His fall ended abruptly and painfully. He opened his eyes. He wasn't in water, but in a dark tunnel that seemed to have been hollowed out of the thick moss. A strong hand shoved him, a sharp blade sliced through his bonds.

"Go! Go! They are thick witted, but they will follow!"

"Rega," Roland mumbled and tried to get back.

"I have her and the elf! Now go!"

Rega fell against him, propelled from behind. Her cheekbone struck his shoulder, and her head snapped up.

"Go!" shouted the voice.

Roland caught hold of his sister, dragged her alongside him. Ahead of them stretched a tunnel, leading deeper into the moss. Rega began to crawl down it. Roland followed, fear dictating to his body what it must do to escape because his brain seemed to have shut down.

Dazed, groping through the gray-green darkness, he crawled and lurched and sprawled clumsily headlong in his mad dash. Rega, her body more compact, moved through the tunnel with ease. She paused occasionally, to look back, her gaze going past Roland to the elf behind him.

Paithan's face glimmered an eerie white, he looked more like a ghost than a living man, but he was moving, slithering through the tunnel on hands and knees and belly like a snake. Behind him was the voice, urging them on.

"Go! Go!"

Before long, the strain told on Roland. His muscles ached, his knees were scraped raw, his breath burned in his lungs. We're safe now, he told himself. This place is too narrow for those fiends - - .

A rending and tearing sound, as if the ground were being ripped apart by gigantic hands, impelled Roland forward. Like a mongoose hunting a snake, the tytans were digging for them, widening the tunnel, intending to ferret them out.

Down and down the captives traveled, sometimes falling or rolling where the tunnel turned steep and they couldn't see their way in the darkness. The fear of pursuit and the gruff "Go! Go!" drove them on past the limit of endurance. And then a whoosh of exhaled breath and a crash coming from behind him told Roland that the elf's strength had given out.

"Rega!" Roland called, and his sister halted, turning slowly, peering at him wearily. "Quin's had it. Come help me!"

She nodded, having no breath left to speak, and crawled back. Roland reached out a hand, caught hold of her arm, felt her trembling with fatigue.

"Why have you stopped?" demanded the voice.

'Take a look ... elf!" Roland gasped for breath. "He's ... finished ... All of us. ... Rest. Must... rest."

Rega sagged against him, her muscles twitching, her chest heaving. Blood roared in Roland's ears, he couldn't tell if they were still being pursued. Not, he thought, that it mattered.

"We rest a little," said the gruff voice. "But not long. Deep. We must go deep."

Roland gazed around him, blinking back fiery spots that were bursting before his eyes, obscuring his vision. He couldn't see much anyway. The darkness was thick, intense.

"Surely ... they won't come ... this far."

"You don't know them. They are terrible."

The voice-now that he could hear it more clearly-sounded familiar.

"Blackbeard? That you?"

"I told you before. My name is Drugar. Who is the elf?"

"Paithan," said Paithan, easing himself to a crouched position, bracing himself against the sides of the tunnel. "Paithan Quindiniar. I am honored to meet you, sir, and I want to thank you for-"

"Not now!" growled Drugar. "Deep! We must go deep!"

Roland flexed his hands. The palms were torn and bleeding where he'd scraped them against the moss tunnel's rough sides.

"Rega?" he said, concerned.

"Yeah. I can make it." He heard her sigh. Then she left him, and began to crawl again.

Roland drew a breath, wiped the sweat from his eyes, and followed, plunging down into the darkness.

CHAPTER 20.

THE TUNNELS, THURN.

THE ESCAPING CAPTIVES CRAWLED THROUGH THE TUNNEL, DELVING DEEPER.

and deeper, the voice behind them urging, "Go! Go!" The mind soon lost all awareness of where it was or what it was doing. They became automatons, moving through the darkness like windup toys with no thought of where they were or where they were going, too exhausted, too dazed to care.

Then came an impression of vastness. Reaching out their hands, they could no longer feel the tunnel's sides. The air, though it was still, was surprisingly cool and smelled of dampness and of growth.

