That one descended rather sharply, and he found himself having to slow his pace just to keep himself from skidding downward. Treading carefully, he tried to avoid patches of loose stone, knowing that a trickle of debris preceding him could only attract the monsters’ unwanted attention. Despite his fear, he felt himself drawing closer and closer.
But would be find Gretchan alive?
Abruptly the floor dropped away, leaving a shaft plummeting into darkness. Brandon halted just before he stepped off the brink, and for a moment he froze in panic. Had Gretchan been taken down that hole?
He was about to thrust the staff and its glowing symbol into the darkness when he caught the sound of a faint moan. He looked past the hole, and there, to his astonishment and pleasure, he spotted the sought-after priestess. She was alive, though from her pale skin and weak, twitching movements, it seemed she was in a feeble state, and she had been fastened to the cavern wall with a network of pasty, thick webbing.
There was a small ledge allowing passage around the hole in the floor, and Brandon wasted no time in skirting the gap, finally reaching the large, flat section of wall where Gretchan was imprisoned. His stomach lurched as he caught sight of many skeletal frames nearby, also entrapped in the webbing. Some were dwarf-sized, while others were small enough that they must have been gully dwarves. Bones and clothing were still there, behind the gauzy web, but the corpses looked as if all the flesh and blood had been drained away.
Desperately, Brandon used his knife to slice away at the strands imprisoning Gretchan. Her eyelids flickered and opened, brightening when they saw him. Then they widened in horror.
“Look out!” she croaked. “The queen is coming!”
SEVENTEEN
THE THIRD QUEEN OF THE HIVE
Brandon’s axe, still gummy with the residue of the webbing he’d shredded, slashed around in a wide arc as he spun. He almost gagged at the sight of a massive head, bulging eyes glittering, huge mandibles poised to crush. The obscene shape loomed out of the hole he had almost tumbled into. His reaction was instinctive: the Bluestone Axe smashed into one of those vicious jaws-a crushing blade the size of a large sickle-and chopped a deep nick into the hornlike material.
The monstrous horax fell back, avoiding a second blow aimed at its foreleg.
“That’s the queen?” he gasped, turning back to the priestess. Even as he asked, he knew the answer.
“Yep, that’s her,” Gretchan replied, shivering in disgust. “She came up to have a look at me when the tangler tied me up.”
“Tangler?”
“The red ones. They cast the webs.” She pushed and twisted, working one arm free from the sticky strands, tearing the silk of her blue tunic in the process.
He chopped away at more of the webbing, and she pulled her other arm free while he lowered his aim, hacking at the strands imprisoning her lower body, taking care to cut away only the web while avoiding her skin. She wriggled one of her legs out of the tangled mess. He glanced back, saw no sign of the queen at the dark hole, and with a wrenching tug, pulled Gretchan free from the rest of her bonds. He braced his knees, ready to catch her as she fell, but was startled to see that she was standing on her own.
“You seem all right!” he exclaimed. “By Reorx, I was praying they hadn’t hurt you!”
“Maybe he was listening,” she replied, gratefully taking the staff of her god from his free hand and leaning on it. “They had me tied up tight-it was damned hard to breathe-and I was dizzy by the time those bugs brought me down here.” She flashed him a sharp look, tinged with an incongruous iota of amusement. “But did you think I was going to let them have me without a fight? I knew you’d be along to get me out of here.”
“I–I’m glad I made it,” he stammered, immensely relieved. “Now come with me!”
He turned, ready to retrace his steps up the steeply angled tunnel he had descended, then stopped in horror as he saw a swarm of horax making their way down toward them. The ceiling, walls, and floor of the tunnel were covered with the many monsters, dozens of them forming a solid barrier against their escape. He looked hopefully in the other direction, but beyond where Gretchan and the other victims had been imprisoned, the passageway terminated in a solid rock wall.
