“Glitch don’ need dragon anymore,” Lidda persisted. “Glitch great dragon-basher. Don’ need dragon for keep aroun’.”
“Nope,” he admitted. “Jus’ get in way, prob’ly.”
Lidda gazed at Verden for a moment, something like true understanding shining in her eyes. Then she elbowed Glitch in the ribs. “Go ’head, then,” she demanded. “Highbulp say, ‘dragon is release.’ ”
“Okay,” Glitch said. “Dragon is release! Don’ need dragon anymore! Go ’way!” He waved an imperious hand. “Shoo!”
Verden’s eyes widened. Within her, something fell away and she was unbound. The geas was broken. She was free! Free to do as she pleased. Free even to kill these miserable creatures if she chose! Still, Lidda had given her back her life. The little female gully dwarf-least of the least-had done an act of mercy!
Verden Leafglow turned away. Up the corridor, and beyond other connecting corridors, beyond the buried city of Xak Tsaroth, beyond the Pitt, spread a whole world that she had never seen in this life. It was out there, waiting for her.
Something clattered at her feet, and she looked down. The Shield of Reorx had fallen from her breast. With gentle talons, she picked it up and half-turned, holding it out to the gully dwarves. “Keep this,” the green dragon said. “When you have children, give it to them.”
She didn’t look back again. Somehow, the sight of the Highbulp standing atop a slain dragon, looking smug and arrogant and actually believing that he, personally, had killed the great beast, was a little more than Verden Leafglow really wanted to deal with.
But in her mind as she crept around the upward bend, a silent voice like the voice of iron whispered. The spear seen from aside passes by. But it is still a spear, Verden Leafglow. One day you will see my shield again. A gully dwarf-the unlikeliest of heroes-will bear it. In that time you will see a sign. When you do, you might choose to settle some old debts.
Vengeance? Verden wondered.
Balance, the iron voice corrected. From chaos, order may arise. But first there must be balance.
PART 2
Chapter 9
“Before yesterday, somebody make all places,” Scrib mused aloud, not really caring whether anybody was listening or not. “Rocks an’ dribbles, leafs an’ hills, mud an’ holes … Somebody make all this stuff be. Even make sky, prob’ly Somebody say, ‘be sky,’ an’ sure ’nough, there sky is.”
Around him his students shuffled their feet and one snapped, “So what? Who needs sky?”
“Gotta have sky,” Scrib explained, straining at the concept. “All places under sky. ’thout sky, no place for places be under.”
Impressed with his own logic, Scrib squinted fiercely and wished that somebody might somehow remember what he had just said, so that somebody could repeat it back to him later. He knew he wasn’t likely to stumble upon that bit of exquisite wisdom again.
As usual when he felt the need to teach, Scrib stood on a high place with his students gathered around him. Today’s high place was a half-buried boulder in a marshy clearing, near the old Tall ruins that the tribe was occupying at the moment. The boulder was a good choice. A previous gathering, just the day before, had been dismissed early when it turned out that Scrib’s rostrum was an active anthill.
The “students,” as usual, were a dozen or so other gully dwarves who were here because they had nothing better to do at the moment.
Now one of them-a muscular young Aghar named Bron, who was usually in charge of the legendary Great Stew Bowl and, Scrib recalled vaguely, was related to somebody important-raised a tentative hand. “All that happen before yesterday?”
“Yep,” Scrib said with a nod. “Sky, places, everything, all made before yesterday.”
“How long before yesterday?”
Scrib screwed up his straggly-bearded face in thought. “Long time,” he decided. “Yesterday before yesterday. Long time ago.”
“What was long time ago?” a curly-bearded citizen named Pook asked.
“Long time ago somebody make everything,” Scrib repeated patiently. He had noticed that some people’s attention spans were shorter than others.
“Who did?” Pook wondered.
“Somebody,” Scrib emphasized.
“Somebody do all that?” Bron pursued, skeptically. “Make everything? Places, sky, turtles? Even us?”
“Yep. Somebody.”
Bron was on a roll now. “Make things, too? Like rats an’ trees an’ stew pots? An’ … an’ mushrooms an’ bashin’ tools … an’ dragons an’ bugs?”
“Yep,” Scrib assured him. “Make ever’thing, make ever’body.”
“Why?”
“Dunno,” Scrib admitted. Of all the questions he sometimes heard, that was the toughest one. “Don’ make much sense, does it?”
“Somebody pretty dumb, do all that for no reason,” another student pointed out. This one was a young female named Pert, one of his regulars. Students came and went, and Scrib never knew who or how many might show up when he began a talk-and-tell. Participation in a talk-and-tell group required thought, and thinking was not high on most Aghars’ lists of things to do.
But Bron and Pert, and a varying gaggle of others, were there more often than not, and Scrib sometimes felt gratified at their interest. Being a philosopher, probably the only philosopher the tribe of Bulp had ever had, unless one counted the Grand Notioner, was a tough job no matter how you mashed it. But being a philosopher alone would have been worse.
He didn’t think of himself as a philosopher, of course. Being only a gully dwarf, he wouldn’t have known what such a word meant, or even how to pronounce it. But he was obviously different from most of those around him. All his life, it seemed, he had been mystified by the things that others seemed to take for granted-like why is fire hot, and how come you fall down if you lift both feet at the same time, and what makes salted slugs become grumpy.
Then, one day, during the tribe’s migration from That Place, which had been This Place until they left it, to the present This Place, which they hadn’t found yet, they were filing across an ancient rope-bound bridge that spanned a wide chasm. The bottom of the chasm was full of ruined, abandoned buildings. Talls had lived in them once, but they were gone now.
They hadn’t meant to stop. Once they were on the move, it was the way of all Aghar to not stop until the Highbulp said “stop,” and the Highbulp was asleep at the time. Several sturdy gully dwarves had tied a rope around him, run a pole through the rope, and were thus carrying him while he slept.
But just below the dilapidated bridge was the crumbling shell of a large building with a daggerlike gold spire that still stood, its point only a few feet below the bridge.
Scrib had leaned over the side for a better look. The next thing he knew, he was dangling from the peak of the gold spire, which had pierced his flapping turkey-skin cloak when he fell.
It took them most of a day to rescue Scrib, and the Highbulp griped at him when he woke up. But in the process of un-skewering Scrib, they had explored the old village and found a lot of good tunnels and seeps, and a plentiful population of vermin. The Highbulp walked around, peering here and there while old Gandy trailed after him, and decided that this place was as good a This Place as anyplace else might be.
It had turned out, in fact, to be an excellent This Place. There were holes to scurry into, and water no worse than anyplace else they had been, and for the foragers there were nearby fields and caves where green things, yellow things and mushrooms could be found. The only serious drawbacks were frequent lightning storms, an occasional thundering herd of Talls crossing the bridge, and a one-eyed ogre who lived somewhere nearby and was thus a blight on the neighborhood.