“I DON’T KNOW! I’M TRYING TO GET YOU TO . . .
!”
Gully dwarves were diving, tumbling and rolling
everywhere. The Highbulp tried to hide behind the stew
pot, then sniffed at its aroma and realized that he was
hungry.
With an effort, Verden lowered her voice again,
speaking very slowly.
“I… am . . . trying … to … find . . . out . . . what . . .
you . . . want,” she said.
Gandy peeped out from behind a rock. “Oh,” he said.
“Okay. Highbulp, what we want?”
Glitch didn’t respond. He was busy eating stew.
Something akin to inspiration tugged at Tagg’s mind,
possibly stirred up by realizing that Minna was beside
him, holding his hand. “Maybe what we always lookin’
for is what we want,” he suggested.
Gandy glanced around. “What that?”
“Promised Place. Seem like we always lookin’ for
Promised Place.”
“Mebbe so,” Gandy nodded. To the dragon, he said,
“We get you stone, you lead us to Promised Place?”
“Yes,” she agreed, sighing. “Where is it?”
“Dunno,” he said. “Hopin’ you’d know.”
“Rats,” the dragon muttered.
“Rats, too,” Gandy pressed. “Throw in some rats.”
“All right! It’s a deal.”
Gandy crept nearer to the rockfall and leaned down to
peer into the depths. A big, green eye looked back at him.
“You say true?” Gandy asked.
The dragon glared at him, then sighed. “I say true.
Have I ever lied to you?”
“Okay,” Gandy decided. “When Highbulp finish
eatin’, somebody tell him he decided what we want. We
get little rock for this dragon, we go to Promised Place.”
Within moments, there were gully dwarves filing
through the exit, all telling one another, “Find little rock,
’bout this big.”
Tagg started to follow them, but Minna pulled him
back. Still holding his hand, she crept toward the rockfall
and looked beneath. “How come dragon make deal with
us?” she asked.
“My lair collapsed,” Verden said.
“Oh,” Minna breathed. Again she looked into the
depths of the fallen rock, at the great, green eye looking
back at her. “Oh. Poor thing.” Sympathetic and truly
concerned, she reached into her belt pouch and brought
out her finest treasure, the little bauble given to her by
Tagg. “Poor dragon,” she said. “Here. Here a pretty thing
for you.”
She reached the bauble toward the hole, and the green
eye brightened. The dragon voice hissed, “That’s it! It’s
mine!” A talon shot upward, spraying rock fragments into
the cavern.
Tagg tumbled back, pulling Minna with him. She lost
her hold on the self-stone, and it arced upward, then down.
There was a splash, and Glitch snapped, “Watch it!
Highbulp eatin’!” Glaring, he swigged another mouthful of
stew, gulped it down and grumped, “How come stew got
rocks in it?”
“My self-stone!” Verden Leafglow shrieked. “You . . .
you SWALLOWED my self-stone!” Rocks erupted again,
and a gigantic clawed arm emerged. For a second, huge
talons flexed above the horrified Highbulp, then Verden
hissed with frustration and pulled back her claws. The
little nuisance might be nothing but a gully dwarf, but he
was a living thing. And her self-stone was inside him. The
self-stone, with its affinity for life.
If he died with the self-stone inside him, the crystal
would be destroyed.
*****
Under smoky skies, across a war-ravaged land, the
combined clans of Bulp made their way out from Chaldis
and into the vast reaches of the Kharolis Mountains, ever
onward and ever upward, led by a thirty-six-foot-long
green dragon who carried a Highbulp at her breast.
Verden Leafglow was not happy about the situation. As
a guide for the puny creatures she so despised, she felt
humiliated and degraded. She longed to simply splash
their blood all over the nearest mountainside. She dreamed
of doing that, but she did not do it. She was stuck with
them. By holding Glitch I – and the self-stone within him –
close to her breast, she had managed a temporary healing
of her wounds. But it was only temporary, until she had
her self-stone back, intact and uningested.
She needed the detestable little imbecile, and he knew
it. At first, the sheer terror of being gripped in dragon