The Gully Dwarves

facts of life, and certainly not from a gully dwarf.” With an oath he strode away, following Graywing.

“What Tall say?” Pad asked, cocking a brow at the confused Blip.

“Said he don’ want facks ’splained,” Blip said. “Was jus’ tryin’ tell him Sap ran off.”

“Where Sap go?”

“Prob’ly downstairs,” Blip answered. “Prob’ly tellin’ ever’body where Clout is.”

“Where Clout?”

“Upstairs,” Blip said. “Sap heard him holler.”

With nothing better to do, the remaining gaggle of gully dwarves headed up the tunnel, where the humans had gone.

At the top of the tunnel, Graywing peered out into the main courtyard of Tarmish from the shadows of a broken grate. Beyond, armed men slashed and hammered at one another, their cries blending with the ring of steel on iron. Thayla Mesinda had definitely come this way. There were distinct marks where her small slippers had climbed the last few feet of incline, and a small handprint in the grime of the tunnel wall where she had pushed through the gaping portal.

He was bracing himself for a charge into the open when Dartimien came up to him. The smaller man looked past him and grunted in distaste. “I guess you’re planning to run right out there and join in,” he said.

“Those aren’t real soldiers,” Graywing growled. “Just Tarmites and Gelnians, fighting one another. They always do that. They always have.”

“So which side do you plan to be on?”

Graywing ignored the question. “I don’t see any mercenaries out there. Do you?”

“No, maybe they all left. Civil wars don’t pay very well. But there are some real hoodlums around somewhere. There were icemen in Chatara Kral’s camp. Those brutes are here if the Gelnians are. They don’t ever walk away from a fight.”

“Vulpin has some personal guards, too,” Graywing added. “I saw them when we first arrived. They looked like cave vandals. Real elite killers. But I don’t see them now.”

“They’re wherever Vulpin is,” the Cat said. “Look. Graywing, I hate to dash you with cold reality like this, but neither of us will profit from this mess. Whatever you were promised for bringing that magician here, you’ll never collect it. And I most certainly am no longer in Chatara Kral’s employ. The best thing either of us can do is turn around, find that outfall port, and get away from this place while we still have our skins.”

“You go, then, if you want to.” Graywing barely glanced at the city man. “Thayla needs protection, and I mean to protect her.”

“From everyone but yourself, I suppose. How chivalrous of you. Anyway, you don’t even know where she is.”

“I’ll find her,” the plainsman growled. With a lunge and a Cobar war cry, he launched himself through the broken grate and into the thick of the fighting beyond.

“Fool,” Dartimien sighed. His feral eyes narrowed as he watched the plains warrior cutting his way through the midst of battle. The barbarian’s sword was a bright blur, dancing around him as though it had a life of its own. Its blade flashed from bright steel to bright blood, singing its song of chaos as it clove through the packed combatants. Graywing’s flaxen hair and beard whipped in the wind as he dodged this way and that, making for the base of the tower. Beyond, in the shadows of the tall, tattered structure, figures appeared at a breach in the wall, paused for a moment, then filed out of sight, into the base of the tower itself.

“Chatara Kral,” Dartimien muttered. There had been no doubt of identity. The Gelnian regent’s brilliant armor was like no other. And with her were four of her personal guards, hulking icemen with brass-bound shields and great axes.

For a moment, in the intervening courtyard, the path behind Graywing was clear, swept clean by the ferocity of his charge. Then he seemed to be swallowed up in the crowd as howling Tarmites and Gelnians closed in around him.

“The gods must love fools,” Dartimien hissed, filling his hands with daggers. “Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many of them.” With a snarl as fierce as any cat’s, he vaulted through the broken grate and into the fray.

Soft, slanting sunlight washed the wooded hillsides west of the Vale of Sunder, filtering through the umbrella of leaves to paint myriad, flickering patterns on the forest slopes beneath. Soft breezes in treetops made the patterns dance, a subtle, intricate kaleidoscope of tiny motion obscuring the huge, graceful movements of the creature beneath the high boughs.

In her first life Verden Leafglow had shunned the daylight. A creature of stealth and deceit, she had preferred the dark hours to the bright. But now she found that the sunlight was a comfortable warmth, and the Tightness of it reminded her of how much she had changed in recent times. She was not the same dragon she had been, either in that past life or in the early portions of this one. Rippling scales that had once been emerald green now were a rich brown in hue, iridescent across the warm spectra with overtones of scintillant gold.

Little by little, the god Reorx had worked his magic upon her, always by her own choice it seemed but never with any clear options in that choice.

In her dreams and her deepest soul the visage of Reorx spoke to her. Free will, it said. The poisons of evil remain, and the antidote lies not in the frozen serenity of blind good. The true enemy of evil is free will. They must resolve their conflicts in their own way, and you must wait.

Your task is not the disorder of human minds, Verden Leafglow. Your task is greater. There is an evil beyond evil, an ancient grotesquery left over from other reckless games, long ago. That is your mission, Verden Leafglow. You will know when the time is at hand. You will have the chance to prove yourself.

Prove myself to whom? Verden’s question raged in her mind, for a god to hear if he cared to. I have nothing to prove!

Prove yourself to yourself, the dream-response came, quiet and sure. You chose to cast off your subservience, Verden. You rejected evil.

Evil rejected me! I only accepted that.

And craved vengeance, the dream-voice pointed out. As you still do. Crown your vengeance with wisdom, dragon. The true punishment of evil is its failure to succeed. You made a choice and a pledge, Verden. You chose free will, and rejected evil.

I pledged it only to myself!

Then you owe it to yourself, the voice said, seeming amused.

Verden shook herself, chafing at the torment of the uninvited voice which goaded and guided her. Impatiently she stirred her great body on the forested hillside. But even as she spread her languid, lustrous bronze wings to catch the patterns of the forest sunlight, she growled deep within her mighty chest.

I could just blast them all, she thought to herself, angrily. Those humans-those petty, soft things-I could kill them all without effort. Her huge fangs glinted at the thought, and her talons twitched. Deadly vapors trickled like foul smoke from her nostrils, and a powerful, devastating dragon spell formed itself in her mind.

But in her dreams a voice like distant thunder, silent beyond her own ears, spoke. Your magic is of this world, Verden Leafglow, just as you yourself are of this world. The thing you must defeat is not. Prepare yourself, Verden Leafglow. Your test is at hand.

Deep inside she knew that whatever was going to happen, whatever task the god had set her to do, it would come very soon. It had already begun. Spreading gold-brown wings, her rear talons thrusting with huge, powerful grace, the dragon launched herself once more toward the battered fortress of Tarmish.

In the deepest caverns beneath Tarmish, the combined clans of Bulp were settling in. Foragers had found a seep that provided an adequate water supply, and there were miles of crevices, tunnels and vermin-infested sumps to be explored, not to mention the most productive pyrite mine any of them could recall having seen.

Nobody knew why the Aghar were so enchanted with pyrites. The sulphur-colored iron nuggets, found here and there in old limestone formations, were useless as far as any other race of people knew. The metal melted poorly, tolerated little stress and had few of the qualities of good iron. But it was yellow, it was shiny and to the gully dwarves it was a fine treasure.

While various members of the clans foraged for food, all of which went into a new batch of stew that some of the females were brewing in makeshift pots over a central fire, others continued to clamber here and there on the