Escape from Undermountain - Mark Anthony [106]
Before Artek could think of an answer, there was a sizzling sound as a gate appeared in the air above. A form dropped through, landing on the floor with a soft oof! It was Beckla. He quickly helped the wizard to her feet as the gate flashed into nonexistence. The wizard's brown eyes were wide and staring, almost mad. At last she shuddered and looked at Artek.
"Where are the others?" she gasped.
Even as she said this, three more gates crackled into existence. Each spat out a single figure before vanishing. Corin and Guss groggily picked themselves up, while Muragh rolled in a dizzy circle.
The young nobleman blinked in bewilderment. "I don't understand. I was plummeting to my death. Then a gray square appeared below me and I fell into it and… and here I am."
"I was about to be melted into slag when the same thing happened to me," Guss said with a shudder. Wisps of smoke still wafted from his scaly hide.
"And I was on the verge of being dissolved into skull soup," Muragh said in a quavering voice.
"What is going on?" Artek wondered. "Where are we?"
"We're in Undermountain," Beckla said in awe.
"I can see that," Artek replied dryly.
"No, not the real Undermountain," Beckla countered. Her forehead crinkled in a frown. "Though I suppose we are there, too."
"Make up your mind," Artek said.
"Don't you see?" Beckla circled the chamber, studying the clay trolls, the painted walls, the wooden floor. "We're inside the miniature." She waited for the others to absorb this fact and then went on.
"It was the Horned Ring," the wizard explained. "I thought that if each of us still had a ruby from the ring, there was a chance it might be able to gate us all to the same place. So I concentrated on Halaster's cavern as I invoked the ring. And it worked. It brought us all here." She ran a hand through her short hair, gazing around. "Only something went wrong. The magic that binds Halaster's model of Undermountain must permeate the entire cavern. I think there must have been some strange interaction between the Horned Ring and that magic."
In shock, Artek stared at the clay trolls. He had thought them to be statues, but now he knew that wasn't so. They were figurines-the kind with which Halaster populated his model of Undermountain. This entire room was no more than a few inches long.
"By all the bloodiest gods!" he shouted, whirling to look at Beckla. "Do you mean to tell me that each of us is now the size of one of Halaster's figurines?"
The wizard nodded grimly. "In a word, yes. And I imagine that, somewhere in Undermountain, there are now five life-sized clay replicas of us, falling off cliffs and getting dissolved by acid. Somehow the interference between the model and the ring has caused us to switch places with our figurines."
Artek staggered, leaning against a painted paper column for support-this was too much. "At least it won't be much work to bury me," he said in a slightly manic voice. "No need to dig six feet. Six inches will do fine."
"Wait a minute," Corin said. The nobleman paced quickly back and forth, his face lined in thought. "This might not be as bad as it seems."
"Apparently, you have a better imagination than I do," Beckla noted dubiously.
"Actually, my idea is really rather simple," Corin went on. "Halaster seems to have taken great care in making this miniature an exact working replica of Undermountain. Don't you see?" He paused meaningfully. "It's perfect in every way."
"Spit it out, Corin!" Muragh griped. "What are you getting at?"
Artek looked at the young man in astonishment. "I see what Corin means," he said. "Wish Gate!"
"Indubitably!" Corin cried.
"Of course!" Beckla exclaimed. "Halaster has taken almost pathological care in recreating every detail in this model-there's