Kender, Gully Dwarves, Gnomes (6 page)

“No!” blurted his impatient listener. “Forget the language! What happened then?”

“Settle down, and let me finish the story! There was this light, kind of a white glow like
moonshine, that got stronger with every word he read. It was coming from the scroll, but
it spread all over his body. By the time he finished reading them words, it got so bright
in my cave that it hurt my eyes to look at him.”

“How long did it last?” Milo Martin asked breathlessly.

“I reckon not more than two or three minutes after he stopped reading,” said the hermit.
"Soon as it was gone, he stands up and heads for the door. He steps outside and

looks around the cave, like he's checking the ground for footprints or something. 'What
are you doing?' I asks him. 'What was that bright light in there?'

" 'They're not here yet,' he says.

“ 'Who's not here?' I asks him, but he just comes back inside and sits by the fire again.
That's when I looked at the scroll he was reading.”

“Well? What did it look like?” Martin prompted.

“Nothing,” the dwarf answered. “There was nothing on it at all. Dalamar wrote that list on
it this mom-ing!”

The startled shopkeeper dropped the parchment onto the counter as if it were a hot coal.
Then he retrieved it and studied the writing more carefully. He even held it near a candle
to see if the heat would reveal hidden characters of any kind. Regardless of the events at
the hermit's cave, the “magic scroll” was now nothing more than a grocery list.

“See what I told you?” said Lodston. “The spellwords are gone. All I know is that whatever
he saw last night scared him.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because he didn't go right to sleep. He made a sign with some ashes on the inside of the
door and then bolted it like he thought somebody was going to try to break in. In the
morning, he gave me that list and told me to get the stuff in a hurry. He handed me his
staff and said I needed to take it with me; that's when he whispered the secret word in my
ear to make it work.”

“What secret word?” demanded Martin, his eyes riveted to the enchanted weapon.

“None of your business,” replied the dwarf, “and I can't give you this staff. It's the
elf's, not mine. Now give me those goods, and let me get back to the cave before dark. I
don't know why he wanted all this stuff, but he told me to hurry.”

“You promised me . . .”

“I never promised you anything, Milo Martin!” countered the hermit. “But if you want me to
tell Dala-mar that you wouldn't loan him the things on that list . . .”

“All right, all right!” growled the cautious merchant. Martin was angry with himself for
letting Nugold Lodston trick him into another extension of his credit, but he was also
hoping to find a way to acquire much more than just the staff.

“Tell this Dalamar that I want to meet him,” the shopkeeper said in a calmer voice. “I
have a few business ideas that may interest him. Knowledge like this can be a valuable
piece of merchandise. I know of several people who would pay fortunes to get a single
glimpse of the future.”

“Like you?” Lodston snorted sarcastically. He collected the provisions in a bulky sack and
headed for the door. “Don't forget to tell him what I said!” Martin called as

the hermit stumbled into the empty street without looking back.

Lodston's “cave” was actually an abandoned dwarven gold mine. For centuries before he was
born, the hermit's people had tunneled into the mountainside near the Meltstone River,
enriching both themselves and the local human merchants with great amounts of the yellow
metal. When iron ingots replaced gold and silver as the most precious substance on Krynn -
to make weapons of steel - the rich Hylar dwarves near Digfel became paupers. Only a
handful of the sturdy miners remained in human towns in the foothills of the dwarven
highlands, becoming blacksmiths and armorers. Human prospectors took their place as
miners, but of iron ore rather than softer metals such as gold and silver.

Nugold Lodston chose to remain in the Hylar hills, making cheap golden toys and baubles
for local children. He cherished the gleaming metal more than he had ever loved anyone,
dwarf or human. He also could not bear the tedium of toiling over a blistering iron forge
to produce weapons and tools of burnished steel. Humans craving such products of the
dwarven metallurgists regarded Lodston as a traitor, one who had critical skills but
refused to use them. Even the few of his own race left in Digfel spat on the ground
whenever he passed, a sign of ultimate rejection among the Hylar dwarves.

“Dalamar! Come help me!” the hermit called from the trail by the river. “I've carried
these things far enough already!”

