“I do understand. Brandon will carry the stone until you have the draft sent. Will that be adequate?”
Harn Poleaxe stroked his beard, his handsome features marked by a pensive expression. “Yes, I agree. We can leave as soon as I’ve settled my affairs; I travel light, and I have nothing that I can’t leave behind for another trip.” He looked at Brandon then rested a hand-a hand that thumped down with the force of a felled tree-on the younger dwarf’s shoulder. “What about you, young Bluestone? Are you prepared for an arduous journey?”
Brandon, speechless, could only nod his head in the affirmative.
Garren cleared his throat then rose to his feet. He removed a key from beneath his tunic, one that he wore on a chain around his neck, and inserted it into a niche in the wall that Brandon had never before recognized as a lock. With a quick turn, he released the catch then pulled open the heavy stone door to reveal a large safe. Within was a single object, wrapped in soft leather, that looked to Brandon to be about the size of a hammer’s head. He set the thing on his desk and slowly, reverently, unfolded the wrapping.
Though, throughout his life, Brandon had seen the Bluestone Wedge depicted on tapestries and shields, on the family’s front door and on his father’s ornate breastplate, but he had always thought it to be an abstract symbol. He had never laid eyes on the precious artifact itself. He was moved by the sight of the actual heirloom. It was just as portrayed: a simple wedge, wide and blunt at one end, while tapered and narrow, though not sharp like an axe blade, at the other. As he had surmised, it was about the size of a regular hammerhead, smaller than the head of a warhammer.
But it was not the shape nor the size of the object that took his breath away. Rather, it was the color. It was not just a turquoise or bluegranite, but nearly the infinite, perfect azure of a sapphire. He imagined he could stare into that stone for hours and never see the same image twice, as if there were countless facets and unique features, dazzling details that would compel him to keep seeking, confound him with wonder at each new discovery.
He shook his head, and it was almost like breaking out of a trance. Harn Poleaxe, he saw too, was similarly transfixed. Garren Bluestone was ignoring the Neidar, watching his son with an expression, Brandon hoped with a pang, that indicated he was proud and satisfied with the object of his scrutiny.
Finally, with a curt gesture, his father pulled the wrapping over the stone again, and the spell was broken.
“Here you go,” he said, hoisting the bundle and handing it to Brandon. “It’s time you two were on your way.
“Now this will be Caergoth, coming up,” Harn Poleaxe said ten days later, gesturing expansively to the large community ringed by fortified walls and towers and crowned by a massive castle, that had been gradually materializing before the two dwarves during their past three hours riding along the road. “Greatest port in southern Solamnia-though they say it’s no match for Palanthas, way up in the north.”
Brandon looked up, startled out of a reverie that had involved both the barmaid Bondall and the heiress Rona Darkwater. He was relieved to see the Neidar hadn’t noticed his inattention.
“So this is where we hire a ship to take us south, across the Newsea?” he asked.
It had been a long, hard ten days. His rump was so sore, he thought he’d never want to sit down again. How could a horse be so damned uncomfortable? And wobbly? And just plain cantankerous? As if to mock him, the animal underneath him shivered and lurched a bit, sending new jolts of pain through his buttocks and lower back.
He squinted, impressed in spite of himself with the vista of the great, fortified city ahead. But it was so confounded bright out there on the plains; he had a constant headache, it seemed, just from trying to cope with the sunlight and the wide vista of sky. Of course, he’d been outside of Kayolin before, exploring the mountains of the Garnet Range, but most of his forays had been through the lush pine forests, and even when he’d been up on the rocky ridges, there always seemed to be stone and cliff and frowning overlook looming over him, intermittently blocking out the blistering rays. For four days they had been out in the wide open, and it seemed as if the clouds had decided to stay permanently out of sight. For four days he had suffered the full blazing glory of the sun.
“So we’re going right to the docks when we get there?” he asked hopefully.
“Nah,” Harn said breezily. “There’s an inn I know in the castle district. Friendly folk, even some dwarves. Like as not we’ll be able to rustle up a game or two of knucklebones. You know, a little social activity before we head out on the water.”
