Jak Barley-Private Inquisitor and the Case of the Seven Dwarves

by Dan Ehl

  I shifted my weight and could tell my left leg was going to sleep. And I recalled my imprisonment by brigands while on the way to Stagsford. I had thought that about as bad as it could get. I had come to the next day with bright sunlight nearly blinding my aching eyes. I had to force my lids open. The floor of the valley was gently rotating beneath my head. I was hanging over a chasm, upside down, bound, and gagged. And from the light breeze playing about my aching body, I could tell I was naked.

  It would be safe to say, until finding myself in this tunnel, I had never found myself in a more troubling dilemma--except maybe during my recent trip to Duburoake.

  I had found myself the victim of outlaws who had left me swinging naked and upside down from a rope above a deep crevice. I could not even yell for help because it was unlikely there would have been assistance on that remote highway. My slow spinning had brought me around to view the rock wall. Clutching to the stone face with large sucker toes were a number of tiny, green lizards. They nervously scampered back and forth while never taking their bright red eyes off me, like anxious puppies scared to make the jump to their master's wagon.

  One finally gained the courage and leaped--landing and clutching onto the ropes that bound my arms to my side. It forthwith tried a tasting of the large feast before I jerked from the needle-sharp nip. The lizard did not have a secure grip and my spasm sent it toppling into the void. Its mates paused in their pacing long enough to watch their unlucky hatchmate dwindle into nothingness then resumed their hungry scurrying.

  My revolution continued and I again faced out over the gorge. I felt the mad scrambling of another lizard as it slid down my back to finally catch in my hair. I vigorously shook my head and dislodged the second attacker at the expense of violently exasperating my headache.

  I tried not imagining myself covered with scavenging reptiles, the tiny creatures swiftly reducing my body to a few meatless bones dangling in the breeze like some frightful wind chime. My private inquisitor instructors said cool heads prevail, but I doubted any of them had found themselves in similar circumstances. If they did, the solution to such a conundrum was never imparted during class.

  I was given another view of the lizards, still excitedly scampering about. A shadow crossing the rock abruptly sent them scrambling for the safety of cracks and fissures. Now what, I wondered bleakly, though believing the situation could not get much worse. I was wrong.

  The slow rotation brought me face-to-face with a harpy. She was straining to hover in one spot as she examined me.

  Some harpies, such as that one, can be quite beautiful from the waist up, though they all have sullen, loathsome dispositions. They are known to eat men who will not have sex with them, which must be quite often since their feathered bodies reek of nest droppings and are infested with a number of ravenous, parasitical creatures. It was from this adventure that I came to meet Osyani, but that is another story.

  If I made it out alive from that ordeal, I had thought, maybe I would go into teaching. At least the new crop of private inquisitors would have an instructor who had done more than learn the profession from scrolls and parchments.

  Chapter Six

  I was brought back to reality--that my own current career did not hold a bright promise--by more grit falling from the tunnel. I could hear the muffled sound of a body sliding down the shaft. I gripped the sword pommel tighter and drew in a deep breath just as the torch sputtered again and the passage went black.

  "Turd!" I swore by reflex then clamped my mouth shut. The noise in the airshaft stopped. Maybe I had offended the spider's sensibilities by swearing and it was deciding to leave.

  "Turd? Turd?"

  I was as surprised by this unexpected reply as I would have been by the spider dropping into the middle of the floor in an evening gown. Had the beasts learned human speech?

  There are dwarf varieties of Moravian vampire roaches that can mimic human speech. My aunt had one as a pet. Its chitin was of beautiful burnished blues and greens. It would chirp such obscenities from its wire cage that my mother would not let me visit her sister when I was of a young and impressionable age. Thinking back, I believe "turd" was part of its repertoire. She got rid of the cursing roach after it escaped its cage one night and almost sucked her dry.

  "You heard me. 'Turd.' Now drop down here where I can skewer you on my blade, beast of the sewers," I challenged with more bravado than I felt, but it was either fight or collapse from cramped muscles.

  In response to my challenge, a beam miraculously erupted from the shaft and cast a pool of light at my feet. I almost shouted 'turd' once more.

  "Jak Barley, you have been a very bad lad," an eerie voice wailed from the shaft. "You have been prideful and conceited. You are short and you don't treat your friends with the respect they deserve."

  I growled under my breath and gripped my sword even tighter. A shower of debris fell, followed by the author of the voice. I swung my blade at the figure now crouching in front of me, though I turned the blade broadside at the last minute. He easily turned it with his own sword.

  "I am near to beating you soundly with this blade," I finally managed to croak.

  "What? Aren't you glad to see me?" laughed Lorenzo. "After all, I was battling the Reverian Assassins while you were off dining with the dwarves."

  "How do you know I was eating with the dwarves?" I demanded, still irritated at his prank.

  "It is the secret sauerkraut recipe on you breath. I gave the dwarves my mother's special Alsace recipe that has the cabbage simmering in a dry Riesling wine."

