Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

Tyorl smiled at that, a crooked lifting of his lips. “Have you been expecting ghosts, kenderkin?”

“And phantoms and specters, although I think they might be the same thing. You hear all kinds of stories about this place. That’s pretty odd, don’t you think? I mean, they say that there’s no way out of here once you get in, then they tell all these stories about things with no hearts, no souls, maybe even no heads! How could they know about—”

“Lavim, shut up,” Stanach warned. Lavim turned and, seeing Stanach’s dark scowl, snapped his mouth shut.

Kelida, who had maintained a grim silence during their flight from Long Ridge, kept pace with the others despite the awkward burden of Stormblade. She said nothing, but shadows moved like nightmares across her white face. Stanach caught her elbow and steadied her.

“Tell me, then, Tyorl,” he muttered, “is the place haunted or do you simply hope to frighten us?”

Tyorl stopped and turned, his eyes sleepy and hooded. “No more haunted than anyplace else in Krynn.”

Lavim, with a shrug in Kelida’s direction, trotted off the path. He wondered what bothered Kelida and hoped he’d remember to ask her about it later. In any case, this was Elvenwood, and with any luck, though Tyorl’s answer had been vague, the place would be haunted. Lavim peered into thickets and the deep, black shadows wondering what form the haunting would take. Things, from the kender’s point of view, were beginning to look up.

After another hour of walking, when the crimson moon had set and the silver one was only a dim and ghostly glow behind lowering clouds, Tyorl stopped at last in an oak-sheltered glade. When Lavim volunteered to take the night’s first watch none argued.

Tyorl limped to the stream to clean the cuts on his face and the long, shallow gash in his shoulder. Stanach gathered wood and laid the night’s fire. Lavim had hunted while he explored and returned with two fat grouse. Kelida fell asleep before the birds were plucked. The damp, cold wind danced with the flames and set the bare branches above clacking together and groaning. Stanach poked at the fire and eyed the clouding sky.

“It’ll rain before morning.” he said. Tyorl agreed. An owl swooped low just out of the fire’s light, a shadow and a clap of wings. A fox barked beyond the stream. Near a small stand of silver birch, Lavim paced his watch. Neither Stanach nor Tyorl expected that the kender would hold his post long and both sat awake in unspoken accord.

Tyorl leaned back against a log, stretching his legs out beside the fire. His belly full, the fire warm, he settled almost peacefully. He looked at Stanach, his smile lazy and knowing as he ran his thumb along the edge of his jaw.

“Say it, dwarf.”

Stanach looked up from the fire, startled. “What do you want me to say?”

“Whatever it is you’ve been about to say all evening. Whatever it is you want to say every time you look at Kelida’s sword. It’s a fine blade and you’re likely wondering about how she came to have it.” Tyorl nodded in Kelida’s direction. She slept with one hand pillowing her head, the other on the sword. “You’ve no doubt figured out that she’s not a good hand with the thing.”

“How did she come by it?”

“Is that the question?”

“One of them,” Stanach said drily.

“Fair, I suppose. It was a gift.”

“Who gave it to her?”

“Why does it matter?”

Stanach watched the fire leap and curl around the hickory and oak logs. Tyorl’s challenge was mild enough. Still, it needed answering. He tangled his fingers in his black beard, tugging thoughtfully. He remembered Piper’s warning: Do what you have to do to get the sword . He sighed.

“It matters more than you know.” The dwarf gestured toward the sword beneath Kelida’s hand. “It’s called Stormblade.”

Old brown leaves skittered across the clearing, scrabbling against the rocks at the stream’s edge and whispering in the underbrush. For a moment, the light of the red moon escaped the covering clouds, turning the shadows purple. Tyorl leaned forward.

“Nice name. How do you know that?”

“I didn’t just make it up, if that’s what you think. Near the place where the hilt joins the steel is the mark of the smith who forged it: a hammer bisected by a sword. Isarn Hammerfell of Thorbardin made the blade, and he named it. There’s a rough spot on the hilt where the chasing hasn’t been smoothed. Check, if you doubt me.”

“I’ve seen both. You still haven’t answered me, friend Stanach. How does it matter who gave Kelida the sword?”

“Good blood has been shed for Stormblade. And bad. Four that I know of have died trying to claim it. One, a dwarf called Kyan Red-axe, was killed two days ago. He was my kinsman.”

Tyorl settled back against the log. Suddenly, he remembered the two dwarves in Tenny’s and how they had watched the daggerplay with marked interest.

Neither Hauk nor the dwarves had been seen in Long Ridge since that night. There had been no reason to connect the dwarves to Hauk’s disappearance. Until now. “Go on.” he said.

Stanach heard the edge in his voice and tried not to react to it. This one would want the whole story and Stanach knew that he had come too far in the telling to start amending the tale now.

“I’m no storycrafter, Tyorl, but here’s the tale. The sword was made in Thorbardin and stolen two years ago. My thane, Hornfel, and another, Realgar, have been searching for it since. Not long ago, word came that Stormblade had been seen. A ranger carried it and he was last known to be in Long Ridge.”

“It’s only a sword, Stanach.” Tyorl snorted. “People kill with a sword, not for one.”

“This one they kill for. It’s a Kingsword. None can rule the dwarves without one. With one?” Stanach shrugged. “Thorbardin is controlled by the dwarf who holds Stormblade.”

“A good reason to want it—yourself.”

He’s an Outlander, Stanach reminded himself, and too ignorant to know what he’s saying. The dwarf tried patiently to explain. “It would do me no good at all. I’m a swordcrafter, nothing more. I don’t have the armies backing me that Realgar has. I’d mount a pretty shabby revolution without a soldier or two at my back, eh?”

Tyorl shrugged. “I’ll wager your Hornfel has a soldier or two.”

“He does.”

“Do you serve him?”

“He’s my thane,” Stanach said simply. “I helped make the sword for him. I was there when—when Reorx touched the steel.” He stared for a long moment at his hands, tracking the scars on his palms. “He hasn’t done that in three hundred years, Tyorl. No sword is a Kingsword without the god’s touch. I was—I was supposed to guard the sword. I turned my back for only a moment …”

“And you lost it.”

Stanach said nothing until the elf urged him to continue. It was a strange story. Tyorl followed the paths of dwarven politics with some difficulty, but he had no difficulty understanding that for Stanach, and for the two thanes who sought the sword, Stormblade was more than a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. It was a talisman that would unite Thorbardin’s factioned Council of Thanes.

Tyorl listened carefully, wondering as he did if the dwarves knew that Verminaard was even now laying plans to bring dragonarmy troops into the eastern foothills of the Kharolis Mountains. The Highlord had a hungry eye for Thorbardin.

His gods were elven gods, silver Paladine and the forest lord, the bard-king Astra. But Tyorl, watching the shadows pooled beneath the trees, sliding across brown carpets of oak leaves, recognized a pattern that only Takhisis the Queen of Darkness could weave. He moved closer to the fire, suddenly chilled.