“What in the—?”
“Nomscul back with eats!” The Aghar popped up in front of Flint, the mud-streaked skin above his scruffy, unshaven chin spread in his usual eager grin.
Nomscul, they had learned, was Mudhole’s shaman, the keeper of the clan’s relics and lore. He served as its healer and wise man, and was widely regarded as its best cook. He was kind of its beloved leader, more for the cooking than the wisdom perhaps. Nomscul now wore a ratty, smelly wool vest that hung to his knees and was lined with pockets of differing sizes and fabrics. From his belt dangled a red cloth bag cinched with a twine. In his hands was a steaming bowl of something gray and stringy, which he shoved right under the old dwarf’s big nose.
Though annoyed at first, Flint was drawn in by the rich, meaty aroma. He took another deep, satisfied breath and accepted the bent spoon Nomscul offered him. “Wonderful!” Flint sighed, barely pausing to speak between mouthfuls. “What is it?”
“Grotto grubs in mushroom mash,” Nomscul answered proudly. Flint’s spooning rhythm slowed for just a moment. He looked over and saw Perian leaning against a table, first mouthful poised near her waiting lips. Her eyes wide circles of disbelief, she set the spoon down and stared into the bowl.
“You like?” the anxious gully dwarf asked Flint.
The hill dwarf set his bowl down on a table, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and hopped from the mossy bed. “Yes, Nomscul, it’s, uh, very tasty.”
Pleased, the gully dwarf patted the potbelly that bulged below his plain, dingy shirt. He bounded for the door. “I get more!”
“Wait!” Flint cried. The gully dwarf stopped and turned around, and Flint came to his side. “Look, Nomscul,” he began, searching for the right words, “thanks for, you know, saving us and all, but I really need to be going now.”
Perian stepped up next to Flint quickly. “I’d like to leave, as well.” She scowled at the hill dwarf.
Nomscul’s fleshy cheeks bunched up in a full smile. “King and queen want two leaf? Stay here, I be right back!” Nodding to himself, he dashed into the darkness of the stone tunnel beyond.
“Strangely pleasant little fellow,” Flint commented. “Probably went to get an escort for us.”
“What was that ‘king and queen’ stuff?” Perian asked, staring after the gully dwarf.
Flint shrugged. “I don’t know, probably Mudhole’s honorary title for guests.” Perian nodded absently.
As they waited for Nomscul to return, Flint circled the room, looking into corners, picking up and examining little bits of gully dwarf treasure. He handed Perian a dirty, broken-toothed tortoise shell comb.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, the frawl dragged the comb’s six remaining teeth through her matted hair. “Ouch!” she snarled after one particularly stubborn rat’s nest. “I can’t wait until I get out of these mud-caked clothes—I can barely bend my knees in these pants!”
Flint raised his eyebrows as a thought struck him. “Say, where do you think you’ll be heading when we get out of here?”
“Home, of course,” Perian said quickly, picking the dried mud from her pants. “What a question. Where else …?” Abruptly she stopped, sucked in her breath, and clapped a hand to her mouth. “I see what you mean! I can’t go back to Thorbardin—Pitrick thinks I’m dead! He’d never let me live now, after what happened at the pit!”
She fell back on the bed in despair. “But where will I go?” she moaned. “Thorbardin is my home, the Theiwar are my clan—I doubt that any other group there would take me! And I don’t know how to live anywhere but underground!” She bit off the end of another nail.
Watching her torment, Flint smashed his hand down on a table. “But why would you want to live among such cutthroats, liars, and murderers?”
Perian bristled. “Not everyone in Theiwar City is like Pitrick, you know,” she said. “There are more good half-derro dwarves like me, and even many a fine full-blooded Hylar.”
“Yeah, the Great Betrayal is a testament to the charity of the blue-blooded Hylar and mountain dwarves in general!” Flint sneered, kicking at a broken pottery shard, sending shattered pieces into the air.
Perian sat up and chuckled without humor. “You think the mountain dwarves were all snug and warm after the Cataclysm? Thousands of dwarves starved to death in Thorbardin, including my grandparents! At least the hill dwarves, used to being above-ground, could forage for food!” She gave a patronizing laugh. “You hill dwarves are such ignorant bigots!”
