Hammer and Axe

21 The Breath of Reorx

It was Porcirin the Pure who led the penetration of Thorbardin. A native of faraway Istar, Porcirin was not well liked among the brothers of the Orders of High Sorcery. With his Istarian attitude of self-righteous single-mindedness, the self-proclaimed “Wearer of the Whitest Robe” was considered by many wizards to be a hypocrite, and by some to be a lunatic. He was not of the highest levels of sorcery, having failed two of the three tests of the Scions. He was not trustworthy, he rarely followed the orders of his superiors unless they just happened to suit him, and—in true Istarian fashion—he was something of a fanatic. Still, Porcirin had a talent for debate and a passion for purpose . . . and followers who would bend to his will.

With the departure of Kistilan the Dark from the assault on the dwarven stronghold, and the resultant confusion of the besieging forces, Porcirin had decided that the human-wave assault on the gate was a waste of time, and that there was a better way to recover the Stone of Threes, which was somewhere inside the undermountain fortress. It did not require an army to go and find it, despite Kistilan’s ambitions. Any three sorcerers, providing they were practitioners of the three orientations of magic, could locate the Stone of Threes if they could get close enough to sense its presence.

So, with half the company of wizards missing, and Kistilan the Dark gone off somewhere, Porcirin took matters into his own hands. Calling a number of others together, he pointed at the great, open gate on the mountainside above and said, “The time is at hand. Who will follow me into the lair of the dwarves to recover that which is ours?”

Some turned away, and some simply glared at him, but six among them were persuaded. The task would be simple, Porcirin assured them. The seven would transport themselves—a short distance only, just through the gate and far enough past it to be beyond any simple inner defenses the dwarves might have—then make themselves invisible and go in search of their tower stone. When they found it, they would take it by whatever means were necessary and return to the outside, to resume the task of creating a Tower of High Sorcery in the Kharolis Mountains.

All seven of them knew transport spells, so, gazing up at the big open gate in the mountain’s face, they said their incantations, more or less in unison.

As Porcirin materialized in a wide, high-ceilinged tunnel that was surprisingly well lighted, he heard screams behind him. He turned quickly, fighting down the brief nausea of transport. Three of his followers were with him, but the other three were some distance behind in the midst of a huge vaulted area traversed from end to end by a narrow catwalk. Two of the laggards were on the catwalk, clinging in terror. The third was dangling from its rail, screaming and flailing. Even as Porcirin and the three wizards with him glanced back, hundreds of missiles of various kinds flew from holes in the walls of the vaulted chamber, striking the other three with deadly accuracy.

It was over in a second. The clinging wizard fell screaming from sight, pierced through by a javelin. The other two stood for an instant, then were toppled by whistling balls of gray iron. They fell from the precarious walkway and disappeared into unseen depths below.

And all around Porcirin and the other survivors, armed dwarves were closing in. “Second spell,” Porcirin commanded, then muttered it, ducking as a thrown hammer flashed past his head.

In an instant, the three were shielded by invisibility and hurried forward, to escape before the advancing dwarves closed around them.

“There they go,” a dwarf shouted. “It’s true, you can still see their eyes. Look for their eyes!”

There seemed to be hundreds of dwarves on all sides, and one of them—a short, wide-shouldered creature—pointed directly at Porcirin. “Here’s one!” the dwarf shouted and lunged at the wizard, lashing out with a dark-steel sword. In panic, Porcirin shut his eyes, ducked, dived to the side, and rolled. He heard the dwarf’s sword ring against stone just behind him. He rolled again and opened his eyes for an instant as someone very short and very solid fell over him.

“I found one!” a voice called. “Oh, rust. Now where did he go?”

Not far away, drums sounded a complex tattoo, and several dwarves shouted. “That’s the signal. Everybody back. Hurry!” Running feet sounded, echoing through the big tunnel, and Porcirin opened his eyes just a crack to see what was going on. Dwarves were streaming past him on both sides, running along the tunnel, deeper into the mountain. A pair of them ran into him, flipped over him and rolled. One of them turned back, raising a hammer. But the second grabbed him and pulled him away. “No time for that!” he shouted. “You heard the orders as well as I did. Come on!”

