by T. H. Lain
Devis looked disappointed, but he nodded. Despite the warning, there was no keeping his tongue still for long, and Tordek sighed as Devis put his hands on his hips and leaned back to look at the places where the gods had been. "Dumathoin you said. Which one is he?"
"Can't be sure," said Tordek. He pointed at one of the smooth planes. They could see the truncated edges of ears, jaws, and rippling hair. "Maybe that one, with the thin neck."
"I've heard another name for him," said Devis. " 'The Silent Keeper.'"
"That's because he never speaks," said Tordek. "Dumathoin is mute."
"Ah," said the bard, "but remember what's on the door. 'Come silently through the secret under the mountain.' That's two hints about Dumathoin."
"He's right!" said Lidda. "That's got to be important. Maybe the real secret door is under the face of Dumathoin."
"Perhaps," said Tordek, "but there's a slag drain there, and it's working. That's no secret entrance."
"Maybe the passage was through the face of Dumathoin," suggested Vadania.
"Yeah," said Devis. "In his ear or up his nose, maybe."
"Still your profane tongue, half-breed!" snapped Tordek, raising his voice enough to cause an echo. He saw his companions look around nervously and lowered his volume. "Just speak of the gods with respect, is all I am saying."
"I'll climb up and have a look," volunteered Lidda.
"Up his nose indeed," muttered Tordek, glowering at Devis. The half-elf grimaced an apology.
Lidda clambered up the cliff face as nimbly as a monkey. Tordek had seen her perform similar feats a dozen times, but he still marveled at her skill. He would need a stout rope to get up there, and to be careful he would need to haul up his armor separately. He watched as Lidda braced herself and began feeling the bare stone face for secrets. Her slender fingers probed the cliff for only a few minutes before she called down to them.
"There's something here! It's small, but I think I can open it!" Lidda grinned down at them, a fierce grin on her face. It vanished when her gaze fell upon Gulo. Big, huge, gigantic Gulo.
Vadania caught the meaning of the look and put her slim hand on the dire wolverine's massive shoulder. "I am sorry, my friend. You can surely make the climb, but the passage is too meager for so great a warrior to pass."
Tordek knew that the dire wolverine could not understand Common, but he was sure he took the elf's meaning nonetheless. With a deep whimper that was anything but ferocious, he slunk slowly away along the shore, sniffing for a spot upstream where he could cross without entering the tainted water.
Vadania looked after her animal friend with a sad expression in her almond-shaped eyes. Tordek stood beside her. "Where will he go?"
"We have walked many trails together," she said. "He will remain nearby until I call for him."
"Come on," urged Devis. He held a knotted rope and had one foot on the cliff face. Thirty feet above, Lidda sat in the mouth of a narrow opening with the other end tied around her waist and played through her gloved hands.
Devis started climbing. He reached the halfway point when Vadania hissed a warning. Devis froze, crouching low to the wall while craning his neck to look down over his shoulder.
The druid was listening intently, so Tordek did the same. He heard nothing but the gurgling of the stream behind them.
"Something's coming!" hissed Vadania. "Something that buzzes." She flapped her hands at Devis, urging him to climb faster as she grasped the rope below. "Hurry!"
Tordek hesitated only a second before snatching up his bow and setting an arrow to the string. By the time he had the weapon ready, he heard the buzzing that had alerted Vadania. A moment later, he spied the first of them.
The thing was like a hornet the size of a boar, with four dangling red meat hooks for legs. The creature's body was a suit of lacquered yellow armor with black splotches, its wings a dark leathery blur. Its eight multifaceted eyes reflected a hundred tiny images of the sky, the cliff, and the ground beneath. A crude harness encircled its fat abdomen, securing a saddle between its wings. There perched a lean goblin resting a short bow across its knees.
The rider spotted Devis crawling into the hole where Dumathoin's eye once lay just as Tordek raised his bow. As the goblin lifted an arm to point at the climber and opened his mouth to shout, Tordek's arrow shot through its chest and slammed it out of the saddle. The goblin tumbled backward over its gigantic mount and dangled, already dead, from one leg still trapped in its stirrup.
