Fistanadantilus Reborn ll-2 Page 5

  And as he cursed and growled over the gods, Cantor spoke with utter sincerity. Indeed, the dark dwarves differed from many of their clan mates in scorning both of the mighty deities. To the subjects of Thane Realgar, any god except Reorx himself was viewed to be a meddling scoundrel, and no self-respecting member of the clan would allow himself to be persuaded otherwise.

  "Fistandantilus, it was, who goaded the hill dwarves into thinking that we of the mountain had cheated them. Now, I've got no love lost for the Hylar-self-righteous, prissy little martinets, for the most part-but they had the right idea when they closed and barred the gates. We had no choice but to leave the hill dwarves to fend for themselves. Not room under the mountain for 'em all. Never was and never will be," Cantor stated with finality.

  "And then the Cataclysm came?" asked Emilo, trying to follow along.

  "No! That was a hundred years before! It was after the Cataclysm, when flood and famine scarred all the land, that the hill dwarves came begging for help. They forgot that they had turned their backs on the mountain years before, when they wanted to mix with the folk of the world." Cantor shuddered at the very idea; his time in exile had convinced him that the ancestral rift was a true and fundamental parting of the ways.

  "But then they wanted to come back inside the mountain?" the kender prodded.

  "Aye. And when the Hylar and the rest of us turned 'em away, we kicked them as far as Pax Tharkas and told them not to come back. But that's when they went and got that wizard and a whole lot of hill dwarf and human warriors."

  "And the wizard… that was Fistandantilus?"

  "And who'd 'a' thought he'd put together an army like that? Coming onto the plains around Zhaman, ready to move against the North Gate. That was when the North Gate was still there, of course. So we came out, and dwarven blood was shed across the whole valley. The Theiwar stood on the left flank, and their attack was sending the hill dwarves reeling back toward the elven-home."

  "And the wizard? Did he do magic? Did he fly?" Emilo pressed excitedly.

  "Well, that was one of the strange things at the time. It seems he wasn't there… didn't take part in the battle. Instead, he came here-or rather to Zhaman, the tower that used to stand here."

  "So did you mountain dwarves win the battle?"

  "We would have!" declared Cantor with a snort. '"Cept for the damn wizard. Like I was trying to tell you, he came here, worked some kind of spell, and the whole place was blown to pieces. Including my father, with the other Theiwar on the front lines."

  "That's too bad." Emilo sounded sincerely regretful.

  "Bah! The blackguard was a scoundrel and a thief! Besides, I got his sleeping chamber, and first pick of the family treasures." Cantor chuckled grimly at the kender's shocked expression, then leaned over to noisily slurp some water from the pool.

  "Was Fistandantilus killed, too?" Emilo asked, studying the walls of this round grotto.

  "Yup. Everybody knows that."

  "It looks like some parts of this place weren't damaged too bad," observed the kender.

  "Whaddaya mean?" argued the dark dwarf. He pointed across the chamber to a series of stone columns, now broken and splintered, cast casually along the far end of the large chamber. A deep crack, as jagged as a lightning bolt, scarred the wall all the way to the ceiling. "Surely you can see that. Right?"

  "Well, of course," Emilo agreed breezily. "But down below here, I found a whole bunch of tunnels. Even a place where there's a jewel…" The kender's voice trailed away with a shiver.

  "Jewel?" Cantor froze, his luminous eyes staring at the pensive kender.

  "What? Oh, yes. It was kind of pretty. I might even have taken it, except-"

  "Where?" The dwarf had no ears for the rest of Emilo's story. His mind was alive again, sending a cascade of pictures through his imagination. Vividly he expanded the vista of his desires, imagining mounds of glittering stones, gems of red and green and turquoise and every other color under the rainbow. His fatigue and despair were forgotten, swept away by a tide of avarice.

  His next instinct was as natural as it was swift: This kender was a danger, a threat to the treasure that was rightfully Cantor's! He must be killed!

  Only after the dwarf had already begun to calculate the most expeditious means of accomplishing his companion's demise did further reality again intrude. Faced once again with the inexorable truth that you couldn't wring information from a lifeless witness, Cantor was forced to acknowledge that Emilo Haversack continued to be more useful to him alive than dead.

