The Gully Dwarves Read online

  Beneath him, warmed by the regal bottom as well as by the radiance of nearby stew fires, the throne seemed to be just as happy as he was. It glowed cheerily with a radiant, greenish light.

  * * * * *

  Lidda found something else with which to occupy herself. High on one wall of the ancient chamber the combined clans had claimed as their home, was a mosaic of carvings surrounded by a framework of dark marble shelving set into gray stone. In some forgotten time, artisans had worked the stone within that frame, shaping forms and sculptures—a grand, intertwined mosaic of figures of all kinds, people, animals, vines and flowers interwoven with strange symbols, all sculpted in the stone.

  In the very center of it all was a circle of faces. Had Lidda—or anyone else around—been able to count past two, they would have known that there were nine visages staring from the cold stone of the wall there. Each stood out in stark relief from the surface of an oval plaque. The nine “faces” were not really faces, exactly—certainly they were like no faces any gully dwarf had ever seen—but seemed images of things far beyond understanding.

  Everybody knew the stone mosaic was there. It was in plain sight, and everyone had glanced at it from time to time, but it had no more meaning to most of them than any other unexplainable thing in their world. They didn’t know what it was, or why it was there any more than they knew why some areas of the ancient ruin to which they had come were full of water, or why the largest of the covered corridors leading away and upward from their living area sometimes whined and wept with distant winds that drifted through the halls of the Pitt and made stew fires flicker.

  Lidda had been noticing the mosaic on the wall a lot lately. Somehow, it seemed to her, it looked different than when she first saw it, and it puzzled her why it should.

  Now, with nothing better to do, she went to look at it again, squinting upward in puzzlement as she walked back and forth beneath the sculpture. Then she saw it. One of the faces was tilted slightly outward, as though the plaque on which it rested had partially separated from the stone of the surrounding mosaic.

  Curious, Lidda found handholds and toeholds in the surface of the wall and began to climb.

  It took some time and effort to get there. The entire mosaic extended from just above the floor—eye-level to Lidda—into the shadows high in the great chamber. And even though the circle of faces was only halfway up, that still was more than twenty feet above the floor. But once set on a course, she tended to follow it, and eventually she was high on the wall, clinging to chiseled stone vines with the tilted oval plaque just above her.

  It was larger than she had guessed—as wide as she was tall. The face on it seemed to be a representation of a bearded man with a string of beads across his forehead and jutting mustaches that came to sharp points at each side. Then again, it might have been a sculpture of one of the lizard-like creatures who had occupied the Pitt until recently or something else, entirely. It was hard to tell.

  It wasn’t the art, though, that held Lidda’s attention.

  It was the crack behind the plaque. The oval, seen closely, turned out to be old, tarnished metal rather than stone, and she stuck out her tongue to taste it. It was iron. Each of the plaques in the circle was made of metal of a different sort, and each had a hinge at the bottom and a catch at the top. The one she was exploring was separated from the wall because its catch had rusted.

  Leaning close to peer into the crack, she saw that there was a hole in the stone behind it.

  “What this?” Lidda muttered to herself. “Maybe somethin’ good inside?”

  With visions of treasure—nests full of forgotten eggs, piles of pretty rocks hidden away, maybe shoe buckles—dancing in her mind, Lidda grasped her handhold, braced herself against the sculpted stone, wrapped strong little fingers around the nearest edge of the loosened oval, and pulled.

  For a moment, the rusted catch held. Then it gave way and the entire plaque swung downward, shaking Lidda loose from her precarious perch. She clung to the falling edge of the oval and glanced upward as something shot from the exposed hole over her head—something long, dark and very fast that whistled in the air as it shot past her.

  The plaque clanged against stone and quivered. Lidda hung from its lower edge with one hand, high above the floor of the great chamber, shouting for help. And somewhere across the chamber, in shadows at the far side, something big crashed against stone, throwing sparks and skittering off into the main corridor.

  Below was a babble of surprised voices: “Here, now! What goin’ on?” “What that flew past?” “Somethin’ noisy in tunnel.” “Look! Somebody up on wall!”

