With the torchlight gone, Tarn waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Soon, he could see the general outline of his cell, the door and its grate, and the chains hanging loosely about his limbs. Grasping them in his hands, he twisted and pushed until he was able to slip his upper body through its strictures, then went to work on the chains wrapped around his legs. In scant moments, he was free. Weaponless, locked inside a chamber somewhere in Norbardin, bruised and battered, but free. All he needed now was to escape. Somehow. He sank heavily onto the throne, chin resting on his fists, while the silence of emptiness echoed around him.
It took some time before Tarn recognized this was no ordinary dungeon cell, cramped and rank with sewage, dead bodies, and rotten straw. The ceilings here were high and vaulted, upheld by crafted pillars. His throne sat atop a sort of dais, with steps leading up from the dusty floor. They had carried him here blindfolded, but he now knew exactly where he was—an old training hall for the guardians of the North Gate. There were still holes in the walls where racks of weapons once hung. The floor was worn into deep tracks where centuries of feet had pounded the tiles.
Why had they put him here? Tarn wondered. Why not a more secure dungeon cell? The answer was immediately obvious. Jungor wanted a large audience when he came to taunt the king. He very well couldn’t lord it over Tarn Bellowgranite in a tiny cell which forced him to limit his witnesses.
Tarn wondered how long it would be before the Hylar thane arrived with his fellow traitors and lackeys. A chamber this large could easily hold fifty or more Hylar dignitaries and their retinues.
Tarn had no intention of waiting around to count them. One thought was uppermost in his mind—the dragon. Even now, it might be stirring in its sleep, roused by all the commotion. The dwarven nation couldn’t hope to fight such a creature, neither could they seal off its lair, for chaos dragons could pass through stone as easily as air. All those innocent fools, he thought ruefully, they had laughed when he warned them of the dragon.
At least Tor was safe. Crystal would not long remain in Thorbardin once she learned of Tarn’s fate. But what would happen to Tor once he was gone? Would Tor, years hence, even remember his father? Would Jungor be satisfied with exile for the son of the king of Thorbardin, or would he have the child murdered to prevent any future claims to the throne? The thought of that innocent child lying dead, hacked apart by cowards, brought Tarn to his feet. His heart pounded in his chest, gripped in sudden panic.
He knelt down. “Oh Reorx, save my son,” the dwarf king prayed, perhaps for the first time since the Chaos War. Though he knew that the gods had left Krynn at the end of the war and could not answer his prayers, still he prayed. “Oh, gods, please save my poor dear innocent boy!”
But after he prayed, he jumped up and considered his options. The ancient wood door was not only locked, but swollen so that the jailer had had to force it shut with his shoulder and kick it several times just to get the key to turn in the rusty lock. The chamber had long ago been stripped of its contents, but he eventually found an old stone baton lying in a corner under heaps of dust. Once used in drills for strengthening arm muscles, it would make an effective if crude weapon. He thought about using it to batter down the door, then gave up that idea as too noisy. The guards would only return, and the next time they wouldn’t be so careless with their chains.
Tarn resumed his seat and rested the stone club on his knees. What he really needed was rest, but he couldn’t risk closing his eyes for a moment; he might fall into a deep sleep. He had to get ready. If nothing else, he would spend his life to see Jungor Stonesinger’s brains splattered all over the floor.
He jerked awake and caught the stone baton as it rolled off his knees. He wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep. But he heard footsteps coming, and then the key rattling in the lock. Thinking quickly, Tarn rested the baton next to his thigh while he slipped the chains back around his legs.
The door groaned on its rusted hinges to admit the jailer. He was soberer now than he had been, though in much worse temper. He carried an old bucket and a large sponge in one hand, a smoking torch in the other. As he entered, slopping water onto the floor and cursing, Tarn noticed that the jailer was alone. The hall outside appeared to be empty.
The jailer crossed the chamber and stopped at the bottom of the steps, setting his bucket down. Soapy gray water slopped over the sides. He dropped the sponge into the bucket, then started up the short flight of steps to Tarn’s throne.
“Jungor has sent word to make you presentable. He wants you pretty, it seems, so you don’t offend the Hylar sensibilities. I have to rinse the piss stains from your trousers,” he growled. “But first let me see to your chains. I…”
The jailer gaped as Tarn rose up before him, his chains sliding from his limbs. Before he could shout or scream, the stone baton had crushed the dwarfs skull to the earholes. Tarn stepped over him, stooped to the bucket, and washed the dried phlegm from his beard. Then he took the jailer’s keys and ghosted from the chamber.
Slipping into the hall, Tarn paused. To his right, the passage descended sharply downward for about forty feet before entering a wider room lit by flickering torches. Twenty yards to his left, the passage ended at an ironbound door, which stood partially open, revealing a dark staircase heading up. He knew that the downward passage led to an old dungeon level, little used these days. But the stairs led to a tower of the North Gate fortifications. He didn’t relish the idea of trying to fight his way through a garrison of troops loyal to Jungor Stonesinger. Just as well to sit in his cell and wait, than to try to run that gauntlet. But the dungeons didn’t offer any better prospect.
He started for the stairs. At least that was a way out, even if not a very certain one. But the quick thunder of boots on the stairs sent him scurrying back in the other direction. He hurried down the sloping passage and into the room at the bottom just as dozens of dwarves tumbled down the stairs and slammed the door behind them. Tarn heard shouts and curses, and something heavy began to pound on the door. “Kill the king before they break through!” one of the guards shouted.
Tarn cast a quick glance around the small subterranean room. Chains and manacles hung from pegs on the walls, while a large, battered table surrounded by benches occupied the center of the chamber. This was another guardroom, luckily unoccupied at the moment. Opposite the entrance, a rusted metal gate blocked the entrance to a narrow passageway lined with doors—more prison cells. The door to his right was, in all likelihood, the jailer’s quarters.
Tarn raced to the metal gate and tried the largest and most ornate of the keys he had taken from the jailer. It twisted in the lock with surprising ease; apparently someone had recently oiled the mechanism. But in his haste, Tarn dropped his weapon. The stone baton, bloody and slippery with the jailer’s brains, broke cleanly in half on the hard stone floor. Swearing, he glanced around the room for another weapon. A bench or a length of chain would prove singularly useless against the swords and axes of trained warriors, but the jailer’s room held the promise of something more suitable.
He found the door unlocked and quickly entered, silently closing it behind him. The room was tiny and unlit, and it stank to the heights of heaven with the odor of unwashed dwarf. A bent dagger lay on a dressing table beside the sagging wooden bed. Several whips and a cat-o-nine-tails hung inside a wardrobe beside the door. But on the opposite wall, a shield and a pair of goblin swords were displayed atop a cabinet which housed a dented horsehair-crested helm—testimony of better and more honorable days perhaps, when the jailer had served in the king’s army. Tarn ripped the shield and one of the swords from the wall. The shield’s leather fittings, old and dry rotted, crumbled as he thrust his arm through the strap, but the sword seemed serviceable enough, if ill-balanced and poorly forged. Thus armed, he crept to the door and leaned against it, straining his ears to hear.