Shale's group consisted of Jherek and two of the other trogs whose names were Hamlode and Bluin. It also contained Connery, Shaun, Matthew, Diana, and the three alumni who, in Shale's mind, added up to one good wizard. Rogil took the other four trogs, the two trog clerics and the other two mercenaries. It was midday when they started out again, and Shale confidently expected to have the entire village cleared out by nightfall.

Shale's group passed the spot where they'd fought their first battle, and they placed the four dead trogs in Redeye's crypt until they could be given a proper funeral service. Shale searched the bodies of the buglins, as he had searched the bodies in the guard room, but found no sign of the Proof of Mantellor, or anything else of value except a few coins that he slipped into his pouches. Diana looked shocked at this blatant robbery of the dead, and the three wizards were thankful that she hadn't seen them searching Mikos's body, but she made no comment, and when Shale had finished she said a few prayers over the buglins' bodies before moving on.

They had no further trouble for some time after that. They moved slowly, thoroughly checking every room they came to, making sure that no new tunnels had been dug down which enemies might be hiding. Buglins weren't the world's greatest tunellers, preferring to inhabit places dug and then abandoned by other races, but they could manage it when they really wanted or needed to. One of their favourite tricks was the pit trap with lots of sharp spikes in the bottom, covered over with a loose framework of sticks and cloths and with dust and rubble scattered over it to disguise it. They did occasionally come across the occasional pile of dust and rubble, but they always turned out to be nothing more than the results of minor roof falls.

Soon, they began to arrive at the residential areas of the village. Each home consisted of half a dozen rooms carved out of the living rock. They were all entered by means of a single door in the corridor, a well crafted stone door that swung easily on its hinges, and which had the names of its former occupants carved on it in an elaborate cursive script. Only a few were locked, the majority either having been left unlocked when the villagers left, or having been forced open by the shologs. Every room was almost completely empty, except for the occasional stone tables or chairs, some of which still had some of the original cloth covering and woolen padding on them. Some of the niches in the walls still had bottles of glowfluid standing in them, and still glowed when a drop of activating fluid was put in, much to the amazement and delight of Shale and the others. He took a few down, and gave one each to Lirenna, Jerry and the humans, just in case they got separated.

Twice they came across more intersections, once where the tunnel street branched in two, and again where another street crossed their own. Each time, they sent someone down the new tunnel to make sure it still ended in a dead end, as it had when the villagers had left. "They were dug when it was still thought that this place might turn into a large town," explained Shale. "They wanted to leave ways to expand between the rooms lining the streets. Who knows, maybe one day we'll need them."

As they reached the far end of the village, they came to the places where the buglins had been living. The rooms were decorated with stolen ornaments, animal skins and skulls, and the floors were covered with more animal skins, rough woven rugs, and half eaten animal bones. The few areas of bare rock had been carved into surprisingly sophisticated images of buglins doing all the things that they loved doing most. Chasing and killing their enemies, mainly trogs and nomes, engaging in contests of strength and fighting ability and feasting on stolen food. Despite themselves, even the trogs had to admire the quality of the carvings. Nasty little things they might be, but they had no little artistic talent.

The sleeping cots were made of thick soft blankets and feather pillows, and looked quite comfy. They counted them as they went, to get some idea of how many enemies they were up against, and were shocked when, after searching only three homes, the total had already passed thirty. If all the old trog homes were occupied, there would well be hundreds of them! They also came across dozens of larger cots, probably used by the shologs, and about twenty others that had to belong to the goblins. A cold fear came over them all. What had they gotten themselves into?

"Where are they all, then?" asked Shaun. "So far, we've only seen about thirty or forty of them."

"They're probably out on a raid," said Shale, "and for that we can be profoundly grateful."

"But they could be back any time," cried Matthew, "and we'd be trapped here. We've gotta get out of here while we still can!"

"The Proof of Mantellor is in here somewhere," pointed out Shale. "A raiding party wouldn't have taken it with them. I intend to stay until I find it. Any of you who wish to leave, however, may do so, but at the forfeiture of all pay. I don't give good gold to cowards."

Shaun and Matthew looked longingly at Diana, who shook her head. Her Goddess had led her here, and she would see it through, trusting to the Lady of Healing that all would go as it should. Her brothers toyed with the idea of dragging her out by force, but this wasn't the place to start fighting among themselves and they could see by the look of determination on her face that she wouldn't leave without a fight. For their sakes the three wizards also decided to stay, but they all stared at each other, searching for hope in the faces of their friends, as they moved on to the next room.

In the next trog home they found evidence that female and young buglins had also been living there until very recently. Diana wondered what the others would do if they came across buglin children, and prayed fervently that it would never happen. Hopefully, the adults had taken them away, out of the trog village, when they learned they were under attack. Meanwhile, Jherek went to search one of the small rooms that had once been a storeroom. The others heard a shout and the sound of a brief struggle and rushed to investigate, but the door had closed behind him and was now jammed shut.

They banged on it and called out to him to open it. From the other side they heard a muffled voice telling them to wait a bit, along with several vague unidentifiable sounds that went on for some time, but finally the door opened and Jherek came out, looking flustered. "Sorry about that," he said. "His body fell against the door and his sword got jammed under it. Took me a while to get it free." Behind him they saw the body of a trog, lying face down and dressed only in his underclothes, which were still enough to shroud his entire body from head to foot, leaving the back of his head as the only bare skin they could see. "I caught him having a nap. He woke up and attacked me."

