Descent Into Underearth

by Susan Bianculli

  I nodded and changed the subject. “What about mounts for the caravan?”

  Arghen and Emalai shook their heads together. “Merchants walk, making their slaves carry the goods intended for trade,” Emalai said.

  “What about guards? Are there any?” Jason asked.

  “Yes, of course,” she said.

  “All right,” I interrupted. “I will be the merchant lead. You and Arghen and Levahn will be the guards. But what will we do for trade?”

  “We can start with what’s in here,” said Jason with a grin, waving at the wall decorations.

  “An excellent notion,” Arghen replied.

  We stripped the walls bare, though the lights were left on the floor to provide light for us to see by. Some of the Surfacers even ran back into the living area to get additional items. Sadly, they weren’t able to convince any of the ones who had decided to stay behind to change their minds. One of the rooms in the Exchange provided more collars and leads which were put on by the Surfacers who were posing as the slaves of the caravan. I wasn’t sure how we were going to manage that with the Ogres, but fortunately the collars were magically expandable. I rolled my eyes at that. Of course they would be. Another door led to rather rich-looking living quarters, probably for Farleigh, where we made an important discovery: his private office. This was where we found partial lists and forms detailing the makeup of a caravan being formulated for a future date. We took as many of the important-looking documents as we could, hoping to fool those who were inattentive. A large room near the Surfacer living quarters contained a large full kitchen and a pantry, which Levahn said was used to feed those of the Exchange. We left enough provisions for a few days for the Surfacers who stayed behind, but we took the rest.

  “All right, Lise,” Arghen said, as the last bundle was secured by straps onto an Ogre’s back. “We have nothing left to do here. Let us go outside to the pens and see how many of them we can convince to come and try for freedom with us.”

  CHAPTER 23

  It was decided that Emalai and I would sneak out to the pen and see what kind of assistance we could get before bringing everyone out with us. The black-haired Surface-elf put on one of the discarded tabards as if I had just gotten her from the Exchange, and we walked boldly out to meander over to the nearest pen as if we hadn’t a care in the world. There was no peace patrol in sight, so I felt comfortable enough to lean on the fence and try to get a Kobold’s attention. The nearest one was about fifteen feet away, plainly within her ‘room’ from all the household items surrounding her. She was pale grey like all Kobolds were, had smaller and more delicate features than on the males we’d seen, and wore a rough-spun natural colored long dress with a black apron over it. She didn’t look very pregnant, so she was probably not far along in her pregnancy. By the set of the Kobold’s shoulders and her posture as she stitched up a dress, she was plainly aware of Emalai and me but was doing her best to ignore us.

  “Psst! Hey, hey Miss Kobold! I’d like a word with you!” I said in a soft voice.

  The Kobold’s shoulders slumped in a tired way that hurt me to watch as she put down her sewing, rose from her stool, and came over to where we were.

  She stood with eyes downcast on her side of the fence in front of us and said to me, “Yes, Matron?”

  Now that I had her in front of us, I wondered what I could say to convince her that what I was about to say wasn’t a ruse to get her in trouble. Then I had a brilliant idea.

  “Hey. Hey. Look up at me,” I whispered.

  She did so warily, and I removed my hat to clearly show my lack of Elven ear tips. Her eyes grew round.

  “As you can see, I’m no Under-elf. I’m actually a Surfacer, and a Champion of Caelestis, goddess of the sky. I am helping some of the other Surfacers to escape from down here, and we’ve come up with what we think is a clever idea. To do that, we need common items so we can pose as merchants. Would you, or any of your friends and neighbors in here, be willing to give us your household items in exchange for a chance to be free?”

  I didn’t think it was possible, but her eyes got even rounder.

  “Leave the Sub-realms?” she squeaked.

  “Only if you want to,” I hastily assured her. “But the decision has to be now, because we don’t have much time. We’re relying on the element of surprise, and we’ve left a few, um, things behind us that, if they are found too soon, will kind of squash the whole escaping idea.”

