“He’s not sick. You’ve just tickled his nose with your beard again,” a female voice answered from the next room.
Tarn felt a tug at his chin and looked down, chuckling as the baby pulled at the ends of his long beard hairs. “Where is your beard, Tor?” he murmured to the child. “Did your mommy shave it off to make you look like an elf child? Or maybe it was wicked old Aunt Needlebone.”
“I heard that,” the female voice said from the other room. A matronly old dwarf appeared in the doorway, a rag hanging from the fist planted firmly on her hip. With her other hand, she pointed a quivering finger at Tarn. “Stop filling that boy’s head with your foolishness,” she admonished.
“He doesn’t understand what I am saying to him,” Tarn said, gazing down at Tor. “He’s just responding to the sound of my voice.”
“Don’t you count on it. This child is brilliant. I’ve never seen a more brilliant child in my three hundred and fifty years, not even his mother.” Tor blinked at Tarn; he had his mother’s gray eyes. “Sometimes he looks at you with that piercing gaze and you think he’s about to whisper great secrets. You feel like you haven’t got any clothes on, or that he is looking right through you. But the next minute, there he is a baby again. It passes like a cloud over the hill.” Her voice trailed off in a sigh of longing. Tarn had heard the old dwarf woman sigh that way many a time since she came with Crystal to live inside the mountain. The old hill dwarf nursemaid missed her home in the hills west of Thorbardin. Only her love for Crystal, and now for the boy, kept her here.
Closing the nursery door behind her, Aunt Needlebone shuffled to Tarn’s side and peered over his shoulder at infant Tor lying in his father’s arms, quiet now, peering at their faces with his large gray eyes. “Sometimes I think he really can talk already. He just hasn’t decided what he wants to say,” she said.
Tarn smiled and shrugged. “I don’t know about talking, but he’ll certainly be walking before much longer.”
Auntie laughed at the king. “Hill dwarf babies are already walking by Tor’s age. Mountain dwarves are a bit slower, I hear.”
Knowing that Auntie was only trying to provoke him, Tarn growled, “He’s as stubborn as a hill dwarf, that’s for certain. This morning, I tried to give him his wooden rattler, but he was having nothing of it. He wanted his gemstone shaker and nothing else would do. Such a voice!”
“He’ll need that voice to be heard in this family,” Auntie said.
The door to the nursery opened and Crystal entered. She was dressed formally, with golden hoops dangling from her ears and rings winking with gems on her fingers. Her face was rouged, her long auburn hair arranged with jeweled pins and combs into a tall coif atop her head. A wide belt of green felt circled her waist, into which was tucked a blouse of milky white silk. A skirt of tooled and gilded leather covered her legs, and over all she wore a robe of fine green wool lined with gray silk and trimmed in ermine.
She stopped just inside the door and looked at Tarn in alarm. “Aren’t you ready yet?” she asked.
Tarn growled something unintelligible into his beard. Crystal sighed and adjusted one of her earrings. “The delegates will be here any moment, Tarn,” she said.
“I’d rather stay here with Tor,” Tarn responded sullenly.
“Well, you can’t. You are the king. This is an important day, the celebration of the Festival of Lights, a time to honor the dead and to remember the destruction suffered during the Chaos War. You can’t hide in the nursery, today of all days.”
“Here, give me the child,” Auntie said as she gently pried Tor from his father’s arms. Tarn only reluctantly released his hold on the boy.
“I’m not hiding,” he said angrily as he rose to his feet. “I enjoy spending time with my son. Is that so wrong?”
“You dote on him too much,” Auntie said. “You’ll spoil him.”
Snarling, Tarn stalked from the nursery. Aunt Needlebone’s fuzzy gray eyebrows rose in a silent question, but Crystal only shrugged and followed her husband.
As Tarn swept into the reception hall of his residence, guards along both walls snapped to attention, their boots thundering on the floor as one. Tarn wore his full ceremonial regalia—plate armor polished to a mirror sheen, kingsword at his hip, crown of Thorbardin encircling his golden mane of hair. A long cloak of wolf fur dragged on the ground behind him as he climbed the stairs to his throne. Crystal walked at his side and took her accustomed place to his left, standing a little behind the throne with her right hand resting on its high, dragon-carved back. Mog Bonecutter emerged from a door behind the throne and took his place to Tarn’s right. Mog wore a full suit of golden-tinted chain mail, his unruly black beard poking fiercely from the circle of mail coif, a tabard of red silk emblazoned with the hammer and anvil symbol covering his chest and back.
The highest dignitaries of the Hylar clan bowed in greeting at the foot of the steps. Thane Jungor Stonesinger was foremost among them. Because the acid damage to his face had caused part of his facial hair to eventually fall out, Jungor had taken to braiding his remaining beard into three short plaits. Even today, when he and all the other dwarves of Thorbardin were dressing in their finest and combing out their beards to achieve the greatest fullness and luxuriance possible, Jungor chose to keep his severe style. With his ascetic’s beard, long gray robes, wizard staff, and golden orb winking from the hollow of his right eye, he looked almost like a sorcerer.
Beside Jungor stood the wealthy merchant Hextor Ironhaft, gold fairly dripping from his fat fingers. Several dozen generals, former priests, nobles, and artisans made up the remainder of the delegation—the cream of Hylar society, both male and female. Most were dressed either in the most expensive silks imported from the north or the richest armor forged by dwarf or man. Several years ago, Tarn’s engineers had opened several new ore veins in the stone near the North Gate. These mines had provided much of the reason for the dwarves’ rising prosperity. Because of Tarn’s policy of openness, dwarf traders from Thorbardin had begun to carry their goods all over the world. Wealth flowed through the North Gate, improving everyone’s lives.
Flowed, that is, it until Jungor convinced the Council of Thanes to seal the mountain after the disaster at Qualinost. Now, the wealth of Thorbardin was being consolidated in higher and higher levels of its society, just as it was in the old days. Gold and iron still flowed from the mines and steel continued to be forged in its foundries, but these riches no longer flowed out with traders traveling to distant lands, bringing home the mundane goods and strange curiosities that once filled the markets of Norbardin. Now, money was hoarded rather than invested. The poor grew poorer, the rich richer. Some dwarves ate off plates of gold while other had nothing to eat at all. And as long as the mountain remained sealed and the economy of Norbardin forced to feed off itself, this situation would never change.
Tarn was well aware that Jungor wanted to keep it that way. The Hylar thane had made no secret of his ambitions in the last year, while Tarn had withdrawn ever deeper into family matters. As he had said, he’d rather spend time with his son. Instead, he was forced to participate in these endless ceremonies.
Crystal nudged him, bringing him out of his dark reverie. He coughed and cleared his throat. “Clansmen and clanswomen of the Hylar, I welcome you into the home of the son of Baker Whitegranite, son of Brom Whitegranite. In remembrance of those now gone to join the Kingdom of the Dead, I wish you a joyous Festival of Lights.”
The Hylar nodded appreciatively. Although many of them had little enough love for their half-breed king, none disputed that Tarn had a remarkable talent for speaking on public occasions, especially rituals and formal ceremonies. There were many who said Tarn would have .made a good priest, an observation that only made Tarn laugh when he heard it.