Even without its rider to goad it on, the spider-eater flew toward the secret entrance. Devis was already inside the shelter of the stone, but Vadania still climbed frantically toward it. Even while Tordek reached for another arrow, he knew she would never make it in time. As he fired at the monstrous insect, two more of the things buzzed around the promontory.
On one of them rode another goblin, already rising in its saddle to shoot at Vadania. On the other, Tordek caught a brief glimpse of a creature even smaller than a goblin, knotty and twisted like an old piece of moldy wood. Before he could identify the wretch, it vanished. When he heard weird, piping laughter from atop the flying insect, he realized its rider had turned invisible.
He cried a warning to those above, but they were already too busy to heed him.
With its hanging rider forgotten, the first spider-eater descended on the druid. Devis reached down to help her up into the secret passage, but just before their hands met, the gigantic insect bumped Vadania and glided gently away to hover over the poisoned river.
From Tordek's perspective, it seemed like such a gentle blow that he didn't realize the peril until he heard Vadania's painful cry. She clutched at her thigh and lost her grip on the rope. Before she could fall to the ground, Devis lunged down and grabbed her with both hands. Behind him, Lidda held onto his ankles and jammed her feet and shoulders against the walls of the tiny passage for support.
Unable to help them from the ground, Tordek fired at the second goblin. The first arrow from his mighty longbow passed completely through the goblin's right arm, severing the bone and leaving the limb and the weapon it still clutched hanging by a ragged strip of flesh. A bright stream of blood blew into a dull mist in the wake of the spider-eater's droning wings.
Tordek spared a quick look up to see that Lidda and Devis had dragged Vadania into their shelter. That was a relief, but it left Tordek alone to face three furious insects and their invisible commander. He bellowed curses at them, hoping to draw one close enough to test his axe against its shell. Before they got within axe reach, he fired two more arrows at the one that stung Vadania. One glanced off the insect's chitinous hide, but the other cracked the surface and sank deep. Thick ichor dripped down the arrow shaft and blew away in black streamers.
The attack had its desired effect. The insect flew straight toward Tordek, followed closely by its companion with the invisible rider. The dwarf barely had time to drop his bow and reach for his war axe. As he gripped the weapon's haft, an icy thrill gripped his spine and shot out through every nerve until his body trembled with ineffable fear. He gritted his teeth against the unmanly emotion, but still his weapon shook in his grip. The spider-eater closed and struck at him, and he turned away to run. He felt the monstrous stinger scrape across his armor. The metal saved him from the foe he could not face. Tordek bit his lip and cursed himself for cowardice as he ran. That the terror undoubtedly came from a spell cast by the invisible foe did nothing to cool the shame.
Despite the fear, fury rose up from Tordek's belly, filling his heart with gleeful hatred. It routed the magical fear and drove it from his body. With a roar, he wheeled around and heaved his axe up in a powerful overhand arc, cutting through the tough sinew connecting the insect's membranous wing to its body. The spider-eater hurtled past him, spinning out of control, until it crashed on the shore of the polluted stream. Its remaining wing beat uselessly against the pebbles.
Tordek whirled again to face his unseen enemy, but the invisible rider was too cagey to be l
ured close. The spider-eater hovered well out of reach. The drone of its wings barely covered the nervous muttering of its unseen master. Before the monster could complete whatever foul spell it was about to utter, the air above the spider-eater shimmered, and its rider was invisible no more.
The thing was only two feet tall, with twisty horns and pustulant, green flesh. It was naked and unadorned but for a spiraling black tattoo that roamed from one gnarly shoulder across its thin chest and torso before ringing its opposite leg. The creature gripped the spider-eater's reins in one slender hand and shook the long claws of its other hand at Devis.
"Got you, you little bastard!" cried Devis. Tordek looked up to see the bard dropping a scroll whose magic he had just discharged. Devis ducked back inside the passage in time to avoid another rush from the third hovering insect.
