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  “You say that as if it is a bad thing,” Wulfgar replied.

  “How many?” Regis asked. “In this new life you have found, how many women have graced the bed of Wulfgar?”

  Wulfgar shrugged as if it didn’t matter, and to Wulfgar, Regis knew, it did not. He had returned a very different man, as if he had paid all of his tributes and done everything correctly in his previous existence and so was on this second journey through life on a lark.

  “Heartbreaker,” the halfling chided.

  “Not so. I do not lie to any of them. They know I won’t be there with the sunrise.”

  “You make no promises?”

  “I speak the truth of it. Then the choice is theirs.”

  “Why?” Regis asked sincerely, and that turned Wulfgar to face him directly. “Do you not wish to find love?”

  “I find it all the time.”

  “Not just physical love!”

  “I know,” said Wulfgar. “I seek pleasure in this life, wherever I might find it. I’ve no desire for a hearth or home, or any family in the expected manner. There’s too much to see and too much—and too many!—to know.”

  Regis stared at him for a long while, grinning and shaking his head. “Why Wulfgar,” he said, “I do believe that your one regret will be in declining the dragon’s romantic advances.”

  “We’ll see both of them again,” the barbarian said with a wink. He took his leave then, moving back into the tower to greet Captain Mallabie and the revelers who had come out beside her this cold and dark night.

  Regis remained outside, staring off into the winter’s dark, thinking of Donnola, imagining her warm arms around him once more, her soft lips against his. Wulfgar was wrong, and Ches was indeed a long, long time away. Far too long!

  He blew into his hands and began his sentry circuit of the tower’s battlement once more. It was the fifteenth of Nightal, the last month of the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls, and at that very moment, Gromph Baenre was casting a most mighty spell, one that would summon Demogorgon to his side and dangerously weaken the barrier of the magical Faerzress, allowing hordes of demons, even demon lords, to cross into Faerûn’s Underdark.

  CHAPTER 2

  Bloodstone Lands

  THEY THOUGHT HIM TOO OLD TO CONTINUE HIS BOWLEGGED patrol, for his beard was more gray than yellow now. Thus they had assigned him to the court of the King of Damara. He had served kings before, and so was not unaccustomed to the tedious trials of such a duty. But those had been dwarf kings, and never before had Ivan Bouldershoulder witnessed such a sheer display of inanity and foolishness as was a daily event here in the court of King Yarin Frostmantle.

  Ivan had never been fond of King Yarin, and truly, in looking upon the man—balding and rat-faced, ever sniveling and hunched in a defensive crouch—it astounded Ivan to think that such a sinister and uncharismatic specimen could have claimed a throne.

  But this was Helgabal, a city of merchants, and among the nobles here, wealth outshined all other qualities. Yarin Frostmantle had been the richest man in Damara before taking the throne—a throne left vacant some twenty-two years earlier when King Murtil Dragonsbane had died, quite suspiciously. Murtil’s untimely death had ended the Dragonsbane line, the paladin kings who had ruled Damara in peace and prosperity for nearly a century—perhaps too much prosperity for too few individuals, Ivan often thought.

  Yarin Frostmantle, the richest man in the region, one with a vast network of spies and private soldiers, had stepped into the void left by the demise of the childless bachelor Murtil. Wealth had won the day, and Yarin Frostmantle had claimed the throne.

  And through less-than-savory actions, Ivan assumed. Though he had come to this land after Yarin’s ascent, he had, of course, heard the whispers.

  Rumors that Yarin had murdered Murtil were nothing new in Helgabal, and the passage of time had done little to tamp down the whispers. Ivan didn’t put too much stock in them, though he didn’t doubt the possibility. He wasn’t really invested in this land. It was true that he and his brother called Damara home now, but that was more because by the time they arrived here, after decades of wandering, the place seemed as good as any other.

  He’d been rethinking that notion these past few tendays, though, as the hours dragged along in this court of ultimate pettiness.

  King Yarin and his queen were holding open court, where anyone desiring the king’s ear or judgment could, if time allowed, gain an audience with the noble couple. As usual, a crowd had gathered at the palace steps before dawn that morning, peasants falling all over each other in their desperate hopes to be heard.

  The grievances were all too familiar to Ivan, for always did they follow the same course, or the same few storylines, at least.

