The Gates of Thorbardin

Chapter 19

On a winding trail high on a mountainside, the group halted its climb at a place where broken rock was strewn across a hundred yards of trail and onto the rises above.

"He's gone," Chane Feldstone said. "This is where I left him, but he isn't here now."

'You should have killed him," Wingover said. "Burying an ogre doesn't mean he'll die. Earth is their natural element. Probably another one came along and dug him out. You'll have to be very watchful now. Ogres don't forget a slight or a defeat. This one won't forget you, Chane."

"Loam," the dwarf muttered. "His name is Loam."

"His buddy's name is Cleft," Chestal Thicketsway offered. "I saw him farther up, that day. But I didn't know ogres helped each other."

"Against anyone else, they will," the man told him.

"They are not pleasant to have as enemies."

Jilian clung closely to Chane, her wide eyes alert and darting about the mountainscape. She had never seen an ogre, but she had heard of the creatures. If Chane had ogres after him, she had a feeling he would need all the help he could find.

Wingover scanned the skies, wishing abruptly that Bobbin and his flying whatzit would show up. 'You can never find a gnome when you need one," he muttered. Chane glanced around. "Why do you need the gnome?"

"It would be nice to have some idea what's beyond the next turn," the man said. "I still think he could scout for us, if he would just stick around."

"He doesn't have much control of the soarwagon,"

Chess pointed out. "It just sort of goes where it pleases most of the time."

Wingover busied himself with trying to calm Geekay.

He kept a firm grip on the animal's lead, scratched its ears and stroked its nose. The horse had been skittish for the past hour, and Wingover wasn't sure whether it was the recent presence here of an ogre, or possibly some distant scent of goblins that worried him. Geekay shared one characteristic with the elf, Garon Wendesthalas. Geekay simply did not like goblins.

Thinking of the elf, Wingover wondered where he was. Probably on his way back to Qualinost by now, he decided.

With Geekay somewhat mollified, Wingover got out one of his maps and studied it, then put it away. "We had better go on," he told them. 'There should be a goat-trail up ahead somewhere, leading off to the south. We'll follow that until we find a better path. I'd guess we're about three days from safety."

Chane glanced around at him again. "Safety?"

"Thorbardin," Wingover said. "If we make good time and stay to the high ground, it should be no more than three days until we run into a border patrol. From there, it's an easy trip home for you two, and I can head for

Barter and start spending Rogar Goldbuckle's money."

"I'm not going to Thorbardin," Chane said levelly. "I told you, I have something I have to do first."

"Then I'll just take Jilian home." Wingover shrugged.

"Either way, I'll have kept my pledge."

"You won't do anything of the kind," the girl snapped.

"I'm going where Chane goes, and you're supposed to go along with us."

"Now look, Button, all I agreed to do was to escort you into the wilderness to look for Chane Feldstone, then to get you home safely. All right. We've been to the wilderness. We found Chane Feldstone. Now it's time to go home. It's as simple as that." Nearby, the wizard Glenshadow sat on a rock, listening. At Wingover's statement, he shook his head slowly, but said nothing.

Jilian glared at the man. 'You made a debt of service. Do you intend to break your pledge?"

Wingover frowned. "I intend to keep it. I just told you that."

"Well, then, you'll have to wait a while longer because Chane has to find Grallen's helm. It's his destiny." The man stared at the dwarven girl, then at the bearded young dwarf behind her. Two of a kind, he thought. Each one more stubborn than the other. He turned to Glenshadow, sitting on his rock. 'You talk to them," he said.

"What about?" the wizard asked, his voice hardly more than a whisper.

"She's right. Chane does have a destiny. And as I said, you have no choice in the matter."

"%fell, as I said, I make my own choices," Wingover growled. "East across this ridge is a valley swarming with hostiles. A person would have to be crazy to go there." Jilian stepped back and took Chane's hand in hers.

"Then I release you from your pledge," she told the man.

"We will go on without you, and you owe us nothing more. Good-bye."

