The Reign Of Istar (30 page)

“Great ... Gorge III ...”

“The great Highbulp who led his people to the Promised Place ... destiny, Highbulp. YOUR
DESTINY.”

“Des'ny,” the Highbulp mused and might have whispered. “Great Highbulp. Highbulp of Desi
... Den ... Density.”

“Destiny.” “Right. Destiny. Where this Promised Place?” “West, Highbulp.” The voice
receded, became faint.

“Far, far west of here. Very far away.” The voice seemed to continue, but it was no longer speaking to Gorge. It spoke only to itself. “So does the mightiest torrent,” it said,
“begin with a single drop of rain.”

“Drip?” the Highbulp might have wondered. “Drip,” the dream voice agreed.

*****

Once they had crossed the lake of wine, it wasn't far at all to where Lady Grund
remembered finding the bit of Tall armor that made such a nice tureen. With Lady Drule in
the lead and Lady Grund guiding, the Aghar ladies made their cautious way through the old
seeps to the lowest of the middens, through pantries and stowages, to a hole where a
cracked stone had settled into eroding clay. The hole opened into a crawl space behind an
ornate cabinet in a huge, vaultlike room where a hundred or more sleeping cots were ranked
along the walls. Tables and benches stood in neat rows beyond them, and the open central
area was a forest of wooden racks where suits of armor hung.

Dozens of the cots had human men sleeping in them, and the rack nearest each occupied cot
glistened with armor. Drule peered from behind the cabinet, listened carefully to a chorus of snores, then nodded to her followers. With a finger at her lips,
she said, “Sh!”

Quietly, methodically and efficiently, the Aghar ladies crept from rack to rack,
collecting burnished iron codpieces.

*****

Skitt came near to drowning in pulp before he found solid matter in the wine mine. The
pulp shifted and flowed around him as he pushed forward through it, threatening to swamp
him. But he kept going and, after a time, bumped into something solid. A wooden wall.

“ 'Bout time,” he muttered, feeling the surface with his hands. It was like the other wood
that had produced the first gusher. With maul and chisel, he went to work.

Beyond was solid stone, and he wondered for a moment if he had gone in a circle and was
tunneling out near where he had tunneled in. He was tempted to forget the whole thing and
take up rat hunting or something, when a revelation came to him.

“This Off Day,” he told himself. “Off Day means don't have to do anything ... not even
quit.”

Fortified by this insight, Skitt renewed his efforts, chiseling away at the stone in
reeking darkness. Beyond the stone was more wood. “Give it one more shot,” he muttered,
“THEN go hunt rats.” In his mind, he fantasized that - if he could make a name for himself
as a wine miner of note - possibly the lovely Lotta might consent to go rat hunting with
him.

At least the wood was easier to chisel than the stone. It was very old, seasoned wood, and
he enjoyed the shaping of it as he carved a tunnel, an inch at a time. Gradually the sound
of his maul changed, becoming deeper, more reverberant with each blow, and intuition
prickled at his whiskers.

“Might have somethin' here,” he whispered. “Sounds like maybe pay dirt.”

The maul thudded and the chisel cut, and abruptly the wood before him bulged and
splintered. Skitt had only time to gulp a breath before a roaring tide engulfed him and carried him, tumbling, back the way he had come - back through the tunnel of wood, of
stone, of wood;

back through the mushy path of reeking pulp, through wood again, through stone and flung
him outward to splash into the frothing, tossing waves of the wine lake in the cavern.

He bobbed to the surface, gasped for air, and stared at the entrance to the mine several
yards away. A vast torrent of dark wine was pouring from the hole, roaring and foaming as
it met the lake's rising surface.

“Wow!” Skitt gasped. “Whole 'nother gusher!”

Still clinging to his maul and chisel, Skitt bobbed and eddied on the tormented purple
surface, trying to stay afloat. His head bumped something solid and he found himself
looking up at a raftload of Aghar ladies carrying laden nets and sacks.

“You fall in?” one of them asked him. “Lake's a lot bigger than before,” another
commented. Lady Drule was kneeling at the raft's edge, dipping wine with an iron bowl. She sniffed at it, took a dainty sip, let it roll on her tongue for a
moment, then nodded. “Good,” she decreed. “What you say this is?”

