Below was a babble of surprised voices: “Here, now! What goin’ on?” “What that flew past?” “Somethin’ noisy in tunnel.” “Look! Somebody up on wall!”
Clinging desperately to the now-inverted oval shield, high above the floor of This Place, Lidda chirped and chattered in panic, trying not to fall.
“Who that up there?” someone below asked.
“Lidda? That you?” someone else wanted to know.
“Me!” she shouted. “Somebody help!”
“What goin’ on?” The Highbulp’s voice sounded irritated. “Who that up there?”
“Lidda,” someone said.
“Lidda come down!” the Highbulp demanded.
A female voice echoed him. The Lady Bruze put her hands on her hips and stamped a foot. “Lidda! Get down from there!”
“Can’t!” she shrieked. “Barely holdin’ on!”
“Then turn loose!” the Lady Bruze insisted.
Directly below her, old Gandy’s voice called, “No, don’ turn loose! Swing feet!”
Since that sounded like a better idea than the one immediately prior, Lidda kept her grip on the metal rim and swung her feet. Her toe touched the carved wall, slipped away, and she swung again, this time finding a toehold in the mosaic surface. She clung for a moment, getting her breath, then eased herself beneath the hanging shield and found a handhold. Within seconds she was scurrying down the sheer wall, sighing with relief.
A few gathered to watch her descent, but with the crisis past, most of the gully dwarves had turned their attentions to the far side of the great chamber where something had entered the main corridor at great speed, thrown a mighty shower of sparks, and disappeared up the tunnel.
When Lidda reached the floor again, only the Lady Bruze was there to face her. Hands on hips, she leaned toward the younger female and snapped, “Lidda stay off wall! Got no business climb wall!”
“Checkin’ out hole …” Lidda pointed upward, trying to explain.
“Bad Lidda!” Bruze’s words bored in. “Why you always do dumb stuff? Like bring us back green thing ‘stead of hunt mushroom an’ … like … like … dumb stuff!”
The lady’s tone was so severe that Lidda backed away a step.
“Now mess up wall stuff!” Bruze chided, glancing upward. “Prob’ly broke somethin’. Dumb Lidda!”
Lidda had taken all she was going to. With her own hands on her own hips, she stomped her foot and thrust a pugnacious face forward, nose-to-nose with Bruze. “Shut up, Lady Bruze! Got no right talk on me that way!”
Bruze recoiled for an instant, surprised, then straightened her back, stuck her nose in the air and turned away. “Dumb Lidda,” she snorted. “An’ sassy, too.” With a sniff of disdain, she stalked off, leaving Lidda to fume and sputter.
Old Gandy appeared beside her, leaning on his mop handle and peering upward. “What Lidda fin’ up there?”
“Nothin’ much,” she answered, still smarting. “How come Lady Bruze can throw big weight aroun’ alla time?”
Gandy frowned thoughtfully, then shrugged. “Lady Bruze got Clout,” he said. “Gives her stat … rank … priv … uh, she get by with a lot.”
“Not fair,” Lidda decided.
“Way it is, though.” The Grand Notioner shrugged again. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Lidda want clout, too?”
“Clout already married,” she pointed out. “To Lady Bruze.”
“Then get somebody else,” the Grand Notioner suggested. “Maybe somebody better. You want marry Highbulp?”
“Stop that again! No!”
“Why not?”
“ ’Cause Highbulp a lazy, worthless twit, is why not. Highbulp never think ’bout anybody ’cept own self.”
“Yep,” Gandy agreed. “That him, alright. So why not marry him?”
Lidda stared at the oldster. “Can’t stand him, is why. Why else?”
“So what? Nobody can stand Highbulp. Marry him anyway. Do him good, have somebody keep him in line.”
Across the chamber, an excited crowd had gathered. Several gully dwarves had crept into the corridor there, looking for whatever had gone that way. Now they were returning, and they had the thing with them. It looked like a huge spear, and it took several of them to carry it.
“Whoever marry Highbulp be consort,” Gandy persisted.
