There was an old saying among the dwarves, accepted as just one of those unpleasant facts of life: Kender happen.
“It is a contamination of magic,” Mistral Thrax explained sadly. “The old scrolls tell of it, those handed down by the earliest smiths. It was the god Reorx — they say — who created the powers of chaos, in the form of a faceted gray stone. And all in its path became infected by its evil.”
“Old tales.” Colin Stonetooth shook his head. “Why would the greatest of the gods, the creator of all metals — and maybe the creator of all of us as well — have despoiled the world with …” — his beard twitched as he curled a lip in disgust — “with magic? Surely, Mistral, you don’t believe that?”
The ancient shrugged and turned his palms upward. On each calloused palm a symbol glowed dull red — a Y-shaped design that might have been a twin-tined spear. “I don’t know now what I believe,” he said. “But this is real, and it came from the magical eyes of a human who used sorcery. And I believe my vision of Kitlin Fishtaker was real … and I know the way to Kal-Thax. How would I know the way to Kal-Thax if I weren’t touched by … by magic?”
They sat atop a stone bluff, watching the combat drills in the fields below. The human knight, Glendon, had started teaching Willen Ironmaul’s guards the skills of his craft, and now he was surrounded by fully half the Hylar nation — men, women, and even children — all anxious to learn the arts of strategy and weaponry. Colin Stonetooth noted to himself that his Hylar had come a long way since Thoradin. No longer was the left side of the tools just an occasional interest. Many of the tools they carried now — things like swords and maces — were tools with no other side but the left.
Glendon Hawke might not have been happy with the turn of events that brought him here, teaching the means of combat to hundreds of fascinated dwarves, but he had admitted to the chieftain that he had never encountered students more apt. The Ten had been the first instructed, and Jerem Longslate had learned the sword so well that he could now disarm the teacher one time out of three. They were also learning the fine art of shield-play and the strangely human arts of the lance. The giant Calnar horses had proved surprisingly adept at lance-charging and were learning along with their riders.
In many ways, the dwarves surprised Glendon. As they learned, they adapted their new skills to their own circumstances and often improved on them. One example — the sudden wheeling of a rider to pick up a footman, then charging into battle with each dwarf clinging to one side of the high saddle, hammers or axes swinging in great arcs — had come as close to killing the knight as any tactic he had ever seen. Had he not dived facedown into the dust the first time Willen Ironmaul and a guardsman demonstrated that, he was sure he would have been beheaded.
The field below the bluff rang with the clang of steel on steel, an energetic counterpoint to the ringing of hammers on anvils off to one side, where dwarves were shaping new shields crafted after Glendon Hawke’s own. There were also bits of armor in the making and sturdy axes suited both to woodcraft and to war. Some of the craftsmen were also beating out battle-helms more suitable for outdoor wear than the old delving helmets most of the Hylar had worn.
Colin Stonetooth watched his people moodily. They were changing, becoming a nation unlike the Calnar from whom they had separated. He hoped the differences would not one day bring their downfall. As a tribe, the Hylar were becoming more formidable by the day, under the tutelage of the somber human knight. But, as with the Calnar of their origins, they were not a prolific people. A male and female who wed tended to wed for life and rarely produced more than three or four children.
We are becoming fighters, Colin Stonetooth thought, watching. Let us not become so enamored of our new skills that we put too much trust in them. No matter how dangerous we are, one by one, we are not destined to be numerous.
As though reading his mind — a tendency the old dwarf had developed of late and which Colin found startling and distracting — Mistral Thrax said, “Yes, we have a destiny. I do not see it clearly, but the new skills will aid in it.” He stared at the marks on his palms, looking puzzled, then muttered, “In Kal-Thax. Our destiny. Not to be all, or even most, but to lead … others?” He shook his head. “I do not understand, my chieftain.”
“Nor do I,” Colin admitted. “Tell me more about the old scrolls.”
“They are very old,” Mistral Thrax mused. “Several centuries, at least. Perhaps more. And some of them speak of that mystical gem, the faceted gray stone. They say that Reorx himself created it and placed it on Krynn. It was delivered into the keeping of a human king.”
“Why?” Colin’s brows went up in outrage. “A human? Why a human? If Reorx had done such a thing, why not give it to dwarves? We are the primary people of this world, after all.”
“They don’t say why.” Mistral Thrax shook his head. “But they do say that the humans lost the thing.”
“Well, of course they did! Who would trust any human with anything of importance? Even a god should know better! At least, no self-respecting dwarf would ever actually try to use such powers.”
“Gnomes set it free,” Mistral Thrax said. “At least, so the scrolls say.”
“Gnomes? That’s even worse than it being in the hands of humans!”
“Oh, they didn’t get it. Gnomes can’t do anything right. They just set it loose, and since then there has been magic on Krynn. So the scrolls say.”
“And this?” Colin indicated the marks on the old dwarf’s hands. “You think it comes from that?”
“The legends of the scrolls tell of Kitlin Fishtaker, a dwarven spearman who traded river fish to the humans of that place. They say he was there when the gray stone was released and tried to knock the thing down with his spear before it could get loose. The stone punished him. He was permanently contaminated with magic and became an outcast because any who touched him also would catch the disease.”
“Folk tales,” Colin Stonetooth rumbled.
“Maybe.” Mistral Thrax shrugged. “But I saw Kitlin Fishtaker in a vision, and I saw the man who couldn’t be seen in the attack on … Thoradin. And the eyes I pulled from his head were not eyes. And now I, too, am contaminated.”
“And so we wander across the vast lands in search of a place we have never seen, called Kal-Thax.” Colin planted his chin on his fists moodily. “It’s just as well, I suppose. After what happened, I could no longer stay there, and all the rest here came with me by choice. So, having somewhere to go is better than having nowhere to go, even if the place we aim for is only a legend itself.”
“Kal-Thax is there,” Mistral Thrax assured him. “In those mountains ahead.”
“I see no mountains,” Colin snapped.
“But you will, my chieftain. I see them already … more clearly, sometimes, than I see what is around us here.”
On the wide field below, Glendon had his charges lined up in double rows, facing each other. He raised a hand, stepped back, and several hundred Hylar — men, women and children — began happily pounding away at one another with padded swords and shields.
Castomel Springheel drifted through the defenses of the Ten to appear beside Colin Stonetooth. Grinning his delight, the kender surveyed the drill field. “They’ll never believe this back in Kendermore,” he told himself. “Dwarves going to knight school! I wouldn’t believe it myself, if I wasn’t right here to see it.”
Part IV:
The Great Caverns
Beneath Cloudseeker Peak
Century of Wind
Decade of Oak
Early Spring, Year of Copper
17
The mountain peak called Cloudseeker was not the tallest of peaks in Kal-Thax. Its broad summit, from which the Windweavers thrust upward like giant sharks’ teeth, was lower by a thousand feet than soaring Sky’s End, to the north. But Cloudseeker was far wider. From the foot of its north slopes where Sky’s End began to climb, to the sloping fields and the high-walled, closed valley that marked its southern base, Cloudseeker was nearly fifty miles across by horizontal measurement.