Realms of the Underdark

SEA OF GHOSTS

The disaster went unrecognized that evening by all who dwelt on the plains of the Eastern Shaar, who heard only the rattling of pottery on wooden shelves or soothed only the skittishness of tethered horses. A hunter lowered his bow, head cocked to catch a rumbling that frightened off his prey. A sorceress in a stone tower frowned, distracted from a mildewed tome by a vibration that caused the candle flames in the room to dance. An old shepherd sitting cross-legged on a rock looked up from the flute he had carved, surprised by distant thunder from an empty red sky. The sun flowed beneath the horizon.

An hour later, all was forgotten.

Far beneath the lazy grass of the Eastern Shaar, unseen by the rising moon, was a measureless maze of dripping caverns and dusty halls. Through this stupendous realm, a subterranean river hurled along a passage it had carved through a thousand miles of cold rock. Called the River Raurogh by dwarves who, over long centuries, had mapped its dark twists and turns, the channel descended through layer after layer of stone at a steady pace toward an unknown end.

Cautious dwarves slowly charted the river's course, probing for whirlpools, low ceilings, rapids, flesh-eating emerald slime, and unwholesome beasts that welcomed a change in their diet of blind, transparent fish. Foolish dwarves cast off in heavy rafts with magical lights fore and aft, determined to learn the river's secrets in a fraction of the time. Four out of five cautious dwarves came home to make their reports, only one in three foolish dwarves did the same. The cautious dwarves drew reliable maps. The foolish dwarves gave birth to legends.

It was a foolish dwarf, battered and wet, who returned to tell of the Deepfall at the Raurogh's end, which had claimed his eight companions and their raft. It had undoubtedly claimed many rafts before theirs. Other dwarves soon dug out a passage from a nearby cavern to the Deepfall, where they put down their tools and marveled at the sight. The long tunnel carved by the River Raurogh here opened into a titanic domed chamber splashed in scarlet and ocher hues. A thousand long stalactites and glittering mineral curtains hung from the dome like diamond chandeliers in an emperor's palace. The ancient silo, well over two hundred feet across, dropped away into nothingness. No sounds arose from the black depths to indicate that the cascade had found its bottom.

Seeing a natural ledge leading into the silo by the chiseled opening, a foolish dwarf soon edged out on hands and knees, bearing a short staff upon which a light-bearing spell had been cast. He looked up first, noting that between the brilliant formations on the ceiling was a dense network of narrow cracks looking a bit like a crude giant spider's web. Most of the cracks were filled in with mineral draperies, but their cause was still apparent. The entire ceiling, to an unknown height, had begun to separate from the rock above it.

The dwarf judged after a minute that the roof was still centuries away from yielding to gravity, and he worried about it no more.

The dwarf then looked over the ledge, his illuminated stick held aloft, and stared down into the abyss. His wisdom overcome by curiosity, he cast the enchanted staff over the edge and watched it fall until it was a spray-dimmed twinkle that was gone from view between one eye blink and the next. He lost track of the time over which the light fell, the depth into which he peered was beyond imagining. When the dwarf returned to his companions, it was deemed best to depart from the region in haste, in case an unwelcome being far down the shaft made its way up to investigate the source of the falling light. Nothing ever did, for which all were thankful, but the legend of the Deepfall spread and bewitched many a dwarf who heard of it.

In a short time, a hundred dwarves migrated from the crowded caverns of Glitterdelve, discontent with local taxes, and chiseled out new homes near the great shaft's dome. Coarsely woven nets strung across the river caught blind fish and crustaceans for the dwarves' food. Wastes and offal were cast into side passages where edible fungi and molds for potions were cultivated. Magical lights of golden hue soon filled the colony of Raurogh's Hall, as the cave village came to be known, though all light was carefully shielded from the silo's top to avoid alerting anything living far down the falls. The surrounding rock was solid, local predators were quickly dispatched, and the river's bounty was endless. Life was good for seventeen years and a hundred twelve days.

The derro waited for Wykar where they had agreed, toying silently with a long knife among the blue glow-fan fungi.

Wykar stopped and did not move a muscle after he eased around the entrance to the blue-lit cavern chamber and saw the derro. The hunched gnome warily embraced the chamber with his senses to discover if Geppo had unwisely brought friends along to the hidden garden of luminescent fungi, but he sensed nothing amiss. He nonetheless kept his gray hands free, ready to seize from his vest, belt, or boots whatever weapon was called for.

Geppo noticed the deep gnome after a few moments but did not seem startled. Head bowed in concentration on his knife, he peered up at the little intruder through his thick, pale eyebrows. A smile tugged at his thin lips. With skin as white and dirty as a toadstool cap, Geppo could easily pass for a true dwarfs corpse in his sleep. The orbs of his large, milky eyes each showed only a black dot for a pupil, little holes in moist white stones. His emaciated face was framed by long, matted hair of a filthy sulfur hue. An unkempt beard and mustache hid his sunken cheeks and narrow lower jaw.

Though Geppo was a head taller than the three-foot gnome, he seemed much the weaker of the two. The derro's skeletal frame had not fleshed out after his long, hard-lived enslavement by the drow. Except for a change of clothing and a few obviously scavenged tools and weapons now strapped to his person, he looked exactly the same as when Wykar had known him as a fellow prisoner. The faint blue light from the glowfan fungi added an air of unreality to the derro's presence, as if he had recently left his own grave.

Geppo wore a dark, muddy tunic of rough fabric, under which a darker outfit showed at the collar. Wykar guessed that leather or hide armor lay beneath. A finely tooled black belt bearing many small pockets and pouches was pulled tight at his thin waist. It looked like a drow's belt, but it was unlikely the derro had taken it from the bodies of their former masters. The Underdark held the remains of many failed plans and dreams, and one could get anything if one knew where to look.

After a long moment, Geppo's gaze dropped. He resumed scraping the edge of his long knife across the scar-crossed back of his right hand. "Late," he grunted, his voice as rough as a broken rock.

Wykar saw the butt of a weapon lying within reach of Geppo's left hand, almost hidden by the curled edge of a glowfan fungus. The bent gnome stepped closer, his movements relaxed and slow. The weapon looked like a crossbow, a little two-shot repeater type favored by the drow-a lucky find. When he was ten feet from Geppo, Wykar crouched on the balls of his boots and rested his elbows on his thighs, letting his thick hands dangle. "Long walk home," he replied.

Geppo snorted faintly, as if he recognized the lie. He lifted the knife blade, eyed its bright edge, then carefully slid it home in a crude sheath strapped to his belt. His thin arms then rested on his knees, hands limp. After a short glance around Wykar, he nodded. "Alone," he rasped approvingly.

"Alone," agreed Wykar. He detected no heat-glow but Geppo's, heard no sound but Geppo's breathing, smelled nothing other than the earthy scent of the glowing fungus and a sour, unwashed body odor that had to be the derro's. Didn't they ever bathe? It must be easy for Underdark predators to track them, little wonder most derro were so insanely paranoid.

Geppo nodded and seemed to relax. He reached over and gently broke a piece from a nearby glowfan. He popped the luminescent tidbit into his mouth and chewed.

Wykar saw disease-blackened teeth through the forest of filthy whiskers. The gnome swallowed and covered up his disgust. He never touched glowing fungus, much less ate it, many species of it were poisonous. Geppo seemed to enjoy fungus of any sort, though. The drow had fed him nothing else.

Wykar let it go. He inhaled slowly as he looked the derro over. "I was surprised to see you here," he said at last. "I didn't know if you would make it very far after…"

The derro smiled with the look of a wicked boy who is proud of something. "S'prise you, s'prise Geppo," he said. "You run much, walk much? You strong, hey. Geppo… mmm, no. Not strong." He held out his thin arms and turned them over, shaking his head and frowning in disapproval. "Not strong, hey? Sick much, sick much." He dropped his arms and shrugged, then leaned forward and stared into Wykar's cool gray eyes, a smirk on his ravaged face. "Hey," he whispered, his white eyes narrow. "Geppo sick much but"-his voice dropped further, as if telling a little secret-"laughing ones sick more now, hey?"

He pulled back before Wykar could reply. "Laughing ones sick more," he repeated with a quick nod. "Sick more than Geppo." The derro thumped his chest with a bony fist when he spoke his name.

Wykar's cheek twitched as he nodded in response, remembering. "Very sick," he said softly. He shivered, though he was not cold in the slightest.

Geppo's smirk faded. After a moment, he nodded and made a gesture of dismissal. "Laughing ones no laughing, all good. You say, see me here, then you run. You here now." He stopped, waiting.

The deep gnome looked into the derro's white eyes. This could work, he thought. He's still the same, or looks it. If he's the same old Geppo, this could really work.

Wykar swallowed. He sensed that he should speak only the truth at this point. Being caught in an important lie would lead straight to serious trouble, especially with a derro-even this one.

"When we… escaped, we left some unfinished business behind us," he said, making no pretense of talking down to the derro. Despite the derro's pidgin-talk, Geppo was intelligent and caught on to whatever was said to him. Some kind of innate derro trait, Wykar guessed. "I came here because I want to finish it. I need your help with things." Wykar swallowed, risking a small untruth. "I will ensure that you are well rewarded for whatever assistance you can give me."

The derro smiled again but did not look Wykar in the eye. "Ah," he said casually. He seemed to have anticipated the topic. He inhaled deeply as his left hand drifted up to his throat and gently rubbed the skin there. "Need Geppo's hel-" he began, but his voice suddenly broke before he could say more. He coughed and tried to clear his throat, then began coughing again, grimacing with pain.

Wykar could not see Geppo's neck through his rat's nest of a beard, but he doubted the derro's old wounds had healed yet. A fun-loving young drow had tried to strangle him as a joke, using a long, thin metal wire. The gnome waited for Geppo to recover his voice, wondering if the wounds had become infected from the filth that was encrusted over the derro's faded hair and skin. It would not be surprising.

