Secret of Pax Tharkas

ONE

Plop.

Gus watched the globule of sludge fall from the ceiling, plummeting-as he had known it would-straight down onto Pap’s bald, wrinkled pate. The ball of gooey liquid exploded noisily, spattering Mam and Birt. But most of the gunk ran down Pap’s face or draped his very prominent ears like the draperies that used to ornament Thane Grumple Nagfar’s palace. (Gus had seen the palace once when Thane Highbulp Nagfar, drunk, had fallen down outside the drain hole that was his palace entrance, and Gus, who also was drunk, had tripped over the thane and tumbled down the slick and slimy shaft.)

Just as he had anticipated the sludge’s fall, Gus knew what would happen next.

“Move!” Pap snapped, roughly elbowing Mam from her small rock and sidling sideways to claim the newly vacated seat. His own perch, the largest rock in the entire Fishbiter household, he left unoccupied.

Mam kicked One Eye (Birt was his real name, but the family called him One Eye ever since that thing that happened when the brothers were fishing) over and took the space on the floor where he had been sitting. It was the only flat spot on the rocky, rubble-strewn floor of the lightless house, so she settled herself there with a stern look at Birt, Ooz, and Gus.

Gus sighed, watching the inevitable progression of nudges, punches, and kicks as Birt claimed the corner perch formerly occupied by Ooz (Ooz was his real name, but the family sometimes called him Hook Lip ever since that other thing that happened when the brothers were fishing), and Ooz knocked Gus out of his place in the doorway. Rubbing his sore ribs-Ooz punched him in the same place every time-Gus stood up and tried to decide what to do. He looked at the ceiling and saw that the ooze was only slowly beginning to bubble down below the crack; it would be at least two minutes before it fell again. Since his only other choice was to leave the crowded little house, he made his way to the rock that had been vacated by Pap.

He settled himself on the high seat, which was clean since Pap himself had intercepted the plunging sludge. For just a second, he relished the thrill of being high and dry, his rump nestled comfortably in the slight concavity atop the rock. It was nice up here!

“Hey! That my seat!”

Pap lunged to his feet, his face twisted into a grimace of ferocity, both of his teeth showing between his widespread lips. Gus sprang off the rock before the old Aghar’s punch could land, allowing his father to reclaim his chair. Pap glowered menacingly at his youngest offspring until a louse in his beard compelled him to refocus his attention on scratching. Mam, meanwhile, wasted no time in reclaiming her place next to the rock, while Ooz and Birt likewise moved back to their previous roosts. Instead of sitting down himself, Gus looked at the ceiling, where another distended smear of viscous sludge was gathering underneath the wide place in the crack. Soon the mass was too heavy to cling and broke free to tumble straight down toward Pap’s still-moist cranium.

Plop.

Gus decided not to stay around for the next step in the cycle, which was the usual after dinner routine of the Fishbiter clan. For one thing, dinner had taken place a very, very long time ago, and the shuffle and return was starting to get a little boring (though he never tired of watching the sludge spatter as it struck Pap’s hairless scalp). And for another thing, Gus was starting to get very hungry again.

The previous dinner had been the bony carcass of a cave carp that Ooz had claimed from behind an inn in New Theibardin. Of course, all the usable meat had been picked off, but Theiwar cooks were notoriously wasteful. In this case, the head, all the fins, and the tail remained. Furthermore, there had been succulent little bits of flesh between the rib bones of the carp, meat that the cook had been too lazy or impatient to carve out.

As a result, there had been feasting in the Fishbiter household! Well, it was sort of feasting, anyway. At least Pap had eaten like a king; he got the whole head to himself. Mam had claimed the tail, greedily smacking her lips over each morsel. Ooz and Birt got the fins and ribs, and all four of them enjoyed something to eat.

Gus, unfortunately, had been left to scramble for the bits of bone, scale, and gristle that evaded the notice of his elders, though he grabbed one tasty morsel when he fooled Birt into dropping his fin to snatch at a tempting mouse that scrambled over his lap. Of course, the mouse had been only a puff of fuzz tangled at the end of a long thread dangled by Gus, but by the time Birt figured out the ruse, Gus was already smacking his lips, savoring the strong aftertaste of carp. Since Birt would have had to neglect the rest of his feast in order to pound his younger brother, he had to forgo any vengeance in order to protect the remainder of his share.

