The Gates of Thorbardin

Chapter 32

An eerie darkness walked across the land, a darkness of writhing black clouds that swirled and coiled, defeating the sunlight. West of the bridge, Sky's End was veiled, its slopes immersed in flowing darkness. To the east, the breaks, the low hills, and the vast plains beyond were a dancing mosaic of deepening shadow. Toward Skullcap the clouds circled and tumbled in upon themselves, twisting in clockwise rotation as the descending belly of the storm dropped lower and lower, becoming a funnel miles across. Above the gorge winds swept down from mountain passes and howled in murky glee.

Wingover set his sword upright against a stone and used his right hand to lift his left arm, shield and all, until the flinthide's edge was just below his eyes. With a strip of fabric from his tunic he tied the useless arm in place, then retrieved his sword.

The woman in the horned helmet gazed up at him, her pose arrogant, speculative. After a moment she called, "I want the thing you brought from

Dergoth! Give it to me!"

Wingover waited.

"You won't kill me," the woman called. "You can't." Her laughter cut across the wind as she lifted the hideous mask, letting Wingover see her face.

"I don't know what you want," Wingover shouted.

"You know," the woman laughed. "The thing your wizard had. The thing you brought here. Give it to me!"

Wingover faced Kolanda, trying to hold her gaze, counting silently. It was only three hundred yards to the rockfall beyond the bridge. The dwarves should reach it any moment. Once within that hidden portal, they might be safe. He didn't know how he knew that, but he knew.

"You've come too late for that," he shouted. "It's gone."

"Gone? Gone where?"

Above and just beyond the woman and the goblins, a figure appeared on top of a rock. It was Glenshadow. Bison cloak whipping in the wind, long hair and beard streaming, he leaned for a moment on his staff, then stood erect as the staff's crystal cap winked to life. A clear crimson beacon blinked to life in the darkening murk.

"They made it," Wingover muttered. "Spellbinder is beneath the ground."

On the flat top of a sundered stone the wizard Glenshadow raised his glowing staff and shouted, "I know you, Caliban!" His voice carried on the wind like flung ice, and a brilliant flare of crimson shot out from his staff toward Kolanda Darkmoor — shot out, and stopped just short of reaching her, swallowed up in a darkness that had a voice of its own.

The sibilant, withered voice said, "And I know you,

Glenshadow. You are the last." Blinding light blazed where the crimson beam ended, and crackling thunder rolled.

Glenshadow's beam receded, swallowed by a wave of darkness that rushed toward Glenshadow. Rushed, then hesitated. Wingover's mind reeled. Which

Glenshadow? There wasn't just one any more. There were three. Then five.

Then a dozen, and more. Myriad Glenshadows, everywhere, all moving in perfect unison as they willed their magics back upon the darkness centered at Kolanda's breast.

"Trickster!" the withered voice rasped. "Red-robe, you'd fight me with illusion?" Blacknesses writhed outward, seeking all the Glenshadows.

"Die," the voice whispered.

The blacknesses snaked out, and one by one the image mages were gone… except one. As Wingover watched that one grew to gigantic size. Hundreds of feet tall, his stance spanning the nearby breaks, Glenshadow absorbed the blackness cast at him. It pierced him here, there, searching, and lost itself in his vastness.

"Illusion," the withered voice hissed. "Can you do no better than that?"

The winds swirled, sizzling, and the searching blackness grew. Great dark holes appeared in the fabric of Glenshadow's massive image, and it seemed to flutter in the wind, dissolving. From one tiny corner of it a beam of crimson lanced out and smote the thing at Kolanda's breast, making it shriek and writhe. It fought back, then, and again the span between them was colliding energies, crimson and black with blinding glare between.

Somewhere beyond the bridge, greater thunders erupted. The stone bridge trembled, keened, and swayed. Somewhere across the gorge a piece of the mountain was falling.

"Where is the thing I want?" Kolanda shouted again, her voice rising in anger.

"It's where you can never reach it now," Wingover called and started forward, limping. A goblin dart thumped into his shield, clung for an instant, and dropped away. A pigeon egg splattered on the armor of a goblin, then a pewter mug took the creature full in the face. One beside it screeched as a dagger made from a cat's tooth whistled from the kender's hoopak and lodged in its throat.

"I've had enough of this," Kolanda Darkmoor spat. She stooped, retrieved a set and loaded crossbow, and trained it for an instant on Wingover. "It ends now! Caliban, finish it!" Massed darknesses welled outward, seeking

Glenshadow. The dark magics reached out, then hesitated and swiftly faded.

The crossbow faltered as Kolanda Darkmoor looked down at the arrow standing in her breast, piercing the withered heart of Caliban, linking it forever to her own heart by a common shaft of hickory Wood.

