guard sauntered past them, paused beside the basket, turned, and looked around, then yawned and leaned back against the outcrop.
Calan halted. 'Rust!' he muttered.
'What?' Derkin asked.
'That man is in our way,' the unseen voice said. 'That's where we're going. There's a hole behind that thrust of stone.' He paused, then said, 'You wait here, Derkin. I'll draw the man away. As soon as he moves, you go to that hole and wait. I'll be right behind you.' He pulled loose from Derkin's grip and was gone.
With nothing else to do, Derkin stood still, waiting. A minute passed, then another, and suddenly a howl of pain echoed around the pit. He turned in time to see a human pitch forward onto the ground, screaming. Then another fell a few feet away, and another, their screams joining the first as if in chorus. Other humans hurried toward them, and Derkin saw a wooden club materialize beside one man and lash out at him. The man fell, as the others had.
By the stone outcrop, the lounging guard stood erect, gawking at the melee out in the pit, then drew his club and hurried toward it. Keeping his invisible cloak tight around him, Derkin raced to the wall, found the shadowed hole behind the stone, and stepped into it, then stopped. 'Hole?' he muttered. 'There is no hole here. It's a dead end.' He turned, started out of the shallow trap, and collided with something solid and invisible. Thrashing legs appeared as Calan fell backward, then disappeared again. 'Watch where you're going!' his angry voice demanded. 'I told you to wait here, didn't I?' A cal-lused hand appeared and pushed Derkin back into the shadows.
'You said there was a hole here, a way to escape,' Derkin rasped.
'There is!' Calan spat. 'Just be quiet and hold on to my shoulder.'
It was only two steps from the opening to the back of the concavity, but as they approached it, the rough stone receded, and the opening became a lengthening tunnel. 'Magic!' Derkin rumbled.
'Of course it's magic,' Calan said, ahead of him. 'Shut up and come on. I don't like magic any more than you do.'
'Then why are you using it?'
'Stop complaining. It's the only way. Come on.'
The tunnel lengthened ahead of them, dim and curving, seeming totally dark, yet somehow lighted faintly by a slight, greenish glow that came from nowhere.
'I thought you weren't going to kill any more guards back there,' Derkin snapped, still peeved at the seemingly senseless killings of the leeping guards outside the cell.
'I didn't kill these,' Calan snapped. 'I just broke some kneecaps to make them yell. It worked. They yelled.'
'How did you find this tunnel?'
'A friend showed it to me. Will you stop yammering and hurry? All this magic makes me nervous.'
A few steps farther on, the tunnel widened, ending in a small cave deep within the mountain stone. The same slight, greenish glow provided just enough light to see. Calan stopped, shook free of Derkin's hand, and became visible from the feet up as he pulled off his unseen cloak. 'We won't need these now,' he said. 'From here on there will be no one to see us.'
Derkin pulled off his concealing garb and breathed deeply. As with most dwarves, the very presence of magic was offensive to him. He tossed the cloak aside, then immediately wished he had not. It might take an hour of crawling around to find the thing by touch, and, magic or not, such a thing might prove useful again.
The only feature of the place was a shallow, dark bowl resting on the stone floor, and Calan approached it. Derkin followed Calan, stooping once to pick up the unseen cloak he had dropped. He could not see it, but his fingers found it. Quickly, he rolled it, thrust it under his tunic, and secured it beneath the chain wound around his waist.
The darkwood bowl contained an inch of milky liquid. Calan squatted beside it, staring into its silent, mysterious depths. Derkin glanced at the bowl, then went on past, to the back wall of the cave. With spread hands, he started exploring its surface, wondering where the next tunnel would appear.
Behind him, he heard Calan say, 'Despaxas? We are here.'
Derkin turned, but there was no one there except the old dwarf squatting beside the dark bowl. With a shrug, he turned back to the wall. 'Where is the next tunnel?' he asked. 'I can't find any…'
Abruptly, the stone seemed to swim before him. He felt dizzy, lightheaded, and disoriented. He closed his eyes, opened them again, blinked, and fell on his back. Overhead, stars glittered in a vast sky, and the light of a rising red moon silhouetted the branches of a tree. Not far away, precipitous slopes rose on both sides, great walls of stone climbing away toward the sky. He struggled upright, feeling slightly sick to his stomach. A few feet away, old Calan squatted on stony ground, bracing himself with his one arm and shaking his head. 'Rust, but I hate that,' he growled.
'What… what happened?' Derkin gasped. 'Where are we?'
'Away from the mines,' Calan said. 'I told you I knew a way out.' Still shaking his head, the old dwarf got to shaky feet and rubbed his belly with a gnarled hand. 'What happened was a transport spell. Magicians use them sometimes.'
'You're a magician?' Derkin glared at him.
'You mind your mouth,' Calan snapped. 'I certainly am not a magician! But Despaxas is.'
'Who is Despaxas?'
Calan turned, pointing. 'He is,' he said.
From the shadows of a grove of conifers, a lean, cowled figure appeared. Derkin could see nothing of him but his stature and form as he strode forward. But one thing was clear: he was no dwarf.
The figure approached, lithe and graceful even in the muffling of his full robe, and Derkin squinted, trying to discern his features. Then the newcomer spoke, and his voice was rich and clear, musical as few human voices and no dwarven voices were. 'Welcome to freedom, Derkin Winterseed,' he said. 'I am Despaxas.'
'Where are we?' the Hylar demanded.
'About four miles from where you were,' the hooded one said quietly. 'This is Tharkas Pass. The mines of Klanath are back that way, to the north. And south of here, through the pass, lie the dwarven lands… or what used to be dwarven lands.'
Derkin looked where the figure had pointed, then swung back. 'What do you mean, 'used to be'?' he demanded.
'You think you were the only one captured by slavers in these past years?' Calan rasped. 'Well, you weren't. The human emperor's soldiers hold the dwarven mines now, and the lands all the way to Sky's End. And all the miners who worked those mines are now slaves in them, just as you have been a slave in Klanath.'
'I never made it that far,' Derkin said grimly. 'We were attacked on the road south of the Tharkas mines by human raiders. My escorts were all killed. Only one survived with me, and he died of his wounds before they got us to Klanath.'
'Those were no raiders,' the hooded one said. 'Those were scouts for the assault force that invaded Kal- Thax and took over the Tharkas mines. Only a very few dwarves survived that assault, got away, and made it to Thorbar-din.'
'Then the alarm was spread?'
'It was,' the cowled one said sadly. 'But no one came. The tribes were at war again within Thorbardin, and no one thought it important to defend the mines outside the undermountain realm.'
'Gods,' Derkin whispered, realizing the enormity of what he had just heard. Since his capture, Kal-Thax had been invaded by humans. And now the humans ruled the northern ranges. 'And what of Thorbardin now?' he asked.
'It stands,' the figure assured him. 'There are reports that some order has been restored, at least temporarily. But still there is no help for these northern realms.'
Again Derkin squinted, peering into the shadows of the cowl. 'Who are you?' he demanded. 'What do you want of me, and how do you know all this?'
With an eloquent shrug, Despaxas reached up and pulled back his cowl, dropping it to his shoulders. Rising moonlight revealed a chiseled, serious face with long, lustrous hair and no beard. It was a faintly ironic face, but the
