Seeker of Secrets

by Deck Davis

  “Huytum means ‘nice try’ in Skoltic-dwarven,” said Kordrude. “Of course, if it’s heetum, and the emphasis was on the ‘he’ in a sort of deep way, it could mean ‘your fate is but a whisper in the ears of a god’. That’d be in the language of the old tree people in the forests in the far south, but the language has fallen out of use.”

  Joshua stared at him, completely and utterly amazed.

  Kordrude shrugged. “I am a level 4 linguist.”

  “That’s expert level. Wow.”

  “Well, you saw me talk dragon-tongue. Did you think a novice could do that?”

  “How far away are you from mastery?”

  “There are just two master linguists in Fortuna,” said Kordrude. “To achieve linguistic mastery, you must learn every single language in the isles to a level of basic understanding. Not fluency – that would be ridiculous. But you must know enough of all of them to at least be able to make yourself understood.”

  “And how many more do you need?”

  “Just one.”

  “One? What’s stopping you? If I was in your shoes, I’d be a master by now!”

  “Because,” said Kordrude, “the final language I need is Polkonan.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Nor would you, because the language has died out along with the tribe who spoke it. Only two people in all of Fortuna know it.”

  “The other master linguists,” said Joshua.

  “Correct.”

  “Then go see them.”

  “I did. One of them, in a cruel twist of fate, has been struck mute. He was walking his pet dog in the forest in the middle of a storm season, and a bolt of lightning hit him.”

  “And the other guy?”

  “He wants a hundred thousand gold coins to teach me the final language.”

  “That’s more gold than in the vault of the three kings,” said Joshua. “He’s really prepared to let the language fade away when he dies? Surely that means there will never be a master linguist again?”

  “He’s a bitter old fool,” said Kordrude.

  “Shut up!” shouted a voice from the basement.

  Joshua stared into the darkness. “Sorry, Benjen. We’ll focus.”

  “It’s not you. It’s the rats, they keep squeaking to each other. Listen, my leg is really starting to cramp up now, and I’m scared that I’m gonna take my foot off the plate.”

  That did it. Joshua went back to pacing around and around. They needed an expert, but whoever could disarm such a device was sure to gouge them for gold in order to get his or her services. They had enough expenses they needed to pay for as it was, without forking out for extras. Disarming a pressure-activated mana trap definitely hadn’t been in their budget.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s think about this. I know this sounds insane, but I’m just throwing ideas around.”

  Kordrude nodded. “Go on…”

  “Let’s say Benjen takes his foot off the plate and sprints like hell up the stairs. There’s a chance he’ll make it.”

  “And a chance that he’ll blunder into another plate in his hurry. Or that the spell is so quickly-activated that there’s no escaping it.”

  “Okay, and if that happens? A mana trap can be an explosion, sure, but what else? I just want to know what we’re dealing with.”

  Kordrude shrugged. “This isn’t my area. If I had to imagine all the weird and wonderful things a mage might load into a trap, I would think about poisonous vapors, beams of burning light, a mist that eats the flesh from your bones…”

  “Can we change the subject?” called Benjen. “Stepping off this thing is not a bloody option.”

  “Then I’m just going to have to go to Ardglass,” said Joshua.

  Benjen groaned. Joshua’s pulse hammered in his ears. “Benjen?”

  “Gods, this cramp. I honestly can’t hold it in.”

  Joshua heard the urgency in his friend’s voice now. For something to happen to Benjen so soon after getting to the guildhouse, he wished he could say such a thing was unimaginable. The problem was that he could picture it all too clearly; the trap going off, horrid-smelling vapors expelling from it, Benjen screaming…

  “I’ll never get to Ardglass in time,” he said. “His cramp will set in too badly. We’re just going to have to replace the weight of his foot on the trap with something else.”

  “Any trap maker worth the title knows how to counteract such tampering,” said Kordrude.

  Benjen groaned again. Louder this time.