Harn gave an involuntary shiver at the word water, and Brandon sympathized. The idea of travel by sea held little appeal for any dwarf. They were traveling by ship because there was no other way to get back to Harn’s hill country, in the rugged foothills of the Kharolis Mountains, which wasn’t too far from fabled Thorbardin itself.
Yet despite his reluctance to leave dry land behind, Brandon was even more reluctant to stay in the Solamnic city any longer than was strictly necessary.
“Remember what happened in Garnet?” he prodded, noticing that Harn had produced his flask of dwarf spirits and was leaning back to swizzle a long gulp. Brandon glumly shook his head when his companion generously extended the bottle toward him.
“Of course I do,” the Neidar declared irritably. “I told you, it was vital that we buy horses! And it was. Sore as your ass is right now, trust me, you didn’t want to walk that long road on foot. We’d still be coming up on the Kingsbridge, fifty miles back!”
“It took two hours to buy horses,” Brandon pointed out. “We were in Garnet for four days!”
Although he was complaining, Brandon had to admit that the days-and, especially, the nights-in the bustling city at the foot of the Garnet range had been an eye-opening experience and not without its share of good times. Three days after walking out of Kayolin’s main gate, the two dwarves had emerged from the foothills and entered the first city, other than Garnet Thax, that Brandon had ever visited in his life.
The sights and sounds and smells had been overwhelming-tantalizing and thrilling, even. The population was mostly human, but the people were very amenable to dwarves-and dwarven coin. Harn had led his young companion immediately to his favorite inn, where the Neidar had proceeded to get drunk and make friends with everyone in the place. Brandon had been preoccupied taking in the sights, talking to the first humans he had ever met-the women, in particular, seemed taken by his broad shoulders and friendly, easygoing grin-and sampling some of the meat and bread and cheese that wasn’t available in sunless Kayolin. Besides he couldn’t keep up with Poleaxe on a drink-for-drink basis.
That was just as well because the Neidar overdrank and needed Brandon’s help just to walk from the first inn to another of his favorite places, where Harn got even drunker. In his third favorite inn, Brandon had pulled his companion out just before a fight erupted, and in the fourth, when the fisticuffs inevitably commenced, Brandon had simply joined in the fun, and the two dwarves had triumphed over all comers in an exhilarating brawl.
But when the same pattern repeated itself the following night, and the night after that, Brandon began to feel a little concerned and restless. Harn kept assuring him he was shopping for the right horses, but the young dwarf grew increasingly skeptical, mainly because they never visited any stables or farms. Finally, on the fourth morning, he had let Harn sleep it off in their boardinghouse room, and Brandon himself had gone in search of a livery stable. Since there seemed to be one on about every other block of Garnet, his search hadn’t taken long. He had purchased a pair of serviceable, if not spectacular mounts, and tipped the stable boy enough that the lad cheerfully showed him how to saddle and bridle the horses, how to stay balanced on said saddle, plus a few tips on food and water requirements for the mounts. The transaction cost him ten of the eighty coins his father had sent with him, but he deemed the investment worth it. By the time Harn had woken up, groggy and hungover, Brando
n was waiting outside their lodgings with the horses raring to go and all their possessions packed into their saddlebags-except for the Bluestone, which Brandon always kept wrapped and bound in a secret bundle he tucked into the small of his back.
Brandon shrugged and decided not to argue the point. If truth be told, he was hungry and thirsty, and the inn below Caergoth Castle proved to be a convivial place. Brandon was pleased to get a hot meal into his companion before Harn started on his second bottle of dwarf spirits. The young Hylar, by comparison, decided that he would stick with beer, which-much to his surprise-the humans had proved capable of brewing with commendable quality.
As Caergoth was the second human city he had visited, Brandon felt almost like a sophisticate as they wolfed down a hearty meal and listened to a pair of minstrels playing their exotic lutes over in a corner. The two dwarves struck up a conversation with a quartet of pikemen, in uniform but unarmed, who were eating and drinking at the next table.
“Do you serve in the army of the king of Solamnia?” asked Brandon. He was buzzing enough with the effects of his beers that he took no offense when the men reacted with laughter.
