“Did anyone notice you had come back?” Riverwind said.

“Only wife, Guma.”

“What did she do?”

Brud grinned. It was not a handsome sight. “She hear monster eat me in cave, gulp. Same day I pop out mouse hole, ha! She scream loud, call me ghost.”

Riverwind couldn't help but smile. “What did you do?”

“I say 'Give me fooood.' “ He drew out the last word in true ghostly fashion. “Then Guma say what she always say, 'Get it yourself!' “

Catchflea cackled with laughter. Riverwind chuckled and even Di An cracked a smile.

Their merriment was short-lived. A soft and heavy thud elsewhere in the cave was followed by a spreading cloud of noxious yellow smoke. The stinking cloud oozed through the cave. “Brimstone!” Di An gasped.

“They're trying to smoke us out,” Riverwind said.

“Looks like they'll succeed, yes!”

Forgetting Brud, they tried to get back to the entrance to the lower tunnel. But that part of the cave was on the other side of the hole, and the sulfur fumes were worse there. Another burlap bag, soaked in oil and blazing, was dumped into the cave. Weeping and choking, the elf girl and the plainsmen retreated to Brud's escape tunnel.

“Go, Di An!” Riverwind said. “Save yourself!”

“I won't leave you!” she said.

“We'll all choke to death,” Catchflea said.

“Go, Di An. Go on!”

She protested bitterly, but Riverwind pushed her into the mouse hole. She slipped her shoulders into the narrow opening. Catchflea crouched on the floor, holding his beard over his nose and mouth. Riverwind spotted Brud.

“Doesn't the smoke hurt you?” he said, coughing between each word.

“Smell not bad to me,” the gully dwarf said with a shrug.

“Will you help Di An if we don't make it, Brud?” River-wind said.

“Skinny pretty girl. Brud look after.” He boosted himself over the rim of the hole. “Farewell, criminal.”

Abruptly Brud popped out onto the cave floor. Di An's tear-streaked face appeared. “Riverwind! The tunnel is large enough for you two inside! Make the entrance wider!”

They had an assortment of tools dropped by the gully dwarves in the cavern, so Riverwind and Catchflea hammered at the stone. Di An and Brud stood by. The glassy limestone splintered and sharp chips flew.

The yellow smoke was so thick now that they couldn't see across the cave. The men and Di An coughed and coughed. “Enough, enough!” Riverwind said. Di An re-entered the opening. Riverwind helped Catchflea in, and Di An dragged at the old man's arms. Riverwind followed them. The tunnel was only two feet wide, but with his shoulders bunched the young plainsman could make it.

Brud surveyed the sulfur-flooded cave. “Not smell so bad,” he mused aloud. The tunnel opening he regarded with a far more critical eye. “Mouse hole ruined,” he said. “Big enough for bear now.”

He grabbed the lower rim of the enlarged hole, levered himself up, and wriggled through.

The mouse hole tunnel ran level for forty yards, then ended on a tight vertical shaft. Notches were chiseled in the wall, and it was easy enough for them to climb the ten yards or so to the surface.

Di An shifted a stone floor tile, and they emerged in a dark room. They lay for a while, gasping the clean air. Brud appeared and kicked the tile back over the opening.

“Where are we?” Catchflea croaked.

“Broken Jar House,” Brud replied. Sure enough, the floor was littered with layer upon layer of broken pottery. “Wait, I make light.”

He found a long pole standing in a corner, apparently left for just such a purpose. Brud used the pole to poke open a shuttered window high on the wall. It was still not very bright inside the room, but enough light filtered in to reveal what a bizarre place they had stumbled into.

It was a house, tipped on its side. The surface they sat on was not a floor, but a wall of the house. Facing them was the true floor, an expanse of white tile. Many tiles had fallen, leaving dark squares in the pattern. The surface above their heads was decorated with lively frescoes showing humans rising from pallets with their hands in the air. A tall, grave figure stood at the end of the fresco, holding a slim jar.

“A doctor, or apothecary,” Catchflea said. “See, he's healed the sick.”

“These must have been his medicine bottles,” Riverwind added. He raised a fistful of fragments. The pottery was so old it was turning to dust. The pieces crumbled in his fist.

“How did this place get this way?” Di An asked. “Why is this city an underground ruin?”

“The Cataclysm,” Riverwind said solemnly. “Almost three hundred and fifty years ago, the world was rent asunder by mighty upheavals of land and sea. My father told me stories of that time. Xak Tsaroth sank into the ground.”

Di An looked thoughtful. “That must have been what we in Hest knew as the Great Shattering. That was when Var-toom was cut off from the other cities of Hest,” she said.

Catchflea sat upright. “Other cities?”

“Yes. Balowil, the City of Lead, and Arvanest, the City of Gold.”

Catchflea was about to draw the elf girl into conversation about these Hestite cities when Brud shimmied up the pole to the window. “Bad to say!” he muttered.

“What is it?”

“Goblins and masters look for you.” Riverwind leaped up, trying to catch the sill of the sideways window. He missed and landed with enough force to jar his aching ribs.

“Let me,” said Di An. She climbed the pole as nimbly as Brud had. At the window, she pushed him aside. He kept trying to sniff behind her pointed ears.

“Stop it, worm,” she said, fending him off.

“How you hear with ears like that?”

“How do you live with a face like that?” she spat.

From the window Di An could see the street. A lizard man stood at the hole. A new ladder had been lowered into the cave, and goblins were being sent down in pairs, armed with clubs. The lizard man carried a large sword. The elf girl relayed all this to her friends.

“We're in the stewpot, yes,” said Catchflea.

“Life like stew,” Brud observed. They waited for him to finish the analogy. Brud said nothing. He turned his back to the window. He felt he'd said it all.

The door to the Broken Jar House was on the “ceiling.” Di An kicked tiles loose and climbed out on the vertical wall, with only her toes and fingertips to hold her up. Brud was rapt with admiration. Di An reached the door and pulled the handle. The corroded copper crumbled in her hand.

Di An leaned out far from the wall, one hand and both feet clinging to the narrowest of holds. With her climbing hook, she picked at the blackened hinge pin on the door. The hardened Hestite steel soon broke apart the ancient brass pin. The corner of the door sagged inward. Hooking onto the door frame, Di An swung free from the wall.

“Woo! Brud want to try!”

The elf girl ignored him. She wedged her foot against the sagging door and pushed. With a loud crack, the remaining door pin snapped. The battered wooden door fell. Di An hooked her foot on the doorjamb and vaulted out.

Brud clapped his thick, dirty hands together. The Que-Shu men applauded as well. Di An lowered the chain. Riverwind and Brud climbed out, then hauled Catchflea up with the chain.

“That fun. Do again?” said the gully dwarf hopefully. They ignored him and studied their position.

The Broken Jar House was lodged in the wall of the cavern, sixty feet above the street. The wall they were standing on slanted down, and opened on a triangular crack in the pit wall. There seemed no place to go until Brud bustled by.

“Where are you going?” Riverwind asked.

Brud pointed below and to their right. “Home to Aghar town. See wife. Hungry.”

“Wait! Hold there.”

Brud ignored them. He hopped from the wall of the house to a narrow ledge that ran out of the crevice. Riverwind followed, though the ledge was barely wide enough for one of his feet. Brud reached the front of the crevice and did a quick right-face. In full view of the entire city, he strolled along the ledge toward a waterfall. Riverwind could see a tunnel had been carved behind the falls. To his companions he said, “Come! Brud has shown us the way.”