anointing and blessing him, crowning his greatness. Harn Poleaxe shivered in delight and, pressing his face to the floor, waited for the monster to speak.
“Harn Poleaxe, you are a servant of the Black One,” declared the creature. “It is his elixir that has empowered you and his will that you must obey.”
“Speak!” Poleaxe begged. “Only tell me what to do, and I will do it. Tell me how I may strike at Pax Tharkas.”
The creature hissed, a rasping sound that might have been taken for laughter. “You already know our master’s will, I see. He will be pleased.”
“I know his will, and I know mine! I am fated to wipe out the mountain dwarves in the fortress! I know what I must do. I must raise an army of Neidar, and we must attack the walls. But the gates, oh my lord! How can we take the gates?”
The thing made that noise again, and Harn was certain that it was a sound of amused pleasure. The red eyes glowed, and the maw gaped open again.
“Leave the gates to me,” it said.
Brandon stared upward at the massive towers and wall blocking passage up the valley. He had seen Pax Tharkas portrayed in drawings and sketches, but the reality of the monument took his breath away. It was as if a part of the mountain range itself blocked their path-a massive slab with a flat, carved face, flanked by summits of utterly symmetrical, perfectly solid peaks. For a moment he forgot that he stood in chains, an abject prisoner of his fellow mountain dwarves. The legacy of that place, its all-encompassing majesty, seemed to banish all trivial emotions into the far corners of his brain.
For two weeks his Bluestone luck had held true. He had been treated miserably. His lowly status as a prisoner had been pounded home every day he had been marching with Garn Bloodfist’s Klar.
For several days he had tried to convince the wild-eyed warrior that he was, in fact, a mountain dwarf of clan Hylar. Every time he made the claim, however, the Klar had grown more agitated, more paranoid. The Klar loudly accused Brandon of spying; he was convinced the Kayolin dwarf was a Neidar from Hillhome. He was fed stingily, poked and kicked, and threatened with execution if he didn’t shut up.
At least Brandon caught a glimpse of the Bluestone and its companion Greenstone now and then when Garn took the colored stones out and studied them lovingly. Captain Bloodfist was proud of his prizes. His eyes seemed to shine in their glow, and he giggled and chortled as he carried them around the camp, endlessly enjoying their heft and beauty. It was clear, at least, that he treasured his treasures.
Other glimpses were less encouraging, however, as on the nights-about every forth evening-when Garn stalked, alone, into the darkness beyond the perimeter of his camp. He would shout and rail against the sky, the stars. Most of his words were garbled, and sometimes he would sob in abject grief or howl in a seeming frenzy of rage. On those nights, even his bravest warriors gave him a wide berth. When the captain returned to camp, exhausted from his ranting, he invariably slept through the following dawn, and the company was several hours late getting onto the trail.
But finally, they had reached their destination. The Klar had spent some time that morning, before they broke camp, in polishing their black armor and shields and cleaning some of the dust and grime from their hair, beards, and boots. They entered Pax Tharkas in a proud column of fours, each dwarf with his shield slung across his back, feet pounding the pavement in regular cadence, up the broad ramp leading to the massive wall.
The great gate in the center of the main wall was wide open. Brandon, in the middle of the column, was chained to a pair of burly warriors, the links fastened to the collar around his neck. Even so, he could swivel his head in awe, taking in the massive structure.
Even the atrium of Kayolin, which was essentially bottomless, was not as far across as the breadth of the massive hall. The whole place seemed to be hollowed out, at least on the ground level. There was a pile of rocks and boulders roughly jumbled in the center, but neither wall nor any other kind of partition divided the enormous space. Very high overhead he could discern a series of catwalks crossing back and forth and side to side through the upper reaches of the wall. The ceiling itself seemed to be lost in shadows, but he was certain that it was well over a hundred feet above his head.
“Bring the prisoner with me,” ordered the captain. “We’ll go see the thane.”
