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  The Covenant of The Forge

  ( Dwarven Nations trilogy - 1 )

  Dan Parkinson

  Dan Parkinson

  The Covenant of The Forge

  Prologue

  A Glimpse of Prophecy

  Except for the dragons, who sprang from the world itself, the first people of Krynn were the elves. This was a conclusion reached by Mistral Thrax early in his search for certainties among the complexities of an uncertain world.

  Few would recall his early pronouncements regarding the sequence of origins, because in those days Mistral Thrax was considered to be full of strong ale and vagaries, and because few among the people of the high mountains really cared about such things as who came first and why. Such thoughts were for the very old, who had nothing better to do than think them. Even then, when he began his studies of lore after being maimed in a rockfall, Mistral Thrax was more than two hundred years of age.

  Thus little note was made of his reckonings. But the logic of his conclusions satisfied Mistral Thrax and led him onward in his studies.

  The elves, he believed, were the first attempts of the gods — particularly of Reorx the Life-Giver — to create people of their own design upon the world which before that time had only its own creatures, the dragons, and the animals which were their prey.

  So the gods discussed it and created the elves. The elves were beautiful, Mistral Thrax admitted, in an elvish way, but it was his belief that the gods grew disappointed after a time because the elves — being elves — were essentially decorative but not particularly functional. They were content simply to live long lives and to exist. They did nothing of real value, in the opinion of Mistral Thrax. In all his studies, the old dwarf found only one thing that the elves had done that was worthy of note. They had claimed the forests of Silvanesti as their home, thereby upsetting the dragons, many of whom considered Silvanesti as their own.

  This, according to Mistral Thrax, was why so much of history was punctuated by periodic skirmishes and at least one full-scale war, starting with dragon attacks against the elves.

  In their concern for proper balance, the gods tried again. This time, they created the ogres. And again, as time passed, they grew disappointed. The ogres had been a promising race — though unimaginative and boring — but with time they began to deteriorate in their culture and eventually they became the ogres of the present — great sullen, surly brutes who were at best a nuisance and could be a real threat.

  Various gods, Mistral Thrax decided, had then tried their hands at designing a better kind of people. Which gods might have originated such monstrosities as goblins and minotaurs and the like was a question Mistral Thrax ignored, on the assumption that those particular gods were probably ashamed of what they had done, and it was not his business to lay blame.

  But Reorx the Life-Giver seemed to have recognized the problems besetting his world and turned his full attention to designing the perfect race of people. As Mistral Thrax viewed it, Reorx must have created humans next, using the basic model of the elves but instilling within the new creatures great energies, driven by the realization of short life spans. Again, in Mistral’s opinion, it was a good try but not yet perfect. Humans proved to be far too chaotic a race for Reorx’s taste, he was sure, and somehow even managed to so distort their basic strengths that some of them turned into gnomes and, possibly, even kender (though there was some evidence, Mistral conceded, that kender might have originated from some unexpected deviation among the elves).

  His intention and his vow — in his two hundredth year — had been to devote the rest of his life to the study of lore. Thus, a hundred years later, being still alive, he was still at it. Copious armloads of scrolls did Mistral Thrax produce through those years, dwelling on the mysteries of the world and dealing with them one by one, using good, dwarven logic. But the thread through all of his theories was that Reorx, once determined to create the proper race of people, did not stop trying until he had done so.

  The true race — the masterpiece of the life-giver — was all that any god could have wanted in a chosen people. Not as tall and awkward as humans, and neither as short-lived as humans nor as indecently long-lived as elves, the new race was equipped with all the skills people needed. They made fine tools and excelled in using them. Sturdy and strong of limb, they could hew stone as other races might hew soft wood. They had the imagination and inventiveness that ogres lacked, the sense of progress and stubborn determination that elves lacked, and the continuity of purpose that humans lacked.

