by Heide Goody
He swung with force and precision, neatly slicing through the pole and ropes just above her chest. Cope rolled away and ripped at her other bonds.
“Now me! Now me!” yelled the damned wizard from his position over a fire which was burning all the fiercer with the addition of the oil. Fire raged throughout the cavern. The grimlocks yelled and yammered, jibbered and jabbered, and screamed like a bag of cats on a bonfire. They ran and flung themselves about without purpose, but it wouldn’t be long before they used five humans to vent their anger and energy upon.
Merken raised the long sword to meet the grimlock savages. Cope snatched it out of his hands.
“I’ll take that, sir,” she grunted. Rapidly, she hauled Pagnell from the fire, his heels dragging through the hot coals for an instant, before slicing through his bonds. Pagnell still wore manacles and chains, but he was now free to move; at least in an awkward and ungainly shuffle.
A grimlock, the feathers in its head aflame, came barrelling towards them through the confusion. Merken turned aside the creature’s flint spear by instinct rather than design, and used the shaft to catapult the unhappy warrior against the cavern wall. Another figure stumbled their way. Merken swung the spear round to impale it.
“It’s me!” squeaked Bez, stumbling and ducking with a bundle of papers and reacquired belongings clutched in his arms.
Merken was half-tempted to run the man through anyway. Damned bard was as much the architect of their current predicament as anyone. Wasn’t like the world would mourn the loss of a bloody street artist.
A cry went up among the grimlocks: not of panic, but a determined and angry tone.
A spinning axe whirled across the cavern, cutting curlicues in the rising smoke. It smashed against the cavern wall a foot or two from Merken’s head.
“Time to go,” said Lorrika, ripping off the last of her bonds and snatching her leather roll of lock picks from of the heap of items Bez held. A flurry of arrows clattered around them.
Cope pushed the others ahead of her towards the nearest tunnel exit. “You too, sir,” she said, and gave Merken a shove.
Cope picked up the broken remains of a door for a shield as a trio of spears were flung across the burning cavern floor. Merken didn’t see where they landed. He stumbled after the thief and the wizard on uncooperative legs.
They ran, down dark unlit passages, with the yells of the grimlock cavern growing fainter behind them. There was a click, a “Thanks”, a mutter of arcane syllables and a pale blue light was now leading them on.
“Which way?” said Lorrika, the light spell the wizard had cast on her mouth flickering as she spoke.
The light bobbed left and Merken staggered after it, like a drunkard following ghost lights into a marsh. Merken felt a sudden dread he was being led to his doom and hesitated. Bez stumbled into the back of him, chains clinking.
“Don’t stop now, granddad. They’re coming!”
Merken himself bumped into the back of someone.
“A dead end!” shouted the wizard. Someone pushed Merken back the way they’d come.
He had not tottered more than dozen steps when they ran right straight into a grimlock war party in hot pursuit. Lorrika’s mouth light picked them out in flickering snatches. The grimlocks had brought their own light too: one of their feathery headpieces was fully ablaze.
Grimlock warriors hissed. Merken gave his best battle cry and reached for a blade which was not there. Pagnell raised his arms and, in a puff of light, two of the grimlocks dropped to the ground. Spears were rattled and primitive bows loosed. Lorrika raised a knife, grunted and dropped it. Then Cope Threemen stepped into the fray with a yell loud enough to start an avalanche, her longsword whirling around her head so fast it was a blur of silver light. The blade flashed down and grimlocks scattered like skittle pins. The blade swung up and the ceiling was splashed red.
“This way!” cried Pagnell. “Quick!”
Merken thought moving quickly was a capital idea, but was surprised to realise his body hadn’t received the memo. He started swearing at his legs, when a hand gripped his elbow and hauled him down a fresh tunnel.
They heard grimlock noises far behind in the passages they had left. It encouraged them on faster than ever. Merken felt the floor rush invisibly beneath him, yet could no longer feel his feet at all. He wondered if he still had feet, or if had perhaps mastered the art of effortless flight.
