bright embedment shining in the dark stone. “Wow,” the
Highbulp breathed . . . and belched. As though echoing him,
the whole cavern shuddered and rumbled.
“Way too much turnips,” Gorge decided, as those
around him looked at him in admiration. He turned his
attention again to the wall of pyrites. He moistened a finger,
rubbed it against a glittering lode, then licked it. “Real
nice,” he said. “Good pyr . . . pyr . . . pretty rocks.”
Spying an exceptionally bright nodule, he reached for it.
The cavern belched again – a deep, rumbling roll of sound –
and the node fell loose in his hand. Gorge belched in
surprise, and the cavern echoed him. The light in This Place
had dimmed slightly, and suddenly became murky with
dust. Gravel fell and rattled around them as the whole cave
shook in a spasm. “Hiccups?” someone asked.
“Not me,” the Highbulp declared. “What goin’ on
here?” As though the mountain had given a stone belch, the
cavern vibrated and began to shake. Gully dwarves danced
around in confusion, stumbling and falling over one
another. The spasm subsided slightly, then came again, this
time far more violently. Fallen gully dwarves piled up on
the gravel-strewn floor, and the Highbulp was thrown head
over heels, to land atop them.
” ‘Nough of this!” he shrieked. “Ever’body run like
crazy!”
They would have, gladly, but a rumbling like
approaching thunder growled all around them. Debris from
above pelted down on them, and the cavern’s floor heaved
and rose, pitching them into the center, where they piled up
in a
writhing, struggling mass with the Highbulp buried
somewhere within.
Then, with a tremendous roar, the hole in the ceiling
split wide, the cavern’s floor heaved upward, the very world
seemed to belch mightily, and the hilltop above erupted in a
gout of gravel, pyrite fragments, dust and tumbling gully
dwarves.
The Highbulp found himself airborne, and shrieked in
terror, then he was falling, and thudded onto hard ground
beneath a smoky red sky. Someone landed on top of him,
and others all around. For a time he lay dazed, then he
raised eyes that went round with wonder. He was on a hill-
top, surrounded by other stunned gully dwarves, and all
around was confusion. In the distance to the east, the
horizon and the sky above it were a cauldron of blazing,
writhing flames, where smoke and black clouds marched
across a howling sky. And in the opposite direction, to the
west, mountains were exploding.
“Wha’ happen?” several voices echoed one another.
“Cave all turnippy,” someone said. “Burp us out.”
For long minutes, the ground beneath them shook and
danced, and they hugged its surface in panic. The sky rained
dust and cinders on them, and huge winds howled overhead.
Then there came a lull, the quaking subsided, and dark
raindrops thudded into the dust around them.
One by one, the gully dwarves got to their feet. They
crowded around the Highbulp, making it almost impossible
for him to get his feet under him.
“Back off,” he growled. Those nearest backed away,
creating a ripple effect in the crowd that knocked some of
those on the outside down again. Gorge stood up, tried to
dust himself off, and a large raindrop splattered on his nose.
He looked around at his gathered followers, squinting in the
darkness that had replaced the brilliant light.
Lightning split the sky overhead, illuminating
everything, and Gorges latest belch turned to a shriek of
panic. All around them were Talls – humans – armed men
with swords and axes that glistened in the storm light –
armed, determined human slavers . . . and there was
nowhere for the gully dwarves to run.
*****
The rains came and went and came again, scouring a
savaged land that never again would be as it had been
before. Gray morning light shone on silent chaos, a land
rent and ripped and devastated, a landscape of desolation,
where huge boulders lay scattered upon silt-buried slopes, a
place of sundered silence in a land torn and rent by
cataclysm.
Mountains no longer had the dagger-spire silhouettes
of yesterday, but instead presented cratered and tumbled