Excerpt 5 from the Third Diary of Terrahex the Dwarf
Urist and Fischer were waiting at the prison at the agreed time, and when Rose and I stepped into the prison, my veil of shadows falling from my shoulders, I saw that Hans was waiting there as well. The large dwarf was sitting outside Talvi’s cell playing with cavies by throwing them carrots. Where he got the carrots, I’ll never know and I’ll never ask.
“We’re here.” Rose accentuated our arrival. Everyone had their weapons, though no one wore armor that I could see, though I knew that Rose always wore chainmail under her clothing. She had to be ready for a fight at any time, she told me.
“So we can see.” Fischer replied, digging a key out of her trouser pocket and inserting it into the lock. Urist was facing the opposite direction from me and so was Hans. Rose had assured me that Splint had told them not to look at me until I’m comfortable in their presence. I was thankful for that as it made communication wheelbarrows better.
When the door swung open on greased hinges, I stepped in, finding that Talvi was already looking at me. I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t know how long the three of them had been outside her cell, but as soon as they came, Talvi had to know something was up. She had a childlike mind, but no one could accuse her of being stupid.
I was struck by how dim her cell was on the inside, as if it was designed to have less light than the hallway. It stank of cavy waste. Talvi turned her head away from me, a pouty look on her face.
“Hello.” I said softly to her.
“I’m not talking to anybody that’s on their side.” Talvi harrumphed.
“Talvi, I’m not on their side.”
“Yes, Terrahex, you are, surer than a basketfula milk.”
“No, I’m not. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.” I took a step closer to her bed, but she still was turned away from me. “Don’t you know what they’re going to do to you if you don’t cooperate?” She didn’t answer, so I continued. “First they’d start yelling. Then they’d yell louder. Then, Fischer would start to take her anger out on you.” I leaned forward and spoke each word loudly with a short pause between them, just to make sure she could hear. “Fischer will hurt you. She’ll hurt you badly. You might die.”
“She wouldn’.” Talvi whimpered, looking back to me.
“She would.” I nodded, my face serious. “And you know she will.”
“Whya bein’ like this Terrahex? I thought we was friends.”
“I told you. I am your friend. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“Terrahex, I can’t tell ‘em where the body is! Don’t ya see!” Talvi whispered. “It’s in the caves.”
“The caves?”
“You know, the caverns that run all natural-like under the ground. I pushed her into one of thems.”
“Why don’t you just tell them that?” I asked, a bit annoyed.
“’Cause, silly. How do you think I get to it? Cavy holes. I can travel through ‘em easier than a jackrabbit on a Tuesday night, but nobody else never pays no attention to them. Even if they could find the right hole, they’d get lost faster than a worm with no eyes.”
“Worms don’t have eyes.” I pointed out.
“And that’s why they’re always lost!” Talvi exclaimed. “I ain’t tellin’ nobody where she is.”
Ten minutes later, I finally left the jail cell. I was satisfied with my answer, but I wasn’t sure how satisfied Fischer would be.
“How’d it go?” Rose asked.
“About as well as could be expected from a bull like Talvi.” I sighed.
“Will she tell us where Vanya is?” Urist asked, hope in his eyes.
I shook my head. “She won’t, but she’ll show us where.”
It took some convincing for Fischer to let Talvi leave the prison. She was still a convict, despite her incarceration being mainly due to her own insistence in going to jail. She yelled at me, I got sick, I yelled back in about ten minutes when I felt better.
Rose threatened to fight Fischer if she tried to get the information out of Talvi with force, knowing full well how the fight would end. Fischer then directed her yelling at Rose, accusing her of bluffing. I knew Rose wasn’t one to bluff.
The fighting would’ve probably continued had Hans not gotten between Fischer and Rose at the risk of his health. He suggested that Rose and Fischer and I try to come up with a compromise. In the end, Fischer tied the ends of a length of rope to each of Talvi’s ankles so she couldn’t walk full stride. Even if she did get out of sight, she’d have to take time to undo the tough knots that Fischer tied if she was going to stand a chance of getting away.
