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  "Fool!" cried Whastryk Kite, in a sharper, more immediate version of the voice that had bubbled from the legless visitor. "You dare to challenge me, silversmith? Know that your child, and your bride, shall pay!"

  The laugh turned to a sneer. "But take comfort that you will not have to witness their suffering!"

  Paulus still did not look at his enemy. Instead, he held the mirror before his face and stepped forward as he heard the mage bark sharp, guttural words of magic.

  Crimson light flashed in the courtyard, and the silversmith heard a wail of anguish. Now he drew his weapon, dropped the mirror, and charged.

  The wizard known as the Black Kite was reeling backward, both hands clutching the bleeding wounds that were his eye sockets. Paulus's boots thudded on the pavement as he rushed closer, and he raised the sword for a single, killing strike.

  Then the man saw the mage, with his left hand, pull a small silver vial from a pouch at his side. Ignoring the danger and the blood pouring down his face, Whastryk tossed back his head and instantly swallowed the vial's contents in the face of Paulus's attack.

  A moment later the silversmith's sword cut through the wizard's cowled hood, slicing deep into his brain. The Black Kite stiffened and toppled heavily to the ground, where he lay motionless in a spreading pool of blood.

  The bold young silversmith stepped back only far enough to keep the sticky liquid from his boots. After a minute, he probed with his sword, making certain that the wizard was truly dead.

  Then he went into the house to look for his child.

  CHAPTER 5

  Further Evidence

  Scribed In Haven

  371 AC

  To my mentor and inspiration, Falstar Kane

  As I had hoped, Esteemed Master, a chance to study the local records has allowed me to penetrate closer to the truth. To wit: I have learned of the fate of the wizard Whastryk Kite.

  The tale was yielded up from the depths of Haven's oldest records. He did, in fact, die in 37 AC, killed by one of the citizens of this wretched city, a silversmith whose son the Black Kite had kidnapped. (The man's infant son was found, unharmed, within the magic-user's stronghold.)

  As to the potion given to Whastryk Kite by Fistandan-tilus some thirty-eight years earlier, nothing is revealed by these records. It seems clear that, whether or not the magic was imbibed by Whastryk in his last moments, the enchantment had no effect on the outcome of the fight. The wizard was unequivocally slain; indeed, his passing was cause for more than a few celebrations.

  Of the silversmith and his family a little more is known. The man became a hero for a short time: His quest had regained the baby, and an entire quarter of Haven was able to emerge from the shadow of the evil wizard's reign. Reputedly, there was enough gratitude among the merchants and tradesfolk to cause them to pay the young couple a handsome stipend.

  Enriched by the rewards, the pair and their son removed to a small village in the country. There it is said that the baby grew to manhood, well versed in the tale of his father's heroism. Beyond that reference, however, the line disappears from view, offering no more disturbance to the waters of the great river.

  Regarding the wizard Fistandantilus during this period of history, the records reveal no more. We know now that he used his time-travel spell to move forward to an age a hundred years following the Cataclysm.

  But of his scheme to transport his essence via the potion of the magic jar, it must be concluded that he failed.

  Your most loyal servant,

  Foryth Teel

  CHAPTER 6

  Gantor Blackstword

  252 AC

  Third Mithrik, Dry-Anvil

  The dwarf had been wandering for weeks, a span of time that seemed like years in the tortured ramblings of his mind. The Plain of Dergoth was a shattered, wounded landscape around him, everywhere waterless, parched into a barren desert by a midsummer sun. He had no destination, but he simply kept plodding along, leaving the tracks of his cleated boots like the trail of an aimless snake coursing through the dust and silt layering the hard, baked ground.

  As he had done so many times since the beginning of his exile, he spun about, staring wildly into the distance, seeing the lofty bulk of the High Kharolis rising into the skies. Raising a knotted fist, he shook it at the massif, crying shrill challenges and insults, spitting loudly, stomping his feet, venting his fury against rock and sky. And as always, the mountainous ridge remained silent and impassive, ignoring the dwarf's railing hysteria.

