3 Legacy of the Drow 02 - Starless Night by Salvatore R.A

Author:Salvatore, R.A. [Salvatore, R.A.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-08-31T17:48:19+00:00

Chapter 15

MASKS

Catti-brie had never seen such creatures. They somewhat

resembled gnomes, at least in stature, being about three

feet tall, but they had no hair on their lumpy, ruddy

heads, and their skin, in the starlight afforded her by

the magical circlet, showed grayish. They were quite stout, nearly as

muscular as dwarves, and judging from the fine tools they carried

and the well fitting metal armor they wore, they were, like dwarves,

adept at mining and crafting.

Drizzt had told Catti-brie of the svirfnebli, the deep gnomes,

and that is what she presumed she was looking upon. She couldn’t

be sure, though, and was afraid that this might be some offshoot of

the evil duergar, gray dwarves.

She crouched amid a cluster of tall, thin stalagmites in an area of

many crisscrossing corridors. The deep gnomes, if that’s what they

were, had come down the opposite way, and were now milling

about one wide, flat section of corridor, talking among themselves

and paying little heed of the stalagmite cluster twenty feet away.

Catti-brie was not sure of how she should proceed. If these were

svirfnebli, and she was fairly sure of that, they could prove to be

valuable allies, but how might she approach them? They certainly

did not speak the same language and probably were as unfamiliar

with humans as she was with them.

She decided that her best course would be simply to sit tight

and let the creatures pass. Catti-brie had never experienced the

strangeness of infravision, though, and she did not fully appreciate

that, sitting among the cool stalagmites, her body temperature fully

thirty degrees warmer than the stone, she was practically glowing

to the svirfnebli’s heat seeing eyes.

Even as the young woman crouched and waited, deep gnomes

fanned out in the tunnels around her, trying to discern if this drow

(for Catti-brie stil wore the magical mask) was alone or part of a

larger band. A few minutes slipped by; Catti-brie looked down to

her hand, thinking that she felt something in the stone, a slight

vibration, perhaps. The young woman continued to stare at her tin

gling hand curiously. She did not know that deep gnomes commu

nicated in a method that was part telepathy and part psychokinesis,

sending their thought patterns to each other through the stone, and

that a sensitive hand could sense the vibrations.

She did not know that the minute tingling was the confirmation

from the deep gnome scouts that this drow crouching in the stalag

mite cluster was indeed alone.

One of the svirfnebli ahead suddenly burst into motion, chant

ing a few words that Catti-brie did not understand and hurling a

rock her way. She dipped lower behind the stones for cover and

tried to decide whether to call out a surrender or take out her bow

and try to frighten the creatures away.

The stone bounced harmlessly short and shattered, its flecks

spreading in a small area before the stalagmite cluster. Those flecks

began to smoke and sizzle, and the ground began to tremble.

Before Catti-brie knew what was happening, the stones before

her rose up like a gigantic bubble, then took on the shape of a giant

fifteen foot tall humanoid, its girth practically filling the corridor.

The creature had huge, rocky arms that could smash a building to

pieces.

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