Dragonlance Tales II, Vol. 2 – The Cataclysm

he flung himself aside, hugging the ground as it hit,

bounced and sailed over, missing him by inches. He raised

himself and turned to watch it go, and something hit him

from behind – something massive and stone-hard that

smashed against his head, bowling him over. Chaos rang in

his ears, and he saw the hard, shaking ground rise to meet

him . . . then saw nothing more.

Where he fell, shards of stone skidded and bounced,

piling up in drifts around him. After a long time, the stonefalls

slowed and stopped, and a creeping, gurgling torrent of

mud and silt from ravaged slopes above rolled down to bury

the lesser debris. He was not aware of being buried. He

wasn’t aware of anything now. The flowing soil found him,

covered him and passed on, and there was nothing there to

see.

With the winds came clouds, and with the clouds came

rain – torrents of rain washing over a ravaged land, rain and

more rain, scouring channels and gullies in the sediment

among the tumbled stones.

The rains came and went and came again, and between

storms the ravaged land lay in silence.

*****

On a caprock hillside, where scoured stone rose in

stacked layers above the climbing slopes, evening light

made a patchwork of shadows, hiding indentations in the

stone cliffs, camouflaging them from prying eyes. Here on

the south face of the cliff, low in its surface, one of those

somber shadows might have seemed slightly different from

those around it, to the practiced eye – darker and deeper,

the opening of a cavern that opened to other caverns

beyond.

Screened from view by jutting rock, the spot was just

the sort of place the combined clans of Bulp had been

seeking for weeks – a place that could be This Place until it

was time to move on to Another Place.

And, seeking it, they had found it and moved right in.

Furtively, they entered, scouted around, were satisfied, and

reported the find to their leader.

With great ceremony, then, His Royalness Gorge III,

Highbulp by Choice and Lord Protector of This Place and

Who Knew How Many Other Places, made his own brief

tour of inspection, strutting here and there, looking at this

and that, muttering under his breath and in general behaving

like a Highbulp.

Various of his subjects trailed after him, occasionally

stumbling over one another.

At a wall of rock, Gorge stopped and raised his candle.

“What this?” he demanded.

At his shoulder, his wife and consort, the Lady Drule,

peered at the wall and said, “Rock. Cave have rock walls.

Wouldn’t be cave without walls.”

Old Hunch, the Grand Notioner of the Bulp Clan,

padded forward, leaned on his mop-handle staff, to ask,

“What Highbulp’s problem?”

“Want to know what is that.” The Lady Drule pointed at

the wall.

“That wall,” Hunch said. “Rock wall. So what?”

“Highbulp doin’ inspec . . . explo . . . lookin’ ’round,”

Gorge proclaimed. He moistened a finger, touched the wall,

then tasted his finger. “Rock wall,” he decided. “Cave got

rock wall this side.”

“Other sides, too,” Hunch pointed out. “Caves do.”

Satisfied, Gorge wandered away from the wall, raised

his eyes to look critically at the rock ceiling, and tripped

over a bump in the rock floor. He sprawled flat and lost his

candle.

“Highbulp clumsy oaf,” Drule muttered, helping him to

his feet. Someone returned his candle to him, and he looked

around, found a foot-high ledge, and sat on it. “Bring Royal

Stuff,” he ordered.

Several of his subjects scouted around, found the

tattered sack that was the Holder of Royal Stuff, and

brought it to him. Digging into it, throwing aside various

objects – a rabbit skull, a broken spearhead, a battered cup –

Gorge drew forth a broken antler nearly as tall as he was.

An elk antler, it once had been part of a set, attached to a

tanned elk hide. The hide and the other antler were long

gone, but he still had this one, and he raised it like a scepter.

“This place okay for This Place,” Gorge III decreed, “so

this place This Place.” The ceremony ended, he tossed aside