Paul Kidd - Descent into the Depths of the Earth

“Hey, pooch. Repair spell time?”

No. Makes Cinders sleepy. The hell hound’s teeth gleamed. Cinders stay ripped. Stay awake.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll be up for hours.” Escallasmoothed out the dog’s pelt then carefully spoke her spell and made the hide andfur go back to its usual pristine self. “There we go! Now you just lie there andlet it do you good while I warm my faerie butt by the fire!”

The hell hound purred, the repair spell stealing through him from nose to tail in a warm delicious haze. His voice actually sounded sleepy as it drifted into Escalla’s mind.

Nice faerie.

“You know it!” Escalla wriggled in Cinders’ fur then leaned over to give thedog a kiss “Nighty night.”

Night.

The tunnels were remarkably quiet. There was no time, no night, no day, no heat, and no rain. Water dripped, and the campfire slowly died. Keeping happily to her work, Escalla wrote and studied for an hour. While Jus slept, she dusted the big lug with a stoneskin spell, then made up her lost spells with another hour of careful thought. Finally she looked at her list and nodded carefully, stifling a yawn as she tried to see if there were any possibilities she had missed.

Another yawn came, this time wider than the last. “Spellshields, black tentacles, lightning bolts, couple of magic walls…”

Cinders’ fur was obscenely soft and silky. Escalla lay withher head propped on her elbow, a little blanket drawn up over herself as she worked. “A few”-another yawn-“few utilities. A charm… charm monster spell.”

It seemed a good idea to rest her eyes for a while, then awaken Polk for his turn on guard. Full of good intentions, Escalla never even felt herself slide beautifully off into the world of sleep.

The fire died down. The uneaten bits of roasted spider cooled. Cinders lay in a warm fuzzy daze, his tail occasionally twitching. In the caverns, all was peace and quiet as the water drip-drip-dripped endlessly from the mildewed walls.

After a long, peaceful time, the sound of movement came from the passageway. Bumbling along the tunnel came a single silly shape-a creaturequesting forward behind an absurd pair of long, thin feelers. Armored in a sturdy shell and searching the dark with addled eyes, the creature hunted after a particular delicious smell that seemed to quiver in the air.

The scent came from the travelers’ cave. Edging forward, thecreature pat-pat-patted with its feelers, tasting eagerly at the air. It stole forward just a little way, saw Escalla lying on the hell hound skin and the other figures wrapped in blankets by the fire. The creature shrank and kept perfectly still-timid and frightened-but the only sound was Escalla makinglittle chipmunk noises in her sleep.

The scent struck-sharp and utterly delicious! Overcomingfear, the creature edged slowly forward, then suddenly saw its prize lying on the cave floor nearby. Its feelers reached out toward the Justicar. A long tail tipped with strange propeller-like blades waved happily in the darkness as the creature carefully began to feed.

Several minutes passed, then quite suddenly, Escalla shot bolt upright in bed, her eyes wide open and staring at the dark.

“Dad! The sculptures of me were all fakes. I swear!”

The creature froze, then bolted off in panic, its belly full and its legs galloping off into the gloom.

Far behind the fleeing creature, Escalla collapsed back in bed. Sleeping the deep sleep of the just, she snored raucously for many long and uneventful hours to come.

“ESCALLA!”

The noise shot Escalla up out of her bed, eyes wide open and her hands moving to snatch spellbooks, pens, and scrolls to look as though she were still working. She blinked about in a daze, only to see Jus looming over the dead campfire and wringing something in his hands. The faerie instantly turned invisible.

“It wasn’t me! It was Polk!”

Polk awoke in a mad confusion of blankets. “It’s a lie! Alie!”

“Of course it’s a lie!” Jus whirled, uncannily able to seeright through Escalla’s invisibility. “You slept on guard!”

“It’s not my fault! I was working! Everyone knows I fallasleep when I’m working!” Now near the ceiling, Escalla took shelter behind astalactite. “Look. Everyone’s still alive. What is your problem?”

Hundreds of pounds of stubble-headed fury paced like an enraged cave bear below Escalla’s hiding place.

“This is the problem!” Jus waved the wolf-skull hilt ofhis sword. “My sword! Something’s eaten the whole blade of my sword!”

The black blade was now nothing but a rusted stump about half a finger long. Escalla blinked back into view, hoping that calming words and a nervous grin were better than calming words alone.

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“Then whose fault was it?!?” Jus’ bellow must have reachedhalfway to the drow citadel. “We left you in charge!”

“Well, Cinders was there!”

“Cinders is still humming away from some damned idiot’srepair spell! We’ll be lucky if he wakes up before lunchtime!”

Huge with anger, the Justicar paced back and forth, his furious eye always fixed upon Escalla.

“That sword saw me through a hundred fights. That swordwasn’t stopped by any blade. That sword was the only thing I had to keep usalive long enough to beat your damned murder charge!”

Private Henry peeked out from behind a stalagmite. “Murder?”

“It’s a bum rap!” Escalla shot a comment at the boy, thensqueaked as Jus’ hand fastened around her and dragged her down to face him.“All right, I made a teeny error of judgment! I was tired, man! Those drowreally blasted me!” The girl clasped her hands. “I’m really sorry. Really reallyreally sorry! Really really really really amazingly sorry! Now will you just calm down?”

Jus released the faerie and sat down, fuming angry and swearing at the dark. Polk cleared his throat to speak, but Escalla waved the man down before he could make a bad situation worse.

“Jus? We can get you another sword.”

“We are in the bowels of the earth a hundred miles fromanywhere!” Jus seethed, his head stubble standing up like porcupine quills.“Where were you planning on going shopping?”

“Hey! We’ve got swords! See! Lots of swords!” In a mad panicto head off Jus’ rage, Escalla spilled captured drow short swords all over thefloor. “See? These are swords.”

The drow weapons were scarcely eighteen inches long. Jus picked one up, the weapon looking like a toothpick in his hand. He dropped it and sat down to brood, seething in annoyance at the whole wide world.

Escalla wrung her hands in misery and hovered at his side. “Jus…?”

“I’m really mad, Escalla.”

“I’ll make it up to you. I promise! I’ll find a better sword,a much much better one.” The girl bit her thumb in shame. “And I’m really sorryabout falling asleep. I stayed up for hours working, man. Honest.”

He smoldered. Escalla ended up in his arms, trying her very best to be contrite.

“I promise you I’ll do the next thr-err, two things you orderme to do without question. All right?” Anxious and much cowed, Escalla sketcheda little salute. “Promise.”

Looking at the sad little stub of his sword-the wolf skullpommel still intact, but the blade a total ruin-Jus sank into a bearlike sulk.

“I pulled that sword out of my dead master’s hands back inthe Iuz wars. Killed the wight that was after me. Saved my life a thousand times.” Bitterly unhappy, Jus sheathed the blade stub then jammed a drow daggerthrough his belt. “We’d better find some proper armament before we run into anymore of our murderer’s little friends.”