Oh, lord, now how, Jon-Tom? "That's the case, I suppose," he replied as quickly as he could, "but they're all irrevocably imbued with the desire to be bigger bosses than those they now serve." Falameezar still seemed unsure.
Inspiration served. "And they also believe implicitly that if they can conquer the rest of the world, the warmlands and the rest, then they will become capitalist bosses over the workers here, and their old bosses will remain master over them. So they will give rise, if successful, to the most implacable class of capitalists the world has ever known, a class of bosses' bosses."
Falameezar's voice echoed like an avalanche across the water. "This must be stopped!"
"I agree." Jon-Tom's attention for the past hour had been more and more on the shoreline. Hills had risen in place of low beaches. On the left bank they merged into sheer rock walls almost a hundred feet high, far too high for even the powerful Falameezar to negotiate. The dragon was swerving gradually toward his right.
"Rapids ahead," he explained. "I have never traveled beyond this point. I dislike walking and would much rather swim, as befits a river dragon. But for the cause," he said bravely, "I will of course dare anything, so I will walk the rapids."
"Of course," Jon-Tom murmured.
It was growing dark. "We can camp the first place you can easily climb ashore, comrade Falameezar." He looked back in distaste. Mudge and Caz were playing at dice on a flat section of the dragon's back. "For a change maybe our 'hunters' can find us something to eat besides fish. After all," he murmured with a wicked grin, "everyone must contribute to the welfare of the whole."
"How very true," said the dragon, adding politely, "not that I mind catching you fish."
"It's not that." Jon-Tom was enjoying the thought of the two somnolent gamblers slogging through the muck to find enough meat to feed the voracious dragon. "It's time some of us did some real work for you. You've sure as hell done enough for us."
"Well put, comrade," said the dragon. "We must bow to social decorum. I would enjoy a change from fish."
The hilly shore bordered a land of smaller trees, narrower of bole and widely scattered amid thick brush. Despite his insistence that he preferred water to land, the dragon had no trouble smashing his way through the foliage bulwarking the water's edge.
A small clearing close to the river was soon located. They settled into camp to the accompaniment of rising moonlight. Ahead was the steady but soothing roar of the rapids Falameezar would have to negotiate the next day.
Jon-Tom dumped a load of wood by the fire, brushed bark and dirt from his hands, and asked Caz, "What do ships traveling past this point do about the rapids?"
"Most are constructed and designed so as to make their way safely through them when traveling down to the Glittergeist," the rabbit explained. "When traveling upstream it is necessary to portage around. There are places where it can be done. Logs have been laid across ancient, well-known paths. The ships are then dragged across this crude cellulose lubrication until quieter water is reached." He nodded curiously toward the dragon. Falameezar lay contentedly on the far side of the clearing, his tail curled across his jaws.
"How did you ever manage to talk the monster into conveying us atop his belly instead of inside it? I understood nothing of his riddle or your reply, nor of the lengthy talk you have engaged in subsequently."
"Never mind," said Jon-Tom, stirring the fire with a twig. "I'll take care of the dialectic. You just try to say as little as possible to him."
"No fear of that, my friend. He is not my idea of a scintillating conversationalist. Nor do I have any desire to become someone's supper through misapplication of a word or two." He patted Jon-Tom on the back and grinned.
Despite the rabbit's somewhat aloof bearing, Jon-Tom couldn't help liking him. Caz was inherently likable and had already proven himself a willing and good-natured companion. Hadn't he volunteered to come on what was likely to be a dangerous journey? To be quite fair, he was the only true volunteer among them.
Or was there some other motive behind the rabbit's participation that so far he'd kept well hidden? The thought gave Jon-Tom an unexpected start. He eyed the retreating ears. Maybe Caz had reasons of his own for wanting to travel upstream, reasons that had nothing to do with their mission. He might desert them at the first convenient opportunity.
Now you're thinking like Clothahump, he told himself angrily. There's enough for you to worry about without trying to analyze your companion's thoughts.
