Plop.
Gus watched the globule of sludge fall from the ceiling, plummeting-as he had known it would-straight down onto Pap’s bald, wrinkled pate. The ball of gooey liquid exploded noisily, spattering Mam and Birt. But most of the gunk ran down Pap’s face or draped his very prominent ears like the draperies that used to ornament Thane Grumple Nagfar’s palace. (Gus had seen the palace once when Thane Highbulp Nagfar, drunk, had fallen down outside the drain hole that was his palace entrance, and Gus, who also was drunk, had tripped over the thane and tumbled down the slick and slimy shaft.)
Just as he had anticipated the sludge’s fall, Gus knew what would happen next.
“Move!” Pap snapped, roughly elbowing Mam from her small rock and sidling sideways to claim the newly vacated seat. His own perch, the largest rock in the entire Fishbiter household, he left unoccupied.
Mam kicked One Eye (Birt was his real name, but the family called him One Eye ever since that thing that happened when the brothers were fishing) over and took the space on the floor where he had been sitting. It was the only flat spot on the rocky, rubble-strewn floor of the lightless house, so she settled herself there with a stern look at Birt, Ooz, and Gus.
Gus sighed, watching the inevitable progression of nudges, punches, and kicks as Birt claimed the corner perch formerly occupied by Ooz (Ooz was his real name, but the family sometimes called him Hook Lip ever since that other thing that happened when the brothers were fishing), and Ooz knocked Gus out of his place in the doorway. Rubbing his sore ribs-Ooz punched him in the same place every time-Gus stood up and tried to decide what to do. He looked at the ceiling and saw that the ooze was only slowly beginning to bubble down below the crack; it would be at least two minutes before it fell again. Since his only other choice was to leave the crowded little house, he made his way to the rock that had been vacated by Pap.
He settled himself on the high seat, which was clean since Pap himself had intercepted the plunging sludge. For just a second, he relished the thrill of being high and dry, his rump nestled comfortably in the slight concavity atop the rock. It was nice up here!
“Hey! That my seat!”
Pap lunged to his feet, his face twisted into a grimace of ferocity, both of his teeth showing between his widespread lips. Gus sprang off the rock before the old Aghar’s punch could land, allowing his father to reclaim his chair. Pap glowered menacingly at his youngest offspring until a louse in his beard compelled him to refocus his attention on scratching. Mam, meanwhile, wasted no time in reclaiming her place next to the rock, while Ooz and Birt likewise moved back to their previous roosts. Instead of sitting down himself, Gus looked at the ceiling, where another distended smear of viscous sludge was gathering underneath the wide place in the crack. Soon the mass was too heavy to cling and broke free to tumble straight down toward Pap’s still-moist cranium.
Plop.
Gus decided not to stay around for the next step in the cycle, which was the usual after dinner routine of the Fishbiter clan. For one thing, dinner had taken place a very, very long time ago, and the shuffle and return was starting to get a little boring (though he never tired of watching the sludge spatter as it struck Pap’s hairless scalp). And for another thing, Gus was starting to get very hungry again.
The previous dinner had been the bony carcass of a cave carp that Ooz had claimed from behind an inn in New Theibardin. Of course, all the usable meat had been picked off, but Theiwar cooks were notoriously wasteful. In this case, the head, all the fins, and the tail remained. Furthermore, there had been succulent little bits of flesh between the rib bones of the carp, meat that the cook had been too lazy or impatient to carve out.
As a result, there had been feasting in the Fishbiter household! Well, it was sort of feasting, anyway. At least Pap had eaten like a king; he got the whole head to himself. Mam had claimed the tail, greedily smacking her lips over each morsel. Ooz and Birt got the fins and ribs, and all four of them enjoyed something to eat.
Gus, unfortunately, had been left to scramble for the bits of bone, scale, and gristle that evaded the notice of his elders, though he grabbed one tasty morsel when he fooled Birt into dropping his fin to snatch at a tempting mouse that scrambled over his lap. Of course, the mouse had been only a puff of fuzz tangled at the end of a long thread dangled by Gus, but by the time Birt figured out the ruse, Gus was already smacking his lips, savoring the strong aftertaste of carp. Since Birt would have had to neglect the rest of his feast in order to pound his younger brother, he had to forgo any vengeance in order to protect the remainder of his share.
