Riverwind p2-1

by Paul B. Thompson

  Di An jerked her hand from his. “I'm not a child, River-wind!” she exploded.

  He was taken aback. “I know that, Di An. I'm sorry.” He looked closely at her. “You've been crying. What's wrong?”

  Her struggle to hide her feelings was plain on her face. It was a battle she lost. “We have suffered through so much together,” she said, “yet you cannot wait to be rid of mel I see it in your face, tall man. You want nothing so much as to be on the surface again, free to return to your-people.” She turned away from him to hide her angry face.

  Riverwind realized then that Catchflea was right. “Di An,” he began, “it's no secret that I ache to get on with my quest. I have to fulfil] it if I am to have the hand of the woman I love.” She stiffened when he said that. His voice softened. “You have been a fine companion and a friend. That need not end, ever.”

  Her thin shoulders rose and fell with a musical clink from her copper mesh dress. “It is difficult,” she said, “never to fit in. Who am I? In Hest, I was a barren child. In Vartoom, I was Mors's eyes. Here in the tunnels and caves, I am Di An, the same as the old man and you. One of three.”

  “You're still one of three,” Riverwind said gently.

  “But soon to be left behind. What am I to do on the surface? Where shall I go?”

  Riverwind had wondered about those same questions himself.

  “I'll be honest with you,” he said slowly. “It won't be easy for you. But you can become anything you can make of yourself. No one on the surface cares if you're a barren child or a digger. Be a traveler, a trader, anything you want. Be free, Di An. Free.” He said the word in her language. “Varin”

  He reached out and gathered her into his arms. She buried her head against his chest and wept a bit. Riverwind sorrowed that she was so unhappy because of him. He knew that her future would not be an easy one.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Brud Stonesifter

  They took turns watching the hole, but nothing happened for many hours. Riverwind was sitting wedged between two limestone boulders, sipping water from his canteen, when he heard voices from above. Seconds later, a stumpy figure appeared in the hole. It was a gully dwarf. A rope was tied around his thick waist, and someone was lowering him through the hole.

  “Make slow!” the Aghar said. He promptly dropped almost six feet. “Slow, dungheads! Slow! Turn rope!” The rope twisted, rotating the little fellow in a circle. He had mouse-colored hair, liberally coated with soot. His stubby fingers were blackened, too. “Make lower,” he said, and he was lowered to the cave floor.

  “Torch!” A flaming brand almost hit him on the head.

  “Good aim, dunghead!” The gully dwarf picked up the brand and started walking. He didn't bother untying the rope from his waist.

  “Any monsters down here?” he called. “Show yourself to Brud. No eat Brud. Taste bad, phooey.” The dwarf waved the torch around. Riverwind crouched lower.

  “No monsters here. Pull up now?” The rope remained slack. “Brud Stonesifter valuable fella. You want rock 'spert eaten?” A hefty chunk of paving stone whizzed down the hole. Brud skipped aside. “All very right! I look more.”

  Brud was no crafty tracker, but he plainly saw the broken ladder and the marks made when Catchflea and Di An had dragged the unconscious Riverwind away. He walked slowly, peering at the trail. It led him right past Riverwind.

  “Valuable Brud, bait for monster. Ha,” the dwarf mumbled as he snooped. “Serve very right if eaten up, then no one find rocks for masters. Ha.” He stumped by Riverwind. The plainsman pulled his knife and grabbed the little man. Clamping a hand over his mouth, Riverwind then cut the rope a foot or so from the Aghar's waist. He carried the struggling gully dwarf around the rocks to his friends.

  “Wake up,” he said.

  Catchflea rubbed his eyes. “I hope you found something to eat,” he said. Brud froze a second, then redoubled his frantic wiggling. Riverwind gave him a hard squeeze and warned him to be still.

  “What have you got?” Di An piped.

  “A visitor. If he'll behave, I'll let him speak.” Brud put his most eloquent appeal into his muddy brown eyes. “All right.” Riverwind removed his hand.

  “Eeeeeeeyow!” screamed the gully dwarf. The cave rang with his blood-chilling cry. Riverwind clamped his hand once more over Brud's mouth and ducked down behind the rocks that sheltered Catchflea and Di An. The elf girl looked disgusted.

