The Gates of Thorbardin

Chapter 13

"I'll bet you never saw anything like this before," Chestal Thicketsway said happily, turning full circle to scan the breadth of the ice field with its jumbled, vague shapes, frozen in combat. "Just look at this!

Didn't I tell you? Bumps! Ice-bumps, everywhere you look. And inside every bump are frozen dwarves… still fighting, except they don't move any more."

Chane Feldstone didn't answer. With haunted eyes he looked around, needing to see what was here but not wanting to. To one raised in the sheltered delves of Thorbardin, the Dwarfgate Wars were just old legend stories of the defense of Thorbardin's gates in a time of great crisis, tales of heroes who had manned the gates and the pathways beyond, who had fought at King Duncan's order so that Thorbardin could live.

These are some of them, Chane thought, approaching a great, jumbled mound of ice rising from the ice field — a chaotic feature, like a miniature mountain range twice his height and fifty to a hundred feet across in any direction. Within the ice, dark shadows hinted at shapes. He knelt in front of a sheer plane of ice and rubbed at it, smoothing and clearing its face. Polished, the ice was transparent.

The dwarf leaned close, peering within. Just inside, only a few feet away, two dwarves were locked together in combat, hammer against sword, shield to shield, straining each against the other — violence captured just as it had been the instant the ice had covered the combatants. Beyond these two were others, receding into vague translucence. A dwarf on the ground held a shield above him, desperately fending against a slicing blade frozen in descent. Another, arms outspread, flailed motionless for balance, frozen in the act of falling over the body of a dwarf cleft from shoulder to midriff by some lucky blow. Within the ice, the spilled blood remained crimson on the black ash beneath.

These are some of those who went out to defend Thorbardin's gates, the dwarf thought. And these are who they fought. Which are which, though? Did even they know? There might be a hundred or more locked in combat, just within this one mound of ice — dwarves who came out from Thorbardin, and dwarves who fought to go within. All dwarves, and all alike now in frozen silence.

No one ever returned to Thorbardin to tell of this battle, he realized.

No one ever went anywhere from here. They are all still here. Encased in ice, with ashes underfoot.

Three spells did Fistandantilus cast. The words echoed in Chane's mind.

The first was fire, the second ice…

Fire and ice. Chane turned away from the ice window, feeling very cold.

"Isn't this great?" The kender hurried past, chattering his enthusiasm.

"Dwarfcicles! Imagine! There's one over there you should look at. That little tall lump… there are four dwarves really going at it. One of them has an axe and he's fighting the other three. Better hurry… but then again, I suppose he'll last as long as the ice lasts, won't he? Wow, this is like a museum of statues, with frosty windows!"

The dwarf turned to glare at the kender, but Chess was already heading off to look at more lumps.

Chane growled, and the growl became a sigh. I don't want to be here, he told himself. I don't want to look at this. And yet, he went on, from mound to mound in the field of frozen death, peering here, kneeling there for a better view within the ice, searching. And through it all he felt the faint tingling of the little red spot on his forehead — the mark of the red moon — driving him on.

None who were on this field when those spells were cast ever left here,

Chane thought glumly. They're here still. Yet, according to the old stories, Grallen did not die in this place. The son of King Duncan died in this ancient war, but not here. Somewhere else, sometime later. Another battlefield, somewhere. The place where Fistandantilus cast his last and greatest spell, they said. Chane tried to remember all he had heard of the old legends. Where had that final battle been? He wasn't sure… except that it was somewhere other than here. East of here, he seemed to recall.

A place called Skullcap.

Grallen, warrior prince of the Hylar, who had learned a secret in his final hours, had learned of a secret way into Thorbardin, too late to find and defend it.

Had Grallen been here, then?

The red spot on Chane's forehead tingled. Yes, he felt, Grallen had been here… and gone on. But to where?

Again in his mind he saw the image, of a face not unlike his own, the face that the dream — or the red moon had shown him. Grallen, son of

Duncan. Chane's own ancestor. Could that be true?

Everywhere, ice. Ice whose convoluted shapes contained dwarves frozen in combat. In some of them, the frozen shapes struggled amid dark swirls of smoke that were kept as still as they were. What kind of mage had he been, this Fistandantilus? What kind of sorcery had availed him, that he could have done this? Yet, the legends said, what he had done later was far worse.

