Secret of Pax Tharkas

SIX

T his could be bigger than the Haxx Delving!” Brandon declared, referring to one of the famous long-standing gold mines in the Kayolin caverns. “Let them try to ignore the Bluestone clan once we start to produce that gold!”

He and his brother were striding upward through the long dark tunnels they had so recently explored. The lamp, with the last bit of their carefully conserved oil, was burning low, but it still offered enough light that they could make good time as they wended their way back to the city.

The connecting passages to the Zhaban Delving were just ahead when the elder dwarf stopped and looked at his brother seriously.

“Remember, Brandon,” Nailer said solemnly. “We haven’t brought an ingot of gold out of this place yet. We haven’t even filed our claim in the king’s court.”

“Governor’s court, you mean,” Brandon corrected. “The only true dwarf king dwells in Thorbardin.”

Nailer chuckled grimly. “Well, that’s what tradition says. But if Regar Smashfingers wants to call himself the King of Kayolin, I suggest you don’t argue the point with him while we’re trying to establish our claim.”

“Right,” the younger dwarf agreed. “But between you and me, he’s claimed more than his due.”

“You’ll get no argument from me,” Nailer declared. “But you must be discreet with such opinions.”

“By Reorx, Nail!” Brandon protested. “This is the best thing that’s happened to our clan since… well, since before the Cataclysm! We’ve just changed a run of bad luck that’s lasted four hundred years! I have a right to be excited.”

“Sure you do. I am too, whether you want to believe that or not. I keep picturing father’s face when I tell him we’ve discovered enough wealth to get the Bluestones a seat on the Kayolin council again. Just between you and me, there’s nothing I’d like better than to make that old dwarf proud.”

Brandon felt a flush of shame. He’d been thinking about dazzling the dwarf maids by wearing jeweled rings, ornate platinum breastplates, and exotic feathered plumes on his steel helmet. He had already mapped out the floor plan of the new house he was going to commission, a dwelling that would be excavated from the virgin bedrock of the Garnet range. The parties he would host! The cream of Kayolin society would rub elbows with him!

But Nailer was right. Their discovery, a new delving of tremendous prospective value, meant much more than mere trivial wealth. It would provide for the restoration of one of the great clans of Kayolin’s history. The Bluestones had produced great miners, generals, even a governor, in the long centuries before the Cataclysm. The dwarf nation in the Garnet range had been mostly immune to that violent act of cosmic revenge, but when the gods hurled the mountain down upon Krynn, there had been several cave-ins and collapses in Kayolin. The most destructive of those had destroyed the Bluestone Delving, and in that instant the clan had been reduced to a minor player in the nation’s power and politics.

For more than four hundred years, the Bluestones had struggled along, managing small mines, branching into trade and manufacturing, but never attaining a status that gave them a regular presence at court. Always they were plagued by ill fortune: a mine tapped into a submountain aquifer, drowning the workers and submerging a small treasure in silver ore; a marriage that had produced two impotent offspring, narrowing the line to Brandon’s father’s and one distant cousin’s families. One enterprising great uncle had thought to display a captured ogre for the edification of Garnet Thax’s citizenry and had been unlucky enough to use cast-iron brackets, rather than steel, to contain the beast. Although the only fatal casualty of the incident had been the uncle himself, it had been a spectacularly public example of House Bluestone’s ill-starred history.

Other newcomers, epitomized by the wealthy and ruthless Heelspur clan, had long eclipsed the Bluestones. A small smelting venture had practically bankrupted Brandon’s father, Garren Bluestone, when the Heelspurs had erected a larger and more modern factory on the same level of the undercity. With the claim that Brandon and Nailer Bluestone intended to file in the governor’s court, that long decline would be reversed.

“Do you think the new mine might be as rich as the Third Delve?” asked the younger brother, remembering the tales of the mine that had brought the Bluestone family its first epoch of glory, some seven hundred years earlier. Indeed, it had been a bedrock strata of sapphire-infused rock that had caused their ancestors to adopt Bluestone as the family name.

