Geppo stopped checking his own gear and stiffened. He eyed the gnome in puzzlement, then anger. 'You say Geppo give you golds now, hey?' he snarled, voice rising. He suddenly spat on the sea-washed ground. 'There are golds for you. Take and spend them. Geppo not owe you golds for save life. Have no golds, not for you.' The derro stood back, legs and arms trembling curiously. His left hand strayed near the hilt of Wykar's blade, sheathed at his side.
Wykar stared back in confusion and his own rising anger. He realized the derro had completely misunderstood him. Maybe derro regarded gratitude as some kind of monetary debt that they extorted from others of their kind. He snorted in disgust, his own self-control slipping. So the derro wanted to threaten Wykar because he didn't know what 'thank you' meant? Fine. Barbarism was all that could be expected from brainless derro scum. 'Forget it,' he muttered, looking down again at his belt equipment. He threw away two other darts with smashed crystal noses. He had one good one left. 'I don't want any damn gold from you. That's not what giving thanks means, you stupid…'
He suddenly seized the last good dart, jerked it free from his armor, and threw it out toward the sea as hard as he could. 'All the gods damn your kind! Damn them all!' he shouted as he did. He fought down the urge to add another dozen pithy comments, very personal ones. He drew a ragged breath instead, and wiped his face and nose with a cold, wet hand. 'Just forget it,' he said tiredly, turning away. 'Forget everything. Just come on.'
He walked off, face burning with buried rage. He marched about fifty paces before he looked back in anger, hearing nothing behind him. Geppo stood in place with an astonished expression, hands now limp at his sides. The tremor in his thin limbs seemed more pronounced.
'Let's move!' Wykar hissed, sweeping a hand toward their goal. 'I want no thanks from you! Just move!'
Geppo's hands twitched. His head suddenly bowed, and he began walking in Wykar's direction as if he had suddenly aged by a century. Wykar turned and set off on the path again himself, the steam cooling on his anger. It took many long minutes for Wykar to regain control of his temper and think clearly again. He then became angry with himself. What if some kuo-toan or sea monster had overheard him? He would have regretted his outburst then. And he couldn't afford to lose the derro for anything if he hoped to get to that egg. He could not afford to throw a fit at every quirk in the derro's behavior. It was hard not to take things personally, as badly as the impulsive journey had turned out, but only a clear head had a chance to win anything good from this.
Wykar rubbed his face until he thought he would take the skin off. He eventually relaxed and let most of the tension go by breathing deeply and focusing on listening for enemies in the landscape ahead. He looked back and saw the derro marching on behind him, not looking up.
That derro has to be the most stupid one alive, he thought. But I guess that was what I needed, wasn't it? This plan had better work.
They walked on over rough terrain for about six miles until it was long past sleeping again, but Wykar was too wound up for rest.
The remainder of the journey had not been uneventful. The great wave had washed the bodies of many creatures onto the rocky shoreline, once-living things of the sort that should have remained hidden from view. Some of the creatures were still in the process of dying when Wykar and Geppo carefully and quietly skirted their quivering, obscene bulks. Several monsters slapped at the rocky shore with weakened fins, straining uselessly to drag themselves back into the sea, or exposed huge mouths of dagger teeth as they gasped out their lives with water only yards away. Wykar noted as well, a few mangled body parts from unfortunate kuo-toa, who had probably been ground against rocks or even the cavern ceiling by the great wave when it started out. He bit his lips and turned his head away, feeling no sympathy for them.
A second, smaller wave, quickly followed by a third, soon roared up the bleak shoreline, but neither wave had the power or reach of the first. After that, the sea cavern was filled with the rumbling of rough water, which went on without end. Worse, the violent sea had stirred up its two-legged inhabitants. Twice, the pair was forced to charge and fight through small groups of live kuo-toa that blocked their way. The fish-folk were confused and often injured, but there was always the danger that a lucky throw with a harpoon or random slash with a long knife would leave the gnome or derro as badly off as the writhing monsters they had passed on the shore.