The derro made a hand gesture of apology-something he had learned from Wykar during their captivity-then pointed at the gnome. "You," he wheezed faintly. Wykar's large ears could barely catch his tortured words. "You tell me what you do, hey?"

"Yes," said Wykar. It was time to face the issue and see what came next. He thought about the crystal-nosed darts just inside his vest, and the speed at which he would have to get to them if things went badly-if Geppo reverted to the derro norm, that is, and tried to threaten or kill him. "I came back because of that egg," he said. "I want to destroy it. I need someone to go along with me for protection. You can have whatever gold and gems they brought with them, but I want to see the egg destroyed. That's all I want." That and the death of every drow alive, but I can be reasonable, he thought.

The derro straightened and looked at Wykar in surprise. "Egg?" he said, his large eyes wider now. "You want big egg in chest, not-?" He shook his head with disbelief and stared at the gnome without further comment. Then he shrugged acceptance, and his eyes slowly narrowed, another topic obviously on his mind. He actually seemed to be considering the proposition then and there, with barely an argument. Several minutes passed. Wykar was patient but alert.

Geppo leaned forward again, absently running thin fingers through his beard. He regarded Wykar with a murky smile. "Golds and gems," he said, his voice stronger than before. "Golds and gems good for Geppo, hey, always good. But egg…" He frowned, then pulled at his tattered beard and nodded solemnly, a ragged king accepting the plan of an underling. "Egg not for Geppo. Egg, you wreck it. You wreck egg, yes. But-"

The derro held up a bone-thin finger. "You think good plan for us get golds and gems, wreck egg, hey? You not see Geppo if you think no plan, think bad plan. You think much, hey? Good, good think much. Geppo take golds, gems-help you wreck egg." The finger lowered, pointing at Wykar's head. "You tell Geppo good plan first, then all go, you wreck egg."

Wykar swallowed and took a deep breath. "I have a plan, but I need to keep it secret for now. You will have to go with me and trust me that I know what I am doing." His voice almost failed for a moment-I must not be weak, he thought-but he recovered and went on. "We must go back to the place where the golds-where the gold and the egg are, if they are still there, and I will tell you there how we are going to get the treasure out of there and destroy the egg. All that I ask of you otherwise is that we look out for each other on the way there and back."

Geppo grunted in skepticism, obviously unhappy. "Not tell Geppo plan? You keep plan secret?" He pressed his lips together and shook his head. "Not good," he murmured, eyeing the gnome. Then, to Wykar's surprise, he shrugged as if the matter were of no consequence. "Geppo go. Geppo get golds, you get egg-if golds and egg not gone, you say. We… look out for each other, hey." He gave his twisted smile again and clapped his hands softly together as if sealing the agreement. "We do."

Wykar blinked. He hadn't expected the derro to capitulate so quickly and with so little trouble. Wykar had been prepared to argue, plead, bluff, threaten, swear oaths, and even offer Geppo a little treasure up front, giving up a few tiny rubies he had hidden within his vest and belt. Geppo's agreeability was almost breathtaking. Derro were so befouled with greed and ambition that no one expected anything good from them.

Then again, Wykar had been imprisoned with Geppo for over two hundred sleepings, not long in a deep gnome's life but long enough to become familiar with most of the derro's personal quirks. Geppo's quirks hinted that he was not a normal derro.

For one thing, Geppo never lied. He exaggerated a bit at times, but he never lied. Geppo was also rather talkative, even after the drow youth tried to garrote him, going on about how hungry he was, what his father would have done with these drow, or his beliefs about the personal habits of the drow priestess who owned both Wykar and Geppo. Most strangely for a derro, Geppo had never threatened Wykar with anything more than words when they grabbed at the rotting scraps tossed into their cramped stone prison by their priestess-owner. Geppo had reserved violence only until the moment their escape was within reach, even then, it was directed only at his captors.

Wykar had become puzzled by Geppo's basically mild behavior, given that every other derro displayed far worse. The only reason he had impulsively asked the derro to meet with him and join him on this mission was that the gnome had a gut feeling Geppo would be pliable enough to go along with the strangest demands. Maybe Geppo was stringing Wykar along, pretending to be a partner while plotting betrayal, but Wykar didn't think so.

Every hero needs a fool, went a saving in the Underdark. How very true.

Wykar took a deep breath. There was only one thing more to do. It guaranteed nothing, but Wykar had always been a firm believer in having a contract. Sometimes you even found someone who would actually stick to it.

Wykar reached down and pulled his long blade free of its sheath. He did it slowly, noting Geppo's startled movement for his own blade. The polished metal of the gnome's weapon was stained red with protective oils and gleamed even in fungi-light. The blade had been forged by the gold dwarves, many sleepings ago and far away. Its handle was a yellow foot bone from a minotaur lizard, set on either side with a small but flawless ruby. Wykar took the long, heavy dagger by the tip of its blade, fingers away from its edge, and set it on the ground, its handle pointing toward the derro. Geppo looked down as he gripped the hilt of his own blade.

"We must trade weapons," Wykar said. "So long as we have each other's blade, we are sworn not to kill or harm each other. You and I both must swear to this by all the gods. Then we will go together and do our work."

Geppo stared at Wykar's weapon, lips parted in mild surprise. He looked up at the deep gnome several times, bit his upper lip, then slowly made a decision. He pulled his long dagger free of its poor sheath and gently tossed the blade so that it landed on the stony ground next to Wykar's dagger, its hilt aimed in the gnome's direction. In the glowfans' light, Wykar saw that the derro's weapon was old and had been much used-recently scavenged from a body in the Underdark, no doubt. Dark flakes clung to the steel blade, which showed signs of rust and corrosion. The handle once had an elaborate inlay, now fallen out, and the very tip of the blade was broken off. But the notched edge was keen and bright-sharper, likely, than Wykar's own blade. The derro knew his way around a whetstone.

The derro waited in anxious uncertainty. Wykar noticed that the pale dwarf kept one hand close to the crossbow butt at his side. Well, that was to be expected. This was new for them both. The deep gnome touched his forehead, nose, right ear, and heart, then carefully named a host of five deities and their spheres of interest in gnomish life. Not a one of them was real, but a derro wouldn't know that. It was then his turn to wait.

Licking his lips, Geppo mumbled his way through a short litany in a deep, guttural tongue. All the while, he stared down at the blades. Wykar knew a smattering of Underdark tongues, the derro tongue among them, but he recognized only a few words: bapda for father, gorin for oath. The derro stopped when he was through, uncertainty still crossing his face, and looked up at Wykar. The gnome nodded as if well satisfied, concealing his real thoughts on the matter. For all he knew, the derro had just taken a blood oath to kill the gnome like a rat. It was irrelevant. The act bought a little time of peace between them, and that was the real heart of the issue.

At a nod from Wykar, the derro and the gnome reached down and took each other's weapon. As they did, Wykar conjured up a complete mental picture of how he could snatch his own knife first and cut through the muscles of the derro's white arm in less than an eye blink, then he would thrust the weapon forward into his opponent's face and end the life of this miserable creature. The picture was perfect and clear, and Wykar instinctively believed the derro was thinking the very same thing.

But this was Geppo, the odd one, Geppo, who never lied-not a real derro foe. Wykar easily thrust all thought of treachery aside. There was still much left to do, and he desperately needed the derro. If there was to be treachery, he was content to let the derro make the first move-at least for now.

A thin white hand and a small but thick gray one quietly lifted each other's weapon from the ground. Each creature looked over his partner's blade, then carefully sheathed it and checked the fit. The deed was done, for whatever it was worth.

"We must leave now," said Wykar.

Seventeen years and a hundred twelve days passed under the golden lights of Raurogh's Hall, far above the gnome and derro, and peace was at an end. A fisher dwarf mending a net by the riverside heard the first crack of rock shifting and splitting.

She froze in her work, startled, then dropped her net and lay flat, placing her ear to the ground as she held her breath. Even through the roaring of the falls and the tremor the cascade sent through the earth, random clicks and pops could be heard in the stone. And the air above the rock had a new smell, a broken-stone and lightning odor that the fisher dwarf had never before sensed but had often heard tell of in old legends of horror. She clumsily got to her feet and ran to seize an iron-headed gaff beside a metal pot.

The other dwarves of Raurogh's Hall had ceased their work to look about uncertainly for the source of the sharp crack they heard come from all directions around them. A moment later, a high, rhythmic clanging of metal against metal was heard. Some dwarves recognized the ancient signal and shouted the alarm. The others heard and as one flung down their tools in rising panic, quickly awakening those who were still abed. Without delay, the hundred dwarves packed themselves into sheltered corners or beneath narrow doorways, their backs pressed tight to the stone and teeth clenched in preparation. The broken-rock odor was everywhere now, disaster was certain. The dwarves' lips moved in prayer to their ancient gods. Mere seconds later, the earthquake struck.

The garden of glowing fungi had come to Wykar's mind when he had asked Geppo to meet with him later, after their unexpected escape from the drow. The fungus garden was reasonably close to the Sea of Ghosts, where the gold, the egg, and their former masters now lay, and the garden could be reached only through a high narrow tunnel that could not be seen from the main cavern passage known as the Old River Path. Wykar grimaced as he remembered that he had been captured only a mile down the great corridor while on his way to see the garden again, which he had discovered in his youth. The silent dark elves had then taken him to a small drow enclave about three sleepings away by fast march. It was unlikely the drow had known of the garden, they had never mentioned it.

