“That’s what I would have recommended,” Dram replied approvingly. “No dwarf likes to have water under his feet-and to spend six days at anchor, waiting for your comrades to get rowed out to their ships, would give even the most hearty warrior a bad case of the nerves.”
“Right! So then I thought your ships could put us ashore on the coast, just south of Xak Tsaroth,” Brandon continued. “That puts us within a short week’s march of Pax Tharkas, with Thorbardin’s North Gate not too far beyond.”
“Aye …”
Dram seemed to assent, but his tone, his quizzical expression, conveyed his skepticism.
“I know what you’re thinking: ‘The North Gate is a narrow tunnel, set high up in a cliff wall. No army could even reach it, much less attack,’” Brandon said.
Dram chuckled. “That’s pretty close to the mark.”
“Well, I think we’ve found a way to breach the mountain itself,” the younger Bluestone continued. “It has to do with an artifact of Reorx, which consists of three parts or smaller artifacts, actually. We have now come into possession of the third and final part, which is being carried to Pax Tharkas. And with the army of Kayolin, Tarn Bellowgranite’s brigade, an army of hill dwarves, and this artifact of Reorx on our side, I think we will prevail.”
“Hill dwarves?” Dram looked pained. “Now I’ve heard it all.”
“They are pledged by pact with Tarn Bellowgranite to aid him in this attempt,” Brandon said. “I was there at the signing. All the exiled king need do is ask for their help.”
“And of course, we are willing to pay for the sea passage,” Garren said.
After a long, suspenseful pause, Dram nodded, accepting the offer. “Emperor Markham appreciates the wealth of Kayolin, as well as your friendship and, in this matter, the needs of the dwarves. He has instructed me to tell you that your army will be transported at the expense of the Solamnic Navy. He wishes you to see this as the gesture of enduring friendship and trust that it is. The ships will be dispatched upon my return to Palanthas, and they should be gathered in Caergoth within four weeks’ time.”
“We are humbled by his generosity,” Garren said sincerely.
The emissary from Solamnia stood and cleared his throat. “Good luck to you,” was all he said.
In a dark cell in the dungeons far below the fortress of Pax Tharkas, a bitter dwarf slowly yielded to the insanity that had ever lurked just below the surface of his awareness. He pulled at the hair that still bristled from his head, though his scalp was marred by bloody, bare patches which he had previously violated. His eyes, always wide and startled looking, like any Klar’s, darted wildly around the cell, swinging from the barred door to the ceiling, the walls, the floor, as if wary of an enemy or seeking some avenue of escape, in any direction.
“I’m mad!” his whispered, careful to keep his voice low so the turnkey couldn’t hear him. He also worried about listeners in the adjacent cells, though through his long year of imprisonment, he had discerned no evidence of any other prisoner down there. Still, he wouldn’t put it past the king to trick him, to post some scum eavesdropper right next door, listening for the prisoner to make a damning confession.
Garn Bloodfist had never been exceptionally well-balanced, even by the standards of the volatile and impetuous Klar. For most of his adult life, he had been a leader of that clan and a more or less loyal follower of the king in exile. But still he was a Klar.
The king had never fully recognized the threat posed by the hateful, deceitful hill dwarves who lived all around the area near Pax Tharkas. Garn had known! Garn had seen the danger and had led his valiant Klar on campaigns against the Neidar, up to-and sometimes even beyond-the limits imposed by his monarch.
Then, with the moment of his greatest triumph at hand, with the teeming mass of the enemy army funneled within the walls of the fortress, caught within a perfect trap-many thousands of tons of crushing rock, ready to be released, ready to kill all the hill dwarves-the king had finally lost his nerve. He had ordered Garn to hold his hand, to not release the trap.
But Garn had seen the truth! Garn knew what to do! He had disobeyed his king and pulled the lever to release the trap, and the killing mechanism had failed to release!
An idiot of a gully dwarf had, all unwittingly, ruined the trap’s release. For Garn, his life had all but ended on that day, when the exiled king made peace with the hill dwarves, and the once-loyal Klar captain had been clapped in irons and hauled off to the dungeon.
He languished there, slowly going mad, or madder. He chewed on his lip, shivering, until he tasted blood. He smashed his fist into his temple and stopped his chewing, though he still shivered. He huddled on the floor, rocking back and forth. He wanted to whimper, to shriek, but he wouldn’t give his imagined eavesdropper the satisfaction.
He wished that she would come back but knew that it was too soon since her last visit. She was the only bright spot in his life-odd, since she was a hill dwarf. Her visits were the only thing that kept him from falling utterly into despair. She listened to him, and he was careful to mask his insanity when he talked back to her in reasonable, calm tones. She spoke to him, offering comfort and hope, not so much through her words-which he frequently didn’t understand-but merely from her presence and the soothing sounds she made.
Suddenly Garn Bloodfist stiffened. He’d heard a noise in the outer hall-something he recognized as a real noise, not the imagined sounds triggered by his paranoia.
“Who’s there?” he demanded. I’m not mad! She must not know that I’m mad!
“It’s me,” came the whispered reply.
But it was not the cherished lady’s voice that responded. Instead, the speaker sounded like a youngster, a dwarf male whose voice had not fully deepened into manhood. Garn shrewdly remained silent, listening, and the mystery was soon resolved.
“I’m Tor Bellowgranite. My mother is Crystal Heathstone. She comes here sometimes … to talk to you. Doesn’t she?”
What to say? What to do? Garn’s tongue froze in his mouth, and he felt a suffocating pressure close around his throat. He opened his mouth, but for seconds he could force only a hoarse croak to emerge.
“Yes,” he finally articulated. “She talks to me. She is a kind woman, your mother.”
“But she’s a hill dwarf!” the lad replied, his voice an accusatory hiss. Even through his madness, Garn realized that his visitor was speaking in a harsh whisper and was no more interested in being overheard by eavesdroppers than was the Klar himself. “And you spent your life making war against the hill dwarves!”
“That war-that war is over,” Garn said, somehow forcing his voice to be calm even as the lie spilled forth. That war would never end! “I … I care for her. She is good to me.”
“You aren’t trying to harm her?” asked the young dwarf.
“No!” wailed Garn, forgetting the need for discretion, forgetting everything in the searing hurt of the question. “No! I would never hurt her! I would never do her wrong!”
“My father thinks you’re dangerous,” Tor declared.
“But I’m not dangerous!” Garn replied, calming himself, putting all of his imagined sincerity into the denial.
He held that thought close to his heart as the young dwarf finally padded quietly away, back to his royal apartments, to his life of sunlight and family and good food.
I’m not dangerous! Garn argued with himself, persuasive, convincing, settling himself into a corner of the cell and repeating the truth like a mantra.
Not dangerous at all.
FOUR