We were on our way soon after, heading down the master staircase of Spearbreakers to the lower levels. Fischer was annoyed that I hadn’t told her about the caverns being the final resting place of Vanya, but I didn’t say anything when she mentioned it, soon blending back into the background in everyone’s eyes but Rose’s and Talvi’s.
When we passed by the graveyard, Talvi, having difficulty taking the stairs with bound legs, stumbled and careened headfirst into a stone coffin. Fischer overreacted and yanked Talvi to her feet by the arm. Talvi elicited a terrible cry in response and began sobbing, refusing to move while holding her head in her arms. No amount of prodding by Fischer or comforting words by Rose and I would get her to budge, and in the end we had to wait until she was petered out on crying.
It wasn’t until later that I would realize that the banging I heard in the graveyard had any significance.
“Right here.” Talvi said confidently when we arrived at a small crack in the wall where a vein of malachite had met microcline and a miner had started to dig before the overseer had given the order to stop.
“Are you sure?” Fischer asked, looking around. “There are many more breaches in the wall. How do you know it’s this one? An elf couldn’t have fit through there.”
“I’m sure.” Talvi nodded, getting down onto her hands and knees to where the crack was widest. “It smells like cavies.”
I shrugged and looked into the inky darkness of the hole, seeing a long ways in before it turned sharply to the right. “Looks like it goes in quite a ways, though I’m not sure how Hans is going to fit.” I announced. Everyone had become accustomed by then to me popping up out of seemingly nowhere, but Fischer, Urist, and Hans still jumped.
“It’s alright.” Hans shrugged a little dejectedly. “I’ll wait here.”
“Okay, troops,” Fischer commanded, “Let’s move. Talvi, I want you in first. Terrahex, I want you in after her. From what Splint has told me, you’re fast. If Talvi makes a break for it, I expect you to catch her. I’ll follow and Urist will bring up the rear.”
It was a tight squeeze at first, especially for Fischer, Rose, and Urist. They all had bulky weapons that they refused to leave behind. The only light came from the dim glowing of Rose’s hammer, but dwarven night vision was a useful thing indeed.
Fischer was wise to put me behind Talvi. She crawled quickly in these cramped tunnels even with bound legs. I struggled to move at her pace, and even so, I lost ground and scraped my knees. Talvi waited for us at numerous diverging paths, but never long enough for us to catch our breaths. I was beginning to think Talvi really was a cavy in a dwarf shaped body when we finally emerged on a high ledge.
It took a moment for everyone to finally get through, but when we did we looked around in awe. Even in the dark, the giant stalactites of the caverns sparkled with false preciousness. The ledge was short and claustrophobic but a noticeable improvement over the cavy tunnels. A short ramp of loose stone gave way to the cavern floor a hundred feet below.
“We’re here.” Talvi said without a smile. “Now yall can see plain as the whiskers on a cavy’s face there ain’t no way down.”
We stood in silence for a couple of minutes while we processed what that meant. Rose was the quickest. “You mean we crawled through that terrible tunnel all for nothing?”
“I told you it was hopeless.” Talvi spoke, her voice echoing in the caverns. “But yall wouldn’t listen to me. ‘Don’t listen to the cavy.’ Yall said, ‘We know better than the cavy.’ Well I gots a surprise for yall, you don’t. Cavies always know bestest.”
“Shut up or you’ll follow Vanya.” Fischer threatened. Talvi did as asked, though she looked satisfied in the point she had made.
We were all silent for a good while before Urist said that he thought he saw a pond down there. All of us looked over the ledge, careful not to fall down that dizzying height. Sure enough, there was a glimpse of water down there that you couldn’t see if you were standing at the top of the ledge.
Urist was excited by this. “If that’s deep enough and she landed in it, she could’ve survived.”
“How can we tell if it’s deep enough?” Rose asked, hefting her radioactive hammer on her shoulder. “We can’t just jump.”
“Maybe we don’t have to.” Fischer said, looking at Talvi. “All we’d have to do is throw the most expendable dwarf down.”
“Fischer!” Rose exclaimed.
