Realms of the Underdark - J. Robert King [106]
Something caught him by the foot and pulled. Wykar lost his balance and fell, unable to see anything through the maze of afterimages and agony in his head. He struck blindly with the wand at the thing that had grabbed him, but the thing only tightened its grip. It didn't feel like a hand.
Wykar swiftly rubbed his eyes on his short sleeve. In the red-violet light of the rift, he then saw what gripped his foot, even through the afterimages in his eyes and the fire in his ears and the bodies of flaming cloakers scattered across the rift floor. He saw it clearly.
The egg in the chest had hatched. It held his foot in one of its thick, dark tentacles.
Wykar screamed and heard himself scream even with no eardrums. The sea wave had hatched it, of course. Wykar realized that even in his madness, as he screamed out the three words and pointed the wand at the three liquid-black eyes only a yard away. He knew why the drow thought it was so funny, the idea of spitting on the egg, which they did not dare do. Water would hatch the egg and set the baby free. Not even a drow would want that.
The scaled newborn raised itself up as Wykar said the last word. He could not shut his eyes to block out the sight of it.
Hot, so very hot, and so blind after, though he saw everything.
In the flash of pure light that filled the rift, he saw the tentacled creature with three eyes impaled on the white-hot lance in his hands. Smoke flew from it in that instant, smoke black as a nightmare, and the creature and the wand blew up.
Almost half the population of Raurogh's Hall fell victim to the earthquake, injured or killed. When the surviving dwarves reached the shivering fisher dwarf, her eyes were closed but her blue lips were still moving.
"One hundred sixty-five," she whispered aloud, hearing their approach. "One hundred sixty-five."
The rescuing dwarves heard the fading thunder from the Deepfall's silo and understood. One hundred sixty-five seconds from top to bottom. They pulled her to safety. Her place in the legends was assured.
Wykar's hands were blistered and burning. He held them up and wept, pushed beyond his limits. His mangled hands glowed like fires in his heat-vision. He was on his feet, staggering around on the body-strewn shore outside the rift with the red-purple glow. He remembered nothing after the explosion, neither what happened nor how he got there.
He went back inside the rift. "Geppo!" he cried. He heard nothing, not even the tortured whine from the remains of his eardrums. "Geppo! Geppo!"
He found Geppo pulling himself from the folds of a limp white sheet. The red-splattered mouth on the sheet was slack and open, and its yellow gaze saw nothing. Geppo reached out to Wykar, bathed in the heat of his own blood. The derro spoke words the gnome could not hear. Wykar caught his hand and leaned close.
"Ring not work very long," Geppo's lips said. "Not very long, but cloaker not kill Geppo, hey?" The derro managed a black-toothed grin. "Geppo think good plan. Eat blue-glow plant in cave. Hooret, poison in blood, but not kill Geppo. True-Masters eat blue-glow plants always. Plants make all very sick when they try eat True-Masters, even Geppo." The derro gripped Wykar's hand tightly. "Geppo smart, hey? Cloaker very sick, hey?"
"I used you," Wykar said. He clutched the derro to him. "I used you to get the cloakers out. I betrayed you. Gods forgive me, Geppo, I did you evil. I did you evil."
The derro merely smiled. "You lie," he said. "You give Geppo magic. You give Geppo real magic. Not work very long, but was real… magi – " He stiffened. "Thank…"
The light went out in the colorless eyes.
"No," cried the gnome. He clutched the derro to him. "Geppo. Gods above hear me. No. No."
Only silence heard him.
On the starlit plains of the Eastern Shaar, the hunter stirred the dying embers of his campfire, thinking of his dead wife. The sorceress in the tower closed the mildewed tome and rubbed her eyes, unsettled by the book's implications. The old shepherd, warm in his cottage