Things were not so bad, Ivy thought, but she was too wary to say it out loud. Luck had a way of turning on you, she had found, especially when you believed the worst was over.

CHAPTER FOUR

The tunnel branch smelled bad-like something had dragged carrion through it. It was a tight squeeze for Zuzzara. The half-orc bent low, pulled in her shoulders, and used her shovel to dig herself a wider opening at one point. Mumchance kept muttering at them to hurry, that he could smell the water rising behind them.

"Move then." Ivy pitched her voice loud enough for the dwarf to hear her. "Get those short legs stepping." A sharp bark sounded from Mumchance's pocket. "And stifle that dog. You can hear her for miles."

Mumchance scratched Wiggles's head. "Don't mind her, sweetie. Don't mind the bad-tempered lady who didn't listen to us when she should have…"

"Just march," snapped Ivy. She might not have a dwarf's keen sense of smell, but the rank odor of damp earth surrounded them, evident to even her very human nose. Years of tunneling behind Mumchance had taught her to be wary of such places. Wet earth tended to be unstable, and a collapsing wall or ceiling in this place could leave them buried forever. "Gods, grant me cremation and not burial in wet earth," muttered Ivy as she burrowed like a half-mad rabbit after the others.

Behind her, silence reigned. Sanval, true to his silver-roof dignity, had not uttered one complaint, not even when Zuzzara's digging had cascaded dirt down his back. Ivy wished the half-orc was as restrained. Louder than Wiggles's barks, a steady stream of muttering came from Zuzzara as she tried to squirm through the narrowing hole.

The tunnel angled steeply upward, and the scent in the air changed. It was no longer quite so rank, but still musty. But a big musty, like a large space, Ivy thought.

The light from Mumchance's lantern bobbed up and down and then disappeared with a sudden drop.

"Cave ahead," said Gunderal, repeating Mumchance's instructions down the line. "Small drop."

Ivy hissed that description back to Sanval and heard him tell Zuzzara.

"Good, good," the half-orc replied in a booming voice that brought down another trickle of dirt from the ceiling, "my back is aching. Just let me stand up straight, that's all I ask."

What Ivy dropped into was not a cave, but a huge hall buried completely underground. The walls were too far away to be lit by Mumchance's little lantern. Great columns rose from the floor to support a ceiling lost in the black shadows above. They looked like strong support columns, which was good; but there was no way to see the condition of the high ceiling, which was bad. The air still smelled stale, but there was an older smell, harsh beneath the damp.

"Ash," said Mumchance, stirring up a cloud with his booted foot. "Floor was burned long ago."

"Bones, too," reported Kid, skipping back into the circle of light. "Old bones, my dears, scorched skulls and blackened ribs."

"Kid, stay away from those," Ivy snapped. He ignored her, continuing to poke among the piles.

Gunderal walked up to one of the black columns and rubbed her good hand across it. She left a white streak shining in the lamplight. "Soot," she said, displaying the black marks on the ends of her delicate fingers. She frowned at the mess on her fingers and pulled a lace handkerchief out of her pocket to clean off the grime. "A fire storm inside. It smells like magic, Ivy."

"How long ago? Is it gone now?" Ivy wondered if it could be a lingering spell or curse, something that could collapse the place on top of them if they touched some forbidden object.

Gunderal whispered a few words and tilted her head and gave the slightest of sniffs, as if she were trying to smell a faded perfume in a room long abandoned. "Before we were born- before our mothers or our grandmothers," she said, shrugging and wincing as the gesture pulled at her arm sling.

"Speak for your own grandparents," said Mumchance. "Mine probably carved these pillars. Look at the fluting on the base, Ivy, that's good clean stonework. Dwarves carved that; humans wouldn't have the patience for it."

"Men can build and carve well, if they desire it," said Sanval, coming up to them with a solid rap of hard boot heels against stone. Ivy thought about pointing out that his firm tread was stirring up more ash, which was settling back down on his beautifully polished boots. But she decided not to comment, not until his boots looked exceptionally bad.

"There were great temples and palaces in Tsurlagol once, before it fell," continued Sanval. "Not all were built by dwarves."

"I still say it is quality work, and that generally means dwarves," said Mumchance. "Tsurlagol was always a steady source of income for those inclined to work with humans. The city's name became another word for 'job available' among dwarves. After all, the humans needed it rebuilt so many times."

Ignoring the arguments, Ivy asked the important question. "So we're in Tsurlagol?"

"In the ruins of some earlier Tsurlagol, I think," said Sanval slowly, as if he were dredging up an old story from his memory. "This city has been destroyed and rebuilt so often, it can be hard to know one level from the next. There are tales of fire once destroying Tsurlagol, sweeping through the city. A fire begun by wizards. It burned so wildly and so free that they finally buried the city under the earth to stifle it."

"Earth magic and fire magic," said Gunderal. "I can smell traces of it in this place. But both extinguished now. And something else too, something even older. Something strange, that pulls on the Weave in a way that I do not recognize."

"So how far are we from present day Tsurlagol?" asked Ivy, whose interest in history had never been strong and tended to be even less when she was trapped underground and had missed her breakfast and had little hope of lunch.

"Outside the walls still," said Mumchance. "We've been traveling too far to the north to be under the current city. That's what I think, and I'm usually right."

"Yes, and a disgusting habit that is too," replied Ivy. She rubbed her eyes-the old ash kicked up by her passage made her itchy-and peered into the gloom. "Best way out?"

"Many ways, my dear," said Kid, trotting back and forth like a restless racehorse. "East, west, south, north. Lots of tunnels going out of here. Bigger than the way we came. Men and dwarves have been down here since this burned and been busy, busy, busy digging away. Others have come since. Animals slithering on bellies, four-foot and two-foot and no-foot, hunting behind the humans and dwarves. Old tracks overlaying older tracks, all hunting one another." Kid's tongue flickered in and out of his mouth, as if he tasted all those passages in the air itself.

"At least there are not any rats," said Zuzzara, who had a strong dislike of rodents. It was Gunderal who always had to clean out the rattraps in the barn, unless she could talk somebody else into doing it.

"Too many reptiles, my dear," said Kid, bending over to examine a small pile of bones.

"Reptiles?" said Gunderal, who had a bigger dislike of snakes than Zuzzara had of rats. Ivy could not stand either rats or snakes, and so she killed them whenever she met any. Slicing off their little heads always made her feel better.

"Snakes, lizards, something else, my dear," said Kid, still stirring through the skeletons on the floor. "But these bones are men and halflings and dwarves."

"Treasure hunters," explained Sanval. "The ruins were rumored to be laden with ancient treasures, magical artifacts, and so on. Men came, and dwarves too, and others as well, to dig through the buried cities. Tsurlagol has been many cities-each one destroyed in a siege and then rebuilt."