Hammer and Axe

8 The Lorekeeper’s Omen

Tag Salan knew, within minutes of entering the crevice under Sheercliff, that he had found what they came to find—the origin of the fog-thing that had wiped out three villages.

The stone-fall on the slope outside the crevice had not been delved from outside. It had been pushed out from within by something very powerful. And there were still marks in the crushed gravel made by the thing’s feet.

Tag rolled tight balls of grass around the ends of sticks, wrapped them with burr-vines, and wove them tight. The resulting bundle of torches—which some dwarves called Theiwar lamps—would give no great light, but each small flame would last for a while. With his first light ignited, Tag drew his blade and entered the dark hole.

The tall, narrow tunnel wound its way into the cliff, turning here and there where scour and erosion had opened faults, but generally going westward and down, deeper and deeper into the stone, hundreds of feet below the mesa. Along most of its length the crevice was no more than a sequence of natural, downward erosion channels, rarely more than a few yards wide, but often so tall that Tag could not see the ceiling. In some places the channels plunged away into dark nothingness both above and below, forcing him to find precarious paths across blind abysses—or to make his own paths. Only where the natural openings were very narrow did he find evidence that something had passed this way. In several such places, stone had been broken away to make the opening broad enough to accommodate something that was at least ten feet wide. In one such place he paused to taste the raw stone of the expanded opening. It was freshly exposed, not more than a month or two at most.

It was slow going, but Tag kept at it. His Theiwar ancestors had been cliff-dwellers who lived in the natural caverns high on sheer mountainsides, and negotiating perilous crevices was as natural to him as working mine shafts to a Daergar, or delving to a Daewar.

By the time the tunnel changed, he could only guess at where he was, but he knew he was at least half a mile into the stone, and many hundreds of feet below its surface.

He barely glimpsed the change in the tunnel before his most recent torch flickered out, and he had to kindle another. But when he had light again, his eyes widened. The erosion channels ended abruptly at a wall of far harder stone, and in this wall was a perfectly round opening, and beyond the opening a perfectly round tunnel angling upward. He estimated the hole to be fifteen feet across.

Stepping into it, he found an obstacle—an ancient, eroded plug of stone that had worn away with the passing of time and fallen inward. It lay now in two pieces, split down the middle, and the break tasted fresh. Whatever had come through here had been blocked by the fallen “gate” and had broken it and gone over it.

Although the break was fresh, the surfaces of the gate were immensely old—as old, Tag guessed, as the mountains themselves. The sides of the tunnel were equally old, though exquisitely delved. They were perfectly smooth, without so much as a tool mark anywhere to indicate how such a thing had been created. The only flaw in the tunnel was a ragged trough running along the bottom of it, crusted with limestone. Water had run here in the past—slowly, but for a very long time. Tag looked around at the mystery and shuddered. It was as though the gods themselves might have made this tunnel, long before there was anybody else around to do it.

Fascinated, he went on, climbing steadily as he followed the strange hole. Upward and onward, the tunnel was as straight as a drawn cable. A quarter mile, then another quarter mile, and suddenly he was at its end. Here another stone gate had eroded and fallen, had lain for untold centuries, then had been smashed aside by something very large and very strong.

Beyond the crushed gate was a large vaulted area, a sphere of glistening, shaped stone except for its floor, where limestone had crusted over the granite, filling a fourth of the cavern. Near its center, the floor had been broken away. Odd bits of broken limestone were scattered about, encircling a jagged ridge of broken stone like a small volcanic ring.

Tag approached, held his torch high, looked into the core, and whistled. This was where the thing had come from. Within the limestone was a perfect imprint of a great, curled body. He could see the clear impression of a huge, taloned foot. Part of the deep concavity where a big haunch had lain blended into the larger concavity where its body had been molded in limestone. Its head —he could see few details, except that its jaws were very large and contained a lot of sharp teeth—had been nestled on one forearm or wing, and its long, sinuous tail had been curled around it.

“It slept here,” he told himself. “It slept here, and the stone grew around it. Then it woke up.”

For a while he searched, but there was nothing more to see. Whatever the thing was, it had been alone. The cavern was entirely empty, and the only way out was the way he had come. With his last two torches, Tag Salan retraced a mile or more of passages, finally emerging into the open air where he had started. The sun was over the escarpment. More than half the day had passed. He followed the wall northward to where Damon Omenborn had made his climb, and started up. He had noticed that the upper level of the cliff was sheer, smooth stone. Damon would have had to cut holds there. Tag could use the same holds.

