Chapter 21
The Hole Truth

Seething with malignant intent, Clonogh paced the wrecked tower. He had scores to settle, and now, thanks to the intervention of a dragon, he had the power to do so.

He might have gone out to face his enemies, but that was never Clonogh’s way. Here in this tower, he felt aloof, above the turmoil beyond, and he liked the idea of his enemies coming to him—using their own efforts to go to their doom. So, a seething old spider in its chosen lair, he waited.

The skeletal structure of stone that had been the great tower of Tarmish was a twisted ruin now, its precipitous stairway a shambles. But he knew the loft was secure. Where the stones had fallen away, where bombards had blasted outer walls to reveal the winding stairs within, and shattered the dark inner walls beyond them, white stone gleamed—a monolith of pure basalt that descended through the great structure, its foundations deep in the bedrock below. The trappings of mankind might fall away, but this stone was eternal.

Just beyond the sprung portal a wide-shouldered gully dwarf approached, scrambling upward through the ruins. Clonogh smiled faintly. The little creature was bringing him the Fang of Orm.

Shielding himself casually with invisibility, Clonogh waited by the doorway. The gully dwarf would be here in moments. And not far behind, climbing through the wreckage from different sides, were the spawn of a Dragon Highlord—Chatara Kral and Lord Vulpin.

The footsteps on the stairs hesitated, then a tattered Aghar crept out into the ravaged room, peering this way and that with nervous, beady little eyes. The creature was sturdy for a gully dwarf, squat and broad-shouldered. He was well over three feet tall, larger then most of his kind, and there were streaks and tangles of gray in his unkempt hair. Clonogh studied him for a moment, unimpressed. One gully dwarf was pretty much like another, despite slight differences. What did interest the mage was the thing the gully dwarf carried in his grimy hands—the Fang of Orm.

With a muttered spell, Clonogh dropped the cloak of invisibility and stood blocking the doorway. “That talisman is mine,” he said. “Give it to me.”

Clout whirled and gawked at the man, blinking in terror. “Wh-what?”

“That.” Clonogh pointed. “It’s mine!”

“This thing?” Clout raised the Fang, peering at it as though he had never seen it before.

“Yes,” Clonogh said. “It’s mine.”

Clout stared at the man a moment longer, then backed away, frightened but stubborn. He had grown to cherish the implement he carried. “This thing my bashin’ tool,” he said. “Not yours.”

“Give it to me!” Clonogh snarled, lunging forward. “That is no ‘bashing tool,’ you little twit!”

Clout dodged aside, ducked into a broken cabinet and peered out. “Is, too,” he quavered. “Good for bashin’ rats. Talls don’ bash rats.”

“I’ll turn you into a rat!” Clonogh said. “My powers are restored. I command magic now!”

“Do?” Clout squinted, not understanding a word of it. The old Tall seemed to be as crazy as a loon, even crazier than old what’s-’is-name, the Highbulp. The gully dwarf’s sullen stubbornness dissolved, replaced by confusion. “How come?” he asked, hoping for a clue to what the human was talking about.

“There was a dragon here,” Clonogh said, easing toward the broken cabinet. “It cast a spell, and I was within its range. It … it resonated me. I am finally complete!”

“Sorry ’bout that,” Clout said, baffled.

“Why in the names of the gods am I trying to explain anything to a gully dwarf?” Clonogh asked himself, sneering. Another step, and he would be able to trap the gully dwarf at the cabinet. If he could just keep the creature distracted for a moment more … “It certainly did,” he said. “I am no longer as I was.”

“Poor Tall!” The gully dwarf’s voice within the cabinet was full of real sympathy “Wish you were.”

Clonogh’s shriek of anguish echoed from the broken tower walls as he felt his newfound powers, all his wonderful, dragon-induced powers, slip away. In an instant the dragon magic was gone. He couldn’t for the life of him remember how to phrase the spells that had contained it. With a wail, he collapsed on the stone floor, and from the stairwell came the tread of hard boots, climbing toward him. He didn’t know which was coming first, Lord Vulpin or Chatara Kral, but whichever it was, the other would be close behind.

“Please,” he wheezed in an ancient voice, rheumy eyes trying to focus on the dull, confused face of the gully dwarf, “Please, reverse that wish.”

“Do what?” Clout sidled from the cabinet, staring at the suddenly-collapsed human on the floor.

