In the Company of Dwarves

by Ralph Benedetto, Jr.

The thief moved through the dimly lit cavern like a shadow - not the sort of shadow that glides effortlessly and silently through the darkness undetected, but more like the sort of shadow thrown by an autumn tree in a high wind - long, spindly and dancing jerkily from side to side.

She was, in fact, long and spindly, nearly reaching six feet in height despite the evidence, visible in her face and bone structure, of an elvish ancestor, and she was so thin as to almost be gaunt. Her whole body hummed with nervousness as she climbed down the wall into the cavern. She could look up and see the moon shining down through the opening she had slipped through, and some of that moonlight filtered in behind her, giving the cavern a ghostly, shimmering look.

Llewellyn swallowed hard and drove that thought out of her mind and looked around. It was dark, but that was not much of an impediment. Some overly generous human ancestor had given her height, but her night vision came from the elves.

She swallowed hard again and moved along the cavern wall looking for any sign that she wasn't alone. It was so quiet in the cavern that the slightest scrape of cloth against stone seemed almost painfully loud. Her head was trying to move rapidly in all directions at once, and she caught her breath at every sound that she made, but she couldn't detect any indications of another presence.

Very well. Time to step away from the wall.

She did. The roof didn't collapse. No screaming hordes of attackers leaped out at her. No hideous monsters appeared from nowhere to dismember her and rip the no, no, stop that line of thought and take another step.

She did. This was actually kind of easy. It was still silent, and she was still alone. That was exactly the way she liked it, and that was made it all the more startling when the scream shredded the silence. It was a piercing scream that drilled its way into the skull and bounced off the walls of the cavern, setting up brittle and painful echoes. Llewellyn would have been appalled by the volume of the scream if she hadn't been too busy falling to realize that she was the one screaming.

The floor had suddenly opened up beneath her feet. Frantic grabs at the edges of the newly formed pit had been futile, and she had plunged, screaming, into the darkness, to land suddenly on some soft but knobby object, the scream silenced by the impact.

"It is to get off!" a voice rumbled. It was a loud voice. Painfully loud. It was a very deep voice, as if it welled up from beneath the mountains. As if it welled up, in fact, from the chest of a dwarf. Llewellyn leaped up and backed away. Contamination was always possible.

She looked. It was a dwarf, all right.

She was stuck in a pit with a dwarf.

Worse.

Much worse.

She was stuck in a pit with three dwarves.

Even worse than that. One of them...

"Ho!" bellowed the one who had broken her fall. "Short-elf!"

One of them was Kalan.

Llewellyn gritted her teeth and looked down at the stocky, bearded figure. "How many times do I have to tell you..." she said dangerously, "that I AM NOT SHORT?!!!!"

Kalan nodded heavily and turned to his companions. "Kevek Metalshaper," he said. He was speaking at normal dwarven conversational volume, but it sounded to Llewellyn like a bellow. "Kori Deepdelver." He turned back to Llewellyn. "Short elf." The introductions now complete, he smiled.

Llewellyn ground her teeth together. "Half-elf," she said grimly. "Half, bone brain, not short."

Kalan shook his head. "Short elf should respect self more. Not is half bone brain. Not can help having elf blood."

"I didn't mean--" Llewellyn started to rage and then gave it up. She'd had that particular argument with Kalan enough times to know that she wasn't going to win. It was impossible to force a thought into that stubborn dwarven head of his. "Never mind," she said. "What are you doing here?"

"How does Kalan know elf?" Kevek asked suddenly.

"Not is elf," Kalan replied. "Is short elf."

"Not is much difference," Kevek offered.

"Hey!" Llewellyn snapped. "Quit talking about me like I'm not here."

"What for is here?" Kori asked.

Llewellyn narrowed her eyes at him. "I believe I asked you that question first," she snapped.

"Not did," Kori told her.

"I did, too!" Llewllyn cried, outraged. Her voice welled up out of the pit and set up more echoes in the cavern above, not that it mattered now. What with her scream and the witty conversation of three dwarves, all hope of surprising anyone was long since gone.

"Not did," Kori said again.

"I did, too!" Llewellyn replied. The discussing was not ascending to lofty heights.

"No," Kori disagreed. "Did ask Kalan. Not did ask Kori."

