Dark Thane

"You dwarves of the Theiwar, Daewar, Daergar, and Klar clans have homes you can return to," Jungor declared. "Only our home, Hybardin, is completely lost to us. The rest of you can rebuild. We must build anew. But build we shall, one day. One day you shall return to the homes of your grandfathers, and there you will find the mortar to fill that empty place in your hearts. We want to be dwarves again, dwarves of the mountain. Here, in Tarn's city, we live little better than hill dwarves, a people the king loves despite their history of treachery. I fear that one day we shall hear the tramp of hill dwarf boots in our streets."

"No! Never!" the crowd shouted, driven to a frenzy by the Hylar thane's meandering diatribe. The speech lasted for nearly an hour, but Zen had already slipped back to the alley before Jungor dismissed the crowds with a benediction that left them weak and warm. Zen marveled at the one-eyed dwarfs skill. The effect was complete-from the eyepatch to the tattered robes to the wizard staff, Jungor looked part prophet, part shaman, part ghost. Zen could appreciate Jungor's masterful manipulation of the crowd. Jungor would have made a good Dragon Highlord, Zen reckoned.

"He'll certainly be king someday, unless Tarn wises up," the draconian in gully dwarf disguise muttered under his breath. Zen knew that he was in a unique position to decide the fate of this miserable mountain and its miserable people. He held information that would ruin Jungor if revealed and assure Tarn's seat forever. But he wasn't particularly inclined to favor Tarn, either. In fact, he didn't care one way or the other who was king of all these filthy dwarves. All he wanted to do was to make Ferro Dunskull pay for his treachery. After that, he might see who was most willing to buy his information or his silence. He hadn't really planned that far ahead.

There was enough to occupy his mind in the present. He crouched in the shadows, watching the crowd break up. Opposite him across the commons, another alley passed between the home of Hextor Ironhaft and the east wall of Jungor's estate. This alley was much wider than the one in which Zen hid, and no one used it for their middens. Doors opened into it from both sides, and windows on the upper levels overlooked it. Six alert Daergar guards stood at the alley's entrance, crossbows held at the ready while they warily scrutinized anyone who wandered near. Zen dared not approach them, for he knew by their familiar faces and their livery that they were Ferro's personal guard. They had orders to shoot on sight any gully dwarf who came within thirty yards.

As Zen expected, Ferro emerged from a door letting into the alley from Jungor's estate. It would be indecorous for a Daergar to be seen exiting through the front door of the Hylar thane's house. Ferro was accompanied by a thin Daergar female wearing black leather breeches and a hardened leather breastplate. Her arms were bare, smooth and milky white, her black hair long and bound in a single loose braid that hung down the center of her back.

Ferro and the female Daergar consulted for a moment in the alley, then parted, Ferro heading toward his guards, the female strolling in the opposite direction, her hips lolling languidly from side to side. Her name, Zen knew, was Marith Darkforge, and she was one of Ferro's closest "advisors."

Zen pushed aside a pile of garbage and lifted a small iron grate from an opening into the sewer. As swiftly as any gully dwarf, he vanished down the hole, pulling the grate back into place above him. He landed with a splash inside a low, round sewer tunnel, quickly glanced both ways to make sure no other gully dwarves were around, then started off.

The sewer tunnel ran directly beneath the commons to the alley beside Jungor's estate, which it followed for some distance before splitting off into a larger sewer. Zen passed the place beneath which Ferro had stood only moments before, then continued down the sewer tunnel, where he followed the larger branch until it reached a wide collection pool. Here, the water and raw sewage surged and spumed down a drain to an even larger pipe some distance below. Pale brown rafts of foam raced each other in circles round and round the chamber. The sewage lay just below the level of a narrow access walk that led from the entrance pipe to a ladder cut into the stone wall and leading up. Zen crossed over and swiftly ascended the ladder, pushed aside a grate, and emerged in a carter's yard in the midst of a milling herd of yellow cave oxen. The sleepy beasts hardly even noticed his appearance, while their enormous bodies hid him from the sight of anyone who might happen by. He was lucky that none of oxen had been standing on the grate, and that the muckboy wasn't at this moment hosing down the stableyard.