The kender skipped past again, as happy as a child with a roomful of new toys. "See anybody you know?" he asked Chane. "Wonder what they were fighting about…" He hurried on, toward a new mound that he hadn't yet explored. Then he paused, thoughtfully, and turned back. "Have you thought about taking that hammer and breaking some of them out of the ice? I mean, just to see if they'd go on fighting?"

Chane rounded on him, furious. "I wish you'd just shut up! You might at least show a little respect."

"Then don't break them out." The kender shrugged. "It was just a thought, anyway." He went on his way.

"That kender would rob a graveyard and not think twice about it," the dwarf muttered. Still, the question was intriguing. Were they really dead in there? Or were they only suspended? He thought about it and decided he didn't want to know.

Chane went on, searching this way and that, not sure what he was looking for except that the tingle on his forehead became more pronounced as he worked his way eastward. Something here, it suggested, would tell him where Grallen had gone all those long years ago.

As he knelt beside another clustered mound — inside, dwarves with pikes held their ground against dwarves with swords and axes — the kender appeared again from somewhere and stopped beside him. "Find anything yet?"

Chess asked.

"More of the same. I don't know what I'm supposed to find. I almost wish that wizard had stayed around. Maybe he would have had an idea."

"If he had, it seems like he'd have mentioned it."

"Did he say anything about where he was going!"

"Up on a mountain. Said he couldn't see down here. He didn't say which mountain, though." The kender shaded his eyes, gazing into the distance.

"What do you suppose that is?"

Chane looked up, saw where the kender was pointing, and gazed in that direction. "I don't see anything."

"I don't either, now. But I thought I saw a big white bird." Chess squinted, then cocked his head. "There it is again. See? Way off there to the north. I wonder what that is."

Chane saw it too, then — a white, winged shape gliding over the forest, miles away. It looked vaguely like a giant seagull. "I don't know," he said. "But whatever it is, it's not what I'm looking for." He stood, glanced around, then headed east again, toward a very large mound of ice some distance away from any others.

Chess watched the distant white thing for a few minutes, then tired of that. He couldn't tell what it was, and it didn't show any sign of coming close enough for a better look. He climbed one of the mounds — beneath his feet, vague dwarf-shapes did perpetual, motionless battle — and looked around. "Now what?" he wondered.

"Go west," something voiceless seemed to say.

"I wasn't talking to you, Zap," Chess scolded. "I was talking to myself.

Besides, the only reason you want me to go west is to get far enough from that Spellbinder thing the dwarf has so that you can happen. Right?"

"Right," something mournful agreed.

"I've been west, anyway," Chess added.

"Woe," Zap grieved.

"I wish that dwarf would find what he's looking for," the kender muttered. "I'm ready to go see something new." He started down from the ice-mound, then ducked as a huge shadow swept over him. Clinging to the ice, he looked up. The white thing was no longer far away. It was directly overhead now, spiraling downward, slanted wings carrying it in great descending circles as it came lower and lower. Fifty feet up it leveled out, seemed to stall, then crept toward him and hovered just overhead. A head appeared alongside one wing, and a voice floated down. "Hey! Are you from around here?"

"Of course not!" Chess called back. "I'm just visiting. What is that thing?"

"It's my soarwagon. It still needs a little design modification but I'm working on it. Right now, though, I'm looking for cats. Have you seen any cats?"

"Not lately," the kender admitted. '"There were some dandies around here when I first got here, but they've all gone now. Are you going to come down?"

"I can't." The flier shook his head. "Ground effect, I think. Do you have any foods"

"A little. Dried meat and flatbread. Why?"

"How about raisins? Do you have raisins?"

"I don't think so."

"Well, whatever you have will just have to do," the flier called. A rope began to descend from the white thing, with a small basket tied to its end. "How about sending some up?"

Chess dug around in his pack. There were all sorts of things in it, mostly just odds and ends he had picked up, and in most cases he didn't recall where or why. The kender found dried meat and a few flatbreads he had picked up in the Irda's hut. The basket descended on its rope, and when he could reach it Chess deposited some of what he had in it. The food was hauled upward.

"Why are you looking for cats?" Chess called.

"Some people wanted to know about them. Man called Wingover. He's sure this valley is full of cats, so I came to see. I haven't found any."

"They're the Irda's cats. She went away, and I guess they went with her.

