The scavens exchanged glances. A flutter of emotions passed between the siblings and their father. The moment passed quickly, and the fair-haired scaven turned to Lindley.

“Right now, we can’t speak of why you're here, but we do believe you intended no harm to our tribe, don't you?” she asked, raising her right eyebrow. “I’m Dhokaz. My sister is Igrehl. What's your name?"

"Lindley Stormfire.”

“Our thanks to you for aiding my father and brother against the drows,” Igrehl spoke up.

"Help?.. Pfft." Lindley smiled bitterly. He had no part in the fight against the drows. By the time they realized they were under attack, he was already poisoned. He had to spend his time drifting in and out of sleep while the battle was being fought. He was even brought to them half-dead. If not for the two scavens, he would have died many times over. "I was just a spectator."

"Well, you were there with them, humanling. You could have done something bad, but you didn’t. That means a lot." She had a rougher voice than Dhokaz, and her gaze was direct. “By the way, why are you here?”

“He seeks a direct transportation to the Overland.” Gargdor said. As they stood talking, the paladin stared into the darkness of the adjoining tunnels with a distant, inevitable expression, as if waiting for more enemies to descend upon them.

"The Portal Orb." Ighrel muttered. She looked at Lindley and couldn't help shaking her head. "Are you tired of living?"

This time Ogvigh reacted to his sister's words. He turned and made a sharp gesture, pointing at Lindley and speaking rapidly in Scavish. His eyes flashed mildly with indifference.

“That's strange. So, you helped the Scaven hunters,” Igrehl said. “Hmm…”

But before she could go on, Dhokaz touched her sister’s shoulder and said something quietly in their native language. Igrehl fell silent, and looked at Lindley with a smile on her face.

Lindley frowned on instinct. He couldn’t help it. Glancing at Dhokaz and Igrehl, he saw them biting their lips to keep from grinning. Gargdor smiled faintly and led them down the tunnels with Ogvigh bringing up the rear.

“We’re not far from the city,” Gargdor said as they walked. “Our king, Baragh Abaethaggar, will be able to tell you more than we can about what you seek and to decide what to do with you. But my daughters are right, our tribe owe you thanks for your aid.”

The conversation subsided. Despite Gargdor’s promise, they marched for what felt like hours, and as the time passed, Lindley's movement became slower but he continued following them. He didn’t want to be a burden, but the remnants of the drow poison lingered in his blood. He almost called out to Gargdor to ask for a period of rest when he saw the tunnel ahead widening.

A string of tunnels converged at the main one, and voices drifted from the smaller tunnels.

Lindley gasped as the reek of sweat and blood hit his nostrils. On the heels of these grim heralds, a score and more scavens spilled out into the passage ahead of them. They carried swords, axes, spears, shields, and other forms of weapons. A number of them carried stretchers to convey a dozen dead or injured scaven warriors. Some of them had no visible wounds, but they shivered and convulsed as if in the throes of some horrible fever. Their bearers stumbled and struggled to keep them on the stretchers.

“Arizda!” Gargdor called to one of the scavens.

Some of the party slowed and turned to greet Gargdor, and the next moment, Lindley’s group joined them. Lindley kept close to Dhokaz and Igrehl, but the scavens on the stretchers drew his gaze. There are more dead than wounded.

“What’s he saying?” Lindley asked Dhokaz, nodding at Gargdor. “I heard something about spiders."

Instead of replying, Dhokaz translated for them.

“What's the news from the Ozgan Pass?” Gargdor addressed a brown-bearded scaven with a battered shield hanging from his bandaged arm. Blood soaked through the bandage and dripped onto the ground, but the scaven didn’t seem to notice.

“We occupied it until the carrion spiders attacked,” Arizda said, “swarms of them. They just kept coming, so we had to fall back.”

Standing in front of Lindley, Igrehl shivered and clutched her axe. Ogvigh turned to his sister and gave her shoulder a quick squeeze.

“Is this all that’s left of your men?” Gargdor asked, incredulous.

“Yes, it is,” Arizda said bitterly. “At the last, we had to collapse the tunnel. If not, we'd have been decimated.”

A pair of scavens shouldered past Lindley carrying another stretcher, but up ahead the tunnel narrowed, slowing the pace of the group and crowding everyone together.

