Douglas Niles - The Heir of Kayolin

The cavern grew steeper and straightened out. Glancing back, still seeing no sign of the clattering pursuers, Brandon slung his axe from its strap again so he could use his hands to help pull himself up the rough, ascending cavern floor. Gretchan carried her staff in her right hand and used it as an extra limb, pushing against outcrops and irregularities in an effort to climb more quickly.

The sounds of the horax grew louder, and Brandon risked a glance over his shoulder. The creatures were in sight now, spilling along the cavern in great numbers, dozens of them crawling all over each other, clawing and scratching to climb after the fleeing dwarves. Some of the bugs used their hooked talons to claw their way up the walls, even climbing on the ceiling, so the whole shaft of the cavern looked like some arachnid-infested nightmare.

“Come on!” Gretchan gasped. He scrambled after her, surprised by how fast she was able to climb. In fact, he reflected wryly as he hastened to catch up, it almost looked as though he were dawdling. To make up some distance, he flexed his legs and sprang upward, grabbing knobs of rock with his hands and quickly drawing closer to her.

The steeply climbing tunnel turned into a larger chamber with a flat, albeit irregular, floor. Two different corridors darkened the far wall, each leading into a narrow cavern that seemed to continue upward. Once more Gretchan raised her staff and extended the anvil tip; it immediately sparkled into light when turned toward the right-hand passage.

With the priestess still in the lead, they barged toward the path and found themselves facing a series of stone ledges, leading steeply upward like some natural stairway-albeit, one formed of giant steps. Each ledge was about waist high to the fleeing dwarves, but Gretchan used her staff to vault up one after the other. Brandon hurled himself after, flinging his leg up as he approached each step and almost keeping pace with her. He glanced back again and saw, with a sinking heart, that the horax still clattered relentlessly after them. The monstrous bugs were also having a hard time climbing, however.

“How far up … to Garnet Thax?” Gretchan asked through gasping breaths.

“Don’t know,” he replied. “We’ve got to be getting close,” he added encouragingly, not at all certain that he knew what he was talking about.

Then Gretchan scrambled over the last step and darted forward, but froze. “Uh-oh,” she said grimly.

He scrambled up beside her and immediately understood. The tunnel ended in a ledge, a perch on the side of the Atrium similar to where they had landed on their initial, gliding descent. They were much farther up than that place, but there was no pathway, not even handholds, that would let them climb up the cliff away from there.

Above, tantalizing them from no more than a hundred feet away, lanterns gleamed and the dwarves of Kayolin chattered and laughed at the lowest of the city’s cliff-side inns.

But for all the help they could offer, they might have been a thousand miles away.

“Will you two be quiet!” Gus demanded. “Bunty hunters hears us and cuts off heads!”

“Shut you bluphsplunging mouth, doofar!” Slooshy snapped at him. “You nots me boss! We talkin’!”

“Yeah, we talking! And you not highbulp, neither!” Berta added, stomping her foot for emphasis.

Gus clapped his hands to his ears, ducked his head, and continued jogging down the dark alley they had been following through one of Norbardin’s dingier neighborhoods, the slum known as Anvil’s Echo. He hoped that, if he ran fast enough, his two companions might get left behind. But no, they simply trotted along closely behind him, yakking even louder than ever about his many failings and inadequacies.

The Aghar sighed, wondering how it had come to that. After all, having a dwarf maid attending to his every need had been a pleasant experience for Highbulp Gus. Indeed, the weeks and months and years-two, at least, of each, according to his arithmetic-that he had spent with Berta had been the best weeks and months and years of his life. She’d brought him food, rubbed his feet, and provided comfort and affection in ways that had never ceased to delight him. It seemed only logical, since he had two dwarf maids willing to attend to his needs, his life would get twice as good as it had been before.

However, it wasn’t working out quite as he would have hoped. It had been a long time since either of the females had offered anything even vaguely resembling comfort and affection. Instead, they seemed to be engaged in a constant contest to unearth new faults of their male companion.

In fact, having Berta and Slooshy both accompany him seemed to make things more complicated than ever before. Instead of having two women catering to his every need, it seemed the pair was concerned only with each other, bickering and arguing and fighting so continually that Gus himself seemed to get lost in all the confusion. Instead of two girls, it seemed he had no girls!

Exasperated, he had marched his way back to Norbardin, with Slooshy and Berta trailing after him, bickering endlessly. When they had approached the city, the highbulp broke into a run, thinking that perhaps he might sneak away from them. But when he sprinted through the gatehouse, into the wide plaza, there they were-right behind him.

Since then they had been hiding in the great city, looking for food as always, and dodging the crafty Theiwar, who were only too likely to chop off a gully dwarf’s head to collect the bunty. No, Thorbardin wasn’t the nice place Gus had remembered it to be.

And that was before he found out that there was a war going on.

“All right,” said Brandon, thinking furiously despite the evident helplessness of their position. “You stay behind me!” He turned to face the tunnel and the swarm of pursuing horax. He expected Gretchan to step up to his side, to offer to fight-and to die-with him as a comrade, not someone under his protection. That anticipated reaction, even against the backdrop of his despair, was vaguely comforting.

Her reaction, however, was not what he expected, and with the horax already clattering into view, he didn’t dare turn and look at her.

“Help!” cried Gretchan, leaning out to shout upward from the ledge. Her voice echoed upward through the Atrium. Brandon knew that she would be plainly audible to the dwarves at the Deepshelf Inn, which looked to be about a hundred feet overhead.

“We’re being attacked by the horax!” she cried in a loud voice. “Can you throw us a rope, drop a ladder? Anything? They’re almost here!”

“Yes, a rope!” Brandon shouted over his shoulder. “I can hold the bugs for a few minutes, but that’s all!”

As he spoke, the first of the pursuing bug monsters clattered near to the terminus of the steeply climbing tunnel. Four of the creatures eyed him hungrily but halted. The dwarf brandished his weapon and they hesitated. He feinted a charge, raising the axe over his head as he lunged back down the cavern.

The monsters hissed, clicked, and reared but showed no inclination to retreat, and Brandon hastily backpedaled to the ledge. He glanced up and saw that Gretchan had attracted the attention of a number of dwarves at the Deepshelf Inn. Several were shouting encouragement, waving, pledging that other dwarves were going to seek a rope or ladder. “Hold on!” one burly fellow called.

The horax stayed back, perhaps thirty feet down the cavern, warily watching the two dwarves. Brandon kept his eye on them, holding his axe at the ready. He didn’t know how long they would linger there, but he got an idea of what was next when he saw the teeming mass of bug monsters part, allowing a large, red-plated horax to advance toward the front of the file. He remembered the gooey webbing that creature had expelled at Gretchan, allowing the monsters to drag her off.