The Howling Delve - Jaleigh Johnson [93]
Dantane's eyes moved rapidly over the text. Finally, he let his hands fall to his sides and closed his eyes. He murmured what might have been a prayer under his breath, opened his eyes, and| began to read aloud from the parchment.
This time his voice carried, booming unnaturally across the J chamber. A tremor of unease went through the refugees. Kali | motioned to Talal to keep them still. J
The echo of Dantane's casting seemed to stick in the walls, | building to a steady rumbling Kail could feel in the stone itself. 1 The air felt thick, as if he were breathing rock dust or sand J instead of air. The cavern seemed to grow smaller around them. | A single rock in the center of the cavern swelled in size before $ his eyes, expanding to fill the chamber, forcing the refugees t back against the far wall. A few of the people cried out or tried to run, but there was no room. A boy standing near the front of the crowd stumbled and went down on his knees. A foot scuffed the side of his face as he tried to stand. He fell again, harder.
"Cease!" Kail barked over the rumbling, and his voice, too, seemed eerily magnified. The crowd quieted, and Kail helped the boy to his feet.
Kail turned again to look at the rock, expecting it to have returned to its normal size as the disorientation cleared. It hadn't. It had, if possible, gotten larger, and now appeared to be breathing. Slow inhalations and exhalations like the wind through a long chimney flue were punctuated by a deep moan coming from somewhere beneath the thing.
Kail had listened to Garavin tell stories of the delvers, beasts friendly to the dwarves. The slablike tunnel dwellers were as large and as cumbersome as boulders, and this one was no exception. Moving by inches and trailing a stain of sticky fluid, the delver made its way to where Garavin stood with one boot propped on the rock pile.
The dwarf put out a hand-in greeting, Kail thought; but Garavin laid his palm gently across the ridges and slopes that might have passed for the thing's face and bowed deeply, his holy symbol falling against his nose.
The low moan came again, and Garavin nodded as if in answer to a question with no words. "A poor way to wake, to be sure," he said, in tones of sincete tegret. "We would not have done so, if our need was not great, Iathantos. Dumathoin has asked, and so I must ask ye to aid us, for ye're the only one who can."
The delvet fell silent. Kail looked around at the refugees, but they, too, were quiet, riveted in awe or horror at the exchange between the dwarf and the huge, living stone.
Finally, the delver shifted its great body, shuffled backward a step, and moaned again. Garavin inclined his head in response.
"My thanks." He pointed to the base of the rock pile, and the delver came forward again, engulfing the space with his bulk. There was a sharp cracking and a sloshing release of sizzling liquid. The stones turned dark with wet, and the delver began to burrow into the cavern floor.
Garavin walked back to the group, shaking his head, but he was smiling. He laid a hand on Talal's shoulder, guiding the boy to where he could see the churning as the delver took the stone into itself.
"He'll tunnel ye out, and do it gladly," the dwarf explained. "He absorbs minerals from the stone to nourish himself, and being that we're close to Keczulla, this rock is richer in them than most. That, and his loyalty to Dumathoin, made him answer out call."
"But it's not a dwatf," said Talal. "Not even a person. Why would it serve a dwarf god?"
"Because it thinks and understands like any other sentient a-eatute," said Garavin. "It may take him longei, and he may never aspire to the intelligence of two-legged folk, but he's:apable of despair and loneliness, and of needing to combat:hose emotions."
"Then why doesn't it have its own god?" Talal pressed. 'Someone who understands him."
Garavin met Kail's eyes briefly, and Kail knew what he was hinking. Talal's questions were not unlike another cautiously