"A trog!" said Shale angrily. "One of us in league with them! This is serious indeed." He went to turn the body over, but Jherek stopped him. "Leave him," he said. "Do not look on the face of a traitor. Just leave him here and forget him, as he deserves."

Shale stared at him as if in sudden shocked understanding, and the others waited silently, expecting him to explain something, whatever it was that had caused his surprise. The trog caught himself, though, and the look vanished as if it had never been there, to be replaced by a cold rage. "Yes," he growled. "Let us not look upon the face of a traitor." He kicked the body hard in the side, then turned to leave, ushering everyone else out before him. It seemed to Thomas that Shale's anger had been directed more at Jherek than the traitor trog, though. He puzzled over it for a moment before giving a mental shrug. Just my imagination, he told himself. I don't know trogs well enough to be able to read their facial expressions reliably or accurately. Diana hung back as the others left, though, and cautiously approached the dead trog. He may be a traitor, she thought, but he at least deserves a prayer said over him, as does any living creature. She knelt beside him and muttered a few words while clutching at her silver caroli flower, but paused when she saw both Shale and Jherek staring at her with a curious, frightening intensity. She hurriedly completed the prayer, and then left to rejoin her brothers.

They continued their sweep of the village, and came eventually to the commercial centre, where the tunnel street was wider and the ceiling higher. On one side of the tunnel was a row of market stalls, the entrances to the temple and the priest's home, while a branching side tunnel led to the goldsmithy, the stoneworkers' shops, the assayer's office, the scribery, and the Manir's manor itself. These places had been pretty well left alone by the village's new occupants, except for the temple, which had been desecrated.

"You wouldn't think it now," said Shale as they paused in the doorway, "but this was once the most beautiful, most lovingly crafted chamber in the whole village." The others believed him, and they stared in horror at what the shologs had done to it. The ceiling was higher than anywhere else in the village, rising a full fifteen feet above the floor, and hundreds of glowbottle niches lined the walls, the upper ones still having the bottles in them. The lower ones, however, had been smashed, and a layer of broken glass now covered the floor. "Once," said Shale, his voice a dangerous growl of anger, "they lit the temple as brightly as daylight, as befitted the glory of the Gods worshipped here." Thomas nodded to himself. The glowbottles carried by the explorers were barely sufficient to illuminate one tiny corner of the immense chamber. The rest was swathed in gloomy darkness, giving it a spooky unwelcoming feel, totally alien to the original purpose of the room.

At the far end of the chamber were the remains of two immense statues, dominating the chamber and staring moodily down at the short but stocky humanoids who gathered here to worship them. The statues of Liithos and Vultos, both represented as giant idealised trogs. They had been smashed to rubble and strewn all over the floor, and the trogs cried out in anger as they looked upon what was left of them.

The only parts of the statues to have escaped relatively unharmed were the heads, which appeared to have been used as bowling balls to knock down a row of stone arms and legs that lined the north wall. Even after this rough treatment, though, the quality of workmanship in them was still obvious, a tribute to the trog sculptor who had carved them. Every crease in the clothing, every fold of skin, every bulging muscle was totally realistic and anatomically correct, and their destruction had been more than a desecration. It had been sheer vandalism, nothing less than a crime against art itself. Even Thomas, who was not at all a very religious person, was outraged by it and saddened enormously to think of the months, perhaps years, of work that had gone into their creation, all wiped out by one vicious act of mindless destruction.

In their place stood another statue, taller than the other two, but not of the same quality. It was rougher, not quite in proportion, and had an unfinished look to it, not helped by the hundreds of faint chisel marks remaining on it. It was a warrior figure in the form of a half sholog, half goblin giant, wearing armour and holding a sword and shield. Its face was twisted in a snarl of contempt, and it had two gleaming rubies for eyes that glittered and shone in the reflected light of the glowbottles as they glared hatred down at the interlopers.

"Skorvos, the evil God of war and conquest," said Shale with disgust. "Eternal enemy of Samnos, the God of the righteous war against evil. The shologs probably ordered the buglins to make it, which accounts for its poor condition. They only produce quality workmanship for themselves, not for others. The shologs, being crude, stupid creatures, probably wouldn't appreciate anything better anyway."

Diana stared at the desecrated temple in horror. Nothing convinced her of the inherent evil of the buglins more than this. The floor at the feet of the statue had a dark stain that made her shiver, and she overheard one of the trogs muttering something about human sacrifices under his breath. The cleric paled with fear and felt a swimming dizziness sweep over her. She had never in her life had such a powerful sensation of being in the presence of evil and she whispered a blessing to herself while making a sign of protection with her hand. It helped, but not much. "We must purify this place before we leave," she said. "This alter to evil must be destroyed."

"Go ahead," said Shale, who was closely examining the walls, looking for secret alcoves. He was convinced that this was the most likely place to find the Proof of Mantellor, and had gotten everyone searching for it. Diana kicked aside the pile of bloodstained offerings, said a prayer over a human skull she found, and sprinkled the altar with the small phial of holy water she'd carried all the way from her own village. Then she bowed her head in a brief prayer to Caroli, beseeching Her help in purifying the chamber and driving out the evil that had entered into it, adding a few words in praise of Lithos and Vultos as well in case They were offended at being ignored in their own temple. Then, with a grunt of effort, she hurled the bottle at the statue, throwing it with all her strength.