'One more than I like!' she shot back, and though her eyes flashed dark hazel below her curly copper hair, the cor ners of her red lips were raised in an almost imperceptibly playful smile.
Grinning back, Flint thought, how different she is from the frawls I've met in more than a century of life. He nearly reached up to brush a wayward curl from her forehead, then caught himself. Why do my hands seek excuses to touch her? We both know hill dwarves and mountain dwarves don't mix.
'What, no quick retort?' Perian asked him, suddenly conscious of his stare.
The hill dwarf's bushy mustache turned down in a frown.
'We've too much work to do to indulge in verbal jousts,' he said irritably, pitching the brown button into the heap again.
Hurt by his sudden mood shift, Perian bristled. 'What ever you say. I'm anxious as well to be done with this
Hillhome campaign, so I can get on with things in my own life!'
'There's nothing that says you have to do 'this Hillhome campaign,' ' he said coldly.
Perian's hazel eyes narrowed to slits. 'You may not under stand this, but my sense of honor prevents me from reneging on a promise.'
Flint whirled on her. 'I never asked for your promise to help.'
Perian trembled with anger. 'I was referring to my vow to stay with the gully dwarves,' she said quietly.
'Oh.'
Silence.
'I have things to do.' Averting her face, Perian quickly strode across the bridge that spanned the stream and bolted for the tunnel to the Thrown Room.
Flint swore silently. Why all of a sudden had he acted like such a proud, stubborn old fool? Go after her, tell her you're sorry, he said to himself. Tell her whatever you have to to take that disgusted look from her eyes!
'Eeeeeeoooooo!'
Following the echoing cry of distress, Flint's head snapped to the left, where he saw a crew of ten gully dwarves still dis mantling the carrion crawler. Hissing smoke rose in small clouds around half of the Aghar, who were doing a bizarre dance of pain.
'How have you boneheads set yourselves afire now?' the hill dwarf groaned, taking the bridge in four strides. He ran the two hundred feet to where they stood around the oozing remains of the giant carrion crawler.
Though surrounded by choking, putrid-smelling smoke,
Flint could find no signs of fire. Four of the gully dwarves had drawn into themselves in fear, their big eyes peering now and then over their shoulders at their screaming com rades.
Those five were covered in varying degrees with a black, tarlike slime, which they were frantically trying to fling from their bodies. Each time they managed to toss a globule to the ground, it exploded on contact with a spark and a loud 'bang!' then fizzled into a noxious gray cloud.
'It burn my skin off!'
'Black goop make fingers bubble!'
'It like bomb!'
'I all sweaddy!' 'It eat hole to my brain!'
'That your ear,' Nomscul informed him calmly, looking closely at the side of one Aghar's head. Nomscul had been supervising the task. His shaman status helped him avoid lapsing into hysteria with the rest of the Aghar.
'Dunk them in the stream!' Perian cried from behind
Flint. She had been back by the tunnel when she heard the gully dwarves' screams. Running up to the group now, she propelled two of the injured gully dwarves over to the left and into the gently flowing stream. She held their collars while they flailed in the water, washing away the mysteri ous black substance. Finally their wails slowed to sobs. Per ian hauled them out and was happy to see that the affected skin was shiny pink but otherwise unharmed.
Seeing her success, Flint shoved the other two Aghar in, and soon their symptoms were relieved as well. Teeth chat tering, the soaked Aghar clustered around their king, look ing like drowned rats.
'Someone had better tell me what's going on here!' Flint demanded of the group. 'Nomscul?'
Nomscul's wispy mustache twitched above his lips. 'I use my magic bag to stop yelling, but it not work! It always work before!' Nomscul's eyes narrowed, shifting the bags underneath them. 'You put curse on it, O kingly guy?'
Flint scowled. 'Of course it doesn't work — it's just a bag of dir — ' He sighed and gathered his patience about him like a cloak. 'Nomscul, where did that black stuff come from?'
'That all king want to know?' Nomscul asked. 'It beast guts.' He pulled Flint over to the remains of the carrion crawler and pointed. 'See sack of yuk, there? They chop ping like you say, and out goop fly!'
'Must be like a venom sack,' Perian suggested. 'How are we going to get rid of the rest of this thing without disturb ing that exploding organ?'
Flint was scratching his beard in thought. 'Hand me your dagger,' he said to Perian. Puzzled, the mountain dwarf pulled it from her belt and placed it into Flint's open palm.
He bent and stirred it around in the black slime.
'What do you think you're doing with my blade?' Perian demanded.
'Just give me a second here,' Flint said softly. Flicking the wrist of the hand that held the dagger, Flint sent some slime sizzling on its way to the dirt floor. A loud clap, like a fire cracker, erupted, and then a narrow column of thick, acrid smoke billowed upward. Flint checked the surface of Per ian's blade and saw that it was still smooth and unpocked.
Apparently, the substance was corrosive to skin, but more durable objects, like metal, and probably glass and clay, were impervious to its caustic effects.
Flint handed the weapon back to the frawl. 'How much of this black venom do you figure there is here?'
'I don't know, quite a lot. The abdominal sac is very large — and there could be another venom gland, for all we know. What does it matter?' Perian asked.
Flint was doing some calculations in his mind and did not hear her question.
'You're not thinking of — ?'
'I certainly am,' he cut in, smiling slyly as he suddenly be came aware of her again. 'I think, Perian, that we may have found our secret weapon…'
Basalt's right hand curled around the ring of teleporta tion. His eyes were squeezed shut in deliberation, his thoughts on the main room of the family homestead. Then, for a brief second, an image of Moldoon's inviting tap room flashed through his mind and he could feel his body waver ing in midair! In panic, he opened his eyes and saw both the family home and Moldoon's, shimmering and distant. In stantly he clamped his eyes shut again and flooded his mind with thoughts of home, his family, the furniture — and in a brief moment that seemed like an eternity, the wavering stopped and he sensed that he was standing on his own feet.
Somewhere.
The air was warm on his freckled cheeks. He opened his eyes slowly, and before him stood his Uncle Ruberik's un smiling, astonished countenance. The wooden pails in Ru berik's hands clattered to the floor, creating a small puddle of creamy white milk at his feet.
'What's the meaning of this? Where did you come from?
What happened to you? You've got some explaining to do, you foolish young trickster!'
'Yes, Basalt,' he heard his mother chime in from behind,
'besides this bit of nonsense, where have you been since, well — ' She coughed uncomfortably. 'Where have you been all night? Tybalt's been looking for you, not to mention the rest of us have been worried.'
Basalt had not moved since the moment of his arrival, and now he stepped back toward the fireplace to get both of them into view, Bertina in the kitchen, Ruberik at the door.
He saw in their faces their usual reaction to him — his uncle's anger, his mother's distress — and he nearly lost his courage.