  Through trial and error, Reorx in his wisdom had finally created the proper people for the world of Krynn — the race of dwarves. Legends held that Reorx was so pleased with his best people that, originally, he named them all Smith, though that proved so confusing that they gave themselves other personal names as needed, and eventually none of them — so far as Mistral Thrax knew — were named Smith.

  Thus did Mistral Thrax clarify the origin of the dwarven race, for any who cared to consider it.

  From there, being now more than three hundred years old and still alive, he went on to summarize the history of the world to date.

  The dwarves in the early times had scattered over the face of the land, seeking the highest places, and tribes had become separated. There were legends of a place called Kal-Thax, where many had settled, and maybe other such places as well, but the dwarves of Mistral Thrax’s acquaintance — the Calnar — had all wound up in the realm of Thorin and had been there for a very long time.

  Fact and legend became very confused on many points, but some things were clear:

  — The race of humans had spread and multiplied until no one knew who or where they all were.

  — The race of elves had clung to the forests of Silvanesti through a dozen dragon sieges and one full-scale war, though some elves had migrated to the west and now lived somewhere else.

  — There were still ogres here and there, including a large colony to the south of Thorin, at a place called Bloten. The original architecture of Thorin was of ogre design, but had been abandoned long ago, and after a few skirmishes with the Calnar, the ogres tended nowadays to leave the dwarves alone.

  — And somewhere in the now-distant past — at least four hundred years ago, by the reckoning of Mistral Thrax — magic had been introduced upon Krynn. Some said that Reorx himself had done it, led astray by other gods. Some said magic came in the form of a gray gemstone that descended upon the world and was captured for a time by humans, then released by gnomes. There was even a legend of a brave and tragic dwarven fisherman who had stood in the path of the source of magic and had tried to stop it by knocking it down with his spear.

  But wherever it came from, magic had come upon Krynn, and for the dwarves it was the ultimate abomination — a power without logic, a force without the rational, comfortable rules of stone and metal, light and dark, moons and mountains, and the rhythm of hammers and drums.

  The dwarves wanted no part of magic, and they ignored it. But its effects were felt.

  This latest dragon war in distant Silvanesti, for example, was far worse than the any of the previous disputes there. This time, the dragons had attacked using magic, and the results were widespread. Little was known in Thorin about the war itself, except that as the elves clung to their forest and fought back, the war spread to other realms. Everywhere now, throughout the known lands, great migrations were under way, and the dwarves and their neighbors were much concerned. Evil was afoot, and everyone knew it.

  On a spring evening, when the light from the sun tunnels began to dim, Mistral Thrax pondered over his scrolls and what they all might mean. Within the threads of fact and legend which he attempted to weave — as
one might weave a tapestry of many colors in order to see the pictures it would reveal — were puzzling, disturbing hints of more to come. Mistral Thrax had attempted to capture history, and in grasping it realized that it went both ways — back through time to what had been and forward somehow to hint at what might yet be. And not all of what he saw there pleased him.

  He sensed that change was at hand — a change that would be painful for all of his people. He sensed that, somehow, magic might touch the lives of the Calnar, and that nothing would ever again be the same.

  High-dwellers, their human neighbors called the Calnar. People of the high peaks. In the dwarven manner of speech, the word for that was Hylar, and somehow that word held special meaning in the threads leading toward the future.

  That, and a tiny piece of legend he had found, which seemed to fit nothing in the past and therefore tasted prophetic — a legend that somewhere, some time, someone very important was to be named Damon. That, the legend said, would be the name of the Father of Kings.

  As he had so many times in the past when pondering such things, Mistral Thrax sighed and rubbed hard old hands against his aching skull. Then he put away his scrolls, picked up his crutch, and turned down the wick of his lamp. It was a long walk from his cubicle to Lobard’s establishment on the main concourse, but at the end of the walk little comforts awaited him, as they did each evening — a mug of good ale, pot meat, and a half loaf of rich Calnar bread.

