Rustle swept together the ragged ends of his mind and focused as properly as he could on Eddy. A fairy was simple to find. They were mystically attuned, practically a part of the wind, and a bright focus of magic. Eddy, even when they were side by side, was much more subdued. And Rustle simply had never needed to hone this skill.
It was frustrating, like trying to snatch a curling wisp of smoke from the air. The mystic sensation of his soul was a blurry, half-felt ember. It was simply a weak beacon in the distance, ignorant of any walls that lay between them. He tried to trace out some path that would lead to the distant sensation, but there was no route available to him.
He was about to give up when, for the first time in too long, fate smiled upon him. He couldn’t explain it, but in the blink of an eye, Eddy’s soul seemed to flare brightly. There was a definite, unmistakable path to him. It was circuitous—leading deep into the system of tunnels before it looped back to him--but that didn’t matter. He suddenly had a route to follow, and he would not spit in fate’s eye by failing to act upon it.
#
Borgle had been digging steadily, but the lack of sea water caused a considerable amount of delay. The walls, while still cooling a good deal faster than nature would normally allow, were taking longer to cool than when immersed. No water also meant maneuverability for the huge digger was greatly diminished. Borgle’s solution was to dig at a far steeper angle than normal. And after a half hour of digging, in what it appeared was becoming a bad habit for the device, Borgle suddenly vanished. The bottom of the tunnel had given out.
The digger plunked out of sight with a distinctive splash. Water rushed in to fill the bottom of the freshly dug tunnel, cooling the walls swiftly and coming to a stop about halfway up the glassy, smooth tunnel. This was fortunate, as the sight of water pouring into the tunnel was a veritable siren call for Eddy. He launched himself down the slippery tunnel and splashed into the water after Borgle without a moment’s thought of if it was safe.
A few seconds later, he surfaced, sputtering and coughing.
“I forgot the water-for-air again,” he said.
“I gathered,” Mab called from above. “What’ve you found down there?”
“Good fresh water!” he said. “Not fresh in the not salty way, fresh in the not sitting around way.”
“What does it matter if it is sitting around or not?”
“I don’t know. Water in the sea just feels better than water in a pool. Say! Do you think that is what Rustle means when he says he knows when the air is trapped or isn’t?”
“What are you on about now? Who’s this Rustle?” Mab called.
“I told you all about Rustle while we were coming here.”
“It’s been years since I had to pay attention to yammering. Nice to have someone to talk to, but years without having to deal with nonsense talk hasn’t done my attention span any favors.”
“He is my—”
“I don’t care any more now than I did then.”
“But you just asked.”
“A mistake I won’t make again. Now what’s down there!”
“I’ll see!” Eddy said, Mab’s bizarre attitude failing to make a dent in his unquenchable enthusiasm.
He took a breath and dove down into the water. For the first time since he came to this place, his eyes had to adjust to their own illumination.
The chamber Borgle had discovered was quite shallow, and the water was quite warm, almost uncomfortably so. The walls had the same glossy blackness as most of the stone, but here it was harder and more jagged. He had to be careful to keep away from the walls, lest he slice himself.
While he was taking stock of his surroundings, Borgle was keeping busy. The digger was downright graceful in the water, pivoting under the power of its tail and maneuvering toward a section of wall that was riddled with fractures. Borgle’s eyes swept over the wall. It grabbed onto two rough spots with pincers and tugged. The wall shattered into chips of stone, revealing a chamber that had clearly been chiseled rather than crafted by nature. Having followed its orders, Borgle pulled back and chimed happily, awaiting the next instructions.
Eddy, whose held breath was running short, allowed himself only a brief glance at the new chamber. His eyes opened wide and he was barely able to keep himself from shouting in excitement.
He popped back out into the tunnel gasped for breath and bellowed up to Mab.
“You should see it! It’s beautiful!”
“What is it?” Mab asked.
“It looks a bit like Borgle, but more! And not shiny metal like Borgle. Not mostly. It is made from stone.”
