Flint the King p2-2

  Flint the King

  ( Preludes 2 - 2 )

  Mary Kirchoff

  Douglas Niles

  Mary Kirchoff, Douglas Niles

  Flint the King

  Prologue

  The hammer fell rhyththmically against the anvil, oven and over, gradually returning the wheelrim to its circular shape. A sheen of perspiration glistened on the dwarven smith's skin when the fire rose, but then he fell into shadows as the blaze sank into the coals. The smithy around him was empty, dark but for the forge fire.

  As the hill dwarf's body labored, so did his mind, franti cally. He thought about the secret he had learned, scarce minutes before. Again and again his hammer fell on the rim as he pushed himself past the point of exhaustion. Sparks exploded from each contact, hissing through the air before settling to the earthen floor of the shed.

  Indecision tormented him. Should he remain silent?

  Should he speak out? The hammer continued pounding.

  Immersed in his task, the dwarf did not see the grotesque figure moving through the shadowy doorway. For a mo ment the fire flared, outlining a black, misshapen figure shorter even than the dwarven smith.

  This dark one shuffled forward, and again the blaze rose, revealing a hump of flesh that twisted the stunted body half sideways. Still the smith hammered, eyes focused on the wheel, unaware of the one who slowly limped toward him from behind.

  The hunchbacked figure raised a hand to his chest and wrapped his blunt fingers around a small object that hung suspended from his neck by a chain.

  Blue light glowed between those fingers as the amulet sparked to life. His other hand gestured toward the smith.

  Softly, the blue light spread outward, advancing slowly like an oily, penetrating mist. It reached forward in uneven tend rils, closer and closer to the smith.

  For the first time, the hammer faltered slightly in its blow.

  Reflexively, the dwarf raised it again, ready to strike. Sud denly his face distorted in a grimace of unimaginable agony, and his body convulsed with a violent spasm. For a moment his movement ceased, as if he had been frozen in a grip of ex cruciating pain.

  The hammer remained poised above him as his body stiff ened, wracked within the blue glow that outlined him. The gentle, almost beautiful cocoon belied the supernatural grip of its power. Only the dwarf's eyes moved, growing wider and more desperate with the slowly increasing, inevitably fatal pressure of dark sorcery.

  Abruptly the light vanished, and the hunchback shuffled backward, melting into the darkness.

  The dwarven smith's hammer finally slid from his gloved hand with a loud clang to the anvil. Slowly, the corpse top pled forward, the stocky body splaying across the anvil and the nearly straightened wheel. It slipped silently to the cold ground.

  Chapter 1

  Autumn Winds

  Watching dead leaves swirl into his windowss, Flint Fireforge threw back his mug and swallowed the last of his draught. A satisfied belch ruffled his thick mustache. For cheap ale, it wasn't half bad, he concluded. But it was gone.

  He held the empty bottle — his last — up to the light of the fire. The dwarf stroked his salt-and-pepper beard out of habit. After considering his empty larder, Flint decided that it was time to see if his ale order was in at the greengrocer's.

  He was going to have to leave the comfort of his home and fire for only the third time in the month since his friends had left the treetop village of Solace.

  The dwarf and his companions — Tanis Half-Elven, Tas slehoff Burrfoot, Caramon and Raistlin Majere, Kitiara

  Uth-Matar, and Sturm Brightblade — had parted ways to discover what they could of the rumors concerning the true clerics, agreeing to meet again in exactly five years. Flint had spent much of his time in the last few years adventuring with his much younger friends or traveling to fairs to sell his metalsmithing and woodcarvings. Truly he missed them, now that they were gone. But the truth of the matter was, at one hundred forty years, the middle-aged dwarf was just plain tired. So, being reclusive by nature, he had stayed at home and done little more than eat, drink, sleep, stoke the fire, and whittle in the month since their departure.

  Flint's stomach rumbled. Patting the noisy complainer, he reluctantly eased his bulk from his overstuffed chair near the fire, brushing wood shavings from his lap as he stood.

  He pulled his woolly vest closer and looked about his home for his leather boots.

