Douglas Niles - The Heir of Kayolin

“Look out!” Gretchan shouted, and Brandon sprang away from the hole as the queen swelled upward. Her head and jaws emerged through the opening, thrashing and clacking aggressively. The priestess smacked her staff against the monstrous horax, the blow producing a bright flash of light, and the queen tumbled back down to perch atop her egg pile, warily staring upward with those buglike, multifaceted eyes.

Brandon looked down for a moment and saw that one of the eggs on the top of the pile was shattered. At the same time, Gretchan repeated the harsh incantation of her spell and pointed her staff. The dwarf felt a jolt of energy, though he didn’t see any corresponding flash, but in the light of the enchanted anvil, he saw another egg quiver and explode, hurling its gory contents across the queen and the rest of the pile.

Once more that grotesque matriarch shrieked her outrage, but instead of leaping toward the hole over her head, she seemed to spread out across the top of the great clutch of spheres. Her abdomen was massive and distended, very different from the segmented, chitinous bodies of her warriors, and she splayed it as wide as she could.

“Call off your soldiers!” Gretchan shouted, raising her staff and aiming it toward the mound of eggs. “Or I’ll destroy all of them!”

“Do you really think she can understand you?” demanded Brandon incredulously, glancing over his shoulder as he brandished the axe to hold the swarm of horax at bay.

“I know she can,” the cleric replied. “I’m speaking aloud for your benefit; I’m connecting to her with my mind. She understands full well that I have the power to destroy all those eggs, or at least a lot of them, before her soldiers can drag us down.”

To prove the point, Gretchan raised her staff again, shook it menacingly, and shouted in that harsh, guttural language Brandon didn’t understand. The horax soldiers started to advance, clacking menacingly, and the axe-wielding dwarf feinted a charge that caused them to halt uncertainly. They hunched, twitching and snapping, creeping closer until the queen shrieked deafeningly. The sound was a piercing whistle that left the dwarves’ ears ringing, but it clearly brought the swarm of her followers to a halt.

“Call them down there to you! All of them!” Gretchan ordered. Again she brandished the staff, and the queen squawked and clacked.

The sounds were loud but nonsensical to Brandon until he saw the effect they had on the horax blocking their escape route. Hissing and shifting nervously, snapping and glaring, the monsters slowly began to back away. He advanced, holding his axe at the ready, and saw they were withdrawing through a narrow gap in the floor, a shadowy crack. One after the next, the horax wedged themselves through the opening and dropped out of sight.

“They’re clearing out,” he called back to the cleric. “I don’t see any more in front of us.”

“Stay there!” Gretchan called, her voice stern, even menacing, as she again waved her staff into the pit. With once last glance, she sprinted after Brandon, who was already leading the way upward to safety.

“Do you really think she’s going to obey you?” he asked, still amazed by her negotiation with the queen of the horax. “She’s just a giant insect, for Reorx’s sake!”

“She’s a lot more than an insect,” the cleric retorted. “I would think you’ve seen proof of that. And now that I can’t menace her eggs, I don’t think she’ll hold them back for a minute!”

“Then,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her up an unusually steep stretch of the cavern. “We’d better make some tracks.”

Once again Brandon ran until his lungs ached, with Gretchan rushing along right behind him. After half an hour of frantic climbing, they stopped to catch their breath, drawing deep and ragged lungfuls of air. Brandon was about to point out that they couldn’t afford to rest for long when his companion murmured a brief incantation, and the dwarves’ fatigue melted away, her words infusing them with a shot of pure, intangible energy.

So they started upward again.

When several pathways presented themselves, Gretchan raised her staff, and the brightened light on the head of the shaft continued to select their route. Always they climbed, and they never encountered a bottleneck that forced them to backtrack, nor did they see any sign of any horax in the first hour of their flight. Several times, however, they passed the wreckage of the ancient stone walls that had been erected to prevent the bug monsters from approaching the dwarven city. The barrier stones were solid and perfectly chiseled, but in every case some unknown force had wrenched them down.

Inevitably the rejuvenating effects of Gretchan’s spell wore off, and the two dwarves paused once again to catch their breath.

“Why would those walls be knocked down?” the cleric asked again, shaking her head in confusion and dismay. “It was clearly done intentionally. But what purpose can it serve?”

Brandon frowned. “I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “I have an idea, but I’d need some proof before I could take my claim to the people of Kayolin.”

“What’s your idea?” Gretchan asked, intrigued.

“Well, we saw in Regar’s proclamation that one of the arguments he used to support his elevation to the kingship, and his creation of a national army and League of Enforcers, was the menace presented by the horax. My parents repeated the same thing; it’s a primary foundation of his claim to kingship. He says that the horax are expanding their range, attacking the lower levels of Garnet Thax, and as we have seen, he’s right.”

“So the king’s men might have knocked the walls down to make the horax more dangerous,” she conclude. “And then he’s using that as an excuse to justify his increased power?” The priestess shook her head, incredulous. “That’s crazy-not to mention terribly dangerous!”

Brandon merely shrugged. “It’s especially dangerous to the dwarves who live down in the lowest parts of the city-the poorest and weakest of the population. If Smashfingers is as ruthless as I think he is-and my brother’s fate suggests he’s all that and worse-what would he care about a few dozen, or hundred, or even a thousand of his most wretched citizens perishing? And if the horax appear in the bottom levels of the city, I’m sure he’s confident his army will be able to defeat them. They’re only giant bugs, after all.”

At that moment the steady sound of clicking mandibles rose from the tunnel behind them. None of the monsters were in sight yet, but the sound clearly proved that they were being pursued. Even as they climbed to their feet, the volume of noise grew louder.

“Run!” Brandon cried. He pulled out the axe that had been strapped to his belt for most of their flight. “I’ll hold them off!”

“Don’t be an idiot!” she snapped, bringing a flush of anger to his cheeks. “If you stay here, then I’ll stay here with you, and we’ll both go down to death! Is that what you want?”

“What? No! That’s ridiculous! Run, I tell you!” His voice rose to a roar. “Get going!”

She glared at him with her chin jutting out aggressively, her own cheeks flushed with emotion-fear, no doubt, but also excitement or anger. Then, right in front of Brandon’s disbelieving eyes, her lips twisted into a slight, mocking smile.

“Make me!” she taunted.

“You’re crazy! Do you know that?” he bellowed, giving her a shove on the shoulder to spin her around. “I’ll be right behind you-now go! ”

Naturally, she looked over her shoulder to make sure that he was following her closely, and he did as both ran for their lives. They raced up the gently curving floor of the cave, panic-stricken at the thought of the bug monsters chasing them. They knew, though, that there was not likely to be any timely rescue, no miraculous escape.