  King Yarin didn’t even pretend to be interested as one poor farmer pointed a crooked finger at a neighbor and accused the man of stealing his chickens, which the other man denied, of course, or excused as “finders keepers,” since the other farmer couldn’t keep the birds on his own land.

  “Split the eggs betwixt you!” Ivan mouthed even as King Yarin proclaimed it. The old dwarf had heard this verdict too many times to count, and of course, as soon as Yarin offered this wise solution, the nobles looking on broke into cheers and overwhelmed gasps at the king’s infinite and divinely inspired wisdom. And so it went through the hours of tedium.

  Ivan did perk up when a man and woman came forward, arm-in-arm, pushing a pretty young woman in front of them. Their daughter, they explained, and she was with child by a rascal who had promised to marry her. That accused man, who was clearly not nearly as young as the daughter, protested with great animation and insult, and to many in the audience hall, it grew quite entertaining.

  But Ivan kept his attention on King Yarin, and on the woman, many years Yarin’s junior, who sat at his side. In the gossip of Helgabal, Queen Concettina was always described as beautiful, or pretty, or lithe, or other complimentary words, though she wasn’t much for Ivan’s tastes. The word “willowy,” too, was often used in describing her, but Ivan was more of an “oaky” kind of dwarf—“a thick oak’s trunk” might well describe the dwarf ladies that caught his fancy!

  Willowy certainly seemed an apt description of Queen Concettina, though, the dwarf noted. She was very slender, looking much younger than her whispered age of twenty-five years. Her wrists and neck and fingers were all so long and so thin they gave rise to rumors that this one had a bit of elf blood in her, and though Ivan knew the queen denied those whispers, those features, along with blond hair that hung practically to her waist, certainly seemed wispy and fairy-like.

  Perhaps she had a bit of wood nymph in her, the dwarf mused, grinning, then coughed to cover up a very inappropriate giggle. He tightened his halberd up close to his side, stood a bit straighter, and tried not to imagine Queen Concettina floating naked over the trees on dragonfly wings.

  Ivan had perfected the art of sleeping on his feet, and it often got him through these interminably boring sessions. He’d never want to be a king, and doubted the citizens would ever want him there, for he’d get so bored with their nonsensical drama that he’d be tempted to execute them all just to shut them up!

  That notion chased the dwarf’s thoughts to the wicked device King Yarin kept in one of the gardens behind the palace, an instrument that the brutal man put to use quite often. It consisted of two rails with a crossbeam at the top, and a thick piece of wood at the base, notched with a curve that would fit a neck. Ivan had heard it called a “guillotine,” and the dwarf thought it something far more appropriate for the hole of an orc king than for anyone leading a civilized race. He simply could not imagine a dwarf king, like his old companion Bruenor, ever using such a device.

  To Ivan Bouldershoulder, if you couldn’t look a man in the eye when ending his life, then you couldn’t admit to yourself that the life needed to be ended.

  It seemed even worse with King Yarin, who reportedly put this wicked guillotine to use quite arbitrarily, so it
was whispered—and so Ivan believed.

  Ivan had made it perfectly clear to Captain Andrus that he wanted no part of duty in that particular garden, going so far as to hint to the garrison commander that he’d not let an innocent man feel the pinch of that falling blade. Andrus respected the warrior dwarf enough to let that smattering of treason lie buried between them—and with good reason, for Ivan Bouldershoulder had proven himself repeatedly as one of the best soldiers in Helgabal. Whenever a new recruit entered the garrison, he or she was sent straight to Ivan for training.

  No doubt, Captain Andrus thought he was doing Ivan a good turn by giving him this easy duty. Perhaps he should disavow the man of that, Ivan thought.

  Indeed, that line of thought led him to an imaginary battlefield, where dwarven brigades clashed with ugly orcs while dragons screeched overhead …

  The sound of Dwarvish voices brought the old dwarf from his contemplation, to see a gaggle of scraggly bearded, truly dirty little creatures standing before the king and queen. The lot of them looked as if they had just crawled out of a hole in the ground, and not a structured dwarven hole at that. And were they really dwarves at all, Ivan wondered. A couple of the fellows looked more like gnomes, or some strange crossbreed in between? They all had beards, though—scraggly, but full enough.

