“I wonder what happened to Sir Grumdish and Doctor Bothy,” he whispered, glancing around and dropping the worms into one of his pouches, “And I wonder what this place is.”
Conundrum stood at the edge of the slide, looking up. He shrugged. “A trap of some kind,” he answered.
Razmous peered over the side and into the pit. “Yes, but who built it, and for what? You don’t suppose there is anything down there in that dark, fearsome-looking hole, do you?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out,” Conundrum declared.
“But what if it is some sort of horrible monster that fell in long ages ago and has been down there ever since, languishing in the dark, unable to escape, with hunger ever gnawing at its reason? Poor blighter. I almost feel sorry for it, don’t you?”
“Not particularly! I’d rather go back to the ship and get help,” Conundrum said. “We’ve got to rescue Sir Grumdish and Doctor Bothy somehow-assuming they need rescuing. "
Searching the floor and walls of the slide for cracks and fingerholds, Conundrum started up the slide. With a sigh of disappointment, Razmous followed.
The stones were mossgrown and slimy, and the slope steep and treacherous. Before they had gone very far, even the nimble kender found himself unable to progress farther without climbing aids of some sort, and without the glow of the worms, the passage was dark as a goblin den. He brushed back a few loose topknot hairs with one begrimed hand, then stepped back and glanced up the slope. High above, at what distance he could not begin to guess, he thought he saw a light like a star winking. He blinked, but then it was gone.
“We’re stuck,” Razmous sighed. “There’s no way out, not unless you can invent something.”
“What do you mean?” Conundrum asked.
Razmous shrugged. “You’re the gnome! I thought you might invent some machine to get us out of here.”
“I can’t make machines out of air. I can’t even see in this…” his words trailed off, then he muttered, “Machines made of air? Hmmm.”
“Shhh!” the kender hissed like a broken steam pipe. “I hear voices!”
“What are they telling you to do?” Conundrum asked, suddenly filled with concern.
The kender slapped him in the dark. “Not that kind! Real voices. Listen!”
They held their breaths and listened with straining ears. Conundrum pressed his ear to the wall. At first, there was nothing, but then he heard, muffled at first by unguessable thicknesses of stone and earth, now growing more distinct as they approached closer, two voices as alike as the chirping of two crickets. Or it might have been one voice carrying on a conversation with itself.
“I tell you I heard a noise, and the beetlespriggins reported that the hole has opened and the glowworms were red,” said one. “That can only mean something is in the trap.”
“Beetlespriggins! I’d sooner trust our own mother than trust beetlespriggins. You’re dreaming!” the other admonished. “Let’s go back and watch them torture the prisoners.”
Conundrum’s breath caught in his throat. Razmous clapped a hand over his mouth.
Suddenly, a tiny door appeared in the wall almost between Conundrum’s feet. Out popped a creature about the size of a beaver, only it was covered from head to head with short bristling spines, like a hedgehog. Razmous checked again. It was true-covered head to head with spines..The creature had an identical spine-bristled head at either end, so that he couldn’t tell if it was coming or going. A warm yellow glow spilled around it, apparently from some tiny torch or glowglobe hidden within the secret passage.
It crept out between Conundrum’s legs, seemingly without noticing them, and peered with its leading head down the pit.
“There. It’s like I said. The worms are blue. There’s nothing in the pit, or if it is, then it’s dead!” the first head cackled.
“Good! I’m hungry,” the rearward head said.
“Nar! It’ll wait. I wants to watch the interrogation. Back us up, now.”
“But what if it’s a troll?” the second head argued. “Hole won’t hold trolls.”
" “Tweren’t no troll,” the first head said. “You’d of known if it was a troll. Here, if you won’t back us up, turn round and let me go first, then.”
“I can do it. You’re always wanting to go first. I get tired of being backwards.” Without turning, the creature started back into the hole.
Suddenly, the now-rearward head-formerly the leading head-hissed, “Don’t look now, Bern, but it is something.”
The creature stopped, half in and half out of its hole.
“What is it, Stang?” the forward head asked with a trembling voice.
“Some kind of… of… dwarf! And a long-haired elf, I think,” the rearward head answered. Its voice then sank to a whisper. “And what’s more, the dwarf is standing right above us!”
“I’m not an elf, I’m a kender,” Razmous declared, extending his small, slime-smeared hand. “And this is a gnome!”
“Run, Bern!” the rearward head screeched, its tiny ratlike eyes opening wide in fear at the kender’s reaching paw.
“You run, too, Stang!” the forward head shouted, while all four of its tiny legs began to spin, claws scrabbling on the slick stones.
“There’s no need to run. I won’t hurt you,” Razmous said, reaching down and catching the creature by one of its legs before it could get away, “very much.”
He lifted it off the ground, but the strange little creature responded by rolling itself up into a small, spiky ball. The spines dug painfully into Razmous’s knuckles, and he dropped it.
The creature bounced once, twice, three times and then it was gone, rolling away at a tremendous speed toward the gaping, sword-rimmed pit. Conundrum made a grab to try to save it, but got a jab in the meaty part of his thumb for his efforts, and nearly lost his balance. Razmous caught him by the collar to steady him, then went back to sucking his own throbbing, stinging fingers. They heard a sharp double cry, followed by a small, muffled thud.
They looked down at the small door, which still stood open, spilling out a small trapezoid of yellow light. Razmous knelt and peered into it.
“Do you think…?” Conundrum asked.
Nodding, Razmous said, “Doctor Bothy is much too fat to make this squeeze. So we’ll have to find another way out, once we rescue them.”
Chapter
13
Several dozen small stinging flies buzzed round Doctor Bothy’s head, laughing at him with their tiny, buzzing voices. He blinked awake, squinting into a bright light. After a few moments he realized that the light was only a candle, but it was blinding compared to the darkness of the previous hour.
However, the candle was quite plainly hanging upside down from the ceiling, its flame pointed straight at the ground in blatant defiance of every law of nature. He blinked again, trying to shake the hair out of his face, then he remembered he was bald. The hair was his beard. With that realization, the full horror of his situation rushed at him like a starved gully dwarf, yellow teeth flashing.
It was he who was upside down, bound with hundreds of blackberry vines and dangling by a rope looped over a particularly thick tree root in the ceiling. Dancing round him in the air were several dozen small, naked, fantastically-painted and gossamer-winged beings that seemed right out of a child’s picture album, except that many wore hideous masks carved out of acorn caps and the half-shells of walnuts and pecans. Others brandished tiny, needle-tipped spears from which depended a variety of shrew skulls, hummingbird feathers, dusty gray mouse scalps, and other diminutive-yet-no-less-horrific trophies. Every once in a while, one of the fierce little creatures would fly closer and prod him with the butt of its spear, an action which reminded him all too vividly of a cook testing the doneness of his roast. He glanced up-no, he reminded himself, down-and to his relief saw not a cooking fire smoldering beneath him, but a single yellow candle affixed to the floor in its own pool of hardened wax.