He lifted Dalamar's black robe from the table and let it fall loosely over his head. A blend of cloying fragrances stormed his nostrils from the hundreds of hidden pockets which had contained the wizard's spell components and ingredients for herbal potions. The pockets were empty now, but residue of their exotic contents remained to perfume the silken fabric.
The hermit had planned to gather the voluminous garment at the waist to adjust its length, but the robe seemed to sense his shorter height. At the moment the light but strong fabric settled on his shoulders, Lodston felt Dalamar's power surging in the robe and spreading into his own body. The flawless stitches seemed to shrink closer together, drawing the garment's hem from the floor until it barely covered the dwarfs boots.
Suddenly, the dark elf's lingering dweomer flooded Lodston's mind with alien thoughts and impulses, confusing the dwarf with flashing images of fire, pain, and dark presences. Just as the psychic turmoil was becoming unbearable, it stopped. The powerful memories melted and receded into Lodston's aged brain, merging with his own dim recollections of the past. A wave of energy swept into his arthritic limbs, dulling their pain and moving him toward the door. The black-robed figure that descended the cliff and strode confidently toward Digfel bore little resemblance to the reclusive dwarf who made golden toys for children.
Four days later, the Pig Iron Alehouse was buzzing with gossip about Lodston and his guest from Sylvanesti.
'He must be an evil sorcerer, part of that trouble in the north,' someone whispered.
'Nobody's ever seen him, but look at old Lodston!'
'I saw him reading a spell from a scroll!' claimed one witness. 'He called up a lightning bolt and set the blacksmith's shop on fire, just because the smith spat on the ground when he walked past! Old Lodston always was an ornery cuss, but never that mean. I think that elf has cast an evil spell on him.'
'Dwarves don't know anything about magic,' scoffed a less superstitious townsman. 'I heard that was some kind of family feud — something to do with the old gold mine. The hermit probably kept the blacksmith busy while the elf set the fire.'
'I know what I saw!' protested the witness. 'He had on some funny glasses and was reading from a piece of parchment when the lightning came right out of his hands just before the scroll blew up!'
'I heard Lodston tell Tidbore Ummer that his sheep were going to die, and they did — every one of them! Tidbore said the old fool told him he read the future from a magic scroll.'
'That old gold-hound can't read!'
'Read? By Paladine, he can't even see!'
'Well, he can now! I heard that this elf is a healer, not a wizard, and that he made some glasses to heal the dwarf's eyesight,' someone whispered.
There was a nervous titter as a flurry of gossip about healing spectacles spread among the tables.
'If that were true, the Seekers from Solace would be crawling all over us. A healer in Krynn? Don't be a fool!'
'To me, the biggest puzzle is why a dwarf would take up with an elf. They're supposed to hate each other, you know.'
'That wouldn't be a special problem for Nugold Lodston. He hates everybody and everything, except gold, that is!'
'That's not any harder to believe than an elf in black robes, I tell you. If you ask me, it's got something to do with all that mess in the north.'
'Maybe he and this Dalamar like something else about each other, if you know what I mean!'
The drunken insinuation cut through the underlying tension of the conversation, causing peals of laughter to fill the tavern. During the raucous outbreak of crude jokes about Lodston and Dalamar, a man clad in a rough wool cloak flipped the hood closer around his face. Then he tossed an iron coin on the table and left the tavern.
While the patrons of the Pig Iron Alehouse were debating over the nature of his relationship with Dalamar, Nugold Lodston was on the other side of Digfel, shaking his stick in Milo Martin's flushed face. Even his voice had changed in the last several days, developing an impatient edge and a curious clipped accent.
'You heard what we want! We'll expect delivery, as usual, before nightfall!'
'I can't do that, Nugold,' Martin insisted. 'My cart was in the blacksmith's shop when you… uh, when it caught fire. It'll be a week before I'm able to bring all this stuff out to you. Tell Dalamar it's not my fault!'