And then there was darkness and silence and a soft but insistent slapping sound.
“Are we all here?” whispered a voice.
“M’all here,” said Merken.
“What’s he doing?” said a voice.
“Jogging on the spot,” grunted another.
“N’m’not,” said Merken. “M’flying.”
“What’s wrong with him?” said a voice.
“He kissed a grimlock,” explained another. “I think he liked it.”
“Din’t. Dun’t’ven kiss m’wife. Wifey wife wife.” The word floated around Merken’s mouth, in and out. He tried to swat it away.
“I’ve got something for that,” said a voice.
There was the pop of cork and something cold was pressed against Merken’s lips. He drank. It tasted bitter but, more importantly, it struck his senses and gave his conscious mind a good slap, sending it from gibbering drunkenness to stark sobriety with just a split second of stunning hangover in between.
“Gnnh!” gasped Merken.
“Back with us?” said the wizard.
“Yes. What was that?”
“Liquid bezoar,” said Pagnell. “Felt like getting a bucket of water thrown in your face, yes?”
“Along with the bucket!”
With a cloth and a dab of oil, a fire was lit. It cast light on a sorry state of affairs. They had come to a stop in a short cul-de-sac, by a turn in the tunnel. Lorrika slumped against a wall, her face ashen and slick with sweat, a grimlock arrow embedded in her wrist, just above where the bandage around her hand ended. Cope stood beside her, an arm held tightly across her midriff, her jerkin stained with blood. Bez crouched over the pile of belongings he had managed to steal back from the grimlock trove: papers, scraps of food, a blade or two. No lamps, no weapons of note apart from Cope’s sword.
Merken scanned the pile, panic rising in him for a second, before realising he was holding the velvet pouch already and had been all this time. He tied it to his belt and felt all the better for it.
“What’s in there?” said Bez.
“Never you mind, bard,” said Merken. “How’s Pipsqueak?”
“She’ll live,” said Pagnell, who was inspecting the thief’s injury. Gently, he touched the arrow. Lorrika screamed.
Cope glanced down the tunnel. “You must keep quiet,” she muttered. “If the grimlocks hear us I do not know if we can fight them off.”
Merken nodded at Cope’s wound. “They get you too?”
The look Pagnell gave him was cold and hateful.
“You did it, sir,” said Cope. “When you cut me free from my bonds.”
Merken tried to remember. The poison-addled escape was naught but a damned dream now. “I thought I only cut through the wood and the ropes.”
“You thought, huh?” said Pagnell and returned his attention to Lorrika’s wound. “If we can pull out the arrow, I can stitch this. If we had something to stitch or bind it with.”
Moving with difficulty, Cope brought a hand up to her jerkin pocket. Her fingers fumbled inside and, as she pulled out a purse, a fat wad of dog-eared cards spilled onto the floor. She passed the purse to Pagnell. Merken bent to pick up the cards. What he had assumed were simply playing cards were actually rectangles of thick yellow card, each marked with a title such as How to Ask for Directions, How to Buy Goods in a Shop or How to Greet a Person of Importance. He read one:
How to Receive a Compliment
Listen to the compliment
Is the person being sarcastic or ironic? (see: How to Detect Sarcasm)
If n
ot, how does the compliment make you feel?
Say “Thank you” to the person who gave you the compliment.
Smile (no more than two seconds)
Determine if you should say something nice back.
See also:
How to Handle Drunkards
How to Fend off Predatory Men
How to Deal with Salesmen
“What are these?” said Merken.
“My instruction cards,” said Cope. “May I have them back, sir?”
Pagnell pulled a needle and bobbin of black thread from the purse. “This is ideal,” he said. “Right, Lorrika. I’m going to tend to your wound but I’m going to need to pull the arrow out. It’s going to hurt.”
“Pain is an illusion,” said Lorrika and, as Pagnell’s fingers brushed the arrow flights, she gave a yell.
“Can’t you damn well knock her out like you did the grimlocks?” said Merken.