Lodston waited, staring up the riverbank toward the entrance to the mine shaft, but there
was no sign of movement. Then he noticed that the door was ajar. The worried elf had
slammed and barred the thick portal behind him seconds after Lodston had left for Digfel.
Why would

Dalamar be leaving the door open now? Dropping the heavy cloth sack on the sandy trail,
the old

hermit broke into a doddering run up the hill to his cave. He sensed that some terrible
event had befallen the elven sorcerer even before he saw the footprints in the dirt
outside the shaft entrance. There were scores of boot marks with low heelprints in the
soft earth, as well as the tracks of several large hounds. The dwarf dropped closer to the
ground to focus his failing sight on the muddy threshold where the searchers had entered
his home. Four large symbols had been drawn in black soot on the timber over the gaping
door, but the illiterate hermit could not understand the inscriptions.

“Dalamar!” he called softly, hesitant to push the door. In his nightmares, unseen evils
always lurked within silent doorways like this one. “Are you in there?”

Only the constant sound of the river below the shaft broke the ominous silence. Lodston
finally mustered the courage to squelch his imagination and kicked the door open wide
enough to peer into the antechamber of the ancient mine shaft.

It was empty. The fire was still warm, and a lamp had been lit beside the small table.
There were no remnants of death and dismemberment, as he had expected to see - not even a
sign of a struggle. The door leading into the abandoned network of shafts was bolted
securely on the antechamber side. Dalamar and his box of scrolls had vanished, perhaps
taken without a struggle by the strangers with the dogs. The enchanted staff in Lodston's
gnarled hands seemed to be all that remained of his strange guest.

The hermit scrambled down the steep bank in the failing light of dusk and retrieved the
sack of provisions. When he returned to the mine shaft, he slammed the door and slid the
heavy wooden bar into place to guard it from whomever had come for the elven sorcerer.
Then he threw another log on the fire and fumbled among the large ingots of gold in a
basket beside the table for one to melt into a toy figure. He saw the end of a parchment
case as soon as he moved the first bar of gold. It was one of the elf's scrolls!

“Ah! They left one behind!” he exclaimed aloud. The familiar echoes of his own voice
inside the mine's entry chamber was a friendly, reassuring sound. Lod ston's tension
melted, giving way to excitement. The old hermit

fumbled clumsily with the scroll case, finally managing to dump the neatly rolled white
parchment into his filthy hand.

Trembling with anticipation, he pressed an end of the scroll to the table and unrolled it
beneath the light of the lamp. There was a hasty line drawing at the top of the page, just
above some undecipherable characters in Dalamar's flourishing script.

“Hey, that's me!” Lodston croaked, peering at the drawing. Sure enough, Dalamar had drawn
a crude caricature of the hermit's profile. The bulbous nose and bushy eyebrows were
unmistakable. Beside the face, the wizard had drawn his own spectacles, equally obvious
because of their curious hexagonal lenses and wire rims. A dotted arrow led from the
glasses to Lodston's profile, and a solid arrow from his eyes to the text below the
drawing. Even a child could understand the simple diagram.

“He wants me to put on his glasses, but where are they?” muttered the hermit.

He began rummaging through the room, his excited imagination blossoming into full-blown
frenzy. After searching inside, under and on top of everything in the sparsely furnished
chamber, the only thing he discovered was the absence of his oldest cloak, a tattered,
floor-length garment of crudely woven wool. He sat down heavily in the chair and stared
once more at the elf's drawing.

Suddenly he knew where the glasses had to be. He whirled around toward the basket of gold
ore and began tossing the heavy nuggets on the floor. The wire-rimmed spectacles were at
the bottom of the pile, wrapped in thick goatskin and wedged into a crevice between two
huge nuggets to protect them from the weight of the ore. Lodston thrust the wire rims
around his hairy ears and peered again at the parchment.

The black characters beneath the drawing began to swim and wriggle before his eyes. The
motion was so distracting at first that Lodston felt a little lightheaded and dizzy. Soon,
though, the characters settled into firmer images, more in the dwarf's mind than on the
scroll.

“I can't read,” he muttered in amazement, “yet I know exactly what this says!” The elf's
message in wizard-scrawl was brief but clear:

THE QUALINESTI MAGE HAS FOUND ME.

