The Search For Magic tftwos-1

by Brian Murphy

  Few but the most esoteric of scholars and thieves knew this, but the sewers of Palanthas weren’t really sewers at all. They were an ancient dwarven city, carved into the bedrock centuries before the first humans sailed into the Bay of Branchala, even before the wizards raised the Tower of High Sorcery with their magic. But the city was abandoned by the dwarves long before the humans took over the land above it. Those who first discovered it found it empty and desolate. Some say it was once part of the great dwarven empire of Kal-Thax, which vanished without a trace before Thorbardin was even a dream in the mind of Reorx.

  As they rounded a bend in the sewer, the trio entered a much larger passage than any they had encountered so far. It was also by far the most pungent. Before them lay a small lake of sewage, in which floated as varied a collection of garbage as any city could boast-everything from a toy boat with a broken mast to a dead and very bloated pig to a whole wagon bobbing belly up with its wheels in the air. Large brown globs of thick and apparently solid foam bumped about among the more common rotting rinds of vegetables, slicks of oil, and shingles of congealed fat.

  “We call this place the Gully Dwarf Stew Pot,” the gnome shouted over the smell, as he tied a bit of white cloth across the front of his face. “This section of the tunnel invertabrately clogs up during the rainless summer months, and gully dwarves find this place irrefutable. The Civil Engineering Guild Local 1101 is currently discussing a hundred and forty-three possible solutions, but in the meantime I can think of no better place to begin to effect a revolution of the patient’s melody.”

  “I’ve never smelled anything quite so extraordinary,” Morg said, while pinching his nose. A burning and curiously itchy curiosity to explore every inch of this place and see what might be found floating in the water competed with a very real concern for the future state of his clothing.

  The gnome hitched up his coat and jumped in, promptly sinking up to his white beard. Being a kender and thus somewhat taller than his gnomish companion, the sewage only came up to Whort’s pouches, but his uncle, being much weighted by his more recent acquirements, slipped upon landing and vanished below the surface. He came up spluttering and thrashing, while his maps spread around him like a jam of small logs. They quickly began to sink, many vanishing into the dark mucky water before he could recover his wits and grab them.

  “Come along, this way. Follow me!” the gnome ordered as he started off, flailing the water to aid his progress. Morg stuffed his remaining maps into a shoulder pouch, making sure to tie it securely shut before continuing.

  Though this section of the sewer was illuminated at irregular intervals by iron grates set in the roof, there was very little light to see by, and the water was so thick with muck that no light could pierce its depths. At each step, there was a danger of dropping into some deep hole. The three explorers felt their way along the slimy bottom as they slogged through the water, wary of sudden drops, or worse.

  As the sewer merged with the Market Street tunnel, the grates in the roof gradually grew more frequent, providing more light and helping to speed their progress. Because this section of the sewer opened directly into Market Street, one of the busiest streets in all Palanthas, it was no wonder that citizens of Palan-thas desired some means of preventing it from clogging, or to clear the clog once it was, well, clogged. To this end, the local gnomes had been diligently working for a number of years, with varying degrees of success. One of their most promising devices, the very large SNAKE (Self Navigating Auto-Keyhole Eviscerator-the original design was much smaller and was intended to clean keyholes clogged with rust) proved unreliable and was last reported still burrowing away somewhere near the town of Lemish.

  Their most recent design was originally thought too simple to work, but to date it had passed every test. It consisted of a large wooden ball only slightly smaller in diameter than the passage it was meant to unstop. The ball was deployed upstream from the clog, then carried to the clog by the flow of water, where it punched through by the force of its own weight combined with the mass of water that had built up behind it. Downstream, it would be caught and wrestled back up an access passage to the street, for redeployment or storage, as needed. For explorers of the Palanthian sewer system, often the only warning of this bowling disaster came when the sewer suddenly drained away, rather like the surf before an oncoming tidal wave. So it was with no small alarm that Dr. Palaver realized he was crawling along the bottom of the sewer rather than swimming through its sludge. He looked back and found his companions standing only knee deep in the water, with the level swiftly receding.

