Dan Parkinson - Hammer and Axe

With assistance, Damon pulled himself to safety, got to his knees, and looked directly into the wide-set eyes of Willow Summercloud.

“You!” he gasped.

“You might at least say thanks,” she pointed out.”If I hadn’t popped that man with a sling-stone, you’d be . . .”

“Thanks,” he said, getting to his feet.

At the edge of the cliff, the little kender teetered precariously, looking down. “Wow!” she shrilled. “That was pretty close. Aren’t you glad I brought my dwarf? This is . . .” She glanced around. “Oh, do you two already know each other?”

Damon peered at the fallen Megistal curiously. The man had tried to kill him, that was certain. But just in that instant, the dwarf had sensed a reluctance, as though the wizard was not trying nearly as hard as he might.

Tag Salan knew, within minutes of entering the crevice under Sheercliff, that he had found what they came to find—the origin of the fog-thing that had wiped out three villages.

The stone-fall on the slope outside the crevice had not been delved from outside. It had been pushed out from within by something very powerful. And there were still marks in the crushed gravel made by the thing’s feet.

Tag rolled tight balls of grass around the ends of sticks, wrapped them with burr-vines, and wove them tight. The resulting bundle of torches—which some dwarves called Theiwar lamps—would give no great light, but each small flame would last for a while. With his first light ignited, Tag drew his blade and entered the dark hole.

The tall, narrow tunnel wound its way into the cliff, turning here and there where scour and erosion had opened faults, but generally going westward and down, deeper and deeper into the stone, hundreds of feet below the mesa. Along most of its length the crevice was no more than a sequence of natural, downward erosion channels, rarely more than a few yards wide, but often so tall that Tag could not see the ceiling. In some places the channels plunged away into dark nothingness both above and below, forcing him to find precarious paths across blind abysses—or to make his own paths. Only where the natural openings were very narrow did he find evidence that something had passed this way. In several such places, stone had been broken away to make the opening broad enough to accommodate something that was at least ten feet wide. In one such place he paused to taste the raw stone of the expanded opening. It was freshly exposed, not more than a month or two at most.

It was slow going, but Tag kept at it. His Theiwar ancestors had been cliff-dwellers who lived in the natural caverns high on sheer mountainsides, and negotiating perilous crevices was as natural to him as working mine shafts to a Daergar, or delving to a Daewar.

By the time the tunnel changed, he could only guess at where he was, but he knew he was at least half a mile into the stone, and many hundreds of feet below its surface.

He barely glimpsed the change in the tunnel before his most recent torch flickered out, and he had to kindle another. But when he had light again, his eyes widened. The erosion channels ended abruptly at a wall of far harder stone, and in this wall was a perfectly round opening, and beyond the opening a perfectly round tunnel angling upward. He estimated the hole to be fifteen feet across.

Stepping into it, he found an obstacle—an ancient, eroded plug of stone that had worn away with the passing of time and fallen inward. It lay now in two pieces, split down the middle, and the break tasted fresh. Whatever had come through here had been blocked by the fallen “gate” and had broken it and gone over it.

Although the break was fresh, the surfaces of the gate were immensely old—as old, Tag guessed, as the mountains themselves. The sides of the tunnel were equally old, though exquisitely delved. They were perfectly smooth, without so much as a tool mark anywhere to indicate how such a thing had been created. The only flaw in the tunnel was a ragged trough running along the bottom of it, crusted with limestone. Water had run here in the past—slowly, but for a very long time. Tag looked around at the mystery and shuddered. It was as though the gods themselves might have made this tunnel, long before there was anybody else around to do it.

Fascinated, he went on, climbing steadily as he followed the strange hole. Upward and onward, the tunnel was as straight as a drawn cable. A quarter mile, then another quarter mile, and suddenly he was at its end. Here another stone gate had eroded and fallen, had lain for untold centuries, then had been smashed aside by something very large and very strong.

Beyond the crushed gate was a large vaulted area, a sphere of glistening, shaped stone except for its floor, where limestone had crusted over the granite, filling a fourth of the cavern. Near its center, the floor had been broken away. Odd bits of broken limestone were scattered about, encircling a jagged ridge of broken stone like a small volcanic ring.

Tag approached, held his torch high, looked into the core, and whistled. This was where the thing had come from. Within the limestone was a perfect imprint of a great, curled body. He could see the clear impression of a huge, taloned foot. Part of the deep concavity where a big haunch had lain blended into the larger concavity where its body had been molded in limestone. Its head —he could see few details, except that its jaws were very large and contained a lot of sharp teeth—had been nestled on one forearm or wing, and its long, sinuous tail had been curled around it.

“It slept here,” he told himself. “It slept here, and the stone grew around it. Then it woke up.”

For a while he searched, but there was nothing more to see. Whatever the thing was, it had been alone. The cavern was entirely empty, and the only way out was the way he had come. With his last two torches, Tag Salan retraced a mile or more of passages, finally emerging into the open air where he had started. The sun was over the escarpment. More than half the day had passed. He followed the wall northward to where Damon Omenborn had made his climb, and started up. He had noticed that the upper level of the cliff was sheer, smooth stone. Damon would have had to cut holds there. Tag could use the same holds.

Atop Sheercliff he found his Hylar friend—and much more. Damon was no longer alone. In addition to a dead wizard and two live ones, he had acquired a very pretty dwarven girl and what could only be a female kender. The small creature was the first to notice Tag’s approach. She stared, then ran to meet him.

“Goodness!” she said. “Another dwarf! But you missed all the fun. There is no more magic being done here right now. I’m Shill. Well, actually I’m Shillitec Medina Quick-foot, but you can call me Shill. And I guess you’re Tag. Damon said you’d be along directly. Are you looking for Damon? He’s right over there with Willow—she’s my dwarf—packing mirrors and things. He has already packed the wizards, see?”

She pointed, and Tag stared. Two men, one rather badly bruised, lay side by side, thoroughly bound hand and foot. Their mouths were covered with gags. A third man lay sprawled nearby, obviously dead.

At a pile of packs and bundles, Damon Omenborn glanced around, stood, and turned. The girl with him also straightened, glaring at the newcomer.

“Don’t remove those people’s gags,” Damon warned. “They’re magic-makers, and their mouths are their main problem.” He came forward, looked Tag over, and asked, “What did you find?”

“I found its nest,” the Theiwar said. “Or its bed. That thing was down there a long time before it woke up.”

“Any others like it?”

“Only the one. Somebody had sealed it into a cave, long enough ago for a half-mile of mountain and several feet of limestone to grow around it. What’s been going on here?”