“Wish!” Clonogh pleaded. “You pathetic little twit! Why must you be so dense? Please, before my enemies find me like this. Make a wish!”

Clout scratched his head, deep in thought. “Wish? Okay. Bet ladies makin’ stew ’bout now. Wish I had some stew.”

*  *  *  *  *

In a realm far away as distances are measured, but very near as they are not, the great one-fanged serpent called Orm raised its evil head, slitted nostrils twitching, forked tongue tasting the air as resonances long awaited touched its senses. There! Just there, only a strike away for one whose plane was not bounded by the sensory dimensions, the creature’s lost fang called—twice! Gigantic muscles tensed. But once again, the resonance was just too brief, just too uncertain for a clear target. The Fang had been used, its magic awakened, but its user’s concentration had lapsed almost before the magic had occurred.

Hissing in frustration, Orm coiled and writhed, clinging to the tenuous sense of target, desperately seeking just one more “sending.” The next time he would be ready. At the next emanation, no matter how slight, he would strike.

*  *  *  *  *

In the catacombs beneath Tarmish it was noticed, though only fleetingly, that there was a sudden shortage of Talls. Scrib the Ponderer became aware of their absence when he looked around from his study of runes and didn’t see any humans. It was evident that they had all gone away, just as the dragon had gone away, and to the gully dwarf the departures were equally mysterious.

But then, who knew what humans, or dragons, either, for that matter, were likely to do next?

Anyway, Scrib had more important things to think about. The squiggles on the plaque were more than just random symbols, he realized. Both a dragon and a human had told him so. The symbols actually meant something.

“If you don’t want to remember things,” somebody had said sometime, “then you write them down.”

Squiggles were writing, and writing was remembering. Somehow, to Scrib, that seemed to be an important notion. He wished he knew how to write it down.

Bron the Hero was aware, also, that where there had been humans, now there were none. But he had little time to think about it. Little Pert, having diverted the services of the hero from the human girl to herself, was busy consolidating her victory. It seemed to Bron that everywhere he turned, Pert was there, gazing up at him with wide, loving eyes and giving him orders. Her manner toward him reminded him vaguely of his mother’s manner toward his father, and Bron found himself responding to each suggestion and request with a resigned, “Yes, dear.”

He had a respite when the Lady Lidda and several other females accosted him to relieve him of his shield. They had a fire going, and needed the iron bowl to make stew. When they trooped away, carrying his shield among them, little Pert looked after them for a moment, then turned back to Bron. She patted him fondly on his lightly-bearded cheek, and took his broadsword from his hand. “This good for stir stew,” she said, and followed the other ladies, trailing the heavy sword behind her.

“Yes, dear,” Bron muttered.

“That’n got you wrapped up real good,” a voice said, beside him. He glanced around. Scrib stood there, nodding sympathetically.

“Guess so,” Bron said. “Keep meanin’ to tell her scat, but then I forget.”

“Write it down,” Scrib suggested, sagely.

Old Gandy, the Grand Notioner, noticed that the Talls had gone away, and he sighed with relief, leaning on his mop handle staff. Many times in his long career, he had been in the company of humans for one reason or another. He didn’t remember much about any of those times, but of one thing he was certain, no good ever came of associating with the tall people. They were best forgotten, so Gandy promptly forgot them.

There were always more interesting things than humans, anyway. Even here, in this place that was as unlikely and mysterious as most places were, there were things to think about. The bustling, clinging, wrangling people of his tribe were mostly up a wall now, clambering here and there on the vertiginous surface of the vast cavern’s upper reaches. Every few seconds two or three of them would lose their holds and drop to the floor, but they scrambled right back up. The Highbulp had said to search for shiny rocks, and it was the habit of most gully dwarves to do what their Highbulp told them to do.

High above, almost at the curve where the cavern veered inward toward the great central pillar, they had uncovered a veritable treasure of shiny pyrite imbedded in the stone of the cavern wall, and now they were chipping away at it. Below them the floor was alive with falling, bouncing stones, deluges of gravel and occasional dislocated miners, and the Highbulp stood in the midst of the cascade, shouting orders and dodging debris.

“Highbulp a numbskull,” Gandy muttered.

Nearby, several of the ladies had a concoction of rats, weeds, mushrooms and bits of pollywog beginning to steam in the legendary Great Stew Bowl, which had been Bron’s noble shield until they confiscated it for better use.

