They left the Gulp and Belch, some of Tarn’s escort departing with every show of reluctance, wiping their lips and heaving sighs laced with the pungent smell of dwarf spirits. Tarn walked no trail but shouldered and trampled his way through the brush, thrusting or pushing aside anything that happened to be in his path. Gilthas, looking back, saw the dwarves had cut a large swath through the woods, a trail of broken limbs, trampled grass, dangling vines, and crushed grass.
Kerian cast a glance at Gilthas and rolled her eyes. He knew exactly what she was thinking. No need to worry about the dwarves hearing some trace of sound from shadowing elves. The dwarves would have been hard put to hear a thunderclap over their stomping and crashing. Tarn slowed his pace. He appeared to be searching for something. He said something in Dwarvish to his companions, who also began to search.
“He’s looking for the tunnel entrance,” Gilthas said softly to Kerian. “He says that his people were supposed to have left one here, but he can’t find it.”
“He won’t, either,” Kerian stated grimly. She was still irritated over being hoodwinked by the dwarves. “I know this land. Every inch of it. If there had been any sort of—”
She stopped, stared.
“Tunnel entrance,” Gilthas finished, teasing. “You would have discovered it?”
They had come to a large outcropping of granite some thirty feet high jutting up through the forest floor. The striations on the rock ran sideways. Small trees and patches of wild flowers and grass grew between the layers. A large mass of boulders, parts of the outcropping that had broken off and tumbled down the side, lay at the foot of the outcropping. The boulders were huge, some came to Gilthas’s waist, many were larger than the dwarves. He watched in astonishment as Tarn walked up to one of these boulders, placed his hand on it, and give it a shove. The boulder rolled aside as if it were hollow.
Which, in fact, it was.
Tarn and his fellows cleared the boulder fall, revealing a large and gaping hole in the outcropping.
“This way!” Tarn bellowed, waving his hand.
Gilthas looked at Kerian, who simply shook her head and gave a wry smile. She stopped to investigate the boulder, the inside of which had been hollowed out like a melon at a feast.
“The worms did this?” she asked, awed.
“The Urkhan,” said Tarn proudly, gesturing with his hand.
“The little ones,” he added. “They nibble. The bigger ones would have gulped down the boulder whole. They’re not very bright, I’m afraid. And they’re always very hungry.”
“Look at it this way, my dear,” said Gilthas to Kerian as the passed from the moonlit night into the coolness of the dwarf-made cavern. “If the dwarves managed to hide the tunnel entrance from you and your people, they will have no trouble at all hiding it from the cursed Knights.”
“True,” Kerian admitted.
Inside the cavern, Tarn stomped twice again on what appeared to be nothing but a dirt floor. Two knocks greeted him from below. Cracks formed in the dirt, and a trapdoor, cunningly hidden, popped open. The head of dwarf poked out. Light streamed upward.
“Visitors,” said Tarn in Dwarvish.
The dwarf nodded, and his head vanished. They could hear his thick boots clumping down the rungs of a ladder.
“Your Majesty,” said Tarn, gesturing politely.
Gilthas went immediately. To hesitate would imply that he did not trust the high thane and Gilthas had no intention of alienating this new ally. He climbed nimbly down the sturdy ladder, descending about fifteen feet and coming to rest on a smooth surface. The tunnel was well-lit by what Gilthas first took to be lanterns.
Strange lanterns, though, he thought, drawing close to one.
They gave off no heat. He looked closer and saw to his amazement that the light came not from burning oil but from the body of what appeared to be a large insect larvae. The larva lay curled up in a ball at the bottom of an iron cage that hung from a hook on the tunnel wall. A cage hung every few feet. The glow from the body of the slumbering larva lit the tunnels as bright as day.
“Even the offspring of the Urkhan work for us,” Tarn said, arriving at the bottom of the ladder. “The larva glow like this for a month, and then they go dark. By that time, they are too big to fit into the cages anyway, and so we replace them. Fortunately, there is always a new crop of Urkhan to be harvested. But you must see them. This way. This way.”
He led them along the tunnels. Rounding a bend, they came upon an astonishing sight. An enormous, undulating, slime-covered body, reddish brown in color, took up about half the tunnel.
Dwarven handlers walked alongside the worm, guiding it by reins attached to straps wrapped around its body, slapping it with their hands or with sticks if the body of the worm started to veer off course or perhaps rollover and crush the handlers. Half the tunnel had been cleared already by a worm up ahead, so Tarn told them. This second worm came behind, widening what had already been built.
The huge worm moved incredibly fast. Gilthas and Kerian marveled at its size. The worm’s body was as big around as Gilthas was tall and, according to Tarn, this worm was thirty feet in length. Piles of chewed and half-digested rock littered the floor behind the worm. Dwarves came along to shovel it to one side, keeping a sharp eye out for gold nuggets or unrefined gemstones as they cleared the rubble.
Gilthas walked the worm’s length, finally reaching its head. It had no eyes, for it had no need of eyes, spending its life burrowing beneath the ground. Two horns protruded from the top of its head. The dwarves had placed a leather harness over these horns.
Reins extended from the harness back to a dwarf who sat in a large basket strapped to the worm’s body. The dwarf guided the worm from the basket, pulling the head in the direction he wanted to go.
The worm seemed not to even know the dwarf was there. Its one thought was to eat. It spewed liquid onto the solid rock in front of it, liquid that must have been some sort of acid, for it hissed when it hit the rock, which immediately started to bubble and sizzle. Several large chunks of rock split apart. The worm’s maw opened, seized a chunk, and gulped it down.
“Most impressive!” Gilthas said with such utter sincerity that the high thane was immensely pleased, while the other dwarves looked gratified.
There was only one drawback. As the worm gnawed its way through the rock, its body heaved and undulated, causing the ground to shake. Being accustomed to it, the dwarves paid no attention to the motion but walked with the ease of sailors on a canting deck. Gilthas and Kerian had slightly more difficulty, stumbling into each other or falling against the wall.
“The Dark Knights will notice this!” Kerian observed, shouting to be heard over the worm’s rending of the rock and the dwarven handlers’ yelling and cursing. “When Medan’s bed starts to bounce across the room and he hears shouts coming from beneath his floor, he’s going to be suspicious.”
“Tarn, this shaking and rumbling,” Gilthas said, speaking directly into the dwarf’s ear. “Can anything be done to quiet it? The Dark Knights are sure to hear it or at least feel it.”
Tarn shook his head. “Impossible!” he bellowed. “Look at it this way, lad, the worms are far quieter than a work force of dwarves going at it with hammer and pick.”
Gilthas looked dubious. Tarn motioned, and they followed him back down the tunnel, leaving the worms and the worst of the commotion behind. Climbing the ladder, they emerged out into a night that was far less dark than it had been when they went underground. Dawn was coming. Gilthas would have to leave soon.