Brandon could carry in his belt pouch. At his mother’s advice, he put on his most comfortable walking boots, leaving both his hobnailed climbing boots and the ceremonial footwear he had worn to the palace behind.

  He said a dignified good-bye to his mother, though her courageously dry eyes made him wan
t to cry. “Go,” she whispered into his ear, and the anguish in her voice made him understand her grief and steeled his own resolve. He emerged to find that Harn Poleaxe had come quickly and was being ushered into his father’s study.

  “I have reconsidered,” Garren Bluestone said to the hill dwarf when the Neidar and the patriarch were comfortably seated. Brandon stood inside the doorway, watching and listening as his father spoke. “I accept your terms, on two additional conditions.”

  “Excellent!” rejoiced Poleaxe before narrowing his eyes. “Conditions?” he said warily. “My offer is on the table: a hundred times a thousand steel pieces for the Bluestone.”

  Brandon tried to listen, though his head was whirling with the fast pace of events. He couldn’t even imagine a hundred times a thousand pieces of steel. And what were the new conditions? He had a feeling they involved himself, and his departure.

  “The terms don’t change,” Garren declared. “But the conditions are these: I want you to take my son with you when you return to Hillhome. And you must leave immediately.”

  Poleaxe blinked, looking Brandon up and down in blunt appraisal. “To the first, I agree,” he said. “Your young son is a hale companion, and of course I will welcome his company. But why the second?” he asked, perplexed. “Is the lad in some trouble?”

  “Precisely,” Garren replied. “He can tell you about it when you are on your way. Time’s a-wasting. Can you do it?”

  Poleaxe shrugged, the simple gesture seeming somehow grandiose, almost kingly. “I will need an hour or two to settle my affairs. And, of course, I don’t have those steel pieces readily at my disposal. It will take some time to arrange for a moneylender’s draft to be sent up here from the south. You understand, after all this time, I did not anticipate having to conclude our arrangement in the matter of a few minutes.”