At the fire, the Lady Lidda glanced around. “What?”

“Said, ‘Highbulp a numbskull,’ ” Gandy repeated.

“Sure is,” Lidda agreed.

Gandy pointed with his mop handle. A short distance away, it was raining debris. Old Glitch stood in the downpour, ducking this way and that, oblivious to everything except the gleam of pyrite far above. “Hasn’t got sense enough come in out of th’ rocks,” the Grand Notioner explained.

Lidda glanced around. “Glitch!” she shouted. “Get out of way!”

If the Highbulp heard her, he ignored her. Gravel clattered around him, accompanied by flailing, bouncing Aghar, but he kept his eyes on the work above. “More that way!” he shouted to the clinging miners. “Lot more left right there!”

At the stew bowl, the Lady Lidda shook her head in disgust. “Bron!” she shouted. “Go get Highbulp!”

“What?” Bron blinked.

Pert looked up from stirring the stew. The broadsword was bigger than she was, but with the help of several other ladies she was managing. “Lady Lidda wants Highbulp!” she ordered. “Bron go get him!”

“Yes, dear,” Bron said. Single-mindedly he waded into the confusion of the drop zone below the overhead pyrite mines.

Gandy watched him go, and shook his ancient head. “Like daddy, like kid,” he muttered. “Couple real twits. Both of ’em nuisances an’ numbskulls. Born for be Highbulps.”

As the sturdy Bron dragged his struggling, complaining father toward them, towing the old Highbulp by his ankle, Gandy studied the pair with rheumy old eyes. Glitch’s matted beard, once curly and wiry, was streaked with gray now, and his bald dome shone through his crown. It seemed a long time since he had shown any force of leadership. He still whined and complained when he didn’t get his way, but the old quality of Highbulpery—the ability to get everybody to do whatever he wanted simply by making a nuisance of himself—was less evident than in the past.

Bron, on the other hand, seemed to have no trouble getting people’s attention. Right now, for instance, he was a designated hero—whatever that meant—and very recently he seemed to have had himself a dragon. Of course, nobody had any idea how a Highbulp might be selected, but Gandy decided it was time to think about such things.

“Time for change,” the Grand Notioner decided. He hobbled over to where the ladies were cooking stew. “What Lady Lidda think?” he asked.

Lidda glanced around at him. “Not much,” she confided. “Too busy for think.”

Crouching beside the cooking shield, Gandy dipped a grimy hand into its simmering contents to test it. Things wriggled between his fingers. Some of the stew’s contents weren’t quite dead yet. “Cook a little longer,” he suggested. “How ’bout Glitch quit bein’ Highbulp?”

“Good idea,” Lidda nodded. “Get a little rest.”

“Glitch gettin’ tired?”

“I gettin’ tired,” Lidda said. “No easy job, tendin’ to Highbulp.”

At her side, the Lady Bruze chirped, “ ’bout time that twit Glitch retire. Let somebody else have chance to be big cheese. Let Clout be Highbulp.”

“Go sit on tack, Lady Bruze,” the Lady Lidda suggested. “Clout good Chief Basher. Make terrible Highbulp, though.”

“Would not!” Bruze snapped.

“Would too,” Lidda countered. “Where Clout now?”

“Dunno,” the Chief Basher’s wife admitted. “Gone off someplace.”

“Fine,” Lidda said. “Highbulp can’t go off someplace alla time. Gotta stay with clan. Like Glitch does.”

“Highbulp doesn’ stay with clan,” someone nearby corrected her. “Clan stays with Highbulp.”

“So there!” Bruze gloated. “Clout oughtta be Highbulp.”

Behind them, Bron deposited his father unceremoniously beside the fire and glanced at the pot. “Stew ’bout ready?” he asked. “I’m hungry.”

Glitch the Most, Highbulp by persuasion and Lord Protector of This Place and More Other Places Than Anybody Could Count, sat up and twisted around to rub his sore rump. “Some kin’ way to treat Highbulp,” he whined. “What Lady Lidda want now?”

“Don’ remember,” Lidda admitted.

Behind them, the cavern reverberated as a huge chunk of broken stone crashed to the floor, shattering into a thousand pieces. Where it hit was where Glitch had been standing just moments before. Panicked gully dwarves, carrying armloads of sifted pyrite away from the fall zone, scurried this way and that. High on the wall, a chorus of Aghar voices said, “Oops!”

