“Its venom will paralyze you so it can dine at leisure later. Be careful!”
Flint hefted a pair of rocks. Holding them in one hand, he pried Perian’s right hand from the tree root with his other and forced a rock into it. “When I say, give it a taste of stone!”
The feel of the rock in her hand gave Perian something to focus on. She hefted it, turned it over in her palm. A good shot from this could split a steel helmet, the frawl thought. She turned back to the pit, the rock poised above her head.
At that moment the carrion crawler burst into view from behind a twist in the tunnel, its tentacles flashing and writhing toward the ledge. Flint could see most of its segmented body now, twisting along the contours of the wall. A pair of short but thick legs, white and slime-covered, extended from each segment. Each leg ended in a pair of suction cups as big as the dwarf’s head. Shreds of rotted flesh from past meals clung to the beast. Bile rose in Flint’s throat as revulsion gripped him. The creature was far larger than any other carrion crawler the dwarf had ever seen, or even heard of; it was the grandaddy of all carrion crawlers. Swallowing hard, Flint tightened his grip on the root and hurled the stone. With a crack, it caromed off the shiny head and sailed down the tunnel, unnoticed by its target.
Instantly, Perian’s arm snapped forward. The stone plunged straight into the crawler’s mouth, disappearing in a tiny shower of tooth fragments. It was impossible to tell whether the beast felt any pain, but the repulsive head made a sort of roar and swung abruptly away from Perian. Though the beast was still at least six feet below them, three tentacles lashed out and wrapped around Flint’s right boot. Instantly the leather steamed and hissed, and blisters formed around the ankle. Though protected from real damage by the leather, Flint howled with pain. He snatched up another rock and smashed at the thin, straining appendages. First one, then another, were severed by his ferocious blows. Blue ichor stained the rock ledge beneath Flint’s foot.
Perian fired a second stone at the beast, hitting just at the rim of one of its eyes. Enraged, the carrion crawler swung its head out from the wall, dragging Flint’s foot from the ledge. Desperately he clung with one hand to the root, groping for any sort of hold with the other. Perian grabbed him by the shoulders just as the monster reared again, and both of them flew off the ledge and out into space. The remaining tentacle around Flint’s foot tightened, then snapped in two. Still clutching each other, Flint and Perian bounced and skidded down the length of the beast’s segmented back, finally crashing onto a pile of bones on the ground.
Flint groaned as he scrambled to his feet. He seemed unhurt, but his foot, with the fragments of tentacle still wrapped around the boot, seemed to be growing numb.
He glanced around and saw that they were in a cul-de-sac. He could not see how far that cavern extended, but it was the only direction out.
“Quick, we need a weapon of some sort,” Flint shouted to the prone frawl. “Don’t you have a knife—some weapon?” he gasped.
“I did,” she said in a small voice. “But I dropped it.”
“You dropped it?” he groaned in disbelief.
“It must have slipped out as I was falling down the chute,” she retorted defensively, struggling to her feet.
“Maybe we can find it down here, or anything else. We haven’t got much—” Flint’s gaze shot up to the wall where the carrion crawler should have been, but the monster had already turned around and was moving toward them “—time! Come on!” He grabbed Perian by the wrist and jerked her into motion.
Scanning the floor as they ran, Flint’s eye caught the glint of metal among the rocks and scattered bones littering the carrion crawler’s lair. With a kick he churned up a rusty but still solid blade about ten inches long. With his free hand, he snatched it on the run.
“It’s gaining!” shrieked Perian. “How fast can that thing move?”
“Faster than us,” Flint snorted, glancing backward at their pursuer. He was horrified to see the creature a scant ten feet behind, and charging fast! In spite of its bulk, the beast moved with alarming grace and fluidity, its numerous legs rippling along its flanks. Then, as Flint watched horrified, the whiplike tentacles shot out and wrapped around Perian’s throat from behind, jerking her to a dead stop.