  “Oh, I cannot! I do not wish to be parted from my mate—unless we can get him, too?” she asked.

  “Unless he is nearby or in the Martial Ring, then no,” I said regretfully.

  Surprisingly, she said, “But he is in the military training grounds! He works in Allocations!”

  I blinked. This, then, had to be the long-mate of the Kobold who’d helped us get our uniforms. If this wasn’t an instance of Caelestis and Quiris helping out, then it was one of the fastest instances of good karma directly coming back to me I’d ever experienced. The petite female stunned me even more by curtseying to me.

  “You must be the ones who saved us and the other Sub-realmers from the Surface cavern shake,” she said. “My name is Harerah, and I am grateful to you.”

  Huh. Sub-realmers. I hadn’t heard that term before, but it made sense.

  “Yes, yes we are, Harerah,” I said in reply to her statement. “So will you help us?”

  “With my whole heart. And once I spread the word, you will get as much help as you need from us,” she replied eagerly. “I will need a little time to speak to others and to pack things into convincing bundles. Come back at Darkening.”

  I looked at Emalai, who glanced at the walls of the cavern at the lichen, and said, “That won’t be too long a time from now.”

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s go back to the Exchange and wait there.”

  When we walked back in, we filled in everyone with what had happened. I noticed two new faces, and I was glad at least a couple more were going to try for their freedom with us. Arghen, however, looked antsy.

  “What’s up?” I asked him.

  “Waiting is dangerous. What if someone comes into the Exchange looking for a transaction?”

  “We kill whoever it is,” interjected one of the Ogres.

  I smiled to myself as I guessed that these past members of the Exchange were like Emalai—they’d acquiesced instead of being broken by Re-conditioning. That made me happy. Then I was sad to realize that those who hadn’t come had probably been broken, like Butterfly Wings.

  “Not that I find that a problem doing that, but you mean Lise, Arghen, and myself will have to,” said Jason with a frown meanwhile. “You all don’t have weapons.”

  “Who needs weapons?” asked the other Ogre.

  He punched the nearest wall, and left a cracked depression in it the shape of his knuckles. I blinked, and suddenly I was thankful that Arghen had dissuaded me from attacking Jason’s capture group on the road.

  “Good point,” I squeaked. Then I frowned and turned to Arghen. “Hey, since Bascom is the same race as these guys, sorta, wouldn’t he be as strong as them? If so, why hasn’t he physically attacked us?”

  “Bascom is a Miscere Ogre, not a full Ogre; it means that he is not as strong as they are. It is also possible that perhaps he views the use of brute force beneath him when he is such a powerful mage. Do you remember my telling you that full mages are rare?”

  I nodded.

  “I would guess that he is probably overweeningly, though with some justification, proud of that fact, and he would see mere physicality beneath him.”

  “That makes sense. All right,” I said, turning to include all in the room, “Everybody else should go to one of the corridors and stay out of sight, except for Levahn. Arghen, you will take the place of Farleigh. Jason, Levahn and I will play your guards.”

  “What about the lights?” Levahn asked as the rest of the Surfacers shuffled back to one of the two corridors.

  “We’ll say
we’re redecorating,” I shrugged.

  Fortunately, no one came in to disturb us. When Arghen announced that it was Darkening, he, Jason and I formed up in ranks all the Surfacers. We ‘manacled’ each Exchanger to the one in front and the one behind, though in reality each set was jimmied so it couldn’t be locked, courtesy of Jason. If a fight happened, the Surfacers would be a secret weapon, because to an Under-elf they would look non-threatening since they were wearing so much ‘restraining’ metal. The Surfacers hefted their chosen bundles; then with Arghen and me in the lead, and Jason and Levahn bringing up the rear, we got ready to go. I prayed to Caelestis that this would work. But like last time I’d prayed, I received no reply, and that worried me. But there was nothing to help about that, so we checked to see if the coast was clear before heading out.

