The Quest for the Trilogy: Boneslicer; Seaspray; Deathwhisper (20 page)

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Authors: Mel Odom

BOOK: The Quest for the Trilogy: Boneslicer; Seaspray; Deathwhisper
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Bulokk raised his shield, which—in Wick's opinion—seemed like a pathetic thing to do. It was obvious that the elemental would strike the dwarf down.
The other dwarves scattered, except for Adranis, who chose to remain at Bulokk's side.
“Wait!” Wick yelled. Of course, he regretted speaking at once. It was evident that his mind responded much more quickly to solutions to puzzles than to selfpreservation.
However, the elemental paused. “Who are you?” the creature demanded imperiously.
“Nobody, but I know why you believe Bulokk is an imposter. Which he isn't.”
“He doesn't know the lineage,” Merjul insisted.
“
You
,” Wick said, “don't know the lineage.”
“I was taught—”
“You were taught what the lineage was back in Master Oskarr's time,” Wick interrupted, fearing that the elemental would choose to strike at any moment. “But a thousand years have passed since Master Oskarr met his fate in these islands.”
Merjul seemed undecided for a moment. He kept the spear resting easily on his shoulder. “A thousand years,” he mused. “Truthfully, I didn't count how long I've been here. Time holds no meaning to someone such as I. Even with the sun to mark its passage, I often don't pay attention. Oskarr's friendship, though it lasted years, seems like such a brief thing.”
“This,” Wick said, “is Master Oskarr's descendant. Blood of his blood. And if you gave your word to Master Oskarr, then you are honor-bound to Bulokk as well.”
“Perhaps,” Merjul agreed. He shifted his attention to Bulokk. “Tell me the lineage again.”
Wick turned to Bulokk. “Again. Only this time begin with Master Oskarr.”
Bulokk did. In spite of his fear, his voice rang out clear and strong as he worked back through the dwarven genealogy. At last he was finished, and everyone stood pensive, awaiting the elemental's judgment.
“You are as you claim,” Merjul said. “You shall have your ancestor's battle-axe.” The thin mouth curved into a frown. “I have to tell you, though, I will be glad to be rid of it. It's been a discomfort the whole time it's been here. The curse laid upon it is a powerful thing.” He dropped the lava spear, which took back its original shape, and held forth his empty hand.
A tendril of lava plopped up, then grew like a vine. In its coils was a beautiful dwarven battle-axe. With careless strength, the elemental flung the weapon at Bulokk.
Wick ducked back, watching as Bulokk effortlessly caught the great axe. He fully expected to hear the dwarf yell out in anguish from the super-heated metal.
But Bulokk didn't. He acted as though the axe wasn't hot at all. Awe filled his face as he gazed upon the mirror brightness of the finish. Even after all those years in the lava pit, the wooden haft wasn't scorched. “By the Old Ones!” he gasped. “I have never seen such a blade!”
Merjul smiled. “Now I know for certain you are Master Oskarr's kith and kin. You share his love for the craft.”
“With all me heart,” Bulokk agreed.
Bowing, the fire elemental said, “Then I am glad I could keep my promise.”
“Thank ye,” Bulokk said, smiling. “I know me words ain't enough, but they're all I have. If 'n ye ever need anything that I can ever help ye with, let me know.”
If we live
, Wick thought, remembering the goblinkin even now searching the mineshafts for them.
“Use the battle-axe in good health,” Merjul said. “My friend would have
wanted that.” His face darkened. “But beware the curse. Master Oskarr wanted to trust no one except his own family with the weapon because of that curse.”
“Why have you never left here?” Wick asked, unable to curb his curiosity.
“My promise to Master Oskarr held me here,” Merjul answered. “Now that I have fulfilled that obligation, I am free to go.”
“How?” Wick asked. “You can't travel except through the fire routes.”
The elemental smiled. “I can travel. When I wish to. I can walk through the lava rivers that reach under the sea to the mainland, or I can become a candle flame and travel in a lantern. For now, though, I'll explore what's to be had here in the islands. Many things have changed since Lord Kharrion brought his destruction here.”
“Wait!” Wick cried. “I have other questions!”
How often do you get to talk to an elemental face-to-face?
Without
dying
?
“This isn't exactly time for a parlor room conversation,” Rohoh said. The skink ran across the ceiling and dropped back to Wick's shoulder, curling a claw in his hair at once.
