The Gates of Thorbardin

Chapter 5

Chestal Thicketsway had been a little miffed that the dwarf had abandoned what promised to be an interesting exploration in favor of playing with fire and iron and such things. But, in the way of all kender, he hadn't stayed miffed very long. The world held far too many new and fascinating things to see for any kender to dwell for long on any one subject… even such a novelty as a fugitive dwarf who could kill a giant cat with his bare hands and make himself a bunny suit. Before he had gone a mile, Chess found a new fascination. The forest of this valley, what he had seen of it so far, was an ancient forest. The gnarled and twisted hardwood trees, some still wearing their fall colors though many now were bare, spoke of ages of time, while the deep loam beneath them, under a thick carpet of fallen leaves, whispered of countless generations of such trees that had grown and fallen before them. Thousands upon thousands of years have passed here, the forest seemed to say, and nothing of note has occurred. Nothing here has changed.

And yet, where the rolling lands came down to a little rock-bound stream, the forest did change. Across the stream was a different sort of forest, younger and less brooding. The kender crossed, climbed the far bank, and prowled around, looking at everything. The trees were large here too, but younger and more varied. The forest here spoke of hundreds of years… but not of thousands.

"It burned," something said… or seemed to say. Chess was not sure whether he had heard words or imagined them. He looked around and there was no one there. He was alone.

"It might very well have," he told himself. "This might once have been a forest fire, and all the old trees burned and the ones here now grew later."

"Much later," something seemed to say.

"I beg your pardon?" The kender turned full circle, holding his forked staff at the ready. There was no one there, nor any sign that anyone had been there — at least in a very long time. The only sound was the fitful breeze rustling the treetops. He squatted, peering under the nearby bush, then walked in a wide circle, looking behind trees and under stones. There was no one anywhere about.

Perplexed and curious, he went on, turning often to look behind him. He wasn't sure at all that he had heard anything, but he didn't remember thinking the words that he had seemed to hear until after he seemed to hear them. Talking to himself was nothing unusual for Chess. As a traveler, he was often alone, and even in company he often preferred to talk to himself. But he didn't recall ever not being in complete charge of one of his own conversations.

The younger forest — he thought of it now as Afterburn Woods — rose away before the kender, and he kept traveling more or less northward, recalling from time to time that his original purpose — at least the most recent one

— had been to go east across the valley with Chane Feldstone, to see if the dwarf could find his dreamhelmet.

The forest thickened, then broke away, and the black road was before him, curving in from the east to wind northward again. The path almost immediately lost itself in the forest as it curved once more, again to the east.

"I wonder what it's trying to stay away from now," the kender muttered.

"Death and birth," something nearby seemed to say.

Chess spun around. As before, there was no one there.

"Death and birth?" he repeated.

"Birth and death," something almost certainly said.

This time Chess strolled about, squinting as he peered upward. Maybe the talking bird has come back, he thought. But there was no sign of it anywhere. Besides, it had talked — clearly and without mistake. Whatever was talking here just kind of seemed to talk. It wasn't the same.

With a grunt of exasperation, he put his hands on his hips and asked,

'Whose birth and death?"

"Mine and theirs," something seemed to respond.

"Theirs and yours?" As the kender asked the question, his bright eyes were darting from one side to the other, looking for a clue as to who was talking to him.

For a moment there was silence, then the silence whispered, "Death and birth. Go and see." And a few yards away, just where the trees began, there was a brief shifting of light — as though the air there had moved.

"Probably something truly dreadful over there somewhere," Chess decided.

"Maybe even a deathtrap for kender. I guess I had better go and see."

He turned his back on the black road and entered the verge of forest where the odd shifting of air had been. A few feet into the woods he saw it again — a little way ahead and beckoning.

"Ogres, maybe," the kender told himself cheerfully. "A beckoning vesper to lead the unwary into a nest of ogres. Or hobgoblins, perhaps? No, probably not. They aren't smart enough to think of something like that."

He paused for a moment, searched in his pouch, and withdrew a sling — a small, soft-leather pocket with elastic loops attached to either end. He secured the loops to the ends of the fork on his hoopak, kicked around in the fallen leaves until he found a few good pebbles, then hurried on, following where the vesper had been. He went on, not seeing the strange air-shift again, but keeping to its original direction.

After a time the forest broke away, and Chess found himself on a low, broken ridge with a clearing extending from its base. A great shallow bowl of ground, broken here and there by groves of trees and grassy knolls, the clearing extended into distances where herds of animals grazed. Beyond them, forests rose toward the tumbles and steeps of the valley's east wall.

Nearer, though, in the bottom of the bowl, was a wide field of what looked like ice — flat around the edges, but distorted within by many random shapes and lumps that seemed to grow from it.

The kender scrambled down the ledge and approached the field of ice. All around it, the air was cold and silent.