Even so, Gus’s belly was rumbling, and as Pap, Mam, Birt, and Ooz rearranged the seating in the household once again, the youngest Fishbiter ducked his head and exited through the low tunnel that was the house’s front door. He emerged into one of the dingy, filthy alleys of Agharhome, the largest “city” (though nest or den or hive or warren or lair might be more accurate terms) of gully dwarves in the whole of vast, subterranean Thorbardin.

The ceiling, a slanted slab of rock, pressed low over the narrow thoroughfare, which was one of a multitude of similar lightless, stinky, cramped enclosures in the city of the gully dwarves. Dozens of little circular holes led into the bedrock to either side of the alley. These were the doors of houses similar to the one in which Gus and his family lived. Some of them had residents, but a great deal were empty. Hunger, predators, and the deadly gangs of Klar thugs made for short life expectancy for the denizens of Agharhome.

Glumly, Gus started down the lane, descending the steep incline toward the lake, quickly emerging onto a narrow ledge above the water. He looked down to see where the dark waters of the Urkhan Sea lapped against many of the lower tunnels of Agharhome. These points of access were all crowded with hungry gullies, each seeking a lucky chance at a fish, and Gus considered whether he wanted to take his chances at shouldering through the crowd and trying his own fortunes.

Gus was neither unusually large nor unusually small by Aghar standards. He stood about three feet high, with a large nose the prominent feature of his round, weak-chinned face. A scraggly beard grew from that chin, but not thickly enough to mask its recession. His eyes were large and watery, his teeth jutted awkwardly forward from his mouth. He wore a surprisingly nice-looking red silk jacket (stolen from someone’s laundry) but the elbows had worn away on it, and it didn’t quite enclose his protruding belly. His saggy pants were held up by a scrap of rope, and though he wore boots, the sole and the front were missing from one of them, so his large, dirty toes projected into view.

He spotted a throng of Aghar squeezed into the narrow mouth of the ravine directly below him. Only two could actually fit at the water’s edge, where they crouched, hands extended, waiting for a fish. Behind them, the rest of the group pushed and jostled. “Move, you bluphsplunger goot!” one demanded.

“Back up, doofus wandwaver!” another replied, grappling the first. The two wrestlers tumbled down, pushing the two fishers into the water. One climbed out, crawling between the pair who had claimed the shore, shivering and dripping and again jostling for position.

Gus watched for two minutes before he turned around. His family was bad enough. He had no stomach for rough encounters with other Aghar who would invariably be bigger, rougher, and nastier. And the teeming numbers he encountered at every one of these ravines! He couldn’t count very high, but a general guess suggested there were at least two, and two, and two more of them everywhere! Such throngs held no appeal for a loner such as Gus.

So instead of descending, he climbed. It was not too long before he emerged from the small tunnel of the alley into a loftier, though still narrow, passage. This was one of the dramatic clefts that scored the upper surface of Agharbardin, carved into the steep wall of the great cavern that surrounded the Urkhan Sea. As was ever true in Thorbardin, a rock ceiling vaulted overhead, but the ceiling was far above him, allowing a vista that carried far out across the black, still water.

This place was nearly lightless, only faintly illuminated from a few of the old sun shafts that still remained open; the others had long been filled in by debris. The pale beams diffused through the distance, glimmering over a few patches of still water.

It had not always been like this. A half century earlier, the whole shore of the Urkhan Sea would have been aglow with the spillage of light from the many forges, fireplaces, and other fires burning throughout the great dwarven kingdom. In those days the great cities along the lake shore rose up through many terraces on the steep cliffs rising from the water while the great Life-Tree of the Hylar, in the center of the lake, radiated light and warmth from thousands of windows, balconies, and overlooks.

All of those cities were abandoned-ravaged and at least partially destroyed by the depredations of the Chaos War. Vast sections had been hollowed out by mighty fire dragons that had burned tunnels right through the bedrock of the mountain, and in many places those scoured caverns had weakened the surrounding structures catastrophically.

In the center of the lake, where the Life-Tree once had dominated, loomed the most tragic wreckage of the Chaos War and its aftermath. The massive pillar had collapsed, leaving an irregular pile of rocks jutting from the surface. Most Thorbardin dwarves called that place the Isle of the Dead, though to the Aghar it was just the Dead Island. A stub of the great pillar still extended from the lofty roof of the cavern, but it terminated a long way above the top of the island. Every once in a while, new rocks would break free and plummet downward, an unpredictable barrage that ensured the island would not be reinhabited.