  “Treacherous worm,” she said. “Pound him with a stone. That will make him quiet.”

  Riverwind set Brud on the ground and pushed his own face close to the dwarf's. “Now listen to me. We are very desperate criminals, and if you make one more sound to alert the goblins, I shall cut your throat.” Catchflea suppressed a giggle at his young friend's fiercely ridiculous threat. Riverwind displayed his knife to Brud, then carefully lifted his hand from the little fellow's mouth.

  “Great master, please don't kill Brud,” he whispered.

  “I won't hurt you if you behave,” Riverwind said severely. “Will you answer our questions?” The gully dwarf nodded. “Where are we?”

  “In cave.”

  “But where!”

  “Under city.”

  Riverwind's grip tightened on the knife. He wouldn't really hurt the little man, but he was sorely tempted to scare him into giving straight replies. He would try once more. “What city?” he asked.

  “Zak S'roth,” Brud said, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.

  Xak Tsaroth! Now Riverwind knew why the place seemed familiar. His father had told him stories of the ruined city that had collapsed into the ground during the Cataclysm. Great gods! He was only about eighteen miles east of Que-Shu. But the city was supposed to be surrounded by dangerous, fever-infested swamps.

  “We saw a lizard man,” Catchflea said. “Who is he?”

  Brud made a horrible face. “New masters. Make Aghar work hard.”

  “How many of them live here?”

  “Too many.”

  Riverwind shook his head. “Where did they come from?”

  “From sea. They march to city, take over, bring in goblin soldiers, make Aghar build houses, dig for rocks.”

  Riverwind, Catchflea, and Di An exchanged knowing looks. “What sort of rocks do they make you dig for?” asked Riverwind.

  “Red rocks, brown rocks, black rocks.” Di An gave a short sigh of frustration. “Brud is expert at finding rocks. Find more than anybody,” he said proudly.

  “What happens to the rocks?” Riverwind continued the questioning.

  Brud shrugged. “Go to big house and be burned.”

  “Smelted,” Di An said knowingly.

  Riverwind peeked over the rocks toward the hole in the roof. The cut rope had been withdrawn. By now the goblins and their lizard masters would be convinced a monster had carried off poor Brud Stonesifter. What would their next step be? Send down armed warriors?

  “Listen,” Riverwind said. “We need food and water. If we let you go, can you arrange them for us?”

  “Yes, wonderful master! I bring you good things to eat!”

  “I don't trust him,” Di An remarked.

  Riverwind didn't either, so he said to Catchflea, “As wizard of the group, I think you ought to put a hex on our friend here, so he will obey.”

  “Hex?” Catchflea said vaguely. “Oh! A hex, yes. Let me see, what is my most powerful spell…?” He took out his gourd and rattled the acorns over Brud's head. He waved the gourd all around the gully dwarf and uttered long, nonsensical words. Brud's eyes got wider and wider.

  “Now,” said Catchflea, pointing a bony finger at Brud, “if you do not return in two hours, or if you tell anyone who or where we are, your nose will grow to be five feet long, and your ears will grow as big as a warrior's shield. You understand, yes?”

  Brud swallowed with an audible gulp. “Brud understand.”

  “Off with you then,” Riverwind said. The dwarf hopped to his thick bare feet, then froze.<
br />
  “Rope gone,” he said. “Okay if Brud use mouse hole?”

  “Mouse hole?” Catchflea repeated.

  “Sure, got one.” Brud leaned forward as if to go. “Brud show you?”

  “By all means, yes.”

  “But watch your step,” Di An said icily.

  Brud looked her up and down and gave the elf girl a broad wink. “You pretty skinny,” he said, “but I like.” Di An sniffed contemptuously.

  They skirted the cone of light showing through the hole. Brud led them to the far end of the cave, where the roof and floor gradually slanted down to meet each other. The plainsmen had to crouch low to save their heads. Then Di An had to crouch, as she was half a foot taller than Brud.

  The gully dwarf rooted among some small loose stones, uncovering a very narrow tunnel.

  “Mouse hole,” he said proudly.

  “The mice grow big here,” Riverwind remarked.

  “Not for mice. For Aghar,” Brud explained. “Good for hiding. Mouse holes all over. I go now?”