“Oh, yeah,” Lidda remembered. “Want Glitch stay out of way when rocks fall.”

“Oughtta write that down,” Scrib suggested, to nobody in particular.

Lidda ignored him. Thoughtfully, she gazed at her husband, and came to a decision. “Time for you give up bein’ Highbulp, Glitch,” she said. “Let somebody else do it.”

Glitch clambered to his feet, gawking at his wife. “Give up bein’ Highbulp? Mean I should jus’ abdica … termi … res … quit?”

“Sure,” the Lady Lidda answered. “Why not?”

“I Glitch th’ Most!” Glitch blustered. “Highbulp, noble leader. Main pain! Biggest cheese aroun’. Been Highbulp long time! Always been Highbulp! Why quit?”

“Not much fun anymore?” Lidda suggested.

Daunted by the logic of this, Glitch subsided a bit, muttering to himself. “Quit an’ do what?” he asked, finally.

Lidda only shrugged, but Gandy pointed his mop handle staff at the growing pile of gleaming pyrites beneath the wall dig. “How ’bout new career?” he suggested. “Clan got big, new mine here. Need somebody in charge of shiny rocks.”

“Pretty big job,” Glitch admitted. “Not jus’ ever’-body know ’bout shiny rocks.” He thought it over for a moment, then removed his crown of rat’s teeth and dropped it on the floor. “Okay, somebody else be Highbulp. I quit. Hey, everybody! Bring shiny rocks over here!”

Grumbling at the aches in his old bones, the Grand Notioner picked up the dilapidated crown and thrust it at Bron. “Here,” he said, “You be Highbulp now.”

Bron didn’t even look around. He was busy. Pert had him stirring the stew. “Nope,” he said. “Don’t want to.”

“Gotta have a Highbulp,” Gandy insisted.

“Get somebody else,” Bron said.

With a determined sigh, Gandy hobbled away a few steps and thumped his mop handle on the stone floor until the clamor around him subsided. This was not going the way the Grand Notioner had planned, but it was too late to turn back now. “Glitch not Highbulp anymore,” he announced to all who were listening. “Need a volunteer.”

“For what?” several of his clansmen wondered.

“For be Highbulp,” Gandy explained. “Crown up for grabs. Who want be Highbulp?”

Only silence and blank stares answered him. Then from high on the wall, a voice said, “Let Bron be Highbulp. Bron got nothin’ better to do.”

“Bron a hero!” Pert protested.

“Don’t need hero.” Gandy said. “Need Highbulp. But Bron says no.”

“Don’t wanna be Highbulp!” Bron insisted, still stirring stew. “Dumb job, bein’ Highbulp.”

“Any other nomina … sugges … any takers?” Gandy called, turning this way and that, holding up the crown. By threes and fives, the gully dwarves of Clan Bulp turned away, expressing their disinterest.

“Somebody gotta be Highbulp,” the Grand Notioner insisted.

“You do it, then,” a gully dwarf snapped, carrying an armload of pyrite to Glitch’s pile.

“Make Bron or Clout do it,” several said.

With an eloquent shrug, Gandy returned to the fireside. “Bron Highbulp now,” he proclaimed. Standing on tiptoe, he tried to set the old crown on Bron’s head. “Majority rule.”

Bron glared at him, avoiding the crown. “How many majori … maj … whatever?” he demanded.

“Two.” Gandy said, sagely.

“No way,” Bron said. “Let Clout do it.”

“Clout not here.”

“Crown here. Jus’ say, ‘Clout Highbulp now.’ ”

“Okay.” The Grand Notioner gave up. “Clout Highbulp now. Anybody see him, tell him so.”

With that task completed, the Grand Notioner turned his attention to getting some stew. He retrieved an old wooden bowl from its hiding place in his garments, stooped … and stopped. Bron was still stirring with his broadsword, muttering to himself about the injustice of it all, but he was stirring nothing. Where the stew had been, simmering in the legendary Great Stew Bowl, now there was nothing. Even the great iron pot was gone. The whole mess had simply vanished, as though it had never been there.