Indeed, all the environs of the Urkhan Sea were virtually abandoned; at least there were no proper cities or towns. There were dens of Aghar all around the lake, however, with the largest being Agharhome. Too, there were bands of feral Klar-the wild-eyed, often insane dwarves-who had rejected the new king’s orderly city life to roam free in their vast undermountain realm. But the feral Klar were not interested in cities and only passed through the ruins periodically on their nomadic wanderings.

Even though there was virtually no illumination in the vast cavern, Gus could make out some details since light was not, strictly, necessary for deep-delving dwarves to see. The Aghar, like the Theiwar and Daergar, had eyes keenly attuned to the dim conditions of their stone-bordered world. As Gus looked out across the water, he could make out the motionless surface of chilly liquid, black as oil and still as ice. The ruined stub of the Life-Tree jutted from that surface, perhaps two miles away from him.

Beyond the Dead Island and much farther away-about two miles, Gus thought, the upper limit of his arithmetic ability-the vast front of Theibardin rose into view. From an array of docks and cavernous warehouses at the lake level, the great city of the Theiwar spread up the precipitous cliff of the lakeshore. It was dotted with villas, palaces, and temples, all carved from the bedrock of the mountain, each structure positioned to give its dwellers a grand view over the great underground lake at the heart of Thorbardin. Those facades were dark and lifeless as Gus stared, with irregular holes and great gaps showing where the war and its attendant erosion continued to tear away at Theibardin’s foundations.

But everything that happened in ancient times (meaning more than two years ago) was beyond an Aghar’s imagination. In any event, Gus’s attention was directed closer to home. A rivulet of scummy liquid was flowing down the base of the ravine, and he sniffed at it without much hope. The vile brown sludge that flowed there was not, nor had it ever been, a source of food, but he sniffed again, just to be sure. Sighing, he stood and watched the flow go past, moving downward, fast where the ravine was steep, slower where the grade was shallower. It trickled right past the mouth of the tunnel/alley leading to the Fishbiter house. The floor of that side tunnel was about two inches above the flowing sludge. Gus remembered a time when the level of sludge had risen up to that tunnel mouth-it had been an unpleasantly wet and smelly time for the neighborhood.

Just beyond the tunnel mouth, Gus noted, the sludge stopped flowing. Gus knew that place, but he peered at the sight just to be sure. The viscous liquid was collecting in a large holding pond, held in place by a makeshift dam of loose rock that had spilled into the ravine some time about two years ago. Looking up at the cliff wall rising over his head and down at the steep ravine and the tunnel leading to his house, Gus suddenly realized that the sludge pond was poised right over his and his neighbor’s houses.

Then he saw something else-there was someone down there, hunched over, studying something on the ground. Squinting, he discerned the hunched back; large, bare feet; and straggly strands of dirt-colored hair that suggested a female gully dwarf.

“Hey!” he called. “Who you?”

She raised her face, which was even dirtier than her feet. It was centered around a huge and not altogether unattractive nose. “Go away, bluphsplunger stoop!” she retorted.

Instead, Gus skidded down the slope to her side, which was right near the edge of the sewage pond. He saw that she was huddled protectively over the limp form of a skinny, bedraggled, and apparently very, very dead, rat.

“That my rat!” Gus declared boldly, hunkering down next to her.

“Go away!” she repeated, picking up the rat and holding it to her tattered dress. “I call you bluphsplunger stoop! You go away!”

“Who you?” Gus repeated, eyeing the rat.

“Slooshy,” she replied, glaring at him.

“Why you call me stoop?”

She shrugged. “Not know. Bluphsplunger stoop-different one from you-push me down. But me lucky after all; found rat!” She brightened at the thought and held the grotesque rodent out in a filthy paw. “See?”

Gus was tempted to snatch the rat out of her hand, but something gave him pause. “Share rat with me?” he suggested instead.

“No!” she snapped, pulling her hand away just as he made his grab. He got his stubby fingers around the hairless tail. But she had a grip on the body and jerked it away until it flew free from her grasp out over the sewage pond, where it landed with a dull plop. Despite the thickness of the liquid, it immediately vanished from sight, sending only a small ripple to the dam of rocks, allowing a small surge to slip over the barrier and spill toward the lake below.

