The Gates of Thorbardin h2-5 Page 4

  The kender paused once more beside the forge. "Luck with your quest," he said.

  "You, too," Chane glanced up. "See you."

  "Sure," Chess waved and headed north. Long after he had gone, the dwarf looked up from his work and his eyes went thoughtful. Entirely ringing him and his forge was a circle of black gravel scattered on the ground. The kender had left a shield for him, in case any of the hunting cats found a way to cross the road or to go around it.

  Chapter 4

  Through that day and most of the next, Chane worked at his forge in the forest. In a buried firepit he coaled bits of hardwood for the bed of his flame, and a foot-bellows of sapling lengths and catskin fed it to a pulsing glow. His first hammer was no more than a lump of iron remelted, skimmed clean and shaped in a clay mold. But with its help he crafted a second one — a hammer that even a Hylar prince or Daewar merchant in the finest halls of Thorbardin might have envied. For though Chane Feldstone — orphaned and without a known lineage — had been relegated to the lowly ranks of common delver and sometimes outsman in the teeming realm within the Kharolis Mountains, still the high crafts came to him easily when he turned his hand to them.

  Often through the years of childhood he had watched others of his age go off to apprentice at the trades of metalsmithy, stonecutting, and other such high callings. Sometimes he had been envious that those so chosen had someone of note to sponsor them. His hands had longed for the feel of good tools, and his heart had yearned for the chance to do such works as those more fortunate would one day do. Still, he had not been alone in his circumstances. Among the seven cities of the undermountain kingdom there always were thousands of children without access to great name or the comfort of wealth. Children of the warrens and the ways, the offspring of warriors who didn't come home or traders lost to the outlands, orphans and waifs of all sorts. It was the way of the dwarves of Thorbardin that these children be cared for and receive at least some basic education so they would never lack for work or the basic needs.

  Chane had grown up like the rest, and had learned a host of lesser skills that served him well. Only, there had been times — times all through the years when some secret part within him raged and strove for recognition. Times there had been…

  When he was yet a youngster, inches short of his full growth of four feet six, Chane had been employed to clean the smithing stalls of the ironworker, Barak Chiselcut. A piece of nickeliron had been cast aside, and Chane retrieved it, put a high polish on it and returned it to the master.

  "A nice bauble," old Chiselcut had said, approving. "So you enjoy metals, youngster?"

  "Yes, sir. I like the feel of good metals, and the sound and taste."

  "Then keep this," the old dwarf told him. "Play with it at the forge and anvil, if you like. But mind you get your work done first."

  For weeks, Chane had shaped the bit of nickeliron, late in the sleeping hours when no one else was about, and the small dagger he crafted from it had so pleased Barak Chiselcut that the shopmaster gave the youth some brass and ebony with which to make a handle for it.

  "You have skill at making weapons, Chane," Chiselcut told him. "Maybe some ancestor of yours was a craftsman. It's too bad you don't have a known lineage. But then, most orphans don't. Keep the dagger, and keep learning. Having craft is more important than knowing who you are."

  For fifteen years Chane had carried and cherished the knife, and sometimes at odd moments it seemed to whisper to him, "Look at me, Chane

  Feldstone. I am no ordinary dagger, and you are no ordinary dwarf. See your reflection in my steel. Perhaps someday your reflection will tell you who you really are."

  He had looked at his reflection and wondered. Even then, in the years before his shoulders broadened and his whiskers grew, he had been aware that he looked subtly different from most of those around him… not quite typical of the ordinary day-to-day Daewar he met in the trade centers. In some respects, he even resembled the Hylar dwarves — not that it made any difference, since there was no more likelihood of his tracing lineage among the Hylar than among the Daewar. A foundling is a foundling, anywhere in Thorbardin.

  It was in those years, too, that the dreams began. The same insistent dream, over and over, sometimes no more than a week apart. The mysterious place, the mysterious container, and the old, horned battle helmet that he held in his hands but somehow never managed to place upon his head.

