But the guard from the shop was yelling a warning as he ran to the gate. His cohorts looked up in time to see the hill dwarf’s exhilarated expression as he threw himself from the top of the gate and crashed into them. Their bodies broke his fall, and they were scattered like bowling pins, taking the other guard down with them. Flint jumped to his feet unhurt. The stunned derro could only shake their foggy heads as the barefoot hill dwarf cut left on Main Street and tore down the road and out of sight.
Chapter 6
Hasty Departure
Flint deliberately avoided the village, leading his muddy trail away from the Fireforge home. He would not be able to explain his appearance to his family—from his head to his toes he was mud-caked and spattered with blood. His mind was in a tumult, and he needed to think things out before he could face anyone with his suspicions.
His tender bare feet cold and sore, Flint set out into the eastern hills just south of the pass. Using steel and flint, he made a fire in the seclusion of a small cave that had a mountain stream trickling past it. He stripped off every stitch of his dirty clothing and washed it by hand in the ice-cold water, laying it out to dry on rocks around the fire. The tired old hill dwarf splashed his face, scrubbed the mud from his hair, and then, unclothed, he returned to sit by the fire, staring without thoughts into the flames for a very long time.
Flint’s blue-green cotton tunic dried quickly, and when he slipped it over his head, he was glad for the long hem that dropped to his knees. His leather pants would take much more time to dry. And he dearly missed his boots.
His stomach rumbled now, reminding him that he had not eaten since that morning. Noticing fish in the shallow stream, he knelt beside the water and pushed up his sleeve. He dipped his hand in, slowly herding an unsuspecting rainbow trout to where he could raise his hand quickly and flip the fish onto the shore. It took him four painstaking tries, but finally a small trout, yet a good seven inches long, was flopping around on the sandy cave floor. Flint quickly slit its silvery belly with his carving knife, cleaned it, then skewered the fish on a sharpened stick. He remembered seeing some berries on his way to the cave, and while the fish was roasting over the flames, he picked two handfuls of red raspberries by the light of the waxing moon.
Only after his stomach was full of succulent fish and sweet berries did he feel capable of thinking at all. Though he had only the ramblings of a simpleton to support the belief, Flint knew in his gut that Aylmar must have been murdered, and likely because he knew the true contents of the mountain dwarves’ wagons. He had killed one of the derro on instinct—but on what evidence? The word of the village idiot? Though his family might believe him, he would still be imprisoned, causing great humiliation and the ruination of the Fireforge name in Hillhome. What bothered Flint more, though, was that from jail he would be unable to discover Aylmar’s killer and avenge his brother’s death.
Flint was determined to do both, or die trying. He would keep his suspicions to himself, until he had evidence no one could refute.
“This is a fine example you set for the family!” grumbled a harsh voice from the barn door when Flint arrived on the front lawn the next morning. He had spent a fitful night sleeping in the cave before setting out at dawn, circling around the south side of the village to reach the family home. Ruberik was in a huff, his milking pail in hand. “Disappear all night and then come staggering home—a disgrace, that’s what it is!”
Flint’s feet were blistered and cold, and he had no patience left. “Listen, Brother,” he growled, fixing Ruberik with a glare that halted him in his tracks. “I don’t know what branch of the family could produce such a tight-faced, sneering, pompous sourpuss of a hill dwarf as yourself!”
Ruberik’s eyes bugged out of his head, and he was too astonished to reply before Flint continued. “Whatever quirk of nature made you my brother, you are my younger brother and you’ve taken too much advantage of my good nature. Now, I’ve had enough of your self-important proclamations. You have no idea where I’ve been or what I’ve been doing, so I’ll expect you to keep your opinions to yourself and show some respect to your elders!”
Ruberick’s ruddy face turned ruddier still, and he spun about on his heel, clanging his milking can against the barn door’s frame in his haste to leave. Sighing heavily, Flint stepped into the house and was thinking about grinding some chicory root to make a hot morning cup when Bertina scurried out from the depths of the house and set about the task herself.
