Jeff Crook - Dark Thane

Once through the gate, the survivors entered a broad hall carved into the heart of the mountain. Streets, alleys, and doors opened into it at regular intervals, and windows lined the way, filled with dwarven faces staring down at them anxiously. Tarn ordered the gate closed, while the various groups quickly split up—the wounded toward the houses of healing, those bearing the dead toward the clan centers where their families were already gathering to claim them. Otaxx led the soldiers from Pax Tharkas to temporary guard quarters on the third level. Tarn, accompanied by Mog and a small squad of guards, followed the wounded. Ilbars stuck close to Tarn. Ferro was not far behind.

Tarn’s new city of Norbardin was not so grand and humbling as the cities it sought to replace. Before the Chaos War, all the different clans had had their own cities scattered around the great cavern and underground sea that lay at the heart of the mountain. The Daergar had lived in Daerbardin, far to the south across the black Urkhan Sea, while the Daewar inhabited Daebardin on the sea’s eastern shore. The Hylar, hereditary rulers of Thorbardin, lived in a magnificent city carved from an enormous stalactite that hung over the Urkhan Sea. Called the Life Tree of the Hylar, it had been one of the marvels and wonders of all Krynn. But now the Life Tree was dead, most of it having broken off and fallen into the sea following the Chaos War. Chaos dragons of fire had burned tunnels through the solid rock, weakening it structurally until it could no longer hold its own weight.

Tarn had carved his new city from the area known as the North Gate complex. Once its halls and galleries had served to house those guarding the North Gate of Thorbardin, and for hundreds of years it had remained largely unoccupied except for a few soldiers, for once the massive gate of Thorbardin was closed, the mountain was virtually impregnable to assault. Under Tarn’s direction, the dwarves had expanded the halls and houses, built shops and markets, and carved new tunnels into the stone. But most of the new construction consisted of filling the vast area known as the Anvil’s Echo with new warehouses, barracks, strongholds, residences, and butteries. The Echo had once been a vast pit crossed by a narrow bridge. But the dwarves’ immediate need following the Chaos War was for living space, and the Anvil’s Echo had first served as a refugee camp, then gradually the temporary structures were replaced with permanent ones. The soaring bridge had fallen during the war and was never rebuilt. The Anvil’s Echo was now the location of the Daergar and Theiwar quarters of the city, a dark region with close alleys and narrow streets, and high defensive walls separating the people of the two clans. The son of a Daergar mother, Tarn felt as much or more at home here as in the lamplit, glittering marble-paved boulevards of the Hylar section.

There was a new Council Hall to replace the one lost in the ruins of the South Gate complex. New mines had been sunk, providing the dwarves with the metals they needed for their crafts, new caverns opened and cultivated with the mushrooms that were the staple of the mountain dwarf diet.

Such as it was, it was home, but it wasn’t Hybardin, and those who lived here knew it. They knew that they were living in a diminished age, in a time when glories of the past were becoming fading memories. They were comfortable, they were safe, and after the terrible destruction of the Chaos War, that was enough for most.

There were dwarf children playing in the streets as Tarn made his way toward the new Council of Thanes, after seeing that his wounded soldiers were being properly settled in the houses of healing. He refused medical care for himself, for he had one final duty to perform before he found the rest he so sorely craved. But the sight of the children made Tarn smile, for here was the future of his people. Traditionally, dwarves were slow to reproduce; some dwarves never even married—not because of a shortage of mates, but because their standards were often above their stations. In the past, dwarf marriages had been conducted like business dealings, the merger of two families arranged for mutual profit, and no dwarf wished to marry below his or her station, as this was seen as a loss, both of wealth and honor. Naturally, this system produced a disappointing number of marriages and therefore few children, though no one had ever seemed to mind. It helped to keep the dwarves from outgrowing their mountain home.

But so very many dwarves had died in the Chaos War; whole extended families were destroyed in the breath of one dragon, whole clans and all memories of them annihilated by the touch of the horrid shadow wights. Tarn’s mother and father had died, fighting on opposite sides of the battle—Garimeth Bellowsmoke was slain by the daemon warrior leading the forces of Chaos; Baker Whitegranite had been consumed by the magical gem he used to destroy the Chaos armies invading their home. Even after the war, die dying and destruction had continued, as Tarn led the surviving Hylar and Klar back into the mountain and found it held by the survivors of the Daergar and Theiwar clans, who were not ready to quickly give up what they felt :hey had won during the war.

And then, the damage wrought by the chaos dragons continued to take its toll on those still living in the cities. Walls collapsed and floors gave way, killing dozens. Tarn lost that which he held most dear. His fiancée, Belicia Slateshoulders, had died when a section of Hybardin that she and several hundred workers were trying to restore broke off and plunged hundreds of feet to the Urkhan Sea below. It was this incident that prompted Tarn to abandon the old cities and start building a new one out of the North Gate complex. He called his new city Norbardin. Norbardin was everyone’s home now, dwarves of all the clans, but at the same time it never really felt like home, not even after forty years.

So many had died that in the years after the Chaos War, the clans could no longer afford the luxury of hating and distrusting one another. They needed one another just to survive, especially after Severus Stonehand led most of the remaining Daewar on a mad exodus to the ancient dwarven homeland of Thoradin. Now, after nearly forty years, the population of Thorbardin was finally beginning to grow. Dwarves had continued to marry largely within their own clans, but many dwarves were glad to find any eligible mate. The realm had begun to prosper.

There was a whole new generation of young dwarves who had never known the former glory of Thorbardin, however. They experienced it only through the tales of their parents and grandparents. They were strong, having been forged during a time of great hardship, and they were eager to win new glories.

It was this generation that Tarn had led to disaster beneath the elven city of Qualinost. Once more, as he approached the Council of Thanes, the enormity of his failure descended upon him. A generation lost, all because he had been too eager to win honor and glory, too hasty to build a new alliance between the elves and the dwarves. He had abandoned caution when caution might have served him best. He had accepted the swiftest course as the wisest, decided that he who hesitated was lost, for this philosophy had served him well in the past. He had agreed to help the elven king because he was eager to forge new ties with the elves.

He wished now that he had listened to the Council of Thanes and waited to see how the elves’ conflict with Beryl and the Dark Knights would shake out. He had argued that they could not afford to wait, for if the elves were defeated, there would be nothing standing between Thorbardin and the green dragon Beryl. Yet he had never had much hope that Beryl could be stopped. So why had he aided them?

That was the question revolving in his mind as he climbed the broad marble stairs leading up to the old temple of Reorx. His wound bothered him little, if truth be told, but he found the climb arduous. The North Gate’s old temple had been converted into a new Council Hall for the Council of Thanes. Its steps were as broad as a dwarf is tall and rose over forty feet to the columned portico that surrounded it. Six marble walls white as milk rose up to form a towering hexagonal structure, which supported a dome of rose quartz from Qualinesti—likely the last standing structure of that material left on Krynn, now that Qualinost was drowned and destroyed. Each of the six walls contained an entrance into the Grand Gallery, which, like the portico, ran the entire circle of the structure, but on two levels. In the portico and Grand Gallery, dwarven philosophers had once expounded on the mysteries of creation and the nature of law; now they were crowded with dwarves awaiting Tarn’s arrival at the Council of Thanes.