The Last Thane

by Doug Niles

  His eyes—pale, luminous, and staring—peered through a narrow slit in the robe that covered his face. He moved with utter silence, testing each handhold and foothold as he crept upward through an angling shaft. For many hours he had passed through the inky darkness, and now as he drew near to his destination, he would make no mistake, nothing that would yield a telltale sound or sign of his presence.

  The shaft turned at right angles so that it ran horizontally, but even here the cloaked dwarf moved with painstaking care. Placing one knee after the other, one careful handhold at a time, he crawled forward. Eventually he drew near an iron grate that allowed air, smoke, and sound to waft into the stone-walled duct. He heard sounds of laughter and argument, the boasts, insults, and curses that were the hallmark of any Daergar gathering. Once those noises swelled into angry shouts and the masked intruder stiffened, wondering if he had missed his chance. But the bitter words settled into murmurs again, and apparently no blows were exchanged.

  Finally he reached the grate. Ever so slowly he extended the top of his head over the opening, giving himself a view into the chamber below. The room was utterly dark, but the Daergar’s eyes were keen enough to penetrate that murk.

  About a hundred dark dwarves were crowded into the room. The smells of sweat, ale, and vomit were thick in the air, clear indication that the festivities had been going on for a long time. Most of the crowd was male, though the watcher could see a few females working and playing among the dark dwarf warriors. The observer took his time, scanning the sea of Daergar in the crowded banquet hall until he found the one that he sought.

  Khark Huntrack was the strong, sturdy dwarf, seated amid a ring of burly bodyguards. Additional guards stood at the two doors that gave access to this chamber, and these barriers were closed, locked and solidly barred. A sharp rapping came from one of those portals, which was opened a crack by guards holding drawn swords. They left an aperture just wide enough to let a few more dark dwarf wenches slip into the room. Each of these was frisked with some enthusiasm by one or another of the guards, and only when it had been determined that none of them were armed were the bawdy females allowed to enter and mingle with the celebrating Daergar warriors.

  Another keg was tapped with a loud hammer blow, and pitchers were filled from the foaming outflow. Khark Huntrack himself took a big swig from one of the first mugs, wiping the back of his hand across the froth on his beard. He uttered a loud belch that was greeted with applause, but the surreptitious observer knew Khark wouldn’t be caught drunk. His bodyguards, too, were sober.

  Grinning behind the gauze of his face mask, the watcher wriggled around in the ventilation tunnel until he could reach the frame of his crossbow. He assembled the weapon and tightened the mighty spring with silent, practiced movements, all the while keeping his eyes on the gathering in the room below. At last he removed a steel-shafted dart from his small quiver, laying the missile into the groove atop his small but powerful bow.

  Only then did he pull the gauze from his face. He settled the weapon onto the edge of the grate and took his time, drawing a careful bead on his target. When he was absolutely certain that he had a clean field of fire, he removed a tiny vial from a pocket at his shoulder. Uncapping the bottle, he smeared a dark, oily substance on the arrowhead.

  He took aim again, exhaling slowly as he felt the sweet tension in the spring and pressed the smooth wood of the stock against his cheek. His finger seemed a piece of the weapon, melding itself to the trigger, slowly applying tension. Never blinking, he studied his target with those luminous eyes.

  Khark Huntrack took a long pull from his mug, leaning his head far back to drain the last drops. His eyes, shrewd and slitted, met the stare of the figure perched at the ceiling grate and widened in surprise.

  The chunk of the crossbow’s release was a sound that cut through the boisterous crowd in the hall. The missile flew downward, missing the mug and Khark’s upraised arm, vanishing into the nest of tangled curls that was the Daergar’s beard. The dark dwarf tumbled backward, his chair smashing onto the floor, and Khark’s lips worked desperately, struggling to make a sound, perhaps to utter a curse or a prayer.

  The room had fallen into a stunned, shocked silence.

  “Poison!” hissed one bodyguard, leaping to his feet and snatching up his master’s drained mug.

  But another of the guards was more astute. He knelt beside the stiffening corpse, touching the shaft of the missile that jutted upward from the nest of the messy beard.