“Wine,” another told her. “Wine, huh? Pretty good.” Lady Drule bent to look at the barely
floating miner.

“Skatt - ” “Skitt,” he corrected, blowing spume. “See any dry land?“ She looked around. ”Sure. Grab on.” Skitt clung to the raft. The ladies poled for
the far shore. A curious crowd of Aghar had gathered on the bank, some to see what the latest
expedition had produced and some who had already been there, sampling the wine.

As the ladies waded ashore with their loot, Lady Drule remembered the miner in tow. “Get
Skatt,” she ordered, pointing.

“Skitt,” burbled the clinging Skitt. Half-drowned and becoming more inebriated by the
minute, he was having trouble keeping his head above wine. Strong, small hands reached for
him, took firm hold on his ears, and lifted him until he could climb onto the raft, then
steadied him as he crawled across it to the safety of dry ground.

He sprawled there and looked up into bright, concerned eyes. It was Lotta. “Skitt all right?” she asked. “All right” He belched. “Fulla wine,
though. Hit 'nother gusher.” Several other young gully dwarves were intently aware of the attention being paid to the wine-logged miner by the fetching Lotta.

“He got somethin' goin',” one of them said.

“Got Lotta goin',” another agreed. “You know anything about mine? Or wine? Or work?”

“What's to know?” A third shrugged. “Just dig, keep diggin'. Somethin' bound to turn up.”

With one final gaze at the recumbent Skitt, basking in the glow of Lotta's undivided
attention, the other young Aghar dashed away and went looking for tools. This being Off
Day, and having nothing better to do, they had decided to go into the mining business.

*****

The acolyte Pitkin thought that yesterday had been a bad day. Today turned out even worse.
His morning duties now included the inspection of only eight vats - the ninth had been
sealed the day before by the chief warder - but nagging intuition made him more and more
nervous as he worked his way along the catwalk.

It couldn't happen again, could it? Not again?

Somehow he knew, even as he opened the sampler port on Vat Eight, what he would find.
Nothing.

Vat Eight was empty. *****

It was a pale and shaken messenger who ran all the way from the chief warder's quarters in
the lower temple to the vast upper halls with their radiant stone, to hand a sealed
message to the captain of the guard outside the portals of the great hall of council. The
messenger knew what was in the message. The lower levels were buzzing with gossip, and
everyone, from the highest maintenance personnel to the lowest cooks and keepers, was
worried.

The messenger was almost too worried to notice the odd appearance of the captain of the
guard ... but not quite.

As he returned to the lower levels, he wondered why such a magnificently attired soldier
would wear one piece of armor so out of keeping with all the other pieces. From polished
helm to burnished braces, from fine, oiled chain to fine-worked scabbard, from gleaming
gauntlets to glistening plates, every piece of his armor was perfectly matched to every
other piece - with one notable exception.

That particular piece looked as though it might have been borrowed.

*****

Within the grand chamber, the sealed message was passed from the clerk of entry to the
clerk of the vestry, then carried silently to the clerk of the keep, who handed it across
to the aide of the keeper of portals. A moment later the keeper himself rose to his feet,
bowed toward the throne and approached it, kneeling at the base of its pedestal. He
lowered his eyes and raised the opened message toward the light.

“Share this news,” the Voice of Radiance said.

Sadly, the keeper of portals turned toward the Grand Council of Revered Sons. Holding the
message at arm's length, he read to them its brief contents.

Vat Eight of the blessed wines - the vintage from the border province of Ismin - was
empty, as empty as the vat from Taol, discovered only the previous day.

“Evil strikes at us,” the master of scrolls said when Sopin had finished. “So subtle a
taunt, yet so direct a challenge. O Most Radiant - O Most Revered Sons - we must respond.”

Somewhere beyond, where shadow dimmed the radiance, a quiet voice whispered, “Destiny.”