  I snorted, by now used to his nonsensical answers. "Where is Snorg?"

  "Snorg?"

  "Snorg."

  "What is a Snorg?"

  "Snorg be a he. A dwarf not given to the talents of bloodletting, but has twice proven clever at finding young ones who have become lost in the burrows," I repeated Fren's introduction.

  "Haven't seen him. What would he be doing in an air shaft?"

  "What were you doing in an air shaft?" I asked then explained the dwarf's disappearance.

  "Sorry, didn't see him. He could now be in another level of tunnels since these shafts intersect a number of burrows. It is most likely he got away since the spider was still looking for dinner."

  "I am surprised you did not encounter it," I said.

  "I probably frightened it off. They are not as fierce as their reputations would lead you to believe."

  "It is likely your balm acts as an arachnid repellent."

  "Hah! So you like my Old Spice? I'll make sure to give you a bottle for Christmas."

  I eyed the airshaft with reservation, refusing to ask what was Christmas. "If these wolf spiders are not that savage, then you will not object to joining me in a search for Snorg."

  "No problem. Shouldn't take that long."

  Lorenzo could be so nettlesome. "If it takes such little effort, why don't you just hurry along and bring him back while I plot our next move?"

  "I would, but I don't know what he looks like," Lorenzo breezily answered.

  "The spider?"

  "No, Snorg."

  "How many wounded dwarf bloodletters do you suppose are climbing about these air shafts?"

  "Hard to say."

  I tried stretching my poor muscles as best I could before beginning the climb into even more confining spaces.

  "Let me have your magic light," I said as I stuck my head into the shaft. He handed me the bewitched metal tube and I flashed it into the darkness. It illuminated much further into the gloom than a commonplace torch. I could see handholds cut into the sides of the shaft.

  I sighed. This is the problem with most tasks--distractions. You embark on a mission to rescue a comely maiden, are side tracked by a hunt for Reverian Assassins and then get diverted by missing dwarves and avaricious, angry arachnids. Maybe I should go into teaching.

  "So, tell me of your pursuit. Why were you in this air shaft?" I asked as I began the climb. "Surely the Reverians are not roving
through these tight burrows."

  "They must have worried about being followed, for several bends down the tunnel the group pulled out a support beam and caused a collapse of the shaft. I was looking for a detour."

  "How many are in this pack?"

  "I'm guessing ten to fifteen."

  I stopped and looked down, trying to glimpse Lorenzo's face. It was hidden by the shadow of my body. "Ten or fifteen! They could not all have been assassins."

  "Probably only half. I believe the others are a riffraff of street thugs and mercenaries."

  I still vainly tried to glimpse his face. "You must be jesting."

  "Why?"

  "Lorenzo, Reverian Assassins are loners, rarely traveling in pairs, let alone three as was the number who attacked me. To say so many are gathered in Duburoake can only mean some abominable clutch of evil eggs is about to hatch."

  My head finally surfaced near the intersection of two tunnels, all just as tight a fit as the one we were leaving. If I had not been looking for traces of Snorg, I would have most likely missed to my left a spotted trail of what appeared to be blood. I was about to comment on it when I glanced to my right and observed a similar line of wet splotches.

  "I'm getting tired of looking at your butt," Lorenzo called from below. "Is there anything I should know?"

  "I expect I have found signs of Snorg passing this way."

  "That's great. What's the problem?"

  "I believe I have also found traces of the wolf spider's recent passing."

  "And?"

  "And I am not sure which trail is which."

  I climbed into the tunnel, making sure not to step in the fluids. Lorenzo swiftly followed. We both bent over one of the lines of blood and paused in contemplation, shining the light up and down the immediate trail so the blood glittered like liquid rubies. An examination of the other procession showed no visible difference.

  "Any guesses?" asked Lorenzo.

  "Our only course appears to follow one of these tracks until we spot a foot print. Sooner or later one of them will leave a mark," I answered. "But which one?"

  "That is the tunnel I was in and it splits not far from here," he said pointing forward.

  One direction was as good as the other to me, so I tossed a coin and chance said to take a right. Lorenzo reclaimed his light and took the lead. As tall as he was, the outlander still made good time through the shaft and I had to clumsily lumber after him as best I could. Whether it be Snorg or the wolf spider, the wound from which the blood flowed was closing. The droplets became fewer and further apart.

  "If this is Snorg, why would he continue on the run and not try to regroup with me?" This makes no sense." I puzzled as we paused to take a brief rest.

  "Maybe he felt he was being pursued or the wound has confused him," Lorenzo offered.

  I rolled my shoulders and stretched as best I could. I have heard some tortures involve placing a prisoner in a box just big enough for the victim to half stand or curl into a ball for sleeping, but not large enough to lay out flat or stand straight. After days in such constrictive confinement, the prisoner will go mad. It did not help that I was forced to half crawl with my sword drawn in case this was the path of the wolf spider.

