Crystal Gorge

“There, I think,” Padan said, pointing at a nearby cluster of grey-colored boulders. “We should be able to find a cave—or at least a well-sheltered place—in that rock-pile.”

“We’d better hurry,” Rabbit suggested, looking off to the north. “I don’t see anything coming our way yet, but it probably won’t be very long before it shows up. Longbow’s friend can move very, very fast when she thinks it’s necessary, and I’d say we’re getting real close to the edge of ‘necessary,’ wouldn’t you?”

“Let’s go!” Sorgan said sharply.

They reached the pile of mossy boulders, and as Padan had suggested, there were a goodly number of passages running between the huge rocks. When a large rock leans against one of its neighbors, it forms what almost looks like a tunnel.

“Let’s try that one over there,” Padan suggested. “The boulder that’s facing the probable direction the cyclone will follow is as big as a house, and when a cyclone is coming your way, you want something big and heavy standing on the windy side.”

“Here it comes,” Torl shouted. Then he stopped dead in his tracks. “Good god,” he exclaimed. “The silly thing’s on fire!”

Sorgan whirled and stared at the approaching whirlwind. As Torl had observed, the spinning wind was definitely burning—but it was no ordinary fire. Normal fires are yellow or red.

This one, however, was blue.

4

Sorgan and his friends crouched in the sheltered passageway between the two enormous boulders, listening to the shrieking roar of the wind. Rabbit, however, frequently crawled on his hands and knees to the narrow opening between the two boulders. “I think we’re safe,” he shouted over the roar of the whirlwind. “The storm’s on fire, that’s for sure, but the fire’s staying down there in the gorge. A few flickers come up above the rim, but they aren’t spreading out much.”

“That curiosity of yours is likely to get you killed one of these days, Rabbit,” Sorgan shouted.

“I don’t think so, Cap’n,” the little smith replied, “—at least not when Longbow’s friend’s involved. She did this to kill the bugs—not us. The color of the fire that windstorm is pulling along behind it says that it’s that gas that burns across the top of a swamp or comes boiling up out of coal-mines—except that it’s not very likely that anybody’s digging coal out of this one. I think I know how she did it, if you’re curious, Cap’n.”

“I’ll listen,” Sorgan replied.

“I’d say that she found a huge pocket of that gas that burns blue somewhere down below the floor of the gorge at the upper end. Then she cracked open the solid rock that was holding the gas back. Then, after quite a bit of the gas had built up, she reached out and grabbed this whirlwind and threw it in this direction.”

“Nobody could do things like that, Rabbit,” Torl scoffed.

“We’re not talking about just anybody, Torl. This is the lady who turned miles and miles of sand into imitation gold and then broke open a mountain to unleash an underground ocean on the bug-people and the Church people. I’d say that there’s almost nothing that she can’t do, if she really wants to.”

“All right, then,” Torl said, “how did she set fire to the gas?”

“We’ve all seen those waterspouts out at sea. I don’t know if you’ve ever looked hard at one of them, but it’s always seemed to me that every one of them had lightning jumping around as it went by. If you want to set something on fire, lightning will do it faster than just about anything else. I’m just guessing here, but I think her plan went something like this: First she turned the gas loose, then she set fire to it with lightning, and then she sent that whirlwind roaring down the gorge. The wind’s pulling the fire along behind it, and I’d say that’s what this is all about. A solid wall of fire is rushing down the gorge, burning every one of the bug-men who was rushing on up to attack the Trogite breastworks right down to little clumps of ashes. And—knowing Longbow’s friend and how she thinks—I’d say that the fire won’t stop at the bottom of the gorge. It’s probably going to sort of imitate that wall of water she used down south. The fire will most likely rush out into the Wasteland and set fire to every single bug-man within a hundred miles of where we are right now.”

“A sea of fire instead of a sea of water?” Torl asked.

“I’d say so, yes,” Rabbit agreed.

After the shrieking of the whirlwind had begun to fade off to the south, Sorgan and his friends cautiously came out into the open again to see what had happened down in the gorge.

There were no longer thousands of bug-people eagerly rushing north, that was obvious. Many of the bugs had been covered with those peculiar shells Sorgan and the others had seen during the war in Veltan’s Domain. Keselo had referred to those shells as “outer skeletons.” Evidently, some varieties of bugs wore their bones on the outside of their bodies rather than the inside. Sorgan saw that armor of any kind would be a bad idea if the enemy was using fire. Getting burned a bit around the edges was one thing. Getting cooked alive was quite another.

There was a thick layer of ash covering the bottom of the gorge, stirred occasionally by the vagrant breeze. Since there were no plants down in the gorge, the ashes were almost certainly all that was left of hundreds—or even thousands—of bug-people. Sorgan shuddered. The bugs were enemies, certainly, but still . . .

Though it was probably not really necessary now, Sorgan and the others went on down the west rim of the gorge to have a look at the fort they’d been forced to abandon some time back. Sorgan told himself that Narasan would like to know if the fort was still standing, so it was proper to have a look at it. Then too, there was now no real need for them to hurry back. Their enemies didn’t exist anymore, after all.

Sorgan privately admitted to himself that it was pure curiosity that pulled him the last few miles down the rim of the gorge.

The fort itself appeared to be intact, but there was a very noticeable difference now. The fort was bathed in blue fire that came boiling up out of the earth.

“Now that’s what I’d call a miracle!” Padan exclaimed. “There’s a fort that doesn’t need any soldiers at all. The blue fire is doing all the work.”

“Our ‘unknown friend’ must really hate the bug-people,” Rabbit said. “That first blue fire is still rushing on down to the Wasteland, burning bugs every inch of the way. Just on the off-chance that her first blue fire burns itself out sometime next year, she reached down and unleashed a second fire that’ll keep burning for the next hundred years or so.”