“Any chance we can escape down there?” he asked, leaning with trepidation over the deep hole, the gap from which the queen’s head had emerged. Gretchan extended the glowing head of her staff over the aperture, and Brandon saw a massive pile of what looked like round, white stones, each bigger than a dwarf’s head. The queen, her massive jaw clacking, sat upon that mound, glowering upward with bulging eyes that seemed to boast a hundred facets each.
“How can we get out of here?” he asked despairingly. The horax blocking the exit tunnel clicked and seethed, apparently content to obstruct the passage-at least, they didn’t try to close in.
“Did you see all those eggs?” Gretchan asked as Brandon hoisted his axe and stepped around the hole, warily watching the swarm of bug monsters in the upper cavern.
“Eggs? Oh, sure. So that’s what they were,” he replied, remembering the big pile of what he thought were rocks.
“Well, I wonder if that bloated bitch has any maternal instincts,” the priestess replied. “Keep an eye on those soldiers. I’ll see if I can make their boss understand me.”
“What are you talking about?” he protested.
“Don’t worry-just do it!” she snapped.
Willing to grasp at any straw, Brandon glared at the swarm of horax blocking their path, trying to look intimidating. He heard Gretchan chanting something, a harsh, aggressive sound very different from any spell he had heard her cast before. Abruptly he heard a sharp crack of sound, followed by a screaming wail rising from the depths of the egg chamber.
“Look out!” Gretchan shouted, and Brandon sprang away from the hole as the queen swelled upward. Her head and jaws emerged through the opening, thrashing and clacking aggressively. The priestess smacked her staff against the monstrous horax, the blow producing a bright flash of light, and the queen tumbled back down to perch atop her egg pile, warily staring upward with those buglike, multifaceted eyes.
Brandon looked down for a moment and saw that one of the eggs on the top of the pile was shattered. At the same time, Gretchan repeated the harsh incantation of her spell and pointed her staff. The dwarf felt a jolt of energy, though he didn’t see any corresponding flash, but in the light of the enchanted anvil, he saw another egg quiver and explode, hurling its gory contents across the queen and the rest of the pile.
Once more that grotesque matriarch shrieked her outrage, but instead of leaping toward the hole over her head, she seemed to spread out across the top of the great clutch of spheres. Her abdomen was massive and distended, very different from the segmented, chitinous bodies of her warriors, and she splayed it as wide as she could.
“Call off your soldiers!” Gretchan shouted, raising her staff and aiming it toward the mound of eggs. “Or I’ll destroy all of them!”
“Do you really think she can understand you?” demanded Brandon incredulously, glancing over his shoulder as he brandished the axe to hold the swarm of horax at bay.
“I know she can,” the cleric replied. “I’m speaking aloud for your benefit; I’m connecting to her with my mind. She understands full well that I have the power to destroy all those eggs, or at least a lot of them, before her soldiers can drag us down.”
To prove the point, Gretchan raised her staff again, shook it menacingly, and shouted in that harsh, guttural language Brandon didn’t understand. The horax soldiers started to advance, clacking menacingly, and the axe-wielding dwarf feinted a charge that caused them to halt uncertainly. They hunched, twitching and snapping, creeping closer until the queen shrieked deafeningly. The sound was a piercing whistle that left the dwarves’ ears ringing, but it clearly brought the swarm of her followers to a halt.
“Call them down there to you! All of them!” Gretchan ordered. Again she brandished the st
aff, and the queen squawked and clacked.
The sounds were loud but nonsensical to Brandon until he saw the effect they had on the horax blocking their escape route. Hissing and shifting nervously, snapping and glaring, the monsters slowly began to back away. He advanced, holding his axe at the ready, and saw they were withdrawing through a narrow gap in the floor, a shadowy crack. One after the next, the horax wedged themselves through the opening and dropped out of sight.
“They’re clearing out,” he called back to the cleric. “I don’t see any more in front of us.”
“Stay there!” Gretchan called, her voice stern, even menacing, as she again waved her staff into the pit. With once last glance, she sprinted after Brandon, who was already leading the way upward to safety.