  The years had passed, and he had come of age and found work with Rogar

  Goldbuckle, the trader. He had served as a packer and sometimes as an outsman, going beyond Southgate to help with the gear and goods of trading parties bound for Barter or some other gathering place of merchants. Chane had made the journey to Barter himself once. He had met elves and humans, gnomes and kender. He had seen the rising and setting of the sun, had seen the moons in the night sky, had felt the vastness of outside, a world not contained beneath mountains.

  Back in Thorbardin, full of worldliness and wonder, Chane had walked as tall as any dwarf for the first time in his life. And it had been then that he'd met Jilian. Jilian Firestoke. His eyes grew moist now, remembering how she had made his heart melt… and how he had worked to win her affections. He had known from the first that her father despised him, but that hadn't seemed important. Jilian knew her own mind, and what

  Slag Firestoke thought about anything didn't seem to matter…

  Until the dream had come again, this time with urgency. This time the dream had spoken to him of destiny, and he couldn't help but believe it.

  And old Firestoke had used the opportunity to teach Chane who he truly was — a lowly foundling who had reached beyond his grasp.

  The nickeliron dagger was gone now. It was one of the things Slag

  Firestoke's thugs had robbed from him when they drove him into the wilderness. Maybe Jilian was gone as well. Chane was certain that Slag

  Firestoke wouldn't tell his daughter what he had done, so all Jilian could know was that Chane had gone away and not come back. Maybe she even thought he was dead. He was still tempted to head right back for

  Southgate, to give those toughs a taste of honest iron, and to shake Slag

  Firestoke until his teeth rattled. The devious old rust-bucket.

  But the dream called. There was something he was supposed to do, and he knew deep inside that he could not return to Thorbardin until he had done it… or at least tried his best.

  "Become rich and famous," the kender had said. Chane rumbled his irritation at the thought. What could a kender know about anything?

  The new hammer shaped itself on his makeshift anvil. Four pounds would be its weight. His hands told him that, and he knew there was no mistake.

  A head that was a shaping maul at one end with a tapered balancing spike at the other. A hammer that could bend the strongest drawbar or shape the daintiest filigree… and could serve as a formidable weapon should the need arise. He put the final touches to it, tempered its face and its spike, and set it on a shaft of sturdy darkwood, with rawhide lashing for the hand to grip. Then he fashioned a thong to carry it, took a deep breath, and looked around for the metal that would make a sword.

  A man stood a few feet away, leaning casually on a staff, watching the dwarf. Chane had no idea how long the man had been there. He had not heard him approach. But the faded red robe beneath the bison-pelt cape told him what the man was, and the dwarf felt a twinge of distaste… distaste and more than a bit of caution. A wizard.

  "I see nothing wrong with becoming rich and famous, Chane Feldstone," the wizard said in a voice as thin and as cold as winter wind. "It is a proper approach to some worthwhile goals."

  The dwarf frowned at him, backing off a step. "Have you been listening to my thoughts? If you have, you know it wasn't me who said that, it was some kender."

  "There'd be no need to read the thoughts of one who speaks them to himself while he is working, Chane Feldstone."

  "How do you know who I am? I didn't tell myself my name."r />
  "Oh, I know of you, Chane Feldstone," the wizard said. "I might even know more of who you are than you do."

  "Who are you, that you know about me?"

  The man sighed, bowing his head, and whiskers of sleet gray bobbed as he nodded. "I have been called many things, young dwarf. Some call me

  Glenshadow the Wanderer. If you want a name for me, that will do." He stepped doser to the still-glowing forge and spread his hands as though to warm himself. He glanced at the new hammer. "Have you set a crest or a device upon that? Have you named it or made it yours?"

  Again the dwarf edged away, but he took the hammer from his belt and turned it in the light. "I've only initialed it. See for yourself. What device would I use?"

