Dark Thane

In the shadow beneath a barbican gate, Zen shucked off the mortal form of Ilbars Bleakfell, trading it for one less familiar, one less regarded. The pale gray corpse lay at his feet on the slick stones, blood pooling black behind its neck. Now Daergar inform, he set to work dismembering his victim and stuffing the sundry parts down a sewer grate, losing his patience when the head wouldn't fit between the rusty bars.

Into its uneven seat in the stone, silent as the dawning day, the North Gate twisted home, sealing the dwarves of Thorbardin inside their mountain once more. Through hidden windows high above, guards watched the northern horizon for dragon flame and the watch fires of camping armies. They watched the approaches to the gate, not to welcome visitors but to drive them away with arrows and bolts and falls of stone. As the gate sank into place, melding with the surrounding stone so perfectly that not even a dwarf could find it once shut, the air inside the mountain grew tight, and the guards at their posts smelled the hot metallic reek of melting lead. The plumber had come to seal the gate, humming a song and sucking the remains of his breakfast from his teeth while he stoked the fires of his portable forge. The captain of the North Gate waited with a signet stone to press into the warm lead seal, to finalize the Council's command to shut out the world.

He was glad no one had come to witness the sealing of the gate. He was glad for the heat of the forge fire and the sweat that hid his tears.

Book II 17

Tarn never tired of looking at him. He never tired of holding him in his arms or feeling his soft fat little fingers close around his own coarse one. "You will he strong, like your father," he whispered to the infant boy.

Tor Bellowgranite, son of Tarn Bellowgranite, smiled his blank, toothless smile up into his father's face. Crystal said he was too young to smile, but Tarn knew better. Tor was smiling because he knew his father. He shook his fists, like little balls of dough, at Tarn's face, and began to kick. Tarn laughed without really knowing why, feeling only a deep and abiding joy unlike anything he had ever known.

Dwarf babies were, to put it simply, quite ugly. Even dwarf mothers had no illusions about the beauty of their own infants. Though usually born with a full head of hair, dwarf babies did not come into the world already fully bearded, despite popular superstitions. Tor shared the Hylar trait of golden hair, just like his father. Crystal argued that Neidar babies were also born blonde-headed, but that they soon lost their fine golden baby hair and replaced it with a proper color. Tarn was pleased that his son, just six months old, still sported a magnificent shock of tawny locks.

Suddenly, the baby's fat little face scrunched up in a horrible grimace. Tarn stared at him in surprise, then recoiled as Tor sneezed. "He's caught something," he said in alarm. He turned to the open door and cried, "Auntie! Tor is ill. Fetch the healers at once."

"He's not sick. You've just tickled his nose with your beard again," a female voice answered from the next room.

Tarn felt a tug at his chin and looked down, chuckling as the baby pulled at the ends of his long beard hairs. "Where is your beard, Tor?" he murmured to the child. "Did your mommy shave it off to make you look like an elf child? Or maybe it was wicked old Aunt Needlebone."