The Gates of Thorbardin

Chapter 8

"Zap," said Chestal Thicketsway, as much to break the silence as for any other reason. Almost a minute had passed since Glenshadow's pronouncement, and nobody had said or done anything since. The three creatures around the kender seemed frozen in place — the dwarf standing stunned, trying to understand what he had just been told; the Irda remote and infinitely patient, waiting; the wizard bleak-eyed and gloomy as though he had spoken the prophecy of his own doom.

When none of them reacted to his word, Chess shrugged and prowled about the little building's interior, looking for anything that might be interesting. "Zap," he said again, to himself. "I'll call him Zap. Good a name as any for a spell that hasn't happened."

"Need to happen," something grieved.

"Well, I'd just as soon you detach yourself from me before you do," the kender said. "I don't even know what kind of spell you are."

"Old," something mourned.

"You've made that clear." Chess peered into a shallow cabinet containing many pigeonhole shelves. Shadows made it hard to see what the shelves contained, and he reached toward them, then withdrew his hand when he felt the Irda's eyes on him. He turned. "Just looking," he grinned. "Maybe I should go outside and look around." Kenderlike, the thought immediately became the action. Chess strode to the door of the hut, pushed it open, and darted out, closing it behind him. From his first glimpse of this place, the place of the Irda, Chess had been fascinated by the tall obelisk in the stone-paved clearing. Now he went to it again, directly to its north face where he had found handholds and toeholds leading upward.

He had intended to see where they went, but seeing the Irda had made him forget that, momentarily.

The marks in the north face of the monolith weren't really a stairway, only a series of shallow indentations set at regular intervals up the precipitous stone face. For a curious kender, however, they were ladder enough. Chess slung his hoopak on his back and started climbing.

In the distance, in moon-shadowed forest beyond the Irda's clearing, he could hear the rumbling purr of cats on patrol. And somewhere far away, a hint of sound carried back on errant breezes, a raucous bird-voice cawed,

"Go away!"

The hand-and toeholds went up and up, and Chess clung and climbed. Near the top, he could look out and see the moon-bathed tops of the forest, the dark walls of the valley beyond to east and west. Then, abruptly, there were no more indentations in the face of the cone. With the top of the monument almost within reach — no more than ten feet above — there was only sheer, smooth stone and nothing to cling to. Chess hunted around for something that his fingers could grasp, his toes brace into, or his hoopak reach. There was nothing. In frustration he clung there for long minutes, then sighed and accepted defeat.

"Isn't that just how things go?" he muttered, beginning a reluctant descent. "Probably the most interesting thing in this whole place is right there on top of this spire, just sitting there waiting to be looked at.

Naturally the stairs don't go quite far enough. I wonder what it is, up there…might be something valuable, if a person could just reach it.

What kind of ladder heads for the top of something and then just stops, just that much short? What kind of sense does that make?"

"All things have reason, little one." The voice was the Irda's voice, low and incredibly sweet. Chess nearly lost his hold, turning to look. She stood just below, watching his descent.

The kender scrambled the rest of the way down the cone, dropped light-footed to the pavement, and turned. "I thought I'd take a look at what's up there," he said. "But I couldn't get to the top. What is up there, anyway?"

"Spellbinder," she said.

"Pain and desolation," something seemed to whine.

Chess glanced around, knowing there was no one there to see. "Hush,

Zap," he snapped. Then, to the Irda, "Is it something the gods left lying around?"

The Irda only smiled. "Spellbinder has been forgotten." She nodded. "But what the gods discard, eventually find purposes again."

"Woe and misery," Zap's voiceless voice mourned.

The Irda half-turned, raising her head. She seemed to be listening to something Chess couldn't hear. And there was something odd about the light. The fires still flickered in their sconces on the ring of stones, but feebly now, as if their fuel were giving out. The rose and silver glow cast by the moons Solinari and Lunitari had changed, too. The light glistening on the dark, lovely face of the Irda was almost a bloody light.

Chess stepped from her shadow to look into the sky, and saw a sight he had never seen before. The red and silver moons hung above the wall of the valley, only a handspan apart, but the silver moon was only a crescent. As the kender watched, the crescent diminished as though a blackness had come from the north and was eating it away. Narrower and narrower the crescent grew.