  “Toofless!” insisted one hunched and crooked fellow.

  “Toothless?” King Yarin asked, clearly at a loss.

  “Toofless!” lisped the fellow, who wasn’t quite toothless, but nearly so—and those choppers that remained were quite jagged and rotted, and every color but white.

  “Aye, Toothless,” said the king.

  “Toofless! Toofless Tonguelasher!” the hunched dwarf insisted, and Ivan noted that the fellow’s tongue did indeed remain outside of his toothless mouth, hanging off to the left and giving him very much the aspect of an old, panting dog. The other dwarves weren’t any cleaner, either, or toothed, for that matter, and Ivan scrunched up his face with curiosity.

  “Toofless, then,” King Yarin conceded. He glanced to the side, to Captain Dreylin Andrus, and the man shrugged and shook his head, obviously trying to hold back a laugh. “And from what region of Helgabal, Master Tonguelasher?”

  “Not fwom Heliogab … err, Helgabal,” the dwarf replied, catching himself from using the old name of Damara’s capital city, which had been banned by Yarin’s decree. Toofless did chuckle a bit, though, at the sudden horrified look that came over King Yarin.

  “Then where in Damara?” the impatient king demanded.

  “Not really fwom Damara,” said Toofless. “Not till just now, at least, when me clan burrowed right thwough the Galenas to put a new door to our home. A door in Damara.”

  “You dug through the mountains? From Vaasa?”

  “Aye, though we’s more undegwound than in Vaasa, and not sure which side o’ the line down there in them tunnels, eh? Might that we been yer citizens fer all time and not knowing it!”

  “Undegwound … what?” an exasperated King Yarin asked. He looked around, his gaze at last settling on Ivan, the only dwarf sentry in attendance. “What is he talking about?”

  Ivan had never heard a dialect quite akin to this one’s, even discounting the obvious lisp. “This clan … Tonguelasher?” Ivan asked of the dwarf.

  “Bigger!” Toofless proclaimed.

  “Bigger’n Tonguelasher?” Ivan asked, not understanding.

  “Just Bigger!” Toofless insisted, and all the dwarves behind him shouted “Bigger!” and pumped their fists in the air.

  “Clan Bigger?”

  The dirty dwarf flashed what passed for a smile and nodded.

  Ivan snorted to steady himself. “The Clan Bigger,” he explained to King Yarin, “they been living mostly in their caves—likely a mine, and seems a big one if they come through the Galenas—for a long, long time’s me guess. Now they come out, and in Damara.”

  “In a land of which they know nothing?” King Yarin asked, looking from Ivan to Toofless and back again.

  “That one knowed the old name for Helgabal,” Ivan reminded the king. “So they be knowin’ something o’ the place afore they climbed out.”

  “Aye, we’re knowin’ the pwace, or what was, and wantin’ to be again,” Toofless said.

  King Yarin fixed him with a stern look.

  “If ye’re havin’ us, I’m sayin’,” Toofless went on, nodding, which made his tongue flap out the side of his mouth. “And not to worry, kingie, for we’re knowin’ our pwace. At yer pweasure, good sir.”

  “And if it is not my pweas … my pleasure?”

  Toofless flashed his ridiculous grin and glanced back at his boys, two of whom hustled up, bearing a small chest. They put it down on the floor in front of Toofless, bobbed several bows the king’s way, then rushed back to their fellows.

  “We ain’t comin’ as beggars, King,” Toofless explained. “But as good subjects.” He bent low and flipped the catch on the chest, rolling back the lid as he stood once more.

  Gold and jewels glittered, and Queen Concettina gasped and brought a hand to her lips so that any who could not directly view the chest merely had to look at the reflection in Concettina’s eyes.

  “We’re knowin’ our pwace, good king sir,” Toofless said. ‘And we’re hopin’ ye’ll let that pwace be yer kingdom o’ Damara.”

  King Yarin tried to remain calm, but Ivan could see that the scruffy little creatures of Clan Bigger had bought their way in. Yarin motioned for a couple of guards to retrieve the chest and shuffle it off to the side.

  “There is more where that came from, I am sure?” King Yarin asked.

  “Course. Good mine.”

  “Then I look forward to your next visit, my new subjects of Clan … Bigger?”