“At least our people have something in common,” said Flint evenly. The chamber fell uncomfortably silent.
Perian broke the silence at last, standing up, looking vanquished. “None of that matters anyway, since I can’t go back there.”
“Don’t worry, Perian.” Flint clapped her on the back, then felt awkward. He cleared his throat. “You’ll probably fit in above-ground better than you think. You aren’t like the other Theiwar I’ve met.”
“You don’t know the first thing about Theiwar,” Perian accused, her eyes blazing with fire again.
“I know one thing—you’re a half-derro. You don’t look like a derro, or even other Theiwar,” he shot back. He crossed his arms smugly. “And I know that no one who thought like a Theiwar would have defended a hill dwarf at the Beast Pit.” His eyes narrowed. “Why did you do that, anyway?”
Perian squirmed under his scrutiny. “I don’t know. For years I’ve stood by and watched Pitrick abuse everything from Aghar to … to me, all for his own twisted amusement. I guess something inside me just snapped today, when I heard what he did to your brother, when I saw that frightened Aghar go over the edge … I just couldn’t stand by and let something happen one more time.”
She snorted. “Frankly, it never occurred to me that he would push me in.” Her hands clenched into fists. “Pitrick deserves a long, slow, torturous death.”
“He’ll get it, the black-hearted bast—” Red-faced, Flint glanced up at Perian. “He’ll pay for what he’s done to all of us, but especially for Aylmar.” Flint snapped a piece of pottery between his thumb and forefinger.
“Who’s Aylmar?” Perian asked.
Bitterly, Flint told the tale of his brother’s murder. His anger flared, fueled by the frustration of their forced inaction. “Where is that Bonehead fellow?” he roared impatiently.
“Nomscul,” Perian reminded him.
“Whatever!” Flint marched to the door and poked his head out.
The little imp abruptly sprang from a corridor to the left, staggering under the weight of a large wooden box. Nomscul elbowed his way past the barrel-chested dwarf and dropped his heavy load unceremoniously onto the dirt floor.
Flint looked in disgust at the box. “What in the Abyss is that?” he bellowed, nearly bowling the smaller dwarf over.
“That two leafs king and queen want!” Nomscul pronounced, happily waving a dirt-caked hand toward the box. Flint and Perian squinted at the container and saw that it did, indeed, contain a sloppy pile of dirty, wet, decomposing leaves. “King find good grubs in there for queen to eat!” Nomscul winked conspiratorially at the hill dwarf.
Flint could see Perian gulp down her disgust. It was with the greatest drain on his limited patience that Flint managed to growl, “We don’t want leaves. We want to go away, to get out of here. Please lead us—or if you’re too busy collecting leaves—get an escort to take us to the surface.”
“King want a skirt for queen now?” Nomscul was obviously puzzled by this new request. His queen looked dirty enough. Shrugging, he spread his hands wide to measure her thick waist, resolving to find one of the skirts that helped differentiate Aghar frawls from harms.
“Of course, we don’t want a skirt, you ridiculous little worm!” the hill dwarf exploded.
Perian put a hand on Flint’s shoulder. “He doesn’t understand.” Turning to Nomscul, she asked, “How many ways out of Mudhole are there?”
The Aghar wiped his nose with his sleeve. “There one way—” He held up
three fingers “—to get out of Mudhole. Beast Pit, garbage run, and big crackingrotto,” he said.
“Garbage run?” Perian asked, with a sinking feeling.
“Up in warrens,” Nomscul told her. “Get good food from weird-eyed dwarves.” The Aghar forced his eyelids open wide with his fingers, then crossed them and giggled.
Seeing Flint’s puzzled look, Perian explained. “The gully dwarves raid Theiwar City’s dumps and warehouses in the north warrens all the time.”
Flint nodded in understanding. “What is the ‘big crackingrotto,’ and where does it lead, Nomscul?”
“There big crack in wall of grotto, and it go out,” the gully dwarf said simply. Nomscul picked a bug from his scalp, inspected it closely, then popped it into his mouth.
“Where is the grotto?” Flint demanded.