Atop Sheercliff he found his Hylar friend—and much more. Damon was no longer alone. In addition to a dead wizard and two live ones, he had acquired a very pretty dwarven girl and what could only be a female kender. The small creature was the first to notice Tag’s approach. She stared, then ran to meet him.

“Goodness!” she said. “Another dwarf! But you missed all the fun. There is no more magic being done here right now. I’m Shill. Well, actually I’m Shillitec Medina Quick-foot, but you can call me Shill. And I guess you’re Tag. Damon said you’d be along directly. Are you looking for Damon? He’s right over there with Willow—she’s my dwarf—packing mirrors and things. He has already packed the wizards, see?”

She pointed, and Tag stared. Two men, one rather badly bruised, lay side by side, thoroughly bound hand and foot. Their mouths were covered with gags. A third man lay sprawled nearby, obviously dead.

At a pile of packs and bundles, Damon Omenborn glanced around, stood, and turned. The girl with him also straightened, glaring at the newcomer.

“Don’t remove those people’s gags,” Damon warned. “They’re magic-makers, and their mouths are their main problem.” He came forward, looked Tag over, and asked, “What did you find?”

“I found its nest,” the Theiwar said. “Or its bed. That thing was down there a long time before it woke up.”

“Any others like it?”

“Only the one. Somebody had sealed it into a cave, long enough ago for a half-mile of mountain and several feet of limestone to grow around it. What’s been going on here?”

“Wizardry,” Damon snapped, his eyes narrowing. “Those three have been up here surveying, if you can believe that. They intended to occupy this plateau and build some kind of magic place on it. A tower of sorcery. But I’ve put an end to that. I invited them to leave, but they chose to fight. I wish you’d been here. I could have used a little help.”

The dwarf girl had approached, and now she snapped, “You had help, in case you’ve forgotten! If it hadn’t been for me, you’d be dead now.”

“Sorry.” Damon nodded. “Yes, I had help. Tag, this is Willow Summercloud. She’s from Windhollow, and . . .”

“I remember,” Tag grinned, bowing slightly.

“. . . and she followed us when we came west.”

“I brought her here,” the kender girl chirped. “She had never ridden a bird before, but she has now. Cawe wanted someone to do something about these wizards, so we went looking for a dwarf, and she was the first one we found. Do you two know that you both have scorched beards?”

“What do we do with the wizards?” Tag asked Damon.

“I don’t really know, but we can’t leave them here. They’d just start building towers again.”

Tag drew his short sword. “No problem,” he said. “I’ll just cut their throats.”

The wizard in the dirty robes looked as though he were about to faint, but the nearest wizard, a bearded man with buckskin breeches and a red strap, struggled and strained at his bonds, his muffled voice audible behind his gag.

“He wants to talk,” the little kender said.

“Of course he does,” Damon sneered. “He wants to say a spell.”

The wizard shook his head urgently, trying again to speak. Damon squatted beside him. “You have something important to say?”

The man nodded.

“No spells?” Damon demanded.

The man shook his head earnestly.

Damon thought it over, then beckoned to Tag. “Remove his gag,” he said. “But stay at his side, and if he says one word . . . one single word . . . that you don’t understand, kill him.”

With the gag removed, Megistal cleared his throat, then told Damon, “It won’t do you any good to kill us. With Tantas dead, Sigamon and I cannot continue our project. It requires three.”

“Then there will be no tower?” Damon asked.

“Oh, there will be a tower,” the man said. “Others are following us. They’ll finish the project, whether we’re here or not.”

“Like rust they will,” Damon growled. “Thorbardin will see to that.”

“You can’t stop the Orders of High Sorcery.” Megistal sighed.

“We can certainly try. And with all your survey stakes removed. . .”

“It makes no difference now. We have completed the testing of the stones, and the Stone of Threes is planted at the center point. All that remains to lay the foundation perimeters for the tower is the testing of mirrors. The others will find the Stone of Threes and complete the tests. Then building will begin, and nothing you or all the dwarves of this land can do will stop them.”

