A noise like a crack of thunder echoed through the vast cavern. The noise shook Tarn back to his senses. “Turn the boat around!” he shouted. “We have to go back for Mog.”
“Listen!” someone in a nearby boat cried. The rowers paused in their strokes for a moment as everyone bent an ear to hear. Tarn heard it first—a distant chorus of shrieking voices, growing ever louder, somewhere high above.
“What new evil is this?” one of the rowers asked fearfully.
“Never you mind. Keep rowing. Bend your backs to it!” shouted the boat’s helmsman.
“No! Turn the boat around! We have to go back,” Tarn said as the shrieking quickly grew louder, like a dozen banshees dropping down upon them from the darkness.
“Row on!” the helmsman roared, ignoring the king, and his rowers obeyed him. Tarn’s demands fell on ears deafened by terror. The banshee wails seemed almost atop them now. The dwarves in the boat ducked their heads even as they pulled frantically at their oars.
Then, the shrieks ended in a thunderous roar as a huge section of the mountain smashed into the island, utterly obliterating the shrine and the wharf. A concussion of hot air and blinding dust struck the boat broadside, nearly tipping it over. Tarn’s fingers dug into the wood of the gunwale as he blinked the dust and stone splinters from his eyes and stared back at the island, desperately seeking any sign of the loyal, brave Mog.
“We must go back and look for him,” he said in a voice utterly bereft of hope.
“It’s too dangerous, my king,” the helmsman said, not without sympathy. The rowers pulled their oars through the water, drawing the boat away from the Isle of the Dead. “He’s probably dead by now. Even if he survived the stone that destroyed his boat, nothing could live through that last collapse.”
They pulled in grim silence for a while, listening to the sounds of the other boats, the soft calls of the helmsmen counting out the strokes. No one spoke. All were still too numb with horror to appreciate the nearness of their escape.
Then, one of the rowers in Tarn’s boat whispered to his benchmate, his voice pitched low so the king would not hear, “Jungor’s warning saved our lives. He saved us all.” But Tarn heard him, and as he heard the murmur of awe from the other dwarves in his boat, his heart grew cold with doubt. Such thoughts, such suspicions took root in his mind, so horrible that he dared not shine the light of reason upon them.
For Jungor Stonesinger had indeed saved their lives with his warning vision. And wasn’t that marvelously fortunate?
22
Mog had never been more comfortable in all his life. His bed was large enough that his entire family could have slept in it, its wooden frame exquisitely carved with elvish designs (probably an import from Qualinesti), its coverlets of an ancient weave, but sturdy and soft as the day they were made.
Across the oddly-shaped chamber where his bed stood, a merry fire burned beneath a bubbling iron pot, from which the most delicious smells occasionally wafted. Mog found that he had acquired a substantial appetite during his absence, and whatever it was that was cooking in the pot was winning a decisive battle against the delightful languid peace that had heretofore kept him in this bed.
Where had he been, he wondered absently, not really caring if he thought of the answer. Still, it was a pleasant diversion, to sit and think of his mortal life. For naturally, he was dead, and this must be the afterlife. Nothing else could explain it. He was certain that he was dead, because he could distinctly remember dying. His legs crushed, pinned beneath a boulder, he had at last succumbed to his fate after a valiant and vain struggle to free himself. And with only a passing regret for having failed his king, he had then taken his first and only breath of the bitter cold dark waters of the Urkhan Sea.
What a way for a dwarf to die, he remembered thinking.
But at least it didn’t bar him from a pleasant afterlife, though he did wonder what had taken him so long to get here. He had the distinct impression that a substantial portion of time had passed since he first drank his death and when he awoke in this bed, only moments ago.
He stretched out his legs beneath the cool sheets, closed his eyes and watched the flames of the fire dance upon the underside of his eyelids. He was so wonderfully hungry, he didn’t want to ruin it all by actually eating, not just yet. In the back of his mind, he wondered what heavenly spirit had built the fire and prepared the meal that awaited him. At the same time, he wondered if the afterlife would bring other pleasures as well, ones he had denied himself out of duty and loyalty to his king. Mog was certain that he must have earned a wife in the afterlife, preferably one of celestial origin. No ordinary dwarf woman would do for him. He had had high standards in life, and didn’t intend to surrender them now that he was dead. Perhaps it would be better to just lie here until his wife returned, to pretend sleep so that he could observe her at his leisure. And if he fell asleep again while waiting, then so be it. He had nothing else to do, and he was fairly certain that one didn’t burn one’s dinner in heaven, no matter how lazy one was.
Perhaps he did doze off again. Mog couldn’t be sure, nor did he care. His mind seemed to slip effortlessly between waking and dreaming, as though the two worlds were really one. But now he heard the sounds of someone moving about the chamber, stirring the pot, stoking the coals. Wood crackled with flame, and he heard the tinkle of crockery.
He opened his eyes a slit, then shot bolt upright in bed. A grizzled, copper-bearded male dwarf of indeterminate age glanced up from the cookfire and smiled. “Ah, awake at last, Lazy Bones?” he cackled.
Senses fully alert now, Mog took in his surroundings in one brief flashing glance. The “bedchamber,” he realized, was really a cavern or cave scraped out of some huge jumble of ruins. One wall was covered in a brightly painted fresco of dwarves laboring at a forge, but the entire thing was upside down and half-buried in the uneven earthen floor. Statuary and broken pieces of columns and other architecture emerged like nightmares from the wall behind his bed. His bed, which he had imagined so luxurious, he now realized to be a creaking wreck, the headboard blackened by some ancient fire, one entire side of it propped up on unstable piles of stone. The cooking fire burned, not in a fireplace, but in an overturned marble privy, and the pot hanging above the flames bore the unmistakable silhouette of a chamber pot.
Perhaps he was not in heaven, but in hell. Still, the food cooking over the fire did smell wonderfully inviting, and he felt alive, his legs whole and strong. He was pretty sure they didn’t serve such good-smelling meals in the Abyss.
“Now, I would stay in bed if I were you,” the dwarf warned as Mog started to slide out from under the sheets. “You’ve only just begun to recover.”
“Who are you?” Mog asked. “And where is this place?”
The dwarf strode up to the side of the bed and extended a paw-like hand, thick, rugged, and scarred. “Ogduan Bloodspike,” he said with a broad, toothy grin that was just a bit more unsettling than friendly; the effect was a little like watching a lion yawn. “As for this place, I’m not sure what they call it nowadays. Used to be part of Hybardin.” He waved a hand at the upside-down mural on the far wall.
“The Isle of the Dead?” Mog exclaimed.
“That’s it,” Ogduan said, snapping his big thorny fingers. He tapped the side of his head. “Memory’s not so keen as it used to be.”
“Then I’m still alive,” the Klar warrior sighed.
“Looks that way, son,” the older dwarf murmured.
“But how did I survive? The last thing I remember… ”