Kender, Gully Dwarves, Gnomes (7 page)

The old dwarf's dreams that first night were filled with images of black-robed sorcerers
who were fighting him with deadly magic. He had no way of imagining Dalamar's enemy, this
“Qualinesti mage,” but his mind constructed a spectral figure in a hooded white robe, the
face hidden by the cowl except for terrible red eyes gleaming from its shadows. Lodston
woke from his nightmare with a shudder and lay awake staring at the dying embers in the
fireplace.

“What am I supposed to do if this mage from Qualinesti comes for your scrolls and books?”
he cried in a hushed voice, as if Dalamar could hear and advise him. “I don't know
anything about magic. I wouldn't even know which spell to read until it was too late. Why
should I have to fight your enemy when you ran away from him yourself?”

The silence that followed his desperate cry for help offered no solace. Lodston fumbled in
the darkness for the staff and the glasses. When he had found both magical items, he
crawled to the door. The only thing he could do, it seemed, was leave this business to
Dalamar and the mage from Qualinesti, whoever he was. He remembered stories from his
childhood about the Kinslayer Wars between different elven clans and wondered fleetingly
if that was the “war” that Milo Martin had mentioned.

“It's none of my business, any way you look at it!” he muttered at the door. Then he slid
the wooden bar aside and stepped into the darkness outside his dwarf-made cave. By the
silver light of the white moon, he could see the curious inscription on his front door
which he hadn't been able to read before. The runes flowed together under the power of the
Glasses of True Seeing, startling the hermit with their stark warning.

DEATH TO TRAITORS AND TO THOSE WHO HIDE THEM! it read.

Lodston felt his skin prickle with fear as he read his own death sentence. He whirled
around and probed the darkness with the aid of his new glasses, hoping to spot one of

Dalamar's enemies in the thick shadows of the cliff side bushes.

“And death to you!” he shouted into the darkness with a shake of the quarterstaff. “This
is my home! Leave me alone! I want nothing to do with elven squabbles!”

The old dwarf tensed himself, prepared to fight anyone who responded to his challenge, but
the stillness remained unbroken save for the steady gurgle of the Meltstone River below
him.

“Well, if magic's your game, then that's what you'll get from Nugold Lodston!” the hermit
shouted into the night. With that burst of bravado, he darted back inside the mine chamber
and bolted the door behind him. Then he opened the chest and looked at the mute wooden
scroll cases. Finally he shut his eyes behind the wizard's spectacles and reached inside
for another parchment.

He was more cautious this time. The gnarled fingers shook as he unfurled an inch or two of
the scroll's top edge and examined its surface carefully with the aid of his enchanted
spectacles. A single line of glyphs began to twist themselves into a meaningful phrase in
his mind.

TISNOLLO'S WONDROUS INCANTATION OF SUGGESTION read the parchment's title.

Encouraged by the fact that nothing dangerous had happened, Lodston unrolled another few
inches of the scroll and continued to read.

“To win powerful control over the thoughts and body of one's subject, the adept must focus
his occult energies upon the . . .”

Aha! Wait until I spring this one on Milo! he thought gleefully. Lodston's childish
excitement stifled his immediate curiosity. He re-rolled the parchment tightly and
returned it to its case. Then he made a small mark on the polished wood with a charred
stick from the fireplace. He couldn't write, but he might at least mark the scrolls to
distinguish those which seemed safe from those which were more dangerous. Then he reached
for another of the powerful parchments.

By sunrise, the would-be wizard had catalogued each of the scrolls into one of four
categories: “tricks,” which meant (he thought) harmless spells he wanted to use on people
he knew, such as Milo Martin; “guard spells,” which seemed to protect their caster from
harm; “attack spells,” whose

titles suggested more aggressive results; and “unknown spells,” whose results the
untrained hermit could not predict even by reading and understanding the first few lines.

A sorcerer needs a sorcerer's robe, Lodston thought, delighted with the promise of new and
unusual powers. He lifted Dalamar's black robe from the table and let it fall loosely over
his head. A blend of cloying fragrances stormed his nostrils from the hundreds of hidden
pockets which had contained the wizard's spell components and ingredients for herbal
potions. The pockets were empty now, but residue of their exotic contents remained to
perfume the silken fabric.

