FiNDS A LIMPING MOUSe," Jikuyin chortled. "THEN 1 WILL RIDE HIS BLOOD TO THE VERY SEAT OF THE GODS!"
Barrick knew he should run-should take advantage of Gyir's sacrifice, however hopeless-but now something new distracted him. The light of a torch had bloomed in the cavern's entrance. Several Drows, the twisted creatures that looked like Funderlings, had pushed a huge corpse-wagon into the cavern doorway. This one was not loaded with the bodies of dead prisoners but with barrels, and the barrels were surrounded by dry straw.
A bearded Drow sat atop the barrels. He seemed oblivious to the bizarre, apocalyptic events in the cavern below him, his eyes fixed instead on some¬thing in the middle of the air. He might have been an old man beside a busy road, content to wait until his passage would be perfectly safe.
AND WHEN I HAVE THE EARTHLORD'S POWER," Jikuyin was gloating, oblivious to the thick, shining blood that oozed down his front, heedless of the dozen new wounds on his face and neck, "I WILL PAINT YOUR PEOPLE'S EPITAPH WITH THE JUICES I WRING FROM YOUR CORPSES! AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT EPITAPH WILL BE?"
I know what yours will be. Gyir's thought was so quiet that Barrick could barely understand it, although he stood only a few dozen yards away. It will be, "He was not good at thinking ahead."
The fairy's arm shot out. His spear jabbed so hard it pushed all the way through the demigod's neck and out the nape. Jikuyin bellowed in anger, but did not seem any more crippled by this blow than by the others. Gyir leaped onto the giant's neck and used the shaft of the protruding spear as an anchor so he could wrap his arms and legs tightly around Jikuyin's head. The ogre's cries of rage now as loud as the earlier explosions, he staggered out into the middle of the track that ran down from the doorway to the cleared space in front of the earth god's black gateway.
The driver atop the wagon full of barrels raised the torch and waved it. The little men massed behind him shoved the cart out onto the downslope.
As the cart picked up speed, bouncing down the track faster than a horse could run, the driver made no attempt to dismount. Instead he dropped the torch into the straw piled around his feet. The flames flared high around the barrels, so that within a few more moments a great billowing blaze sur¬rounded the little man and filled the back of the wagon. At the base of the track the unheeding giant still tore blindly at the small shape on his back, the faceless gnat who so annoyingly refused to die.
Jikuyin finally yanked Gyir free, pulling the fairy's arm loose in its socket so that it dangled helplessly and the spear dropped from his nerveless lin gers. As Jikuyin bellowed in triumph, ignoring the wagon, Barrick realized what was in the barrels.
"I WILL EAT YOU, INSECT!" the demigod roared.
You will choke on me. The skin of Gyir's outer face had been torn away, and his strange small mouth twisted in what might have been a bloody smile. Look.
For the merest instant Barrick saw Jikuyin s face and the way it changed, then the blazing cart crashed into the demigod and the entire cavern van¬ished in a howling, crackling storm of fire. Barrick felt the Storm Lantern's last thought, a joyous curse on his defeated enemy, then the prince was flung away up the slope, skidding and rolling, and he felt the fairy's pres¬ence in his thoughts wink out like a snuffed candle.
Barrick came to a stop in the doorway amid the shrieking Drows who had brought the wagon, awakened by Gyir's death into this incomprehen¬sible chaos. The stupefying concussion of the gun-flour, still echoing, was followed a moment later by the cracking, scraping sound of the cavern's stone roof collapsing. Solid rock jumped and boomed like Heaven's own drums. Several of the creatures who had unwittingly engineered this mon¬strous event scrambled over Barrick like rats in their haste to flee the doomed cavern. The prince could only cover his head and hold his breath as the impacts lifted and dropped him.
A millionweight of stone came tumbling down, burying demigod and mortals alike, sealing the open gateway to the gods' realm for the next thou¬sand years and more.