Geekay tossed his head, broke his reins free from Wingover's grip, and pranced a few steps up the path, past the glowering dwarves. He stood there, facing upward and away, snorting and pawing at the rock path. "You, too?" Wingover snapped. He pointed a stern finger at Chane. "You're going to get everyone killed," he warned. "And for what? A dream."

"The dream was real," Chane said, his voice level.

"Grallen called me to go and find his helm. Thorbardin is at stake, and the power to protect the kingdom is in that helm. But you heard Jilian.

You're free to go wherever you want to go. We don't need you."

"And where do you intend to go from here?"

"Where Grallen went. I have the Spellbinder. It shows me the way."

Wingover took a deep breath, then released it in a sigh. "That's how it is, then." He strode past them, recovered Geekay's lead, and started on without looking back, though he could hear them following.

After a time, the old trail wound to the right along a shoulder of the ridge, then switched back, climbing. At the turn, a faint trail parted from it, leading southward. The goat-trail. Wingover turned south, leading a reluctant Geekay, and walked a hundred yards before turning to see the others going away, following the climbing trail upward. At that distance, they looked very small. Two dwarves, a robed mage, and a kender. Of them all, only the kender turned to look back at Wingover; Chess gave him a sad wave of the hand.

"Crazy," Wingover muttered. "They're all crazy." He shrugged, put a toe in a stirrup, and swung into his saddle. Ahead lay three days of wilderness, then the relative security of the dwarven realm and the road back to Barter. And he was free now of the debt of service. He had been released. It would be good to get back to Barter, to rest a bit, carouse a bit and spend Rogar Goldbuckle's wager money…

Wingover turned in his saddle for another look back.

Far off on the climbing slope, Chane Feldstone and Jilian Firestoke were just disappearing around a shoulder of rockfall, the wizard plodding along behind them. Higher up on the slope, the kender was scampering off ahead, looking for whatever kender looked for.

"By all the moons," Wingover muttered, "I must be as crazy as they are."

He reined Geekay around, touched heels to the animal, and went to catch up to the others. When he finally came up to them, near the crest of the ridge, he reined in. Dismounting, Wingover pointed a demanding finger at

Glenshadow. "There's just one thing I want to know," he said. "What is your interest in all this? Why are you with these people?"

"I have my own reasons," the wizard said.

"That's not good enough," Wingover growled. "If I'm to face danger with someone, I want to know why he is there."

Chane Feldstone rubbed his whiskers. "That sounds like a fair question to me," he noted. Wide-set dwarven eyes studied the wizard. "What's in it for you, anyway?" Glenshadow sighed and slumped, leaning on his staff.

"A long time ago," he said slowly, "there was a renegade mage. A wizard of the black who rejected the robes and the order. Three of us went in search of him. One of each order. We went to find him, to… deal with him."

"Deal with him?" Jilian raised a pert brow. "What does that mean?"

"A rogue mage cannot be tolerated," Glenshadow said.

"He must be persuaded to return to one of the orders… or he must be eliminated. We tried to persuade him." He paused, staring off into the distance. "We tried. And of the three who went out, only I came back.

Caliban's powers were greater than we had known."

Glenshadow paused again, then added, "Caliban died in the conflict, as well. And yet, somehow Caliban still lives. I have set myself the task of completing what I thought was through back then. Caliban lives, and he is with those who oppose Chane Feldstone and his quest. I seek Caliban."

Wingover looked at the mage with hooded eyes. "To kill him I"

"If I can."

Sunlight lingered on the peaks when the group came down through a meandering pass and looked out across the Vale of Respite. In the distance, smoke trailed above two burned-out villages — no longer the smoke of destruction, but now the smoke of cookfires where an army rested, occupying what had been a peaceful valley. Chane stepped into the lead, raised a hand to halt the column, and gazed into the distance. His hand closed around the pulsing crystal in his pack. For a time he simply stood there, the high-mountain wind ruffling his beard. Then he turned away, and the others gathered around him. "Grallen's path leads east," he said. "On and on… through the valley, and up the mountains beyond. I had hoped it

— wherever I have to go — would be closer."

"Toward Skullcap," Wingover said. "I thought as much."

Chane gasped. 'You know where Grallen went?

