Dwarven Nations 01 The Covena Dragonlance

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.He was satisfied.The Balladine was beginning.The dwarves—the dinks—would be offguard and vulnerable.It would be the last Balladine, he told himself, and the end of the Calnar of Thorin.Thorin would be his, and every dwarf within his reach would pay painfully and finally for the painthat lived within him each day of his life.Grayfen made a sign with his hands, strode across the forbidden perimeter around his hut, andstepped inside, into a darkness that was not dark to him.He saw clearly in the gloom, as brightly as he saw everything—in brilliant, burning shades of red.Closing the portal behind him, he went to aplain, wooden pedestal in the center of the room and knelt before it.With a sigh, using the thumb and first finger of each hand, he removed his eyes, easily pluckingthem from their sockets.Immediately, the fiery pain in his head subsided, and he rested there for a moment, letting the familiar relief of it wash over him.With a muttered incantation, he placed the two ruby spheres on the pedestal, stood, and shuffled to his sleeping cot—a blind man groping in darkness.He found his cot and lay down upon it, wishingfor real sleep.wishing that, for a few hours, he could be as blind as the empty sockets beneath his brows.He was blind, but still he saw—as brightly and relentlessly as always.He saw the ceiling of the hut above the pedestal.He saw what the ruby orbs saw—always that, and never less.They lay ingloom, glowing faintly, staring at the ceiling, and the first sight in his mind was that ceiling.The second sight, captured within the orbs and always present, was of a ragged, bleeding dwarf with aslender, double-tined javelin in its hand—like a fishing spear, except that it hummed to itself and glowed with a crimson luster.As always, in his mind, Grayfen saw the image of that woundeddwarf—and as he saw it, it hurled its glowing javelin at his face.Once, then, Grayfen had been truly blind.before the double-pointed spear that took his eyes gave him new ones and the power that went with them.Once, years ago and very far away, in a placecalled Kal-Thax, Grayfen had known the darkness.It was a dwarf who had blinded him.Now itwould be dwarves who paid the price.Kalil the herdsman had spent the day driving his flock up from the meadows above theHammersong, and as the Suncradles swallowed the light of full day, he chased the last ewe into thepen and closed the gate.Though his legs ached from the day's work, Kalil was pleased.The flockhad grazed well on the rich meadows.They were fat and frisky, and their wool was prime.Far up the mountains, the drums had begun their call.Balladine was at hand.Tomorrow, Kalilwould select the best animals from his herd and take them to the village, to join the trek fromGolash to Thorin.Trading should be good this year; he knew the Calnar needed wool and mutton.Even after paying his trade-share to Garr Lanfel, Prince of Golash, Kalil expected to have a pursebulging with dwarven coin—and maybe a bit of dwarven steel as well.Securing his gate, Kalil turned toward his herdsman's shack and was nearly there before he lookedup and stopped, startled at what he saw.In front of his house stood a tall, gold-and-white horse,head-down and streaked with sweat.It was clearly a dwarven horse—no one but the dwarves bredand used the huge, white-maned Calnar horses.It wore a saddle of dwarven design, richly studdedwith steel and silver, and its loose reins dangled from its headstall.Quickly, Kalil glanced about, his hackles rising, half expecting to see a Calnar soldier nearby.Like most of the humans of the Khalkist realms, Kali! accepted the dwarves of Calnar.He lookedforward to trading with them, and he didn't mind mingling with them—on their lands—during theBalladine.But, like most humans, his regard for the Calnar was tempered by a deep-seated dislikeborn as much of envy as of the difference in their appearance from his own.The dwarves were rich.He had never encountered a dwarf who wasn't rich.The dwarves madesteel, and they used steel, and there was—it seemed to Kalil—a certain arrogance in the casual waythe short, stubby creatures displayed their wealth.It made him feel very poor by comparison.They were ugly little creatures, to Kalil's human perception, and they were arrogant and obviouslyselfish, since they seemed always to be wealthier than anyone else.The idea of a dwarf being here—at his home—irritated him as much as it startled him.But there was no dwarf around.There was only the huge, tired horse standing in Kalil's dooryard,and he approached it cautiously."Ho!" he said when it turned its great head to look at him with intelligent eyes."Ho, stay! Easy now, good horse.stay."When it neither bared its teeth nor backed away, Kalil picked up its reins and rubbed its muzzlewith his hand."Good horse," he crooned, noticing that the bit in its mouth and the studding on its headstall were of fine silver.He looked further.From withers to flanks hung a skirt of delicately worked mesh, with a fine saddle atop.Kalil's mouth dropped open.The saddle was smeared withdried blood, and the shaft of an arrow jutted upward from its pommel.For a moment, Kalil had considered trying to return the horse to the dwarves of Thorin for the rich reward they undoubtedly would pay for a strayed animal.But now he changed his mind.To take adwarven horse to the dwarves, its saddle covered with blood and a human-made arrow embeddedthere, would be worse than foolish.It would likely be the last thing he ever did.He decided he wanted nothing to do with this horse.Still, its trappings were of the finest dwarven craft.The steel parts alone were worth a small fortune in human realms [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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