"We have reached the bottom," said the dwarf. "Now, you may rest."

They collapsed, rolling over on their backs, gasping for breath, stretching, easing cramped and aching muscles. Drugar said nothing else to them. They might have thought he'd left them, except that they could hear his stentorian breathing. At length, rested, they grew more cognizant of their surroundings. Whatever it was on which they were lying was hard and unresiliant, slick and slightly gritty feeling to the touch.

"What is this stuff?" Roland asked, propping himself up. He dug at a handful, ran it through his fingers.

"Who cares?" said Rega. Her voice had a shrill edge, she was panting. "I can't take this! The dark. It's awful. I can't breathe! I'm smothering!"

Drugar spoke words in dwarven, that sounded like rocks clashing together. A light flared, the brilliance painful to the eyes. The dwarf held a torch in his hand.

"Is that better, human?"

"No, not much," said Rega. Sitting up, she looked around fearfully. "It just makes the darkness darker. I hate it down here! I can't stand it!"

"You want to go back up there?" Drugar pointed.

Rega's face paled, her eyes widened. "No," she whispered, and slid over to be near Paithan.

The elf started to put his arm around her, to comfort her, then he glanced at Roland. His face flushing, Paithan stood up and walked away. Rega stared after him.

"Paithan?"

He didn't look around. Burying her face in her hands, Rega began to sob bitterly.

"What you are sitting on," said Drugar, "is dirt."

Roland was at a loss, uncertain what to do. He knew-as her "husband" he should go comfort Rega, but he had a feeling that his presence would only make matters worse. Besides, he felt in need of comforting himself. Looking down at his clothes, he could see, by the torchlight, splotches of red-blood, Andor's blood.

"Dirt," said Paithan. "Ground. You mean we're actually on ground level?"

"Where are we?" Roland demanded.

"We are in a k'tark, meaning 'crossroad' in your language," answered Drugar. "Several tunnels come together here. We find it is a good meeting place. There is food and water." He pointed to several shadowy shapes barely visible in the flickering torchlight. "Help yourself."

"I'm not all that hungry," mumbled Roland, rubbing frantically at the bloodstains on his shirt. "But I could use some water."

"Yes, water!" Rega lifted her head, the tears on her cheeks sparkled in the firelight.

"I'll get it," offered the elf.

The shadowy shapes turned out to be wooden barrels. The elf removed a lid, peered inside, sniffed. "Water," he reported. He carried a gourd filled with the liquid to Rega.

"Drink this," he said to her gently, his hand touching her shoulder.

Rega cupped the gourd in her hands, drank thirstily. Her eyes were on the elf, his were on her. Roland, watching, felt something dark twist inside him. I made a mistake. They like each other, like each other a lot. And that's not in the plans. I don't care two sticks if Rega seduces an elf. I'll be damned if she's going to fall in love with one.

"Hey," he said. "I could use some of that."

Paithan rose to his feet. Rega handed back the empty gourd with a wan smile. The elf headed for the water barrel. Rega flashed Roland a piercing, angry glance. Roland returned it, scowling. Rega flipped her dark hair over her shoulder.

"I want to leave!" she said. "I want out of here!"

"Certainly," said Drugar. "Like I said, crawl back up there. They are waiting for you."

Rega shuddered. Forcing back a cry, she hid her face in her folded arms.

."There's no need to be so rough on her, dwarf. That was a pretty awful experience up there! And if you ask me"-Paithan cast a grim look at their surroundings-"things down here don't look much better!"

"The elf's got a point," struck in Roland. "You saved our lives. Why?"

Drugar fingered a wooden ax that he wore thrust through his wide belt. "Where are the railbows?"

"I thought so." Roland nodded. "Well, if that was why you saved us, you wasted your time. You'll have to ask those creatures for them. But maybe you've already done that! The SeaKing told me you dwarves worship these monsters. He said you and your people are going to join these tytans and take over the human lands. That true, Drugar? Is that why you needed the weapons?"

