A magical lantern had been washed out into the river from the dwarves' hall, and in its light the fisher dwarf saw the entire ceiling of the silo break free, a monstrous plate of rock twenty yards thick. It dropped swiftly past the top of the falls and out of sight. The dwarf looked on in amazement. She remembered the legend of the foolish dwarf. Her lips moved. "One," she whispered. "Two-"
An enormous, screaming wind awoke around her. It hurled water, tools, buckets, lanterns, and nets toward the falls, everything it could seize in its shrieking teeth. The wind savaged the dwarf as she gripped the fishing net with gnarled fingers, she felt the net's worn strands give and break apart. Freezing rain whipped at her face. The river danced and shook in the fury. Four, she thought, head down, eyes shut. Five. Six.
The hurricane blast eased and faded as swiftly as it had come. The partial vacuum created by the ceiling collapse was filled. Chilled to the bone, the fisher dwarf shivered and clung to the ruined net, unable to pull herself up. The wind's last howls echoed in her ears, following the great rock plate down into the light-lost abyss of the Deepfall.
The fisher dwarf was oblivious to all but her numbers, waiting for the great stone to reach the end of its endless fall. She had been cautious every day of her life. She would not lose her place in the legends now.
Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen…
The thunder dwindled slowly from every direction. Wykar heard himself shouting hysterical pleas and prayers to Garl, chief god of the gnomes. His pleas turned into sobs and coughs, then ended as he got control of himself again. He lay exhausted on his stomach, arms covering his head, and did nothing but cough on the thick dust and the overpowering stench of rotting fish.
A distant boom rolled down the great cavern corridor as part of a wall or ceiling split off and collapsed far away. The deep rattling of a rockslide could be heard afterward as the ground trembled slightly. Then the noise died into real silence. A few seconds after that, Wykar realized that the earthquake was over.
The gnome reached up with his right hand and gingerly felt his injured nose. Touching a particularly sore spot brought more sudden tears to his eyes, but a careful examination revealed that his nose was only bleeding and dirty, not broken. Thank you, Garl, he thought. He couldn't imagine life with a broken nose. It was too awful to conceive, better to be crippled. He sighed with relief and began brushing bits of rock off his nose and face.
Something groaned and stirred in the debris, very close to him. Wykar wiped his eyes on his right arm a sat up. Loose debris fell from his head and back. "Geppo?" he called.
He smelled rancid fish. Damn, he thought, fumbling for his blade hilt.
The heat-glow of a huge, pudgy creature arose from the thick dust and debris, barely two yards away. Wykar scrambled back, ignoring the pain. Though its skin was lukewarm, the creature was bleeding profusely, and its warm blood illuminated it clearly in Wykar's heat-sensitive vision. The being rose up on its hands and knees to survey the ruins of the great corridor. It hissed as it did.
It was the kuo-toan Wykar had stabbed only a few moments before. The creature sucked in a great lungful of air, its gills slapping wetly against the sides of its goggle-eyed head. One of the huge eyes rolled in Wykar's direction and fixed on him. The kuo-toan hissed again, louder and sharper. Its mouth opened as it turned, it was so close that Wykar could see the individual needle teeth in its lower jaw.
The kuo-toan lurched at the gnome, mouth opened to bite. Wykar threw himself to the side at the last moment and swung his right fist at the kuo-toan's head in a roundhouse punch. He hit it squarely in its huge left eye.
With a loud gasp, the fish-creature jumped back, one long webbed hand clutching at its injured eye. It lunged forward to grab the gnome, but by then Wykar had seized the handle of the derro's long blade and pulled it free. He swung for the monster's thin-boned arm and connected with a solid thump.
With another gasping scream, the kuo-toan jerked back, waving the stump of its severed right arm. Wykar swiftly got to his feet. The derro's knife was incredibly sharp. He knew he would have to kill the stupid fish-man now, though. He bit his lower lip and steeled himself, then moved in to finish the job.
Fast as the gnome was, he had not even touched the kuo-toan when the creature shuddered violently, its back arched in a spasm and its head reared back to give the ceiling a pop-eyed stare. It wheezed out a long, final sigh as it fell backward. As it did, Geppo adroitly stepped out of its way. His left fist was clenched around the hilt of Wykar's blood-covered blade.
Geppo was panting and bleeding profusely from a scalp wound, but seemed unharmed otherwise. His blood was warmer than the kuo-toan's, so he was much brighter, his face shone like a lantern. Wykar lowered his weapon and looked around. A rumbling ran through the great corridor in the distance, the cave floor vibrated slightly through the sand. Aftershock, thought Wykar. It would be best to leave the open cave quickly.
The deep gnome produced a second hotstone from his belt pouch and held it aloft. He and Geppo paused to survey the damage to the main passageway. The floor was littered with split rocks and boulders torn from the cave walls. The dust had settled, the air smelled of shattered stone and stirred earth. Going back the way they'd come would be hard, indeed. Wykar hoped the trip hadn't now become one-way. He then looked down and saw only an arm and a foot were left of the first kuo-toan they had fought, the rest of the creature messily flattened to the thickness of a mica flake beneath a thick stone slab.
Wykar checked the narrow passage toward the Sea of Ghosts. It seemed solid even now, though the floor was a foot deep in debris and most of the tiny ceiling formations were broken off. He could see only a half-dozen yards into the narrow passage before it curved around a bend. Surprises were certain to lie beyond.
He muttered a dark curse. The only other tunnel to the Sea of Ghosts was two sleepings away by foot, and time was against them. He considered calling off the whole thing and fleeing for his life. How did he know the earthquake hadn't buried or broken the egg now? And the sea would be in violent turmoil after the shock.
If the vast, arched roof over the sea had held-and there was good reason to think it had, since the sound of its falling would have been quite noticeable through the tunnel-the kuo-toa there would be more active than ever. Wykar and Geppo had just fought two gogglers who had walked out of the tunnel, a thousand more might await them on the shoreline on the other end. The whole plan was ruined.
He tapped the derro's battered weapon against his bare leg, then thought better of it and stopped before he cut himself badly. Everything was quiet now. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to just take a peek and see what was going on, for curiosity's sake. He motioned to the derro, who had finished cleaning his blade, and with great care and many looks at the ceiling, they stepped into the side tunnel.
The tunnel had survived in good condition. It curved back and forth for two hundred feet, once an outflowing stream from a formerly higher Sea of Ghosts. Inch-wide cracks showed all the way through the tunnel, legacies of the quake. At one point, the gnome and derro were forced to climb over the crushed remains of another three kuo-toa, half-buried when the ceiling gave way over a three-yard section. Wykar nearly gave up at that point, but he steeled himself and moved on, steadily avoiding a close look at the smashed skull of an unlucky kuo-toan. The fishy stench was incredible, and he swallowed several times to keep from vomiting.
A few yards past that point, only a bend away from the opening to the great chamber of the sea, Wykar felt a cool breeze against his face. He stopped short, taken aback. No wind had ever stirred the Sea of Ghosts, as far as he knew, but now he was certain he could feel one. A rumbling noise in the distance that Wykar had ignored was now louder, too. It might be a short aftershock, but the ground was not trembling. Something else was going on. Wykar suspected he was in great danger. He felt it by instinct rather than by reason, but the sense was too powerful to shake off. He looked back at the derro, who merely frowned and stared back in puzzlement.