Jungor stepped over the threshold and greeted Tarn with a bow that was all but an obvious mockery of respect. Tarn ignored the insult. “I must speak with you,” he said in a low voice, even as Brecha Quickspring appeared in the doorway behind Jungor. “Alone,” he added.
“Come now, we can speak freely here, can we not?” Jungor asked solicitously as he stepped past Tarn and spoke so that his voice would carry to the crowd below. “We have nothing to hide from the people of Thorbardin. And unless my eye betrays me, we have a majority of the Council of Thanes in attendance as well. How very convenient.”
Glowering, Tarn said, “Very well then. I have come to say that we must put aside our petty differences because—”
“I couldn’t agree more!” Jungor loudly interrupted.
Tarn raised his voice and continued, “… because we are all in grave danger!”
Jungor looked at him in genuine surprise. “Grave danger? What kind of danger? Is the king having more bad dreams?” he asked.
“That was no groundquake that shook the mountain last night!” Tarn said angrily. “It was a fire dragon slumbering in the depths of Thorbardin.”
Silence descended on the plaza as everyone stared up at the king in shock. It was as though a spell of fear had been cast over everyone, fear born of their memories of the Chaos War. Even Jungor seemed momentarily taken aback, until he shattered the silence with a hideous peel of laughter. “A fire dragon!” he shrieked. “By Reorx’s bones and boots, that must be some fire dragon if it can shake the whole mountain!”
Slowly, others began to chuckle, none with more smug glee than Rughar Delvestone. Growling deep in his throat, Glint’s fingers tightened around the haft of his axe. Crystal slipped her hand from his arm to the dagger secreted in her sleeve. The Klar thane glanced down at her, and she returned his gaze with a grim expression.
Jungor continued, “Are you sure it isn’t Beryl?” he asked the crowd. “No, we’ve heard not a peep from the great green bitch, despite the king’s most dire prophecies. Maybe it was Malystryx, then.” The crowd began to roar with laughter.
“It was a chaos dragon I tell you!” Tarn shouted, his voice cutting through the levity like an axe stroke. “My captain and I discovered its lair beneath the new Council Hall. You can go and see for yourselves, if you don’t believe me. It is asleep now, but stirring. It may awaken at any moment. We must evacuate the mountain.”
Jungor glared at Tarn for a few moments, his misshapen face writhing. “A chaos dragon? But the chaos dragons were all destroyed. As you yourself have attested, all the minions of Chaos were destroyed, and by your own father when he released the power of the Platinum Egg. May the name of Baker Whitegranite,” he added quickly, “be forever praised!”
“Go and see for yourself, I tell you!” Tarn responded. “But I warn you, when that beast awakens, it will be the horrors of Chaos all over again.”
Jungor ignored the king. “So now you would have us abandon our homes once more, to make your father’s sacrifice a vain and empty one!”
“Are you the only one who has seen this supposed dragon?” Rughar Delvestone asked accusingly.
“No, Ghash Grisbane, Captain of the King’s Guard, also saw the dragon,” Glint said as he stepped nearer the Daewar thane.
“And where is he, pray tell? Not here to confirm the king’s words, I notice,” Rughar sneered. “There is only you, Tarn’s ever-loyal lackey.”
“I’ll only warn you once to keep a civil tongue between your teeth, Thane Delvestone,” Glint growled.
“Don’t speak to me of civilities Thane Ettinhammer. How many innocent Hylar and Daewar did you slaughter during the Chaos War? Their blood still cries for vengeance!” Rughar shrieked.
“Very well then,” Glint said as he calmly hefted his axe.
“You wouldn’t dare,” Rughar hissed as he fumbled at his own sword.
“I told you I would only warn you once,” Glint said.
“Glint! Wait!” Tarn cried as he leaped for the Klar thane, but too late. Glint’s huge, double-bladed axe swept up, cleaving through armor, bone, and flesh. Rughar’s head leapt from his neck in a spray of blood that doused both Jungor and the Theiwar thane.
Tarn swore furiously as madness seemed to erupt. His guards retreated to within a few steps below him, forming a defensive barrier of steel to protect their king. Jungor’s forces poured in from every side of the plaza and fought their way through the frenzied crowd. Glint swung again and cut down one of Rughar’s bodyguards even as Crystal drew her dagger and slammed it into the throat of another. As the dwarf fell, blood spurting around the blade in his windpipe, she snatched the spear from his fist.
The third bodyguard drew his sword and attacked Tarn. His own sword still in its sheath, Tarn managed to dive beneath the blade and slam his shoulder into the dwarfs belly. Standing up suddenly, he lifted the Daewar warrior and flung him down the stairs, ripping his sword from its scabbard at the same time.
He turned as a sibilant whisper of magic froze his blood. Jungor now filled the doorway behind Brecha Quickspring, his face contorted with hatred. Lost in the ecstasy of her magic, Brecha seemed not to hear Jungor’s warning shout. Her words shivered the air, drawing power as the spell found shape and substance around the amber rod in her hand. But the spell died on her lips as Jungor grabbed her by the belt and pulled her through the doorway an instant before Crystal’s spear would have skewered her dark Theiwar heart. Instead, the missile thudded into the doorframe and stuck quivering in the wood, just as Jungor unceremoniously slammed the door.
Tarn leaped after him, but as his hand closed around the ornate bronze knob, a bolt of electricity arced from the metal to his fingertips. He jerked his hand away and wrung his numb fingers.
“That witch has magicked the door,” Glint shouted over the din of battle. “We have to get out of here before she has time to do worse.”
Tarn nodded as he switched his weapon to his left hand. Crystal jerked her spear free and dropped in behind Glint as he strode down the stairs, bellowing orders to Tarn’s guards. They quickly formed up in a defensive wedge, with the Klar thane at the point, and drove into the first of Jungor’s soldiers to reach the stairs. So ferocious was the assault of the battle-mad Klar warriors that they easily clove through the disorganized resistance they met.
Fleeing the shrieking Klar charge, the crowd was met on the other side of the plaza by Astar Trueshield, leading a large force of Hylar and Theiwar warriors—the best of Jungor’s troops. Swirling in confusion, the crowd coiled upon itself for a moment, then turned and fled back the other way, quickly colliding with Tarn’s small group of warriors. In seconds, he and Crystal found themselves separated from their bodyguards. Glint’s voice roared about the din of the mob as he was carried away, axe flailing. Crystal clung desperately to Tarn’s arm to keep them from being pulled apart, even as he laid about with the flat of his blade, to little avail. Soon, they found themselves swept into a close, cramped alley stinking of garbage, pressed murderously on all sides by the panicked mob and Jungor’s troops. While clinging to one another and fighting to keep their feet beneath them, the tide swept them along, but to where, they did not know.
31
Having at last escaped the mob as it dissipated into the maze of streets and alleys of Norbardin, Tarn and Crystal hurried along a darkened street, hand in hand, each encouraging the other to greater speed.
Their fortress home was near enough now that they no longer kept to the shadows. The section of the third level nearest the fortress had remained loyal to Tarn through all the difficulties of the past year. Perhaps it was the inherent nature of neighbors to support their own. Dwarves were fiercely loyal to clan and family, but in Norbardin, many of the families had been forced to live in different sections of the city due to space limitations. There were, for instance, four Klar quarters of Norbardin and seven small enclaves of the Daergar clans. In some places, especially around Tarn’s fortress, Klar and Daergar, Hylar and Theiwar lived side by side, shopped at the same markets, drank in the same taverns. Over the course of nearly forty years, they had begun to feel the same fierce loyalty for their neighbors that they had formerly reserved only for clan and family.