Every now and again Seilloah would rise up from a puddle of fur, totter awkwardly and in obvious pain across the floor, and point out a spot where Corvis had misaligned a design or muddled a rune. (At which point, of course, the echo of Khanda in his mind would mock him unmercifully.) Irrial, still not entirely certain what was going on and a bit put out that they'd not deigned to explain, hovered to one side and occasionally fed another stick into the meager fire.
And then she jumped so violently she nearly swallowed her own eyes as Corvis, in a single swift motion, rose to his feet and drove Sunder into the nearest wall. The crunch reverberated vacantly throughout the cave, but it was the subsequent screech as he worked the enchanted blade from the stone that really set hair and teeth on edge, gnawing on the fringes of mind and soul like a maddened beaver.
"Buggering hell, Rebaine! What in the gods' names are you doing?"
Corvis froze in mid-swing. "Why, Lady Irrial, wherever did you learn such language?"
"Probably from spending-" She paused, wincing, at the second crash, and then the third. "-spending too much godsdamn time with you!" Another crash, a second wince. "Would you stop that!"
He glanced at the small chunk he'd carved from the stone, then down at the powdered rock at his feet. "Sure, that's probably enough. I-ow!"
For several moments he hopped on one foot, waiting for the pain to ebb from the other. "What was that for?"
Seilloah spat out a few strips of leather. "For not warning me. These ears are sensitive."
"Fine! Fine, I'm sorry. I should've told you it was coming."
"I believe I just said that." And, simultaneously, 'I believe she just said that.'
This was not, Corvis knew without even taking the time to ponder it, an argument he was likely to win. "Irrial," he said instead, "I need a gem."
"What?"
"A gem. Diamond, emerald, doesn't matter, though more valuable is better."
"I don't-"
"I know you took a few bits of jewelry from Rahariem."
The baroness frowned. "And you think you're just entitled to them?"
"Consider it fair price for escaping here alive. Unless you don't think it's worth the cost? You're welcome to take your business elsewhere…"
Muttering a few more of those words that she must have learned from Corvis, Irrial slipped a glinting blue ring from her finger and handed it over. He took it, flipped it over a time or two, and then snapped the sapphire from its setting and handed the silver band back to her.
"Your change, m'lady."
"Thanks ever so," she grumbled.
He took a few more moments, gathering rocks from around the cave into a circle, for reasons that neither Irrial nor even Seilloah initially understood. Only when he placed the tiny sapphire in the midst of it and raised his axe high overhead did they comprehend: He wanted to ensure the shards and powdered gem didn't get lost throughout the cave.
And it was a good thing he did, too, as he first struck the tiny target only obliquely, sending it skittering across the floor, bouncing and rolling until it fetched up against the edge of his work space. His entire posture daring either of the women to comment, he stomped over to it, put it back in place, and tried once more.
This time it shattered cleanly beneath the Kholben Shiar. Again bending over, and again struggling with the pain in his back, Corvis scooped up the dust and splinters into one palm and sprinkled them into the pile of rock dust he'd already gathered. Then, using an eating knife rather than Sunder, he drew a thin line down the palm of his left hand and squeezed exactly nine drops of blood into the mixture, adding water from a leather skin until the whole thing was a gritty paste.
"What-?" Irrial began, only to have Seilloah look up and shush her.
Corvis moved about the symbols he'd sketched, chanting an atonal, discordant litany as he went, daubing the gunk at various points across the runes. When he was done, he sat cross-legged in the center of it all and, pausing just long enough to draw breath, raised his voice to a shout. Sounds and syllables that were not words echoed across the cave-and then, though Corvis never wavered and his chant continued, those echoes stopped, sucked away by the stone.
A minute passed, then two. And then they were there, appearing through the shadows and even the rock wall as though stepping between the curtains on a stage.
There were five, or rather there seemed to be five; it was impossible to say for certain. They were half Rebaine's height, but there was nothing remotely child-like about them. Filthy, maggot-pale skin covered long and gangly limbs that hung at improper angles and bent in unnatural directions. They did not walk so much as convulse, each twitch carrying them the distance of a single pace. Pink, irritated eyes sat, uneven and far too close together, above a jagged, tooth-rimmed slash.
Corvis thought no less of Irrial when she whimpered and retreated as far as the cave's walls would allow; he'd dealt with the foul things before, but it was all he could do to hold his ground.
He spoke as firmly as a voice made hoarse by his prior incantations would allow. "I offer greetings to the gnomes, true and rightful lords of the earth's inner flesh. I am-"
"He knows." It was the foremost gnome, indistinguishable from any of the others, who interrupted in a voice of grinding stone. They came to a halt, all as one, and the speaker tilted its head to a perfect right angle. "He knows who has come, yes, has climbed into, under, the skin of the earth." He reached an impossibly long arm, sensuously caressed the cave wall with a cluster of irregular fingers. "Who dares again to call, yes, to spit the mountain's voice through flopping human lips. He knows the Rebaine, yes. He never forgets, none of him forgets the Rebaine."
"Nor has the Rebaine forgotten him," Corvis replied gravely.
"What…?" Irrial whispered.
"They call themselves 'he,' " Seilloah explained quietly. "I don't know if it's their language, or something about how they think, but they all do it."
"So how do they know which one of them's being addressed?"
"No idea, but they always do."
"… call to him now?" the gnome was saying. "He has nothing left to say, no, to tell the Rebaine. It risks its life, yes, its flesh, to come here, to his home beneath, below."
"I've come to bargain, as we have in the past."
"So, bargain, yes, deal." The vile creature licked its lips with something that more closely resembled a limp worm than a tongue. "Does it wish the same as before?"
"No, nothing so long term. We require you to guide us through your tunnels, far to the west." Then, at the creature's puzzled blinking, "Ah, in the direction of the sunset. For at least…" Damn it, how do the little creeps measure distance? "… at least, um, thirty-thousand paces. My paces, not yours."
"It wishes to walk, yes, to travel below? Through his paths and corridors? This, he does not like, no, has never allowed. What does it offer?"
Corvis pretended not to hear Irrial's whispered "I don't have a lot more where that first one came from." He gestured vaguely toward the cave mouth, still hidden from outside by Seilloah's phantasm.
"Many men hunt us. I offer you the chance to spill their blood, to avenge the theft of your ancestors and the rape of earthen wombs, as I did before."
The gnomes cocked their heads toward one another, puppets with loosened strings, and whispered in tones that Corvis felt vibrating in his gut and through the floor.
"No," the speaker grumbled finally, "he does not think so, no, does not agree. Before, the Rebaine offered him crowds, yes, homes and cities high above, far above, where normally he cannot go, no, cannot reach. And now it thinks these men here, yes, in the hills above are payment? They are not payment, no. He can take them whenever he wants, anytime, yes.