Douglas Niles - The Heir of Kayolin

Ragat still held the Kingsaver Shield, the metal disk burnished to a high gleam, even after the dissolution of Willim’s flying minion. The city of Norbardin, sadly, was not so untarnished. Even then, several days after the fighting had ceased, smoke lingered like a miasma of gloom. The convulsion of the brief earthquake had smashed buildings and brought large pieces of rock tumbling from the ceiling. Bodies were rotting all across the vast square, still lying where they had fallen during the battle as their comrades, blinded by the explosion of god’s light, cowered in their camps, barely able to feed themselves or bandage their own wounds. As to the citizens of the once-great city, they remained hiding in their homes, terrified even to venture onto the streets.

“The will of Reorx was made real!” the king declared forcefully. “You were here; you saw it!”

“Yes, my king. His will was a blinding light, and when it seized the bedrock of our nation, he shook the world and brought the battle to a stop in the same instant,” Ragat agreed, even as he studied his king warily. The shield had blocked the loyal general from the flash of light, so he hadn’t been blinded, but the king had suffered along with the rest.

“And he drove the wizard and his wench away!” the king exulted. “The will of Reorx rendered the rebel army weak kneed. Even now they cower under archways and stout columns; they fear to venture on to the attack!”

“Yes, Reorx’s display did all those things, my liege,” agreed the general noncommittally.

“Then why can you not muster a counterattack?” the king demanded. “The black wizard’s army is scattered, ill prepared. You could sweep them from the gates and reclaim the city’s outer defenses!” Stonespringer blinked, his good eye shifting wildly across the war-torn city until finally, again, settling on his general.

“The men refuse to fight, my liege,” Ragat declared bluntly. “They took the message from our god as an immortal command, an expression of Reorx’s displeasure with the war. Many are still blinded or can see only a little. Even those who had their eyes averted, who were unaffected by the light, will not fight. It seems that neither the enemy’s nor our own soldiers will agree to recommence the attack.”

“The fools!” snapped Stonespringer, turning to stalk to the edge of the parapet. “The god was showing his pleasure with me , his favored prophet and spokesman! I demanded his action, and he acted. His blow struck at our enemies when they stood at the verge of triumph-Reorx brought their attack to a halt so that we could prevail! Do the men not see that?”

“I regret to say, sire, that they do not. Those who saw the blast of light sweep from the tower at the middle of the battlefield still are blinded. The priestly healers tell me it will be days, if not weeks, before their vision begins to return. And even those who were not blinded felt the tremor that threatened to bring the mountain down on our heads, and they took that to mean that they should no longer fight their kinsmen.”

“But those arrogant rebels are still there! They cling to the gate fortresses. They could strike the city again at any moment.” The king waved his arms, gesturing at the plaza, to the gatehouses, and to the many places where the enemy forces crouched in their camps.

“Begging your majesty’s pardon, but my spies suggest that the rebel troops are no more anxious to fight than are your own soldiers,” Ragat reported, repeating the assurance he had been giving the king over and over since the battle had been interrupted several days earlier. He spoke calmly, patiently, though his heart broke to reject his king’s orders.

“Spies can be wrong!” Jungor hissed. He trembled, clenched his fists, and made a visible effort to restrain himself from striking the loyal general in the face. Instead, he turned abruptly toward the door into the palace. “We need to know Willim’s plans, to understand his resources and what actions he might take next. Where did he go after he fell from this tower?”

“It is impossible to say, my liege. All who might have witnessed his flight were still suffering from the blindness of Reorx’s light. But it is certain that neither his body nor that of the female are anywhere below the tower. We must conclude that he was able to escape Norbardin.” Ragat himself had led that search, and he, too, had at first refused to believe that their enemies could have escaped. But an exhaustive investigation of all the grounds around the palace had confirmed beyond any doubt that Willim the Black and his female lackey were gone.

“We must know more!” the king declared. “What does the black wizard intend next? How many of his troops survive? When might they be ready to attack?”

“Begging my king’s pardon, but I have a spy who has been very accurate in his reports to me,” the general reported. “He came to me even during the battle for the palace. He says he has identified some of the wizard’s agents, here in Norbardin. It may be that, if we take those spies, they will be able to tell us something about their master’s intentions.”

“Go to him, then,” ordered the king. “Seek out your agent and have him take you to these enemy spies. Be sure to take them quickly, and with surprise; remember, our enemies possess arcane magic, obscene power that we cannot fully understand. Arrest them, and bring them to me!”

“Bluestone! Bluestone! Bluestone!”

The cry echoed through the tunnels of the deep-levels, up and down the Atrium, rising into the city of Garnet Thax on a cresting wave of triumph and celebration. Brandon held on to Gretchan’s hand and let the swelling shouts, the pats on the back, the cheers, and the congratulations sweep him along. They had just emerged from the Deepshelf Inn and made their way along a street suddenly crowded with boisterous revelers. It was only then dawning on Brandon that they were celebrating because of him .

In the midst of the fight with the horax, he’d been only vaguely aware of the rest of Kayolin-at least, beyond those dwarves in the Deepshelf Inn who had helped rescue them by throwing them the rope ladder-but he realized that his battle and almost single-handed defeat of a swarm of the bug monsters had been observed by a significant portion of the population. They had watched in horror as the clicking, hungry monsters had swarmed up the walls of the Atrium like some nightmare from the ancient past. And they had seen the wielder of the Bluestone Axe fight them back, slashing through the webs of the tanglers and sending dozens of the horax tumbling to their doom.

Clearly, from the adulation he and Gretchan received as they strode proudly along, with more and more citizens of Kayolin streaming out of houses, shops, and inns, the word had spread rapidly among the city’s dwarves about their amazing fight.

“You’re quite the hero,” the cleric said, pressing his hand and impulsively leaning over to kiss him. That gesture drew another round of cheering as well as some hoots and whistles from the crowd, mainly male, for there were many miners and smith-workers who thronged the lower levels.

Brandon couldn’t hide his grin until he remembered the reason they had plunged down the Atrium in the first place. “I imagine the League of Enforcers are going to hear about this,” he said grimly, glancing around for a glimpse of the dread shiny black leather uniforms.

“Do you think they’d dare to arrest you now?” Gretchan asked, shaking her head vigorously. “Even a king has to pay a certain amount of attention to the peoples’ wishes. I would say, right now, the people would like to see you rewarded, not arrested. And remember, he isn’t even the blasphemous king yet; he won’t be until they clap that sapphire-studded crown on his head, the one he’s having made from the Torc of the Forge.”