She gave Flint an appraising glance, but kept her opinions to herself. “Out a bit late, weren’t you?” She glanced down at his bare, red feet. “I’ll bet Aylmar’s old boots would fit you if you’re needing a pair,” she offered tactfully. She was unfazed. Without waiting for an answer, she fetched a pair of boots very like his own lost ones from the depths of the house.
Flint slipped them on gratefully. They were a little big, which was good now, considering his swollen feet. “Thanks Berti,” he said softly, “for the boots … and for not asking.”
His sister-in-law knew what he meant and nodded, beating some eggs in a bowl. They ate a breakfast of scrambled eggs, buttered bread with jam, and pungent chicory. Flint was about to offer to help clean up when the front door burst open and Tybalt stormed in, holding a pair of mud-caked boots under his arm.
The young dwarf was clearly agitated as he approached Flint. “You recognize these?” he asked, holding the muddy boots up. He looked at Flint’s feet. “Those are Aylmar’s old ones! I knew these were yours!”
“Good morning to you, too, Brother,” Flint said, trying hard to sound nonchalant. He had not thought about being traced by his boots! He took a sip of hot chicory and tried to keep his hand from shaking.
“Don’t ‘good morning’ me!” Tybalt cried, slamming his fist to the table. “What were you up to, anyway? And what possessed you to leave your boots behind?” Tybalt was working himself into a frenzy.
“What in heavens are you talking about, Tybalt?” asked Bertina, handing him a cup of the hot drink.
He waved it away in exasperation. “It seems our visiting brother took a trip through the mountain dwarves’ wagon yard yesterday. They found his muddy boots by the barn.”
Tybalt began to pace before Flint. “That’s not the worst of it. When I showed up at the constabulary for work this morning, I was told a derro had been stabbed to death and that the murderer had left behind his boots! I began to laugh, but then I nearly choked when I saw them,” he snarled, his hands clenching into fists.
Tybalt squinted at Flint. “They have a good description of you, too! The guards you jumped got a good look at your face before you fled. Of course, the description could match practically anyone—except for the boots.”
He resumed pacing, his hands behind his uniformed back. “And then there’s Garth … he heard the description and began jabbering some nonsense about Aylmar being back from the dead to give him bad dreams. Fortunately, the derro don’t pay much attention to the village idiot, but there’s some folk who know that he’s got you all confused with our late eldest brother!”
“Tybalt! I won’t have you calling that poor harrn such things in this house,” Bertina scolded him. “Garth is perfectly pleasant. He just got caught between the hammer and the anvil once too often, is all,” she finished softly.
“Bertina, who cares about Garth?” Tybalt shouted. “Flint murdered a derro in the wagon yard!”
“Aren’t you convicting me without even asking if I did it?” asked Flint.
“Well, did you?” a hesitant Tybalt demanded.
“Would it matter?” Flint asked cagily.
“Of course it would!” Tybalt sank into a chair and tugged at his beard in agitation. “Don’t you see the position you’re putting me in—and me with my promotion coming up! I should hand you over to Mayor Holden. I should, and I just might!”
Flint looked at him squarely. “Do what you must, but you said yourself that the description could fit practically any dwarf in Hil
lhome. Why don’t you just pretend you’ve never seen those particular boots before?”
Tybalt looked like he was being pulled in two pieces. “I can’t do that! I know those boots are yours, and I’m sworn to uphold the law, no matter who breaks it!”
“Who says the killer wore those boots?” Flint suggested. “Perhaps they were thrown into the wagon yard by some cruel young harrns playing a trick on an old dwarf sleeping off an excess of spirits.”
“Is that what happened?” Tybalt asked eagerly, sitting up straight.
“Do you really want to know, Tybalt?”
Tybalt’s eyes closed, and he shook his head quickly. He combed the fingers of both hands through his thinning dark hair. “I shouldn’t even think of doing this,” he began through gritted teeth, “but if you leave town, at least until this blows over, I’ll forget about the boots.” He frowned into Flint’s face. “You don’t seem to care about your own fate, but please consider that the rest of us chose to live in Hillhome, even if you don’t think our lives are very interesting or worthwhile!”