You're a gnome, aren't you?"

"I am. Bobbin's the name."

"I'm Chestal Thicketsway. Do you know anything about old gnomish engines? Like siege engines from ages back? There are several of those off that direction, but I couldn't tell much about them."

"Neither can I," Bobbin said. "I'm insane."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"Not your fault. Another thing that Wingover and his bunch asked about was a dwarf. Any dwarves around here?"

"Hundreds," Chess waved his arms around him.

"Everywhere you look, but they're frozen under the ice. Been there a long time."

"No, the one I'm looking for is more recent. Dwarf named, er, Chain something — " The gnome pointed. 'Who's that?"

Chane Feldstone had appeared from behind a distant mound, and was hurrying toward the kender and the soarwagon.

"He's a dwarf," Chess said. "He might be the one. Name's Chane

Feldstone. What do they want him for?"

"I don't know. Does he always dress like that? What is that outfit? A bunny suit?"

"Catskin," the kender explained.

A vagrant wind whispered across the ice field and made the white bird dip and bobble. The gnome did something, and abruptly the flying thing shot high in the sky, so high that it was only a winged dot overhead.

Slowly it seemed to steady, then started going in wide circles.

Chane reached the mound where the kender stood. "Who is that?" he demanded. "What is he doing up there?"

"His name is Bobbin. He's a gnome."

"What is he doing?"

"Looking for cats."

"Up there?" Chane squinted upward, trying to follow the circling path of the flying thing. "What is he riding?"

"Something unreliable, it seems to me," Chess said. "All he said was that some people sent him to look for cats and he hasn't seen any. Oh, and somebody named Wingover asked about you."

"Me?"

"Might be you. Do you know him?"

Chane scratched his beard. The name did sound familiar, as though he might have heard someone mention it sometime. Then he remembered.

"Wingover's a human. Rogar Goldbuckle thinks he's crazy."

"No, it's the gnome who's crazy. He said so himself."

"Why would Wingover ask about me? I don't even know him."

"Maybe you're becoming famous," the kender suggested. "Look, the gnome is coming down again. Every time he goes in one of those circles he gets lower. Wow! That looks like fun."

"Fun," something voiceless said.

Chane jumped and looked around, then clenched his teeth. "I wish that spell would stop talking," he growled.

"It makes me nervous."

"Shut up, Zap," the kender said offhandedly. 'You just want to get away from the Spellbinder."

"Need to," Zap whispered.

"Oh, he's going away," Chess sighed.

"Your spell?"

"No, the flying gnome. See? He's heading south. Oh, well. Easy come, easy go."

"It doesn't matter," Chane said. "I found something, finally." He walked away, back in the direction he had just come. The kender climbed off the mound and scampered after him.

The large mound was east of all the rest, and well apart from them. It was a grotesquely shaped mound of ice more than a hundred feet long, stretching from north to south in a shallow curve. Even from a distance, the shadowy figures inside were visible as dark silhouettes a line of armed dwarves in defense position, fighting to hold off a force twice their strength.

"It looks like a rear-guard action," Chess decided.

"It does to me, too. But what I found is beyond it." Chane led the way around one end of the long mound, then part way back along its opposite side. He stopped and pointed. "See?"

The kender looked, blinked and looked again, then shrugged. "See what?

The end of the ice field? The slope beyond? That range of peaks?"

"The path," Chane said. "Look. It looks like a faint green trail, heading east. Can't you see it?"

"I don't see anything like that. Are you sure you — " He stopped and stared at Chane. "Do you realize that the red spot on your forehead turned green for a moment?"

Chane raised a tentative hand to touch his forehead. His eyes widened, then he opened his belt pouch and took out the Spellbinder. He took a deep breath. "Well, the gem's still red. I thought for a minute maybe it had turned green, too."

The crystal was still red, but something seemed to pulse dimly, deep within the stone. With each pulse the faint green trace of an ancient trail renewed itself to Chane's eyes.

"It's showing me where Grallen went from here," the dwarf said. "He went east."

"Where Pathfinder went," something voiceless whined.

Chane jumped. "I don't think I'll ever get used to that. What did it say?"

"It said, 'where Pathfinder went,' " Chess repeated. "Zap, what are you talking about?"

Where nothing was, something sighed. "Spellbinder's other," the unfired spell whispered.