dwarves would raise it, and release the power from within.
— From the Early Chronicles of Chisel Loremaster
I like those words as much today as I did when I wrote them, more than three thousand years ago. I know Baker Whitegranite gave them careful thought when he translated them just a fortnight past, though it is true that at that time he did not ascribe to them their proper worth.
In another few weeks, of course, he will number them among the most important phrases he has ever read.
But that time lies still in the future, and I think it would be good, now, to consider the Kingdom of Thorbardin as it is, at the height of its glory, shaded from the brutal sky during these hot summer days. The Storms of Chaos loom on the horizon, and over the world, but the bitter winds have yet to commence their sweep across Krynn.
The 'house' of Baker Whitegranite and Garimeth Bellowsmoke lay in many ways at the very heart and the ultimate height of this great dwarven kingdom. Situated on Level Twenty-eight of the Life-Tree, its balcony commanded a vista of the great sea nearly three thousand feet below, while the pulse of the kingdom's greatest city measured its beat at the house's doorstep and beyond. And in its garden were the cool, brilliant waters that gave such pleasure to the acting thane of the Hylar.
Hybardin, called the Life-Tree, was a place unique in the world of Krynn, and among all the planes for that matter. It existed in a massive stalactite, a half-mile in height and that same distance in width, at least at its widest diameter, which, naturally, was at the very top. The great shaft of living stone tapered as it plummeted downward, passing through the many levels of the Hylar city, each layer somewhat smaller and more compact than the levels above.
Water flowed everywhere in Hybardin. The dwarves had channeled countless natural springs to form fountains, pools, gardens, canals, and small, trilling brooks. These served a practical function in keeping the city clean, but they were cherished for their beauty, for the cool mists that soothed the lower levels where the forges smoked and roared, and for the splashing vitality they brought to neighborhoods and homes.
As well as water, Hybardin was a city of light, for more than any other clan of mountain dwarves the Hylar loved to behold the world with their eyes. They had keen hearing and acute smell and they could discern some shapes even in nearly complete darkness, but they maintained a network of constantly burning lanterns, torches, and fires so that each of their streets was illuminated, and within every inhabited house could be found the friendly glow of candle, lamp, or coal hearth.
As an observer reached the middle strata of the Life-Tree, he would notice that the streets and byways of the city moved from regions of noble manors to the crowded houses of hard working dwarves. Finally, descending into the lower levels he would find smithies clanging, bellows roaring, and furnaces baking as they flamed and seared the metals dwarven crafters could meld like no other artisans. Yet even here the pragmatic Hylar retained their love of beauty, and thus there were gardens, fountains, and streams even in the midst of their soot-stained work and the fiery heat.
The tapered column of stone did not extend all the way into the lake. Rather, it reached a blunt terminus some distance beneath the floor of the city's Level Three. Through a span of forty feet of space, the bottom of the stalactite was joined to the rocky islet below by a multitude of metal stairways and no less than five transport shafts. Four of the latter provided service only to Level Three, but the greatest of the transports occupied a long, hollow cylinder in the very center of the Life-Tree. This, the Great Lift, was a transport that extended all the way from Level Twenty-eight down through the base of the stalactite to a platform in the center of Level Two, which was a raised plaza above the encircling ring of the city's waterfront docks that formed Level One. Twin cars, one going up while the other descended, could carry more than a hundred dwarves each.
In its extent and beauty and populace, Hybardin was a true wonder of the world, yet it was not the only remarkable place in Thorbardin-which, after all, is a realm boasting no less than seven great cities. Still, the Life- Tree serves the chronicler as a useful center, a focal point and a commencement for any look at the kingdom of the mountain dwarves.
Hybardin was linked to the rest of the underground realm in many ways. Dwarves were ever delving, and through the centuries they had bored tunnels through the rock at the top of the stalactite. Some of these had been pressed forward to such extent that they linked with similar tunnel networks outlying the other dwarven cities. In this way was the whole mountain a honeycomb of passages. It is safe to presume that the total network of such tunnels was too vast for any single dwarf's comprehension.
The bustling docks and wharves of the city's Level One served as the prime location for commerce in the realm, for from these berths goods came and went from across the Urkhan Sea. Four great chain ferries connected the Life-Tree to cities and roads around the shore of the lake. Several teeming cities-Daebardin, Theibardin, and Daerforge-pressed close upon the shoreline. Other cities such as Daerbardin, Theiwarin, and Klarbardin dwelled deeper under the mountain or along a sinuous fjord of the subterranean sea. And all of this great kingdom-cities, sea, tunnels, roads and vast warrens-was an underground domain roofed by the massif of Cloudseeker Peak and the lofty crest of the High Kharolis.
But Thorbardin was more than a kingdom of cities. It was an amalgamation of dwarven clans so different as to make a casual visitor wonder how they could share a common heritage. The mountain dwarves dwelled in five clans, each of which was centered in one or two cities.
Each of these clans was ruled by its thane, and these five dwarves were the most powerful citizens of the kingdom.
In the best of times these thanes were united under the King of the Mountain Dwarves, a post that Glade Hornfel Kytil had held since the War of the Lance. But now the king was gone, and Thorbardin was home to five thanes, each unique to his clan.
Close allies to the Hylar were the Daewar, the other light-loving clan. They dwelled in a large, well-ordered city on the north shore of the lake, but in these days of tension they had been swept into internal crisis. Daewar eyes were turned inward, upon themselves.
At the western end of the Urkhan Sea were the cities of the Theiwar, dark dwarves who cherished the magic that lingered in the lightless alleys and byways of their domain. Spells of seduction and betrayal were worked amid creations of wicked beauty. The Theiwar hated the dwarves of all the clans, but their most passionate loathing was reserved for the Hylar, the dwarves of light and water and solid, honest stone, the antipathy of everything held dear by the Theiwar.
Darker even than the Theiwar was the clan dwelling at the eastern end of the great sea in the twin centers of villainy called Daerforge and Daerbardin. In the cities of the Daergar murder was a form of high art and treachery a skill learned in infancy.
Daerforge rose from the edge of the water like the facade of a grand fortress. The city was arrayed in three vast levels, while turrets, balustrades, and overlooks jutted across the face of the rock in a forbidding display of fortified stone.
The lowest level lay at the water's edge. Here docks extended into the lake, and the links of the great chain ferries clinked steadily between the city of dark dwarves and the brilliant beacon of Hybardin, gleaming ever brightly- hatefully-across several miles of underground lake water. Behind the Daerforge waterfront great ovens and furnaces roared and despite huge ventilation shafts the air retained a taste of soot and ash.
The second level of the city was rife with the scent of molten metal. Here the great smelters and casting plants capitalized upon the heat generated a hundred feet below.
The upper level of the dark city was a place of living compartments, a teeming den of Daergar houses ranging from splendid manors arrayed along the ramparts above the sea to crowded alleys so low-ceilinged that even dwarves had to hunch downward to walk here. A dozen or more Daergar might live in one small room, and it is to one of the smallest and darkest of these warrens that the chronicler now directs the reader's attention. For it is here, in the crowded and roaring festivity preceding a great celebration, that another branch of our story begins.
The dwarf was as dark as the shadows through which he moved. Cloaked in a robe of supple silk, he crawled through a tunnel that served as a ventilation duct from deepest Daerforge. On his back was a blocky shape marked by the distinctive wooden thwart of a heavy crossbow. The weapon, like the dwarf himself, was fully wrapped in dark shrouding. Upon his feet were moccasins of soft leather, also black, and his hands were concealed by gloves of a rubbery, skintight membrane.