“That way.” Nomscul chucked a thumb toward the corridor beyond the room. “Past bedrooms of Aghar—lots of Aghar in Mudhole!”
“That’s good enough for me,” Flint said, taking Perian’s arm and pulling her toward the door. “We’ll just explore around until we find something that looks like a grotto; Mudhole can’t be that big. Come on, Perian.”
“Where we go?” Nomscul asked, bouncing at their sides.
Flint did not stop to look at him. “I don’t know where you’re going, but Perian and I are gonna look for the cracking grotto.”
Nomscul looked crushed. He fumbled in a pocket on his right side and pulled out a carved wooden whistle. Placing it between his thick lips, the gully dwarf blew so hard on it that his face turned red. Both Perian and Flint jumped at the unexpected shrill noise. Before either could turn or question, though, they were stampeded from both doorways by running, screaming, jumping Aghar, all talking at once.
“You can tell he king. He got big nose!”
“That your real hair, Queen? Hair not usually come that color!”
“Two chairs for king and queen! Hip-hop hurry! Hip-hop hurry!”
The teeming masses of Aghar flooded in endlessly from the corridors, tearing the astonished Flint from Perian’s side. Where were they all coming from? the hill dwarf wondered as he tried to make his way to the door again. On every grubby face was an adoring smile, and each one he squeezed past reached up to touch his hair, her hem. What on Krynn did they all want?
“King getting away!” Nomscul shouted. Suddenly every gully dwarf within ten feet launched himself into the air and onto Flint’s back and head, hugging him, squeezing his arms and cheeks as he was crushed to the floor. Someone poked him in his black eye, but the right side of his face was pressed into the cold stone floor and he couldn’t even move his mouth to swear at the perpetrator.
“What is going on here?” Perian screamed over the din. Though she had not been knocked to the ground, ten gully dwarves clung to her legs and arms.
The Aghar atop Flint rolled off into a mound of wiggling, flailing limbs, as the hill dwarf struggled to his feet, shaking his head. His face was hot with anger, and he swung about in a wide circle, his fists raised and ready.
“King and queen must stay in Mudhole!” Nomscul announced, standing on top one of the tables to be seen. “The property say so!”
“Pro-per-ty! Pro-per-ty! Pro-per-ty!” The gully dwarves chanted, dancing and whooping and gibbering around their stunned dwarven visitors.
“What are you talking about?” Perian demanded. “What ‘property?’ ”
That all-too-familiar puzzled look crossed Nomscul’s face again. Suddenly his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You testing Shaman Nomscul to see if he know!” The gully dwarf squinted in concentration, his eyes sinking into his skull as if he would find the answers there. At last he began to recite in an irritating, singsong falsetto.
King and Queen descend from mud,
Land in Beast Pit with a thud.
Aghar crown them, dance and sing,
And they be king and queen forever.
Nomscul began to hop up and down happily at having passed the test. “That what property say!” The gaggle of gully dwarves once again whooped, gibbered, and bounced around its newly acclaimed monarchs.
“That’s terrible!” moaned Perian. “It doesn’t even rhyme! And he must mean prophecy, not property.”
Flint cast her a stony glance.
“We touch king! We touch queen!” the Aghar chanted, drawing a sloppy circle around the two.
Flint batted away their groping hands. “Stay back!” he growled. “Keep your disgusting paws off of me!” He made one last lunge for the door, but the press of bodies was too thick, and they brought him down again.
“Tie king up!” Nomscul commanded. Dozens of hands lifted Flint from the floor and stuffed him into a rickety chair made of beams. Eight dwarves sat on his thrashing form while Nomscul and a frawl the shaman called Fester ran circles around the chair with two lengths of thick rope.
“Untie me this minute, you miserable dirt-eaters!” Flint flung himself from side to side, sending the chair pitching and making the gully dwarves who clung to him hoot with glee. But the chair did not break, the Aghar did not lose their grips, and Flint remained tied up.
Arms behind his back, Nomscul leaned toward Flint and smiled right into the hill dwarf’s scowling face. “Queen not running away,” he said. Perian stood at the far corner of the room, relatively ignored by the Aghar since she offered no resistance. Her arms were crossed and her hazel eyes regarded Flint expectantly, a small smile about her lips. “Promise to be king, and we cut you loose,” Nomscul offered affably in a singsong voice.
