Realms of the Underdark a-4

by Mark Anthony

  Destroying their precious egg would be a welcome if minor revenge. They had cared for that egg for many sleepings, whatever it was, if it was precious to a drow, it deserved to be smashed before it hatched.

  Their march went on for four more hours, unbroken by talk, until Wykar recognized landmarks that indicated they were close to the Sea of Ghosts. He signaled another break in the walk, just below the stumps of three stalactites that had formed in a perfect equilateral triangle. Sand crunched softly under their boots as they shuffled to a halt.

  Wykar sighed. He had gotten over the derro's admission of body-robbing, and he hoped nothing would further strain things between them.

  "We have about two hundred feet to go," he whispered, making sure the echo would not carry to unwelcome ears. "The side tunnel is ahead, around the corner to the right side of the hall. There are likely to be kuo-toa around, and we'll have to hit them as hard and quickly as we can unless we're too outnumbered. We've been lucky so far, but we'll have to-"

  A loud crackling noise shot around them, echoing throughout the broad corridor. They both jumped, taken completely by surprise, and instinctively looked up at the ceiling. Wykar curled his gloved fingers down around the hotstone and cut off the heat-glow. They stood in the blackness and listened.

  "I heard it," came Geppo's hoarse whisper. "Dragon. Big dragon sound. My father-"

  "Shhh." Wykar shivered. "No, it's not-"

  A broken-rock and lightning smell entered Wykar's nostrils. He knew about lightning from the spells that a few deep-gnome wizards and kuo-toan priests were able to cast. But if no lightning was around, and the rocks smelled broken, then-

  He suddenly knew. He gasped and sprinted forward, hard and fast. His gloved fingers opened around the hotstone and held it up as his feet pounded the sandy ground. The corridor again leapt into bright monochromatic view, infrared shadows jerking wildly.

  "Hey there!" Geppo called behind him. Wykar heard the derro start to run, too.

  "Earthquake!" Wykar shouted back at the top of his lungs. It didn't matter now if anyone or anything heard him. He jumped over a large rock in his path and almost lost his footing when he came down on loose debris, hurtling on. "Run!"

  There was a second cracking sound, much louder than the first. Not yet! Not yet! begged Wykar in prayer. Dust and rock bits rattled down from the cavern ceiling. Shadows shifted and jerked in the deep gnome's hurried vision. Perhaps it was a trick of the poor light, a trick of the dancing shadows as he ran, but Wykar didn't think so. Heartbeats, heartbeats left, he thought. The tunnel to the underground sea was narrow enough for shelter, well supported at its entrance.

  He saw the final bend in the cavern ahead before the tunnel came to the Sea of Ghosts. The air was thick with the frightening broken-rock smell, the ceiling dust drifting slowly about now like Ghost Sea mist. There were new smells, too-moisture, dead fish, rich fields of fungus. The Sea of Ghosts. He might make it. The fishy odor was particularly strong.

  The narrow tunnel to the sea appeared around the corner.

  Something tall and warm was in front of the tunnel already, half visible and obviously waiting for him. That something stepped out and made a windmilling motion with its arm in Wykar's direction. It had seen his infrared-bright hotstone and heard his shouts.

  Wykar threw himself forward into a roll. Bits of sharp floor debris stabbed into his back and neck. He lost the hotstone. An object whispered through the air over him, clattering hard against the far wall. Harpoon, Wykar thought.

  Wykar came up on his knees from the roll, snatching two darts from inside his vest. He hurled them, right hand and left. The hotstone, on the floor three yards away, revealed a tall, fat figure less than thirty feet ahead as it hurriedly raised another spear. The darts struck it first and burst into sprays of crystal fragments, releasing a pale gas.

  The tall creature hissed like a steam vent, staggering back as it coughed sharply on the gas. The kuo-toan waved its long arms in an effort to clear its vision and throw its next harpoon. Wykar reached for his blade, but hesitated when he realized he was grabbing the weapon belonging to Geppo. It didn't matter, he pulled it out, got to his feet, and charged. If he could just close before-

  There was a whiz to Wykar's left, and a soft thump from the tall creature's stomach. It stepped back with a long wheezing sigh, a crossbow bolt protruding from its midsection. A second thump put a bolt right between the creature's goggle eyes. The kuo-toan shook violently, mouth open impossibly wide, then fell forward with a heavy crash to quiver softly on the ground.

