“Me highbulp!” he croaked in a vain attempt to assert his lord-and-master-ship.
“Me Berta!” she retorted with her maddening obtuseness. “Berta sick of highbulp! You no boss no more!”
With that, she sat back down, her back straight, her chin-what there was of it-jutting stubbornly into the air. She crossed her arms over her scrawny chest and made a point of looking away from her astounded lord and master.
Gus could only stare at her in dismay.
Berta’s attention was directed toward the dungeon wall, so by chance she noticed the distortion, the haze of blue magic appearing there, before Gus did.
“Huh?” she blurted. “Here come Thorbardin again!”
“What? Where?” demanded the highbulp, following Berta’s gaze. He saw the shimmering blue image appear on the wall, right where the four travelers, the Hylar family, had stepped into the room before. He remembered that they had told him that they came from Thorbardin, a fact that made him think, longingly, of his once-beloved home.
Perhaps it was just the growling of his stomach or his shock at Berta’s sudden rebelliousness or maybe the boredom that had descended on him over the past few months had taken a deeper hold than he understood. But as he spotted that shimmering magical gateway make its appearance and discerned the figures of dwarves, two of them, lurking about somewhere inside there, he was seized with inspiration.
In that flash of insight, he realized something: Thorbardin was a world of plentiful, wonderful food, especially the sumptuous cave carp that were unknown in Pax Tharkas and abundant under the mountain. Blissfully he recalled the great Urkhan Sea, the huge caverns that he had grown up exploring, the multitude of abandoned cities and deep, fungus-laden warrens. In his nostalgia-tinted memory, even the Theiwar bunty hunters who had tried to cut his head off seemed like more of an amusing highlight than any real threat.
The blue circle glowed brightly on the wall, establishing that clear ring of color with the dark hole, snaking away like the mouth of a narrow tunnel, at its center. Almost immediately the two dwarves stepped through the wall. One was an old male; the other, a much younger female, and they both recoiled when Gus bounced to his feet and came striding forward.
“Hi,” he said. “This Pax Tharkas. That Thorbardin, right?” he asked, pointing at the glowing blue door.
“Er, yes,” stammered the male dwarf, ignoring Gus’s outstretched hand. He edged away from the magical aperture.
“Hey, wait for me!” Berta called, bouncing to her feet, stomping after Gus. “You go to Thorbardin? I go too!”
“All right!” beamed the highbulp of Pax Tharkas, once more in command. “Come now!”
The magic opening still shimmered in the wall. Berta drew a deep breath and put her stubby little fingers into Gus’s outstretched hand. Together they stepped into the blue doorway, Berta cringing while Gus blinked slightly, briefly wondering-it was a very deep thought for him-if he was really doing a smart thing.
But then it was too late to change their minds. The blue light grew very bright and warm around them as they seemed to be drawn along and inside and up and whirling through the winding tunnel. Gus took one step, which seemed to travel a very long way. Then, suddenly, they tumbled through another round hole and found themselves in an underground room, some kind of workshop crowded with shelves and benches, with boxes and barrels lining the walls. The blue circle, which they could see lingering on the wall behind them, quickly faded away.
The chests on the floor, many with lids open because they were overflowing with interesting objects, seemed rather promising to Gus-even though nothing exactly looked like food. Still, he was in Thorbardin, and plenty of food was lying around somewhere. Before he could saunter over for a look, however, he heard a strangled, gagging sound.
He turned and looked up to see a pair of elderly Theiwar dwarves, staring at them in horror. The old woman was making the noise, her eyes bulging out and her nearly toothless gums smacking and flexing as she tried to talk. The old male had swooned into a faint, collapsing on the floor. Recovering her wits, the female glowered and pointed a bony finger while she started chanting something that sounded very much like a spell.
Gus knew spells were bad things, to be avoided at all costs. “Come on!” Gus said, tugging on Berta’s hand, sprinting toward the door that led out of the room. A magic missile zinged into the stone floor behind them, sending up a spray of sparks, but by then they were into the next room and moving fast. A few seconds later, Gus had found his way out onto the street and was swaggering along the walkway with Berta beside him, gawking this way and that while the female Theiwar’s shrieks and curses echoed behind him.
