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.”
“What, kid?” I demanded. “Are you still standing up for the tyrant? I thought we cured you of that habit in Prygg. Gave you a labor contract and everything!”
The dwarf rummaged in one of the pockets of his tunic. “Teach your grandmother to suck eggs,” he muttered. A moment later his hand emerged, clutching a well-worn and dog-eared little booklet. I recognized the thing. It was the labor contract which Les Six had negotiated for him in Magrit’s house, after the full extent of Shelyid’s position had become clear. Most indignant, they’d been—and rightly so. True, Les Six are notorious malcontents, even by the standards of the Groutch proletariat. But there wasn’t much doubt, by anybody’s standards except outright slavers, that Zulkeh’s concept of “conditions of apprenticeship” was, ah, quaint.
Shelyid’s little fingers flicked through the pages with practiced ease. “Here it is!” he piped. ” `Part IV, Section B, Paragraph 3, clause (a): It shall be the responsibility of the short-statured-but-fully-qualified apprentice to rise to the defense of the sorcerer when said mage’s sagacity is questioned by ignorant louts.’ ”
The nerve of that kid!
“I know how to read contracts myself, you know!” I flicked a finger dismissively, curling my lip. “Read the next clause, why don’t you?”
Shelyid didn’t bother to consult the booklet. He was already returning it to his pocket. “Clause (b),” he intoned. ” `Except when the mage is making a damn fool of himself.’ ”
He gave me a half-reproachful, half-derisive look. “Which he didn’t, in this case, because this is exactly how he planned the whole thing.”