“A digger?”
“More than a digger. A… a very much digger! Pointed down. It does not look like it can swim like Borgle. It is only for down digging. Thin stone things hold it up, but they look like they will break if it ever moves.”
“Worthless, then.”
“Worthless? It is a thing made by a hand of Tria!”
“But it is only for digging down. We don’t want to go down. We want to go up, or aside. Anywhere but down.”
“It is worth little for you or me right now. But it is worth very, very much for the world! A thing left behind by the hands of a god!”
“Bah. I’ll worry about the rest of the world when I can get back to it.” Mab grumbled. “You said the water felt like it was connected to the rest of the sea. Does that mean it’s a way out for you?”
“I do not think so. Not for me now or for Dua then. But maybe small things. The walls are filled with very much cracks. Some I can fit my fist in, but they seem like they go a long way. Just as much digging to get out here as from anywhere.”
“Fine. Then get back up here, bring Borgle, and let’s dig our way out back where we should have been hours ago.”
“We cannot go yet. This machine sleeps, waiting for someone to wake it. If Dua could not, maybe I can. Maybe it was only because she was here for so long that—”
“It doesn’t go where we want it to go, it is a waste of time!” Mab shouted. “We are lucky digging down to find it didn’t cause this whole section of the cave to collapse, if the stone was that thin between here and the water. You said the walls were full of cracks down there. That means—”
“I will go. It will be fast.”
Mab shouted something rather rude after him, but he was too busy reciting the water-for-air spell to hear it. Once the words were spoken, he dunked down and replaced the stale air of the cave with a fresh, fulfilling breath of water. He swam back down to the chamber Borgle had unearthed and slipped inside.
The machine really was a wonder. It was long and sleek, simpler in design than Borgle, but more than making up for it in sheer size. It was triple the diameter of Borgle, and easily ten times longer. Rather than tentacle-like pincers, it made do with much shorter appendages, presumably the closest Dua could manage to fabricate without metal. He ran his hand over the polished stone and marveled. It was not quite like the stone around it, though. Dua may have harvested it from elsewhere, or perhaps she had changed it somehow, mystically or otherwise.
His claws clicked over intricately carved symbols. He leaned close to shed more light upon them. They were in long lines, like ribbons wrapped around the mechanism. They crossed each other, and each place they met bore the hammer and spear emblem, in metal. They had likely been harvested from a fallen digger, as was the blunt nose of the massive creation and any other parts that would strike the stone.
The great many bumps and scrapes Eddy had accumulated meant that it wasn’t difficult to find a spot on his body willing to offer up a smear of blood. He anointed each emblem he found, and each time he was treated to a pulse of amber glow and a flash of mystic energy. The third and final splash of blood breathed life into the mechanism. Stubby appendages shifted and scraped. Beady “eyes” near the blunt nose lit up. Instead of the merry, lively rhythm that echoed from within Borgle, this thing had a duller, far more mechanical sound. Despite the astounding craftsmanship, it was comparatively
crude. The thing lacked the spark of life, or at least of personality, that Borgle had. And it did not wait for instructions. The very moment it fully activated, it shattered its stone supports and struck the ground like a massive hammer, shattering stone like glass.
Eddy scrambled back to a safe distance and watched in awe as it sunk into solid stone as though it were mud. The pincers started to spark and heat the walls of the tunnel. This made his current distance significantly less safe as the temperature rose sharply. He retreated into the tunnel Borgle had bored. Here the temperature of the water eased upward more slowly, taking it from warm to unpleasantly warm, though not threatening to boil him alive as the water nearer to the digger had. Nevertheless, he decided to give the thing some time and distance before he ventured back to its chamber. He recited the spell once more and dragged himself back up the tube to the surface, where Mab was waiting.
More accurately, she was fuming.
“I don’t know what I was thinking, hoping someone would eventually show up. I’d forgotten that when you talk to someone else, you may as well be talking to yourself anyway!” she barked.
