Jinna no longer moved, and he realized that she had stopped breathing. Distractedly, barely aware of the howling tide of murderous humans sweeping down on him, Handil the Drum stood, swung his vibrar under his arm, and stripped away its wraps. An arrow buried itself in his thigh as he drew forth his mallets, but he hardly felt it.
The nearest humans were only yards away now, rushing at him, but when he turned to them, they slowed, stunned at what they saw in his eyes. In that instant, a few of them may have realized that they were looking at their own deaths. Unhurriedly, standing over the body of his beloved, Handil raised his mallets and brought them down, and the Thunderer began to sing.
No Call to Balladine was this, no glad song of the high peaks. The rhythm of the big vibrar was a dirge, and it filled the great hall of Grand Gather with sound so intense that humans reeled back from it, many dropping their weapons to clap hands to their ears.
Another arrow struck Handil, and then another, but they meant nothing to him. The mallets increased their tempo, and the vibrar thundered.
And all around — above where the sun-tunnelled ceiling arched away, around every wall and in every rise and ramp of Grand Gather — hewn stone took up the vibrations and began to disintegrate. The cavern roared and bellowed, and huge chunks of broken stone showered down from above, crushing everyone and everything beneath them. An entire sun-tunnel slipped free of its collar somewhere and plummeted to the arena floor, shattering into bright, piercing shards which flew in all directions. Humans milled and screamed, many turning back the way they had come. But the entryway had collapsed, and there was nowhere to go.
A raging human, crazed by fear, ran at Handil with a raised sword and impaled himself upon the lance of another human trying to get away. An axe struck Handil in the hip, and he fell, then raised himself on one knee, never missing a beat.
The song of the vibrar built upon itself like contained thunders rolling back and back, echoes becoming great choruses of echoes.
“As long as we live,” Handil the Drum muttered to himself, building his beat to a crescendo. And the entire roof of Grand Gather collapsed inward, millions of tons of cold stone filling and forever sealing what was now only a silent tomb.
Clouds of dust and debris rose from the mountainside above Thorin Keep as a chasm opened there. The great monolith called First Sentinel, standing just at the edge of the collapse, teetered and swayed, then disintegrated and fell into the hole, raising more clouds of stone-dust.
And above it all the sun of Krynn approached the zenith of its solstice day.
Just as no human had ever guessed the magnitude of Thorin, neither had any human ever known — or even suspected — about the inner gates. Most of the Calnar themselves were only vaguely aware that, suspended unseen in a hall-sized slot above the east portal of Grand Gather, was a gigantic hanging wall of solid granite held in place by cable-braced props. Old Mistral Thrax might have remembered the tremendous task of creating this massive deadfall, had he ever had cause to think about it, but few others beyond the leaders of the Calnar had known it was there. It was plastered over and unseen, and had never been used because once released it was unlikely that it could ever be raised again.
But now, in their last moments, the invaders in Grand Gather had learned of it. And now all those beyond, in Thorin proper, knew of it. Where had stood the door to Grand Gather, now was an impenetrable wall. As Wight Anvil’s-Cap had said, Thorin would never again be the same. The keep, the outer tunnels, even Grand Gather, had always been a facade. Now they — or what was left of them — were cut off forever from the city beneath the crag.
The Calnar had removed themselves from invasion by sealing the only entry that any but themselves knew about. Within Thorin now were only Calnar — except one. Raging and unseen, one walked among them who was human … or had once been human, before encountering a dwarf imbued with wild magic from the Graystone itself.
Grayfen stalked the great concourse of Thorin, unseen as long as he shielded his eyes. Only he, of all the human forces, had got past the inner gate before it came crashing down, and the rage that boiled within him was a burning, insane fire. The dinks had tricked them! Long years of planning and intrigue had come to nothing. He was in Thorin, but not as a conqueror. He was a shadow among those he hated most, trapped with no way out.
The glowing orbs that were his only eyes burned in his head, their presence a pounding pain that never relented. He longed to remove them, even for a few minutes, but without them his magic would not work, and he would be seen and killed.
In his rage he struck out around him. A dozen times in as many minutes he touched some passing dwarf, then did the magic he had learned and watched, unseen, as the dwarf died in agony, clawing at its throat.
But that only tired him, and did no good. He could not kill them all.
The magic! He knew there was more that it would do, more than he had learned. Too often, when he had tried to devise spells, they had turned on him with painful results. Yet now, in his rage, he knew there was a thing he could do, and the magic itself seemed to tell him how. Revenge! The magic whispered it. Revenge upon Colin Stonetooth, whose fault it was that he was trapped.
The rage boiled and coalesced within him and became arcane words that molded themselves to his tongue. “
As though the magic itself instructed him, he spoke the spell and knew what it meant. To the leader of the dwarves, exile. To his seed, death!
It was all he could do. Yet, somewhere ahead must lie the fabulous treasure that everyone knew the dwarves had. The subterranean city was far bigger than he had suspected, and far brighter. The radiance of the place seemed to increase with each passing second, and to eyes that could not close, that could never not see, it was intensely painful. And the place was incredibly hot. He felt as though he were in a furnace. Despite the pain, he went toward the brightness. That must be where the treasure was.
Most of the dwarves he saw now were hurrying in the other direction, and as he emerged into a great, circular chamber filled with blinding light, the only other creature there was a hobbling, ancient-looking dwarf with a crutch, who glanced his way and then stopped to stare. Grayfen shielded his eyes and went on. Just ahead, in the center of the chamber, stood a shaft of brilliant light. It seemed to come out of the floor, or from above, and where it stood the floor ended at a precipitous pit.
The treasure, he thought. The treasure of the dinks! It must be there! Agonized by brilliant light, tortured by intense heat, Grayfen approached to the very lip of the pit and heard a sound. He turned to see the old dwarf with the crutch directly behind him.
“The dream was real,” the ancient creature hissed. “You are the one Fishtaker showed me. You are the enemy!”
“You see me?” Grayfen gasped.
“As clearly as though you were alive,” the dwarf said.
“I
The motion was never completed. More quickly than the man could have believed, the old dwarf raised his crutch and heaved it like a javelin. The foot of it thudded into the mage’s belly with such force that it doubled him over. Hard old hands clawed at his face, and suddenly he was blind. His eyes were gone, clenched in the dwarf’s hands.
The mage lashed out, searching, and took one step back … into searing nothingness. His scream as he disappeared into the shaft of light was drowned by a hum of vibrance as the sun of Krynn reached zenith above the central light-shaft of Thorin, and fireflash occurred — the fireflash of Balladine.
Mistral Thrax threw himself aside, face down, his smoking cloak shielding him from the instant of searing heat. When he got to his feet again, staggering, most of his beard was burned away, his clothing smoldered, and he felt as though he were one solid blister. But he opened his hands and stared at what they held. The eyes of Grayfen had been red, glowing orbs. Now in the old hands of Mistral Thrax lay a pair of black spheres, like marbles made of jet. But beneath them, on his palms, were red marks — like drawings of a fishing spear, done in glowing red.
Staggering, he picked up his crutch and turned away, not looking back at the shaft of brilliance that hummed