The hermit had planned to gather the voluminous garment at the waist to adjust its length,
but the robe seemed to sense his shorter height. At the moment the light but strong fabric
settled on his shoulders, Lodston felt Dalamar's power surging in the robe and spreading
into his own body. The flawless stitches seemed to shrink closer together, drawing the
garment's hem from the floor until it barely covered the dwarfs boots.

Suddenly, the dark elf's lingering dweomer flooded Lodston's mind with alien thoughts and
impulses, confusing the dwarf with flashing images of fire, pain, and dark presences. Just
as the psychic turmoil was becoming unbearable, it stopped. The powerful memories melted
and receded into Lodston's aged brain, merging with his own dim recollections of the past.
A wave of energy swept into his arthritic limbs, dulling their pain and moving him toward
the door. The black-robed figure that descended the cliff and strode confidently toward
Digfel bore little resemblance to the reclusive dwarf who made golden toys for children.

Four days later, the Pig Iron Alehouse was buzzing with gossip about Lodston and his guest
from Sylvanesti.

“He must be an evil sorcerer, part of that trouble in the north,” someone whispered.

“Nobody's ever seen him, but look at old Lodston!”

“I saw him reading a spell from a scroll!” claimed one witness. "He called up a lightning
bolt and set the blacksmith's shop on fire, just because the smith spat on the ground when
he walked past! Old Lodston always was an ornery cuss, but never that mean. I think that
elf has cast an

evil spell on him.“ ”Dwarves don't know anything about magic," scoffed a

less superstitious townsman. “I heard that was some kind of family feud - something to do
with the old gold mine. The hermit probably kept the blacksmith busy while the elf set the
fire.”

“I know what I saw!” protested the witness. “He had on some funny glasses and was reading
from a piece of parchment when the lightning came right out of his hands just before the
scroll blew up!”

“I heard Lodston tell Tidbore Ummer that his sheep were going to die, and they did - every
one of them! Tidbore said the old fool told him he read the future from a magic scroll.”

“That old gold-hound can't read!” “Read? By Paladine, he can't even see!” "Well, he can
now! I heard that this elf is a healer, not a

wizard, and that he made some glasses to heal the dwarf's eyesight," someone whispered.

There was a nervous titter as a flurry of gossip about healing spectacles spread among the
tables.

“If that were true, the Seekers from Solace would be crawling all over us. A healer in
Krynn? Don't be a fool!” "To me, the biggest puzzle is why a dwarf would take up

with an elf. They're supposed to hate each other, you know."

“That wouldn't be a special problem for Nugold Lodston. He hates everybody and everything,
except gold, that is!”

“That's not any harder to believe than an elf in black robes, I tell you. If you ask me,
it's got something to do with all that mess in the north.”

“Maybe he and this Dalamar like something else about each other, if you know what I mean!”

The drunken insinuation cut through the underlying tension of the conversation, causing
peals of laughter to fill the tavern. During the raucous outbreak of crude jokes about
Lodston and Dalamar, a man clad in a rough wool cloak flipped the hood closer around his
face. Then he tossed an iron coin on the table and left the tavern.

While the patrons of the Pig Iron Alehouse were debating over the nature of his
relationship with Dalamar, Nugold Lodston was on the other side of Digfel, shaking his
stick in Milo Martin's flushed face. Even his voice had changed in

the last several days, developing an impatient edge and a curious clipped accent.

“You heard what we want! We'll expect delivery, as usual, before nightfall!”

“I can't do that, Nugold,” Martin insisted. “My cart was in the blacksmith's shop when you
. . . uh, when it caught fire. It'll be a week before I'm able to bring all this stuff out
to you. Tell Dalamar it's not my fault!”

Martin looked away from the dwarf's angry gaze behind the curious hexagonal glasses.
Though he had never met the elf, he now feared Lodston's guest. The powers which the elven
wizard had bestowed upon his unlikely dwarven friend were more than the shopkeeper wanted
to face. Hadn't they changed the irascible but harmless old hermit into a fearsome
sorcerer with a more dangerous temper? Hadn't the elf somehow healed the dwarf's failing
vision with the enchanted spectacles perched upon Lodston's huge nose?

“Well, bring it as soon as you get your cart fixed,” growled the dwarf as he turned to
leave Martin's shop. “Just remember what I said about the door, if you value your life!”

