The one called Demoth relaxed his bowstring slightly. “Then what are they doing here?”
“Maybe we should ask,” the female suggested. She looked from one to another of the dwarves with wide-set, slanting eyes. “What
Cale found his voice and lowered his arms a bit. “We have no home. We were Calnar once, but no longer. Now we are Hylar, and seeking new delves.”
She looked beyond him, into the distance. “Those drums are yours, then?”
“They are ours. Mistral Thrax has had a vision of Everbardin, and the people of Colin Stonetooth have followed it.” He glanced at Demoth’s bow, took a deep breath and lowered his arms, taking a demanding stance. “And why are elves in this place? And in the name of Reorx, why do you point arrows at us?”
The female elf gestured. “Lower your points,” she said. All around, reluctantly, bows were lowered and draws relaxed. She looked at Cale again. “My name is Eloeth,” she said. “There is more to it than that, but Eloeth is enough. And you?”
“Cale Greeneye,” he said. “Son of Colin Stonetooth, once chieftain of the Calnar, now leader of the Hylar.”
“The Calnar of Thorin,” she said. “I have heard the drums of Balladine.”
“Thoradin,” he corrected. “Thorin is Thorin only for those who remained. We search for Everbardin.”
“Well, have a care searching these mountains,” she suggested. “Look down there.”
Cale turned. He could see nothing where she pointed.
“Come up here where I am,” she said. “Then look.”
Cale clambered up the rise to stand beside the elf girl. She was taller than him by several inches, though she looked to weigh only a fraction of his solid bulk. She pointed again, and Cale turned. From here he could see the valley beyond the trail — the same valley he and the others had turned from, but higher, deeper into the mountains.
The valley floor was littered with death. He shaded his eyes, squinting. The largest of the silent forms looked like horses. Or most of them did. A few looked like dead ogres. And scattered everywhere were other, smaller things. He stared.
“Only the latest of many battles,” the elf told him. “Kal-Thax is under siege and is not a safe place to travel.”
“You’re here,” Cale pointed out.
“We have our own ways,” Eloeth said. “There is dragon war in Silvanesti. Our cousins need us there, and all we can bring with us. To go east we must cross Kal-Thax. So we do.”
He looked around, trying to estimate their number, but it was impossible. The elves had a way of moving a bit and becoming very hard to see, camouflaged against the terrain. But there were a lot of them.
“We are one of many parties,” Eloeth said. “And we are looking for allies.” She looked again at the other dwarves, noticing their armor and their weapons. “I don’t suppose any of you would be interested in fighting dragons?”
“Of course not,” he said. “Not that we couldn’t, if we wanted to, but only humans and kender turn to new ventures before the old ones are complete.” He paused, looking eastward, then added, “There are a lot of humans between here and where you’re going. They might be better mannered if they had something constructive to do. Maybe some of them would join you to fight dragons.”
“Humans?” she raised an exquisite eyebrow.
“I know,” Cale shrugged. “But they aren’t all bad. I know a knight who might help. His name is Glendon Hawke. He’s a great fighter, and he is back there somewhere, in the direction you’re going.”
“Would he join us?”
“I haven’t any idea,” Cale told her. “But you could talk to him. If he won’t help, maybe he knows somebody who will.”
“Thank you,” the elf girl said. “In return for that, I give you a suggestion. If you want to get into Kal-Thax without going through a war zone, turn north. That mountain over there — the highest one — is called Sky’s End. Go around to the north of it. There’s a dwarven place there that has been abandoned. And the rises below it are deserted right now. Since the early snows, the broken lands are virtually impassable … for humans, at least. You could begin your search there for … what is it you call what you seek?”
“Everbardin,” he said. “It means hope. And home.”
“Everbardin,” she repeated. “To us, Qualinesti means hope — or new hope. Silvanesti means home.” She backed away. “Go in peace, Cale Greeneye. You and we are not at war … though everybody else around here seems to be.”
Cale clambered down to the trail again and climbed aboard Piquin, then looked around in surprise. Where there had been dozens, or maybe hundreds, of elves, now he saw only a few — then none. The lithe, silent beings had gone their way, fading into the landscape. His companions also were staring around in confusion.
“Well,” Cale decided, “you heard what she said. Let’s veer north and take a look at that next peak.”
“You trust that elf?” Gran Molden stared at him.
“Why not?” Cale glared back. “I gave her some advice, and she responded. That’s one thing about elves. They are straight traders.” From a high place where they could see the Hylar procession, Cale signaled, using his burnished shield as a mirror. Across the miles, the response came, and they saw Colin Stonetooth’s tribe change course to follow them. Then they headed for the slopes of Sky’s End.
When the dwarven scouts were gone, shadows moved on the hillside, and what had seemed a vacant slope became a large band of western elves trotting down a hidden trail. At the lead, the elf called Demoth asked, “Why would you counsel dwarves, Eloeth? They are nothing to us. Especially here, in Kal-Thax.”
She smiled slightly. “Why not? Those were unusual dwarves, Demoth. They found our trail, when no one else ever has. Besides, I have a hunch about that one … that Cale Greeneye.”
“What hunch?”
“I don’t know. I have a feeling we’ll see him again. Come on. Let’s have a look at these ‘Hylar’ with their marching drums, then see if we can find a knight named Glendon.”
In the shadow of a great peak, through broken, tumbled lands bounded by a deep, vertical gorge, the people called Hylar entered the realm of Kal-Thax. Old Mistral Thrax extended his red-palmed hands upward. “There,” he told Colin Stonetooth. “Up there, above the stonefall.”
“Those bead-eyes from the mage?” someone asked. “Do they guide you, Mistral?”
“My hands guide me.” The old dwarf shrugged. “I haven’t seen those bead-eyes since the day that kender left. But this is the place where our search begins.”
Here the entire lower face of the mountain was a massive fan of stone rubble, miles wide at the bottom. Dwarves climbed through it, poking and tasting. “Hewn stone,” they reported. “From fresh delving, very deep.”
Above, high on the mountainside, they found the remains of an elaborate citadel, partly destroyed by rockfall. Within and behind it the Hylar studied walls, passageways, cubicles, and ledges, learning what they could of those who had created this place. They were dwarves, obviously, and the cuttings of the stone spoke of a numerous, energetic people whose tools, primitive by Hylar standards, were nonetheless of fine quality.
And the place was only recently abandoned. So where had they gone?
Wight Anvil’s-Cap, a master delver, studied the rubble below the delvings. Frost Steelbit, who had been chief of wardens in Thorin, studied the patterns of the wrecked citadel. Talam Bendiron, who once had been tap warden, puzzled over the placement of seeps and cisterns. Then they conferred with Colin Stonetooth.
“This place was called Daebardin, and its people the Daewar,” Frost said. “But the runes have been scratched over, indicating that they packed up and left.”
“These Daewar are primitive in some ways,” Talam said. “They do not have the knowledge of water- tunneling, so they have to live near a natural source. But our tampers have sounded out this peak and its only water is outside, on its face.”
“Yet they went inward,” Wight reported. “This delving-stone is from a tunnel that goes south into the mountain. The rubble indicates a straight dig, directly into the stone heart of the peak, with no consistent layers … as there would be if they had widened their digs or delved a living space.”
“They are people of the sun,” Frost Steelbit puzzled. “The architecture of their citadel shows that. They do not like the dark deeps, and they don’t know how to build sun-tunnels, yet they penetrated a peak with no natural
