Next Flint had ordered the rebuilding of the hole in the wall to discourage any further attacks by Pitrick, piling rocks of all sizes before it. Another crew was assigned the grim task of dismembering the beast, since it was far too large to remove intact from Mudhole's narrow egress.
After he'd initiated these programs, Flint had returned, exhausted, to the Thrown Room, where Perian put salve and a bandage over a magic-inflicted burn on Flint's arm.
They were both too wound up to sleep.
Sitting on the edge of the moss bed now, hunched over a small table, quill in hand, Perian nodded her copper head emphatically in answer to Flint's question. 'Pitrick is the most insanely cruel and powerful dwarf I've ever known.
Why, once I saw him — never mind,' she amended, shaking away the story when she noted Flint's preoccupied look.
The hill dwarf smote his open palm angrily. 'Blast my wicked temper! I never should have told him Hillhome knew anything about the weapons or Aylmar. It was a lie anyway!' He kicked the wall with the toe of his boot.
Perian shook her head. 'You can't blame yourself for Pit rick's villainy! He's always hated hill dwarves — it was inevi table that his hatred would someday be turned against Hillhome.'
Flint snorted and threw up his hands. 'But now I've given
Hillhome less of a chance! I only hope I get back before it's too late.'
She glanced up from the notes she was making on an old scrap of parchment and shook her head. 'But they wouldn't have had any chance otherwise, because they wouldn't have known an attack was coming. When you think about it that way, you've done them a favor!' She propped her head up with a hand on her cheek.
Flint frowned. 'Thanks for saying that, but this is still my fault.'
Perian pushed the curls on her forehead from her eyes and pursed her lips. 'Pitrick's obsession with me hasn't helped matters.' She shook her head fiercely. 'I can't help but think that this would not have happened if I'd confronted him sooner, or even told the thane I thought he was crazy. Per haps I should have just given him what he wanted!' She shuddered.
Flint shuddered, too. He had no difficulty imagining what
Pitrick had desired from the frawl. He found himself look ing beneath Perian's warm hazel eyes to her soft, fuzzy cheeks. He remembered the vision of her in Pitrick's grasp just a few hours ago, and his blood boiled. 'You could not have given him that. It would have been worse than death.'
Perian looked straight ahead without blinking. 'No, I couldn't have done that.'
Flint looked brightly at the paper beneath her hand on the rickety table. 'What are you doing?'
She tapped her chin with the end of the quill. 'Making a list of the things we'll need on the trail to Hillhome.' She scratched a note. 'How far do you figure it is to this little vil lage of yours?'
Astounded, Flint could barely keep the smile from his face. 'You mean you'd help me — I mean Hillhome?'
'Just try and stop me!' she said, setting her shoulders defi antly.
'But why? Why would you risk your life for strangers?'
'You're hardly a stranger,' she laughed. 'You've saved my life twice in the last, what — five days?'
Flint rolled his eyes. 'Your life wouldn't have needed sav ing if it hadn't been for my bumbling in the first place.'
Perian wrinkled her nose in disagreement. 'We've been over that already. I was at the breaking point anyway.
Something had to give.' She hesitated, then quickly added, watching his expression, '- and then luckily you came along.'
Uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation, the mountain dwarf decided to lighten it. 'Does the king of the gully dwarves expect to leave his queen and subjects be hind 7'
Flint was stroking his beard and fingering the teleport ring Pitrick had left behind along with his fingers. He looked at Perian tentatively, chewing the edge of his mustache.
'Please don't laugh,' he said at last, 'but I was actually thinking of taking them along. After all, I gave my vow not to leave them. They're not the best fighters I ever saw — actually, they're just about the worst — but I never saw any braver. The way they went up against that carrion crawler, well, it was purely noble. I don't imagine well-trained mountain dwarves would intimidate them in the slightest.'
Perian's eyebrows flew up, and she slapped the quill down. 'That's a great idea! How soon should we — '
Suddenly, there was a great commotion in the hall outside their room. Expecting the worst, Flint and Perian shot each other a look before leaping off the bed for the door.
'Cainker back! Garf back!' Nomscul shouted, running down the dark tunnel toward them. He skidded to a stop just short of Flint's nose. 'Cainker and Garf, they bring king's pop!' he explained out of breath, revealing that the gully dwarves were not totally clear on the various branches of the royal family tree.
Flint blinked. 'My nephew? I can't believe those two boneheads actually found their way to Hillhome, let alone located my nephew. But you say they brought him here?
Why?'
'You bet they did, O kingly guy!' proclaimed Nomscul, having misappropriated new words from his king and queen. 'You come see!' Nomscul frowned suddenly. 'King's father not real happy.'
'Of course he's not! They were just supposed to give him my note, not kidnap him!' Flint snarled, then sighed heav ily. 'Where is he?'
'In grotto,' Nomscul explained. 'They shove him through crackingrotto. I magicked him,' he said, holding up the red bag dangling from his waist, 'but he no will move.'
Sighing again, the hill dwarf splashed his face with strained puddle water from a basin by the door, drying it with his sleeve. 'You'd better take me to him right away.' He looked over his shoulder at Perian and winked. 'Coming, 0 queenly gal?' Smirking, she nodded.
'This way faster than through Big Sky,' he explained as he dashed ahead of them into a dark, narrow mine shaft. The tunnel continued, straight as an arrow, for about six hun dred feet, Flint noted, counting his steps by using an old trick from his dungeon-crawling days. Neither he nor Per ian had yet visited this part of Mudhole, and he wanted to make sure they could find their way out again.
Then the shaft dead-ended. Nomscul led them around a turn, and after another five hundred feet they came to an other tunnel on their right, but Nomscul ignored it. 'That go to Big Sky. We in Upper Tubes area now.'
Two hundred fifty feet later the tunnel ahead narrowed by half, and another shaft turned sharply to the left.
'Have you noticed we seem to be heading downhill?' Per ian called back to Flint, who was bringing up the rear.
'Yeah,' Flint panted, winded by the walk. 'And I'm glad of it, because it's the only thing that's keeping me going.
How much farther?' he hollered ahead to Nomscul.
'Grotto right here!' Nomscul crowed unexpectedly, stop ping so suddenly that Perian slammed into him, and Flint into her, his face buried in her russet curls. Without think ing, he closed his eyes and inhaled, his hands coming to rest on her upper arms. Flint jumped backward abruptly, flus tered by his own reaction.
'Uh, Nomscul went down there,' Perian said softly over her shoulder, pointing to the right.
Flint looked around the frawl. 'Steps!' he said unhappily.
Indeed, a very narrow stone stairway had been cut into the granite, curving and twisting downward so that it was im possible to tell where the bottom was. Flint followed Perian down the cramped stairs, counting out of habit.
'Eighty-eight, eight-nine!' he said out loud as his foot hit the last one. He could hear Perian draw in her breath ahead of him, and he looked up.
They stood on the threshold of a beautiful natural grotto, which was dimly lit by some source that Flint could not im mediately identify. Though much smaller than the Big Sky
Room, the ceiling of the underground cavern was just as high. A waterfall cascaded through a crack at the top of the far right wall, forming a clear pool, which in turn fed a stream that flowed out under the left wall. White, eyeless fish frolicked in the cold depths of the pool, disappearing beneath an overhanging shelf of rock above the
