They reached the entrance without incident. Shale peered in, then waved for the others to follow. It led straight into a bare stone room, the ceiling of which was only just above the humans' heads. It made Thomas feel nervous. It made him want to stoop, afraid that he would hit his head on something, and he noticed that the mercenaries felt the same way. They were slightly crouched, even though they could have just about stood upright in the room. Mikos, however, being slightly shorter, appeared to be comfortable enough, and seemed to enjoy the discomfiture of the other humans.

     Apart from the entrance the room had two other doors, one in the middle of the south wall, opposite the entrance, and another near the southern end of the east wall. Both doors were made of thick wood, the one in the south wall having a small window in it, protected by a rusty iron grill and a wooden flap. Shale carefully opened it and peered in.

     The room beyond was a little smaller, and contained a table in the middle with several chairs around it. Sitting there, playing some kind of card game and gambling with silver and copper coins, were two buglins. Tiny creatures, even smaller than Jerry, with dark brown, scaly skins and large staring eyes. They had large pointed ears like those of a cat, two short white horns on their heads and short ratlike tails. Their hands and feet had short but wicked looking claws, and they had sharp pointed teeth. Each had a short sword belted around its waist, scarcely larger than the daggers that Shale had given the wizards. A smell like stagnant water drifted through the door, and they occasionally made a sharp yapping sound, like a small dog barking.

     Suddenly they leapt up in surprise as they became aware of the trog watching them. Shale kicked the door open, leapt in and killed them both with two swipes of his sword, dispatching them before they even had a chance to draw their weapons. "Total surprise," he said with satisfaction, wiping his blade on their clothing.

     Diana gave a cry of outrage and shock as she realised what had happened, and elbowed her way through the trogs to confront him. "Was that necessary?" she demanded. "You didn't have to kill them!"

     "They were only buglins," replied Shale, scooping up the money on the table and dropping it casually into a pouch hanging on his belt. "Doesn't really count as killing."

     "They were people!" she cried in even greater outrage. "They were thinking creatures with souls! You had no right to just kill them like that! You could have just taken them prisoner!"

     "Listen, human," said the trog impatiently, staring fiercely up at her. "You asked to come with us. We agreed to have you because your healing powers may come in useful, but if you don't like the way we do things, you can leave right now. I intend to clean out this nest of vermin, and I'll do it any way I have to. Understand?"

             
     Diana stood seething with fury, trying to think of a suitable reply, but her brothers pushed their way through to her. "Listen, sis, buglins aren't like real people," explained Shaun patiently. "They're evil. I know they look small and harmless, especially when they're dead, but believe me, they're vicious little monsters. They kill for the pleasure of it, they torture their prisoners, they..."

     "I don't care!" interrupted Diana. "There was still no reason to just kill them as if they were nothing more than rats or cockroaches."

     "He's right, Di," said Matthew. "Remember when a tribe of them raided the Bailey place a couple of years ago? We never told you then, because you were too young, but when we found old Bailey, they'd done some pretty nasty things to him. They'd staked him out on the ground, and..."

     "All right, all right!" cried Diana. "But that doesn't mean they're all like that. You can't judge an entire race because of the actions of a few renegades."

     "There isn't a single recorded instance of a buglin that wasn't thoroughly evil," pointed out Shaun as kindly as possible. "As nasty, spiteful and sadistic as you can imagine. Believe me, it's a racial characteristic of their kind. If you leave them alone too long, they multiply until you've got a plague of them on your hands, and then you've really got trouble."

     "You make them sound like rats or vermin," cried Diana, now becoming tearful.

     "That's exactly what they are," said Shale. "And now if you're quite finished, let's get on with our job." He left the guard room and returned to face the second door, the one that led into the village itself. Shaun and Matthew followed, leaving Diana alone in the room with the two dead buglins. She said a tearful prayer over them, and then also left to rejoin her brothers.

     Thomas looked into the guardroom as she left, staring at the corpses curiously. So that's a buglin, he thought. Hardly seem worth all the trouble. He felt a tremendous sense of relief. The whole village would be like this, he thought. They'd come across small groups of humanoids, kill them and move on. All the caution, all the precautions they'd taken, had been unnecessary, but he was still glad they'd taken them. He wondered whether he'd get a chance to cast his spell. Would Shale demand his money back if they didn't actually do anything?

