The Lady Drule glanced after him, mildly bewildered, then glanced around the cavern. Only a few of the males were there, some asleep, some more interested in eating than in following the Highbulp around, and two or three who had started on the trek into the tunnel, then lost interest and turned back.
She could see them clearly, she noticed. The cavern suddenly was very well lighted, light flooding in from the entrance and growing brighter by the moment. Near the fire, a sleeping gully dwarf rolled over, sat up and blinked, shading his eyes. 'Huh!' he said. 'Mornain' already?'
The light grew, its color changing from angry red to orange, to yellow and then to brilliant white, nearly blinding them, even in the shadows of the cavern. Other sleeping souls awoke and gaped about them.
'What happenin'?' the Lady Drule wondered. Hunch returned with a bowl and filled it with stew. 'Get-tin' lighter,' he said, absently. Abruptly there was a howling at the entrance, and a gust of wind like an oven blast swept into the cave. The stew in Hunch's bowl seemed to come alive. It spewed up and out, showering gravy halfway across the chamber. The bowl followed, wrenched from the Grand Notioner's grip, and Hunch followed that, rolling and shouting, his mop-handle flailing.
Everywhere, then, gully dwarves were scurrying for cover — stumbling, falling, rolling, fleeing from the brilliant, howling entrance. They scurried into crevices, rolled into holes, dodged behind erosion pillars… and abruptly there was silence. The bright light still flooded in from the entrance, but now not quite so blinding. The roaring wind died away and the howling diminished to a low, continuing rumble almost below hearing.
Silence… then the rumbling increased. The floor of the cavern seemed to dance, vibrating to the sound. Bits of stone and showers of dust fell from the walls, and chunks of rock parted from the ceiling to crash downward. A rattling, bouncing flood of gravel buried the stew pot and the fire, and there was a new sound above the rumbling — the high, keening wail of stone splitting.
The cavern's entrance collapsed with a roar. Tons of broken stone slid across the opening, burying it, sealing it. Within, the rumbling and the rattle of rockfall were a chaos of noise, but now the noise built in darkness, for there was no light to see.
The tunnel from the back of the cavern called This Place wound deep into the capstone of the hill, bending and turning, always angling upward. His Royalness Gorge III, Highbulp and leader of clans, was somewhat to the rear of his expedition when the rest of them rounded a bend in the rising tunnel and saw the light ahead. Somewhere along the way, Gorge had decided that his feet were sore, and had taken to limping whenever he thought about it.
But when he heard the shouts and exclamations ahead of him — cries of, 'Hey! This pretty!' and 'Nice stuff, huh?' and 'Where that light comin' from?' — he forgot his limp and hurried to see what was going on. Rounding a bend, he found a traffic tie-up in a well-lighted cave, where the light seemed to grow brighter moment by moment. The first arrivals there had stopped in awe; others had piled into them from behind, and several had fallen down. Wading around and through tangles of his subjects, Gorge pushed past them and stopped. The cavern was a wide oval, an erosion chamber where ancient seeps had collected, and at the top of it was a hole that opened to the sky… a sky that suddenly was as bright as day.
'What goin' on here?' Gorge demanded. 'What light through yonder… yon… why hole all lit up?'
'Dunno,' several of his subjects explained. Then one of them pointed aside. 'See, Highbulp? Pretty rocks.'
He looked, and his eyes widened. One entire wall of the cavern glistened like brilliant gold, layer upon layer of bright embedment shining in the dark stone. 'Wow,' the Highbulp breathed… and belched. As though echoing him, the whole cavern shuddered and rumbled.
'Way too much turnips,' Gorge decided, as those around him looked at him in admiration. He turned his attention again to the wall of pyrites. He moistened a finger, rubbed it against a glittering lode, then licked it. 'Real nice,' he said. 'Good pyr… pyr… pretty rocks.'
Spying an exceptionally bright nodule, he reached for it. The cavern belched again — a deep, rumbling roll of sound — and the node fell loose in his hand. Gorge belched in surprise, and the cavern echoed him. The light in This Place had dimmed slightly, and suddenly became murky with dust. Gravel fell and rattled around them as the whole cave shook in a spasm. 'Hiccups?' someone asked.
