Epilogue
Sheer exhaustion and clever words ended the civil war in the Vale of Sunder—the exhaustion of those who had spent their last energies in combat, and the quick, persuasive tongue of Dartimien the Cat.
The wandering mercenaries who had been the backbone of both armies were gone, and most would not return. Mercenaries fight for gain, and there was nothing to be gained where the makers of conflict were dead. Those few who might have returned on the chance of looting, changed their minds when they glimpsed a flying dragon in the distant sky above Tarmish. The dragon danced among storm clouds, plummeting again and again to strike at the wrecked tower.
Whatever was happening back there, no sane mercenary wanted any part of it.
For a time after all was quiet, Verden Leafglow patrolled the Vale of Sunder on mighty wings, fascinated by what she had encountered there. She might even have wished for further communion with the god Reorx, who had spoken to her so casually when he chose. But, godlike, Reorx had finished with her. She had served a purpose and was no longer needed. So she heard no more from the deity. It was the way of gods.
One thing she did retain, though, and with time she would come to regard it as a high prize. She was free. For the first time in her life, in two separate lifetimes, Verden Leafglow was bound by no pledge, encumbered by no obligation. Her life was her own, to live as she would, and neither a god nor any creature had claim upon her anymore.
Scarcely a hint of green remained in the coloration of her body now. Her great wings had warmed and darkened in hue to a flowing gold-brown color, deepening almost to maroon along the trailing vanes and rich umber in the folds between flexors. Her back and tail, scales and crests, were an iridescent kaleidoscope of colors—shifting light—bright rainbow hues flirting among somber browns and pale tans, laced with metallic glints of copper and gold. Her underbelly was a rich, warm brown and her eyes, once emerald, now shone like mountain crests bathed in summer sun.
Free! No longer bound by oath, pledge or even color to any enforced ethic, Verden Leafglow was free to be what she chose to be, to do as she chose to do, and she wondered if this, in itself, might be a parting gift from Reorx.
She soared above the mean, scarred bastions of Tarmish and contemplated with casual interest the doings of the small creatures below. Humans and not-quite-humans alike, they were creatures of kinds other than her kind. Yet for an age, it seemed, her life, her lives, had been bound to them.
She had detested them. She had despised them. Yet now she felt no real malice toward them. They were as trapped within their small existences as she had been within hers. Just as she had been bound to gods, they—the little creatures below—had bound themselves by choice or chance to leaders and causes, and they had inherited the grief that came of bondage.
Most of them would do it again. They knew no other way.
Yet they were sentient creatures, and could change. Maybe one day she would see whether any of them had. The humans, some of them, might. But those others down there, burrowing beneath the bastions and scurrying among the shadows, Verden doubted that they ever would. A gully dwarf would always be a gully dwarf.
Forever Aghar, she thought, and there was a touch of wry amusement in the notion. The lowest of the low, most despised of all the demi-human races of Krynn, the gully dwarves had only two things in their favor—inadvertence and a stubborn resistance to change that bordered on being an elemental force.
Twits, she thought. Somewhere deep within her she made a sacred promise to herself. As long as she lived, she would never again associate with gully dwarves.
Nobody, not even a mighty dragon, the greatest of all creatures, could be a match for such absolute simplicity.
* * * * *
Sheer exhaustion had ended the bloodletting between the people of Gelnia and those of Tarmish. Confusion and a sudden shortage of leadership kept it from flaring up again. With both Lord Vulpin and Chatara Kral dead, their followers were at a loss as to what to do next.
It was exactly the kind of situation Dartimien the Cat was born for, and he wasted no time in establishing himself. While sweat still stood on the brows of the warriors and their blades still dripped fresh blood, he went among them, pointing out the error of their ways.
“Men of Tarmish!” he exhorted, “Look about you at the fallen! Your own kinsmen lie at your feet, along with the kin of Gelnian men, and the blood that mingles there on the stones is all the same color. Your comrades and your enemies have joined forces in death. Friend and foe alike, they are gone from you forever. Now who will share a draught with you on a cold evening? And who will fill your granaries? Who will roast your meat, and bake your bread, and who will tend the fields from which these things arise?
“Men of Gelnia!” he continued, “see your comrades where they lie, and see who shares with them this final cold bed! Look about you at what remains of great Tarmish! Only ruin and wreckage. Among your dead lie Tarmite dead. Now who will pay the price of your harvests? Who will craft the plows for your fields and the shoes for you children’s feet? Whose walls will give you refuge when there are invaders?”
