"Sorry we lost him," he said, chagrined.

"No harm done, and maybe some good. We accomplished what we set out to do. The dwarves have seen the truth for themselves. However, we now have new problems."

As Tanis was telling his friends about Riverwind and Gilthanas, Hornfel was deep in discussion with the Thanes of the Daewar and Klar. The Highbluph was nowhere to be found. The draconian had, unfortunately, leapt straight at him when making his escape, leading the terrified Highbluph to think his last moments had come. He had turned and fled, running to the darkest, deepest pit he could find, and there he would remain until the supply of rats ran low and he was obliged to come out of hiding.

The absence of the Aghar Thane concerned no one. It is doubtful if they noticed. They did take note-grimly-of the absence of Rance, the Thane of the Daergar. No one had witnessed his departure. There was little doubt in Hornfel"s mind that his worst fears were realized. His hopes for unification of the clans beneath the mountain were dashed. A Theiwar and Daergar alliance would have been bad enough, but now there was evidence the renegade dwarves had secretly opened the gates of Thorbardin to forces of darkness. The very tragedy he had worked so hard to avoid-civil war-appeared inevitable.

The Daewar Thane, who had been the most reluctant to think ill of his cousins, was now the most militant, ready to summon his army and battle them on the spot. The wild-eyed Klar would follow Hornfel"s lead and do whatever he was commanded to do. Klar military forces were not entirely reliable, however. They were vicious fighters, but undisciplined and chaotic.

The Theiwar were not warriors, but the dark Daergar were. Their numbers were plentiful, and they were fierce, loyal, and consumed with hatred for their cousins, especially the Hylar. If they were joined by an army of monstrous beings, Hornfel foresaw ruin and disaster.

After discussing the situation with the Thanes and making what plans they could, Hornfel walked over to speak to Tanis, to offer his apologies for his earlier treatment.

"I would be glad to provide safe haven for the refugees in your care, Half-Elven," Hornfel said, adding grimly, "but I fear there will be no safe haven for anyone beneath the mountain-humans or dwarves."

"Perhaps all is not as dire as you think, Thane," Tanis said. "What if the Daergar have not allied with the Theiwar? I saw Rance"s face when he first set eyes on the draconian, and he did not look smug. He looked as shocked and horrified as the rest of you."

"When I saw him, he wore a look of fury," said Raistlin. "He pa.s.sed us on the way to the lift, and his expression was dark with rage. His brows were lowered and his fists were clenched, and he was muttering to himself. My guess is that he had no knowledge that the Theiwar had brought in these terrible new allies and that he is not happy about it."

Hornfel looked grateful. "You give me hope, friends, and food for thought. Much now depends on the recovery of the Hammer of Kharas. If the hammer is returned to us, along with proof that Reorx has also returned, the Daergar would, I think, refuse to side with the Theiwar. The Daergar are not evil and twisted, as the Theiwar have become. Their clan was hurt badly by the mine closings and many have sunk to crime, but deep inside they are loyal to Thorbardin. They could be convinced to listen to reason and they would be as glad as any to welcome Reorx back to his shrines. The reemergence of the true hammer would be a most fortuitous event now!"

"Not fortuitous," said Sturm. "Divine intervention. The G.o.ds brought us here for this reason."

Did they? Tanis found himself wondering. Or did we come here through stumblings and missteps, wrong turns and right choices, accidents and failures, and here and there a triumph? I wish I knew.

"We have to reach Flint and Arman," he said, "for the very reasons you stated, Thane."

"Impossible, I fear," Hornfel returned gravely. "My people reported to me that the bronze doors to the Valley of the Thanes have closed and no matter what we do, they will not reopen."

Chapter 21.

A Hero"s Death. Flint Makes Up His mind.

Flint sat on the steps in the dark, rubbing his thighs and his poor old creaking knees. His legs had given out, refusing to climb one more stair. He"d climbed the last few half-blinded by tears from the pain that burned through his muscles like liquid fire. He was hurting and in a bad mood, and he took it as a personal affront that Ta.s.slehoff was so cheerful. The kender came clattering down the stairs.

"The staircase ends right up there-What are you doing sitting here?" the kender asked, amazed. "Hurry up! We"re almost at the top."

At about that time, the gong struck, and it did sound quite loud, much louder than before. The musical tone resonated through the stairwell and seemed to jar right through Flint"s head.

"I"m not budging," he grumbled. "Arman can have the hammer. I"ll not take one more step."

"It"s only about twenty stairs and then you"re there," Ta.s.slehoff urged. He tried to slide his arms underneath Flint"s shoulders with the intent of dragging him. "If you scoot along on your bottom-"

"I"ll do no such thing!" Flint cried, outraged. He batted the kender away. "Let go of me!"

"Well, then, if you won"t go up, let"s go back down," Tas said, exasperated. "The map shows other ways to reach the top-"

"I"m not going down either. I"m not moving."

Secretly, Flint was afraid he couldn"t move. He didn"t have the strength, and that dull ache was back in his chest.

