The scent of the pines surrounded them, brushing their skin in the cool breeze that blew down from the heights of the Garnet Mountains. The smell brought a strong wave of nostalgic memories to Brandon, who had spent much of his life hunting, prospecting, and exploring the peaks and valleys of that majestic range.
Yet as he walked, every one of those memories seemed imperiled by the present, and he felt himself borne down again by the weight of the responsibility that had compelled him to return.
“You’re thinking about that proclamation that your father included with his letter again, aren’t you?” Gretchan asked softly.
Brandon nodded. He had shown her the letter, which included a copy of Regar Smashfingers’s proclamation of kingship. “I don’t know if the king is behind my exile, but the fact that he promoted Lord Heelspur to head of his League of Enforcers makes me think so. It was Heelspur who was behind my brother’s murder, and I had to leave Kayolin because I accused him of the crime, remember? It’s pretty clear which side the king came down on.”
“What about all that stuff about the horax? Do you think the king is making it up?”
“Who knows? I mean, every Kayolin dwarf knows about the horax. Even with the walls and barricades and such, one or two of the bugs still make their way into the sublevels once in a while. They’re damned nasty, and if there ever was to be a real infestation of them, I think it could be pretty bad. But it just seems convenient to have them turning into a widespread menace all of a sudden, just when Regar Smashfingers is looking for an excuse to seize even more power than he already had.”
She let go of his hand and almost skipped as they came around a bend in the winding road. A tall mountain came into view again, its sturdy shoulders mantled in white snow. The gentle, rocky ridges, far about the timberline, stood out in such crystalline relief that it seemed as though they could see every rock, niche, and snowdrift. The summit had been part of their horizon for several days, but their new vantage proved that they were getting very close indeed.
“I can’t believe we’re almost there!” Gretchan said breathlessly. It was several moments before she realized that her companion had fallen a number of paces behind. “Brandon!” she called, turning and waving to the bearded, plodding dwarf. “Come on!”
“What’s your hurry?” the big dwarf demanded sourly. His sturdy legs chugged along, and the large backpack looming higher than his head didn’t affect his balance or bearing. Even so, he moved more slowly than he had on any day during the long trek northward. “We’ll get there when we get there,” he added.
“But-there’s Garnet Peak, right there!” she said, her cheeks flushed, eyes bright with excitement. She turned and pointed to the lofty, snowcapped mountain that had dominated their view for the past few days. “Your homeland is right underneath it!”
“Don’t you think I know that? After all, I was born there!” Brandon snapped.
“Well, you sure don’t sound like someone who’s going home for the first time in more than a year!” Gretchan retorted. “If you were walking any slower, a glacier would beat you!”
“Glaciers move down mountains. We’re climbing up,” he shot back, allowing a smug smile to gleam through his beard.
His companion sighed, her shoulders slumping as she shook her head and looked at him. Her excitement and enthusiasm seemed to all drain away in that look, and he felt a stab of guilt.
“You’re really worried about what you’re going to find in Kayolin, aren’t you?” she asked sympathetically. “Look, if you really want to stop here, to turn around, we can. We don’t have to go there if you don’t want to, you know. We really don’t.”
“I suppose not. It’s only the one thing you’ve been talking about since we met-the chance to see Kayolin with your own eyes. But we don’t have to go there.” A look of hurt flashed in her eyes, and he immediately regretted his sarcasm.
“Look,” he added hastily. “I’m sorry. I’m worried about my father. And … it’s just … you know I left under some rather stressful circumstances. I’m also worried about what we’re going to find in Kayolin in general, the whole city and nation. And if something’s happened to my parents … You know, the Bluestone Luck-”
“You changed the Bluestone Luck! Did you forget that already?” She pointed to the shiny weapon at his belt. “It was you who saved Pax Tharkas with Balric Bluestone’s axe! You fought that black minion; that is still the bravest thing I’ve ever seen!”
Her words make him look up at the snowy massif of Garnet Peak, the mountain where Balric Bluestone had disappeared-during the Cataclysm-leaving his axe to be recovered by his son, Brandon’s ancestor, immediately after the destruction had ceased to rain down upon Krynn. Legend had it that the weapon had been blessed by Reorx himself, and most assuredly, it was a mighty blade, keen and enchanted.
But the descendents of Balric Bluestone had not prospered from that blessing. Catastrophe had piled upon misfortune and mingled with tragedy through the more than four hundred years since that singular event. House Bluestone’s fortunes had waned, a series of business setbacks had taken their toll, and the family members had a way of finding disgrace or meeting up with untimely death. Brandon’s father, Garren, had struggled to survive as a moderately successful businessman, and his brother, Nailer, had been murdered by assassins that, Brandon had learned, were sent by the most ruthless and richest lord in Kayolin: Alakar Heelspur.
It had been that murder, and Brandon’s own life threatened, that had led the younger Bluestone to flee the land of his ancestors. A year earlier he had made his way south, across the Newsea. He’d been ambushed and betrayed by hill dwarves, sentenced to death, then thrown into the dungeon of his own mountain dwarf cousins when they had mistaken him for a hill dwarf spy.
Of course, all those adventures had also led to meeting Gretchan. She had rescued him from that dungeon, and together they had turned back the hill dwarf attack. Yes, he and Gretchan were not a bad team. He hung his head, forced to admit to himself that his luck hadn’t been all that bad.
“Well,” he admitted, blushing. “It was really you who banished the minion back to-well, to wherever it came from.”
“I could only do that through the will of Reorx,” the dwarf priestess replied cheerily. “And because you had the courage to stand up to the creature.”
As they hiked steadily higher into the mountains, Brandon smelled the pine forest with new delight, heard the brooks and waterfalls of the Garnet range, and was reminded of all the good things about the place that had been his home for all of his fifty years-excepting the past eighteen months. And he finally felt that it was good to be going home again.
He had spent the past peaceful year in Pax Tharkas with Gretchan and the dwarves of Tarn Bellowgranite’s Thorbardin refugees. He had shared Gretchan’s joy at the discovery that Tarn’s old general, Otaxx Shortbeard, was in fact the father she had never known.
Throughout the year, Gretchan had yearned to continue her explorations, wishing to travel to the one great dwarf nation of which, as yet, she had no firsthand knowledge. Brandon had consistently refused to take her to Kayolin-until the letter from his father had arrived. For more than a month they had been journeying northward. They had trekked across the plains south of the Newsea, booked passage on a ship to Caergoth, and even purchased horses that had carried them all the way to the city of Garnet, gateway to the mountain range of the same name. They had sold their horses in that city two days before and were completing the journey on foot, following the smooth, paved road high into the mountains.
The slopes to either side of the valley grew steadily steeper, and they came into view of some small glaciers, permanent sheets of ice clinging to the creases and couloirs in the shady recesses of the upper reaches. The Garnet range was much smaller, the cliff faces more gentle, the crests more rolling, than the lofty realm of the Kharolis. But from down here on the valley road, the mountains looked plenty big.