has the riddle been tested? The omen of the moons?'
'We think it means there will be war,' the ice-face said.
'A war like none Krynn has ever known.'
'When?'
'Soon. The preliminary games are in play even now…as you have seen.'
'But, a war of the moons? What kind of war must that be?'
'Of the moons, Wanderer? Or of the gods? We believe the omens mean a war for dominion. Some say a contest among gods, to once and for all determine which of the triad alignments shall rule on Krynn… But, of course, there are always those who speak of ultimates and finalities. Even so, those of the dark robes are gleeful these days, while those of the white are silent and anxious.' The figure in the ice seemed to shrug. 'We shall see what comes of it all. Most of us are not overly concerned.' The ice faded, went blank. The mirror surface reflected only cold sky above — that, and the cold, thoughtful face of the wizard who knelt beside it.
'Not overly concerned,' he muttered, and his cold words were carried away by the wind. 'Not concerned? It was not only the white moon that was eclipsed, but the red, as well.'
Glenshadow passed the glowing tip of his staff over the ice pool, and again it shifted. He knew from past trials that it would show him nothing of Chane Feldstone and his companions. It was, after all, only magic. It could not see within the realm of Spellbinder. But it would show him other things, in other places.
A scene emerged: a sundered plain where goblins marched, and in the background the blind, leering death's-head of Skullcap, hideous monument to the power of magics drawn from Nuitari, the black moon.
'Chislev!' the wizard said. The ice scene flowed, spanned across miles, and refocused on a barren hillside. There, a figure stood motionless — a curious, oddly-jointed thing that might have been a horse… or some woodcarver's interpretation of a horse. It was obviously a carven figure, wooden with pin-hinged joints like a child's toy. As the ice eye closed on the figure its carved head turned. Painted eyes looked at the wizard.
'Which are you?' Glenshadow asked the ice.
'I am Hobby,' the carved horse told him. 'What wish do you have?'
'The helm of the dwarven prince, Grallen. Do you know where it is?'
'I know nothing except what Chislev wills,' Hobby said.
'And I have called upon Chislev and found you.
Therefore it is the will of Chislev. Hobby, where is Grallen's helm?'
The carved horse turned away, seeming to look about uncertainly.
Suddenly its hinged joints came alive, and it sprang away, running at an awkward, loose-legged gallop that seemed slow — except for the blur of landscape flashing past. Hobby ran, and the ice image followed it. Hills sped past, and wild steppes where raw wind flattened scrub. The torn and savaged land was seen just in glimpses by the mage.
The carved horse ran, then slowed and halted atop another hill. 'There,' it said. 'Hobby has found it.'
The wooden horse looked away, and the ice image followed its steady gaze. At the foot of the hill was a tumble of rocks. Great boulders lay here and there in a field of smaller, broken stones, which stretched across a quartermile of barren waste. Only here and there among the rocks was there indication that they had once been part of a structure — a squared corner, a wedge-cut face of flat stone.
Hobby's gaze narrowed, and so did the scene in the ice pool. Among the stones, a point jutted up, tilted at a slight angle, its lower parts buried under sand and debris. It was a piece of what must once have been a mighty structure, now only wreckage among rubble. A wide crack ran from the covered base part way toward the upright point, and Hobby's painted eyes focused on that crack. In the shadows within the fissure, something glowed for a moment.
'The helm is there,' Hobby said. 'Chislev knows where everything is.
Chislev is everywhere that there are eyes to see.' Slowly, the carved wooden head turned to the right, and in the ice pool the landscape slithered past: a place of broken lands; a wide, cold marsh with mountains beyond. Only a few miles away, a range of giant peaks rose above the sheer wall of a great cliff hundreds of feet high, a diff that soared upward from a misted gorge. And just at the top of the cliff, facing on a narrow ledge, was a massive, closed gate.
The great northern gate of the undermountain realm of Thorbardin, still intact though its approaches had been sheared away for centuries. Abruptly the picture vanished, and the carved wooden face of Hobby was again in the ice. 'Hobby has shown what you wanted to see,' the horse said. Glenshadow drew his staff across the ice, and again it was only ice. He stood, wind whipping the fringes of his bison cloak, rippling the hems of the faded red robes beneath.
Far out across the plain, tiny with distance, plumes of dust arose where armies moved. Glenshadow watched these, deep in thought. Out there, somehow joined to the woman who led the invaders, was Caliban.
Caliban, the renegade black-robed mage Glenshadow and two others had hunted down years before… Caliban, who chose to fight them rather than accept the rules of the robed orders… Caliban, whose magic destroyed two of the three before he himself died.
Glenshadow's cold eyes were as bleak as a winter storm as he remembered.
Caliban had died, but not at
Glenshadow's hand. He had killed himself, rather than accept defeat.
Glenshadow had seen the manner of it.
The black-robed mage, with his own two hands, had torn out his own heart.
Even across the miles now, he felt eyes upon him and knew that he was seen. Caliban's magic lived, and was at work.
The wizard on the mountain raised his eyes toward the skies. 'Hear me
Gilean, gate of souls,' he said, his voice like the mountain wind. 'Hear me Sirrion Firemaster. Hear me Chislev, whose carven creatures see what is to see. World-tree Zivilyn, and Shinare by whose color the wilderness man shone, hear me. Hear me all who seek balance in a struggling world, who yearn for order in a plane whose name is chaos. Two things more do I ask in this life: to see the death of he who died before… and first, to see what Chane Feldstone sees when he holds Spellbinder and Pathfinder and looks toward Thorbardin.'
Sighing, the mage looked across distances toward the place where the dust plumes blew. He knew what the thing was that Kolanda Darkmoor had raised from her breastplate — the thing he had thought was an amulet. It was what remained of Caliban. It was the wizard's heart. The Wanderer felt eyes upon him, and sensed a building of magics. He turned his eyes toward the place the wooden horse had shown him, and muttered a transport spell.
Winds whipped about him on the mountainside, and then there was only the wind.
In the final four miles of approach, with Skullcap fully and horribly visible ahead, Kolanda Darkmoor had fanned her goblin troops out in three long lines. They had swept the plains for a sign of anyone having passed as she waited for the reports to come back. Within hours, a front several miles long had been combed. It was clear that no one had passed this way recently.
Thoughtfully, then, Kolanda looked back the way she had come. Due west, the bulk of Sky's End rose somber against the sky. To the south, just visible across the miles, was the massive mountain wall of Thorbardin, the great north gate tiny above a sheer cliff of huge proportion. Northgate was almost never used now because of its nearly impossible access — even by the dwarves who lived beyond it.
Her eyes, shadowed within the grotesque horned mask that was the faceplate of her helmet, rested on Northgate for a time. Then they roved downward, seeking something she knew was there but had never seen — the thing her career with the Highlord's forces was based upon, the thing that would assure her the power she craved when the Highlords began their campaigns. That thing was the secret way into Thorbardin.
Command of Thorbardin was to be Kolanda
Darkmoor's reward — provided she remained in the good graces of the
Highlord of Neraka. She would have command of defeated and occupied
Thorbardin, and first share of the treasures of the realm.
Kolanda could not see the hidden entrance. No one could, now. But it was there, and she knew the way to it. It was that information that had gained her the interim rank of Commander.
She wished she could see the hidden gate now. It would feel good, she thought, to see the route by which
