Goblinopolis, The Tol Chronicles, Book 1 (29 page)

Selpla was the first to speak. “Well, that was fun. Guess we’d better figure out the best way to get back to the road. Without running that gauntlet again, I mean.”

“Wonder how Prond is making out?” asked Lom.

“He’s probably as wet as we are, but I’ll bet he hasn’t got quite as many, um, perforations.” She was noticing the remarkable collection of holes various ravenous creatures had left in her hide. Good thing goblin skin was tough stuff. The goblin immune system was downright formidable, as well.

Drin had been scouting their position in a tight circle and suddenly made an announcement. “Road that way. We walk along ravine.” He pointed down a water-swollen gulley leading off to the southwest.

Lom and Selpla looked at one another and shrugged. They sloshed off behind Drin, who led them as though he were fronting a grand parade. The path he chose down to the road wasn’t exactly smooth, but it was marginally more navigable than the route up had been. When at last they stumbled onto the paved surface, it was barely recognizable under the layers of debris and displaced topsoil the flood waters had scattered across it. Now they just had to figure out which way Prond was from here.

The main highway was well maintained from Goblinopolis to Tillimil, but south of the river Tud it got a bit tetchy. It narrowed and widened sans any obvious pattern or logic, and even the quality of the paving deteriorated markedly beyond the Tudmash Marsh. There wasn’t a lot of traffic between Tillimil and Dreadmost to be inconvenienced, however, which is probably why the Transport Council hadn’t made road improvements along that route any sort of priority. That, and the fact that none of them lived anywhere near the place.

After some head-scratching and dead reckoning, they agreed that north along the road was the most likely route to where they’d left Prond, since the natural movement of the water that had swept them along was southeast toward the Gulf of Honkmin. Selpla was trying to take notes on their position so she could pursue the ‘moving mountain’ story further once they were again mobile, but the steadily streaming precipitation was making pulp of the leaves in her reporter’s pad.

The ever-increasing deluge had finally convinced Prond to look for some real shelter. He scrambled a few meters up a muddy embankment and found a hole that after a little excavation provided a snug but relatively dry refuge from the flooding. As the daylight slipped slowly away with no sign of either Kurg or Selpla, he began to feel rather drowsy. The rain had slacked off to a gentle patter now, which made it all the more difficult to stay awake. Finally Prond could fight it no longer and fell into a deep, contented sleep.

Less than ten minutes later Kurg’s dray chugged slowly around the bend, still sporting large outcroppings of thick blue mud on the rear wheel wells and bumper. Its noisy passing below him disturbed Prond’s slumber a bit, but not enough to bring him to full consciousness as his snoring easily drowned out the rain sounds as well as those of Kurg’s transit. In truth, he could have acoustically overpowered a medium-sized volcanic eruption. When he awoke half an hour later and saw tire tracks in the mud below him, Prond intuitively realized they had been left by Kurg. He scrambled down the incline and jogged off along the road in pursuit.

“Is that them?” Kurg shouted, gesturing at several figures off to one side of the road. Hnuppa shaded his eyes and strained in concentration.

“No, that’s a couple of rocks.”

“Those aren’t smekking rocks! Are they? Oh, smek.”

He trailed off as they drew nearer and the lithic nature of the figures became more apparent. Slud was making the odd honking sound they’d come to understand was his version of laughter. Kurg shot him a withering glance but otherwise ignored him. His attention was on something in the distance. He stared at whatever it was so intently that Hnuppa was worried he’d gone catatonic or something. He waved a gnarled extremity in front of his boss’ face. “Kurg? You still with us, you ol’ planker?”

“Quiet, smekhead. I’m tryin’ to figure out what that thing is over there.” He pointed to what appeared at first glance to be a distant hill. Hnuppa glanced over in the direction Kurg was pointing, but all he saw was a distinctly non-remarkable topographic feature. He shook his head and frowned at Kurg. “You take all your meds today, boss?” Kurg scowled menacingly, but did not take his eyes off the distant object. “You’re gonna need more than meds if you don’t shut your yap. Get your camera stuff and follow me.”

