Lidda glanced around. “Glitch!” she shouted. “Get out of way!”
If the Highbulp heard her, he ignored her. Gravel clattered around him, accompanied by flailing, bouncing Aghar, but he kept his eyes on the work above. “More that way!” he shouted to the clinging miners. “Lot more left right there!”
At the stew bowl, the Lady Lidda shook her head in disgust. “Bron!” she shouted. “Go get Highbulp!”
“What?” Bron blinked.
Pert looked up from stirring the stew. The broadsword was bigger than she was, but with the help of several other ladies she was managing. “Lady Lidda wants Highbulp!” she ordered. “Bron go get him!”
“Yes, dear,” Bron said. Single-mindedly he waded into the confusion of the drop zone below the overhead pyrite mines.
Gandy watched him go, and shook his ancient head. “Like daddy, like kid,” he muttered. “Couple real twits. Both of ’em nuisances an’ numbskulls. Born for be Highbulps.”
As the sturdy Bron dragged his struggling, complaining father toward them, towing the old Highbulp by his ankle, Gandy studied the pair with rheumy old eyes. Glitch’s matted beard, once curly and wiry, was streaked with gray now, and his bald dome shone through his crown. It seemed a long time since he had shown any force of leadership. He still whined and complained when he didn’t get his way, but the old quality of Highbulpery-the ability to get everybody to do whatever he wanted simply by making a nuisance of himself-was less evident than in the past.
Bron, on the other hand, seemed to have no trouble getting people’s attention. Right now, for instance, he was a designated hero-whatever that meant-and very recently he seemed to have had himself a dragon. Of course, nobody had any idea how a Highbulp might be selected, but Gandy decided it was time to think about such things.
“Time for change,” the Grand Notioner decided. He hobbled over to where the ladies were cooking stew. “What Lady Lidda think?” he asked.
Lidda glanced around at him. “Not much,” she confided. “Too busy for think.”
Crouching beside the cooking shield, Gandy dipped a grimy hand into its simmering contents to test it. Things wriggled between his fingers. Some of the stew’s contents weren’t quite dead yet. “Cook a little longer,” he suggested. “How ’bout Glitch quit bein’ Highbulp?”
“Good idea,” Lidda nodded. “Get a little rest.”
“Glitch gettin’ tired?”
“I gettin’ tired,” Lidda said. “No easy job, tendin’ to Highbulp.”
At her side, the Lady Bruze chirped, “ ’bout time that twit Glitch retire. Let somebody else have chance to be big cheese. Let Clout be Highbulp.”
“Go sit on tack, Lady Bruze,” the Lady Lidda suggested. “Clout good Chief Basher. Make terrible Highbulp, though.”
“Would not!” Bruze snapped.
“Would too,” Lidda countered. “Where Clout now?”
“Dunno,” the Chief Basher’s wife admitted. “Gone off someplace.”
“Fine,” Lidda said. “Highbulp can’t go off someplace alla time. Gotta stay with clan. Like Glitch does.”
“Highbulp doesn’ stay with clan,” someone nearby corrected her. “Clan stays with Highbulp.”
“So there!” Bruze gloated. “Clout oughtta be Highbulp.”
Behind them, Bron deposited his father unceremoniously beside the fire and glanced at the pot. “Stew ’bout ready?” he asked. “I’m hungry.”
Glitch the Most, Highbulp by persuasion and Lord Protector of This Place and More Other Places Than Anybody Could Count, sat up and twisted around to rub his sore rump. “Some kin’ way to treat Highbulp,” he whined. “What Lady Lidda want now?”
“Don’ remember,” Lidda admitted.
Behind them, the cavern reverberated as a huge chunk of broken stone crashed to the floor, shattering into a thousand pieces. Where it hit was where Glitch had been standing just moments before. Panicked gully dwarves, carrying armloads of sifted pyrite away from the fall zone, scurried this way and that. High on the wall, a chorus of Aghar voices said, “Oops!”
“Oh, yeah,” Lidda remembered. “Want Glitch stay out of way when rocks fall.”
