by T. H. Lain
When Tordek felt the splashes from the monster's footfalls wet his back, he planted his feet and turned to face the foe.
"Tordek, don't!" shouted Vadania.
Her warning came too late.
The beast's roar was like an avalanche in his ears, its breath a noisome gale. Tordek swung his blade in a low arc, hoping to wound the beast so suddenly that it would stumble, giving the others a few more seconds' lead. Instead, his axe swept through the empty space where the monster's legs had been the instant before it hopped back from the dwarf, howling.
The beast dropped its giant club and clutched at dozens of tiny wounds in its feet, where sharp, woody spikes jutted from its thick hide. None of them was wicked enough to maim the creature, but collectively they gave it a fearsome pain. The monster bellowed and rubbed at the gigantic thorns.
Briefly, Tordek wondered how he had avoided treading on the spikes, but in an instant he realized their source and knew they had not been there when he passed. Vadania summoned them from the roots of the swamp growth to slow the brute.
Rather than take advantage of her spell, Tordek had turned to stand there like a half-wit.
"Hurry, you fool!" cried the druid. "I cannot do that again."
Tordek lowered his head and ran for his life, muttering a brief prayer of thanks to Moradin, who had forged his soul and watched over it, even when he made such blunders as this one. The monster's howls of pain turned to roars of anger as it regained its feet and chased after its prey. Even with their slight lead, Tordek knew the monster's vast strides would soon close the distance.
They ran until Tordek felt his pulse throbbing in his head. Ahead of him, Vadania and Devis slowed their pace so that he and Lidda might keep up. Tordek heard a mighty splashing behind him and saw Devis staring agape.
"Don't look!" shouted the bard. "Just run!"
Devis turned and obeyed his own advice, as did Vadania and Gulo. They ran for hundreds of yards, and each one felt like ten for all the clinging mud and rough terrain. They ran until their breath came in harsh wheezes. They ran until they could no longer feel their legs.
Tordek barely noticed when he slammed into a tall pole and knocked it down into the marshy ground. He stomped on some leathery fetish that had been mounted on its tip, but he spared it not so much as a glance.
He ran until his heart leaped to escape his chest, his eyes swelled almost to bursting, and his legs turned to rubber. At last he knew that the last stand from which Vadania had just spared him was indeed fated for this day. Once again, he planted his feet, grabbed his war axe, and turned to face his doom.
He saw nothing but empty swamp.
As his throbbing pulse slowed, Tordek could hear the distant splashing of giant feet running in the opposite direction. Soon after, a horn sounded in the distance. It came again a moment later, more distant still. The trogs were retreating.
For a long while they stood gasping for air, their bodies bent over, their hands clutching at their knees for support. Devis tried to speak, but all that came out was a harsh whistle. Gradually, their panting slowed, and they blinked away the dizziness.
"Well," said Vadania, "it wasn't Gulo who frightened off the mob this time."
"Maybe not," replied Tordek, "but something surely did the trick."
"Maybe it was one of these," suggested Lidda. She shook a tall pole with a troglodyte's head mounted atop it. Some of the bones that rattled beneath the rotting head looked more human than reptilian.
"Uh, oh," said Devis. "I have a bad feeling I know where we are."
They looked around in all directions, crouching low in an effort to see before they were seen-by exactly what, they were not certain, making them feel all the more exposed and vulnerable. They spread out slightly, keeping in sight of each other as they searched the area.
"There," said Vadania, pointing toward the northeast.
On a relatively dry mound of earth stood a homely cottage no better than those they had seen in Croaker Norge. All around it stood similarly gruesome warning poles, some mounted by skulls, others with frightful talismans of sticks and bones and skin.
"Shall we have a peek?" said Devis.
"No!" said everyone else.
"Aren't you curious about the fabled Sandrine?"
"We'll skirt the cottage," decided Tordek. He looked up to judge the sun's distance from the horizon. It was hard to tell how much daylight was left when precious little of it reached them through the mist.
"There could be treasure," crooned Devis, drawing out the last word in a manner obviously meant to tempt a dwarf. "Gold and jewels and fabulous trinkets plucked from her victims over the years."
"Knock it off, Bunny," said Lidda. "You just want to see whether she's beautiful."
"Well…"
Tordek turned his back on the argument and led the way around the cottage, staying as close to the totems as possible. Lidda and Vadania soon followed him, as did Gulo, who was gradually looking more and more ferocious after his embarrassing retreat from the bigger foe. Slowly, reluctantly, Devis followed them through the totem poles and north, away from the story of Sandrine the poisoner.