They ran, and others swarmed after them. Within moments the corridor around the wizards was empty. Porcirin sat up, looked around, and said, “Saritius? Kryxan? Lonex?”

“Here,” three voices answered.

“What was that all about?” one continued.

“They could see our eyes,” another growled. “Why didn’t somebody tell me that an invisibility spell doesn’t hide a person’s eyes?”

“I meant, why did they all run away?” the first explained.

“I don’t like this,” a third voice grumbled. “I don’t like this at all.”

“Shut up!” Porcirin snapped. “It doesn’t matter why they ran. We’re inside their fortress now. Let’s look for our. . .”

A short distance away, steel clanged against stone as a heavy, barred portcullis dropped across the tunnel, blocking the route toward the catwalk and the gateway beyond. In the distance, the light from the gateway dimmed as creaking sounds erupted, like a great screw turning in steel collars. Dropping their invisibility spells, the wizards got to their feet and sprinted back the way they had come, as far as the barred portcullis. Just beyond was the huge, vaulted chamber with the catwalk through its center and the murder holes in the walls. Now those murder holes were disappearing with a staccato series of clangs and clicks as covers were sealed over them from beyond the walls. In the distance, past the outer end of the vaulted cavern, the glare of light from outside diminished and then vanished as a monstrous gate closed, sealing the exit of the fortress.

“What is this?” Kryxan snarled. “A trap?”

“Well, if it is, it has only one side,” Porcirin pointed out, turning. Northward, into the depths of the mountain, the wide tunnel ran with no sign of blockades. “Come on,” he said. “We were going in that direction, anyway.”

The four hurried along the tunnel, gaping around them at the sheer immensity of the undermountain excavation with its high ceilings and, at intervals, circles of bright light that flooded the area below. Beneath one of these, Saritius stopped for a moment, staring upward. “It’s the sky,” he said. “I can see the sky through that thing.”

They went a hundred yards, then another hundred, and ahead of them they saw a place where the tunnel widened, a sort of great hall with a low, circular wall of set stones in the middle of it. Beyond, in the distance, the tunnel resumed its usual size and continued onward. It looked as though it ran for miles.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Lonex marveled. “It’s unbelievable that simple dwarves could build something like this.”

“Shut up and pay attention,” Porcirin snapped. “We’re here to find the Stone of Threes. Do any of you sense its presence?”

They shook their heads. “Not a thing, yet,” Saritius said.

As they approached the wide cavern with its walled circle, the air seemed to grow warmer with each step. “They have some kind of stove in here,” Porcirin decided. Curiously, he approached the low, circular wall and peered over it, then froze, staring downward. Within the wall was a sheer-sided pit of immense proportions, a huge round hole that went straight down . . . and down, and down into dizzying depths as though it pierced right through the world itself. Far away, down there, was a tiny glow of intense brightness. And from the pit rose air so hot that it seemed to come from an oven.

“What. . . what is it?” Saritius wondered.

“This hole is deep!” Kryxan marveled.

Porcirin started to respond, then stopped as sounds brought his head up. Beyond the walled pit, beyond the wide cavern, there were dwarves in the northward tunnel—busy, bustling dwarves drawing great, fabric curtains across the opening.

Olim Goldbuckle had staked his reputation as Prince of the Daewar on the ability of his best delvers to complete a tunnel under water. Slide Tolec had, in turn, staked the honor of the thane of Theiwar on his boatmen overcoming their natural tendency to drown a few “gold-molders” if they had the chance, and instead to submerge and retrieve the Daewar delvers unharmed. Vog Ironface had promised the new regent of Thorbardin—the chief of chiefs—that his Daergar mine workers could install a hinged plug over the abandoned Hylar heat-exchange vent in the Shaft of Reorx, and have it done before it was needed. And Pakka Trune had given his word that his Klar craftsmen could produce and weave enough rock wool, or “spunstone,” in their fiber-lofts adjoining the worm warren, to seal the width and height of the Southgate tunnel with a thick curtain of heavy woven stone.

