Mary Kirchoff - Flint the King

"What's going on here?" Flint demanded, both irritated and embarrassed by the strange incident.

Moldoon looked red-faced as well. "Garth does odd jobs about town for almost everyone. He's a little simple — most people call him the village idiot — and well, you two did look quite a lot alike," Moldoon finished, his voice coming faster.

"What two? What are talking about? Spit it out, man!"

Flint was just angry now.

"The tragedy," Hildy said dully.

Moldoon wrung his hands and finally said, "I'm sorry,

Flint. Garth was the one who found Aylmar dead at the forge one month ago."

Thee general looked over the smoldering city below.

He saw the seaport of Sanction, wracked by forces both ge ological and mystical. Its people were being driven away, the very earth beneath it changed by volcanic eruptions and the rivers of lava flowing down to the Newsea.

He also saw what the tortured city would become: the heart of an evil empire embracing all of Krynn. Sanction would protect the nerve center of that empire with a barrier of arms and with the awesome barrier formed by the Lords of Doom. These three towering volcanoes stood at three points of the general's view, spewing ash and lava, gradu ally changing the shape of the city and the valley. Active for the past few years, the smoking peaks dominated Sanction and the surrounding chaos of steep mountains.

The brown waters of the port, and the Newsea beyond, marked the fourth direction, to the west. The Lords smol dered, oozing rockfire and slowly wracking the city below.

The Newsea beckoned placidly, a route that one day the general's armies would follow on their path to conquering the west. Clasping his heavy gauntlets to his hips, the gen eral peered through the narrow eyeholes in his mask, pleased by the destruction below.

The general wore ceremonial armor of black, etched in red. Tall boots of polished leather protected his feet and muscular legs. A breastplate of deepest blue-black reflected darkly across his torso, while several large rubies winked crimson around the edges of the plate.

His face lay entirely concealed behind the grotesque dark helm. A scarlet plume, rising from the crest of the helmet and then trailing below and behind him, enhanced his height even more than his already impressive natural size.

Heavy, curved plates of the same black steel as his breast plate covered his shoulders and accentuated his imposing physique.

Now he paced alone, atop a blocky, black-walled tower just south of the city — one of two such prominences on the black fortress known as the Temple of Duerghast. This huge, walled structure squatted low on the slopes of the smallest of the Lords of Doom, Duerghast Mountain. The towers of the temple provided a splendid view of Sanction, and the mountains and sea beyond.

The Temple of Duerghast was, in fact, more of a fortress than a place of worship. The high black wall surrounded the entire structure. It provided space for barracks, troop train ing, and even an arena for gladiatorial combat.

The temple and the entire city, now as always, lay under a leaden, overcast sky. The gray blanket was caused by the smoke and ash that spewed from its surrounding summits, and because the valley of Sanction was a windtrap, termi nus of the Newsea.

A river of steaming lava, glowing cherry red in the eter nally twilit valley, cut through the center of Sanction. An other finger of flaming rock trickled toward it by a different path. Soon the two boiling streams would meet, forming a lava moat around the other temple.

The general's gaze lingered on that great construction — now a pile of rock, slowly being given form by the lava and ash. The Temple of Luerkhisis, that one was called, after the second of the Lords of Doom. The temple held the keys to so much of the future, for in its bowels were kept the precious eggs of the good dragons. Those gold, silver, brass, and bronze orbs would — when the time was right — force the neutrality of good dragonkind, allowing the empire of dark ness to be born.

But there was much to be done before that could happen.

An army had yet to be raised, equipped, and trained. Plans would be drawn, powers marshaled. All of this would take time. But he knew how to put that time to good use.

The general had begun to organize his forces. Already, thousands of mercenaries had gathered in the scarred city below him, replacing the huge numbers of refugees who had fled to safer lands when the volcanoes first rumbled to life.

The general had agents crossing the wildest lands of Ansa lon, gathering tribes of hobgoblins and ogres, bribing them with promises of plunder and war. And across the valley, in the temple taking shape over the hiding places of the good dragons' eggs, the spearhead of his army was even now be ing created. Draconians.

It was the equipping of his massive army that brought the general to this meeting today.

A great, crackling rumble suddenly reverberated through the valley, like an impossibly loud peal of thunder. The peak of Duerghast, south of the general's temple, pitched mon strous boulders from its cauldera. Idly, the masked figure watched the house-sized pieces of rock crash to earth, tum bling down the mountainsides and adding to the destruction as they fell. The helmet blocked the general's peripheral vi sion, but all of a sudden he detected a presence off to his left.

He whirled around and saw the new arrival unconsciously finger the steel ring that had allowed him to be teleported here.

"You are late," said the general, his voice a deep, rasping complaint.

The newcomer, a dwarf, ignored the rebuke and shuffled toward the figure towering before him. The general's height accented the small stature of this one. When the dwarf threw back his hood, his grotesque face suddenly came into view, a fitting image to counter the general's mask, though the dwarf's features were his own.

Milky, pale skin covered the dwarf's body, with a bluish cast vaguely reminiscent of a corpse. His eyes were pale, and very, very wide. Now, even under the deep overcast, he squinted against the daylight. A shock of yellow hair on the dwarf's head shot in all directions, bristly and uncontrolled.

His mouth was concealed by a tangled beard that, despite its length, grew only in sparse, ugly patches from his cheeks, chin, and neck.

The dwarf was a derro, a race of less pure stock than the hill dwarf or Hylar mountain dwarves, since it reputedly re sulted from an ancient intermixture of human and dwarven blood. Still a mountain dwarf, he was a member of the Theiwar clan.

He came directly from Thorbardin, the great underground realm of the mountain dwarves, where he served as the ad viser to Thane Realgar, ruler of the Theiwar. The Theiwar was the only clan of derro, and they competed jealously with their rivals of the Hylar, Daergar, and other clans.

In addition to his derro race, this dwarf differed from the typical mountain dwarf in another important way: he was a magic-using savant. Though all dwarves were resistant to magic, few were able actually to cast spells. Among these, the savants of the derro were most potent; and of these sa vants, Pitrick, adviser to the thane, was the most feared.

Pitrick moved awkwardly, partially dragging his right foot. He leaned forward in an unnatural stance, his body distorted by the large hump of flesh that deformed his back and right shoulder.

"You summoned me, and I came," said the dwarf. "Is that not the important thing?" Craning his neck, he looked up at the general. The masked human turned away silently. His expression pensive, the dwarf studied the general's straight, well-armored back.

"I see you wear my present," the general said, though he looked out over the smoldering city of Sanction. He had given the little derro the amulet, iron forged into the like nesses of five writhing dragon heads, as a token for closing the weapons shipment arrangements. The general himself had received it from his Dark Queen, and he half hoped that