Shockingly, the usually obedient Berta leaped to her feet and planted her filthy fists on her hips, glaring indignantly at the highbulp. “How I get big dwarf food? Huh? What kind of bluphsplunging idea you think, anyway? Big dwarves kick Aghar right back down stairs! They watch food, not share with Berta! They beat Berta!”
She drew a deep breath while Gus blinked in astonishment. “Me think highbulp should go get Berta food!”
Gus popped to his feet, spluttering indignantly, glowering at his rebellious subject. She merely glowered back. “What kind of doofus-stoop idea be that?” the highbulp demanded of Berta when he could finally articulate. He grasped at the thin hair to either side of his scalp and pulled in exasperation. How could a lowly female speak to a highbulp like that? What kind of bluphsplunging place was Pax Tharkas, anyway?
“Me highbulp!” he croaked in a vain attempt to assert his lord-and-master-ship.
“Me Berta!” she retorted with her maddening obtuseness. “Berta sick of highbulp! You no boss no more!”
With that, she sat back down, her back straight, her chin-what there was of it-jutting stubbornly into the air. She crossed her arms over her scrawny chest and made a point of looking away from her astounded lord and master.
Gus could only stare at her in dismay.
Berta’s attention was directed toward the dungeon wall, so by chance she noticed the distortion, the haze of blue magic appearing there, before Gus did.
“Huh?” she blurted. “Here come Thorbardin again!”
“What? Where?” demanded the highbulp, following Berta’s gaze. He saw the shimmering blue image appear on the wall, right where the four travelers, the Hylar family, had stepped into the room before. He remembered that they had told him that they came from Thorbardin, a fact that made him think, longingly, of his once-beloved home.
Perhaps it was just the growling of his stomach or his shock at Berta’s sudden rebelliousness or maybe the boredom that had descended on him over the past few months had taken a deeper hold than he understood. But as he spotted that shimmering magical gateway make its appearance and discerned the figures of dwarves, two of them, lurking about somewhere inside there, he was seized with inspiration.
In that flash of insight, he realized something: Thorbardin was a world of plentiful, wonderful food, especially the sumptuous cave carp that were unknown in Pax Tharkas and abundant under the mountain. Blissfully he recalled the great Urkhan Sea, the huge caverns that he had grown up exploring, the multitude of abandoned cities and deep, fungus-laden warrens. In his nostalgia-tinted memory, even the Theiwar bunty hunters who had tried to cut his head off seemed like more of an amusing highlight than any real threat.
The blue circle glowed brightly on the wall, establishing that clear ring of color with the dark hole, snaking away like the mouth of a narrow tunnel, at its center. Almost immediately the two dwarves stepped through the wall. One was an old male; the other, a much younger female, and they both recoiled when Gus bounced to his feet and came striding forward.
“Hi,” he said. “This Pax Tharkas. That Thorbardin, right?” he asked, pointing at the glowing blue door.
“Er, yes,” stammered the male dwarf, ignoring Gus’s outstretched hand. He edged away from the magical aperture.
“Hey, wait for me!” Berta called, bouncing to her feet, stomping after Gus. “You go to Thorbardin? I go too!”
“All right!” beamed the highbulp of Pax Tharkas, once more in command. “Come now!”
The magic opening still shimmered in the wall. Berta drew a deep breath and put her stubby little fingers into Gus’s outstretched hand. Together they stepped into the blue doorway, Berta cringing while Gus blinked slightly, briefly wondering-it was a very deep thought for him-if he was really doing a smart thing.
But then it was too late to change their minds. The blue light grew very bright and warm around them as they seemed to be drawn along and inside and up and whirling through the winding tunnel. Gus took one step, which seemed to travel a very long way. Then, suddenly, they tumbled through another round hole and found themselves in an underground room, some kind of workshop crowded with shelves and benches, with boxes and barrels lining the walls. The blue circle, which they could see lingering on the wall behind them, quickly faded away.
The chests on the floor, many with lids open because they were overflowing with interesting objects, seemed rather promising to Gus-even though nothing exactly looked like food. Still, he was in Thorbardin, and plenty of food was lying around somewhere. Before he could saunter over for a look, however, he heard a strangled, gagging sound.
He turned and looked up to see a pair of elderly Theiwar dwarves, staring at them in horror. The old woman was making the noise, her eyes bulging out and her nearly toothless gums smacking and flexing as she tried to talk. The old male had swooned into a faint, collapsing on the floor. Recovering her wits, the female glowered and pointed a bony finger while she started chanting something that sounded very much like a spell.
Gus knew spells were bad things, to be avoided at all costs. “Come on!” Gus said, tugging on Berta’s hand, sprinting toward the door that led out of the room. A magic missile zinged into the stone floor behind them, sending up a spray of sparks, but by then they were into the next room and moving fast. A few seconds later, Gus had found his way out onto the street and was swaggering along the walkway with Berta beside him, gawking this way and that while the female Theiwar’s shrieks and curses echoed behind him.
“Ah,” Gus sighed, all regrets behind him. It was Thorbardin, all right.
Home sweet home.
Brandon felt a dizzying sensation of weightlessness as he and Gretchan plunged into the Atrium of Garnet Thax. The walls of the massive shaft seemed to fly upward, and his stomach surged with disorienting nausea. He wondered, for the briefest of moments, if the shaft really was bottomless since it seemed the only way they might survive the ultimate plunge would be if they could keep falling and never smash into the ground.
But that was a hopeless notion: the glowing crimson lava down below pretty much guaranteed that they’d burn up even if they somehow managed to survive the long fall. The wind stung his eyes as they dropped and dropped through space. Brandon kicked and thrashed helplessly, barely sensing the levels of the city flying past.
Still, he clung to the two corners of the cloak as the priestess had instructed him. He stared at her, noting that she was holding tightly to the square of fabric. At some point she had thrust her staff through her belt. She wasn’t looking at him, or anything, it seemed, for her eyes were tightly closed. Her lips were moving, however; she was casting a spell. After she quickly chanted a short phrase, Brandon felt a tug from above.
He looked up in surprise to see that the cape had somehow expanded in size so that it was eight or ten times larger than it had been a moment before. Not only that, but the supple fabric had inflated from the pressure of the air they fell through. As he tightened his grip on the corners of the magically enhanced cloak, he could tell that it was dramatically slowing their descent-an impression that was confirmed when he glanced at the nearby wall and saw that, while they were still falling, they were descending slowly enough that he could watch the startled expressions on the faces of the dwarves who happened to be looking into the Atrium from the balconies on the deep-levels as the fugitives floated past.
“Stop them! Arrest them, in the name of Lord Heelspur!” came frantic commands from far above, the Enforcer captain’s squeaky voice echoing through the deep shaft.
Brandon couldn’t see the fellow because the large cloak blocked his upward view, but he wasn’t surprised that none of the Enforcers plunged after the pair, who continued to float down deeper and deeper into the stone-walled chimney. Brandon was surprised at how warm it was getting; the temperature seemed to be climbing rapidly as they descended.