He examined the narrow aperture with a critical eye. “I could knock it into a wide hole… might take me an interval or two.” He chuckled sourly. “It’s not like we’ve got anything else to do.”
So he set to work with his hammer and chisel. He tapped the stone, listening for the hollow sound that marked the thinnest part of the shell. When he had located this, he started by chopping at the edges, knocking chips of rock free. The sound of each blow resonated into the Underworld, and he winced at the knowledge that he was broadcasting their position far and wide. Still, it was hard to envision any kind of threat that could reach them here. And besides, they really had no other choice.
After a full cycle of pounding, thousands of blows that left his shoulder flaming, his arm numb, and his fingers cramped into a seemingly permanent curl, he had chiseled only a few inches of rock out of the way. The next cycle he shifted the work, swinging with his left arm and poising the chisel in his right hand. He accomplished less, but by the third cycle he could use his strongest arm for swinging again.
While Karkald worked, Darann explored the nearby ledges. She quickly located a steady stream trickling down a little rivulet, and subsequently she began each cycle by bringing them fresh drinking water. Searching farther, she found bits of fungus and the occasional mushroom, enough food to hold the pangs of hunger at bay and to keep Karkald’s strength up. He suspected that she was giving him most of the food, and though the thought caused him chagrin he accepted her generosity as necessary to their survival.
They slept on the wide ledge near the site of the excavation, and as the cycles passed, the entry into the rock grew wider and wider. When they burned a small pile of precious flamestone, they were heartened to see that the cavern beyond the notch continued to the limits of their vision.
As soon as the illumination faded Karkald stood, stretched the kinks out of his muscles, and knocked another knob of rock out of the way. As usual, he worked in darkness, since they didn’t use their flamestone for routine activity. Finally he stood back to gauge the distance with his hands.
“I think it might be wide enough for you to fit,” he suggested to his wife. “It needs a few more inches before my shoulders are passing.”
“I’ll see what I can find, then,” Darann agreed nervously. Neither of them wanted to acknowledge that this could easily prove to be a short, dark, dead end.
She leaned sideways and slid, head first, through the widened crack. Quickly she stood up and touched off a pinch of flamestone.
“The floor’s good-fairly smooth,” she said. “A lot of stalactites overhead and some water, still flowing.” Her voice and the light grew softer as she moved farther away. Karkald heard her shout, and listened to a volley of echoes returning. Then, for long moments, there was no sound. The dwarf’s heart was pounding anxiously by the time she came back, explaining that her flamestone had expired. He had to still the shaking in his hands as he pulled her back through the opening.
“Wh-what did you see?” he demanded.
“It goes for a long way. The water seems to be coming from pretty high overhead. There are some rocks in the way, and I couldn’t get over them with one hand holding the light. Still, I could see that the cavern went on far after that, and when I shouted, the echoes lasted a long time.”
More hopeful than he had been in a long time, Karkald set to his chiseling with renewed vigor. In another two cycles he had a gap wide enough for even his broad frame. He passed through and found that there was plenty of room beyond the crack. Holding hands, hearts pounding, they departed the ledge that had served as their lofty camp. It was with a sense of impending adventure that Darann used a little flamestone to give them a picture of the route before them, while Karkald checked his tools.
“Hammer, chisel, hatchet, file. Knife, pick, rope, spear. I’m all set,” he declared, and they started into the cave.
T he great mountain of rubble completely blocked their path. Echoes sounded from high and wide, marking the barrier as almost incomprehensibly vast. Zystyl sensed, through the location of his many scouts, that the Delver army would not be advancing any closer toward Axial. Either the city had been buried by the quake, crushed beneath a mass of stone, or it was masked by this new and apparently impenetrable barrier.
As was so much of his own realm. The Delver commander had recently received word from Nightrock, his own homeland. Many of the food warrens had been destroyed by the temblor. He knew that if he had taken his army home, there would have been a critical shortage of provisions. It was not in his interests to have Delvers eating other Delvers, and so he had continued on with the campaign, striving to find a way to strike at their hated enemies.
But where could they go from here?
My master. The words came into his mind, the message from Kerriastyn, the army’s other arcane. Though she was second in command of this mighty horde, he was pleased that she knew to show proper respect to her leader.
What is it? Where are you?
I am here, high on the mountain. I have made a discovery that might prove promising.
Wait. I will reach you shortly.
Zystyl began to climb, following the rope lines that his scouts had laid earlier. He made his way steadily upward, knowing that Kerriastyn would not have reached out to him if she did not have something truly interesting to report. She was a capable leader in her own right, and would have handled any minor discovery by herself.
It was fully an hour later that the first sensations told him that he was drawing close to her. From a hundred paces away he could smell fresh blood, Delver blood. But the spoor was tainted with another stench, an animal-like odor that seemed to seep from the very rocks themselves. He heard Kerriastyn hiss, the sound a beacon drawing him through the darkness.
When he was within ten paces of Kerriastyn he could sense her excitement in his own mind, and then he could hear the rapid pounding of her heart, the giddiness of her breathing. She was standing between the corpses of two Delvers. From the probing of his mind Zystyl could see that both had been killed violently, and one was partially devoured.
“That smell… it is wyslet, is it not?” he asked, finally recognizing the animal stench.
“Yes, master,” Kerriastyn replied. “They slayed one of these Delvers and were eating him. They killed the second when he came upon the first, then fled when more of your warriors arrived on the scene.” She waited expectantly. His first reaction was to demand further explanation, but his intuition told him that he should know why this was important.
And then he did.
“Which way did the wyslets go?” Zystyl started to see the possibility.
“They ran up the hill, and vanished.”
“Indeed.” They had disappeared upward. Wyslets couldn’t fly, he knew… so they must have had a path of escape, a route into the ceiling of the First Circle.
Where could that have taken them? Wyslets needed food, and they probably had a route into and through the swath of midrock. Could those caverns take them all the way to the Fourth Circle, to a new world awaiting the cold kiss of Delver steel?
Zystyl remembered another thing that had happened in the last few cycles. He had heard hammering, steel against stone, coming from high up in the world. His best guess had placed that sound near the top of the pillar of the nearest watch station, the place he had been when the quake had rocked the world.
And he remembered the sweet taste of Seer tears, the allure of a woman he had touched, smelled, tasted, and heard. That memory still burned within him, rising into a compulsion, a need that he desperately wanted to slake. Could it be that she had escaped, that she had found a way into the vast canopy overlying their world?