“The high king has brought four guards with him,” the elf told Kerian. “As you ordered, we have watched their movements ever since they left Thorbardin.”
“For their safety, as well as ours, Your Majesty,” Kerian was quick to add, seeing Gilthas’s expression darken.
“They met with no one,” the elf continued, “and they were not followed—”
“Except by us,” Gilthas said sardonically.
“It never hurts to be cautious, Your Majesty,” Kerian said.
“Tarn Bellowgranite is the new high king of the clans of Thorbardin. His rule is secure among his people, but dwarves have traitors living among them, as do we elves.”
Gilthas sighed deeply. “I wish the day would come when this was not so. I trust the dwarves did not notice that we were dogging them?”
“They saw the starlight, Your Majesty,” said the elf proudly.
“They heard the wind in the trees. They did not see or hear us.”
“Him say he like our dwarf spirits,” Ponce said importantly, his face shining, though this might have been due to the fact that it was smeared with grease from the goose he had been basting.
“Him say we make fine dwarf spirits. You want try?” he asked Gilthas. “Put hair up your nose.”
Kerian and the elf departed, taking the gully dwarf with them. Gilthas sat watching the candle flame flicker with the stirring of the air. Beneath his feet came that strange shivering in the ground, as if the very world trembled. All around him was darkness. The candle’s flame was the only light, and it could be extinguished in a breath. So much could go wrong. Even now, Marshal Medan might be entering Gilthas’s bedroom. The Marshal might be ripping up the pillows from the bed, arresting Planchet, demanding to know the whereabouts of the king.
Gilthas was suddenly very tired. He was tired of this duplicitous life, tired of the lies and the deceptions, tired of the fact that he was constantly performing. He was always on stage, never allowed a moment to rest in the wings. He could not even sleep well at night, for he was afraid he might say something in his sleep that would bring about his downfall.
Not that he would be the one to suffer. Prefect Palthainon would see to that. So would Medan. They needed Gilthas on the throne, jerking and twitching to the strings they pulled. If they found out that he’d cut those strings, they would simply reattach them. He would remain on the throne. He would remain alive.
Planchet would die, tortured until he was forced to reveal all he knew. Laurana might not be executed but she would certainly be exiled, deemed a dark elf like her brother. Kerian might well be captured, and Medan had proclaimed publicly the terrible death the Lioness would suffer should she ever fall into his hands.
Gilthas would not suffer, except that he would be forced to watch those he loved most in the world suffer and know he was powerless to help them. That would be, perhaps, the greatest torment of all.
Out of the darkness crept his old companions: fear, self-doubt, self-hatred, self-loathing. He felt them lay their cold hands upon him and reach inside and twist his gut and wring the icy sweat from his shivering body. He heard their wailing voices cry to him warnings of doom, shout prophecies of death and destruction. He was not equal to this task. He dared not continue this course of action. It was foolhardy. He was putting his people at risk. He was certain they had been discovered. Medan knew everything.
Perhaps if Gilthas went back now, he could make it all right. He would crawl into his bed and they would never know he had been gone. . . .
“Gilthas,” said a stem voice.
Gilthas started. He looked wildly into a face he did not know.
“My husband,” Kerian said gently.
Gilthas shut his eyes, a shudder passed through his body. Slowly he unclenched the hands that had tightened to fists. He made himself relax, forced the tension to ease from his body, forced himself to quit shaking. The darkness that had momentarily blinded him retreated. The candle’s flame that was Kerian burned brightly, steadily. He drew in a deep, shivering breath.
“I am well, now,” he said.
“Are you certain?” Kerian asked.” The thane waits in the adjacent room. Should I stall him?”
“No, the attack has passed,” Gilthas said, swallowing to rid his mouth of the taste of bile. “You drove away the demons. Give me a moment to make myself presentable. How do I look?”
“As if you had seen a wraith,” said Kerian. “But the dwarf will not notice anything amiss. All elves seem pasty-faced to them.”
Gilthas caught hold of his wife, held her close.
“Stop it!” she protested, half-laughing and half in earnest.
“There’s no time for this now. What if someone saw us?”
“Let them,” he said, casting caution aside. “I am tired of lying to the world. You are my strength, my salvation. You saved my life, my sanity. When I think back to what I was, a prisoner to those same demons, I wonder how you ever came to love me.”
“I looked through the cell bars and saw the man locked inside,” Kerian replied, relaxing in her husband’s arms, if only for a moment. “I saw his love for his people. I saw how he suffered because they suffered and he felt helpless to prevent their pain. Love was the key. All I did was put it into the door and turn the lock. You have done all the rest.”
She slid out of his embrace and was, once again, the warrior queen. “Are you ready? We should not keep the high king waiting longer.”
“I am ready,” Gilthas said.
He took in another deep breath, shook back his hair and, walking straight and tall, entered the room.
“His Majesty, Speaker of the Sun, Gilthas of the House of Solostaran,” Kerian announced formally.
The dwarf, who was enjoying a mug of dwarf spirits, placed the mug on a table and lowered his head in a gesture of respect.
He was tall for a dwarf and looked far older than his true age, for his hair had gone prematurely gray, his beard was gray streaked with white. His eyes were bright and clear and youthful, his gaze sharp and penetrating. He kept his gaze fixed on Gilthas, seemed to bore through the elf’s breastbone as if he would see straight into his heart.
“He has heard rumors of me,” Gilthas said to himself. “He wonders what to believe. Am I a weak dish rag to be wrung out by every hand? Or am I truly the ruler of my people as he is the ruler of his?”
“The High King of the Eight Clans,” said Kerian, “Tarn Bellowgranite.”
The dwarf was himself a half-breed. Much as Gilthas, who had human blood in his veins, Tarn was a product of a liaison between a Hylar dwarf—the nobles of dwarfdom—and a Daergar, the dark dwarves. After the Chaos War, the Thorbardin dwarves had worked with humans to rebuild the fortress of Pax Tharkas. It seemed that the Thorbardin dwarves might actually once more begin to interact with the other races, including their brethren, the hill dwarves, who, due to a feud that dated back to the Cataclysm, had long been shut out of the great dwarven kingdom beneath the mountain.
But with the coming of the great dragons and the death and destruction they brought, the dwarves had gone back underground. They had sealed up the gates of Thorbardin once again, and the world had lost contact with them. The Daergar had taken advantage of the turmoil to try to seize the rulership of Thorbardin, plunging that nation into a bloody civil war. Tarn Bellowgranite was a hero of the war, and when it came time to pick up the pieces, the thanes had turned to him for leadership. He had found a people divided, a kingdom tottering on the edge of ruin when he came to his rule. He had placed that kingdom upon a firm foundation. He had united the warring clans behind his leadership. Now he was about to contemplate another step that would be something new in the annals of the dwarves of Thorbardin.