For a time, Tera Sharn’s grief at her father’s death kept her to her quarters, and Willen Ironmaul stalked the Hylar digs, hard-eyed and lonely, tormented by guilt that he had not been there when his chieftain — his beloved wife’s own father — needed him. Yet the time of grieving eventually passed, and the two were together again. Still, at times Willen caught her eyes upon him, brooding and speculative, deep with thoughts she was not ready to share.
In a way, the death of Colin Stonetooth had bonded the clans closer, as though the bloody, senseless act of Glome and his followers stood as an example of everything evil and pointless about the old ways, when tribal rivalries had overshadowed all other interests. Now Daewar, Theiwar, Daergar, and Klar had fought shoulder to shoulder against enemies from within, and they saw one another with wiser eyes.
Still, it was as though the heart had gone out of Thorbardin. Colin Stonetooth had been that heart. Now the thanes went about their delvings grimly and separately, each tribe progressing at its own rate as they tried to build homes within the great cavern of the underground sea. The Daewar delved rapidly, but to no great depth. The Theiwar hollowed out lairs that were little more than caves within caves, and the Daergar stayed to the dark places, unwilling to come near to anyone else.
The population of Thorbardin had grown greatly as Einar from the outside came to join this or that clan, but the increased numbers of dwarves only made food scarce, as no real systems of production and trade had yet been perfected.
Then, on a morning when the sun of Krynn shone radiant down the quartz veins and the subterranean lake sparkled with its light, a sound arose that brought people from their labors and their lairs. The Hylar drums were singing again, that same quickening, pulsing beat that they had played before on the slopes of Cloudseeker. The music the Hylar named Call to Balladine.
The drums were muffled, here deep beneath the mountains, but every ear in Thorbardin heard the call and most responded. By the thousands, following the lake shore, they went to see what was going on.
The table of seven sides was erected again on the scrubbed stone of that same shore where Colin Stonetooth had died, and behind it waited a dozen Hylar drummers and Olim Goldbuckle, Prince of the Daewar. When the thane leaders were present, Olim asked them solemnly to take the seats they had claimed before. When they were seated, Tera Sharn came to stand at her father’s place at the seventh side. With Willen Ironmaul at her shoulder, seeming to tower over her, she gazed silently at one and then another of the four chieftains gathered at the table. When her gaze rested on Olim Goldbuckle she asked, “You ordered the drums?”
“It is how the thanes were first called.” The Daewar shrugged, his blond whiskers glowing in the subdued light. “I thought it appropriate, and the drummers agreed. We have things to discuss at this table, and now we are assembled.” He glanced around. “Well, most of us are.”
The Aghar were absent this time, because the entire tribe had wandered off somewhere and had not yet been found. And most of the Einar had retired to their valleys to prepare for spring.
But the Daewar prince was there, and Slide Tolec, with Vog Ironface of the Daergar, and the Klar leader, Bole Trune. The Hylar drums had called, and they had responded. With wide, dark eyes as wise as her father’s, Tera Sharn regarded them one by one. Then she asked, “You … all of you … avenged my father. Why?”
There was silence for a moment, then Olim Goldbuckle said, “It was not vengeance. We joined to keep the peace of the covenant.”
“Glome and his followers would have brought chaos upon Thorbardin.” Slide Tolec nodded. “In Kal-Thax, we have seen the face of chaos. We have despised one another and have paid the price for it.”
“The Hylar, your father,” Vog rumbled, “brought wisdom here.”
“I see,” Tera said. “And now my father is gone.”
“Which is why we are here at this table today,” Olim said. “Who will lead the Hylar now?”
Behind Tera, Willen Ironmaul said proudly, “Our people have asked my wife to take her father’s place.”
“You, and not your brother?” Vog raised his mask, looking at the young dwarf woman curiously. Even to his Daergar eyes her beauty was obvious, as apparent as the fullness of her belly. “Your Hylar would follow a female chief?”
“My brother Cale Greeneye favors the open sky above his head,” Tera said. “He is Neidar and has no wish to lead. He has told our people that.”
“What have you told your people?” Olim asked.
“I have given them no answer,” she said. “Though I have thought about the matter.” She hesitated, collecting her thoughts, then said, “Colin Stonetooth, my father, was a wise person. He looked always ahead, and never back. And because of that wisdom, he made a mistake … twice. He trusted the right people, seeing the path ahead, but he failed to see the wrong ones behind. At Thorin, which is now Thoradin, it was humans who betrayed him.”
A resonant growl came from Vog’s mask, but Tera raised a small hand. “Not all humans,” she said. “Those my father trusted as friends were — as much as they could be — true friends. But others were not. And then here, where we found others of our own kind, he trusted. He trusted and was blind to the enemies who stalked him.”
“As we all were,” Olim nodded.
“I am my father’s daughter,” Tera said. “His blood is my blood, and his ways my ways. Sooner or later I would make the same mistakes he made, because I see as he saw. Therefore I will propose another for chieftain of the Hylar, but I believe I would like for each of you to approve before I do.”
They stared at her blankly. “Why ask us?” Slide Tolec tilted his head. “Each thane in Thorbardin is independent. The Covenant is clear about that.”
“So it is,” she agreed. “But there is much to do here if Thorbardin as my father envisioned it — and as each of you envision it — is to be built. Old differences among the clans must be recognized, and different ways respected, but the Council of Thanes must act as one on matters of the future. To do things which have never been done before, all must work together. This Council alone can make that occur. Therefore I ask your approval before I say to my people that my husband, Willen Ironmaul, should be their chief.”
Behind her, Willen’s mouth dropped open. “Me? Tera, I am no chief! I’m just a soldier. I wouldn’t know how to …”
Tera looked around at him and slipped her hand into his. “No one is a chief until the time comes to lead,” she said.
Slowly, a grin spread across Olim Goldbuckle’s wide face, parting his golden whiskers. “You are your father’s daughter,” he said. “I wonder if your Hylar suspect how fortunate they are.”
“I would welcome Willen Ironmaul to this table,” Slide Tolec said solemnly. “I know as well as anyone that being chief comes of necessity more than by design.”
Vog Ironface hesitated, then raised his mask. Glinting ferret eyes in a face that sloped like a fox’s studied the big Hylar guardsman, and he nodded. “I have seen you fight,” Vog said. “There is more to your strategies than strength and precision. There is something unseen. What is it?”
“It is order.” Willen shrugged. “The teacher who taught us how to fight also taught us why and when. He said that skills without honor — which I think is nothing more than order of the heart — are like a forge without fire.”
“Honor is order?” the Daergar mused. “Order of the heart. Interesting. Wisdom” — he glanced at Tera — “and honor. Willen Ironmaul, Vog Ironface will welcome you to this table.”
“As will I,” Olim Goldbuckle chuckled. “Maybe some order of the heart is what is needed to get us all moving forward again.”
At the far side, Bole Trune rose to his feet, drew his cudgel, and placed it on the table before him. Then he turned to Willen Ironmaul. “Klar have trusted Hylar,” he rumbled. “Bole Trune trusts you.”
A few days later the muffled drums said that Willen Ironmaul had been named chieftain of Thane Hylar of Thorbardin. And in the song of the drums was a resonance that echoed in the hearts of dwarves of all the thanes, quickening their steps as they worked. Purpose, they felt, had been restored.