When the dust finally cleared, the grubber remained outside the passage, humming a low, growling moan and, every so often, banging its head against the stone. Belwar stood just a few feet farther in than Drizzt, the deep gnome’s arms crossed over his chest and a satisfied grin on his face.
“Peaceful enough?” Drizzt asked him, rising to his feet and shaking off the dust.
“They are indeed.” replied Belwar with a nod. “But grubbers do love their baruchies and have no mind to share the things!”
“You almost got me crushed!” Drizzt snarled at him.
Again Belwar nodded. “Mark it well, dark elf, for the next time you set your panther to sleep on me, I will surely do worse!”
Drizzt fought hard to hide his smile. His heart still pumped wildly under the influence of the adrenaline burst, but Drizzt held no anger toward his companion. He thought back to encounters he had suffered just a few months before, when he was out alone in the wilds. How different life would be with Belwar Dissengulp by his side! How much more enjoyable! Drizzt glanced back over his shoulder to the angry and stubborn grubber.
And how much more interesting!
“Come along,” the smug svirfneblin continued, starting off down the passage. “We are only making the grubber angrier by loitering in its sight.”
The passageway narrowed and turned a sharp bend just a few feet farther in. Around the bend, the companions found even more trouble, for the corridor ended in a blank stone wall. Belwar moved right up to inspect it, and it was Drizzt’s turn to cross his arms over his chest and gloat.
“You have put us in a dangerous spot, little friend.” the drow said. “An angry grubber behind, trapping us in a box corridor!”
Pressing his ear to the stone, Belwar waved Drizzt off with his hammer-hand. “Merely an inconvenience,” the deep gnome assured him. “There is another tunnel beyond―not more than seven feet.”
“Seven feet of stone.” Drizzt reminded him.
But Belwar didn’t seem concerned. “A day.” he said. “Perhaps two.” Belwar held his arms out wide and began a chant too low for Drizzt to hear clearly, though the drow realized that Belwar was engaged in some sort of spellcasting.
“Bivrip!” Belwar cried.
Nothing happened.
The burrow-warden turned back on Drizzt and did not seem disappointed. “A day.” he proclaimed again.
“What did you do?” Drizzt asked him.
“Set my hands a humming.” replied the deep gnome. Seeing that Drizzt was completely at a loss, Belwar turned on his heel and slammed his hammer-hand into the wall. An explosion of sparks brightened the small passage, blinding Drizzt. By the time the drow’s eyes could adjust to the continuing burst of Belwar’s punching and hacking, he saw that his svirfneblin companion already had ground several inches of rock into fine dust at his feet. “Magga cammara, dark elf,” Belwar cried with a wink. “You did not believe that my people would go to all the trouble of crafting such fine hands for me without putting a bit of magic into them, did you?”
Drizzt moved to the side of the passage and sat. “You are full of surprises, little friend.” he answered with a sigh of surrender.
“I am indeed!” Belwar roared, and he pounded the stone again, sending flecks flying in every direction.
They were out of the box corridor in a day, as Belwar had promised, and they set off again, traveling now―by the deep gnome’s estimation―generally north. Luck had followed them so far, and they both knew it, for they had spent two weeks in the wilds and had encountered nothing more hostile than a grubber protecting its baruchies.
A few days later, their luck changed.
“Summon the panther,” Belwar bade Drizzt as they crouched in the wide tunnel they had been traveling. Drizzt did not argue the wisdom of the burrow-warden’s request; he didn’t like the green glow ahead any more than Belwar did. A moment later, the black mist swirled and took shape, and Guenhwyvar stood beside them.
“I go first.” Drizzt said. “You both follow together, twenty steps behind.” Belwar nodded and Drizzt turned and started away. Drizzt almost expected the movement when the svirfneblin’s pickaxe-hand hooked him and turned him about.
“Be careful.” Belwar said. Drizzt only smiled in reply, touched at the sincerity in his friend’s voice and thinking again how much better it was to have a companion by his side. Then Drizzt dismissed his thoughts and moved away, letting his instincts and experience guide him.
He found the glow to be emanating from a hole in the corridor floor. Beyond it, the corridor continued but bent sharply, nearly doubling back on itself. Drizzt fell to his belly and peered down the hole. Another passage, about ten feet below him, ran perpendicular to the one he was in, opening a short way ahead into what appeared to be a large cavern.
“What is it?” Belwar whispered, coming up behind.
“Another corridor to a chamber,” Drizzt replied. “The glow comes from there.” He lifted his head and looked down into the ensuing darkness of the higher corridor. “Our tunnel continues,” Drizzt reasoned. “We can go right by it.”
Belwar looked down the passageway they had been traveling, noting the turn. “Doubles back,” he reasoned. “And probably comes right out at that side passage we passed an hour ago.” The deep gnome dropped to the dirt and looked into the hole.
“What would make such a glow?” Drizzt asked him, easily guessing that Belwar’s curiosity was as keen as his own. “Another form of moss?”
“None that I know,” Belwar replied.
“Shall we find out?”
Belwar smiled at him, then hooked his pick-hand on the ledge and swung over and in, dropping down to the lower tunnel. Drizzt and Guenhwyvar followed silently, the drow, scimitars in hand, again taking the lead as they moved toward the glow.
They came into a wide and high chamber, its ceiling far beyond their sight and a lake of green-glowing foul-smelling liquid bubbling and hissing twenty feet below them. Dozens of interconnected narrow stone walkways, varying from one to ten feet wide, crisscrossed the gorge, most ending at exits leading into more side corridors.
“Magga cammara,” whispered the stunned svirfneblin, and Drizzt shared that thought.
“It appears as though the floor was blasted away.” Drizzt remarked when he again found his voice.
“Melted away,” replied Belwar, guessing the liquid’s nature. He hacked off a chunk of stone at his side and, tapping Drizzt to get his attention, dropped it into the green lake. The liquid hissed as if in anger where the rock hit, eating away at the stone before it even sank from sight.
“Acid,” Belwar explained.
Drizzt looked at him curiously. He knew of acid from his days of training under the wizards of Sorcere in the Academy. Wizards often concocted such vile liquids for use their magical experiments, but Drizzt did not figure that acid would appear naturally, or in such quantities.
“Some wizard’s working, I would guess,” said Belwar. “An experiment out of control. It has probably been here for a hundred years, eating away at the floor, sinking down inch by inch.”
“But what remains of the floor seems secure enough,” observed Drizzt, pointing to the walkways. “And we have a score of tunnels to choose from.”
“Then let us begin at once,” said Belwar. “I do not like this place. We are exposed in the light, and I would not care to take quick flight along such narrow bridges―not with a lake of acid below me!”
Drizzt agreed and took a cautious step out on the walkway, but Guenhwyvar quickly moved past him. Drizzt understood the panther’s logic and wholeheartedly agreed.