THE LITTLE FIEND
They trudged through the mire for hours, determined to get out of the swamp and into the hills near Andaron's Delve before setting camp. The stink of the mire and of its reptilian inhabitants still dulled their heads, but as the sun touched the horizon they settled for a dry spot in the lowlands to make their camp.
"Tell me those dwarves didn't build their forge in this swamp," said Lidda.
"Those dwarves didn't build their forge in this swamp," Devis assured her.
"No," agreed Tordek, "but they were mindful of its value as a barrier to the south. Few armies would choose this path."
"No kidding," said Devis, flinging a particularly nasty bit of black slime from his sleeve.
Vadania nearly exhausted her spells healing Gulo, who had suffered by far the worst wounds of the day's battle. The great wolverine did not seem to mind the smell and the muck that clung to them, but Devis complained steadily until the druid promised to conjure some clean water for their morning ablutions.
They rested uneasily after the fattening moon rose up to whiten the treetops and cast the rest of the world in stark shadow. The double-watch left only Vadania enough time to recuperate from the day's trials. The elf never truly slept but merely meditated in reverie while Tordek and Lidda watched over her and the gently snoring Devis. When Lidda grew sleepy eyed, Tordek indulged her in a silent game of finger signs. He scowled each time she bested him, and she grinned in triumph as they turned away after each brief match to look outward from the banked campfire to spy any threatening movement beneath the trees.
True to her word, Vadania conjured a small pool of fresh water at dawn. After everyone including Gulo had drunk from it, Devis stripped off his clothes and made a hasty bath. Lidda joked about the effects of the cool water on his retractable bits, but the bard didn't seem to mind the teasing. He was happy to be clean again. After he was finished, the others washed quickly before setting off once more.
Vadania led them out of the wet terrain and up into rocky hills before noon. Tordek sighed in relief as he felt the firm ground beneath his feet once more. He could feel the solid bedrock through his boot soles and the topsoil. The realm of frogs and serpents was behind them, and even the rain abated as they climbed higher into the hills. They were entering dwarf country.
On the second night after leaving the swamp, the full moon soared high in a cloudless sky. Lidda and Devis slept under the shelter of a deep outcropping while Tordek kept watch with Vadania nearer the hilltop for a far vantage, careful not to climb so high as to present a silhouette against the moon.
"There," said the elf, pointing toward the northwestern horizon. "Jorgund Peak."
Tordek squinted at the point she indicated. He saw a roughly triangular promontory jutting from the forested hills like the prow of a half-sunken ship sailing southeast. It was too
small to be a mountain, too sharp and conspicuous to be merely a hill. Trees covered its crest and ran down the gently sloping back of its northwestern face. Its western and eastern sides formed sheer cliffs streaked black and white with years of droppings. Tordek hoped that what flocked there were merely birds, but a cold premonition settled in his stomach. At Vadania's indication, he spied a trio of pale oval spots running along the limestone cliffs before vanishing into shadow, their alignment suggesting a regular progression around the escarpment.
"Eight of them," said Vadania. "They look as though something large was cut away from the stone."
Tordek could barely make out the spots she indicated. Judging from the distance, he guessed that each one must be around twenty feet high. He made a low, almost inaudible thinking sound deep in his chest. "Perhaps," he said.
Vadania watched him, expectant of more information. When he did not offer any, she looked back at the peak and said, "I see smoke against the stars. There is a camp near the summit."
Tordek took her word for it. By dint of his dwarven blood, he could see through subterranean blackness without so much as the light of a spark. Even so, no dwarf could hope to see so far and clearly as an elf on a moonlit night.
"Uh oh," said Vadania.
"What?"
"Something is moving among the trees up there. Something big."
"Giants?"
She nodded. "Probably. There were none in the area a month ago. I would have seen their tracks."
"He is wasting no time," said Tordek. "Already he summons an army for his champions to lead."
"You think it is Hargrimm?"
"Who else?" saidTordek.
"Why haven't you told the others about him?"
Tordek ignored the question. "Where is the secret entrance you found?"
"They deserve to know what manner of foe we face, Tordek. Your brother's was not the only soul the barghest devoured."
"Where is the entrance?" insisted the dwarf. He jutted his jaw obstinately, but there was more entreaty than warning in his tone.
The elf pointed to the base of the nearest cliff. Tordek saw the glimmer of water coursing below the promontory. Even at this distance, he saw that where it passed the cliffs its surface turned dark and unreflective.
"Can we reach it without alerting the troops on the summit?"
Vadania raised one eyebrow at the word "troops." She said, "This is no war, Tordek. We are no army."
"Can we reach it undetected?"