Wykar now descended the rough cave wall down from the tunnel to the garden, rappeling quickly by rope. When he again set foot on the sandy floor of the Old River Path, Wykar stepped back and scanned his surroundings for danger. No new smells, sounds, or sights-excellent. Luminescent fungi on the ceiling cast a faint green light over all. The wide hall had held a river many thousands of sleepings ago, but some race had rechanneled the water miles back to form the Sea of Ghosts. Many kingdoms, wars, and slaughters later, someone else had channeled the water away from the great sea, and the sea had slowly drained ever since then through cracks in its bed or walls. At some point many sleepings in the future, the Sea of Ghosts would itself be a ghost, a monstrous dry chamber miles and miles across, where albino fish and uglier things had stirred its black surface. It would be interesting then to see how many bones-and whose- the sea had hidden over the long years.

Once the derro had descended from the fungus garden and the rope was flipped loose and put away, Wykar took the lead toward their destination. Geppo agreeably followed a dozen paces behind, saying nothing and studiously ignoring the lethal advantage his position gave him over the gnome. Instead, he tested the heft of the gnome's blade and practiced a few shallow swings with it, then slid it back in his ragged sheath and prepared his crossbow instead. That done, he watched the walls and ceiling for possible targets as he walked. The gnome noticed this and gave himself a mental pat on the back. Maybe Geppo would adhere to the contract after all. He was certainly an odd fellow.

Wykar walked on with confidence, not particularly worried about being shot or stabbed in the back. He had long ago prepared for that in other circumstances, and he did not question his current defenses. Still, he would be disappointed if Geppo turned traitor just now. He would hate having to kill Geppo, even if he was just a derro.

The gnome's mind wandered as they walked. In the time they had been slaves, Geppo had said nothing about his past or how he had come to be held by the drow for what was likely many thousands of sleepings. He sometimes mentioned his father, but always as a powerful figure, always in the past tense, and always in a way that rang a little oddly to Wykar. Wykar had eventually asked about Geppo's father, but his questions were met with sudden silence, a cryptic shrug, or a change of subject.

It was getting dark again, no glowing fungi clung to the walls in this part of the tunnel. The deep gnome opened his vest wider to have a clear grab at the crystal-nosed darts stuck through loops on the outside of his leather armor. As soon as the weak light from the high fungi had faded, he carefully pulled a flexible left-hand glove from his belt, put it on, and plucked a hotstone from inside a thick side pouch. He held the hotstone aloft, testing it. The heat radiation from the magical stone reflected brightly from the surrounding rocks, well past the distance that Wykar could throw a war dart. The gnome's ultrasensitive eyes easily caught the infrared light, it was as good as a torch, but any creature lacking heat-sensitive vision would see only darkness.

Wykar glanced back and saw Geppo squinting around but making good headway over the sand and stones nonetheless. The eyes of derros, Wykar had heard, were poorly adapted to seeing heat, their visual range for that was as far as a child could pitch a pebble. Hardly tragic, considering their other flaws.

Wykar's mind spun on as they made their trek to the Sea of Ghosts. If Geppo had been a true person, another svirfneblin, Wykar thought, we would have grasped each other and wept for joy in that glowing garden. He shook his head. No, that's wrong. We would never have parted after our escape. We would have been inseparable. It's as if I were cheated by the gods. If it weren't for having to get rid of that egg…

The deep gnome shook himself. What he had to get rid of were dark thoughts like these. They weren't doing the situation any good. His thoughts did not encourage talk between the two as they walked, but too much talk would have been unwise anyway. They were in a large, open area, and the more quietly they moved, the longer they would live. Silent hours passed. They rested and ate only briefly, not stopping for long at any point.

Wykar was meditating on the negative aspects of his plan to get the egg and destroy it when he heard the derro cough and whisper, "You close here to home, hey?"

The gnome slowed and waited for Geppo to catch up while swiftly signaling for him to speak more softly. They then walked on, side by side, with only a couple of yards between them. Wykar decided he could put up with a little conversation with a weird derro, they were still two hours from the side tunnel to the sea.

"No," said Wykar truthfully, then thought and added, "I had to run to get there and back in time. Didn't mean to be late."

Geppo said nothing in return.

Wykar glanced up at the derro and took a chance. "Is your home around here?" he asked.

Geppo looked at him blankly, then away again. He shrugged. Wykar had seen that shrug a hundred times.

"Well, you asked me," said Wykar. "What did you do when I left? Did you find your people?"

Geppo shrugged again. "Stayed here, blue food cave. Sharp up sword, eat, sleep, wait you."

Wykar looked up in surprise at the ragged white ex-slave. "You didn't just stay here, did you?" he said.

The derro waved at the air as if brushing away a fly, but he didn't respond.

Wykar sniffed and rubbed at his large nose. "I thought you would go home and see your family, your father. Maybe lead a war party back and kill some drow. Have a little fun."

The derro frowned and shook his head. He took a breath to say something that seemed to be difficult to get out, then exhaled and shrugged. "Not anything… nothing to do," he finally said.

Wykar gave a humorless laugh. "You say you stayed here for ten sleepings and did nothing but wait for me?" he asked. "No, don't shrug it off. Tell me. Where did you get the crossbow and your clothes?"

Geppo shot Wykar a brief look and licked his lips. "Dead ones," he said quietly. "Dead from fight long time ago, close to blue food cave. Geppo find them, get things."

Wykar nodded. There was nothing wrong with looting a forgotten body. It was standard practice if you were out on your own and needed every advantage. It was proper to give a prayer for the spirits of the dead, of course, and sometimes even thanks for their "gifts," but that was up to the taker.

"Two drow dead," Geppo continued. "One dwarf. Two… two gnomes."

The deep gnome blinked and stared at the derro in a new way. "Two gnomes-like me?" he asked. His voice was cold and flat.

The derro actually appeared frightened, though it was hard to tell. He nodded once, not looking at Wykar. Then he slowed down, trying to drop back behind Wykar again, crossbow aimed at the ground as if in shame.

Wykar let him go, but only after sending him a look that should have killed the derro. The ugly white bastard was looting svirfneblin dead? Wykar stalked on ahead, enraged and heedless of what Geppo might be doing. He looked back once in time to see the derro turn his head to the side, as if he'd almost been caught looking at the gnome.

It was half an hour before Wykar gained control of himself again. He should have let it go. He himself had looted dead svirfneblin, so what did it matter that a derro did? Well, it did seem to matter in a way, but there was no point in dwelling on it. Wykar forced himself to stick to watching his surroundings.

Few interesting formations were about. Legions of past visitors to this region had chiseled away anything of value, and the natural oils from their hands and feet had ruined further mineral growth. The wide, oval-shaped tunnel was rather drab, though quite serviceable as an underground road, but it was little used now. The creation of the Sea of Ghosts had brought the wicked kuo-toa, the two-legged fish-folk, and their presence had discouraged traffic along the Old River Path and its surrounding region. Wykar counted on meeting more than a few fat kuo-toa shortly, but his infrared-vision was better than theirs-he'd see them long before they saw him. He didn't doubt that his combat skills would be better than theirs, too. They were mediocre warriors, though big enough to be hard to kill.

Old kuo-toa were often covered with battle scars, as ugly alive as they were after a week dead.

Wykar looked down at his wiry, muscular arms, lean but growing strong once more. Even with his heat-vision, the gnome could see that his hairless gray skin was crisscrossed with healed-over scars. His back and legs were worse, and lash marks itched all the time under his armor, especially beneath the thin iron plate that protected his back and neck. Physically, he would heal completely, he had no broken limbs or deformities from his captivity, so he counted himself lucky. At least no damned drow kid had tried to strangle him. But healing was not so quick for his mind and spirit. Even seeing the death of his former masters firsthand did not quench his rage at his captivity, nor did knowing those deaths had been hideously painful for the screaming drow. There was no forgetting or forgiving. A thousand deaths like theirs would not be enough for Wykar.

Destroying their precious egg would be a welcome if minor revenge. They had cared for that egg for many sleepings, whatever it was, if it was precious to a drow, it deserved to be smashed before it hatched.

Their march went on for four more hours, unbroken by talk, until Wykar recognized landmarks that indicated they were close to the Sea of Ghosts. He signaled another break in the walk, just below the stumps of three stalactites that had formed in a perfect equilateral triangle. Sand crunched softly under their boots as they shuffled to a halt.

Wykar sighed. He had gotten over the derro's admission of body-robbing, and he hoped nothing would further strain things between them.

"We have about two hundred feet to go," he whispered, making sure the echo would not carry to unwelcome ears. "The side tunnel is ahead, around the corner to the right side of the hall. There are likely to be kuo-toa around, and we'll have to hit them as hard and quickly as we can unless we're too outnumbered. We've been lucky so far, but we'll have to-"

A loud crackling noise shot around them, echoing throughout the broad corridor. They both jumped, taken completely by surprise, and instinctively looked up at the ceiling. Wykar curled his gloved fingers down around the hotstone and cut off the heat-glow. They stood in the blackness and listened.

"I heard it," came Geppo's hoarse whisper. "Dragon. Big dragon sound. My father-"

"Shhh." Wykar shivered. "No, it's not-"

A broken-rock and lightning smell entered Wykar's nostrils. He knew about lightning from the spells that a few deep-gnome wizards and kuo-toan priests were able to cast. But if no lightning was around, and the rocks smelled broken, then-

He suddenly knew. He gasped and sprinted forward, hard and fast. His gloved fingers opened around the hotstone and held it up as his feet pounded the sandy ground. The corridor again leapt into bright monochromatic view, infrared shadows jerking wildly.

"Hey there!" Geppo called behind him. Wykar heard the derro start to run, too.

"Earthquake!" Wykar shouted back at the top of his lungs. It didn't matter now if anyone or anything heard him. He jumped over a large rock in his path and almost lost his footing when he came down on loose debris, hurtling on. "Run!"