The chiefs had given their pledges, and Willen Ironmaul had given Gem Bluesleeve permission to proceed with his plan.

Now all the pledges had been fulfilled, except one. The Daewar diving delvers had done their job, and a new tunnel now connected the bottom of the Urkhan Sea to the abandoned shaft leading to the Shaft of Reorx. True, there were now new grudges to be resolved. Daewar delvers angrily accused Theiwar boatmen of trying to drown them and, even worse, of laughing at them when they were finally pulled up from the sea, coughing, spitting, and soaked. And Theiwar boatmen in turn accused the delvers of endangering their crafts by attacking their “saviors” as soon as they had their breath. Daergar lid-setters, scorched and blistered from their exposure to the Shaft of Reorx, accused the Klar of providing inadequate insulation in their spunstone garments, and a committee of Klar weavers was petitioning the Council of Thanes for new looms, to replace those crushed by tractor worms attracted to the spunstone fibers.

But the tasks were done, and now the entire responsibility for the enterprise rested on the sturdy but nervous shoulders of Gem Bluesleeve, whose idea the whole thing had been.

“If this doesn’t work,” the warden of the watch told himself when the first signal came that wizards had penetrated Southgate, “I’ll never be able to show my face again in Thorbardin.” Then, on second thought, he amended the statement. “If this doesn’t work, I’ll never get out of Thorbardin alive, face or not.”

As the last of the spunstone drapery was hung from its curved rod running along the ceiling of the Southgate Road, Gem told himself, “Even if it does work, every smelter-smith in Thorbardin is going to be after me if I damage the magma pit.

“I should have kept my mouth shut,” the Daewar warrior told himself. “I should have been content just to be a soldier, not an inventor.”

As the final lift-lines were laid, from the Shaft of Reorx to hewn shelters behind the curtain rods, Gem told himself, “It’s all Willen Ironmaul’s fault, really. He’s the one who insisted that every tool must double as a weapon. then sagged and fell as the vapors were pushed aside by a huge, thundering gout of pure, live steam shooting from the Shaft of Reorx. In an instant the entire concourse, from the Southgate plug to the whipping, drumming spunstone screen, was filled with superheated steam. Even the spunstone screen did not stop all the heat. Behind it, Gem and the others dived for their hewn shelters and pulled thick layers of stone weave over themselves.

Half a mile away, in Anvil’s Echo, the great vaulted chamber filled with steam and vapors, and dwarves behind their sealed murder holes abandoned their posts and raced for cooler places.

“That’s enough!” Gem Bluesleeve hissed. “Reverse the lines!” Red-faced and gasping, scalded even behind their protective screen, dwarves dropped the lid-lines and pulled desperately on others to close the lid on the waterfall within the Shaft of Reorx. The roar diminished slowly, though the rumble of expanding steam continued for several minutes.

Gem waited nearly an hour before chancing a glance through the screen’s flap. Beyond, vapors rolled along the ceiling of the concourse, and the floor was awash in foot-deep water, slowly draining away into the lower levels of Anvil’s Echo.

“What a mess!” a dwarf beside the warden of the watch said. “Where are the wizards?”

At first, they saw no sign of the four intruding humans. But then, as the condensing vapors receded and the waters lowered, they saw four indistinct lumps on the floor. Opening the curtain at one end, Gem and a few others waded out into the concourse and paused to stare at what was left of the wizards. It was not dwarven nature to have weak stomachs, but some of them turned away quickly. None of them had ever before seen what live steam can do to living flesh.

“I expected to see steamed wizards,” a young guard muttered, pale and shaken. “This is just bones and slop.”

Gem Bluesleeve waded across to the Shaft of Reorx. No water had actually reached the magma, of course. The heat halfway down the shaft had been intense enough to vaporize any liquid. But a great deal of energy had been expended in converting water to steam, and now the “eye” of the magma pit far below glowed smoky red.

“Breath of Reorx,” Gem sighed. “There will be some who will want to draw and quarter me for this.”