Lidda turned to him again. “Be what?”
“Consort.”
“What consort?”
“Highbulp’s wife. Got more clout than Chief Basher’s wife.”
“Consort have to put up with Highbulp, though,” said Lidda. She shook her head back and forth. “Forget it.”
She walked away without looking back, and Gandy leaned on his mop handle. “Good choice,” he muttered to himself. “That’n might shape up Highbulp. That’n fulla vinegar.”
Chapter 3
Perils of the Pitt
The Aghar scouts recovered the missile-a twelve-foot-long spear of iron with a steel point as wide as a shovel-from far up the “big tunnel” where it had lodged itself in a stone wall after skipping and caroming for several hundred yards. It weighed at least fifty pounds and required four sturdy gully dwarves to carry it back to This Place.
“That thing dangerous,” the Highbulp declared, studying it from his perch atop his glowing green throne. “Where come from?”
“Murder hole up there,” someone pointed toward the far wall with its stone mosaic. They had built up the fires, and the hole behind the iron face up there was visible.
“Somebody throw that thing through that hole?” someone asked.
“Throw itself, prob’ly,” Gandy said, his mop handle staff thudding against the floor as he stepped past the fire, gazing at the hole high in the wall. “Ol’ trap somebody set, for guard big tunnel. Lidda open hole, trap sprung.”
Faces peered with renewed interest at the decorated wall. There were still eight more undisturbed faces.
“More of these up there?” the Highbulp asked.
Gandy squinted at the remaining eight plaques. “Yep,” he decided, “two more.”
They buzzed and hovered around the spear for a time, but could think of no use for it. It was inedible, and far too big for even Clout to use as a tool. Finally, with no better idea in mind, Gandy tied a scrap of stained cloth to the point of it and supervised as a dozen of them hoisted it upright and thrust the butt end of it into a hole in the paving, a few feet from the throne.
“There,” he said, when at last it stood tall and secure.
“ ‘There,’ what?” somebody asked. “What that supposed to be?”
“Flag,” Gandy explained. “Highbulp’s new flag.” He turned. “See, Highbulp? Got new …” He stopped, and sighed. Glitch the Most wasn’t listening. The Highbulp was all tuckered. He lay curled atop his “throne,” asleep and beginning to snore.
“Lidda right,” Gandy growled. “Highbulp a twit.”
The throne seemed happy, though. Beneath the Highbulp it glowed a steady green light, and seemed to pulse a bit, as though it were matching the Highbulp’s breathing.
Gandy frowned, tilting his head as he looked at the throne. He was almost sure that it was growing. It was noticeably larger now than when Lidda had first brought it.
* * * * *
Out of nothingness, she swam slowly into a kind of awareness. Vague, slow dreams drifted around her and she was part of them. More feelings than images, they drifted, curling and coalescing in first one way and then another-feelings of comfort and discomfort, of longing for … something long since gone, and of anticipation of something yet to come.
She floated among the dream-streams, knowing nothing except what they told her. The odd longings were less than memory, but more than dream. They were longings for things past and gone-feelings of freedom and power, of exhilaration and cruel joy, of confrontation and combat, of flying on great wings that ruled the skies above a vast and servile world. The feelings were bittersweet, clouded by a certainty that all of that was gon
e now, gone forever.
And yet, the other feelings-the anticipations-were warm with promise, as though what had ended forever might still, somehow, begin anew.
Timeless time passed, and the images became more clearly defined. She became aware of herself as a presence and dimly sensed other presences around her, presences beyond the limits of the green universe that was herself, but not far away.
The presences were not like herself. They were lesser things, yet presences. A vague instinct said, these are food, and abruptly she recoiled as though huge, unseen claws had raked her, punishing her for the thought. It was a lesson. Not food, then. Lesser beings, nearby, but not food.
Then why did they matter? The glowing greenness swam and coalesced and within it a darkness spoke to her. They own you, it said. You are theirs. Cold certainty flowed about her. You cannot harm them, the darkness declared. You can only serve them. You are theirs. Soon you will know.