There was a second cracking sound, much louder than the first. Not yet! Not yet! begged Wykar in prayer. Dust and rock bits rattled down from the cavern ceiling. Shadows shifted and jerked in the deep gnome's hurried vision. Perhaps it was a trick of the poor light, a trick of the dancing shadows as he ran, but Wykar didn't think so. Heartbeats, heartbeats left, he thought. The tunnel to the underground sea was narrow enough for shelter, well supported at its entrance.

He saw the final bend in the cavern ahead before the tunnel came to the Sea of Ghosts. The air was thick with the frightening broken-rock smell, the ceiling dust drifting slowly about now like Ghost Sea mist. There were new smells, too-moisture, dead fish, rich fields of fungus. The Sea of Ghosts. He might make it. The fishy odor was particularly strong.

The narrow tunnel to the sea appeared around the corner.

Something tall and warm was in front of the tunnel already, half visible and obviously waiting for him. That something stepped out and made a windmilling motion with its arm in Wykar's direction. It had seen his infrared-bright hotstone and heard his shouts.

Wykar threw himself forward into a roll. Bits of sharp floor debris stabbed into his back and neck. He lost the hotstone. An object whispered through the air over him, clattering hard against the far wall. Harpoon, Wykar thought.

Wykar came up on his knees from the roll, snatching two darts from inside his vest. He hurled them, right hand and left. The hotstone, on the floor three yards away, revealed a tall, fat figure less than thirty feet ahead as it hurriedly raised another spear. The darts struck it first and burst into sprays of crystal fragments, releasing a pale gas.

The tall creature hissed like a steam vent, staggering back as it coughed sharply on the gas. The kuo-toan waved its long arms in an effort to clear its vision and throw its next harpoon. Wykar reached for his blade, but hesitated when he realized he was grabbing the weapon belonging to Geppo. It didn't matter, he pulled it out, got to his feet, and charged. If he could just close before-

There was a whiz to Wykar's left, and a soft thump from the tall creature's stomach. It stepped back with a long wheezing sigh, a crossbow bolt protruding from its midsection. A second thump put a bolt right between the creature's goggle eyes. The kuo-toan shook violently, mouth open impossibly wide, then fell forward with a heavy crash to quiver softly on the ground.

Wykar halted and looked back. He saw Geppo lower his short crossbow and hurry toward him. The derro's broad, black-toothed grin was visible even at a distance.

"All-damn kuo-toa!" the derro roared gleefully as Wykar quickly seized his hotstone again. "Eat that, all-damn k-" The derro was seized with a spasm of deep, racking coughs, and his run slowed into a halting gait. Wykar reached out to seize the derro's arm and propel him toward the cavern to the Ghost Sea.

A rumbling sound, louder and deeper and longer than a thunderclap, shook the cave floor like a drum. It crescendoed and did not stop. Geppo and Wykar staggered and almost fell.

"It's the-" began Wykar.

With a cracking groan so loud it filled the world, the cave walls rippled and shifted and rocked back and forth. Stony layers split open, clouds of dust sprayed, boulders tore free of ceilings and walls. Wykar clearly saw it all in the heat-glow, though he was deafened and momentarily paralyzed with a terror that surpassed anything in his worst nightmares. He caught the derro's arm in his right hand and ran for the two-yard-wide side tunnel. He almost reached it.

A sheet of ceiling rock slammed flat against the ground to Wykar's left, the impact blowing him over like a leaf. Sand and dust fell through the semidarkness. Wykar got up and staggered forward over shattered rock, falling twice more. Geppo was gone. Wykar no longer cared.

The battered gnome was on the verge of entering the tunnel mouth when he fumbled and dropped the hot-stone again. Near darkness enveloped him. He staggered on, shielding his eyes from flying debris. His outstretched fingers touched a cold cavern wall, he turned right. Something warm was close to him, he saw that, but dust got in his eyes and pain stabbed his corneas, blinding him. A heartbeat later, he smelled the unmistakable odor of rancid fish-and ran nose-first into the wet, slimy stomach of an enormous live creature-another kuo-toan.

Wykar stabbed at the creature blindly. He wasn't even aware that he had pulled a dagger out of his boot. A moment later, the kuo-toan was gone. He lurched forward on the trembling ground and tripped once more, falling flat and banging his large nose hard on sharp, broken rocks. The pain caused him to scream, his stinging eyes ran anew with tears. The dagger fell and was gone. Then Wykar took a deep whiff of something that filled his lungs like smoking magma. He hunched up on the ground, coughing and gasping as each breath stabbed his lungs with fire. A crystal-nosed dart on his armor had broken open when he had fallen, choking him with its gas.

Deep gnomes are a pragmatic people. That does not keep them from cursing the unfairness of death, and Wykar gasped out a string of curses himself as he waited for a crushing blow from a quake-loosened stone to strike the life from him in the bleak hell of the earthquake. He hoped death would be quick. The gas from the broken dart was the pits.

The short, violent shock rocked every floor, wall, and ceiling of Raurogh's Hall, as if the earth had come to life and breathed in for the first time. Ragged cracks burst open in walls facing the direction of the shock, then closed as the earth swayed back and split the opposite walls wide with deafening roars. Carved ceilings crumbled, walls of bas-relief broke. Rock fragments fell over all, and the air was a cloud of choking dust that clogged noses, mouths, and lungs.

The fisher dwarf slipped and fell on damp rock when the shock hit, dropping the gaff with which she had banged out the alert. Scrambling fingers seized the fishing net she had flung aside as she slid on her stomach toward the river, the net snagged itself on a foot-long iron bolt driven into the cave floor. This saved her life.

In the next instant, the River Raurogh sloshed over the fisher dwarf's head and carried her off with it, flooding the riverside tunnels as the shock flung it sideways out of its ancient bed. Clinging to the net, the dwarf collided painfully with a stone bench in the hall. Then, as the earth jerked in the opposite direction, she was washed back out again onto the stone bank of the river, and the water rushed back into its channel.

It was then that the fisher dwarf heard a monstrous roar tear through the river tunnel from the direction of the falls, a sound as great as if the cavern were the throat of a wild beast. She turned her head to look. It was the moment when the Eastern Shaar hunter far above lowered his bow, when the sorceress in her tower glared, when the old shepherd looked up from his knife and flute.

A magical lantern had been washed out into the river from the dwarves' hall, and in its light the fisher dwarf saw the entire ceiling of the silo break free, a monstrous plate of rock twenty yards thick. It dropped swiftly past the top of the falls and out of sight. The dwarf looked on in amazement. She remembered the legend of the foolish dwarf. Her lips moved. "One," she whispered. "Two-"

An enormous, screaming wind awoke around her. It hurled water, tools, buckets, lanterns, and nets toward the falls, everything it could seize in its shrieking teeth. The wind savaged the dwarf as she gripped the fishing net with gnarled fingers, she felt the net's worn strands give and break apart. Freezing rain whipped at her face. The river danced and shook in the fury. Four, she thought, head down, eyes shut. Five. Six.

The hurricane blast eased and faded as swiftly as it had come. The partial vacuum created by the ceiling collapse was filled. Chilled to the bone, the fisher dwarf shivered and clung to the ruined net, unable to pull herself up. The wind's last howls echoed in her ears, following the great rock plate down into the light-lost abyss of the Deepfall.

The fisher dwarf was oblivious to all but her numbers, waiting for the great stone to reach the end of its endless fall. She had been cautious every day of her life. She would not lose her place in the legends now.

Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen…

The thunder dwindled slowly from every direction. Wykar heard himself shouting hysterical pleas and prayers to Garl, chief god of the gnomes. His pleas turned into sobs and coughs, then ended as he got control of himself again. He lay exhausted on his stomach, arms covering his head, and did nothing but cough on the thick dust and the overpowering stench of rotting fish.

A distant boom rolled down the great cavern corridor as part of a wall or ceiling split off and collapsed far away. The deep rattling of a rockslide could be heard afterward as the ground trembled slightly. Then the noise died into real silence. A few seconds after that, Wykar realized that the earthquake was over.

The gnome reached up with his right hand and gingerly felt his injured nose. Touching a particularly sore spot brought more sudden tears to his eyes, but a careful examination revealed that his nose was only bleeding and dirty, not broken. Thank you, Garl, he thought. He couldn't imagine life with a broken nose. It was too awful to conceive, better to be crippled. He sighed with relief and began brushing bits of rock off his nose and face.

Something groaned and stirred in the debris, very close to him. Wykar wiped his eyes on his right arm a sat up. Loose debris fell from his head and back. "Geppo?" he called.

He smelled rancid fish. Damn, he thought, fumbling for his blade hilt.

The heat-glow of a huge, pudgy creature arose from the thick dust and debris, barely two yards away. Wykar scrambled back, ignoring the pain. Though its skin was lukewarm, the creature was bleeding profusely, and its warm blood illuminated it clearly in Wykar's heat-sensitive vision. The being rose up on its hands and knees to survey the ruins of the great corridor. It hissed as it did.

It was the kuo-toan Wykar had stabbed only a few moments before. The creature sucked in a great lungful of air, its gills slapping wetly against the sides of its goggle-eyed head. One of the huge eyes rolled in Wykar's direction and fixed on him. The kuo-toan hissed again, louder and sharper. Its mouth opened as it turned, it was so close that Wykar could see the individual needle teeth in its lower jaw.

The kuo-toan lurched at the gnome, mouth opened to bite. Wykar threw himself to the side at the last moment and swung his right fist at the kuo-toan's head in a roundhouse punch. He hit it squarely in its huge left eye.

With a loud gasp, the fish-creature jumped back, one long webbed hand clutching at its injured eye. It lunged forward to grab the gnome, but by then Wykar had seized the handle of the derro's long blade and pulled it free. He swung for the monster's thin-boned arm and connected with a solid thump.

With another gasping scream, the kuo-toan jerked back, waving the stump of its severed right arm. Wykar swiftly got to his feet. The derro's knife was incredibly sharp. He knew he would have to kill the stupid fish-man now, though. He bit his lower lip and steeled himself, then moved in to finish the job.