  Whort, who had spent some time, years perhaps, living in the sewers of Palanthas, knew immediately that danger loomed. The bells on his sleeve commenced to tinkle quite vigorously in his agitation. He grabbed his uncle’s arm and pulled, but Morg was much too intent on what was, by the sound of it, bowling from behind them.

  The thing filled all the passage, blotting out the light streaming from above and casting the passage into ever deepening darkness. It was constructed of circular layers of wood bolted together and coated by a hard slick varnish to keep out the water and maintain buoyancy. It ground along the passageway, pushed from behind by what appeared to be a wall of water reaching all the way to the roof.

  “We’ll be crushed!” Morg remarked gleefully. Dr. Palaver had already fled, abandoning his patient, before Whort got his uncle turned around and headed in the right direction. But there was nowhere to run. They quickly caught up to the puffing old physician as he stood before the tunnel blockage-a massive dam of sticks, treelimbs, bones, bits of furniture and cloth, a wheel, the bodies of more rats than they cared to count, even a bathtub, all cemented together by the thick black sewer sludge.

  “Trapped like gully dwarves!” the doctor cried, pulling at his beard.

  But Whort had no desire to be flattened, crunch or no crunch. Turning his uncle once more, he shoved the elder kender into a hole in the wall barely wide enough to admit his pouches and hoopak. Complaining volubly of missing all the fun, Morg climbed inside. Dr. Palaver followed, with Whort dragging his feet to safety a bare heartbeat before the sewer ball cast the tiny upward-sloping pipe into pitchy darkness.

  Of course, a moment later, raw sewage roared in behind them, blasting the two kender and their gnomish companion up the length of the pipe, disgorging them into a small, round chamber dimly lit by a grate in the low roof above.

  “Ah. We have reached a safe room. Good show,” the gnome said as he wrung out the sleeves of his no-longer white coat. “We should be quite safe here. You see, the safe rooms lie above the highest level of the sewer. Even at flood time, we will have to wait a bit for the level to subsist, but then I think we may then continue our search for gully dwarves.”

  “Won’t those do?” Morg asked while pinching his nostrils. With his free hand, he pointed into a dark corner, where a half dozen pairs of beady black eyes gleamed back at them.

  “They will do admiralty,” the gnome answered. He rushed to Whort’s side. “I will minotaur your reactions as you approach the gully dwarves. Are you afraid?”

  Whort shook his head that he wasn’t, almost dislodging the strange spectacles still clinging to his pointy ears.

  “Approach them now,” the doctor ordered. “When I tell you, you must drink the potion. Do you have it?”

  Whort shook his head that he didn’t. Dr. Palaver frantically searched his own pockets, until Morg produced it from one of his own. “You left it on the table back at the office,” he explained.

  Whort took the potion, then stepped toward the gully dwarves, moving into a thin beam of light descending through a tiny grate in the roof. Perhaps it was his eyes, hugely magnified through the glasses, which frightened them, for the gully dwarves began to scream and bite each other. Whort backed away, hiding his features in the shadows opposite the room. “Erngh,” he groaned miserably.

  The gully dwarves screamed again at the sound, and continued to chew one anothers’ ears, fingers,
noses, and whatever was handy. Soon, the cries turned from fright to anger, and a fight broke out which threatened to engulf them all. The two kender and the gnome backed up against the wall, wary of flashing yellow teeth or grubby nails.

  “Inflections! Inflections!” the gnome cried. “Do not let them bite you or you’ll get an inflection!”

  Finally, the disagreement subsided, with only a few missing ears and one gnawed pinky finger. Like a shark-haunted bank of herring, in the blink of an eye the gully dwarves had turned, swirled, then collected back in their shadowy corner, all facing in the same direction again.

  “I suppose I may have misdirected you,” Dr. Palaver said as he examined Whort’s sleeve and protective goggles. “I had hypostacized that agharaphobia might be the cause of your fears, but obviously you aren’t afraid of gully dwarves as I first surmounted. Say ah.” He whipped out another wooden plank (this one much begrimed and hardly very sanitary) and shoved it into the kender’s mouth.

  “Erngh,” Whort gagged.