  Wykar halted and looked back. He saw Geppo lower his short crossbow and hurry toward him. The derro's broad, black-toothed grin was visible even at a distance.

  "All-damn kuo-toa!" the derro roared gleefully as Wykar quickly seized his hotstone again. "Eat that, all-damn k-" The derro was seized with a spasm of deep, racking coughs, and his run slowed into a halting gait. Wykar reached out to seize the derro's arm and propel him toward the cavern to the Ghost Sea.

  A rumbling sound, louder and deeper and longer than a thunderclap, shook the cave floor like a drum. It crescendoed and did not stop. Geppo and Wykar staggered and almost fell.

  "It's the-" began Wykar.

  With a cracking groan so loud it filled the world, the cave walls rippled and shifted and rocked back and forth. Stony layers split open, clouds of dust sprayed, boulders tore free of ceilings and walls. Wykar clearly saw it all in the heat-glow, though he was deafened and momentarily paralyzed with a terror that surpassed anything in his worst nightmares. He caught the derro's arm in his right hand and ran for the two-yard-wide side tunnel. He almost reached it.

  A sheet of ceiling rock slammed flat against the ground to Wykar's left, the impact blowing him over like a leaf. Sand and dust fell through the semidarkness. Wykar got up and staggered forward over shattered rock, falling twice more. Geppo was gone. Wykar no longer cared.

  The battered gnome was on the verge of entering the tunnel mouth when he fumbled and dropped the hot-stone again. Near darkness enveloped him. He staggered on, shielding his eyes from flying debris. His outstretched fingers touched a cold cavern wall, he turned right. Something warm was close to him, he saw that, but dust got in his eyes and pain stabbed his corneas, blinding him. A heartbeat later, he smelled the unmistakable odor of rancid fish-and ran nose-first into the wet, slimy stomach of an enormous live creature-another kuo-toan.

  Wykar stabbed at the creature blindly. He wasn't even aware that he had pulled a dagger out of his boot. A moment later, the kuo-toan was gone. He lurched forward on the trembling ground and tripped once more, falling flat and banging his large nose hard on sharp, broken rocks. The pain caused him to scream, his stinging eyes ran anew with tears. The dagger fell and was gone. Then Wykar took a deep whiff of something that filled his lungs like smoking magma. He hunched up on the ground, coughing and gasping as each breath stabbed his lungs with fire. A crystal-nosed dart on his armor had broken open when he had fallen, choking him with its gas.

  Deep gnomes are a pragmatic people. That does not keep them from cursing the unfairness of death, and Wykar gasped out a string of curses himself as he waited for a crushing blow from a quake-loosened stone to strike the life from him in the bleak hell of the earthquake. He hoped death would be quick. The gas from the broken dart was the pits.

  The short, violent shock rocked every floor, wall, and ceiling of Raurogh's Hall, as if the earth had come to life and breathed in for the first time. Ragged cracks burst open in walls facing the direction of the shock, then closed as the earth swayed back and split the opposite walls wide with deafening roars. Carved ceilings crumbled, walls of bas-relief broke. Rock fragments fell over all, and the air was a cloud of choking dust that clogged noses, mouths, and lungs.

  The fisher dwarf slipped and fell on damp rock when the shock hit, dropping the gaff with which she had banged out the alert. Scrambling fingers seized the fishing net she had flung aside as she slid on her stomach toward the river, the
net snagged itself on a foot-long iron bolt driven into the cave floor. This saved her life.

  In the next instant, the River Raurogh sloshed over the fisher dwarf's head and carried her off with it, flooding the riverside tunnels as the shock flung it sideways out of its ancient bed. Clinging to the net, the dwarf collided painfully with a stone bench in the hall. Then, as the earth jerked in the opposite direction, she was washed back out again onto the stone bank of the river, and the water rushed back into its channel.

  It was then that the fisher dwarf heard a monstrous roar tear through the river tunnel from the direction of the falls, a sound as great as if the cavern were the throat of a wild beast. She turned her head to look. It was the moment when the Eastern Shaar hunter far above lowered his bow, when the sorceress in her tower glared, when the old shepherd looked up from his knife and flute.