“Ah,” Gus sighed, all regrets behind him. It was Thorbardin, all right.
Home sweet home.
Brandon felt a dizzying sensation of weightlessness as he and Gretchan plunged into the Atrium of Garnet Thax. The walls of the massive shaft seemed to fly upward, and his stomach surged with disorienting nausea. He wondered, for the briefest of moments, if the shaft really was bottomless since it seemed the only way they might survive the ultimate plunge would be if they could keep falling and never smash into the ground.
But that was a hopeless notion: the glowing crimson lava down below pretty much guaranteed that they’d burn up even if they somehow managed to survive the long fall. The wind stung his eyes as they dropped and dropped through space. Brandon kicked and thrashed helplessly, barely sensing the levels of the city flying past.
Still, he clung to the two corners of the cloak as the priestess had instructed him. He stared at her, noting that she was holding tightly to the square of fabric. At some point she had thrust her staff through her belt. She wasn’t looking at him, or anything, it seemed, for her eyes were tightly closed. Her lips were moving, however; she was casting a spell. After she quickly chanted a short phrase, Brandon felt a tug from above.
He looked up in surprise to see that the cape had somehow expanded in size so that it was eight or ten times larger than it had been a moment before. Not only that, but the supple fabric had inflated from the pressure of the air they fell through. As he tightened his grip on the corners of the magically enhanced cloak, he could tell that it was dramatically slowing their descent-an impression that was confirmed when he glanced at the nearby wall and saw that, while they were still falling, they were descending slowly enough that he could watch the startled expressions on the faces of the dwarves who happened to be looking into the Atrium from the balconies on the deep-levels as the fugitives floated past.
“Stop them! Arrest them, in the name of Lord Heelspur!” came frantic commands from far above, the Enforcer captain’s squeaky voice echoing through the deep shaft.
Brandon couldn’t see the fellow because the large cloak blocked his upward view, but he wasn’t surprised that none of the Enforcers plunged after the pair, who continued to float down deeper and deeper into the stone-walled chimney. Brandon was surprised at how warm it was getting; the temperature seemed to be climbing rapidly as they descended.
They drifted past a wide gap in the wall, and he saw a number of dwarves shoveling coal from large piles into the metal carts that carried the fuel to the smelters and smithies in the lowest levels of the city. One of the diggers dropped his shovel in startlement as he happened to look out and catch a glimpse of the two dwarves riding their makeshift parachute down the Atrium. By the time he shouted to attract the attention of his coworkers, Brandon and Gretchan had passed from sight, but they heard a clatter and scramble as the entire workforce raced to the edge of the pit to gawk.
He spotted the Deepshelf Inn as it swept up from below; then they passed by it too. He met the eyes of a waitress who was carrying a tray crowded with full mugs; by the time he heard her scream, followed by the loud crash of crockery, they were already gone.
“Um, this was a pretty good idea,” Brandon admitted, relaxing a little and twisting to try to look around. “But that was the last of the deep-levels we just passed
. Do you have any idea how to stop us before we get down to the fires of the Abyss?”
“I have a sort of idea, but I’m not sure how it will work. Look, can you swing your legs like this? Let’s try to shift ourselves closer to the wall.”
Following her lead, he kicked his feet at the same time as Gretchan, starting a pendulum motion toward the cliff then back to the middle of the shaft-which was growing steadily narrower as they continued their rapid descent. They swung sideways again, and he felt a sickening dizziness, momentarily wondering if they would tip the cloak so much that they would lose buoyancy and plummet into the fiery depths. Instead, he found that they were indeed edging closer and closer to the rough stone wall.
Here and there the precipice was scarred by cave mouths and broad, shelflike ledges. All of a sudden Brandon realized her plan: if they could swing into one of those openings or land on a ledge, they might have a chance to arrest their fall. He didn’t even begin to think about their prospects of climbing back up to Garnet Thax undetected.