A trio of Klar warriors fell in behind Brandon, whose wrists were bound behind him. At least one hundred other mountain dwarves were in view. Most were working, hauling, levering, and carrying large rocks to a series of lift cages at one side of the great hollow hall.
As they approached, one of those lifts was filled with rocks, and a dwarf rang a bell. Brandon watched as the container, which was little more than a sturdy wooden box attached to a block and tackle, creakingly rose into the darkness far overhead.
“Hold that work, there,” Garn barked as several laborers approached an empty lift with the beginnings of the next load. The captain, the prisoner, and the three guards crammed into the box, and Garn signaled to the bellman. Once more the gong sounded, and that crate, like the other, began to rise into the heights overhead.
The lift climbed smoothly and swiftly with no yawing or pitching movements even as the floor fell away. Brandon estimated they were hoisted more than a hundred feet into the air before the cage slid snugly into a notched landing. There they found a dozen dwarves, some with shovels and picks, others cranking away on the block and tackle winch.
“Welcome back, Bloodfist,” called one burly foreman. “At least you don’t weigh as much as a box of rocks.”
“Where’s Tarn Bellowgranite?” asked the captain, ignoring the pleasantry.
A harsh voice answered him from out of the darkness. “Damn it, Bloodfist! Are you crippled? You know there’s stairs you could climb-why did you waste the time of the load men?”
“I have a hill dwarf prisoner, my thane, and important treasure,” Garn Bloodfist called as sternly as his leader had spoken. “I didn’t want to waste any time in bringing you the news.”
The captain turned and fixed Brandon with his piercing, intense eyes. “You will now meet the thane of Pax Tharkas. Mind your tongue, or I will have it cut out of your head.”
Tarn Bellowgranite stepped into view, making his way along a dark, narrow wooden catwalk to the lift landing. The dwarf looked old and tired, except for the undying spark of anger in his eyes. His head was bald on top, surrounded by a fringe of gray hair, and his shoulders slumped, his back bent, as he clumped along. To Brandon, he looked like a dwarf who had been carrying a great weight-greater than any box of stones-for a long, long time. The thane was accompanied by another elderly dwarf, a sturdy-framed fellow with white hair and a beard who, though his belly bulged perhaps more than he would have liked, still bore himself like a lifelong warrior.
“Greetings, my thane,” said Captain Bloodfist, bowing low. His men did the same and, after a moment’s hesitation and an elbow in his sides, so did Brandon. The Klar straightened and spoke again, addressing Tarn’s companion. “Greetings too, General Shortbeard,” he said. “I am glad that you, also, are here to receive my report.”
“Well?” demanded the thane, looking Brandon up and down. “What manner of hill dwarf is this? Rather an unusually big fellow, to be sure.”
“I keep telling this dummy, I’m not a hill dwarf!” the prisoner retorted, meeting Tarn’s angry eyes with his own steady glare. “And I would expect better treatment from my own kinfolk in the mountain clans!”
“Shut up, you,” declared one of the guards, delivering a ringing blow to the back of Brandon’s head with the hilt of his sword.
While the Kayolin dwarf staggered, fighting the urge to slump to his knees, Garn spoke solemnly. “We caught this fellow following us back from Hillhome-he came from there, clearly. I believe he’s a thief and a spy; he sought to pass himself off as a mountain dwarf, but you have heard his accent. Clearly he’s not one of us. And my thane-”
Garn’s breathing grew excited, and he was almost panting as he reached into his belt pouch to pull out the Bluestone and the Greenstone, which he set on a nearby workbench for all to admire.
“This is the booty the thief was after-the prizes we claimed from Hillhome. Look at them! I have a hunch they are valuable artifacts!”
The facets on the two wedges glittered and winked in the diffuse torchlight. Tarn Bellowgranite’s eyes, like those of all the other dwarves, were drawn almost hypnotically to the pair of colored stones.
“Hmm, yes. Look at these, Otaxx,” the thane said, addressing the one called General Shortbeard. “What do