A cold, clammy hand latched onto Lindley’s arm.

Gasping, he tried to jerk away, but the hand held him fast. It was the scaven on the litter. He stared up at Lindley with a distant, fevered light in his brown eyes.

“Agnun,” he said in a hoarse whisper. It sounded like a name. “Agnun.” Then he uttered some incorrigible streams of words in Scavish that Lindley found difficult to understand.

“I’m sorry,” Lindley said. He looked to the litter bearers, hoping one of them spoke Commish. “What did he say?”

“He asked you for water,” said one of the scavens. “He’s out of his head, thinks you’re his wife.” The litter bearers glanced at each other helplessly then looked back at Lindley. There was something empty and remote in their eyes, as if it took all their strength just to carry their burden. They had nothing left in them with which to attend or comfort their wounded companion.

Lindley removed the stopper from his firewater urn with his free hand and held it to the scaven’s lips. This was all he got, and he could only hope the scaven would manage it. The scaven released his—leaving five angry red marks on his skin—and slurped sparsely from the container. The firewater burned his throat mildly, making him cough in pain. Rivulets of water darkened his beard, mingling with the tears that dripped from his eyes.

“Agnun,” he said again, pushing the urn back at him. He coughed once, violently, spraying water and blood all over himself and Lindley.

“It’s … all right,” Lindley said. He put away the urn and wiped the blood flecks from his face. “You’re almost home.”

The crowd started to move. Lindley walked alongside the litter until the tunnel widened again and the scavens were able to hurry forward. His last sight of the injured scaven was his hand lifted in the air, vaguely reaching for him.

“Agnun …” His voice echoed, lost and childlike.

Lindley took a wavering step as if to follow him, but he found he couldn’t move. He covered his mouth with his hand, suddenly afraid he might be sick.

Finally, the two groups passed out of the long tunnel, and suddenly there were guards all around them, a dozen warriors heavily armored and grim looking. Lindley might have been afraid of the presence of so much steel and so many dour-faced scavens, but the passage ahead temporarily distracted him. In the tunnel was the largest door he had ever seen anywhere.

Ten feet tall and made of solid iron, the gate to Kulgagar wedged perfectly into the stone, an immovable titan that Lindley couldn’t imagine an enemy ever being able to break down. That was assuming the enemy made it so far, past the armored scavens and clerics who stood on either side of the door. The gate could rival that of any dwarven city.

The healers immediately went to work tending the wounded scavens, but Lindley noticed a few of them watching him with steely glares as they approached the iron door. Was it his imagination, or they could sense some form of magic in him. The one they didn't like?

Lindley shook those irrational thoughts away. Likely they were simply suspicious of outsiders. There was no point in dwelling on his fears. He had no control over how the scavens felt about his appearance in the Lowerment and outside their city, but they had obviously brought him here for a reason, one that Lindley suspected had little to do with the sudden appearance of a humanling in over a long time.

"So, how do I find this Portal Orb?" As soon as he mentioned the Portal Orbit, the other scavens became agitated. Lindley sensed their anger wasn’t directed at him specifically, but he had known quite a few secrets in his life to know when someone was hiding something from him.

Perhaps King Baragh Abaethaggar would be kind enough to tell him about this transportation portal that could take him back to the Overland without facing the dangers of the tunnel again. If this king didn't decide to sacrifice him first.

A shattering groan lifted Lindley from his thoughts. The massive iron door creaked open under the direction of the guards, and Lindley had another reason to be enchanted. The door itself was at least three feet thick, lumbering open by inches, guided by the large grim-faced scaven warriors.

Dhokaz came up beside her. “Few outsiders are allowed to witness the Gate Guardians opening the outer door,” she commented.

“The outer door?” Lindley echoed, incredulous. “Are there more doors like this one between here and your city?”

Dhokaz’s mixture of soft and coarse laughter made Lindley think of the overland race of scavens and forests or beautiful landscape rather than iron and rock like the dwarves.

“Nine doors lie between this spot and my city. The outer doors are a pair of iron giants. The inner six are iron, too, but cloaked in Iridium, one of our magical metals. The innermost is the Palladium door, last protector of the Palladium City, our home.” The scaven woman cleared a catch in her throat as she spoke these words. “Welcome to Kulgagar, Lindley Stormfire.”