Before they could argue more, I broke in. “I can find out.” I said plainly, trying not to give anything away on my face.
“And how in Armok’s name can you do that?” Fischer asked impatiently.
I didn’t answer her. Instead, I stepped carefully down the slope, needing to at least look like I was examining the pond. Rocks loosened at the touch of my feet and spilled over the Cliffside, spinning a few seconds midair before colliding with the muddy ground below.
Perched precariously at the bottom of the slope and the top of the cliff, I pulled back my sleeve just enough to reveal the fourth rune on my arm. In the dark I saw the full circle. I pulled my sleeve back down, not wanting everyone else to see it glowing on my arm when I activated Echo Map, my fourth spell.
I closed my eyes and all at once was overcome by the sensations that wrapped around me like a blanket. I could hear everything, see everything, around me, laid out before me like a huge, three dimensional map. The shear amount of information being sent through me overwhelmed me and I found myself following the cavy tunnels we had taken to get to the ledge, roaming through them unbound by walls. At the end of them, shining bright red in a light blue sea was Hanslada, sitting watchfully by the crack that we had all squeezed ourselves into.
Then I was following the mined out vein of ore back to the staircase. High above me was the very fringes of Spearbreakers proper. I could see dwarves hastily rushing about as they performed jobs, though I wasn’t quite close enough to see them clearly. I saw vaguely dwarf shaped blobs of red combine and split apart as dwarves started and ended conversations. I found myself pushing farther than that, farther until I could no longer discern hallway from dwarf from solid stone.
I agonizingly ripped my attention away from Spearbreakers and focused it back on the caverns. I couldn’t quite get myself to focus on what I wanted and found myself roaming the maze of tunnels and stalactites. I found a roaming band of crundles and watched as they fearfully fought off a giant bat to protect their food. I saw a drop of water fall from the ceiling and crash loudly into a giant lake far off from Spearbreakers. I lost myself in those tunnels, exploring intricate webs freshly spun by cave spiders, weaving in and out of the ribs of a gorlak’s mutilated skeleton, exploring a vent of magma.
I felt my body slip on the loose stones of the ledge, but by then, my mind was far away from it, detached from that little speck in the spacious caverns. I felt myself slowly teeter, threatening to go over. Suddenly, a hand grabbed my arm, and a loud, reassuring voice met my ear.
“I got you, buddy.” Rose panted. All at once I was pulled back to my body, still in Echo Map, but grounded near my body. I explored up her arm and found her face to be a mess of concern and exertion. Urist grabbed her arm and anchored her to keep both of us from spilling over the ledge together. I didn’t have to turn around to see any of it.
“Sooner would be better than later.” Rose panted. Suddenly I remembered what I was doing with Echo Map. I looked down the ledge, struggling not to let the overwhelming signals divert me. Down far below was the pond, actually a large lake, that I was supposed to judge. I jumped down and landed at the bottom of the lake.
All at once I knew everything about it.
I canceled Echo Map and gasped, flinging myself backwards. “Haul me up! Haul me up!” I cried and Rose did quickly.
When I was safe on the ledge again I gave them the answer.
“A large portion of the lake is deep enough.” I struggled to get out. I yanked back my sleeve to see that the circle was three fourths empty. I had been using it for at least five minutes. It felt like an eternity.
“How do you know?” Fischer asked skeptically.
“I just know.” I replied, a bit peeved that I had gone to all that effort just to be questioned (though in retrospect, it was a just question she asked). “It’s about 30 feet deep in some places and around the shore is a pretty steep drop off of ten feet. If she landed anyplace in the pond, there’s a pretty good chance she survived without any injury.”
“That’s amazing.” Urist scratched his beard. “Another talent of the incredible Terrahex I presume?”
“Does anyone else hear that?” Talvi suddenly asked, her head cocked to the side.
Everyone quieted suddenly. Off in the distance, through all the stone, was some sort of haunting chiming.
“Bells.” Fischer identified the foreign sound. “Alarm bells. Spearbreakers is under attack.”
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Topic: [34.11] Spearbreakers - It shudders and begins to move (Read 2191845 times)