“Look, there’s a spot!” the priestess said, pointing with her toe. Brandon saw it too: a wide cave hole, gaping like a mouth in the cliff wall. A narrow ledge jutted from the floor of the cave out and into the Atrium. “Let’s swing and drop … on ‘three!’ ”
Trying not to think about the seemingly bottomless drop off the edge of the shelf, Brandon followed her count, swinging his legs over in the steady “one,” “two,” “three” count she barked out. On the last, their feet swung over the ledge, and they both let go of the cape, tumbling onto the shelf. Brandon landed on his feet, flexing his knees, but Gretchan stumbled and slipped, rolling to her side and starting to slide over the edge.
Diving toward her, Brandon reached out a hand, and Gretchan caught it with both of her own. The force of landing on the ground nearly wrenched his shoulder out of the socket, but he pulled her away from the ledge, rolling onto his back and holding her on top of him.
“Well, that wasn’t so bad,” he said, grinning into her face.
But she wasn’t looking back at him. Instead, her eyes were trained on the dark cave just behind the ledge. Whatever she saw there caused her to draw a deep breath and scream.
FOURTEEN
INTO THE UNDERDARK
Where’s my wife?” Garren Bluestone demanded. “Where’s Karine? What did you do to her?”
The dwarf struggled against the ropes that bound his arms tightly behind his back. He twisted in the muscular grip of at least two captors. He couldn’t see anything because the Enforcers had placed a dark hood over his head before they’d even removed him from his house. He’d heard his wife screaming for help but had been powerless to intervene as his captors dragged him into the street.
She had been pulled out the door with him, but Karine’s voice had faded into the distance as they forced him to march along, leaving her and his home behind. Whether she had been taken in a different direction or perhaps returned to the house, he didn’t know. He’d felt miserably helpless and terribly frightened for his family as the king’s Enforcers pushed Garren toward the nearest stairway. With swords poking his back and buttocks, the prisoner had been marched up a long series of steps. He’d been too distraught to count them but estimated that he’d climbed some six or eight of the city’s levels. His best guess was that he was in the League of Enforcer’s headquarters, which he knew to be on the level directly below the palace-the very highest level of all Garnet Thax.
After hearing several doors clank open then slam shut behind him, Garren was pushed down into a hard wooden chair. One more door slammed, very nearby, and he heard several other dwarves moving around him and chairs scraping on the floor. Someone with a big chest and a deep voice coughed harshly.
Abruptly the hood was pulled from his head. Garren was seated at a small table, his arms still bound behind him. Two black-clad Enforcers stood flanking him; one of them had removed his hood.
But the captive dwarf’s eyes immediately went to the fellow sitting across the table from him, a villain regarding him with flat, emotionless eyes. Garren recognized Baracan Heelspur: the son of Lord Heelspur had his father’s large, hooked nose, and a thick head of dark hair that sprouted so low on his forehead it almost merged with his black, shaggy eyebrows. His eyes receded far into his head and were shaded by a blunt, protruding brow. They might have been black cave mouths, dark spots underneath a shelf of cliff.
“I’m so happy that you could join us,” Baracan said, his sneering tone unmatched by any expression of delight or even interest in those black eyes. “I’ve wanted to have the pleasure of your company for some time now. I was just waiting for the proper occasion.”
“Where’s my wife?” demanded Garren. “What have you done with her, you butcher?”
One of the guards smacked Bluestone, hard, on the ear. “Don’t insult the captain,” snarled the dwarf.
Wincing, his head ringing, Garren drew a breath. “Where is she?” he repeated.
“Don’t worry about her,” Baracan Heelspur said with an easy chuckle. “It’s you we’re interested in. If you tell us what we need to know, nothing … untoward … will happen to your lovely wife.”
“Is she here? Did you lock her up too?”
“I told you,” Baracan said with just a hint of annoyance. “Stop worrying about her. It’s you we’re interested in.”