“Now look! Bluphsplunger stoop! You big humpus maker, you!” she shouted, standing up and stomping her feet.

Gus sat on a rock, trying to ignore his empty stomach and the barrage of creative insults that emerged from Slooshy’s mouth. She knew a number of interesting words, enhancing most with the “bluphsplunger” modifier as she called him a “doofa,” a “goopar,” and a “burfhoofing lumpus.”

But he couldn’t focus on her tirade and, inevitably, was distracted by other things, watching the ooze and the ravine and the barricade of rocks. Many random facts flitted, unbidden and mostly unannounced, through his little brain. He thought of the rat, the tempting morsel flying through the air, the plop in the sludge. The sludge…

The sludge was trying to go down, but it couldn’t because of the dam.

This sludge was just like the stuff that dripped through the ceiling of his house.

All of his neighbors had sludge dripping through their ceilings as well.

The sludge was trying to go down, but it couldn’t because of the dam.

A clatter of rock distracted him. He looked up just as Slooshy threw a small rock, one that had broken loose from high on the cliff. Her aim was good, and she stood right in front of him, so the jagged missile smacked him square in the right eye.

“Ow!” he cried, clapping a hand to his face. Through his other eye, he saw the stone had continued to roll, bouncing over the uneven ground and finally landing in the sludge pond with a smacking splash.

“Stoopy humpus bluphsplunger!” she cried, kneeling to look for another missile.

Still, Gus paid her no attention. He was thinking. The stone, like the sludge, was trying to go down. That idea, for some reason, struck Gus as vaguely important. He watched the ripples from the splash disappear as the rock finally vanished beneath the scummy surface. He didn’t see Slooshy charging him until he felt the punch in his chest, which she landed with both fists. As the blow struck, his muddy boots slipped from the slick ledge he stood upon.

“Ow!” The pain came from his rump as he came down hard on the solid, slippery stone. His stubby fingers clutched for a handhold, but there was nothing to grab. Instead, he skidded off the ledge, bounced painfully off of a few boulders, and tumbled after the stone that she had flung against his face.

“Here! Grab me!” Slooshy demanded, holding out her hand. At the last moment, Gus did, and she yanked him to a stop, his feet and other hand braced against the slime-coated surfaces of the jagged rocks just above the edge of the pool.

Just like the stone, like the sludge, like everything, the gully dwarf had nearly tumbled down.

Everything goes down.

Then Slooshy let him go and squealed with delight as he did a face plant on the scummy rocks. He looked up at her, grinning in excitement.

“Everything falls!” he shouted.

The truth hit him as hard as the rock had, and he gaped at the amazing reality that was made even more obvious by the inexorable force tugging him down the slick stone surface. The girl laughed so hard, she had to sit down, even as Gus felt stunned by the universal truth of his realization. He clawed to hold his position until his nose started to itch. When he released his grip to scratch himself, his other hand lost purchase, and he skidded down again, down and down, bouncing and tumbling over the lip of the drop to splash heavily into the thick, scummy ooze of the drainage pond.

Gully dwarves tend to be natural swimmers, and Gus was no exception. He instantly popped to the surface and paddled over to the edge of the pond without really thinking about what was happening. Instead, he was still trying to grasp the intricacies, the beauty of the brainstorm that had dawned on him.

Everything goes down.

His hand brushed against something in the ooze, something limp and furry. In triumph he pulled it out to reveal the rat! Clutching his treasure, Gus climbed out of the sludge to find that he had unwittingly crossed the small pool and was perched on the loosely piled rubble left by the rockslide-the rubble that formed the dam that held back the sludge. To one side was the pond, the murky liquid lapping against the rim of the makeshift barrier. To the other side, Gus could see that the rocky slope tumbled steeply away. He recoiled from the edge, realizing that if he lost his balance, he would tumble all the way down to the dark hole where the sludgy stream disappeared into the ancient sewer extending under the Urkhan Sea.

Everything goes down, he knew, and that would include himself.

“Look! Got rat!” he crowed, hoisting the gamey morsel. Unfortunately his movement was too abrupt, and the slippery thing slid from his fingers, through the air, and back into the pond.

“You one funny bluphsplunger gully dwarf, you are!” Slooshy cried, still sitting on the ground, holding her sides from the force of her laughter.

Glumly, Gus looked at the place where the rat had vanished. He saw that more of the liquid, churned by his fall and subsequent swim, had spilled over the lip of the dam, running in gooey rivulets down the surface of tumbled stone.