“Oughtta write that down,” Scrib suggested, to nobody in particular.
Lidda ignored him. Thoughtfully, she gazed at her husband, and came to a decision. “Time for you give up bein’ Highbulp, Glitch,” she said. “Let somebody else do it.”
Glitch clambered to his feet, gawking at his wife. “Give up bein’ Highbulp? Mean I should jus’ abdica … termi … res … quit?”
“Sure,” the Lady Lidda answered. “Why not?”
“I Glitch th’ Most!” Glitch blustered. “Highbulp, noble leader. Main pain! Biggest cheese aroun’. Been Highbulp long time! Always been Highbulp! Why quit?”
“Not much fun anymore?” Lidda suggested.
Daunted by the logic of this, Glitch subsided a bit, muttering to himself. “Quit an’ do what?” he asked, finally.
Lidda only shrugged, but Gandy pointed his mop handle staff at the growing pile of gleaming pyrites beneath the wall dig. “How ’bout new career?” he suggested. “Clan got big, new mine here. Need somebody in charge of shiny rocks.”
“Pretty big job,” Glitch admitted. “Not jus’ ever’-body know ’bout shiny rocks.” He thought it over for a moment, then removed his crown of rat’s teeth and dropped it on the floor. “Okay, somebody else be Highbulp. I quit. Hey, everybody! Bring shiny rocks over here!”
Grumbling at the aches in his old bones, the Grand Notioner picked up the dilapidated crown and thrust it at Bron. “Here,” he said, “You be Highbulp now.”
Bron didn’t even look around. He was busy. Pert had him stirring the stew. “Nope,” he said. “Don’t want to.”
“Gotta have a Highbulp,” Gandy insisted.
“Get somebody else,” Bron said.
With a determined sigh, Gandy hobbled away a few steps and thumped his mop handle on the stone floor until the clamor around him subsided. This was not going the way the Grand Notioner had planned, but it was too late to turn back now. “Glitch not Highbulp anymore,” he announced to all who were listening. “Need a volunteer.”
“For what?” several of his clansmen wondered.
“For be Highbulp,” Gandy explained. “Crown up for grabs. Who want be Highbulp?”
Only silence and blank stares answered him. Then from high on the wall, a voice said, “Let Bron be Highbulp. Bron got nothin’ better to do.”
“Bron a hero!” Pert protested.
“Don’t need hero.” Gandy said. “Need Highbulp. But Bron says no.”
“Don’t wanna be Highbulp!” Bron insisted, still stirring stew. “Dumb job, bein’ Highbulp.”
“Any other nomina … sugges … any takers?” Gandy called, turning this way and that, holding up the crown. By threes and fives, the gully dwarves of Clan Bulp turned away, expressing their disinterest.
“Somebody gotta be Highbulp,” the Grand Notioner insisted.
“You do it, then,” a gully dwarf snapped, carrying an armload of pyrite to Glitch’s pile.
“Make Bron or Clout do it,” several said.
With an eloquent shrug, Gandy returned to the fireside. “Bron Highbulp now,” he proclaimed. Standing on tiptoe, he tried to set the old crown on Bron’s head. “Majority rule.”
Bron glared at him, avoiding the crown. “How many majori … maj … whatever?” he demanded.
“Two.” Gandy said, sagely.
“No way,” Bron said. “Let Clout do it.”
“Clout not here.”
“Crown here. Jus’ say, ‘Clout Highbulp now.’ ”
“Okay.” The Grand Notioner gave up. “Clout Highbulp now. Anybody see him, tell him so.”
With that task completed, the Grand Notioner turned his attention to getting some stew. He retrieved an old wooden bowl from its hiding place in his garments, stooped … and stopped. Bron was still stirring with his broadsword, muttering to himself about the injustice of it all, but he was stirring nothing. Where the stew had been, simmering in the legendary Great Stew Bowl, now there was nothing. Even the great iron pot was gone. The whole mess had simply vanished, as though it had never been there.