Jeff Crook: Dark Thane

Soon, they cleared a path, but as they crawled through the last few feet of rubble, the beams around them groaned and cracked, pouring black soil, leaves, and twigs onto their heads. At the same time, something large and heavy struck the wall a tremendous blow. They clambered to their feet to find another section of tunnel collapsed not thirty feet ahead. Half-buried by tons of stone, an Urkhan worm was thrashing in pain and torment, its huge head hammering the walls, floor, and groaning roof. The monster was enormous, the largest and oldest in their stables. They had used it to burrow out the main passageways. Its tubular body was as thick as three dwarves standing on each other’s shoulders. Its three jaws were large and powerful enough to shear through granite boulders. Two horns, each thicker than Tarn’s wrist, sprouted from the creature’s enormous head. With each blow, dirt and pebbles poured through ever-widening cracks in the ceiling.

“Kill that thing before it brings down the whole tunnel!” Tarn shouted.

Four of his Klar bodyguard rushed the monster, but their axes seemed to bounce off its rubbery reddish-brown skin. One dwarf dived beneath the creature’s upraised body and stabbed with his dagger into the joint between two of its body sections. He disappeared with a sickening crunch beneath the monster as it flailed him to a pulp. Another dwarf managed to hack off one of the worm’s horns, to which was still attached a length of broken harness rein. Writhing in agony, the huge worm spat a glob of clear viscous fluid. The glob splashed over the dwarfs upraised shield, coating his face and left hip. Immediately, his flesh began to hiss and smoke. Screaming in agony, he dropped shield and axe to claw at his dissolving face. Tarn jumped toward him and jerked him out of the way just as the worm’s enormous head swept down, flattening his shield like the blow of an enormous hammer.

As captain of Tarn’s personal guard, Mog leaped in front of his thane, sword raised. The blind worm seemed to sense his movement and lashed out. Mog ducked the blow that would have crushed him then jabbed with his sword into the creature’s neck, just behind the huge misshapen skull. The worm flailed back, seeking to crush and destroy, but the Klar warrior rolled free, his sword dripping black blood that hissed on the stone. Another dwarf landed an axe blow between the creature’s horns, and the blade stuck fast in the hard bone, jerking the weapon free of his grasp as the worm reared up in agony and bashed its head against the ceiling, vomiting corrosive spittle over the weakened roof. The force of the blow drove the axe blade deep into its tiny brain. Acid saliva dripped from its champing mouth as its enormous head wove uncertainly in the air.

Mog drove in again with his sword and stabbed behind the skull. This time, his sword found its mark. The creature collapsed as though struck by a thunderbolt. The floor, shattered by its death throes, opened in a hole that swallowed both the worm and the rubble that had crushed and trapped it. No longer supported by the rubble pile, the roof followed floor and worm down, widening the chasm. Tarn tried to drag the injured dwarf to safety but had to release his hold or be killed himself, as a whole elm tree dropped roots first through the roof and smashed to the ground, branches snapping, then toppled through the hole in the floor. He and his remaining band of dwarves scrambled to the other side of the tunnel as the last sections of the floor broke free beneath their feet.

After a few terrifying seconds, the collapse ended. Hazy yellow sunlight streamed down through gaping cracks in the tunnel’s ceiling, sending dusty shafts of light probing the yawning black hole in the floor. The eleven surviving dwarves clung to the walls, staring down into the hole with eyes half-blinded by the sudden light. At the bottom of the hole black water swirled and churned like an underground river.

“We have to get out of here,” Tarn shouted above the roaring of the water. A fine mist rising up from the hole began to wet the walls, making clinging to their precarious perches a treacherous affair. At the same time, the dwarf leader had noticed that the water level was rising.

Where was the flood coming from, and what of the dwarves in the deeper tunnels, what of the dwarves beneath the city? This was what Tarn had feared the moment the first damp breath of wind fingered his beard earlier that morning. Had they accidentally tunneled beneath an underground stream or lake?

There was no time to answer these questions. The water was already up to the crumbled edges of the tunnel floor. Tarn’s bodyguards had worked their way up the sides of the tunnel toward the sunlight. He quickly followed. Climbing was no easy matter, even had the walls been dry, and his heavy armor only hindered his efforts. Mog was the first to reach the surface. He cut a branch and used it to pull the others to safety.

Tarn clambered out of the hole onto a leafy forest floor. Towering trees surrounded them like leafy columns in some sylvan feasting hall, marching in serried ranks in all directions. There was a strange, otherworldly beauty to the forest of Qualinesti. Leaf and moss were greener here, more vibrant, more alive. The light seemed to shine from another more ancient day. Even in war, there was peace here, so one could not imagine war ever disturbing such a place.

War there was, though, and war was near. This place was an garden, and nearby Tarn saw a house of rose quartz secreted among the trees, made to look like a natural part of the terrain. They were near the city; the hills rose behind them to the south. A haze hung over the forest, yellow and reeking with some familiar but unnameable odor. Yet there were no black pillars of smoke to be seen, not like there would have been if the city were burning. Perhaps the dwarves and elves had won after all. Perhaps Beryl had been driven off and Tarn’s dwarves were waiting in the city with those elves who had stayed behind to defend their homeland, waiting to receive him with feasting and rejoicing.

Tarn’s hopes leaped at the thought, but as he paused to glance back down at the water swirling up into the collapsed tunnel, he saw a sight that filled him with foreboding. A dwarf, ashen gray and purple-lipped with a jagged, white-edged wound splitting the crown of his head, had been twirled up by the stream. For a moment, the dead dwarf spun lazily in the water below, his beard and hair floating about his face like a dream, milky eyes staring up at a sun they could not long see, at a king they no longer revered. Then the water sucked him down again. As he sank away into the black gloom, his slack cheeks fluttered in a mockery of laughter.

Tarn looked away, his heart tightening in his chest. Captain Mog glanced up at the hazy sun to get his bearings.

“The city is that way,” he said, pointing through the trees.

The other dwarves started off, fanning out through the trees to scout the way. Mog took a moment to sidle up beside his king and glance down into the water.

“Our warriors were down there,” he whispered.

“I know,” Tarn snapped.

He tromped off, kicking up leaves in his wake. Mog dropped behind him and warily scanned the forest for enemies.

The forest floor sloped gently downward as they traveled north toward the city. The lead dwarves stumbled and swore as they pushed their way through the woods, tripping over every root and snagging their clothes and armor on any vine or thorny creeper that crossed their paths. Tarn cringed at the noise of their passage, which seemed to echo through the eerily silent forest. He’d been to Qualinost several times in the past months, and he’d never experienced such a profound silence.

They had not gone more than a bowshot when the dwarves emerged from the forest and into the hazy yellow sunlight. They hung back in the shadow of the trees and gazed in wonder and awe at what confronted them. Tarn hurried forward, but even before he reached the edge of the trees, he saw. At first, he doubted his senses. He stumbled past the last tree and stood, gaping, from the margin of the forest.