Rick Cook - The Wizardry Quested

The party found themselves standing back to back in the cavern, surrounded by a haze of stinking smoke and a carpet of dead creatures. Wiz realized he had been bitten in a dozen places or more. He could feel the blood oozing down both cheeks and a wound in his forehead was trickling blood into his eyebrows. Most of the others appeared wounded in several places as well.

"What where those things?" Danny panted, as he wiped blood from his eyes. June was instantly at his side with a cloth, cleaning the wounds on his face and ignoring her own.

Wiz bent down to examine the litter of corpses around them. Each of the things had the form of a tiny bat, perhaps hah0 as long as his little finger. The mouths sported a pair of outsized fangs and even in death the little eyes showed a glazed malevolence. He picked one up and showed it to the others.

"Little vampire bats," Danny said. "I wonder if these things carry rabies."

"Rabies we can handle," Wiz reminded him. "Healing magic, remember?"

"Speaking of which:" Malkin said, looking at the bloody wounds on the back of her hand.

As one person, the party sank to the ground where they were and started rummaging through their packs for what Wiz persisted in thinking of as "first aid kits."

On an impulse Wiz tried a listing and scowled at the result.

"More weird code," Danny said and then winced as June dabbed a healing salve on a wound on his neck.

"So the Enemy sent these things against us," Malkin said.

"If I had to guess I’d say they weren’t exactly sent," Wiz said. This part here looks like another variation on the watcher spell and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of code for remote control."

"Meaning?" Danny studied that section of the listing-

"Meaning I think these things operate independently. If I had to guess, and that’s pretty much what it is at this point, I’d say this part here is a magic detector and they home in on magic. What’s more, magic seems to rouse them to a rage. You’ll notice Malkin wasn’t the focus of an attack and they didn’t go after Glandurg until he got Bund Fury into action."

"Kinda like leaving hives of killer bees around as guards," Danny said. "Cute."

"Ugly," Wiz corrected. "Especially since the same principle could be applied to other critters. Nastier ones."

Danny nodded. "Let’s get out of here then. There may be more on the way and I’m not sure I’d want to face a horde of maddened dragons."

"And no more magic," Wiz admonished. "Not if it attracts these things."

"Our steel and our courage alone shall carry us henceforth," said Glandurg.

"Well," Wiz amended, eyeing Blind Fury, "we don’t have to swear off magic completely."

"Moira," the wind moaned. "Moira, Moira, Moira, Moira."

It keened around the towers. Frigid fingers clutched at the banners and tugged at the windows. It could not find purchase against the wizards’ spells, but it kept on.

Moira went to the window and tried to look out, but a dark formless thing beat upon the pane, as if to strike her, and she turned away.

"Is it getting worse?" she asked Bal-Simba.

"It gets no better. That in itself means it will get worse. Like a starfish on an oyster. It pulls and pulls and eventually the oyster weakens."

The dragon hesitated. Then perhaps I should go out there," Moira said.

"And give our enemy the advantage he seeks? An unwise move, My Lady."

"Then what shall we do?"

"Work Wait. Perfect the spells to drive this thing from our door."

The dragon did not turn its head. "I wish Wiz was here."

Bal-Simba sighed. "So do I, My Lady. So do I."

Their first warning was the way sounds changed. Careless footsteps or dislodged pebbles rang sharper and more hollowly. Wiz was still trying to puzzle out the difference when they came around a bend in the tunnel and stepped out into a new world.

The cavern was immense. Stalactites and sheets of flow stone rippled from ceiling to floor in pastel pinks and yellows. They made weirdly distorted shadows in the light from Wiz’s glow globe. In spite of the steady illumination the shadows seemed to flicker and dance in eerie motion. The air was heavy with damp and utterly still. Occasionally a foot would dislodge a pebble and the sound would ring through the emptiness.

They picked their way along for perhaps two hundred paces and then, suddenly, there was no floor before ’ them.

It took a minute for Wiz to make a coherent picture out of the sense impressions, like staring at an optical illusion. Finally the elements snapped into focus and he realized they were standing at the edge of a cliff thickly coated with onyx flowstone. By directing the magic light out over the darkness he could see that the face was a steep cascade of the same orange, pink and white material as the surface they were standing on. He could not see the other side and the light did not show him the bottom, but his magic detector pointed straight out across the emptiness.

"It looks like we’re going to have to climb down," he said to the others. " Tine," Malkin said, shedding her pack and unhooking a coil of rope from it "I’ll go first."

Wiz wasn’t exactly overjoyed at the prospect of climbing down a slippery cuff in the dark, but he felt he had to assert himself as leader. "Why you?" Malkin looked up at him. "Because you’re a klutz. Now help me find a rock to tie off on."

That was true enough that Wiz didn’t argue. But he was a little surprised she knew the word.

Malkin selected a convenient boulder, looped the rope around it and secured it with a particularly complicated looking knot. Keeping the rope taut in one hand she stepped back and admired her handiwork.

"All right everyone, I’ll go first. Be sure to keep tension on the rope and whatever you do don’t let it go slack and then jerk it."

"Why not?" asked Danny.

"Because if you do the knot comes undone. That’s how we get the rope down when we’re at the bottom."

Danny looked at the knot again.

"It’s perfectly safe," Malkin assured him. "The next person to go down stands by the rope and keeps the tension on. Just keep doing that and we’ll be fine." The thief rigged a harness from a shorter piece of rope and attached it to the main rope with a peculiar looking knot.

"I’ll take a light with me and signal for the next one to follow," she said, and with that she stepped backwards into the blackness and disappeared from view. Danny kept tension on me rope as she worked her way down. The others watched the rope twitch as Malkin worked her way down the cuff face. Finally it lay still and they heard her call up to them.

"Okay. It’s about a hundred paces down. There’s plenty of rope and its an easy descent. Come on down one by one."

Since he couldn’t lead, Wiz figured the leader’s next logical place was as rear guard. He let Danny and then June go down. Glandurg disdained the rope and scrambled down the cliff face like a fly. At last the rope was still again. Wiz picked up Malkin’s pack, slung it over one shoulder and started to work his way down the cuff.

In the back of Wiz’s mind a small voice kept telling him all this was wrong. You don’t find limestone caves beneath volcanoes. Halfway down the rope Wiz decided this was arrant pedantry and told the small voice to shut up.

The rope finned and steadied as someone took hold of it from the bottom. With that aid Wiz made good time the rest of the way down.