"I asked all of you!" Llewellyn yelled. "What are you doing here?"

"Resting," Kalan told her.

"Fell into pit trap," Kori explained.

Llewellyn snorted. "I thought dwarves were supposed to know all about that sort of thing," she said sneeringly. "Why didn't you realize it was a pit?"

"Did," Kevek told her.

"What?"

"Did realize it was pit."

She nodded. "Uh-huh. That's why you're all down here. Because you realized it was a pit."

"Wanted to know what was at bottom of pit," Kalan told her.

"Is rock," Kori added.

"Oh, thank you very much for that informative piece of...of...information," Llewellyn said. "I can see that it's rock. How long have you been down here?"

Kalan shrugged and looked at the others. "Two days?" he asked.

They nodded.

"Is good rock," Kori said.

Llewellyn snorted again and then reached into her pack for a grappling hook and rope. "Well, I'm not staying down here," she said. "Maybe if you're nice to me I'll let you use the rope to climb out."

"Dwarfs not need rope to climb rock," Kevek said dismissively.

"Oh, right," Llewellyn said. "That's why you're still down here after two days!" She swung the grappling hook around in a circle, swinging it high so that she didn't accidentally bury it in a dwarf head. After all, she didn't want to damage the hook.

After a moment, she let the hook fly. The rope snaked upward out of the pit, and the hook hit the stone floor of the cavern with a clang and then scraped its way along the rock before sliding back into the pit, causing Llewellyn to jump aside with a shriek.

Kori caught the hook just before it hit the ground and held it out to the half-elf. She snatched it from him with a glare.

"What will short elf do now?" the dwarf asked politely.

"Get away from you," she said, beginning her wind-up again.

"Not can," Kori assured her.

The hook fell to the ground as the rope went limp. "What?" she asked.

"Not can use hook to get out of pit."

"Why not?"

"Cavern above is dwarf made," he explained. "Floor is smooth. Not is place for hook to catch."

"Dwarf made," Llewellyn said. "I should have known. Well, if yyou don't mind, I'd rather tr again than not do anything."

Kori shrugged amiably, and Llewellyn, after another wind-up, tossed the hook. There was the same clang followed by the same sliding screech, but this time the hook didn't come tumbling back down into the pit like a missile of death. Llewellyn gave a tentative tug on the rope. It held. She pulled harder. It continued to hold. She gave Kori a smug smile of triumph and started to climb. The mouth of the pit was at least twenty feet above her, but the walls gave her feet enough purchase that she could climb rapidly.

Finally, her head appeared above the rim of the pit, and she found herself looking into the face of Kalan, who was standing two feet away and holding onto the grappling hook. Llewellyn was so surprised that she let go of the rope and started to tumble gracefully backwards. Fortunately, Kevek was standing near Kalan and was close enough to reach out and grab her. Unfortunately, he grabbed her by the hair.

A moment later, Llewellyn was standing at the edge of the pit, her eyes filled with tears, screaming.

"Did you have to grab me like that?"

"No," Kevek assured her. "Could have let short elf fall."

Even Llewellyn didn't have a response to that one.

"How did you get up here?" she asked in a subdued voice, turning to Kalan.

"Climbed walls of pit," he said. She turned to look back at the pit just in time to see Kori hauling himself up through the opening. Except that she couldn't see the opening. It actually appeared as if the dwarf's head was rising up out of the solid stone. Which seemed pretty appropriate, really.

"Nice," she said appreciatively. "Illusory floor. Not bad." She bent down to examine it carefully. It wasn't perfect, but illusions seldom were, and this was better than most. She hadn't been paying enough attention to catch it and had fallen through it, as had the dwarves. "Wait a minute," she snapped, rounding on Kalan again. "Do you mean that you could have climbed up that wall anytime you wanted?"

Kalan looked surprised. "Are dwarfs," he said.

"Fang Mountain dwarfs," Kori added.

"Could climb almost before could walk," Kevek put in.

"They why did you tell me you had been down there for two days?!"

"Because had been," Kalan said, as if it were the most obvious fact in the world.

"Why?!"

"Good stone," Kori said, repeating his earlier statement.

There was long moment of silence while Llewellyn waited for an actual explanation, and the dwarves, having delivered the explanation, simply waited.