  “No,” said the second dark dwarf, eyes swinging upward to regard the ceiling grate. There was no sign of the assassin, but the Daergar pointed upward with certainty.

  “Slickblade,” he said.

  At the word all the Daergar in the room gasped in horror and, in unison, backed away from Khark Huntrack’s lifeless body.

  The World of Tarn Bellowgranite

  Chapter Four

  The young dwarf swaggered along the waterfront of Hybardin, gratified as the thronging Hylar parted before him. Let them stand aside, he thought with private scorn. Let them wonder who I am.

  The reaction was welcome and not unfamiliar. As always, it provoked a sense of his own uniqueness, a powerful and arrogant awareness. If a burly Hylar dockman had failed to step out of the way, Tarn Bellowgranite would have been quite ready to move the fellow with his fist. He found himself glaring at the crowd, looking for someone who might give him the satisfaction of a fight. But these Hylar seemed to have other matters on their minds, for no one took the trouble even to return his stare with a similar expression of belligerence. Instead, each dwarf lowered his eyes as Tarn looked his way, or shifted himself to quickly study the dark waters of the lake. Some bent to inspect some particularly tempting bit of mushroom, bread, or meat offered by one of the dockside vendors.

  Tarn should have been used to this by now, but on some deep and hidden level the attitude of the Hylar bothered him. Yet he was still one of them, in more ways than he was ready to count. His head was crowned with the golden hair, considered a mark of beauty among the Hylar, and even his beard was a straw yellow, unusually light. But his eyes were his mother’s: large whites surrounding pupils of an abiding violet that darkened to purple when his thoughts were grim, as they were now. Those were eyes that could never be found in a Hylar’s face, and Tarn knew that his habit of staring frankly at strangers was cause for great unease among the dwarves around him.

  Let them be uneasy then.

  He reached the chain ferry on time, and his mother arrived soon after, accompanied by several servants and a great cargo of crates, satchels, and bags. She nodded as she saw him, then turned to the business of ordering her luggage stowed. Only when that was arranged to her satisfaction did she turn back to her son.

  “You’re really going?” he asked her, still somehow surprised despite her message to that effect this morning.

  “Of course, and I’ll expect to see you soon,” she replied. “There’s room for you in the house, so plan to stay for a long time.”

  “Yes, I’ll come. I don’t know when, just now, but I will.”

  “Don’t let your father bully you into staying away,” she warned, scowling so he knew she was serious.

  “I won’t,” Tarn responded, though privately he doubted that Baker Whitegranite could bully anyone—and certainly not his son.

  “Good. Remember, you are half Daergar. Don’t let this place of lights and gardens drive you mad. It just about did that to me.”

  Tarn had been to his mother’s homeland enough to know what she meant. Where the Hylar preferred flowing water, graceful architecture, and at least the minimal light provided by the sunshafts and their many small, smokeless lamps, Daerforge and its great sister city, Daerbardin were places of unrelieved darkness. Where the Hylar built for beauty, the Daergar built for strength. Great, blocky bulwarks marked the ends of the wharves there, and the buildings were ugly but practical, square of edge and thick of wall. The wide streets of the Daergar city were s
traight, unadorned by gardens or fountains; such amenities were recognized as a waste of space by the ever practical dark dwarves. Instead, they had avenues along which entire armies could quickly be moved from one side of the city to another.

  “I’ll be careful,” he assured her. “And I’ll come as soon as I can.”

  He helped his mother load her things and watched as she sailed away. Her mood had been brisk and cool, though she sharply chided the boatmen, Hylar and Daergar alike, whom she deemed overly careless in loading her crates on the large craft. No damage was done, and Tarn watched his mother’s spirits brighten once she’d had the chance to utter a few choice insults.

  Her farewell to her only son had been formal, though her wish that he come to visit was undoubtedly sincere. Still, she clearly had other matters on her mind, so Tarn’s presence at her departure seemed a mere afterthought. He doubted that she felt any of the emptiness, the sense of alienation, that now overwhelmed Tarn as the boat lurched away and he turned to amble along the crowded wharf.

