Dark Thane

It suddenly dawned on him that he was in his old room, the bedchamber of his childhood, in his mother's house in Daerbardin. But that was impossible. His mother's house was a heap of slag and ruin, destroyed by the Chaos dragon. Yet everything here was exactly as he remembered it. He walked to the door and opened it, half expecting to see the old familiar servants bustling about their morning duties, or his mother come to scold him for sleeping late again.

Instead, the hall was empty. But not silent. He heard someone hammering, somewhere deep within the house. Somewhere else, he heard a childish voice humming a wordless song, a busy song without meaning or end, just a series of notes repeated to no purpose. Da da dee da dum da dee, la dum la dee, da lee da dum.

The hammering matched the rhythm of the song, as though the same person were producing both sounds. But the singing came from somewhere to the right, while the hammering was somewhere to the left. Tarn chose the singing. It sounded strangely familiar.

The hall outside his bedroom was barren and dusty, as though no one had ever lived here. Its clean rectangular lines stretched into infinity before him, but doors lined the hall to right and left. He stopped at each door to listen, then moved on, for the singing always seemed to be just ahead of him somehow. He wondered if it would lead him forever to nowhere.

But finally, he found the source. He opened the door to his old nursery. It was as barren as the hall, but in the middle of the square chamber sat a boy with his back to the door, dressed in pajamas, leaning over something with his long golden hair hanging down over his face, and humming the tuneless song. As Tarn entered, the boy stopped singing and looked over his shoulder. He looked familiar, like someone he had once seen in a crowd.

"Who are you?" Tarn asked him.

"Who are you?" the boy parroted.

"What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm looking for you," Tarn said.

The boy smiled a familiar smile, a familiar twinkle in his gray eyes. He turned away. "There is a crack in the floor here," the boy said.

"Really? Let me see." Tarn was interested in spite of himself. He approached and knelt beside the boy. Between his small, knobby knees was a small, black crack in the stone of the floor. The boy put his fingers over it and it began to whistle. As he moved his fingers, the whistling became the tuneless song. Da da dee da dum da dee, la dum la dee, da lee da dum.

"That's very good," Tarn laughed. "Where did you learn to do that?" The boy shrugged. Tarn placed his hand over the crack and felt a stiff, hot wind rising from it. In the deep earth, a hot wind is a sign of trouble. Cold wind you can expect. Hot wind means fire.

"We had better get out of here," Tarn said urgently. He stood and took the boy's hand. Together, they left the nursery and started back the way Tarn had come. The sound of hammering grew nearer, the closer they got to Tarn's old bedroom. It sounded like someone carving stone, like a hammer tapping a chisel. He had left his bedroom door open, and as he neared the door, it sounded like the hammerer was inside his room. He approached the door cautiously, keeping the boy well behind him, in case it was dangerous.

As he peered into the room, he saw that it wasn't his bedroom at all. It was the nursery again, and in the center of the nursery an old, red-bearded dwarf was busy widening the crack. The hot air rose up around him, blowing his beard into his eyes so that every few moments he stopped to brush it back down. But it was a pointless gesture, for as soon as he bent to his work again, the wind blew his beard up into his eyes again.

During one of his pauses, the old dwarf spotted Tarn standing at the door. "Ah, there you are, my lord. There is something wrong here. I have to get to the bottom of it."

"You fool! Who told you dig up this floor. Don't you feel that hot air coming?"

The old dwarf nodded as he removed a bright red handkerchief from the pocket of his coveralls and mopped his sweaty brow. "There's something wrong here, and I have to get to the bottom of it."

"Stop digging, I say. Wait…" Tarn turned and saw that the boy had slipped away. "Wait Let me see where that boy went to. Don't widen that hole any more until I get back!" Tarn ordered.

The worker tucked his handkerchief into his pocket and said as Tarn hurried away, "There's something wrong here, and I have to get to the bottom of it."

Tarn moaned as he heard the tap-tap-taptap of the hammer resume behind him. There was nothing for it, however. He had to find the boy first He couldn't let Tor get lost here.