“I’d have no way of waking her up. I’ve lost my smelling crystals.” Pagnell looked around and picked up a short, corked bottle. He emptied the silvery liquid within and muttered an incantation before putting the bottle in Lorrika’s good hand. “Scream into this.”
“Into this?”
Pagnell nodded and gestured to her to put it to her mouth. “Ready?”
“To scream?”
“For all you’re worth. Three, two, one—”
In one swift action, Pagnell snapped off the arrow flight with one hand and yanked the arrowhead through her arm with the other. Lorrika did indeed scream: screamed fit to burst. He mouth contorted, her face went red and the sound went … nowhere. Merken could hear a tight, whispering wind from the neck of the bottle, like a draughty door in a storm. As Lorrika panted in silent agony, Pagnell cast the arrow aside, pulled her torn sleeves away and readied the needle and thread.
“Hold her still!” he told Merken.
“Why not him?” said the soldier, scowling at Bez. The damned artist had found parchment and charcoal and was sat cross-legged, indulging in some pointless scribbling and sketching.
“I want you to hold her because I need to keep her still,” said Pagnell tersely. “And I trust you to do it.” He quickly cast a spell.
“What’s that?” said Merken.
“Nolan’s Magic Thread,” said Pagnell as the needle magically set to work stitching Lorrika’s wound with abnormal speed. Lorrika bucked and kicked, silent screams magically soaked up in the bottle. Merken kept the arm rock steady.
“So, what now?” asked Bez as he doodled.
“We find the next gateway,” said Pagnell.
“I saw something which could have been it,” said Cope. “A tall arch made of three stones?”
“Why didn’t you say?” said Merken.
“I assumed the people in charge knew where they were going,” she said.
If Merken didn’t know Cope was incapable of conversational subtleties, he would have taken that for insubordinate sarcasm.
“And then it’s onto the Pathways of the Righteous,” said Pagnell.
“Sounds easy enough,” said Merken.
“It’s a vast tiled hall. Each stone is linked to a different deadly trap and, if you step on any of them in the wrong order, then—” Pagnell made a strangled throat-slitting noise.
“—A duck appears?” said Cope.
“I meant ‘What now?’ as in we’re injured, depleted and lost and shouldn’t we turn back?” snapped Bez.
Merken glowered at him. “What did you expect? A gentle jaunt? Hot meals and a warm welcome at every turn? Damned fool. Any more talk of turning back and I’ll put a knife in you.”
“Got any knives left?” sneered Bez.
He had a point. “You’ll never know,” said Merken.
“We’re done,” said Pagnell.
“What?” said Merken.
Pagnell took the bottle from Lorrika’s lips and stood. Lorrika’s voice returned in ragged, weary gasps. Merken released her arm; his grip had left a row of tiny bruises.
“Right, Cope,” said Pagnell. “You’re next. Let’s get you sewn up.”
Cope unbuttoned the lower half of her jerkin and gingerly raised the bloodied tunic underneath. There was a long, shallow cut across the bottom of Cope’s ribs.
“I barely nicked you,” muttered Merken.
“Indeed, sir,” said Cope.
Pagnell held out the bottle to her. “Scream if you need to.”
“I won’t,” said Cope.
“This will hurt.”
“I was told never to cry out unless I wanted to draw attention,” said Cope. “And I don’t. So, I won’t.”
Pagnell corked the bottle and stuffed it in his coat. It made a muffled cry as he did.
Cope was true to her word and stood, lips pressed so tightly together the blood went from them entirely, but was otherwise silent. Nolan’s Magic Thread worked rapidly and neatly along the wound with the speed of a master seamstress. When it was done, Cope inspected the work and nodded in approval.
There were no clean bandages or cloths among the remains of their belongings, so Pagnell unwound the bandage from around his own head and used it to cover Cope’s midriff as best he could. Cope pulled her tunic down and buttoned her jerkin tightly.
“This Pathways of the Righteous,” said Merken. “Do you know how to cross it safely?”
