Tordek did as she bade, digging through pouches of trail rations, leaves, little clay pots, a soft bag of some squishy substance, and other odds and ends before finding three leaves of parchment rolled around a sunrod. He showed them to her, and she chose one. Tordek held his torch up to illuminate the page as she intoned the healing magic. Together they watched as its soothing power ran through Vadania's hand and into the festering wound. Instantly, the ruddy stain of poison faded, and the swollen flesh became smooth and healthy once again.
"Still hurt?" he asked.
"Not a bit," she said, "but I feel a little stiff. Maybe you or Lidda should lead the way in."
"You keep an eye on the bard," said Tordek. "He's liable to try something 'daring.'"
Vadania smiled. When she saw that Tordek was still scowling, she wiped the expression from her face and nodded.
They followed the passage deeper into the bedrock, finding only scant clues that the place was ever inhabited. A few rusty torch clasps slowly crumbled away from their sockets in the limestone walls, and twice they walked through tunnels scarred by the chisels that opened them wide enough for dwarven shoulders to pass.
Patches of shelf fungus and fuzzy mold covered the damp stone here and there. As they descended below the river's level the rocky floor gave way to great swathes of soft earth in which an increasing array of subterranean life flourished. There were tiny button mushrooms, mushrooms with bright red caps, mushrooms that grew over one another like ripples in a rain-spattered pond. Mushrooms grew underfoot, on the walls, and even on the ceiling in a few places. Some were squat and wide as lily pads, while a few rose taller than Lidda.
"Can we eat these?" she asked, crouching beneath one huge, pink and violet specimen as if it were a parasol.
"No," replied Vadania. "If you stand there much longer, it might eat you."
Lidda threw herself to the floor and rolled away in a hasty, graceless escape. She crouched there with her short sword drawn, watching for any sign that the giant mushroom might follow her.
"Just kidding," said Vadania.
"What?" Lidda turned on the druid, yellow rage in her eyes.
"Some people," Vadania said, not quite mimicking Lidda's usually cheerful voice. "A little levity."
Lidda stared at the druid, her expression twitching between real anger and surprise. She decided on pouting indignation when Tordek's deep chuckle escaped the shelter of his big red beard.
"Funny," he observed.
Lidda looked to Devis for support, but he was pressing a hand to his flat belly and bracing himself against the wall to keep from laughing aloud.
"That's enough," said Tordek. "Some of this stuff could be dangerous. Andaron's people undoubtedly cultivated this area, but in the years since the place was abandoned, who knows what degenerate strains have crept in."
"True," agreed Vadania. "I'll jest no more about the fungus. Some of it can be quite deadly. Don't eat any unless I've seen it first, and don't poke any of the large ones."
As they pushed deeper into the caverns, they found fewer clear paths through the fungus, and Lidda led them carefully around the more sinister-looking specimens. Once they spotted a sudden movement among a stand of tall, white stalks with puff-balls for heads. They crouched low and watched, momentarily sheltering their light, but whatever crawled through the soft fronds did not stir again. They resumed their explorations with weapons in hand.
The mushroom grottoes extended in all directions, each new cavern revealing two or three more passages leading to still more fungus-filled chambers. Through two of them ran a clean stream that Tordek estimated branched off from the untainted portion of the river outside. Near the bottom of the clear water they spied a few crawfish and an eyeless, pale gray eel coursing downstream.
"There," said Lidda, pointing at a spot just beyond their light. "Some chambers carved into the rock, behind that ridge of orange fungus."
After Vadania's guess that the brilliant, fan-shaped stuff was harmless, Tordek hacked a path through it and they peered into the chambers beyond. They were simple, cubical rooms upon whose black hinges still hung a few scraps of rotten wood. Inside, where mold had not grown into great mounds, they found little more than a stone trough in each of the four identical rooms. In one they found the white ribcage of a huge, long-bodied lizard half-buried in yellow mold. Vadania immediately warned everyone to stay well away from the powdery stuff.
"We're in the kennels," declared Tordek. "Keep searching."
Soon they found a stairway cut into the living rock. Its steps were blue with some slick, mossy growth that made Vadania shrug when Lidda asked whether it was safe.
"Don't we want to go up?" said Devis. "I thought the forge would be higher. Drier."
Tordek grunted an affirmative. "Let's search a while longer for another passage. If we don't find anything leading up, then down we go."
Half an hour later, they gave up their search for an alternative passage and turned back toward the overgrown staircase. If there was another egress, it had to be completely smothered by fungus or mold, and none of them wished to poke too deeply into the subterranean forest.
Before they reached their destination, a distant cry echoed through the caverns behind them. A jabber of goblin voices responded, and soon there followed a clamor of jostled armor, dire curses, and shouts for help from someone decidedly not a goblin.
"That's a dwarf they have!" said Tordek. He hustled toward the voices, and the others followed close behind. The sounds led them to a cavern choked with fungal growth, one they had skirted earlier because of its particularly foul stench and lack of a clear path.
"Cover the lights," he whispered, shoving his everburning torch into its shroud. Lidda did the same with her sunrod. In the resulting gloom, they all saw the crescent of light opening twenty feet above their heads. It had not been obvious on their earlier passage, but now they saw a small square of worked stone amid the natural stone of the ceiling.
The crescent soon became a circle through which they spied a struggle of ruddy goblin limbs and the bigger but outnumbered figure of an old dwarf with a long, snowy beard. The scuffle was brief, abruptly punctuated by the sound of a truncheon rapping against the dwarf's skull. The goblins chortled as they dropped the limp body through the hole, and they watched as it struck the dense fungus below and sent waves through the nearby fronds.
Tordek lurched toward the fallen dwarf, but Vadania held him back.
"Wait," she whispered.
Light from the goblins' torches illuminated the point where the dwarf had fallen. Tordek marked it and crouched impatiently. Even as the initial disturbance subsided, he saw two new waves form in the fungal growth. A fan of writhing tentacles rose briefly above the mushroom caps to taste the scent of the fallen dwarf before homing in on his location. He caught a glimpse of vivid, green flesh as some huge, wormlike body passed through the fungal trees.
The goblins cackled gleefully until one of them cracked a lash and scolded the others. Grumbling, they replaced the cover to the oubliette.
Tordek rushed forward. He drew out his everburning torch and stuck it in his shield hand, his right moving to unsling his war axe. After ten paces, he had to hack his way through huge stalks of mushrooms but still he plunged forward, for every step a stroke of his blade to clear the path. With every yard he gained, he saw the carrion crawlers move closer to the dwarf who lay motionless beneath the oubliette hatch.
Vadania ran past Tordek, seemingly unhindered by the thick barrier. Where her slender form slipped through the stalks, she left no sign of her passage. As she reached the gray-bearded dwarf, a prayer to nature was already on her lips. She knelt and pressed one hand flat on the dwarf's chest while holding her scimitar defensively above her head. It was a useless gesture, since her curing spell demanded her concentration.