“Gods!” swore the dwarf, skidding into the cavern wall. “Let her go, you stinking worm!” Brandishing the rusty blade, he spun around and stumbled toward the retreating monstrosity. With one hand he grabbed a fistful of Perian’s jacket and with the other he slashed across the dripping, rubbery tentacles. Gobs of venom and thick, blue blood hissed through the air, thrown from the thrashing limb. It took a third lightning cut by the tarnished knife before the frawl was released. Flint flung the paralyzed but still conscious mountain dwarf over his shoulder and retreated, moving backward to keep his face toward the beast. It seemed momentarily stunned by its injury, though Flint knew it had too little brain to yield to any opponent.
But for the moment, it had something else to think about. Food, in the form of its own tentacles, had fallen at its feet. Flint gazed in disbelief as the horror gulped down the grisly bounty of itself. The hill dwarf turned and bolted once more into the cavern, only too aware that so far only luck was keeping him alive.
This might be the last thing I ever do, Flint caught himself thinking as he raced through the darkness. And I’m not doing it very well, he added as his benumbed ankle crumpled beneath the combined weight of him and Perian. Frantically he pulled himself up on the wall and, dragging both Perian and his own foot, continued deeper into the lair of the creature.
Or he would have, had the cavern not abruptly narrowed to a point and then stopped completely. His escape route blocked by solid rock, Flint dropped Perian to the floor. Her eyes, peering helplessly at him, were filled with unaccustomed terror. Flint looked away, then readied the humble blade he’d picked up. With a rueful chuckle he said aloud, “I’m naming you Happenstance, little knife, for whatever it’s worth. You stand between us and perdition. I hope you’re up to it.”
As he turned to face the approaching carrion crawler, a flash of light from a fissure in the wall caught Flint’s eye. With no hesitation, he hefted Perian’s limp form and crammed her head first into the crack in the rock, wherever it led. He pushed her forward as far as possible, but then she wedged in and Flint could not budge her. “Forgive me, Perian,” he muttered as he put his shoulder to her ample seat and heaved with all his might. The frawl inched forward, and then suddenly, as if something ahead was tugging on the other end, she zipped forward and out of sight. Startled, Flint tried to twist his neck up for a look through the hole, but a pair of hands grabbed him by the red trim on his tunic and dragged him, too, through the breach in the wall.
Flint crawled to his knees and saw Perian laying on the ground before him. He looked up.
Sporting an idiotic grin and a self-important posture was the filthiest pot-bellied creature the hill dwarf had seen in a long time.
“I’ll be hanged!” Flint exclaimed. “A gully dwarf!”
“What you doing there? Monster get you,” the gully dwarf said simply, scolding them with a click of his tongue.
“No kidding,” chuckled Flint. “Where are we now?”
The gully dwarf beamed proudly. “You in Mudhole!”
Chapter 11
Mudhole
When He created the world, Reorx the Forge, a god of neutrality who strove for balance between good and evil, needed men to help Him with His work in this new land. For many years the humans worked happily under the loving guidance of Reorx, the master of creation and invention. But the men became proud of their skills, as men will, and they used them for their own ends. Early in the Age of Light, four thousand years before the Cataclysm forever altered the face of Krynn, Reorx became angered by this and transformed some men into a new race. He took from them the crafts He, upon the anvil of His immortal forge, had taught, leaving only their burning desire to tinker and build, invent and construct. He made the s
tature of this new race, known as gnomes, as small as their goals.
The evil Hiddukel, the patron god of greedy men, was pleased by this because He knew the forging god had worked long and hard to make order out of chaos, and now the balance of god and evil was not being maintained. Hiddukel went to another of the neutral gods, Chislev, and, seeking to make mischief, He convinced Him that neutrality could not be maintained since evil was losing position. Their only hope, He said, was for neutrality to seize control. To that end, Hiddukel persuaded Chislev, who in turn persuaded His fellow neutral god, Reorx, to forge a gem that would anchor neutrality to the world of Krynn. A large, clear gray stone of many facets, it was designed to hold and radiate the essence of Lunitari, the red moon of neutral magic. And on that same moon it was placed.
