“What ’bout Clout?” Lidda asked.
“What?”
“What Sap wanna tell Highbulp?”
“Bout Clout,” Sap repeated.
“What ’bout Clout?”
“Nothin’ much. Jus’ know where he is, case anybody want him.”
“Where?”
“Upstairs. Way up high. Heard him.”
“Why Highbulp not in This Place?” a passing gully dwarf wondered. “This place not This Place ’thout Highbulp here.”
“This not This Place?” another said. “Then where This Place?”
“Someplace else, I guess,” Sap reasoned. “Maybe upstairs, where Highbulp is?”
A dozen yards away, thunder erupted and dust rolled as a great gout of loosened stone fell from the vaulted ceiling. Among the rockfall were various screeching miners. All around the shattering blast, gully dwarves scampered for safety. Several of them ran right through the new cook fire, spilling the stew and kicking coals in all directions.
Near the grand column Scrib turned, and ducked back as shards of rock whistled past him.
Out of the roiling dust, disheveled gully dwarves emerged, Glitch among them. “ ’nough minin’!” the ex-Highbulp grumbled. “No fun anymore.”
“Stew all gone,” a gully dwarf lady announced. “Fire, too.”
“This place a mess,” several chorused. “Not fit to live in right now.”
“So what we do now?”
“Better find Highbulp,” the Lady Lidda said. “Highbulp decides stuff like ‘what now.’ ”
Old Gandy, the Grand Notioner, hobbled up, leaning on his mop handle staff. “Guess everybody better pack up,” he sighed. “Highbulp not here, we better go where Highbulp is.”
“Clout only been Highbulp since today,” Scrib the Scholar complained, unhappy at having to leave his squiggles. “Jus’ one day, an’ already gettin’ be a twit. Maybe oughtta have different Highbulp?”
Gandy shrugged philosophically. “One Highbulp jus’ like ’nother. All real nuisance. Anyway, gettin’ hard to keep track of who Highbulp is. Too many Highbulps lately.”
“Always hard to keep track of who Highbulp is,” someone observed. “Who cares, anyway?”
“Prob’ly oughtta write it down,” Scrib said, thoughtfully. All around him, gully dwarves were preparing to migrate.
“Kinda bad upstairs,” Sap warned. Talls havin’ a war or somethin’.”
“No pro’lem,” Pert said, proudly. “Bron take care of us. Bron a hero.”
Bron blinked, considering the enormity of it all. He didn’t want to be a hero anymore. But there didn’t seem to be any choice in the matter. Unhappily, he shouldered his broadsword and headed for the “stairway” to the world above.
“Yes, dear,” he muttered.
The Lady Lidda looked after her son, her head tilted thoughtfully. Little Pert was showing real skill at the care and tending of numbskulls, and it occurred to Lidda that Pert might make a fine consort for a Highbulp. The only problem was, Bron wasn’t Highbulp. Clout was. But Bron had all the makings of a good one. At Pert’s direction, he was leading the tribe.
Gandy was right, Lidda decided. There were too many Highbulps right now.
Chapter 23
Lord Vulpin encountered unexpected resistance in withdrawing the Fang of Orm from the broken cabinet. He pulled the thing halfway out, then blinked and caught his balance as the thing recoiled back into the shadows with unexpected strength. Somebody inside there, someone unseen, was trying to pull the ivory talisman out of his hand.
With a muttered oath, the lord of Tarmish braced himself, firmed his grip and heaved. In an instant the Fang was his, clenched in his steel-gloved fingers. But swinging from the end of it was a babbling, struggling, ugly little person half his height, a raggedly-clothed creature that vaguely resembled a diminutive human but distinctly was not.
“Gully dwarf!” the warlord rumbled. With a vicious shake he dislodged the little creature from his prize. The gully dwarf went tumbling into a corner and Vulpin lashed out with a steel-shod foot, barely missing the creature. The gully dwarf skittered aside, shrieked and dashed back into the sanctuary of the broken cabinet.
“Vermin,” Vulpin muttered, then dismissed the imbecillc little creature from his thoughts. Gully dwarves weren’t worth thinking about, beyond a mental note to have exterminators scour the premises when the present task was completed. He held the Fang of Orm high, gazing at it, his eyes glowing with a triumphant light.
“Mine,” he said. “The Wishmaker is mine, and the world is about to be.”
“Mine!” the broken cabinet argued. “My bashin’ tool!”
Ignoring the objections from the furniture, Vulpin strode to the shattered wall above the inner courts. Below, a melee of armed men swept this way and that. Tarmites and Gelnians raged and strove, howling their bloodlust. From above it was impossible to tell one force from another. They all looked the same. Here and there, on the battlefield, the fallen lay in pools of gore. But these were relatively few. Vulpin’s helmed face twitched sardonically. For all their ancient hatreds, the combatants were not very capable fighters. The battle raged, but it produced more noise than blood.
There were exceptions, though. A mismatched pair of warriors, neither Gelnian nor Tarmite-one looked like an urban alley-dweller, the other a tall, rangy plainsman-were making their way through the fray, slashing and countering, scattering combatants like wind-blown leaves. Vulpin recognized the plainsman, and he heard the cry of his prisoner as the girl saw those below. “Graywing!” she called, her cry a plea.
“Graywing,” Vulpin sneered. A Cobar, with that code of honor that the plainsmen cherished. The other man below he did not know, but he knew the type. Thief or assassin, the smaller man was lithe as a cat, quick and deadly. A dagger-wielder. Vulpin peered downward, where the two were headed. At the base of the tower, a pair of axe-wielding icemen held both Gelnians and Tarmites at bay. Those would be seasoned mercenaries, Vulpin realized, part of Chatara Kral’s personal guard. Which meant that Chatara Kral was here, in the tower.
“Your timing is perfect, little sister,” he rumbled. “Come up. Come up now and face your destruction.” To his guard he snapped, “Give me the girl.”
Thayla Mesinda was shoved forward roughly, and Vulpin closed steel-sheathed fingers on her arm. “You have been well-treated, girl,” he said. “You have been fed, made comfortable and protected. Now-”
“You kept me prisoner!” Thayla snapped, then gasped as his iron fingers tightened cruelly on her arm.
“I have kept you safe and pure, for a purpose,” Vulpin said. “Now it is time to pay your debt. I require only one thing of you. You must make a wish.”
“I wish you’d let me alone!” Thayla shouted at him.
“A wish,” Vulpin growled. “But it must be my wish, and no other.” With a sudden movement he released her arm and his steel fingers closed around her throat. “I will tell you what to wish. You will wish exactly as I tell you. If you alter my wish, even in the slightest way, in that instant I will snap your neck. Do you understand?”
She struggled and fought, but to no avail. The man was incredibly strong. Her flailing little fists, her soft slippers and her clawing nails met only metal armor. She saw the light dimming, like a tunnel closing in around her. She could not breathe.
Dimly, beyond the armored lord, Thayla glimpsed movement. A gully dwarf darted furtively from the broken telescope cabinet and peered over the outer wall, waving.
“Hey, ever’body!” the little creature called. “Could use some help up here!”
Vulpin’s fingers relaxed slightly and Thayla gasped for breath. Her throat throbbed and ached.
“Do you understand?” Vulpin demanded.
Defeated and barely conscious, the girl gulped air into her burning lungs. She nodded, trying to speak. “Yes,” she whispered.
Still holding her by the neck, Vulpin raised the Fang of Orm before her eyes. “Do you know what this is?”