The Weight of a Throne

Somehow in the chaos of the battle Baker Whitegranite had lost his glasses. He crouched next to the garden wall of a fine Hylar manor, feeling along the ground, trying to find the place he'd fallen when the bizarre shadows had first attacked. It was then that his spectacles had been knocked off of his face, though in the grip of confusion and terror he hadn't noticed the loss immediately. Still frightened, he tried to stay low as he scooted along the ground, hearing screams and shouts and clashing weapons nearby.

Finally the sounds faded, and Baker crept back to the place where he had first fallen. Through his blurred vision he saw a hint of crystalline gleam and finally put his hands over the familiar golden frame. Touching the twin lenses, he breathed a sigh of relief as he discovered that they were unbroken.

Baker quickly wiped his spectacles on a corner of his stained tunic, then put them back onto his face. His sight was still bleary, and one of the lenses seemed to have been permanently scuffed, but they were clear enough to confirm that things on Level Twenty-eight looked as bad as they sounded.

And that was very bad indeed.

The fight had moved on from here, though the echoes, smells, and gore still lingered heavily in the air and on the ground. He saw dead dwarves who had been locked in combat with each other, Hylar and Klar intermingled, mouths gaping and eyes bulging in mute testimony to the horror of their last moments. In other places he saw empty lumps of armor and clothing, weapons lying nearby. There was no sign at all of the dwarven flesh that had worn the pathetic remnants only minutes-or was it hours?-before. These were the places where the horrifying chill shadows had slithered past.

Baker heard shouts and screams and the occasional clash of a sword or shield coming from down the street. Looking up, he saw a hint of the shadowy attackers, manlike beings of pure darkness that moved steadily away from him.

He tried to reconstruct the last few minutes since the wall had melted and the wave of horror had surged into Thorbardin. But details were curiously vague in his mind. He recalled dark and shadowy beings, intangible but very deadly nevertheless. They had emerged in countless numbers, breaking right through the stone walls to sweep into the ranks of the battling dwarves.

One thing was certain. The shadowy invaders were no friends of the Klar. The crazed dwarves, already frenzied from battling the Hylar, had turned with fresh fury to fight the dark forms. The dwarves had been swept aside, eradicated like a nest of pesky rats. Although the mere touch of the shadow beings proved instantly fatal, this did not prevent the maddened Klar from pressing home their suicidal attacks.

Hylar had also fallen victim to the horrific onslaught, and Baker had seen many of his countrymen slain before his eyes. At least he thought he had-though when he tried to recall the battle, to put faces on those brave fighters, everything was terribly confusing. He looked at the wrecked Ferrust house. He clearly remembered old Black-beard Ferrust, the prominent coal seller. Beside that ruin had stood another once-great house, emptied without visible damage by the shadow attack. It was a mighty edifice, and Baker was pretty sure that a very influential clan of Hylar had lived there. Yet that family had been annihilated by the shadow warriors, and now the thane couldn't recall their names, their roles in the city, or anything else about them.

Slumping against the stone in weariness, he wondered about his son. Was Tarn dead too? Was he caught in the onslaught of Chaos? Or had he joined ranks with the dark dwarves? Angrily the thane shook his head at the last notion. He refused to believe that Tarn's loyalties would be so easily twisted. Closing his eyes, he breathed a silent prayer to Reorx, pleading that the young dwarf remained unhurt.

Leaning against the wall, feeling the familiar burning in his stomach, Baker felt like giving up. But instead he listened again to the growing silence and then again heard the hint of sounds. Groans came from beneath a section of the wall that had fallen flat into the street. Baker hurried to the place and tried to move the heavy slab. Though he tore off one of his fingernails in the attempt, he could not budge the heavy weight. Once more he heard a fading moan.

Standing up, he was able to spot an elder Hylar kicking through the rubble of a nearby building. From his silk vests, shiny leather boots, and the magnifying eyepiece he wore on a gold chain, the thane deduced that the fellow was a gem cutter.

"Help!" he called, and the other dwarf hastened over to lend a hand with the flat piece of stone. But after they had moved it, they could only look down helplessly at the blue-faced corpse of a young dwarfmaid.

"She suffocated before we could get her free," Baker said, feeling horribly guilty.

"There were more noises over there," reported the jeweler, pointing to the nearby rubble where Baker had first seen him.

The thane accompanied the gem cutter, and they were quickly joined by more Hylar, young and old, males and females, who seemed to appear from nowhere. In a few minutes they had freed a mother and two children who had been buried alive, saved from being crushed by an overhanging shelf of what had once been their ceiling.

"Let's get them down to safety," Baker suggested, wondering if in fact any place in Hybardin was free from danger right now. "Does the lift still work?" he asked the group.

"The chain was broken when I passed it an hour ago," said one of the rescuers, a burly smith by the look of him. "They was workin' to get it fixed, though."

"Then let's get the injured to the station and see what can be done."

Willing hands lifted those unable to walk, while others limped along with the group.

For the time being the battle had seemed to settle into a quiet stasis. Baker stopped to take a look around his beloved city's highest level. He could see some of the creatures he called shadow monsters, far down the street from him, slithering around the ruins of several structures. The shadows glided like cats or oozed along the ground.

Baker turned toward the lift, surprised to note that the big blacksmith and several other brawny Hylar were waiting for him.

"What's your name?" asked the thane, grateful for the company.

"Capper Whetstone, my lord thane, at your service. I would be grateful for the chance to stand at your side.

I say with all respect, lord, that you should not be walking around here without protection."

"Yes, thank you." He briefly wondered about his earlier bodyguards. He had met them and conversed with them, of course, but now he couldn't recall their names or anything about them.

"I'll stay here and keep watch, my lord thane," offered a new voice, and Baker was surprised to see the Hylar jeweler, his single-lens viewer still hanging from its golden chain. "I've got a good eye, and I'll keep it on those marauding shades down there. I'll give a holler if they start coming this way."

Baker was touched by the fellow's loyalty. "That would be a good service. Just make sure to run while you're hollering," he replied.

And then he was struck by a question that suddenly seemed very important. "What's your name?"

"I am called Emerald-Eye the Younger," said the Hylar, touching his neatly trimmed beard with his fingers as he performed a deep and formal bow.

By the time Baker and his escort of a half dozen Hylar had neared the lift station, the engineers had made their repairs, and the great cage was rattling up to its landing. Baker was relieved to see that Axel Slateshoulders was returning from his mission of inspection. The veteran captain seemed strangely dazed, failing to react until the thane called him twice.