“How in Reorx’s name should I know?’ Nailer snapped. But then he paused to consider the question and shrugged. “Maybe. It just might be, you know!”

“Yes, I know!” Brandon exulted. “Just imagine it! We could start a whole new house!”

“And what’s wrong with the House of Bluestone?” demanded the elder, glowering.

“Well, nothing.” Brandon cheerfully waved away his brother’s concern. “I mean, I’m just talking. I don’t want to start a new house, anyway. Especially if this means that our luck is changing. But if we were that rich, we could!”

“And if I had wings, I could fly to the Lords of Doom,” Nailer retorted. “That doesn’t mean I would.”

“I would!” Brandon replied delightedly. “I mean, don’t you want to try some new things, go new places? Maybe places dwarves have never gone before?”

“My home under the mountain is all the place I’ll ever need. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll come to the same conclusion. You remember old Balric Bluestone, don’t you? How he just had to climb that mountain?”

“Sure I do.” It was a story that every scion of the Bluestone family learned as a lesson in youth. “And I always loved his sense of adventure. I mean, not too many dwarves set out to climb any mountains, much less Garnet Peak.”

“And he was the only one who happened to be doing it when the Cataclysm struck!” Nailer reminded his brother. “They never even found his body. Just his axe, the one you’re carrying right now. Now come on. Let’s get out of here. We’ve got a lot of work to do before this gets settled.”

“Should we go see father first when we get back to Garnet Thax?” Brandon wondered. Indeed, once he thought about it, winning approval from crusty old Garren Bluestone would bring him a flush of pleasure deeper, more significant, than any that could be aroused by the building of new houses or collection of gem-studded jewelry.

“I’d like to,” Nailer replied. “But I really think we should go right to court. Once the claim is recorded, there’ll be plenty of time for celebration.”

“Right,” Brandon agreed. “Let’s go to the palace first.”

Another ten minutes of climbing brought them to a narrow passage almost blocked by tumbled rocks. The gap forced them into single file, Nailer leading the way as he used his hands to pull himself up. At the top the passage became almost a chimney. “Here, take the lamp and hold it up for me,” the elder dwarf requested.

“Sure.” Brandon held the flickering lantern high, watching as his brother wedged himself into the chimney. After a few moments, the sturdy dwarf braced his hobnailed boots against the stone walls and started pushing himself up and through the crack connecting to the massive Zhaban Delving.

Above them sprawled an ancient network of mines that had produced silver, lead, and some gold for the wealthy Heelspur clan over the past six hundred years. Their access point was in a shaft that had been long abandoned-and, in fact, was vigorously avoided by sensible dwarves since there had been many unexplained and fatal encounters there over the years. The cave troll, the brothers knew, had been the reason behind the “hauntings,” and they were rightfully proud of the courage that had led them to challenge the beast and earn the spoils of their hard-fought victory.

At the top of the chimney, Nailer turned and reached a hand down. Brandon passed him the lantern, which he set on the floor at the edge of the gap, then reached down again to help Brandon up the last stretch. With a last kick and a pull from his brother’s strong arm, the second dwarf rose up from the gap and set his boots, once again, on a stone floor that was plotted and mapped in the official surveys of Kayolin.

For a moment the two dwarves stood, breathing heavily, resting for the long walk back to Garnet Thax, Kayolin’s great capital city.

Then the shadows moved.

Brandon opened his mouth to cry out a warning, but a black-cloaked figure behind his brother was already lunging, wielding a black steel blade. Nailer grunted, sounding surprised, and Brandon saw the blade emerge from his brother’s chest and felt drops of liquid spatter his face.

“Nailer!” the younger Bluestone shouted. He pulled his axe from its belt sling even as he caught the slumping dwarf and felt his brother’s warm blood soaking through his shirt.

Already there were more shadows moving, dark-cloaked dwarves attacking from his left, and he was forced to let Nailer fall while he defended himself, his axe clashing into a pair of thrusting blades, snapping one off at the hilt and deflecting the other.

