The Gates of Thorbardin

Chapter 14

High on a Mountain slope, where biting winds came down from the snows,

Glenshadow the Wanderer paused in his climbing to inspect the head of his sorcerer's staff. No longer chalky, it was again a cold, flawless stone of swirling transparencies. The wizard pulled his collar tighter against the chill and raised the staff a foot or so. He muttered a word, and the stone burst into cold, bright light. He nodded, doused it with a word, and looked around. Some distance away, a large, serrated stone lay against a jagged cliff, half-buried in wind-blown snow. He raised the staff, pointed it at the stone, and uttered other words. A tight beam of silver light shot from the gem and struck the boulder, which exploded into shards, some of them bounding away down the mountainside.

Satisfied, Glenshadow climbed again until he came to a high place where patches of ice lay like white pools in the weathered stone.

He gazed into a small ice-covered pool. "Master of the tower,"

Glenshadow said in a voice as cold as winter's winds, "Grallen's descendant has the Spellbinder, and has begun his search for the helm. Is there word of the outlaw?"

"The Black One lives," said the ice-image that formed on the frozen pool. "Though he was certainly put to death long ago, there is no doubt now that he lives. His magic is known. Other searchers have tasted it, just in recent days."

"Can you tell me where he is, then, or must I continue to follow the dwarf?"

"He is somewhere to the east," the hooded image said. "Nearer to you than you are to me, but though his magic is sensed he goes hidden… shielded somehow from our seekings. If you would find him, you must go with the dwarf."

"Does the outlaw know yet of the dwarf and his quest?"

"We think he knows that something is amiss." The iceimage told him. "The

Black One is pledged to a quest against the dwarven realm of Thorbardin.

This much we know, from those of our order in the Khalkist Mountains. Two died and a third was horribly burned just to bring us the information.

Tell me, does the dwarf know his purpose?"

"To go where the Hylar Grallen went." Glenshadow said and nodded. "To seek the helm of his ancestor, which alone might save Thorbardin from infiltration by its enemies. He has an artifact — an ancient god-stone, the twin of the one his ancestor wore on his helm. One stone will lead him to the other, and thus to the helm."

"And should he find this helm… will he then know where Thorbardin's weakness lies?"

"If his ancestor Grallen saw the secret gate, then the stone in the helm may also show it to its next wearer. Both are god-stones, as was suspected. Their magic is beyond sorcery."

"Then the thread is not frail," the ice-pool said. "If the dwarf poses a threat, the Black One will know it. He sees more clearly now than when he was alive… before he was put to death. Follow the dwarf, Wanderer, if you would find the Black One; the Black One will surely seek him. Follow the dwarf toward shattered Zhaman, if you would seek again to destroy the outlaw mage." A pause, and then the faint voice asked, "Did you see the omen, the eclipse of the moons?"

"I saw it. What does it mean?"

'14one knows for sure," the voice said. "But all the omens point to a great darkness from the north. Evil has its pawns a'play, and moves across the gaming board. Beware."

The pool darkened, cleared, and was simply a pool of ice. Glenshadow shivered, drew his bison cloak more tightly around his shoulders, and again touched the ice with his staff. This time the image that appeared was of the valley from which he had come. Chane Feldstone and the kender stood at the edge of a patterned ice-field and looked eastward.

"Toward shattered Zhaman," the mage whispered. "He follows Grallen's path, toward the resting place of Grallen's helm."

He started to turn away from the pool, then stopped. Another vision had formed there, coming without call. In inky blackness swirled indistinct shapes, coalescing at the center in a pattern that become a face… or not quite a face, just the ghostly outline of one; but one that Glenshadow had seen before, long years ago.

And a voice as dry as dust — a voice that seemed shriveled with hatred and age — hissed from the image. "He seeks me, does he?" it said. "The puny red-robe would try again to do what he thought he had done before'

Hee-hee. He asks the ice whether I know there is an obstacle in my way. A puny obstacle it is, too. A dwarf. Only a dwarf. Did I know before, he wonders? No matter. I know now." Giggling, the dry voice faded and the ice cleared. Long after the vision was gone, Glenshadow knelt by the ice, shaken and unsure.

"Caliban," he muttered. "Caliban."

Viewed from the south, the valley was a long, deep cut among towering mountains. Miles wide and many more miles long, deep enough that fall foliage still livened the forests below, it swept away to the north. The valley was straighter than most Wingover had explored, and interesting to his explorer's mind because, while its sides were crested by precipitous cliffs, its approach from due south was a long, fairly gentle slope.

