Tas was pointing at the wall. There, scrawled in charcoal, was a heart. In the middle of the heart was the word “Tika”.
“I’ll bet Caramon drew that,” said Tas, grinning.
“I’ll bet he did, too,” said Tika softly. She reached out and took the flaring torch from the kender.
“Follow me,” she said, and feeling her own heart soar to the heavens with happiness, she led the way along the tunnel, deeper into the darkness.
Chapter 11
A Question Of Faith. End Of The Tunnel. The Man-Eating Stalig Mite.
Flint and Tanis edged their way through the pass that wasn’t so much as a pass as a large gap. Tanis envisioned the refugees trying to cross this rocky, narrow defile, their children in tow, and he hoped fervently it wouldn’t come to that. They spent most of the morning navigating among the boulders and scrambling over rock slides, finally emerging after hours of toil on the other side.
Using his battle-axe, Flint pointed. “Well, there you are, Half-Elven,” he said. “Thorbardin.” Tanis looked down at the landscape spread beneath him. Ash-gray plains led into dark green foothills, thick with pine trees, from which soared the gray blank face of the tallest mountain peak in the Kharolis chain.
Tanis regarded the mountain in bleak dismay. “There’s nothing there.”
“Aye,” said Flint in gloomy satisfaction. “Just like I told you.” The dwarf had indeed told him, but Flint had a tendency to exaggerate and embellish his tales a mite now and then, particularly those tales having to do with the wrongs, perceived or otherwise, suffered by his people. Search as Tanis might, he could see no sign of anything resembling a gate on the mountain side or even a place where one might put a gate.
“Are you sure Thorbardin is there?” Tanis asked.
Flint rested his weight on the battle-axe and gazed steadily at the mountain.
“I was born and raised hereabouts. The bones of my ancestors lie on the plains below us. They died because our cousins closed the gates of that mountain on them. Cloudseeker casts a shadow over us all. Each and every one of us hill dwarves sees it loom large in his dreams. I’m not likely to forget this place.”
Flint spit on the ground. “That’s Thorbardin.”
Tanis sighed deeply, scratched his beard and asked himself, “What in the Abyss do I do now?” He had no hope at all that he would be successful in his mission. Neither he nor Flint had any idea where to even start looking for the lost gate to the dwarven kingdom. They could spend years traipsing across the face of Cloudseeker. The greedy and the desperate had been searching for this gate for three hundred years and never found it. There was no reason to think he and Flint would be the ones to succeed where so many had failed.
Tanis considered giving up. He went so far as to half-turn, look back the way they’d come, and even take a step in that direction, but he found he couldn’t do it. He could not admit defeat, not yet.
Flint stood leaning on the battle-axe, watching his friend turn first one way and then the other. When Tanis turned around again, Flint nodded.
“We’re to keep going then,” he said.
“You know as well as I do that it’s only a matter of time before Verminaard attacks,” Tanis said, adding in frustration, “There must be a way inside Thorbardin! Just because no one else has discovered it…”
“After all, the gods are with us,” Flint observed.
Tanis eyed his friend to see if the dwarf had spoken sarcastically or if he was serious. Tanis couldn’t tell. The dwarf’s expression was unreadable, much of it hidden behind his full beard and shaggy eyebrows.
“Do you believe the gods are with us?” Tanis asked. “Do you believe what Elistan and Goldmoon have been teaching?”
“Hard to say,” said Flint, and he appeared uncomfortable talking about it. He cast Tanis a sidelong glance. “I take you don’t?”
“I want to.” Tanis shook his head. “But I can’t.”
“We’ve seen miracles,” Flint pointed out. “Riverwind was burnt to a crisp by a black dragon. Elistan was brought back from the brink of death.”
“And Verminaard brought back from the dead, as well,” said Tanis dryly. “I’ve seen Raistlin scatter a few rose petals and cause goblins to fall sound asleep at his feet.”
“That’s different,” Flint growled.
“Why? Because it’s magic? Magic or no, one could call such things ‘miraculous’.”
“I call them accursed,” Flint muttered.
“All I know for certain,” Tanis said, smiling, “is that the only being who walks with me is you, my friend.” He clapped Flint on the shoulder. “I could not ask for a better companion. Gods included.”
Flint flushed in pleasure, but he only said gruffly that Tanis was a silly ass and he shouldn’t talk in such a flippant manner about things beyond his understanding.
“I think we should keep going,” Tanis said. “Raistlin may find the key to the gate in Skullcap.”
“Do you think he’s planning to bring it to us if he does?” Flint snorted in derision. “And you claim you don’t believe in miracles.”
The two started what Tanis feared would be a slow and laborious journey down the side of the mountain when Flint came to a sudden halt.
“Would you look at this,” he said.
Tanis looked and marveled. It wasn’t a miracle. It was a road. Built by dwarves, centuries old, the road had been carved out of the side of the mountain. Winding back and forth across the face of the mountain, the road led down and into the foothills then climbed back up the other side. All the refugees had to do was make it this far, and the way after that would be smooth.
“Provided this road leads to the gate,” said Flint, reading Tanis’s thoughts.
“It must,” said Tanis. “Where else would it go?”
“Just what people have been asking themselves these last three hundred years,” Flint remarked dryly.
Sturm, Caramon, and Raistlin, traveling beneath the mountain, found their journey long, tedious and uneventful. The area was prone to earthquakes, but the dwarf-built tunnel had survived hundreds of these shocks almost unscathed. Occasionally they noticed places where the walls had cracks, and here and there a small rock slide impeded their path, but that was all. The tunnel ran straight, no twists or turns. It was neither haunted nor otherwise inhabited. They walked for several hours and made good time. Raistlin was again strangely energized. He set a swift pace, ranging ahead of his brother and Sturm, his staff thumping the tunnel floor, his red robes swirling about his ankles. When the other two called a halt to take a breather, Raistlin would caustically remind them that lives depended on their progress.
Down here in the darkness, with no way to tell time, none of them had any idea how long they walked or how many miles they traveled. Every so often, they came upon marks on the wall that appeared to be some type of indicator of distance. The marks were in dwarven, however, and none of them knew what they meant.
They traveled so long that Caramon began to secretly wonder if they might not have missed Skullcap altogether. Perhaps they had walked across the continent and would emerge to find themselves in some distant realm—the far southern reaches of Ice Wall, maybe. He was deep in his imaginings, dreaming of vast expanses of white wastes, when Sturm called their attention to the increased amount of debris and rubble in the passage.
“We must be nearing the end,” said Raistlin. “The destruction we see is a result of the blast that leveled the fortress.”
“What do we do if the blast destroyed the tunnel?” Sturm asked.
“We must hope that it was protected,” Raistlin said. “As you can see, the beams shoring up the ceiling have not been damaged. That is a good sign.”
They trudged wearily on. The light of Sturm’s torch and Raistlin’s staff did not extend far, and Raistlin almost walked headlong into a stone wall before he realized it was there. He came to an abrupt halt, shining the light this way and that.