Drizzt shook his head. "The magic is limited by spans of time. Walking the material plane tires Guenhwyvar. The panther needs to rest."
"Back the way we came, we could go." Belwar suggested. "Perhaps there is another tunnel around."
"Five miles," replied Drizzt, considering the length of the unbroken passageway behind them. "Too long."
"Then let us see what is ahead," the burrow-warden reasoned, and he started boldly off. Drizzt liked Belwar's straightforward attitude and quickly joined him.
Beyond the archway, which Drizzt had to crouch nearly double to get under, they found a wide and high cavern, its floor and walls covered in a mosslike growth that emitted the red light. Drizzt pulled up short, at a loss, but Belwar recognized the stuff well enough.
"Baruchies!" the burrow-warden blurted, the word turning into a chuckle. He turned to Drizzt and, not seeing any reaction to his smile, explained. "Crimson spitters, dark elf. Not for decades have I seen such a patch of the stuff. Quite a rare sight they are, you know."
Drizzt, still at a loss, shook the tenseness out of his muscles and shrugged, then started forward. Belwar's pick-hand hooked him under the arm, and the powerful deep gnome spun him back abruptly.
"Crimson spitters," the burrow-warden said again, pointedly emphasizing the latter of the words. "Magga cammara, dark elf, how did you get along through the years?"
Belwar turned to the side and slammed his hammer-hand into the wall of the archway, taking off a fair-sized chunk of stone. He scooped this up in the flat of his pick-hand and flipped it off to the side of the cavern. The stone hit the red-glowing fungus with a soft thud, then a burst of smoke and spores blasted into the air.
"Spit," explained Belwar, "and choke you to death will the spore! If you plan to cross here, walk lightly, my brave, foolish friend."
Drizzt scratched his unkempt white locks and considered the predicament. He had no desire to return the five miles down the tunnel, but neither did he plan to go plodding through this field of red death. He stood tall just inside the archway and looked around for some solution. Several stones, a possible walkway, rose up out of the baruchies, and beyond them lay a trail of clear stone about ten feet wide running perpendicular to the archway across the chasm.
"We can make it through," he told Belwar. "There is a clear path."
"There always is in a field of baruchies," the burrow-warden replied under his breath. Drizzt's keen ears caught the comment. "What do you mean?" he asked, springing agilely out to the first of the raised stones.
"A grubber is about," the deep gnome explained. "Or has been."
"A grubber?" Drizzt prudently hopped back to stand beside the burrow-warden.
"Big caterpillar," Belwar explained. "Grubbers love baruchies. They are the only things the crimson spitters do not seem to bother."
"How big?"
"How wide was the clear path?" Belwar asked him.
"Ten feet, perhaps," Drizzt answered, hopping back out to the first stepping stone to view it again. Belwar considered the answer for a moment. "One pass for a big grubber, two for most." Drizzt hopped back to the side of the burrow-warden again, giving a cautious look over his shoulder. "Big caterpillar." he remarked.
"But with a little mouth." Belwar explained. "Grubbers eat only moss and molds―and baruchies, if they can find them. Peaceful enough creatures, all in all."
For the third time, Drizzt sprang out to the stone. "Is there anything else I should know before I continue?" he asked in exasperation.
Belwar shook his head.
Drizzt led the way across the stones, and soon the two companions stood in the middle of the ten-foot path. It traversed the cavern and ended with the entrance to a passage on either side. Drizzt pointed both ways, wondering which direction Belwar would prefer.
The deep gnome started to the left, then stopped abruptly and peered ahead. Drizzt understood Belwar's hesitation, for he, too, felt the vibrations in the stone under his feet.
"Grubber." said Belwar. "Stand quiet and watch, my friend. They are quite a sight."
Drizzt smiled wide and crouched low, eager for the entertainment. When he heard a quick shuffle behind him, though, Drizzt began to suspect that something was out of sorts.
"Where..." Drizzt began to ask when he turned about and saw Belwar in full flight toward the other exit.
Drizzt stopped speaking abruptly when an explosion like the crash of a cave-in erupted from the other way, the way he had been watching.