“Do you really think she’s going to obey you?” he asked, still amazed by her negotiation with the queen of the horax. “She’s just a giant insect, for Reorx’s sake!”
“She’s a lot more than an insect,” the cleric retorted. “I would think you’ve seen proof of that. And now that I can’t menace her eggs, I don’t think she’ll hold them back for a minute!”
“Then,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her up an unusually steep stretch of the cavern. “We’d better make some tracks.”
Once again Brandon ran until his lungs ached, with Gretchan rushing along right behind him. After half an hour of frantic climbing, they stopped to catch their breath, drawing deep and ragged lungfuls of air. Brandon was about to point out that they couldn’t afford to rest for long when his companion murmured a brief incantation, and the dwarves’ fatigue melted away, her words infusing them with a shot of pure, intangible energy.
So they started upward again.
When several pathways presented themselves, Gretchan raised her staff, and the brightened light on the head of the shaft continued to select their route. Always they climbed, and they never encountered a bottleneck that forced them to backtrack, nor did they see any sign of any horax in the first hour of their flight. Several times, however, they passed the wreckage of the ancient stone walls that had been erected to prevent the bug monsters from approaching the dwarven city. The barrier stones were solid and perfectly chiseled, but in every case some unknown force had wrenched them down.
Inevitably the rejuvenating effects of Gretchan’s spell wore off, and the two dwarves paused once again to catch their breath.
“Why would those walls be knocked down?” the cleric asked again, shaking her head in confusion and dismay. “It was clearly done intentionally. But what purpose can it serve?”
Brandon frowned. “I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “I have an idea, but I’d need some proof before I could take my claim to the people of Kayolin.”
“What’s your idea?” Gretchan asked, intrigued.
“Well, we saw in Regar’s proclamation that one of the arguments he used to support his elevation to the kingship, and his creation of a national army and League of Enforcers, was the menace presented by the horax. My parents repeated the same thing; it’s a primary foundation of his claim to kingship. He says that the horax are expanding their range, attacking the lower levels of Garnet Thax, and as we have seen, he’s right.”
“So the king’s men might have knocked the walls down to make the horax more dangerous,” she conclude. “And then he’s using that as an excuse to justify his increased power?” The priestess shook her head, incredulous. “That’s crazy-not to mention terribly dangerous!”
Brandon merely shrugged. “It’s especially dangerous to the dwarves who live down in the lowest parts of the city-the poorest and weakest of the population. If Smashfingers is as ruthless as I think he is-and my brother’s fate suggests he’s all that and worse-what would he care about a few dozen, or hundred, or even a thousand of his most wretched citizens perishing? And if the horax appear in the bottom levels of the city, I’m sure he’s confident his army will be able to defeat them. They’re only giant bugs, after all.”
At that moment the steady sound of clicking mandibles rose from the tunnel behind them. None of the monsters were in sight yet, but the sound clearly proved that they were being pursued. Even as they climbed to their feet, the volume of noise grew louder.
“Run!” Brandon cried. He pulled out the axe that had been strapped to his belt for most of their flight. “I’ll hold them off!”
“Don’t be an idiot!” she snapped, bringing a flush of anger to his cheeks. “If you stay here, then I’ll stay here with you, and we’ll both go down to death! Is that what you want?”
“What? No! That’s ridiculous! Run, I tell you!” His voice rose to a roar. “Get going!”
She glared at him with her chin jutting out aggressively, her own cheeks flushed with emotion-fear, no doubt, but also excitement or anger. Then, right in front of Brandon’s disbelieving eyes, her lips twisted into a slight, mocking smile.
“Make me!” she taunted.
“You’re crazy! Do you know that?” he bellowed, giving her a shove on the shoulder to spin her around. “I’ll be right behind you-now go!”
Naturally, she looked over her shoulder to make sure that he was following her closely, and he did as both ran for their lives. They raced up the gently curving floor of the cave, panic-stricken at the thought of the bug monsters chasing them. They knew, though, that there was not likely to be any timely rescue, no miraculous escape.