  “Aye, bigger’n ye’re thinking!” Toofless replied with a laugh. He bowed and began backing away. When he reached his friends they too began to bob and back up, until the whole lot of them exited the palace.

  King Yarin looked to Ivan, as if seeking some explanation, but the yellow-bearded dwarf could only shrug and shake his head.

  IVAN SWISHED HIS spoon around in the bowl of stew, trying to identify the vegetables and roots that popped up through the thick green base.

  “Ain’t natural,” he muttered, as he did almost every night. He lifted one large spoonful to his lips and slurped it in. “Bah, ain’t natural,” he said again.

  “Hee hee hee,” came the reply from the green-bearded, one-armed dwarf moving around in the cramped kitchen.

  It had become a ritual in the Bouldershoulder house, a squat stone building on the southern edge of Helgabal. The place was windowless, and dark in this section late in the day, the way Ivan liked it. It reminded him of the dwarven kingdoms he had called home in his earlier days. The entire back of the house was open, though. His brother, Pikel, had broken out the stones to construct a walled garden to the place.

  And what a garden it was! Full, leafy stalks climbed the stone walls and fruits and vegetables and nuts and beans weighed down the vines, offering a variety of aromas not found anywhere else in this part of the world. The garden was part green thumb and part druidic magic—mostly magic—and so every night, Ivan was treated to a new mish-mash of beans and nuts and fruits and vegetables and roots and whatever else Pikel decided to create on that particular day.

  It wasn’t natural, as the dwarf often complained, but for all his grumping, Ivan couldn’t deny that the meals were delicious!

  “Strange bunch o’ buggers,” Ivan remarked, going back to the previous conversation. “Dirtier than a Gutbuster, most without teeth, and not a bit o’ mail or armor or jewels on ’em—and that when they come to court a king!”

  “Hmm,” answered Pikel, who wasn’t much for words.

  “And Clan Bigger,” Ivan huffed. “Clan Bigger! Who’d be callin’ themselves Clan Bigger?”

  “Dugers?” Pikel asked, his way of referencing “duergar,” the gray dwarves known to haunt the Underdark—no kin or friends of
Delzoun dwarves like Ivan and Pikel.

  “Nah,” Ivan said, and he slurped a few spoons of the marvelous stew. “Not grays, nor derro. Dwarfs, but a strange-lookin’ bunch. First I thinked ’em gnomes, but too much a beard for gnomes. Aye, strange-soundin’ bunch.”

  A loaf of bread came flying from across the room. Ivan caught it and nearly fell off his chair in the process.

  “Hee hee hee.”

  Ivan huffed and blew on the bread, which had come right out of the oven. He tossed it from hand to hand, puffing on the loaf and his fingers alternately, much to the amusement of Pikel.

  Finally he controlled it and got it down beside his plate, then tore off a hunk and plopped it into the stew. It came up on his spoon covered in beans. Ivan stuffed the whole monstrous bite into his mouth.

  His lips were still smacking when there came a loud rap on the door.

  “Hmm,” said Pikel.

  “Master Ivan!” sounded a familiar voice, followed by a more insistent rapping on the door.

  Ivan belched and pulled himself from his chair, nearly tripping on it as he swung around for the door, and in that stumble he let fly a tremendous fart.

  “Hee hee hee,” said Pikel, the Prince of Bean Stew, who took that as the highest of compliments.

  Ivan pulled open the door, and there stood Captain Dreylin Andrus, commander of Helgabal’s garrison.

  “Aye, Captain,” Ivan said.

  “May I?” Andrus asked, motioning for the room.

  “Aye.” Ivan moved aside. “Pikel, another bowl, what!”

  “What!” said a happy Pikel, hustling for a third bowl.

  “Ye’re knowin’ me brother, eh?” Ivan asked the captain.

  “Me brudder!” yelled Pikel, and that brought a grin to the captain’s face.

  “Aye, soldier,” he said. “He’s been working the palace gardens.”

  “Hee hee, kingie!” Pikel cried.

  “Well, we’ve plenty o’ good gruel for ye, so sit and burp with us a bit,” said Ivan.

  To Ivan’s surprise, Andrus accepted, and as the sun set on Helgabal, the three of them sat around the small table in the Bouldershoulder home, enjoying the fine bounty of Pikel’s extraordinary garden.