"Do you remember your home, Leda?"
"No… I have no personal memory of that. Still, we drow live in such conditions, I hear – don't you? What more natural, then, than to go traipsing off under an Ashen Desert?"
Gord made a wry face but began checking out the options available. Eventually he narrowed their alternatives to two. "We can try the big hole here," he said to the girl, pointing to the place a slug must have made as a means of entering the aqueduct, "or we can follow the smaller one on the side there. It goes in our general direction, but the large one seems to turn that way also. Your choice."
"Big passage, big monster. Let's give the small one a go."
It turned out to be a good decision. They had to stoop, but the hard-walled passage went almost straight southwest, if slightly upward as well. Pretty soon it intersected with the floor of a bigger hole, the trail of a much larger slug that had come this way a long time previously, judging from the decaying condition of the tunnel it had left. Neither liked the looks of the place, but they had to follow it anyway. The smaller creature had done so, evidently, for there was no sign of its continuing passage anywhere nearby.
The new passageway took them more south than west, a bit off course, but still they were making good time. There were odd growths here, some sorts of fungoid material that needed little moisture, creeping things, and occasional chitterings – bats, rats, and probably even little mice. Leda didn't turn a hair at any of it.
"Now what?" Gord asked as they arrived at another decision point. There was nothing but dust and soil directly ahead, and only three possibilities for them. A hole slanted down, and another slug burrow intersected their tunnel at a right angle.
"Down," said Leda without hesitation. "That's where water would be. We must be close to the surface by now, and it's high time we delved downward again. With luck, we'll find a maze of new passageways there."
"What if the creators of the tunnels are there, too?"
"Have your weapons ready," Leda answered dryly.
Gord sent a large, flat stone down the slope of the passage first, listening to the sound of its slide. After several seconds he heard a faint clatter; then there was silence. "Hmmm… Be prepared to slow yourself after a couple of seconds, Leda. I think there's a drop at the bottom of this hole. Give me a short time, then set out behind me," he told her. Then Gord got out his dagger with his left hand and lowered himself gingerly into the opening.
Negotiating this passage wasn't as easy as he had hoped it would be. Gord found that by some perverse instinct, the slug that had formed; this tunnel had decided to alter course to a more steeply slanting, nearly vertical, one after about thirty feet. It took all of his strength, pushing with forearms and knees against the sides, to slow his drop into the tube. The tunnel turned slightly toward the horizontal again for a few yards. Then, without warning, there was nothing beneath his feet.
"Hellish hoppin' toads!" The expostulation came unbidden. Fortunately, so did his frantic reaction to keep from falling. As Gord felt the solid ground disappear from beneath him, he instinctively tried to halt himself. His right hand slammed hard against the side of the tube, while his left shot out to do the same. The sharp point of his dagger pierced the hardened slime that formed the passage. It held there, nearly dislocating his arm as the solid hold it gave him jerked him to a stop.
"Whew, that was a close one," Gord muttered to himself as he rested on his elbows at the edge of the hole, feeling his lower body swinging free in space. A wind blew, ruffling his truncated robe. "I must be hanging out over the edge of a chasm!" Then he heard a shuffling, grating sound from above that terrified him. Leda was sliding down the passage after him, just as he had told her – no doubt holding her sword out, ready to run him through!
Chapter 14
SOMEWHERE ABOVE, WHERE the wind sent great clouds of dust and ash flying across the rolling wastes that had once been the Grand Empire of Suel, the struggle for life continued as it had for centuries. Wire-tentacle trees snared incautious animals, as did stinging whips, the low bushes that never grew near the predatory trees' wire-tentacles. Eight-barbs and snakeweeds fought for smaller morsels, while hungry rodents and insects feasted on the seeds and sprouts of these plants. Jumping cacti and touch-me-nots caught unwary birds and other flying things, as sliver sticks shot sprays of stuff at any warm object that passed near, so that the bits of wood would lodge in flesh, grow, and flourish. Basin plants offered the mirage of water; shower shrubs gave occasional sprinkles of the precious fluid – and deadly poison thereafter as well.
The ashworms just below the surface ingested minerals and deposited wastes upon which other things fed and grew, and of course the multitude of these worms fed insects, birds, shrews, moles, and many other creatures as well. Dust archers exchanged shots with needle-birds; spotted pit vipers and deadly ash arrows slithered through the powdery land after their own prey. Dust striders and wolf spiders of large size lurked or ran, chasing or being chased by paddle-foot lizards and long, black centipedes. When darkness fell, packs of dogs, wolves, jackals, and big-footed, long-legged foxes ran over the dust. Sometimes the lurking dustfish took one of these canines, other times their packs dined on the flesh of the high-finned denizens of this place. In many forms and at many levels of activity, life went on.
To the north, three nomads struggled across the drifts and dunes. They were still a good distance from the mountains, but soon enough they would come to the oasis they sought. Their water was running low, for a bed-of-nails plant and an incautious moment had cost them two full skins. Also, because all were still recovering from wounds, they traveled more slowly than they had on the way south. With luck, though, the three would make it.
More than a hundred leagues to their east, and totally unaware of the existence of the struggling tribesmen, a dozen souls rode across the Ashen Desert on a strange, wind-powered vehicle. Already half of the bladderlike tubes it rode upon had been destroyed by sharp rocks or strange plants. Worse still, it had encountered a dust mire, and the morass of fine powder was. so vast and deadly that the craft had been forced to detour a hundred and twenty miles to go around the obstacle.
The delay, the extra days of hardship, and the very fact that such a thing could happen infuriated the captain of the dust cruiser. Obmi gave the wizard called Bolt a tongue-lashing on account of the matter, and then he ordered the chief pilot flogged for good measure. The dwarf took over from the man doing the lashing, for he wasn't hitting the offender hard enough. Obmi was a bit too zealous, though, and the victim died before the sun rose the next morning. The dwarf didn't mind, for it meant one less person to eat the scanty food and consume the dwindling water. Besides, there were two others aboard who were almost as knowledgeable as the dead pilot.
The wind-powered cruiser that bore the dwarf and his parly across the powdery terrain wasn't the only strange craft plying the Ashen Desert. Another, smaller and odder still, was skimming along at a speed much higher than that of the sailed vessel. This vessel was flshlike. In fact, it not only resembled a grouper but was painted like one and had dark eyes – crystals of smoky sort that allowed anyone inside to see out, but not vice versa. The craft was fully enclosed against dust and wind storms. Perhaps three or four could fit inside it without discomfort. There was no way of knowing how many the vehicle contained as it moved over the dust.
Viewed from a distance, the flshlike thing appeared to float just about a foot above the ash and powder. Actually, about midway along the sides of this piscean vessel were revolving blades. These turning blades were made of stiff, thick leather. As the leather strips turned, their edges came into contact with the surface of the ground over which the craft floated. Puffs of dust and ash were spewed toward the tail as the vehicle's paddles revolved, one blade after the other brushing against the powdered ground. The craft moved along very quickly in this manner.