  “You go,” said Catchflea. “But remember the hex!” Brud fingered his stub of a nose and nodded solemnly. He wriggled into the tiny opening and soon was gone.

  Di An examined the aperture. “I could probably fit in there,” she said.

  “Why would you want to?” asked the old man.

  “In case the gully doesn't return. I could go out and search for food.”

  “Let's give Brud a chance. He might do as we wish,” River-wind said. “If not, we'll have to slip out at night again.”

  Di An rubbed her sharp chin. “Goblins will be on guard above.”

  “I know, but it's better than starving down here.”

  They waited by the mouse hole for at least two hours. No one was paying much attention when a cloth-wrapped bundle finally popped out of the hole and rolled to a stop at Riverwind's feet. A second bundle dribbled out after the first, then a heavy stoneware jug. Finally, Brud emerged, head-first, grinning from ear to ear.

  “Brud is back!” he declared. “Nose and ears do not grow?”

  “The hex is lifted,” Catchflea said, his mouth watering. With trembling fingers he untied the first bundle. Out tumbled five potatoes, still warm from their boiling. The second bundle held four more boiled potatoes. Riverwind pulled the wooden plug from the jug and sniffed.

  “Wah! Whatever this is, it's gone bad!” he said.

  “It's milk,” Brud said. “Tall human like milk.”

  “Only when it's fresh!”

  Di An bit gingerly into a potato. It was still mostly raw, but never having had a potato before, she didn't know. She ate it quickly, licking her fingers when she had dispatched it.

  “Raw potatoes and sour milk. Is that all you brought?” asked Catchflea. Brud fingered his earlobes.

  “You no like?” he said weakly.

  The old soothsayer picked up a potato, brushing off some dirt. He bit it.

  “Better than nothing,” he mumbled through his food.

  They ate all the potatoes quickly, and Catchflea commented that he wished he at least had some salt to season them with. Brud's eyes got wide, and he said, “Oh!” He dug a hand into one pocket and came out with a fat pinch of salt, well mixed with dirt and lint. He offered this to Catchflea quite seriously. The old man graciously declined.

  “Did anyone notice you had come back?” Riverwind said.

  “Only wife, Guma.”

  “What did she do?”

  Brud grinned. It was not a handsome sight. “She hear monster eat me in cave, gulp. Same day I pop out mouse hole, ha! She scream loud, call me ghost.”

  Riverwind couldn't help but smile. “What did you do?”

  “I say 'Give me fooood.' “ He drew out the last word in true ghostly fashion. “Then Guma say what she always say, 'Get it yourself!' “

  Catchflea cackled with laughter. Riverwind chuckled and even Di An cracked a smile.

  Their merriment was short-lived. A soft and heavy thud elsewhere in the cave was followed by a spreading cloud of noxious yellow smoke. The stinking cloud oozed through the cave. “Brimstone!” Di An gasped.

  “They're trying to smoke us out,” Riverwind said.

  “Looks like they'll succeed, yes!”

  Forgetting Brud, they tried to get back to the entrance to the lower tunnel. But that part of the cave was on the other side of the hole, and the sulfur fumes were worse there. Another burlap bag, soaked in oil and blazing, was dumped into the cave. Weeping and choking, the elf girl and the plainsmen retreated to Brud's escape tunnel.

  “Go, Di An!” Riverwind said. “Save yourself!”

  “I won't leave you!” she said.

  “We'll all choke to death,” Catchflea said.

  “Go, Di An. Go on!”

  She protested bitterly, but Riverwind pushed her into the mouse hole. She slipped her shoulders into the narrow opening. Catchflea crouched on the floor, holding his beard over his nose and mouth. Riverwind spotted Brud.

  “Doesn't the smoke hurt you?” he said, coughing between each word.

  “Smell not bad to me,” the gully dwarf said with a shrug.

  “Will you help Di An if we don't make it, Brud?” River-wind said.

  “Skinny pretty girl. Brud look after.” He boosted himself over the rim of the hole. “Farewell, criminal.”

  Abruptly Brud popped out onto the cave floor. Di An's tear-streaked face appeared. “Riverwind! The tunnel is large enough for you two inside! Make the entrance wider!”

  They had an assortment of tools dropped by the gully dwarves in the cavern, so Riverwind and Catchflea hammered at the stone. Di An and Brud stood by. The glassy limestone splintered and sharp chips flew.

