Dan Parkinson: The Gates of Thorbardin

The man studied the features as he had in many viewings, then twitched his staff. The view changed again, back to the black pathway in the Valley of Waykeep. This time the vision moved close, sighting on the irritated, frowning face of a dwarf in black furs with cat ears atop his head.

Just as he had studied the face in the painting, the man at the ice pool now examined the features of the dwarf in the valley below.

The blackstone path wound and curved as it wandered deeper into the

Valley of Waykeep. It twisted and turned oddly, often for no apparent reason. Sometimes it nearly doubled back on itself, so that the travelers found themselves walking southward within easy reach — sometimes even within sight — of where they had just passed going northward. Then again, it would straighten for a time, only to abruptly veer off to the east or west, as though circling around some obstacle that neither the dwarf nor the kender could see. At times the path narrowed, becoming only six or eight feet wide. In these places the big cats gathered along its edges — sometimes a dozen or more, rumbling and purring in feral anticipation — and the two were forced to go in single file, running a gauntlet of swatting, searching claws as the animals balanced just at the borders of the path and strained forward, trying to reach them.

"These creatures are most decidedly unfriendly," Chess mentioned as he dodged a huge, needle-clawed paw. As it whipped past him, he rapped it sharply with his hoopak. "Bad kitty!" he snapped. The cat's responding growl was thunderous.

Just behind him, Chane ducked as a cat swatted at him. "Stop stirring them up," he ordered the kender. "You're just making matters worse."

"I don't know why they have to be so surly." The kender shrugged. "Maybe they don't get fed regularly. I wonder why this path twists and turns so much. Doesn't it seem odd to you that a path should go to so much trouble to go aroun'd things, if there aren't any things to go around? I'll bet we've walked ten miles so far, and haven't gained more than a mile or two.

You see, there it goes again." He pointed with his hoopak. Ahead, the black road turned abruptly to the left and disappeared into forest. "Do you see any reason why we shouldn't just go straight ahead?"

"I see about a dozen very good reasons," Chane snapped, counting cats.

"I mean besides them. What do you suppose is ahead there, that this path doesn't want us to see?"

Chane felt an extended claw graze his boot-top and skipped away from it, then ducked as a cat on the other side tried to knock off his head. He spun, lost his balance, and sprawled, pellets of black gravel sheeting ahead of him. The cats there dodged aside, retreating. Chane got to his knees and scraped at the gravel with his hand. The gravel was spread evenly over a smooth surface, as though it had been swept. It was only inches deep, with bare dirt below. He gathered a handful of gravel and tossed it toward a cat. The cat veered aside, as though panicked.

"They don't like this stuff," Chane muttered. "I think they're afraid of it."

Chess had come back to watch. "Well, then, that's easy," he said. "All we need to do is move the road."

"Move it how?" Chanc's brows lowered in disgust.

"I don't know," Chess shrugged. "You're a dwarf. You're supposed to know about things like moving gravel. How would you do it?"

"If I wanted to, I'd use a skid. Something flat and heavy to drag it from one place to another. But we don't have a skid."

"Then maybe you could build one," Chess suggested. "There are all sorts of things around here to use."

Chane sighed, looking off into the forest beyond the path. Yes, there were plenty of materials, readily available. There also were plenty of giant black cats just itching for one of them to step off the path and within reach. "Sure," he said. "That deadfall log over there could be a dragsled, with vines attached. But it's over there, not here."

"Then go get it," the kender said. "Just a minute, though. I'll see if I can give you a little space." Without hesitating, he stepped to the edge of the path, lifted his staff and brought it down between the ears of a cat. While that one still was recoiling, Chess thumped two more of them, prodded a fourth one in the ribs, then moved away along the path, his feet flying, swerving on and off of the carpet of black gravel. All of the cats on that side bounded after him, snarling and spitting. "Hurry'" he shouted.

For a moment, Chane stood stunned, staring after the departing chase.

"Rust and tarnish!" he muttered. "That kender is crazy." Then he hurried off the path to gather materials for a dragsled skid. "I don't know why

I'm doing this," he grumped as he dragged things back to safety. "It wasn't my idea to change the road. It was his."

Still, when the kender reappeared at the curve in the path, strolling along with a pack of angry cats pacing him, Chane was already binding vines to a log and weighting it with stones. Chess came to watch him work, peering over his shoulder. "Do you think it will work?" he asked.

"Of course not," Chane snapped. "I'm just doing this for practice."

"What's wrong with it?"

"To start with, in order for a skid to move gravel, somebody has to get out in front of it and pull it. And whoever does that is going to be eight feet past the edge of the path before the gravel load gets there."

"That could be a little chancy," Chess admitted, looking around at the patrolling cats. "But if you don't pull too fast, I can come along behind you and…"

"Me pull?"

"It's your skid," the kender pointed out. "Besides, you're bigger than me. Anyway, I can follow along and throw gravel out ahead of you, enough to keep the cats back while you reroute the road."

"I don't see anything wrong with just leaving the blasted road where it is!"

"We've already been over that," the kender said.

Considering the circumstances of its construction, the skid worked fairly well. The black gravel on the path was only a few inches deep, with ordinary clay below, and when Chane put his shoulders to the tow-vines and dragged the sled, it plowed up a growing mound of black pebbles in front, and left bare clay behind.

'That's perfect," Chess grinned. "Just head for the curve, and keep going straight ahead when you get there. I'm right behind you."

"That's comforting to know," the dwarf growled.

When he came to the curve, Chane was barely moving. The load of gravel ahead of the skid had grown so that it took all his strength to move it.

He hesitated at the edge of the path, confronted by cats. Then showers of black gravel began to fly over his shoulders, some of it pelting him from behind as the kender flung enthusiastic handfuls as fast as he could. The cats snarled and snapped, but backed away. "Take the weights off the skid," the dwarf called.

"Why?" Another handful of gravel flew, one fair-sized pebble catching

Chane on the cheek as he turned.

"So it will spread the gravel instead of scooping it! Don't argue, just do it!"

Chess removed the weights, then resumed showering gravel as Chane took up his harness again.

By the time the skid was exhausted, the pathway south of the curve had a bare clay stripe angling from its center to the turning edge, and a new black path the width of the strip extended fifty feet into the forest.

Chess scampered back and forth along the new path, peering off into the forest. "Nothing interesting yet," he said, finally. "We'd better go back for another load."

The second stripe taken from the main path extended the new road another fifty feet, and the third stripe put them well into the forest, almost out of sight of the road where they had been. Poised at the very end of the gravel, the kender peered and squinted, looking ahead. "There is something over there," he pointed. "But I can't see what it is. It's something big, though. Another load, and we should be there."