Tyorl leaned back against a log, stretching his legs out beside the fire. His belly full, the fire warm, he settled almost peacefully. He looked at Stanach, his smile lazy and knowing as he ran his thumb along the edge of his jaw.
“Say it, dwarf.”
Stanach looked up from the fire, startled. “What do you want me to say?”
“Whatever it is you’ve been about to say all evening. Whatever it is you want to say every time you look at Kelida’s sword. It’s a fine blade and you’re likely wondering about how she came to have it.” Tyorl nodded in Kelida’s direction. She slept with one hand pillowing her head, the other on the sword. “You’ve no doubt figured out that she’s not a good hand with the thing.”
“How did she come by it?”
“Is that the question?”
“One of them,” Stanach said drily.
“Fair, I suppose. It was a gift.”
“Who gave it to her?”
“Why does it matter?”
Stanach watched the fire leap and curl around the hickory and oak logs. Tyorl’s challenge was mild enough. Still, it needed answering. He tangled his fingers in his black beard, tugging thoughtfully. He remembered Piper’s warning: Do what you have to do to get the sword. He sighed.
“It matters more than you know.” The dwarf gestured toward the sword beneath Kelida’s hand. “It’s called Stormblade.”
Old brown leaves skittered across the clearing, scrabbling against the rocks at the stream’s edge and whispering in the underbrush. For a moment, the light of the red moon escaped the covering clouds, turning the shadows purple. Tyorl leaned forward.
“Nice name. How do you know that?”
“I didn’t just make it up, if that’s what you think. Near the place where the hilt joins the steel is the mark of the smith who forged it: a hammer bisected by a sword. Isarn Hammerfell of Thorbardin made the blade, and he named it. There’s a rough spot on the hilt where the chasing hasn’t been smoothed. Check, if you doubt me.”
“I’ve seen both. You still haven’t answered me, friend Stanach. How does it matter who gave Kelida the sword?”
“Good blood has been shed for Stormblade. And bad. Four that I know of have died trying to claim it. One, a dwarf called Kyan Red-axe, was killed two days ago. He was my kinsman.”
Tyorl settled back against the log. Suddenly, he remembered the two dwarves in Tenny’s and how they had watched the daggerplay with marked interest.
Neither Hauk nor the dwarves had been seen in Long Ridge since that night. There had been no reason to connect the dwarves to Hauk’s disappearance. Until now. “Go on.” he said.
Stanach heard the edge in his voice and tried not to react to it. This one would want the whole story and Stanach knew that he had come too far in the telling to start amending the tale now.
“I’m no storycrafter, Tyorl, but here’s the tale. The sword was made in Thorbardin and stolen two years ago. My thane, Hornfel, and another, Realgar, have been searching for it since. Not long ago, word came that Stormblade had been seen. A ranger carried it and he was last known to be in Long Ridge.”
“It’s only a sword, Stanach.” Tyorl snorted. “People kill with a sword, not for one.”
“This one they kill for. It’s a Kingsword. None can rule the dwarves without one. With one?” Stanach shrugged. “Thorbardin is controlled by the dwarf who holds Stormblade.”
“A good reason to want it—yourself.”
He’s an Outlander, Stanach reminded himself, and too ignorant to know what he’s saying. The dwarf tried patiently to explain. “It would do me no good at all. I’m a swordcrafter, nothing more. I don’t have the armies backing me that Realgar has. I’d mount a pretty shabby revolution without a soldier or two at my back, eh?”
Tyorl shrugged. “I’ll wager your Hornfel has a soldier or two.”
“He does.”
“Do you serve him?”
“He’s my thane,” Stanach said simply. “I helped make the sword for him. I was there when—when Reorx touched the steel.” He stared for a long moment at his hands, tracking the scars on his palms. “He hasn’t done that in three hundred years, Tyorl. No sword is a Kingsword without the god’s touch. I was—I was supposed to guard the sword. I turned my back for only a moment …”
“And you lost it.”
Stanach said nothing until the elf urged him to continue. It was a strange story. Tyorl followed the paths of dwarven politics with some difficulty, but he had no difficulty understanding that for Stanach, and for the two thanes who sought the sword, Stormblade was more than a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. It was a talisman that would unite Thorbardin’s factioned Council of Thanes.
Tyorl listened carefully, wondering as he did if the dwarves knew that Verminaard was even now laying plans to bring dragonarmy troops into the eastern foothills of the Kharolis Mountains. The Highlord had a hungry eye for Thorbardin.
His gods were elven gods, silver Paladine and the forest lord, the bard-king Astra. But Tyorl, watching the shadows pooled beneath the trees, sliding across brown carpets of oak leaves, recognized a pattern that only Takhisis the Queen of Darkness could weave. He moved closer to the fire, suddenly chilled.
“If you know the sword,” Stanach said, “you’ve seen the red streak in the steel. It’s the mark of the god’s forge, the reflection of Reorx’s own fire. I saw it come red from the fire and, when the steel cooled, I saw the god’s mark. This is a Kingsword, and the thane who has Stormblade will rule in Thorbardin as king regent. There’s been no one thane to rule the dwarf-realms in three hundred years.
“It’s a hard thing to be kingless. Something will always be … missing, longed for but never found. We know that we will never have a high king again. The Hammer of Kharas is made up of legends and hopes; it’s not about to be found again. But, Stormblade will give us a king regent, a steward to hold the throne in the place of the high king who will never be.
“If Realgar becomes that king regent, the dwarves of Thorbardin are lost to slavery. He is derro, a mage and a worshipper of Takhisis. Thorbardin will be hers and will have fallen without a fight. He will do anything to capture Stormblade, and he’s killed for far less than this.”
A log, light and laced with gray ash, slid from the fire. Stanach toed it back into place. “In the end I suppose it doesn’t matter how Kelida got the sword.”
“It matters, dwarf.” Tyorl sat forward, his blue eyes as hard as the blade of his dagger glinting in the firelight.
Stanach sat perfectly still, his eyes on the steel. “Aye, then? How?”
“It matters because she had it as a gift from a friend of mine. The ranger you mentioned. He’s been missing these two days past. Would you know anything about that? Two dwarves, one of them was missing an eye, were in Tenny’s the night Hauk disappeared—were they, by any chance, friends of yours?”
Stanach went cold to his bones. Realgar’s agents had been in Long Ridge! “No friends of mine. I left Thorbardin with Kyan Red-axe and a human mage called Piper. Kyan is dead. Piper is waiting for me in the hills. I went to Long Ridge alone.”
“I’m wondering if you’re lying.”
“Wonder all you want,” Stanach snapped. He remembered Kyan and the heartless scream of crows in the sky. “Those two in Long Ridge were no friends of mine. More likely, they were part of Realgar’s pack. I’d wager that at least one of them is a mage. No doubt they waylaid your friend and didn’t find the sword because he’d already given it to the girl.
“And if those two were mages, Tyorl, they could have had him to Thorbardin before you even thought to miss him. If he’s not dead, Realgar has him. Me, I’d rather be dead. Know it: he’s using every means to discover where the Kingsword is now.”