So skilled was Dartimien’s persuasion that most of them—Gelnian and Tarmite alike—listened to his words and slowly, hesitantly, put away their weapons.
* * * * *
But not all. Gratt Bolen, a huge Tarmish street-bull with bulging shoulders and hardly any forehead, took exception to the outsider’s interference, as did Melis Shalee of Gelnia. No amount of persuasion would bend such as these, so Dartimien relied on other skills.
Both the challengers eventually recovered, Melis Shalee from a broken shoulder and Gratt Bolen from multiple dagger wounds. Both became captains in the First Sunderian Legion, but that was later.
At Dartimien’s direction, the Tarmites resurrected their doddering old Grand Megak from the dungeons of Tarmish castle, and the Gelnians brought from his hiding place the infant Prince Quarls. These two were displayed with great honor before the gates of Tarmish, and co-rulership of the Vale of Sunder was bestowed upon them, with Dartimien as crown regent.
The Gelnians went back to their fields and villages, and the Tarmites to the rebuilding of their city. Then the plainsman Graywing asked Dartimien, “How long do you honestly expect such harmony to last in this place?”
“Maybe a few months,” the Cat grinned. “But in that time we should see some real progress.”
Dartimien himself—exercising his new, self-proclaimed authorities—performed the wedding ceremony of Graywing and Thayla Mesinda, and only those at the altar heard his muttered comment when the bonding was complete. “What a waste,” he said, “that such a beauty should settle for an unredeemed barbarian when she might have had me.”
* * * * *
Through it all the Combined Clans of Bulp, unperturbed and oblivious, went about their day-to-day business in the catacombs beneath Tarmish.
Glitch the Most, once Highbulp and now Grand Chief of Mines and Stuff Like That, had become disenchanted with the search for pyrite. Four times now he had found himself buried under mountains of the shiny nuggets, simply because he happened to fall asleep at the collecting point during times of peak discovery. The experience was beginning to wear on him. So Glitch was receptive when Scrib the Doodler proposed a new project.
“Signs on shiny rock not much fun anymore,” Scrib complained. “Those all other folks’ squiggles, say other folks’ stuff. We oughtta make squiggles of our own.”
“What for?” Glitch grumped.
“For say stuff ’bout us,” Scrib suggested. “Talls an’ swatters allus make squiggles, for pres … commem … keep track of glorious stuff they did. Aghar oughtta do that, too.”
“Why?” Glitch wondered aloud.
“For keep track,” Scrib said, struggling with the concept. “Make squiggles so someday ever’body know what stuff we did. We do some pretty great stuff. Oughtta write it down.”
“What kin’ great stuff?” Glitch peered at him. “What did we do … did?”
Nearby the Lady Lidda was stirring stew and listening. “Not much,” she muttered,
“Great stuff,” Scrib said. “Like time when Highbulp had own personal dragon.”
“Bron’s dragon?” Glitch frowned. “So what? Bron tell dragon scat, dragon scat. Big deal. Glitch had dragon once. Big green dragon. Glitch’s dragon. Maybe even two dragons. Who knows? Slew red dragon once, too. Glitch did that. Single-handy.”
“Hmph!” Lidda said.
“If make squiggles to chronic … record … keep track, then everybody know Trout all that, even after tomorrow,” Scrib pursued.
“Ever’body know all ’bout glorious Glitch th’ Mos’?”
“Legendary great Highbulp,” Scrib assured him. “Big cheese. Main pain. Highbulp of all Highbulps.”
“Real twit, too,” the Lady Lidda muttered, glancing fondly at her husband.
“ ’bout time great Glitch got some recog … recog … what’s word?”
“ ‘Preciat … notori … respect,” Glitch agreed. “That it, respect! Glitch prob’ly bes’ Highbulp ever was!”
“Right,” Scrib said. “So le’s do squiggles.”
“Right,” Glitch said, nodding enthusiastically. “Le’s do squiggles! Uh, where we do squiggles?”
“Dunno,” Scrib answered. Make a monume … edif … squiggle place, I guess.”
“Right!” Glitch got to his feet and cupped his hands. “All miners!” he shouted. “Front an’ center!”
Instant pandemonium erupted in the area. Gully dwarves of the mining persuasion converged from all corners, all trying to be in the same place at the same time. The resulting collision sent gully dwarves tumbling in all directions.
“No more shiny rocks!” Glitch told them. “Got ’nough shiny rocks. Now gonna build a squig … edit … monument to glory of Glitch!”