Fast as the gnome was, he had not even touched the kuo-toan when the creature shuddered violently, its back arched in a spasm and its head reared back to give the ceiling a pop-eyed stare. It wheezed out a long, final sigh as it fell backward. As it did, Geppo adroitly stepped out of its way. His left fist was clenched around the hilt of Wykar's blood-covered blade.

Geppo was panting and bleeding profusely from a scalp wound, but seemed unharmed otherwise. His blood was warmer than the kuo-toan's, so he was much brighter, his face shone like a lantern. Wykar lowered his weapon and looked around. A rumbling ran through the great corridor in the distance, the cave floor vibrated slightly through the sand. Aftershock, thought Wykar. It would be best to leave the open cave quickly.

The deep gnome produced a second hotstone from his belt pouch and held it aloft. He and Geppo paused to survey the damage to the main passageway. The floor was littered with split rocks and boulders torn from the cave walls. The dust had settled, the air smelled of shattered stone and stirred earth. Going back the way they'd come would be hard, indeed. Wykar hoped the trip hadn't now become one-way. He then looked down and saw only an arm and a foot were left of the first kuo-toan they had fought, the rest of the creature messily flattened to the thickness of a mica flake beneath a thick stone slab.

Wykar checked the narrow passage toward the Sea of Ghosts. It seemed solid even now, though the floor was a foot deep in debris and most of the tiny ceiling formations were broken off. He could see only a half-dozen yards into the narrow passage before it curved around a bend. Surprises were certain to lie beyond.

He muttered a dark curse. The only other tunnel to the Sea of Ghosts was two sleepings away by foot, and time was against them. He considered calling off the whole thing and fleeing for his life. How did he know the earthquake hadn't buried or broken the egg now? And the sea would be in violent turmoil after the shock.

If the vast, arched roof over the sea had held-and there was good reason to think it had, since the sound of its falling would have been quite noticeable through the tunnel-the kuo-toa there would be more active than ever. Wykar and Geppo had just fought two gogglers who had walked out of the tunnel, a thousand more might await them on the shoreline on the other end. The whole plan was ruined.

He tapped the derro's battered weapon against his bare leg, then thought better of it and stopped before he cut himself badly. Everything was quiet now. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to just take a peek and see what was going on, for curiosity's sake. He motioned to the derro, who had finished cleaning his blade, and with great care and many looks at the ceiling, they stepped into the side tunnel.

The tunnel had survived in good condition. It curved back and forth for two hundred feet, once an outflowing stream from a formerly higher Sea of Ghosts. Inch-wide cracks showed all the way through the tunnel, legacies of the quake. At one point, the gnome and derro were forced to climb over the crushed remains of another three kuo-toa, half-buried when the ceiling gave way over a three-yard section. Wykar nearly gave up at that point, but he steeled himself and moved on, steadily avoiding a close look at the smashed skull of an unlucky kuo-toan. The fishy stench was incredible, and he swallowed several times to keep from vomiting.

A few yards past that point, only a bend away from the opening to the great chamber of the sea, Wykar felt a cool breeze against his face. He stopped short, taken aback. No wind had ever stirred the Sea of Ghosts, as far as he knew, but now he was certain he could feel one. A rumbling noise in the distance that Wykar had ignored was now louder, too. It might be a short aftershock, but the ground was not trembling. Something else was going on. Wykar suspected he was in great danger. He felt it by instinct rather than by reason, but the sense was too powerful to shake off. He looked back at the derro, who merely frowned and stared back in puzzlement.

Wykar couldn't think of anything to say that would make sense. He turned again and took a few steps toward the tunnel opening.

The sharp crack of breaking rock sounded through the entire tunnel. It came from directly above the gnome's head. Wykar's nerve broke. He threw himself into a dead run for the open sea cave. Cold mist settled on his nose, cheeks, and the exposed skin on his arms and legs. It was Ghost Sea fog, stirred by a rising breeze.

Wykar saw a kuo-toan with a harpoon at the tunnel mouth. It had turned to look back at the Ghost Sea, surprised by the loud rumbling throughout the great cavern. Its body was clearly outlined by green light falling on it from above. The kuo-toan had only enough time to turn back and see Wykar before the gnome's sword chopped into the goggler's right leg. The creature gasped and twisted as it fell facedown, thigh muscles cut down to the bone. The inhuman cries ended with its next breath as the derro jammed a blade into the creature's back, through its lung and heart.

Thunder and gusts of wind now flew all across the sea from every direction. A chorus of goggler cries arose downslope at the water's edge, barely fifteen yards from the tunnel exit that Wykar had fled. Wykar heard them but ignored everything that didn't contribute to his immediate escape. He ran to the left and went upslope the instant after he attacked the kuo-toan, weaving his way around numerous large boulders. His boots pounded uphill at a rapid pace beneath his short, stocky legs. Geppo would have to keep up or defend himself alone.

Wykar recalled that the tunnel opened about two-thirds of the way down a great slope that ended at the edge of the dark sea. Thirty yards up the slope at its top was a narrow path through the many rocks that had fallen over the ages from the cavern ceiling. The path had probably been created by deep gnomes many thousands of sleepings ago. If the earthquake had not damaged the area severely, Wykar and Geppo could use the path to escape the area by running around its perimeter, and thus reach their final destination. The ceiling was low along the pathway, too, and would slow pursuit by the tall fish-folk.

The gnome ran low to the ground, so hunched over he seemed bent in half. Hurrying up the slope and almost panting now, he saw a familiar rock that marked part of the high trail. He looked back just long enough to see Geppo stamping up rapidly behind him, only four yards back. The gnome then fled off along the path.

Visibility was only fair. The ever-present fog on the Sea of Ghosts usually clung to the surface of the black underground lake, rarely traveling inland. However, green tendrils of the mist now whirled in the fungus-lit air ahead of the gnome. Wykar had heard tales that the thick mist came from a broad silo in the ceiling over the center of the sea, perhaps a mile away. A river or lake far above apparently drained into the silo, perhaps as far up as the world's true surface. The vast quantities of water turned into a heavy spray over the long fall. The kuo-toa were said to enjoy the cool fog there, and sometimes things from above fell into the sea and were swiftly taken as treasure or food.

"Wait!" The desperate voice barely carried to Wykar's ears as he ran. He dared to stop and look back. Geppo had fallen farther behind him and appeared to be tiring. The derro suddenly banged his head on a low place in the overhanging ceiling and fell to his knees, grabbing at his injured forehead with a whimpering cry.

Wykar swore aloud. He ran back, grabbed one of the pale dwarf's arms, and dragged him to his feet. "Run!" he shouted in Geppo's ear. Fresh streaks of hot blood streaming down his face, the derro wheezed and stumbled forward.

It was harder now to negotiate the path. Wykar banged his left knee and shin repeatedly into rocks. He fought down the pain and struggled to keep the derro on his feet. A gust of wind then blew a thick curtain of fog over the pathway and the two runners. Wykar slowed too quickly, got his right leg entangled in the derro's left leg, and the two fell in a heap among the rock chips and dirt on the pathway.

Cursing angrily, the deep gnome forced himself back to his feet. His hands reached down and snatched at the groaning derro's prone body.

A sudden crackling of thunder swept rapidly over the two, then an explosion of noise burst against Wykar's eardrums, a stupendous sound different from all others and many orders of magnitude louder. Wykar's head jerked toward the source of the almighty racket, somewhere across the Sea of Ghosts. Then he slapped his hands to the sides of his head and ducked, ears ringing with pain. His teeth were clenched as tight as the jaws of a vice. Echoes of the explosion crashed and rolled everywhere. He could see nothing now but a churning riot of cold green mist, whipped by howling winds.

What was happening? What was going on?

Wykar suddenly knew for sure that he had made a fatal mistake. He should have abandoned the trip at its start, fled to his real home instead of trying to play hero or get revenge. It was too late now. It was probably going to be very unpleasant to die, he knew, and he probably wouldn't have to wait long for it to happen.

Blinking stupidly, Wykar let go of his aching ears and shuffled forward, squinting through the mists. He had the oddest sensation of being completely carefree. Geppo called for help from the ground, but Wykar ignored him and strained his senses to their limits, searching for any clue of what was to come.

He did not have long to wait. Even with the blast ringing on in his ears, he could hear death approaching. It was a sound he had never heard in all his years of traveling the Underdark around the Sea of Ghosts. It was like thunder but lower in register. It made his bones tremble.

"Wave's coming," said Wykar. He tried to remember how high the slope was here, how far it was down to the shore. The blowing green fog, high winds, and lack of landmarks made him give up. He looked down at Geppo, who was slowly getting to his hands and knees. Wind whipped at their clothes, moaning like an army of ghosts.

Wykar took Geppo by an arm again, gently this time. "We have to hurry," he said aloud, above the wind's blast. Geppo muttered something into the stray hairs of his beard. One of the words sounded like hooret. Wykar had heard the word years ago during his long explorations of the Underdark. Hooret was the derro word for poison.

With the gnome's assistance, the two walked on at a quick pace. The path ran upward in a shallow grade from here, which the gnome was glad to see: the higher, the better. The low rumbling was very loud now. Wykar could feel a steady vibration through the packed soil of the path. Cold droplets ran down his face and arms from the thick mist settling on his skin.

Higher, the gnome prayed. Higher. Higher.

Now to the sound of the low rumbling was added a new noise, that of water crashing on water. The wave was almost at the shore. Wykar stopped and released Geppo, the derro fell to the ground again. Snatching at the tools hanging from his belt, Wykar swiftly drove a steel T-headed spike into the largest rock he could find within reach. Throwing the mallet aside, he pulled his climbing rope free from his belt and looped the small noose at one end around the T-head of the spike, pulling it tight. He reached down and grabbed the woozy derro by his black belt just as the water-on-water crashing sound turned into water-on-rock. With hardly any time following that, a foaming wall of cold, black water burst up through the green-lit fog and slammed into both of them.