Beside the north spire Garon Wendesthalas slumped, a goblin's blade piercing his throat. Slowly he sprawled, his bow sliding from nerveless fingers to lie beside him. He turned his head and looked up the bridge rise, then raised a battered hand in final salute to his old friend,

Wingover. He didn't move again;

The winds howled, and hailstones battered the land. Lightning like spider legs walked across the Plains of Dergoth and the nearer hills, striking among the goblin troops there. Staccato and brilliance, darkness and storm, the bolts danced on winds that screamed and sang and buffeted the swaying stone bridge.

Chestal Thicketsway clung to a bridge rail and shouted, "It's Zap! He's happening!"

His shield to the raging wind, Wingover fought his way to the foot of the bridge with the kender clinging to him. They fell, rolled, and sought shelter in a storm like no storm ever seen on Ansalon… at least since the Cataclysm.

"Three spells cast Fistandantilus,"the Irda had said, "in the Valley of

Waykeep. The first was fire, the second ice. The third has not yet happened."

Now, the sundered Plains of Dergoth were washed by storm, as Zap fulfilled his destiny.

Rockfall had hidden the old trade portal. What once had been an iron-framed gate, nine feet wide and twenty feet high, with cable-cart stays and transfer platforms, now was a forgotten gap behind hundreds of tons of tumbled stone. Hidden, but not closed.

With Jilian following, Chane Feldstone crawled through a cleft among the rocks and entered a tunnel, which was more a maze that only a dwarf or a curious kender might have riddled out. Behind them, faint now, was the rolling thunder of the storm. Chane eased around a hairpin turn between boulders, then crawled over a buried slab and under another, following the green light that seemed to speak to the gem set in the old helm he wore.

On and on they went, and everywhere was dark, fallen stone with only the green trace to guide them. Pathfinder pulsed and glowed as the stone maze wound on dimly. In the pouch at Chane's belt, Spellbinder throbbed a silent song.

Jilian's cheeks were moist with wiped-away tears, her throat tight with dread and regret. People she had come to love were now left behind. They would probably die so that the mission of Grallen and of Chane's dream could be completed. She had looked back just once, from the top of the bridge, and felt as though her heart might break. The two had seemed so small back there, so helpless — a bleeding man and a bright-eyed kender with his hair coiled around his throat. Just those two, facing…Jilian had not looked back again.

For the first time in her life, Jilian felt the weight of mountains above her, the press of the stone through which they made their way.

"Maybe we can go back and help them," she whispered. "I mean, when you've done whatever it is you are supposed to do." Ahead of her Chane squeezed his broad shoulders through a narrow crevice and took another turn, pausing only to make sure that she followed. He said nothing, though she knew he ached for their friends just as she did.

Another tight, jagged opening between tumbled slabs, another turn, and

Jilian heard Chane's breath catch in his throat. He clawed and pulled through a crack, and when he was beyond it he turned to give her his hand.

Greenish light flooded about him and lit up the cavern he had discovered.

Chane and Jilian looked around. The light they saw was Pathfinder's glow, reflecting back from the delved walls and ceiling of a wide, hewn space. A few bits of rubble lay scattered among neat mounds of piled stone. Nearby, an old cable-cart lay on its side.

"A transfer terminal," Chane said. He pointed to the left. A clean, unshattered tunnel led away there, into darkness. Pathfinder pulsed, and the narrow trail of green light appeared again, on the dusty floor. It led straight to a mound of crushed stone, up the side of it to the top, and stopped at a little cone of green light, with a red center.

Chane walked to the mound, head-high to him, and stood a moment, listening to something that only he could hear. Then he took Spellbinder from his pouch. The red gem pulsed warmly, its glow the color of

Lunitari's light. Reaching out, he placed the gem on the pile of stone, where the spot of red shone.

From behind the dwarves, from the buried gate they had traversed, came a sound of distant, rolling thunder. Spellbinder's light grew in power, flared brilliantly in the cavern, then settled into a steady, warm glow that seemed to fill the air with tiny music.

"Come." Chane took Jilian's hand. "Pathfinder has brought Spellbinder home. Now we must hurry."

"Can we go back?" she asked.

As though in answer, the thunder grew beyond the gate and the cavern quaked ominously. Chane headed for the left tunnel at a run, pulling

Jilian along with him. The thunder mounted behind them.

Once beyond the cavern, Pathfinder's steady green glow lighted a cable-way long forgotten, a finely-delved tunnel that seemed to go on ahead of them unobstructed. "Hurry," Chane said. Behind them, the thunder became the roar of solid stone shearing and the chatter of rockfall. A cloud of dust obscured the opening of the cavern, and the faint red light winked out.

"It's sealed," Chane rumbled. "And locked against magic. That was what

Grallen intended to do."

"Where does this go?" Jilian pointed ahead, down the cable-way.

"It goes where it always went," Chane Feldstone said.

"It goes to Thorbardin."

Once more Jilian looked back. "I'd like to see outside again… sometime. Do you suppose we ever will?"

"We'll see it," Chane replied softly. "Maybe we'll even see… them… again sometime,"

At his brow, Pathfinder throbbed a clear green pulse of reassurance.

Chane felt as though Grallen's helm had just given him a promise.