"What is it?" Chess wondered. "What's happening?"

Soft light shone from the Irda's hut, and there were footsteps. A moment later the dwarf and the wizard were beside them, also staring at the strange sky. 'What's happening to the white moon?" the dwarf rumbled.

Glenshadow raised his staff, useless in this place of anti-magic, and pointed it. "Dragonqueen," he hissed.

"The black moon shows itself, and eclipses the white."

"Dragonqueen?" Chess stood on his toes in his excitement, staring. "Do you mean the moon or the goddess?"

"They are the same," the Irda said. "By any name, they are the same.

Queen of Darkness, Dragonqueen, Nilat the Corrupter…"

"Tamex the False Metal," Chane growled. "The evil one."

"She of the Many Faces," the kender chirped. "I've never seen the black moon's shape before — only a hole in the sky where it hides stars. It's a disk, like the other two. Look, it's almost covered the white moon… It has covered it!"

Where the white moon had been was now only a dim ring of brighter stuff in the sky — a hairline circle of radiance, encompassing darkness. The black moon had covered the white one.

At that instant Glenshadow's staff came to life. The crystal in its head, which normally resembled blue ice but which had looked like dull chalk since entering the Valley of Waykeep, blazed brilliant red as if all the luminance of the red moon had condensed in it. A beam of crimson shot from the staff to burn for an instant on the forehead of the astonished dwarf… only for an instant. Then the beam danced away, up the side of the conical tower, right to its top, where it rested, a ruby brilliance at the monolith's peak.

Chane Feldstone stared at the ruby light with eyes not quite the same as his eyes had been before. Without a word he walked to the base of the monolith and found the handholds and toeholds that the kender had found before.

The rest were still staring at the eclipsed white moon, unable to tear their eyes from the omen. Little by little, the dark moon continued its transit, and a crescent of white reappeared — the opposite crescent, emerging.

"The next omen," Glenshadow's voice was as thin and cold as windblown snow. "A portent of great evil."

Something voiceless and terribly sad seemed to say, "The time comes," and Chess glanced around.

"Hush, Zap," the kender said. "Spells should be seen and not heard.

Look, Chane… now where did the dwarf go?"

Again the Irda tilted her lovely head, as though listening. Glenshadow glanced at her and frowned. 'What is it? What do you hear, Irda?"

She shook her head, silver hair dancing in the light that again came from two moons. "Evil," she sang softly. "In the north an evil lives, and one of evil sings. Ogres gloat and goblins march… and I hear the sound of WlllgS.

"Where in blazes did that dwarf get off to?" Chestal Thicketsway was prowling the clearing, peering here and there. He looked upward then, and blinked. "Oh. There he is. Chane! You, Chane Feldstone! What are you doing up there? I already tried that. You can't get to the top!"

The others looked, too. High above them, moving with the steady, solid rhythm of a climbing mountain dwarf, Chane was approaching the top of the monolith.

"You're about to run out of ladder!" the kender shouted. "Take my word for it, that's a waste of time. You can't get to the — "

The Irda moved close to him and rested a graceful, powerful dark hand on his head. "Be quiet, small one," she sang softly.

The white moon was whole again, but now the red moon was diminishing as the black orb began to occlude it. The rose tint of the moonlight dulled, becoming more silvery. Above, Chane Feldstone had reached the last of the fingerholds and hesitated.

Again the crystal on Glenshadow's staff winked alight, this time a cold white light as if the white moon's glow focused in it. A single shaft of white light shot upward, bathing in hard luster the hammer slung on the dwarf's back. Clinging to the cone, Chane loosed the hammer, braced himself and swung its spike-end against the stone above him. He struck again, and a black shard fell, bouncing once on the slight slope of the monolith, ringing as it struck the pavement below.

Snagging the hammer in his belt, the dwarf reached up, found purchase in a new handhold, and retrieved the hammer to cut another one.

"Why didn't I think of that?" the kender chuckled. "Here I was thinking about slings and pulleys or some such."

The red moon was nearly eclipsed now, but still Glenshadow's staff glowed, and strong white light bathed the top of the spire where the dwarf worked. Abruptly, Chestal Thicketsway remembered the nature of his unseen companion — the spell that had somehow associated itself with him. He glanced around nervously. "Wizard, the light… does this mean that magic is working here again?"