Tas eyed him thoughtfully then plunked himself down on the steps.

"I guess staying here forever won"t be so bad," said Tas. "I"ll have a chance to tell you all my very best stories. Did you hear about the time I found a woolly mammoth? I was walking along the road one day, and I heard a ferocious bellowing coming out of the woods. I went to see what the bellowing was, and it turned out to be-"

"I"m going!" said Flint. Gritting his teeth, he put his hand on the kender"s shoulder and, groaning, hauled himself upright. His head spun, and he tottered on his feet and had to steady himself with a hand on the kender.

"Put your arm around my shoulder," Tas suggested. "No, like this. There you go. You can lean on me. We"ll go up together. One stair at a time."

This was highly undignified. Flint would have refused, but he feared he could not make it without a.s.sistance, and he was driven not so much by the hammer but by the terrifying prospect of hearing the woolly mammoth story for the umpteenth time. a.s.sisted by the kender, Flint began to stagger up the stairs.

"I don"t mind you leaning on me, Flint," said Tas after a moment, "but could you not lean quite so heavily? I"m practically walking on my knees!"

"I thought you said there were only twenty stairs!" Flint growled, but he eased up on the kender. "I"ve counted thirty and I still don"t see the end."

"What"s a few stairs more or less?" Tas asked lightly, then, feeling Flint"s arm tighten around his neck in a choking manner, Tas added hurriedly, "I see light! Don"t you see light, Flint? We"re near the top."

Flint raised his head, and he had to admit that the stairwell was much lighter than it had been before. They could almost dispense with the lantern. Flint was forced to practically crawl up the last few stairs, but he managed it.

An arched wooden door banded with iron stood at the top of the stairs. Sunlight gleaming through the slats lit their way. Tas pushed on the door, but it wouldn"t budge. He jiggled the handle, then shook his head.

"It"s locked," he reported. "Drat! That will teach me never to leave my pouches behind again!"

The kender slumped down. "All these stairs for nothing!"

Flint couldn"t believe it. His aching legs didn"t want to believe it. He gave the door an irritated shove and it swung open.

"Locked!" Flint said, glaring in disgust at the kender.

"1 tell you it was!" Tas insisted. "I may not know much about fighting, politics, the return of the G.o.ds, or all that other stuff, but I do know locks, and that lock was tell you it was!" Tas insisted. "I may not know much about fighting, politics, the return of the G.o.ds, or all that other stuff, but I do know locks, and that lock was locked locked."

"No, it wasn"t," said Flint. "You don"t know how to work a door handle, that"s all."

"I do so, too," Tas said indignantly "I"m an expert on door handles, door k.n.o.bs, and door locks. That door was bolted shut, I tell you."

"No, it wasn"t!" Flint shouted angrily.

Because if the door had been locked, that meant that someone-or some thing-had opened it when he pushed on it, and he didn"t want to think about that.

Flint walked out into the sunshine. Ta.s.slehoff followed, giving the offending door an irritated kick in pa.s.sing.

They had reached the battlements at the top of the tomb. Across from them was a crenellated stone wall. A tower lined with rows of windows rose to Flint"s left. A short, squat tower was to his right. Beyond the towers and the stone wall was azure blue sky.

"I don"t want to hear anymore about it- Great Reorx"s beard!" He gasped.

"Oh, Flint!" Ta.s.slehoff let out a soft breath.

The sunlight gleamed off a cone-shaped roof made of faceted panels of ruby-colored transparent gla.s.s. The pain in Flint"s legs and the burning in his chest were subsumed in wonder and in awe.

He pressed his nose to the gla.s.s, and so did the kender, both of them trying to see inside.

"Is that it?" asked Tas softly.

"That"s it," said Flint, and his voice was choked.

A bronze hammer attached to what appeared to be a thin rope hung suspended from the apex of the cone. The hammer swung slowly from one side of the chamber to the other. Around the ceiling were twenty-four enormous gongs made of bronze. Each of the gongs was inscribed with a rune. Each rune represented the hours of a day from Waking Hour to First Eating Hour; First Working Hour to Second Eating Hour; and around to the Sleep Hours. The Hammer swung back and forth, shifting position with each swing, timed so that it struck a gong at the start of the hour, then continued on in a never ending circle.

Flint had never seen anything so wonderful.

"That"s truly remarkable," said Ta.s.slehoff, sighing. He drew his head back and rubbed his nose, which had been pressed flat against the gla.s.s. "Did dwarves set the Hammer to swinging like that?"

"No," said Flint, adding hoa.r.s.ely. "It"s magic. Powerful magic." Though the sun was uncomfortably hot on the back of his neck, he shivered at the thought.

"Magic!" Tas was thrilled. "That makes it even better. I didn"t know dwarves could do magic like that."