  “As I suspected! The talk bone is still constricted. Well then, we shall just have to find the true source of your fear. As my tormentor used to say, when all other probabilities have been exploded, whatever remains, no matter how smelly, must be the truth.” Dr Palaver tossed aside his dipstick. “One of you wouldn’t have anything of interest to a gully dwarf?”

  “Would a rat do?” Morg asked, wrinkling his nose in disgust as he withdrew the dead rat he had just discovered in one his pouches.

  In answer, the gully dwarves began to slaver and creep forward, eyeing the limp, wet morsel dangling from the kender’s fingertips. Dr. Palaver took the rat from Morg and shook it temptingly before the gully dwarves, drawing them even farther from their shadowy nook.

  Taking great care to speak slowly so that they could understand him (gnomes were notoriously rapid speakers), the doctor said in sweet tones, “Whoever shows me the scariest place in the whole sewer gets this rat. Do any of you know where the scariest place in the whole sewer is?”

  At this point, some kind of conference commenced among the gully dwarves. There was many a loud meaty smack, for like most of their race, they spoke more eloquently with the back of the hand than the mouth. They also tended to repeat the same two-word argument endlessly-”No! Yes! No! Yes! No! Yes!”- like a shutter banging back and forth in the wind.

  Finally, one of them seemed to have gained the upper backhand, so to speak, for as he turned and the others started to protest, he raised one grubby fist and silenced them all. “Me know!” he said. “Give rat.” He held out his hand, black palm upward.

  “What is the most scariest place?” the gnome asked.

  “Don’t say, Grod,” one of the other gully dwarves begged.

  “Place called… The Hole!” the head gully dwarf said with the best dramatic flair he could muster. The other gully dwarves screamed and bit each other anew.

  “What is the Hole?” Dr. Palaver asked. The gully dwarves screamed again.

  “The Hole”-again with the screams-”is deep, dark place where no aghar ever come back from.”

  “Take us to it,” Morg said, leaping into the conversation. The head gully dwarf backed away a step and shook his head until his yellow teeth clattered.

  “No get rat until you take us to the Hole!” the doctor demanded as he hid the dead rodent behind his back.

  The gully dwarves screamed.

  “That Hole,” the gully dwarf leader said, pointing to a small, collapsed section of the wall in another part of the massive Palanthian sewer system. The other gully dwarves, too terrified by the sight of it, still managed to scream, even if it was a whisper.

  “Doesn’t seem much to me,” Morg said as he approached the hole in the wall. He stuck his head into the dark aperture and shouted, “Tally-ho and view halloo!”

  As he removed his head (still attached to his neck), and his bright kender voice came chirruping back to him by way of a magnificent echo, the gully dwarves breathed an awed sigh to kender bravery. “Do again,” one whispered, but he was promptly attacked by his fellows for even suggesting anything so frightening.

  Dr. Palaver approached and tilted his ear toward the opening. “I hear something,” he said. “Some sort of deep rumbling. Could be the snore of a sleeping beast.”

  He sniffed. “And a smell like stale beer and dead rats. Definitely something in there,” he concluded.

  “Something, yes!” the gully dwarf leader agreed.

  “Then go in there and find out what it is,” the gnome retorted.

  The gully dwarves backed away in horror, until Morg (who had gotten hold of the dead rat again) dangled the morsel before them. They stopped, and a few even managed a step forward, filthy bearded jaws slobbering hungrily.

  Morg swung the bait before them, back and forth, back and forth, hypnotically, watching their eyes watch the movement of the rat, watching their bodies begin to lean side to side with each sway. Suddenly, he flung the rat into the hole, and the lot of them dived after it before they knew what they were doing. One managed to actually get through the hole. The others merely piled up against the wall, clawing and scratching at each other angrily until they realized where they were. Then, with a horrific yell, they pelted away, leaving the gnome and the two kender alone beside the hole.

  They waited a bit for the victim of the rat toss to emerge, then waited in growing alarm as he failed to make his anticipated appearance and exit.

  “Perhaps they were right,” Morg suggested. His eyes were almost as large as his nephew’s, but without the benefit of magnification. “Let’s go and see,” he added, in a tone that seasoned travelers had learned to dread when spoken by a kender.

