Dragons of Autumn Twilight

by Margaret Weis

  “Don’t move!” Tanis screamed at Caramon as the warrior instinctively charged into combat. The pot tilted. The big man quickly returned to his position. The pot righted itself. The draconian hanging onto the edge, its fingers oozing green, let go, spread its wings, and floated down into the mist.

  Tanis spun around to fight the draconian that had landed in the pot and fell over Flint, knocking the dwarf off his feet again. The half-elf staggered against the side. As the pot rocked, he stared down. The mists parted and he saw the ruined city of Xak Tsaroth far below him. When he drew back, feeling sick and disoriented, he saw Tasslehoff fighting the draconian. The little kender crawled up the creature’s back and bashed it on the head with a rock. At the bottom of the pot, Flint picked up Caramon’s dropped dagger and stabbed the same creature in the leg. The draconian screamed as the blade bit deep. Knowing more draconians were about to fly over, Tanis looked up in despair. But the despair turned to hope when he saw Riverwind and Goldmoon staring down through the mist.

  “Bring us back up!” Tanis yelled frantically, then something hit him on the head. The pain was excruciating. He felt himself falling and falling and falling.…

  Raistlin did not hear Tanis’s yell—the mage had already gone into action.

  “Come here, my friends,” Raistlin said swiftly. The spellbound gully dwarves gathered eagerly around him. “Those bosses down there want to hurt me,” he said softly.

  The gully dwarves growled. Several frowned darkly. A few shook their fists at the potful of draconians.

  “But you can help,” Raistlin said. “You can stop them.”

  The gully dwarves stared at the mage dubiously. Friendship—after all—went only so far.

  “All you must do,” Raistlin said patiently, “is run over and jump on that chain.” He pointed at the chain attached to the draconians’ pot.

  The gully dwarves’ faces brightened. That didn’t sound bad. In fact, it was something they did almost daily when they missed catching hold of the pot.

  Raistlin waved his arm. “Go!” he ordered.

  The gully dwarves—all except Bupu—glanced at each other, then dashed to the edge of the hole and, yelling wildly, flung themselves onto the chain above the draconians, clinging to it with marvelous dexterity.

  The mage ran over to the wheel, Bupu trotting along after him. Grabbing the Staff of Magius, he tugged it free. The wheel shivered and began to move once again, turning more and more rapidly as the weight of the gully dwarves caused the draconian pot to plummet back down into the mists.

  Several of the draconians who had been perched on the edge about to jump into the other pot were caught off guard by the sudden jolt. They lost their balance and fell. Though their wings stopped their fall, they shrieked in rage as they drifted to the ground below, their cries contrasting oddly with the gleeful shouts of the gully dwarves.

  Riverwind leaned out over the edge of the hole and caught hold of the companions’ pot as it reached the wheel.

  “Are you all right?” Goldmoon asked anxiously, leaning over to help Caramon out. “Tanis is hurt,” Caramon said, supporting the half-elf.

  “It’s just a bump,” Tanis protested groggily. He felt a large lump rising on the back of his skull. “I thought I was falling out of that thing.” He shuddered at the memory.

  “We can’t get down that way!” Sturm said, climbing out of the pot. “And we can’t stay around up here. It won’t take them long to get this lift back in operation and then they’ll be after us. We’ll have to go back.”

  “No! Don’t go!” Bupu clutched at Raistlin. “I know way to Highbulp!” She tugged at his sleeve, pointing north. “Good way! Secret way! No bosses,” she said softly, stroking his hand. “I not let bosses get you. You pretty.”

  “We don’t seem to have much choice. We’ve got to get down there,” Tanis said, wincing when Goldmoon’s staff touched him. Then the healing power flowed through his body. He relaxed as the pain eased and sighed. “As you said, they’ve lived here for years.”

  Flint growled and shook his head as Bupu started down the corridor, heading north.

  “Stop! Listen!” Tasslehoff called softly. They heard the sound of clawed feet coming toward them.

  “Draconians!” said Sturm. “We’ve got to get out of here! Head back west.”

  “I knew it,” Flint grumbled, scowling. “That gully dwarf’s led us right into those lizards!”

