It took a bit of head-scratching, but then the Highbulp remembered. "Little stone? 'Bout this big? Special stone?"
"That's the one. I need it, and I need you and your… your people to find it for me."
The Highbulp scowled in deep thought, scuffing the ground with his toe. Then his eyes lighted with a shrewd look. "What in it for me?" he asked.
The deep growl that seeped through the fallen stone mixed irritation and controlled rage, but Verden held herself in check. She was trapped, but not helpless. It would be the work of a moment to free a claw and rend the arrogant little nuisance to shreds. But that wouldn't solve her problem. "What do you want?" she asked.
When the rest of his tribe found him — right where they had left him — Glitch I, Highbulp Etc., was sitting on a rock in the rockfall cavern, his chin resting on his knuckles. At first, he seemed to be deep in thought; then the other dwarves noticed that he was asleep.
They gathered around him, curious. Old Gandy walked around him, then prodded him with his mop handle staff to get his attention. "What Highbulp doin'?" he asked.
Glitch blinked, raised his head and looked around. "What?"
"Why Highbulp sittin' here?"
"Thinkin'," Glitch said, irritated at being awakened. "Highbulp doin' big think."
"Soun' 'sleep, thinkin'? Think 'bout what?"
Glitch scratched his head, trying to remember what he had been thinking about. From the shadowed rockfall beyond, a voice thin with exasperation said, "He's trying to decide what he wants from me."
The voice so startled the gully dwarves that several of them tripped over others, and for a moment the place was a tumble of confusion. Then Gandy stooped to look under the rocks. "Dragon? That still you?"
"It's still me," Verden Leaf glow assured him. "I can't believe that little oaf went to sleep. I thought he was thinking."
"Highbulp always go to sleep, when try to think," Gandy explained. "Think about what?"
"I am prepared to offer you stinking little… you people… something that you want, in return for delivery of my self-stone.
So what in the name of the Gods is it that you want?"
Gully dwarves tumbled about again, some diving for cover, some running for the exit. With a hiss, Verden exhaled a jet of noxious vapor — just a small stream, but aimed directly at the exit tunnel. Gully dwarves darting into the mist recoiled, gasping and coughing, tumbling backward as the green fumes assailed them. "No running away!" Verden commanded. "We are going to settle this, here and now! Tell me what you idiots want."
The Grand Notioner looked around him, puzzled. "Want? Dunno. Anybody know what we want?"
"Stew," several offered. "Out," a few others said. "Rats?" someone wondered.
"Make up your minds," the dragon hissed.
"We find self-stone, give to you, you give us somethin'?" Gandy pressed, trying to get it clear.
"Yes."
"What you give us?"
"I don't know!I'm trying to get you to…!"
Gully dwarves were diving, tumbling and rolling everywhere. The Highbulp tried to hide behind the stew pot, then sniffed at its aroma and realized that he was hungry.
With an effort, Verden lowered her voice again, speaking very slowly.
"I… am… trying… to… find… out… what… you… want," she said.
Gandy peeped out from behind a rock. "Oh," he said. "Okay. Highbulp, what we want?"
Glitch didn't respond. He was busy eating stew.
Something akin to inspiration tugged at Tagg's mind, possibly stirred up by realizing that Minna was beside him, holding his hand. "Maybe what we always lookin' for is what we want," he suggested.
Gandy glanced around. "What that?"
"Promised Place. Seem like we always lookin' for Promised Place."
"Mebbe so," Gandy nodded. To the dragon, he said, "We get you stone, you lead us to Promised Place?"
"Yes," she agreed, sighing. "Where is it?"
"Dunno," he said. "Hopin' you'd know."
"Rats," the dragon muttered.
"Rats, too," Gandy pressed. "Throw in some rats."
"All right! It's a deal."
Gandy crept nearer to the rockfall and leaned down to peer into the depths. A big, green eye looked back at him. "You say true?" Gandy asked.
The dragon glared at him, then sighed. "I say true. Have I ever lied to you?"
"Okay," Gandy decided. "When Highbulp finish eatin', somebody tell him he decided what we want. We get little rock for this dragon, we go to Promised Place."
Within moments, there were gully dwarves filing through the exit, all telling one another, "Find little rock, 'bout this big."
Tagg started to follow them, but Minna pulled him back. Still holding his hand, she crept toward the rockfall and looked beneath. "How come dragon make deal with us?" she asked.
"My lair collapsed," Verden said.
"Oh," Minna breathed. Again she looked into the depths of the fallen rock, at the great, green eye looking back at her. "Oh. Poor thing." Sympathetic and truly concerned, she reached into her belt pouch and brought out her finest treasure, the little bauble given to her by Tagg. "Poor dragon," she said. "Here. Here a pretty thing for you."
She reached the bauble toward the hole, and the green eye brightened. The dragon voice hissed, "That's it! It's mine!" A talon shot upward, spraying rock fragments into the cavern.
Tagg tumbled back, pulling Minna with him. She lost her hold on the self-stone, and it arced upward, then down.
There was a splash, and Glitch snapped, "Watch it! Highbulp eatin'!" Glaring, he swigged another mouthful of stew, gulped it down and grumped, "How come stew got rocks in it?"
"My self-stone!" Verden Leafglow shrieked. "You… you swallowed my self-stone!" Rocks erupted again, and a gigantic clawed arm emerged. For a second, huge talons flexed above the horrified Highbulp, then Verden hissed with frustration and pulled back her claws. The little nuisance might be nothing but a gully dwarf, but he was a living thing. And her self-stone was inside him. The self-stone, with its affinity for life.
If he died with the self-stone inside him, the crystal would be destroyed.
Under smoky skies, across a war-ravaged land, the combined clans of Bulp made their way out from Chaldis and into the vast reaches of the Kharolis Mountains, ever onward and ever upward, led by a thirty-six-foot-long green dragon who carried a Highbulp at her breast.
Verden Leafglow was not happy about the situation. As a guide for the puny creatures she so despised, she felt humiliated and degraded. She longed to simply splash their blood all over the nearest mountainside. She dreamed of doing that, but she did not do it. She was stuck with them. By holding Glitch I — and the self-stone within him — close to her breast, she had managed a temporary healing of her wounds. But it was only temporary, until she had her self-stone back, intact and uningested.
She needed the detestable little imbecile, and he knew it. At first, the sheer terror of being gripped in dragon claws and pressed against a dragon's breast had almost killed him. A more complex individual probably would have died from compounded fright and shock. Glitch had only screamed and passed out.
Since then, though, he had decided that he enjoyed being carried around by a dragon, and seemed to be doing everything in his power to maintain the status quo. Whether by his own doing or by simple luck, Glitch had kept Verden's self-stone lodged somewhere inside him for nearly a week. Through sheer stubborn perversity, it seemed, Glitch I had become constipated, and seemed determined to remain that way until Verden delivered him and his subjects to their Promised Place. She couldn't kill him, she couldn't dispose of him — each time she let go of him for more than an hour, her wounds began to open again — and she couldn't separate him from the rest without chancing that he would somehow disgorge the stone and lose it.