Dark Thane Read online

  Having left the plaza surrounding the Council Hall, they turned north. Here, near one of the major transportation shafts that connected the various levels of the city, they found the houses of healing for the second level of Norbardin. Not far away stood Jungor's warehouses, and from the intersection of two streets, Tarn could see the crowd that had already gathered to receive the distribution of goods. Though obviously not in dire need as a result of the groundquake, the dwarves were not about to pass up free blankets and food. Tarn could not help but think that Jungor was buying the favor of the populace.

  But this did not concern Tarn so much at the moment. What more readily attracted his attention was the large number of people waiting in the street outside the houses of healing. Most bore only minor bruises and scrapes, and he saw no one with truly serious injuries. But there were far too many of them, and Tarn noted that most were Daergar or Klar. Fifty or more stood on the curb outside the door and the line stretched around the far corner.

  Tarn turned aside and entered, Ghash hurrying in his wake. They found the lobby more crowded than the street, with dozens of dwarves angrily demanding attention for their wounds from the undermanned staff. Tarn glanced around until he spotted a young female Hylar wearing the white robe and brown belt of a healer's apprentice. She was hurrying toward him with a tray of bandages balanced on one hand while she fended off the grasping hands of the patients who swarmed around her. Tarn pushed through until he reached her side, then took the tray from her hand and passed it to Ghash. "Distribute these," he ordered. The Klar captain stared at him in confusion for a moment before lowering the tray to within the reach of those clamoring around him.

  "Wait just a moment. Those are for the doctor!" the apprentice healer shouted angrily. Tarn turned back to her, and it was only then that she realized who he was, so frazzled were her nerves. "Pardon my impertinence, thane. I did not see you enter. Are you injured?" She performed a quick curtsy.

  "Not at all. Tell me, what has happened here? Why are there so many injured citizens on this level?" Tarn asked.

  The girl pushed her hand through the mop of dirty brown hair hanging in her eyes. Her cheeks were flushed with exertion, her hair dank with sweat. "Oh, my king," she sighed. "The houses of healing on the first level have been flooded. We're getting patients from both levels now, and there aren't enough of us to handle them all."

  "Where are all your healers, then?" Tarn asked, well aware of the precise number of staff assigned to each of the healing houses. "There should be more than enough healers here to handle this. And I was told that there aren't any serious injuries to speak of."

  "That's true, my lord, or would be. There are only two doctors here. The rest of the staff is made up of apprentices and novices. Most of our doctors were ordered to the third level to deal with Hylar wounded," she said in annoyance. "That was before the first level houses of healing became flooded. Now we can't recall them."

  "Ordered? Who ordered this?" Tarn asked, though he thought he already knew the answer.

  "Thane Stonesinger," the girl said, confirming his suspicions. "Forgive me, my lord. The doctor is waiting for me." Curtsying again, she hurried away.

  "Send the head doctor to me, when he has a moment!" Tarn shouted after her, and she waved to show that she had heard before vanishing through a doorway.

  Tarn found Ghash standing by a window with an empty tray in his hands. Two other Klar stood nearby, and the three leaned together, speaking swiftly in their choppy, guttural dialect. Tarn noticed that the two newcomers were still wet up to their waists and dripping water onto the floor. One wore a blood-soaked bandage wound about his shaggy head, the other leaned upon a makeshift crutch. As Tarn approached, they ceased their whispered conference and turned to bow. Tarn immediately noticed a distinct aroma of sewage that surrounded them. They smelled like they had been wading in a latrine. The other patients had already identified the source of the odor and retreated to the other side of the chamber.

  "My kinsmen," Ghash said, introducing them to the king. "Garn and Boros Bloodfist." The two bowed again. Tarn could not help but notice how much the one wearing the head bandage, Garn Bloodfist, looked like a younger version of his old friend Mog Bonecutter. Looking at him was like seeing a ghost from the early days of his rule.

  "What passes on the lower level?" Tarn asked, trying not to stare at the young dwarf.