Martin looked away from the dwarf's angry gaze behind the curious hexagonal glasses. Though he had never met the elf, he now feared Lodston's guest. The powers which the elven wizard had bestowed upon his unlikely dwarven friend were more than the shopkeeper wanted to face. Hadn't they changed the irascible but harmless old hermit into a fearsome sorcerer with a more dangerous temper? Hadn't the elf somehow healed the dwarf's failing vision with the enchanted spectacles perched upon Lodston's huge nose?
'Well, bring it as soon as you get your cart fixed,' growled the dwarf as he turned to leave Martin's shop. 'Just remember what I said about the door, if you value your life!'
'I know, I know!' the man mumbled. 'You and the elf have placed a curse on it. No thief in his right mind would try to steal anything from you or your new 'friend.' '
Lodston smirked behind his whiskers and stepped through the doorway onto the street. The curious little glasses perched on his thick nose sparkled in the late morning sun. The bully, Joss, interrupted a conspiratorial discussion with a pair of teenaged pickpockets and muttered a hasty warning. The unscrupulous trio darted into the shadows, away from Lodston's path. The hermit scowled in their direction, wishing he had a suitably vindictive spell to cast upon the fleeing threesome.
I've used all the scrolls I understand, he mused on his way home. I guess I'll just have to take a chance on a strange one, if I mean to keep these human clods on their toes.
When he reached the mine, Lodston headed immediately for the chest. He had already used all of the 'fun' and 'attack' spells and was ready to risk reading one or two incantations in his 'unknown' category in order to strengthen his image in Digfel as a dangerous sorcerer. The hermit unrolled the first scroll he found with four black marks and began to read it.
HAPGAMMITON'S MODE OF INTERPLANAR GATING TO SUMMON OTHER INTELLIGENCES RESIDING ON OTHER PLANES OF EXISTENCE, IT IS ESSENTIAL FOR THE CASTER TO PREPARE HIMSELF FOR FIVE CONSECUTIVE NIGHTS PRIOR TO UTTERING THE INCANTATION. FAILURE TO PURIFY HIMSELF BEFOREHAND WILL RENDER THE INCANTATION EITHER POWERLESS OR UNPREDICTABLE.
Bah! I already knew it was unpredictable! Lodston thought. The worst that can come of it is that it'll fail. In that case, I can just pick another one. Undaunted, the amateur wizard skipped the rest of the page and began reading the ancient words at the bottom of the parchment.
His pronunciation and understanding of the forgotten elvish dialect had grown more accurate with each reading of Dalamar's scroll's. This time, his dwarven accents had dwindled to a mere trace, as had much of his original personality before it was dominated by the dark elf's spells and robe. Lodston intoned the ancient words perfectly, letting the scroll's dweomer fuse with the vestiges of Dalamar's power within his mind and body.
MARGASH JORAS NOLLEN GRATH GRISSIT DORSI, GRISSIT BLUDE; ITEL FOMA DRILID SHUDE; MARGASH NEPPS U HALLEM GRATH! OBEY THESE WORDS OF POWER WATCHERS OF THE THRESHOLD, WATCHERS AT THE GATE, UNBAR THE GUARDED DOOR; OBEY THE COMMAND OF THIS SERVANT OF POWER!
Beneath the dwarf's feet, the firm rock floor seemed to quiver as he spoke the final spellwords. Lodston's untrained concentration shattered completely when a thin stream of opaque light seemed to slice through both floor and ceiling of his sturdy artificial cave. The frightened hermit collapsed in a babbling heap on the floor, shielding his face from the intensifying light.
Suddenly the beam began to split, as if a doorway were opening onto a new yet darker dimension. Peering through his trembling fingers, Lodston saw moving forms just inside the opening, monstrous forms with scaly appendages and tentacles writhing and lurching toward the threshold produced by Dalamar's scroll.
The dwarf began to moan and crawled toward the door. Just as he was reaching for the bar, the stout wooden timbers exploded from some terrible force on the outside. The blast drove scores of thick splinters into the