“All right.” Garren forced himself to breathe deeply, to remain calm. “Why are you interested in me? What do you think I’ve done?”
“Obviously, for one, you were harboring a fugitive. Your son is a renegade dwarf, I’m certain you understand. Not only did he defame me, personally, in the presence of the king, but he sought to deny my father’s rightful claim to a new, and very valuable, vein of gold ore. You’ll be flattered to know that he was one of the first outlaws to be placed on the list; you might even say his name was noted before there even was a list.”
Garren seethed. He knew the real story: his two sons, Nailer and Brandon, had discovered the ore on a daring expedition. They had battled and slain a fearsome cave troll in the process. Then, as they had made their way back to the city, they had been ambushed by masked assassins. Nailer had died; Brandon had been fortunate to escape with his life. The purpose behind the assassination had become clear when Garren and his surviving son had heard Lord Alakar Heelspur loudly claim the ore in the name of his clan, crediting his son with both the discovery and the slaying of the cave troll. Brandon’s appearance in the royal court-and his strenuous objection to Heelspur’s claim-had badly embarrassed the lord. Lord Heelspur hadn’t forgotten that humiliation.
But Garren knew better than to try to make Brandon’s case then and there. Perhaps the contemptible dwarf sitting across the table from him had even been one of Nailer’s killers. That possibility caused Garren’s pulse to pound in his temples, and he strained against his bonds with all his strength. But the ropes were thick and the knots secure; he could only glare at the captain of the Enforcers and imagine his vengeance.
“He slipped into the city rather cleverly; my guards at the Kayolin gate have since been reassigned to gully dwarf surveillance. But how did he escape from your house? My men claim they were mysteriously blinded when they tried to arrest him.”
“How should I know?” Garren spat. “I couldn’t see anything either.”
“It smacks of sorcery, if you ask me,” the captain of the Enforcers said.
Garren shrugged. “Is that against the law now too?” he asked.
“No … not yet. So do you deny that your son was in your home when my men raided your cozy little domicile?” probed Baracan.
“My son was visiting my wife and I,” Garren said stiffly. “I was not aware that you consider him a fugitive or that his name was on any ‘list.’ He’s been traveling for more than a year, and we were naturally delighted that he had finally returned home.”
“Do you deny that you, yourself, secreted him out of the city immediately after he slandered my father in the ki
ng’s court?”
“You and I both know that he told the truth,” Garren said levelly. “And the truth cannot be called slander. The rest I neither deny nor affirm.”
“He slandered my father!” declared Baracan, pounding wildly on the table. For the first time his eyes flashed with emotion: they burned with a plainly murderous rage. Garren felt more certain than ever that Baracan Heelspur, personally, had taken part in Nailer’s murder. He met the captain’s gaze with a level look, while in the deepest depth of his soul he harbored murderous thoughts of his own. Perhaps some of that hatred showed in his eyes since, for just a moment, the Captain of the Enforcers averted his eyes and blinked nervously.
Abruptly he turned back to the prisoner and pointed an accusing finger. “And don’t think we don’t know about the rest of your nefarious schemes. We’ve been watching those who follow the Bluestone faction for a good long time now.”
“Bluestone faction? Nefarious?” Garren had never heard his family referred to as a ‘faction’ before. “What in Reorx’s name are you talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb.” Baracan sneered. “When there’s a band of rebels in the city and they use your name to identify their group, you can be pretty sure my Enforcers are going to take action.”
“I tell you, I don’t know anything about any so-called Bluestone faction!”
The head of the king’s secret police force just laughed. “Apparently there are still some Kayolin dwarves who don’t understand that the Bluestone Luck is a genuine curse. They don’t recognize that the misfortune that has befallen your once illustrious line only proves that you are not fit to rule this city-and you never were!”
“Who claims I want to rule Garnet Thax?” Garren snapped angrily. “That’s preposterous!”
Baracan shrugged. “Deny it all you like. In any event, you have now been caught committing a clear, undeniable crime.”
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