The Philosophical Strangler(109)
The wizard frowned, examining what was left of the monster. Shelyid took the tome from his hand and tucked it away in the sack.
“I tried to talk him out of it,” he said apologetically. “Sure and the rosy finger’s a doozy, but before you can use it you gotta wade through all that stuff about the wrath of what’s-his-name and all that squabbling over the girl and that silly business where everybody’s racing around in chariots getting in the way of the gods who are doing all the real stuff and—”
“Silence, dwarf!” barked Zulkeh.
“Silence yourself!” snapped Magrit. She waddled toward the wizard, shaking her plump fist. “You damn near got us all killed and then didn’t do a damn thing except—”
Zulkeh didn’t seem to be listening. The mage had his head cocked, as if he were listening for something.
“Silence!” he hissed. “There has been too much noise already!”
Magrit wasn’t about to let Zulkeh shut her up, of course, so she kept squawling her displeasure. But the wizard’s obvious disquiet transmitted itself to everyone else.
“Silence the creature, Greyboar!” hissed Zulkeh. His usual arrogance seemed entirely absent. He waved his hands frantically, urging silence upon everyone.
Greyboar grunted, and clapped a hand over Magrit’s mouth. The witch looked furious, but she seemed to settle down a bit.
Silence. The strangler removed his hand and frowned. “What’s the problem, prof? Why are you—”
“Silence!” hissed the wizard again. Zulkeh was almost dancing with agitation. “Silence!”
A sound was heard. A deep, faint sound. Like—rocks moving, maybe. Or crunching.
“As I feared!” cried the mage. “Come! We must be off—and quickly!”
Matching deed to words, Zulkeh strode across the grotto to the tunnel entrance opposite the one from which we had entered. Shelyid followed.
Another sound. Much louder. Definitely like rocks moving. Or crunching.
We all hastened into the tunnel after Zulkeh and his apprentice. Behind us, the sound grew into a crescendo. It sounded like a rock slide—coming from the bottom up.
“Make haste! Make haste!” cried Zulkeh from ahead.
We made haste.
“What’s making that noise?” asked Angela. “Another Ogre?”
“Bah!” oathed the mage. “Do you think a pitiful Great Ogre of Grotum can rip apart the very roots of the mountains? Fie on such witless notions!”
The noise behind us now sounded like a volcano.
“Nay, nay!” cried Zulkeh. “The Great Ogre of Grotum is a trifle. Alas, the brutes are doted upon by their—”
“Oh, shit!” cried Magrit.
“Good move, guys,” groused Wittgenstein.
“That’s just a myth!” protested Hrundig.
The noise behind us now made a volcano sound tame.
“The Great Ogre of Grotum’s Mother,” concluded Zulkeh. “No myth, sirrah! And what is worse is the very real possibility—”
The volcano behind us was suddenly joined by an earthquake.
“As I feared! The Peril More Dire Still!”
Racing down the tunnel, led by the mage’s voice:
“Fly for your lives!”
Volcano and earthquake were now joined by a tidal wave of rippling rock.
Again: “Fly for your lives!”
Chapter 25.
(Too disgusting to title)
Well, we escaped. Barely. As time passed, the rumble and crumble of collapsing passageways behind us faded slowly into distant thunder. But by the time the wizard got done leading us down about a million twists and turns in the labyrinth, we were hopelessly lost.
Or so I thought. Zulkeh claimed otherwise.
We finally stopped in another grotto. A very small one, dank and damp. Nervously, I inspected the moisture-glistening walls in the lantern light. Except for an oval-shaped door on one side—what sailor types call a hatch—and a tunnel maybe fifteen feet from it, the grotto seemed empty.
Zulkeh was standing in front of the hatch, inspecting it closely. After a moment he straightened, exuding satisfaction. “Just as I planned!” he proclaimed. “My stratagem bears fruit.”
I must have snorted loudly enough for him to hear. He turned a baleful eye upon me.
“You doubt my words?” he demanded. “Lost, you say? At wit’s end, I presume?” Zulkeh rapped the hatch with his staff. The rusty iron rang hollow. “Stymied by this unexpected obstacle in the course of my science, you claim?”
He was genuinely pissed, I could tell. Not hard, that. Zulkeh was usually genuinely pissed about something.
“You shouldn’t doubt the professor, Ignace,” complained Shelyid. A moment later, the huge sack gave a little heave and whumped softly on the floor of the grotto. Shelyid’s furry little face stared up at me reprovingly. “ ’Tisn’t right.”