20. Down the Kobold Hole: Xzar's Wild Mine Cart Ride

The party headed south from the fair. Kagain strode along quietly, Xzar gleefully wore Gazib's adventurer's robe and fingered a frostwand he'd just found in the hollow of a tree, and Montaron studied the necromancer quizzically. It was early morning; they had spent a night camped outside the carnival in preparation for today, particularly for the sake of Branwen, whose last 'rest' had consisted of peftrification, and Jade, who for all her cynicism and years of training, was stoically bracing herself for her first real plunge down the rabbit-hole of the Life - the dungeon crawl.

"Ye said Gazib wore yellow," Montaron asked Xzar, "But now his robe be green?"

"Oh yes," Xzar smiled, brushing some semi-dry blood off the robe, and then slicking his hair back with it, "It's a Wizard Thing. Our magical robes always turn our Favorite Color. His was Coward Yellow, mine is Bile Acid Green. El-Pompous-Minster wears Codger Pinkish Red. And you know what they say about wizards who wear that color, Monty..."

They came to the edge of a shallow cliff, the rim of an open-pit crater littered with mine carts, shacks, and rail ties. They found a narrow path descending into this pockmark in the earth, and found the entrance to the mines running right into the side of the pit. A battery of Amnish guards blocked the door, and Jade did the talking with their captain, Emerson.

"If Ghastkill says so," Emerson shrugged and shoved his men aside, "Indeed, we could use the help. There are problems in the lower levels, where we lost some workers."

One of the guards looked around superstitiously, and in a conspiratorial voice whispered, "The men talk of things a-movin below, but who's to say? The earth, she hides many things from sight." The other guards shuddered.

Wimps. Jade and Branwen exchanged smirks while pulling helms over their tightly braided scarlet and blonde hair.

The other guards moved aside, and Jade peered forward out of the open face of her helm. She lifted one foot, but then planted it again. She hesitated.

Emerson, looking on expectantly, reached up and pulled off his own helm, to reveal dark milky skin and a smooth, bald head. Deep, calm eyes, and a wide jawl faced Jade. "New adventurer? First crawl..." he stated paternally. Many years of the Life were visible in eyes.

Jade gulped, "Yeah."

He intoned, "So it must be I imagine that right now you're feeling a bit like Janice, tumbling down the kobold hole?"

Jade looked hesitantly into the blackness before her. Xzar squeaked, "O folly, to follow a rabbit..."

Jade grimaced. "Something like that."

The domed-head Emerson nodded toward the trail ascending back out of the mine pit. "You take the high road, the story ends, you go back to the everyday world."

Jade looked up, out of the pit, into the beautiful day.

What am I doing? her face creased. This has nothing to do with avenging my father. This is just adventuring for money; the life, the Life, I meant to lead after Candlekeep. So many years I longed for it, I waited, what I wouldn't have given for the wait to be over. And now, now what I wouldn't give to be back. With my father, with my brother, with Imoen. Why did we split up? Why couldn't they just get along? Why did Gorion have to die?

She squinted at the bright sky.

Who knows what's down there?...I'm still too close to Candlekeep. They're still hunting. I could go away. We could go away. Branwen would follow me. But X...no, I don't know who in the hells he's working for, but this was his idea, well, his and Monty's, in the first place.

Emerson gestured toward the tunnel. "You take the low road, you stay in Adventureland, and it shows you just how deep the kobold hole goes."

Branwen held her shield close. Kagain raised his axe. Montaron's knuckles grew white on his crossbow.

Xzar tittered. "Is there light at the end of the tunnel?" He clutched the sides of his head. "Red Knight takes Black Queen. White Knight takes..." his eyeballs all but erupted from their sockets. "AIEEEEE!!! THE WHITE KNIGHT!!! THE BRIGHT LIGHT RIGHT KNIGHT!!!" Montaron kicked his shin. "STOP TOUCHING MEEEEEE!!!!!!!!"

Jade winced, blocking out everything around her.

This is it.