  “Wait!” Goldmoon gripped Tanis’s arm. “Look at her!”

  The half-elf turned to see Bupu remove something limp and shapeless from the bag she carried over her shoulder. Stepping up to the wall, she waved the thing in front of the stone slab and muttered a few words. The wall shivered, and within seconds, a doorway appeared, leading into darkness.

  The companions exchanged uneasy glances.

  “No choice,” Tanis muttered. The rattle and clank of armored draconians could be heard clearly, marching down the corridor toward them. “Raistlin, light,” he ordered.

  The mage spoke and the crystal on his staff flared. He and Bupu and Tanis quickly passed through the secret door. The rest followed, and the other door slid shut behind them. The mage’s staff revealed a small, square room decorated with wall carvings so covered with green slime that they were impossible to distinguish. They stood in silence as they heard draconians pass in the corridor.

  “They must have heard the fight,” Sturm whispered. “It won’t take them long to get the lift in motion, then we’ll have the whole draconian force after us!”

  “I know way down.” Bupu waved her hand deprecatingly. “No worry.”

  “How did you open the door, little one?” Raistlin asked curiously, kneeling beside Bupu.

  “Magic,” she said shyly and she held out her hand. Lying in the gully dwarf’s grubby palm was a dead rat, its teeth fixed in a permanent grimace. Raistlin raised his eyebrows, then Tasslehoff touched his arm.

  “It’s not magic, Raistlin,” the kender whispered. “It’s a simple, hidden floor lock. I saw it when she pointed at the wall and I was about to say something when she went through this magic rigmarole. She steps on it when she gets close to the door and waves that thing.” The kender giggled. “She probably tripped it once, accidentally, while carrying the rat.”

  Bupu gave the kender a scathing glance. “Magic!” she stated, pouting and stroking the rat lovingly. She popped it back into her bag and said—“Come, you go.” She led them north, passing through broken, slime-coated rooms. Finally she came to a halt in a room filled with rock dust and debris. Part of the ceiling had collapsed and the floor was littered with broken tiles. The gully dwarf jabbered and pointed at something in the northeast corner of the room.

  “Go down!” she said.

  Tanis and Raistlin walked over to inspect. They found a four-foot-wide pipe, one end sticking up out of the crumbling floor. Apparently it had fallen through the ceiling, caving in the northeast section of the room. Raistlin thrust his staff down inside the pipe and peered inside.

  “Come, you go!” Bupu said, pointing and tugging at Raistlin’s sleeve urgently. “Bosses can’t follow.”

  “That’s probably true,” Tanis said. “Not with their wings.”

  “But there’s not room enough to swing a sword,” Sturm said, frowning. “I don’t like it—”

  Suddenly everyone stopped talking. They heard the wheel creak and the chain start to screech. The companions looked at each other.

  “Me first!” Tasslehoff grinned. Poking his head into the pipe, he crawled forward on his hands and knees.

  “Are you sure I’ll fit?” Caramon asked, staring at the opening anxiously.

  “Don’t worry,” Tas’s voice floated out. “It’s so slick with slime you’ll slip through like a greased pig.”

  This cheerful statement did not seem to impress Caramon. He continued to regard the pipe gloomily as Raistlin, led by Bupu, clutched his robes around him and slid inside, his staff lighting the way. Flint climbed in next. Goldmoon
followed, grimacing in disgust as her hands slipped in the thick, green slime. Riverwind slid in after her.

  “This is insane—I hope you know that!” Sturm muttered in disgust.

  Tanis didn’t answer. He clapped Caramon on the back. “Your turn,” he said, listening to the sound of the chain moving faster and faster.

  Caramon groaned. Getting down on his hands and knees, the big warrior crawled forward into the pipe opening. His sword hilt caught on the edge. Backing out, he fumbled to readjust the sword, then he tried again. This time his rump stuck up too far making his back scrape along the top. Tanis planted his foot firmly on the big warrior’s rear end and shoved.

  “Flatten down!” the half-elf ordered.

  Caramon collapsed like a wet sack with another groan. He squirmed in, head first, shoving his shield in front of him, his armor dragging along the metal pipe with a shrill, scraping sound that set Tanis’s teeth on edge.