“Another time, perhaps,” the elemental said. Then he dropped into the lava and disappeared. The molten rock dimmed at his passing and Wick knew he was gone.
“Well then,” Bulokk said, “I suppose it's time we should be findin' out if 'n that escape attempt we planned for the prisoners is workin' out. Luck willing, they should be around the island by now.” He slung his own battle-axe and shield, and took up his ancestor's, giving it an experimental swing. “By the Old Ones but this is a fine weapon.” He smiled in pleased satisfaction, then took off at a trot.
Wick followed, falling into the middle of the group of dwarves, hoping that they all remained safe. That hope was quickly shattered, though. Only a few tunnels back, surely not even halfway back to the entrance, they were discovered by a goblinkin patrol.
“Halt!” a goblinkin ordered.
Turning, peering between the dwarves, Wick saw nearly twenty goblinkin in a pack just coming out of the mineshaft they needed to pass through in order to get out of the mine.
“There can't be more'n twenty of 'em,” Adranis said. “I like the odds just fine.”
Apparently so did the other six dwarves. They hefted their weapons. Then another goblinkin patrol closed on them from behind. Wick quickly verified that there were nearly twenty in that group as well.
“By the Old Ones,” Adranis said, “most of the goblinkin must have been sent into the mine after us.”
“This whole setup has been to secure the return of Master Oskarr's axe,” Wick said. “It makes sense that they would safeguard that first.”
“Well, it's to our rotten luck,” Drinnick snarled. “Twenty goblinkin we could account for. Forty is pressin' the limit.”
“In here,” Bulokk said, dodging into the mineshaft to his right.
“No!” Rassun cried.
But it was too late. The dwarves, and Wick, had already plunged into the new mineshaft.
“This shaft holds the pens for the Burrowers!”
Burrowers!
“
B
y the Old Ones!” Adranis shouted, coming to a stop in front of Wick.
Unable to stop so quickly, Wick ran into the dwarf's backside and fell backward, tripping Hodnes.
“Stupid halfer tanglefoot!” Hodnes yelped. “Walkin' ain't that hard to—”
From the way the dwarf stopped in mid-deprecation, Wick assumed Hodnes had gotten his first sight of the Burrowers, too. It did take the breath away.
The torches lit up the large chamber surprisingly well. Or maybe it only seemed like that because the Burrowers could be seen well enough to inspire instant nightmares.
They were at least thirty feet long and nine feet in diameter, and they lay in a writhing mess at the bottom of a twenty-foot pit. A narrow ledge ran around the pit, but it went in an irregular oval, leaving only the one entrance to the chamber.
Their pale pink and cream skins looked tough as leather but gave them a deceptively harmless appearance. They had no eyes or ears or nostrils, only a huge gaping maw that opened the full diameter of their bodies so they looked on the verge of turning themselves inside out. Rows of serrated teeth occupied the thick purple tongues that showed in the vast hollows of their mouths.
The tongues moved out again and again, like battering rams. Nets made of metal links covered the Burrowers' mouths/faces, though, and every time the tongues came in contact with the net,
the tongues would withdraw at once. Chains attached to the nets were locked onto stakes driven deeply into the stone floor of the chamber.
“They can't chew through them metal nets,” Rassun said. “An' the goblinkin put some kind of foul-tastin' brew on the net links to keep 'em from tryin'.”
“How do they control them?” Wick asked.
“Got riders,” Rassun said. “Humans with some kind of magical talisman what allows them to control the Burrowers. A little bit, anyways. If 'n nobody watches after these beasties all the time, why they'll get loose an' wander off on their own. It's hard bringin' 'em back under control.”
Wick didn't doubt that. What he had trouble believing was that anyone could exercise any control at any time. He pressed against the wall so hard that the stone dug into his back.
“Ain't any way forward,” Bulokk said, face grimy and grim in the torchlight. He nodded back toward the entrance. “Gotta go back through them goblinkin.”
Evidently the goblinkin knew that, too. They stood in the doorway, grinning and waiting in anticipation.
“There's only one way we're getting out of here alive,” Rohoh yelled into Wick's ear.
Wick had forgotten the skink was riding there. “What?”
“We've got to set a Burrower free,” Rohoh said. “Let it chase the goblinkin back.”
Wick peered over the side of the pit. “I'm not going down there.”