  He forced his trembling voice to grow calm. "Where was this jewel? Far from here?" He cleared his throat and spat to the side in an elaborate display of casual interest.

  "Well, quite a bit below here, actually." Once again Emilo displayed that strange sense of disquiet. "It wasn't really much to look at, kind of scuffed up and all that. Besides, there was something else… something I didn't like very much."

  Cantor didn't want to hear about it. "Take me there!"

  "Well, if you really want to. But don't you really think we should rest for a-"

  "Now!" snarled the Theiwar, instantly suspicious of the delay. "You'll just wait for me to fall asleep so you can get the treasure for yourself!"

  "What? No, I won't! I don't even want it-not anymore, at least. But all right, then, if you're so worried about it, I'll show you. But don't say I didn't warn you."

  Muttering about bad manners and pushy people, the kender rose to his feet and plodded out of the chamber where he had discovered the pool of water. They passed through a maze of broken walls and tumbled ceilings, but the dwarf could clearly discern that this had once been a structure of large hallways and broad, sweeping stairways.

  Now the shadows were thick through the corners, and a stairway was as likely to be lying on its side as standing upright. They picked their way through the ruins with care, Emilo apparently guessing which path to take at several junctures. Eventually the kender came to a large circular pit, a black hole with a depth extending beyond the limits of the dwarf's darkness-piercing vision.

  "This must have been a central shaft," Emilo said. If he still begrudged the dwarf's peremptory commands, his voice revealed no trace of the resentment. Instead, he was as chatty and conversational as ever. "You can see that it goes up through the ceiling as well as down."

  Indeed, Cantor observed a matching circle of blackness in the arched surface over his head. A spindly network of strands dangled through space, connecting the upper reach of the shaft to the pit on the floor level. When he clumped over for a closer look, the Theiwar saw that these were the rusted remnants of a steel stairway that had once spiraled through the central atrium of the great tower of Zhaman.

  And now those same stairs offered a route into the deep heart of Skullcap.

  "That's how I went down before," Emilo said, joining the dwarf. "You have to hold on a little bit carefully, and in some places the metal sways back and forth. But it's strong enough to get you down."

  Cantor blinked, glowering at the kender. "How do I know you're not trying to get me killed?"

  Emilo shrugged. "Do you want me to go first?" He reached for the rusty remnant of a railing, only to be slapped away by the suspicious dwarf.

  "Don't you try it!" Cantor seized the railing and stepped onto the top step, which was a small web of iron bars anchored solidly into the bedrock of the fortress.

  Immediately the bars creaked, and there was a distant clatter of some scrap tumbling downward, clanging off the jutting wreckage of the stairway. The Theiwar yelped and clung to the railing with both hands as the frail support leaned outward, the vast gulf yawning like an unquenchable, eternally hungry mouth. As Cantor clung to his precariously dangling perch, more bits of metal broke away, the sharp sounds fading into the depths, banging, jangling, continuing to fall for a very long time.

  "Here," said Emilo, extending a hand. He, too, stepped onto the bending bars of the platform, casually swinging into space with a grasp of the railin
g, then hopping to rest on the next intact stretch of stairs several feet below. "Just do it like that."

  "I'll do it my own way!" snorted Cantor, gingerly inching along the railing, grunting as his feet swung free. He clumped to a rest beside the kender, and this time he didn't slap away the supporting hands that wrapped around his waist and helped pull him to safety.

  "Come on," Emilo said cheerfully, scampering farther along the rapidly descending framework.

  "Wait!" The Theiwar followed as quickly as he could, his temper growing more foul with each swinging traverse, each heart-stopping leap through the darkness. Quickly the hole in the floor disappeared overhead as they continued to descend steadily down the inside of the cylinder of stone. And always the kender proceeded jauntily, spanning long gaps with the same lack of concern with which he stepped over easy, solid footholds.

  Abruptly the dwarf halted, seized by a new suspicion. Cantor clasped a shaft of metal and glowered at the kender, who was quite a few feet below him. "How come you're not scared going down here? Don't you know you could break your neck with one little slip?"