Wykar was thrown wildly by the churning, stinking flood. His left arm was nearly pulled from its socket when the wave hit, and the rope tore at his numb fingers. The derro was a dead weight that stretched his other arm almost to breaking. The freezing water stank abominably of dead things and goggler slime. Some of it got into the deep gnome's mouth and nose, he choked violently, almost letting go of the rope and Geppo both.

Then the churning water rushed back over the rocks, cascading downslope again to the sea. Wykar's right arm was pressed so hard against a rocky edge that he was forced to let go of Geppo. He let go of the rope next, unable to grip anything through the sea slime. Instead of being washed away, he merely thumped down against the top of a flat rock. Coughing, he tried to roll over on his back but fell off the rock instead, dropping several feet to the ground. There he choked and vomited up foul water until he had the dry heaves and could barely breathe at all.

The sea thundered in his ears, waves crashing into rocks and each other. The echoes rang from every direction, even from above. He could barely hear his own gasps for air.

Enough, he thought, enough throwing up already.

Panting and on his last reserves of energy, the gnome managed to get up on his wobbly hands and knees. He then sat upright to get a look around at his immediate vicinity. It came to his mind to call for Geppo, and he opened his mouth to form the word.

It never happened. The blood ran from his head. His eyes rolled up, he fell over backward and knew nothing more.

Something slapped Wykar's face. He was so numb that he hardly felt the blow. Clumsy hands tugged on his leather clothing and pulled at his belt and tools. He lifted a hand feebly, and the tugging ceased.

He lurched into partial consciousness and almost immediately threw up again. He started to choke, but turned on his side, just in time. When he finished coughing and sputtering, he looked around, taking short, shallow breaths. He was shivering from cold.

A thin, dwarflike figure stood out in his heat-vision. Wykar saw a relieved grin on the figure's thin, bearded face.

"Not dead yet, hey?" said Geppo shakily, voice rising above the roaring of the sea. His rotting teeth were clenched together as he spoke. The derro looked down briefly at an object in his trembling left hand, then tossed it to the rocky ground in front of Wykar's face. It was one of the gnome's combat darts, its glass head broken away. "Water broke gnome throw-toy," he finished, the grin a bit broader. "Broke Geppo crossbow, lost arrows. But Geppo have gnome sword!" He patted the hilt of Wykar's weapon, still safe in its sheath.

Wykar managed to sit up, leaning back against a rock with his back facing downslope. He left the useless dart where it had fallen. No doubt all of his stun-gas darts were broken by now. He resisted the urge to check over all his possessions to see if the derro had stolen anything. "Good for you," he said hoarsely. He tried to stop shivering.

Geppo jerked his head in the direction from which they had been fleeing. His ugly grin disappeared. "Geppo not hear fish-heads talk. Water push them away, kill them, maybe. We go red place and run home fast, hey?" His colorless eyes flicked toward the noisy sea, over Wykar's shoulder.

Wykar absorbed the news and half turned to peek at the sea. His view was blocked by other rocks, and he sat back against the stone, hugging himself. "We should get out of here," he agreed. "We'll dry out if we keep moving and build up more body heat."

With an effort, he pushed himself up on unsteady feet, still careful to keep his head low in case some kuo-toa were around. He carefully checked his gear, though he was unsure if it really made any difference now. "You know," he said conversationally, "you could at least thank me for saving your life."

Geppo stopped checking his own gear and stiffened. He eyed the gnome in puzzlement, then anger. "You say Geppo give you golds now, hey?" he snarled, voice rising. He suddenly spat on the sea-washed ground. "There are golds for you. Take and spend them. Geppo not owe you golds for save life. Have no golds, not for you." The derro stood back, legs and arms trembling curiously. His left hand strayed near the hilt of Wykar's blade, sheathed at his side.

Wykar stared back in confusion and his own rising anger. He realized the derro had completely misunderstood him. Maybe derro regarded gratitude as some kind of monetary debt that they extorted from others of their kind. He snorted in disgust, his own self-control slipping. So the derro wanted to threaten Wykar because he didn't know what "thank you" meant? Fine. Barbarism was all that could be expected from brainless derro scum. "Forget it," he muttered, looking down again at his belt equipment. He threw away two other darts with smashed crystal noses. He had one good one left. "I don't want any damn gold from you. That's not what giving thanks means, you stupid…"

He suddenly seized the last good dart, jerked it free from his armor, and threw it out toward the sea as hard as he could. "All the gods damn your kind! Damn them all!" he shouted as he did. He fought down the urge to add another dozen pithy comments, very personal ones. He drew a ragged breath instead, and wiped his face and nose with a cold, wet hand. "Just forget it," he said tiredly, turning away. "Forget everything. Just come on."

He walked off, face burning with buried rage. He marched about fifty paces before he looked back in anger, hearing nothing behind him. Geppo stood in place with an astonished expression, hands now limp at his sides. The tremor in his thin limbs seemed more pronounced.

"Let's move!" Wykar hissed, sweeping a hand toward their goal. "I want no thanks from you! Just move!"

Geppo's hands twitched. His head suddenly bowed, and he began walking in Wykar's direction as if he had suddenly aged by a century. Wykar turned and set off on the path again himself, the steam cooling on his anger. It took many long minutes for Wykar to regain control of his temper and think clearly again. He then became angry with himself. What if some kuo-toan or sea monster had overheard him? He would have regretted his outburst then. And he couldn't afford to lose the derro for anything if he hoped to get to that egg. He could not afford to throw a fit at every quirk in the derro's behavior. It was hard not to take things personally, as badly as the impulsive journey had turned out, but only a clear head had a chance to win anything good from this.

Wykar rubbed his face until he thought he would take the skin off. He eventually relaxed and let most of the tension go by breathing deeply and focusing on listening for enemies in the landscape ahead. He looked back and saw the derro marching on behind him, not looking up.

That derro has to be the most stupid one alive, he thought. But I guess that was what I needed, wasn't it? This plan had better work.

They walked on over rough terrain for about six miles until it was long past sleeping again, but Wykar was too wound up for rest.

The remainder of the journey had not been uneventful. The great wave had washed the bodies of many creatures onto the rocky shoreline, once-living things of the sort that should have remained hidden from view. Some of the creatures were still in the process of dying when Wykar and Geppo carefully and quietly skirted their quivering, obscene bulks. Several monsters slapped at the rocky shore with weakened fins, straining uselessly to drag themselves back into the sea, or exposed huge mouths of dagger teeth as they gasped out their lives with water only yards away. Wykar noted as well, a few mangled body parts from unfortunate kuo-toa, who had probably been ground against rocks or even the cavern ceiling by the great wave when it started out. He bit his lips and turned his head away, feeling no sympathy for them.

A second, smaller wave, quickly followed by a third, soon roared up the bleak shoreline, but neither wave had the power or reach of the first. After that, the sea cavern was filled with the rumbling of rough water, which went on without end. Worse, the violent sea had stirred up its two-legged inhabitants. Twice, the pair was forced to charge and fight through small groups of live kuo-toa that blocked their way. The fish-folk were confused and often injured, but there was always the danger that a lucky throw with a harpoon or random slash with a long knife would leave the gnome or derro as badly off as the writhing monsters they had passed on the shore.

In the pair's favor, the thick, drifting mist from the sea enabled the gnome and derro to make an escape without fear of being followed. The kuo-toa, still stunned from the earthquake and sea wave, were also not inclined to pursue, hurling only two or three badly aimed harpoons before subsiding in confusion.

In time, Wykar saw a faint reddish-purple glow far ahead as he rounded a bend in the wall to his left. He knew immediately that the journey was almost over. The glow illuminated a region where the rocky shore swung inland away from the sea, perhaps two hundred yards or more, to end in a high wall marked by several vertical rifts from floor to ceiling. The Red Shore, the drow had called it.

Wykar stopped, signaled Geppo to take cover behind a fallen rock, and began scouting the area before them. Nothing registered as important-but that was exactly what the drow slave masters had thought as well, eleven sleepings ago. They had missed a critical thing and had died for their omission,

The red-purple glow came from a large colony of wall fungus, many yards square, that coated both sides of a broad, wet fissure large enough for a group of drow to gather inside. An underground stream leaking down from above kept the area moist.

Memories came to Wykar at once. Eleven sleepings ago, a group of drow had chosen a spot deep within the vertical fissure to bury the large chest that they and their two slaves had brought with them. They had handed Wykar and Geppo each a small pick and told them to dig. The smirking drow then stood around the ragged pair and prodded them with boot tips and sword points, urging them on with their work while describing their individual ideas on how each slave should die when the job was finished. The drow had been perfectly serious, they intended for no one to reveal the hiding place later on. After time-consuming tortures and a slow execution, the derro and gnome would be animated by magic as undead guardians, to be buried with the chest and its egg for eternity-or until the drow elected to move the chest to another spot.

Wykar rubbed his eyes and pushed the memory aside. After a few moments, he reconsidered and deliberately brought the memory of those last moments back to the surface, focusing on its details with all the detachment he could summon. He had to think his way through what had happened next, break it down and study every piece, if he was to finish the task he had set for himself.

Silently, Geppo crouched down a short distance from the deep gnome and also surveyed the land ahead. The two had not spoken for many hours, but the earlier argument was already pushed aside. It was not the time and place for quarreling now.

"I was trying to remember what happened before the moaning sound started," murmured Wykar, frowning. "They were making jokes about opening the chest and spitting on the egg and locking us inside with it, and I didn't understand why that was so funny to them-the spitting part." He glanced at Geppo, who said nothing.