  "I'll come back there, I will!" Cantor Blacksword shrieked. His hand came to rest on the hilt of the once splendid weapon that had girded his waist. Several times he had drawn the thing with a flourish, waving it at the mountain dwarf stronghold, but even through the feverish agitation of his despair, Gantor had come to see the gesture for the foolish act that it was.

  Not foolish because the target of his rage was distant and unassailable, but because the hilt, steel-hard and wrapped with the hide of an ancient ogre, was only that: a handle, with no blade attached. Thane Realgar himself, lord and master of all the Theiwar clan, had snapped the weapon asunder as he had pronounced the sentence upon Gantor Blacksword.

  The bearded, perpetually scowling Theiwar had been prepared to face death for his crime, even public execution or a painful demise following a long period of torture. Indeed, both were common fates handed to Theiwar murderers under clan law, and there was no dispute over Cantor's status as a killer of a fellow Theiwar. The best he had hoped for-and it was a slim hope-had been a forfeiture of his rather extensive personal wealth and a sentence to a lifetime of labor in the food warrens. He could have faced torture and death bravely, and he would have gone willingly into the warrens, even knowing that he might never see the lightless waters of the Urkhan Sea again.

  But he had never been prepared, could not have imagined, the utter horror of the sentence that Thane Realgar had pronounced.

  Exile, under the naked sky.

  The very concept had been so foreign that, upon first hearing the words, Gantor Blacksword had not fully grasped their meaning. Only as the thane had continued his dire pronouncement did the full sense of disbelieving fear seep slowly into Cantor's wicked and hateful brain.

  "Your crimes have extended well beyond the boundaries that will be tolerated by our clan," declared Realgar, tacitly acknowledging that assassination, robbery, assault, and mayhem were common tactics for the settlement of disputes among the Theiwar.

  "It is well known," Realgar continued, "that your conflict with Dwayal Thack was deep and true; both of you claimed ownership of the stone found between your delv-ings, and had you limited your activities merely to the killing of Dwayal in a fair fight, your presence before this board of judgment would never have been required."

  Gantor had glowered and spat at the time, refusing to accept the words, though now he admitted to wishing that he had handled the problem exactly as the thane had suggested. Dwayal Thack had been a larger dwarf than Gantor, more skilled in the use of sword and axe, but even so the aggrieved miner had not been without recourse. After all, a fair fight among the Theiwar did not disallow the use of ambush or a stab in the back, and even the hiring of a trained assassin would have been acceptable, though in the latter case, Gantor might have been required to a pay a small stipend to the victim's family.

  Instead, however, he had decided to take care of the problem himself. His plan had been simple but well thought out, and undeniably lethal.

  It had been a simple matter to use carefully chiseled plugs of granite to block the two ventilation shafts connecting the Thack apartments to the rest of vast Thor-bardin. Then Gantor Blacksword had visited one of the Theiwar alchemists, who were always willing — for a price — to aid the nefarious activities of their clients.

  Armed with a smudge pot full of highly toxic vile-root, Gantor had approached his neighbor's front door during the quiet stillness that descended over the Theiwar city in the midst of the sleeping hours. Gantor had ignited th
e highly toxic mixture of herbs, hurled open the barrier, tossed the smudge pot inside, then slammed shut the door and fixed it in place with several carefully tooled steel wedges.

  The rest of the killing had only taken a few minutes. There had been screams and gasps and a few feeble bashes against the door, and then silence.

  Cantor still remembered his elation as he had awaited outside the door. Dwayal, his wife, his collection of brats-three or four offspring, so far as the murderous Theiwar had remembered-and whatever slaves and servants Dwayal Thack had employed had been inside the crowded apartments. They were inevitably dead by poisonous suffocation within minutes, though they suffered horribly during their last moments. The telltale stink of the vile-root extended into the corridor, so those who came in response to the commotion had no choice but to wait. Fortunately one of the things that made vile-root such an effective tool for this kind of work was the fact that the toxins in the smoke settled into a layer of soot within a few hours of vaporization.

