Douglas Niles - The Heir of Kayolin

“Why did you come here?” he asked, surprised at the unusual catch in his voice. “I left you with the army in Norbardin. But let me ask you: How are your eyes?”

“The healers were good to me, Master. In you, I can see all that I need to see.”

He felt himself stirred by her words as well as her presence. She took a step closer, and his blood pulsed in a way both frightening and thrilling. He reached out, touched her smooth, black hair, lifted the pale face with the lips painted so shockingly, so appealingly crimson.

“I am worried about you, Master,” she stated softly. “I sense your keen disappointment. I detest those who pledged you their loyalty but now fail you in your hour of opportunity … and of need.”

She understood! Willim felt a stab of powerful desire, an almost breathtaking awareness that the dwarf maid was the only one who could see into his soul, could sense that the wonderful prize, which had lurked so close, had seemed so attainable, was disastrously, tantalizingly out of reach.

“You are precious to me, a rare treasure,” he said, reaching for her, casting his scarred, eyeless face down upon her own image of rare beauty. If she was repulsed by his appearance-for the first time ever, he actually worried that his visage might be upsetting to another dwarf-she gave no outward sign. She melted into his embrace, and he held her, kissed her, pulled her close.

“You are suffering, my master,” she whispered to him. “I will do anything in my power to ease your distress.”

An hour later, he knew that she spoke the truth.

Another Theiwar came to talk to me. He’s a diamond merchant, one of the wealthiest in all Norbardin. And he’s willing to pay an even greater fortune to get out of Thorbardin!” Peat informed Sadie as they sipped bitter spirits in the back room of the Two Guilders shop. “I think we should do the dimension door spell again.”

“Well, I think it’s time we thought about getting out of here ourselves,” she snapped testily. “We’re lucky the ceiling didn’t come down on our heads when the Master and the king faced each other.” She glanced meaningfully around the shop. Always crowded, it was at that time a tangled mess as several shelves had toppled, smashing jars of potions and ingredients onto the floor, during the short but violent earthquake. “And that flash of light! It seems half of the city has been blinded. Everyone’s saying it was the will of Reorx himself! I’m not sure I want to hang around to find out.”

“Surely you don’t believe that superstitious nonsense?” Peat scoffed. “Why, it was just ten days ago when we went out into the square and dropped that stone on the king’s man. You know very well who exercised the will of Reorx on that occasion!”

“I remember,” she retorted. Still, she looked hesitant, glancing around nervously as if she suspected someone, or something, was lurking in the shadowy corners of the room.

“What is it?” her husband asked in exasperation.

“I’m not kidding. I’m worried,” she admitted. “What if the Master suddenly decides he needs us? What if one of his messengers shows up at an inopportune time, just when we’re hosting one of our dimension-door customers?”

“I think he’s too busy with the war to need our kind of help at the moment.”

“What if he finds out I stole the dimension door spell from him?” Sadie asked bluntly.

Peat could feel his face going pale. “What? That’s where you got the scroll?” he gasped. “You stole it from Willim the Black? Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

She waved his objection away with a gesture of contempt. “Where did you think I got it? Where else would I find something like that, in Thorbardin? Of course I took it from the Master. And he hasn’t missed it for twenty years. I don’t think he’ll be missing it now all of a sudden. But I do think he’d recognize the spell as one of his own.”

“Oh, that’s just great,” Peat muttered. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should use the dimension door ourselves, while we are still alive to enjoy the fruits of our labors.”

“Yes. Maybe we should. This Theiwar you’re talking about. What kind of payment could he make? Maybe we could risk it just one more time, so we have a real fortune to take with us wherever we end up.”

Peat reached into his pouch and pulled out a stone that nearly filled his palm. Even his weak eyes could discern the multiple facets, the crystalline clarity of the gem. “That diamond merchant gave me this as proof of his good faith. He said he has eleven more like it and will spend them all of ’em just to have a one-time use of our dimension door.”

Sadie’s eyes flashed with greed at the sight of the massive diamond. She snatched it out of his hand and held it up to the light of the eternal candle flickering magically over the worktable. “It’s fabulous,” she allowed after a moment’s study. “I’ve never seen its equal. And eleven more, he said?”

“Eleven more … for us,” Peat declared.

“Well, all right, then. One more time, we’ll do the spell. But then, after that, it’s time for you and I to get out. Before the king, or the Master, learns about what we’ve been doing.”

“Right, good plan,” Peat agreed.

“But there’s one more thing,” his wife reminded him.

“What’s that?”

“I’m not about to bring more gully dwarves into Thorbardin!” Sadie replied. “I just about had a heart attack when those two little runts came strolling into our store! And who knows where they dashed off to!”

“Right, those gully dwarves,” Peat agreed, shuddering at the nasty memory. “But surely we can pick a different place to anchor the spell! I mean, what are the odds of opening a dimension door into another gully dwarf lair!”

“Odds, shmodds! Magic isn’t always so controllable. I can’t decide if it’s worth the risk. After all, we’ve got plenty of treasure already!” Sadie retorted. Even as she spoke, her eyes drifted back to the magnificent diamond that she still held in her crooked fingers.

“No-how can you even say that?” Peat argued. “Remember, there’s eleven more of them, a fortune, available for the taking just for casting that same simple spell.”

“It’s not a simple spell!” she reminded him haughtily. “Or do you want to try and cast it?”

“No. You know I could never do it. But you can!” pleaded her husband. “You can get this Theiwar diamond merchant out of here and get his diamonds into our strongbox, and then we can escape from this awful place!”

“But where would I send him?” she asked almost plaintively.

“Well, we can’t just open a dimension door into the wilds of the Kharolis,” Peat agreed. “Why, these dwarves would step through and get eaten by a bear or smashed by a giant. Or buried under a blizzard or an avalanche.”

“True …” Sadie said, deep in thought. “Of course, no one would necessarily know that result,” she observed.

“No!” Peat said, startling them both by standing up to his wife. “I don’t mind taking steel, lots of steel, to let these refugees get away from Thorbardin. But I won’t send them to certain deaths!”

“Well, I’m not saying we should send them to certain deaths!” Sadie protested. “But we know that for some reason the dimension door into Pax Tharkas leads into some squalid nest of gully dwarves. So I’m not using that one again!”

“There must be other places that’re safe-at least, that we can presume are safe,” Peat suggested. “You know, another place where there are … many, many dwarves.”