The Swordsheath Scroll

24

What had taken the Chosen Ones a winter's work to collect- every usable timber and building stone in the now-vanished human city of Klanath-would take years to recut, bore, and reuse. In ordering the dismantling of Klanath, the Lawgiver had thought little about what to do with the architectural materials which now filled half of Tharkas Pass. His immediate concerns had been to make certain that the human city could not be rebuilt, and to give his people a season or two of enjoyable labor. Privately, he had hoped that Lord Sakar Kane might show up if they waited for a time on the slopes north of Tharkas. But Kane had disappeared. No one-not even the far-ranging elves-seemed to know what had become of him.

As a new season greened the pastures south of Tharkas, Derkin sent a crew of dwarves north one last time to complete "The Tidying" there. But they found nothing left to do. What the dwarves had begun, the elves who now claimed that land beyond the pass had completed. Except for the black quartz monument to dwarven law, there was not a trace or a hint that there had ever been a settlement of any kind there. The last vestiges of the old palace were gone, all traces of the mines were gone, all sign of the great battle that had been fought there had been removed, and the stony flats were green with grasses and clover.

The dwarves, reporting back, said that the forest seemed closer now, as though it were already advancing toward the mountains to hide the barren slopes in deep foliage. Only an enchanted forest could reclaim its grounds so quickly, they told their peers. They reported seeing a small band of elves, who waved at them from a distance. And two among them swore that they had seen a unicorn, just within the edge of the advancing forest.

But the elves had not touched Derkin's law stone. It stood where it had been, dark and austere among the wildflowers around it, with its stern warning: "… We will always retaliate."

Derkin had intended to take his people back to Stone-forge-their sprawling, bustling Neidar settlement in the western mountains near Sheercliff-but as the weeks became months, he delayed. The dwarves were hard at work here, building and hauling, climbing and hoisting, adding tier after tier to the wall they had built across the pass. And as the work progressed, the wall became two walls, with compartments and chambers between… then three walls.

"Give a dwarf work that satisfies him," Derkin mused to Helta Graywood one day, "and he'll work at it as long as there's breath in his lungs and life in his heart. It's the nature of our people."

"They'll leave here when you decide to go," Helta said. "If you tell them to return to Stoneforge, they'll go. They are your people, Derkin Lawgiver."

"They don't want to go back, though," he pointed out. "Most of them would rather stay right here and build walls than go to Stoneforge. You know that as well as I do."

"But whatever you want…" she started.

"Stoneforge is complete," Derkin said. "It has its fields to farm, its foundries and its shops, its herds to tend. It is a Neidar settlement, no different from any other Neidar settlement except that it is bigger. The people we left there are mostly Neidar and are content with Stoneforge. But these people-my Chosen Ones-they're different, Helta. Most of them have been slaves, and all of them have been warriors. Now they've found something to do that they enjoy doing, and that joy can last them through many generations."

"Building walls?" she asked, frowning.

"More than walls," he corrected. "Those walls, if they continue, will become the foundations of a great city as proud and fine as anything in this world. And more than a city. If I don't interrupt them, these people of ours might just construct a new way for dwarves to live."

"The city the elf called Pax Tharkas," she said.

"Pax Tharkas," he confirmed, nodding. "Right now, only dwarves are building here. Which is for the best, because what elves know about stonemasonry and the rodding of joints could be set down in three runes, with two of them used only for emphasis. But later, when our people have made the underpinnings of this place solid and sturdy, the elves will come. Then there will have to be a treaty between us, of course. A thousand understandings will have to be reached, and accords agreed to. When it is done, the Treaty of Pax Tharkas must signify once and for all the sheathing of swords between two races. It won't be easy, and I can't imagine it, truly-dwarves and elves sharing the same city-but most of our people believe in their hearts that such a thing can be done. Somehow, I believe it, too."

As he said it, Derkin seemed so sure, so confident, that Helta could almost share the vision with him. Still, there was something that troubled her. Despite Derkin's seeming enthusiasm for the idea of expanding his border wall into a great city, Helta sensed that his heart was elsewhere.

Often, she had noted, it was Talon Oakbeard who presided at planning sessions for new parts of the construction. The idea of Pax Tharkas, which Derkin had come to espouse so openly, had found its true roots in the former Neidar's heart. For Talon, the great undertaking had become an obsession-a work of true love.

As the months passed, and the great cleft of Tharkas rang with the pleasant pandemonium of thousands of dwarves cheerfully building the first solid layers of a great city, stone by stone, Derkin and Talon were everywhere among them. They counseled with stonecutters, they drew diagrams and argued about them with the masons, they suggested a tower base here and demanded a shoring brace there.

In the concept of building a citadel, Talon Oakbeard had discovered his true talent. Derkin, on the other hand, had a different talent-the ability to lead. Yet now, the people he led had chosen their own path, and it was not the path he might have chosen for himself.