"Quite a sight!" he heard Belwar call, and he couldn't deny the truth of the deep gnome's words when the grubber made its appearance. It was huge―bigger than the basilisk Drizzt had killed―and looked like a gigantic pale gray worm, except for the multitude of little feet pumping along beside its massive torso. Drizzt saw that Belwar had not lied, for the thing had no mouth to speak of, and no talons or other apparent weapons. But the giant was coming straight at Drizzt with a vengeance now, and Drizzt couldn't get the image of a flattened dark elf, stretched from one end of the cavern to the other, out of his mind. He reached for his scimitars, then realized the absurdity of that plan. Where would he hit the thing to slow it? Throwing his hands helplessly out wide, Drizzt spun on his heel and fled after the departing burrow-warden.
The ground shook under Drizzt's feet so violently that he wondered if he might topple to the side and be blasted by the baruchies. But then the tunnel entrance was just ahead and Drizzt could see a smaller side passage, too small for the grubber, just outside the baruchie cavern. He darted ahead the last few strides, then cut swiftly into the small tunnel, diving into a roll to break his momentum. Still, he ricocheted hard off the wall, then the grubber slammed in behind, smashing at the tunnel entrance and dropping pieces of stone all about.
When the dust finally cleared, the grubber remained outside the passage, humming a low, growling moan and, every so often, banging its head against the stone. Belwar stood just a few feet farther in than Drizzt, the deep gnome's arms crossed over his chest and a satisfied grin on his face.
"Peaceful enough?" Drizzt asked him, rising to his feet and shaking off the dust.
"They are indeed." replied Belwar with a nod. "But grubbers do love their baruchies and have no mind to share the things!"
"You almost got me crushed!" Drizzt snarled at him.
Again Belwar nodded. "Mark it well, dark elf, for the next time you set your panther to sleep on me, I will surely do worse!"
Drizzt fought hard to hide his smile. His heart still pumped wildly under the influence of the adrenaline burst, but Drizzt held no anger toward his companion. He thought back to encounters he had suffered just a few months before, when he was out alone in the wilds. How different life would be with Belwar Dissengulp by his side! How much more enjoyable! Drizzt glanced back over his shoulder to the angry and stubborn grubber.
And how much more interesting!
"Come along," the smug svirfneblin continued, starting off down the passage. "We are only making the grubber angrier by loitering in its sight."
The passageway narrowed and turned a sharp bend just a few feet farther in. Around the bend, the companions found even more trouble, for the corridor ended in a blank stone wall. Belwar moved right up to inspect it, and it was Drizzt's turn to cross his arms over his chest and gloat.
"You have put us in a dangerous spot, little friend." the drow said. "An angry grubber behind, trapping us in a box corridor!"
Pressing his ear to the stone, Belwar waved Drizzt off with his hammer-hand. "Merely an inconvenience," the deep gnome assured him. "There is another tunnel beyond―not more than seven feet."
"Seven feet of stone." Drizzt reminded him.
But Belwar didn't seem concerned. "A day." he said. "Perhaps two." Belwar held his arms out wide and began a chant too low for Drizzt to hear clearly, though the drow realized that Belwar was engaged in some sort of spellcasting.
"Bivrip!" Belwar cried.
Nothing happened.
The burrow-ward
en turned back on Drizzt and did not seem disappointed. "A day." he proclaimed again.
"What did you do?" Drizzt asked him.
"Set my hands a humming." replied the deep gnome. Seeing that Drizzt was completely at a loss, Belwar turned on his heel and slammed his hammer-hand into the wall. An explosion of sparks brightened the small passage, blinding Drizzt. By the time the drow's eyes could adjust to the continuing burst of Belwar's punching and hacking, he saw that his svirfneblin companion already had ground several inches of rock into fine dust at his feet. "Magga cammara, dark elf," Belwar cried with a wink. "You did not believe that my people would go to all the trouble of crafting such fine hands for me without putting a bit of magic into them, did you?"
Drizzt moved to the side of the passage and sat. "You are full of surprises, little friend." he answered with a sigh of surrender.
"I am indeed!" Belwar roared, and he pounded the stone again, sending flecks flying in every direction.