  The house was small by the measure of the human-sized buildings up in the trees. But his home, built in the base of an old, hollowed-out vallenwood, was quite large by dwar ven standards — opulent even, he reflected, with not a little pride. Sure, it didn't have the large nooks and crannies found in the caves-turned-houses of his native foothills near the Kharolis Mountains, nor was there the ever-present homey scent only a white-hot forge could produce. But he had carved every inch of the inside of his tree into shelves or friezes depicting vivid and nostalgic scenes from his home- ' land. These included a forging contest, dwarven miners at work, and the simple skyline of his boyhood village. Such carvings were not easily done on the stone walls of the homes of most hill dwarves.

  The stroke of his knife over a firm piece of wood was Flint's greatest joy, though the gruff hill dwarf would never have admitted such a sentiment. Idly, he raised his hand to one of the friezes, touching his fingers to the carved crest of a jagged ridge, following the dips and summits. He dropped his hand to the carvings of the dark pine forests below the crest, admiring the precise bladework that had marked each tree in individual relief on the wall.

  With a large, shuddering sigh, Flint took his heavy, well worn leather boots from under a bench by the door and jammed them onto his thick feet. There was nothing to be done about it — he'd put off this errand as long as he could.

  The massive vallenwood front door creaked as Flint opened it, causing the shutters on his windows to bang in the chill breeze, their hinges sagging like an old woman's stockings. They ought to be repaired — there were many such tasks to be done before the first snow fell.

  Flint's home was one of the few in Solace at ground level, since he was one only of a handful of non-humans living in the town, including dwarves. While the view from up in the trees was quite lovely, Flint had no interest in living in a drafty, swaying house. Wooden walkways suspended by strong cords attached to high branches were the sidewalks of Solace. Probably they had provided a useful means of de fense against the bandit armies that had once ranged across the plains of Abanasinia in the wake of the Cataclysm.

  Nowadays the trees served as an aesthetic delight, Solace's trademark. People came from many miles away simply to gaze on the city of vallenwood.

  The day was cool but not cold, and warming sunshine cut through the thick trees in slanted white lines. The greengro cer's shop rose above the very center of the eastern edge of the town square, a short distance away. Flint set out for the nearest spiral stair leading to the bridgewalks overhead. By the time his short legs had pumped him to the top of the cir cling thirty-foot wooden ramp, his brow had broken out in beads of sweat. Flint plucked at the furry edges of his vest and wished he hadn't dressed so warmly; he slipped his arms from it and draped the leather and wool garment over one shoulder. He saw the grocer's, at the end of a long straighta way.

  For the first time in quite a while, Flint truly noticed his surroundings. The village of Solace was washed in vivid fall colors. But unlike the maples or oaks of other areas, each large vallenwood leaf turned red, green, and gold in perfect, alternating angled stripes of about an inch wide. So instead of seeing blazing clumps of solid color, the landscape was a multicolored jumble. The bright sunlight cast the leaves in a shimmering iridescence that shif
ted in shade and intensity with each passing breeze.

  The view from the bridgewalk allowed him to see quite a distance. He looked down at a smithy, where the blacksmith

  Theros Ironfeld toiled at shoeing the lively stallion of a robed human who was pacing with impatience.

  A seeker, Flint thought sullenly, and his mood darkened.

  It seemed the seekers were everywhere these days. The sect had arisen from the ashes of the Cataclysm, which was itself caused by the old gods in reaction to the pride and misdirec tion of the most influential religious leader at the time, the

  Kingpriest of Istar. This group, calling themselves seekers, loudly proclaimed that the old gods had abandoned Krynn.

  They sought new gods, and sometime during the three cen turies since, the seekers claimed to have found those gods.

  Many of the folk of Abanasinia had turned toward the flick ering promise of the seekers' religion. Flint, and many oth ers of a more pragmatic nature, saw the seekers' doctrine for the hollow bunk that it was.

