“I hate to puncture your happy ending, Eddy. But there are a few things you need to keep in mind. We’re still trapped.”
“Rustle will rescue us.”
“From what I’ve seen of him he’s mostly good for fretting and getting us in hotter water. But let’s assume you’re right. That lava is still rising, with plenty of cracks just big enough for it to seep through. This tunnel is getting hotter by the moment. So he’s not only got to rescue us, he’s got to rescue us fast. We don’t know how far he got, and we know how fast Borgle can dig. There’s a chance we’re already dead, we just haven’t been boiled alive yet.”
Eddy crossed his arms. “He will save us.”
“Fine. But that’s not all. Listen close.”
The merman waited.
“You are not saying anything,” he said.
“Not to me, you great bubble-headed fish! Listen to everything else!”
Eddy nodded and shut his eyes. The rumbling was done, certainly. The distant—but approaching—whistle and spit of water meeting cooler water—was constant. Subtly interspersed, though, was a clatter and scratch. It wasn’t just settling stone. It was motion. Motion of things smaller than the Great Ancient.
“The landslide didn’t kill all of the thieves…” Eddy said.
“Right. So where are we? Either the lava rises and the thieves are either roasted or boiled. Not ideal. We get rescued, but the surviving thieves escape, too, which is no skin off my nose, but seems like it would cause some problems for you and your kind.”
“We could be saved and the thieves could die! That is a thing that could happen! We just need to be very much lucky, and we have been very much lucky.”
“Maybe you have. I’ve been trapped in an air pocket for years, and the first so-called ‘intelligent’ beast to come along drags me into a fight with an ancient horror and gets us trapped in a pot that’s about to boil over.”
“I think my good luck is better than your bad luck… But maybe we dig up a little. To help the luck find us.”
She hefted the hammer. “Now you’re speaking my language.”
#
Mira and Cul had reached what should have been the beginning of the rift not long before. What they’d discovered was horrific. The rift was gone, or at least it was no longer recognizable. Vast sections of it had crumbled in on itself. Others had deepened. The farther they went, the deeper the rift went. What had been a deep gash in the sea floor, softened by untold ages of constant currents, now was a jagged, fresh wound that continued downward seemingly without end.
“No… No, no, no…” Mira muttered as she held tight to Cul.
His natural glow was still the only useful source of light. In her haste to be on her way, she’d neglected to bring a light of her own beyond the shells that hung from her necklace. At another time, they would have done some good, but not here, and not now. The devastation had kicked up copious amounts of silt. The water around them was milky with the stuff. It choked them with every breath and made it necessary to nearly be on top of something before their light cut far enough through it for them to see.
“We look for a merman’s glow,” Mira said. “Eddy isn’t a fool. He would have gotten as near to the surface as possible if something like this was happening. We’ll see him. I know we will…”
They swam onward, following the path of the devastation. Gradually it became more substantial. The rift was no longer a sharp, defined thing in the floor. It was merely the deepest part of a sinkhole.
“He’ll be alive. He’ll be alive…” She repeated desperately, as though through repetition she could make it true.
A short, wavering blast of sound came from below. Mira recognized it as a weak attempt at the same distress call she’d convinced Cul to sound not long ago. Cul reacted to it as though his body were moving of its own accord. He darted directly toward it, moving faster than Mira had ever seen him move. Mira worked her tail to catch up.
“There… What color was your brother’s glow?” Cul said, pointing as he swam.
“Blue-green. A bit lighter than yours.”
“Not your brother then. I see… I see two colors. Do you see? There, below. And something red farther ahead. I recognize that sharp green. That’s Bult!”
They dove toward the gravely dross piled beneath them. The vague glow resolved into what was clearly the spines of a merman. Cul gripped the largest of the stones and heaved them aside. Mira had mystically borrowed the pressure resistance of the males, but lacked their higher strength. Instead, she consulted the spell book, squinting at the page and holding her faintly glowing necklace closer. When she was satisfied she’d found the proper words, she murmured them with eyes shut tight.
