The Heir of Kayolin

SEVENTEEN

Brandon’s axe, still gummy with the residue of the webbing he’d shredded, slashed around in a wide arc as he spun. He almost gagged at the sight of a massive head, bulging eyes glittering, huge mandibles poised to crush. The obscene shape loomed out of the hole he had almost tumbled into. His reaction was instinctive: the Bluestone Axe smashed into one of those vicious jaws-a crushing blade the size of a large sickle-and chopped a deep nick into the hornlike material.

The monstrous horax fell back, avoiding a second blow aimed at its foreleg.

“That’s the queen?” he gasped, turning back to the priestess. Even as he asked, he knew the answer.

“Yep, that’s her,” Gretchan replied, shivering in disgust. “She came up to have a look at me when the tangler tied me up.”

“Tangler?”

“The red ones. They cast the webs.” She pushed and twisted, working one arm free from the sticky strands, tearing the silk of her blue tunic in the process.

He chopped away at more of the webbing, and she pulled her other arm free while he lowered his aim, hacking at the strands imprisoning her lower body, taking care to cut away only the web while avoiding her skin. She wriggled one of her legs out of the tangled mess. He glanced back, saw no sign of the queen at the dark hole, and with a wrenching tug, pulled Gretchan free from the rest of her bonds. He braced his knees, ready to catch her as she fell, but was startled to see that she was standing on her own.

“You seem all right!” he exclaimed. “By Reorx, I was praying they hadn’t hurt you!”

“Maybe he was listening,” she replied, gratefully taking the staff of her god from his free hand and leaning on it. “They had me tied up tight-it was damned hard to breathe-and I was dizzy by the time those bugs brought me down here.” She flashed him a sharp look, tinged with an incongruous iota of amusement. “But did you think I was going to let them have me without a fight? I knew you’d be along to get me out of here.”

“I–I’m glad I made it,” he stammered, immensely relieved. “Now come with me!”

He turned, ready to retrace his steps up the steeply angled tunnel he had descended, then stopped in horror as he saw a swarm of horax making their way down toward them. The ceiling, walls, and floor of the tunnel were covered with the many monsters, dozens of them forming a solid barrier against their escape. He looked hopefully in the other direction, but beyond where Gretchan and the other victims had been imprisoned, the passageway terminated in a solid rock wall.

“Any chance we can escape down there?” he asked, leaning with trepidation over the deep hole, the gap from which the queen’s head had emerged. Gretchan extended the glowing head of her staff over the aperture, and Brandon saw a massive pile of what looked like round, white stones, each bigger than a dwarf’s head. The queen, her massive jaw clacking, sat upon that mound, glowering upward with bulging eyes that seemed to boast a hundred facets each.

“How can we get out of here?” he asked despairingly. The horax blocking the exit tunnel clicked and seethed, apparently content to obstruct the passage-at least, they didn’t try to close in.

“Did you see all those eggs?” Gretchan asked as Brandon hoisted his axe and stepped around the hole, warily watching the swarm of bug monsters in the upper cavern.

“Eggs? Oh, sure. So that’s what they were,” he replied, remembering the big pile of what he thought were rocks.

“Well, I wonder if that bloated bitch has any maternal instincts,” the priestess replied. “Keep an eye on those soldiers. I’ll see if I can make their boss understand me.”

“What are you talking about?” he protested.

“Don’t worry-just do it!” she snapped.

Willing to grasp at any straw, Brandon glared at the swarm of horax blocking their path, trying to look intimidating. He heard Gretchan chanting something, a harsh, aggressive sound very different from any spell he had heard her cast before. Abruptly he heard a sharp crack of sound, followed by a screaming wail rising from the depths of the egg chamber.

“Look out!” Gretchan shouted, and Brandon sprang away from the hole as the queen swelled upward. Her head and jaws emerged through the opening, thrashing and clacking aggressively. The priestess smacked her staff against the monstrous horax, the blow producing a bright flash of light, and the queen tumbled back down to perch atop her egg pile, warily staring upward with those buglike, multifaceted eyes.

