by Rick Cook
“And no more magic,” Wiz admonished. “Not if it attracts these things.”
“Our steel and our courage alone shall carry us henceforth,” said Glandurg.
“Well,” Wiz amended, eyeing Blind Fury, “we don’t have to swear off magic completely.”
Ten
Enter the Lobster
“Moira,” the wind moaned. “Moira, Moira, Moira, Moira.”
It keened around the towers. Frigid fingers clutched at the banners and tugged at the windows. It could not find purchase against the wizards’ spells, but it kept on.
Moira went to the window and tried to look out, but a dark formless thing beat upon the pane, as if to strike her, and she turned away.
“Is it getting worse?” she asked Bal-Simba.
“It gets no better. That in itself means it will get worse. Like a starfish on an oyster. It pulls and pulls and eventually the oyster weakens.”
The dragon hesitated. “Then perhaps I should go out there,” Moira said.
“And give our enemy the advantage he seeks? An unwise move, My Lady.”
“Then what shall we do?”
“Work. Wait. Perfect the spells to drive this thing from our door.”
The dragon did not turn its head. “I wish Wiz was here.”
Bal-Simba sighed. “So do I, My Lady. So do I.”
###
Their first warning was the way sounds changed. Careless footsteps or dislodged pebbles rang sharper and more hollowly. Wiz was still trying to puzzle out the difference when they came around a bend in the tunnel and stepped out into a new world.
The cavern was immense. Stalactites and sheets of flow stone rippled from ceiling to floor in pastel pinks and yellows. They made weirdly distorted shadows in the light from Wiz’s glow globe. In spite of the steady illumination the shadows seemed to flicker and dance in eerie motion. The air was heavy with damp and utterly still. Occasionally a foot would dislodge a pebble and the sound would ring through the emptiness.
They picked their way along for perhaps two hundred paces and then, suddenly, there was no floor before them.
It took a minute for Wiz to make a coherent picture out of the sense impressions, like staring at an optical illusion. Finally the elements snapped into focus and he realized they were standing at the edge of a cliff thickly coated with onyx flowstone. By directing the magic light out over the darkness he could see that the face was a steep cascade of the same orange, pink and white material as the surface they were standing on. He could not see the other side and the light did not show him the bottom, but his magic detector pointed straight out across the emptiness.
“It looks like we’re going to have to climb down,” he said to the others.”
“Fine,” Malkin said, shedding her pack and unhooking a coil of rope from it. “I’ll go first.”
Wiz wasn’t exactly overjoyed at the prospect of climbing down a slippery cliff in the dark, but he felt he had to assert himself as leader. “Why you?”
Malkin looked up at him. “Because you’re a klutz. Now help me find a rock to tie off on.”
That was true enough that Wiz didn’t argue. But he was a little surprised she knew the word.
Malkin selected a convenient boulder, looped the rope around it and secured it with a particularly complicated-looking knot. Keeping the rope taut in one hand she stepped back and admired her handiwork.
“All right everyone, I’ll go first. Be sure to keep tension on the rope and whatever you do don’t let it go slack and then jerk it.”
“Why not?” asked Danny.
“Because if you do the knot comes undone. That’s how we get the rope down when we’re at the bottom.”
Danny looked at the knot again.
“It’s perfectly safe,” Malkin assured him. “The next person to go down stands by the rope and keeps the tension on. Just keep doing that and we’ll be fine.”
The thief rigged a harness from a shorter piece of rope and attached it to the main rope with a peculiar-looking knot.
“I’ll take a light with me and signal for the next one to follow,” she said, and with that she stepped backwards into the blackness and disappeared from view.
Danny kept tension on the rope as she worked her way down. The others watched the rope twitch as Malkin worked her way down the cliff face. Finally it lay still and they heard her call up to them.
“Okay. It’s about a hundred paces down. There’s plenty of rope and it’s an easy descent. Come on down one by one.”