“Tell me where the Stone of Threes is,” Damon growled.

“No.” Megistal lowered his eyes. “Kill me if you will, but I won’t tell you that.”

The kender girl stood beside Damon. She reached into the pouch at her belt and withdrew a bauble. “Is this it?”she asked.

“Put that back!” the wizard gasped, his eyes bulging in disbelief. “That isn’t yours, you little . . . purloiner!”

Abruptly, Tag’s blade went across the wizard’s exposed throat, and Damon had to grab quickly to stop the cut. “Wait!” he said. “What are you doing?”

“He said a word I don’t understand,” Tag explained, shrugging.

“It just means ‘thief,’ ” Damon growled. Turning, he grabbed the bauble from the kender’s hand and looked at it. It was an oval gemstone, a polished thing of many facets. Its color seemed to change constantly as he turned it in the sunlight, shifting from clear to milky white, to various shades of red, to gray, to inky black.

“I’d say, offhand, that this is the Stone of Threes,” the dwarf said. “What’s it for?”

“Put it back!” Megistal shouted. “You don’t know what you’re doing! There are only seven of those. One for each Tower of High Sorcery. Without it. . . Without all seven towers, magic will never be properly balanced!”

“Tough,” Damon mused. Casually, he held the changing gem to the light, then tasted it with his tongue. His nose wrinkled in disgust. The thing didn’t taste like a normal, natural gem. It tasted terrible.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Megistal demanded.

“I’m putting you out of the tower business.” Damon stood, put the gem into his own belt pouch, and sealed the flap.

“Hey!” the kender chirped, “that’s mine! I found it!”

“Do we kill them now?” Tag asked Damon, replacing the wizard’s gag.

“No.” Damon hesitated. “We probably should, but. . . no. Maybe they will spread the word that wizards don’t belong here.”

“What are we going to do with them?”

“Leave them,” Damon urged. “By the time they get loose, we’ll be well away from here.” He turned to Megistal. “Be grateful for your life, human,” he said. “Just remember, you have been ordered out of Kal-Thax. I suggest you leave as soon as you can move.”

While the leaders of the thanes of Thorbardin—meeting in extraordinary session on a cleared stone shelf above the Daebardin docks—got down to the business of hearing the reports of Gran Stonemill and Mace Hammerstand, Quill Runebrand wandered around the area like a small, dark cloud. Head down and hands clasped behind him, he stalked here and there muttering to himself, sometimes causing people to dodge aside to keep from being bumped into.

Deep in concentration, he tried to assemble his thoughts in practical, logical order, as any good dwarf might do when something is bothering him. But it seemed to do no good. Oh, there were things bothering Quill, all right. He wasn’t happy about the informal meeting of the council. Quill loved pomp and ceremony, and the chieftains had just dispensed with all of that and gone straight to business.

The business of the killing thing that had launched itself upon Kal-Thax worried him, too. It was frightening and unsettling that there could be such a creature, right here in the mountains of the dwarven clans. What was it? Where did it come from? Were there others like it out there somewhere? And what was Damon Omenborn thinking of to go off on some wild mission to search for such a thing’s nest? Damon Omenborn was to be the “father of kings,” if there was anything to the old stories about his birth. Now he was out there in the wild, somewhere, almost as though he were inviting his own doom.

It was Mistral Thrax who had told Quill Runebrand that Damon was destined to be the father of kings. Mistral Thrax had heard it himself from the apparition of Kitlin Fishtaker, who was legendary. Mistral Thrax had believed it, and Quill Runebrand wanted it to be true—though he couldn’t bring himself to really wish kings on his people.

But if Damon went out tearing around the wilderness lands and got himself killed, then none of it could ever come to be.

Quill stalked, muttered to himself, and worried.

There was the problem of the human wizards who had disappeared from the Road of Passage—first three of them and now, if those people on the Ergothian border could be believed, maybe a hundred or so more. What were humans doing in Kal-Thax? What were they after? And even more terrible, these were magic-users. That was as frightening to the dwarf as it was revolting.

And Gran Stonemill’s concern about the old Daewar tunnel that led through Sky’s End Mountain—that also was a great worry. Was the tunnel truly sealed? Was it proof against magic-users? And if not, could it be made so? Quill Runebrand knew little about magic, but his intuition told him that anything that had been closed could be opened.