They were out of the box corridor in a day, as Belwar had promised, and they set off again, traveling now―by the deep gnome's estimation―generally north. Luck had followed them so far, and they both knew it, for they had spent two weeks in the wilds and had encountered nothing more hostile than a grubber protecting its baruchies.
A few days later, their luck changed.
"Summon the panther," Belwar bade Drizzt as they crouched in the wide tunnel they had been traveling. Drizzt did not argue the wisdom of the burrow-warden's request; he didn't like the green glow ahead any more than Belwar did. A moment later, the black mist swirled and took shape, and Guenhwyvar stood beside them.
"I go first." Drizzt said. "You both follow together, twenty steps behind." Belwar nodded and Drizzt turned and started away. Drizzt almost expected the movement when the svirfneblin's pickaxe-hand hooked him and turned him about.
"Be careful." Belwar said. Drizzt only smiled in reply, touched at the sincerity in his friend's voice and thinking again how much better it was to have a companion by his side. Then Drizzt dismissed his thoughts and moved away, letting his instincts and experience guide him.
He found the glow to be emanating from a hole in the corridor floor. Beyond it, the corridor continued but bent sharply, nearly doubling back on itself. Drizzt fell to his belly and peered down the hole. Another passage, about ten feet below him, ran perpendicular to the one he was in, opening a short way ahead into what appeared to be a large cavern.
"What is it?" Belwar whispered, coming up behind.
“Another corridor to a chamber," Drizzt replied. "The glow comes from there." He lifted his head and looked down into the ensuing darkness of the higher corridor. "Our tunnel continues," Drizzt reasoned. "We can go right by it."
Belwar looked down the passageway they had been traveling, noting the turn. "Doubles back," he reasoned. "And probably comes right out at that side passage we passed an hour ago." The deep gnome dropped to the dirt and looked into the hole.
"What would make such a glow?" Drizzt asked him, easily guessing that Belwar's curiosity was as keen as his own. "Another form of moss?"
"None that I know," Belwar replied.
"Shall we find out?"
Belwar smiled at him, then hooked his pick-hand on the ledge and swung over and in, dropping down to the lower tunnel. Drizzt and Guenhwyvar followed silently, the drow, scimitars in hand, again taking the lead as they moved toward the glow.
They came into a wide and high chamber, its ceiling far beyond their sight and a lake of green-glowing foul-smelling liquid bubbling and hissing twenty feet below them. Dozens of interconnected narrow stone walkways, varying from one to ten feet wide, crisscrossed the gorge, most ending at exits leading into more side corridors.
"Magga cammara," whispered the stunned svirfneblin, and Drizzt shared that thought.
"It appears as though the floor was blasted away." Drizzt remarked when he again found his voice.
"Melted away," replied Belwar, guessing the liquid's nature. He hacked off a chunk of stone at his side and, tapping Drizzt to get his attention, dropped it into the green lake. The liquid hissed as if in anger where the rock hit, eating away at the stone before it even sank from sight.
"Acid," Belwar explained.
Drizzt looked at him curiously. He knew of acid from his days of training under the wizards of Sorcere in the Academy. Wizards often concocted such vile liquids for use their magical experiments, but Drizzt did not figure that acid would appear naturally, or in such quantities.
"Some wizard's working, I would guess," said Belwar. "An experiment out of control. It has probably been here for a hundred years, eating away at the floor, sinking down inch by inch."
"But what remains of the floor seems secure enough," observed Drizzt, pointing to the walkways. "And we have a score of tunnels to choose from."
"Then let us begin at once," said Belwar. "I do not like this place. We are exposed in the light, and I would not care to take quick flight along such narrow bridges―not with a lake of acid below me!"
Drizzt agreed and took a cautious step out on the walkway, but Guenhwyvar quickly moved past him. Drizzt understood the panther's logic and wholeheartedly agreed.
"Guenhwyvar will lead us," he explained to Belwar. "The panther is the heaviest and quick enough to spring away if a section begins to fall."
The burrow-warden was not completely satisfied. "What if Guenhwyvar does not make it to safety?" he asked, truly concerned. "What will the acid do to a magical creature?"