Wykar shrugged and looked back at the reddish-purple glow. "Then that sound started, that loud, piercing groan that went on and on and on, and it dug right down into my gut. I saw the drow clap their hands over their ears and shout at each other, and one or two drew swords, but they dropped them. I couldn't see what was making the noise. I was sick to my stomach to be listening to it. My hands shook so much that I dropped the pick, and I was terrified the drow would kill me for dropping it. But I couldn't help it. My stomach was cramped up like I was going to vomit. I covered my ears, but that didn't help me, either."

He paused and swallowed before continuing. "A male drow, I think it was Deriander the wizard, fell down over me, screaming like a banshee. We were all screaming by then. I got up again and saw that Deriander had gone rigid and was shaking. His muscles were like iron ropes, hard as rocks. They all looked like that, all six of the drow. But I could still move. I couldn't figure it out." Wykar turned to his companion. "That was when you hit Sarlaena with your pick. You hit her in the legs several times before she fell down, and I had this strange thought that she couldn't feel a thing you were doing. I thought she was screaming from something else." He looked back at the unearthly glow. "I fell over the lesser priestess and was getting up to escape when the cloakers got us."

The gnome's hands trembled at the memory. "I saw one of the cloakers fall from somewhere up on the ceiling. It looked like a white square. I knew what it was from stories that my people used to tell, but I had never seen one before. I knew then that cloakers were making the moaning noise that we heard, paralyzing and trapping the drow. Then I saw a large mouth open in the middle of the cloaker where nothing had been, a mouth with teeth, and two glassy eyes opened above it. It landed on Xerzanein's back and wrapped around him while he was still standing up, screaming and holding his ears. It was like a living cape, black as jet, squeezing Xerzanein so tightly I could see each of his fingers trying to claw through. Xerzanein had his mouth open, but I couldn't hear him through the cloaker cries all around."

The gnome swallowed again, his voice even quieter. "I could see the cloaker's mouth on Xerzanein's back, biting into his shoulders and neck. Every drow had a cloaker then. Sarlaena had one wrapped around her that was biting through her gut, chewing at her as she kicked and kicked, trying to scream. She flopped and twisted on the ground like a fish. Then something touched me on the back-" Wykar shivered violently and rubbed his shoulders, looking down at the ground.

Distant thunder rolled over the Sea of Ghosts.

"It's strange," he said, "but I don't really remember running away. I remember talking with you afterward, a bit of it anyway. I had it in mind even then that we had to go back and destroy the egg. If the drow thought it was so valuable and wanted to hide it, then it was too important to leave alone. They would have broken any egg that would hatch something good. I knew we had to destroy it, but I had no idea how we were going to go about it. I didn't want it to sit there for some other drow to find. But I didn't want to talk about things then, I just wanted you to meet me later when we could talk about it. I just wanted to get away and run and run."

"You ran to your people," said Geppo after a pause.

Wykar slowly shook his head, mildly surprised he would admit to this. "No. I didn't go back. I lied about that. I stayed away and hid by myself. My people are miles and miles off. I hid by myself and raided some caches of weapons, armor, food, and clothes I'd made for myself long ago. I just hid. I don't know what I was thinking for a while." He flashed an empty smile. "I just wanted to be by myself, to get myself back together again. I was never very close to anyone. I'm an orphan. I always kept to myself and did what I wanted to do. I explored places, and that was enough for me. Exploring and being alone."

He looked back at the red-purple glow. "That was how the drow caught me, you know. I was exploring, and they ambushed me with nets and clubs. Beat me until I was almost broken, dragged me back like a food lizard to their commune. You probably remember what I looked like then. You were already there." He chewed on his lower lip, squinting at the glow, then suddenly turned to Geppo. "How did they ever catch you?" he asked.

The derro blinked, then looked away. He covered his mouth with one hand, stroking his scraggly mustache. Wykar looked away at the glow again.

"My… my people sold me," Geppo said suddenly. He started to say more, but stopped. He didn't look at Wykar.

"Sold you?" Wykar said, stunned. "Sold you to the drow?"

Geppo stroked his mustache and nodded. The heat from his face increased visibly. He made an odd brush-away gesture with his hand, then kept toying with his mustache.

"Why?" Wykar asked.

Geppo's face seemed to sag like melting wax. He bowed his head and blew out heavily. He smiled as if the news were of no consequence and spoke slowly. "Geppo not… Geppo have no… no magic like True-Masters-what you say derro. No magic in Geppo, all empty. Lose magic when born, maybe. Geppo, True-Masters not know why. Geppo not know how make magic go from hands, go from head. True-Masters, they have magic, magic for conquer, kill, but…" He shrugged and spread his hands. "Empty," he said.

Wykar swallowed. "Your clan sold you for that? Didn't your father stop-" The truth dawned. He bit off his words, too late.

Geppo coughed, then held his thin hands up to his eyes, surveying his fingers and palms as if they were keepsakes of no value. "Father," he said, smiling again. "Father very angry. He say, Geppo shame upon all clan for have no magic. Father say, Geppo slave now. Geppo talk like slave. Geppo tell truth like slave. Geppo work, be slave, then Father angry more and say, out! He sell Geppo. Drow slave." He shrugged, his voice a monotone. His eyes glistened as he looked at the ground. "True-Masters, drow, all gone now. Geppo have no magic, but Geppo here, all good, hey." He sighed, all the wind going out of him. "Get golds now," he said, his voice tired. "Tell me now how we get golds and egg. Tell secret plan now. Talk too much."

Wykar looked away, the sound of the Sea of Ghosts in his ears. "Well," he said at last, "I thought we would just walk into that crack in the wall there and take them."

The derro stared at Wykar and snorted in disbelief, his face heating with anger once more. Before Geppo could say a word, however, Wykar reached back and dug his fingers into a slit on the inside of the back of his belt. The rings were still there, the rings he had taken from the body of a long-dead svirfneblin. He fished them out. The derro was a terrible looter, if that was what he had been doing earlier.

Wykar handed one ring to the derro. As he did, a sudden heat arose in Wykar's face and stung his eyes. He fought against it, refusing to acknowledge it at all. He almost took back the ring. His fingers trembled as if they knew what they were about to do.

"Don't put this on yet," said Wykar, struggling to keep his voice as steady as before. He did not dare look Geppo in the face. "These rings will make us invisible. The cloakers won't see us at all. Whatever we pick up will disappear, too, so we can carry things off, right out from under them. If the cloakers come after us, just run back here. They won't be able to see you, but you have to move carefully over loose stones, or they can find you that way. They can still hear you even if you are invisible. Do you understand?"

He dared to look at the derro's face. White eyes huge, Geppo stared down at the plain golden band in his thin fingers. Something was going on in his mind, though. Wykar could see that clearly.

Even through the fires of his shame.

Geppo's hand closed over the ring. He looked up, eyes avoiding Wykar's, then he looked down at his fist again.

"Yes," whispered Geppo. Then: "Thank you."

No, don't say that, Wykar thought in horror. No. Think of the egg. This is the only way. It is the only way.

Wykar held out his right hand, fingers spread. His hand shook as if it were cold, but he pretended not to see it. "I'm going to put my ring on," he said hoarsely. "Your people are like mine, a little, because we are resistant to magic more than other folk. Sometimes these rings work for us, sometimes they don't. We have to keep trying until they do." With that, Wykar slid his ring on the middle finger of his left hand.

And he vanished. Invisible. He shivered when it happened. He would never get used to that. Geppo flinched and, with what looked like open fear, watched the spot where Wykar had been. It was fear of abandonment, Wykar instinctively knew, not fear of magic.

"It's okay," said Wykar softly. "I'm still here. I'm invisible. You must have seen magic like this before somewhere. This is our magic now. Okay, now, you put your ring on."

Geppo looked around for the source of the bodiless voice, as if he thought Wykar were going to reappear. When that didn't happen, he looked down at his own ring, then carefully put it on.

Wykar continued watching the derro, who examined his still-visible hand in confusion. "Try it again," said Wykar, gaining his nerve by talking. "That's your natural magic resistance. Take the ring off, put it down on the ground, then pick it up and try again."

Geppo did as he was told. As he put the ring on the second time, he gasped aloud in amazement, mouth open wide. He turned his hands over in front of his face, marveling at the sight of them, then looked at the rest of his body and possessions. His face radiated purest awe.

Wykar watched invisibly, face burning and chest tight. The derro was just as clearly visible to Wykar now as he had been before the ring was put on.

But that was not surprising, given the sort of magical ring that Geppo wore, a wondrous ring that fulfilled the wearer's most secret and desired wish.

A cursed ring of mental delusions.

"Excellent," said Wykar shakily. "It worked that time. Don't wander off. I… I can't see you, and we have to go. Stay within hearing of my voice, though. When we get close enough, just move in on your own. Get whatever gold you want, then come back here. Don't take your ring off until then. The cloakers will never see us."

Geppo nodded. A new expression filled his ravaged face. It was beatific joy. Wykar knew he had done something terribly wrong. He was no fool when it came to the gods. They saw everything, even this. Maybe they would forgive all of this because of the egg. The egg was the evil thing, not Wykar. He told himself this over and over, but somehow he did not believe it anymore.

He shook it off. He was tricking a derro, not a child or a god's holy avatar.

If I am to be damned, then let us get on with it, Wykar thought angrily. "Let's go," he said, getting to his feet.

Keeping the derro in the corner of his vision, Wykar began to walk toward the red-violet glow from the distant wall, still shrouded by blowing fog from the rumbling Sea of Ghosts. Geppo walked along carefully beside him, grinning like a big fool who could not get enough out of trying to see his hands. Wykar looked away from that black-toothed grin.

The deep gnome felt inside his open vest for his final weapon and his final defense. Both were safely there, strapped into a deep, crude pocket. He removed them and gritted his teeth. He had thought long and hard about what was coming next. It would hurt terribly, but sometimes there was no other way out but through, the svirfneblin often said. No way out but through.