Tordek was loath to give up his axe, but he dropped it in favor of the longbow. The previously invisible rider screeched a command, and its mount rose farther away from Tordek. The other remaining insect swooped down from the secret passage to join its fellow.
Devis whooped a note so musical that Tordek thought at first he was singing. Instead, the bard leaped from his high vantage and fell with all his weight upon the retreating spider-eater. Together they plummeted toward the dwarf, Devis shouting, "Kill it, Tordek!"
At the same moment, the strange insect-rider shrieked. Tordek glimpsed its fall out of the corner of his eye. The tiny creature tumbled off its steed with a green-fletched arrow lodged in its knotty hide. It seemed more startled than injured.
Tordek's attention was wrenched back to Devis when the bard and the other spider-eater crashed into the gravel at the cliff's base. Devis rolled away from his unwilling steed onto the shore. The creature's wings were broken and its carapace cracked, but its razor claws thrashed furiously in all directions. Tordek snatched up his axe and after slashing off the flailing limbs, set to work chopping the spider-eater to messy bits. The monstrous insect squirmed and chattered horridly until the blade cut it into dozens of sections.
Devis regained his feet as Tordek turned to face the third and final foe. Instead, he saw it disappear over the top of Jorgund Peak, followed by an erratically flapping bat he had not spied before. There was no sign of the little demon.
"We'd better hurry," said Devis, beckoning him back to the rope. "When that giant bug returns to camp, they'll send out a larger party."
Tordek nodded, collecting his bow and shield. There was no time to send up his gear and climb unhindered, but he paused before climbing the rope to consider the bard.
"That jump off the cliff," he said. "Not bad at all."
"Well, thanks," said Devis, "but when you tell the ladies, use the words 'brave' and 'dashing,' will you?"
Tordek pulled himself up the rope, guiding his ascent with his feet upon the cliff face. He grunted and said, "I'll think about it."
THE BURIED FOREST
At Tordek's suggestion, Lidda crept back to close and jam shut the secret door. While the halfling worked, the other three crawled more than twenty feet into the passage before finding a chamber large enough to shelter them all together. The smooth, regular lines of dwarven chisels gave way to a cool, damp chamber shaped by eons of trickling water. A natural passage continued to bore deeper into the mountain, but they paused to tend to injuries.
While he could see perfectly well, albeit in shades of black and white, Tordek drew his magical torch from the black cloth that hid its continual flame's enchantment. Lidda had already struck a sunrod, filling the small cavern with golden light, but Tordek knew it always paid to have a second source of light. Even a few seconds of blindness could mean the difference between life and death in the subterranean world, especially one shared with fiends and gods-knew-what-else.
Vadania's injury had swollen so horribly that she had to slit the side of her trousers lest it burst. The wound was scarlet against her white flesh, even after she cast a spell to cure the injury. The effort exhausted her strength, and her muscles were beginning to seize up in paralytic convulsions.
"It's infected," said Lidda. She drew a dagger and sighed. "That leg's going to have to come off."
"Keep her away from me," said the elf.
"Some people!" said Lidda, sheathing her blade. "Try to raise their spirits with a little levity."
"I thought it was funny," said Devis.
"Yeah?" said Lidda, brightening as she sidled up to the half-elf. "I hear you were daring out there."
"Stand back, both of you," said Tordek. He knelt beside the injured druid.
He already regretted his earlier praise for Devis, and he suspected the bard had somehow tricked him into it. The scamp was already contaminating Lidda with his childishness. In the months she had spent with Tordek, the halfling rogue had never been a liability in a dangerous spot. She might make a snappy remark now and then, but she was never so easily distracted when there was serious work at hand. Now Tordek was beginning to wonder whether he could rely on either of them.
"Do you have anything for it?" He wished he had more than a cool splash of water to offer. Despite years in battle, he never learned more healing than the simple tasks of binding wounds and splinting broken limbs.
"Devis already tried one of his spells," she said. "Here, take off this pack. Find the scrolls inside."