  "The entire Anvil's Echo is flooded, my thane," the older of the two brothers answered. He shifted his position on his crutch, wincing when his foot touched the floor.

  "It's the sewers," Ghash said. "They're backing up everywhere down below."

  "I can't believe the sewers have failed this badly after such a small groundquake," Tarn said. "They're newly built and reinforced, after all."

  "It wasn't the groundquake at all," Boros said. "The sewers didn't start backing up until the engineers began to inspect them for damage. My brother and I were assigned to these very duties. I can't speak for what happened to the others, but we discovered magical wards had been placed at the confluence of the sewage system beneath the first level houses of healing. One ward exploded while we were trying to remove it. That's how we were injured, and how the healing house came to be flooded with sewage. The entire pipe collapsed. We barely escaped with our lives."

  "We've heard that there were other explosions, too," Garn added as he rubbed his bandaged forehead.

  Tarn pondered their strange news in silence. Could it be? Magical wards had been set to collapse the sewers beneath the Anvil's Echo, thus flooding the most densely populated region of Norbardin with raw sewage. The place would be uninhabitable for months, until they could clean it up and repair the sewers. Who could have set those wards? There was no question as to who had the capability, much less the motive. Among all the dwarf clans, only the Theiwar had the skill to use magic, and the Theiwar were aligned, through their thane, Brecha Quickspring, with Jungor.

  The question was, why? Why flood the Anvil's Echo? Who lived there? Daergar, Theiwar, and Klar, for the most part. A few Daewar had homes in the Anvil's Echo, but no Hylar would lower himself to live in that slum. Forcing the Daergar, Klar, and Theiwar out of their homes would only aggravate the clan rivalries in Norbardin, as they would all be forced to share an even smaller amount of inhabitable city. Tarn had only managed to keep the peace in Norbardin for these forty years by allowing the different clans to build their own enclaves within the city. Force them together now and it was sure to end in clan-on-clan violence. That must be the plan.

  Did Jungor really desire the return of internecine war in the streets of Thorbardin? Should a civil war erupt, Tarn didn't have the manpower or the resources to stop it. He'd been holding the tiger by the tail for forty years now, living on borrowed time while he worked to break down clan hatreds. And prosperity, more than anything else, had helped to keep the peace. But in the eighteen months since the gates were closed, prosperity had faltered. Tarn knew that each day, the tinder beneath their society became a little drier, a little more ready for the spark that would light it into a conflagration.

  All the while, Jungor had apparently been scheming, planning, preparing to take advantage of this disruption in the delicate social balance.

  Tarn cursed himself for a blind fool. Now the dozens of reports and hints that had passed across his desk in the past year came flooding back to him. He only half read most of them, deeming them unimportant, and he had never connected the dots, until now. In the past months his son had been the only thing he really cared to attend to, and therefore he had neglected the duties of the king, while Jungor built up a sizable militia of Hylar and Theiwar warriors "in preparation for Beryl's attack, or any other emergency"; while he stockpiled food stores and blankets in his warehouses; while he commissioned dozens of new fountains to be built in the Hylar quarter that would provide plenty of water in case of a siege.

  Perhaps it was not too late for Tarn to act. Maybe the groundquake had saved him from an even greater disaster. I
t had exposed the magical wards set to collapse the sewers beneath the Anvil's Echo, obviously before Jungor was ready to use them. Tarn felt a cold chill pass down his spine. Jungor must already be aware that his machinations had been laid bare. The Hylar thane couldn't afford to wait and see if Tarn would put the last pieces of the puzzle together and discover the extent of his treachery. He was probably already moving his forces into position to seize control of vital streets and transportation shafts, stairways and sources of water, prisons and centers of government All he needed was an excuse to act, and Tarn had no doubt that Jungor could improvise such a contingency. A few acts of clan violence, a little rioting in the streets, some looting and arson to go with the flooding of the Anvil's Echo, and Jungor Stonesinger would be ready with his army of soldiers, ready to restore civil order and be proclaimed king of Thorbardin.

  "We have to get back to the fortress," Tarn said in a low voice that Ghash knew was ominous. Instinctively, his hand flew to the axe at his belt.