"I've heard the stories," the man said. "From Rogar Goldbuckle, and others. Grallen died at Shaman, or somewhere nearby. It's called Skullcap, now. That would be roughly northeast from here." He turned to see the last of sunlight above the peaks to the west, then turned back. "Point where it goes, this green trail of yours."

Chane pointed, due east across the valley.

"Well, that doesn't tell us much," Wingover sighed.

"There's an easy path through the mountains over there.

But it's farther north. Where you're pointing — that highest peak off there, that's called Sky's End. My map doesn't show a trail there."

"I can only see what the stone shows me," Chane admitted. "We'll have to cross over, and look from there."

"Easy enough to say," Wingover snorted. "Just cross over. Of course, there's a little matter of several hundred goblins and some ogres between here and there. Do you have any ideas on that score?"

"We have the element of surprise," Chane suggested uncertainly.

"That's the ticket," Chess said. "We'll slip up on them and catch them off guard."

"That seems like a lot of goblins for us to attack," Jilian pointed out.

"Maybe it would be better if we just went around them."

"If we can figure out where 'around them' is,"

Wingover noted. He turned to the wizard. "Don't you have powers that might help us out?"

"Not here," Glenshadow said. "Not in the presence of Spellbinder. Here I have only my eyes."

"Your magic doesn't work at all?" Wingover asked.

"It might or might not. And if it did, it would be unreliable."

"A little invisibility might come in handy," the kender said. "I saw a lot of invisibility at Hylo the time the bird came from… well, I didn't see it, exactly. What I did was not see it. That's what invisibility does."

"I wish we had the gnome here now," Wingover said.

"I wonder where he is."

"Right here," a voice came from aloft. Wingover stared up at the flying contraption, barely ten feet overhead.

"It's me," the gnome said. "Bobbin. Do you remember?"

"Of course I remember! Where have you been?"

"I'm not quite sure. Somewhere northwest, I think.

Where are you going?"

"Across that valley," Wingover shouted. "I'd like for you to scout for us."

"All right, if that's what you want. But I don't think it's such a good idea to go across there. There are surly people all over the place. Look here." He tossed something over the side of the basket. It rang against stone, and Chane picked it up. It was a bronze dart.

"Somebody shot me in the hub with that thing," Bobbin griped. "Would have cost me a wheel, if I still had my wheels."

Wingover blinked, realizing for the first time that the flying craft no longer had its delicate silver-wire wheels.

"What did you do with your wheels?"

"While I was in the northwest, I found some people — elves, I think — with raisins. I traded them my wheels for a half-bushel of raisins. Fat lot of good wheels do me up here, anyway."

"Take a look at this," Chane handed the goblin-dart to Wingover.

The man looked at the object closely. It was a slim bolt, about eighteen inches long, with a broad, sharp head and airfoils of shaved wood. Darts were a favorite weapon of goblins, and they often fired them from short, stiff crossbows. Wingover started to shrug, then looked more closely.

"This isn't sand-cast," he said. "It looks as though it has been forged, or turned on a wheel." He handed the dart to Glenshadow.

"Not goblin work," the wizard judged.

"Well, it was a goblin that flung it at me," Bobbin called down.

"I'd like to see a few more of these," Chane said. "If I could compare some of them, I'd know whether they were forge-turned or ground on a cold lathe." Chestal Thicketsway snapped his fingers and opened his large pack.

"Like these?" He drew out two more goblin-bolts.

"Where did you get those?"

"The other night, when I was flying with Bobbin, these came along. I'd forgotten that I had them." He dug deeper into his pack, lifting out various other things one by one, to look at them. "I have some pretty good stuff in here. I should check it more often."

"Lathe-turned," Chane Feldstone pronounced, comparing the darts. "No goblin ever made these. I wonder who did."

"Somebody whose purpose was to turn out a lot of them in a hurry,"

Wingover said.

"Somebody equipping an army?" Chane asked.

"Somebody who isn't a goblin, outfitting goblins? That's crazy,"

Wingover scoffed.

Chane shook his head. "No crazier than the idea of a human — a human female — being in command of a goblin force."

"Speaking of females," Wingover said as he looked around, "where's

Jilian?"