“We have no king in Solamnia,” one scoffed. “Haven’t for years.”
“Yeah that’s right, Bennett,” said his companion. “We got something better: an emperor!”
“Guess you ain’t heard,” the one called Bennett said to the dwarves. “We’re an empire again! Why, me and my blokes here, we helped to make it so. Didn’t, we boys?”
“Aye,” said another. “We fought the horde of Ankhar the half-giant when Jaymes Markham was our lord marshal, and we fought him again after he was made emperor! If Ankhar wasn’t dead, I’d be ready to go to war with him and fight with the emperor a third time tomorrow.”
“Aye, and me too,” pledged the fourth pikeman, who looked morosely into his empty glass. “There’s not been a merry war for nigh on a year now!”
“Here, let me buy you lads a round,” said Harn Poleaxe, waving a barmaid over and securing a pitcher of beer for each table. Brandon was quietly glad his companion was eschewing the stronger dwarf spirits, at least for the time being. “Tell us about this war.”
Brandon knew a little something about the campaigns of the Solamnics against the barbarian horde of the half-giant, Ankhar. Regar Smashfingers had sent several companies of dwarves to the emperor’s aid, and his forgers made quite a profit, so it was said, selling strong spring steel to the humans so they could build some newfangled kind of weapon, a bombard it was called, that had proved a decisive factor in the wars. Of course, that highly profitable activity had been limited to the king’s inner circle; the Bluestones hadn’t been involved. Still, since many of the goblins and ogres of Ankhar’s army had been drawn from the valleys of the Garnet Range and had perished in the war, the outcome of the conflict had had a beneficial effect on the dwarven kingdom.
“So how big is this empire?” Brandon wondered, thinking about how much ground he and Poleaxe had covered since they left home. It was a big world, he was beginning to realize, but it was startling to think they had been traveling in one nation that whole time.
“Why, Garnet and Caergoth are just the far south,” Bennett explained. “We got Solanthus and Vingaard and Thelgaard. The empire goes all the way to Palanthas, way in the north. That’s where the emperor has his palace.”
“Say, you fellows wouldn’t be interested in a little wagering, would you?” Harn said casually, pulling out the small bag holding his knucklebones. He rolled the shaped ivories onto the table, smiling as each settled with three points turned up. “I have a few steel coins been burning a hole in my money pouch.”
Before Brandon knew what was happening, the two tables had been pushed together and each of the four men and two dwarves had a small pile of coins stacked before him. Ever mindful of his family’s luck, the young mountain dwarf decided to limit his gambling to twenty steel pieces. They took turns rolling the bones, making bets, passing their steel pieces back and forth, and drinking from the never-ending stream of pitchers that Harn Poleaxe kept ordering.
Brandon was having a great time, even though he was down to his last two coins after a couple of hours. He noticed, vaguely, that the four soldiers were also short on coins, while Harn Poleaxe had somehow amassed a rather impressive pile of the valuable steel pieces. Perhaps Brandon was aware that the emperor’s men were not having as much fun as he was, but he was still surprised when the fight erupted.
For some reason, Bennett broke his mug over Harn’s head, an act that did little more than get the big Neidar to freeze, raise his eyebrows irritably, and rise to his feet with a grin and a roar-somehow sliding his coin stack into his purse at the same time. Poleaxe swung a wild punch at the pikeman. The blow failed to connect with its intended target while knocking out the soldier sitting directly to Bennett’s left.
Another of the men lunged at Brandon, who defended himself instinctively, first breaking the fellow’s hold around his neck then clocking him with a punch that smashed his nose into a flat purple bruise. Harn, meanwhile, grasped the necks of both Bennett and the fourth man and pulled, crunching the two heads together and letting the men flop, unconscious, onto the table.
Somehow, however, the two dwarves had failed to notice that the bar was heavily crowded with other humans who were all wearing the same blue tunics as their gambling companions. Those soldiers wasted no time in joining in, lunging after the dwarves, and for a lively ten minutes, the two traveling companions stood back to back, enjoyably defending themselves against thrown chairs and bottles, punches and kicks.