  "What's wrong?" Ghash hissed.

  "There's no time to lose." Tarn started for the door, but a commotion in the street brought him up short. Ghash leaped in front of the king, axe in hand with a snarl peeling his lips back from his teeth.

  A litter bearer stumbled through the doorway, tripping over the threshold in his hurry and nearly dumping the litter's occupant unceremoniously on the ground. The bearer at the other end of the litter fought to stabilize their burden while his companion regained his balance. Weaving a path through the other patients, they shouted frantically for the doctor.

  Concerned, Tarn stepped nearer. Two apprentice healers appeared and swiftly knelt beside the dwarf on the litter. One peeled back the damp sheet covering him to reveal his naked body. His skin had turned a brilliant scarlet color and was covering with pustules from the middle of his chest to his knees. A few tatters of blackened clothing still clung to his flesh around his wrists and ankles.

  "He's been burned," one of the apprentice healers said to his companion other. "Fetch a doctor at once." He then lifted one end of the litter, and with the help of one of the litter bearers hurried the patient from the room. The other patients, many of whom had been moaning pitifully about their cuts and bruises, grew silent at the sight of the horribly burned dwarf.

  Tarn grabbed the other litter bearer and pulled him aside. Seeing who it was who had accosted him, the young Daewar dwarf swiftly knelt before the king. Tarn pulled him to his feet "What happened?" he asked.

  "A… a… an accident at the s-site of the N-new Council Hall, my king," the young dwarf stammered.

  "Was it the groundquake?" Tarn asked impatiently.

  "No, sire. I don't believe so. He was one of the engineers sent to investigate the crack in the foundation caused by the groundquake," the litter bearer answered.

  Tarn's blood went cold in his veins—it was just like his recurring nightmare—the crack in the nursery floor, the hot breath welling from it, and the gaping chasm of fire. And each time, that dream had ended with Tor's mangled and broken body being torn to shreds by shadow wights.

  "Crack? What crack?" he asked through lips suddenly gone numb.

  "I can't say, my lord. Someone found him beside the crack, his skin scalded nearly from his bones but still alive. Of the other engineers, there was no sign."

  "Wait, my lord!" Ghash shouted as Tarn bolted through the door.

  28

  Though nearly complete, Tarn's new Council Hall still had a good two years of work ahead before it would be ready to hold its first meeting of the Council of Thanes. Its architect, Gaul Quarrystone, had chosen the location to take advantage of a natural bowl-shaped cavern uncovered by silver miners a few years after the Chaos War. The cavern lay a hundred feet beneath the lowest level of Norbardin at the end of a broad sloping passage that wound snakelike into the heart of the mountain, following a thin vein of silver that could still be seen sparkling in the tunnel's walls. For the better part of ten years, two hundred of Thorbardin's most skilled stonemasons had chiseled and chipped and cut and polished until the cavern had become a thing of unmatched beauty. In their diggings, they had uncovered deposits of golden-hued quartz crystal, which they cut into panes to form the lamps that would one day fill the Council Hall with warm golden light. But for the most part, the dwarves sought to reshape the caverns as little as possible, and what they did alter, they used all their skill to make it look natural.

  Were it not for the scaffolding rising to the ceiling a hundred feet overhead, the piles of stone dust waiting to be carted away, and the discarded tools of the workers littering the floor, one might have mistaken the chamber for a natural amphitheater. Only the stairs were too regular, the seats too evenly shaped, and the dais at its center was too perfectly rounded to be an accident of nature. The dwarves sought to improve upon the perfection of nature whenever they could. This philosophy had been the inspiration behind the wondrous Life Tree of the Hylar, their great city built within a single huge stalactite hanging over the Urkhan Sea. With Tarn's enthusiastic support, Gaul Quarrystone had envisioned re-creating just a little of that former majesty here in the new Council Hall.

  Tarn had no doubt that the brilliant young architect would succeed in his aspirations. Though the Council Hall followed the traditional design, this was a place unlike any the dwarves of old had ever imagined. Natural rock blended perfectly with shaped stone to form a fluid whole of surpassing beauty.