She closed her eyes and took a stride forward. Branwen was step-for-step and shoulder-for-shoulder behind her.

The two women walked abreast into the tunnel, followed closely their companions. Jade held her longbow ready, Branwen was poised with her sling, Kagain flipped a hurling axe around in his hands, Montaron nervously caressed the trigger of his crossbow, and Xzar juggled three throwing daggers.

They descended into the mines, and found themselves assaulted by cold, damp, and thoroughly unpleasant air. The sunlight from outdoors was virtually gone before they reached the end of the first hallway and came into a large chamber with several mine carts and equipment racks. The miners and guards scrambled about, all babbling about disappearing coworkers and ghosts in the mines. Jade recognized the description of a kobold from one of their frightened tales, and smiled. Kagain and Montaron's eyes flickered red as they looked around, but the other three had to make do with the scattered, weak torches lining the walls. How do these miners do it? Jade wondered. Makes you wonder whether their lungs give out first or their eyes.

"I always did want infravision, like the elves," Xzar mused, "Too bad it's more than just taking the eyes..."

"Xzar!" his childhood friend hissed. "Got a light?"

"Oh, Jade," the necromancer cooed fruitily, "I thought you'd never ask." He withdrew from his robes the skull of Zordal the witch-hunter, and while the others looked on with mixed awe and disgust, he whispered something into the skull's nonexistent ear. Bright white light beams shot forth from its eye sockets, and it floated out of Xzar's hand like a balloon, and sat hovering a foot or two over his shoulder, illuminating their trail with its twin eye-beams.

"The undead clowns call these head lights," Xzar grinned proudly up at the floating cranium. "A necromancer's preferred implementation of mage light."

Jade smirked. "Zordal's head was never this bright in life."

The smile fell from her face when an arrow whizzed past her head. "Kobold!" Montaron yelped, his eyes peering forth and glowing red. Jade had her bow already strung, and fired an arrow into the darkness, and cursed when she heard it ping against stone. A throwing axe and a stone flew past her head, and Kagain and Branwen cursed as well as the hurled weapons echoed off stone. A bolt sailed past, an anguished "Yiip!!!!" could be heard from up ahead, and Montaron cackled contentedly. The party strode up to find the kobold lying in a pool of its own blood, its long tongue hanging out of its mouth as it died with a crossbow bolt in its tiny chest. Jade bent over it, collecting a few gold pieces in its pocket, when she noticed a green vial at its belt.

"What do we have here?" she smiled, "Antidote or some such?" it was greenish, and looked much like off-the-shelf antidote potions, but somehow the color was a little strange.

Kagain inspected it. "Well, this'd be as poisonous as whatever you tried to counteract!" he chuckled. "Been an arms merchant long enough to know this stuff when I see it." He up snatched the dead kobold's shortsword and poured the potion on it.

"Hey!" Jade snapped, "We can sell that! Some merchant you are, old dwa-" she fell silent when the fluid oozed over the blade, and the metal turned a strange purplish-gray color. Jade never would have thought it possible for metal to appear sickly as flesh might, but it did. Kagain gave the blade the lightest of taps, and it shattered like glass. "Brilliant, Kagain!" she grinned. "So that's how the little buggers are doin' it! Nothing to do now but follow the trail of 'em!"

"Better start now," Branwen hollered as a thousand little kobold 'yips' could be heard up ahead in the darkness, "Because the trail of them starts here!"

Xzar's headlights flooded forward to reveal a horde of yipping demons.

The party unleashed their eclectic mix of missiles into the cavern ahead, and pained yips echoed. The horde straggled forward, and Kagain reached for his battleaxe. Jade flipped her bow over one shoulder while drawing her bastard sword, and her eyes brightened in amazement as Branwen with a single brave cry conjured an azure hammer with an ethereal glow.

"Oh, Monty!" Xzar squealed with delight as Branwen pounded kobolds left and right into the stone floor, "It's like Whack-a-Kobold!"

The necromancer tried out his jagged blue wand, shooting forth an air-chilling beam of frost into the horde. "Kobold-Cicles!" Xzar laughed at the little monsters frozen and shattered by the beam.