  Above, the overhang of the Life-Tree swept outward and up, lofting the great city of the Hylar into the cavernous heights of Thorbardin’s vast, central chamber. Though he had grown up in this city, Tarn was still able to feel a sense of amazement. Hybardin had been carved over the course of twenty five centuries, one room or passageway at a time, into this great pillar of rock. The island at the base of the pillar was completely encircled by docks, wharves, warehouses, and the machinery buildings anchoring the great pulleys and gears that ran the ferries. He could clearly hear the clanking of steel mechanisms as the chain linking Hybardin to the great manufacturing center of Daerforge lurched in constant motion, pulling the broad ferry over the still waters of the Urkhan Sea. He watched until the flatboat had almost disappeared into the distance.

  A great barge had just tied up to the wharf, the cargo vessel having been hauled to Hybardin by the same chain that was now carrying his mother’s ferry back to the east. Loud crashes sounded as dockworkers lifted out bars of Daergar steel and stacked them to the side. The raw metal shafts would be sent to Hylar craftsmen, who would form the strong metal into blades and spearheads valued across Krynn. Now the air echoed with harsh curses as the Daergar foreman, no doubt irritated by the light from an overhead lantern, berated his team of workers.

  The actual dockside laborers were Klar, Tarn saw, hardy dwarves of the tribe that, according to legend, had been maddened by their experiences during the Cataclysm. The entire clan had been trapped in lightless tunnels with insufficient air, food, and water. Those of the Klar who eventually clawed their way to freedom had proven the strongest of the band, but they—and all their ancestors—had dwelled at the brink of madness ever since. Tarn felt a twinge of sympathy as he saw a Klar worker, towering a head taller than his Daergar overseer, confront his brutal and belligerent superior with a look of dark, glowering hatred. The Daergar raised his whip and shouted an unintelligible insult, and the sullen Klar went quickly back to work.

  Now, as he wrestled through the crowds mingling in a narrow lane that encircled a decorative fountain, Tarn found himself scorning the Hylar propensity for frivolous waste. Surely the waterfront would be better served by removing that fountain and widening the road.

  Determined not to yield his space, Tarn angrily shouldered aside a plump Hylar merchant. That dwarf, his fingers bright with gem-studded rings and his neck ringed by heavy gold chains, turned to rebuke the insolent youngster, but something in the look of the half-breed’s violet eyes caused the merchant to hold his tongue.

  Again the roadway widened as Tarn reached the next section of docks, where another heavy chain extended across the water to the south, connecting the Life-Tree to the Sixth Road, one of the main avenues of food supply, not only to Hybardin but to all the dwarven cities on the Urkhan Sea.

  Tarn watched a crew of working Daewar, dwarves who preferred bright illumination for their activities, and soon his eyes adjusted to the glare of their lanterns. He reflected that his sight was probably the one advantage he had inherited from the cursed match that had brought his parents together. While he was not bothered by light, and unlike the Daergar and Theiwar he could even walk the surface of Krynn in relative comfort under bright sunlight, his vision in full darkness was as adept as any dark dwarf’s.

  He thought, as he spit into the waters of the lake, that it was precious little consolation in exhange for the fact that nowhere in Thorbardin could he really feel at home. Turning, he cut across the dock and climbed one of the four broad stairways connecting the waterfront to the city’s second level. This was a broad, flat plaza focused around the great lift station in the center where the metal cage descended from the hanging mountain overhead to provide a link to Level Three and all of the Life-Tree above.

  He continued on across the plaza, a bustling marketplace where dwarven merchants from all the cities of Thorbardin hawked their wares. Food and drink, clothing and jewelry, and even small tools and minor weapons such as knives and daggers, were all offered by vendors who claimed stalls amid the tangled lanes that twisted among the shops.

  Tarn cursed as something tumbled into the back of his legs. Looking down, he saw that a rotund gully dwarf had tripped over something to sprawl headlong, and his momentum had nearly toppled the bigger, sturdier half-breed.

  “Be careful, you oaf!” snapped Tarn, aiming a kick of his heavy boot at the clumsy Aghar’s head.

  “Watch you step!” protested the gully dwarf, nimbly dodging the blow that would have knocked him senseless. Tarn stumbled, barely catching his balance before he fell, while the filthy little dwarf stood firmly and glared up at him. “I here first!”

