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he would have to kill the stupid fish-man now, though. He bit his lower lip
and steeled himself, then moved in to finish the job.
Fast as the gnome was, he had not even touched the kuo-toan when
the creature shuddered violently, its back arched in a spasm and its head
reared back to give the ceiling a pop-eyed stare. It wheezed out a long, final
sigh as it fell backward. As it did, Geppo adroitly stepped out of its way.
His left fist was clenched around the hilt of Wykar's blood-covered blade.
Geppo was panting and bleeding profusely from a scalp wound, but seemed
unharmed otherwise.
His blood was warmer than the kuo-toan's, so he was much brighter, his
face shone like a lantern.
Wykar lowered his weapon and looked around. A rumbling ran through
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the great corridor in the distance, the cave floor vibrated slightly
through the sand. Aftershock, thought Wykar. It would be best to leave the
open cave quickly.
The deep gnome produced a second hotstone from his belt pouch and held it
aloft. He and Geppo paused to survey the damage to the main
passageway. The floor was littered with split rocks and boulders torn
from the cave walls. The dust had settled, the air smelled of shattered stone
and stirred earth. Going back the way they'd come would be hard,
indeed. Wykar hoped the trip hadn't now become one-way. He then looked
down and saw only an arm and a foot were left of the first kuo-toan they had
fought, the rest of the creature messily flattened to the thickness of a mica
flake beneath a thick stone slab.
Wykar checked the narrow passage toward the Sea of Ghosts. It seemed solid
even now, though the floor was a foot deep in debris and most of the tiny
ceiling formations were broken off. He could see only a half-dozen yards into
the narrow passage before it curved around a bend. Surprises were certain to
lie beyond.
He muttered a dark curse. The only other tunnel to the Sea of Ghosts was two
sleepings away by foot, and time was against them. He considered calling off
the whole thing and fleeing for his life. How did he know the earthquake
hadn't buried or broken the egg now? And the sea would be in violent turmoil
after the shock.
If the vast, arched roof over the sea had held-and there was good reason to
think it had, since the sound of its falling would have been quite noticeable
through the tunnel-the kuo-toa there would be more active than ever. Wykar and
Geppo had just fought two gogglers who had walked out of the tunnel, a
thousand more might await them on the shoreline on the other end. The whole
plan was ruined.
He tapped the derro's battered weapon against his bare leg, then thought
better of it and stopped before he cut himself badly. Everything was quiet
now. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to just take a peek and see what was going on,
for curiosity's sake. He motioned to the derro, who had finished cleaning his
blade, and with great care and many looks at the ceiling, they stepped into
the side tunnel.
The tunnel had survived in good condition. It curved back and forth for two
hundred feet, once an outflowing stream from a formerly higher Sea of Ghosts.
Inch-wide cracks showed all the way through the tunnel, legacies of the quake.
At one point, the gnome and derro were forced to climb over the crushed
remains of another three kuo-toa, half-buried when the ceiling gave
way over a three-yard section. Wykar nearly gave up at that point, but he
steeled himself and moved on, steadily avoiding a close look at the
smashed skull of an unlucky kuo-toan. The fishy stench was
incredible, and he swallowed several times to keep from vomiting.
A few yards past that point, only a bend away from the opening to the great
chamber of the sea, Wykar felt a cool breeze against his face. He stopped
short, taken aback. No wind had ever stirred the
Sea of Ghosts, as far as he knew, but now he was certain he could feel one. A
rumbling noise in the distance that Wykar had ignored was now louder, too. It
might be a short aftershock, but the ground was not trembling. Something else
was going on. Wykar suspected he was in great danger. He felt it by
instinct rather than by reason, but the sense was too powerful to shake off.
He looked back at the derro, who merely frowned and stared back in puzzlement.
Wykar couldn't think of anything to say that would make sense. He turned again
and took a few steps toward the tunnel opening.
The sharp crack of breaking rock sounded through the entire tunnel. It came
from directly above the gnome's head. Wykar's nerve broke. He threw himself
into a dead run for the open sea cave. Cold mist settled on his nose, cheeks,
and the exposed skin on his arms and legs. It was Ghost Sea fog, stirred by a
rising breeze.
Wykar saw a kuo-toan with a harpoon at the tunnel mouth. It had turned to look
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back at the Ghost
Sea, surprised by the loud rumbling throughout the great cavern. Its body was
clearly outlined by green light falling on it from above. The kuo-toan had
only enough time to turn back and see Wykar before the gnome's sword chopped
into the goggler's right leg. The creature gasped and twisted as it fell
facedown,
thigh muscles cut down to the bone. The inhuman cries ended with its next
breath as the derro jammed a blade into the creature's back, through its lung
and heart.
Thunder and gusts of wind now flew all across the sea from every direction. A
chorus of goggler cries arose downslope at the water's edge, barely fifteen
yards from the tunnel exit that Wykar had fled.
Wykar heard them but ignored everything that didn't contribute to his
immediate escape. He ran to the left and went upslope the instant after he
attacked the kuo-toan, weaving his way around numerous large boulders. His
boots pounded uphill at a rapid pace beneath his short, stocky legs. Geppo
would have to keep up or defend himself alone.
Wykar recalled that the tunnel opened about two-thirds of the way down a great
slope that ended at the edge of the dark sea. Thirty yards up the slope at its
top was a narrow path through the many rocks that had fallen over the ages
from the cavern ceiling. The path had probably been created by deep
gnomes many thousands of sleepings ago. If the earthquake had not damaged the
area severely, Wykar and Geppo could use the path to escape the area by
running around its perimeter, and thus reach their final destination. The
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