Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

He entombed Duncan in the magnificent burial tower now known as Duncan’s Tomb. A place of mourning and magic, it hung magically suspended above the ancient dwarven burial place called the Valley of the Thanes.

He then hid his war hammer with the aid of magic and Reorx himself, and decreed that no dwarf would rule as high king in Thorbarin without it. Legend or truth, Stanach reminded himself, no dwarf had been crowned high king since. The histories were filled with tales of dwarven suffering during times when a high king was needed to rule the people. Times like these, he thought, when rumors of war seeped in from the Outlands, accompanied by reports of dragons and the Dark Queen’s rising. Stanach wiped cold sweat from his forehead with a shaking hand. None could rule without the hammer, and none could rule without a Kingsword. Through the years, many had tried to have such a sword forged, some because they knew that it would be enough to rule Thorbardin as king regent, some because they hoped it would point the way to the Hammer of Kharas. Though these swords had been beautiful works of craftsmanship, none had ever been a Kingsword. Reorx had never touched the blades, never gave them the crimson heart of red-glowing steel… . Until now. It was said among the smiths that the voice of every dwarven hammer striking an anvil’s plate would be recalled for all time in Anvil’s Echo, the huge, dwarf-built cavern connecting Northgate to the city of Thorbardin. If the legends were true, Stanach thought, the ringing of Isarn’s hammer must be sounding the keynote and shaping the echoes of centuries of work into an eternal song in Anvil’s Echo.

He_shivered again. When he looked away from the god-touched steel, he saw that Isarn was weeping. He had crafted a Kingsword for his thane, for Hornfel of the Hylar.

Though in times past, in the years before the Cataclysm, it had been a city exactly like every other dwarven-built city. Thorbardin, the last of the once-great dwarven kingdoms, was now unique in Krynn. Built inside the mountain, in a cavern spanning twenty-two miles from north to south, fourteen from east to west, Thorbardin was both a great city and an almost unbreechable fortress. Southgate, with its fortifications and several secondary lines of defense, guarded the city at one end. The ruins of Northgate, destroyed during the Cataclysm and now only a slim, five-foot ledge above a valley one thousand feet below, warded the way to Thorbardin from the Plains of Death.

Here the mountain dwarves had lived for centuries among their smithies and taverns, temples, shops and homes, and even parks and gardens. They grew their crops in the farming warrens deep below even the city itself, having abandoned the fields outside Southgate long ago, after the Dwarf gate Wars. Their light came from crystal shafts, sunk deep in the cavern’s walls and ceiling, which guided the sun’s light into their city and farms from the outside.

Though Thorbardin itself was called a city, it was composed of six smaller ones, one for each of the six thanedoms, or realms, which lay within the mountain. All but one bordered the edges of the dwarf-made body of water called the Urkhan Sea.

The sixth, and most beautiful, was the Life Tree of the Hylar. Shaped like a stalactite, it rose from the sea itself in twenty-eight levels. In this central city, approachable only by boat, the business of government was conducted. The council of Thanes sat there, presided over by its nominal leader, Hornfel. It was the only ruling body Thorbardin had possessed for three hundred years.

The politics and policies of six dwarven realms were woven there, tangled there, and sometimes fought for there with all the ferocity of a fierce and independent people. The dwarves watched vigilantly over their rights and freedoms and would not suffer them to be encroached upon. Thorbardin was the ancient home of the mountain dwarves. All else, even their own lands outside the mountain, were the Outlands. There were places below the great city of Thorbardin where none but the derro Theiwar mages went. These were the Deep Warrens, and they were far below even the dungeons and the farming warrens, beyond the wide, high delved cavern that cradled the city in the mountain’s heart. Magic was done in these places, and all of it was black.

Deep in the mysterious realms of the Theiwar lay the Chamber of the Black Moon. Torchlight, like transparent blood, splashed across the walls of the high-ceilinged cavern and vanished into the heights. Though upon first view the place seemed to be a wholly natural and virtually untouched cavern, the chamber was in truth the result of many years of skilled labor. On the walls were gilded metal cressets shaped like tightly woven baskets. These cressets fit neatly into stone niches carved from the living rock of the walls. The walls themselves were smooth, the stone polished to display its natural colors in all their striated variety. The floor at first appeared to be jagged stone. Upon closer inspection, it proved to be as smooth as polished wood. A thick layer of glass overlaid the contours of the stone. Poured as liquid fire from a vat, guided by the arts of magic, it had not settled in the depressions made by the natural rock, but formed as a clear, thick sheet an inch above the floor’s highest point.

Despite the use of four centuries, no place could be found where the glass floor was damaged. It was said that the glass would never scratch, not even under the tip of the hardest diamond.

In the center of the floor, crafted by the same magic art, was a simple, round dais of solid black marble. Upon the dais, as though suspended in air, rested a thick-legged clear glass table. Behind that table was a deep seated chair, dressed in soft black velvet.

It was here that Realgar, thane of the Theiwar, studied his ancient magical tomes, worked his spells, and plotted murders.

This night, while Stanach and his master watched a crimson heart of fire beat in a sword made for Hornfel, Realgar did not plan a murder. This night he planned a theft. The murder, he thought, smiling, would come later, when history would call Hornfel’s death a traitor’s execution. A Kingsword had been forged for the Hylar.

The informer had used no such word as ‘Kingsword.’ He didn’t seem to know what the strangely marked blade really was. He had simply been repeating tavern gossip carried by the bucket-lad who served at Isarn’s forge.

“According to the lad, the sword was strangely marked,” the informer said. “Red-scarred steel. Not the perfect blue-silver that usually comes from the master’s forge.”

No, Realgar thought now. Not the perfect blue-silver, but a steel blade with a heart of fire, as the legendary Duncan’s was said to have. But was this a Kingsword, made to invest a high king and then be entombed with him when he died? No dwarven smith had forged a Kingsword since Duncan’s had been buried with him three hundred years before; since Kharas, Duncan’s champion, had hidden his god-forged hammer and rendered the dwarves kingless until it could be found again. But the gods were abroad now, ranging in the worldly plane, and would manifest their strivings, Good against Evil, in the war some said would soon rage across Krynn. Dragons, dark creatures of Takhisis, had been seen on the mountain and coursing the night sky. Realgar bared his teeth in a slow smile. This night a god may well have visited Thorbardin. Had Reorx touched Isarn’s forge fire? Had he transformed simple steel into a Kingsword?

Isarn must have thought so. Though the master himself had gone from the smithy in exhaustion to rest, he left his apprentice to hilt the blade and, according to the bucket-lad, charged the apprentice to stay all night with the sword.

If it were a Kingsword, Isarn Hammerfell would not leave it unattended, but would set a guard. Realgar’s hand fisted. Aye, guard it well through the night and present it to their thane in the morning, newly forged and hilted. A mark of the god’s favor.