Douglas Niles: Fate of Thorbardin

Still, he was brutally wounded. It was all he could do to keep his eyes open, to watch the events swirl around him. He knew that Otaxx was dead; the old Daewar had sacrificed himself to distract the wizard’s attention away from Brandon.

Then he had watched with numb disbelief as Sadie had snatched up the staff and handed it to Gretchan. He had seen the cage burst to pieces as the power of the god was made real. And he witnessed Willim, his back to Brandon, slowly advancing on Gretchan. The priestess did not seem to be afraid, but the Kayolin dwarf knew that neither could she hope to stand, to survive, in the face of the wizard’s murderous rage.

Gasping from the pain, Brandon tried to move. His left arm was on fire, and his shoulder grated sickeningly as the broken bones shifted and twisted against each other. Somehow he managed to block out the agony, to use his right arm to push himself to a sitting position while he rested the axe in his lap. When next he looked up, Willim was only two steps away from Gretchan. She held her staff before her, as if to ward off the villainous wizard, but her power couldn’t match his. With a single, sharp gesture, Willim the Black swept his hand to the side, and the staff was torn from Gretchan’s hands. It went clattering helplessly onto the rocks of the hilltop.

The handle of the Bluestone Axe was in Brandon’s hand. He hoisted that hand, pulled it back over his shoulder, and hurled the artifact with all his might, aiming for the middle of the black robe shrouding the back of the eyeless wizard.

The throw was true: The axe spiraled through the air and struck the wizard squarely between the shoulder blades. The keen edge sliced through the black robe, the withered skin, and the scrawny, scarred frame of its intended target. Willim tumbled onto his face with a gagging cry, clawing at the stony ground. He twisted, trying to reach the weapon that was killing him, but it was behind him, beyond the grasp of his fingers.

With one last croak of sound, he died.

In that death his body became fire, and the fire spumed into smoke. It rose from his corrupt flesh like a living thing, the manifest remnant of foul magic, consuming evil, and nearly absolute power. The smoke, thick and dark and acrid, exploded from the vanishing flesh, swirling and churning, gathering strength near the ground for a few moments.

Then it began to billow upward. The murky cloud rose quickly, surging and churning and climbing. As it spumed upward from the Isle of the Dead, it separated into three columns, and each column swelled higher, flying like a living creature, a dragon of smoke perhaps, roaring and churning toward the three dragon teeth embedded in the ceiling of Thorbardin.

There is nothing that terrifies a population of underground-dwelling mountain dwarves as much as an earthquake. Nothing can rain death upon a cavern as soundly, as quickly, as thoroughly as a great convulsion that shakes the bedrock of the world and collapses structures and caverns and pillars and caves that have long been considered solid and permanent. The crushing weight of such a cave-in can mark a permanent and fatal end, not just to lives, but to houses, villages, cities, even whole nations of dwarves.

Thus, when the ground shivered underneath and rumbles of sound, louder than thunder and twice as violent, shot through the great plaza of Norbardin, the celebration of victory and the triumph of King Bellowgranite’s return to the throne came to an immediate end. Cheers of laughter and hope, songs of delight and praise, all were replaced with cries of terror. The pounding of the drums ceased, though the loud percussion continued as rocks split free from the ceiling to crash into the streets and onto the buildings. Screams of pain replaced the sounds of revelry from one end of the city to the other.

The floor buckled and pitched underfoot. Dwarves who were dancing crazily lost their balance and tumbled to the ground. Youngsters screamed in fear, and elders shouted prayers or curses, depending on temperament. Everywhere dwarves dived for cover or fled, screaming, into the side streets or the imagined safety of sturdy buildings.

In the heart of the celebration, near the center of the great plaza, Tarn Bellowgranite wrapped his arms around his wife and bore her to the ground, protecting her body with his own. For a second he lay on top of her, heart pounding, eyes tightly closed as he waited for the lethal, crushing force of collapse.

But then the ground grew still again, and it seemed that the danger had passed.

“I appreciate the sentiment,” the restored queen said, grunting for breath. “But if a ten-ton rock falls on you, I don’t think you’re going to offer much protection.”

“Sorry,” Tarn said, quickly rolling to the side. “But it’s a quake-!”

“And your first instinct was to protect me,” Crystal replied, not unkindly, as she sat up and brushed herself off. “I think that’s marvelous. But doesn’t it seem strange that there would be an earthquake now, of all times?”

Indeed, her voice had a calming effect on the king, and it seemed to have the same effect on the world itself. At least, after the initial shock, the ground seemed to have grown still, and the rumbling slowly faded into echoes.

“Could it be over already?” Tarn wondered, standing on shaky legs and helping his wife climb to her feet. “It seemed terribly abrupt and quick.”

“I don’t think that was a natural earthquake,” Crystal said. “I’m rather more worried that it had something to do with the black wizard. I think we should investigate. Where can we go to get a look at what’s happening?”

“The Urkhan Sea!” Tarn said, holding on to his wife rather more than was strictly necessary for safety’s sake. Thankfully, the ground remained still, though the deep, thrumming rumble of unsettled bedrock continued to assault their ears, forcing them to shout just to be heard. “That’s where Otaxx and Brandon were going. Maybe there.”

“Let’s go!” Crystal agreed.

Gretchan knelt over Brandon’s bloodied form and touched his shoulder, closing her eyes as she concentrated on a prayer of healing. Almost immediately she felt him twitch then heard him groan-at least, she thought she did, though the roar of the churning smoke consuming the wizard’s body was all around, making it difficult to hear anything else.

Willim’s corpse had disappeared, but the unholy murk still churned, and the three columns continued to spume upward, reaching all the way to the ceiling. Each of the pillars extended like a great, black tentacle, the whole resembling a three-taloned paw reaching upward from some monstrous being, claws extended to scrape the sky itself.

“It’s the black wizard!” Sadie screamed. “He wants to bring all of Cloudseeker Peak down upon us! Look!”

That appeared to be the case. The cleric looked upward and saw that three great fires burned at the places where the smoke touched the top of the dome over the sea. They burned like cancerous sores, boring holes in the ceiling, eating away at the foundation of the rock, rotting the very roof over the mountain kingdom. They seemed to shed no heat, but they were terribly bright, casting a pale, sickeningly yellow light.

Tons of rocks were already breaking free, falling into the lake on three sides, breaking loose from each of the oozing sores on the upper dome of rock. The collapsing stone, some of it in the form of house-sized boulders, sent huge waves churning across the waters that had never been troubled by so much as a breath of wind.

In the glaring light of the unholy fires, it was possible to see to all sides of the great cavern, much as if the whole place had been thrown open to a noonday sun.