*  *  *  *  *

At first, Lord Vulpin did not recognize the ancient figure sprawled beside the battered telescope cabinet in what was left of the Tower of Tarmish. Then the rheumy old eyes, staring at him with livid hatred, told him who this relic was. “Clonogh,” the Lord of Tarmish purred. “So your tarnished magic has reduced you to this. Where is the Fang of Orm that you were to deliver to me?”

The old mage glared at him, despising him but helpless to harm him. Vulpin glanced around, wrinkling his nose. A foul stench seemed to pervade the atmosphere here, and he heard tiny, muffled lapping noises that seemed nearby. The din of battle below—the remaining forces of Gelnia and Tarmish were hand to hand and blade to shield now in the courtyard beneath the tower—almost drowned out all other sound. Then he turned crimson eyes on the cowering Clonogh again, and raised his black visor. A cruel grin split his beard. “The Fang or your life, mage. The choice is yours.”

“Kill me,” Clonogh hissed. A wavering, bony finger pointed at Vulpin’s blood-stained sword. “I want nothing more than death.”

“It is no matter,” Vulpin sneered. “The Fang is here. I saw the creature that brought it. But no clean death is yours, master mage.” From his tunic he withdrew a little, glassy sphere, holding it casually between finger and thumb of a gauntleted hand. “Your soul, old man,” he purred. “I said I would return it one day. So here it is.”

“The Fang is no good to you without a wishmaker,” Clonogh spat, struggling to arise. “An innocent. Where will such as you find an innocent, now that your captive girl is gone?”

“Gone?” Vulpin grinned, barked a command and a huge, armored brute stepped out of the stairwell into daylight. One of Vulpin’s cave-vandal guards carried a struggling girl under his arm as casually as a smaller man might carry a puppy. The girl was Thayla Mesinda. “I found her just below,” Vulpin said. “Apparently she and some others had been hiding in the cellars beneath this place. She will speak the wish I want, Clonogh, the wish that will rid me of all annoyances.” With a sneer, Vulpin stepped to the precipitous edge of the broken tower and raised the glassy bauble in his fingers. “You have earned your reward, Clonogh,” he said. “The return of your soul. Here it is. If you want it, go get it.”

With a chuckle, Vulpin tossed the glass sphere outward.

“My soul!” Clonogh shrieked. With the last of his strength he darted past Vulpin and dived outward, trying to catch the falling sphere. It was falling free, at the limit of his reach. With his last strength he reached for the little sphere, and with his last breath, as he plummeted toward the cobbled courtyard, Clonogh voiced a spell. It was his last, and now the ravages of it no longer mattered. He put into it every shred of his energies, every trace of his hatred, and the arcane words still echoed above the tumult of battle as the old magician’s fingers closed around his falling “soul” and his withered body shattered upon the stones of the court. “You will never leave this place,” the echoes seemed to say.

A thin, dark cloud might have floated for a moment above the gore of the splattered corpse, then swirled and wound around the standing tower, darkening the stones. It might have, or it might have been no more than a trick of light and shadows.

Inside the telescope cabinet, Clout was sipping stew from a huge vat of the stuff that had suddenly, for no reason he could understand, appeared there beside him. The gully dwarf was aware of a great deal of commotion just outside the cabinet. There were Talls out there, arguing and shouting. But it meant nothing to Clout. He had wished that he had some stew. Now he had stew, a whole pot-full of fresh, hot stew, and the pot itself seemed to be none other than the legendary Great Stew Bowl of the Bulps.

Another person, even some other gully dwarves, might have found all this puzzling. But Clout had never been one to wonder about things beyond his understanding, and thus he rarely ever wondered about anything at all. The stew he had wished for was here, and he was hungry. Lacking any other utensil, he dipped in with both hands, then stuck his bearded face into the mess to lap at the juices.

He had just come up for air, belching happily, when the great, helmet-framed face of a fire-eyed human filled the broken panel beside him and the man’s voice said, “Ah, there it is.” A large, armor-clad arm reached into Clout’s hiding place, swatted the gully dwarf casually aside, and gauntleted fingers closed around his bashing tool.

“Here, now!” Clout shrieked as the white stick was pulled away from him. With a lunge and leap that almost cleared the stew pot, but not quite, the Chief Basher of Clan Bulp caught his receding bashing tool and hung on. Half-submerged in noisome stew, he grasped the stick with both hands and clung to it. “My bashin’ tool!” he wailed at the top of his lungs. “How come ever’body tryin’ steal my bashin’ tool?”