Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

A shiver of something partly fear and partly anticipation slid along Hornfel’s arms. “Lavim,” he said slowly, carefully, “who are you talking to?”

Lavim’s face, a weathered mass of deep wrinkles, brightened. “Piper, of course.”

Piper. Hornfel had heard the story in the gatehouse, Lavim’s fast-talking explanation as to how he came to be entering Northgate by a five-foot ledge a thousand feet above a burning valley. The kender claimed that he spoke with Piper’s ghost. To his credit, Finn grudgingly backed Lavim up. Hornfel did not know what to believe.

Lavim, his eyes full of mischief, cocked his head again, listening to some voice Hornfel could not hear. “Oh,” he said as though reminded of something, “right. I forgot.” Hands kender-quick, he reached into a deep pocket of his old black coat and rummaged only a little. What he produced from that pocket made Hornfel smile. Cherry wood, polished smooth as satin, and so very familiar, the kender held up Jordy’s pipe.

“You know this, don’t you? Piper’s flute. It’s magic. I know because I used it twice. Once to save young Stanach from the—the waddayacall’ems—”

“Theiwar.”

“Right. And once to transport me and Finn and Kem and—” Lavim hesitated only a little, his eyes darkening. “—and Tyorl out of the Hills of Blood. Stanach was going to bring it back to you because he said that you and Piper were particular friends.”

“Particular friends, eh? Stanach said that?”

“Well, no. I just did. But Stanach would have said it if he’d thought of it.”

Hornfel reached out and ran a finger down the flute’s length. “Does he really talk to you, Lavim?”

Lavim nodded vigorously, white braid bobbing. “Oh, sure he does. He told me all about how you kept him out of the dungeons and how light gets into the city from outside and about the gardens and farms.” Lavim’s eyes twinkled. “And he told me something else, too. He told me—oh. Well, I can’t tell you that.” He shrugged. “But never mind, you’ll know all about it soon anyway. There’s one thing I can tell you.”

Amused, Hornfel smiled indulgently. “What is that?”

Suddenly solemn, Lavim tucked the flute back into his pocket. “He said you should bring Stormblade to the Valley of the Thanes when you come for—when you come.”

For Tyorl’s funeral. There had been funerals enough in the last few days. Hornfel had attended those he could. This one, small and private, would be different. Tyorl’s funeral would serve, at least for Hornfel, as Piper’s, too. And Kyan’s. Elf, dwarf, and human mage, they had died for Stormblade. And for him.

Though it would be fitting for the Kingsword to be present, Hornfel would not be able to wear it until his investiture. Not even for this. The dwarf shook his head. “I can’t do that, Lavim. I can’t wear it yet.”

“Mmmm. You really can’t? Would it just be impolite, or is it some kind of law or something?”

“Both.”

Lavim thought, or listened, for a moment. “So, then don’t wear it. Just bring it.”

“Lavim, I don’t think—”

“Now you see,” Lavim said earnestly, stepping closer to the coffer as he spoke. “That’s just the problem everyone seems to have. They say ‘I don’t think,’ and they really mean they’re thinking. It’s no good, thinking. Just gets you into trouble.”

Quick as a trout darting, Lavim took up the Kingsword and tossed it to Hornfel, who caught it. “There! Now you’ve got it. If you’ve broken some law or been impolite—though I think you’ve certainly been polite enough all along—you might as well do it for an hour or so as do it for ten seconds, right?”

Stormblade balanced perfectly in Hornfel’s grip. It had been made for his hand and fit well there.

“Piper says to bring it?” Hornfel asked.

Lavim nodded solemnly.

“All right then, I’ll bring it. What about the flute?”

“Oh, that.” Lavim patted his pocket. “You’ve got that heavy sword to carry. Don’t worry about the flute. I’ll keep it for you temporarily, right here in my pocket.”

Home, Stanach thought. I’m home!

Using his left hand and his shoulder, he rolled another cairn stone to the growing pile. He’d been reminding himself since dawn that he was, indeed, home. Now, with the sunset light red on the walls of the Valley of the Thanes, he still needed reminding. It wasn’t that Thorbardin had changed. Stone and steel, the place was still the same. He had changed. Stanach shied from the memory of his reunion with his parents, with his friends. He didn’t like to recall their shock when they’d seen his ruined hand, or the way they’d looked at him when they realized he was not the quiet, peaceable forgeman they’d known only a few short weeks ago. He’d been in the Outlands, and he’d come home changed.

The difference had not to do with his injury. It had more to do with the stranger they saw in his eyes. Dark-eyed, he was, and knife-scarred, changed somehow by looking at horizons more distant than those many dwarves had seen.

The wind cut, sharp and cold, through the Valley of the Thanes. The valley was the only part of Thorbardin open to the sky. In ancient times, it had been a cavern. Now, the cavern long since collapsed, the sinkhole had become a valley, holding a small lake and carefully tended gardens on the water’s edge. The barrows of lesser folk lined the edges of the valley. The cairns of thanes and high kings stood in the gardens.

If the Valley of the Thanes was where the dwarves buried their dead, it was also where they, normally great mistrusters of magic, rejoiced in the working of enchantment. High above the lake, its shadow cutting always across the water and the valley, hung Duncan’s Tomb. Nothing supported the tomb but the spell of some long-dead mage.

Here Duncan was entombed, the last High King of the Dwarves. None had reigned in Thorbardin for all the three hundred years since his death. Despite the lives lost to regain the Kingsword Stormblade, none would reign in Thorbardin again. Kharas, Duncan’s friend and champion, had hidden his war hammer with the aid of magic and the god who had made it. None had found it since.

Hornfel would be high king, Isarn had said.

Stanach shook his head. No, Hornfel would not sit on the high king’s throne. He was king regent, though Reorx knew he’d guard the kingdom as though he were high king. That would have to be enough. Stanach leaned against the pile of stone and dragged an arm across his face. Sweat and dirt grimed the loose, white forgeman’s shirt he wore. He’d not stand before a forge again, but he knew no more comfortable clothes than this old shirt and the brown leather breeches he’d once worn for forge work. There were people who would have done this cairn building for him, stonemasons and diggers whose job it was to do it. Stanach would have none build Tyorl’s cairn but himself.

Of Piper’s cairn, built on the lonely edge of Qualinesti, Tyorl had said: You’re skilled enough at it. Your friends don’t live very long, Stanach. How many cairns have you built since you left Thorbardin ?

Then, Kelida, standing watch on the hilltop, had murmured protest at what she perceived as the elf’s cruelty. Stanach had not thought the words cruel then, he didn’t think them cruel now. Only true.

The dwarf’s lips twitched in a crooked, humorless smile. Piper’s had been the first cairn he’d ever built. Tyorl’s would be the second.

“And the last,” he whispered. “Aye, the last, Tyorl. Though I’d never thought to be building yours and never here in the Valley of the Thanes, in the shadow of a high king’s tomb.”

The wind whistled high and then dropped low around the walls of the valley, a slow, sad dirge. Stanach thought of Piper’s flute. They were mourning in Thorbardin and not the least for the mage Jordy, whom the children had named Piper.