Brandon looked down for a moment and saw that one of the eggs on the top of the pile was shattered. At the same time, Gretchan repeated the harsh incantation of her spell and pointed her staff. The dwarf felt a jolt of energy, though he didn’t see any corresponding flash, but in the light of the enchanted anvil, he saw another egg quiver and explode, hurling its gory contents across the queen and the rest of the pile.

Once more that grotesque matriarch shrieked her outrage, but instead of leaping toward the hole over her head, she seemed to spread out across the top of the great clutch of spheres. Her abdomen was massive and distended, very different from the segmented, chitinous bodies of her warriors, and she splayed it as wide as she could.

“Call off your soldiers!” Gretchan shouted, raising her staff and aiming it toward the mound of eggs. “Or I’ll destroy all of them!”

“Do you really think she can understand you?” demanded Brandon incredulously, glancing over his shoulder as he brandished the axe to hold the swarm of horax at bay.

“I know she can,” the cleric replied. “I’m speaking aloud for your benefit; I’m connecting to her with my mind. She understands full well that I have the power to destroy all those eggs, or at least a lot of them, before her soldiers can drag us down.”

To prove the point, Gretchan raised her staff again, shook it menacingly, and shouted in that harsh, guttural language Brandon didn’t understand. The horax soldiers started to advance, clacking menacingly, and the axe-wielding dwarf feinted a charge that caused them to halt uncertainly. They hunched, twitching and snapping, creeping closer until the queen shrieked deafeningly. The sound was a piercing whistle that left the dwarves’ ears ringing, but it clearly brought the swarm of her followers to a halt.

“Call them down there to you! All of them!” Gretchan ordered. Again she brandished the staff, and the queen squawked and clacked.

The sounds were loud but nonsensical to Brandon until he saw the effect they had on the horax blocking their escape route. Hissing and shifting nervously, snapping and glaring, the monsters slowly began to back away. He advanced, holding his axe at the ready, and saw they were withdrawing through a narrow gap in the floor, a shadowy crack. One after the next, the horax wedged themselves through the opening and dropped out of sight.

“They’re clearing out,” he called back to the cleric. “I don’t see any more in front of us.”

“Stay there!” Gretchan called, her voice stern, even menacing, as she again waved her staff into the pit. With once last glance, she sprinted after Brandon, who was already leading the way upward to safety.

“Do you really think she’s going to obey you?” he asked, still amazed by her negotiation with the queen of the horax. “She’s just a giant insect, for Reorx’s sake!”

“She’s a lot more than an insect,” the cleric retorted. “I would think you’ve seen proof of that. And now that I can’t menace her eggs, I don’t think she’ll hold them back for a minute!”

“Then,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her up an unusually steep stretch of the cavern. “We’d better make some tracks.”

Once again Brandon ran until his lungs ached, with Gretchan rushing along right behind him. After half an hour of frantic climbing, they stopped to catch their breath, drawing deep and ragged lungfuls of air. Brandon was about to point out that they couldn’t afford to rest for long when his companion murmured a brief incantation, and the dwarves’ fatigue melted away, her words infusing them with a shot of pure, intangible energy.

So they started upward again.

When several pathways presented themselves, Gretchan raised her staff, and the brightened light on the head of the shaft continued to select their route. Always they climbed, and they never encountered a bottleneck that forced them to backtrack, nor did they see any sign of any horax in the first hour of their flight. Several times, however, they passed the wreckage of the ancient stone walls that had been erected to prevent the bug monsters from approaching the dwarven city. The barrier stones were solid and perfectly chiseled, but in every case some unknown force had wrenched them down.

Inevitably the rejuvenating effects of Gretchan’s spell wore off, and the two dwarves paused once again to catch their breath.

“Why would those walls be knocked down?” the cleric asked again, shaking her head in confusion and dismay. “It was clearly done intentionally. But what purpose can it serve?”

Brandon frowned. “I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “I have an idea, but I’d need some proof before I could take my claim to the people of Kayolin.”

“What’s your idea?” Gretchan asked, intrigued.