"That's it?" Llewellyn yelped. "Good stone?"

"Worth looking at," Kalan told her. Having spent more time around elves in general and this one in particular than the others had, he knew that sometimes they had to have even the simplest things explained to them with great clarity.

Llewellyn stared at him, blinking rapidly. "Do you mean to tell me that you spent two days in the bottom of that pit on purpose to look at rock?"

Kalan nodded, looking at her in much the same way one might a favorite pet who had pulled off a difficult trick in front of company.

Kori and even Kevek nodded as well, the former making a small noise of appreciation.

"Never mind," Llewellyn said. "Just never mind."

She turned away from the three dwarves and looked around the cavern. It was large and filled with nothing but air. The moonlight filtering down through the opening was inadequate to let even her eyes see the far wall, and she knew that she was going to need some sort of light before she could proceed any deeper into the darkness. If the rumors were right, though, this would all be worthwhile.

Keeping one eye on her surroundings, she knelt and rummaged in her pack. A moment later she pulled out flint and tinder and, a moment after that, had set light to a lantern. She closed the shutter most of the way so that it gave it out far too little light for human eyes but enough for hers, then she resealed her pack, stood up and began to walk along the near wall, preferring the sense of shelter that it gave her.

The footsteps startled her. She whirled. The three dwarves were walking behind her, watching her expectantly.

"What are you doing?" she said in an agonized whisper.

Kori cocked his head at her. Kalan said, "What mean?"

"I mean what are you doing?!" Llewellyn was trying to yell without raising her voice above a whisper.

"Are walking," Kevek told her levelly.

"Well, walk somewhere else!"

"If walk somewhere else," Kalan told her patiently, "Not will end up where want to end up."

"I know where I'd like you to end up..." Llewellyn muttered.

The dwarves continued to stare patiently at her. It reminded her of the look she'd once seen on the face of a very large dog who had decided to follow her, and whom she had not been able to dissuade in any manner whatsoever. She'd had to put up with it until the dog had finally gotten bored and wandered off on its own. The thought disquieted her.

"Look, I'm going to go my way and you go your way, all right?" she asked in her most reasonable and patient voice.

"Hokay," Kalan agreed.

"Good." She turned away and started to walk forward. The dwarves followed. She whirled on them again.

"What are you doing?"

"Are going own way," Kalan told her.

"This is my way," she snapped. "Go some other way! Go any other way you like!"

"Short elf not own world," Kevek told her tartly.

"If I did," she retorted, "there wouldn't be any dwarves in it."

"Dwarfs," Kori corrected her helpfully.

"Shut up," she told him. She glared at all three of them. "Look, what I'm doing here is difficult enough--"

"What is short elf doing here?" Kevek asked.

"Shut up!" she replied. "What I'm doing here is difficult enough--"

"Then dwarfs could help short elf," Kalan offered.

"Why would dwarfs want to help short elf?" Kevek asked.

"Shut up!!" Llewellyn screeched. "What I'm doing here...no, never mind. Just go away, all right? Go away!" She turned and stalked away from them. An instant later, the footsteps followed her. She spun on her heels, looked at the dwarves, started to shriek in frustration and suddenly clapped a hand over her mouth, stopping herself in midwail, her eyes wide. Then her head darted from side to side, and she spun rapidly in a circle trying to look in every direction at once.

The dwarves looked up and around, listening to the dying strains of the scream which had filled the cavern, rebounding from and amplified by the walls, floor and ceiling.

"Good echoes," Kalan said. The other two dwarves nodded in appreciation and agreement. Llewellyn stared at them, her eyes growing even wider and her face red, then she took her hand carefully away from her mouth, and, keeping her lips clamped together, turned, and walked toward the far wall, ignoring the sound of dwarven footsteps dogging her heels.

As the far wall drew ever closer, Llewellyn could see an opening carved into the stone. For some reason, the light from her lantern didn't penetrate the darkness beyond the opening. She approached it carefully, her lantern held high and her body never in a direct line with the opening.

She came to a halt ten or fifteen feet away and stared. Behind her, she heard the sound of a throat being cleared followed by a grunt. She ignored it and continued to stare at the opening. It was merely an arch-shaped hole filled by velvety blackness that, for some reason, seemed to swallow the light from her lantern while stubbornly refusing to be illuminated.