In the pair's favor, the thick, drifting mist from the sea enabled the gnome and derro to make an escape without fear of being followed. The kuo-toa, still stunned from the earthquake and sea wave, were also not inclined to pursue, hurling only two or three badly aimed harpoons before subsiding in confusion.
In time, Wykar saw a faint reddish-purple glow far ahead as he rounded a bend in the wall to his left. He knew immediately that the journey was almost over. The glow illuminated a region where the rocky shore swung inland away from the sea, perhaps two hundred yards or more, to end in a high wall marked by several vertical rifts from floor to ceiling. The Red Shore, the drow had called it.
Wykar stopped, signaled Geppo to take cover behind a fallen rock, and began scouting the area before them. Nothing registered as important-but that was exactly what the drow slave masters had thought as well, eleven sleepings ago. They had missed a critical thing and had died for their omission,
The red-purple glow came from a large colony of wall fungus, many yards square, that coated both sides of a broad, wet fissure large enough for a group of drow to gather inside. An underground stream leaking down from above kept the area moist.
Memories came to Wykar at once. Eleven sleepings ago, a group of drow had chosen a spot deep within the vertical fissure to bury the large chest that they and their two slaves had brought with them. They had handed Wykar and Geppo each a small pick and told them to dig. The smirking drow then stood around the ragged pair and prodded them with boot tips and sword points, urging them on with their work while describing their individual ideas on how each slave should die when the job was finished. The drow had been perfectly serious, they intended for no one to reveal the hiding place later on. After time-consuming tortures and a slow execution, the derro and gnome would be animated by magic as undead guardians, to be buried with the chest and its egg for eternity-or until the drow elected to move the chest to another spot.
Wykar rubbed his eyes and pushed the memory aside. After a few moments, he reconsidered and deliberately brought the memory of those last moments back to the surface, focusing on its details with all the detachment he could summon. He had to think his way through what had happened next, break it down and study every piece, if he was to finish the task he had set for himself.
Silently, Geppo crouched down a short distance from the deep gnome and also surveyed the land ahead. The two had not spoken for many hours, but the earlier argument was already pushed aside. It was not the time and place for quarreling now.
'I was trying to remember what happened before the moaning sound started,' murmured Wykar, frowning. 'They were making jokes about opening the chest and spitting on the egg and locking us inside with it, and I didn't understand why that was so funny to them-the spitting part.' He glanced at Geppo, who said nothing.
Wykar shrugged and looked back at the reddish-purple glow. 'Then that sound started, that loud, piercing groan that went on and on and on, and it dug right down into my gut. I saw the drow clap their hands over their ears and shout at each other, and one or two drew swords, but they dropped them. I couldn't see what was making the noise. I was sick to my stomach to be listening to it. My hands shook so much that I dropped the pick, and I was terrified the drow would kill me for dropping it. But I couldn't help it. My stomach was cramped up like I was going to vomit. I covered my ears, but that didn't help me, either.'
He paused and swallowed before continuing. 'A male drow, I think it was Deriander the wizard, fell down over me, screaming like a banshee. We were all screaming by then. I got up again and saw that Deriander had gone rigid and was shaking. His muscles were like iron ropes, hard as rocks. They all looked like that, all six of the drow. But I could still move. I couldn't figure it out.' Wykar turned to his companion. 'That was when you hit Sarlaena with your pick. You hit her in the legs several times before she fell down, and I had this strange thought that she couldn't feel a thing you were doing. I thought she was screaming from something else.' He looked back at the unearthly glow. 'I fell over the lesser priestess and was getting up to escape when the cloakers got us.'
The gnome's hands trembled at the memory. 'I saw one of the cloakers fall from somewhere up on the ceiling. It looked like a white square. I knew what it was from stories that my people used to tell, but I had never seen one before. I knew then that cloakers were making the moaning noise that we heard, paralyzing and trapping the drow. Then I saw a large mouth open in the middle of the cloaker where nothing had been, a mouth with teeth, and two glassy eyes opened above it. It landed on Xerzanein's back and wrapped around him while he was still standing up, screaming and holding his ears. It was like a living cape, black as jet, squeezing Xerzanein so tightly I