  When it was safe to enter, Cantor and several Theiwar wardens had entered the apartments-and then the true horror had been revealed.

  One of Dwayal Thack's sons-may his name be cursed by the gods through eternity! — had been friends with one Staylstaff Realgarson, a favored nephew of none other than the Theiwar thane. Worse, Staylstaff had been visiting his friend, engaged in a bout of gambling, at the time of the murder. Naturally he, too, had perished as a result of the toxic fumes.

  And Thane Realgar had proved utterly unwilling to treat the mishap as the unfortunate accident that it had surely been! Instead, the ruler of the Theiwar clan had reacted to the killing as if it constituted some sort of heinous, even unprecedented, crime. Cantor had been called before a clan tribunal, forced to listen to all sorts of accusatory remarks, and eventually came to realize that he would be punished for his natural and understandable-by Theiwar standards-attempt to defend his right to contested property.

  Faced with the deliberations of the august body of wild-eyed, bristling dark dwarves, the accused had been prepared to accept his sentence bravely. He had vowed to himself that, no matter how heinous the tortures, he would not give the thane the satisfaction of seeing him, Cantor, lose his dignity or his pride. Indeed, he had been prepared to spit contemptuously when he was confronted by the terms of his punishment.

  Yet all that resolve had vanished in the face of the actual sentence. Exile! Never in his worst nightmares- and Cantor Blacksword suffered some very horrible nightmares indeed-had the dwarf pictured a punishment so terrifying, so unutterably bleak, as that which cruel fate had delivered unto him. Thane Realgar's pale and luminous eyes had gleamed with a wicked light when he pronounced sentence, and the cheering of Dwayal Thack's many relatives had echoed from the rafters of the vaulted Judgment Hall when he had made his announcement:

  "Cantor Blacksword, you are banished forever from the Theiwar Realms, and as well from all attended and allied steadings of the Kingdom of Thorbardin. You are sentenced to the world above, where you will live out your miserable days under the cruel light of the sun and without the comfort of your fellow dwarves."

  His own scream of shrill terror had been drowned out by the delighted cheering of the gathered throng. With bitterness, Cantor remembered his own wife and elder son joining in the celebration. No doubt the faithless female had already taken a new mate, and the worthless offspring was certainly in the midst of squandering his father's hard-earned fortune. Such practical and unsentimental avarice was neither more nor less than the Theiwar way.

  Of course, there was always the hope of revenge… Someday Cantor Blacksword would find a way to make all his enemies suffer!

  For a time, here under the horrifying, endless sky, the exiled Theiwar had failed to let reality dissuade him. He had spent the first days of his banishment in picturing the many vengeances he would inflict: his treacherous wife, slow-roasted on a spit over the family hearth. His son, skinned alive, but only over the course of many months. Indeed, perhaps the wronged patriarch could exact a whole year's worth of diversion before the wretched wastrel was at last put out of his suffering.

  And Thane Realgar, too, would suffer the wrath of Cantor Blacksword, though not so mercifully as wife and son. No, the thane could only be sufficiently punished in the same fashion as he had sentenced Cantor Blacksword: He would be condemned to wander under the sun, banished from the comforts of stony Thorbardin for the rest of his days.

  But over the initial weeks of his wandering exile, Cantor had at last realized that thoughts of revenge took him down a useless road. Without any real hope of returning to Thorbardin, he had no practical prospects of harming any of his enemies. And though the hatred, the desire for death and mayhem, never faded far from the forefront of the Theiwar's awareness, he had gradually realized that those urges would remain mere fantasies, unrealized by acts of truly gratifying bloodshed.

  Instead, Cantor was reduced to this, to shaking his fist at the distant mountain, crying out his frustration and rage, then turning away in defeat to continue shambling over the trackless, dusty plain.