     The second door led into a long dark corridor as wide as a small village street with doors and openings on either side. Buglins hated light, and so didn't bother to illuminate their homes, being able to see by the very faint light that trickled down the ventilation shafts. The trogs could also see in near darkness, as could Lirenna, but the humans needed more light, so Shale reached into a pocket and produced two small glass bottles, each about the size of a small apple. One was filled with a light greenish liquid, the other filled with a yellow, orange liquid.

     He opened the tops of both bottles, and carefully poured a small amount of the yellow liquid into the green liquid. The green liquid began to glow, faintly at first, but soon as brightly as a torch flame. Several other trogs were doing the same, and soon they had enough to illuminate the whole room. Some hung their glowing bottles on cords around their necks, while others attached them to the ends of wooden poles. Some simply held them in their hands. The bottles apparently produced light, but not heat.

     "What are those?" Shaun asked the trog nearest him.

     "It's called glowoil," said the trog proudly. "It was invented by a trog alchemist centuries ago, and is now used to illuminate all our cities. We export a lot of it to other races, including humans." He chuckled. "It makes an ideal export because, although a single bottle of glowoil will last virtually forever, it requires a constant supply of activating fluid to keep it glowing, and only we know how to make it. No-one else of has ever found a better indoor source of light. Not even the shae folk."

     Mikos, who was standing nearby, snorted in contempt. "Is that so?" he said. "Watch this." He produced a small pouch from a pocket of his robes and took a pinch of grey ash from it. He rubbed it on his staff and chanted some magic words. The staff started to glow along its entire length, producing as much light as a dozen glowbottles. "What do you think of that?" he asked smugly.

     The trog wasn't impressed. "A glowbottle glows for six hours for every drop of activating fluid put into it. How long will that staff glow for?"

     Mikos grew red with indignation. "I have another spell that will make an object glow permanently." Shale, up ahead, looked round angrily. "Shut up, you idiot, before you wake up every buglin in the place!" He then led the way slowly forward while Mikos glared furiously at the back of his head, muttering curses under his breath.

     The corridor was wide enough for them to walk three abreast and still have enough room for them all to swing their weapons freely. All through it drifted the faint smell of buglins, a little like the smell of a wet dog, only rather more unpleasant. Twenty feet down the corridor, another corridor branched off to the right.

     "We'll go this way," said Shale, taking the right turn. "The main street loops ‘round and joins itself here. If we go this way, pushing the buglins ahead of us as we go, we'll drive them right round and out past here and we can get rid of them without having to fight them. Not because of any compassion for the buglins," he added hurriedly, glancing back at Diana, "but to save some of our lives. They're basically cowards, and will run from any fight in which they don't overwhelmingly outnumber the enemy, but they're fierce fighters when cornered and have no qualms about using poisoned arrows and blades. Also, this road goes past the tomb of Redeye Granore, and I'd like to pay my respects as we go past."

     "And perhaps glance once more on the Proof of Mantellor, the first trog to do so for over a century," said Rogil, grinning behind his steel helmet.

     Shale's head nodded. "Perhaps," he admitted.

     They crept along quietly, checking each room they passed and taking two more buglins by surprise, killing them quietly and quickly. The wizards and the clerics now walked in the middle of the group, with trog fighters ahead and behind them. After about twenty yards the corridor turned forty five degrees to the left, and then carried on in a straight line again. They came to a large double door on the right, different from any they'd seen before, which Shale examined closely for a few minutes. "This door has not been opened since our fathers left," he said. "There's no need to check in there."

     "What's in there?" asked Matthew.

     "The mine itself," said Shale. "It's just a big wide cave with a few columns of rock left to support the roof. It's completely mined out. There'll never be any reason to go in there again unless we need more living space one day. We'll be accessing the new vein by way of a tunnel on the other side of the village."

     After another fifteen yards they came to another special door on the right. This one was made of a black, glassy rock and was covered with the angular runes of the trog alphabet, spelling out something in their secret language. In the middle was a design showing an elaborate hieroglyphic of some kind, from which lines, probably representing rays of sunlight, radiated. The door had a complicated combination and key lock, but some skilled thief had managed to open it and it now stood slightly ajar.

     "The tomb of Redeye," said Shale reverently. "Apparently, the new inhabitants of Dermakarak have also been paying their respects. If they have desecrated it, they will pay dearly."

