“You never took the dare, I see,” Riverwind remarked.

“What dare?”

“To kiss the river. When I was very young, the boys of Que-Shu used to go to the river in winter and take dares to see who could kiss the frozen surface the longest.”

“That's silly,” said Di An.

“The point was, the longer a boy held his lips to the ice, the harder it was to remove them.”

“I did not play much with the other boys when I was young,” Catchflea said wistfully. “I always regretted that, yes. Until now.”

On the twentieth day after leaving Vartoom, the trio was resting in a rock niche, hungry and thirsty, when they heard voices and the unmistakable sound of digging. This so galvanized them that Catchflea leaped up and banged his head on an overhanging rock. Riverwind tripped over his friend, and Di An got stepped on.

The old man and the elf girl complained loudly until Riverwind shushed them. “Quiet!” he hissed. “Who knows who these people might be?”

They lay silent for a time. Lights showed in the distance. Bobbling, weaving lanterns appeared on the other side of their cavern. The voices grew louder and more distinct.

“-to find rocks,” said one squeaky voice. “What look like?”

“You big 'spert! You 'sposed to know!” added another.

A raspier voice put in, “Mine like stew. Many things in it.”

“Gully dwarves!” Catchflea whispered. “We must be near the surface!”

“They think they're in a mine?” Di An muttered. “They're very stupid.”

“Aghar aren't known as philosophers,” Riverwind said, using the formal name for the gully dwarf race. “But they'll know a quick way out.” He leaned forward on his hands.

“What are you going to do?”

Riverwind smiled in the dark. “Introduce myself,” he said.

On hands and knees, he crossed the cave diagonally to get in front of the gully dwarves. Riverwind's battered moccasins skidded on some loose stones. The four lanterns stopped swaying.

“You hear?”

“I hear. Got club?”

“Uh-huh. Got knife?”

“Uh-huh.”

That wasn't reassuring to the plainsman. Gully dwarves were not much respected as fighters, but a club and knife indicated trouble. They might attack first and flee later.

A shaft of light flashed over his feet. The lantern carrier gave a hoot and swung the lantern back.

“Big feet here,” he reported. The feeble light flickered over Riverwind's crouching form.

All four lanterns were brought to bear on the plainsman, outlining him in orange highlights. Riverwind raised a hand to shield his eyes from the glare and stood up.

Four lanterns hit the cave floor simultaneously as the gully dwarves gave a concerted shriek. Four pairs of bare feet slapped the ground in headlong retreat. Riverwind never got to say a word.

He retrieved a lantern that still burned, then fetched Di An and Catchflea. At the site where the gully dwarves had panicked, they found tools and a small leather bag. Catchflea turned the bag upside down, hoping it held food. All that fell out was a lumpy red rock. Di An picked it up.

“Cinnabar,” she said.

“What is cinnabar?” asked Catchflea.

“The ore of quicksilver,” said Di An. “A difficult and dangerous mineral to mine.”

“Dangerous? How?”

“The dust is poisonous,” she said. “It invades the body. Insanity and death follow quickly.” The elf girl sniffed. “But they'll find no cinnabar here. This is a limestone cave.”

Catchflea righted another burning lantern and opened the tin hood so that light leaped out across the cave.

“That's where they went!” he called. A dark hole five feet high showed in the near wall. Closer examination showed it was not a natural opening.

Riverwind shone his light through the hole. The dwarves were fast on their feet, bare or not; they were long gone from the cave. “I say we follow them,” he said. “Wisdom is not their strongest virtue, but gully dwarves always know the quickest way to safety.”

The path was clearly marked with gully dwarf jetsam- rags, worn tools, and, most tantalizing, apple peelings, melon rinds, and gnawed chicken leg bones. Catchflea dawdled over the last as though they were diamonds in the rough.

“Roast chicken,” he mused. “I'd shave my beard for a whole roast chicken.”

“Be careful of oaths you make, old man,” Riverwind said. “You may have to keep them.” Di An said something he didn't quite hear. He asked her to repeat herself.

“Water,” she said. “I smell water.”

They hurried toward the smell of fresh water. Around them the walls, spires, and spikes of cave architecture glistened with dew. The water sparkled like gems in the light of the torches on the walls.

There were holes in the ceiling farther along. Crude ladders with closely spaced rungs reached down through the holes to the cavern floor. Gully dwarf ladders. Their rungs looked as if they had been broken and patched together; all the rungs sagged noticeably. The three companions stood beneath one of the round holes, peering up.

Riverwind felt disappointment settle like lead in his empty stomach. “We are still underground,” he said dully.

They seemed to be at the bottom of another vast cavern, for they could see walls rising hundreds of feet all around.

The hole they peered through was thirty feet above them and too small for them to make out details of the upper level. But it was definitely still underground.

“I hear water,” Catchflea said. “At least there is that.”

Mingled with the blessed thunder of falling water was another very familiar sound.

“Forge hammers,” Di An said, tilting her head to hear better. “There is metalworking here.”

“Where is here!” Riverwind groaned. For all he knew, they could have passed through the center of Krynn and emerged on the far side.

A light patter of feet sounded, and the stumpy figure of a gully dwarf ran past the hole. The three stepped away from the opening. Four more Aghar scurried by.

Di An wanted to know what gully dwarves were. Catch-flea tried to explain.

“First there were humans, who worshiped the god Reorx, many, many years ago. They grew wise in the making of things and soon decided they were too wise to follow Reorx on the Path of Neutrality. They made war on their neighbors, made slaves of their captives, and generally acted base and greedy.

“For this Reorx punished them. He humbled their pride by taking away their human stature, making them little people.” Here Catchflea blushed a bit, aware of Di An's own di-minutiveness. “Thus was the race of gnomes created. But the gnomes lost none of their creative talent, only the willful greed. Gnomes are tireless experimenters, and they brought down the Graygem of Gargath, a source of great magic. The Graygem altered some of the gnomes again, beginning the races of the kender and dwarves. Dwarves and gnomes sometimes married, and from their unions the Aghar, or gully dwarves, sprang.”

“These gullies are poor folk?” Di An asked.

“They usually live in squalor and are despised for it,” Catchflea said with sympathy. “A paradox of prejudice, yes? To confine a people to living in garbage heaps and ruins, and then hate them for being dirty and stupid.”

“We should be very careful entering that cavern,” River-wind said, staring up through the hole thoughtfully.

Di An asked, “Are the gullies so dangerous? They ran from the sight of you before.”

“They were surprised. But, no, they aren't so dangerous. What I'm worried about is what else we'll find once we leave the shelter of the cave. Aghar seldom work for themselves; more often, they are the slaves of a more powerful race.”

Di An frowned at that.

“A race that is hoarding cinnabar,” Catchflea added thoughtfully.