Then a bugle suddenly sounded, and the whole bar cleared out, seemingly in the space of an instant, leaving only the two dwarves and about a dozen pikemen who were unconscious, injured, or simply too stunned to scramble away. The front door-none of the fleeing soldiers had departed that way-burst open, and three tall knights came striding in. Their heavy armor was decorated with the image of a white crown on their chests. The largest marched forward, looming over the dwarves, and glared down at them with his hands on his chest. Brandon, no stranger to facial hair, couldn’t help but be impressed by the fellow’s long, feathered mustaches.
“What in the name of all the gods is going on here?” he demanded.
“Who wants to know?” shot back Harn Poleaxe, trying to step forward and being quickly restrained by Brandon’s strong arm.
“We were fairly defending ourselves, your lordship,” the Hylar said politely.
The knight looked in contempt at the scattered soldiers, some of whom, groaning, were trying to sit up or push themselves to their feet. “Against this rabble?” he asked.
“We were led to believe they were honorable soldiers,” Brandon explained. “But they didn’t take kindly to my companion’s success at knucklebones.”
“What kind of success?” the knight demanded, looming closer.
“None of your-oof!” Harn’s retort was interrupted by Brandon’s elbow to his guts.
“Show him,” the mountain dwarf encouraged in a conversational tone.
Grudgingly, the Neidar pulled out his money purse and displayed the steel coins. The knight reached in and helped himself to a handful, eyeing Poleaxe sternly, while Brandon kept a tight grip on his companion’s arm-partly to hold him back and partly to hold him up, for the Neidar was starting to sway alarmingly.
“How long are you planning to stay in town?” the knight asked when he had taken his share, glaring at them. “Do I need to clear space in my dungeon for you?”
“We’re leaving first thing in the morning,” Brandon said at once.
“Yeah. First thing,” Harn agreed sullenly.
“Very well,” the knight replied, smiling tightly. “We can escort you to a nice room by the waterfront. You don’t want to be late for the morning tide.”
ELEVEN
Working Without A Roof
The High Kharolis is the loftiest, most extensive mountain range upon the continent of Ansalon. The
summits are grand and numerous, and while they are not so craggy as some of the Khalkist Mountains and they are not fiery volcanoes like the Lords of Doom, their majesty is apparent to anyone within fifty miles of the foothills of the range. They cap the great subterranean city of Thorbardin and have long been a fastness of the dwarf race. The mountain dwarves preferred to live under the mountains themselves, while the hill dwarves populated the outer valleys, their towns and villages too numerous to count, spreading out over nearly all of the habitable space below the range’s timberline.
Late at night those communities mostly slumbered. Here and there sounds of raucous celebration-punches landing on noses, curses exchanged, crockery smashed over heads, kicks bouncing off kneecaps-indicated not all the hill dwarves had turned in for the night. Mostly those revelries were confined to the village inns and taverns, though in a few cases the sounds arose from private homes, part of the sweet togetherness that was the typical dwarf marriage. In most of the houses, a fire ebbed on the hearth or a candle glimmered in a window, giving a pastoral illumination to the simple villages in the Kharolis valleys.
Of course, in the great undermountain realm, there was no night, no day. Forges smoked and smiths banged away throughout the great city of Norbardin. Farmers worked the great food warrens, some using the mighty Urkhan worms to pull their implements through the moist loam, others harvesting fungus in a hundred varieties or fish from their breeding ponds for hauling the next morning to the city’s famed market. But those activities occurred out of sight of the world and, for most, out of awareness.
The highest summit of the Kharolis was the mountain known as Cloudseeker. Eternally shrouded in snow and glacier, it was a massive peak made even more monumental by the fact it was not completely surrounded by cliffs. Instead, it rose from the bedrock with broad shoulders, long, sinuous ridges connecting to the lower summits, and slopes leading down to the valleys with their forests and lakes. It was one of the loftiest mountains in the world, but because of those long, gradual slopes, it was not impossible to climb. Still, the thin air, cold temperatures, and constant winds made the climb inhospitable.
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