Douglas Niles - The Heir of Kayolin

“Are you thinking of Kayolin?” Sadie asked. “That’s a long way away, but it doesn’t really matter for the spell. I mean, we have the maps and charts. We could pick a place in that nation and let our refugees go there.”

“Kayolin! That’s a splendid idea,” Peat, who hadn’t really had any specific destination in mind, agreed. “You get out the map and figure the coordinates. I’ll wait by the door and let the customer in when he gets here.”

The decision made, the two Guilders plunged into activity. Sadie had just a little bit of work remaining to prepare another scroll, but she would have to hurry. She got out an ancient tome and blew the dust off the cover so she could read the title: The Dwarven Nations of Krynn . Flipping it open to the section on Kayolin, she began to seek an appropriate destination.

The book included a detailed schematic of the northern nation, and she immediately found some likely locations. “Hmm. Garnet Thax would be the right place,” she mused to herself. “Not too high up-don’t want to have him falling into the governor’s lap first thing. But not deep down in the mines either.”

Her nearly deaf ears picked up a sound, and she looked up, irritated at the interruption. What could Peat be doing to raise such a racket?

She was about to shout out to him when the door to the back room opened. She blinked in surprise: it wasn’t Peat there at all, but their neighbor Abercrumb. The Hylar stepped out of the way as two burly soldiers burst in, charging over to Sadie. One of them clapped a hand over her mouth before she could even think to cast a spell.

Only then did she see Peat, already bound and gagged. The old Theiwar was pushed into the back room by a silver-armored Hylar she recognized as one of the king’s generals.

“There she is!” declared Abercrumb, his face creased by a smug smile. “I tell you, they’re both working for the black wizard!” He pointed at the scroll on the table. “Look there-that’s some kind of dark magic they’re fussing with, you can mark my words!”

None of the soldiers seemed any too willing to examine the scroll or anything else in the shop. Instead, the two who held Sadie bound her hands behind her back, and one stuffed a dirty gag into her mouth. The general stalked over and looked her right in the face.

“Sadie Guilder!” he barked. “I arrest you and your husband in the name of the king!”

“So you haven’t heard from Father since Baracan Heelspur forced him to confess?” Brandon confirmed, gently prodding his mother for answers.

They were seated in the great room, the same room where they had been when the Enforcers had turned their lives upside down only a few days earlier. Brandon was so angry that he clutched the haft of the Bluestone Axe with white-knuckled intensity, almost hoping that a mess of officials would barge in again. He was all but certain that none of them would have gotten out of there with his life.

Gretchan put a hand on his shoulder. Her touch, as always, soothed and calmed him, and he shook off the dark, violent impulse that had been taking over his thoughts. His hands relaxed, though he still kept his weapon in his lap, ready and willing to use it.

“No. There has been no public report. The standard procedure in a case like this, with a signed confession of wrongdoing, is for the king to determine the sentence. When he does so, that sentence will be posted at the gate of the palace. I have been going there every day, and there has been no public announcement yet.”

She glanced from Gretchan to Brandon, her face a tight mask of fear. “It was Baracan Heelspur himself who interrogated him. He said they would do terrible things to me if your father didn’t confess. So, of course, he did.”

“What did they charge him with?” Brandon asked.

“Well, with harboring a fugitive, first of all,” said Karine, frowning. “But Heelspur was talking crazy. He spoke of something called the Bluestone Faction, as if your father was some kind of revolutionary. There’s nothing to it, but the Heelspurs-and the king, too, I’m sure-are terribly worried about our clan. He already had to deal with a mutiny in the Garnet Guards.”

“What happened there?” Brandon said. “I noticed a few of the redcoats as we wended our way here. They seemed to be permanently off duty.”

“Yes. They’ve been relieved of their official tasks since a couple of them got into a fight with some of Heelspur’s Enforcers. The Enforcers took kind of a beating, even though they had the advantage of numbers. Of course, Smashfingers took his friend Lord Heelspur’s side. The guards have been furloughed for the season without pay. I understand they’ve taken to wearing their uniforms as a point of pride, and the Enforcers haven’t been able to muster the gumption to order them to take off those red jackets.”

“That could be useful to us,” Brandon said, glad to hear that all was not well in the ranks of Regar Smashfingers’s men-at-arms.

“I have an idea,” Gretchan suggested. “Let’s not wait for the king’s public pronouncement. We should do whatever we can to spread word through the city about Garren’s plight and contrast it with Brandon’s heroism. From the reception we have been getting, just climbing from the deep-levels up to here, it’s clear that many dwarves will be sympathetic. You’re the Horax Hero, after all.”

Brandon frowned and his mother shot him a sympathetic look. They had told her all about what happened, but she knew that Brandon didn’t like to play the national hero. “I’m not about to go bragging about fighting for our lives!” Brandon objected. “And we wouldn’t even have been down there if not for the League of Enforcers chasing us!”

“And that’s a point that the dwarves of Kayolin would do well to remember. As to you bragging: no, of course you shouldn’t do that,” Gretchan said, her eyes twinkling. “Your mother and I will do that job better than you! And we’ll enlist your friends. I’d bet that Bondall would do a good job of spreading the news. This story is already taking on a life of its own.”

“What should I do, then?” Brand asked, intrigued by the idea even as he was frustrated at the thought of handing over the initiative to Gretchan and his mother. “Just sit around and look heroic while my father rots in the Enforcers’ dungeon?”

Only then did he remember his discovery in the subterranean throne room, when he had been racing after Gretchan and the horax that had captured her. He pulled the torc out of his belt pouch.

“Wait, I forgot to tell you! I found this in the horax lair,” he said excitedly. “Do you think it could be real? I mean, the Torc of the Forge?” He held the silvery circle up, and the blue stones flashed in the firelight, brightening the room as if they possessed an internal source of brilliance.

Gretchan froze with a little gasp of awe. Then she reached forward and touched the artifact, and as she did so, the miniature anvil on the top of her staff pulsed with a dazzling light. She swayed dizzily, and he caught her as she almost swooned onto her side.

“It is, isn’t it?” he said fiercely. “It’s the real torc!”

She nodded, awestruck. “I believe so. It’s the power of Reorx, more concentrated than anything I have ever seen before. An artifact, lost for centuries far below the civilized depths of Kayolin. And you just found it when you were coming after me?”

“That’s it! I found you- you led me to it, even though I suppose you didn’t do it on purpose.” He described the ancient hall with its dusty floor and the solid stone throne. “I got the feeling that the place was even older than Kayolin. I don’t know if it was even inhabited by dwarves; it might have been those ancient ogres or some other culture that’s now lost to history. The whole place has been overrun by the horax for a thousand years, and this torc was just sitting there as if it had been waiting for me to pick it up.”