  Opening the door, we saw a peace patrol not far away. We shut it and did a slow count to one hundred before trying the door again. I was relieved to see that this time they were gone. By doing a sort of crouching run so that the fences would help hide our movements from far away line-of-sight, we all quickly crossed over to where Harerah waited with several other female Kobolds. We helped the females over the barricade, took what they had packed up, and distributed it among the Surfacers. Then we disguised our Kobolds the best we could by draping them in as many shapeless garments that we could find and hiding them singly in the middle of bigger pairs of Surfacers. I stepped back to survey our handiwork once done. I was pleased to see it really did look at least something like a caravan now.

  “All right, let’s go,” I commanded.

  CHAPTER 24

  We started out across the breeding lands, following Emalai’s whispered directions from her position at the end of the lead in Arghen’s hand. She was to direct us to the caravan entrance, a different way than how we’d come in by, because trying to take our unwieldy group through the Martial Ring passageways would be too awkward and too suspicious. After a short discussion of tactics, we walked brazenly through the breeding pens as if we had every right to be there. Nervous, I kept looking around, and soon spotted a patrol in the distance. They saw us and headed in our direction.

  “Uh-oh,” I said to Arghen. “We’ve been spotted.”

  “It was inevitable,” he said. “Perhaps we can make this confrontation work to our advantage.”

  “How?” I asked. “We’re merchants now; we have no supposed standing anymore. And worse, we have no papers or credentials.”

  “We have the papers we found in the Exchange,” Arghen reminded me.

  “But they are not complete,” I argued. “And incomplete will raise as many problems as outright missing ones.”

  Arghen shucked off the over-robe he’d taken from Farleigh’s rooms. “I can still be a Captain,” he said with a smile. “Either my rank will work for us, or we will have a battle. There are no other options. Keep walking at the same measured pace until I say to stop.”

  I shot a glance at the patrol, who had picked up their pace towards us. I felt a tug on my sleeve.

  “Please, Champion, you should stop. If the patrol has to chase you, they will be in a worse mood when they catch up. And they will,” said Harerah, who had wormed her way to the front.

  “She has a point,” said Arghen. “There is an intersection of our paths ahead. Let us stop at that one to wait for them, Lise.”

  I issued orders for the caravan to halt when we reached it, and we waited nervously for the patrol. Arghen assumed an escort position out of their sight.

  “Papers,” the leader of the quad said peremptorily when they reached us.

  I reached into my pocket and blanched. I’d forgotten Arghen held them, and I couldn’t ask him for them; that would be suspicious. I made a show of searching for the papers while wondering what to do.

  “Here you go, Leader,” said Jason out of the blue as he handed the sheaf of papers to the quad leader. “Did you forget that you’d given them to me to hold?” He nodded meaningfully at me to tell me without words he’d gotten them from Arghen.

  I breathed a silent sigh of relief. “Errr, yes, very good, Sub-lead. Now back to your post.”

  With a crisp Under-elf salute to me, Jason returned to the rear of the caravan as Arghen stepped in front of me.

  The quad leader looked up at the caravan, and did a double take. “You have Surfacers in this caravan?” he asked, astonishment rife in his voice.

  Crap, something’s given us away, I thought, then came up on the spot with, “Yes. They are to be taken to Kelsavax to introduce the High Councilors there to the concept of magic use.”

  “Is there a problem, warrior?” Arghen asked impatiently. “This caravan is losing travel time while they stand here.”

  The quad leader looked at Arghen, startled. “Ah, Captain. I did not see you there. Did you know that these papers are incomplete? And that there are Surfacers in this caravan?”

  I sweated as Arghen replied, “Yes.” He added nothing else.

  That threw the leader for a loop, leaving him momentarily speechless. Arghen took advantage of it.

  “Sub-leader, I appreciate your due diligence, but there are certain Council members who would be most put out if this caravan does not get underway, and soon.”

  “We were given no notice of a caravan leaving,” he protested.