The only way for the old tunnel to be safe, he felt, would be for there to be no tunnel at all. If it were somehow obliterated, instinct told him, then even magic couldn’t unobliterate it.

Wandering the ways of the Daebardin waterfront, Quill fumed and fretted. Something was nagging at him, some hunch or intuition that seemed just beyond his grasp. He couldn’t tell which of his many worries it was.

Could it be the fact that Northgate, though almost completed, was still an open portal? Or the fact that nothing had been heard from Cale Greeneye’s search party since they set out to track the fogbound creature?

Could it be something he had eaten?

He searched his mind for all of the many things he might find to worry about, seeking clues as to which one had suddenly raised itself in his thoughts from worry to innate dread. Mistral Thrax had always been an intuitive dwarf, often seeming to know a bit more about things than he rightly could know. It came, he had said, of having been exposed once to magic. He had recovered from the magic, he said, but some of its echoes lingered on.

And maybe some of those echoes had passed on to Quill Runebrand.

There was the question that had become foremost among the chieftains, almost from the moment Barek Stone expressed it. The point that, in emergency, Thorbardin could have only one leader. As the captain general of forces stated it, the point was obvious and in-arguable. But to Quill, as to most dwarves of Thorbardin, the idea of everybody being led by one person was a frightful thought. And worse yet, it bordered on the heretical.

Only once had anyone ever tried to be king of all the dwarves. That was the maniac Glome, ninety years ago. Glome had died for his efforts, but the episode had solidified one thing that all the dwarves could agree about. They didn’t want to have a king.

And nobody wanted to be a king, either. No sane dwarf, in Quill’s opinion, would ever seek such a job. But in case of real emergency, one must lead.

Quill scratched his beard, shook his head, and started to pace again, then looked up, and his eyes widened. He was standing at the lakeshore—the subterranean lake that was named Urkhan Sea—and as he raised his eyes some trick of light drew his gaze to the mighty stalactite descending into midlake from the shadows of the great cavern above. The stalactite was the largest natural construct of living stone that anyone had ever seen. It was probably the largest stalactite in the world. It was called the Life Tree, and within it was the rising city of Hybardin, home of Thane Hylar.

Sun-tunnels above Daebardin lighted the shoreline brightly, but out in the center of the lake there was a gloominess as though clouds were forming around the Life Tree—dark clouds that spread in all directions to obscure the distant, vaulted ceilings of Thorbardin.

Quill blinked and rubbed his eyes. A trick of the light, he told himself. But it was still there, and now a ghostly figure seemed to appear in the clouds. Huge, wavering, and barely visible, it might have been a faint mirage, but Quill stared at it in openmouthed awe. It was the vague outline of a dwarf, and it seemed to shift from one contour to another. One minute it appeared to be an old dwarf leaning on a crutch—the way Mistral Thrax had leaned on his crutch sometimes—and the next moment it was slightly different, like a tattered dwarf beset by scars and pain, holding in his hand a fishing spear.

Quill stared, gulped, and looked around to see if anyone else had noticed the phenomenon. But none had, it seemed. People came and went around him, hurrying this way and that as people always did, but even those who glanced toward the lake in passing seemed to notice nothing odd. Yet when Quill turned back, the shifting cloud-image was still there for his eyes. Now voices spoke in his mind, voices that whispered in unison.

“What one fears is not the teeth of a dragon, nor the tail nor the talons of a dragon,” the voices whispered.

“What one fears when the mind envisions dragons is the whole dragon.”

“What?” Quill asked aloud. Around him, several dwarves glanced his way, raised curious brows, then went on.

“It is not this scroll or that scroll that contains wisdom,” the voices whispered in his head. “Wisdom is not in any scroll. . . but it is in all scrolls.”

Quill frowned, flapped his arms, and shouted. “What in the name of Reorx does that mean?” Around him people stopped, stared at him, then hurried away, hoping whatever afflicted the lorekeeper was not contagious.

The cloud-vision shifted, from crutch-leaner to spear-holder and back. “A spoke is not a wheel,” the mind-voices whispered. “A point is not an arrow, nor is grain bread. Knowledge is not wisdom, Quill Runebrand, nor is the part the puzzle.”