"Old," the silence seemed to say.

"Right," the kender agreed. He knelt at the edge of the field and rapped at it with his staff. The stuff looked and sounded like ice, and when a sliver of it broke away he tasted it. It was ice. "It's ice," he said.

"Fire and ice," the silence seemed to say. "Old."

Encouraged, Chess wandered out onto the ice. A few steps brought him to the nearest of the weird shapes — a tangled mound of crystals and spires higher than his head and twenty feet long. He knelt, looking into it, seeing twisted dark shadows inside. He rapped at it with the heel of his staff. Little cracks formed, then a hole, larger than his head, appeared in it as bits of ice fell away. Inside was a blackened tangle of burned branches, and a mist like ancient woodsmoke rose from the hole. He stuck his head through for a better look. Inside the ice was a burned tree.

"Fire and ice," he said to himself. It looked as though the tree had burned and toppled, then been caked with ice while it still burned.

All around were other interesting ice mounds. The kender wandered among them, peering here and there, his eyes wide with the pure delight of a kender amidst a mystery. Sometimes he could not see what the ice held, but sometimes he could. One small lump contained a dead dwarf — a short, thick-set body armored with mail and visored helm. A bolt from a crossbow had pierced him. He lay across an emblazoned shield, preserved by the ice so that the blood of his wound was still bright red. Hill dwarf, the kender thought. He looks as though he might have died just minutes ago.

"Old," something seemed to say.

Chess stood and turned away, but stopped as something in the flat ice underfoot caught his attention. He knelt again, brushing at the surface.

Just beneath it, things glittered and shone. He went to work with his staff.

Breaking away the shallow ice, he found a broadsword, its edge notched by combat but still as shiny as when it was new. He lifted it, then set it aside. A good dwarven weapon, it was too heavy and awkward to suit a kender. But there were other interesting things there, as well. One by one, he lifted out a pewter mug, a string of marble beads, and a little glass ball. He looked them over, then moved on. Under other ice mounds were other dead dwarves, some standing, some kneeling and some fallen.

Dwarves with hammers and swords, frozen in mortal combat. Hill dwarves and mountain dwarves, locked now in solid ice in a battle that would never end.

"What ever could they have been fighting about?" the kender wondered.

"The gates," something seemed to say.

Chess peered all around, shading his eyes. He saw nothing anywhere that looked like gates. "Gates? What gates?"

"The gates of Thorbardin," the silence seemed to say.

"That dwarf should have come with me," the kender muttered. "I'll bet he never saw anything like this."

At the thought of Chane Feldstone, Chess looked back the way he had come. The dwarf had said something about wanting a sword. Chess snooped for a while longer, then decided there was nothing to see here that was more unusual than what he had already seen. He went back to where he had left the dwarven sword, hoisted it on his shoulder, and started back, more or less retracing his steps. Chess had in mind to leave the sword somewhere that the dwarf would be likely to pass — if he came north at all

— so he decided he would retrace his steps to the black road.

"So long," something seemed to say.

Chess turned, looking all around, yet no longer expecting to see someone. "Oh, yes," he said. "So long to you, too."

The silence seemed puzzled and suddenly very sad. "So very long," it seemed to say.

Chess didn't know what to say to that, so he said nothing and went on his way. The sun sank below the valley's west wall, and the forest became a shadowy place. Here and there, little mists formed above the leaf mold to drift vague tendrils among the trees. Chess wandered, pausing to look at a bright stone, a bird's nest, a scattering of bones where some predator had fed. Whatever caught his eye, he inspected. Whatever came to hand, he picked up. Whatever appealed to him — if there was space for it — went into his pouch. It was the way of all the kender, and Chestal

Thicketsway was no exception.

In evening shadows, somewhere near where he expected to find the black road, he came across another gnomish artifact — an ancient, fallen construct that might once have been a catapult, except that no one could conceivably have operated a catapult so huge and complex. He walked around and through the overgrown wreckage, trying to imagine how the thing might once have looked — a huge, impossibly complex machine standing at least a hundred feet tall on four gigantic wheels with spiked iron rims… endlessly intricate systems of pulleys and gears, levers and winding mechanisms, steam boilers and windvanes… and probably half a hundred whistles, bells, and ratchet-rattles.

Little was left of it now. What had been wood was entirely gone. What had been stone was rubble. What had been iron was designs of rust imbedded in the ground. But he traced it out, and could surmise what had happened.

Here an army of gnomes had built a siege engine and had set it off.

Possibly it had thrown a missile, but definitely it had thrown itself. The entire machine had climbed up onto its throwing arm, flipped over and landed on its back. And there it lay to this day, what was left of it.

Such a long, long time ago. So inconceivably old.

"Ages," something seemed to say.

