Douglas Niles - The Heir of Kayolin

Angrily he shook his head, just before he suddenly tripped over an irregularity on the floor and went sprawling, clutching his axe but once again losing his grip on Gretchan’s staff. The wooden shaft went clattering into the darkness, the glowing anvil fading immediately. Pure instinct pushed the weary Brandon back to his feet, but he was breathing so hard, his heart pounding so violently, that he realized that he could barely stand.

“What good am I to her if I can’t even draw a breath?” he asked himself, panting out the whispered words. He knew that he had to rest. Carefully, he felt around in the darkness, relieved when he found the staff after only a minute of searching. He took a seat upon a boulder, holding the shaft across his lap, grateful for the mild glimmer of illumination that again started to shine from the anvil head of Gretchan’s talisman.

Gradually his breathing returned to normal. As soon as he could do so without panting, he rose to his feet and continued on, at first merely walking. Taking stock of his resources, he realized he was pretty much limited to his axe and the cleric’s staff. No, he was also carrying his small dagger, as well as a piece of flint that might be useful for striking a spark.

He was trying to think if he had any other useful resources when he entered a circular chamber, like a large room in the tunnel of the cave. He started across then came up short when he realized that at least three different passages led out the other side of the cave. His heart sank. How was he to choose which way Gretchan had been taken?

Wondering if he might find a trace of blood or some other sign, he raised the staff, extending the faint light into the first passage. Seeing nothing other than bare stone, he inspected the second tunnel with much the same result. When he turned to the third passageway, however, the anvil-Reorx’s symbol-at the tip of the staff flickered with brighter light. He didn’t hesitate, immediately starting down the third cave.

That one descended rather sharply, and he found himself having to slow his pace just to keep himself from skidding downward. Treading carefully, he tried to avoid patches of loose stone, knowing that a trickle of debris preceding him could only attract the monsters’ unwanted attention. Despite his fear, he felt himself drawing closer and closer.

But would be find Gretchan alive?

Abruptly the floor dropped away, leaving a shaft plummeting into darkness. Brandon halted just before he stepped off the brink, and for a moment he froze in panic. Had Gretchan been taken down that hole?

He was about to thrust the staff and its glowing symbol into the darkness when he caught the sound of a faint moan. He looked past the hole, and there, to his astonishment and pleasure, he spotted the sought-after priestess. She was alive, though from her pale skin and weak, twitching movements, it seemed she was in a feeble state, and she had been fastened to the cavern wall with a network of pasty, thick webbing.

There was a small ledge allowing passage around the hole in the floor, and Brandon wasted no time in skirting the gap, finally reaching the large, flat section of wall where Gretchan was imprisoned. His stomach lurched as he caught sight of many skeletal frames nearby, also entrapped in the webbing. Some were dwarf-sized, while others were small enough that they must have been gully dwarves. Bones and clothing were still there, behind the gauzy web, but the corpses looked as if all the flesh and blood had been drained away.

Desperately, Brandon used his knife to slice away at the strands imprisoning Gretchan. Her eyelids flickered and opened, brightening when they saw him. Then they widened in horror.

“Look out!” she croaked. “The queen is coming!”

Brandon’s axe, still gummy with the residue of the webbing he’d shredded, slashed around in a wide arc as he spun. He almost gagged at the sight of a massive head, bulging eyes glittering, huge mandibles poised to crush. The obscene shape loomed out of the hole he had almost tumbled into. His reaction was instinctive: the Bluestone Axe smashed into one of those vicious jaws-a crushing blade the size of a large sickle-and chopped a deep nick into the hornlike material.

The monstrous horax fell back, avoiding a second blow aimed at its foreleg.

“That’s the queen?” he gasped, turning back to the priestess. Even as he asked, he knew the answer.

“Yep, that’s her,” Gretchan replied, shivering in disgust. “She came up to have a look at me when the tangler tied me up.”

“Tangler?”

“The red ones. They cast the webs.” She pushed and twisted, working one arm free from the sticky strands, tearing the silk of her blue tunic in the process.

He chopped away at more of the webbing, and she pulled her other arm free while he lowered his aim, hacking at the strands imprisoning her lower body, taking care to cut away only the web while avoiding her skin. She wriggled one of her legs out of the tangled mess. He glanced back, saw no sign of the queen at the dark hole, and with a wrenching tug, pulled Gretchan free from the rest of her bonds. He braced his knees, ready to catch her as she fell, but was startled to see that she was standing on her own.

“You seem all right!” he exclaimed. “By Reorx, I was praying they hadn’t hurt you!”

“Maybe he was listening,” she replied, gratefully taking the staff of her god from his free hand and leaning on it. “They had me tied up tight-it was damned hard to breathe-and I was dizzy by the time those bugs brought me down here.” She flashed him a sharp look, tinged with an incongruous iota of amusement. “But did you think I was going to let them have me without a fight? I knew you’d be along to get me out of here.”

“I–I’m glad I made it,” he stammered, immensely relieved. “Now come with me!”

He turned, ready to retrace his steps up the steeply angled tunnel he had descended, then stopped in horror as he saw a swarm of horax making their way down toward them. The ceiling, walls, and floor of the tunnel were covered with the many monsters, dozens of them forming a solid barrier against their escape. He looked hopefully in the other direction, but beyond where Gretchan and the other victims had been imprisoned, the passageway terminated in a solid rock wall.

“Any chance we can escape down there?” he asked, leaning with trepidation over the deep hole, the gap from which the queen’s head had emerged. Gretchan extended the glowing head of her staff over the aperture, and Brandon saw a massive pile of what looked like round, white stones, each bigger than a dwarf’s head. The queen, her massive jaw clacking, sat upon that mound, glowering upward with bulging eyes that seemed to boast a hundred facets each.

“How can we get out of here?” he asked despairingly. The horax blocking the exit tunnel clicked and seethed, apparently content to obstruct the passage-at least, they didn’t try to close in.

“Did you see all those eggs?” Gretchan asked as Brandon hoisted his axe and stepped around the hole, warily watching the swarm of bug monsters in the upper cavern.

“Eggs? Oh, sure. So that’s what they were,” he replied, remembering the big pile of what he thought were rocks.

“Well, I wonder if that bloated bitch has any maternal instincts,” the priestess replied. “Keep an eye on those soldiers. I’ll see if I can make their boss understand me.”

“What are you talking about?” he protested.

“Don’t worry-just do it!” she snapped.

Willing to grasp at any straw, Brandon glared at the swarm of horax blocking their path, trying to look intimidating. He heard Gretchan chanting something, a harsh, aggressive sound very different from any spell he had heard her cast before. Abruptly he heard a sharp crack of sound, followed by a screaming wail rising from the depths of the egg chamber.