The water around them coiled and churned. A tight swirl drew the silt around them up and away, then slowly strengthened to begin lifting away the smaller stones and pebbles. Between the two of them, Mira and Cul unearthed Bult. When he was clear of the heaviest of the stones that had trapped him, Cul put his arms around his fellow nomad and pulled him free.
“Bult! Speak to me! What happened?” Cul said.
The rough-looking merman was dazed, but his injuries were mercifully minor.
“I was looking through the overhangs. The sort of places that I thought a shore-lover might like. Then the ground started shaking. Half the sea floor came down upon me.”
“Are you hurt? Do you need aid?” Mira said.
“Nothing a couple loaves of pannet couldn’t cure,” he said, blotting some of his thick blood from his forehead.
“Did you see my brother?” she urged.
“Didn’t see anyone.”
She darted up and away, straining her vision for the other glow they’d seen.
“You’ve got to help us then.”
With Cul’s aid, Bult joined them and they swam down along the slumping ground. As they’d traveled they’d come to forget the whistling, churning sound that had concerned them when they’d first drawn near. It was constant, an unnatural but unchanging part of the disaster that had happened here. As they approached the hazy, smoldering glow, they found the sound was growing louder. The water was turbulent, and had grown sharply warmer along the way.
“I know this. This sound. The way the water is so lively,” Bult said. “Remember? When we followed the stout current out past Deep Swell to see if we could get some good weapons for trade?”
“The Glowing Pools,” Cul said. “Yes. This does feel like that. But there are no glowing pools here.”
“There are now…”
They paused and gazed down. The collapsed sea floor dropped sharply down. Constant rippling currents stirred the water even more powerfully, keeping the water heavy with silt. And deep below the silt, a deep, constant glow.
“The blood of the earth…” Cul said. “All of that trembling… It must have opened a wound deep enough to reveal it.”
Mira’s expression took on a hard, defiant look. A realization was dawning upon her, but she seemed to be physically fighting it.
Cul approached her.
“Has your brother… Has he worked with the Glowing Pools before?” Cul asked.
“He hasn’t,” she said quietly.
“Done for, then,” Bult said.
Cul thumped him in the arm.
“We don’t know that,” Cul said.
“We do! Takes all sorts of magic and equipment to work near the glowing pools. If they just showed up, and he wasn’t ready—” Bult continued.
“Shut your mouth,” Cul barked.
“Do you hear that?” Mira said, shutting her eyes and turning her head.
The others did the same. Amid the roiling tumult, there was something more. A clatter and crackle. Moving stones. Not settling. Not dislodging. Shifting with purpose. Something was digging, and not far below.
“Come on! It could be him! It is him. I know it!” Mira shouted.
She dragged Cul and Bult deeper. They followed the sound, eventually locating its source along one
of the shallower parts of the sloping wall. She tugged madly at the stones. Cul did the same.
“We’re coming, Eddy! We’re coming!” she cried.
They shifted as many stones as they could, sending them tumbling down into the glowing pit. But for every stone they moved, the sound seemed just as far away.
In the distance above them, a blast of a shell rang out.
“They’re here!” Bult said. “The rest of the drift is here!”
“So quickly?” Mira replied.
“I told you. Nothing covers a long distance quicker than a good healthy whale and a dedicated drift of nomads,” Cul said. “Bult, go to them. Send down the strongest mermen and see to it you get your wounds tended to.”
“I can work.”
“They’re fresh, you were buried for an hour. Now go!”
Bult muttered under his breath, but finally obliged. Mira re-cast the spell that began to clear away the smaller stones again and pull the silt from the water.
“Hold on, Eddy!” she called. “Help is here!”
#
Beneath the sea floor, Mab and Eddy worked at the stone. The heat was becoming unbearable. Though the lava’s rise seemed to have slowed, or even stopped, the temperature continued to creep higher.