  The dwarves of Thorbardin had equipped him with a meager pack full of provisions before they had summarily pushed him out of the South Gate of the great under-mountain fortress. Cantor was given a small hand axe and a bone-handled knife with a blade of black steel that served as a mocking reminder of his once-honorable namesake. In addition, he had several skins full of drinking water, a blanket, a net, and many cakes of the hard, nourishing bread that was the major foodstuff of the mountain dwarves. As a final insult, Thane Realgar had taken Cantor's sword of black steel and snapped off the blade at the hilt, a further symbol of the disgraceful state to which he had fallen.

  For a long time Cantor Blacksword had been sustained by little more than his rage. He had plodded through the Kharolis foothills during the nights and sought whatever shelter he could find during the day. When the sun was high, the Theiwar's eyes burned from the painful light, and when no cave or shady grove offered itself, he had been forced to pull his cloak over his head and lie, a huddled ball of misery, on the open ground until sunset.

  The early days of his exile had carried him through lands of plentiful water, and during the nights he had been able to find fungus in the deep, wooded groves. Sometimes he had caught fish, using the fine webbing of the net to pull trout and sunfish from shallow streams. He ate the scaly creatures whole and raw, as was Theiwar custom, and the meager feasts had provided the few bright memories of his recent existence. Cantor's dwarf-cake bread had lasted him for several weeks, thus augmented by the food that he could gather for himself. And he had been sustained.

  But then his rambling course had progressed, coming all the way around the mountain dwarf kingdom until he had found himself on this trackless plain. There were no streams here, no groves wherein he could find the tender mushrooms. Worst of all, there were not even any caves, nor any tall features that would offer even minimal shade from the lethal sun. Day by day he had weakened, until his water was gone, and he shambled blindly onward, delirious and full of despair.

  Since beginning his trek across the plain he had survived by eating… what? Cantor knew he hadn't killed anything, and there was nothing even remotely edible growing on the parched and arid desert. He had vague memories of carrion, rank and putrid meat surrounded by a maggot-infested pelt, but the gorging upon that foul meal had been a reflexive act, driven by mindless hunger.

  And afterward he had been sick, his gut wracked by spasms and cramps that had dropped him in his tracks. Now he lay where he had fallen on the cracked plain, in this place, for more days than he knew. Several times since, just when he thought that the merciless sun must at last kill him, must finally bring to an end the awful suffering, he had been spared by sunset.

  In fact, it had just happened again. Cantor's tongue was thick and dry in his mouth, and his parched lips cracked and bled with every effort of movement. He pushed himself over to lie on his back, staring upward at the vault
of sky, seeing the pale wash of illumination, so cool and distant, that characterized the heavens on clear nights such as this. He had no knowledge of stars-Theiwar vision was far too imprecise to pick out the distant spots of illumination-but he knew there was something bright up there, something aloof and mocking.

  He wanted only to die, but it seemed that Krynn itself conspired to keep him alive.

  "Hey, fellow? I don't want to be rude, but that's an odd place to make a camp."

  At first Cantor thought the words to be the products of another feverish dream, an attempt to drive him still further into madness. Yet he forced his aching tongue to move and parted his blistered lips enough to articulate a reply.

  "I sleep where I will! I am dwarf, master of all beyond Thorbardin!" he boldly proclaimed. At least, he tried to boldly proclaim; the dryness of his throat reduced the proud boast to little more than a prolonged croak.

  "Wait. I can't understand you. Do you want something to drink?"

  Cantor couldn't reply, and in fact wondered why anyone who possessed such a magical voice would have trouble understanding his own profound response. Yet before he could voice his question, he felt a warm trickle over his lips. Reflexively he swallowed, and the water sent a jolt of pure pleasure through his parched body.

  "How's that? More?"

  Now the dwarf could see a dim shape, a shadow outlined against the glow of the sky. Close before him, wonderful wetness dripped from the end of a waterskin. With a reflexive grab, fearful that the precious nectar would be snatched away, Cantor reached up with both hands, tearing the skin out of small fingers, thrusting the nozzle to his lips.