  We continued our trek until entering a large cavern. I immediately stood and luxuriated in stretching. I looked about us. The huge chamber was not natural. It had the look of having been laboriously hollowed by pick and chisel. The massive stone columns were in reality the rock that had not been cut away and were used as buttresses against the immense weight above our heads.

  It took me a moment to comprehend the enormity of the cavern. Used to viewing such grottoes by torch light that penetrate only twenty to thirty feet, I now perceived that Lorenzo's magic torch extended eight or ten times further and there were still far off areas left in the dark. It was a hall that dwarfed (no pun intended) those of the most powerful kings or priests. Lorenzo's light played along the wall to our right, revealing a number of niches carved into the stone. Many were empty, but others were inhabited by small images I presumed to be of gods or demons.

  "Turd," I exclaimed.

  Lorenzo nodded in agreement. We began walking down the middle of the hall. The damp air held a mixture of moist odors, the strongest that of mildew and mold. There were signs of what must have been furniture, but anything wood had long since decomposed into mounds of rotting pulp. We passed an area that might have been used as a barracks or dormitory. The rows of debris could have once been bunks.

  We stepped around a moldering corpse of crumbling bones and rusted armor. The proportions of the skeleton seemed strangely askew. A brief glitter caught my eye and I stooped to retrieve a jeweled ring from a bare finger bone. There was not sufficient light or time to thoroughly examine it, but the heavy ring appeared to be of pure gold and the massive gem a precious stone of deep red. The jewel was mounted in a fanged mouth that could have belonged to one of the abominable idols partially hidden in the shadows.

  "Grave robbing?"

  "Do you believe the former owner minds?" I asked. "You never know when the gods leave such tokens as wards against future perils."

  "No matter how you softly whisper into a young maiden's ear, you will never convince her you bought that for her as a love keepsake unless she is an ogre."

  "And what if we meet a hideous tribe of cannibalistic trolls who plan on us being the main fare, but in viewing the ring, fall to their knees and claim me as their long lost god?"

  "First, they would be trolls, so eating us is not cannibalistic. Second, what if they spy the ring and it is the symbol of an ancient oppressor, so they skin us alive with very dull knives."

  "Nonsense," I retorted, though I placed the ring in an inner pocket rather than on my hand.

  Always at the back of my mind was the possibility the wounded wolf spider lay in wait. My sword felt inadequate for facing the monster. We passed a column with a weapon's rack carved into it. I grasped a spear, but the shaft crumbled in my hands and the falling iron head noisily clanged to the floor.

  "Snorg-g-g-g," I called. "Snorg-g-g-g, can you hear me?"

  My cry echoed eerily through the cavern. I cocked my head and looked at Lorenzo. He was slowly turning his head, as if attempting to pinpoint a sound.

  "I think I heard something," I whispered. Lorenzo held a finger to his lips and we both waited in the vast silence of the cavern.

  The next time I knew it was not my imagination. A faint cry came from the far darkness ahead. We both took off at a trot. In our rush, we did not have the time to peer off to the sides where barely visible mounds of rubble and strange idols stood just at the edge of Lorenzo's magic torch. I caught but a passing glimpse of one shadowed stone image and shuddered, glad that I had not viewed it in full light and pleased even more that I had not beheld whatever twisted creature it was meant to portray.

  We reached the opposite side of the cavern and continued through the single visible opening, that of a massive portal only partially sealed by rotting wood doors. This hallway was much larger than a common mine shaft and its ceiling was hid in the darkness above us. I slammed into Lorenzo when he unexpectedly came to an abrupt halt. An exclamation was cut off when I saw what his light revealed. I frantically backpedaled to draw my sword.

  Snorg had managed to scale a pile of rubble that reached to an alcove above our heads. Beneath him was a seething gray mass of juvenile wolf spiders that leaped and fought each other to climb the debris and be the first to pull down the dwarf. Snorg was valiantly keeping them at bay with his sword, but he appeared pale and his thrusts feeble.

  Our light was catching the attention of some of the juvenile spiders. The size of real wolves, several of them turned and rushed toward us. I desperately wished the spear shaft had not crumbled in my hand. A sword thrust would bring my arm in reach of the creatures' hooked feet.

  The lead monster eagerly leaped at Lorenzo and the outlander brought his blade up with two hands, continuing the swing after he imp
aled the spider and hurled it over his shoulder. A second came in lower and attempted to slash Lorenzo's legs with its long fangs. My friend's sword returned in a smooth arc and neatly severed its head.

  I stepped to his left and brought my blade down with enough force to partially cleave a spider's head. I jerked my saber free in time to impale another of the beasts as it flung itself into my face. The impact shoved me back several steps and the weight of the wolf spider dragged my sword point to the floor.

  "Pull," Lorenzo ordered as he stepped on the dead spider. I plucked my blade free. He then grabbed my arm and drew me to the wall. "Hurry, we're drawing a crowd."