"No magic of mortals," the wizard breathed. "Nor any that I can sense or understand."

"The gods are not bound by the limits they set," the Irda whispered.

"Only Krynn-magic is captured in Spellbinder's net."

"Ashes and woe," something voiceless mourned.

"I'm glad to hear that," the kender sighed. "I'm not in any hurry to find out what happens when Zap gets unbound."

Atop the tall cone, Chane cut another hold, then a final one, and pulled himself up for a look. The top of the monolith was a shallow cup, no more than four feet across, with objects lying in it. The largest was a small, broken statue apparently carved from alabaster — a weathered and eroded representation of a man with a beard, face turned upward, one outthrust arm intact, its hand holding a two-inch oval of dark red crystal. The little statue, which would have stood no more than three feet tall, lay on its back. Part of its other arm lay beside it, but the hand was missing.

The other object in the bowl was a metal ball the size of Chane's fist — deeply rusted, but still showing clearly the dent of ancient impact. A green bronze plate was imbedded in the ball, and Chane bent close. The enhanced light of the white moon showed him part of the inscription: Size four siege projectile, specific for use with superior flipshot…

Gnomes, he thought.

He swung a leg over the lip of the cup and extended a hand, meaning to set the little statue upright for a better look. But suddenly the red crystal pulsed and hummed, the statue's fingers fell away, and the crystal dropped into his hand. As Chane closed his own fingers around it, it stilled. He knew then, beyond question, why he had climbed the cone. The crystal had called him. He was to take it.

Vaguely, in the dwarf's mind, a face appeared — a face much like his own, the bearded face of a mountain dwarf. But not his own face, though there was a strong resemblance. The face was more stern than Chane's, and bore the scars of battle. And it looked out at him from the curved portal of a studded, horned helmet with a single ornament — a crystal that might have been a twin of the crystal in Chane's hand except for the color. The helmet's stone was green.

"Grallen?" It was his own whisper that asked it.

The face in Chane's mind seemed to nod, to encourage… then it faded.

Feeling more confused than ever before in his life, Chane Feldstone secured the red crystal in his pouch, slung his hammer on his back, and eased down to the new holds he had cut. Step by step, hold by hold, he lowered himself down the face of the monolith. Above him, the enhanced light faded and the spire's peak was only that — a stone monolith in moonlight.

At the bottom, they gathered around him, the kender chattering questions, the wizard trying to get a word in, the Irda kneeling to look closely at his face. She peered, then pointed at his forehead. Glenshadow bent to look.

On the dwarf's forehead, above the bridge of his nose, was a red spot, almost the shape and tint of the red moon.

In the Irda's hut, over mugs of spicy drink, Chane told them what he had found. He brought out the crystal to show to them, but when Glenshadow touched it, it burned his fingers. The kender also had been reaching for it, but he withdrew his hand quickly at the wizard's cry of pain.

"I expect you'd better hang on to that," Chess said prudently.

The two visible moons were ordinary moons again, as they had been before the omen, but there was a darkness in the northern sky — an absence of stars where there should have been stars. The black moon hung there, not seeming to move, and Glenshadow shuddered when he looked in that direction. The Irda sat outside her hut, facing northward, her head thrown back as one who listens intently.

The lamplight and the sweetnog were soothing. Chane felt himself nodding, then yawned and lay his head on the table. The kender was already asleep.

Chane and his companions weren't the only ones who watched the omen of the moons. A hundred miles northwest, in the glades of Qualinost, the elves of Qualinesti saw it and sent rangers to spread the word. Something was forecast that demanded study. Evil was afoot.

Eighty miles due west of the Valley of Waykeep, mages at the Tower of

High Sorcery also watched the dark moon occlude first the white and then the red. Councils were called — councils at which the wearers of white robes and those who wore red were much more in evidence than the wearers of black.

North of the wilderness, at the great pass city of Pax Tharkas, people lined the battlements to watch the moons in wonder.

And twenty miles from the ancient temple of Gargath, across the ridge line separating Waykeep from the Vale of Respite, ranks of armed goblins spread across the north end of a fertile valley, awaiting orders for their advance southward, where unsuspecting villages lay sleeping among the moonlit fields. Among them, aloof and haughty, were some far larger creatures — ogres who had come from their lairs to join the goblin horde, knowing there would soon be sport for them.

