“I’m going!” said Flint. Gritting his teeth, he put his hand on the kender’s shoulder and, groaning, hauled himself upright. His head spun, and he tottered on his feet and had to steady himself with a hand on the kender.
“Put your arm around my shoulder,” Tas suggested. “No, like this. There you go. You can lean on me. We’ll go up together. One stair at a time.”
This was highly undignified. Flint would have refused, but he feared he could not make it without assistance, and he was driven not so much by the hammer but by the terrifying prospect of hearing the woolly mammoth story for the umpteenth time. Assisted by the kender, Flint began to stagger up the stairs.
“I don’t mind you leaning on me, Flint,” said Tas after a moment, “but could you not lean quite so heavily? I’m practically walking on my knees!”
“I thought you said there were only twenty stairs!” Flint growled, but he eased up on the kender.
“I’ve counted thirty and I still don’t see the end.”
“What’s a few stairs more or less?” Tas asked lightly, then, feeling Flint’s arm tighten around his neck in a choking manner, Tas added hurriedly, “I see light! Don’t you see light, Flint? We’re near the top.”
Flint raised his head, and he had to admit that the stairwell was much lighter than it had been before. They could almost dispense with the lantern. Flint was forced to practically crawl up the last few stairs, but he managed it.
An arched wooden door banded with iron stood at the top of the stairs. Sunlight gleaming through the slats lit their way. Tas pushed on the door, but it wouldn’t budge. He jiggled the handle, then shook his head.
“It’s locked,” he reported. “Drat! That will teach me never to leave my pouches behind again!” The kender slumped down. “All these stairs for nothing!”
Flint couldn’t believe it. His aching legs didn’t want to believe it. He gave the door an irritated shove and it swung open.
“Locked!” Flint said, glaring in disgust at the kender.
“1 tell you it was!” Tas insisted. “I may not know much about fighting, politics, the return of the gods, or all that other stuff, but I do know locks, and that lock was locked.”
“No, it wasn’t,” said Flint. “You don’t know how to work a door handle, that’s all.”
“I do so, too,” Tas said indignantly “I’m an expert on door handles, door knobs, and door locks. That door was bolted shut, I tell you.”
“No, it wasn’t!” Flint shouted angrily.
Because if the door had been locked, that meant that someone—or some thing—had opened it when he pushed on it, and he didn’t want to think about that.
Flint walked out into the sunshine. Tasslehoff followed, giving the offending door an irritated kick in passing.
They had reached the battlements at the top of the tomb. Across from them was a crenellated stone wall. A tower lined with rows of windows rose to Flint’s left. A short, squat tower was to his right. Beyond the towers and the stone wall was azure blue sky.
“I don’t want to hear anymore about it—Great Reorx’s beard!” He gasped.
“Oh, Flint!” Tasslehoff let out a soft breath.
The sunlight gleamed off a cone-shaped roof made of faceted panels of ruby-colored transparent glass. The pain in Flint’s legs and the burning in his chest were subsumed in wonder and in awe. He pressed his nose to the glass, and so did the kender, both of them trying to see inside.
“Is that it?” asked Tas softly.
“That’s it,” said Flint, and his voice was choked.
A bronze hammer attached to what appeared to be a thin rope hung suspended from the apex of the cone. The hammer swung slowly from one side of the chamber to the other. Around the ceiling were twenty-four enormous gongs made of bronze. Each of the gongs was inscribed with a rune. Each rune represented the hours of a day from Waking Hour to First Eating Hour; First Working Hour to Second Eating Hour; and around to the Sleep Hours. The Hammer swung back and forth, shifting position with each swing, timed so that it struck a gong at the start of the hour, then continued on in a never ending circle.
Flint had never seen anything so wonderful.
“That’s truly remarkable,” said Tasslehoff, sighing. He drew his head back and rubbed his nose, which had been pressed flat against the glass. “Did dwarves set the Hammer to swinging like that?”
“No,” said Flint, adding hoarsely. “It’s magic. Powerful magic.” Though the sun was uncomfortably hot on the back of his neck, he shivered at the thought.
“Magic!” Tas was thrilled. “That makes it even better. I didn’t know dwarves could do magic like that.”
“They can’t!” Flint said crossly. He waved his hand at the swinging Hammer. “No self-respecting dwarf would even dream up something like that, much less do it. The same magic that yanked this tomb out of the ground and set it floating in the sky has turned the Hammer of Kharas into a Palanthian cuckoo clock and—” he sighed glumly and peered up again at the Hammer—
“whoever wants the Hammer has to find out a way to get inside there, then stop it from swinging, and then haul it down from the ceiling. From where I stand, it can’t be done. All this way for nothing.”
The moment he said it, he was suddenly, secretly, vastly relieved.
The decision whether or not to switch hammers had been taken out of his hands. He could go back to Sturm, Raistlin and Tanis and tell them the Hammer was out of reach. He’d tried. He’d done his best. It wasn’t meant to be. Sturm would have to get along without his drag-onlances. Tanis would have to find some other way to persuade the dwarves to let the refugees inside the mountain. He, Flint Fireforge, was never cut out to be a hero.
At least, he thought with a certain amount of grim satisfaction, Arman Kharas won’t be able to get to the Hammer either.
Flint was about to start back down the stairs, when he looked about and realized he was alone. He felt a twinge of panic. He’d forgotten the first rules of traveling with a kender. Rule Number One: never allow the kender to grow bored. Rule Number Two: never let a bored kender out of your sight.
Flint groaned again. This was all he needed. A kender loose in a magic-infested tomb! He let out a roar: “Tasslehoff Burrfoot—Oh, there you are!”
The kender popped out from around the corner of the small, squat tower.
“Don’t go running off like that!” Flint scolded. “We’re going back down to find Arman.”
“You’re standing in the wrong place, Flint,” Tas announced.
“What?” Flint stared at him.
“You said that from where you stood, you couldn’t reach the hammer, and you’re right. From where you are standing, you can’t reach the hammer. You’re standing in the wrong place. But if you walk around to the other side of this tower, there’s a way. Here, look inside again.” Tas pressed his nose to the glass and, reluctantly, yet feeling a twinge of excitement, Flint did the same.
“See that ledge over there, the one sticking out of the wall above the gongs.” Flint squinted. He thought he could make out what Tas was talking about. A long stone ledge thrust out into the chamber.
“If it is a ledge, it’s not much of one,” he muttered.
Tas pretended he hadn’t heard. Flint was such a pessimist! “I figured if there was a ledge, there had to be some way to reach the ledge, and I found it. Come with me!”
Tas dashed around the squat tower. Flint followed more slowly, still searching for a way off this tomb. He looked out over the crenellations, but all he could see down below were curls and whorls of red-tinged mist.
“Not there, Flint. Over here!” Tas called.
The kender stood in front of a double door made of wood banded with iron.
“They’re locked,” Tas said, and he fixed the doors with a stern eye. Flint walked up, pushed on one of the doors, and it swung silently open.
“How do you keep doing that!” Tasslehoff wailed.