  Never in all the years he had been searching had Mistral Thrax found real answers to his questions in the ale at Lobard’s, but it eased his aches and did no harm.

  Part I:

  The Drums Of Thorin

  The Dwarven Realm of Thorin

  Khalkist Mountains

  Century of Wind

  Decade of Oak

  Year of Iron

  1

  First Blood

  Sledge Two-Fires eased back on the reins as the patrol entered Crevice Pass, and Piquin responded. The big horse slowed his mile-eating trot to a fast walk, then slowed again as the silver bit on his tongue retained its slight pressure. The oiled saddle on his back creaked softly, and the fine steel mesh of his skirt whispered with the shift.

  Behind Sledge Two-Fires, the others also slowed, turning bright-helmed heads as they studied the rising slopes on either side of the trail. Just ahead, the slopes closed in and became the steep, brushy cliffs that gave the pass its name. Sledge Two-Fires glanced back the way they had come. Late sunlight slanted into the pass, and shadows were climbing the backtrail as the sun lowered toward the jagged peaks of the Suncradles in the distance.

  Two hours of daylight remained, time enough to make it through Crevice Pass and make night camp on the far side, where the sugar fields began. From there, in evening, the lights of Thorin would be visible across the Hammersong Valley. Enough daylight remained, providing the ride through the narrow pass was uneventful. But Sledge Two-Fires felt the hackles rising beneath his helmet and raised himself high in his tall saddle to peer around, squinting and frowning. Something seemed out of place — something that for a long moment he could not identify, then did. It was too quiet. On a bright midsummer evening like this, with the sun above the Suncradles by the width of a fist, there should be sounds in the mountain wilds. There should be eve-hawks wheeling and whistling above and cliff pigeons homing from the fields. There should be squirrels a-chatter and rabbits scurrying through the brush — a whole chorus of muted wilderness sounds.

  But there was nothing. It was as though the world had gone silent, and the silence gave the closing cliffs ahead an ominous feeling.

  Sledge had never cared for Crevice Pass. The place was perfect for ambush, a narrow defile where enemies could lurk unseen above the trail and attack at will. Once, long ago, the Calnar themselves had used it so. Still, not since those long-ago times had such a thing as ambush ever happened to a Thorin border patrol.

  After all, Sledge thought, who was there now to make an ambush? Ogres? One or two of the brutes might conceive of such a thing, but despite their size and ferocity, no one or two ogres would be a match for a mounted, armored dwarven patrol, and even the most vicious-tempered ogre would realize that. Humans, then? There were humans everywhere these days, more all the time, it seemed. Thorin was flanked by human realms north and south, but not in the memory of anyone had there been serious conflict with Golash and Chandera. The people of those regions depended upon the dwarves of Thorin for many of their commodities, just as the dwarves depended upon the humans for trade.

  Wild humans? There were those, too, of course — traveling bands of nomads, occasional clots of fugitives from some distant conflict or another. Sledge and his patrol had seen bands of humans in the distance during the weeks of their patrol — more, it seemed, than ever before. But the wanderers had kept their distance, and none seemed to pose any real threat. It was following and observing one such group that had caused the patrol to be here now, miles north of the usual route. Normally, returning patrols crossed the ridge at Chandera Road, not Crevice Pass.

  Elves, then? All the elves that Sledge knew about were far away to the southeast, beyond the Khalkists. In times past, a few of them had visited Thorin for Balladine, but not in recent years. The elves had their hands full, it was said, fighting dragons for control of their beloved forests. Besides, there had never been conflict between the elves and the Calnar. They were both intelligent races and had no reason to fight.

  Still, a sense of foreboding hung about Sledge, seeming to come from the cleft ahead. It made his beard twitch.

  Agate Coalglow and Pierce Shard had eased their mounts forward to flank their leader. Now Agate noticed the same thing that Sledge had noted a moment before. “It’s quiet,” the split-bearded dwarf said. “No birds.”