“I know, I know!” the man mumbled. “You and the elf have placed a curse on it. No thief in
his right mind would try to steal anything from you or your new 'friend.' ”

Lodston smirked behind his whiskers and stepped through the doorway onto the street. The
curious little glasses perched on his thick nose sparkled in the late morning sun. The
bully, Joss, interrupted a conspiratorial discussion with a pair of teenaged pickpockets
and muttered a hasty warning. The unscrupulous trio darted into the shadows, away from
Lodston's path. The hermit scowled in their direction, wishing he had a suitably
vindictive spell to cast upon the fleeing threesome.

I've used all the scrolls I understand, he mused on his way home. I guess I'll just have
to take a chance on a strange one, if I mean to keep these human clods on their toes.

When he reached the mine, Lodston headed immediately for the chest. He had already used
all of the “fun” and “attack” spells and was ready to risk reading one or two incantations
in his “unknown” category in order to strengthen his image in Digfel as a dangerous
sorcerer. The

hermit unrolled the first scroll he found with four black marks and began to read it.

HAPGAMMITON'S MODE OF INTERPLANAR GATING

TO SUMMON OTHER INTELLIGENCES RESIDING ON OTHER PLANES OF EXISTENCE, IT IS ESSENTIAL FOR
THE CASTER TO PREPARE HIMSELF FOR FIVE CONSECUTIVE NIGHTS PRIOR TO UTTERING THE
INCANTATION. FAILURE TO PURIFY HIMSELF BEFOREHAND WILL RENDER THE INCANTATION EITHER
POWERLESS OR UNPREDICT ABLE.

Bah! I already knew it was unpredictable! Lodston thought. The worst that can come of it
is that it'll fail. In that case, I can just pick another one. Undaunted, the amateur
wizard skipped the rest of the page and began reading the ancient words at the bottom of
the parchment.

His pronunciation and understanding of the forgotten elvish dialect had grown more
accurate with each reading of Dalamar's scroll's. This time, his dwarven accents had
dwindled to a mere trace, as had much of his original personality before it was dominated
by the dark elf's spells and robe. Lodston intoned the ancient words perfectly, letting
the scroll's dweomer fuse with the vestiges of Dalamar's power within his mind and body.

MARGASH JORAS NOLLEN GRATH GRISSIT DORSI, GRISSIT BLUDE;

ITEL FOMA DRILID SHUDE; MARGASH NEPPS U HALLEM GRATH!

OBEY THESE WORDS OF POWER

WATCHERS OF THE THRESHOLD, WATCHERS AT THE GATE,

UNBAR THE GUARDED DOOR;

OBEY THE COMMAND OF THIS SERVANT OF POWER!

Beneath the dwarf's feet, the firm rock floor seemed to quiver as he spoke the final
spellwords. Lodston's untrained concentration shattered completely when a thin stream of

opaque light seemed to slice through both floor and ceiling of his sturdy artificial cave.
The frightened hermit collapsed in a babbling heap on the floor, shielding his face from
the intensifying light.

Suddenly the beam began to split, as if a doorway were opening onto a new yet darker
dimension. Peering through his trembling fingers, Lodston saw moving forms just inside the
opening, monstrous forms with scaly appendages and tentacles writhing and lurching toward
the threshold produced by Dalamar's scroll.

The dwarf began to moan and crawled toward the door. Just as he was reaching for the bar,
the stout wooden timbers exploded from some terrible force on the outside. The blast drove
scores of thick splinters into the dwarf's head and chest and dashed him against the far
wall with such force that he crumpled to the floor in a daze. The Glasses of True Seeing
fell from his face into his lap, adding natural blindness to the old hermit's stupor. He
could still see the gaping doorway because of the sunlight outside the entrance. He could
also see a bulky figure clad and cowled in rough wool framed by the shattered sill.

“Idiot! What have you done?”

Dalamar's distinctive accent boomed in the small chamber.

“Dalamar!” the hermit tried to cry. “Help . . .”

“Quiet, you ignorant fool! I must try to undo what you've done before the gate widens!”

Blood from several gashes in his head blinded the dwarf even more. He was growing weaker
and was clutching desperately to consciousness. Through the haze, he could barely see
Dalamar marking the floor with a bit of chalk. Tentacled paws and stranger appendages were
probing the air above the dark elf's head while he began chanting a singsong phrase over
and over again from within the sanctuary of the hastily drawn pentagram.