Even as the thought possessed him, the loose pile of rocks underneath him shifted slightly. Gus scrambled to the side, kicking frantically to climb higher. He made it to safety with a single lunge, but his efforts knocked a couple of stones off the pile. They clattered downward, chased by a small spill of sludgy liquid as a bit of the pond scum trickled through the notch in the dam created by the falling rocks.

And in that instant, everything became really, really clear to the startled gully dwarf.

The sludge in the pond, like everything else in the world, wanted to go down. But the dam was stopping it from following the course of the stream. Instead, it sat there in the bowl of rock, and tried to go down a different way-the way that led through the ceilings of all the Aghar houses that happened to lie directly beneath.

“Hey!” he cried, hopping to his feet, quickly circling the small pond. Slooshy looked at him in confusion. “Hey! The sludge wants to go down!”

“That not so funny,” she replied. “You fall in again?” she added hopefully.

“Everything falls down!” he shouted, throwing back his head.

A few Aghar were higher up on the sides of the ravine, climbing or descending within his view. They stared at him in surprise, startled by the outburst. Most of them simply ignored him, though one hefty, young fellow tossed a sharp rock in Gus’s direction. He ducked, then shouted out in glee as the stone hit the liquid and, naturally, vanished.

“See! Everything goes down!”

“What? You crazy bluphsplunger now, you are!” Slooshy said, backing away. “Go away!”

She started climbing up the sloping ground, stopping to throw a rock at him every few feet. He gleefully skipped out of the path of each missile. “See! Goes down!” he cried when each errant stone vanished into the pond.

“That crazy talk! Stoop humpus bluphsplunger Aghar, leave me alone!” Slooshy shouted back. She threw one more rock-another he easily avoided-from the top of the ridge before vanishing from his view.

He didn’t care. He raced back up the ravine floor to the tunnel leading down to his neighborhood, skidding and sliding down the steep shaft. He almost couldn’t control his momentum until he caught a flash of movement on the ground, something slithering along at the base of the wall.

It was a cavebug!

Gus stopped the only way that he could: he sat down on the hard stone ground. Ignoring the pain in his bruised rump, he reached down and grabbed the bug with his stubby thumb and forefinger. Hoisting it, feeling the hunger gnawing at his belly, he almost popped it right into his mouth.

Then he remembered: sting thumb, not tongue!

That axiom of cavebug dining had been passed down through generations of gully dwarves, and Gus remembered it just in time. The little, wormlike bug wriggled in his grasp, the numerous legs-at least two on each side-flailing for purchase. At the tail he spotted the sharp stinger, erect and thrashing. Squinting, carefully concentrating, Gus held up his thumb and let the wicked-looking barb plunge into the pad of flesh.

“Ow!” he shouted as fiery tendrils of pain shot through his thumb, his hand, and up his arm. The stinger itself detached from the bug to jut from the gully dwarf’s skin. Knowing his prey was disarmed, Gus popped it into his mouth, breaking the segmented body with a crunch of his teeth and quickly swallowing the still-wriggling parts of the doomed creature. He smacked his lips and enjoyed the sensation of delicious food. If he was not exactly full, neither was he starving, and starving was a very pleasant thing not to be doing.

For a few moments, he inspected the floor of the alley, looking, hoping, seeking another one of the bugs. But he was lucky to have found the one creature and was unsurprised that no more were in view. He smacked his lips again, ignoring the searing pain in his thumb, wishing Slooshy would come along so he could brag about his precious discovery.

Only after two minutes did he remember that precious discovery, his mission, his crucial news. Then he hopped to his feet again and started down the steeply sloping alley toward his house, which was right around the next bend. Tumbling to a stop before the Fishbiter residence, he burst inside-fortunately, the Aghar family had no use for a front door-and immediately collided with Birt, who was lunging to outmaneuver Ooz to claim the rock that Pap, dripping with sludge, had once again vacated.

“Everything goes down!” Gus cried.

“Hey! That my rock!” Pap cried, knocking the momentarily triumphant Birt out of the way.

The patriarch resumed his place of honor, just as another dribble of goop gathered below the crack in the ceiling. Gus watched, waiting, knowing that it wouldn’t be long. The globule grew heavy, distended, drooping ever further downward while Pap, once more king of his household, glared sternly at his wife and sons.

Plop.