  Clinging desperately to the now-inverted oval shield, high above the floor of This Place, Lidda chirped and chattered in panic, trying not to fall.

  “Who that up there?” someone below asked.

  “Lidda? That you?” someone else wanted to know.

  “Me!” she shouted. “Somebody help!”

  “What goin’ on?” The Highbulp’s voice sounded irritated. “Who that up there?”

  “Lidda,” someone said.

  “Lidda come down!” the Highbulp demanded.

  A female voice echoed him. The Lady Bruze put her hands on her hips and stamped a foot. “Lidda! Get down from there!”

  “Can’t!” she shrieked. “Barely holdin’ on!”

  “Then turn loose!” the Lady Bruze insisted.

  Directly below her, old Gandy’s voice called, “No, don’ turn loose! Swing feet!”

  Since that sounded like a better idea than the one immediately prior, Lidda kept her grip on the metal rim and swung her feet. Her toe touched the carved wall, slipped away, and she swung again, this time finding a toehold in the mosaic surface. She clung for a moment, getting her breath, then eased herself beneath the hanging shield and found a handhold. Within seconds she was scurrying down the sheer wall, sighing with relief.

  A few gathered to watch her descent, but with the crisis past, most of the gully dwarves had turned their attentions to the far side of the great chamber where something had entered the main corridor at great speed, thrown a mighty shower of sparks, and disappeared up the tunnel.

  When Lidda reached the floor again, only the Lady Bruze was there to face her. Hands on hips, she leaned toward the younger female and snapped, “Lidda stay off wall! Got no business climb wall!”

  “Checkin’ out hole …” Lidda pointed upward, trying to explain.

  “Bad Lidda!” Bruze’s words bored in. “Why you always do dumb stuff? Like bring us back green thing ‘stead of hunt mushroom an’ … like … like … dumb stuff!”

  The lady’s tone was so severe that Lidda backed away a step.

  “Now mess up wall stuff!” Bruze chided, glancing upward. “Prob’ly broke somethin’. Dumb Lidda!”

  Lidda had taken all she was going to. With her own hands on her own hips, she stomped her foot and thrust a pugnacious face forward, nose-to-nose with Bruze. “Shut up, Lady Bruze! Got no right talk on me that way!”

  Bruze recoiled for an instant, surprised, then straightened her back, stuck her nose in the air and turned away. “Dumb Lidda,” she snorted. “An’ sassy, too.” With a sniff of disdain, she stalked off, leaving Lidda to fume and sputter.

  Old Gandy appeared beside her, leaning on his mop handle and peering upward. “What Lidda fin’ up there?”

  “Nothin’ much,” she answered, still smarting. “How come Lady Bruze can throw big weight aroun’ alla time?”

  Gandy frowned thoughtfully, then shrugged. “Lady Bruze got Clout,” he said. “Gives her stat … rank … priv … uh, she get by with a lot.”

  “Not fair,” Lidda decided.

  “Way it is, though.” The Grand Notioner shrugged again. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Lidda want clout, too?”

  “Clout already married,” she pointed out. “To Lady Bruze.”

  “Then get somebody else,” the Grand Notioner suggested. “Maybe somebody better. You want marry Highbulp?”<
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  “Stop that again! No!”

  “Why not?”

  “ ’Cause Highbulp a lazy, worthless twit, is why not. Highbulp never think ’bout anybody ’cept own self.”

  “Yep,” Gandy agreed. “That him, alright. So why not marry him?”

  Lidda stared at the oldster. “Can’t stand him, is why. Why else?”

  “So what? Nobody can stand Highbulp. Marry him anyway. Do him good, have somebody keep him in line.”

  Across the chamber, an excited crowd had gathered. Several gully dwarves had crept into the corridor there, looking for whatever had gone that way. Now they were returning, and they had the thing with them. It looked like a huge spear, and it took several of them to carry it.

  “Whoever marry Highbulp be consort,” Gandy persisted.

  Lidda turned to him again. “Be what?”

  “Consort.”

  “What consort?”

  “Highbulp’s wife. Got more clout than Chief Basher’s wife.”

