Douglas Niles - The Heir of Kayolin

“I don’t like the sound of that!” Regar said. Still, he stroked his beard, eyes narrowed in thought. “What would be the point?”

Only then did the king notice the female, a dwarf maid wearing a shimmering gown with a jeweled necklace around her neck. She stood just to the side of and behind Baracan Heelspur.

“Who are you?” Smashfingers demanded, startled.

“Ah, forgive me, Majesty,” said Lord Heelspur. “I invited my son here with his betrothed. This is Rona Darkwater, of House Darkwater. I had hoped you would do us the honor of announcing their engagement to the rest of the city.”

“Ah, of course,” said the beaming king, all too willing to set aside the previous disagreeable discussion. The Darkwaters were one of the wealthiest and most influential clans in the city, and a marriage alliance between them and the Heelspurs would only help to solidify Regar Smashfingers’s hold upon the throne. “Please, my dear. Come forward. Tell me, when may we look forward to the happy event?”

Peat had been too grateful for his and Sadie’s miraculous escape to think much about the strange events that were transpiring in the kingdom. The more he thought about it, however, the more worried he became. Fire raging in the stone-walled palace! Destruction raining down upon the city! What was going on? And more important, would it prevent the two Guilders from making their escape from Thorbardin?

While Sadie busied herself in the back of the shop, finishing the last markings on the scroll that would allow the two of them to escape Thorbardin once and for all, Peat went to the front door of the shop and cracked it open. He could still see the glow of massive fires burning in the great plaza, which began a quarter mile down the street. Screams and cries, more sporadic than when they had escaped from the palace, still rang out. Several dwarves, gasping and out of breath, came running down the road from that direction.

“What is it?” demanded the shopkeeper, accosting a terrified Theiwar whose beard and hair had been badly singed. “What’s going on?”

“A fire dragon!” the man gasped. “It’s like the Chaos War is starting all over again! It burst up from the ground, burning a tunnel right up through the rock. It flew through Norbardin and then returned to the square. Now it’s attacking the king’s palace again.”

Feeling sick to his stomach, Peat released the dwarf’s arm and let him resume his escape. The Chaos War! He and Sadie had been much younger during that awful time, just starting out in business, in fact, tending a small shop in Theibardin, right on the shore of the Urkhan Sea. Already they had started to prosper with a loyal and steadily growing group of customers when the creatures of Chaos had exploded into the kingdom of Thorbardin. Peat well remembered the shadow wights sweeping across whole neighborhoods, wiping out not just the residents, but any memories of those dwarves in the minds of the survivors. He had seen the powerful daemon warrior, striding like an avenging giant, smiting buildings, boats, and dwarf soldiers with his crushing fists.

But worst of all had been the fire dragons. Driven purely by rage and the lust to destroy, they had flown through the city, gouging tunnels in the rock that seemed no more substantial than smoke to their flaming advance. It was the fire dragons that had destroyed the great cities of Thorbardin, carving away at the supporting bedrock, gouging through palaces, manors, and slums with equal callousness. When the forces of Chaos had finally withdrawn-they had not been defeated by dwarves, but rather compelled to depart because of factors in the greater war between the gods-they had left Theibardin and the other great cities of the underground nation so badly damaged that the surviving population had migrated, excavating the new city of Norbardin, to begin life anew.

And he watched as that new city was being terrorized by the same menace. Peat could hardly bear the fear, the anguish, that threatened to overwhelm him. He was quaking and on the verge of tears as he closed the door, feeling a fresh sense of urgency. Hastening into the back room, he saw that Sadie was still scratching symbols on the scroll.

“Hurry!” he whispered, knowing she wouldn’t be able to hear him. He had to do something to occupy his mind, so Peat went to the strongbox wherein the two Guilders had stored their treasures, the vast wealth they had amassed from those dwarves who had used the dimension door to escape Thorbardin. He was so nervous, he fumbled with the lock twice before he finally inserted the tiny key and pulled it open.

He found a bag of holding on a nearby shelf and carried it back to the chest. With one trembling hand, he scooped out diamonds, rubies, platinum coins, emeralds, and all the other trinkets they had collected. The treasures tumbled into the sack, ten or twenty pounds worth of them. But because of the enchantment on the bag of holding, the little sack weighed only a few ounces and took up only the space of a small belt purse.

“Where are we going to go?” he asked Sadie.

So intent was her concentration-and her deafness-that he had to repeat the question three times, each more loudly than the last, before she answered.

“The same place as I was going to send that last dwarf,” she finally replied. “Kayolin. I don’t want to take the time to work out a new destination.” She gestured to the empty strongbox. “And now, at least, we’ll have enough wealth to be comfortable.”

“Hurry!” he pressed.

“Well, if you wouldn’t keep chattering …” she replied ominously.

Finally she jotted down the last symbol and capped the ink bottle. “Do you have everything?” she demanded. “I’m ready to cast the spell.”

“Yes, right here,” he said, holding up the bag. “This should be all we need.”

She nodded curtly and turned toward the lone blank spot on the shelf-lined walls. Reading carefully, she chanted the words to the powerful spell. Peat watched anxiously, almost fearing to breathe, as the enchantment slowly took form.

First the blue circle began to glow on the wall. Gradually, the hole in the middle of the circle-the dark wormhole that was the actual pathway of the spell-took shape. With each word, more of the scroll on the desk before her burned away until there remained nothing but ashes.

Finally Sadie finished, sighing with exhaustion, but quickly pushing back her stool and standing up. The blue circle glowed firmly, the dark tunnel of the magical passage beckoning to them, promising escape, freedom, riches-and safety.

Peat finally began to relax. He wondered about Kayolin. One thing he knew was that it lay hundreds of miles away from their shop, far to the north. It seemed highly unlikely that the king of Thorbardin, or their wizardly Master, would be able to track them down there. And they would be fabulously wealthy; they would have every comfort that their nearly bottomless hoard of treasure would be able to purchase.

Sadie looked at her husband and started to speak. “Time to-”

She halted with an audible gasp. Peat blinked, perceiving that she was looking at something beyond him, just over his shoulder.

In a panic, the elderly Theiwar turned around, eyes bulging as he spotted a black-robed figure that had silently, suddenly, come through the door into the back room of the two Guilders’ shop.

In that same instant, Peat recognized their master.

It was the wizard Willim the Black, standing there calmly, his scarred, eyeless face expressionless as he gestured toward the blue circle on the wall. Finally, a small smile parted his beard and creased his ghastly lips.

“Going somewhere?” asked the most powerful magic-user in all Thorbardin.

“I wanna go Pax Tharkas!” Slooshy whined as soon as the three gully dwarves made their way through the palace wall and back into the tangled, debris-filled cover of the plaza. “No big mess there alla time!” She had no firsthand experience with the city, but she imagined it from what Berta had said to her.