finality.
'And then the Cataclysm came?' asked Emilo, trying to follow along.
'No! That was a hundred years before! It was after the Cataclysm, when flood and famine scarred all the land, that the hill dwarves came begging for help. They forgot that they had turned their backs on the mountain years before, when they wanted to mix with the folk of the world.' Cantor shuddered at the very idea; his time in exile had convinced him that the ancestral rift was a true and fundamental parting of the ways.
'But then they wanted to come back inside the mountain?' the kender prodded.
'Aye. And when the Hylar and the rest of us turned 'em away, we kicked them as far as Pax Tharkas and told them not to come back. But that's when they went and got that wizard and a whole lot of hill dwarf and human warriors.'
'And the wizard… that was Fistandantilus?'
'And who'd 'a' thought he'd put together an army like that? Coming onto the plains around Zhaman, ready to move against the North Gate. That was when the North Gate was still there, of course. So we came out, and dwarven blood was shed across the whole valley. The Theiwar stood on the left flank, and their attack was sending the hill dwarves reeling back toward the elven-home.'
'And the wizard? Did he do magic? Did he fly?' Emilo pressed excitedly.
'Well, that was one of the strange things at the time. It seems he wasn't there… didn't take part in the battle. Instead, he came here-or rather to Zhaman, the tower that used to stand here.'
'So did you mountain dwarves win the battle?'
'We would have!' declared Cantor with a snort. ''Cept for the damn wizard. Like I was trying to tell you, he came here, worked some kind of spell, and the whole place was blown to pieces. Including my father, with the other Theiwar on the front lines.'
'That's too bad.' Emilo sounded sincerely regretful.
'Bah! The blackguard was a scoundrel and a thief! Besides, I got his sleeping chamber, and first pick of the family treasures.' Cantor chuckled grimly at the kender's shocked expression, then leaned over to noisily slurp some water from the pool.
'Was Fistandantilus killed, too?' Emilo asked, studying the walls of this round grotto.
'Yup. Everybody knows that.'
'It looks like some parts of this place weren't damaged too bad,' observed the kender.
'Whaddaya mean?' argued the dark dwarf. He pointed across the chamber to a series of stone columns, now broken and splintered, cast casually along the far end of the large chamber. A deep crack, as jagged as a lightning bolt, scarred the wall all the way to the ceiling. 'Surely you can see that. Right?'
'Well, of course,' Emilo agreed breezily. 'But down below here, I found a whole bunch of tunnels. Even a place where there's a jewel…' The kender's voice trailed away with a shiver.
'Jewel?' Cantor froze, his luminous eyes staring at the pensive kender.
'What? Oh, yes. It was kind of pretty. I might even have taken it, except-'
'Where?' The dwarf had no ears for the rest of Emilo's story. His mind was alive again, sending a cascade of pictures through his imagination. Vividly he expanded the vista of his desires, imagining mounds of glittering stones, gems of red and green and turquoise and every other color under the rainbow. His fatigue and despair were forgotten, swept away by a tide of avarice.
His next instinct was as natural as it was swift: This kender was a danger, a threat to the treasure that was rightfully Cantor's! He must be killed!
Only after the dwarf had already begun to calculate the most expeditious means of accomplishing his companion's demise did further reality again intrude. Faced once again with the inexorable truth that you couldn't wring information from a lifeless witness, Cantor was forced to acknowledge that Emilo Haversack continued to be more useful to him alive than dead.
He forced his trembling voice to grow calm. 'Where was this jewel? Far from here?' He cleared his throat and spat to the side in an elaborate display of casual interest.
'Well, quite a bit below here, actually.' Once again Emilo displayed that strange sense of disquiet. 'It wasn't really much to look at, kind of scuffed up and all that. Besides, there was something else… something I didn't like very much.'
Cantor didn't want to hear about it. 'Take me there!'
'Well, if you really want to. But don't you really think we should rest for a-'
'Now!' snarled the Theiwar, instantly suspicious of the delay. 'You'll just wait for me to fall asleep so you can get the treasure for yourself!'
'What? No, I won't! I don't even want it-not anymore, at least. But all right, then, if you're so worried about it, I'll show you. But don't say I didn't warn you.'
Muttering about bad manners and pushy people, the kender rose to his feet and plodded out of the chamber where he had discovered the pool of water. They passed through a maze of broken walls and tumbled ceilings, but the dwarf could clearly discern that this had once been a structure of large hallways and broad, sweeping stairways.
Now the shadows were thick through the corners, and a stairway was as likely to be lying on its side as standing upright. They picked their way through the ruins with care, Emilo apparently guessing which path to take at several junctures. Eventually the kender came to a large circular pit, a black hole with a depth extending beyond the limits of the dwarf's darkness-piercing vision.
'This must have been a central shaft,' Emilo said. If he still begrudged the dwarf's peremptory commands, his voice revealed no trace of the resentment. Instead, he was as chatty and conversational as ever. 'You can see that it goes up through the ceiling as well as down.'
Indeed, Cantor observed a matching circle of blackness in the arched surface over his head. A spindly network of strands dangled through space, connecting the upper reach of the shaft to the pit on the floor level. When he clumped over for a closer look, the Theiwar saw that these were the rusted remnants of a steel stairway that had once spiraled through the central atrium of the great tower of Zhaman.
And now those same stairs offered a route into the deep heart of Skullcap.
'That's how I went down before,' Emilo said, joining the dwarf. 'You have to hold on a little bit carefully, and in some places the metal sways back and forth. But it's strong enough to get you down.'
Cantor blinked, glowering at the kender. 'How do I know you're not trying to get me killed?'
Emilo shrugged. 'Do you want me to go first?' He reached for the rusty remnant of a railing, only to be slapped away by the suspicious dwarf.
'Don't you try it!' Cantor seized the railing and stepped onto the top step, which was a small web of iron bars anchored solidly into the bedrock of the fortress.
Immediately the bars creaked, and there was a distant clatter of some scrap tumbling downward, clanging off the jutting wreckage of the stairway. The Theiwar yelped and clung to the railing with both hands as the frail support leaned outward, the vast gulf yawning like an unquenchable, eternally hungry mouth. As Cantor clung to his precariously dangling perch, more bits of metal broke away, the sharp sounds fading into the depths, banging, jangling, continuing to fall for a very long time.
'Here,' said Emilo, extending a hand. He, too, stepped onto the bending bars of the platform, casually swinging into space with a grasp of the railing, then hopping to rest on the next intact stretch of stairs several feet below. 'Just do it like that.'
'I'll do it my own way!' snorted Cantor, gingerly inching along the railing, grunting as his feet swung free. He clumped to a rest beside the kender, and this time he didn't slap away the supporting hands that wrapped around his waist and helped pull him to safety.
'Come on,' Emilo said cheerfully, scampering farther along the rapidly descending framework.
'Wait!' The Theiwar followed as quickly as he could, his temper growing more foul with each swinging traverse, each heart-stopping leap through the darkness. Quickly the hole in the floor disappeared overhead as they continued to descend steadily down the inside of the cylinder of stone. And always the kender proceeded jauntily, spanning long gaps with the same lack of concern with which he stepped over easy, solid footholds.
Abruptly the dwarf halted, seized by a new suspicion. Cantor clasped a shaft of metal and glowered at the kender, who was quite a few feet below him. 'How come you're not scared going down here? Don't you know you could break your neck with one little slip?'