“What, on foot?” Hnuppa complained. “Yes, on smekkin’ foot,” Kurg replied, “I’m not taking this dray off the road into that muck and risk getting it stuck again. A little rain won’t melt you, or if it does, I’ll see to it your smekkin’ remains get flushed down a nice, tasteful loo.”

“Thanks, boss. You’re one smek of a great goblin.”

“Don’t I know it. Now get yer carcass movin.’ We’ve got a mountain to catch!”

“Excuse me, boss. For a moment there I thought you said we’ve got a
mountain
to catch,” Hnuppa said, shaking his head.

“That is exactly what I said, smekhead. We’re following that mountain over there. I’ve been watching it, and it’s moved a good half a mile in the last fifteen minutes.”

Hnuppa stared in the indicated direction and confirmed that there was, indeed, a large topographic feature that was apparently ambulatory.

“OK, it’s a moving mountain. Curious geologically, perhaps, but is it really front page stuff? I mean, after all is said and done, it’s still just a pile of dirt and rocks.”

“I don’t give a damp smek about the mountain itself, smekhead. The thing is traveling far too fast to be a natural phenomenon. It takes a very powerful mage to cast a translocate spell to move something that big, and
he’s
the story I’m after. Why is a mage of that caliber out here in the boonies? What purpose does the moving mountain serve? It has all the makings of a great goblin-interest story.”

“Did it occur to you that a mage who goes around moving mountains might be a tad nutso and therefore sort of dangerous to approach?”

“Danger is part of this job, smekker. You knew that when you signed on.”

“This isn’t another one of your ‘imaginary infantry platoon leader’ flashbacks, is it?”

“There’s nothing imaginary about them! I
was
a platoon leader in the infantry, you smekhead.”

“Yeah, at a supply depot outside Lumbos. The only danger you ever faced was in the chow line.”

“That’s more than you’ve ever had to worry about in your pampered life, smekhead, but you keep yakkin’ and that’s gonna change.”

A ridiculously loud clap of thunder drowned out whatever response Hnuppa made to this challenge and changed the focus of the conversation dramatically. Actually, it wasn’t the thunder that mattered so much as the associated lightning strike. It split a nearby gonsap tree neatly in twain, the larger fragment of which fell directly in the path of their dray, rendering any further vehicular progress in that direction problematic at best. Slud let out a sound like the air brakes on a large cargo transport and twisted around to stare accusingly at Kurg, who pointedly ignored him and clapped his hands.

“Isn’t this great, kiddies? Now we
all
get to go on a hike. Don’t forget your knapsacks and juice boxes.”

“To say that ‘you suck’ would demean vacuums everywhere,” Hnuppa mumbled.

• * • * • * •

Prond saw a lightning strike in the distance ahead of him and dove instinctively under a scraggly bush jutting at an odd angle from a nearby overhang. The rain, which had slacked off considerably over the past hour or so, began again in earnest, pouring over him in great, drenching sheets. He resumed his slogging trek along the highway, now nearly obliterated by water, mud, and debris. If this was a typical weather pattern for the area, he reasoned, it wasn’t difficult to see why the southlands were so sparsely populated. You’d need to be part amphibian to enjoy living here.

There wasn’t much for it but to keep to his course. The rain apparently felt right at home here and intended to kick back and make itself comfortable. Prond figured he might as well get used to it. The first adaptation he made to his new semi-aquatic habitat, other than working out how to slosh more efficiently, was learning not to glance up in alarm every time thunder boomed out across the sodden landscape. Water was falling with such intensity that his custom of gaping at loud noises actually threatened to get him drowned.

He trudged about a kilometer in silence, slanting his head forward to allow supraorbital ridges to divert the flow of water away from his eyes. As a navigational technique, however, this left a little too much to the imagination and he continually careened into rocks, ledges, trees, and the occasional foraging hearth bear, which while potentially quite vicious were easily outmaneuvered as they were neither agile nor particularly aggressive. Especially when soaking wet and wading.