  They crawled into the hole, Morg leading the way, the gnome bringing up a reluctant rear. They had only gone a short distance before they realized that they were no longer in the sewer. They had come through into a cellar somewhere, a place filled with casks and barrels. Judging from the ancient stone pillars supporting the roof, it appeared to have once been a catacomb.

  The deeper into the hole that they went, the louder the contented purring snore became. It sounded like the enormous rumbling of a snoozing dragon-a thing Morg had actually heard, once upon a time. But the reek of stale beer and wet rat and, they now noticed, gully dwarf, grew stronger with each step forward. Finally, rounding a corner, they came to a section of the catacomb illuminated by torchlight shining through a grate in a large iron door. The flickering beam of light that slanted through the grate fell directly on a pile of gully dwarves. They were not dead, though they smelled like they might be. Instead, they were sleeping off a marvelous drunk. Nearby, a cask had been broached, and it was but one of many other empty ones. The owner of the cellar obviously had not been in this section for many days-weeks perhaps, or even months.

  Morg saw a large iron door nearby, and his kender-curiosity got the best of him. Straining at the massive ring, he pulled the door open. An even larger cellar, this one lit by numerous torches, lay beyond it.

  However, his opening of the heavy iron door had caused it to groan on its rusty hinges. The noise awoke the gully dwarves and sent them bolting in all directions. One gully dwarf bowled into Morg, almost knocking him off his feet. It was a good thing that he kept his balance, or the gully dwarf would surely have devoured him in its fright. Yellow teeth flashed and champed inches from his face. Finally, he had to whack the grimy creature with his hoopak just to settle him down. It worked. The gully dwarf settled down on the floor with a thump.

  “Oh dear,” Morg grimaced while gnawing on his topknot.

  Dr. Palaver brought the gully dwarf around by applying something he called “smelly salts, or bicarbonate of ammonia” to a kerchief and waving it below the gully dwarfs nose. The miserable little creature came fully awake in an instant, teeth already snapping together in defense. Morg gripped his hoopak in case he needed to reapply the anesthetic.

  But the gnome managed to mollify the creature enough to talk to it. “Wha
t is your name?” he asked slowly, so the gully dwarf could follow his words.

  “Rulf,” the creature belched.

  “He sounds like he is about to be sick,” Morg said.

  “Rulf, we have rescued you from the Hole. Doesn’t that make you happy?” the gnome asked.

  The gully dwarf shook his head. “No. Me happy here. Plenty good beer, stinky cheese… this heaven. You rescue me from heaven. Go away.” He crossed his arms sullenly and chewed a remnant of cheese still stuck in his beard.

  “Come now, Rulf. We have rescued you, so you must come with us. You must do us a little favor, and if you do, I will catch you a nice, big, fat rat with one of my mousetraps,” the gnome offered.

  “How big?” Rulf queried.

  The gnome held up two fingers (he had dealt with gully dwarves before). “This big,” he said, wriggling his stubby digits for emphasis.

  Rulf sucked in his breath, which caused him to choke on the bit of beard he had been chewing. He spat it out. “That big, huh? Who Rulf gotta kill?”

  “Rulf kill no one. All Rulf gotta do… er, ahem,” the gnome cleared his throat and blushed. “All we desire of you is to show us the scariest place you know.”

  “Scarier than this?” Rulf asked, indicating with a wave the catacomb cellar around him.

  “The scariest you know,” the gnome said.

  “It better be big hog rat,” Rulf said as he rose wearily to his feet, rubbing his hoopak-knocked noggin with a grimace.

  Deep beneath the city of Palanthas, below its sewers and deepest dungeons, lay a system of sea caves known only to a few scholars of Palanthian lore. The caves had not been explored by the surface-dwelling citizens of that city in many a century, but they were well known to those who inhabited them.

  The denizens of the caves were, of course, the gully dwarves. Those who knew of the gully dwarves living in the city’s sewers knew only the tip of the dwarfs beard, as the saying goes. There is often a whole dwarf behind it. In this case, there were several thousand of the generally mistreated and wisely disliked race of aghar dwarves, all living out their private lives in their private desolation, deep beneath a city of a hundred thousand blissfully ignorant souls.