  A magical lantern had been washed out into the river from the dwarves' hall, and in its light the fisher dwarf saw the entire ceiling of the silo break free, a monstrous plate of rock twenty yards thick. It dropped swiftly past the top of the falls and out of sight. The dwarf looked on in amazement. She remembered the legend of the foolish dwarf. Her lips moved. "One," she whispered. "Two-"

  An enormous, screaming wind awoke around her. It hurled water, tools, buckets, lanterns, and nets toward the falls, everything it could seize in its shrieking teeth. The wind savaged the dwarf as she gripped the fishing net with gnarled fingers, she felt the net's worn strands give and break apart. Freezing rain whipped at her face. The river danced and shook in the fury. Four, she thought, head down, eyes shut. Five. Six.

  The hurricane blast eased and faded as swiftly as it had come. The partial vacuum created by the ceiling collapse was filled. Chilled to the bone, the fisher dwarf shivered and clung to the ruined net, unable to pull herself up. The wind's last howls echoed in her ears, following the great rock plate down into the light-lost abyss of the Deepfall.

  The fisher dwarf was oblivious to all but her numbers, waiting for the great stone to reach the end of its endless fall. She had been cautious every day of her life. She would not lose her place in the legends now.

  Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen…

  The thunder dwindled slowly from every direction. Wykar heard himself shouting hysterical pleas and prayers to Garl, chief god of the gnomes. His pleas turned into sobs and coughs, then ended as he got control of himself again. He lay exhausted on his stomach, arms covering his head, and did nothing but cough on the thick dust and the overpowering stench of rotting fish.

  A distant boom rolled down the great cavern corridor as part of a wall or ceiling split off and collapsed far away. The deep rattling of a rockslide could be heard afterward as the ground trembled slightly. Then the noise died into real silence. A few seconds after that, Wykar realized that the earthquake was over.

  The gnome reached up with his right hand and gingerly felt his injured nose. Touching a particularly sore spot brought more sudden tears to his eyes, but a careful examination revealed that his nose was only bleeding and dirty, not broken. Thank you, Garl, he thought. He couldn't imagine life with a broken nose. It was too awful to conceive, better to be crippled. He sighed with relief and began brushing bits of rock off his nose and face.

  Something groaned and stirred in the debris, very close to him. Wykar wiped his eyes on his right arm a sat up. Loose debris fell from his head and back. "Geppo?" he called.

  He smelled rancid fish. Damn, he thought, fumbling for his blade hilt.

  The heat-glow of a huge, pudgy creature arose from the thick dust and debris, barely two yards away. Wykar scrambled back, ignoring the pain. Though its skin was lukewarm, the creature was bleeding profusely, and its warm blood illuminated it clearly in Wykar's heat-sensitive vision. The being rose up on its hands and knees to survey the ruins of the great corridor. It hissed as it did.

  It was the kuo-toan Wykar had stabbed only a few moments before. The creature sucked in a great lungful of air, its gills slapping wetly against the sides of its goggle-eyed head. One of the huge eyes rolled in Wykar's direction and fixed on him. The kuo-toan hissed again, louder and sharper. Its mouth opened as it turned, it was so close that Wykar could see the individual needle teeth in its lower jaw.

  The kuo-toan lurched at the gnome, mouth opened to bite. Wykar threw himself to the side at the last moment and swung his right fist at the kuo-toan's head in a roundhouse punch. He hit it squarely in its huge left eye.

  With a loud gasp, the fish-creature jumped back, one long webbed hand clutching at its injured eye. It lunged forward to grab the gnome, but by then Wykar had seized the handle of the derro's long blade and pulled it free. He swung for the monster's thin-boned arm and connected with a solid thump.

  With another gasping scream, the kuo-toan jerked back, waving the stump of its severed right arm. Wykar swiftly got to his feet. The derro's knife was incredibly sharp. He knew he would have to kill the stupid fish-man now, though. He bit his lower lip and steeled himself, then moved in to finish the job.

  Fast as the gnome was, he had not even touched the kuo-toan when the creature shuddered violently, its back arched in a spasm and its head reared back to give the ceiling a pop-eyed stare. It wheezed out a long, final sigh as it fell backward. As it did, Geppo adroitly stepped out of its way. His left fist was clenched around the hilt of Wykar's blood-covered blade.