Rega raised her head, stared at the dwarf. Paithan slowly sipped water from the gourd, his eyes on Drugar. Roland tensed. He didn't like the glitter in the dwarf's dark eyes, the chill smile that touched the bearded lips.

"My people ..." said Drugar softly, "my people are no more."

"What? Make sense, damn it, Blackbeard!"

"He is," said Rega. "Look at him! Blessed Thillia! He means his people are all dead!"

"Orn's blood," swore Paithan, in elven, with reverence.

"Is that it?" demanded Roland. "Is that the truth? Your people ... dead?"

"Look at him!" Rega cried, almost hysterically.

Minds confused, blinded by their own fears, they had none of them really seen the dwarf. Eyes open, they saw that Drugar's clothes were torn and stained with blood. His beard, of which he had always taken great care, was matted and tangled; his hair wild and uncombed. A large and ugly gash had opened the skin on his forearm, blood had dried on his forehead. His large hands fingered the ax.

"If we'd had the weapons," said Drugar, his gaze fixed black and unblinking, on the shadows moving in the tunnels, "we could have fought them. My people would still be alive."

"It isn't our fault." Roland raised both hands, palms outward. "We came as fast as we could. The elf"-he pointed at Paithan-"the elf was late."

"I didn't know! How was I supposed to know? It was that damn trail of yours, Redleaf, up and down hundred-foot cliffs that led us right into the bastards-"

"Oh, so now you're going to blame it all on me-"

"Stop arguing!" Rega's voice screeched. "It doesn't matter whose fault it is! The only thing that matters is getting out of here!"

"Yes, you're right," said Paithan, calming down, subdued. "I must return and warn my people."

"Bah! You elves don't have to worry. My people will deal with these freaks!" Roland glanced at the dwarf and shrugged. "No offense, Blackbeard, old boy, but warriors-real ones, not a bunch who've been sawed off at the knees-won't have any problem destroying the monsters."

"What about Kasnar?" said Paithan. "What happened to the human warriors in that empire?"

"Peasants! Farmers." Roland dismissed them with a gesture. "We Thillians are fighters! We've had experience."

"In bashing each other, maybe. You didn't look so great up there!"

"I was caught off-guard! What do you expect, elf? They were on me before I could react. All right, so we won't bring these giants down with one arrow, but I'll guarantee you that when they've got five or six spears through those holes in their heads, they won't be asking any more of their stupid questions about citadels!"

... Where are the citadels?

The question reverberated through Drugar's mind, beat and hammered and pounded, each syllable physically painful. From his vantage point in one of the myriad dwarven dwellings, Drugar stared down upon the vast moss plain where his father and most of his people had gone to meet the giants vanguard.

No, vanguard wasn't the correct word. A vanguard implies order, directed movement. To Drugar it appeared that this small group of giants had stumbled over the dwarves, coming across them by accident not design, taking a brief moment away from their larger quest to ... ask directions?

"Don't go out there. Father!" Drugar had been tempted to plead with the old man. "Let me talk to them if you insist on such folly! Stay behind, where it's safe!"

But he knew that if he had said such words to his father, he might very well feel the lash of that walking stick across his back. And he would have had reason to beat me, Drugar admitted. He is, after all, king. And I should be at his side!

But he wasn't.

"Father, order the people to stay indoors. You and I will treat with these-"

"No, Drugar. We are the One Dwarf. I am king, but I am only the head. The entire body must be present to hear and witness and share in the discussion. That is the way it has been since the time of our creation." The old man's face softened, saddened. "If this is, indeed, our end, let it be said that we fell as we lived-as one."

The One Dwarf was present, streaming up out of their dwellings far beneath the ground, coming to stand on the vast moss plain that formed the roof of their city, blinking and winking and cursing the bright sunlight. In the excitement of welcoming their "brothers" whose huge bodies were almost the size of Drakar, the dwarven god, the dwarves did not notice that many of their number stayed behind, standing near the entrance to their city.