“Well, we saw in Regar’s proclamation that one of the arguments he used to support his elevation to the kingship, and his creation of a national army and League of Enforcers, was the menace presented by the horax. My parents repeated the same thing; it’s a primary foundation of his claim to kingship. He says that the horax are expanding their range, attacking the lower levels of Garnet Thax, and as we have seen, he’s right.”

“So the king’s men might have knocked the walls down to make the horax more dangerous,” she conclude. “And then he’s using that as an excuse to justify his increased power?” The priestess shook her head, incredulous. “That’s crazy-not to mention terribly dangerous!”

Brandon merely shrugged. “It’s especially dangerous to the dwarves who live down in the lowest parts of the city-the poorest and weakest of the population. If Smashfingers is as ruthless as I think he is-and my brother’s fate suggests he’s all that and worse-what would he care about a few dozen, or hundred, or even a thousand of his most wretched citizens perishing? And if the horax appear in the bottom levels of the city, I’m sure he’s confident his army will be able to defeat them. They’re only giant bugs, after all.”

At that moment the steady sound of clicking mandibles rose from the tunnel behind them. None of the monsters were in sight yet, but the sound clearly proved that they were being pursued. Even as they climbed to their feet, the volume of noise grew louder.

“Run!” Brandon cried. He pulled out the axe that had been strapped to his belt for most of their flight. “I’ll hold them off!”

“Don’t be an idiot!” she snapped, bringing a flush of anger to his cheeks. “If you stay here, then I’ll stay here with you, and we’ll both go down to death! Is that what you want?”

“What? No! That’s ridiculous! Run, I tell you!” His voice rose to a roar. “Get going!”

She glared at him with her chin jutting out aggressively, her own cheeks flushed with emotion-fear, no doubt, but also excitement or anger. Then, right in front of Brandon’s disbelieving eyes, her lips twisted into a slight, mocking smile.

“Make me!” she taunted.

“You’re crazy! Do you know that?” he bellowed, giving her a shove on the shoulder to spin her around. “I’ll be right behind you-now go!”

Naturally, she looked over her shoulder to make sure that he was following her closely, and he did as both ran for their lives. They raced up the gently curving floor of the cave, panic-stricken at the thought of the bug monsters chasing them. They knew, though, that there was not likely to be any timely rescue, no miraculous escape.

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.

“Uh-oh. They’re bringing up a tangler,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Hurry up!”

The crimson horax skittered forward, rearing onto its rear legs. The tubelike protrusion on its chin came into view, and immediately the creature spit a thick strand of webbing straight at Brandon. He raised his axe and sliced at it, cutting the web into ribbons before the beast could pull him back. But the mass of bugs crept steadily closer.

“Here’s a ladder; they’re dropping a rope ladder,” Gretchan cried.

“Climb it!” Brandon urged frantically. He parried another blast of webbing then looked back to see Gretchan’s boots disappear as she climbed up the set of rungs attached between two supple lines. He darted out of the cavern and jumped to grab a rung with his left hand while still holding his axe with the right. Quickly his feet found another rung, and he climbed upward as quickly as he could while still keeping an eye out below.

Seconds later horax started spilling out of the cave, scrambling onto the narrow ledge. Above them, dwarves screamed and started shouting and pointing at the creatures. Looking up, Brand saw that Gretchan was climbing swiftly, her staff strapped to her back. The whole rim of the Deepshelf Inn was lined with gawking dwarves, and farther up, along the walls of the whole vast chimney of the Atrium, other dwarves were gathering on the balconies and perches, looking down at the daring escape and pointing. The horde of horrible monsters attacking them was in plain view of the whole city.

“Behind you!” shouted one of the dwarves in the Deepshelf, and Brandon looked down again, startled to see a horax scrambling right up the ladder behind him. The monster ascended faster than the dwarf, but thinking fast, Brandon reached down to chop through the ropes of the ladder with his axe. He severed the first one, and the lower stretch of the ladder sagged, forcing the monster to hang on with many of its legs. When he cut the other rope, the bottom of the ladder fell, carrying three horax down into the depths of the bottomless shaft.

