Dan Parkinson: The Gates of Thorbardin

Chane let himself down another set of holds, and suddenly it was raining gravel again. From above came the sound of splintering rock, and another yell. The next instant, Chane was knocked from his holds as the kender landed on him. A tangle of arms and legs, pack, pouch, and forked staff, the kender and the dwarf thumped onto the slope at the foot of the cliff and rolled downward, gathering momentum — a black-and-motley ball heading for the maze of tumblestone below, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake.

Through the fallen rock they went, threading this way and that among boulders as the rise and fall of the slope guided them. They bounded off a boulder, careened from another, shot through a hole in the base of two coupled stones, and zoomed off a lower ledge. Water glinted below, rising to meet them, then closed over them with a splash.

The kender surfaced, bobbing like a cork. He sputtered, blinked, and headed for the nearest solid surface a jutting creek bank a few feet away.

Reaching it, he pulled himself up, water sheeting from him. "Wow," he said. "Your way down is certainly faster than mine."

When there was no answer, he looked around. There was no sign of the dwarf. The surface of the stream — a deep, cold little river no more than twenty feet wide shivered with converging ripples and resumed its flow. He looked downstream, then upstream. No one was in sight. He waded out as far as he could and began thrusting about beneath the surface, poking here and there with his hoopak.

Nothing.

"Now where did that dwarf get off to?" Chess muttered. He waded in another step, fighting the current, and prodded deep into the stream, finding nothing but water.

Several yards downstream, near the bank, waters parted and a pair of black cat-ears emerged, followed by a black head-pelt and then the face of

Chane Feldstone, dripping wet. The dwarf got his whiskers above water and blew out a long-held breath, then plodded up the shallows and out of the creek.

"What are you doing over there?" Chess snapped at him. "I was getting worried. I didn't know whether you could swim."

The dwarf turned, glaring at him with hot-eyed fury. "I can't swim! I had to walk." He sat down to empty water out of his boots and his pack, then put them on again and stood, plodding toward the kender with the look of mayhem in his eyes. "Why did you jump on me up there? If you can't scale cliffs, why don't you just stay off of them?"

"I didn't jump on you," Chess said. "I fell on you. It's a different thing entirely. It…" He looked past the drenched dwarf and pointed. "Do you know that you have a following?"

Where thickets began, fifty yards downstream, four of the great black hunting cats had emerged. Ears laid back, eyes blazing with feline anticipation, they padded toward the pair, their rumbling purrs like distant thunder.

"Don't talk about it," Chane said. "Run!"

They ran up the creek bank, across a gravel bed, and onto meadowgrass where thickets converged ahead of them. The kender, in the lead, dove into the thickets, as quick and as limber as a rabbit taking cover. The dwarf, slower of foot, felt hot breath on his back as he bumbled into a viny wilderness that clawed and pulled at him from all sides. With one arm up to protect his feet, he pushed on, short, brawny legs making up in power what they lacked in speed. Directly behind him he heard cats circling, testing, slinking into the thickets by hidden ways, spreading to flank him on both sides, converging to head him off. Chane tripped and sprawled, suspended for a moment in a nest of thorny brush. He pushed on and stumbled again, and abruptly a fork of seasoned hardwood was in his hand.

He gripped it and followed as it pulled him forward another step, then two.

"Come on!" the kender shouted. "We don't have all day!"

With Chess pulling and his own legs pushing, Chane burst from the entwining thickets and rolled onto clear ground. He could see nothing except a mass of vines and thorns in front of his face. He tried to stand, tripped over vines tangled around his face, and fell again. Behind him, to the right and left, were the rumbling purrs of big cats. He braced himself for their attack, and waited.

And nothing happened.

Near at hand, the kender said, "Well, how about that! I think we've found the 'Way.' "

Pulling and cutting at Chane's cloak of vegetation, the kender cleared a viewport for him. He looked around. They were near the center of a wide, open path that led into forest. The path's surface was black gravel, its stones glinting in the spangled light like bits of coal. And alongside the path were several of the huge hunting cats, glaring and whining, padding this way and that along the verge of the gravel.

"They don't want to come onto the path," the kender said. "I guess this is what the bird was talking about." He turned his attention again to clearing thorny vines from Chane, pulling and slicing at them, discarding them by lengths and armloads. "You really are a mess," he noted cheerfully. "Given a little time, I'll bet you could grow berries."

Chane's arms were free then, and he set about untangling himself, shrugging off the kender's attempts to help.

"This works pretty well for that," Chess said, holding up the implement he had been using. Chane stared at it a dagger made from a cat's tooth.

"What are you doing with that?" he demanded. 'That's mine."

"Is it I" the kender looked at it closely. "I found it somewhere, while we were rolling down the hill. Do you suppose you lost it?"

"Give it back!"

"All right." Chess handed over the knife. "If that's how you feel about it, here. It's all right. I still have another, just like it."

Above the blackstone path an iridescent raven wheeled, circled, then flew off to the north as though showing them the direction to take.

Other eyes also watched the bird, but not directly. High on a wind-scoured crag, among the peaks east of the Valley of Waykeep, a man knelt beside an ice pool, gazing intently at its surface. A dark bison-pelt robe pulled tight around his shoulders shielded him from the cold, only here and there exposing the color of the long robe he wore beneath it — a robe that had once been vermilion, but whose hood, cape, and hems now were faded to the red of twilight. The color blended, in the shadow of his hood, with unkempt whiskers the gray of winter wind.

In the ice pool was an image: two beings on a black path where black cats prowled the edges and a black bird beckoned above. The image wavered and misted as an errant wind scattered hard, dry snow across the ice.

Without looking up, the man raised a long staff with a crystal device at its peak. Sunlight glinted in the crystal and concentrated through it to glow on the surface of the ice. The misted surface smoothed itself, melted, and refroze bright and clear. The two in the valley were on the move, following the bird. Like a deadly honor guard, great black cats plodded along both sides of the pathway, flanking them.

The image shifted then. In the ice was a great, vaulted chamber hewn from living stone. Dim and deserted, the chamber contained various structures and articles, largest of which was a great dais upon which rested a crypt. Here and there on the shadowed walls hung paintings, all done in the finest dwarven style. The view held on one painting and seemed to approach it as the vision magnified: a fighting dwarf in emblazoned armor, leading a charge of dwarven warriors across a blasted mountainscape. Again the vision grew, focusing on the face of the dwarf in the lead.

Peering closely into the ice, the man studied the features of that face

— wide, strong dwarven features of a face that had known power and had known pain; wideset, intelligent eyes that had seen much of life and had cherished most of it; a face chiseled for patience, twisted now in fury as he led his armies in final assault.