Since he couldn’t lead, Wiz figured the leader’s next logical place was as rear guard. He let Danny and then June go down. Glandurg disdained the rope and scrambled down the cliff face like a fly. At last the rope was still again. Wiz picked up Malkin’s pack, slung it over one shoulder and started to work his way down the cliff.
In the back of Wiz’s mind a small voice kept telling him all this was wrong. You don’t find limestone caves beneath volcanoes. Halfway down the rope Wiz decided this was arrant pedantry and told the small voice to shut up.
The rope firmed and steadied as someone took hold of it from the bottom. With that aid Wiz made good time the rest of the way down.
“Thanks,” he said as his feet touched the ground. Behind him the rope holder snorted.
Wiz turned to look His first impression was of Malkin in a silver fright wig. His second impression was of a lot of teeth, claws, blazing red eyes and really awful breath.
He yelled and ducked as the thing took a swipe at him. He fumbled for his staff, but the thing was too close, so he settled for tripping backwards and going flat on his back. The thing closed in for the kill and the world blinked.
###
The protection sped, Wiz thought. The protection spell kicked in. His second thought was that he wasn’t wearing the magic ring, so he must have been stunned by his fall and before he had time for a third thought, a liquid voice broke in.
“Oh, I hope you are all right. Not damaged in any way? Here, let me help you up.”
“Thanks,” Wiz said, taking the preferred hand.
It wasn’t a hand, exactly. It was a claw. A very large claw. At the other end of the claw was a lobster—about thirty feet of lobster.
“Uh, thanks,” Wiz said again.
The lobster waved an antenna. “Think nothing of it. All in a day’s work, I can assure you.” Its voice was a warm rich baritone, not at all the way Wiz had expected a lobster to sound. Although come to that, Wiz realized, he didn’t really have an idea how a lobster should sound. “Terribly sorry about that,” the lobster went on. “Those creatures have no manners at all, not to mention absolutely no taste! Tasteless.”
The lobster gave Wiz’s hand a little squeeze before releasing it. “Oh, and you’re molting too,” the lobster said delightedly. “How wonderful. You’re especially tender at this stage.” The lobster sighed. “And the shells are such a bother.”
It occurred to Wiz that he might not be out of trouble yet.
“Uh, where are my friends?”
“Oh, they’re off chasing the rest of those things. They attacked them, you know.” A sniff of disdain. “Tasteless. Utterly tasteless. No matter how much garlic and herbs you use, it’s like eating old leather.”
Wiz remembered the guardroom with the dismembered skeletons.
“Now you, on the other hand! Oh, think how wonderful you’ll smell all boiled up with lemon pepper and a bouquet garni of herbs.”
Wiz scrambled back up the slope away from the huge claws. “Look, can’t we talk about this?”
“But it is the function of humans to be served up on a plate with garlic butter and surrounded by parsley,” the lobster protested as it moved toward him. It paused. “Ah, you don’t happen to have any parsley with you? Pity. I’m out.”
The lobster extended his enormous pincers and advanced on Wiz. “Now, I assure you, your nervous system is so primitive you won’t feel a bit of pain.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Wiz said,
continuing his backwards scramble. “Did anyone ever tell you it’s impolite to eat your acquaintances?”
The lobster sighed gustily through its gills, giving Wiz a whiff of iodine-scented “breath.” “You humans have the most curious notions. We have always believed that a little light conversation before dinner allows you to fully appreciate the meal. But not too much. Come on now, into the pot you go.”
Wiz kept backing up. There wasn’t any place to run to and the lobster seemed to move over the rocky ground more easily than he did.
“You’re being quite unreasonable, you know.” The lobster sounded almost hurt. “After all, humans eat us.”
“But you give us heartburn.”
“That,” said the lobster smugly, “is the advantage of a superior constitution. We don’t get heartburn.”
A fireball whizzed over the lobster to splatter against the cavern wall above them.