“Stop it!” snapped Bertina to Tybalt, as the muscles in Flint’s jaw tightened. “Are you a human or a dwarf? I declare, sometimes you and your ambitions embarrass me, Tybalt!”
“Thanks, Berti,” Flint said faintly, a hand on her fleshy arm, “but Tybalt’s right—I don’t want to bring shame down on the family. I’ll leave right away.” He fetched his pack and axe from a small storage room behind the kitchen.
Smiling in relief, Tybalt stepped up to Flint as the old dwarf adjusted his backpack. “I’m sorry about this, really. It’s nothing personal. No hard feelings?” he said, thrusting his hand toward Flint.
His brother considered the beefy hand with its stubby fingers, then turned away. “You’re a hypocrite, Tybalt Fireforge, and the worst kind for asking me to help you pretend you’re being saintly instead of selfish.”
Tybalt leaped back as if struck. “But you said I was right about you leaving!”
Flint gave him a pitying smile. “You are, but not for the reasons you think.” He shook his head and then turned to Bertina, anxious to be done with Tybalt. He could hear his brother rushing out of the house behind him.
Flint’s sister-in-law stood mute, tears filling her eyes. Her face glowed a bright crimson that paled all her previous blushes. “You can tell me, Flint. Why would you do such a terrible thing?” she asked, but there was no harsh judgment in her voice.
Flint felt he owed her, wife of his murdered brother, as much of the truth as he dared. “It was self-defense,” he said vaguely, measuring his words.
Bertina brightened through her tears. “Then why don’t you stay and tell the mayor that? He’ll take your word over those of the derro!”
“Do you think so, if it meant he would lose the mountain dwarves’ trade?” Flint shook his head. “No, it’s not that simple, Berti.” He hugged her awkwardly and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” Flint said evasively. “But don’t worry, Bertina, I’ll be back some day.… Soon. Say good-bye to everyone for me.” She slipped a sack full of food into his hands, brushed a kiss across his bristly cheek, then fled into her room at the back of the house.
Flint stood in the sorrowful silence a moment and looked around his family’s home one last time. He wished he could have settled things with Basalt, said good-bye to Bernhard and his sisters—the saucy Fidelia, and naive Glynnis—but they were at work in the town. Ruberik was out in the barn, he knew, but he could not bring himself to offer an explanation for his departure and face the inevitable tongue-lashings. So, he tucked his shiny axe into his belt and walked out the door.
Flint did not notice the small shadow that cut across his path. Nor did he see that anyone was following him as he stomped through the hills to the southwest of Hillhome.
The hill dwarf was too preoccupied with finding his brother’s murderer to notice anything, for he was on his way to the vast dwarven city of Thorbardin.
Chapter 7
A Kingdom of Darkness
The Kharolis Mountains were not the tallest range upon the face of Krynn, nor the most extensive. They did not contain smoldering volcanoes such as the Lords of Doom in Sanction to the north, or the great glaciers found in the Icewall range. The ruggedness of the range’s individual valleys and peaks, however, could be surpassed nowhere on the continent of Ansalon.
Sheer canyon walls dropped thousands of feet into narrow, twisting gorges. Streams poured with chaotic abandon from the heights, slashing their way deeper and deeper into jagged channels of rock, engraving their mark with each passing day. Trees survived only on the lower slopes and valleys; most of the Kharolis range was too rough or too high to support anything more than sparse patches of moss and lichen.
The crests of the range never lost their snowcaps, the hanging teeth of which descended as glaciers into the circular basins of the heights. These twisted and turned in every direction before finally coming to rest in the frigid blue-green waters of the high lakes.
The landscape of the Kharolis Mountains, inhospitable in the extreme, was the home of a populous kingdom and thriving culture that dwelled there quite comfortably, since its members rarely saw the landscape above them.
They were the dwarves of Thorbardin.