It seemed to almost offer itself as a route, and Wingover found that irritating. He had seen the great cats who lived in this valley, and he knew the valley was a trap. He wondered if any who had entered there had ever come out again.

The man was moody and irritable as the hours passed, tired of waiting for a crazy gnome in a sailing contrivance, who probably would never return anyway. He brooded upon the fates that had brought him to be here, back out in the wilderness again, pursuing an impossible quest — to find one lost dwarf in ten thousand square miles of barely explored territory.

It didn't help Wingover's attitude that Jilian Firestoke seemed to have decided that it was her responsibility to fill the idle hours with constant chatter. He had heard a dozen times now about Chane Feldstone's dream, and at least a half-dozen times about the perfidy and downright churlishness of Jilian's father, Slag Firestoke. He had been belabored by gossip — most of it meaningless to him — about the feud between the

Tinturner and Ironstrike families, which had kept the fifth level downshaft neighborhood of Daewar in an uproar for months; about how

Silicia Orebrand's sister was not on speaking terms with any of the

Silverfest Society members; about the uncouth mannerisms of Daergar dwarves who seemed to think they owned the Fourteenth Road; and about the scandal that had risen when Furth Undermine accused the East Warren overseers of bribing the executor of the Council of Thanes.

"Far stars, Button," Wingover finally erupted, "doesn't anybody get along with anybody in Thorbardin? To hear you talk, I'd think the intrigues and hostilities outnumber the population by five to one."

She blinked in surprise. "Oh, it isn't like that at all," she said.

"Thorbardin is the nicest place imaginable. Really. I've just been telling you the juicy stuff because that's what most people prefer to hear. But then, most people — at least most people I know — are dwarves. What do humans like to hear?"

"Silence, occasionally," he snapped.

For long minutes, he had his wish. Jilian sat facing away from him, her sturdy little back arrow-straight. She had tried to entertain him. Now she made a point of ignoring him, which, for his part, Wingover liked better.

Soon, though, she asked, "Do you mind if I tell you one other thing?"

"I knew it was too good to last," he said. "What?"

She pointed. 'The gnome is coming back."

He saw it, then — the gliding, erratic flight of the gnome's machine, coming toward them, low over the valley's forested floor.

"It's about time," Wingover snorted.

The white kite came closer, rising as it neared the climbing slope, seeming to shoot upward on wind currents until it was a tiny thing far overhead. Then it dipped its wing and began the wide circling that they had seen before. It seemed that, once up, the only way the gnome could come down again was by this tedious procedure.

The soarwagon circled and descended, circled and descended, and finally crept to a halt hovering just a few yards up — but in the wrong place. It was a quarter of a mile from them, above a jagged cliff where the valley's west wall began.

"What is he doing?" Wingover growled. "Why doesn't he come over here?"

"He's probably trying to," Jilian said. "I don't think his machine really works all that well."

"It's a wonder it works at all," Wingover pointed out.

For a moment, the soarwagon hovered where it was. Then with a shudder it shot upward again, and the circling began all over. This time the gnome seemed to have corrected his navigation, and when next the thing hovered it was just above Wingover and Jilian.

Bobbin leaned out, his face pinched with irritation. He looked from one to another of them, then settled on Wingover. "I'm back," he announced,

"It's me… Bobbin. I'm here."

"I know you're here," Wingover called back. "I can see you. Did you find anything?"

"Quite a lot of valley, with various things in it. Several miles north, there's a ring of stones with a thing in the center that looks like a really big thermodynamic inflector, though I'm sure it isn't that. There's a sort of little, broken statue on top of it, and paving all around. Then there's a hut, though if anyone lives there he wasn't at home, and there is a winding black path that goes off in both directions from it. I saw a river and enough trees to make a woodnymph think she'd gone to paradise, and several nice meadows that I could have landed in… if I could land.

And an ice field covered with lumpy shapes, and what's left of an old wall

— older than I can calculate from up here, but I imagine it was old before anybody I know was old enough to understand old — "

"How about cats?" Wingover called.

"How about what?"

"Cats! That's what you went to look for. Cats!"

"No. No cats. One kender, but no cats. Though I did see someone wearing a bunny suit made out of cathide, if you can believe anything a kender tells you. What do you want cats for?"

"I don't want cats! I just wanted to know if you saw any!"

"Well, I didn't. Some bison, here and there, and a few elk, though…"

"How about Chane Feldstone?" Jilian called. "Did you see him?"

"Does he wear a bunny suit?"

Jilian had started to shout something else at the gnome, but suddenly his invention was off again, shooting away in a sharp climb that carried it toward the distant peaks to the west.