Speaking of companions, where the devil had Mudge got himself to? Caz had returned a few moments ago with a fat, newtlike creature. It drew deprecatory comments from Talea, the designated chef for the evening, so they'd given it to the delighted Falameezar.
But Mudge had been gone a long time now without returning. Jon-Tom didn't think the mercurial otter would try to split on them in so isolated a place when he'd already passed up excellent opportunities to do so in far more familiar surroundings.
He walked around the fire, which was now crackling insistently for fuel, and voiced his concern to Clothahump. As usual, the wizard sat by himself. His face shone in the firelight. He was mumbling softly to himself, and Jon-Tom wondered at what lay behind his quiet talk. There was real magic in the sorcerer's words, a source of never ending amazement to Jon-Tom.
The wizard's expression was strained, as befitted one on whose shoulders (or shell) rested the possible resolution of a coming Armageddon.
Clothahump saw him without having to look up. "Good eve to you, my boy. Something troubles you." Jon-Tom had long since overcome any surprise at the wizard's sensitivity.
"It's Mudge, sir."
"That miscreant again?" The aged face looked up at him. "What has he done now?"
"It's not what he's done so much as what he hasn't done, sir, which is come back. I'm worried, sir. Caz returned a while ago, but he didn't go very far into the forest and he hasn't seen Mudge."
"Still hunting, perhaps." Most of the wizard's mind seemed to be on matters far off and away.
"I don't think so, sir. He should have returned by now. And I don't think he's run off."
"No, not here, my boy."
"Could he have tried to catch something that caught him instead? It would be like Mudge to try and show off with a big catch."
"Not that simpleton coward, boy. But as to something else making a meal of him, that is always a risk when a lone hunter goes foraging in a strange forest. Remember, though, that while our otter companion is somewhat slow upstairs, there is nothing sluggish about his feet. He is lightning fast. It is conceivable that something might overpower him, but it would first have to surprise him or run him down. Neither is likely."
"He could have hurt himself," persisted a worried Jon-Tom. "Even the most skillful hunter can't outrun a broken leg."
Clothahump turned away from him. A touch of impatience crept into his voice. "Don't belabor it, boy. I have more important things to think upon."
"Maybe I'd better have a look for him." Jon-Tom glanced specula-lively at the silent ring of thin trees that looked down on the little clearing.
"Maybe you had." The boy means well, Clothahump thought, but he tends not to think things through and to give in to his emotions. Best to keep a close watch on him lest he surrender to his fancies. Keep him occupied.
"Yes, that would be a prudent thing to do. You go and find him. We've enough food for the night." His gaze remained fixed on something beyond the view of mere mortals.
"I'll be back with him soon." The lanky youth turned and jogged off into the woods.
Clothahump was fast sinking into his desired trance. As his mind reeled, something pricked insistently at it. It had to do with this particular section of Tailaroam-bordered land. It was full night now, and that also was somehow significant.
Was there something he should have told the boy? Had he sent him off unprepared for something he should expect to encounter hereabouts? Ah, you self-centered old fool, he chided himself, and you having just a
ccused him of not thinking things through.
But he was far too deeply entranced now to slip easily back into reality. The nagging worries fell behind his probing, seeking mind.
He's a brave youngster, was his fading, weak appraisal. He'll be able to take care of himself....
Untold leagues away, underneath the infectious mists of the Green-downs in the castle of Cugluch, the iridescent Empress reclined on her ruby pillows. She replayed her sorcerer's words mentally, lingering over each syllable with the pleasure that destruction's anticipation sent through her.
"Madam," he had bowed cautiously over this latest pronouncement, "each day the Manifestation reveals powers for which even I know no precedent. Now I believe that we may be able to conquer more thoroughly than we have ever dreamed."
"How is this, Sorcerer?--and you had better be prepared to stand by any promises you make me." Skrritch eyed his knobby legs appraisingly.
"I will give you a riddle instead of a promise," Eejakrat said with untoward daring. Skrritch nodded.