  The wizard squinted at the hammer. "Ah, yes. I see. C. F. Chane

  Feldstone. It is truly your hammer, then."

  "What do you want of me?"

  "Why, I am going with you. I thought you would know that."

  "Why would I have known any such thing?"

  "You're right, of course," the man admitted. "Well, first we must go see the Irda."

  "The who?"

  "The Irda."

  "Why?"

  "We will know more about that when we get there. Come along, now."

  "Come along nothing!" Chane's whiskers twitched with exasperation. "I have a sword to make."

  The wizard looked at the ancient, rusted metal bar.

  "That isn't the stuff of your sword, Chane Feldstone. There's better along the way. Come on, now. This valley is not a happy place for me, and

  I don't want to spend more time here than I have to."

  Chane shook his head violently, clenching his teeth in frustration. "I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't want to go!"

  "I think you had better," the wizard said quietly.

  "Why?"

  "Because of them." The wizard tilted his head to one side, gesturing."

  Chane looked where the man indicated, then sucked in a whistling breath, grabbed his pack, and ran, barely aware that the robed man was pacing him alongside. Behind them came a leaping, bounding, slinking flood of huge black cats. The wizard was half again as tall as Chane, and when he lifted his hems and sprinted, he left the dwarf in his wake. "This way!" he called. "The road curves back, just ahead!"

  Chane ran for all he was worth, but with each step the cats were closer behind him, their deep, rumbling purrs mounting like the roll of charging drums. When he felt their breath warming his back he clasped his hammer in one hand, his cat-tooth dagger in the other, skidded to a stop, and spun around. The dwarf crouched and roared a battle cry. As he faced them, the cats hesitated. Other cats coming up behind collided with the leaders. In an instant the glade was atumble with clawing, spitting cats, swatting at one another, sidling and rearing, grappling and rolling. Chane raised his hammer and started forward, set to wade in among them, but a hand caught him by the nape, turned him, and shoved.

  "Run!" the wizard snapped. "This is no time for games!"

  The logic of that statement was inescapable. Chane ran. Beyond the glade was forest, and beyond the forest the blackstone path. They arrived there with cats pounding at their heels, and the dwarf strode back and forth along the edge of safety, growling as ferociously as the frustrated predators that strained toward him. Finally Chane got his temper under control, slung his hammer at his belt, and turned to the wizard. "How do you suppose those cats got across the road? They were supposed to all be on the other side."

  The man shrugged disinterestedly. "An ancient question, that. Why does a cat cross the road?"

  "Rust and corruption!" Chane glared at him. "That's chickens, not cats!

  And don't change the subject. What I asked was how they got across."

  "Oh, that. You left your log skid back there. Someone simply moved the gravel again."

  "But who would — " the dwarf's face went dark with fury. "You! You did that! Why?"

  "Would you have come along with me otherwise?"

  Chane tried to say something, could think of nothing appropriate, and merely sputtered.

  "No need to apologize," the wizard said. "Any dwarf worth his salt would rather cook iron than travel. It's your nature. You might have dawdled there for weeks, when you should be seeking the Irda. You do want answers to your questions, don't you?"

  "I don't have any questions!"

  "Of course you do." The wizard drew himself up to his full height, and the gray eyes above his gray beard seemed to focus on something far away.

  "Everyone has questions." At first, Chane had thought the man looked old.

  Now he realized it was not old he looked, but… ageless. 'You can learn to be what you've always been," the wizard said, "if you've the gift of knowing. But you can't learn from whence you came 'til you learn where you're going."

  Chane felt a chill creep up his spine. "Are you working a spell, wizard?"

  "Oh, mercy, no," the man said, turning away. "Didn't your little friend tell you? Spells are dangerous and unreliable here. This is the Valley of

  Waykeep."