“Oh, drat!” said the lobster and scuttled backwards at astonishing speed as Malkin, Danny and the others came up the tunnel.
“Boy, am I glad to see you guys!” Wiz said as the rest of the party gathered around him.
“We had a little butt-kicking to do,” Danny explained.
“What was that?” Malkin demanded. “The Enemy?”
“No, that was a lobster. I think it was here before the Enemy took over. Local color you might say.”
“I’d like to color him,” Malkin retorted fiercely. “Boil him in a pot until he’s bright red.”
“Yeah, well the feeling is mutual,” Wiz told her.
Eleven
Lateral to the Real World
I wish these things would run straight for a while, Wiz thought irritably. But the tunnels down here didn’t and this was an especially twisty part. Wiz’s inner ear was starting to send queasy messages to his stomach because of all the sharp turns.
Then the tunnel opened out into another room, an enormous, echoing black space that yawned before them in all directions. Wiz hastily ducked back around the corner and dimmed the magic light. Then he motioned for a huddle.
“What does the magic detector say?”
Danny squinted at the device. “That there’s something magical around here that probably wouldn’t be too glad to see us.” He cocked his head and squinted some more. “But it’s not real active and it doesn’t seem to be directly in our path.”
Wiz peeked around the corner again and listened intently. The silence was as overpowering as the darkness. He looked at Malkin, but the thief shook her head.
“Nothing,” she said quietly.
“Okay folks, single file and move softly. We don’t want whatever s out there to surprise us.”
Wiz considered leaving the light off, but he decided the danger of falling into a hole outweighed the risk of alerting whatever was in the neighborhood. With a gesture he sent the globe of light floating above them. I gotta figure out a way to make these things directional, he thought as he followed Malkin out into the room.
The room was huge. After nearly a hundred paces the light no longer showed the walls or ceiling, only the uneven, stalagmite-studded floor, glistening with moisture. It occurred to Wiz that the detector might be pointing toward their ultimate destination rather than toward the exit. If that was true they could spend hours searching for the way out and if there was more than one they could be thoroughly lost before they knew it.
Out in the gloom was a heap of something. It wasn’t rocks and it didn’t seem to be alive, but aside from that Wiz couldn’t make out just what it was. With a gesture he increased the brightness of the magic light and was rewarded with a glint from the heap.
At first Wiz thought the pile had caught fire. Then he realized it was his own light reflected back at them, glittering off the objects in the pile.
Another gesture and the light grew even brighter. Now there was no doubt at all what the heap was.
Gold winked yellow or glowed ruddy in the light. Gems flashed green and red and wine-purple fire. Pearls and opals threw back a soft luster. There were ingots and cups and brooches and rings; candlesticks and platters and coins and gems loose like marbles. Wiz even caught a glimpse of a full suit of golden armor, studded with precious stones and filigreed with enamel. All of it piled head-high in a loose, careless mass.
“Look at that,” Wiz breathed.
The others could only stare. Malkin started edging toward it, only to be pushed aside roughly by Glandurg in his haste to reach the pile.
“Glandurg! Get back here. We’re not here for gold.”
“What kind of adventure is it if you don’t get the treasure?” the dwarf grumbled. “Uncivilized, I say.”
“Boy,” said Danny, “I always knew dungeons were supposed to have treasure, but this . . .” He waved his arm in awe. June stayed behind her husband, obviously torn between wonder at the sight and distaste at his reaction.
Wiz noticed that there were no containers in the pile. No chests, no bags, nothing that could be used to transport or contain the hoard. It was as if it had been carefully brought here and emptied out and then the containers removed.
“Where do you suppose this came from?”
“Your dark wizards, or whatever.” Malkin ran her fingers through the pile. “Whoever it was is long gone.”
“You hope,” Wiz retorted.
With a clatter and the ringing sound of falling gold hitting the stone floor, Glandurg burrowed into the pile like a homesick gopher. Suddenly his head emerged from the top, sending a shower of wealth cascading down the mound. He spat out a ruby the size of a hen’s egg and grinned gleefully.