The cavern grew steeper and straightened out. Glancing back, still seeing no sign of the clattering pursuers, Brandon slung his axe from its strap again so he could use his hands to help pull himself up the rough, ascending cavern floor. Gretchan carried her staff in her right hand and used it as an extra limb, pushing against outcrops and irregularities in an effort to climb more quickly.
The sounds of the horax grew louder, and Brandon risked a glance over his shoulder. The creatures were in sight now, spilling along the cavern in great numbers, dozens of them crawling all over each other, clawing and scratching to climb after the fleeing dwarves. Some of the bugs used their hooked talons to claw their way up the walls, even climbing on the ceiling, so the whole shaft of the cavern looked like some arachnid-infested nightmare.
“Come on!” Gretchan gasped. He scrambled after her, surprised by how fast she was able to climb. In fact, he reflected wryly as he hastened to catch up, it almost looked as though he were dawdling. To make up some distance, he flexed his legs and sprang upward, grabbing knobs of rock with his hands and quickly drawing closer to her.
The steeply climbing tunnel turned into a larger chamber with a flat, albeit irregular, floor. Two different corridors darkened the far wall, each leading into a narrow cavern that seemed to continue upward. Once more Gretchan raised her staff and extended the anvil tip; it immediately sparkled into light when turned toward the right-hand passage.
With the priestess still in the lead, they barged toward the path and found themselves facing a series of stone ledges, leading steeply upward like some natural stairway-albeit, one formed of giant steps. Each ledge was about waist high to the fleeing dwarves, but Gretchan used her staff to vault up one after the other. Brandon hurled himself after, flinging his leg up as he approached each step and almost keeping pace with her. He glanced back again and saw, with a sinking heart, that the horax still clattered relentlessly after them. The monstrous bugs were also having a hard time climbing, however.
“How far up … to Garnet Thax?” Gretchan asked through gasping breaths.
“Don’t know,” he replied. “We’ve got to be getting close,” he added encouragingly, not at all certain that he knew what he was talking about.
Then Gretchan scrambled over the last step and darted forward, but froze. “Uh-oh,” she said grimly.
He scrambled up beside her and immediately understood. The tunnel ended in a ledge, a perch on the side of the Atrium similar to where they had landed on their initial, gliding descent. They were much farther up than that place, but there was no pathway, not even handholds, that wou
ld let them climb up the cliff away from there.
Above, tantalizing them from no more than a hundred feet away, lanterns gleamed and the dwarves of Kayolin chattered and laughed at the lowest of the city’s cliff-side inns.
But for all the help they could offer, they might have been a thousand miles away.
“Will you two be quiet!” Gus demanded. “Bunty hunters hears us and cuts off heads!”
“Shut you bluphsplunging mouth, doofar!” Slooshy snapped at him. “You nots me boss! We talkin’!”
“Yeah, we talking! And you not highbulp, neither!” Berta added, stomping her foot for emphasis.
Gus clapped his hands to his ears, ducked his head, and continued jogging down the dark alley they had been following through one of Norbardin’s dingier neighborhoods, the slum known as Anvil’s Echo. He hoped that, if he ran fast enough, his two companions might get left behind. But no, they simply trotted along closely behind him, yakking even louder than ever about his many failings and inadequacies.
The Aghar sighed, wondering how it had come to that. After all, having a dwarf maid attending to his every need had been a pleasant experience for Highbulp Gus. Indeed, the weeks and months and years-two, at least, of each, according to his arithmetic-that he had spent with Berta had been the best weeks and months and years of his life. She’d brought him food, rubbed his feet, and provided comfort and affection in ways that had never ceased to delight him. It seemed only logical, since he had two dwarf maids willing to attend to his needs, his life would get twice as good as it had been before.
However, it wasn’t working out quite as he would have hoped. It had been a long time since either of the females had offered anything even vaguely resembling comfort and affection. Instead, they seemed to be engaged in a constant contest to unearth new faults of their male companion.
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