Margaret Weis - The reign of Istar

"Skitt," he corrected.

"Skitt, then," she said. "Why?"

"Dunno," he admitted. "Somebody give me that name, I guess. Where ladies go?"

"Need more stew bowls," she called back. "Lady Grund remember where they are. Place where Tall guards stack metal clothes."

"Have nice day." Skitt waved again.

"Off Day."

"What?"

"Skatt supposed to say, 'Have nice Off Day.' This Off Day, remember?"

"Oh." Skitt waved again. The raft was past him now and approaching the ledge where the seeps began. Having nothing better to do, Skitt went back into his tunnel, took a deep breath, and plunged into the wall of sticky stuff. It had occurred to him that somewhere beyond there might be more wood or rock — something that he could cut with his chisel.

Gorge III was feeling grumpy. He glared around in the dimness of the central cavern, seeing only a few of his subjects here and there, all of them ignoring him. Everybody, it seemed, had decided to take the day off. No body was arguing, nobody was scurrying about bumping into one another, and worst of all, nobody was paying him any attention. He was surly and miffed, but he didn't know quite what to do about it.

"This insubor… insub… in… this no fun," he grumbled, and nobody seemed to care.

Even old Hunch was no help. The grand notioner simply had shrugged and said, "This Off Day, Highbulp. Nobody got to do anything on Off Day. Not even put up with Highbulp. Me, too." And with that he had turned his back and wandered off.

For a time, the Highbulp fumed and stamped around. When that gained him no attention, he got his elk hide, pulled it around him with the great antlers jutting upward atop his head, and sat down to sulk.

As usual, when Gorge III set out to sulk, he went to sleep. His eyelids drooped, he yawned, the great antlers teetered and swayed above him, then tipped forward, held upright only by the elk hide on which he was sitting. His mind drifted off into muddy visions of hot stew, cold lizard, stolen ale, and comfortable confusion.

It seemed that Gorge III was alone in the cavern of This Place. It seemed that the cavern had grown darker, and that there was no one anywhere except himself. Or maybe there was someone else, but he couldn't see who it was.

"So THIS is the answer," said a soft voice. Gorge couldn't remember the question.

"Poor Highbulp," the voice whispered. "Gets no respect."

"Right," Gorge tried to say, but it didn't seem worth the effort.

The voice soothed him, weaving its slow way through drifting dreams. "Need to do something special to get respect," it said. "Something grand and glorious. Something great."

"Sure," he thought about saying. "That nothin' new. Highbulp glorious all the time."

"But SPECIAL," the voice purred. "Need to do something special."

"Like what?" the Highbulp considered asking.

"Move," the voice suggested.

"Don't want to," Gorge might have said. "Just got here."

"Oh, but a big move," the voice insisted. "A migration, Highbulp, a great, grand, glorious migration. Lead your people to the Promised Place."

"What Promised Place?"

"Far," the voice whispered. "Very, very far. A long journey, Highbulp. Destiny… the Highbulp of Destiny. What is the name?"

"Great… Gorge III…"

"The great Highbulp who led his people to the Promised Place… destiny, Highbulp. YOUR DESTINY."

"Des'ny," the Highbulp mused and might have whispered. "Great Highbulp. Highbulp of Desi… Den… Density."

"Destiny."

"Right. Destiny. Where this Promised Place?"

"West, Highbulp." The voice receded, became faint. "Far, far west of here. Very far away."

The voice seemed to continue, but it was no longer speaking to Gorge. It spoke only to itself. "So does the mightiest torrent," it said, "begin with a single drop of rain."

"Drip?" the Highbulp might have wondered.

"Drip," the dream voice agreed.

Once they had crossed the lake of wine, it wasn't far at all to where Lady Grund remembered finding the bit of Tall armor that made such a nice tureen. With Lady Drule in the lead and Lady Grund guiding, the Aghar ladies made their cautious way through the old seeps to the lowest of the middens, through pantries and stowages, to a hole where a cracked stone had settled into eroding clay. The hole opened into a crawl space behind an ornate cabinet in a huge, vaultlike room where a hundred or more sleeping cots were ranked along the walls. Tables and benches stood in neat rows beyond them, and the open central area was a forest of wooden racks where suits of armor hung.

Dozens of the cots had human men sleeping in them, and the rack nearest each occupied cot glistened with armor.

Drule peered from behind the cabinet, listened carefully to a chorus of snores, then nodded to her followers. With a finger at her lips, she said, "Sh!"

Quietly, methodically and efficiently, the Aghar ladies crept from rack to rack, collecting burnished iron codpieces.

Skitt came near to drowning in pulp before he found solid matter in the wine mine. The pulp shifted and flowed around him as he pushed forward through it, threatening to swamp him. But he kept going and, after a time, bumped into something solid. A wooden wall.

" 'Bout time," he muttered, feeling the surface with his hands. It was like the other wood that had produced the first gusher. With maul and chisel, he went to work.

Beyond was solid stone, and he wondered for a moment if he had gone in a circle and was tunneling out near where he had tunneled in. He was tempted to forget the whole thing and take up rat hunting or something, when a revelation came to him.

"This Off Day," he told himself. "Off Day means don't have to do anything… not even quit."

Fortified by this insight, Skitt renewed his efforts, chiseling away at the stone in reeking darkness. Beyond the stone was more wood. "Give it one more shot," he muttered, "THEN go hunt rats." In his mind, he fantasized that — if he could make a name for himself as a wine miner of note — possibly the lovely Lotta might consent to go rat hunting with him.

At least the wood was easier to chisel than the stone. It was very old, seasoned wood, and he enjoyed the shaping of it as he carved a tunnel, an inch at a time. Gradually the sound of his maul changed, becoming deeper, more reverberant with each blow, and intuition prickled at his whiskers.

"Might have somethin' here," he whispered. "Sounds like maybe pay dirt."

The maul thudded and the chisel cut, and abruptly the wood before him bulged and splintered. Skitt had only time to gulp a breath before a roaring tide engulfed him and carried him, tumbling, back the way he had come — back through the tunnel of wood, of stone, of wood; back through the mushy path of reeking pulp, through wood again, through stone and flung him outward to splash into the frothing, tossing waves of the wine lake in the cavern.

He bobbed to the surface, gasped for air, and stared at the entrance to the mine several yards away. A vast torrent of dark wine was pouring from the hole, roaring and foaming as it met the lake's rising surface.

"Wow!" Skitt gasped. "Whole 'nother gusher!"

Still clinging to his maul and chisel, Skitt bobbed and eddied on the tormented purple surface, trying to stay afloat. His head bumped something solid and he found himself looking up at a raftload of Aghar ladies carrying laden nets and sacks.

"You fall in?" one of them asked him.

"Lake's a lot bigger than before," another commented.

Lady Drule was kneeling at the raft's edge, dipping wine with an iron bowl. She sniffed at it, took a dainty sip, let it roll on her tongue for a moment, then nodded. "Good," she decreed. "What you say this is?"

"Wine," another told her.

"Wine, huh? Pretty good."

Lady Drule bent to look at the barely floating miner. "Skatt — "