more or less straight course. Abruptly the delved shaft narrowed, becoming a slot only wide enough to travel single file. In the notch the malodor became almost overwhelming, causing Perry to gag and catch his breath; he did not want to come into this stink, but the Spawn gaining behind left him no choice.
As they edged along the cleft, Delk exclaimed, 'Starsilver! Look! See the ore vein! This delving is a silveron shaft!'
Perry could see the soft glimmer of silvery metal twinkling in the lantern light and running on ahead. And even though they were being pursued, the Dwarves paused long enough to reach out and touch the precious lode, for they had never before seen sitveron in its native state. This was the wealth of Kraggen-cor; in only two other places in Mithgar was silveron known to exist.
Suddenly they came to what had been the last extent of the silveron shaft; but they could see that the end wall had been burst through from the far side: the stone was splintered as if some enormous force had blasted into the delf from beyond the wall.
They clambered over the shards of rock and came into a carven chamber. This room was the source of the foul reek, but they could see nothing to cause the stench; it was as if the fetor exuded from the very stone itself.
The chamber was long and rectangular; its far end was lost beyond the shadows. In the center was a raised stone slab, a huge block with a smooth top and carvings on the side. Here,
too, were scrawled serpentine signs. Shannon Silverleaf held up a lantern and quickly scanned the glyphs. They writhed across the stone and looked somehow evil and foul, recorded in a long-lost tongue; yet the Elf was skilled at runes and rapidly deciphered the words: ' 'Thuuth Uthor.' Ai!' Shannon sucked in a gasp of air. 'This is the Lost Prison. The Draedan's Lair. No wonder the stone is imbued with a foul reek, for here, trapped for ages, was the Dread of Drimmen-deeve-the Gargon-trapped til the Drimma were deceived by Modru's vile gramarye and delved too deeply and set the Draedan free.'
'Trapped?' exclaimed Kian. 'Trapped in this chamber? Is there no way out?'
AH the lanterns were opened wide, and light sprang to the far end and filled the room. No archways were discerned, no black tunnel mouths gaped in the walls; only smooth stone, blank and stern, could be seen. No outlet, no portal of escape stood open before them, and behind, a hom blared loudly and they could hear the slap of running Rucken feet.
CHAPTER 3
'Quickly, Ursor, Anval, to the cleft!' barked Kian. 'Bonn, Delk, flank them. Let no Spawn through. If we are trapped, then let it cost them dear to pluck us forth.'
Ursor sprang to the notch, shifting to one side, with Bonn warding his flank. Anval leapt thwartwise.the notch from Ursor, Delk at hand. Shannon and Kian quickly stepped to the third rank, and Perry took a place at Shannon's side. They could see torchlight wavering down the slot, and suddenly a Ruck burst forth from the breach, to be felled by Ursor's great black mace. A second Spawn came on the heels of the first, and Anval's axe clove him from helm to breastplate. A third Ruck Ursor crushed, and a fourth. The next Ruck threw down his iron bar and turned to flee but was pushed shrieking and gibbering into the chamber by those behind who did not yet know that anything was amiss, and AnvaJ smote him and the next with his blade. The maggot-folk finally stopped coming in as enough of those in the front ranks at last turned and shoved back through the press in the notch.
A time passed, and the Seven could hear the Spaunen snarling and cursing, but the Sluk speech was being used, and so the comrades did not understand what was being said. For a moment it became still, and then a spate of black-shafted Rucken arrows hissed through the cleft to strike the far chamber wall and splinter on the stone. Then there came a great shout from the maggot-folk and a rush of booted feet: they were mounting a charge. One leapt in, only to be dropped by Ursor's mace. Three more hurtled through and were slain by Anval, Bonn, and Delk. More charged forward but stumbled over the dead bodies of the slain Rucks and were themselves dispatched. Once more the Rucks withdrew.
Just as it had been at the rope bridge over the Great Deep, the Spawn could only come at the Seven single file, and thus the Rupt could not bring their great numbers to bear to their advantage. No Ruck had yet reached the third rank of the defenders. Four warders alone could hold off an entire Rucken army, especially since the comrades flung the dead Spaunen one atop another to clog the entrance, forming a grisly but effective barricade.
An hour went by, and again the maggot-folk charged. Once more the defenders slew all that entered. This time the second rank killed but one Ruck; all the others were slain by Ursor and Anval. The bulwark of dead Spawn grew higher.
Bonn and Delk then stepped to the first rank, relieving. Ursor and Anval, who stepped back. Lord Kian and Shannon1 took over the second file. Perry, who had yet to engage the foe, felt useless, but he realized that in this battle the others were larger and more effective than a Warrow would be.
But it was not only a sense of uselessness that disturbed the buccan: most of all, Perry felt a deep sense of guilt over the turn of events. 'Lord Kian,' the Warrow quietly declared, 'I have failed you and my other comrades here; I have failed Durek and all those with him; and I have failed, myself.' At the Man's questioning look, the buccan continued: 'Back at the Grate Room I did not keep Bane in the open, and we were discovered. Our mission is in dire jeopardy, and I am to blame.'
'Perry, Friend Perry,' sighed Lord Kian, 'had Bane been left unsheathed, mayhap we would not have been discovered just then. Yet I think we would have fled west on the Brega Path when Bane's flame cried 'Rupt!' And we would have run into the band of Yrm coming up that way. Of course we could have run east on the Path and into the arms of the other Spawn back that way. Perry, Bane is a wondrous Elven-blade, yet it does not tell us where the danger lies, only that it is near or far or not at all. Let me say this: as we came to the Grate Room you remarked that there were no side passages off the Brega Path for the next mile; and the last mile we
travelled to that place also had no corridors or crevices off to the side. True?'
'Yes, there are only those passages right at the Grate Room,' replied Perry, 'four eastward, one westward.'
'And of those ways,' continued Kian, 'two had Yrm forces in them: one behind us on the path, and one ahead. Heed me: we would have seen Bane's glimmer and run along the Path into one Ruptish band or the other, with no place to hide; and we would have been trapped between the two gangs, overwhelmed by their very numbers in those broad halls.' Lord Kian fell silent, and though Perry had to agree with the Man's reasoning, still he felt somehow guilty that the Seven had been discovered.
'Lord Kian is right,' said Shannon to Perry, softly. 'He has the wisdom to see that what has befallen would have done so one way or another no matter the circumstance, for we were already trapped yet did not know it. Some who call.themselves leaders would have leapt at the chance to fix the blame on you, Perry, deserved or not; to them, finding fault is more important than finding solutions to their dilemmas. With them it is more important to punish in the name of justice than it is to right a wrong.
'But 1 stray far afield. Lord Kian knows that our task is to somehow rescue our quest from the jaws of adversity, and it is not our concern to blame one small Waerling for all the Spaunen that teem in these caverns-' Suddenly, with a screeching how! a large, spear-bearing Hlok leapt onto the dead-Ruck barricade, only to be gutted by Delk's axe. Three more Ruck were slain by Delk and Bonn. Again the.attack was shorn off short, the Rucks fleeing back up the notch.
Two more hours passed without attack, except now and again a black shaft or two would hiss into the chamber to fail with a clatter at the far wall. The guard on the cleft had been rotated, and in turn each of the Seven had walked the chamber-staying out of line of the black arrows, looking for a hidden door or passage-but none had been found, for this was indeed the Lost Prison, the Gargon's Lair: that terrible creature had been sealed in this chamber from the overthrow of Gyphon, at the end of the Ban War, to the year 780 of the Fourth Era; nearly three thousand years in all. The Dwarves had inadvertently set it free while mining silveron, led this way by