“There’s a formula, a series of steps to remember,” said Pagnell. “High Priests of Buqit of the Sixth Order of Lamentation are taught it by rote. Only High Priests of the Seventh Order are actually allowed to cross the hall: they’re expected to have remembered it from their previous life.”
Bez laughed. Cope shushed him and looked down the tunnel.
“Most priests of my acquaintance,” Bez whispered, “can’t remember what they had for dinner yesterday. I’ve got more chance of sprouting wings than they’ve got of remembering past life events.”
“But do you know?” Merken insisted.
“The wizard Abington made notes on it somewhere,” replied Pagnell. “There’s a bunch of charts and diagrams.”
“That’s the If the tile has three sides and you’ve stepped on it with your left foot then consult Table F one,” said Lorrika. “I remember Abington working all of it out with an abacus. It made him quite cross.”
Merken knew Abington, and could imagine what quite cross looked like. He suspected the wizard had gone through several smashed abacuses before the task was done.
“Here,” said Lorrika and pulled Abington’s much battered, soaked and recently scorched journal from the pile. “It’s in here.”
Pagnell thumbed through it.
“So, to repeat, Sparkles,” said Merken. “You can get us across this hall of traps?”
“Absolutely,” said the wizard with a confidence Merken did not trust one jot. “When have I ever let you down?”
10
With a makeshift torch made from a grimlock spear, a bundle of rags and the last of their oil, Cope led the way back along the tunnel. Pagnell followed close behind her, muttering to himself as he studied the contents of Abington’s journal. Almost all of the dead wizard’s papers were lost: drowned in a waterlogged pit, scattered in the labyrinth or turned to ash in the grimlock cavern. A man’s work brought to naught.
Though he wouldn’t tell them as much, Merken didn’t hold out much damned hope for this mission now. With a wounded thief, an unarmoured warrior, a tu’penny-ha’penny wizard and a damned bard who was – even now! – sketching little caricatures when he could at least be acting as lookout, they were hardly a crack team of tomb raiders. If they could find the next threshold, if they could avoid wandering back into the labyrinth, if they could stay clear of a tribe of vengeful grimlocks, if they could cross the Pathways of the Righteous then they still had several levels of traps, guardians and barriers to pass through and not enough time in which to do it.
“Down there,” said Cope turning right.
She was, to Merken’s surprise, correct. The turn
ing brought them to a stone archway, beneath which stood a great door of age-blackened wood.
“Another riddle door?” said Merken.
Pagnell inspected it at length. “Ah, no. I think…”
He prodded it with his fingertips and it swung open on improbably well-oiled hinges. The space beyond was as black as the door. Blacker.
Pagnell took the torch from Cope and stepped warily through. Spots of light flickered overhead and grew until the hall before them was illuminated by six orbs of blue-white light, like giant hovering fireflies. The orbs hissed softly like insects in long grass.
“The work of the gods!” breathed Cope, impressed.
“Or a contained construction of permanent enchantment,” suggested Pagnell. “But, yes, it’s all very pretty.”
The hall was as big as any of the chambers in the temple above, as big as any banqueting hall Merken had been in. Large enough to hold jousting tournaments, and have room for spectator seating and a pie and ale stand on the side. Fluted columns lined both sides and between there was, as Pagnell had promised, a floor of coloured tiles. Marble, granite, quartz and other slabs of polished stone – which Merken could not identify – had been used to create a perfectly interlocking patchwork of squares, triangles, kites, arbelos, lozenges and shapes without names. Or at least, not names Merken knew.
The door on the far side of the hall looked very distant.
“These traps…?” queried Bez, looking on with trepidation.
Pagnell consulted his book. “Kavda the Builder was fond of, er, metaphorical descriptions. The Traitor’s Sting, The Touch of Purification, et cetera. Does it matter?”
“I was just wondering how severe they were.”
“Let’s assume they’re pretty severe,” said Lorrika. “I doubt any of the traps in here result in a strong verbal reprimand or unwarranted tickling.”
“Certainly not,” agreed Cope. “Unwarranted tickling would not be much of a deterrent, and it would be difficult to administer.”