Dark Thane

In a tiny room lit by fire, his haggard face starkly divided between light and shadow down the crooked line of his nose, the captain of the North Gate solemnly nodded his sweaty bald head. Released, the mechanism slowly commenced its turn. Driven by swift, icy water hidden behind stone, it propelled a gleaming steel screw thick as an Urkhan worm into the side of the mountain. The gate, a solid plug of stone, swung out of its cavern lair on hinged steel arms and slid into position over the coiling rod, silent as the first day of Creation. The floor shuddered with the leviathan waking of the machine.

In his bed deep inside his fortress home, in the dark with his wife breathing deep and slow beside him, Tarn Bellowgranite wondered if it would be enough. Enough to keep Beryl out, when she came, if she came. Enough to quiet the souls of those he'd led to their doom. Somewhere in the world above, the elves of Qualinost wandered alone. He wondered if they knew the price he'd paid for their freedom, sacrificing his own. He wondered if their young king deserved it. He wondered if he had the right to wonder or the wisdom to question. He fell asleep and clutched the sheets as he dreamed of drowning dwarves.

In the city beneath the stone, Norbardin, Jungor Stonesinger paused in his garden, submersed in sudden moonlight. By some unlikely chance, Krynn's pale moon had chosen that moment to peer down through the skylight and limn every line and shape in silver and forest green, startling him as though he had walked, unaware, onto a stage. In his fancy, the lights had come up and the crowd sat breathless in their seats, awaiting the chorus that would open the play. The blistered skin round his eyeless socket tightened as he recalled his lines and smiled. He had written this play himself.

In the darkness of the Anvil's Echo, Ferro Dunskull lost himself in a pale Daergar beauty, as rare and pure as a black dragon's tear, whose name he had already forgot. His fear and anger and loneliness he poured out like a bitter libation onto her floor, both needing and hating her, and she welcomed him into her small, well-apportioned room, hungry to share his power. Her limbs long and lithe, the flat round of her belly pallid as moonlight, she paused at the edge of the candle's light, a crystal decanter of black brandy hanging from the crook of her finger. He turned away to hide his sneer.