Chess jumped, then turned full circle again, squinting into the twilight. "I thought I had left you back there," he snapped.

"All the ages since the first," the breeze whispered. "Old. Very old."

"Well, I can see that," the kender agreed. "Are you following me?"

"With you," something whispered.

"Why?"

"By your doing," the voice that was no voice said.

"By my — " Chess strode to where he had set the dwarven sword and picked it up. "Aha!" he said. Then he raised a puzzled brow and rubbed at his cheek. "Funny, though. I'd heard that magic doesn't work right in this valley."

"I don't," something very wistful seemed to say.

It was growing dark, and there was nothing more to see here, so Chess set the sword on his shoulder and headed west. The black road should be near now, he decided.

The forest became deeper and more shadowy, and the kender stopped abruptly, his pointed ears twitching. Somewhere to his left, things were moving, coming his way. Among the shadows were darker shadows, big shadows flowing and bounding toward him on great padded paws… shadows that purred as they came, like the rumbling of distant thunder.

"Oops!" Chess said, and ran.

In evening's dusk, Chane Feldstone and Glenshadow the Wanderer rounded a curve of the black road and saw ahead of them a conclave of cats. Feral eyes and dagger teeth glinted where the brutes prowled and crouched at each side of the path, while a small figure danced and darted from side to side, shouting threats and taunts. As the two approached, the taunter saw them and waved. "Hello!" he called. "I wondered where you were! Who's that with you?"

"There's that kender," the dwarf told the wizard, then turned.

Glenshadow had stopped. The man stood now, holding his staff before him as though to protect himself. Chane cocked his head, the tilting ears on his cat-cape cap giving a quizzical look to his scowl. "What's the matter?

It's only a kender."

"There's more," the wizard said. "But I can't see…"

"More? I don't see anybody except a kender. And of course a bunch of cats, but that's no surprise."

"Not a person," the wizard said slowly, looking one way and then another, peering into the gloom. "No, not a person, but an… an event."

The dwarf growled, deep in his chest. Kender and wizards… birds and hunting cats… Chane was beginning to miss the sensible, logical life of

Thorbardin. Out here, it seemed, no one ever really made sense. "What event? I don't see any event."

"It hasn't happened yet," Glenshadow said softly. "But it wants to."

"Needs to," something seemed to say in a voice that was not a voice.

Chane felt a chill crawl up his spine as he whirled around, looking for the source of the sound. He felt as though he had heard a voice, but his ears had not. The mage behind him had raised his staff higher, but he didn't seem to see anything, either.

The kender trotted up to them, grinning. "I see you've met whatsit," he said. "I think he comes with the sword." He lifted a dwarven broadsword from his shoulder and extended it, hilt first. "Here. I found this for you. Now you can stop complaining about not having a sword."

Surprised, Chane took the sword and held it in both hands, turning it over, squinting in the poor light.

"Of course, there's a ghost or something attached to it," Chess said brightly. "But I can't see how that would matter. Who's that with you? He looks like a wizard."

"He is, I guess," the dwarf said. "Haven't seen him do any magic, but

I'd just as soon he didn't, anyway." He lifted the sword to his mouth and tasted its blade. "Old," he muttered. "Good steel, though. And it doesn't look old. "It's been on ice," the kender explained. "Wthat's wrong with your wizard? He looks like he's seen a ghost."

"I don't know what's wrong with him." Chane busied himself, slicing a strip of cathide from his cape to make a belt for the sword. "He said he saw an event."

"Well, I've seen a few of those." The kender nodded. "But I try not to let them bother me. Pretty good sword, huh?"

"A fine sword," the dwarf agreed. 'Thank you. Where did you get it?"

"I found an old battlefield, over east of here. There's a lot of good stuff just lying around. And frozen dwarves all over the place, too.

Probably nobody you know, though. They've been there a long time. Maybe the ghost is a dwarven ghost. I've never met any sort of ghost before, so

I don't know. But if he bothers you, just ignore him."

As one coming out of a trance, the wizard Glenshadow shook himself and lowered his staff. He stepped close to them, leaned down, and squinted at

Chane's sword, then turned to the kender. "Not a ghost," he said, in a voice that was like winter. "And not fixed to the sword, either. It follows you, Chestal Thicketsway."

The kender blinked. "What does?"

'You picked up more than a sword on that battlefield, kender. You picked up an unexploded spell."

Before Chess could respond, Chane pointed down the path. "The cats are gone," he said.

Then on an errant breeze, coming from somewhere ahead, all three of them heard a sound that seemed to float among the treetops and drift down like crystal snow. The mage seemed to stiffen, the kender's eyes went huge, and even the stolid, pragmatic dwarf felt the sound take hold of his heart and tug at it.

Somewhere off there, to the north, someone was singing. The voice was more lovely than anything Chane Feldstone had ever heard.