“There is an old gnomish axiom which states that something will work until it doesn’t,” Dr. Palaver explained. “And since we don’t know that it doesn’t work we must assume that it does. It really is elementary if you think about.”
“I see,” Morg sighed, though he really didn’t see.
When they had reached a certain section of the tunnel that seemed significant to the gnome, but which was no different than any other they had passed along the way-except perhaps that there was a particularly vile smell wafting from a nearby passageway-the gnome paused and removed a strange-looking device from one of his coat pockets.
“This inflatable sleeve monitors the thickness of the vines in the arm,” the gnome said, as he wrapped a thing around the kender’s arm that looked like the air bladder of a large fish. A long tube ending in an onion-shaped bulb of similar material depended from one end of the device, while from the other hung three tiny brass bells of varying sizes and tones. “It is believed that the thickness of the vines in the arm is directly provisional to the state of health. Any sudden changes could indicate a converse reaction to the potion, but we will be alerted to such changes by the ringing of the smallest bell. This middle bell indicates that there is a problem with the first bell, and this largest bell indicates that there is a problem not associated with either bell.”
Next, the doctor removed a strange set of spectacles from the upper-middle breast pocket of his white coat. They were not ordinary reading spectacles like the ones perched on the tip of his own very large, bulbous nose. Instead, they seemed made of some kind of thick, dark, opaque material through which no light could possibly pass, and which wrapped completely around the face. “How marvelously hideous!” Morg exclaimed, as the doctor slipped them onto his nephew’s nose and wrapped the arms behind his pointy ears. Once on his face, the lenses magnified to grotesque proportions the size of his eyes behind them. He blinked, and it was like someone quickly opening and closing the shutters of a pair of dark windows.
“These spectacles measure the pupae reactions of the eyes for any changes which could indicate possible side effects such as a sudden onset of death-like symptoms. The lenses also prevent any outside influx of proprietary confluences which might construe the results obtained from the measurement of the potion’s benefits. Do you understand?”
“Not really.”
“Erngh.”
“Excellent! Shall we begin?” The gnome snapped open the cover of his bullseye lantern. Pointing a long narrow beam of light ahead of him, he led the two kender into a smaller passage of the sewer. He splashed heedlessly through the muck, while Whort trudged behind and Morg brought up the rear, leaping nimbly or pole-vaulting with his hoopak from dry spot to dry spot in a vain attempt to keep his bright green leggings clean.
Few but the most esoteric of scholars and thieves knew this, but the sewers of Palanthas weren’t really sewers at all. They were an ancient dwarven city, carved into the bedrock centuries before the first humans sailed into the Bay of Branchala, even before the wizards raised the Tower of High Sorcery with their magic. But the city was abandoned by the dwarves long before the humans took over the land above it. Those who first discovered it found it empty and desolate. Some say it was once part of the great dwarven empire of Kal-Thax, which vanished without a trace before Thorbardin was even a dream in the mind of Reorx.
As they rounded a bend in the sewer, the trio entered a much larger passage than any they had encountered so far. It was also by far the most pungent. Before them lay a small lake of sewage, in which floated as varied a collection of garbage as any city could boast-everything from a toy boat with a broken mast to a dead and very bloated pig to a whole wagon bobbing belly up with its wheels in the air. Large brown globs of thick and apparently solid foam bumped about among the more common rotting rinds of vegetables, slicks of oil, and shingles of congealed fat.
“We call this place the Gully Dwarf Stew Pot,” the gnome shouted over the smell, as he tied a bit of white cloth across the front of his face. “This section of the tunnel invertabrately clogs up during the rainless summer months, and gully dwarves find this place irrefutable. The Civil Engineering Guild Local 1101 is currently discussing a hundred and forty-three possible solutions, but in the meantime I can think of no better place to begin to effect a revolution of the patient’s melody.”
“I’ve never smelled anything quite so extraordinary,” Morg said, while pinching his nose. A burning and curiously itchy curiosity to explore every inch of this place and see what might be found floating in the water competed with a very real concern for the future state of his clothing.
The gnome hitched up his coat and jumped in, promptly sinking up to his white beard. Being a kender and thus somewhat taller than his gnomish companion, the sewage only came up to Whort’s pouches, but his uncle, being much weighted by his more recent acquirements, slipped upon landing and vanished below the surface. He came up spluttering and thrashing, while his maps spread around him like a jam of small logs. They quickly began to sink, many vanishing into the dark mucky water before he could recover his wits and grab them.
“Come along, this way. Follow me!” the gnome ordered as he started off, flailing the water to aid his progress. Morg stuffed his remaining maps into a shoulder pouch, making sure to tie it securely shut before continuing.
Though this section of the sewer was illuminated at irregular intervals by iron grates set in the roof, there was very little light to see by, and the water was so thick with muck that no light could pierce its depths. At each step, there was a danger of dropping into some deep hole. The three explorers felt their way along the slimy bottom as they slogged through the water, wary of sudden drops, or worse.
As the sewer merged with the Market Street tunnel, the grates in the roof gradually grew more frequent, providing more light and helping to speed their progress. Because this section of the sewer opened directly into Market Street, one of the busiest streets in all Palanthas, it was no wonder that citizens of Palan-thas desired some means of preventing it from clogging, or to clear the clog once it was, well, clogged. To this end, the local gnomes had been diligently working for a number of years, with varying degrees of success. One of their most promising devices, the very large SNAKE (Self Navigating Auto-Keyhole Eviscerator-the original design was much smaller and was intended to clean keyholes clogged with rust) proved unreliable and was last reported still burrowing away somewhere near the town of Lemish.
Their most recent design was originally thought too simple to work, but to date it had passed every test. It consisted of a large wooden ball only slightly smaller in diameter than the passage it was meant to unstop. The ball was deployed upstream from the clog, then carried to the clog by the flow of water, where it punched through by the force of its own weight combined with the mass of water that had built up behind it. Downstream, it would be caught and wrestled back up an access passage to the street, for redeployment or storage, as needed. For explorers of the Palanthian sewer system, often the only warning of this bowling disaster came when the sewer suddenly drained away, rather like the surf before an oncoming tidal wave. So it was with no small alarm that Dr. Palaver realized he was crawling along the bottom of the sewer rather than swimming through its sludge. He looked back and found his companions standing only knee deep in the water, with the level swiftly receding.
Whort, who had spent some time, years perhaps, living in the sewers of Palanthas, knew immediately that danger loomed. The bells on his sleeve commenced to tinkle quite vigorously in his agitation. He grabbed his uncle’s arm and pulled, but Morg was much too intent on what was, by the sound of it, bowling from behind them.