Flint hung his head over the arm of the chair and spat on the ground. “Me? King of the gully dwarves? I’d sooner drown!”
Chapter 12
A Cold Domain
Pitrick’s twisted foot ailed him mightily; he had been on it far too long today, without the benefit of numbing goldroot salve. The day’s events had piled up unexpectedly leaving him with no time to perform a preventative spell or even to think to use his teleportation ring.
Dragging the clubbed foot behind him even more than usual, the adviser to Thane Realgar was relieved to see the iron door to his apartments, with its gleaming brass hinges and its embossed image of a huge, leering face, looming ahead in the dim torchlight. He hated all torchlight—hated the policy of low-burning flares on all of the public roads and levels in Theiwar City. Through meditation and heightened magic, he was able to see even better without it than most derro. On impulse, he mumbled a single word, “shival!” and waved his arm impatiently. For as far as he could see—more than one hundred feet—torches were instantly extinguished, trailing smoke and hissing.
Pitrick’s eyes quickly adjusted to the comfortable total darkness. His soft, callus-free, blue-white hand came upon the multifaceted diamond doorknob and, as always, its cool, perfect surface gave him a feeling of tremendous security. A magical blast of lightning struck dead anyone but himself or of his choice who touched the knob. Pitrick had many enemies in Theiwar City and in the neighboring clans who would pay great sums to bring about the savant’s demise. A number of them had already died hideous deaths at that very juncture.
But even those fond memories could not lift his foul mood. He stepped into his lightless antechamber and bellowed for his harrnservant.
“Legaer? Damn you, why aren’t you waiting at the door for me?” The hunchback shifted his weight to his good foot and counted the seconds before his servant’s shadow scurried up to him.
Pitrick backhanded Legaer’s face, the points of his teleport ring leaving a bloody trail on the other mountain dwarf’s already scarred cheek. “Five seconds delay! I must think of a punishment for such a lazy servant!” Pitrick paused to peer closely at Legaer. “I thought I told you to keep that veil on—it makes me sick to see your deformed face!” The savant wrenched his cape off and tossed it at the servant. “You are lucky to have such a tolerant master, for no one else would suffer your hideous presence!” Pitrick stormed past the dwarf and into his apartment.
&nb
sp; Legaer had Pitrick to thank for his repulsiveness. Recruited shortly after the untimely suicide of Pitrick’s twenty-third harrnservant, Legaer had felt honored to be asked to serve as important a person as the thane’s savant. It was no coincidence that Pitrick always chose as his new servant the most physically appealing of the forgeworkers. Pitrick kept them prisoner in his apartments, using them as slaves and subjects in his magical experiments. If his experiments did not succeed in “accidentally” destroying their appearance, eventually they would be killed or maimed as punishment for some misdeed. They never lasted long; Pitrick grew bored with them once he’d broken their spirit.
“Fetch me a mug of mulled mushale,” he ordered the cowed servant who dogged his heels. “And it had better be exactly room temperature this time, or you know the penalty!” Legaer bolted into the darkness. Pitrick made a mental note to think of a new torture, since there was little left to destroy of Legaer’s face, and his ears had already been sliced from his head.
Pitrick threw himself onto a stone bench before the unlit hearth in the center of the main chamber. In the peace and total darkness, he began to relax.
He loved his home. It came as near to meeting his high standards as anything in his life ever had, though it had not been without cost. Two decades before, when he had come into power, he had chosen the location of its construction for its seclusion—the third level had not been so popular then—and for the charcoal-gray hue of the granite in that part of Thorbardin. For five years a crew of fifty craftsharrn had chipped and carved the granite to Pitrick’s exact specifications; a sleeping chamber, a small galley, an antechamber leading into the main room, and several steps above that an efficient study and laboratory. All furniture—the circular hearth, his bed, the benches in the central chamber, the desk and chair in the study, even the support pillars—were painstakingly carved from the bedrock left intact, so there were no lines or joints to mar the fluidity of the space.
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