Music and Misadventure: 3

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Humble proportions marked the space below; no soaring Mines of Moria halls here. Low ceilings; curving packed-earth walls neatly fitted with cut stones; rounded walls and sloping floors; all marked the caverns beneath Sheep Island as a gnome habitation.

Jay and I stepped, with great caution, into a central hall with three arches leading into shadow-darkened chambers beyond. We kept our backs to the wall, alert for further sounds of the lindworm's approach.

Nothing moved.

'Any of those arches could be the gateway,' I said to Jay in an undertone.

'How do you tell?'

'You don't. Well, you do, but only by what you might call the "reckless" way.'

'Step through and hope?'

'Yup.'

Another dry rasp of scales against stone interrupted my thought, and I froze. Seconds passed as those sounds drew nearer, and nearer still — then the lindworm appeared, writhing sinuously across the worn stones of the floor. More serpent than dragon, its hide gleamed mottled green in my firelight. It had wings, after all, but they were feeble, stunted things, folded against its muscular sides; by no means could it fly with such miserable specimens.

Its blunt-nosed head turned in our direction, its mouth opening to display long, bone-pale fangs. My pipes were at my lips in an instant, my lungs inhaling for a blast of song — but away turned the lindworm's head and on it went, vanishing back into the darkness.

I stood, frozen and unbreathing, for some time before at last I let out a breath. The creature was big enough almost to fill the chamber from floor to ceiling. With such bulk, and such teeth, I considered my mother fortunate to have lost only a hand.

Jay looked enquiringly at me.

'Need to find out where that damned gateway is,' I murmured.

'So we follow?'

'We follow.'

We crept away from the dubious protection of the shadowed wall, and passed under the round-topped arch through which the lindworm had disappeared. To my surprise, the chamber beyond was smaller still than the hall; round-walled, like the rest, bare of furniture, and primitive, it was primarily marked by a lack of two important things: one gigantic lindworm, and any other entrance or exit besides the one through which we had just ventured.

We stood in the centre of the room, momentarily dumbfounded.

'Doesn't a gateway require, you know, a gate?' said Jay after a while.

'Or a doorway, or an arch? You would think so...' I brightened my fireballs until the room glowed in the light, but this had little effect save to confirm the total lack of alternative doorways. Stone-packed walls, unbroken and featureless, met my confused gaze.

'The thing is,' I said, turning in yet another circle, 'we can't do gateways anymore. Not the kind my mother means. Those are among the many arts we've lost, probably forever, and since so few functioning gates have survived down the ages, we know too little about how they work.'

'In other words, maybe it doesn't have to be a door.'

'I suppose not, looking at this. But what, then? There's nothing here.'

Jay reached the nearest wall in two long strides, and laid a hand against it. 'There has to be something.'

I followed suit, selecting the opposite wall, and we groped our way around the room until we'd each covered half. Nothing promising had happened on my side; everything under my hands felt cold, solid and immoveable, as stone should.

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