The throat clearing noise was repeated, followed by an "Uh," followed by, "No, short elf said not did want help of dwarfs."

Llewellyn sighed deeply and, filled with the feeling that she was going to regret her action, turned to face the dwarves.

"What?" she said. They were staring at her, bright eyed and chipper, looking like a line of students who all want to be called on by the teacher because they are certain they know the answer. "What is it?"

"Not want to interfere with short elf," Kevek said primly.

"Fine," Llewellyn said, starting to turn back toward the opening.

"Uh..." Kori said.

Llewellyn turned back toward him. "Yes?"

He pointed at the door way. Kalan and Kevek were reaching around behind them for the battle-axes strapped to their backs.

Llewellyn's eyes got very wide and, as she turned back toward the opening, she also leaped. It was quite impressive, as she cleared all three dwarves and, by the time she was facing the opening, was standing behind them, crouched down so that her entire body was shielded.

The opening was unchanged.

All three dwarves turned to look at her, only now, because she was squatting down, she found herself face to face with them.

Kalan held out one hand in front of him, palm up. Kori and Kevek each put a coin in it and Kalan made the money disappear.

"What was that for?" Llewellyn asked suspiciously.

"Good jump," Kori said admiringly.

"Kalan said short elf could jump well if motivated," Kevek admitted grudgingly. "Was right."

Llewellyn slowly rose up to her full height and then seemed to expand, somehow, her face growing red and her whole body seeming to swell. She opened her mouth, but her emotions were running so high that nothing came out. After a long moment, she stalked past the dwarves and walked to the archway which she proceeded to study carefully.

The dwarves ranged themselves around her in a semi-circle, watching.

Light still failed to penetrate the archway. She could see the darkness beyond, she could guess that there was really a passageway of some sort cut into the stone, but that was all. She couldn't even begin to guess what might lay beyond the opening.

She started to reach out a hand toward the opening, then she stopped and pulled it back. She thought a moment and then pulled a long metal tool out of a belt pouch, started to reach out with that and then stopped again. With a slight smile, she turned and looked at the dwarves, who were still staring at her with polite attention. She was beginning to feel like a zoo exhibit.

"Say," she said winningly. "Do you happen to know anything about this door here?" She gestured negligently at the opening.

All three dwarves shook their heads.

"Not do," Kori volunteered.

"You know, I have a little idea..." Llewellyn beamed on her companions, then she pointed at Kori. She had an idea that he was a little younger than the other two, which probably meant that he was a little more gullible. "Would you like to help me out?"

Kori shrugged. "Hokay," he said. "What want?"

"Nothing much," she told him, waving one hand in random patterns. "Just uh...head right on through there, would you?"

Kori shrugged, walked to the archway, looked at it for a second and then walked through.

The darkness seemed so solid that Llewellyn had half expected the dwarf to bounce off of it, but he didn't. He passed through, each part of him disappearing as it was swallowed by the darkness.

Llewellyn, Kalan and Kevek all stared at the archway for a long moment while absolutely nothing happened, then the two remaining dwarves looked at each other and walked through after

Kori.

Llewellyn stood there for several moments longer, listening for screams, the sound of dwarves being dismemjbered or any other noise that might indicated unpleasantness on the other side of the great divide, and then she sighed heavily, closed her eyes and stepped forward. After all, if she was going to get what she had come for, she had no choice but to press on.

On the other side of the archway was another cavern. What a surprise. Unfortunately, all three dwarves were also there, staring at her.

"What?" she said irritably.

Kori pointed behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. There was no archway. The wall behind her was solid stone. Her eyes widened - they were doing that a lot lately - and her mouth was just starting to do the same when the whisper echoed through the darkness, a frightening susurration. Llewellyn spun back to face the dwarves again. The bulk of the cavern was in

darkness, pitch black. Llewellyn's head darted wildly from side to side.

"Where did that come from?" she asked, confused by the echoes.

All three dwarves instantly pointed in the same direction.

Then the voice spoke.

"I'm so glad you finally made it," it said.

It was a quiet voice, seeming to Llewellyn to come from everywhere and nowhere. It echoed through the cavern, the reverberations somehow making it sound more menacing.