A dozen times, Helta found herself wishing that Derkin would delegate the whole project to Talon and stop worrying about it. But spring became summer, and summer became fall, and still Derkin lingered at Tharkas.

Most of the dwarves from Thorbardin were still with them. With typical Hylar directness, Culom Vand had told Derkin that he would not return to Thorbardin until Derkin agreed to go back with him. "Thorbardin needs your skill," he had confided. "I promised my father and jeron Redleather that I would find you and bring you back, so that's what I intend to do. If you won't go now, then I'll stay until you do."

Having stated that, Culom Vand said no more about it. With typical Hylar dignity, he simply waited. In the meantime, he and most of the Hylar with him had found something to do. The beautiful old lake beyond Tharkas Camp, which had once served a great dwarven mining settlement but had been allowed to deteriorate during human habitation, was a challenge to the efficient-minded Hylar. They had taken it upon themselves to clear and reshape its channels and to build pump stages. "Thorbardin's glaziers could fit these lifts with lenses to make steam," Culom told Derkin. "And our foundries could produce steam-driven wheels to lift the water to your new citadel of Pax Tharkas."

Derkin's response had been only, "It isn't my citadel. It's theirs… the Chosen Ones."

Unlike the reserved, patient Hylar, Luster Redleather and the hundred other gold-bearded Daewar in the group had become enthusiastically involved in the construction of walls and foundations, and the dream of a great citadel that one day would rise to the very summits of Tharkas Pass to serve two nations.

"Think of the trade possibilities!" Luster exulted one autumn evening after a feast of roast boar, dark bread, and ale. His blue eyes alight with the Daewar love of commerce, Luster paced this way and that, his hands sometimes clasped behind him and sometimes waving happily over his head. "Elvencraft, here at the very gateways of Thorbardin! Elven wines and spices, elven fabrics and flosses… There are fortunes to be made here! We'll provide steel and glass for the elves, and we'll stockpile elvenwares at Thorbardin for trade with the world!"

"How are you going to trade through closed gates?" Derkin asked him morosely.

"Just the way you said." Luster grinned. "We'll build commerce towns at all of our borders. Places open to anybody who has something to trade."

"Did I say that?" Derkin frowned.

"You said you would build a place called Barter," the Daewar reminded him. "I'm just expanding on the idea."

"That idea is for Kal-Thax," Derkin snapped. "Not for Thorbardin."

"Kal-Thax is Thorbardin," Luster countered.

"Not while those gates are closed," Derkin said. "I told your Council of Thanes that."

Throughout the exchange, Culom Vand sat quietly to one side, simply listening. But now he said, "If you come back to Thorbardin, Derkin, maybe you can open the gates."

Derkin gazed at him with level, cynical eyes. "By a vote of three to two?"

"By decree," Culom said, "if you were king."

"There are no kings in…"

"Maybe it's time to change that." Luster interrupted him. "The Covenant of the Forge is only a document, after all. It can be amended."

Helta Graywood set down a tray and stood beside Derkin, ruffling his hair with her fingers. "That's what I've been trying to tell this stubborn oaf," she told the Daewar, "for ages."

Shaking his head, Derkin growled, stood, and strode away into the dusk. When Tap Tolec and some of the Ten rose to follow him, Helta waved them down. "Leave him alone this time," she said. "He needs to think."

Late that night, Derkin stood alone atop a craggy summit, gazing up at the living sky where autumn clouds rode the high winds, forming shifting, flowing patterns in the light of two moons.

"I want to go home," he muttered to himself. "Helta knows that, and Tap knows it, too. Maybe they all know it. But if I take my people away from here, they will lose their finest dream. Most of them now are neither Neidar nor Holgar. It is as Tap said, these people have become a new breed of dwarf. Maybe Pax Tharkas is their destiny. But is it mine?"

Troubled and confused, Derkin the Lawgiver raised his hands toward the flowing sky. "Gods!" he whispered. "Reorx… and any others who care… give me a sign!"

The clouds swirled slowly in the high winds above, shifting from pattern to pattern. Then, for a moment, one bit of cloud broke away from the rest and stood alone. And just for an instant, as the winds molded it, it seemed to take the shape of a wedge-or an arrowhead-pointing south.

Derkin lowered his arms and sighed. "Maybe it is a sign," he told himself. In the distance, dappled moonlight played on the massive construct that now filled the lower one-third of Tharkas Pass. Where "Derkin's Wall" had once stood, twenty feet of stone defending a mountain pass, now rose the beginnings of a city-a city that would one day bridge the gap between two alien worlds, the ancient land of the dwarves and the new land of the western elves.