Cruel, cold humor flowed from the darkness. Grow quickly now, it commanded her. Grow and awaken to your destiny. Awaken to your fate. Soon, the essences told her, you will understand. Soon you will know, just as you knew before. And that is when your punishment begins.
As the days passed, what was obvious to Gandy became apparent to everyone else in This Place. The Highbulp’s throne was growing. For a time, this greatly pleased Glitch the Most. With each day, it seemed, his loftiness above his subjects became greater, reinforcing his importance.
The problem was, the Highbulp kept falling off, and the fall was greater each time he did. Sometimes he fell off by his own doing-rolling over in his sleep and winding up in a heap on the hard, cold floor. But now and then the throne trembled and squirmed, and sometimes its violent spasms were enough to throw him from his perch.
It had grown big enough that it was increasingly difficult to get back on top of it when he fell off. “Highbulp need ladder,” he grumped to all those around him after a particularly forceful expulsion from his throne.
Nobody had the slightest idea how to make a ladder, but Glitch the Most was becoming grumpier by the hour, and an inspiration occurred finally, out of sheer aggravation.
It was a gully dwarf named Tunk who came up with it. While he and others were exploring far regions of the Pitt, where inexplicable wonders had been left by the lizard-things and others from the past, they bumped into a giant salamander who had been trying to get some sleep.
Instantly they fled in gibbering panic along a dark tunnel, just steps ahead of the huge, slithering thing with a mouth bigger than they were and teeth as sharp as needles. Giant salamanders were one of the hazards of life in the Pitt. Although the Talls and the lizard-men had gone, there were many other large, unpleasant things living here and there in the rubble of the Promised Place.
Tunk could feel the thing’s hideous breath on his back by the time someone in the lead found a crevice to dart into, and he left a shoe dangling in the thing’s snapping teeth as he scurried into safety. They could hear the salamander scrabbling behind them, but it was too big to follow, and could not break through the stone that barred its way.
The exploring party had scurried through the crevice, tumbling out the other side into a great, cavernous space that none of them had seen before, a place where balconies lined stone walls beneath an immense, vaulted roof high above, and the central arena had a floor of packed sand.
“Whew!” Tunk declared, looking back at the crevice that had stopped the salamander. “That way too close!”
The danger behind them then, they wandered out into the enclosed arena, gawking at the enormity of it.
“What kin’ place this?” one of them wondered aloud.
“Dunno,” another said. “Big, though. Maybe got good stuff to find?”
Then Tunk saw it, and his eyes widened. “Lookee there!” he pointed. In the center of the arena was a flagstaff with a lanyard, and something came together in Tunk’s simple mind. “That what Highbulp need,” he said. “That shut him up from gripin’ so much.”
When they eventually returned to This Place-by other routes, to avoid the ravenous salamander that had chased them-they were laden with equipment. Among other things, they brought a coil of rope and a pulley with ring clamps. Without ceremony, they marched to the center of This Place-casting worried glances at the throne, which was more than five feet high now and had an alarming tendency to twitch-and dumped their treasures on the floor beside Glitch the Most, who had just landed there himself.
“Here, Highbulp,” Tunk said.
He glared at the pile of things. “What all this?”
“Hoist,” Tunk explained. “For get back on throne.”
Within an hour, the Highbulp’s “flagpole,” which was now within inches of the growing throne, was rigged with a serviceable lanyard, very much like the flagstaff in the arena. A curious crowd gathered as Tunk proudly tied the Highbulp’s rag flag to the pulleyed line, and hoisted it to the top.
“There,” he said, grinning happily.
Beside him, Glitch frowned at the flag atop the great spear. “What good that do?” he snapped. “Take down flag, put up rope, haul flag back up. For what?”
Tunk cast him a baleful glance. “Trial run,” he said. Quickly he lowered the flag, untied it from the lanyard and, before Glitch the Most could object, looped the lanyard around the Highbulp’s chubby middle. “Lend hand here,” he beckoned several of the others. “Haul ’im up!”
