Secret of Pax Tharkas

TWELVE

Brandon staggered off the single-masted sailboat, down the rickety wooden pier, and onto the hard-packed dirt of the anonymous little fishing village. There, he dropped to his hands and knees, where he gazed lovingly at the solid, unmoving ground.

“Never again,” he groaned as Harn Poleaxe sauntered merrily after him.

“What?” asked the hill dwarf innocently. “It was just a little fresh breeze and some sprinkles-nothing like when I sailed north. Then we went through some real storms!”

“We had water pouring over the deck! Half the sails tore away! If that wasn’t a storm, I’ll eat my axe!”

“At least it’s all overland from here-down the coast of the Newsea and into the hills of home.” Chuckling, Harn helped Brandon to his feet, and they looked around the village.

The place was a far cry from the bustling port of Caergoth. In that Solamnic city, ships with masts and galleys with oars had steadily made their way in and out of the broad, deep channel. A long curve of waterfront had included docks, warehouses, markets, and an extensive shipyard, where three new hulls were busily being constructed.

In contrast, the seashore village was a cluster of huts with one long rickety building that seemed to be a smokehouse for fish. A couple of small fishing dhows were pulled up on shore, and another, larger boat rested at anchor in the small bay.

“Doesn’t look like there’s an inn worthy of the name,” the hill dwarf said in disgust.

“But there is a stable,” Brandon noted happily. After all that time rolling and rocking on the waves, the prospect of a long stretch in a saddle didn’t seem so bad.

Two hours later they were on the road. Brandon’s head was clear, and his lungs relished the taste of dry air, free of the taint of salt. Bouncing on his horse, he felt almost comfortable. He even allowed himself to hope that, there on the dry land of the south, away from Kayolin, his luck might be about to improve.

Though he was acutely conscious of the treasure he bore, still wrapped in the pouch he wore at the small of his back. The Bluestone Wedge was heavier than just a stone. To Brandon, it was the weight of the legacy of his father and his grandfather and the whole of his family’s house.

After an hour of contemplation and analysis, Willim decided he would not move his laboratory, even though the king and his agents knew where it was located. He inspected the seal of the original tunnel, found it to be as air and water tight as ever. Detection spells, with wafts of smoke as his feelers, determined that no holes had been drilled or otherwise established that would allow access to the underground chamber from any other direction. Let the king teleport in more toadies if he would; Willim could defeat an army of dwarves! And if hard pressed, well, he could always resort to a teleportation escape, a magical flight that would be impossible for his enemies to pursue.

Only after making his decision did he allow himself the luxury of cleaning up the debris from the battle and its aftermath. Casting a spell of levitation, Willim rose from the floor until he floated in the air, high above the floor of his laboratory. From there, he could see better what needed to be done. Wielding his magic as if it were a team of laborers, he slid a heavy bench across the room and righted several shelves and bins that had been upset during the melee. He repaired boxes and barrels that were damaged, plucked stray arrows from his wooden table and benches. Finally, he repaired his granite table, using the gesture of a finger to weld a seam through the crack his tantrum had wrought in the hard, smooth stone.

Then he drifted around the great vault of the chamber, mindful of security. He set spells of alarm to create noise and light if any intruders appeared or if any sound of digging or boring was detected through the walls. He installed traps he could activate by a simple command word, devices that would send granite columns and great shards of stone shooting through the chamber if they were triggered. He rigged the entire vast hall with a powerful spell of stone-shattering, ensuring that, if he were forced to retreat from a fresh army of attackers, he could bring the roof down on their heads even as he made his instant escape.

Just he was settling back to the floor, he felt a tingle of alarm and sensed the presence of another. But the newcomer was no threat: his minion dropped through the ceiling, spreading its black wings as it came to rest before him. The gaunt minion, with its Abyss-red eyes, pressed itself obsequiously to the floor, paying homage to its lord.

“Where is it?” hissed the Black Robe. “The flask!”

“The Aghar is destroyed,” replied the minion. “But his body was lost, frozen in an avalanche. I searched and searched but could not discover him in the cold vastness before the sunrise drove me underground.”

“Fool!” snarled Willim, raising his fist. He twitched irritably; whatever blow he delivered would make little difference to the soulless being. “I don’t care if you spend the entire year up there, you must go back as soon as it is night and look harder and find his body. Most importantly of all, bring me the thing that he carries!”

“As you wish, lord,” replied the creature, spreading its wings as it prepared for departure.

“Wait,” declared the wizard, holding up his hand. “Let me seek him again-that way, I might be able to confirm that he is dead and where his body may be found.”

Once more he went through the spell to locate an object, swirling the liquid in the bowl, watching the position of the enchanted arrow. His eyeless face creased into a frown as the indicator took shape, marking a line that pointed more toward the northeast than before.

“See! He is not dead. He has moved, fool! You have been tricked and eluded by a gully dwarf! Now hunt him down-destroy him!”