Eddy hacked the last of the water out.
“I am sorry if—”
“Don’t you ‘sorry’ me!” Mab said. “Look around you!”
Eddy blinked at the comparatively bright light cast by the stalks and ceiling. The whole cave was rattling around them. Dislodged stone danced across the cave floor. Bits of the floor had slumped downward. Some of the nearer stalks fell and slid down the slope. Distantly, chunks of the odd growth on the ceiling cracked free and sprinkled upon them, along with spritzes and showers of water from above.
“I hope your gods have some favor left for you. Mine certainly aren’t listening to my prayers,” Mab fumed.
“Surely this isn’t as bad as the quake that came before. The cave will hold,” Eddy said hopefully.
“There’s a difference between shaking the earth and boring holes in it. A cave this deep, beneath the sea, is a precarious balance at best. Even if the roof doesn’t fall on us, there is no telling what has kept the sea from flooding it. And you may be well served by having this place fill up with water, but it will be the end of me!”
Eddy’s face hardened as he realized the sort of danger he’d put his new friend in.
“Borgle! Up here! Now!” he called. “Mab, you follow me.”
“Where? What good will it do?”
A fault crackled up from below, splitting the edge of the pool. The stone beneath the statue of Dua cracked and the petrified figure vanished It dropped down into the shaft the massive digger was leaving behind.
Eddy dragged himself to the edge of the pool and dipped his hand inside.
“The temperature is not bad. The water from outside is cooling it fast.”
“Are you not listening?” Mab said. “If the ceiling comes tumbling down, wading into a pool of water won’t—”
Eddy grabbed her hand and quickly uttered the words of the water-for-air spell. Mab gasped twice, first when her lungs decided fresh air wasn’t what they craved any longer, and again when Eddy heaved her forward into the water. She sunk like a stone, heavily heaped as she was with tools and armor, and came to an abrupt and uncomfortable stop when she struck Borgle approaching from below.
Stones and water rained down steadily. The ceiling was giving way. Eddy muttered the spell once more for himself, then slipped back into the water. And thumped down beside Mab, who was having some difficulty coming to terms with the fact that she was a water breather for the time being.
“Down, Borgle. Down fast, until we are safe from the collapse or I tell you to stop!” he ordered.
Borgle chimed happily. Its pincer-tipped legs reversed direction, clattering crab-wise along the smooth wall since the digger was angled such that its tail would do little good. Deep, reverberating clashes of stone on stone assaulted their ears. A thin stream of pebbles sprinkled down from the opening above. Mab clung to Borgle’s blunt nose as they descended. Eddy drifted above her, darting his eyes upward to monitor the flow of debris and back again to be sure Mab was unhurt and adjusting to the jarring shift to an aquatic environment.
“Breathe normal,” Eddy instructed. “I am very much a good caster of the water-for-air spell.”
“I can’t breathe normally!” Mab growled. “I breathe air normally.”
“Now it is water. It is the same.”
“I hate the water!” Mab barked.
A clatter of stones rang out from above. Eddy turned and just barely managed to deflect a large stone as it tumbled down behind them.
“Right now, you would hate the cave more.”
Borgle finally reached the strange void where the larger digger had been and eagerly righted itself. As a consequence—or perhaps as a calculated act of rebellion, this dumped Mab from its nose. Eddy snatched her before she could plummet too far and worked his tail hard to tug her aside, clear of the increasing stream of jagged stones rushing down from the tunnel that had led them here.
He held her in his arms and swam over the pit the larger digger was creating. It had been mere minutes, but already the thing was little more than a distant sequence of sparking flashes and a dull orange glow of cooling stone.
“That thing digs very much fast…” Eddy said in awe.
“Never mind that! Put me down!” Mab squealed.