"They can"t!" Flint said crossly. He waved his hand at the swinging Hammer. "No self-respecting dwarf would even dream up something like that, much less do it. The same magic that yanked this tomb out of the ground and set it floating in the sky has turned the Hammer of Kharas into a Palanthian cuckoo clock and-" he sighed glumly and peered up again at the Hammer- "whoever wants the Hammer has to find out a way to get inside there, then stop it from swinging, and then haul it down from the ceiling. From where I stand, it can"t be done. All this way for nothing."

The moment he said it, he was suddenly, secretly, vastly relieved.

The decision whether or not to switch hammers had been taken out of his hands. He could go back to Sturm, Raistlin and Tanis and tell them the Hammer was out of reach. He"d tried. He"d done his best. It wasn"t meant to be. Sturm would have to get along without his drag-onlances. Tanis would have to find some other way to persuade the dwarves to let the refugees inside the mountain. He, Flint Fireforge, was never cut out to be a hero.

At least, he thought with a certain amount of grim satisfaction, Arman Kharas won"t be able to get to the Hammer either.

Flint was about to start back down the stairs, when he looked about and realized he was alone. He felt a twinge of panic. He"d forgotten the first rules of traveling with a kender. Rule Number One: never allow the kender to grow bored. Rule Number Two: never let a bored kender out of your sight.

Flint groaned again. This was all he needed. A kender loose in a magic-infested tomb! He let out a roar: "Ta.s.slehoff Burrfoot- Oh, there you are!"

The kender popped out from around the corner of the small, squat tower.

"Don"t go running off like that!" Flint scolded. "We"re going back down to find Arman."

"You"re standing in the wrong place, Flint," Tas announced.

"What?" Flint stared at him.

"You said that from where you stood, you couldn"t reach the hammer, and you"re right. From where you are standing, you can"t reach the hammer. You"re standing in the wrong place. But if you walk around to the other side of this tower, there"s a way. Here, look inside again."

Tas pressed his nose to the gla.s.s and, reluctantly, yet feeling a twinge of excitement, Flint did the same.

"See that ledge over there, the one sticking out of the wall above the gongs."

Flint squinted. He thought he could make out what Tas was talking about. A long stone ledge thrust out into the chamber.

"If it is a ledge, it"s not much of one," he muttered.

Tas pretended he hadn"t heard. Flint was such a pessimist! "I figured if there was a ledge, there had to be some way to reach the ledge, and I found it. Come with me!"

Tas dashed around the squat tower. Flint followed more slowly, still searching for a way off this tomb. He looked out over the cren-ellations, but all he could see down below were curls and whorls of red-tinged mist.

"Not there, Flint. Over here!" Tas called.

The kender stood in front of a double door made of wood banded with iron.

"They"re locked," Tas said, and he fixed the doors with a stern eye.

Flint walked up, pushed on one of the doors, and it swung silently open.

"How do you keep doing that!" Ta.s.slehoff wailed.

Sunlight poured eagerly inside, as though it had been waiting all these centuries to illuminate the darkness.

Flint took a few steps and came to a sudden halt. Ta.s.slehoff, coming behind, stumbled right into him.

"What is it?" the kender asked, trying to see around him in the narrow hall.

"A body," said Flint, shaken. He"d nearly trod on it.

"Whose?" said Tas in a smothered whisper.

Flint had trouble speaking for a moment. "I think it"s Kharas."

The body had been sealed in a windowless vestibule shut off by two sets of double-doors and was well-preserved. The body was intact, the skin like parchment or old leather, drawn tight over the bones. It was that of a dwarven male, unusually tall, with long flowing hair, but only a very short scruff of a beard. Flint remembered hearing that Kharas had shaved his beard in grief over the Dwarfgate Wars and had never allowed it to grow back. The corpse was clad in ornate, ceremonial armor, as befitted the warrior who had borne the king to his final rest. The harness that had held the hammer for which he was famous was empty. He had no weapons in his hands. There was no sign of a wound on his body, yet he appeared to have died in agony, for his hand clasped his throat, the mummified mouth gaped wide.

"Here"s the killer," said Tas, squatting down by the body. He pointed to the remains of a scorpion. "He was stung to death."

"That"s no way for a hero to die," Flint stated angrily. "Kharas should have died fighting ogres, giants, dragons, or something."

Not felled by a bug.

Not felled by a weak heart...

"But if this is Kharas and he"s dead," said Tas, "who"s that other Kharas? The one who told Arman he"d show him how to find the Hammer?"

"That"s what I"m wondering," said Flint grimly.

At the end of the vestibule was another set of double doors. Beyond the two doors was the Ruby Chamber and inside the chamber was the Hammer of Kharas. Flint knew those doors were locked and he also knew the locked doors would open for him, as the other locked doors had opened. Having seen the ledge, he had figured out a way to obtain the Hammer.

He looked down at the corpse of Kharas, the great hero, who had died an ign.o.ble and meaningless death.

"May his soul be with Reorx," Flint said softly. "Though I"m guessing the G.o.d took him to his rest a long, long time ago."

Flint gazed down at the corpse and made a sudden resolve.