Even so, Gus’s belly was rumbling, and as Pap, Mam, Birt, and Ooz rearranged the seating in the household once again, the youngest Fishbiter ducked his head and exited through the low tunnel that was the house’s front door. He emerged into one of the dingy, filthy alleys of Agharhome, the largest “city” (though nest or den or hive or warren or lair might be more accurate terms) of gully dwarves in the whole of vast, subterranean Thorbardin.
The ceiling, a slanted slab of rock, pressed low over the narrow thoroughfare, which was one of a multitude of similar lightless, stinky, cramped enclosures in the city of the gully dwarves. Dozens of little circular holes led into the bedrock to either side of the alley. These were the doors of houses similar to the one in which Gus and his family lived. Some of them had residents, but a great deal were empty. Hunger, predators, and the deadly gangs of Klar thugs made for short life expectancy for the denizens of Agharhome.
Glumly, Gus started down the lane, descending the steep incline toward the lake, quickly emerging onto a narrow ledge above the water. He looked down to see where the dark waters of the Urkhan Sea lapped against many of the lower tunnels of Agharhome. These points of access were all crowded with hungry gullies, each seeking a lucky chance at a fish, and Gus considered whether he wanted to take his chances at shouldering through the crowd and trying his own fortunes.
Gus was neither unusually large nor unusually small by Aghar standards. He stood about three feet high, with a large nose the prominent feature of his round, weak-chinned face. A scraggly beard grew from that chin, but not thickly enough to mask its recession. His eyes were large and watery, his teeth jutted awkwardly forward from his mouth. He wore a surprisingly nice-looking red silk jacket (stolen from someone’s laundry) but the elbows had worn away on it, and it didn’t quite enclose his protruding belly. His saggy pants were held up by a scrap of rope, and though he wore boots, the sole and the front were missing from one of them, so his large, dirty toes projected into view.
He spotted a throng of Aghar squeezed into the narrow mouth of the ravine directly below him. Only two could actually fit at the water’s edge, where they crouched, hands extended, waiting for a fish. Behind them, the rest of the group pushed and jostled. “Move, you bluphsplunger goot!” one demanded.
“Back up, doofus wandwaver!” another replied, grappling the first. The two wrestlers tumbled down, pushing the two fishers into the water. One climbed out, crawling between the pair who had claimed the shore, shivering and dripping and again jostling for position.
Gus watched for two minutes before he turned around. His family was bad enough. He had no stomach for rough encounters with other Aghar who would invariably be bigger, rougher, and nastier. And the teeming numbers he encountered at every one of these ravines! He couldn’t count very high, but a general guess suggested there were at least two, and two, and two more of them everywhere! Such throngs held no appeal for a loner such as Gus.
So instead of descending, he climbed. It was not too long before he emerged from the small tunnel of the alley into a loftier, though still narrow, passage. This was one of the dramatic clefts that scored the upper surface of Agharbardin, carved into the steep wall of the great cavern that surrounded the Urkhan Sea. As was ever true in Thorbardin, a rock ceiling vaulted overhead, but the ceiling was far above him, allowing a vista that carried far out across the black, still water.
This place was nearly lightless, only faintly illuminated from a few of the old sun shafts that still remained open; the others had long been filled in by debris. The pale beams diffused through the distance, glimmering over a few patches of still water.
It had not always been like this. A half century earlier, the whole shore of the Urkhan Sea would have been aglow with the spillage of light from the many forges, fireplaces, and other fires burning throughout the great dwarven kingdom. In those days the great cities along the lake shore rose up through many terraces on the steep cliffs rising from the water while the great Life-Tree of the Hylar, in the center of the lake, radiated light and warmth from thousands of windows, balconies, and overlooks.
All of those cities were abandoned-ravaged and at least partially destroyed by the depredations of the Chaos War. Vast sections had been hollowed out by mighty fire dragons that had burned tunnels right through the bedrock of the mountain, and in many places those scoured caverns had weakened the surrounding structures