  They could be recognized by their brown and golden robes, these seeker missionaries who rode about the plains collecting steel coins for their coffers. Most of them at the missionary level were the young, bored malcontents who grew up in every town. The promise of money and power, if only over people desperate for a sign that gods existed, seemed to lure these spiritual bullies like a magnet. They were molded into persuasive salesmen by an intensive "training" session in the seeker capitol of nearby Haven, and they claimed to have converted thousands to their cause.

  The seekers were as close as anything to the governing body of the plains. A body with muscle, of course: seeker followers were equally divided between the zealous acolytes who taught the words and ways of the new gods, and the men-at-arms who garrisoned the towns for no discernible purpose.

  Unfortunately, groused the dwarf to himself, their con cept of governing seems to involve little more than mooch ing off the towns and villages unlucky enough to host their temples and guardposts.

  Flint's mood dipped even farther when he noticed a group of seekers hovering around the doorway to Jessab the

  Greengrocer's. He recognized this bunch as rude, belliger ent, over-postulating phonies who couldn't cure a split fin ger any more than they could speak with their so-called gods. In one of the few times Flint had ventured from his home in the last month, he had come upon a villager chok ing on a bite of meat. This very group had been summoned to help, and after much desperate prodding from the small, gathered crowd, the leader of the three, a pimply young whelp, had sighed and gesticulated uselessly above his head as if casting a clerical spell. No miracle appeared. The vil lager had gasped his last before the other two could try to help him. The three had shrugged in unison and then headed into the nearest inn, unconcerned.

  Flint could feel his face tighten with anger now as he con sidered the cluster around the doorway. Novices, he noted, from their coarse white robes edged with embroidered hem lock vine and the all-too-familiar emblem of a lighted torch on the left breast.

  "Who are you staring at, little man?" one of them de manded, his arms crossed insolently.

  Flint's eyes narrowed in irritation, but he let a shake of his head and a snort of disgust suffice to answer the question.

  Tipping his head slightly, he made to squeeze his way be tween them and into the greengrocer's.

  A bony finger poked him in the shoulder, scarcely enough pressure for the dwarf even to notice. "I asked you a ques tion, gully dwarf." The seeker's friends laughed at the insult.

  Flint stopped but did not raise his eyes. "And I believe I gave you as much answer as your kind deserves."

  Egged on by his friends, the young seeker pressed his point. "You've got an awfully smart mouth for an outnum bered old man," he growled, stepping fully in front of Flint.

  He reached down to grab the dwarf's lapels.

  "Teach him a lesson, Gar," a crony purred in anticipation.

  Flint's irritation turned to fury. He looked into the face of his antagonist. What he saw was the glee-and-fear mixed ex pression of an animal who was closing on an easy victim. Or so the seeker thought.

  Flint decided that the fellow needed a lesson in humility and manners. Moving like lightning, he drove his fist into the boy's belly. Stunned, the youth doubled over and clutched at his stomach. The dwarf's stubby fingers flew up to pull the seeker's droopy, coarse hood down over his red face. Flint quickly drew the strings tight and knotted the hood shut, until only the boy's pimply nose poked out.

  Flailing his arms desperately, the seeker let out a screech and tumbled to the planks of the bridgewalk.

  Flint was dusting off his hands when his sharp dwarven ears picked up the familiar "whoosh" of blades being un sheathed. Whirling around with stunning quickness, the stocky dwarf knocked the small daggers from the other seekers' hands. The metal weapons glinted in the sun as they flew over opposite sides of the bridgewalk.

  "Daggers! Look out below!" Flint called over the railing in case anyone stood beneath. Looking down, he saw a few villagers scatter without question, and the blades fall harm lessly, point down, into the earth.

  When Flint looked up again, he saw the backs of the seek ers as they fled, the two toadies pulling their still-hooded, stumbling leader after them.

  "Run home to your mothers, you young whelps!" Flint was unable to resist shouting. My, but it's a fine day, he thought, looking up into the blue sky before stepping spirit edly into the greengrocer's.

  Amos Cartney, a human of some fifty years, owned and ran Jessab the Greengrocer's. Flint could not enter the shop without remembering the time he, Tanis, and Tasslehoff had stopped in for some snacks to bring to a night of fellowship before Flint's hearth, shortly after Tasslehoff's arrival in Sol ace, some years ago.