     "Let's hope they haven't taken the Proof of Mantellor," said Rogil.

     "Impossible," snorted Shale. "It is set in an alcove in the wall, above Redeye's coffin, safely protected behind a sheet of armourglass an inch thick. Nothing small enough to enter the room could possibly break it. Wait here, I wish to enter alone. I'll only be a few minutes."

     The door opened easily and soundlessly and Shale slipped inside. For a moment nothing happened, but then they heard a cry of outrage and fury and the trog reappeared, his eyes glaring furiously through the slits of his helmet. His battle-axe was gripped tightly in his hands, as if he desperately wanted something to swing at.

     "The Proof of Mantellor is gone," he said, his voice cold and hard. He looked about wildly, as if the culprit might suddenly appear, to taunt him with the success of his crime, but there was no-one there except the members of the expedition. He forced himself to calm down. They all took turns to look into the crypt, and saw the smashed pane of armourglass, some fragments of which lay on or beneath Redeye's sarcophagus.

     "I don't understand," said Rogil "How could it have happened? The crypt itself was supposed to be impregnable, and even if it was breached, the armourglass was stronger than the stone it was set in! What could possibly have broken it?"

     "We'll figure that out later," said Shale. "After we've recovered the Proof. That's the most important thing. There's going to be a change of plan. No buglin or any other creature in this place is to be allowed to escape. We will divide into two groups, one of which will return to the intersection and hold it. The rest of us will continue on, pushing the vermin ahead of us, until we've gone all around the village and trapped them between us." Diana seemed about to say something, but Shale gave her a look of such fury that she fell silent. "Anyone who finds the Proof of Mantellor is to hand it to me immediately."

     "It's a mistake to divide ourselves," said one of the mercenaries. "It weakens us, and we..."

     "I am in charge here!" roared Shale. "You will follow my orders or leave." At the looks from the others, however, he relented a bit. "It has to be this way," he explained. "The Proof of Mantellor means more to us than I can possibly put into words. I realise that splitting in two is, looking at it purely objectively, a tactical mistake, but it is the only way. I will double your wages if you follow me in this."

     The mercenaries looked at each other and grinned. "Okay, bossman, you got it. All the more fun for us if we find the buglins first."

     "What does this Proof of Mantellor look like?" asked Shaun.

     “A sheet of parchment, as long as a trog is tall and written on by the great Mantellor himself, the only example of his actual handwriting still in existence.”

      “It is nearly a thousand years old,” added Rogil, “but impregnated with lexin so that it will remain strong and pliable for all eternity, even though it started as just an ordinary sheet of parchment that he used to scribble his ideas down on. After his death it was declared to be a HouseGem...” He paused, seeing the blank looks on the faces of the humans. “That’s like an heirloom. A specially revered or treasured object. The Manir himself inscribed the emblems of the Underberg clan upon it. A depiction of a cave under a mountain, and beside it the coat of arms of the Granore family."

     "Valuable then, is it?" asked Connery. The enchantment he was under had apparently done nothing to change his essentially greedy nature.

     "The lexin makes it quite valuable, as the secret of its manufacture was lost during the goblin wars, yes," said Shale, "but it has a much greater symbolic value to us."

     “So why was it left here?” asked Thomas. “Why not take it with you when you left this place?”

     “Why wouldn’t we leave it here?” asked the trog in genuine puzzlement. “It has the same value wherever it is.”

     “But there’s no-one here to look at it, and it might come to harm...”

     “It was believed to be perfectly safe, and it’s enough to know that it exists. We don’t need to keep looking at it to reassure ourselves that it hasn’t suddenly vanished in a puff of smoke.”

     “Except that it has,” said Connery, looking at the empty alcove. A calculating look appeared on his face.

     “Forget it,” warned Rogil. “Anyone who finds it and keeps it for himself will arouse the wrath of the entire Underberg clan, and we would pursue him all across the world to regain what is ours. However, a reward of a thousand gold Clannets will be given to whoever finds it and returns it to us."

     "Just as a matter of interest," said Thomas. "How many are there in the Underberg clan?"

     "At the last census sixty two years ago, a quarter of a million," said Shale meaningfully. He gave the mercenaries a hard stare, making them fidget and swallow nervously. One said "That reward of a thousand gold ‘uns sure sounds good to me."

     "Yeah, me too," said another.