Dan Parkinson - The Gates of Thorbardin

"Got him!" Chane called. "Pull us back up!" Wingover pulled, but nothing happened. His grip on his sword held them suspended — man, dwarf, kender, pole and pack hanging over the misted gorge — but no amount of muscle-wrenching effort would lift them.

"I thought I was the one who was crazy," Bobbin called from the hovering soarwagon.

Just at the cliff's edge, Jilian had her feet braced and both hands on

Wingover's forearm. Her nails bit into hi! skin as she pulled. "Let go!" he shouted at her. 'You're making it worse!"

"Somebody get a rope!" Chane called from below.

"I have a rope," Bobbin mentioned. "A fat lot of good it does me, now that it's melted."

Jilian scrambled back from the ledge, then turned and ran, returning with Wingover's horse and a length of rope from his packs. Working quickly, the girl secured the rope to the saddle, carried its free end to the ledge, and leaned over to tie it around Wingover's arm. With Jilian pulling on its headstall, the horse braced itself and hauled. Wingover appeared at the ledge and was dragged to safety, snatching up his sword as he came. Then came Chane and finally the kender. Chess had one hand firmly grasped in the dwarf's fingers; the other held the pole's loop.

"Remarkable," Bobbin sighed, watching from the limit of ground effect.

When finally the pole and packs were safe, Chane Feldstone released his grips on the man's ankle and the kender's hand. The dwarf stood up, brushed himself off, and took the pole away from Chess. "Get out of the way," he growled.

Angrily, the dwarf reversed the pole and thrust its butt-loop out toward the gnome's dangling hook, hand over hand.

Chess watched for a moment, then shook his head.

'That won't work," he said.

"Why not?" Chane kept feeding out the pole.

"Because then I'll lose my supply pole!"

"What do you want it for?"

"Well, it's for sending raisins and cider out to where Bobbin can get them."

"And when he has the pole, he'll have the supplies, too," the dwarf rumbled. "Mercy!"

"Oh." Chess backed off, considering the logic of it.

"Well, there is that."

Using the supply pack as a counterweight, Chane fed the pole out and neatly dropped its loop over Bobbin's hook. The gnome began to winch in his line, and the pack slid off the ledge and fell. The heavy bundle of supplies swung at pole's end, making the soarwagon dance in its hover. The contraption held for a moment, then sensitive vanes reacted to the shifting currents and it soared away over the gorge, circling and climbing as Bobbin's angry voice trailed away.

"You're welcome!" Chess shouted, watching soarwagon, rope, supply pole, and raisin-and-cider pack diminish into the distance.

"At least he has provisions," Jilian pointed out. "I'm sure he was getting hungry."

Hiqh ox a chill slope, where whining winds drove scudding clouds below and whipped snow from peaks above, the wizard Glenshadow knelt beside a pool of ice. The hooded face looking up at him was grim.

"Only a few days ago you were within an arrow-shot of the Dark One,

Wanderer. Did you see him?"

"I saw something," Glenshadow replied. "The warriorwoman lifted something from beneath her breastplate. Something small and dark, it seemed, like an amulet."

"It was the Dark One," the face told him. "You could have killed him then… or he you." Glenshadow shook his head. "His magic would no more work for him than mine for me," he said. "Not in the presence of

Spellbinder."

"The dwarf still carries the stone, then," the voice muttered. "Has he seen where it directs him?"

"He sees the trail of Pathfinder, and thus the way to Grallen's helm. He may know soon where it lies, for he is on the east face of Sky's End now.

All of Dergoth is visible beyond the chasm."

"All of Dergoth… and the woman, Darkmoor. The Dark One is with her.

They are ahead of you, Wanderer. They await you."

"Then so it must be," Glenshadow rasped, his voice as chill as the whining winds on the mountain. "Tell me, has the riddle been tested? The omen of the moons?"

"We think it means there will be war," the ice-face said.

"A war like none Krynn has ever known."

"When?"

"Soon. The preliminary games are in play even now…as you have seen."

"But, a war of the moons? What kind of war must that be?"

"Of the moons, Wanderer? Or of the gods? We believe the omens mean a war for dominion. Some say a contest among gods, to once and for all determine which of the triad alignments shall rule on Krynn… But, of course, there are always those who speak of ultimates and finalities. Even so, those of the dark robes are gleeful these days, while those of the white are silent and anxious." The figure in the ice seemed to shrug. "We shall see what comes of it all. Most of us are not overly concerned." The ice faded, went blank. The mirror surface reflected only cold sky above — that, and the cold, thoughtful face of the wizard who knelt beside it.

"Not overly concerned," he muttered, and his cold words were carried away by the wind. "Not concerned? It was not only the white moon that was eclipsed, but the red, as well."

Glenshadow passed the glowing tip of his staff over the ice pool, and again it shifted. He knew from past trials that it would show him nothing of Chane Feldstone and his companions. It was, after all, only magic. It could not see within the realm of Spellbinder. But it would show him other things, in other places.

A scene emerged: a sundered plain where goblins marched, and in the background the blind, leering death's-head of Skullcap, hideous monument to the power of magics drawn from Nuitari, the black moon.

"Chislev!" the wizard said. The ice scene flowed, spanned across miles, and refocused on a barren hillside. There, a figure stood motionless — a curious, oddly-jointed thing that might have been a horse… or some woodcarver's interpretation of a horse. It was obviously a carven figure, wooden with pin-hinged joints like a child's toy. As the ice eye closed on the figure its carved head turned. Painted eyes looked at the wizard.

"Which are you?" Glenshadow asked the ice.

"I am Hobby," the carved horse told him. "What wish do you have?"

"The helm of the dwarven prince, Grallen. Do you know where it is?"

"I know nothing except what Chislev wills," Hobby said.

"And I have called upon Chislev and found you.

Therefore it is the will of Chislev. Hobby, where is Grallen's helm?"

The carved horse turned away, seeming to look about uncertainly.

Suddenly its hinged joints came alive, and it sprang away, running at an awkward, loose-legged gallop that seemed slow — except for the blur of landscape flashing past. Hobby ran, and the ice image followed it. Hills sped past, and wild steppes where raw wind flattened scrub. The torn and savaged land was seen just in glimpses by the mage.

The carved horse ran, then slowed and halted atop another hill. "There," it said. "Hobby has found it."

The wooden horse looked away, and the ice image followed its steady gaze. At the foot of the hill was a tumble of rocks. Great boulders lay here and there in a field of smaller, broken stones, which stretched across a quartermile of barren waste. Only here and there among the rocks was there indication that they had once been part of a structure — a squared corner, a wedge-cut face of flat stone.

Hobby's gaze narrowed, and so did the scene in the ice pool. Among the stones, a point jutted up, tilted at a slight angle, its lower parts buried under sand and debris. It was a piece of what must once have been a mighty structure, now only wreckage among rubble. A wide crack ran from the covered base part way toward the upright point, and Hobby's painted eyes focused on that crack. In the shadows within the fissure, something glowed for a moment.