  The half-elf reached out and grasped the top of the pipe. Thrusting his legs in first, he began to slide in the foul-smelling slime. He twisted his head around to look back at Sturm, who came last.

  “Sanity ended when we followed Tika into the kitchen of the Inn of the Last Home,” he said.

  “True enough,” the knight agreed with a sigh.

  Tasslehoff, enthralled by the new experience of crawling down the pipe, suddenly saw dark figures at the bottom end. Scrabbling for a handhold, he slid to a stop.

  “Raistlin!” the kender whispered. “Something’s coming up the pipe!”

  “What is it?” the mage started to ask, but the foul, moist air caught in his throat and he began to cough. Trying to catch his breath, he shone the staff’s light down the pipe to see who approached.

  Bupu took one look and sniffed. “Gulp-pulphers!” she muttered. Waving her hand, she shouted. “Go back! Go back!”

  “We go up—ride lift! Big bosses get mad!” yelled one.

  “We go down. See Highbulp!” Bupu said importantly.

  At this, the other gully dwarves began backing down, muttering and swearing.

  But Raistlin couldn’t move for a moment. He clutched his chest, hacking, the sound echoing alarmingly in the stillness of the narrow pipe. Bupu gazed at him anxiously, then thrust her small hand into her bag, fished around for several moments, and came up with an object that she held up to the light, She squinted at it, then sighed and shook her head. “This not what I want,” she mumbled.

  Tasslehoff, catching sight of a brilliant, colorful flash, crept closer. “What is that?” he asked, even though he knew the answer. Raistlin, too, was staring at the object with wide glittering eyes.

  Bupu shrugged. “Pretty rock,” she said without interest, searching through the bag once more.

  “An emerald!” Raistlin wheezed.

  Bupu glanced up. “You like?” she asked Raistlin.

  “Very much!” the mage gasped.

  “You keep.” Bupu put the jewel in the mage’s hand. Then, with a cry of triumph, she brought out what she had been searching for. Tas, leaning up close to see the new wonder, drew back in disgust. It was a dead—very dead—lizard. There was a piece of chewed-on leather cord tied around the lizard’s stiff tail. Bupu held it toward Raistlin.

  “You wear around neck,” she said. “Cure cough.”

  The mage, accustomed to handling much more unpleasant objects than this, smiled at Bupu and thanked her, but declined the cure, assuring her that his cough was much improved. She looked at him dubiously, but he did seem better—the spasm had passed. After a moment, she shrugged and put the lizard back into her bag. Raistlin, examining the emerald with expert eyes, stared coldly at Tasslehoff. The kender, sighing, turned his back and continued down the pipe. Raistlin slipped the stone into one of the secret inner pockets sewn into his robes.

  When a branch pipe joined theirs, Tas looked questioningly at the gully dwarf. Bupu hesitantly pointed south, into the new pipe. Tas entered slowly. “This is stee—” he gasped as he began to slide rapidly down. He tried to slow his descent, but the slime was too thick. Caramon’s explosive oath, echoing down the pipe from behind him, told the kender that his companions were having the same problem. Suddenly Tas saw light ahead of him. The tunnel was coming to an end, but where? Tas had a vivid vision of bursting out five hundred feet above nothing. But there wasn’t anything he could do to stop himself. The light grew brighter, and Tasslehoff shot out the end of the pipe with a small shriek.

  Raistlin slid out of the pipe, nearly falling on Bupu. The mage, looking around, thought for an instant that he had tumbled into a fire. Great, billowing clouds of white rolled around the room. Raistlin began to cough and gasp for breath.

  “Wha—?” Flint flew out of the end of the pipe, falling on his hands and knees. He peered through the cloud. “Poison?” He gasped crawling over to the mage. Raistlin shook his head, but he couldn’t answer. Bupu clutched the mage, dragging him toward the door. Goldmoon slid out on her stomach, knocking the breath from her body. Riverwind tumbled out, twisting his body to avoid hitting Goldmoon. There was a clanging bang as Caramon’s shield shot from the pipe. Caramon’s spiked armor and broad girth had slowed him enough so that he was able to crawl out of the pipe. But he was bruised and battered and covered with green filth. By the time Tanis arrived, everyone was gagging in the powdery atmosphere.