  “None,” Sledge agreed. “There may be someone in the Crevice.”

  “No sign of anyone,” Pierce said, studying the rising banks.

  “Probably nothing,” the leader admitted. “I’m just feeling hunchy. If there were trouble, our scout would have seen it and reported back.”

  “Not much that quick-eyed Dalin’s likely to miss,” Agate nodded. “He’s probably waiting for us right now at the sugar fields. You have travel nerves, Sledge. It’ll do us all good to get back home. Let somebody else do border patrol next shift.”

  Sledge took one more hard look at the crevice ahead and shrugged. “You’re right. Travel nerves.” He raised his hand and swept it forward. “By twos!” he called. “Tomorrow we’ll be in Thorin Keep!”

  Piquin needed only the lightest heel-tap to pick up his long-legged gate, and the patrol trotted up the incline as the crevice walls grew around them. The sun now was directly behind, and their long shadows stretched out ahead, into the silent pass.

  A mile went by, silently except for the echoes of their horses’ shod hooves and the occasional rattle of swords in their bucklers. Another mile, and the crest of the trail was in sight — the narrowest part of the defile, where stepped stone walls stood above the strewn floor like ramparts, and clear sky shone between them. From there, the pass would widen again, and the trail would be downhill all the way to the outer ford, just above the roaring canyon where the Bone River joined the Hammersong.

  Tomorrow they would cross the two rivers, with Thorin in sight. Tomorrow night they would sleep in their own secure beds.

  Nearing the crest, the dwarves felt a surge of relief. Sledge’s mood had touched them all, and there had been tension in the climb. But now the crest was just ahead, and beyond was the open sky where crevice walls slanted away. The sky of Thorin. They were past the worst of the defile, and nothing had happened.

  “I’ll pay for a keg of Lobard’s best ale tomorrow evening,” Agate Coalglow offered, turning to glance at those behind him. “As soon as Sledge has given our report to Willen Ironmaul, I promise it. One full keg. After that it’s up to someone else to ease our patrol aches.”

  “I’ll buy the second keg,” Pierce Shard offered,
“if that’s the sort of ease you have in mind.”

  “I doubt if that’s it,” someone in the ranks chuckled. “Agate finds more comfort in the bright eyes of Lona Anvil’s-Cap these days than any of Lobard’s ale can match.”

  “Mind your own bright eyes, and keep them sharp,” Agate snapped. “We’re not out of this crack yet.”

  At the very top of the trail’s crest, Sledge Two-Fires scanned the towering banks above, then glanced down as Piquin snorted. The dwarf’s eyes went wide, and he hauled on the reins. “Arms!” he bellowed. “Shields up! It’s a trap!”

  Just ahead, where the trail began its downward slope, lay two still forms. Dalin Ironbar would scout for no more patrols. He was dead. A few feet away lay the body of his horse, a broken javelin protruding from its ribs.

  “Eyes high!” Sledge shouted. “Defend!”

  But it was too late. Even as the word “defend” left his lips, an arrow flew from above to thud into his exposed throat and downward into his chest.

  In an instant, the air sang with the whines of arrows and bolts, the luffing whisper of thrown spears, and the clatter of flung stones.

  Agate Coalglow saw his leader fall and raised his own oval shield just in time to deflect a deadly arrow. He dodged another, and a third buried its ripping head in his thigh just below his buckler. Two arrows protruded from his horse’s neck, and Agate flung himself from the saddle as the big animal began to pitch and dance, blind with pain. He lit hard on the stony trail, rolled, and slid behind a fallen boulder as other arrows sought him, whining down from the steep slopes above.

  There were men up there. Where moments ago there had been nothing, now the slopes were alive with humans springing from hiding. A human voice, harsh and commanding, shouted, “Block that trail! Don’t let any of them escape! Kill the dwarves! Kill them all!”