Drizzt wasn't certain of the answer. "Guenhwyvar should be safe," he reasoned, pulling the onyx figurine from his pocket. "I hold the gateway to the panther's home plane."
Guenhwyvar was a dozen strides away by then―the walkway seemed sturdy enough―and Drizzt set out to follow. "Magga cammara, I pray you are right." he heard Belwar mumble at his back as he took the first steps out from the ledge.
The chamber was huge, several hundred feet across even to the nearest exit. The companions neared the halfway point―Guenhwyvar had already passed it―when they heard a strange chanting sound. They stopped and glanced about, searching for the source.
A weird-looking creature stepped out from one of the numerous side passages. It was bipedal and black skinned, with a beaked bird's head and the torso of a man, featherless and wingless. Both of its powerful-looking arms ended in hooked, wicked claws, and its legs ended in three-toed feet. Another creature stepped out from behind it, and another from behind them.
"Relatives?" Belwar asked Drizzt, for the creatures did indeed resemble some weird cross between a dark elf and a bird.
"Hardly." Drizzt replied. "In all of my life, I have never heard of such creatures."
"Doom! Doom!" came the continuing chant, and the friends looked around to see more of the bird-men stepping out from other passages. They were dire corbies, an ancient race more common to the southern reaches of the Underdark―though rare even there―and almost unknown in this part of the world. Corbies had never been of much concern to any of the Underdark races, for the bird-men's methods were crude and their numbers were small. For a passing band of adventurers, however, a flock of savage dire corbies meant trouble indeed.
"Nor have I ever encountered such creatures," Belwar agreed. "But I do not believe that they are pleased to see us."
The chant became a series of horrifying shrieks as the corbies began to disperse out onto the walkways, walking at first, but occasionally breaking into quick trots, their anxiety obviously increasing.
"You are wrong, my little friend," Drizzt remarked. "I believe that they are quite pleased to have their dinner delivered to them."
Belwar looked around helplessly. Nearly all of their escape routes were already cut off, and they couldn't hope to get out without a fight. "Dark elf, I can think of a thousand places I would rather do battle," the burrow-warden said with a resigned shrug and a shudder as he took another look down into the acid lake. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Belwar began his ritual to enchant his ma
gical hands.
"Move while you chant," Drizzt instructed him, leading him on. "Let us get as close to an exit as we can before the fighting begins."
One group of corbies closed rapidly at the party's side, but Guenhwyvar, with a mighty spring that spanned two of the walkways, cut the bird-men off.
"Bivrip!" Belwar cried, completing his spell, and he turned toward the impending battle.
"Guenhwyvar can take care of that group," Drizzt assured him, quickening his steps toward the nearest wall. Belwar saw the drow's reasoning; still another group of enemies had come out of the exit they were making for.
The momentum of Guenhwyvar's leap carried the panther straight into the pack of corbies, bowling two of them right off the walkway. The bird-men shrieked horribly as they fell to their deaths, but their remaining companions seemed unbothered by the loss. Drooling and chanting, "Doom! Doom!" they tore in at Guenhwyvar with their sharp talons.
The panther had formidable weapons of its own. Each swat of a great claw tore the life from a corby or sent it tumbling from the walkway to the acid lake. But, while the cat continued to slash into the bird-men's ranks, the fearless corbies continued to fight back, and more rushed in eagerly to join. A second group came from the opposite direction and surrounded Guenhwyvar.
Belwar set himself on a narrow section of the walkway and let the line of corbies come to him. Drizzt, taking a parallel route along a walkway fifteen feet to his friend's side, did likewise, drawing his scimitars somewhat reluctantly. The drow could feel the savage instincts of the hunter welling up within him as the battle drew near, and he fought back with all of his willpower to sublimate the wild urges. He was Drizzt Do'Urden, no more the hunter, and he would face his foes fully in control of his every movement.
Then the corbies were upon him, flailing away, shrieking their frenzied chants. Drizzt did little more than parry in those first seconds, the flats of his blades working marvelously to deflect each attempted strike. The scimitars spun and whirled, but the drow, refusing to loose the killer within him, made little headway in his fight. After several minutes, he still faced off against the first corby that had come at him.
Exile - Book 2 of the Dark Elf Trilogy Page 15