Eddy looked about. There was a jagged and unpleasant-looking floor to this section of the tunnel, but the low rumble of continued collapse above made it clear this wasn’t the safest place to recover one’s wits. Alas, the crackle and collapse had failed to open any new exits, so the only way forward was downward, where the large digger had gone. He let Mab’s weight pull him down into the deepening pit. Borgle swam happily along behind them. The tunnel, while mostly glassy smooth like those Borgle left behind, had more than a few voids along its edge. The massive digger must have plunged through previously hidden tunnels running through the sea floor. Eddy darted into the largest and continued along it. Borgle followed. When the rumble of the collapsing cave either subsided or was far enough away to no longer be heard, Eddy set Mab down on the much smoother and more pleasant floor of the tunnel.
As Borgle settled down and awaited further instruction, Eddy looked over his new friend. She was, to put it lightly, less-than-mollified by the rescue. The water was doing strange things to her beard, causing it to billow and wave like an anemone. Behind it, her face was red with fury.
“See?” Eddy offered. “Safe and sound.”
“Save and sound? Safe and sound! Is that what you call this? Before I met you, I was living a lonely but otherwise comfortable life, scraping a living out of that strange, glowing cave. Now I’m trapped underwater at the bottom of the sea, after having my former home crushed in a collapse that you caused.”
“It was a mistake and I am very much sorry.”
“I am going to be the first dwarf to die by starving while wandering a maze of deep-sea tunnels, but you are ‘very much sorry,’ so I suppose that’s fine. Nothing you do matters if you’re very much sorry about it.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing would—”
“I told you what it would do!” She felt her hands over armor. “Where is my ax?”
She found the handle and pulled the gear-fabricated weapon free.
“What do you need your ax for?”
Mab answered with a vicious swipe of the weapon. Eddy darted up out of her reach.
“Get down here and take your medicine, coward!” she cried.
“What good will attacking me do?” Eddy reasoned.
“It’ll make me feel better. And it’ll make sure you don’t cause any more cave-ins.”
She swiped and slashed at him fruitlessly as he patiently waited just beyond the range of the weapon. When she was winded—or perhaps, in light of her current respiratory status, when she was currented—she dropped the ax to the floor of the tunnel and plopped to a seating position. She covered her face with
her hands and, slowly, her gasping turned into angry sobbing.
“Do not be sad, Mab,” Eddy said.
“What can one dwarf do in a lifetime to deserve this…”
“We will get out of this place. I will help you.”
“No!” Mab cried. “Stop helping me! You are a menace, you awful fish. A curse! You are a punishment clawed up from the great below for some horrid deed I must have forgotten. Leave me be! I’ll find my own way out.”
She struggled to her feet and thumped along the tunnel, heading down its slope, deeper into the unknown darkness ahead.
“But you don’t have any light!” Eddy called after her.
“I’m a dwarf in a tunnel. I’ve got all the light I need,” she growled back at him.
Mab angrily grappled with her drifting beard for a moment, twisting it a bit to keep it from floating into her face, then continued on her way.
Eddy turned to Borgle.
“I had forgotten how many adventures heap terrible misfortune upon the characters who are not central to the story,” he said, grateful to, for a moment, no longer rely upon his damaged translation spell. “Every good story has a village destroyed. It had never struck me how that must affect those aside from the hero.”
He watched Mab stomping along until she was no longer visible, then swam along at a respectful distance behind her. Until she calmed down it was probably best to give her some space.
“Of course, she’s probably one of the important helpers that show up in the more entertaining adventure stories. But it is unfortunate she had to lose her home. Maybe when we tell this story, we’ll build her heroism up a bit.”
Ahead, she stumbled and fell, illustrating how extremely well suited the dwarven language was to profanity.
“Or at least we’ll make her less grumpy…”
Chapter 18
Mira, Cul, and Cora approached the galaxy of glowing lights that marked her hometown of Barnacle. Truly, she had something to learn from the Nomads. Though they seemed to take their time, they never slowed for a moment during the journey from the rift. It helped that the current was more or less with them, but even so, Mira could never remember making the journey so quickly.
The Adventures of Rustle and Eddy Page 22