But the horax didn’t need a ladder to climb rock walls. Some of those that emerged from the cavern were scrambling right up the cliff face of the Atrium walls. They weren’t moving as fast as those that had hitched onto the ladder, but their steady upward progress was undeniable. Even worse, the great red shape of the tangler emerged onto the ledge. Lifting its head, it arrowed a strand of webbing straight up, sending the sticky ropes all the way up to Brandon’s boot and ensnaring it.

The monster pulled, and the dwarf was almost jerked from the ladder. Clinging for his life, he reached down and sliced away the web before it pulled him down. By then, Gretchan had reached the inn, where willing hands pulled her off the ladder and onto the balcony. She turned and shouted encouragement to Brand, who continued to climb as fast as he could.

By then more than a thousand dwarves were watching from dozens of different vantages, rising through most of the city’s stacked levels. They shouted encouragement to Brandon while calling others to come and witness the thrilling chase. Every balcony, shelf, and plaza was lined with onlookers. From the opposite side of the Atrium, a few intrepid crossbowmen fired shots at the horax pursuing Brandon. Several of the bolts struck home, and one horax shrieked and writhed, losing its grip on the cliff to tumble into the depths of the Atrium. But such deadly missile weapons were not common among the folk of Garnet Thax, and only a few of their wielders were in position to shoot.

Another strand of web snagged Brandon’s foot, and that one pulled his boot off before he could cut himself free. A second web shot past his shoulder, flying all the way to the railing of the Deepshelf Inn, where it snagged onto the stone parapet. By then sturdy dwarves were pulling the ladder up, hand over hand, doubling the speed of Brandon’s ascent. Moments later he was grabbed and helped over the railing, collapsing into the willing embrace of Gretchan, as a dozen hearty miners clapped them both on the backs and offered congratulations.

The celebration was short-lived, however, as other witnesses, looking down, reported that the horax were still climbing. Several were sawing at the web that had attached to the stone railing, but their knives and swords seemed unable to slice through the gooey strand.

“Here, let me at that!” Brandon declared, breaking free of the throng and striding to the web with his axe upraised. He looked down to see no less than a dozen horax slithering quickly up the ropey strand, which apparently did not stick to their claws. With one swing of his Reorx-blessed axe, he cut the web free, and a loud cheer rang out as all of the bugs on the strand tumbled, writhing and clicking, into the depths of the Atrium.

Again and again the tangler sent its web shooting upward, latching onto the parapet, providing a path for the horax to quickly slither upward. Each time, Brandon waited until a number of the creatures were suspended by the web, then cut it free to send them plummeting.

A few of the horax climbed directly up the walls, but that was harder going, and when they reached the edge of the Deepshelf Inn, the monsters were invariably met by a half dozen burly, ill-tempered dwarves. The commotion had drawn enough attention that many of the dwarves had come running with their picks, hammers, and shovels, and those weapons were sufficient to batter the precariously clinging monsters free from the edge.

Finally, the monsters seemed to recognize, if not defeat, at least a stalemate. Those that were still in view, including the tangler, disappeared back into the tunnel. The deep shaft of the Atrium was silent for several seconds as the great throng of watching dwarves seemed to hold its breath.

Then the whole space erupted with cheers, nearby dwarves clapping Brandon and Gretchan on the shoulders, others, from higher vantages, shouting and whooping their congratulations on their victory in the public battle and very narrow escape from death.

“Bluestone!” Gretchan shouted, wrapping Brandon in a firm embrace. “This is Brandon Bluestone!” she repeated loudly. “You know,” she said in a lower voice, winking at Brandon, “famous for his Bluestone Luck!”

He was about to ask her what she was doing when he heard the chant picked up by the dwarves in the Deepshelf Inn. It rose like smoke through the chimney of the Atrium, borne higher by a thousand voices:

“Bluestone! Bluestone! Bluestone!”

He looked at her in amazement, knowing that their return to the city could not escape the notice of the Enforcers. He glowered and was surprised to see her beaming at him.

“You do realize we were going to try and sneak back into the city?” he demanded.

She kissed him and nodded. “But just let the king try to arrest you now!”