Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

“Of course! Of course!” the kender cried.

Kelida gasped. Stanach turned sharply, reaching for the kender to grab and silence him. Lavim, nimble and quick, ducked out of Stanach’s reach and scrambled around Tyorl’s cairn to Hornfel.

“I know where it is! I know where it is! Piper told me! He kind of suspected it all along, ever since you got your sword back. Me, I wanted to go get it right away, but he said no, he wasn’t sure yet. It’s been like an itch in his mind, he said. But he had to wait. Once he came here, he knew. He says he’s been in the valley a few times before, but that was when he was alive and couldn’t see things the way he does now that he’s dead.

“You’re never going to believe it! Hornfel—sir! I know where it is!”

Finn grabbed the old kender by the shoulders, lifting him right off his feet. “Damn, kender! Now what? Can’t we have a moment’s peace from you, even now?”

Hornfel, his eyes still on the Kingsword, whose light was dimming as he watched, motioned for the rangerlord to release Lavim. “What, Lavim? You know where what is?”

Lavim took a quick step away from Finn. He looked up at Hornfel, his grin threatening to split his face. “Piper told me. I know where it is. I’d’ve told you sooner, but I didn’t really know what he was talking about. He said that this business of being king regent wasn’t for you. I said I wouldn’t know about that, but you didn’t really look much like a fellow who’d watch the store while the shopkeeper has his dinner. He said to tell you to bring Stormblade tonight, and he’d show me, because the Kingsword would know where it is. And I said, sure, I’d do that—”

Light as spider’s feet, anticipation crawled along Stanach’s spine. Isarn’s last words whispered in his memory. “Lavim!” he shouted. “Out with it!”

Startled, Lavim jumped and turned wide eyes to Stanach. “I’m trying to tell Hornfel something really important here, young Stanach. Just once I’d like to get through something without being interrupted. Now,” He turned back to Hornfel. “Where was I? Oh, right. I know where the Hammer of Kharas is.”

Hornfel, his hand still on Stormblade’s grip, stared at the kender with an aching mixture of disbelief and hope. “Where?” he whispered.

“Oh, not far from here at all.” Lavim laughed. “Not very far at all.

“Of course, you’ll have to send someone to get it. A few people probably ’cause you know that Kharas hid it real well. He made it invisible and guarded it with all kinds of traps and magic because he didn’t want just anybody finding it. He wanted a real high king to find it. Someone like Duncan, you see. Someone like you.”

“Where?” Hornfel whispered again.

Lavim smiled and pointed straight up.

Hornfel looked up at the sky. Stanach, following Hornfel’s gaze, stared at the first faintly glittering stars and saw the red star that dwarves call an ember from the Forge.

No, he thought, oh, Lavim, what are you on about now?

Kelida, following Lavim’s point exactly, gasped and touched Stanach’s arm. Hauk grinned and nodded.

“Not the sky, Stanach.” Kelida said, her voice shaking with wonder and sudden understanding. “The tomb.”

Lavim nodded. “Right. Duncan’s Tomb. Where else would it be?”

Stanach looked at Hornfel, head bowed over the red-hearted Kingsword in his hand. He saw the High King of the Dwarves.

“Hornfel King,” he whispered.

Hornfel raised his head, and Stanach dropped to his knee, suddenly moved to this rare gesture of homage. He spoke before he thought, but the words were heart-spoken none-the-less.

“Hornfel King, the Hammer is yours. I’ll find it. I’ll bring it back.”

“Oh, yes!” Lavim cried, stepping quickly to Stanach’s side. “It won’t be hard at all. There’s just a few little traps, some magic stuff and things like that. Piper knows all about it, and we’ll be able to get in and out before you know it.”

Stanach turned. “We?”

“You and me and Piper and—” Lavim looked at the rangers and Kelida. “And whoever else wants to come along. I figured everyone would because—well, what else are they going to do all by themselves here in Thorbardin while you and me and Piper are off getting the Hammer?

“You know how these things are, Stanach. It might take a day or two.”

Full night settled on the Valley of the Thanes. Shadows became darkness. Stanach, sitting on the ground beside Tyorl’s cairn, looked up at Kelida.

“ ‘A day or two,’ he says.” He crooked a wry smile. “Or says Piper says.”

“Stanach, do you believe that?”

The dwarf shrugged. “There’s no denying that Finn backs up his story of Piper guiding them through the defile. Lavim says that Piper guided Tyorl’s crossbow when he killed the dragon.” Stanach was silent for a long moment. “He was a fine shot, Tyorl. But—”

Kelida nodded. “It was dark. No one could have seen through that to aim so perfectly at the dragon’s one vulnerable spot. It would be nice to think …”

Stanach sighed. It would be nice to think that Piper was, in some way, still with him. It would be nice to think—

Stanach drew back, scowling. “I’m going after the Hammer of Kharas on the word of a ghost-haunted kender?”

“We’re going after the Hammer.”

“We, eh?”

Kelida dropped to a seat beside him and did not answer the question. She ran a forefinger lightly along a cairn stone. After a moment she said,

“I’ll miss him.”

“Aye, so will I.”

Kelida turned suddenly, the color high in her cheeks. “Stanach, I said it in the Deep Warrens, I’ll say it now: I go where Hauk goes. I go where you go. I will help you find the Hammer of Kharas.”

Stanach looked up at the tomb suspended above the lake. The calm, icy waters feathered in a light breeze. Starlight softened the water’s black surface to gray as it lapped gently against the shore.

Kelida covered his ruined hand gently with hers.

The dwarf rose and pulled her to her feet. “We’d best get back. I don’t recall that Lavim ever gave Piper’s flute to Hornfel. I’ve heard enough about what he’s done with it, and there’ll be no sleeping for me until it’s safely in Hornfel’s hands.”

Kelida walked silently beside him as they left the Valley of the Thanes. When he paused at the gate into the mountain and looked back, Stanach saw the shadow of Duncan’s Tomb, cast in Solinari’s light, shrouding Tyorl’s cairn.

The breeze became a low singing wind, and Stanach entered Thorbardin thinking of forests.