Jade and Kagain cleaved into two of the last three yipping monsters with downward swings, but the third pounced upon the dwarf with a feral snarl, jabbing its crude shortsword at the open face of his helm. Kagain grunted as the blade shore across his bearded cheek, cutting hair and flesh, and he took off both its stubby legs with one swing of his axe, then finished the parapalegic kobold with an overhead executioner's chop.

"Brave work, good dwarf," Branwen kneeled before Kagain, her hammer vanishing from a hand that opened toward his bloodied face in a healing gesture. "Allow me."

"Save yer prayers," Kagain snorted and held his hands up, "I only wish the little dog hadn't clipped me beard, Now I've hafta get the other side done to match."

Branwen shrugged, but her jaw dropped along with Jade's as Kagain's overshaved cheek abruptly ceased bleeding. Kagain wiped it clean, and the women exchanged disbelieving glances as the wound shrank before their very eyes.

"Yeah," Montaron snickered up at his shocked human companions, "Now ye know why I calls him a bearded troll!"

Jade's gaze flicked to the halfling for a moment, and when she appraised Kagain again, his cheek was utterly uncut. "Nice shave," she smiled down at the dwarf with great approval.

"Let's get on," Kagain barked matter-of-factly, marching on and looking about at the walls. "I like it down here, underground...where the gold grows."

Montaron chuckled, "Gold I like well enough, but if those blasted miners don't quit complainin' bout problems we already know about, they'll fear us more than the kobolds!"

They followed the dwarf, Jade noticing he walked as if he knew his way around. He seemed more chipper than she'd seen him yet, and even broke into a beard-muffled hum she could barely make out as, "Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go...."

The party continued walking past dripping stalactites and putrid underground puddles. Jade wrinkled her nose at a human corpse they were now passing, which Montaron hastily looted, pocketing a greenstone ring. He dug through one of a nearby row of mine carts, annd cursed when he found naught but chunks of ore. He was about to toss it back in a huff, when Kagain whistled and clapped his hands. The halfling shrugged and tossed it to the dwarf, who peered at it professionally.

"Any dwarf worth his salt - or iron, as it were," the old fighter chuckled, "Knows bad metal when he sees it." The dwarf then held up the strange green vial they'd found earlier, and peered into it. "Same stuff as coats the iron. Yep, this is definently it. Kobolds are too stupid to poison a mine themselves, or have reason to." The dwarf scratched his beard. "Who'd stand to profit? Iron or arms merchant with another source, certainly. Perhaps an aggressive foreign power wants to sabotage local arms? But whom? Both Amn and the 'Gate use this iron. Maybe Tethyr? Too far. Cormyr? Too 'honorable'. Sembia? Now, economic warfare is their style, but so far away..."

"Xzar, what ye be doin'?" Montaron snapped at his green-robed accomplice, as the wizard climbed into the mine cart the halfling had just pulled the ore from.

"Too many kobolds! Too many kobolds!" Xzar bit his knuckles, but made lucid eye contact with his companions. "The mines have...five levels?" Kagian nodded. "Five levels! Why fight so many kobolds? Why not..." the necromancer peered along the tracks that stretched out from the mine cart, "...Take the fast way!!"

"...to splattering yourself against a stone wall, sooner or later," Branwen barked at him.

"The rabbit-dragons approved," Xzar pouted.

"Actually," Kagain spoke up, "I used'ta work in these mines, long time ago 'fore you whippersnappers were glints in yer daddies' eyes, and I'll wager they're still buffered."

Branwen remained unconvinced. "Xzar," she shouted in an almost maternal tone, folding her arms, "Step away from the mine-cart, and nobody gets hurt."

"No no no," the necromancer giggled, and reached for a lever at the back of his cart, "I go go go...." He pulled the lever, and the cart began to creak and groan, and started inching along, then picked up more and more speed. It hit a dip in the tracks, and suddenly began flying away down the tunnel at full rickety speed. Xzar disappeared around a bend, shrieking "Waaaahoohoohooohoooo..."