*****

Within hours, at least a dozen would-be wine miners were at work in the royal mine, and
more Aghar were on their way. The earliest arrivals found a sizable lake of wine in the
cavern below the mine, but only a trickle coming from the mine itself. Armed with various
delving tools, they entered single file and traced Skitt's route, going through a long
tunnel of rock and a short tunnel of wood through a sagging tunnel of congealed sludge to another tunnel of wood, which led again to
rock, then to wood, then to a seeping mass of wet pulp. Here, dim light filtered through
from above and anxious Tall voices sounded muddled, muted by the pulp.

In silence, the Aghar waited until the light and the voices faded. They heard the distant
boom of a heavy port being sealed.

When all was silent, the one in the lead said, “Come on. Maybe more pockets of wine. Let's
get 'em.”

In single file, they trudged through the cavern of sludge, only their heads and candles
rising above it, and set to work on the wooden wall beyond. After some tunneling they
encountered stone, then wood again.

The caverns of This Place roared with the thunder of released wine, flowing and frothing
through two empty vats, spewing outward from the mine shaft into the growing lake beyond,
carrying a round dozen gully dwarves tumbling with it. Their shouts and splashes resounded
as they hit the roiling, rising surface of the wine lake.

When the commotion finally died down and the drunken gully dwarves had been fished out by
their peers, several dozen others picked up tools and headed for the mine. It became a
contest to see how much wine could be mined and who could produce the most.

It also was an interesting way to spend Off Day - as good a way as any, since nobody was
sure what Off Day was all about, anyway.

*****

By the time the glorious radiances of the grand chamber began to soften, to take on the
pastels of evening, a visitor might have thought that the Temple of the Kingpriest at
Istar - the most awesome piece of architecture in the entire world - was in a state of
siege.

In the upper reaches, white-faced clerics and ashen functionaries rushed here and there,
carrying messages, pausing for fervent prayer, gathering in clumps and clus ters to
whisper among themselves. In the lower levels, daily routine was a shambles. Warders and
coding clerks came and went from the wine vaults. A general, emergency inventory had been
ordered, an audit of every artifact every store and every commodity. And to top everything else off, half a company of temple guards on the noon-to-night shift refused to leave their quarters.

In the evening hours, the final holdouts on the Grand Council of Revered Sons conceded.
There was no reasonable explanation for what was happening within the temple, but things
were becoming worse by the minute.

There would be no decision reached today regarding the unleashing of the power of the
Scroll of the Ancients. Nor would such a matter be decided tomorrow, or even next week.
But the zeal of the master of scrolls was having its effect upon the Revered Sons,
assisted by the air of chaos in the temple.

It was only a matter of time before the Kingpriest himself conceded that the ultimate
power was needed in the battle against evil. Thanks to the master of scrolls, when the
power was called for, the council would sanction it.

“Destiny,” the whisper in the shadows said again. But in the entire chamber, only the
keeper of portals heard it. Intuition told him that it meant something, but reason could
not define it.

“Drip.” The Dark One in the shadows laughed.

Far beyond the temple, in the skies over Istar, thunder rolled.

*****

In filtering light of dusk, Gorge III, Highbulp by Choice and Lord of This Place and Maybe
a Lot of Others, glared at his subjects crowded around him. It wasn't his presence that
had drawn them, as much as that this part of This Place was the only high ground left in
This Place, and even here they were ankle-deep in wine.

His elk antlers towering over him and all the rest, the Highbulp muttered every curse he
knew ... which at the moment was two or three. “This abomin ... abom ... this no good!” he
roared, his voice echoing through the cavern. “Too much wine! Wine all over everything!”

“Should'a traded it off when you had the chance, Highbulp,” old Hunch snapped. “Prob'ly
too late now.”

“This place lousy place for This Place.” The Highbulp snorted. “Inoccup ... unoccu ... not
worth livin' in.”

Most everyone else had watched the wine rising through the day, but it had come as a nasty
surprise to Gorge III. After sulking for part of the morning, he had slept the rest of the
day and it hadn't occurred to anyone to wake him. He had awakened only when he had rolled
over and gotten wine up his nose.

Now he came to a decision. “Time to leave,” he announced. “All pack up. Let's go.”

No one moved. Some simply stared at him, others hadn't heard him at all.

“Matter with you?” he roared. “Highbulp say pack up! So pack up!”

“Don't have to,” someone near him sneered. “Don't have to do anything. This Off Day.”