Dark Thane

Tarn found Ghash standing by a window with an empty tray in his hands. Two other Klar stood nearby, and the three leaned together, speaking swiftly in their choppy, guttural dialect. Tarn noticed that the two newcomers were still wet up to their waists and dripping water onto the floor. One wore a blood-soaked bandage wound about his shaggy head, the other leaned upon a makeshift crutch. As Tarn approached, they ceased their whispered conference and turned to bow. Tarn immediately noticed a distinct aroma of sewage that surrounded them. They smelled like they had been wading in a latrine. The other patients had already identified the source of the odor and retreated to the other side of the chamber.

"My kinsmen," Ghash said, introducing them to the king. "Garn and Boros Bloodfist." The two bowed again. Tarn could not help but notice how much the one wearing the head bandage, Garn Bloodfist, looked like a younger version of his old friend Mog Bonecutter. Looking at him was like seeing a ghost from the early days of his rule.

"What passes on the lower level?" Tarn asked, trying not to stare at the young dwarf.

"The entire Anvil's Echo is flooded, my thane," the older of the two brothers answered. He shifted his position on his crutch, wincing when his foot touched the floor.

"It's the sewers," Ghash said. "They're backing up everywhere down below."

"I can't believe the sewers have failed this badly after such a small groundquake," Tarn said. "They're newly built and reinforced, after all."

"It wasn't the groundquake at all," Boros said. "The sewers didn't start backing up until the engineers began to inspect them for damage. My brother and I were assigned to these very duties. I can't speak for what happened to the others, but we discovered magical wards had been placed at the confluence of the sewage system beneath the first level houses of healing. One ward exploded while we were trying to remove it. That's how we were injured, and how the healing house came to be flooded with sewage. The entire pipe collapsed. We barely escaped with our lives."

"We've heard that there were other explosions, too," Garn added as he rubbed his bandaged forehead.

Tarn pondered their strange news in silence. Could it be? Magical wards had been set to collapse the sewers beneath the Anvil's Echo, thus flooding the most densely populated region of Norbardin with raw sewage. The place would be uninhabitable for months, until they could clean it up and repair the sewers. Who could have set those wards? There was no question as to who had the capability, much less the motive. Among all the dwarf clans, only the Theiwar had the skill to use magic, and the Theiwar were aligned, through their thane, Brecha Quickspring, with Jungor.

The question was, why? Why flood the Anvil's Echo? Who lived there? Daergar, Theiwar, and Klar, for the most part. A few Daewar had homes in the Anvil's Echo, but no Hylar would lower himself to live in that slum. Forcing the Daergar, Klar, and Theiwar out of their homes would only aggravate the clan rivalries in Norbardin, as they would all be forced to share an even smaller amount of inhabitable city. Tarn had only managed to keep the peace in Norbardin for these forty years by allowing the different clans to build their own enclaves within the city. Force them together now and it was sure to end in clan-on-clan violence. That must be the plan.

Did Jungor really desire the return of internecine war in the streets of Thorbardin? Should a civil war erupt, Tarn didn't have the manpower or the resources to stop it. He'd been holding the tiger by the tail for forty years now, living on borrowed time while he worked to break down clan hatreds. And prosperity, more than anything else, had helped to keep the peace. But in the eighteen months since the gates were closed, prosperity had faltered. Tarn knew that each day, the tinder beneath their society became a little drier, a little more ready for the spark that would light it into a conflagration.

All the while, Jungor had apparently been scheming, planning, preparing to take advantage of this disruption in the delicate social balance.

Tarn cursed himself for a blind fool. Now the dozens of reports and hints that had passed across his desk in the past year came flooding back to him. He only half read most of them, deeming them unimportant, and he had never connected the dots, until now. In the past months his son had been the only thing he really cared to attend to, and therefore he had neglected the duties of the king, while Jungor built up a sizable militia of Hylar and Theiwar warriors "in preparation for Beryl's attack, or any other emergency"; while he stockpiled food stores and blankets in his warehouses; while he commissioned dozens of new fountains to be built in the Hylar quarter that would provide plenty of water in case of a siege.