Chapter 19
In a place of shadows, small shadows moved. Here ancient, mildewed granite walls stood half-buried by rubble and silt, somber testament to the antiquity of the unseen structures high above. Great pillars of rough-cut stone towered at intervals along the walls and across the fields of rubble. Dark monoliths stood here and upon their sweeping shoulders rested Tarmish-the fortifications, the habitat, the entire culture of the people of this place. Here in a time long forgotten, generations of human toil had carved foundations from the virgin stone, foundations upon which future generations could build a fortress.
No one remembered now how these monoliths had come about, or who had shaped them. Over time these reminders had been so despised by the people above them that they had been ignored and eventually forgotten. For those ancient people who built such underpinnings had been neither Tarmite nor Gelnian, but the common ancestors of both.
For any Gelnian to admit such ancestry would have been unthinkable, for it would have been an admission of kinship with the hated city dwellers of Tarmish. And of course no Tarmite would even consider that a Gelnian-one of those despised rural folk who were good only for tending the crops that kept the city fed-might be even remotely a relative.
Thus the foundations of Tarmish-a dim catacomb of tunnels, vaulted passages and great chambers among stone foundations-went unnoticed, generation after generation. If anyone thought of the cavernous cellars at all, it was only as the place where storm drains led, and where sewers discharged.
Yet now, suddenly, these nether regions were occupied. The new tenants crept here and there, cautiously, exploring their surroundings by the muted light that came from grates far above. Here and there, little bands of Aghar roved the shadowy corridors, exploring. None of them were quite sure where this place was, or how they came to be here. But such abstract reflection was of little interest. The fact was, they were here, and until somebody told them otherwise, they would stay here.
It was a place. That was enough to know about it. It wasn’t This Place, of course. For any place to be This Place, the Highbulp must designate it as such. But nobody had seen the Highbulp just lately, or anybody else of any authority. The Lady Lidda wasn’t here, any more than the Highbulp was. Nor was Clout, the Chief Basher, or Clout’s wife, the Lady Bruze, who might have taken charge had she been around. It was the nature of the Lady Bruze to take charge every time she had a chance. But she was as absent right now as the rest of Bulp’s notables. Even old Gandy, the Grand Notioner, was among the missing.
Others seemed to be missing, too, but nobody was exactly sure who, or how many. There was a lot to see here, and having nothing better to do, most of the lost tribe of Bulp set out to see it. For a time, Scrib followed along with the general pack, peering here and there, as awed as the rest at the magnitude of the ancient construction. “Big stuff,” he muttered, circling a monolithic stone pillar that rose from rough rubble into the echoing shadows far above. It was like the countless other pillars in this catacomb, but larger, and it captured Scrib’s attention by its sheer size. “Somebody make all this big stuff, sometime,” he said, nodding sagely. “Long time before yesterday.”
Hands clasped behind him, he shuffled around the great, standing cylinder of the monolith.
Though roughly crafted, without the fine work of a column that was intended to be seen, the massive, carved stone fascinated him. Shrouded in centuries of accumulated lime, mildew, fungus and filth, it was nearly a hundred feet in diameter, and at least twice that tall. Though the Aghar had no concept of such architecture, the massive column was the central support for the Tower of Tarmish, high above. It was, in fact, the root of the great tower and its solid core of stone extended to the very floor of the tower’s highest bastion.
At a bulge in the dark, grime-coated surface, Scrib paused, peered more closely, and rubbed the moist, sticky surface with an inquisitive finger, which he then stuck into his mouth. Cocking his head thoughtfully, he smacked his lips. “Not bad,” he decided. “Taste kinda like mushroom.” He took another taste, and was crowded aside by dozens of other curious Aghar, who had been following him around the base of the column, all of them gawking like tourists. Scrib had tasted the mildew, so now they all wanted a taste, and all from the same bulge.
“Nice,” one of them commented. “Pretty good goo.”
“Heady li’l vintage,” another nodded in agreement. “Del’cate arom … boqu … don’ smell too bad, if you hold nose.”
“Hint of musk,” somebody else judged. “Well aged an’ full-bodied.”
“Bit on th’ sandy side,” a string-bearded individual pointed out. “Like raw bird craw.”
“Nothin’ but mildew!” a female grumbled. “Mildew is mildew. Okay for taste, but not food!”
“Some folks got no palate,” somebody observed. “This make pretty good spice for stew.”
“Don’t have stew,” Scrib muttered.
“Got a point there,” somebody agreed. “Anybody got stew stuff?”
Obediently, dozens of gully dwarves searched their pockets and pouches. Among the treasures discovered there were several old bird nests, most of the mummified remains of a lizard, twenty or thirty nice rocks, a forgotten shoe, a fur ball recovered long ago from some cat’s abandoned den, a shriveled ogre-finger, a single scissor and a putrefied pigeon egg. But nobody had any food.
“Rats!” several remarked.
“Oughtta be rats around here,” one suggested. “Anybody got a bashin’ tool?”
“Clout usually has bashin’ tool,” somebody said. “Where Clout?”
“Not here,” several of them reminded him. “Maybe we better find a bashin’ tool.”
“Maybe we better find Clout,” somebody suggested.
“Don’ have any stew pot,” a female complained. “Bron carries stew pot, but Bron not here either. Gettin’ so ya can’t count on anybody anymore. Bron not here, Clout not here, Highbulp not here.”
“Better find Bron, too,” they decided. “Anybody see Bron lately?”
With a purpose established, squads of gully dwarves set off in various directions to begin their search. And a dozen or so of the ladies organized a forage, to see what else they could find that might be useful. Still musing over the mildew-covered bulge on the stone column, Scrib glanced around. “Where everybody goin’?”
“Lookin’ for Clout an’ Bron,” somebody told him. “Need a bashin’ tool.”
“Gonna bash Clout an’ Bron?” Scrib asked, puzzled.
“Need meat for stew.”
“Gonna cook Clout an’ Bron, for stew?”
But there was no answer to that. Most of them had gone off in search of their missing members, and those who remained hadn’t understood the question. With a shrug, Scrib turned his attention again to the bulge on the column. Where the mildew had been scraped away, a metallic surface glowed dully.
“What this?” Scrib mused.
A helpful passerby peered at the metal, then stuck out his tongue to taste it. “Not brass,” he said, his dwarven senses at peak. There were those who speculated that the Aghar-the gully dwarves of Krynn-might be distant cousins of the true dwarves. No true dwarf, of course, would have tolerated such a thought for an instant, and it was unlikely that any gully dwarf had ever thought about it. To the Aghar, true dwarves-or “swatters”-were just as mysterious and unfriendly as Talls. But there were common traits between the dwarven and Aghar races, and one was a taste for metals. “Got zinc in it,” the passerby decided. “Mus’ be bronze. Pretty old, but still bronze.”
Jostling the helpful one aside, Scrib rubbed some more mildew off the surface, and squinted at the metal beneath. There were markings on it-row after row of strange little doodles carefully inscribed.