“I don’t…” Eddy wheezed. “I don’t know how much longer I can go on…”
“I’ve seen worse heat than this. Just keep at it,” Mab said.
“It isn’t… It isn’t the same for mermen. We do fine with cold. But hot. Not so fine.”
He cleared a bit of stone that they’d chiseled away and packed it into the cracks behind them. If they’d not been sealing off the tunnel behind, the flood of hot water probably would have finished them minutes ago.
“Just imagine nice cold water on the other side of the next stone. Look, see? There’s just a bit more. I can see a big gap on the other side of it.”
“I will work until I can’t… But you do me a favor.”
“Fine, fine. What’s the favor,” Mab grumbled, hefting the hammer as he found a proper place to position the chisel.
“Tell my story. The adventure. I told it all to you, the parts before you got here. And you have been here for the rest.”
“Tell it yourself.”
“If I die, you tell it.”
“Just hold the chisel.”
She raised the hammer up and brought it down. The chisel punched cleanly through the stone ahead, shattering it. The rest of the wall before them fell away. Sure enough, there was a void behind it.
“There! See? Never doubt the mining intuition of a dwarf! We just need to…”
The pair clambered over debris to find that they’d revealed not an open tunnel, but a small chamber blocked on the far end with a massive, entirely intact stone. Mab ran her hand over it. Boring through it wouldn’t be like they’d been doing until now. It wouldn’t be shifting fallen stones and chipping through bits of collapsed roof. It would be like starting a fresh tunnel from scratch.
“All right…” Mab said. “Any bits of the story you’d like me to emphasize?”
“Make sure you talk about Rustle. Find him and learn his part. I think he thinks this adventure wasn’t for him. But it was for him. It was for both of us. For all three of us.”
A subtle rumble started to rattle around them. Likely some of the thieves scrabbling between bits of debris in their own bid for freedom. Eddy raised his voice to be heard.
“Tell people about the big fight. How we poked holes in the head of the monster. That was good.”
The rumble grew louder.
“Tell them about the place we found you! And how you helped fix Borgle.”
Now the rumble was almost painfully loud. Eddy swam back and held the chisel defensively. Mab stood beside him and held her hammer.
“Probably this is a part you should tell, too,” Eddy said.
Rhythmic pounding sent fractures splitting along the surface of the wall before them. Finally the wall seemed to turn to powder all at once. Mab and Eddy shielded their eyes. When the jagged bits of shattered stone settled, what stood before them was a massive, complex assembly of gleaming metallic parts.
“That’s… That’s my house!” Mab said.
Indeed, they were staring into the front door of the structure Mab had built from the diggers. The mechanism settled a bit lower, like a crab taking a seat, and a blue gleam of light flitted from within. Rustle appeared. Once again he greeted Eddy by darting into him and hugging his neck. The force of the pounce was enough to knock Eddy back a bit.
“Yes, definitely remember to tell this part,” Eddy said.
Mab stepped up to the thing she’d called her home for so many years.
“You woke it up?”
“Yes. I found a few marks and put blood on them.”
“Rustle says yes,” Eddy explained.
“I guess the metal carcass still had a mind in it somewhere.” She grinned. “I’m glad I made sure the thing could still move!”
“Come on,” Eddy said, flitting inside. “I woke up other diggers. They’ve been digging upward. We should have a way out by now. I want to get out of this place right now!”
The three entered the ‘house’ and found places to brace themselves.
“Maybe you could tell this thing what to do. It was having a very hard time piecing together useful orders out of what I remembered you taught me.”
“Take us to the surface!” Eddy said. “The most direct route!”
Gears spun, chains shifted, and the mass of machinery pivoted in place to retrace its steps.
“Did you do it? Did you kill the Great Ancient?” Rustle asked.
“Yes! We broke its head, and then stones pushed it down into the blood of the earth.”
“And the thieves?”
