It wasn’t long before one of the gully dwarves shouted for their leader. Shnatz ordered them to stop digging and approached. “You find treasure?” he asked.
“No. But something wrong with this rock,” the gully dwarf, named Hong, answered. To demonstrate, he struck the floor with his hammer. A section of the floor as large as a serving platter sank three inches under the blow.
Shnatz leaped back and began to edge away. “You do good work, better than I thought. Treasure almost ours. But you work hard, need break. Everybody take break. I be right back.”
“Where you go?” Hong asked.
“I gonna go spit in that hole, see how deep it is. You stay here,” Shnatz said, then hurried away.
Hong looked around at his companions and shrugged. Groaning, they sank to the shattered floor, stretched out their short, weary legs and began to discuss how they were going to spend their riches once they were all kings.
19
In previous years, the Festival of Lights had been Tarn’s favorite time of the year. At no other time was his city of Norbardin more beautiful. Being exquisite metalworkers and skilled in the arts of stonecarving, the dwarves delighted in creating the most fantastic lanterns and lamps they could imagine. They made lanterns from the materials they loved most—gold and silver, copper and steel, as well as all kinds of beautiful stone. As he made his way through the city, accompanied only by the captain of his guard, Mog Bonecutter, Tarn delighted in the infinite variety of lights that lined the streets. Whether hung in windows or from lampposts or strung from wires from house to house, the streets of Norbardin glittered with a beauty and a brilliance to rival the stars in the night sky.
Tarn’s favorite ornaments were the moon lamps that he saw sitting atop poles at the corners of many of the streets he passed. Carved into a hollow sphere inside which a single candle burned, the red lanterns were carved from red jade and glowed like the red moon Lunitari, the moon of neutrality. Far more popular were the white lanterns, which were carved from milky white crystal to represent Solinari, the silver moon of goodness. Though the moons of magic no longer brightened the night skies of Krynn (they, like the gods, had disappeared at the end of the Chaos War), the dwarves remembered them in their crafts and in their songs. Tarn loved to see the warmly glowing translucent globes hanging above his head once more. They reminded him of a simpler time.
At this time of the day, the celebrations of the festival were just beginning to start. Columns of dwarves paraded through the streets of each quarter of the city—Hylar, Daewar, Daergar, Theiwar, and Klar—playing harps and drums, and bearing lights to honor the dead and decorate the family shrines found in most residential districts. Each family had its own shrine, and the head of the family was its priest, presiding over a day of feasting. The dwarves celebrated their dead rather than mourning them, after the proper mourning period of six years had passed. So the Festival of Lights was a day in which a family might celebrate the lives of their grandfathers through riotous feasting and games, while at the same time wearing shorn beards and black armbands in mourning of someone who had recently passed away. It was not unusual to see a veiled widow kicking a ball in the streets with a gang of laughing children, or a grief-stricken father well into his cups singing songs with other customers at the neighborhood tavern.
Tarn made a point of touring the newer neighborhoods of the Anvil’s Echo, though this took him far out of his way. On normal days, the Daergar and Theiwar never even bothered to light the streets of their home quarters; they were gifted with darkvision and had no need of lights. But on the day of the Festival of Lights, these two quarters were perhaps more brilliant than any other in the city. The Daergar made up in cleverness and dark humor for their lack of precious metals and rich stones with which to make their lamps. Instead, they had created an infinite variety of paper and wood constructions, and this material allowed them to achieve more fantastic shapes and a greater variety of colors. On one street, all the lamps were of fish, whales, and mythical beasts of the sea, shining with cool blues and soft greens that made the street look like some weird underwater grotto. Another street seemed to be on fire, with orange and yellow paper lamps shaped like open flames licking from every window and doorway. Such was the nature of the Daergar humor, which re-created the destruction of Chaos as part of their celebration.
In the Theiwar quarter, there were fewer lamps, but these were often magical in nature, burning without fire or heat, and with wildly varied colors. The Theiwar preferred to cast their magics into lamps of purest crystal and to decorate them with illusions, usually grotesque ones. Tarn’s favorite was a new one set up before the house of Brecha Quickspring, the Theiwar thane. It was a towering piece of crystal carved to look like the mountain itself. Its light shone from the open North and South Gates, while illusionary dragons flew in slow circles around its snowcapped peak.
Tarn was surprised to see so many new magical lamps in the Theiwar section of the Anvil’s Echo. Over the past three or four festivals, new lamps had been scarce, and some had even begun to whisper that the Theiwars’ magic was failing. But now, the streets seemed to be filled with glowing lights and weird illusions to delight and terrify. Tarn had a natural distrust of magic, as did most dwarves, but he could appreciate the care that had gone into the Theiwars’ decorations this year. Certainly, this proved that their magic had not waned one whit. While pleased, nevertheless he reminded himself that he needed to dig more deeply into this development and find out why.
Tarn’s wandering journey through Norbardin was of course accompanied by Mog’s constant wheedling. That street was much too dangerous; the people of this neighborhood dislike you; let me summon more guards, you shouldn’t travel alone like this; I can’t protect you from everything, I only have two eyes. …on and on. The Klar captain walked as though upon naked swollen nerves, always jumping at shadows, his hand flying to the axe at his belt at every slam of a door.
Tarn knew his job was to look as though he was comfortable enough to lie down on a bench in the seediest section of the Anvil’s Echo and take a nice long nap. That didn’t mean he wasn’t wary. In the year since the disaster at Qualinost, the good will of the dwarves of Thorbardin had definitely soured toward their king. Not in obvious ways, of course. Few spoke openly against him, but in his public audiences Tarn had begun to detect a distinct undercurrent of disrespect. Nothing he could pin down with certainty, just the occasional sarcastic remark about his “leadership.”
But more ominously, the dwarves he met on the streets no longer greeted him in their old familiar ways. They used polite formality to keep their distance from him now. In the weeks after the disaster, people had gone out of their way to greet him, to offer words of encouragement and support, seeking any excuse to shake his hand, or bend his ear. Now, people did little more than pause and bow coolly before continuing about their business. Some merely nodded, though everyone was meticulously polite.
Tarn tried not to let it bother him, but Mog, on top of all his safety concerns, was incensed by the change in public mood. He snarled and grumbled nearly constantly, promising a sound thrashing under his breath to nearly everyone they encountered. Tarn heard every word and feared the day Mog should ever be let loose on the innocent population. That was one reason why he had so thoroughly incorporated the Klar into his administration, assigning them duties at every level. With something positive to do and the honor of the king to protect and uphold, the Klar were less likely to cause themselves and others harm. Naturally, the other clans didn’t understand this, and resented Tarn’s apparent favoritism.