“As you wish, lord.” His minion took flight, its ghastly shape rising through the cavern, vanishing into the bedrock of the Kharolis Mountains as it pursued its prey.

Willim went back to work, muttering to himself about stupid minions.

He had a long list of things to do. He would need new apprentices, more components for spells and potions, new test subjects to lock in his empty cages. The Aghar didn’t matter at the moment, for he had an army to raise and a king to destroy.

Days and weeks on the trail had introduced Brandon to a host of new, and for the most part fascinating, experiences. After the constant nausea of the sea crossing, Brandon welcomed firm land as though it were a long-lost relative, enjoying the glimpses of wildlife, the earthy smells, the ever-changing landscape. They journeyed from village to village down the coastline of Abanasinia, staying on a simple dirt road that meandered along about ten miles from the coast-the terrain along the shore being for the most part marshy and impassable. Each night they stayed at an inn if the village had one, or they paid a copper coin for the right to sleep on the floor of a cottage or in the haystack of a local’s barn.

The people who dwelled along the coast were humans for the most part, though occasionally they encountered a hill dwarf working as a carpenter, bartender, or blacksmith among the humans. Apparently the social life of village taverns didn’t appeal to Harn quite as much as did the lively establishments in the cities up north. Though they quaffed a few ales when the opportunity afforded, the big hill dwarf avoided drinking marathons and fights and was ready to resume their journey each morning with the dawn.

They trekked down the western shore of the Newsea. Brandon quickly realized that the world was drier down there than it was in the Garnet Mountains or even in the part of Solamnia they had traversed on their way to the port on the Newsea. Harn told him that that was nothing, and he described the Plains of Dust. That, Poleaxe said, was a desert that swept off to the south for hundreds of miles. Brandon was amazed to think of such a vast expanse, barely moistened by rain, crossed only by a very few streams and one river.

He found himself fascinated by the variety of birds, especially the great raptors, the eagles and the vultures, that drifted on currents so high overhead, covering great distances without any appearance of effort. Only carrion birds were common in the Garnet Range; others were rare and precious. Antelopes and great wild buffalo, long of leg and fearsome of countenance, commonly regarded them from the forest thickets beside the road.

They camped for one night at the great ruins of Xak Tsaroth, where Brandon was barely able to sleep. Instead, he stayed up nearly until dawn, admiring the sketchy outlines of ancient walls, imagining the towers and battlements that once must have dominated that place. It startled him to think about how those ancient glories had been eroded by the effects of wind and rain and other natural forces-effects that were virtually unknown underground, where an abandoned battlement might look pretty much the same after a thousand years of neglect as it did when the last dwarf marched away from it.

Following the coastline past the beginning of the Kharolis Mountains, they turned inland as they neared the southern end of the Newsea. There they entered more rugged country and slowly began to climb. Brand’s heart gladdened to the faint suggestion of lofty mountains rising before them, and he swelled with dwarf pride when Poleaxe confirmed that, yes, they were in fact the summits of the High Kharolis.

“Ah, smell that air-the breath of home,” Poleaxe declared finally after some five weeks of steady travel. “The first hills, at least. It will take us a few more days to get to Hillhome, to be precise-finest town in all the Neidar lands in my opinion.”

“Are we that near, then?” Brandon asked, swinging easily along in the saddle that had seemingly become comfortably attached to his anatomy.

“Less than a week, anyway,” the hill dwarf informed him.

The next village they encountered, as the landscape rose around them, was Flatrock, and it was the first community where the population was primarily hill dwarves-though a scattering of human families lived there as well. Harn had friends-many friends-in Flatrock, and they welcomed their long-lost comrade with a long night of celebration. Brandon seemed as popular as Harn and enjoyed the festivities immensely, though he was puzzled that the Neidar had introduced him as a clan cousin.

“Ah, but you don’t understand,” Harn said the next day when the two were back on the road after a late start. “Hill dwarves and mountain dwarves: where you come from, they may not be the best of friends, but they’re rivals, not enemies. Down here, around Thorbardin, you have to remember there’s a blood feud that has lasted more than four hundred years, since those treacherous mountain dwellers locked my ancestors out during the Cataclysm.”

“Well, but like you said,” Brandon pointed out, “that was four centuries ago. There aren’t any dwarves around who were even alive back then!”

“No, but there are plenty who heard the tales from their folks and grandfolks-those who actually did remember. And it’s a scar that runs deep-hasn’t even begun to scab over yet.”

“But you live right next to each other!”

Harn shrugged, eyes narrowing as he regarded Brandon thoughtfully. “Thorbardin might as well not be there, as far as we Neidar are concerned. The gates are sealed and have been for these past ten years. The only mountain dwarves we concern ourselves with are the refugees in Pax Tharkas.”

“What about them?” Brandon wondered, surprised at the news of a settlement of mountain dwarves living in exile aboveground.