“Why would ye go down there?” Adranis asked, not taking his eyes from the goblinkin.
“The lizard says we should free one of the Burrowers to chase the goblinkin,” Wick said.
Peering over the side, Adranis shook his head. “It's just as likely to chase us as them.” The other dwarves quickly agreed.
“I've seen what them things can do to flesh an' blood,” Rassun said. “I ain't goin' down there.”
“We don't have a lot of time to mess about,” Rohoh said.
Without warning, white-hot pain flooded Wick's ear. It took him a second to realize that the skink had bitten him, managing to hit one of the few nerves in the ear. Screaming with pain, he tried to knock the skink loose, but it only chomped down harder and tore at his ear. Before Wick knew it, he stepped over the side and fell.
Noooooooooo!
Then he hit something hard and leathery, spongy like a melon gone bad. Panicked, totally afraid that he knew exactly where he was, he rolled from his back to his stomach. His torch lay farther down on the ground, burning against the stone floor and driving the four Burrowers away from it. They didn't like heat. He filed that away for future reference even as he plastered his face up against the hide of the Burrower he was currently on.
Then light from other torches flooded the pit as the dwarves and the goblinkin peered down at him. Wick looked around, feeling the Burrower shifting beneath
him. He didn't know if he was on top of the creature or clinging to its belly. Maybe it didn't even make those kinds of distinctions.
One thing he became certain of: The Burrower didn't like him on it.
“What are ye a-doin' down there, halfer?” Bulokk demanded. “Ye're gonna get yerself killed! Get back up here!”
For the first time Wick noticed that most of the pain in his ear was gone. The skink had stopped biting him, but it hadn't been lost in the fall. Rohoh clung tightly to his shoulder and hair again, digging his claws in deep.
“Come on, halfer!” the skink cried out. “Get up there and free this thing before the goblinkin kill those dwarves!”
Wick didn't think about freeing the Burrower or saving the dwarves. He only knew he wanted off the gigantic creature, and that the head was probably safer than anywhere else.
Grabbing fistfuls of the Burrower's leathery hide, the little Librarian pulled himself forward. If he reached the head, he was certain he could leap back to the ledge. Falling would no doubt mean instant death, crushed beneath the raw tonnage of the writhing creatures.
By the light of the torches held by the anxious dwarves, Wick reached the chain net that guarded the Burrower's maw. The creature felt him there then, and it gentled somewhat.
It thinks I'm its rider!
Wick couldn't believe it, but he took advantage of his good fortune. He gripped the chain and prepared to leap to the ledge. Unfortunately, at that moment the Burrower chose to shift, maybe growing impatient. It shook its massive maw-end like a dog.
Wick tumbled down, scrabbling for a fresh hold, and caught the chain net again. Something clicked against his palm. When Wick looked up, he saw that he'd accidentally grabbed the locking mechanism. As he watched, the maw-net came loose.
“Move!” Rohoh yelled. “You're going to get us both eaten!”
Digging in with his bare toes, Wick climbed to the top of the Burrower again as the chain net fell away. The Burrower rose up immediately, twisting itself into a proud S shape and bugling like a moose—a very large, very angry moose. The sound filled the pit and the cavern.
Tensing like a bowstring, the Burrower lunged from the pit, sliding up the wall and over the ledge directly toward the doorway where the goblinkin were. Either it sensed the entrance or the goblinkin, or it remembered the direction. Wick had no clue. He clung on tightly, flattening himself against the Burrower's body, certain that he'd be scraped off on the entrance with every bone broken.
Instead, Wick sank down a little as the Burrower flattened its body and eased through the entrance. Goblinkin shouted in terror as the massive creature grabbed several of them with its maw and swallowed them whole. Immediately, the Burrower's teeth went to work, cutting and grinding, and its stomachs shivered into action.
Out in the main mineshaft, the Burrower took off in pursuit of the goblinkin fleeing down into the mine. Wick lost his hold and struggled to remain on top of the creature as it bounced and jarred beneath him. He finally gave up and wrapped
an arm around his head and hoped he didn't have his brains bashed out or—Old Ones forbid!—end up
beneath
the Burrower.
Abruptly, Wick ran out of creature. He dropped off the posterior end and plopped to the floor. He landed in a pile of the foulest, gooiest mess he'd ever felt or smelled. As he tried to stand, his feet kept sliding out from under him.