Sputtering, cursing and struggling, Glitch the Most found himself rising from the floor, alongside his spear, then dangling above his throne. “Cut that out!” he shrieked.
Gandy had shown up from somewhere, and he studied the situation and nodded. “Pretty good,” he approved. “Now swing him ’round that way.”
Overhead, the Highbulp found himself arcing through the air, out from the pole, then directly over the throne and in free fall as Gandy gave the order to curtail the hoist. Glitch thumped down atop the twitching, glowing throne, and it responded so violently that he almost fell off again. He clung, though, swearing every oath that occurred to him as the throne twitched busily and those below congratulated one another on a job well done.
“Pretty good,” Gandy assured the hoisters. “What about the flag?”
Tunk scratched his head, frowning. “Might haul ’im down again, tie flag to him,” he suggested.
Gandy thought it over, glancing up at the livid face of his Lord Protector. He shook his head. “Better let well enough alone,” he decided.
Chapter 4
The Awakening
Vague awareness became tumultuous dreams, disturbing the liquid green comfort of her deep sleep. Then the dreams gave way to annoyance as irritating little presences, presences just beyond awareness, repeatedly jostled and abused the greenness where she slept.
She didn’t want to awaken. Something-some knowledge just beyond the grasp of dreams-told her that she would regret awakening. Still, the presences were there, all around her, and they bumped, jostled and poked at her comforting limbo. They babbled and tumbled, shouted and shoved, drawing her toward angry response. Kill them, she thought and felt again the punishing agony of great, invisible talons raking her mind.
No, something dark said. You will not kill them. You will not injure them. You are powerless against them. It is your fate. Somewhere far off, somewhere not of this world, she sensed cruel, mocking laughter.
She railed against the vicious, ironic cruelty being inflicted on her, railed against the awful feeling of being absolutely powerless, but in the dream-knowledge there was not the slightest lenience. A decree had been issued, and there was no appeal. Once, it seemed, she had dedicated herself to a god. Now that god had renounced her and left her to an eternal punishment. You are theirs, the darkness said. Awaken, sleeping one. Awaken and face the fate you have earned.
The green comforts began to diminish, and awareness grew of the world outside. It was a world where pathetic little creatures waited to torment her, a world where she, to whom powe
r was all, would lack the power to strike back even at them.
Awaken, the dream voice commanded, and gave purpose to the twitching of her body. She turned, rolled over, extended her needle-tipped talons, and raked at the leathery shell beyond the liquid where she grew.
Clout and the dozen or so other rat hunters with him were puzzled. They had hunted for hours in the maze of cells that covered a vast area up the “big tunnel” from This Place, and had not found a single rat. It was unheard of. Ever since any gully dwarf could remember, the Pitt had abounded in vermin. It had always been full of rats. Usually they were everywhere, and the maze of old cells-interconnected cubicles that might once have been sleeping quarters for Talls or lizard-things-was prime rat hunting territory.
Yet today, no matter how they searched, there was not a sign of stew meat anywhere. It was as though every rat in the area had gone into hiding.
“This whole place fulla empty rats.” The chunky, bearded Tote shook his head in disgust. “Where they all go?”
“Dunno why no rats.” Clout muttered. “ ‘No’ one thing. Lady Bruze not gonna like us come back ’thout rats.”
“Plenny sign,” young Blip pointed out, squatting to study the floor. “Rat drops all over. Tracks, too.”
“No rats, though.” Peady gazed around. “Maybe somethin’ eat ’em?”
“What eat rats?” Clout scoffed. “Who hunt rats, ’cept us?”
“Somethin’ scare ’em off, then. All go hide, maybe?”
“What scare rats?” Clout glanced around as a gasp sounded behind him. Tote was staring into the shadows of a tunnel a dozen yards away, his eyes huge, his mouth hanging open. He closed it with a snap and pointed. “That,” he quavered, then spun on his heel and ran.
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