Chapter 37
'An army?' growled Kelk, cocking an eye at Tipperton.
'Well, it's not exactly my army,' said Tipperton, 'though they did appoint me as their representative, did the Elves, the Baeron, and the men of Dael.'
A mutter of approval rumbled among the Dwarves, and Kelk grunted, 'Good. At last we will drive the Grg from our doorstone.'
As Bekki caught up a brass and glass lantern, Tipperton glanced behind where stood the secret entry, yet he could see nought but a blank stone wall with no evidence whatsoever of a doorway in the rock. Tip's gaze swept on about the chamber. Through an archway immediately to the right stood a carved room, and among the shadows therein Tip caught a glimpse of cots and chests and a table and chairs.
The guards' quarters, I would say.
Straight ahead and beyond another archway a dark corridor clove into the stone of the mountain.
'Come,' said Bekki, raising the hood on the lantern, and though no flame was kindled, a phosphorescent glow streamed forth. 'We have a ways to go.'
Kelk held up a staying hand and said, 'Lord Bekki, tell your sire we would join in the fight.'
His statement brought a chorus of Ayes from the others.
'I will,' replied Bekki.
Kelk smiled and slapped the blade of his axe and then stepped aside, as did those arrayed behind, opening the way into the dark passage and the mountain beyond.
Through the archway strode Bekki, Tipperton on his heels, and from behind, the buccan could hear the voices of the warders speaking to one another in Chakur as they moved back into their quarters. What they said he knew not, though he supposed they talked of the coming battle.
Down a gentle slope Bekki and Tipperton went, fissures and splits branching left and right as well as an occasional corridor. Down carved stone steps, and 'round sharp turns they tramped, and in one place they followed alongside a dark chasm, a cold drift of air upwelling and smelling of dampness and stone. Through carved chambers they trod, and archways stood darkly here and there, passages bored away to unknown destinations deep within the mountain stone. They strode down a long tunnel, and somewhere water fell adrip, its tinking echoes sounding within the shadowed hall. And Tip knew if something happened to Bekki, he would be hopelessly lost, and his chances of ever finding his way out would be completely in the hands of Dame Fortune and not within his own.
'Lor', Bekki, my head is spinning with all these twists and turns and I can hardly tell up from down. Do you truly know where we're going, or are you lost arid confused as well?'
Bekki laughed and stepped onto a low bridge made of square-cut blocks of stone, and Tip could see they were fitted together with no mortar between. Below raced a wide stream of water.
'We Chakka cannot lose our steps, Waeran,' said Bekki.
'Cannot lose your- What do you mean by that?'
'It is a gift from Elwydd. When She made the first Chak, She-'
'Elwydd made the Chakka? The Dwarves?'
Bekki paused at the cap of the bridge, his face eerie in the blue-green light of the lantern. Water tumbled beneath.
'Aye, we do believe it so.'
'Oh. Hmm. You know, Bekki, as to who made the War-rows, I haven't the faintest idea. Perhaps Elwydd… or Adon… or someone short.'
Bekki laughed, and they took up the trek again.
'You were saying, Bekki, about not losing your feet…'
'It is a gift all Chakka have: wherever we travel on or within the land, be it on foot or by pony or even in a drawn cart or wagon, we can ever after retrace that path exactly.'
'Exactly?'
'Aye, exactly. Be it in driving rain or blinding snow or even total darkness, whether or not we can see, still we can step out the path again, without error. Elwydd wove this gift into the very fabric of Chakkacyth, for She knew without it, we could not dwell within the living stone.'
Tipperton looked at the crevices and corridors splitting away from the path they followed and driving into blackness. 'Well I for one am certainly glad of it, as twisted about as I am.'
They trudged up a short flight of steps and through a long delved corridor, then down a stony slope through a natural cavern.
'It does not work on water,' said Bekki, 'nor when Chakka are fevered.'
'The gift, you mean?'
'Aye. In boats, on barges, on rafts, or racked with ague, we are just as bewildered as other kind.' Bekki snorted. 'I deem we also would be confused were we somehow conveyed through the air.'
Now they came to a high ledge along a wall of a huge cavern, and the light of the lantern faded away in the distance ere reaching any other walls or a floor unseen far below. To the left along the ledge Tip saw a long flight of stairs set in a carved hollow cut into the stone of the wall at hand, the narrow steps plunging into darkness and down.
There was no rail.
'This way,' grunted Bekki, and he crossed the ledge and started down, his footsteps echoing back from the distant dark.
Tip followed, his heart racing. And he clung closely to the carved wall hollow on the left, away from the precipitous black fall to the right, a bare three or four feet away.
And his breath came in short, sharp puffs.
Count the steps, bucco, it'll take your mind off it.
His count had passed two hundred when he thought he could hear a far-off singing drifting along unseen faces of stone.
His count had not quite reached three hundred when he became certain of the singing: a soaring voice in solo.
Finally they reached a level floor below.
'Three hundred ninety-seven,' said Tip, his voice a bit quavery.
Bekki looked at him in the blue-green light. Tip gestured at the steps and repeated, 'Three hundred ninety- seven.'
Bekki shook his head. 'Four hundred twelve.'
Tip shrugged. 'I was a bit of the way down before I began counting.'
They started across the floor, and still the singing echoed.
'I say, Bekki, who is that singing?'
Bekki tramped onward and did not answer.
Striding along at Bekki's side, Tip frowned up at the Dwarf but did not repeat the question.
Now several voices joined that of the singer, a chorus, and there was not a deep voice among them. Somewhat like Elven Darai they sounded, or perhaps as would War-row dammen.
Are these the voices of female Dwarves? What did Phais and Loric call them? Chakia? Yes, Chdkian.
They came to an archway where stood a pair of guards, with others asleep in a nearby chamber, and after but a brief exchange and a salute, Bekki and Tipperton went onward, the warders' surprised gazes following the Waeran. What Bekki had said to the guards and they to him, Tip did not know, for unlike the exchange at the secret door, this time the Dwarves spoke entirely in Chakur.
'Why do you have guards here deep in the holt?' asked Tip.
'We are coming to the core, Waeran, and the holt is on war footing.'
Tip cocked an eye at the answer, yet asked no more.
Down long hallways they strode, turning left and right, Bekki not hesitating in choosing their path.
Now they passed by arched openings into corridors where portcullises barred passage, the black-iron rods