“Is that supposed to make sense?” Quill shrieked. “What does it mean?” Members of a guard company passing nearby looked at one another and shook their heads. The keeper of scrolls was becoming stranger by the day.

The mind-voices were silent for a moment, the vision shifting and swaying. Then a single voice, a voice halting and oddly inflected, whispered to him, “Your concerns are well founded, Quill Runebrand. Thorbardin is in peril. Beware.”

Before he could react, the voice changed to another voice, and Quill gasped. “What did I teach you?” the voice of Mistral Thrax hissed in his mind. “What was the first, fundamental thing I tried to get through your thick skull?”

Then as quickly as it had appeared, or seemed to appear, the vision was gone, though the impression of dark clouds over Thorbardin remained. Maybe the lorekeeper had seen a vision, and maybe he only imagined it, but suddenly the vague dreads in his mind became sure knowledge. He turned away, his face as pale as winter ice.

The fundamental thing! Wisdom is not a knowledge. Wisdom is all the knowledge one has, speaking in its own way, telling the mind things that are beyond knowing.

Intuition, Mistral Thrax had told him many years ago, is wisdom trying to get through the narrow places in the mind.

Quill knew now what had been bothering him. It was not just the mystery of the mages, not just the killing beast that stalked the mountains, not just the question of how to meet an emergency. It was all of those things combined.

Somehow they were all connected, somehow all interrelated, and they were the parts of the danger that Quill sensed.

Thorbardin was in peril, and the dark clouds he sensed were an omen!

A time of storms was at hand.

“Barek Stone was right!” Quill announced to no one in particular, as startled passers-by turned to stare at him. “The mages will come to Thorbardin, and we will have to fight them! And the beast of the fog is out there because of the mages!”

Scattering bystanders in all directions, Quill Runebrand ran as fast as his quick, short legs could pump, heading for the pavilion where the chieftains of the thanes were just facing the question of how to meet an emergency that could threaten the entire fortress and the realm it protected.

As he approached, Quill was shouting, “Listen to me! Listen! We don’t need a king, but we do need a . . . a . . . Oh, rust, what’s a good word? A . . . an executive! A council can rule, but one must order!”

In the pavilion, puzzled faces turned toward him.

“What the blazes is the scrollmaster jabbering about?”

Olim Goldbuckle snapped, turning to Willen Ironmaul. “He’s Hylar, Willen. Does he make sense to you?”

For a moment, Willen Ironmaul didn’t answer. Then, slowly, he nodded. “Yes, he makes sense. And, by Reorx, he’s right!” Willen stood and raised his hands for silence.

“I propose a regency,” he said when he had their attention. “We all agree, Thorbardin needs no king. But we must have one who can direct all when necessary. A regent could have full authority to lead and command, and still not be a king. He’d just be a chief of chiefs.”

They thought it over, and Slide Tolec asked, “On what would such authority be based?”

“On the approval of the council,” Willen said. “Approval given in advance, for certain actions under certain conditions.”

“The problem remains, though,” Vog Ironface rumbled. “There may be a day when Daergar will follow Theiwar, or Theiwar follow Daewar, but that day has not come yet. Why would a Daergar follow one who is not Daergar, or a Theiwar one not Theiwar?”

“Because they follow their own chieftains,” Willen said. “And a regent would speak not just for the council, but for each chieftain among us.”

“Klar followed Hylar once,” Pakka Trune observed. “We did not regret that. Would Willen Ironmaul be regent?”

“I have no wish to be regent.” The Hylar shook his head. “Olim Goldbuckle is senior here. Let him be regent.”

“Not me!” Goldbuckle snorted. “The rest of you are chieftains. I am prince of my people. Were I to become regent, as sorry as I am to admit it, the Daewar might become truly insufferable.”

“They already are,” a Theiwar on the sidelines muttered.

“Don’t look at me.” Slide Tolec pushed back from the table as glances turned his way. “I’m no regent. I never even wanted to be chieftain of the Theiwar.”

Vog Ironface removed his iron mask, his grizzled fox-face wrinkling in a squinting frown. “I refuse to be considered,” he rumbled. “I am Daergar. I will never be less . . . or more.”

“Well, we’re not leaving this table until somebody is regent,” Olim Goldbuckle snorted.

“Reorx,” Quill Runebrand muttered. “And I thought I had a good idea.”