  But there was one flaw in Gaul Quarrystone's design—apparently, the Council Hall rested over a significant fault in the bedrock. The groundquake had opened it, neatly splitting the central dais almost through its center. Tarn and Ghash now stood at the edge of the gaping black hole, peering down into a seemingly bottomless chasm from which wisps of steam steadily rose.

  Even more ominous, dried bloodstains and tatters of burned clothing lay around the crack. Bloody palm prints and streaks on the inside edge of the hole told of the surviving engineer's desperate attempt to escape. The fire from below was intense, and dwarves feared fire more than any other hazard of the deep earth. But whether the engineers had accidentally stumbled upon a pocket of methane gas, igniting it with their lamps, or whether they had encountered molten rock pushing up into the mountain, neither >Tarn nor Ghash could tell. Either way, this was a great danger.

  "Ghash, I want you to go and fetch more engineers. Bring Gaul Quarrystone here at once," Tarn said, adding when he saw the captain begin to protest, "Now, do as I say. Time is of the essence, and we must know what happened here."

  "All the more reason that you should come with me, m'lord. It is too dangerous for you to remain here. If the Hylar thane's soldiers were to discover you… "

  "They won't find me," Tarn snapped. "I'll be safer here than on the streets. Bring a squadron of my personal guard with you when you return. There is no telling when Jungor might… ." His voice trailed off as a faint sound rose from the crack in the floor. At first he thought it nothing more than the hissing of steam. But then a voice, distant yet clear, cried, "Someone help me! Please!"

  "There's someone still alive!" Ghash exclaimed as he knelt at the side of the hole.

  "Hello down there!" Tarn shouted. His voice was amplified by the empty chamber.

  A faint, inarticulate cry answered. Without even considering the danger, Tarn sat at the edge of the hole and swung his legs over the side. The shattered rock provided plenty of handholds and ledges to place his feet, so that he had little difficulty negotiating his descent. Grumbling into his beard about the risk, Ghash followed even more nimbly than his king. The younger Klar was an accomplished mountaineer and soon was able to pass his king.

  After about forty feet, the air became sweltering, the stone under their hands grew uncomfortably warm. "If it gets any worse, we'll have to turn back," Ghash said. Tarn said nothing, continuing his swift descent. But they had not gone much deeper before the rocks grew too hot to touch for very long. Both dwarves felt the pads of their fingers slowly being seared, their face
s and chests baked by the heat. Even worse, the air scalded their lungs with each breath. Steam mixed with noxious vapors seeped from the stone around them, even as the crack narrowed and grew more steep.

  "We have to go back," Ghash said in a strangled voice.

  "There's someone alive down there," Tarn said. "If he can survive this long, we can stand it long enough to try to rescue him."

  "And what if he is trapped? What is he can't escape? If we join him, we'll be trapped, too."

  "Then we'll be trapped!" Tarn shouted angrily as he continued downward. After a dozen more feet, he felt the close air open around him and knew that they had entered a larger cavern. The smoke and mist prevented him from seeing much with his darkvision. He felt truly blind in the dark. The slope leveled off and soon he found himself standing at the bottom of the chasm. Ghash joined him, coughing and retching from the poisonous fumes.

  By feeling their way along the wall, they discovered that they had entered a tunnel, roughly circular, with smooth walls that seared their fingers. Both knew immediately that no dwarf had delved this tunnel. Some more elemental force must have burned its way through the rock. Guessing that the tunnel was not very wide, Tarn pushed off from the wall and moved blindly ahead. Almost immediately, he stumbled over something on the floor. The sickly sweet odor of cooked flesh assaulted his nostrils.

  He and Ghash found six more dwarf bodies lying in the immediate area. They didn't need to see to know that all of them were horribly burned. But the last body that they found stirred when Tarn touched it. "Here he is!" Tarn cried to Ghash.

  "I can't see!" the injured dwarf moaned. "My eyes! My eyes are gone!"