Dark Thane

As the skald read the last name from his book, the last urn was emptied. A silence fell over the assembly. Shaken from his morose thoughts by the demand of his ceremonial duty, Tarn approached the basin, fluttering torch in hand. This was always a tricky undertaking, involving a certain degree of risk. Pure, unbridled dwarf spirits of the kind brewed in every local tavern were notoriously flammable, one might say explosively flammable. Battles had been won in the ancient past when walls were breached by dwarf spirit bombs being rolled against them and lit with flaming crossbow bolts. The king's spirits, being of a finer grade and brewed with better equipment and ingredients, were not so volatile, but still required careful handling. As was the custom, Tarn had donated from his private stores the urns of dwarf spirits to fill the drinking bowl of the dead. This was the way the king celebrated the Festival of Light, for this granite basin filled with dangerous spirits was his lamp, the only one he was allowed to light.

Standing well back, long torch in hand, Tarn touched the flame to the edge of the bowl. A blue-white column of fire shot up, roaring like a whirlwind, a plume of superheated glowing smoke rising high into the darkness of the great subterranean chamber. Everyone scurried away from the intense heat. And, as usual, the ends of Tarns eyebrows and beard hairs were scorched and smoking as he turned his face away from the flames.

Shnatz Ong started in surprise. "That signal!" he whispered excitedly.

He sat at the edge of the collapsed section of the tunnel, gazing down into the blackness and carelessly dangling his feet over the ledge. Earlier, he had watched numerous small collections of lights cross the black Urkhan Sea and gather along the shore of the massive dark bulk of the Isle of the Dead, hundreds of feet below him. Now, he saw a jet of blue-white flame rise up from the midst of the lights. He didn't really care what kind of sentimental ceremonies the Hylar conducted on the Isle of the Dead. Such was not his purpose in spying on them. Jungor had told him to watch for a pillar of blue-white fire, for that was the signal for him to complete his task. Leaping to his feet, he scurried off down the tunnel toward the light of the gully dwarves' torches.

His sudden return startled the lounging gully dwarves from their ruminations, waking the others from their naps. "Hurry, back to work. Dig! Dig!" he shouted.

"What wrong?" the gully dwarf named Hong cried as he clamored for his hammer and chisel.

"Somebody coming!" Shnatz said. "We got to get treasure before they get here."

"That just our luck," Hong muttered and he began to hack and bang at the stone. The other gully dwarves returned to their tasks with renewed fury. Stone chips flew under their pickaxes, and then the floor began to sink visibly, the walls to crack and moan.

"Must be some big treasure chamber!" one of the gully dwarves shouted excitedly as a large section of the floor beside him dropped away. He leaned over and looked into the hole it left behind. "I see twinkles, look like shiny rocks, whole bunches of shiny rocks, way far below!"

"Dig! Dig!" Hong cried. "How much deeper, you think?" That's when he noticed that Shnatz had disappeared again.

But of course, by that time, it was already too late.

21

Tarn shook the ashes from his hair and stood back to admire the pure elemental ferocity of the fire he'd ignited. The pillar of blue-white flame rose forty or more feet into the air and burned with a steady magnificence that was startling to behold, even for a people much accustomed to the intense flames of the forge fire and the smelting pit. He felt the heat baking the flesh of his face, almost as though he had, for a moment, stood too close to the sun.

Then, as quickly and violently as it began, the flame winked out. A few gossamer whisps of bluish fire were all that remained, dancing like elf spirits along the edges of the smoking granite basin. Even so, the dwarves could still see a great mushroom of smoke rising up and up toward the place where their city once hung. Their prayers, their hopes, their regrets, and their collective grief rose up with that swirling cloud, leaving their hearts lightened and their spirits lifted. Someone began to sing an ode to joy-one of the rarest songs of the dwarven musical catalogue. Tarn felt his own fears and thoughts of death shredded by that rising cloud of smoke. He knew it was nothing more than smoke, yet it left him feeling strangely at peace with his past as well as hopeful for the future. It had been many years, more years than he could remember, since any sort of ceremony, religious or otherwise, had affected him so deeply. It had brought him from his accustomed apathy to the depths of fear and despair in the visions of his dead son, and left him, at last, as though upon a plateau of joy.