“Why?” several wondered. But Glitch ignored them. Within moments he had several dozen puzzled gully dwarves organized into precise ranks of three to five and marching purposefully toward the tunnel which led to the world outside. Scrib followed along happily, doodling notes and plans on his piece of slate, and even old Gandy went tottering after them, clad in a cast-off grain sack and leaning on his mop handle staff.
At the fireside, Lidda looked after them, shrugged and returned to her concoction of stew. She stirred it contentedly, pausing now and then to swat some ingredient that still moved of its own volition.
The Highbulp Bron and his consort, the Lady Pert, wandered up from someplace, staring after the squadron of reassigned miners. “What goin’ on?” Bron asked.
“Gonna squiggle Glitch,” Lidda said.
“Okay. Uh, why?”
“Glitch been glorious Highbulp,” Scrib explained. “Oughtta write down stuff like that.”
“How ’bout squiggle Bron?” Pert suggested. “Bron kinda glorious, too, for a twit.”
“Sure,” old Gandy added. “Been lotsa Highbulps. More’n two. Oughtta squiggle all of ’em.”
“Okay,” Scrib said. The more the squigglier, he supposed. Maybe Gandy or somebody would remember about other, past Highbulps and their glorious careers. If not, they could just make it up as they went along.
It took the better part of four days for the miners of Bulp to build a grand monument on the parade grounds outside the main gates of Castle Tarmish, and more than a week for Scrib to carve upon its surface the epic history of the Aghar of Clan Bulp.
He chronicled every great event anybody could think of, and every legend and tale from the history of his race. In painstaking hieroglyphic he recounted the legend of the mine that flowed wine, told of the time when his people had been adopted by an ogre, elaborated upon the resurrection of the world’s greatest fling-thing in ancient times, chronicled the tale of the great dragon who had led his race to the Promised Place, and of the dragon that had hatched from the Highbulp’s throne. Every nugget of fact and legend of the Aghar race—from the imprisonment of notables by Tall slavers to the finding of the legendary Great Stew Bowl, Scrib documented with loving care.
And when he was done he stood back, staring in awe at the monumental thing he had done. Here, captured in chiseled squiggles, was the entire epic story of a great people—the definitive history of the Aghar of Krynn, immortalized for all time. Somehow, Scrib felt that a great destiny had been fulfilled and he had been its instrument. He was awed and humbled at the enormity of his accomplishment.
“Aghar forever now,” he breathed. “Forever Aghar.”
* * * * *
That was on a Tuesday afternoon, by Tall reckoning. The following morning, a Wednesday, Captain Gratt Bolen led a work party out of Tarmish to secure and repair the peripheries of the stronghold. The first thing he noticed was a weird, grotesque little monolith standing in the parade ground. It looked as though someone had collected every shard and fragment of broken stone in the area into a tall, ungainly pile, then plastered over the whole thing with mud. And every inch of the dried mud was covered with scratches, gouges and chisel marks.
Gratt Bolen walked entirely around the thing, shaking his head and growling. Even to his coarse sensibilities, the odd, ugly little monument was an eyesore.
“Get some men to clean up this mess,” he ordered. “This is a parade ground, not a garbage dump.”
Thus was the grand history of the combined clans of Bulp lost forever. But by that time the Aghar of Bulp were some distance away, moving generally westward. They didn’t know where they were going, nor did it matter. They were simply moving.
The new Highbulp, Bron the First, had decided it was time to vacate the premises when a horde of Talls armed with scoops, pails and brooms invaded the catacombs.
Cringing in the shadows, the gully dwarves watched for a time as the Talls went to work, tidying up the entire area for human use.
“This place not fit to live in anymore,” Bron decided. “This place all infested with Talls. This place not This Place anymore. Time to move.”
The Lady Pert nodded in agreement and gazed at her husband with approving eyes. Bron was sounding and acting more like a true Highbulp every day. He even walked with an arrogant swagger sometimes, when he thought about it. Given time, the consort decided happily, her husband could turn into a real twit.
Bron had no idea where the new This Place would be, but he felt he would recognize it when he saw it. After all, there had always been a This Place. Therefore, there always would be a This Place.
This Place was wherever the Highbulp said This Place was. And wherever This Place was, there the gully dwarves would be—bumptious and innocent, grotesque and oddly appealing, operating on simple inertia and inadvertence, as changeless as any elemental force could be on the world of Krynn.