“What?”
“Are you scared?”
“Of what?”
It was Persephone’s turn to laugh, even if the situation wasn’t the least bit funny. “I’m not seeing a way out.”
Frost made a pfft sound of dismissal. “Let me ask you this. Would you be frightened if you fell through the floor of your lodge into the root cellar?”
“Well, no, but—”
“It’s the same thing. Neith is our home. This is where we learned to dig, to tunnel, to work with metals, and cut gems. This is where we became Belgriclungreians. You know, they say we were as tall as you once, but after living in the deep tunnels for so long, Drome gave us the gift of compact size to make it easier to work and get around. On the surface, you tall folk think you’re so advantaged. You’ll see. Down here, being shorter is better. I can’t be frightened. This is my home.”
“But we can’t get out and we have very little food left.”
“Food? There’s plenty of food, just not surface food. Granted, I’m not a fan of traditional underworld fare.”
Persephone remembered rumors about the Dherg eating stone. She hoped that wasn’t what he meant.
“What’s traditional fare?”
“Cave beetles, millipedes, crustaceans, crickets, spiders, salamanders, and cavefish. And of course, centipedes.”
“Centipedes?”
Frost nodded rapidly. “Down here they grow so large, they’ve been spotted feasting on bats.”
She grimaced.
“We could live down here forever, if we wanted.”
What kind of life, or afterlife, would that be? Trapped in the dark eating centipedes. Maybe this wasn’t Rel. Perhaps the gods had decided she was unworthy. This might be Nifrel. Maybe I’m being punished.
“The only thing I’m frightened of is Balgargarath,” Frost told her. “The deeper we go, the closer we get. I suspect the water absorbed much of our shenanigans, but we’ve got to be close now. And I’m having second thoughts about the Miralyith.”
“I can hear you,” Arion said from across the shelf.
Frost frowned. “Damn their ears.”
The scuffling behind them grew louder.
“Well?” Frost asked. “How does it look?”
“Nothing up there,” Moya responded, despondent. “Just goes up to more rock.”
“The lady wants to know where we are, Rain,” Frost pointed at Persephone. “She thinks we’re trapped.”
The smallest of the dwarfs with the biggest of picks looked at Persephone. His eyes widened a bit and the hint of a smile touched his lips. Because he had less beard than the others, the slight curl was easier to see. Then he shook his head. “Not trapped.”
“Can you tell where we are?”
He shrugged. “We’re deep. Below the Rol Berg.” He pointed at the ceiling. “That’s the Grand Cauldron up there. I imagine it would take only a few good strokes and I could break through. Of course, we’d drown if I did.” He pointed up and off to the right. “That way leads to the Deep Shaft…what would normally be taken to get down this far. Except…”
“Except we’re down farther than that, aren’t we?” Flood asked.
Rain nodded.
“When you were playing hide-and-seek with Balgargarath, did you ever come down this far?” Persephone asked.
“Not here, exactly, but close,” Rain said.
“Are we near it?” Flood asked.
It? Persephone wondered. What’s it?
Rain looked up at the cliff beside them and nodded. “That way is the Dark Fork. There’s a seam I could open and that would let us squeeze through. Just beyond is the Agave.”
Up until the last word, Persephone had thought that it was the demon, and she didn’t like the idea of it being so close. But when Rain said Agave, the three Dherg shared looks of a most serious nature.
Is there something even worse than Balgargarath down here? she wondered.
“What is the Agave?” she asked.
The three ignored her. Frost got up and joined the other two, who had shifted off to the side. They drew closer, closing a circle with heads almost touching, speaking quietly among themselves. Persephone doubted they were trying to be secretive. If they were, she imagined they would talk in their own language.
“Any digging will alert the demon,” Frost said.
“But it’s what we came for,” Flood replied.
“I just didn’t expect to face it this deep.”
“Does it matter? The question is, will the Fhrey kill it when it comes?”
“It’s just that being so near the Agave—”
“What is the Agave?” Persephone asked again, more forcefully this time.
All three glared at her.
“It’s the chamber,” Frost said.
“The chamber?” Moya asked.
They all nodded and Flood said, “The chamber of the Old One.” He said this with a sort of finality.
“Old One?” Persephone asked. “Care to explain?”
Frost and Flood sighed together. Then Frost held out inviting hands toward Flood who slumped his shoulders as he took a breath. “Our ancestors weren’t content with the city they built inside Dome Mountain. They dug down until they found the Agave, a compartment surrounded by a wall of smooth black stone. They came upon it so deep that some believed they had reached the bottom of the world, but there was a person on the other side. They could hear him, talk to him.”
“How is that possible?” Persephone asked.
“No one knows. He could have been one of us, or a Fhrey, or even a Rhune. Although your people hadn’t appeared in the world yet. He said he was a prisoner and asked to be released. Our ancestors were understandably hesitant. What kind of being is imprisoned deep underground like that? Who put him there? How? Why?”
Moya sat down, looking up at the Dherg, captivated. Across the shelf, Persephone noticed Arion and Suri were also listening. Brin, too, which wasn’t a surprise.
Flood continued. “It claimed to be older than the gods. Older than Drome or Ferrol.”
Arion coughed.
“It said it was unjustly imprisoned and tried every trick it could come up with to escape, to persuade our ancestors to let it out. Gifts were offered, and eventually our forefathers felt pity for the Old One and foolishly set it free. For their generosity, the treacherous Old One unleashed the demon Balgargarath.
“It was believed that the Old One was guarding something of great value,” Flood said. “That inside the Agave was a treasure. So naturally, after he was gone, our ancestors went inside. There, they found Balgargarath. It slaughtered hundreds, and—”
“She heard the rest from Gronbach,” Frost said.
Persephone looked from one dwarf to the next. “You were trying to get in the Agave, going after the treasure. If you hadn’t, Balgargarath would be merrily following his path of knockers.”
“We didn’t expect it would still be doing that. It’s been over six thousand years!” Frost erupted. “Six thousand! It had to be dead after all that time. Nothing, not trees, not even Fhrey, live that long. We were certain that if Balgargarath had really existed and wasn’t just some myth, it would have expired or left long ago. We were positive that the law prohibiting entrance to Neith was no more than a superstition. We were going to lead our people to reclaim our heritage, our birthright, to rediscover our own past.”