  Geppo was panting and bleeding profusely from a scalp wound, but seemed unharmed otherwise. His blood was warmer than the kuo-toan's, so he was much brighter, his face shone like a lantern. Wykar lowered his weapon and looked around. A rumbling ran through the great corridor in the distance, the cave floor vibrated slightly through the sand. Aftershock, thought Wykar. It would be best to leave the open cave quickly.

  The deep gnome produced a second hotstone from his belt pouch and held it aloft. He and Geppo paused to survey the damage to the main passageway. The floor was littered with split rocks and boulders torn from the cave walls. The dust had settled, the air smelled of shattered stone and stirred earth. Going back the way they'd come would be hard, indeed. Wykar hoped the trip hadn't now become one-way. He then looked down and saw only an arm and a foot were left of the first kuo-toan they had fought, the rest of the creature messily flattened to the thickness of a mica flake beneath a thick stone slab.

  Wykar checked the narrow passage toward the Sea of Ghosts. It seemed solid even now, though the floor was a foot deep in debris and most of the tiny ceiling formations were broken off. He could see only a half-dozen yards into the narrow passage before it curved around a bend. Surprises were certain to lie beyond.

  He muttered a dark curse. The only other tunnel to the Sea of Ghosts was two sleepings away by foot, and time was against them. He considered calling off the whole thing and fleeing for his life. How did he know the earthquake hadn't buried or broken the egg now? And the sea would be in violent turmoil after the shock.

  If the vast, arched roof over the sea had held-and there was good reason to think it had, since the sound of its falling would have been quite noticeable through the tunnel-the kuo-toa there would be more active than ever. Wykar and Geppo had just fought two gogglers who had walked out of the tunnel, a thousand more might await them on the shoreline on the other end. The whole plan was ruined.

  He tapped the derro's battered weapon against his bare leg, then thought better of it and stopped before he cut himself badly. Everything was quiet now. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to just take a peek and see what was going on, for curiosity's sake. He motioned to the derro, who had finished cleaning his blade, and with great care and many looks at the ceiling, they stepped into the side tunnel.

  The tunnel had survived in good condition. It curved back and forth for two hundred feet, once an outflowing stream from a formerly higher Sea of Ghosts. Inch-wide cracks showed all the way through the tunnel, legacies of the quake. At one point, the gnome and derro were forced to climb over the crushed remains of another three kuo-toa, half-buried when the ceil
ing gave way over a three-yard section. Wykar nearly gave up at that point, but he steeled himself and moved on, steadily avoiding a close look at the smashed skull of an unlucky kuo-toan. The fishy stench was incredible, and he swallowed several times to keep from vomiting.

  A few yards past that point, only a bend away from the opening to the great chamber of the sea, Wykar felt a cool breeze against his face. He stopped short, taken aback. No wind had ever stirred the Sea of Ghosts, as far as he knew, but now he was certain he could feel one. A rumbling noise in the distance that Wykar had ignored was now louder, too. It might be a short aftershock, but the ground was not trembling. Something else was going on. Wykar suspected he was in great danger. He felt it by instinct rather than by reason, but the sense was too powerful to shake off. He looked back at the derro, who merely frowned and stared back in puzzlement.

  Wykar couldn't think of anything to say that would make sense. He turned again and took a few steps toward the tunnel opening.

  The sharp crack of breaking rock sounded through the entire tunnel. It came from directly above the gnome's head. Wykar's nerve broke. He threw himself into a dead run for the open sea cave. Cold mist settled on his nose, cheeks, and the exposed skin on his arms and legs. It was Ghost Sea fog, stirred by a rising breeze.

  Wykar saw a kuo-toan with a harpoon at the tunnel mouth. It had turned to look back at the Ghost Sea, surprised by the loud rumbling throughout the great cavern. Its body was clearly outlined by green light falling on it from above. The kuo-toan had only enough time to turn back and see Wykar before the gnome's sword chopped into the goggler's right leg. The creature gasped and twisted as it fell facedown, thigh muscles cut down to the bone. The inhuman cries ended with its next breath as the derro jammed a blade into the creature's back, through its lung and heart.