“Look, people,” Wiz said, “this isn’t what we’re here for.”
“But it doesn’t hurt,” retorted Malkin, who was already elbow-deep in a mass of gold coins.
Danny threw himself down in the treasure, scooped up handfuls and poured it over his head. He winced when a particularly heavy and tasteless gold goblet hit him on the head. “Hey, Scrooge McDuck was onto something with his money bin.”
Wiz hesitated. He didn’t like this at all and he sure didn’t want to be encumbered by a lot of dead weight. But obviously the attraction of all that loot was an irresistible force for Glandurg and Malkin.
“We need a way to carry this stuff,” Malkin said.
“If you think I’m going to whomp up a levitation spell just so we can take that along with us, you’re crazy.” Malkin and Glandurg looked at him.
“Okay,” he sighed, “you can take what you can carry in a cloak.”
It took Malkin and Glandurg a minute to decide whose cloak was bigger. Then they started shoveling gold, jewels and other treasure from the pile. When the heap on Malkin’s cape was about three feet high in the center they stopped for breath.
“Now try to move it,” Wiz said.
Dwarf and thief each seized an edge of the cloak and gave a mighty tug. The pile moved perhaps six inches.
“What you need is a cart,” Danny suggested.
“Won’t work. Floor’s too rough.”
“Okay,” Wiz said, “if it will get us moving again, I’ve got a spell that reduces friction to almost nothing. That will make the cloak easier to haul. But we’re burying the stuff the first chance we get.”
He stepped forward, raised his staff and spoke a few words.
“There, it should pull easily now.”
Malkin tugged on the edge of her cloak and nearly went over backwards when her hands slipped off the material. Glandurg grabbed and yanked and went careening into Malkin when his hands slipped. Both of them landed in a tangle on the rocky floor and glared at Wiz.
“Okay, let me modify the spell.”
He drew a breath to list out the spell, but before he could exhale he heard a noise from beyond the circle of light. Something was moving out there in the dark.
“Ah, folks . . .” Danny began. He never finished the sentence. He didn’t need to.
Wiz didn’t know if it was the biggest dragon he’d ever seen or not. For one t
hing, the cavern was mostly dark. For another he couldn’t see all of it. But primarily, he was too scared to take accurate measurements. If it wasn’t the biggest dragon he’d ever seen it would do quite nicely for now.
The dragon spouted a gout of flame that illuminated the cavern to its corners and left a dark smear of an afterimage clouding his vision. He tried to raise his staff to cast a spell and realized he was magically frozen in place. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the others straining to move as well. The dragon fire had been misdirection while the creature pinned them where they stood with a spell
Its enemies neutralized, the dragon lumbered forward for the kill.
Wiz muttered under his breath.
Talons extended, the dragon’s left front paw landed on the cavern floor and promptly flew out from under him, dumping the beast on his nose. The great muzzle slipped on the floor and left the dragon lying spread-eagled and neck extended on the glistening limestone.
However dragons are not so easily defeated. The huge talons on all four feet dug into the limestone as if it were soft clay and the beast levered itself erect. It crouched to spring across the intervening distance at its prey, but its purchase failed just as it leapt and the dragon went sprawling and slithering across the cavern. Wiz and the others watched fascinated as the dragon slid helplessly by, hit the cave wall behind them and rebounded back into the cavern like a pool ball coming off the side rail.
Wiz had cast the reduce-friction spell not on the floor, but on the dragon. That not only made the dragon slippery all over, but it charged the beast to a high magic potential—and made every stalagmite, stalactite, flowstone and ordinary rock in the cavern repel him violently. The creature had put enormous power into his spring and lost almost none of it in the inelastic collisions. As a result a very unhappy dragon went caroming off everything he hit, and he managed to hit just about everything in the cave except Wiz and his friends.