"I'm busy preparing things for you," the voice continued, "So I can't be there to greet you in person. That's why I have left you this little message. I know you're coming. Be ready."

A chill wind blew through the cavern and the flame in Llewellyn's lantern died. She yelped and then, suddenly, her feet were swept out from underneath her. She fell forward, the lantern flying from her hand to break against the stone floor. She could smell the oil which spilled from the remains. She managed to get her hands in front of her so that they took the brunt of the impact instead of her face, and she started to push herself back to her feet when a weight fell across her shoulders and head and her nose met the floor after all. She started to kick her legs, and another weight fell across them. An instant later a third weight fell across her midsection, and she was pinned, unable even to flail her arms uselessly.

As all of this was happening, she heard a strange sound, a quick wind followed by a number of sharp pings.

"Get off of me!" she yelled, the number of weights having finally connected with the number of dwarves in her mind.

The dwarves climbed off of her.

Llewellyn dug in one of her belt pouches and pulled out a small sack. When she opened this, light flowed out of it. She reached in and took out a small stone. It provided a soft and gentle glow that, while not the best thing for illuminating one's surroundings, was at least better than nothing.

Sitting on the floor, in the gentle light of the glowing stone, she glared at the three dwarves.

"What did you think you were doing?!" she yelped.

"Saving life," Kevek told her grimly. "Kevek not sure why." Kalan nodded and Kori pointed behind her again.

Llewellyn turned and peered back over her shoulder. Several small, irregularly shaped pieces of metal were sticking out of the stone wall behind her, as if the had been propelled there by a great force. They sketched a line across the wall, and, had she been standing, that line would have bisected her body quite nicely. She turned back to look at the dwarves, her face white.

She knew that the dwarven tunnel sense – something akin to vision but not really was the best description she'd ever gotten - was not hindered as her eyes were by absolute darkness. The dwarves had seen what was happening and saved her. That was embarrassing. She mumbled something that might have been 'thank you,' or possibly 'thagoo' or perhaps even 'dadoo,' but it seemed to satisfy the dwarves.

Then the voice swept through the cavern once again.

"Don't worry," it said quietly, amused at its own cleverness. "The toxin coating the flechettes will not kill you, it will merely...take the edge off of what passes for your intellect. I believe in obtaining every advantage."

"Right," Llewellyn said calmly, then she turned to face the wall. "Time to go. Where's the door?" She began to examine the wall, at first with great care and then with increasing speed and jerkiness of movement. "Where's the door? Where'sthedoorwhere'sthedoorwhere'sthedoor...?"

The dwarves watched her curiously.

"What is short elf doing?" Kevek asked. The look on his face seemed to indicate that his worst fears had been confirmed.

"Looking for door back to previous cavern," Kalan told him.

"No is door," Kevek said.

Kalan nodded. "No is," he agreed.

Llewellyn was examining the wall with hands and eyes, her movements growing steadily more frantic while her mouth, apparently running on automatic, continued to repeat "Where'sthedoorwhere'sthedoorwhere'sthedoor...?"

"Elfs not have to breathe?" Kori asked after a moment.

Kalan and Kevek both shrugged.

After several more moments, Kori walked up behind Llewellyn and cleared his throat. She shrieked, jumped, pirouetted in mid-air and came down with her back to the wall, gasping for breath.

"No is door," Kori told her.

"What?!"

"No is door," he repeated, this time speaking slowly and pronouncing each word with exaggerated distinctness.

"I can see that there's no door!" she snapped. "Why isn't there a door?"

Kori shrugged. "Because not is," he offered philosophically.

She pointed into the depths of the cavern. The glowstone did little to dispel the darkness, so she had no idea what that darkness concealed, except, of course, some apparently vengeful lunatic intent on wreaking some hideous punishment on her for some imagined offense of which she was no doubt utterly innocent. She hadn't even been there. And, if she had, it was all probably some laughable misunderstanding, but was, in any case, absolutely and definitely not her fault, and, anyway, he should just get over it. Life brings us these little difficulties to improve us, so, if she had done anything to this guy, whoever he was, which she hadn't - a fact which couldn't be stressed enough - then she had been doing him a favor anyway, so he should be thanking her instead of doing whatever it was that he intended to do, which was something that she didn't want to think about anyway.