The attackers were strangely silent, breathing harshly as they closed in. Brandon counted five of them and quickly dropped one, splitting his skull with an overhand blow. He parried attacks from both sides, standing over Nailer’s bleeding form. When the four dark dwarves pulled back for a moment, he rushed forward two steps, swinging his axe through a half circle.

The two to his right backed away, a clear attempt to get him to charge and expose his back, and it almost worked. A red haze of battle seemed to film Brandon’s vision, and he lowered his head, ready to charge. Only as he started to lunge did he realize the danger, halting then spinning around to parry the double stabbing blades slicing toward his back. With a resounding clang, he knocked the blades away.

“Assassins!” he cried at the top of his lungs, his voice ringing out even louder than the dueling steel weapons. “Help!”

It was a futile plea in those abandoned passages, and he knew this fight would come down to his own prowess. He charged the two dwarves to his right, but they fell back, and Brandon was forced to pivot again to avoid exposing his back. One of those black blades sliced into his arm, and he grunted in pain, at the same time swinging his axe hard, severing the swordsman’s arm at the elbow. With a shriek of pain, the stricken attacker dropped away.

But the three who remained were skilled, and they worked together to push Brandon back. He stepped across Nailer’s motionless form, his heart breaking even as he struggled not to slip on his brother’s slick, rapidly expanding pool of blood. His boot stopped at the edge of the chimney as he used the niche as some measure of flank protection. The attackers pressed hard, blades slashing in high and low, and Brandon’s elbows banged against the walls of the narrow confines as he tried to swing his axe.

He teetered at the brink; then his boot slipped. He felt himself falling backward as three black blades lunged for him. The tumble into the chimney was the only thing that saved him, even though he bashed painfully into a protruding rock and dropped his axe as he clawed to arrest his fall. The precious weapon, a family heirloom more than four hundred years old, clattered into the darkness below, while Brandon clung precariously to a ledge of rock in the narrow vertical passage.

A large stone, thrown from above, bashed into his head, and he slipped, skidding another dozen feet downward. More rocks followed, a punishing barrage, and before he could wriggle out of the gap at the bottom of the niche, a heavy boulder clanged off his helmet, knocking him into a blackness that was even darker than the lightless caverns under the world.

Brandon gradually became aware of a consuming, pounding pain in his skull, and it was that agony that finally told him he was still alive. He lay still for a very long time and gradually reconstructed the events that had brought him to that place. Groaning as he remembered his brother, stricken in the corridor a few dozen feet overhead, he tried at last to move and cried out as a searing pain stabbed through his shoulder.

Gritting his teeth, cursing his attackers, pleading for strength from the great god Reorx, he pushed himself up to his hands and knees. He tried to open his eyes, but they would not respond, and he was terrified at the thought that he had been blinded. It was only when he had finally pushed himself to a sitting position, freeing his hands, that he was able to touch his face and find that his forehead was crusted with dried blood. That sticky fluid had dribbled over his eyes, and his lids were sealed shut.

Each scrape was agony, each probing finger brought renewed stabs through his skull, but he slowly clawed the dried blood away until he could open his eyes. Though it was pitch dark in the deep delving, he tried looking around in the murk and was almost pathetically relieved to see the blurry silver glow of his axe blade-the weapon that had once been Balric Bluestone’s axe. He pounced on it and picked it up, ignoring the pain provoked by the sudden movement, and he began to feel a little better.

He felt better, at least, in that anger was beginning to supplant grief in his churning emotions. He slung the axe onto his back and stood, shakily at first but with growing strength. The chimney was full of rocks, blocking his escape, but he set to work pulling them away. Dragging and clawing until his fingers were raw, he cleared away the blockage, aided by gravity as the last of the stones finally rolled free into the deep cavern. Hand by hand, his boots jamming against the walls for traction, he pulled himself upward, finally emerging into the upper corridor, the ancient connection to the Zhaban Delving.

