And these last flew through the rock and stone as if it was wispy smoke. They followed the beacon of Primus, who in turn was guided by his dark master. They flew, climbed, and swam in the world until the shell of that planet fell away to reveal a great underground sea, teeming cities-some bright with light and others inky black. They also found peoples of blood and flesh, victims for the coming of Chaos.
Zarak Thuul led, and the horde of Chaos followed.
Chapter Thirteen
Coming of Chaos
Though the lesson was painful, Tarn learned it quickly enough. The best thing to do was to try to breathe through his mouth. The air in the escape shaft had been tolerable, but when Regal had led him to an adjoining tunnel the stench had become fetid, the air almost unbreathable. By Tarn's best guess, their current passage was one of the sewage drainage tunnels underneath Daerforge. When he took a careless breath, this supposition was vividly confirmed.
"This Street Number One," Regal proclaimed proudly as he strolled down the great pipeway with no apparent discomfort.
"Street? Of what?" wondered Tarn, looking for anything that might distinguish the dark shaft as anything other than a big drainage pipe.
"Of Agharhome!" The gully dwarf seemed perplexed at his thickness. "This Number One Main Street of city!"
"Does it smell this bad everywhere?" Tarn asked, still breathing through his mouth.
"What smell?" Regal took a loud, wet sniff, and shook his head in mystification. "I smell no smell. Maybe you smell?" He fastened a look of calculated appraisal on his companion, but then shrugged forgivingly. "Oh, well. You not smell too bad."
Regal continued to lead him down the long, damp tunnel. He finally turned into a different shaft, then crawled into a narrower pipe that forced the reluctant Tarn onto his hands and knees as well.
"This Main Street Number Two," the Aghar informed him.
Despite his resolve not to breathe through his nose, Tarn periodically found himself accidentally catching a tiny whiff of Agharhome. Each time he gagged on the stench, and they were forced to halt while Tarn drew desperate, rasping mouthfuls of air.
At first each assault of tainted vapor seemed like a toxin powerful enough to blacken his vision. But he was surprised to note that, very gradually, the hideous stench seemed to become somewhat less offensive. It was not that the smell was any less vile or any less intense. Instead, it was more like his nostrils had become desensitized, so that the occasional waft that passed through the guard of his closed palate ultimately brought no more than a sensation of mild distaste.
Regal Everwise-or was it Wise-Always? — continued to lead the way as the two of them moved through a series of tight passages that sometimes descended and sometimes proceeded in a more or less lateral direction. The passages were narrow and smoothly made, but nothing like a city in Tarn's mind.
"What's that?" the half-breed asked as they passed a wider passage and heard sounds of laughter and sociable conversation.
'That Main Street Number Two," declared Regal.
"I thought this was… never mind." Tarn decided it was best to follow along with as few questions as possible.
They finally emerged from the base of a cliff. Looking over his shoulder and upward, Tarn saw the sweep of stone wall rising to the uppermost of Daerforge's levels. He recognized the twin towers at the gatehouse of his mother's manor and realized he was really not that far from the dwelling of his maternal ancestors.
But as he looked around he also felt transported to another world. A slope before him led steeply downward. It was a surface of huge rocks teetering dangerously at unbalanced angles. The slope was scored by paths and gullies that twisted around the huge outcrops. Beneath and around the rocks Tarn could see countless niches and darkened alcoves. He guessed that these dens must serve as the Aghars' houses and other buildings-well, shelters anyway since they didn't seem to have actually been "built."
While he was watching, he noticed several small figures dashing from one of these entrances to another with every appearance of great urgency. They dove into the burrows under the rocks, vanishing as quickly as they had appeared. Agharhome covered a broad, steep slope that led from the base of the cliff to the shore of the Urkhan Sea. At a casual glance the gully dwarf city was indistinguishable from a field of strewn boulders. The network of ravines and channels served as roads, just as the crude niches between the rocks served as buildings.
"Here we find my friends," Regal said, his conversational voice sounding like a shout to Tarn after the long, silent crawl. As soon as he got over his surprise, he realized that the whole area was abuzz with noise: laughter, argument, snoring, all kinds of sounds-though there were still no Aghar immediately in view.
"Sure. Regal?"
"What?" The gully dwarf stopped and looked up at Tarn, scowling suspiciously.
"I just wanted to say, urn, thanks… thank you for getting me out of there."
"Beer was gone anyway," Regal replied with a shrug. "My friends got more, but different kind. You will see. Gully grog got some real kick."
Tarn suppressed his misgivings, remembering the rather startling taste when Regal had shared his flask. "Well, I might have to take your word for it. The last time somebody showed their hospitality to me with a bottle, it didn't work out too well."
"Head hurts?" wondered the gully dwarf.
"Yeah, for starters," Tarn replied, still feeling the cottony thickness in his mouth and the queasiness in his stomach.
Regal sniffed, somewhat contemptuously. Any further critique was prevented by the sudden appearance of two more Aghar, who seemed to crawl out from beneath a nearby boulder. One was chubby and short even for a gully dwarf, while the other was taller with a red face framed by a bristling mane of frizzy hair.
"Regal Way-Too-Smart!" the short one declared, beaming. "You got home in time for… what? We gonna do something, I know." He turned to his companion while scratching his bushy head. "Why he come home?"
The second dwarf with an entirely hairless, egg-shaped face scowled. A seared and frazzled fringe of hair was visible at the back of the Aghar's head. The skin of his face was blistered. Even his eyebrows had apparently been burned away.
Regal cleared his throat with great formality. "This Poof Firemaker," he declared, pointing at the singed gully dwarf. "And Duck Bigdwarf."
Duck was undoubtedly one of the shortest Aghar Tarn had ever met. Even after he rose from his sweeping bow-a gesture which dropped him onto his face for a disconcerting moment-his head came barely to the level of Tarn's chest. Looking down, Tarn saw that the tangle of Duck's hair was alive with fleas. Stepping quickly backward, Tarn tried not to let his distaste show.
Poof also bowed, and Tarn saw that the burn line neatly intersected his skull into fore and rear halves. It seemed obvious to Tarn that the Aghar Firemaker had held his face a little too close to some incendiary project. This suspicion was reinforced by the sight of a small tinderbox that the gully dwarf proudly held up for the half-breed's inspection.
"Come and have some grog, now?" asked Regal, showing every intention of crawling under the boulder where the pair of gully dwarves had been. It appeared to be no more than a small and dingy niche. "Plenty even for big thirsty guy like you."
"Thanks a lot," the half-breed tried to explain, "but I've got to be going. I want to look around a bit."
His reluctance was only partly out of distaste. In fact, his thought processes had finally begun to grapple with the next question. Where should he go? The answer was obvious: back to Hybardin, back to his father, and especially back to Belicia. He would have to travel by boat, but his hopes were dampened by the sight of the Agharhome waterfront. There were a series of small jetties made from tumbled rock, but these looked like precarious places even for walking, much less docking a boat. And there were no watercraft anywhere in evidence, which, he realized with another glance at the trio of Aghar, was probably very sensible.