Kori would have liked to have waved a hand in front of her face, but he couldn't reach that high, so he settled for clearing his throat again.

"What?" Llewellyn asked.

"No is door," he told her patiently.

She frowned at him. "I can see that," she snapped. "I can see that there's not a door. You don't have to keep telling me that."

"Hokay," Kori said.

"Finally," Kevek said happily. "Can move on."

"Oh, no," Llewellyn said. She pointed into the darkness and said, "I'm not going in there."

"Hokay," Kevek said.

"Okay is right," Llewellyn agreed.

The three dwarves headed into the cavern.

"Hey!" Llewellyn called.

"What want?" Kevek asked.

"Don't you want to...uh...stay here and..."

"No."

The dwarves had continued to walk and were already out of the circle of light cast by the glowstone, though Llewellyn could still hear them, dwarves not being known for being light on their feet.

In the company of dwarves or alone in the dark in a cavern with a lunatic waiting for her. Well, well, it turned out there were worse things than being stuck with dwarves after all. Who would have thought? It only took her a few seconds to catch up with them.

They walked through a large, dark cavern. The echoes unnerved Llewellyn slightly, not that this was hard task at the present moment.

"Do you even know where we're going?" she asked irritably, more to hear a voice than in any hope of obtaining any actual information.

"To tunnels," Kalan said, pointing with his head.

Llewellyn peered into the darkness, but all she saw as more darkness. She had the eerie feeling that creatures were skittering through the shadows, just beyond the limit of her vision, but she couldn't hear anything, so it had to be her imagination. She was going to keep telling herself that, anyway.

It only took them a few more minutes, and then the tunnels were within the patch of illumination cast by Llewellyn's glow stone. There were four of them, the openings neat and regular, all of them leading off into more darkness. This darkness was really beginning to get annoying.

Sitting next to the wall was a wooden box. Llewellyn went over to look at it.

"Ah, here at last," the voice said. Llewellyn jumped and squawked at the sudden sound. "At least you made it this far." The voice laughed. "Now you have to make a choice. There are four tunnels in front of you. All of them lead to torments that are hideous and cruel. One of them leads to a fate slightly less hideous than the other three."

"Lovely," Llewellyn said bitterly.

"Just to help you," the voice continued, "That one slopes upward at an angle of exactly three degrees. All you have to do is identify it." The voice laughed again. Its laugh was really annoying. More annoying than the darkness, even. "So, you have four choices."

"Or I could not choose any of them," Llewellyn uttered.

"Or," the voice continued. "You could not choose any of them."

"Smart a--" Llewellyn began, but the voice continued, cutting her off.

"Of course, in that case you will merely stay where you are until you starve to death, which, while perhaps not a hideous fate, would still be pretty bad." There was a pause. "No, I think we can still call that hideous. That means that all of your choices are still hideous. Hah!"

Llewellyn made a growling sound deep in her throat.

"However," the voice continued, "I am not cruel, so I have included some tools to help you select that tunnel that will lead you to your fate. In that box against the wall you will find a vial of pure water, a vial of salt water, a vial of oil, a coil of rope, some meetal wire and three spheres of varying sizes. With these, and a little intelligence, you should be able to determine which tunnel slopes upward at precisely the right angle. Have a good time!"

Llewellyn made the growling noise again, put her back against the wall and slid down it until she was resting on the floor staring at her feet. After a moment, she looked up at the dwarves.

"You know about tunnels," she said.

The dwarves nodded and made individual noises of assent.

"Can you figure out which tunnel--"

She never finished the sentence. All three dwarves simultaneously pointed to one opening. Llewellyn blinked at them. "Are you sure?" she asked.

"Are dwarfs," Kevek told her, outraged.

Llewellyn patted the air gently with her hands. "Fine," she said. "Let's go."

The tunnel proved to be relatively short, and it led to another chamber which had a door in it. It appeared to be a normal wooden door such as you might find in a building, and it was a little startling to Llewellyn to see it set into the stone wall of the cavern. She grinned and moved closer to it, then she stopped and looked at Kalan.

"Is this floor solid?" she asked.

All three dwarves immediately laid down and rested an ear against the stone.

"What are you doing?"

"Shhh!" they said.

Llewellyn waited, impatiently tapping one foot on the floor until Kevek glared at her and then glared at her foot.