As his head reached the floor level, he found himself staring directly into Nailer’s lifeless eyes. He groaned a choking cry of grief. Pulling himself out of the shaft, he collapsed on his brother’s body, cradling Nailer’s motionless form and sobbing uncontrollably. The lamp still flickered, and he angrily knocked it away, as if the darkness could block him from acknowledging the stark truth of his brother’s death…

The truth that the Bluestone luck remained as bad as ever.

Only after several minutes of grieving did he start to consider the potential danger to himself. Belatedly, he looked around, but there was no sign of the mysterious assassins. He remembered the arm he had severed, but even that limb was gone, the wound marked by only a smear of dried blood on the floor. Also removed was the body of the slain attacker.

Brandon slowly rose to his feet, resolute and grimly determined. He reached down and hoisted his brother’s body into his strong arms. Staggering under the weight, gritting his teeth against the pain that still wracked his body, he began to walk home.

For many long hours, he trudged through the abandoned passages, making his way ever upward. He had to stop frequently to rest, and in these intervals he thought of his mother and father, his heart nearly breaking at the thought of their grief when they heard his news. All of their hopes, the whole future of the clan, had been vested in the two brothers and their bold exploration.

Remembering the goal of their mission while he caught his breath, Brandon wondered if that vein of gold, somehow, had led to his attack. He didn’t see how it was possible. But then, who had killed his brother and why? He growled deep in his chest as he pondered the question and vowed that, when he had the answer, that person would die a miserable death. Then he hoisted his brother’s body in his arms and once more started trudging upward.

Eventually he came to a rail tram used for hauling ore out of the still-working parts of the delving and two kindly miners allowed him to place Nailer’s body on top of their cargo of ore. Brandon trotted along beside the cart, still moving upward, until they reached the large smelting plant at the summit of the extensive Zhaban Delving. There were a number of dwarves around, and several who were just getting off work offered to help him cart his brother’s body toward Bluestone Manor, on one of Garnet Thax’s midlevels.

“Thanks, friends. I’ll do it myself,” Brandon said. He did gratefully accept the loan of a two-wheeled wagon, and with that simple machine bearing Nailer’s corpse, he began the last long climb.

Stairways linked the city’s levels for foot traffic, but several wide, spiraling ramps facilitated the ascent, or descent, for wheeled vehicles. It was as Brandon trudged up the first of those, a road that climbed through all ten of the deep-levels, that he looked up to see one of his father’s friends hurriedly approaching, his bearded face marked by an expression of grave concern.

Harn Poleaxe was a foreigner, a Neidar hill dwarf who had been a long-time visitor to the mountain dwarf city. That in itself was not unusual-there were clans of Neidar in several parts of the Garnet range-but Poleaxe was also a dwarf from south of the Newsea. In fact, he was a Neidar who hailed from the hills around great Thorbardin itself. Brandon didn’t know him well, but the visitor was a regular guest at his father’s house, and the son knew Poleaxe and his father had been discussing business dealings for more than a year. Poleaxe was an inherently likable fellow, always quick with a story or to flip a coin to the bartender to buy the next round.

As he hurried toward Brandon, however, his face was gray, and he blanched as he saw the bloody bundle in Brandon’s cart.

“Word was spreading through the bazaar just a half hour ago. I came down as soon as I heard.” Poleaxe was a big, handsome dwarf. His breath, as he leaned close, was sweet with the aroma of dwarf spirits, which was no surprise to Brandon as Poleaxe and his father were both fond of the strong drink.

The Neidar didn’t seem the least bit drink-addled right then, however. Instead, he was stern and commanding, planting his hands on his hips and glaring about at the nearby dwarves-mostly gritty miners climbing from the delvings to their inns and living quarters-as if he expected to locate Nailer’s murderer among them. “How did it-?” He grimaced. “Never mind, there’ll be time enough for the tale. You!”

He pointed at a sturdy blacksmith who was watching them curiously. “Take word to Garren Bluestone! Tell him his eldest son is slain, and we are bearing his body home!”

Brandon was impressed by the visiting hill dwarf’s sense of command and so, apparently, was the blacksmith. “Yes, sir!” he declared, hastening off at a sprint.