  “What in the name of the Abyss?” Tanis said, astonished, then promptly choked as he inhaled a lungful of the white stuff. “Get out of here,” he croaked. “Where’s that gully dwarf?”

  Bupu appeared in the doorway. She had taken Raistlin out of the room and was now motioning to the others. They emerged thankfully into the unclouded air and slumped down to rest among the ruins of a street. Tanis hoped they weren’t waiting for an army of draconians. Suddenly he looked up. “Where’s Tas?” he asked in alarm, staggering to his feet.

  “Here I am,” said a choked and miserable voice.

  Tanis whirled around.

  Tasslehoff—at least Tanis presumed it was Tasslehoff—stood before him. The kender was covered from topknot to toes in a thick, white, pasty substance. All Tanis could see of him were two brown eyes blinking out of a white mask.

  “What happened?” the half-elf asked. He had never seen anyone quite so miserable as the bedraggled kender.

  Tasslehoff didn’t answer. He just pointed back inside.

  Tanis, fearing something disastrous, ran over and peered cautiously through the crumbling doorway. The white cloud had dissipated so that he could see around the room now. Over in one corner—directly opposite the pipe opening—stood a number of large, bulging sacks. Two of them had been split open, spilling a mass of white onto the floor.

  Then Tanis understood. He put his hand over his face to hide his smile. “Flour,” he murmured.

  19

  The broken city.

  Highbulp Phudge I, the Great.

  The night of the Cataclysm had been a night of horror for the city of Xak Tsaroth. When the fiery mountain struck Krynn, the land split apart. The ancient and beautiful city of Xak Tsaroth slid down the face of a cliff into a vast cavern formed by the huge rents in the ground. Thus, underground, it was lost to the sight of men, and most people believed the city had vanished entirely, swallowed up by Newsea. But it still existed, clinging to the rough sides of the cavern walls, spread out upon the floor of the cavern—there were ruined buildings on several different levels. The building the companions had fallen into, which Tanis assumed must have been a bakery, was on the middle level, caught by rocks and held up against the sheer cliff face. Water from underground streams flowed down the sides of the rock and ran into the street, swirling among the ruins.

  Tanis’s gaze followed the course of the water. It ran down the middle of the cracked cobblestone street, running past other small shops and houses where people had once lived and gone about their business. When the city fell, the tall buildings that once lined the street toppled against one another, forming a crude archway of broken ma
rble slabs above the cobblestones. Doors and broken shop windows yawned into the street. All was still and quiet, except for the noise of the dripping water. The air was heavy with the odor of decay. It weighed upon the spirit. And though the air was warmer down beneath the ground level than up above, the gloomy atmosphere chilled the blood. No one spoke. They washed the slime from their bodies (and the flour from Tas) as best they could, then refilled their water skins. Sturm and Caramon searched the area but saw no draconians. After a few moments of rest, the companions rose and moved on.

  Bupu led them south, down the street, beneath the archway of ruined buildings. The street opened into a plaza—here the water in the streets became a river, flowing west.

  “Follow river.” Bupu pointed.

  Tanis frowned, hearing above the noise of the river another sound, the crashing and roaring of a great waterfall. But Bupu insisted, so the heroes edged their way around the plaza river, occasionally plunging ankle deep in the water. Reaching the end of the street, the companions discovered the waterfall. The street dropped off into air, and the river gushed out from between broken columns to fall nearly five hundred feet into the bottom of the cavern. There rested the remainder of the ruined city of Xak Tsaroth.

  They could see by the dim light that filtered through cracks in the cavern roof far above that the heart of the ancient city lay scattered about on the floor of the cavern in many states of decay. Some of the buildings were almost completely intact. Others, however, were nothing but rubble. A chill fog, created by the many waterfalls plunging down into the cavern, hung over the city. Most of the streets had become rivers, which combined to flow into a deep abyss to the north. Peering through the mists, the companions could see the huge chain hanging only a few hundred feet away, slightly north of their present position. They realized that the lift raised and lowered people at least one thousand feet.