Silence had fallen now, a profound silence as they listened to the old mage, whose voice was strong and carried above the rising wind that was blowing the storm clouds from the sky.
‘One of you would have taken the orb and used it, and you would have found that you had hurled yourself upon disaster. You would have been broken as surely as the kender broke the orb. As for hope being shattered, I tell you that hope was lost for a time, but now it has been new born—’
A sudden gust of wind caught the old mage’s hat, blowing it off his head and tossing it playfully away from him. Snarling in irritation, Fizban crawled forward to pick it up.
Just as the mage leaned over, the sun broke through the clouds. There was a blazing flash of silver, followed by a splintering, deafening crack as though the land itself had split apart.
Half-blinded by the flaring light, people blinked and gazed in fear and awe at the terrifying sight before their eyes.
The Whitestone had been split asunder.
The old magician lay sprawled at its base, his hat clutched in his hand, his other arm flung over his head in terror. Above him, piercing the rock where he had been sitting, was a long weapon made of gleaming silver. It had been thrown by the silver arm of a black man, who walked over to stand beside it. Accompanying him were three people: an elven woman dressed in leather armor, an old, white-bearded dwarf, and Elistan.
Amid the stunned silence of the crowd, the black man reached out and lifted the weapon from the splintered remains of the rock. He held it high above his head, and the silver barbed point glittered brightly in the rays of the midday sun.
‘I am Theros Ironfeld,’ the man called out in a deep voice, ‘and for the last month I have been forging these!’ He shook the weapon in his hand. ‘I have taken molten silver from the well hidden deep within the heart of the Monument of the Silver Dragon. With the silver arm given me by the gods, I have forged the weapon as legend foretold. And this I bring to you—to all the people of Krynn—that we may join together and defeat the great evil that threatens to engulf us in darkness forever.
‘I bring you—the Dragonlance!’
With that, Theros thrust the weapon deep into the ground. It stood, straight and shining, amid the broken pieces of the dragon orb.
7
An unexpected journey.
‘And now my task is finished,’ Laurana said. ‘I am free to leave’
‘Yes,’ Elistan said slowly; ‘and I know why you leave’—Laurana flushed and lowered her eyes—’but where will you go?’
‘Silvanesti,’ she replied. ‘The last place I saw him...’
‘Only in a dream—’
‘No, that was more than a dream,’ Laurana replied, shuddering. ‘It was real. He was there. He is alive and I must find him.’
‘Surely, my dear, you should stay here, then,’ Elistan suggested. ‘You say that in the dream he had found a dragon orb. If he has it, he will come to Sancrist.’
Laurana did not answer. Unhappy and irresolute, she stared out the window of Lord Gunthar’s castle where she, Elistan, Flint, and Tasslehoff were staying as his guests.
She should have been with the elves. Before they left Whitestone Glade, her father had asked her to come back with them to Southern Ergoth. But Laurana refused. Although she did not say it, she knew she would never live among her people again.
Her father had not pressed her, and—in his eyes—she saw that he heard her unspoken words. Elves aged by years, not by days, as did humans. For her father, it seemed as if time had accelerated and he was changing even as she watched. She felt as though she were seeing him through Raistlin’s hourglass eyes, and the thought was terrifying. Yet the news she brought him only increased his bitter unhappiness.
Gilthanas had not returned. Nor could Laurana tell her father where his beloved son had gone, for the journey he and Silvara made was dark and fraught with peril. Laurana told her father only that Gilthanas was not dead.
‘You know where he is?’ the Speaker asked after a pause.
‘I do,’ Laurana answered, ‘or rather—I know where he goes.’
‘And you cannot speak of this, even to me—his father?’
Laurana shook her head steadfastly. ‘No, Speaker, I cannot. Forgive me, but we agreed when the decision was made to undertake this desperate action that those of us who knew would tell no one. No one,’ she repeated.
‘So you do not trust me—’
Laurana sighed. Her eyes went to the shattered Whitestone. ‘Father,’ she said, ‘you nearly went to war...with the only people who can help save us...’
Her father had not replied, but—in his cool farewell and in the way he leaned upon the arm of his elder child—he made it clear to Laurana that he now had only one child.
Theros went with the elves. Following his dramatic presentation of the dragonlance, the Council of Whitestone had voted unanimously to make more of these weapons and unite all races in the fight against the dragonarmies.
‘At present,’ Theros announced, ‘we have only those few lances I was able to forge by myself within a month’s time, and I bring several ancient lances the Silver Dragons hid at the time the dragons were banished from the world. But we’ll need more—many more. I need men to help me!’
The elves agreed to provide men to help make the dragonlances, but whether or not they would help fight—
‘That remains a matter we must discuss,’ the Speaker said.
‘Don’t discuss it too long,’ Flint Fireforge snapped, ‘or you might find yourself discussing it with a Dragon Highlord.’
‘The elves keep their own counsel and ask for no advice from dwarves,’ the Speaker replied coldly. ‘Besides, we do not even know if these lances work! The legend said they were to be forged by one of the Silver Arm, that is certain. But it also says that the Hammer of Kharas was needed in the forging. Where is the Hammer now?’ he asked Theros.
‘The Hammer could not be brought here in time, even if it could be kept from the dragonarmies. The Hammer of Kharas was required in days of old, because man’s skill was not sufficient by itself to produce the lances. Mine is,’ he added proudly. ‘You saw what the lance did to that rock.’
‘We shall see what it does to dragons,’ the Speaker said, and the Second Council of Whitestone drew to a close. Gunthar proposed at the last that the lances Theros had brought with him be sent to the knights in Palanthas.
These thoughts passed through Laurana’s mind as she stared out across the bleak winter landscape. It would be snowing in the valley soon, Lord Gunthar said.
I cannot stay here, Laurana thought, pressing her face against the chill glass. I shall go mad.
‘I’ve studied Gunthar’s maps,’ she murmured, almost speaking to herself, ‘and I’ve seen the location of the dragonarmies. Tanis will never reach Sancrist. And if he does have the orb, he may not know the danger it poses. I must warn him.’
‘My dear, you’re not talking sensibly,’ Elistan said mildly. ‘If Tanis cannot reach Sancrist safely, how will you reach him? Think logically, Laurana—’