Then came the Cataclysm and the withdrawal of the gods from Krynn, the withdrawal of the elves to Qualinost and the dwarves to Thorbardin, the scattering of the humans….
In those hard times, the very face of Krynn was remade. Seas shoved out of their basins, and the climate across the face of the world changed. In the ensuing years, kingdoms fell like toppled sand castles, and the wealthy became poor, and poor people became desperate. Pax Tharkas became the sole property of the mountain dwarves, the far western outpost of Thorbardin manned by clans grown suspicious of outsiders. Old alliances fell to dust, old treaties were forgotten, and the names of old friends went unspoken as the elves of Qualinesti and the dwarves of Thorbardin grew eager to turn inward where the godless could not come.
"Pax Tharkas was many long years in the making, and few deny it is the finest craft of dwarven hands," Elansa said. "It’s built astride a south-running mountain pass, an enormous fortress of stone with two tall towers and an outer wall no enemy has ever breached. Kith-Kanan, the first king of the Qualinesti, our first Speaker of the Sun, is buried there in a fine crypt, and his Royal Guard lies near."
"Have you ever seen it?" Brand asked.
"The crypt in the Hall of the Ancients? No. No one alive has. It’s guarded by dire magic. And I've never seen Pax Tharkas itself." Her voice dropped low. "But I think we are near Pax Tharkas."
Brand's eyes lit with amusement. "What makes you say that?"
She pointed to the step upon which they stood. "Dwarf-made, don't you agree?"
He didn't disagree. How could he? He'd spent years in the outlands of Thorbardin. The mark of dwarves was everywhere to be found and not in the least noted in the ancient stonework in the robber-hall under Hammer Rock. Cunningly worked columns lay shattered beneath the ledge where his men had long kept watch, as though some great temple had once stood, then fallen. If one didn't see mountain dwarves much outside Thorbardin, one often saw the ancient work of their hands.
Elansa took his silence for agreement. "I believe the dwarf who made these steps must have been in the Tower of the Sun. I'm sure he saw the steps these mirror. This work is ancient, and so are the steps in Qualinost. He was, I think, one of the designers of Pax Tharkas."
Brand snorted. "A step’s a step."
She bent to one knee, tracing her fingers along the riser until she felt the mark that made her case. "Look." She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. "Put your hand here and see the proof of what I say."
He bent, and she guided his hand toward the mark she wanted him to feel. So close to him that she felt his breath on her cheek, she knew his surprise when he touched and traced the lily-mark.
"That is the mark a dwarf made upon those steps in the Tower of the Sun, in the feast hall, and that hall was commissioned by a woman whose name, in Elvish, means Lily of the Night. Why would her sigil be here in this place if the maker of these steps hadn't had to do with Qualinost and Ashanlilana, the Lily of the Night?"
"An elven queen," he said, "marked there and marked here."
Color rose to Elansa’s cheek. Ashanlilana hadn't been a queen in Qualinost, though for a time she had been queen in the king's bed. The Lily of the Night had managed no official status for herself, though her mark, her lily, remained in several chambers of the ancient Tower of the Sun-on tiles, stair risers, and in bas-relief on two of the colonnades that led out from the tower and into the royal family’s private gardens. She had, in her time, had great influence on the heart of the king.
"Tell me this," Brand said, pulling her to her feet, "who lives in Pax Tharkas now?"
"Why, no one." Did these humans know nothing?
Did they roam between the Tower of the Sun and Pax Tharkas as though they'd been dropped down into foreign lands? "No one lives there. The dwarves held on to it for nearly a century after the Cataclysm, but they lost it during the Dwarfgate War. Now the only things living there are ravens and wolves and rats and-"
"Ghosts. You call it Pax Tharkas, and dwarves do. The rest of us call it the Fortress of Ghosts."
That was a dark enough name for a place meant to stand as a monument to friendship, but it wasn't the name that made her draw in her breath. Sudden understanding and wonder filled her, and she looked over her shoulder to the place where she saw Char and his hound.
"He led us all this way, so close to Pax Tharkas, with no sight of sun or moons or stars."
"He's a good guide when he's not drinking. None better in the hills around or even here in the belly of Krynn."
"I don't doubt he is. Arawn doesn't seem to agree."
"Arawn’s a fool," Brand said. "He's looking for trouble, but Char won't give it to him."
"Why do you keep him?"
"Arawn or Char?" He shrugged. "We're long-time friends, me and Arawn. Me and Char, too. They have their faults. One drinks a bit, the other… he has a hard time with things sometimes. Arawn doesn't like it when things change. Makes him feel like he's got to shove up against me to prove who he is." Brand combed his fingers through his thick beard, and his lips quirked in a mirthless smile. "I won't kill him unless he makes me."
The moment had an odd clarity, a strange stillness, and Elansa realized that the observation Brand had just made might have been one Kethrenan might have made. Not couched so roughly, but they knew their men, these two. They knew what moved them, how far to push them, and when to stop.
Caught in the disjointed moment when she saw her husband and her captor in a similar light, she spoke with perhaps more softness than she had in months. She said, "Brand, why are you going to Pax Tharkas?"
He scratched his beard. Head cocked, he looked at her, deciding if he should say. In the stillness, she saw the gleam of silver around his neck, the glinting of the sapphire phoenix on his chest. He reached to touch it, the god-figure, and Elansa thought, He doesn't know what he's touching. He doesn't feel the magic.
"Do you know the Notch?"
How could he ask?
"Sometimes I used to stay with the farmer and his family," Brand said. "I liked their daughter. She liked me for a time. They were friends. They’d feed me when I needed it, shelter me if I wanted that. I gave them things-sometimes steel, sometimes just a brace of hares. It was a good place to be, a little fastness in the border to keep them."
But it hadn't kept them. It had burned, tumbled down, and been deserted. Elansa had seen it.
"What happened to them?" she asked.
Brand's eyes narrowed, and his hand fell from the phoenix. "Got raided."
"Goblins?"
Whatever warmth she'd seen in Brand's expression was gone.
"No," he said, and his eyes touched her, cold. "Elves. Too close to your precious border, that farm. They took a deer or two, hare or pheasant when they could without going too far in. Took too much." He jerked his head. "The little fastness couldn't stand against your husband's will. And I moved on, back and forth, building me a feud with goblins. But I remembered them and their little stone fastness that stood true against all but an elf prince. I thought I'd find a fastness of stone for myself. One that would stand against anyone. I'd sit there in the mountain, stash weapons all over the inside of this place, and never a goblin or elf would stand against me."
But the goblins had got a hob for a leader now, Gnash whose army swelled daily, or so it seemed. And the elves… well, that hadn't worked out well, either.
"What will you do in Pax Tharkas?" Elansa asked. He lifted his head, rough and shaggy. He looked at her long, and she saw that his nose jutted like an eagle's beak. "I have enemies. I will hold the place against them, and they will not take me."