  Arghen put on a forbidding scowl. “I understand that you have a responsibility to your patrol, but I have my orders. I have not been told to make anyone equal to or below my rank privy to Council affairs. Are you insinuating that you are a higher rank than I?”

  The other Under-elf paled, turning the color of stale marshmallows instead of milk. “I am not prying into Council affairs, but we are usually given notice of something happening, if not the details,” he said weakly.

  “Not this time,” said Arghen, “which is why I am here—to assure patrols such as yours that this caravan, irregular though it is, has the blessings of those in power.”

  “Ah,” said the leader.

  The rest of the quad exchanged uneasy glances.

  The warrior paused a moment, looking us over, and then said, “Perhaps we could escort the caravan as well? So we can help you get to the gate?”

  “That is not necessary, as it will detract from your patrol here,” Arghen demurred.

  “Though that is true, I feel I would be remiss if I do not assist in some way. I will split my patrol.”

  Uh-oh, I thought.

  “Very well,” Arghen said tightly.

  Emalai and I exchanged concerned glances. Having the warriors along would complicate things immensely. Somehow we had raised too many suspicions for them to leave us alone but not enough to cause an outright ruckus.

  Or perhaps they were biding their time until we reached the Martial Ring and could summon help from there? That thought left me cold but wasn’t something I could say out loud to anyone.

  Hopefully Jason and Arghen would be thinking along those lines as well. If so, we would have to deal with the warriors somehow before reaching the front gate, and we were about to pass through the Martial Ring and then the military training grounds where they could get reinforcements with one yell. Neither of those places would be an easy place to leave a couple of bodies, so it had to be in here somewhere. That, plus the couple of other bodies we’d left behind us would surely be found soon. Our time here was running out no matter which way you looked at it.

  The quad separated out into two pairs: the acting lead warrior and one of the other guards were to come with us, and the other pair was to continue its patrol. I was nervous about that. What was to prevent that pair from just running off to get someone higher in rank than Arghen? Or running to the Leadership Ring and making enquiries? I tried to convey my uneasiness through eye contact with Arghen. He sighed, looked at the Ogres, and nodded his head towards the pair who were nominally to remain behind to continue their rounds.

  Arghen turned to the quad leader. “All right, warrior. Get your patrol underway. As I said before,
the caravan is losing travel time.”

  The quad leader motioned to the chosen pair to move out, and as he turned back to us he met with Arghen’s knife in the ribs. The other Under-elf paired with the quad leader yelled a warning too late as the Ogres slipped the pretend chains that they wore and, assisted by a couple of Dwarves, lunged for the remaining pair. The warriors were lifted off their feet and squeezed while I engaged the warrior who’d been paired with the leader. Between Arghen, myself, and a couple of other Surfacers, the second Under-elf soon went down, followed by the Under-elves in the Ogres’ grips.

  By the time it was over we’d attracted the attention of the nearby pens, which happened to have green Troglodytes in them. Quickly the Kobolds in our midst explained what was going on, and the Troglodyte females agreed to help us hide the bodies if we took some of them into the caravan as well. There was a bit of a dispute as more wanted to come that I felt we could safely absorb, but I bribed the ones we couldn’t take with some of the magical items that produced food and drink.

  We searched the warrior bodies in the vain hope that one of them might have some other paperwork for caravans on them. But, as expected, they didn’t. We did take the weapons to pass out to some of the caravan, and we disguised the Troglodytes who were to come with us like we’d disguised the Kobolds previously. After rearranging the caravan to absorb the new additions, we headed again to the Martial Ring tunnel that the caravans took, knowing now that missing patrol would put us even more under the gun.

  CHAPTER 25

  We picked up the pace as we followed Emalai’s directions. It didn’t take us long to reach the proper tunnel, and I sent up a heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving to Caelestis that there was no guard stations to have to clear.

  “We do still have to get through the training grounds and the front gate,” Arghen reminded me at seeing my sigh of relief. “This is not over yet.”

  I shot a glare at him. “Killjoy. I’ll take my small victories where I can.”