Prond stopped to rest in the mouth of a rather dark cave under a rock overhang mostly obstructed by a dense tangle of vegetation. He found this refuge by literally blundering into it; otherwise it would most likely have escaped his attention entirely. He was grateful for the accidental discovery, as the constant drumming of raindrops on the external secondary tympanic membranes above his auditory canals was beginning to give him a headache.

As he sat there on a boulder waiting for his head to stop throbbing in rhythm with the rainfall, Prond noticed something rather odd about his chosen resting place. Bruised and broken plant parts were sticking out from under the rock flooring as though the entire cave had recently been plopped down on them from somewhere else. He contemplated the botanical devastation for some time, but couldn’t make any sense of what he was seeing.

A sudden movement off to his right caused Prond to turn his head just in time to get beaned right above the eyes by a flat rock dislodged from somewhere in the darkness above the cave entrance. His vision blurred and he stood there cradling his pounding, bleeding cranium when more rocks came careening down around him. His free hand groped the rock wall for some anchorage as the floor began to shift and heave beneath him. He turned to run out of the suddenly treacherous cave but ran smack into a granite slab that seconds ago had been the floor of the entryway but now tilted up at a crazy angle, blocking the cave entrance and trapping him inside.

The barrage continued. Prond’s only escape route seemed to lead deeper into the cavern, although his common sense was screaming at him that this just
couldn’t
be a good idea. Still, a rapid examination of the tactical situation convinced him to explain to his common sense that, while it was welcome to hang about and take its chances here, the rest of him was evacuating the landslide zone posthaste in whatever direction was available for that purpose. He scrambled over the increasingly obstacle-strewn floor, looking for a place not actively engaged in trying to flatten him.

Prond finally found a refuge of sorts deep in the bowels of the cavern. The occasional rumble still resounded off the stone walls, but actual rocks being heaved in his direction had diminished dramatically. As his eyes adjusted to the subterranean gloom, he began to realize that this was more than just a featureless hollow in the heart of the mountain. It was a complex arrangement of balconies, grottoes, blind corners, overhangs, and fantastic rock formations that stretched far up into the overarching darkness. A few places were faintly backlit, suggesting that someone or something might possibly live here. Prond scratched his head and contemplated what an extraordinary way of life that must be, residing deep underground with bits of the ceiling constantly falling around you. Headache medicine and a stout helmet would seem to be basic necessities.

He wandered aimlessly among the stalagmites and shimmering translucent curtains of crystal, marveling at their intricate beauty and wondering how they escaped being destroyed by the constant motion of their surroundings. Funny thing, though, is that in here the movement didn’t seem nearly so pronounced as it had on the periphery. In fact, he didn’t really notice it at all anymore. No stones had tried to meld with his head lately, either. He was puzzling over the curious kinetics of the mountain when he rounded a corner and came face to face with...the stairway to Paradise.

It was, in a word, magnificent: wide as a city street, helical, bannisters and steps carved from the very living rock with geometric precision by obsessive deep gnomes and slavishly polished to a high luster. It sparkled and glinted as though inhabited by its own animate light source. Prond stood there awestruck for a longish while, unwilling to break the spell cast by the unexpected architectural spectacle. Finally he approached the lowest tread almost in reverence and padded gingerly onto it. There was a marvelous, undecipherable quality to the experience—like stepping on an exquisitely resonant chime made of frozen clouds.

Prond followed the winding wonderway up and up into the stalactite-studded highlands, until he came at last to a grandiose balcony that circumscribed the entirety of the cavern. From this lofty vantage he could see many additional and even more astounding structures than were visible at the lower level. He wondered how such a fantastic subterranean palace as this could have remained totally unknown to the citizens of Tragacanth. “It’s the best-kept secret in the country,” he said out loud, shaking his head in amazement.