  For days Jilian Firestoke had watched the ways of the Daewar city, going often to the market centers at the tenth and thirteenth roads and finding excuses even to visit the bustling ware-room district near the eleventh road gate, where goods from other clan cities in Thorbardin were gathered and traded. She had ridden a cabletrain to the east warrens, where Chane

  Feldstone worked the fields sometimes when neither Barak Chiselcut nor

  Rogar Goldbuckle had employment for him.

  Wherever she went, she had asked about Chane, but no one had seen him lately. Maybe, some suggested, he had gone to carry dispatches for Rogar

  Goldbuckle to his commodity camp west of Thorbardin in the Kharolis

  Mountains. But, no, one of Goldbuckle's guardsmen had said that he was sure there had been no dispatches lately, and since Goldbuckle was preparing for a pack-trip to Barter, he would carry any such messages himself.

  She had become more worried by the day. It was not like Chane to just disappear without telling her where he was going, Yet, since the day she had taken him to see her father — she had been sure her father would help him, but he had flatly refused — Chane had been absent. Someone said they thought Chane might have gone back again, alone, to talk with Slag

  Firestoke. But her father said he hadn't seen the whelp again and, furthermore, didn't want to.

  Jilian had only recently — as they said in the polite sectors — "come of age," and had no shortage of admirers among the young male dwarves of

  Thorbardin. A petite and sturdy four feet three, with the wide, subtly chiseled face of a dwarven angel and a curvaceous shape that even the most modest of clothing could not hide, it was natural that she should have suitors. And she did. They came by the dozens, and Slag Firestoke busied himself investigating the family lineage and financial means of each one.

  But he was wasting his time. Jilian had already decided. Even when young males of the noble-blooded Hylar clans stared after her in the market, with open mouths and enchanted eyes, she was no more than amused. In Chane

  Feldstone she saw something that no one else seemed to see, but that didn't matter. She saw it, and had no intention of letting him get away.

  And she had told her father so, in no uncertain terms. In that straightforward way of hers that always seemed to infuriate him, Jilian had made it clear that she would, by Reorx, decide for herself what male she wanted. And she had, by Reorx, decided it was Chane Feldstone.

  It wasn't that Chane was the most handsome young dwarf she had seen — although his broad shoulders, his somber, wide-set dark eyes, and the way his near-black whiskers swept back in feral lines along each sloping cheek reminded her of old pictures she had seen, paintings of the fierce Hylar warriors of ancient times. It wasn't that he was the most entertaining; at times, when the mood was on him, Chane was nearly impossible to talk to, and seemed to lose himself in dark, hidden thoughts tha
t he wouldn't — or couldn't — express.

  He was, in fact, a waif.

  Orphaned in some manner that left no clear record of his lineage, Chane was a bit of an enigma to those whose duty it was, or whose inclination it was, to keep track of people in the dwarven realm. Clearly a citizen of

  Thorbardin, he yet had no definable status except that of orphan and common worker.

  But now Jilian was worried. He had simply disappeared, and no one had seen him. And when she had asked her father to make inquiries, old

  Firestoke just sneered and said, "Good riddance. He's nothing but an upstart who's never learned his place."

  She would have argued with her father, except for the arrival of that bunch of rough-looking armsmen who were waiting to see him on some sort of business and wouldn't go away until they had. By the time they were gone,

  Jilian's anger at her father had jelled. She didn't want to argue with him. She didn't want to talk to him at all. In fact, she had hardly seen him since the incident, having gone about her own business and staying out of his sight when he was at home.

  Until today.

  With communication at a minimum in the Firestoke quarters, certain necessities such as paying the tap fees and keeping the larder stocked — things Jilian normally did — had piled up so that she had to do something about it or face such problems as late penalties on water and oil bills.

  So she had gone to her father's chamber for the money she needed, and found that he was away on business.

  For the first time in months Jilian had opened the old dwarf's private locker.

  Now she stood over the locker, holding a dagger in her hands — a small, nickeliron dagger with an ebony-andbrass hilt. It was a dagger she had seen many times, but not in her father's things. It belonged to Chane

  Feldstone.

  Chapter 5