  "Oh, we kender don't worry about much of anything." Emilo made a breezy gesture with one hand, ignoring the darkness yawning below. "The way I look at it, if it's going to get me, it will. Doesn't make much difference if I waste my time being afraid."

  "That's crazy!" With renewed muttering, the dwarf started after the kender, trying to conjure up those images of treasures that had once flitted so seductively through his mind. But another, deeper thought intruded.

  "What was that you were talking about, that thing that had you worried?" He remembered Emilo's nervousness, even fear, when they had first talked of the gem. "I thought you said you kender didn't get afraid of stuff?"

  "What do-oh." Emilo's voice fell. "You mean down by the jewel?"

  Cantor nodded silently.

  "Well, there-there was a skull on the floor right beside the jewel. It kind of gave me the creeps. Just when I was thinking of taking that pretty stone along, I got the feeling that the skull was watching me with those shadowy eyes. I decided I would leave the gem and get out of there."

  The Theiwar snorted in quiet contempt. Here was a person who didn't have the sense to worry about a bone-crushing fall into a yawning abyss, yet he let himself get alarmed by a mere piece of skeleton!

  With a renewed sense of smugness, the dwarf struggled to follow along. He still cursed at frequent intervals, and his fury at the kender's seeming ease of movement grew into a cold determination, fueled by his instinctive antipathy for one who was not Theiwar, was not even mountain dwarf. His resolve was clear: As soon as Emilo showed him where the jewel was, the kender would die.

  Finally a lower platform emerged from the darkness, and Cantor sighed, relieved that the interminable descent was almost over. Yet he soon saw that there remained one more challenging section to traverse, for the tangled wreckage of the spiraling steel stairs dangled from the ceiling of a high passageway. Suspended in space, it formed a tenuous connection to the stone floor far below.

  Emilo scampered like a monkey down the network of girders, railings, and steps. Even the slight weight of the kender was enough to set the whole mass to spinning slowly, and the dwarf grimaced at the sight of a single bolt, a stud of steel anchored into the bedrock of the cylindrical passage that seemed to support the entire remaining mass of metal. A shrill creak wailed through the air, and Gantor imagined the bolt giving way, carrying the kender into a tangled mass of killing metal.

  Of course, the death of his companion would be inconvenient to the exiled Theiwar, since the kender knew where the jewel was. Still, if he were to be left here alone, the Theiwar felt little doubt that he could eventually locate the stone. More significantly, such a collapse would remove Cantor's route down to the treasure that he coveted now with even more fervor than before.

  "It's easy!" cried Emilo, and the high-pitched echo- easy, easy, easy-seemed to mock the dwarf's hesitation. "Just jump over there and slide down the pole."

  "Wait!" growled Gantor. He removed his small axe and reversed the weapon in his hand. With a few sharp blows, he drove the bolt back into its socket, secure in the knowledge that the deep pit in the stone was solid and the metal of the support uncorroded and strong.

  Only then did he swing onto the framework, feeling his stomach lurch sickeningly as the beams and girders shifted. Again the creak of metal assaulted his ears, but the movement of the mass was less extreme than it had been when Emilo descended. Gritting his teeth, the dwarf scrambled down the rest of the way. When his feet were firmly planted on solid rock, he shifted his weight back and forth, glowering fiercely. His pale eyes were wide, absorbing the darkness, then settling upon the agitated figure of the kender.

  "Well, that took a while," said Emilo, a trifle sourly. "It's over this way."

  Once again Gantor suppressed his murderous urges, seeing that the wreckage of chambers and corridors around them still created a fairly extensive maze. Yet here the kender seemed to know where he was going with some degree of certainty, for Emilo started along one of the passages, winding easily between great pieces of stone that had fallen from the ceiling. Judging by the coat of dust over the scattered rubble, the Theiwar assumed that the place had been pretty much undisturbed since the convulsive explosion that had rendered Zhaman into Skullcap.

  Again he found himself descending, following the kender down a series of stairways, but these were honest, stone-carved steps, cutting through squared passages that had been gouged into the living bedrock of the fortress's foundation. Gantor recognized dwarven work and admitted to a measure of racial pride when he saw that most of these stairways remained relatively undamaged.

