The Ring of Winter - James Lowder [63]
When Kaverin gazed through the glasses, the lenses made his lifeless eyes huge. He blinked and settled the spectacles on a table. "In a way," he said, "I hope Cimber survived his encounter with Grumog, so we can present his corpse to the Batiri. It would be fitting to have his bones set on display in here next to Phyrra's. She would have wanted it that way, poor girl."
Nine
Artus held the torch up to the tunnel's low ceiling. With his dagger, he probed the packed earth. It looked promising. A few hours of hard work and he might be able to loosen some of the larger stones, perhaps even bring the walls down. The trick would be blocking the passage without burying himself, too.
"We could help, you know," Byrt offered brightly. "Wombats are constructed rather well for excavation. It's our lot in life, really-a burrow here, a furrow there."
"Thanks, but no thanks," Artus murmured.
The wombats had been following him for hours, though they had little choice in the matter. Grumog's tunnel had proved impassable, leading as it did to an underground lake. In silent frustration, Artus had returned to the pit and crawled through the hole Byrt had so helpfully widened during the battle. That was, after all, the only way left to explore.
Artus had done his best to keep the wombats at a distance. That proved simple with Lugg; the brown-furred creature trundled along, minding his own business. Byrt, however, was annoyingly curious and insufferably cheerful. He blurted out a constant stream of questions and inane comments. Still, Artus suspected a keen intelligence lurked behind those vague blue eyes.
"This isn't the place for bringing the house down, you know," Byrt offered, expression blank as ever. Artus, engrossed in studying the balance of stones in the wall, ignored him completely. The little wombat tugged on the explorer's boot. "I don't believe you heard me, old man. I said-"
"I heard you," Artus sighed. He leaned back against the cool stone wall. "Look, I don't have anything against you two, but I really don't want anyone tagging along with me. I have important things to do."
"As do we," Byrt said sincerely. "We need to find a way out of this jungle. You actually don't think we're locals, do you?"
Raising one eyebrow, Artus studied the gray-furred creature. With all the other strange things he'd encountered in Chult, he had, as Byrt suggested, simply dismissed the unique duo as yet another example of bizarre local fauna. "If you're not Chultan, what are you?"
Lugg opened his mouth to speak, but Byrt launched into a complicated tale of thievery and kidnapping on the high seas. The brown wombat shook his head and sat in the shadows, brooding.
"Where we're from, Lugg was a passable second-story man," Byrt began theatrically, "and I was a… well, let's just say I made my living as a jack-of-all-trades. A year ago a ship out of the City of Splendors found our island-a happy little place off Orlil, just prefect for wombats. Lugg was burying some loot on the beach when the captain of this pirate ship came ashore. Thinking Lugg would make a wonderful addition to Waterdeep's zoo, he grabbed the poor fellow. When I tried to rescue my comrade-as I am wont to do now and then, being the valiant sort-I was snatched, too."
Lugg snorted. "There you go, rambling on again. That's what got us into all this trouble, if you ask me. You don't know when to be quiet!"
The comments went unchallenged, and Byrt continued blithely on. "The ship was bound first for Refuge Bay, but by the time we sighted this dreadful place, the captain had decided to strand us. That dashed poor Lugg's hopes for a life in show business, and I had left off pining for home and rather looked forward to seeing a city larger than fifty wombats and the occasional odd platypus-though, to be perfectly blunt, I've never met a platypus who wasn't