Thorbardin was a powerful dwarven stronghold, containing seven teeming cities and an extensive network of roads and subterranean farming warrens. The whole of Thorbardin covered an area more than twenty miles long and fourteen miles wide.
Toiling in their vast underground domain, the dwarves paid little attention to occurrences on the surface world. They had enough space and enough intrigue in their subterranean lairs to last them many centuries.
At the heart of Thorbardin lay the Urkhan Sea. Not a sea at all, it was actually an underground lake some five miles long. Cable-drawn boats crisscrossed the lake in an intricate network, linking most of the cities of the dwarven realm. In the center of the sea was the most amazing city of all: the Life Tree of the Hylar. Twenty-eight levels of dwarven city were carved within a huge stalactite that hung from the cavern roof to dip below the surface of the sea.
Thorbardin drew its food supply from three great warrens. These massive caverns devoted to sunless agriculture were capable of producing huge crops of fungus and mold-based food. Each warren was shared by several cities, but individual food plots were jealously guarded.
Despite its size, Thorbardin was historically connected to the surface world by only two gates, at the north and south boundaries of the kingdom. The Northgate had been destroyed by the Cataclysm. The dwarves had withdrawn into their underground domain, sealed the Southgate against every form of attack they could imagine, and turned their backs on the world.
Although considered one kingdom by outsiders, the mountain dwarves of Thorbardin actually consisted of no less than four identifiable clans, or nations: the Hylar, the Theiwar, Daewar, and the Daergar. Each of these was ruled by a thane, and each had its own interests, goals, even racial tendencies.
Thorbardin’s schisms were aggravated by the absence of one true monarch to rule the kingdom as a whole. According to ancient legend, Thorbardin would become truly united only when one thane obtained the Hammer of Kharas. That ancient artifact, named for the greatest of dwarven heroes, had been missing for centuries. Untold effort, treasure, and lives had been expended, fruitlessly, in attempts to locate it.
Without the hammer to unite them, the nations of the dwarven kingdom struggled against each other. Spies were sent to observe the activities of rival thanes. Treasure stores were jealously watched, because riches—particularly steel and gems—were a traditional measure of dwarven status.
The Hylar, the eldest of the mountain dwarf races, were the traditional masters of Thorbardin. Their might had been severely taxed by the Dwarfgate Wars, however, allowing other nations to gain increased prominence. Most notable among these was the Theiwar clan, made up of derro dwarves and cont
rolled by their magic-using savants.
The derro, paler complected and of slightly larger stature than their Hylar cousins, lived in the northern portion of Thorbardin. They practiced dark magic and were regarded with superstitious awe by other dwarves. They had a well-earned reputation for treachery, betrayal, and sorcerous manipulation. Other mountain dwarves regarded them with fear and extreme distrust.
It was the derro Theiwar who had excavated a new, secret exit from northern Thorbardin, allowing them to send their wagons of weapons to the sea without the knowledge of the other clans. Wealth was power, and the Theiwar intended to be very powerful, indeed.
The great throne room gave an impression of unlimited space, like a wide clearing beneath a silent, nighttime sky. Tall columns stood around the periphery of the chamber, rising into the darkness like massive tree trunks. Low torches flickered in a hundred locations, cloaking the chamber in a warm, yellow light.
The vast chamber, nevertheless, lay more than a thousand feet below the surface of Krynn. Great halls, shielded by massive steel-and-gold doors, led from the throne room to all parts of Theiwar City. A hundred dwarves stood alert at the various doors, clad in gleaming plate mail and armed with axes or crossbows.
Now one of these doors swung slowly open, and a hunchbacked dwarf entered the chamber. His long, bronze-colored robe rustled along the floor behind him. He hastened toward the center of the room.
There, Thane Realgar rested quite comfortably in the massive throne, his boots extended and crossed before him. The ruler was an old dwarf, with white streaking his yellow beard and long, loose-flowing hair. He had ruled the Theiwar clan for many decades. Most of the routine matters of the clan were handled by his chief adviser, so that Realgar could devote his own energies to the search for the Hammer of Kharas. He regarded any business not relating to that hammer as bothersome.
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