The dwarves came out of the Burrowers' chamber with their axes and torches in hand.
“There he is!” Adranis shouted. “He's still alive!”
Wick finally got to his feet just as they arrived. Although they seemed happy enough to see that he was still alive, none of them wanted to touch him.
“That was a brave thing ye did, halfer,” Bulokk said. “I don't think I coulda done that.”
“Now you're a hero,” Rohoh whispered into Wick's punctured ear.
Some hero
, Wick thought sourly.
I'm battered and bruised, and have an ear that will probably never look right again, and I'm covered in
—
in
—He looked at the greenish paste that covered him from head to toe. Then he looked at Rassun.
“What is this?” Wick asked.
“Burrower leavin's,” Rassun said solemnly.
Wick gazed back down at himself in disbelief.
“Goblinkin go right through 'em,” Rassun said. “Told ye they digested fast. Goblinkin ain't no good for 'em nutritionally, but they do love to eat 'em. Like treats.”
“Dung?” Wick cried. “I'm covered in goblinkin dung?” The foul stench nearly made him sick.
“It's not exactly goblinkin dung,” Rassun said. “Though that's pretty foul, too. No, this here's Burrower dung. Usually it's rocks and suchlike. But this is, well, it's—”
“Right disgustin' is what it is,” Adranis supplied.
Wick silently agreed. He wanted a hot bath with scented soap. He wanted a change of clothes. He wanted a book and a pipe, and to
never
be reminded that he'd once wallowed in Burrower poop made out of goblinkin.
The skink climbed down Wick, careful of where he trod. “If you don't mind,” Rohoh said, “I'll manage on my own from here.” The lizard was somehow miraculously clean of foulness.
“Come on,” Bulokk said. “We've got an escape to attend.” He trotted back up the mineshaft.
Wick took a moment and kicked as much of the dung from his feet as he could. He wished he had a stick to clean out between his toes, but he didn't. When he saw the dwarves leaving, he finally gave up and ran after them, avoiding the Burrower trail that had been left in the creature's wake.
Farther down the mineshaft, the goblinkin shrieked in terror, but the shrieks came less and less often.
 
 
They gained the front entrance without further incident, but there were ten goblinkin standing guard.
“Axes!” Bulokk yelled.
Immediately, Adranis, Hodnes, and Drinnick formed on Bulokk. The goblinkin tried to stand their ground, but they went down before the dwarven axes like wheat before a flail. The battle was short and vicious, with no mercy given to the goblinkin. Rassun and the other dwarf took on any that managed to escape the whirling death that was the dwarven axes. By the time they reached the entrance, all of them were covered in the blood of their foes.
Stumbling over the bodies of the fallen goblinkin, Wick peered outside. It took a moment for his eyes to adapt to the night.
“To the docks!” Bulokk roared, taking off at once. “They've made it around to the goblinkin ship!”
Glancing down, Wick saw that the escapees and the rest of Bulokk's warriors
had
made it around to the stone pier. A massive battle was taking place on the pier. Not all of the goblinkin had abandoned their posts to pursue the fleeing slaves.
Looking up, Wick saw that a number of dead goblinkin littered the stone steps leading up to the ridge. More of them had fallen to the hard-packed ground.
Wick followed the dwarves down the steps even though it meant running into the battle. He definitely didn't want to remain standing at the mine entrance by himself in case any goblinkin survived the Burrower's attack and decided to come out. Or if there were other groups that hadn't yet gone down before the Burrower.
Several of the loose rocks Wick had dumped down the steps remained and he had to be careful. Still, he slipped twice and ended up barely keeping himself from going over the edge, and he had new sets of bruises to show for his efforts.
When he reached the bottom of the steps, he was even with the dwarves. He was faster than they were, more sure-footed in spite of the falls he'd taken, and unburdened by armor.
Wick guessed that most of the prisoners had made good on their escape, because most of them appeared to be with Bulokk's warriors. They used weapons they'd taken along the way or picked up when they arrived at the harbor. Some of them threw rocks into the milled mass of goblinkin trying to keep the dwarves from reaching the anchored ships.
Within a few steps, the skink leaped onto Wick's leg and slithered up. At first Wick had started to beat the skink away, thinking that one of the dead goblinkin around him wasn't quite as dead as he'd looked. Then he recognized the lizard and relaxed a little.
“I guess maybe I don't stink so bad now,” Wick said.

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