  Knowing better than to waste his time in fruitless argument, Tarn turned his back, only to see the pudgy Aghar, moving very quickly for such an awkward-looking fellow, dart around him and wander over to a stand where a bristly haired Theiwar was selling marinated mushrooms. In spite of himself, Tarn chuckled. The gullies were pathetic and irritating, but it was hard for him not to feel a certain kinship to these, the rudest and lowest of Thorbardin’s dwarves. After all, like himself, the Aghar had no true home in the great kingdom. Instead they had to make do with whatever the rest of dwarvenkind was willing to give them.

  The gully dwarf made a great show of sniffing disdainfully at the shriveled balls of fungus, then ducked a backhanded blow that the vendor aimed at his head, disappearing below the front of the stall. When a Hylar lady, her reddish-gold hair bound in twin braids, stopped to inspect the wares, the Theiwar turned his attention to a possible paying customer. Still enjoying himself, Tarn watched and waited.

  The gully dwarf made his move.

  A grubby hand reached over the lip of the table and snatched a particularly succulent mushroom. Immediately the little fellow streaked away, knocking aside shoppers, diving between the legs of a startled Klar.

  “That’s it, you little thief!” screamed the Theiwar, his already squinting features screwed into a map of fury. The dark dwarf touched his left hand to a ring that he wore on his right forefinger, and pointed that digit at the fleeing Aghar.

  “Stop!” he shrieked, and the word was far more than a statement of command. Standing a few feet away, Tarn felt queasy, and the hackles on his neck rose as they always did in the presence of magic.

  The gully dwarf stopped. With a look of dumb amazement, he stared at his feet, which were planted as though anchored to the ground. He twisted around and regarded the Theiwar with stark terror as the vendor came around the side of his stall, drawing a long dagger. Grinning savagely, the dark dwarf ran a finger along the edge of his blade, relishing the Aghar’s terror as he walked nonchalantly forward.

  “Let’s see how nimble-fingered you are when you’ve lost your hand, you wretched little—oof!”

  The Theiwar fell backward, the air driven from his lungs by Tarn’s sternly planted elbow. Getting up from the ground, the fungus merchant snarled in apoplectic anger, his fury now directed at this new target.
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  “I’m sorry. Did I bump you?” asked the half-breed innocently, extending a hand and then withdrawing it as the Theiwar’s knife whipped past his fingers.

  “You bastard, you’ll pay for that ’shroom, or I’ll take it out of your hide! And maybe I’ll take it anyway,” the dark dwarf blustered. Once more his left finger touched the ring, though his pointing was made awkward by the fact that he still clutched the dagger in his right hand.

  Tarn’s own slender short sword was in his hand, swinging upward faster than the squinting Theiwar’s eyes could follow. With a single sharp clang the two weapons came together. The dark dwarf’s knife spun away and Tarn’s blade came to rest at the base of the ring finger.

  “Put that ring in your pocket, unless you want me to do it for you.” Tarn spoke calmly, but the keen edge of his blade brushed the Theiwar’s skin and drew a trickle of blood.

  “Who was that? A friend of yours?” sneered the Theiwar, though he slowly complied with Tarn’s request.

  “No friend,” the half-breed said with a dismissive shrug. “But no enemy either.”

  Apparently deciding that any further bravado would carry untoward risks, the Theiwar sniffed loudly, turned his back, and stomped into his stall. He squawked in outrage when he discovered that his wares had been greatly diminished during the brief altercation; several other gully dwarves, casually ambling through the crowd, were busy licking traces of marinade from their lips and stringy beards. Though he glowered darkly after Tarn, the Theiwar fungus merchant made no further move as the half-breed ambled out of sight.

  Tarn felt a little better after the confrontation. Though the Theiwar, like the Daergar of his mother’s clan, were dark dwarves, he despised them. Unlike any of the other clans, the Theiwar were fond of magic and quite willing to employ it to further their ends. In the eyes of any self-respecting mountain dwarf this was clear proof of cowardice. For a moment Tarn wondered, idly, if he should have grabbed the vendor’s ring and thrown it into the lake. An attempt to do that, he decided, would probably have taken the fight further than he wanted to go.