'Not me,' the Highbulp declared. 'What goin' on here?' As though the mountain had given a stone belch, the cavern vibrated and began to shake. Gully dwarves danced around in confusion, stumbling and falling over one another. The spasm subsided slightly, then came again, this time far more violently. Fallen gully dwarves piled up on the gravel-strewn floor, and the Highbulp was thrown head over heels, to land atop them.
' 'Nough of this!' he shrieked. 'Ever'body run like crazy!'
They would have, gladly, but a rumbling like approaching thunder growled all around them. Debris from above pelted down on them, and the cavern's floor heaved and rose, pitching them into the center, where they piled up in a writhing, struggling mass with the Highbulp buried somewhere within.
Then, with a tremendous roar, the hole in the ceiling split wide, the cavern's floor heaved upward, the very world seemed to belch mightily, and the hilltop above erupted in a gout of gravel, pyrite fragments, dust and tumbling gully dwarves.
The Highbulp found himself airborne, and shrieked in terror, then he was falling, and thudded onto hard ground beneath a smoky red sky. Someone landed on top of him, and others all around. For a time he lay dazed, then he raised eyes that went round with wonder. He was on a hilltop, surrounded by other stunned gully dwarves, and all around was confusion. In the distance to the east, the horizon and the sky above it were a cauldron of blazing, writhing flames, where smoke and black clouds marched across a howling sky. And in the opposite direction, to the west, mountains were exploding.
'Wha' happen?' several voices echoed one another. 'Cave all turnippy,' someone said. 'Burp us out.'
For long minutes, the ground beneath them shook and danced, and they hugged its surface in panic. The sky rained dust and cinders on them, and huge winds howled overhead. Then there came a lull, the quaking subsided, and dark raindrops thudded into the dust around them.
One by one, the gully dwarves got to their feet. They crowded around the Highbulp, making it almost impossible for him to get his feet under him.
'Back off,' he growled. Those nearest backed away, creating a ripple effect in the crowd that knocked some of those on the outside down again. Gorge stood up, tried to dust himself off, and a large raindrop splattered on his nose. He looked around at his gathered followers, squinting in the darkness that had replaced the brilliant light.
Lightning split the sky overhead, illuminating everything, and Gorges latest belch turned to a shriek of panic. All around them were Talls — humans — armed men with swords and axes that glistened in the storm light — armed, determined human slavers… and there was nowhere for the gully dwarves to run.
The rains came and went and came again, scouring a savaged land that never again would be as it had been before. Gray morning light shone on silent chaos, a land rent and ripped and devastated, a landscape of desolation, where huge boulders lay scattered upon silt-buried slopes, a place of sundered silence in a land torn and rent by cataclysm.
Mountains no longer had the dagger-spire silhouettes of yesterday, but instead presented cratered and tumbled faces to the dawn. Their slopes were strewn with boulders. Jagged shards jutted like teeth from the pitted flows of settling topsoil scoured from ravaged ranges above.
On one such slope a searching falcon circled near the surface, drawn by scurrying rodents among the stones. The bird spiraled downward, gliding just above the stones, then beat its wings and darted away when something moved in a place where nothing should be.
The falcon beat away, and behind it a grotesque, recum bent figure stirred. Half buried in silt, it had seemed only a fragment of thrown rock — until it moved. It stirred, shifted a portion of itself upward, and drying mud sloughed away to reveal a large, rounded head surmounting great, knotted shoulders. It raised its head and opened puzzled eyes, peered this way and that for a moment, then pushed its huge torso upward on massive arms, and the rest of it became visible. Legs the size of tree trunks bent and flexed, and the creature paused on hands and knees to look around again, then shifted to a sitting position.
Big, calloused hands went to its head, and it closed its eyes in momentary pain. A growl like distant thunder escaped it. Its grimace revealed teeth like yellow chisels, in a mouth that was wide and cruel.