Reorx, although still angry at the gnomes, loved them and could see how they might yet serve Him. He presented to them a plan for a Great Invention that would be powered by a magical stone: the gray gemstone. As only the gnomes could, they built a mechanical ladder that lifted itself into the sky and to the red moon itself. With a magical net given to him by Reorx, a gnome appointed by Reorx climbed to the top of the ladder and captured the Graygem for the Great Invention. But when he returned to Krynn and opened the net, the stone leaped into the air and floated quickly off to the west. Fascinated, most of the gnomes packed up their belongings and followed it to their western shores and beyond. The gem’s passing caused new animals and plants to spring up and old ones to alter form overnight. Instead of anchoring neutrality, the gem made the pendulum of good and evil swing more rapidly than before. That is when Reorx knew He and Chislev had been tricked.
During many years of searching for the gem, the gnomes split into two armies. Both armies’ searches led them to a barbarian prince named Gargath, who, seeing it as a gift from his gods, had plucked the marvelous gem from the air and placed it in a high tower for safekeeping. Gargath refused the groups’ demands for the gem, so they both declared war on the barbarian prince.
After many abortive siege attempts, the gnomes finally penetrated Gargath’s fortress. Both sides were amazed to see the gem’s steel gray light suddenly fill the area with unbearable brightness. When anyone could see again, the two factions of gnomes were fighting each other. One side was filled with lust for the gem, the other side was curious about it.
Under the power of the gem, the gnomes changed. Those who coveted wealth became dwarves. Those who were curious became the first kender. These new races spread quickly throughout Ansalon.
As their mountain and hill dwarf cousins were always quick to point out, gully dwarves were the result of intermarriage between dwarves and gnomes. Unfortunately, the members of this new race lacked all the better qualities of their ancestors.
Seeing the result, dwarven and gnomish societies banned this sort of intermarriage, and members of the new race were driven out, most vehemently by dwarves. Forced to grub for existence among abandoned ruins and the refuse piles of cities abandoned after the Cataclysm, the gully dwarves were free to develop their own culture—or lack of it. Named Aghar, or “anguished,” humans later nicknamed them “gully dwarves,” noting their poor living conditions and the general disgust felt toward them by nearly every other race on Krynn.
Such was the lot of some three hundred Aghar living in Mudhole. Before the Cataclysm, Mudhole had been a thriving, productive mine, supplying the forges of Thorbardin above with rich iron. But that continental catastrophe had sent sheets of rock crashing into the shafts, cutting off all but one long tunnel that led back into Thorbardin. Even that one was pitched so that it was now nearly vertical and impossible to climb: it was this that the derro called it the Beast Pit.
But some good came of the Cataclysm, at least for the Aghar of Mudhole. Most of the dwarven-dug tunnels remained intact, and in some places actually intersected with stunningly beautiful organic caverns cut by centuries of water that ran through the mountains of Thorbardin.
The three hundred gully dwarves that inhabited Mudhole were broken down into family units; they lived in the ends of abandoned, dead-end shafts, but shared the four natural caverns as common space. They had “decorated” their homes with family heirlooms, such as petrified animals, and other bits of treasure garnered from the garbage piles of Thorbardin above. Thus, Mudhole was at once a natural wonder and an appalling pigsty.
“They can’t really expect us to sleep in here, can they?” Perian moaned, pacing anxiously.
Nomscul, the gully dwarf who had rescued them from the Beast Pit, had led them here and left them, saying he would return shortly with food and some friends. Perian fingered the tattered edges of the filthy woolen blanket that was draped over a legless wooden chair. She disdainfully nudged an old bone on the dirty stone floor with a toe of her boot. Shivering, the mountain dwarf hugged herself and looked around in despair for someplace suitable to sit.
The perfectly square chamber had two doorways and was perhaps twenty feet square. It had been chipped out of solid granite, for the bites the pick-axes had taken could still be seen in the cold, gray-green stone walls. Thick, moldy old support beams crisscrossed the ceiling in no apparent pattern, or perhaps a few had been removed by the gully dwarves for other purposes. Indeed, some chairs and small tables looked to be hastily constructed of the same stout beams. Small rugs; worn, hairless animal skins; and the occasional piece of fine silk or rich but filthy lace, all but covered the floor.