  “Consort have to put up with Highbulp, though,” said Lidda. She shook her head back and forth. “Forget it.”

  She walked away without looking back, and Gandy leaned on his mop handle. “Good choice,” he muttered to himself. “That’n might shape up Highbulp. That’n fulla vinegar.”

  Chapter 3

  Perils of the Pitt

  The Aghar scouts recovered the missile—a twelve-foot-long spear of iron with a steel point as wide as a shovel—from far up the “big tunnel” where it had lodged itself in a stone wall after skipping and caroming for several hundred yards. It weighed at least fifty pounds and required four sturdy gully dwarves to carry it back to This Place.

  “That thing dangerous,” the Highbulp declared, studying it from his perch atop his glowing green throne. “Where come from?”

  “Murder hole up there,” someone pointed toward the far wall with its stone mosaic. They had built up the fires, and the hole behind the iron face up there was visible.

  “Somebody throw that thing through that hole?” someone asked.

  “Throw itself, prob’ly,” Gandy said, his mop handle staff thudding against the floor as he stepped past the fire, gazing at the hole high in the wall. “Ol’ trap somebody set, for guard big tunnel. Lidda open hole, trap sprung.”

  Faces peered with renewed interest at the decorated wall. There were still eight more undisturbed faces.

  “More of these up there?” the Highbulp asked.

  Gandy squinted at the remaining eight plaques. “Yep,” he decided, “two more.”

  They buzzed and hovered around the spear for a time, but could think of no use for it. It was inedible, and far too big for even Clout to use as a tool. Finally, with no better idea in mind, Gandy tied a scrap of stained cloth to the point of it and supervised as a dozen of them hoisted it upright and thrust the butt end of it into a hole in the paving, a few feet from the throne.

  “There,” he said, when at last it stood tall and secure.

  “ ‘There,’ what?” somebody asked. “What that supposed to be?”

  “Flag,” Gandy explained. “Highbulp’s new flag.” He turned. “See, Highbulp? Got new …” He stopped, and sighed. Glitch the Most wasn’t listening. The Highbulp was all tuckered. He lay curled atop his “throne,” asleep and beginning to snore.

  “Lidda right,” Gandy growled. “Highbulp a twit.”

  The throne seemed happy, though. Beneath the Highbulp it glowed a steady green light, and seemed to pulse a bit, as though it were matching the Highbulp’s breathing.

  Gandy frowned, tilting his head as he looked at the throne. He was almost sure that it was growing. It was noticeably larger now than when Lidda had first brought it.

  * * * * *

  Out of nothingness, she swam slowly into a kind of awareness. Vague, slow dreams drifted around her and she was part of them. More feelings than images, they drifted, curling and coalescing in first one way and then another—feelings of comfort and discomfort, of longing for … something long since gone, and of anticipation of something yet to come.

  She floated among the dream-streams, knowing nothing except what they told her. The odd longings were less than memory, but more than dream. They were longings for things past and gone—feelings of freedom and power, of exhilaration and cruel joy, of confrontation and combat, of flying on great wings that ruled the skies above a vast and servile world. The feelings were bittersweet, clouded by a certainty that all of that was gone now, gone forever.

  And yet, the other feelings—the anticipations—were warm with promise, as though what had ended forever might still, somehow, begin anew.

  Timeless time passed, and the images became more clearly defined. She became aware of herself as a presence and dimly sensed other presences around her, presences beyond the limits of the green universe that was herself, but not far away.

  The presences were not like herself. They were lesser things, yet presences. A vague instinct said, these are food, and abruptly she recoiled as though huge, unseen claws had raked her, punishing her for the thought. It was a lesson. Not food, then. Lesser beings, nearby, but not food.

  Then why did they matter? The glowing greenness swam and coalesced and within it a darkness spoke to her. They own you, it said. You are theirs. Cold certainty flowed about her. You cannot harm them, the darkness declared. You can only serve them. You are theirs. Soon you will know.

  Cruel, cold humor flowed from the darkness. Grow quickly now, it commanded her. Grow and awaken to your destiny. Awaken to your fate. Soon, the essences told her, you will understand. Soon you will know, just as you knew before. And that is when your punishment begins.

