Douglas Niles - The Heir of Kayolin

“What’s so funny?” she demanded. “You could have been killed!”

“I thought I was killed,” he replied. “And I’m happy to find out I was wrong!”

“Don’t try to talk,” she urged. “You were hurt pretty bad. Your leg was broken, and you lost a lot of blood.”

“Tell me about it,” he said with a grimace. Being the stubborn dwarf that he was, he flexed his “broken” leg. The muscles protested with a stab of pain, but he found he could move the limb. He reached across his chest to touch his wrist where the horax claw had torn his flesh and found that, beneath the crusted blood, his skin was whole, unbroken.

“Did you …?” He left the question unasked.

She smiled gently and touched the miniature anvil on top of the staff that lay across her knees. “I prayed for you, and Reorx granted his blessing. The worst of your wounds-the broken bone, the deepest cuts-are healed. He also granted my plea for sustenance since we didn’t have time to pack a lunch before jumping down here.”

She offered him the waterskin again, and he drank greedily without coughing or choking. Next she handed him a small piece of bread and a wedge of cheese, food magically conjured by her cleric spell. Feeling more like himself, he sat up and took a bite of each. The food was not exceptionally tasty, but it seemed as though he could feel the nourishment seeping right into his bloodstream. He looked around, not surprised to see the bodies of five or six dead horax lying in a heap at the mouth of the cave.

“What about the last one?” Brandon asked abruptly, feeling strength return to his voice as well. “I thought it was going to have me for dinner … and you for dessert!”

“That’s it lying there,” she replied, pointing to the nearest of the dead monsters. “You hurt it, badly, with your axe, before it knocked you out. I hit it over the head with my staff, and then Reorx struck it down.”

“Reorx again, eh? Seems like I should probably get to a temple more often,” Brandon said wryly. “And, um, thanks. I guess I’d be in the hands of the Enforcers right now if it wasn’t for you. When I was fighting these damned bugs, I felt something-you touched me and were chanting. Whatever you were doing helped. It was like my strength had doubled; I didn’t feel a lick of fear. Was that Reorx too?”

She nodded. “It was my battle prayer, a blessing upon warriors who fight in Reorx’s name.” Suddenly she leaned over and put her arms around him, and he held her fiercely, feeling her shaking from the emotion of barely contained sobs. “Oh, Brand-I was afraid I was going to lose you!”

“I guess we were both in a bit of a pickle,” he admitted gruffly, enjoying the embrace. “Still, it seems like we don’t do so badly when we work together.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “But what are we going to do now?”

“Well, I don’t suppose Reorx would agree to fly us out of here?” Brand asked with a grin.

“Oh, you!” She pushed away from him and glared for a moment, softening when she saw he was joking. “My magic doesn’t work like that!” she pointedly informed him.

“Frankly, I’m glad,” he replied. “That was a nice escape you arranged, but I’m happy to have some solid rock underfoot. Let’s have a look in this cave. There’s a lot of connecting passages through this mountain, and my people have been working to expand them and map them out for more than a thousand years. With any luck at all, we’ll be able to find our way into the lower mines, and from there we might be able to sneak back to the city.”

He grimaced then, remembering what awaited them in Garnet Thax. His stomach tightened with worry as he pictured his parents in the hands of Heelspur’s Enforcers. “It’s my fault they have taken my parents!” he growled, shaking his head, suddenly guilty over the time they were wasting sitting on the ledge. “My father warned me not to come home, but I didn’t listen, and now look what it’s happened!”

His muscles creaked and strained in protest as he stiffly rose to his feet, but he found that his body responded to its instructions with complete obedience, if not the supple quickness he was used to. The kinks, he told himself, would work themselves out.

And so, stepping around the gory remnants of their battle, they entered the cavern, which proved to be a natural cave with swooping turns, some narrow channels, and a few large chambers replete with shimmering stone curtains, stalagmites, and stalactites. Using the pale illumination emanating from the head of Gretchan’s staff, they could see clearly enough to identify obstacles and to pick a path through the winding tunnels. Water trickled in places, sometimes spilling through gaps in the walls, sometimes seeping down from sandy beds or trickling through gaps in the floor.

After passing the slain horax at the cave mouth, they didn’t encounter any more of the creatures nor any indications the bugs had taken up permanent residence in that cave. The slope of the ground tended to gradually carry them downward, which was the opposite of what they wanted, so the dwarves kept their eyes open for any promising options. After several hours, Brandon located a chimney-a narrow shaft where water had eroded a vertical passage through the rock. Bracing themselves against the steep sides, the two dwarves were able to climb several dozen feet, emerging into a cavern larger than any they had previously encountered. Reaching down, Brand assisted the priestess onto the level floor, and they took stock of their new surroundings.

It, too, was a natural cave, high ceilinged and, in that stretch at least, quite dry. With Gretchan’s staff still glowing, the pair started along the wide cavern, only to stop almost at once when they reached a pile of square rocks, bricklike boulders scattered all over.

Brandon studied the walls and the strewn stones. “This was a wall, here,” he said, pointing to the chisel marks and dried mortar where the stones had been anchored to the cave walls. He examined the blocks, recognizing the sharp edges, the regular size. In some places stones had been carefully carved to match tightly to the irregularly shaped cavern wall. “It was built by good masons, dwarves no doubt.” He swiped at the barren wall and looked at some of the dried mortar. “They put it up a long time ago, but it was knocked down fairly recently. See, there’s no dust collected on the faces of the rocks where they lay on the floor.”

“Who would build a wall here?” asked Gretchan. “And why?”

“Well, my ancestors did it, most likely,” Brandon speculated. “There were lots of these kind of plugs down here in the old days. Because of the horax, Kayolin dwarves invested a lot of energy into blocking any possible places where they could make their way into the kingdom. Horax don’t do any digging themselves-at least, not through solid rock or sturdy stone walls. So it was probably built to keep them at bay.”

“Well, who would knock it down, then?” the priestess wondered, coming up with the next logical question. “Not the horax?”

Brandon had been thinking about that same mystery. He studied the loose stones carefully before answering. “No, I don’t think so. Look: they’ve been struck with hammers and picks,” he said, identifying some of the scrapes and dents. “Tools applied with a lot of force. I’d say dwarves knocked it down, though I have no idea why.”

“Well, let’s see where it leads,” Gretchan said, tilting her staff forward.

They continued on for a hundred or more paces, working their way steadily upward. Abruptly the priestess stopped, standing still, listening or searching for something.

“What’s that smell?” was the first thing she said.

Brandon sniffed then winced; he hadn’t noticed the odor before then, but it was a not-unfamiliar mixture of filth, refuse, and unwashed bodies, a miasma that might be encountered in the underbelly of just about any dwarven community.