Broken stoneware pots, sundry rodent skeletons, rusty weapons in various states of ill-repair, dozens of candles burned to an inch, bent utensils, one half of a hand-held fire bellows, a canoe filled with holes, a stringless lute, and a dwarf-high pile of unmatched shoes and boots rounded out the adornments.
Reclining on the big, soft bed of burlap-covered moss, Flint picked at his teeth absently with a splinter of wood. He chuckled at Perian’s discomfiture. “I’ve slept in worse.”
He watched her flit about the room apprehensively, virtually tearing off the whites of her nails. “Can’t you relax for one moment?” he asked, putting down his toothpick. “I’ll admit the accommodations aren’t the best, but they’re only temporary. Not ten minutes ago I was carrying you and limping for our lives from—well, you know what from. At least we’re safe until I can get someone to show us the way out of here.”
The first thing Flint intended to do after that was to let his nephew, whom he’d left waiting outside Thorbardin, know he was all right. Basalt would be plenty worried by now.
Perian whirled about, perspiration alluringly curling the ends of her coppery hair. She fixed him with an icy glare. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” The mountain dwarf chewed the end of another nail off with her teeth, her eyes, like daggers, piercing his. “You think just because I suffered a little temporary fright paralysis I can’t take care of myself?”
“A little paralysis? You were like a sack of flour!” Flint caught the embarrassed look in her eyes and held up his hands in mock surrender. He laughed. “Sorry if I assumed command. I forgot I was talking to a soldier. I’m used to ordering around youths and barmaids,” he explained, thinking of his friends in Solace. He coughed uncomfortably when he saw her bemused face. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded! I have these friends—oh, never mind!” he exclaimed, unused to explaining himself. He rubbed his face, turned onto his side, curled up into the moss bed, and closed his eyes.
“You aren’t going to sleep, are you?”
He opened one eye. “I thought I might until that Aghar brought some food, yes.” He closed his eye again.
“But how can you sleep after what we’ve just been through?” she squealed, her fists clenched tight at her sides.
Flint sighed heavily, sat up, and looked at her through half-lidded eyes. “That’s precisely why I need the sleep. I’m exhausted! In the last few days I’ve been pushed and punched and kicked and chased and dropped down a pit. Every muscle and bone aches; the only thing holding me together is my skin! Do you think my fa
ce usually looks like this?” he asked, holding a cracked and swollen hand to his puffy lips, nose, and black eye. “Adventures always drag me out.” He covered a yawn with the back of his thick, callused hand.
Perian looked astounded. “You mean you’ve had this sort of thing happen to you before?”
He blinked. “Sure, though the situation has become considerably more complicated than your average dungeon crawl. Don’t tell me you haven’t?”
“I’m the captain of the thane’s guard, for Reorx’s sake!” she said despondently. “I train troops for parade maneuvers and theoretical fighting, and I live in the plushest barrack on the richest level of Thorbardin! I am not accustomed to this!” she said, indicating the cluttered room with a wave of her hand.
He scowled. “So that’s all it is.” Flint punched his fluffy moss pillow and dropped his bushy gray head onto it. “Lay down, take a load off your feet! Mark my words, this place won’t look so bad after you’ve had a good rest.”
Perian stopped her fidgeting long enough to run a hand through her damp hair. “That’s just it! I can’t rest here!” She frowned and looked away, then mumbled, “If you must know, I’m dying for a rolled mossweed!” She resumed pacing.
“I’m sure the gully dwarves have some sort of weed you can smoke if you must,” the hill dwarf said in exasperation, his tone telling her what he thought of the habit of smoking dried moss. With that, he turned over again. But he could hear her mumbling behind him.
“I know it’s a disgusting habit, but it’s the only one—well, one of the only ones I have!” She chewed nervously on a wild hank of her hair. “Some sort of weed, hmm? I’m used to the best dwarven mix from the north warren farms in Thorbardin, and you expect me to smoke any old dried thing?”
Flint yawned. “I don’t expect you to do anything on my account but be quiet.”
Perian had a retort prepared, when suddenly, from the doorway straight ahead came the sound of clattering glass and metal and some other unidentifiable noises as well. The mountain dwarf whirled around in surprise, and the hill dwarf shot up angrily.
Flint the King Page 14