  * * * * *

  As the days passed, what was obvious to Gandy became apparent to everyone else in This Place. The Highbulp’s throne was growing. For a time, this greatly pleased Glitch the Most. With each day, it seemed, his loftiness above his subjects became greater, reinforcing his importance.

  The problem was, the Highbulp kept falling off, and the fall was greater each time he did. Sometimes he fell off by his own doing—rolling over in his sleep and winding up in a heap on the hard, cold floor. But now and then the throne trembled and squirmed, and sometimes its violent spasms were enough to throw him from his perch.

  It had grown big enough that it was increasingly difficult to get back on top of it when he fell off. “Highbulp need ladder,” he grumped to all those around him after a particularly forceful expulsion from his throne.

  Nobody had the slightest idea how to make a ladder, but Glitch the Most was becoming grumpier by the hour, and an inspiration occurred finally, out of sheer aggravation.

  It was a gully dwarf named Tunk who came up with it. While he and others were exploring far regions of the Pitt, where inexplicable wonders had been left by the lizard-things and others from the past, they bumped into a giant salamander who had been trying to get some sleep.

  Instantly they fled in gibbering panic along a dark tunnel, just steps ahead of the huge, slithering thing with a mouth bigger than they were and teeth as sharp as needles. Giant salamanders were one of the hazards of life in the Pitt. Although the Talls and the lizard-men had gone, there were many other large, unpleasant things living here and there in the rubble of the Promised Place.

  Tunk could feel the thing’s hideous breath on his back by the time someone in the lead found a crevice to dart into, and he left a shoe dangling in the thing’s snapping teeth as he scurried into safety. They could hear the salamander scrabbling behind them, but it was too big to follow, and could not break through the stone that barred its way.

  The exploring party had scurried through the crevice, tumbling out the other side into a great, cavernous space that none of them had seen before, a place where balconies lined stone walls beneath an immense, vaulted roof high above, and the central arena had a floor of packed sand.

  “Whew!” Tunk declared, looking back at the crevice that had stopped the salamander. “That way too close!”

/>   The danger behind them then, they wandered out into the enclosed arena, gawking at the enormity of it.

  “What kin’ place this?” one of them wondered aloud.

  “Dunno,” another said. “Big, though. Maybe got good stuff to find?”

  Then Tunk saw it, and his eyes widened. “Lookee there!” he pointed. In the center of the arena was a flagstaff with a lanyard, and something came together in Tunk’s simple mind. “That what Highbulp need,” he said. “That shut him up from gripin’ so much.”

  When they eventually returned to This Place—by other routes, to avoid the ravenous salamander that had chased them—they were laden with equipment. Among other things, they brought a coil of rope and a pulley with ring clamps. Without ceremony, they marched to the center of This Place—casting worried glances at the throne, which was more than five feet high now and had an alarming tendency to twitch—and dumped their treasures on the floor beside Glitch the Most, who had just landed there himself.

  “Here, Highbulp,” Tunk said.

  He glared at the pile of things. “What all this?”

  “Hoist,” Tunk explained. “For get back on throne.”

  Within an hour, the Highbulp’s “flagpole,” which was now within inches of the growing throne, was rigged with a serviceable lanyard, very much like the flagstaff in the arena. A curious crowd gathered as Tunk proudly tied the Highbulp’s rag flag to the pulleyed line, and hoisted it to the top.

  “There,” he said, grinning happily.

  Beside him, Glitch frowned at the flag atop the great spear. “What good that do?” he snapped. “Take down flag, put up rope, haul flag back up. For what?”

  Tunk cast him a baleful glance. “Trial run,” he said. Quickly he lowered the flag, untied it from the lanyard and, before Glitch the Most could object, looped the lanyard around the Highbulp’s chubby middle. “Lend hand here,” he beckoned several of the others. “Haul ’im up!”

  Sputtering, cursing and struggling, Glitch the Most found himself rising from the floor, alongside his spear, then dangling above his throne. “Cut that out!” he shrieked.