“Um… Less yes…”
#
Six of Cul’s fellow nomads, including a reluctant Sitz, were hard at work clearing away the stones nearest to the scratching sound. It had seemed tantalizingly near to the surface when they’d begun, but the smaller, easier to move stones had quickly sifted aside to reveal much larger slabs. Fortunately, there were few things that couldn’t be moved by a sufficient number of mermen working together.
“On three,” Cul said. “One, two, three!”
All six of them propped their tails against the ground and heaved with all their might. A glassy block of black stone tipped up and tumbled down into the glowing pit. Below was nothing but darkness. They’d broken through the debris.
A roar began to rise up, but it was cut short when something came rushing out of the gap they’d opened. Had they been present for Rustle and Eddy’s adventures thus far, they would have known it was a thief, and a badly injured one at that. The insect-like form was missing several limbs, and its carapace was fractured and oozing. But it was still very much alive, and without the irresistible target of the Great Ancient, the thing picked a fresh target. As there was but one creature present with a mystical aspect, Mira became that target.
The thing launched at her. She darted nimbly aside, but it scrabbled along the debris and thrust itself after her. Shouts rang out among the mermen to kill the beast, and soon the six of them had converged upon it, driving stout knives into the creature, tugging at its limbs, and generally attempting to break it to piece. It snapped and slashed at them, and though they were strong, they couldn’t seem to put an end to it. Worse, while they grappled with it, another emerged from below. Then another.
“Head up! Find the rest of the drift. Tell them to take up arms!” Cul shouted.
“If I go, they’ll follow! They’re after me!” Mira shouted.
The ground began to rumble.
“What did you get us into!?” shouted Sitz.
Fresh pits began to open all around them. From some, more of the horrid monsters flitted out. From others, something else. Gleaming metallic mechanisms. Then the ground practically exploded beneath them and a massive final beast emerged. It was Mab’s house
, and in it, the three adventures.
Eddy darted out from within as the thing crept crabwise to a stop.
“Eddy!” Mira called.
“Mira!” he shouted back.
His eyes swept about, trying to make sense of what was going on around him. Then, in a snap decision he shouted.
“Diggers! Destroy the thieves. Borgle, Mab, Rustle, you come with me, help me defend Mira!”
The metallic mechanisms released a chorus of obedient chimes and quickly assaulted the thieves. Eddy swam painfully to Mira’s side and raised his chisel. Mab trotted over and readied her weapon. Rustle flitted between them, eying the water behind.
“What is all of this?” Mira asked.
“A very long story,” Eddy said. “An adventure!”
Mab swung the hammer and smashed one of the thieves aside.
“A bloody nuisance from beginning to end,” she growled.
For a time, chaos reigned. It seemed to do so rather frequently when Eddy was around. He and the others faced off against the remaining thieves. A thousand of them had been enough to challenge the Great Ancient. Even a hundred would have probably been enough to kill the whole of their little group. But when the hole stopped spewing them, there were barely a dozen, and they were all suffering from a massive landslide, a near-cooking, and a prolonged battle with the Great Ancient. It was by no means an easy battle, but when all was said and done, the creatures were defeated with little more than a few extra scrapes and gouges suffered by the heroes.
“I knew you’d still be alive… I knew you would be,” Mira said, hugging Eddy tight.
“Easy,” he said. “I’ve taken some bumps and bruises. Who are these nomads?”
“This is Cul and his drift,” she said. “After the first quake I was worried about you. I hired them to help find you. Who are these… creatures?”
Eddy smiled broadly. “This is Rustle. He is a fairy. A water fairy from the forest on the other side of the mountain. He is clever and helpful and brave. And this is Mab. She is a dwarf from the mountain. She is clever and hardworking and brave. And that is Borgle! Borgle is a digger, and Borgle is helpful and hardworking. Brave, too, but I do not know if the word applies to a machine. The other diggers are like Borgle, but Borgle is the best, if you ask me.”
The Adventures of Rustle and Eddy Page 27