"When will we have completed the annihilation of the warm-lands?" he asked her.
"When every warmlander bows to me," she answered without hesitation.
The wizard did not respond.
"When every warmlander has been emptied to a dead husk?"
Still he did not reply.
"Speak, Sorcerer," Skrritch directed testily.
"The warmlands will be ours, my lady, when every warm-blooded slave has been returned to the soil and in his plaee stands a Plated subject. When the farmlands, shops, and cities of the west are repopulated with Plated Folk your empire will know no limit!"
Skrritch looked at him as if he'd gone mad and began to preen her claw tips. Eejakrat took a prudent step backward, but his words held the Empress in mid-motion.
"Madam, I assure you, the Manifestation has the power to incinerate entire races of warmlanders. Its death-power is so pervasive that we shall not only crush them, we will obliterate their memory from the earth. Your minions will march into their cities to find the complete welcome of silence."
Now Skrritch smiled her weird, omnivorous smile. The wizard and his queen locked eyes, and though neither really understood the extent of the destruction at their disposal, the air reverberated with their insidious obsession to find out....
It was very dark in the forest. The moon made anemic ghosts of the trees and turned misshapen boulders to granite gargoyles. Bushes hid legions of tiny clicking things that watched with interest and talked to one another as the tall biped went striding past their homes.
Jon-Tom was in fair spirits. The nightly rain had not yet begun. Only the usual thick mist moistened his face.
He carried a torch made from the oil rushes that lined the river's edge. Despite the persistent mist the highly combustible reeds readily caught fire when he applied the tip of the well-spelled sparker Caz had lent to him. The torch lit readily and burned with a satisfying slowness.
For a moment he had thoughts of swinging round his duar and trying to conjure up a flashlight or two. Caution decided him against the attempt. The torch would serve well enough, and his accuracy where conjuration was involved thus far left something to be desired.
The ground was damp from the mist-caress of late evening, and Mudge's tracks stood out clearly. Occasionally the boot marks would cross each other several times in one place, indicating where the otter had rested behind a large boulder or fallen log.
Once the gap between the prints abruptly lengthened and became intermixed with tiny polelike marks, evidence that Mudge had given chase to something. The pole prints soon vanished and the otter marks shortened in stride. Whether the otter had made a successful kill or not Jon-Tom couldn't tell.
Oblivious to the fact that he was moving steadily deeper into the woods, he continued to follow the tracks. Unexpectedly the brush gave way to an open space of hard-packed earth that had been raised several inches above the level of the surrounding surface. The footprints led up to the platform and disappeared. It took Jon-Tom long minutes before he could locate traces of them, mostly scuffs from the otter's boot heels. They indicated he'd turned off to his right along the artificial construct.
"Come on back, Mudge!" There was no reply, and the forest swallowed any echo. "Caz brought in something already, and everyone's getting worried, and my feet are starting to hurt!" He started jogging down the platform.
"Come on out, damn you! Where the hell have--?"
The "you" was never uttered. It was replaced by a yelp of surprise as his feet went out from under him....
XVII
He found himself sliding down a gentle incline. It was slight enough and rough enough so that he was able to bring himself to a halt after having tumbled only a few yards. The torch bumped to a stop nearby. It had nearly gone out. Flames still flickered feebly at one corner, however. Leaning over, he picked it up and blew on it until it was once more aflame. Try as he would, though, he couldn't induce it to provide more than half the illumination it had supplied before.
The reduced light was barely sufficient to show that he'd stumbled into an obviously artificial tunnel. The floor was flat and cobbled with some dully reflective stone. Straight walls rose five feet before curving to a slightly higher ceiling.
Having established that the roof was not about to fall in on him, he took stock of himself. There were only bruises. The duar was scratched but unbroken. Ahead lay a blackness far more thorough and intimidating than friendly night. He wished he hadn't left his staff back in camp. There was nothing but the knife strapped to his belt.
