"I heard it," came Geppo's hoarse whisper. "Dragon. Big dragon sound. My father-"
"Shhh." Wykar shivered. "No, it's not-"
A broken-rock and lightning smell entered Wykar's nostrils. He knew about lightning from the spells that a few deep-gnome wizards and kuo-toan priests were able to cast. But if no lightning was around, and the rocks smelled broken, then-
He suddenly knew. He gasped and sprinted forward, hard and fast. His gloved fingers opened around the hotstone and held it up as his feet pounded the sandy ground. The corridor again leapt into bright monochromatic view, infrared shadows jerking wildly.
"Hey there!" Geppo called behind him. Wykar heard the derro start to run, too.
"Earthquake!" Wykar shouted back at the top of his lungs. It didn't matter now if anyone or anything heard him. He jumped over a large rock in his path and almost lost his footing when he came down on loose debris, hurtling on. "Run!"
There was a second cracking sound, much louder than the first. Not yet! Not yet! begged Wykar in prayer. Dust and rock bits rattled down from the cavern ceiling. Shadows shifted and jerked in the deep gnome's hurried vision. Perhaps it was a trick of the poor light, a trick of the dancing shadows as he ran, but Wykar didn't think so. Heartbeats, heartbeats left, he thought. The tunnel to the underground sea was narrow enough for shelter, well supported at its entrance.
He saw the final bend in the cavern ahead before the tunnel came to the Sea of Ghosts. The air was thick with the frightening broken-rock smell, the ceiling dust drifting slowly about now like Ghost Sea mist. There were new smells, too-moisture, dead fish, rich fields of fungus. The Sea of Ghosts. He might make it. The fishy odor was particularly strong.
The narrow tunnel to the sea appeared around the corner.
Something tall and warm was in front of the tunnel already, half visible and obviously waiting for him. That something stepped out and made a windmilling motion with its arm in Wykar's direction. It had seen his infrared-bright hotstone and heard his shouts.
Wykar threw himself forward into a roll. Bits of sharp floor debris stabbed into his back and neck. He lost the hotstone. An object whispered through the air over him, clattering hard against the far wall. Harpoon, Wykar thought.
Wykar came up on his knees from the roll, snatching two darts from inside his vest. He hurled them, right hand and left. The hotstone, on the floor three yards away, revealed a tall, fat figure less than thirty feet ahead as it hurriedly raised another spear. The darts struck it first and burst into sprays of crystal fragments, releasing a pale gas.
The tall creature hissed like a steam vent, staggering back as it coughed sharply on the gas. The kuo-toan waved its long arms in an effort to clear its vision and throw its next harpoon. Wykar reached for his blade, but hesitated when he realized he was grabbing the weapon belonging to Geppo. It didn't matter, he pulled it out, got to his feet, and charged. If he could just close before-
There was a whiz to Wykar's left, and a soft thump from the tall creature's stomach. It stepped back with a long wheezing sigh, a crossbow bolt protruding from its midsection. A second thump put a bolt right between the creature's goggle eyes. The kuo-toan shook violently, mouth open impossibly wide, then fell forward with a heavy crash to quiver softly on the ground.
Wykar halted and looked back. He saw Geppo lower his short crossbow and hurry toward him. The derro's broad, black-toothed grin was visible even at a distance.
"All-damn kuo-toa!" the derro roared gleefully as Wykar quickly seized his hotstone again. "Eat that, all-damn k-" The derro was seized with a spasm of deep, racking coughs, and his run slowed into a halting gait. Wykar reached out to seize the derro's arm and propel him toward the cavern to the Ghost Sea.
A rumbling sound, louder and deeper and longer than a thunderclap, shook the cave floor like a drum. It crescendoed and did not stop. Geppo and Wykar staggered and almost fell.
"It's the-" began Wykar.
With a cracking groan so loud it filled the world, the cave walls rippled and shifted and rocked back and forth. Stony layers split open, clouds of dust sprayed, boulders tore free of ceilings and walls. Wykar clearly saw it all in the heat-glow, though he was deafened and momentarily paralyzed with a terror that surpassed anything in his worst nightmares. He caught the derro's arm in his right hand and ran for the two-yard-wide side tunnel. He almost reached it.
A sheet of ceiling rock slammed flat against the ground to Wykar's left, the impact blowing him over like a leaf. Sand and dust fell through the semidarkness. Wykar got up and staggered forward over shattered rock, falling twice more. Geppo was gone. Wykar no longer cared.
The battered gnome was on the verge of entering the tunnel mouth when he fumbled and dropped the hot-stone again. Near darkness enveloped him. He staggered on, shielding his eyes from flying debris. His outstretched fingers touched a cold cavern wall, he turned right. Something warm was close to him, he saw that, but dust got in his eyes and pain stabbed his corneas, blinding him. A heartbeat later, he smelled the unmistakable odor of rancid fish-and ran nose-first into the wet, slimy stomach of an enormous live creature-another kuo-toan.
Wykar stabbed at the creature blindly. He wasn't even aware that he had pulled a dagger out of his boot. A moment later, the kuo-toan was gone. He lurched forward on the trembling ground and tripped once more, falling flat and banging his large nose hard on sharp, broken rocks. The pain caused him to scream, his stinging eyes ran anew with tears. The dagger fell and was gone. Then Wykar took a deep whiff of something that filled his lungs like smoking magma. He hunched up on the ground, coughing and gasping as each breath stabbed his lungs with fire. A crystal-nosed dart on his armor had broken open when he had fallen, choking him with its gas.
Deep gnomes are a pragmatic people. That does not keep them from cursing the unfairness of death, and Wykar gasped out a string of curses himself as he waited for a crushing blow from a quake-loosened stone to strike the life from him in the bleak hell of the earthquake. He hoped death would be quick. The gas from the broken dart was the pits.
The short, violent shock rocked every floor, wall, and ceiling of Raurogh's Hall, as if the earth had come to life and breathed in for the first time. Ragged cracks burst open in walls facing the direction of the shock, then closed as the earth swayed back and split the opposite walls wide with deafening roars. Carved ceilings crumbled, walls of bas-relief broke. Rock fragments fell over all, and the air was a cloud of choking dust that clogged noses, mouths, and lungs.
The fisher dwarf slipped and fell on damp rock when the shock hit, dropping the gaff with which she had banged out the alert. Scrambling fingers seized the fishing net she had flung aside as she slid on her stomach toward the river, the net snagged itself on a foot-long iron bolt driven into the cave floor. This saved her life.
In the next instant, the River Raurogh sloshed over the fisher dwarf's head and carried her off with it, flooding the riverside tunnels as the shock flung it sideways out of its ancient bed. Clinging to the net, the dwarf collided painfully with a stone bench in the hall. Then, as the earth jerked in the opposite direction, she was washed back out again onto the stone bank of the river, and the water rushed back into its channel.
It was then that the fisher dwarf heard a monstrous roar tear through the river tunnel from the direction of the falls, a sound as great as if the cavern were the throat of a wild beast. She turned her head to look. It was the moment when the Eastern Shaar hunter far above lowered his bow, when the sorceress in her tower glared, when the old shepherd looked up from his knife and flute.