Jade smiled. She had to admit she had been on the fence about the idea. As absurd as it was at a time like this, long-buried childhood memories of his antics resurfaced by the barrel. Or mine cart, as it were.

"Well," Montaron grinned, "If he does die, it'll save me the trouble!"

"C'mon, ladies," Kagain croaked as he climbed into the second mine cart, just barely able to get his stout body over the lip, "We ain't all got our whole lives ahead of us here!"

Montaron laughed, and the dwarf helped pull his halfling associate up into the cart. Monty pulled the lever, and the cart sailed down the tunnel, carrying the two short mischief makers, who chuckled and laughed like childish old-timers on a carnival ride as their speed picked up and the disappeared.

Jade had already stepped into the third and last cart. "Only one left," she grinned at Branwen. The priestess groaned, and hopped into the cart. The armored women barely squeezed in, folding their legs to sit as low as possible. Jade pulled the lever, and away they went.

The rusty cart screeched and whined as they sped at blinding speed around dark twists and tunnels, sounding as if it were about to fall apart at any moment, and every time they went around a sharp curve, they felt certain they would fly off the tracks and smash themselves against the outer wall.

"T-h-a-t s-t-u-p-i-d w-i-z-a-r-d!" Branwen bounced and screamed at Jade as the mine cart jittered along at reckless velocity, holding her rattling helm, "I t-o-l-d y-o-u t-h-i-s w-a-s s-u-i-c-i-d-e!"

They could hear the raving laughter of Xzar, the nervous screeching of Montaron, and the raspy chuckling of Kagain all echoing down the tunnel ahead of them, and took some small comfort in figuring that if the three ahead of them were still alive, they themselves logically had at least ten or so seconds more to live. Branwen used those perpetual ten seconds to make peace with her patron.

"...i-n V-a-l-h-a-l-l-a f-o-r-e-v-e-r!" she prayed to Tempus as they flew to certain doom, her teeth chattering.

The tracks sloped ever downward, conspiring to keep up their speed. At one point they passed over a narrow rocky bridge suspended over a river of lava, and continued deeper into the mines.

At last they passed into a large open chamber, and they could even see the water of some sort of underground lake or river up ahead. But more immediately, they noticed that the mine cart tracks came to an end. There was indeed some sort of padding erected, but it didn't look terribly gentle.

"Aieieeeeee!!!" Xzar shrieked as his cart slammed into the padding and he went flying into the air, his green robes flapping wildly around him. "I am a superman!!!! Wendy, I can fly!! I can flyyyyyyyyyy!! Oh, Monty, remember that circus? We should tell that poor wingless avariel about this...she so wanted to fly, poor thing....oh yes, what a fun experiment to make her fly! I do need some hollow bones for a necromantic experiment..."

"Ommmmpf!" Kagain declared as the mine cart containing him and Montaron smacked into the back of Xzar's cart.

"Oyyy!" Montaron shrieked as he and the dwarf catapulted out of their cart, their rotund bodies flying high into the air.

Branwen and Jade each groaned as their cart smashed into the back of the that vacated by their short companions', and they flew out head-over-heels.

"Hooohoooo splat!" Xzar screamed as he fell face-fist onto the dirty chamber floor.

"Ooof!" "Ach!" Montaron and Kagain cried as they landed on top of him.

"Ugh! "Ooh!" Jade and Branwen grunted as they landed on top of the other three members of their party.

"Owwwwieee," Xzar mumbled, sticking his clown-tattooed face out of the bottom of the pile, "We had to put poor Xzar on the bottom, and his four armored companions on top of him, didn't we?"

"Not to mention," Kagain wheezed, sounding like it was the last air escaping him, "The two big ol' human warriors on top!" Beside him, Montaron cursed in agreement.

"I thought it was a nice little rough-n-tumble," Jade giggled. "How deep into the mines did we make it, anyway?"

"I don't know," Branwen grunted from atop the pile of adventurers, "But this is a new low for me, in several respects."