  The yellow smoke was so thick now that they couldn't see across the cave. The men and Di An coughed and coughed. “Enough, enough!” Riverwind said. Di An re-entered the opening. Riverwind helped Catchflea in, and Di An dragged at the old man's arms. Riverwind followed them. The tunnel was only two feet wide, but with his shoulders bunched the young plainsman could make it.

  Brud surveyed the sulfur-flooded cave. “Not smell so bad,” he mused aloud. The tunnel opening he regarded with a far more critical eye. “Mouse hole ruined,” he said. “Big enough for bear now.”

  He grabbed the lower rim of the enlarged hole, levered himself up, and wriggled through.

  The mouse hole tunnel ran level for forty yards, then ended on a tight vertical shaft. Notches were chiseled in the wall, and it was easy enough for them to climb the ten yards or so to the surface.

  Di An shifted a stone floor tile, and they emerged in a dark room. They lay for a while, gasping the clean air. Brud appeared and kicked the tile back over the opening.

  “Where are we?” Catchflea croaked.

  “Broken Jar House,” Brud replied. Sure enough, the floor was littered with layer upon layer of broken pottery. “Wait, I make light.”

  He found a long pole standing in a corner, apparently left for just such a purpose. Brud used the pole to poke open a shuttered window high on the wall. It was still not very bright inside the room, but enough light filtered in to reveal what a bizarre place they had stumbled into.

  It was a house, tipped on its side. The surface they sat on was not a floor, but a wall of the house. Facing them was the true floor, an expanse of white tile. Many tiles had fallen, leaving dark squares in the pattern. The surface above their heads was decorated with lively frescoes showing humans rising from pallets with their hands in the air. A tall, grave figure stood at the end of the fresco, holding a slim jar.

  “A doctor, or apothecary,” Catchflea said. “See, he's healed the sick.”

  “These must have been his medicine bottles,” Riverwind added. He raised a fistful of fragments. The pottery was so old it was turning to dust. The pieces crumbled in his fist.

  “How did this place get this way?” Di An asked. “Why is this city an underground ruin?”

  “The Cataclysm,” Riverwind said solemnly. “Almost t
hree hundred and fifty years ago, the world was rent asunder by mighty upheavals of land and sea. My father told me stories of that time. Xak Tsaroth sank into the ground.”

  Di An looked thoughtful. “That must have been what we in Hest knew as the Great Shattering. That was when Var-toom was cut off from the other cities of Hest,” she said.

  Catchflea sat upright. “Other cities?”

  “Yes. Balowil, the City of Lead, and Arvanest, the City of Gold.”

  Catchflea was about to draw the elf girl into conversation about these Hestite cities when Brud shimmied up the pole to the window. “Bad to say!” he muttered.

  “What is it?”

  “Goblins and masters look for you.” Riverwind leaped up, trying to catch the sill of the sideways window. He missed and landed with enough force to jar his aching ribs.

  “Let me,” said Di An. She climbed the pole as nimbly as Brud had. At the window, she pushed him aside. He kept trying to sniff behind her pointed ears.

  “Stop it, worm,” she said, fending him off.

  “How you hear with ears like that?”

  “How do you live with a face like that?” she spat.

  From the window Di An could see the street. A lizard man stood at the hole. A new ladder had been lowered into the cave, and goblins were being sent down in pairs, armed with clubs. The lizard man carried a large sword. The elf girl relayed all this to her friends.

  “We're in the stewpot, yes,” said Catchflea.

  “Life like stew,” Brud observed. They waited for him to finish the analogy. Brud said nothing. He turned his back to the window. He felt he'd said it all.

  The door to the Broken Jar House was on the “ceiling.” Di An kicked tiles loose and climbed out on the vertical wall, with only her toes and fingertips to hold her up. Brud was rapt with admiration. Di An reached the door and pulled the handle. The corroded copper crumbled in her hand.

  Di An leaned out far from the wall, one hand and both feet clinging to the narrowest of holds. With her climbing hook, she picked at the blackened hinge pin on the door. The hardened Hestite steel soon broke apart the ancient brass pin. The corner of the door sagged inward. Hooking onto the door frame, Di An swung free from the wall.