On the slope below Southgate, the battle had continued, far more fiercely now that most of the human mercenaries were without wizards to give them illusions, and many were thoroughly disappointed as word spread that the coins they had received—and those promised—were not coins at all but simply spell-changed pebbles. As with most humans, the hired warriors were willing to accept magic as part of their world, but when it came to money they wanted true, hard coinage cast in honest foundries and stamped by real molds.

To make things worse for the marauders, it was plain to see that the great gate above them was closed, and even if they made it that far, getting through it would be impossible. In the meantime, the dwarves pressed the battle with renewed vigor, and more and more of their engines came into play as the field spread and scattered. The big discobel still thundered now and then, its great, whirring disks of death cutting through everything in their path. Also, the dwarves were using dozens of catapults and assorted flingers, now that the ramparts were clear. All sorts of mischief fell among the humans as these engines did their work. The most dangerous missiles were loads of iron rubble, and great baskets of discard from forges and foundries. These odds and ends of metal screamed and whined through ranks of marauders, cutting them down by the dozens. But the most disconcerting were little canisters of bronze that left a trail of smoke behind them as they arced through the air, then exploded with a bang, throwing bits of bronze in all directions. Everywhere one of these exploded, there were clouds of white smoke that smelled like rotten eggs.

Still, the humans continued their fight, until—abruptly—little fissures and crevices all along the lower slopes began spouting great clouds of hot steam. From every crack and pore in the mountain, it seemed, steam hissed forth directly into the faces of the humans in the lines.

It was more than reasonable mercenaries—no longer bound by magic—could be expected to tolerate. Within minutes, most of the attacking bands had turned and were in full flight, scattering toward the Promontory and points beyond. Cohorts and companies of dwarves raged after them, sweeping the field, but by the time the sun of Krynn sat upon the Anviltops to the west, there was no one left for the dwarves to fight. With their longer legs, the surviving humans had outrun their pursuers and had not turned back.

It would be estimated by human chroniclers that more than four thousand of the human horde survived the attack upon Thorbardin. In the scrolls of Quill Runebrand, the number would be set at two thousand, seven hundred . . . human losses of more than four thousand, against two thousand, one hundred and thirty-four dwarves who would not see tomorrow’s sun through the sun-tunnels. There would be great mourning in Thorbardin, and the grief would last a long, long time. But what mattered most was that fortress Thorbardin, almost ninety-one years after its inception, had endured its first full-scale test as a fortification and had stood firm. Old Kal-Thax remained intact, the realm of Thorbardin was tempered by blood and steel, and its people were—as they had always been—the bonded thanes and scattered Einar of the dwarven race.

When Southgate was reopened, and the bloodied but victorious hosts of Thorbardin returned to their homes, Willen Ironmaul immediately called a Council of Thanes and laid his hammer upon the table. “I am no longer chief of chiefs,” he said. “I have done what I had to do, but if you still want someone to be in charge of all of Thorbardin, get someone else. I will lead the Hylar. But I will never again try to lead all the thanes.”

Damon Omenborn turned his Cobar captive over to the Gateway guards and went with his father to the council. As soon as he could, though, he hurried away in search of Willow Summercloud. He expected to find her at Hybardin, where he had left her, but no one there had seen the Einar girl recently.

“She’s around somewhere,” Tera Sharn assured her son. “Did you know she has a kender girl tagging after her? A lot of people aren’t too happy about that, but no one knows exactly what to do about it. Personally, I think the little thing is kind of cute.”

Damon roamed the markets and the concourses, searching, but there was no sign of Willow anywhere. Then he came across Quill Runebrand. “Your village girl?” The lorekeeper blinked. “I don’t know, but I saw her yesterday. For several days she has been complaining about fog in the north warren, telling everyone she can find to tell. Of course, everybody has been busy, and no one paid much attention. But yesterday she was here again, her and that pesky little kender, complaining about the fog. . . .”

“Fog?” Damon frowned, feeling a cold intuition creep up his spine.

“Fog,” Quill repeated, shrugging.

“What kind of fog?” Damon asked.

“Cold fog.” The lorekeeper tipped his head. “She gave up on telling people about it though. At least, I guess she did. When I last saw her, she said she would take care of it by herself.”