Above the pass, flowing clouds shifted in the wind, and it seemed that there was a face there-a wide, bearded dwarven face that molded and remolded itself in its features as the breeze in the pass whispered long-forgotten names, a litany of generations of Hylar leaders. "Colin Stonetooth…" the breezes murmured. "Willen Ironmaul… Damon Omenborn… Cort Fireblend…" Fascinated, Derkin stood gazing upward as the breezes whispered names to him-the names of his own ancestors. And with each name, the flowing cloud-face became another face. "Harl Thrustweight…" the breezes whispered, and the face Derkin saw was that of his own father. And now the breeze shifted and the whispering was a voice like his father's voice. "Thorbardin," it murmured. "Thorbardin has never been ruled… but it must be governed. That is your destiny, my son."

The breeze died away, and the clouds above were again only clouds, but in Derkin's mind was the echo of a whisper. He knew now what his course must be, and he felt oddly at peace with it. "Destiny," he muttered.

Only one regret remained in his mind. He had failed to keep his pledge-to himself and his people-to bring Sakar Kane to the justice the man deserved. Sakar Kane had simply disappeared. "If only I knew," Derkin said aloud. "If only I could be sure that he is gone."

As though in answer, a voice spoke. He knew he was alone. There was no one else within half a mile of where he stood, yet the voice spoke clearly, as though at his side. It was a low, musical voice, the voice of Despaxas, and it said one word: "Chapak."

Instantly, Derkin found himself deep within a dark, reeking place, a place where mildew grew on ancient stone walls, moist and glistening in the light of a single candle. On one wall hung the skeletal remains of a man- a man who had been dead for a long time-and Derkin knew exactly where he was and what he was seeing. With absolute certainty, he realized that he was looking at a deep cell in a dungeon beneath the palace of the human emperor of Daltigoth. And he knew that the shackled body hanging there was that of Lord Sakar Kane, the Prince of Klanath.

The single candle lighting the scene was held by a man who seemed to be two men. Each time the flame flickered, the man's appearance changed. At one moment he seemed a squat, bulky human with a braided beard and elegant robes, at the next a tall, burly man in dark robe and dusty boots.

Derkin knew one of the faces. It was the man called Dreyus. And he knew the other as well, though he had never seen him. The man with the braided beard was Quivalin Soth V, Emperor of Daltigoth and Ergoth.

Again the candle flickered, and Derkin found himself where he had been, standing on a craggy knoll in a mountain pass, half a mile south of the place that would be Pax Tharkas. Beside him, where no one stood, Despaxas's musical voice whispered, "This is the gift my mother wished for you, Derkin. To know that you did not fail."

His eyes wide with wonder, Derkin the Lawgiver turned full around, then shook his head. "Magic," he muttered. "A latent spell."

With one last glance at the sky above-which was once again only an autumn sky-Derkin headed back toward his quarters. On the way he stopped at the fire of Culom Vand, then at several other places in the camp. By the time he opened the door of his own quarters and stepped in, a crowd was following him.

Helta Graywood and the Ten were waiting for him, alert and concerned as he had known they would be. It was rare that any of them ever let Derkin out of their sight. Derkin stood before them, his fists on his hips, firelight gleaming on the polished luster of his armor, as other dwarves entered behind him. He looked from one to another of those gathered around his hearth, then let his somber gaze linger on Helta. "Do you still say you can live anywhere with me?" he asked.

"Anywhere," she asserted.

"Then live with me in Thorbardin," he said. His gaze turned to Tap Tolec. "Do you still dream of being a Hol-gar?"

Tap raised one eyebrow. The ironic expression, combined with his broad shoulders and long arms, made him look more Theiwar than most who were full-blood. "As always," he said. "Maybe as much as you do."

"Could you be the leader of a thane?"

Tap blinked, surprised at the question. 'There is a legend among my family," he said, "that an ancestor of mine was a chieftain, a very long time ago. His name was Slide Tolec. They say he led the Theiwar when Thorbardin was in its glory."

Derkin nodded and turned. "And you, Talon Oak-beard? Could you be a leader of people?"

"I have no thane." Talon shrugged. "My people were always Einar or Neidar. What people would I lead?"

'The Chosen Ones," Derkin said. "They are your thane. If I pronounce you their chieftain tomorrow, do you pledge to lead them well?"

Talon stared at the Lawgiver for a full minute, hardly believing what he had heard. "I'd do my best," he said finally.

It would be spring before the one called Lawgiver could undertake the journey southward to Thorbardin. There were conferences to be held and plans to be made. There were messages to be sent and pledges to be given and received.

Some of the Chosen Ones would choose to go with Derkin, and some, like Tap Tolec who would replace Swing Basto as chieftain of Thane Theiwar of Thorbardin, would need time to adjust to what Derkin had in mind for them.

There was a great deal to be done and much to be decided before Derkin Winterseed-Hammerhand-Derkin the Lawgiver-could return to Thorbardin to find the rest of his destiny.