The girl sighed, then slung her pack and her sword. "I guess that settles that," she said. "We'll just have to look for ourselves. Are you ready?"

"Hold on, there, Button," Wingover snapped. "I'm in charge here, remembers I decide where and when we go."

"Then decide," she said and headed for the valley.

They camped that evening in a clearing well within the valley, where a chuckling little river flowed cold from the mountains to the west, and a strange, black-gravel path wound aimlessly northward through deepening forest. At day's final hour, Wingover scouted ahead and found nothing to alarm him except an odd emptiness about the valley. "It's strange," he told Jilian when he returned. "It's as if this place has been lived in — but isn't now. Recently vacated. I had the same feeling once when I stumbled across a village of the Parwind people on the plains. At least it had been one of their villages; the tents had all been folded and the people were gone. That place felt the way this place feels. It's as though the area had accustomed itself to being home to someone, and now it doesn't quite know what to do with itself."

Jilian gazed at the man thoughtfully, then shrugged. "Humans are very strange people," she decided, and set about cooking their supper.

A shadow flitted across the twilight clearing and a sharp, high-pitched voice called from overhead, "I'm hungry! How about sending up some supper?"

Bobbin and his soarwagon were with them again. Wingover looked at the contrivance hovering above the camp and shook his head. He had seen gnomes from time to time, but he had never encountered a mad one. He cupped his hands and called, "I want to know about this valley."

"What about it?" the gnome called back.

"Everything that you see that might be useful to me. Like how far north does it go, and are there dangers ahead, and where does it come out?"

"It's a big place. I haven't seen the whole thing."

"How about scouting for dangers, then?"

"I can do that, if you ask me nicely. What sort of dangers are you looking for?"

"Any that might be there. Like cats."

"There aren't any cats. I already told you that, but I don't suppose you remember. There's a wizard on a mountainside off there somewhere, but he's miles and miles away. And a kender and a dwarf in a funny suit, east of where you are… or north, I'm not sure. And way off over there I saw a bunch of people crossing over from the next valley. They're really a mess, all cut up like they've been in a fight, and carrying their wounded.

Really a mess, it looked to me. I — "

The soarwagon pitched, nosed up, and shot toward the sky, the exasperated shout of the gnome trailing back from it, "Save me some supper!"

Bloody, battered, stripped, and staked out on the cold ground, Garon

Wendesthalas was only vaguely aware of those who stood over him. For hours, the goblins had tormented him while the one in the lacquered armor their leader — stood quietly and watched. Torture after torture they had applied, gleeful in their sport, stopping just short of breaking his bones or drawing enough blood to kill him. The leader wanted information from him. Did he know of a mountain dwarf somewhere near, a dwarf who might have Hylar featuresl Where was the dwarven girl they had seen traveling with him? And the human, who — and where — was he?

The elf had not uttered a sound throughout. Nor had he let his attention fix on the pain they inflicted. Instead, he drifted in his mind, remote and aloof, savoring memories, recalling pleasant times… remote and unreachable. He had removed himself to such distance that he was barely aware of the goblins around him. But he knew the leader now. A human female, Kolanda Darkmoor. Cornmander, the goblins called her. And he knew that someone — or something — else was with her, though he had seen no one. Distantly, he had heard bits of their conversation… the woman's voice impatient and querulous, the other's a dry, shriveled husk of a voice that whispered in tones of venom and mockery. He had heard her call the other's name. Caliban.

Garon shut out all other awarenesses. In his mind he walked the patterned forests of the Qualinesti, drank cool water from a brook, listened to the songs of elves in a nearby glade…

"We're learning nothing here," Kolanda Darkmoor snapped, beckoning to an armored hobgoblin. "We've wasted enough time. This elf will tell us nothing."

"Kill him now?" the creature asked hopefully.

"No, bring him along. He's strong. He will make a good slave."

"Elf," the hobgoblin snarled. "Make trouble. Run away, sure — "

Kolanda turned fierce eyes on him. "Did I ask for your opinion, Thog?"

The hobgoblin stepped back quickly, then lowered his face in submission.

"Forgive, Commander."

"Assemble your patrol, Thog. Or what's left of it. We're going back to

Respite. The valley should be reduced by now, and there are things to do.

Bring the elf, but first cut the tendons in his legs. Then he won't run away. When we rejoin, put him to work tending one of the carts."

She turned away, cold and angry. No elf would ever make a worthwhile slave, but this one would live long enough to serve her. He had killed nearly half of her patrol before they brought him down.