Two dwarves were strolling lazily toward him. One of them was coiling a long rope that led through a hook in the ceiling down to the net where Gus was imprisoned. He noted their milky, pale eyes and their bristling beards and recognized the pair as Theiwar.
“Well, we caught us a prize, eh?” said the one holding the rope. He released his grip, dropping Gus head-first onto the floor.
“Aye. The master will be pleased,” said the other. He reached down and grabbed a corner of the net. When he pulled, the gully dwarf-still stunned from the head blow-tumbled free of the webbing to lie shivering on the floor.
“Up, you,” said the first Theiwar. He prodded Gus none too gently in the thigh with a short sword. “You’re coming with us.”
Still trembling, the Aghar climbed to his feet. He glanced once more at the empty corridor ahead, where the apparition of a threat had propelled him into their real trap.
“A bit of the master’s magic, that,” chuckled the sword-bearing Theiwar. “We likes to catch youz without havin’ to break a sweat.”
His head throbbing, Gus could only shuffle along, guarded by the watchful captors. He didn’t know who the “master” was, but he guessed he would soon find out.
The powder of the amanita mushroom, as deadly a toxin as existed in the world, was fine-grained and completely dry. Willim carefully stoppered the vial containing the poisonous stuff; his spell of true-seeing allowed him to determine the cork had no imperfections and fit so tightly that no air could enter or leave the container. Carefully setting the glass onto a metal ring, he touched the stone underneath the ring and muttered a word of magic.
Immediately, that stone surface began to glow, radiating a warmth the Theiwar mage could feel against the skin of his face. Satisfied, he turned to another process, using a black steel knife to stir a bowl containing a viscous mix of carrion-crawler ichor and a sludge of oily mud. He counted a hundred spirals of the blade, his mind relishing his focus on the precise tasks.
Around him, the laboratory was still. Many of his attendants were gone, hunting subjects in the dark caverns beneath Thorbardin; the rest were currently resting or gambling in their garrison quarters. His captives, the elves and Klar dwarves and goblin, sat silent and sullen in their cages; none of them wished to make any sound or disturbance that might attract the attention of their sadistic captor, so they made themselves as invisible as possible behind the bare steel bars of their cells.
When the hundredth stroke was completed, Willim put down his blade and returned to the vial containing the amanita powder, which had become hot. Long years of torture had destroyed the nerves in his stubby fingers, so he picked up the glass container without discomfort. Indeed, the faint whiff of burned flesh smelled pleasant in his nostrils.
He shook the vial, pleased to see the powder was suspended in the air within the container, swirling as a murky-and very lethal-gas. He set the vial on a shelf beside a wide variety of similar containers. Some of them contained liquids, while others appeared empty-an appearance belied by the dwarf wizard’s keen senses; his magical vision knew the lurking toxin or enchantment was masked by the clean air in the apparently-empty bottles.
For a moment Willim the Black allowed himself the luxury of relaxation. He breathed in his sulfurous air, expelling the warmth in an easy sigh while he strolled to the edge of the deep chasm, the pit where Gorathian lurked. He could feel the beast down there, waiting, hungry as always. In his mind’s eye, the wizard envisioned the creature’s powerful coils, its grotesque body and burning, hate-filled eyes. As if sensing his thoughts, Gorathian stirred, a billow of warmth, tinged with black smoke, rising from the depths.
“He fears me, you know,” he murmured as if Gorathian could understand his words. Or perhaps the beast did; at least, the sound of the wizard’s voice provoked a warm surge of energy, a glow of liquid fire that brightened the interior of the crevasse, casting a pale mirror of that shape on the lofty ceiling of the chamber once destined to be the council hall of the thanes.
“That one-eyed fool… he even named me in one of his edicts!” Willim actually giggled as he recalled his amusement.
On one of his many magical journeys into Norbardin, he had spotted the king’s new edicts. Moving invisibly, his flesh rendered into a gaseous form so he would not have to endure any physical contact, the black-robed wizard had traveled the streets and alleys and even the shops and homes of the great underground city. The dwarves appeared busy as ever, he had observed, but to him the masses also looked even more chagrined and depressed than ever before. Most walked with their heads down, avoiding contact with each other and studiously avoiding the swaggering enforcers, mostly Hylar and Daergar, who wandered about in groups seemingly everywhere, seeking any violations of the king’s increasingly long list of proscriptions and prohibitions.
Willim had been surprised to observe very few females in public, and those he observed were always escorted by a male and seemed in an unusual hurry to reach their destinations. There were none of the bands of young dwarf maids, formerly ubiquitous, who used to laugh and carouse together on the streets.
When, finally, the wizard had drifted up to the edicts posted in the city’s great central plaza, he had understood why the women and girls had become scarce. And he had read with delight that the king had specifically listed Willim the Black as a dangerous outlaw.
“If only he knew how dangerous.” The mage chuckled. Imagine if the king had known the wizard’s laboratory was right under his city, in the very grand chamber that had been excavated by order of the previous king! Oh, the irony of it all!
“I could kill him today if I wanted to,” the wizard continued, speaking aloud. “Perhaps he knows that. Perhaps that is why he names me in his edict-because he fears me, as he should.”
He giggled again, an oddly high-pitched sound emitting from his whiskered face with its sewn-shut eye sockets pinched like scars. “But I will not kill him. Certainly not yet. No, I have something special in mind for the one-eyed king. He will learn-they all will learn-in due time.”
Willim’s meditations were abruptly interrupted as magic shimmered in the upper alcove of the great chamber. It ws a spell of teleportation, but the wizard immediately realized there was no threat here. Instead, the door to his laboratory opened. Two of his apprentices returned from their hunting expedition, prodding a miserable-looking gully dwarf before them.
The mage sniffed disdainfully. A gully dwarf wasn’t much of a prize. For a moment Willim thought about Gorathian, ever hungry, ever burning, and he thought he ought to toss the empty-headed gully dwarf right into the chasm.
Then he sighed. Even gully dwarves could be useful, he knew, remembering several new potions he needed to have tested. And his Aghar cage was currently empty, the last hapless captive having been awarded to the beast several cycles earlier.
“Put him in the cage,” the black-robed wizard commanded. Already he was making a new plan, concocting an experimental recipe. “I will have something for him to do very soon.”
Without another look at their shivering captive, who gaped in awe at his new surroundings as his captors thrust him into a vacant cage, Willim returned to his workbench, warmed another section of the stone slab, and got to work with his ingredients and his plans.
SIX
T his could be bigger than the Haxx Delving!” Brandon declared, referring to one of the famous long-standing gold mines in the Kayolin caverns. “Let them try to ignore the Bluestone clan once we start to produce that gold!”
He and his brother were striding upward through the long dark tunnels they had so recently explored. The lamp, with the last bit of their carefully conserved oil, was burning low, but it still offered enough light that they could make good time as they wended their way back to the city.