GUARD MY SCROLLS AND BOOKS WITH YOUR LIFE. IF I FAIL TO RETURN WITHIN A MONTH, YOU MUST
TAKE THEM TO LADONNA, MISTRESS OF BLACK ARTS IN THE TOWER OF HIGH SORCERY AT WAYRETH. YOU
WILL FIND THEM BEHIND THE OLD DOOR. GO INTO THE TUNNEL AND TURN LEFT AT THE FOURTH
PASSAGE. WALK TWELVE PACES AND LOOK UP. MY STAFF AND THESE DWARVEN GLASSES OF TRUE SEEING
WILL REPAY YOU FOR YOUR PAST AND FUTURE KINDNESSES.

DO NOT TRY TO READ THE OTHER PARCHMENTS! THEIR POWER WOULD DESTROY YOU AND ATTRACT MY
ENEMIES.

DALAMAR

Lodston removed the enchanted glasses, only to see the magical writing encode itself again
in his mind. He experimented with them a few more times, feeling the message swim in and
out of his awareness each time he donned and removed the spectacles. He also noticed that
he could see his surroundings perfectly whenever he was wearing the magical lenses.

“ 'Glasses of True Seeing,' huh? Now that's some piece of sorcery!” he exclaimed aloud.
“Healing an old dwarf's eyesight and teaching him to read secret spells all at the same
time!” Lodston could not have known that the “healing” effects were accidental. The
lenses, which some unknown dwarven wizard had used to fashion the enchanted spectacles,
just happened to have the right angle of refraction to improve Lodston's failing vision.

The jubilant hermit unbolted the inner door and ran into the tunnels, following Dalamar's
directions to the letter. At the twelfth step in the fourth passageway, he looked upward,
using the lamplight and his wondrous new glasses to study the shadows of the ceiling. The
small chest was wedged between the tunnel roof and a loose timber, just as the parchment
had promised. He quickly pried it loose and scurried back to the antechamber to study his
newfound treasure.

Lodston opened the unlocked lid of the chest and dumped its contents on the table in the
lamplight. Dalamar's voluminous robe tumbled onto the rough wooden surface, forming a
black cushion for dozens of small parchment

cases and several slender books covered in purple silk and bound with leather straps.

“So he traded me his fine black robe for my old cloak, huh? Sorcerers might be brainy, but
they're short on common sense,” Lodston muttered to himself. The hermit picked up each
scroll separately, weighing it in his hands and examining it with his powerful new
spectacles. Still he saw nothing unusual about any of them.

“Why didn't he put labels on them?” mumbled the curious dwarf. “What good are enchanted
glasses if there's nothing to read with them? At least they should have titles so I'd know
what I'm guarding 'with my life.' ”

For several minutes of agonizing temptation, Lodston stared first at the scrolls, then at
the note from Dalamar. Finally, he snorted and started returning the cases, one-by- one,
to the chest. He held the last one in his hand a moment too long, letting curiosity win
the battle with judgment. With a muffled growl of surrender, he squinted behind the tiny
glasses perched upon his huge nose and opened the scroll case.

Once again, the magical glyphs on the parchment writhed into a meaningful form, the words
of an incantation in some unknown language forcing themselves from the dwarf's throat.

“DRISH FETTS, DRISH FETTS, LORGON TRITS,” he heard his own voice pronouncing, but he could
not understand what he was saying.

Lodston found it difficult to recall which of several things happened first at the instant
he uttered the last syllable of the strange incantation. The scroll itself flared with a
yellow light, then disintegrated into fine ashes in his hands. At the same time (it
seemed) a huge sphere of orange flames formed itself from the yellow glow of the scroll
and shot forward, away from the hermit. In a blinding, deafening explosion, the fireball
struck the pantry wall with such stunning force that Lodston was slammed to the rock floor
of the antechamber.

“Great Reorx!” he swore when he was able to stagger to his feet. The pantry, with its
dirty dishes and utensils, plus some sacks of food, had been completely destroyed! The
nearest comer of the ancient mine chamber was charred and bare of everything. The wooden
shelves had disintegrated into smoking embers on the floor. Lodston looked at the

pile of seemingly harmless scroll-cases in the chest and slammed its lid shut with a
fearful cry.

“I won't touch another one of the damnable things!” he vowed in a ringing shout, as if he
were promising the absent Dalamar that he would never disobey him again. “You and this
'Ladonna' can have these evil things to yourselves!”