Tordek did as she bade, digging through pouches of trail rations, leaves, little clay pots, a soft bag of some squishy substance, and other odds and ends before finding three leaves of parchment rolled around a sunrod. He showed them to her, and she chose one. Tordek held his torch up to illuminate the page as she intoned the healing magic. Together they watched as its soothing power ran through Vadania's hand and into the festering wound. Instantly, the ruddy stain of poison faded, and the swollen flesh became smooth and healthy once again.
"Still hurt?" he asked.
"Not a bit," she said, "but I feel a little stiff. Maybe you or Lidda should lead the way in."
"You keep an eye on the bard," said Tordek. "He's liable to try something 'daring.'"
Vadania smiled. When she saw that Tordek was still scowling, she wiped the expression from her face and nodded.
They followed the passage deeper into the bedrock, finding only scant clues that the place was ever inhabited. A few rusty torch clasps slowly crumbled away from their sockets in the limestone walls, and twice they walked through tunnels scarred by the chisels that opened them wide enough for dwarven shoulders to pass.
Patches of shelf fungus and fuzzy mold covered the damp stone here and there. As they descended below the river's level the rocky floor gave way to great swathes of soft earth in which an increasing array of subterranean life flourished. There were tiny button mushrooms, mushrooms with bright red caps, mushrooms that grew over one another like ripples in a rain-spattered pond. Mushrooms grew underfoot, on the walls, and even on the ceiling in a few places. Some were squat and wide as lily pads, while a few rose taller than Lidda.
"Can we eat these?" she asked, crouching beneath one huge, pink and violet specimen as if it were a parasol.
"No," replied Vadania. "If you stand there much longer, it might eat you."
Lidda threw herself to the floor and rolled away in a hasty, graceless escape. She crouched there with her short sword drawn, watching for any sign that the giant mushroom might follow her.
"Just kidding," said Vadania.
"What?" Lidda turned on the druid, yellow rage in her eyes.
"Some people," Vadania said, not quite mimicking Lidda's usually cheerful voice. "A little levity."
Lidda stared at the druid, her expression twitching between real anger and surprise. She decided on pouting indignation when Tordek's deep chuckle escaped the shelter of his big red beard.
"Funny," he observed.
Lidda looked to Devis for support, but he was pressing a hand to his flat belly and bracing himself against the wall to keep from laughing aloud.
"That's enough," said Tordek. "Some of this
stuff could be dangerous. Andaron's people undoubtedly cultivated this area, but in the years since the place was abandoned, who knows what degenerate strains have crept in."
"True," agreed Vadania. "I'll jest no more about the fungus. Some of it can be quite deadly. Don't eat any unless I've seen it first, and don't poke any of the large ones."
As they pushed deeper into the caverns, they found fewer clear paths through the fungus, and Lidda led them carefully around the more sinister-looking specimens. Once they spotted a sudden movement among a stand of tall, white stalks with puff-balls for heads. They crouched low and watched, momentarily sheltering their light, but whatever crawled through the soft fronds did not stir again. They resumed their explorations with weapons in hand.
The mushroom grottoes extended in all directions, each new cavern revealing two or three more passages leading to still more fungus-filled chambers. Through two of them ran a clean stream that Tordek estimated branched off from the untainted portion of the river outside. Near the bottom of the clear water they spied a few crawfish and an eyeless, pale gray eel coursing downstream.
"There," said Lidda, pointing at a spot just beyond their light. "Some chambers carved into the rock, behind that ridge of orange fungus."
After Vadania's guess that the brilliant, fan-shaped stuff was harmless, Tordek hacked a path through it and they peered into the chambers beyond. They were simple, cubical rooms upon whose black hinges still hung a few scraps of rotten wood. Inside, where mold had not grown into great mounds, they found little more than a stone trough in each of the four identical rooms. In one they found the white ribcage of a huge, long-bodied lizard half-buried in yellow mold. Vadania immediately warned everyone to stay well away from the powdery stuff.
"We're in the kennels," declared Tordek. "Keep searching."
Soon they found a stairway cut into the living rock. Its steps were blue with some slick, mossy growth that made Vadania shrug when Lidda asked whether it was safe.