Douglas Niles: The Last Thane

Some time later they all collapsed from exhaustion, uncertain how many levels they had climbed, knowing that the rack and ruin of the Life-Tree continued all around them. Utterly drained, they lay in a dark passageway, drinking a little water from a pool. Slowly, their gasps faded to more normal breathing. Unspeaking, they lay in numb silence, trying to let some of their fatigue melt away.

Belicia whimpered suddenly, and Tarn realized that she had fallen asleep. Gently he touched her. She sat upward with a jerk, crying out with a despair so deep that it tore Tarn's heart just to hear it.

"Don't," he consoled. "You're safe here, for now at least. I'm with you."

She cried softly, and finally sniffled and looked at him, her eyes bright in the near total darkness. "It came crashing down: tons of rock, falling all around me. Why did I live? What right did I have to survive when so many died?" she demanded.

Tarn said nothing, just pulled her against him. Firmly she pushed herself away.

"I don't know why I wasn't killed," she said. "I should have been. All my dwarves-Farran, Raggat-all of them: they're dead! Why was I the one to live?"

"They will have a legacy somehow," Tarn suggested awkwardly. "And you have to stay alive to make that happen."

"Aye, girl," Baker said. "He's right."

She talked of the courage displayed by her young company-the way they had stood at the docks and the stairways, the disbelief that had seized them all when the forces of Chaos had erupted into Thorbardin. The others let her talk, knowing that she needed to explain to herself as much as to them. Finally she breathed more easily, and they knew that she slept again. Tarn let himself drift off for a short time as well. He awoke to an awareness of movement around him.

"Are you ready?" Belicia asked softly. He grunted his assent.

Stiffly the thane got to his feet nearby. "I guess we'd better get going again."

For hour after hour they made their plodding way upward, passing through innumerable bleak, ruined levels of the Hylar city. Virtually all the dwarves had gone, either fleeing farther upward or already dead. The effects of the Chaos horde were everywhere. Whenever they passed a long transport shaft or connecting tunnel they heard the chants and pounding cadence of dark dwarves on the march.

Then they could climb no further. The tunnel emerged into the mushroom yard of one of the city's grand gardens. Dimly, Tarn recognized that they had climbed to Level Twenty-eight and had emerged fairly near to the quarter where his father had his house.

But his attention was quickly drawn away by his father, who indicated the nearby street.

"Here! This way!" said the thane.

Regal, Belicia, and Tarn hastened to keep up as Baker Whitegranite led the way down the avenue. They met a few frightened Hylar who Baker urged to keep climbing-to take to the tunnels in the ceiling that the Klar had used.

"Father, wait," cried Tarn, at last determined to speak his mind. "The Grotto's not going to help us. Our best bet is to keep on climbing, to do what you're telling these others and find a way out of the city."

Belicia added her own arguments. "Those tunnels in the ceiling are a good idea. We should go!"

Baker turned and looked at his son and the brave dwarfwoman. "It will be your turn, soon," he said. "But first-please-come with me. See what it is I have been seeking for all these years."

"There's still hope that we can escape!" Tarn replied, struggling to understand his father's irrational behavior.

But as he looked at his father, Tarn realized that the elder's dwarf's fatigue had melted away, his mood seemed positively buoyant. Baker was tall, clear-eyed, and stern. Tarn wanted to grab him, to slap him into some awareness of their situation, but he didn't have the heart. Instead, he listened as his father tried to explain.

"The Grotto-and the platinum egg, if it's there-is the only hope for any kind of survival for our people, for all of clan Hylar," Baker Whitegranite said in all sincerity. "That egg comes from the stuff of Chaos. It was said, by Chisel Loremaster himself, that a true ruler of the dwarves could release that power.

"If we were to flee, our enemies would continue to chase us. The ending would be the same. But these are beings of Chaos that are destroying our city. Doesn't it seem that they might be matched, even driven away, by that same power?"

"So we let them kill us in an ancient dragon lair instead?" demanded Tarn.

"I don't have time to explain further." Baker now stopped, and Tarn realized that they were in front of their own house. "I have to find that egg!"

"Come in here with me," said Baker Whitegranite. "If I'm guessing right, we'll want to head right down into the cellar."

Unwilling to argue, but feeling even more hopeless than before, Tarn felt that he had no choice except to follow.

Pounce Quickspring stared through the dusty smoke, trying to find some semblance of order in the teeming mass of Theiwar. Everywhere dark dwarves choked the crowded corridors, a mass of attackers that should have carried through every vestige of resistance. They had pushed and charged, followed the daemon warrior and killed the Hylar. By rights, the dark dwarves should have been approaching their moment of ultimate conquest.

But instead they were stuck here, pinned so tightly that the Theiwar had turned against each other, dwarf killing dwarf in an effort to make a little breathing room. The Daergar of Darkend Bellowsmoke had taken a different route, vanishing into the maze of this dying city. For once Pounce longed for word from his allies, for some sense of how the other dark dwarf clan fared. But there was nothing but this press of Theiwar, an attacking wedge that had somehow compressed itself into this narrow passageway.

The spellcasters among the Theiwar clan had exhausted their magic. A few of the arcane dwarves had vanished, using what spells they possessed in order to disappear. Others stared wildly around, eyes bright and mouths wide as they neared a state of frenzied panic. Weapons flashed here and there as the anxious warriors were quick to use violence against each other.

The blaze began at one end of the choked tunnel, a crimson wash of heat that blistered even from such a distance. The brightness was already painful, an assault against the dark-tuned eyes of the Theiwar. As it grew brighter, the light became heat, and the nervous fear grew to a mind-numbing terror.

When the dragon roared closer still, the intense heat seared through flesh and melted armor. Dark dwarves screamed and burned as they died, the stink of charred flesh spreading down the corridor and preceding the killing serpent by a mere fraction of a second. The monstrous, flaming creature flew down the narrow corridor over the heads of the Theiwar, rushing along like an explosive fireball that destroyed everything in its path.

Pounce Quickspring shrilled his cry of hatred, watching the death of his army until the flames embraced him.

In that grip of fire he perished.

"How many more of these stairs are we going to have to climb?" demanded Darkend as he slumped against the stone wall in an effort to draw several ragged gasps of breath. Behind him the legion of dark dwarves paused, taking advantage of their leader's fatigue to get some much needed rest for themselves.

"No more than five hundred; we're almost there," Garimeth said, infuriated with his ail-too-visible fatigue.

Couldn't he see? Didn't he understand? "We've got to keep moving! We don't have any other choice!"

In truth, Garimeth was more than angry. She was utterly terrified. Would the daemon warrior even notice her, much less hear her, now that she had lost the bronze artifact? She almost wailed aloud at the memory, the image of the Helm of Tongues stolen by a gully dwarf who had somehow tripped her and snatched it off her head. The thought still caused her to tremble with deep, abiding fear.