"Yes," sighed the elf, "if we are careful of their scouts. I can take wing tonight and try for a better look at the camp on top."
Tordek considered the offer but shook his head. "I think of those spider-eaters and do not like the thought of their catching you alone. Besides, we won't have to go anywhere near the camp. At first light we go down past the eyes and fingers of the fiend and strike at his heart, down in Andaron's Delve."
Four hours after dawn, they stood on the narrow shore at the base of the southwestern cliffs of Jorgund Peak. Thirty paces to either side, steaming trails of iron slag and some other hellish substances oozed out of narrow sluices and into the river. Already befouled by the grates on the other side of the promontory, the stream burbled and blushed as it received the noxious runoff. As much as the pollutants offended the two-legged companions, whose legs it had stained dark red as they waded across the stream, their stench drove the usually silent Gulo to whining like a kit.
"I've got nothing," said Lidda, rocking back on her heels as she squatted before the cliff wall.
"Keep looking," said Tordek. He stood on her right and peered along a hairline crack, blowing dust out here and there. "How about you, bard?"
At the other side of the door, Devis traced a faint line of dwarven characters and compared them with what he had written on a sheet of parchment. "Still the same," Devis said.
For the past two hours, Tordek and Lidda had taken turns examining the nearly invisible outline of the secret door for some sign of a catch and the surrounding wall and ground for any indication of a counterweight. While they sought a mechanical solution, Devis considered the weathered runes, which he translated literally and inscribed on parchment. Tordek did not fully trust the bard's ability with the dwarven tongue, but for a dabbler who was not fluent in the language, the half-elf had done a creditable job. The dialect was peculiar even to Tordek, and a few characters had been effaced by centuries of erosion. The bard summed it in Common: "In siege or mutiny, friends of Andaron, come silently through the secret under the mountain."
"I give up!" sighed Lidda. "Either this is a false door, or else the dwarves never finished cutting it."
"Nonsense," said Tordek. "Who would write a welcome on a door that was not finished? It would be an affront to the delve and to the gods that protect it."
"You said it yourself," said Devis. He blew one last time to assure himself the ink was dry, then rolled the parchment and put it in the bag with his other scrolls. "It sounds solid when you rap it. My spell detected no trace of magic on the wall. There must be some dwarven trick to it."
Tordek grumbled a nonspecific complaint and looked up at the sky. The sun was rising toward its zenith, and the shadow that helped shield them from view was rapidly shrinking. High above, brilliant white clouds rode high in a bright blue sky. A great, lozenge-shaped formation slowly glided past one of the flat spots pointed out by Vadania the night before, giving the illusion of steam rising from a white pool set into the cliff. The spots were smooth except for the mark of chisels and stone saws, which Tordek could identify even from the base of the cliff, thirty feet below. Each was about eight feet wide and ten or twelve feet high. They had distinct outlines that hinted at giant faces.
"What were they?" asked Vadania.
"The gods," replied Tordek and Devis in unison. Tordek gave the half-elf a sour look, but Devis grinned and winked back at him.
"You want to tell it?" he asked. His tone of voice made it plain that he hoped Tordek did not.
"Go ahead," said Tordek sourly.
"Many dwarven strongholds set the images of their gods looking out at the surrounding lands as a way of calling on their protection. Usually it's just one god, or perhaps two. Moradin is always the first one. That's probably him, there, right above us. On the other side is Berronar Truesilver, his wife and the Mother of Safety. They usually appear beside each other."
"Who are the others?" asked Lidda. "I know Clangeddin Silverbeard, Father of Battle."
"I don't know," said Devis. "It's hard to tell from the shapes that are left."
"He's on the other side," said Tordek. "Protecting Berronar and Sharindlar the Shining Dancer. Probably keeping an eye on Abbathor, too." Tordek licked his thumb and rubbed it against two fingers as if feeling a coin. "Trove Lord, he's called. Wyrm of Avarice. He left his shadow on this delve, to be sure."
"Who's on this side?" prompted Vadania.
Tordek looked up and considered. "Dugmaren Brightmantle, Dumathoin the Keeper of Secrets Under the Mountain, and Vergadain the Merchant King, probably."
"Are you sure?" said Devis. "What about Haela Brightaxe or Gorm Gulthyn? There are others, too. Deep Duerra and Ladaguer, for instance."
"Haela is a demigod, lauded as a hero in some delves, as a goddess in others. Gorm you will never find on the surface, for he watches for those who devour from beneath the hearth." Tordek fixed his eye on the bard. "The others are not to be spoken of."
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 To
rdek. "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.