He stood, and promptly measured the height of the ceiling. Carefully turning around, he walked awkwardly back toward the circle of moonlight he'd fallen through. Nothing materialized from the depths of the tunnel to restrain him, though his neck hairs bristled. It is always easier to turn one's back on a known enemy than on an unknown one.
He crawled up the slight incline and was soon staring out at the familiar forest. The lip of the gap was lined with neatly worked stone engraved with intricate designs and scrollwork. Many twisted in upon themselves and were set with the same dimly reflective rock used to pave the tunnel.
He started to leave... and hesitated. Mudge's last boot prints had been moving in this direction. A close search of the rim of the hole showed no such prints, but the earth there was packed hard as concrete. A steel rod would not have made much of an impression upon it, much less the boot of an ambling otter.
The paving of the slope and tunnel was of still tougher material, but when he waved the torch across it the light fell on something even more revealing than a boot print. It was an arrow of the kind Mudge carried in his hunting quiver.
Crawling back inside, he started down the tunnel. Soon he came across another of the orphaned shafts. The first had probably fallen from the otter's quiver, but this one was cleanly broken. He picked it up, brought the torch close. There was no blood on the tip. It might have been fired at something and missed, to shatter on the wall or floor.
It was possible, even likely, that Mudge was pursuing some kind of burrow-dwelling prey that had made its home in the tunnel. In that case Jon-Tom's worries might prove groundless. The otter might be just ahead, busily gutting a large carcass so that he'd have to carry only the meat back to camp.
The thought of traveling down into the earth and leaving the friendly exit still further behind appalled him, but he could hardly go back and say truthfully he'd been able to track Mudge but had been too afraid to follow the otter the last few yards.
There was also the possibility that his first assumption might prove correct, that the creature Mudge had been pursuing had turned on him and injured him. In that case the otter might he just a little ways down the tunnel, alive but helpless and bleeding.
In his own somewhat ambivalent fashion Mudge had looked out for him. Jon-Tom owed him at least some help, with either bulky prey or any injuries he might have suffered.
With considerable trepidation he
started moving down the tunnel. The slope continued to descend to the same slight degree. From time to time torchlight revealed inscriptions on the walls. There also were isolated stone tablets neatly set into recesses. Directions perhaps... or warnings? He wondered what he would do if he reached a place where the tunnel split into two or more branches. He was too intent on the blackness to study the revealing frescoes overhead.
He had no desire to become lost in an underground maze, far from surface and friends. No one knew where he was, and when the night rain began it would obliterate both Mudge's tracks and his own.
Holding the torch ahead and to one side, he continued downward.
Mmmmmm-m-m-m-m-m...
He stopped instantly. The eerie moaning came clearly to him, distorted by the acoustics of the tunnel. He knelt, breathing hard, and listened.
Mmmm-lllll-l-l-l-l...
The moan sounded again, slightly louder. What unimaginable monster might even now be treading a path toward him? His torch still showed only blackness ahead. Had the creature already devoured the poor otter?
He drew the knife, wishing again for the staff and its foot-long spear point. It would have been a particularly effective weapon in the narrow tunnel.
There was no point in needlessly sacrificing himself, he thought. He'd about decided to retreat when the moan unexpectedly dissolved into a flurry of curses that were as familiar as they were distinct.
"Mmmm-l-l-l-let me go or I'll slice you into stew meat! I'll fillet you neat and make wheels out o' your 'eads! I'll pop wot little eyeballs you've got out o' their sockets, you bloody blind-faced buggerin' ghouls!"
A loud thump sounded, was followed by a bellow of pain and renewed cursing from an unfamiliar source. The source of the first audible imprecations was no longer in doubt, and if Mudge was cursing so exuberantly it was most likely for the benefit of an assailant capable of reason and understanding and not blind animal hatred.
Jon-Tom hurried down the corridor, running as fast as possible with his hunched-over gait. There were still no lights showing ahead of him, so he had burst around a bend and was on top of the busy party before he realized it.