“Well, they got huffy and left after some kind of civil war. They’re a bad lot-their thane is a Hylar, Tarn Bellowgranite, and he used to be king of the whole place. When they kicked him out, he brought some real ruffians. He’s got a company of Klar who like nothing more than raiding Neidar towns.”

“But if it’s just a small band of exiles, how can they stand against all the Neidar?”

“You don’t know Pax Tharkas,” Harn said in disgust. “Thane Bellowgranite has maybe a thousand dwarves in there, but half that many could hold it against twenty thousand attackers. It’s a stronghold and they’re crazy fighters.”

“So that’s why you told your friends I was your cousin?” Brandon concluded, feeling a new trepidation about his sojourn to the south.

“Yeah. And come to think of it, maybe we should stick to the back roads for a while until we draw closer to Hillhome.”

For the next three days, the two dwarves followed rugged paths, avoiding the many small villages, making discrete camps near streams or in glades in secluded valleys. When they stopped to make camp on the fourth night, however, Poleaxe announced that they were, at last, on his home territory.

As if to prove his point, that night the Neidar dwarf built a large campfire, clearly abandoning the caution that had limited them to small, well-contained cookfires over the long march. With an air of sly celebration, he produced a flask from his saddlebags, and when he shared it with Brandon, the Kayolin exile was pleasantly surprised to discover that it contained top-shelf dwarf spirits, the bitter but potent brew that was barely tolerable to humans, elves, or kender but represented the nectar of Reorx himself to a thirsty dwarf. Poleaxe must have been saving it for that occasion. The brew was better than any they had had on the road.

“Now that hits the spot,” Brandon remarked after drinking deep, leaning back against the saddlebag that served as his pillow. The fire was warm against his face, comforting in those southern climes where the air was undeniably chillier than in the more equatorial north. The liquor was even warmer in his belly, and he felt a languorous pleasure as the effects seeped through his bloodstream into every part of his body.

“I thought you’d like it,” Poleaxe said. “Help yourself to more, and then pass the bottle back.”

Brandon followed his companion’s advice, looking up to watch the stars come into view against the slowly darkening sky. “How long has it been since you’ve been home?” he asked.

“More than two years, now,” Poleaxe said wistfully. “That’s how long it took to settle my affairs in Kayolin.”

“All that time to buy a stone?” Brandon mused.

“Ah, but it had to be the right stone. That’s why I was so pleased your father finally decided as he did.”

Poleaxe handed the bottle back and Brand, obligingly, took another slug. He reminded himself to be careful, however-it wouldn’t do to drink too much and wake up the next morning groggy, having to cling to a saddle and ride through the rugged hills.

“What is it about the Bluestone that makes it so valuable to you?” Brandon asked finally, a question that had been hovering in his mind during the whole journey.

“Ah, there’s a reason, and you’ll find out soon enough. But it’s too long a tale to be telling now,” the hill dwarf said breezily. He gestured to the bottle again. “Help yourself,” he said encouragingly.

“No, thanks. I think I’ve had enough for now.”

“Suit yourself.” Harn held the bottle himself for a long time, and by the time he offered it again, Brandon didn’t need his arm twisted; the dwarf spirits had thoroughly warmed his belly and soothed away every worry, every concern that might ever have bothered him. His distant home, the loss of his older brother, his parent’s grief and fear… all of those melted away in the soothing pleasure of the moment and the strong drink.

He didn’t think he’d taken that many sips from the bottle, but he was surprised by how his head was starting to spin. Like most dwarves, he had a strong tolerance for the strongest dwarf spirits, and he felt a little embarrassed when he realized that his tongue was growing thick, his speech slowing and slurring.

“Had ’nuf,” he said, passing the flask to his companion, but Poleaxe simply passed it back. It never seemed to grow any emptier, though as the stars began to spin over his head, Brandon was well aware that he had had an awful lot to drink.

“Gonna be a tough day ’morrow,” he muttered finally, his head drooping near to his chest. He knew from experience that his head would hurt and his stomach churn in the morning and probably, considering how much he’d imbibed, well into the afternoon and evening.

“No more,” he blurted when Poleaxe tried to pass him the flask again.

“Are you sure?” asked the hill dwarf, standing over him. How was it possible that the fellow didn’t seem the least bit drunk? They had been sharing the potent liquor for hours!

“Sure,” Brandon declared with some difficulty. “No more.”

Then something struck him, very hard, on the side of his head. He was more mystified than angry as he fell over in slow motion, lying on the ground, gaping up at the sky. The stars were no longer pinpoints of lights, but instead had become a mere whirling blur. Against that blurry backdrop loomed a familiar figure: Harn Poleaxe.

“Hey!” Brandon mumbled. “Wha…?” The question trailed away as he couldn’t articulate the rest of the word.

Then it didn’t matter because Poleaxe hit him again, and everything went black.