Slumping against the stone in weariness, he wondered about his son. Was Tarn dead too? Was he caught in the onslaught of Chaos? Or had he joined ranks with the dark dwarves? Angrily the thane shook his head at the last notion. He refused to believe that Tarn's loyalties would be so easily twisted. Closing his eyes, he breathed a silent prayer to Reorx, pleading that the young dwarf remained unhurt.
Leaning against the wall, feeling the familiar burning in his stomach, Baker felt like giving up. But instead he listened again to the growing silence and then again heard the hint of sounds. Groans came from beneath a section of the wall that had fallen flat into the street. Baker hurried to the place and tried to move the heavy slab. Though he tore off one of his fingernails in the attempt, he could not budge the heavy weight. Once more he heard a fading moan.
Standing up, he was able to spot an elder Hylar kicking through the rubble of a nearby building. From his silk vests, shiny leather boots, and the magnifying eyepiece he wore on a gold chain, the thane deduced that the fellow was a gem cutter.
"Help!" he called, and the other dwarf hastened over to lend a hand with the flat piece of stone. But after they had moved it, they could only look down helplessly at the blue-faced corpse of a young dwarfmaid.
"She suffocated before we could get her free," Baker said, feeling horribly guilty.
"There were more noises over there," reported the jeweler, pointing to the nearby rubble where Baker had first seen him.
The thane accompanied the gem cutter, and they were quickly joined by more Hylar, young and old, males and females, who seemed to appear from nowhere. In a few minutes they had freed a mother and two children who had been buried alive, saved from being crushed by an overhanging shelf of what had once been their ceiling.
"Let's get them down to safety," Baker suggested, wondering if in fact any place in Hybardin was free from danger right now. "Does the lift still work?" he asked the group.
"The chain was broken when I passed it an hour ago," said one of the rescuers, a burly smith by the look of him. "They was workin' to get it fixed, though."
"Then let's get the injured to the station and see what can be done."
Willing hands lifted those unable to walk, while others limped along with the group.
For the time being the battle had seemed to settle into a quiet stasis. Baker stopped to take a look around his beloved city's highest level. He could see some of the creatures he called shadow monsters, far down the street from him, slithering around the ruins of several structures. The shadows glided like cats or oozed along the ground.
Baker turned toward the lift, surprised to note that the big blacksmith and several other brawny Hylar were waiting for him.
"What's your name?" asked the thane, grateful for the company.
"Capper Whetstone, my lord thane, at your service. I would be grateful for the chance to stand at your side.
I say with all respect, lord, that you should not be walking around here without protection."
"Yes, thank you." He briefly wondered about his earlier bodyguards. He had met them and conversed with them, of course, but now he couldn't recall their names or anything about them.
"I'll stay here and keep watch, my lord thane," offered a new voice, and Baker was surprised to see the Hylar jeweler, his single-lens viewer still hanging from its golden chain. "I've got a good eye, and I'll keep it on those marauding shades down there. I'll give a holler if they start coming this way."
Baker was touched by the fellow's loyalty. "That would be a good service. Just make sure to run while you're hollering," he replied.
And then he was struck by a question that suddenly seemed very important. "What's your name?"
"I am called Emerald-Eye the Younger," said the Hylar, touching his neatly trimmed beard with his fingers as he performed a deep and formal bow.
By the time Baker and his escort of a half dozen Hylar had neared the lift station, the engineers had made their repairs, and the great cage was rattling up to its landing. Baker was relieved to see that Axel Slateshoulders was returning from his mission of inspection. The veteran captain seemed strangely dazed, failing to react until the thane called him twice.
"What's the word from below? How does Belicia fare on the dock?"
A closer look at Axel's face cut off Baker's question and confirmed that the news was bad-bad as could be.
"The bottom levels are lost," Axel began, forcing words out with an effort that brought the veins bulging from his forehead. "The whole bottom of the Life-Tree broke loose and fell onto the docks and plaza. It's all buried. And Belicia. By Reorx, it should have been me!" The veteran commander staggered with a groan of pure misery.
Baker caught Axel by his broad shoulders and felt that sturdy body heaving in a tide of grief. The thane searched without success for words to bring him comfort. He settled for the solace he could offer with his embrace, even as his own despair threatened to overwhelm him.
"What happened?" Baker asked, utterly drained, but knowing the answer might well be important-if anything could ever be important again.
The question seemed to bring Axel back to some measure of awareness. "No one knows. My lord, there were no survivors. The First and Second levels were cut off, buried under a million tons of rock. The Third is full of corpses or worse. They're all dead. The Lift can't go lower than Level Four. I did the last descent by one stairway that hasn't yet caved in."
Baker tried to absorb the loss. Axel's daughter, their beautiful city, perhaps even his son were all gone.
For the first time he took note of the forty or fifty dwarves who had accompanied Axel in the lift. Some of them bore fine weapons. A few carried only big sticks, but it Was clear that all were ready to do battle for their realm. They stood around waiting, looking at the wreckage that marked every one of the four avenues leading away from the lift station.
Baker spotted several apprentices from the palace library. They were young dwarves, and now they held swords and knives in hands that had been trained to use writing utensils.
"You dwarves," he said quickly. "Do you have quill and parchment?"
"Aye, lord thane. We all have our writing tools."
"I want you all to take down the names of every dwarf here," Baker said. "And find the others, the groups of Hylar that are scattered all around this level. From now on I want a record-a written record-of everyone who fights against these shade creatures."
The young scholars quickly obeyed. Meanwhile, Axel found several veteran warriors among the throng of Hylar and appointed them sergeants. In a short time they had sorted the volunteers into a semblance of units, their number growing as more of the scattered patrols returned to the lift and added their number to the group.
Still the Hylar were disorganized and unprepared for the shock of a fresh attack when Baker heard the unmistakable cries of battle-ready Klar. The sound rose like a roar and rumbled through the whole city quarter. Within seconds, bands of frenzied attackers swept down two of the wide streets and rushed toward the lift station. Spittle flying from their grinning lips, they thundered closer with whoops and shouts of insane glee.
"Back, my lord!" cried Capper Whetstone, taking the thane's arm with a powerful grip. "Into the lift!"
"Wait!" snapped Baker, his voice sharp enough to pierce the din. His mind whirled. The lift was too small to hold more than a fraction of the Hylar gathered at the station.