The Swordsheath Scroll

together.'

'Together?' Derkin gaped at him. 'You mean…dwarves and elves, together? Such a thing has never been done.' He yawned. 'Look, could we talk about this tomorrow? I'm tired.'

'There is nothing more to talk about,' Despaxas said. 'I have presented thanks, and a suggestion. You have heard it.'

'Fine,' Derkin said. 'I'll sleep on it.'

With an innocent smile, Despaxas raised his hand and muttered something that Derkin could not understand. But suddenly the dwarf felt restored and content… and, somehow, very wise. 'What have you done?' he asked.

'I have given you two gifts,' the elf said. 'One is from my mother. The second is on behalf of the people of Qualinesti. It is long life-if you don't get yourself killed first-and a touch more of that special talent which you have been acquiring over the past few years. You have the gift or the curse of leadership, Derkin. You will find now that you have it even more.'

'Magic.' The dwarf shrugged. 'I don't like… Oh, well, thank you, I suppose.'

With a nod-and another twitch of that innocent, catlike smile-Despaxas turned away, the other elves following him. Derkin watched them go for a moment, then called. 'Wait a minute! You said there were two gifts! What's the first one?'

'If ever you need to know, you will,' Despaxas called back. 'Farewell, Derkin Winterseed-Hammerhand- Law-giver. You have been interesting to know.'

'Aren't you coming back?'

'Who knows the future?' the elf called, and turned away again.

'Who knows the future?' Derkin muttered, irritated. 'If anyone does, it's you, elf.' Closing the gate between Kal-Thax and Qualinesti, the dwarf suddenly felt an odd loneliness-a sense of loss, as though a true friend had just gone away.

Helta was waiting for him beside his fire, but as he approached she backed away a step, her eyes widening. 'Derkin,' she said, pointing over his head, 'what is that?'

'What's what?' He glanced up, saw nothing, and peered at her.

'Uh… nothing, now,' she said. 'But just for a moment, there was something above your head.'

'There's nothing there,' he insisted, looking again. 'What did you think it was?'

'It looked like a crown,' Helta replied in awe. 'Like a crown of gold, with stones in settings.'

24

A Place of the Nations

What had taken the Chosen Ones a winter's work to collect- every usable timber and building stone in the now-vanished human city of Klanath-would take years to recut, bore, and reuse. In ordering the dismantling of Klanath, the Lawgiver had thought little about what to do with the architectural materials which now filled half of Tharkas Pass. His immediate concerns had been to make certain that the human city could not be rebuilt, and to give his people a season or two of enjoyable labor. Privately, he had hoped that Lord Sakar Kane might show up if they waited for a time on the slopes north of Tharkas. But Kane had disappeared. No one-not even the far-ranging elves-seemed to know what had become of him.

As a new season greened the pastures south of Tharkas, Derkin sent a crew of dwarves north one last time to complete 'The Tidying' there. But they found nothing left to do. What the dwarves had begun, the elves who now claimed that land beyond the pass had completed. Except for the black quartz monument to dwarven law, there was not a trace or a hint that there had ever been a settlement of any kind there. The last vestiges of the old palace were gone, all traces of the mines were gone, all sign of the great battle that had been fought there had been removed, and the stony flats were green with grasses and clover.

The dwarves, reporting back, said that the forest seemed closer now, as though it were already advancing toward the mountains to hide the barren slopes in deep foliage. Only an enchanted forest could reclaim its grounds so quickly, they told their peers. They reported seeing a small band of elves, who waved at them from a distance. And two among them swore that they had seen a unicorn, just within the edge of the advancing forest.

But the elves had not touched Derkin's law stone. It stood where it had been, dark and austere among the wildflowers around it, with its stern warning: '… We will always retaliate.'

Derkin had intended to take his people back to Stone-forge-their sprawling, bustling Neidar settlement in the western mountains near Sheercliff-but as the weeks became months, he delayed. The dwarves were hard at work here, building and hauling, climbing and hoisting, adding tier after tier to the wall they had built across the pass. And as the work progressed, the wall became two walls, with compartments and chambers between… then three walls.

'Give a dwarf work that satisfies him,' Derkin mused to Helta Graywood one day, 'and he'll work at it as long as there's breath in his lungs and life in his heart. It's the nature of our people.'

'They'll leave here when you decide to go,' Helta said. 'If you tell them to return to Stoneforge, they'll go. They are your people, Derkin Lawgiver.'

'They don't want to go back, though,' he pointed out. 'Most of them would rather stay right here and build walls than go to Stoneforge. You know that as well as I do.'

'But whatever you want…' she started.

'Stoneforge is complete,' Derkin said. 'It has its fields to farm, its foundries and its shops, its herds to tend. It is a Neidar settlement, no different from any other Neidar settlement except that it is bigger. The people we left there are mostly Neidar and are content with Stoneforge. But these people-my Chosen Ones-they're different, Helta. Most of them have been slaves, and all of them have been warriors. Now they've found something to do that they enjoy doing, and that joy can last them through many generations.'

'Building walls?' she asked, frowning.

'More than walls,' he corrected. 'Those walls, if they continue, will become the foundations of a great city as proud and fine as anything in this world. And more than a city. If I don't interrupt them, these people of ours might just construct a new way for dwarves to live.'

'The city the elf called Pax Tharkas,' she said.

'Pax Tharkas,' he confirmed, nodding. 'Right now, only dwarves are building here. Which is for the best, because what elves know about stonemasonry and the rodding of joints could be set down in three runes, with two of them used only for emphasis. But later, when our people have made the underpinnings of this place solid and sturdy, the elves will come. Then there will have to be a treaty between us, of course. A thousand understandings will have to be reached, and accords agreed to. When it is done, the Treaty of Pax Tharkas must signify once and for all the sheathing of swords between two races. It won't be easy, and I can't imagine it, truly-dwarves and elves sharing the same city-but most of our people believe in their hearts that such a thing can be done. Somehow, I believe it, too.'

As he said it, Derkin seemed so sure, so confident, that Helta could almost share the vision with him. Still, there was something that troubled her. Despite Derkin's seeming enthusiasm for the idea of expanding his border wall into a great city, Helta sensed that his heart was elsewhere.

Often, she had noted, it was Talon Oakbeard who presided at planning sessions for new parts of the construction. The idea of Pax Tharkas, which Derkin had come to espouse so openly, had found its true roots in the former Neidar's heart. For Talon, the great undertaking had become an obsession-a work of true love.

As the months passed, and the great cleft of Tharkas rang with the pleasant pandemonium of thousands of dwarves cheerfully building the first solid layers of a great city, stone by stone, Derkin and Talon were everywhere among them. They counseled with stonecutters, they drew diagrams and argued about them with the masons, they suggested a tower base here and demanded a shoring brace there.

In the concept of building a citadel, Talon Oakbeard had discovered his true talent. Derkin, on the other hand, had a different talent-the ability to lead. Yet now, the people he led had chosen their own path, and it was not the path he might have chosen for himself.