  "Hey, Amos, who is Jessab, anyway?" Tasslehoff had blurted out of the blue, plucking at items of interest on the candy counter. "Must be someone important, for you to name your store after him. I mean, your name is Amos

  Cartney, not Jessab."

  Knowing the answer through local gossip, Flint had tried desperately to clap a hand over the kender's big mouth. But the quick-footed imp had danced away. "Watch out, Flint I

  You nearly suffocated me," he had scolded the dwarf. "Your father, maybe?" he pressed, turning back to the suddenly pale shopkeeper. "Grandfather? Hmm?"

  "The man who owned the store before me," had been Amos's quiet reply.

  "That's it?" Tas squealed.

  "Mind your own business, kender!" Flint had growled low in his throat.

  But Amos waved away the dwarf's concern. "No, he stole my wife and left behind this shop. I leave his name up to re mind me how fickle women can be, in case I'm ever tempted to trust one of them again."

  The tender-hearted kender's eyes had filled with tears, and he came to Amos's side to pat the human's shoulder, treasures newly "found" in the shop dropping from his pockets in his haste. "I'm so sorry… I didn't know…"

  A slight, stoic smile had creased Amos Cartney's face as he gently slipped his hand from the anxious kender's. "And you know what else? I haven't been tempted, all these ten years."

  Flint secretly agreed with Amos's evaluation of women — he'd had some bad experiences of his own — and from that time forward, the human and the dwarf were friends.

  Seeing Flint in his doorway now, the greengrocer wiped his hands on his apron and waved the dwarf inside, a hearty grin on his face.

  "Didn't bring that nosy kender with you, I see!" He snick ered, continuing to wave Flint forward. "Hurry on in. I've been having some trouble with seekers hanging around the doorway, pestering my good customers. Can't seem to get rid of 'em." Amos shook his balding head wearily.

  Flint patted his old friend on the back. "Tas has gone ex ploring for five years. And I don't think those seekers will be bothering anyone for a while, either."

  Catching the glint in the dwarf's eye, Amos's smile was grateful, but it still held a hint of weariness. "
My thanks, but they always come back. Maybe not the same trouble makers, but every day there are more seekers to take their places." Amos dug the heels of his palms into his eyes and rubbed.

  Flint's good mood ebbed as he was forced to agree with the shopkeeper. Solace was not the same friendly village it had been before the seekers had encroached on it in the last few years.

  "But what am I saying?" Amos forced his mood to brighten. "You didn't come here to listen to my woes.

  Where's your list? I'll rustle up your goods." Amos elbowed the dwarf conspiratorially in the ribs. "Got that bottle of malt rum you've been waiting for, too." Taking the scrap of parchment Flint held up in his hand, Amos cackled as he shuffled off to collect the dwarf's groceries.

  "Thanks, Amos," Flint called softly, absently scanning the shelves around him.

  He saw huge clay jars of pickled cucumbers, onions, and other vegetables. The smell of vinegar lingered thick around here, and Flint moved away. The dwarf passed a row of bar rels, containing rye and wheat and oat flours, and then smaller bins with sugar and salt. Opposite these was a wall of spices, and he read their odd names with amused curios ity: absynt, bathis, cloyiv, tumeric. What made people add such bizarre things to their food? the dwarf wondered. What was wrong with a plain, sizzling haunch of meat?

  Flint was looking at a tin of salted sea snails, a treat he hadn't had in years, when he heard someone beside him say in a gravelly voice, "So there is another hill dwarf in this town! I was beginning to feel like the proverbial hobgoblin at a kender Sunday picnic," boomed the stranger, clapping

  Flint on the back merrily. "Hanak's the name."

  Flint took a small step sideways and looked at the speaker. He was nearly big nose to big nose with another dwarf, all right. Wild, carrot-red hair sprang from the other dwarf's head like tight metal coils, and between that and a poker-straight beard and mustache were eyes as clear blue as the sky. Flint tried to judge his age: the lines on his face were not too deep, but he was missing his two front teeth, though whether from aging or fighting Flint could not say.