apart.
He raised his eyes, squinting in the dim candlelight. Above the thing, on its far side, stood a great, folded wing. Nearer, a second wing sprawled back at an angle, exposing yet another gaping wound.
'This thing in bad shape,' Tagg whispered to himself. 'Pretty beat up.'
The huge body towered over him and its crest was lost in shadows above. Farther along, the body widened abruptly, and he realized that what he was seeing was a leg — a huge leg, folded in rest. Beneath it was a toed foot with claws as long as his arms. Beyond, curled around from behind, was the tip of a long tail. He recognized that appendage now. It was what he had bitten, when he thought it might be half a snake. The recollection set his knees aquiver and he almost fell down.
Tagg's nerves had taken all they could stand. He had seen enough. He headed back.
Just as he was edging past it, the nearest eye opened an inch, and its slitted pupil looked at him. With a howl, Tagg erupted from the hole, bowling over a half-dozen curious gully dwarves in the process. Behind him, the great eyelid flickered contemptuously, and closed again.
As Tagg got to his feet, Glitch stepped forward. 'Well?'
'Well, what?'
'Well…' Glitch hesitated in confusion, trying to recall what he had sent Tagg to do.
'That thing got wings?' Gandy rasped.
'It got wings, all right. Got claws an' tail an' gashes, too.' Recovering his candle, Tagg handed it back to Glitch. 'Highbulp want any more look, Highbulp go look. I' ve seen enough.'
'Gashes?' Gandy blinked. 'What kind gashes?'
'That dragon all sliced up,' Tagg told him. 'Somebody hurt it pretty bad.'
Minna eased up beside him, gazing with sympathy at the hideous face of the green dragon asleep a few feet away. 'Poor thing,' she said.
As she spoke, the dragon's eyes opened to slits, then closed again. It shifted slightly, sighed, and seemed to relax, as though the pain of its wounds had somehow eased a bit.
For an hour, then, they searched for a way out of the rubble trap. They found nothing — at least, nothing they could reach without going past the dragon. The shifting of the beast in its lair had resettled the fallen stone, blocking every exit. One after another, the searchers gave up, shrugging and gathering into a tight little group as far from the dragon as they could get.
When it was obvious that they were truly trapped, Clout asked — of no one in particular — 'So, now what?'
Gandy scratched his head and leaned on his mop handle. 'Dunno,' he said. 'Better ask what's-'is- name.'
'Who?'
'WHAT'S-'is-name. Th' Highbulp ' He turned. 'Highbulp, what we do now?' He peered around in the dimness. 'Highbulp? Where th' Highbulp?'
It took a few minutes to find him. With nothing better to do. Glitch I had curled up beside a rock. He was sound asleep.
They were all asleep when Verden Leafglow awakened — gully dwarves everywhere, scattered in clumps and clusters about the dim recess, most of them snoring. At a glance, she counted more than sixty of the little creatures in plain sight, and knew there were more of them behind rocks, in the shadows, and beneath or beyond the sleeping heaps. One of them, she knew, had even crept past her into her lair, thinking that in sleep she might not notice. But it had only looked around and returned to the others.
Her first inclination was to simply exterminate them. But she had a better idea. They might be useful to her, if she kept them alive for a time — and if she could make them serve her.
Gully dwarves. Her contempt for them was even greater than the contempt most other races felt for the Aghar. As a dragon, she loathed ALL other races, and these were certainly the most contemptible of the contemptible. Even compared to the intelligence of humans, full dwarves, and others of the kind, the mentality of gully dwarves was so incredibly simple that it bordered on imbecility. And compared to dragon intelligence, it was nothing at all.
Still, the pathetic creatures had certain instincts that might be useful. They were excellent foragers, adept at getting into and searching out places that others might not even know existed. And they were good at finding things, provided they managed to concentrate their attention on the effort for any length of time.
Somewhere here, among the rubble of the destroyed city of Chaldis, was her self-stone. In her sleep she had sensed its presence. With her self-stone, she could heal herself completely. Properly motivated, the gully dwarves might find and deliver the self-stone.
Closing her eyes, she thought a spell, and her dragonsenses heard the beginnings of tiny movements among the rubble beyond the rock-fall cavern where the gully dwarves were trapped. Tiny, scurrying sounds, hints of movement carried more by vibration in the stones than by any real noise. She concentrated on the spell, and the hints of movement increased in number and volume. She added a dimension of difference to the spell, and other movements could be sensed; slithering, scuffing movements seeming to come from the soil above her lair.
The vibrations became true sound, and things scuttled in the deepest shadows within the chamber. From cracks and crevices everywhere, small things emerged, coming toward her. Rats and mice, here and there a squirrel, a rabbit or a hare — they emerged by the dozens, answering the call of her spell.
For a moment it seemed the place was filled with rodents, darting around and over the tumbles of sleeping gully dwarves, then they were all directly in front of her. Moving carefully, ignoring the pain of her injuries, she thrust out her right paw, and its talons sliced downward, slaughtering great numbers of the rodents. Using her tail, she scraped the ceiling of her lair, and brought forth the herbs and roots that hung there, drawn downward from above by her magic. These she pushed from tail to foot to forepaw, and deposited them in front of her hole, beside the dead rodents there. A final twist to the spell, and rocks moved, somewhere above. Seconds later, water began to drip from the roof of rubble, a small spring diverted to flow through the chamber. And a small, crackling fire appeared in mid-chamber.
'Wake up, you detestable creatures,' Verden Leafglow rumbled. 'Wake up and make stew. You are no good to me if you starve.'
'Sure. We find thing for you. No problem. What thing is?' Glitch I stifled a belch and grinned a reassuring grin at the monstrous face looking at him from its hole.
After the first shock of sharing a closed cave of rubble with a dragon had worn off, and when it became obvious that the dragon didn't intend to kill them and eat them — at least not right away — the Clans of Bulp had gotten down to business. First things first. They were hungry, and there was food.
Within minutes, savory stew was bubbling in their best pot over what — to some of the ladies especially — was the most remarkable cooking fire they had ever encountered. The fire seemed to have no fuel, nor to need any, and none of them had ever seen stew become stew so quickly.
Then, when their bellies were full, the dragon explained to them what she needed. She seemed, despite her great size and horrendous appearance, to be a pleasant enough dragon. Her voice was low and comforting, her words simple enough for most of them to understand and she even managed to seem to smile now and then. Quite a few of them discovered — without ever considering that there might be a touch of magic involved here — that they were really quite fond of the unfortunate Verden Leaf glow.
'The thing I need is a small thing,' she told the Highbulp. 'It is a sort of stone, about this big…' A huge, three-fingered 'hand' with needle-sharp talons a foot long appeared beside the green face, two talons indicating a size. About an inch and a half.
'Lotta stones 'round here,' Glitch said dubiously, looking around the cavern. 'Whole lot more outside, though. Oughtta look outside of here.'
'By all means,' Verden agreed. 'Outside, of course. And I am sure that, once you are outside, you wouldn't for a minute consider just going off and leaving me, would you?'
'Nope,' Glitch shook his head, speaking just a bit too loudly. 'Nope, wouldn' do that. Sure wouldn'.'
'Of course you wouldn't,' Verden said softly. 'Because that would be very unwise.'
'Sure would,' Glitch agreed emphatically. Then his face twisted in confusion. 'How come not wise?'