The two had marched to within two hundred feet of the glowing rift when Wykar whispered, "Stop." Geppo halted, looking around in mild confusion. Wykar leaned closer, but was careful to be out of the way in case Geppo drew his weapon. "Listen to me," he said. "We're going in there together. Move very slowly. If you pick something up, do it slowly and make no sound. These rings don't hide the noise you make, so be careful." Why am I saying this? Why am I saying this?

"Thank you," whispered Geppo, nodding. He set off for the glowing rift, walking in silence.

Wykar stood for a moment, staring after the derro with an empty expression. Then he took a deep breath and put a corner of his vest between his teeth, filling his mouth with the vile, fishy-tasting fur. He ground his jaws together tightly, readying himself for what came next.

He carefully lifted his final defense, unable to see it but feeling it roll between his fingers. It was a long, bronze needle.

He put the needle in his left ear, then pushed it in. Boiling pain exploded deep in his ear, pain a thousand times worse than anything the drow had given him. His head felt as if it would burst. Quickly, before he could think better of it, he transferred the needle to his other hand and jammed it into his right eardrum, destroying it as well. He dropped the needle after that and doubled over in mindless agony. He felt his teeth almost close together through the thick fur in his mouth. Hot blood ran from his ears and down the sides of his bare cheeks.

He lifted his head, eyes streaming tears. Geppo was halfway to the rift. Wykar had to go after him, to destroy the egg. It was all for that egg. He heard nothing but an endless scream from his ruined ears. But his eardrums would heal in time. There had been no other way to block the cloakers' moaning, no way to keep them from claiming him. His ears would heal, and he would be a hero and have his revenge on the drow.

Wykar saw Geppo stop and look back in puzzlement. The gnome realized he was running and probably making a lot of noise. He forced himself to stop and concentrate through his pain, then walk more carefully and quietly. Geppo relaxed at that, then went on toward the glowing rift.

The air turned bad. Wykar now smelled dead things, rotting things. The ground was covered with bits of stinking algae, like everywhere else, but a dark lump that looked like a body was just ahead. It was a drow, most of its flesh and muscle eaten away, one leg was missing. It lay in a peculiar, loose-limbed position, untouchably foul. Its filthy bones were draped with algae and ripped, soaked clothing.

The face and long hair were still recognizable. It was Sarlaena, who had once owned him.

Wykar averted his streaming eyes. He tried not to inhale the air. He was close to throwing up again, he bit down harder on the fur. More long, thin, dark bodies lay ahead, scattered around like forgotten dolls. The wave, Wykar remembered. The first wave must have come up all the way to flood the split in the wall. Something about that bothered him, something bad. He shook off the feeling and trudged on. The pain burned bright as a lighthouse beacon in his head, sending its agony out to the world.

Geppo, now only twenty paces ahead, was cautiously peering into the rift. The sight and stench from the wet, rotting bodies did not seem to affect him. Geppo looked over the bodies carefully, then looked up, saw no threat, and continued on into the rift.

The final weapon was in Wykar's hands. The black wand would have to work the first time. There would be no chance for a second time. He spit out the corner of his vest and some loose fur fibers with it. He had control of himself now, in these final moments.

Geppo was in the rift. He kicked aside a severed limb, perhaps a drow's arm. He looked down at the ground now. He toed something, a sack or piece of clothing. He bent down to pick it up.

Then he straightened up fast, and his bony hands clamped tight over his ears. He seemed to be screaming, his eyes shut. It was the moaning attack of the cloakers.

Something white fell from the cavern ceiling high above the derro.

Wykar raised the black wand and said the three words that would make it work. He never heard the words he spoke. He only felt them vibrate his chest. Moving his jaw tore the wounds in his ears open again, and he almost forgot the words. The pain was horrific.

White light burst out, filled the world in a flash. Wykar saw afterimages of the entire cave imprinted on his retinas like a gigantic, detail-perfect painting. A white arm of sunlight, over a hundred feet long, perfectly connected his wand tip to the falling cloaker. The cloaker was in flames, dying the instant the burning light struck it. The wand of sunfire, taken from an ambushed drow wizard and hidden away among the deep gnome's caches long ago, worked perfectly. Wykar ran forward. There would be more, at least five more. But he was half blind, and his feet caught something, and he fell.

He dropped the black wand of sunfire. He kicked at the thing holding his legs, looking back and blinking at the afterimages.

A dead drow lay at Wykar's feet, his boots entangled in its blood-darkened arm bones and clothing.

Wykar kicked and screamed. Each scream renewed the bolts of agony in his deafened ears. The limp arms lost their grip on him and fell away, unmoving and dead. Wykar crawled away from the drow, limbs shaking with fear. He saw the wand, grabbed for it, looked up again.

Another white thing was falling from the ceiling. Geppo was below it, clutching his head. The cloakers were singing to him as they had sung to the drow.

Wykar raised the wand and shouted out the three words.

Nothing happened.

Your people are like mine, a little, because we are resistant to magic more than other folk.

"NO!" Wykar screamed. He threw down the wand, then snatched it up and aimed.

The cloaker had Geppo in its folds.

"NO!" Wykar got up and ran, waving the invisible wand like a sword. "NO! NO!"

Geppo was trying to get out. Wykar could see his thin fingers pushing out against the black folds. The derro's narrow mouth was open and screaming and making absolutely no sound. Wykar screamed as he ran. He pulled off his ring, his invisibility ring, and threw it at the cloaker entrapping Geppo. "Look at me," he screamed. "Look at me."

Something white fell from the ceiling. He saw it just before it got him.

The wand went up, aimed, the three words said.

A staggering white spear of light set the cloaker ablaze, it curled up and fell to the side. Wykar saw in the great flash that a dozen dark things hung from the ceiling above him. A nest of monsters. They pulled loose when he saw them, a dozen white sheets falling at him with huge mouths and glassy eyes and fangs. Wykar screamed three words, wand out, and shut his eyes. He screamed them again and again and again, over and over, white flames roaring now from the wand and heat searing his hands, a litany of fire in the darkness.

Something caught him by the foot and pulled. Wykar lost his balance and fell, unable to see anything through the maze of afterimages and agony in his head. He struck blindly with the wand at the thing that had grabbed him, but the thing only tightened its grip. It didn't feel like a hand.

Wykar swiftly rubbed his eyes on his short sleeve. In the red-violet light of the rift, he then saw what gripped his foot, even through the afterimages in his eyes and the fire in his ears and the bodies of flaming cloakers scattered across the rift floor. He saw it clearly.

The egg in the chest had hatched. It held his foot in one of its thick, dark tentacles.

Wykar screamed and heard himself scream even with no eardrums. The sea wave had hatched it, of course. Wykar realized that even in his madness, as he screamed out the three words and pointed the wand at the three liquid-black eyes only a yard away. He knew why the drow thought it was so funny, the idea of spitting on the egg, which they did not dare do. Water would hatch the egg and set the baby free. Not even a drow would want that.

The scaled newborn raised itself up as Wykar said the last word. He could not shut his eyes to block out the sight of it.

Hot, so very hot, and so blind after, though he saw everything.

In the flash of pure light that filled the rift, he saw the tentacled creature with three eyes impaled on the white-hot lance in his hands. Smoke flew from it in that instant, smoke black as a nightmare, and the creature and the wand blew up.

Almost half the population of Raurogh's Hall fell victim to the earthquake, injured or killed. When the surviving dwarves reached the shivering fisher dwarf, her eyes were closed but her blue lips were still moving.

"One hundred sixty-five," she whispered aloud, hearing their approach. "One hundred sixty-five."

The rescuing dwarves heard the fading thunder from the Deepfall's silo and understood. One hundred sixty-five seconds from top to bottom. They pulled her to safety. Her place in the legends was assured.

Wykar's hands were blistered and burning. He held them up and wept, pushed beyond his limits. His mangled hands glowed like fires in his heat-vision. He was on his feet, staggering around on the body-strewn shore outside the rift with the red-purple glow. He remembered nothing after the explosion, neither what happened nor how he got there.

He went back inside the rift. "Geppo!" he cried. He heard nothing, not even the tortured whine from the remains of his eardrums. "Geppo! Geppo!"

He found Geppo pulling himself from the folds of a limp white sheet. The red-splattered mouth on the sheet was slack and open, and its yellow gaze saw nothing. Geppo reached out to Wykar, bathed in the heat of his own blood. The derro spoke words the gnome could not hear. Wykar caught his hand and leaned close.

"Ring not work very long," Geppo's lips said. "Not very long, but cloaker not kill Geppo, hey?" The derro managed a black-toothed grin. "Geppo think good plan. Eat blue-glow plant in cave. Hooret, poison in blood, but not kill Geppo. True-Masters eat blue-glow plants always. Plants make all very sick when they try eat True-Masters, even Geppo." The derro gripped Wykar's hand tightly. "Geppo smart, hey? Cloaker very sick, hey?"

"I used you," Wykar said. He clutched the derro to him. "I used you to get the cloakers out. I betrayed you. Gods forgive me, Geppo, I did you evil. I did you evil."

The derro merely smiled. "You lie," he said. "You give Geppo magic. You give Geppo real magic. Not work very long, but was real… magi — " He stiffened. "Thank…"

The light went out in the colorless eyes.

"No," cried the gnome. He clutched the derro to him. "Geppo. Gods above hear me. No. No."

Only silence heard him.

On the starlit plains of the Eastern Shaar, the hunter stirred the dying embers of his campfire, thinking of his dead wife. The sorceress in the tower closed the mildewed tome and rubbed her eyes, unsettled by the book's implications. The old shepherd, warm in his cottage and his flock in its pen, played a soft tune on his flute, then began a bedtime tale to his grandson about ghosts.