On a brushy rise above the goblins' dark camps a lone figure stood, looking into the sky. Moonlight of two colors shone on a horned helmet and emblazoned black body armor. The faceplate of the many-horned helm was a hideous metal mask, a demon-faced device from which dark, searching eyes peered.

As the occlusion of the visible moons began, the figure unfastened and removed the faceplate. The moonlight revealed the face behind it: a woman's face, stern and dark-eyed. A face that might have been beautiful, had it chosen to be, but that had made other choices from which there had been no turning back.

As the dark moon of Krynn eclipsed the first of the visible moons, the woman drew a thong from beneath her breastplate, a thong from which was suspended a dark, misshapen lump. "Caliban," she said.

The voice that responded was a dry, husky whisper, heard within her ears

— an ancient, querulous voice. "Why does she call me now," it breathed.

"She does not need me here. There is nothing here that she cannot do for herself."

The woman frowned. "Caliban, the moons. What does it mean?"

"The moons, she says," the dry voice had whispered.

"She wants to know the story of the moons."

"Tell me!"

"It is another of the Queen's omens," the husky voice rasped. "She tells the Highlords that the time is almost at hand for their invasion of

Ansalon, and she tells whatever gods may notice that she claims this time and this world as hers. She warns them not to interfere."

"Another omen," the armed woman snapped. "Is there a message there for me?"

"Ah," the dry voice said. "She seeks messages for herself."

"Tell me!" the armor-clad woman ordered.

"If there is a message for her, it is only this: she has promised the

Highlord that she will take and hold access to the fortress Thorbardin.

The Queen will not tolerate any who fail in what they promise on her behalf."

"I will not fail!" the woman said sharply. "Even though I have nothing but… these — " she swept her free arm contemptuously, indicating the dark camps of the waiting goblin horde "- to assist me. I asked the Highlord for a strike force. He gave me stinking goblins. But I will succeed.

Thorbardin will fall when he is ready."

"She has no need to tell me of this," the dry voice said. "It is her concern, not mine. Now she will let me rest until there is a better reason for me to awaken."

"I will do what I choose!" she started to say, then hissed through clenched teeth as tiny lightnings laced from the dark thing to sting her hand. Quickly, she dropped it back into the shelter of her armor. She could feel it pulsate slightly as it came to rest between her breasts.

"Omens," she muttered. "I need no omens to accomplish what I set out to do."

Her gaze fixed then on the sky, not where the moons were telling their story, but westward, where the line of ridges that formed the valley's east rim stood like jagged teeth against the night sky. There, far in the distance beyond the ridges, was a crimson glow — a light that was neither moonlight nor firelight, but that hung in the sky beyond the mountains like an echo of Lunitari's light.

Between her breasts the dark thing moved, and again she heard the dry, ancient voice. "Ah, but there is a message for her, it seems. Someone else is abroad this night, seeking the lost way to Thorbardin."

Full daylight lay on the valley when Chane Feldstone awoke. For an instant he didn't know where he was. He blinked and looked around. The hut was wide open, shutters thrown back and door standing ajar. Cabinets stood open and empty, and the cool breezes of autumn wafted through, carrying the sounds of birdcall and small creatures — sounds that Chane abruptly realized he hadn't heard since coming into this strange valley in the wilderness. Near the door, the wizard Glenshadow lay asleep on a rush mat.

Chane stretched and stood, feeling stiff from sleeping at the table, his hammer still slung on his back. Recalling the night before, he fumbled with the lashing on his pouch and looked inside. The red crystal was there, secure. He touched his forehead, then brought his hammer around, using its polished surface as a mirror. The red spot was still on his face, just above his nose, but it was less vivid now, less noticeable.

Still, his mind was full of information that he knew had not been there before.

He looked around at a small sound. The kender was just strolling in through the open door.

"The Irda is gone," the small creature said sadly. "I can't find her anywhere. And I guess she took her kitty cats with her, because I didn't find any of them, either."

'Then I guess she was through here," Chane said, assembling his packs and straps. "It doesn't matter, though. I know which way to go from here."