“Now let me give you a hand with that sad burden,” declared Poleaxe. Brandon finally felt his weariness and allowed the Neidar to help him pull on the yoke. He barely noticed as the burly dwarf took more and more of the weight, and the young Bluestone was left to stumble along beside the wagon, numbed by a mixture of grief and exhaustion.

Others were taking note, and a small crowd began to collect, trailing along with them on the curving section of ramp. Brandon didn’t even notice when one dwarf then another offered him a shoulder, but soon he was assisted along by the pair of sturdy helpers. Before he knew it, they had climbed to the fifth midlevel, the section of the city where the current Bluestone manor was.

“Thanks, all,” said Poleaxe with obvious sincerity, addressing the dozen or so dwarves who had formed their small procession. “Now let’s give the family their privacy, eh?”

“Right you are, Harn,” said one of the dwarves who’d been supporting Brandon. “You take care, lad,” he added as the numb Hylar nodded his thanks. The group quickly dispersed, leaving the Neidar and Brandon to haul the cart down the narrow street toward the stone door of the house.

Garren Bluestone himself opened the front door, and from the stricken look on his father’s face, Brandon knew that word of the vile murder had already reached the house. For some reason, the stern visage of the family patriarch steeled the young dwarf’s soul, and he suppressed the tears that felt like they wanted to burst forth.

“They killed him, Father. Five dwarves, assassins, came out of the darkness.”

“Bring him in.” The elder’s dwarf’s face was a stony mask, utterly devoid of emotion. He stared at Brandon, and suddenly his eyes showed their deep pain, a window of grief. “Are you hurt?” he asked hoarsely, his eyes going to his surviving son’s arm.

Brandon looked down and was surprised to see the dried blood crusted there-he had all but forgotten the slice of the assassin’s sword. But then the pain flared anew, together with the throbbing in his head and back, where the boulders had rained down on him. “I–I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe a little. It’s nothing.”

He looked at his brother’s body and couldn’t suppress a sob.

“Your sons were in the delvings,” Harn Poleaxe offered softly. “Brandon carried Nailer up to the deep-levels, and from there word spread through the stalls in the bazaar. I met him on the ramp.”

“I thank you for your help,” Garren declared, his voice choking as he clasped Poleaxe’s arm. Only for a moment did his expression harden again. “But you must know, my decision is final.”

“Of course,” Poleaxe said, bowing humbly. “Though, with respect, old friend, this”-he gestured to Nailer’s body-“makes it all that much more important that we reach an agreement.”

“Now is not the time!” snapped Garren sternly.

“Certainly. I understand. My deepest apologies and regrets. I merely wished to help a friend in his hour of need. I shall leave you to your grief in privacy.”

The hill dwarf quickly backed away as Karine Bluestone, Brandon’s mother, rushed up to the cart and, sobbing, embraced the body of her son.

“Tell me how it happened,” demanded Garren, leading Brandon into his study as Karine and several family attendants wept over the body and gingerly carried Nailer toward the room where he would be prepared for burial.

Starting with the discovery of the “haunted” passage, Brandon recounted the fight with the cave troll, the search that led them to the fabulous vein of gold ore, and the treacherous attack as the two brothers had returned to the known passages of Kayolin.

“You say you made the connection through the Zhaban Delving?” Garren pressed grimly.

“Yes, down some of the deeper passages that were tapped out a hundred years ago. There was nobody there to witness.”

“This smacks of the Heelspurs,” declared the elder dwarf. His eyes were moist with grief-inspired tears, but his voice growled with an undercurrent of rage. “And there is one way to find out.”

“Tell me, Father!” pleaded Brandon. “I will avenge my brother.”

“Wait, and be patient,” said Garren. “We must be very careful. Come with me now to the king’s atrium.”

“You mean the governor’s atrium,” Brandon corrected, immediately recalling the conversation he and his brother had shared.

“I fear that may be only memory,” Garren suggested grimly. “But we may know more when we arrive at court.”