  Finally they emerged into a maze of small rooms. Despite the dust and rubble, Gantor discerned that these chambers were furnished with far more attention to detail than were any of the bare stone passages that had marked the rest of the catacombs. Woven carpets had once lined the floor, though most of these had rotted into a layer of moldy paste. The smell of decay was pungent here, and doorframes and beams of punky dried wood were visible in each of the four directions where the Theiwar could see corridors.

  "It's this way," said the kender. "If you're sure you want to-"

  "Don't try to back out now!" Cantor's heart pounded at the notion of the treasure that he sensed must be very near. He sniffed, and the spoor of riches was an almost tangible scent in the air. Unconsciously his fingers closed around the hilt of his knife.

  They passed through several more chambers, and the Theiwar was vaguely aware of tables, of the wreckage of bottles and vials, of leathery tomes that, though layered in dust, had somehow escaped the rot and mold that had claimed the wooden and fabric objects within the deep cell.

  "It's right there," Emilo said, halting abruptly and pointing to a shadowy archway. "Y-You go in if you want. I think I'll just wait here for-"

  "Oh, no, you don't!" Cantor's suspicions, always bubbling near the surface, burst into full boil. He gave the kender a hard shove, ignoring the sharp yell of protest, and then clumped after Emilo into a small room.

  Only it wasn't a room at all. Instead, the corridor seemed to continue until it ended in a blank stone wall. At first the dwarf was convinced he had been tricked, but when he glared downward at the kender, he saw that Emilo was paying him no attention. Instead, the little fellow's eyes were fixed upon an object at the base of the featureless wall.

  Cantor shifted his gaze and then gasped as he beheld the eyeless skull, lying on the stone floor, gaping up at him from those empty sockets. It was just a piece of white bone, identical in appearance to any of a hundred other skulls that the dwarf had seen. Yet there was something disquieting, undeniably menacing, about the morbid object. The skull did not move, nor was there any visible trace of illumination around it; neither did it emit any kind of noise that the dwarf could hear.

  But he could still not banish the sense that it was glaring, waiting, watching him. Shivering, he took
a step back, his pale Theiwar eyes still fixed upon the piece of bone.

  In fact, the fleshless visage was so distracting that it was several moments before the dwarf even thought to look at the other object lying on the otherwise featureless floor.

  "The jewel!" he declared, suddenly wrenching his gaze to the side. Trembling, he approached and knelt, though as yet he did not reach out to touch the gem.

  A golden chain, still bright amid the dust of the floor, indicated that the thing had once been worn around a person's neck. A filigree of fine gold wire enwrapped a single large stone, a gem of pale green that was unlike anything else Cantor had ever seen.

  He didn't need to identify the piece to know that it was tremendously valuable. This was an object unique in his experience, and that experience included very many encounters with precious gems of numerous varieties. And then he knew, his memory triggered by thoughts of a few odd stones of a type he had not seen for many decades.

  "It's a bloodstone," he said gruffly, greed thickening his voice. He reached out, touched the chain, then looped it over his wrist to lift the gem up to his eye level. "You can see traces of red fire-the same color as fresh blood-there, right below the surface."

  Avarice welled within the Theiwar's cruel heart, and he knew that he was holding the most precious object he had ever seen.

  "Maybe you want to look at it outside," said Emilo, edging toward the door. "Right this way."

  But Cantor wasn't listening. He stared at the stone, convinced that he was seeing flickers of light-hot, crimson bursts of illumination-deep within the gem. The pulses were faint, but visible to his keen eyes.

  "Uh, Cantor?" asked Emilo. "Can we get going now?"

  The dwarf snapped his head around to see that the kender had his back turned as he looked longingly up the corridor. With a snort of contempt, the dwarf realized that the little fellow was still nervous, unaccountably distressed by their presence here.

  And finally the dark dwarf remembered his other intent, the determination that he would leave no witnesses, none who knew where he had found this treasure, or even who knew of its existence, its possession by the rogue Theiwar.