  Joshua’s stomach lurched.

  “We need something. Anything. I’ll run down there and throw myself on the trap if I have to. In fact, screw it. I won’t let him get hurt. I’m going down there…”

  Suddenly, Kordrude leapt to his feet. The feathers on his face stuck out, and his black bird eyes widened.

  “Benjen,” he shouted. “You said the trap made a sound like a word. Like huytum or heetum, yes?”

  Benjen groaned what must have been ‘yes, Kordrude. You’re quite right.’

  “Could it have been kuytum by any chance?”

  “What does that mean?” asked Joshua.

  Now, it was Kordrude’s turn to pace around. Except he didn’t do it through a nervous tension; his face was alive with excitement.

  “It’s a word used by a people called the Malformed. They live in the mountains in an island far east of Fortuna, one that is only accessible once every four years, when the weather conditions align perfectly. They are an old and ponderous people, and their language developed to match their demeanor. For them, a single word can convey a wealth of ideas.”

  “And?” said Joshua, tension gripping every part of his body. “What does kuytum mean to them?”

  “It means, approximately, ‘speak the name off the Fallen one that he might listen, for every wanderer deserves a chance, every thief redemption. If the name is not known the judgment is given and so decreed.’”

  “What does that mean?” said Joshua.

  “Your trap must have been made by the magi of the Malformed. Since they rarely get visitors, they prepare for years for the ships that come when the seas allow, and they make sure to have things to trade with them. Traps and other such magical trinkets are popular. But…the Malformed have a sense of justice; their religion demands it. Every trap they make provides the victim with a chance.”

  Joshua waited for his seeker binding to update with this new information, but nothing happened. Then he realized that Kordrude had only told them about the Malformed; he hadn’t actually seen them.

  “You said ‘speak the name of the Fallen one.’ Who’s that?”

  Kordrude kneeled by the basement doors now and he stared into the darkness.

  “Garasil,” he shouted.

  There was a ringing sound, like a wind chime tinkling in the breeze. Joshua felt his stomach tighten, and he half-braced himself for Benjen to shout. He fought through the feeling, and he almost tore down the stairs toward his friend, but Kordrude must have read his intentions. The crowsie grabbed his arm.

  “Be careful, there may be more.”

  Joshua nodded. He knew Kordude was right. He tried to be level-headed in everything he did, but that was impossible where his friend’s safety was concerned.

  “Benjen, are you okay?”

  “It’s stopped glowing,” said Benjen. “I think it’s disarmed.”

  “I’m going to get a torch,” said Joshua. “I’ll take the steps one by one and make sure there are no more traps, and I’ll light a path for you to get out.”

  Then, he turned to Kordrude. “I need to know who placed that trap, because it sure as hell wasn’t anyone from the guild. Nobody in their right mind would lay traps like that in their own basement. Something is down there that someone else doesn’t want us to find. I want to know what that thing is, and who planted it.”

  Store of Secrets updated

  [Rare] Secret added: What is in the guildhouse basement?

  Chapter Sixteenr />
  Joshua, holding a half-melted wax candle that Kordrude had found in the grand hall, took the steps down into the darkness of the basement one at a time. It was a strange sort of feeling, the idea that one wrong step could unleash a mist of gas that would melt the flesh from his bones or could let out a gust of dust that boiled the blood in his veins.

  Trap makers were a demented bunch.

  Mana traps were something he hadn’t even thought he’d need to deal with, but then, the estate agent who sold the building had explained the strangeness of the building and the way it had been abandoned. It was how they’d gotten it so cheap, after all.

  Twenty-three years ago, the house had been a functioning heroes’ guild. By all accounts, Jandafar, the gnoll guildmaster, was a businessman above everything else, and thus he charged as much as he could for sending his heroes out on quests.

  This didn’t make the residents of nearby towns like Ardglass cheer his name when they saw him, but still, this was the only guild around. What choice did they have?

  Then, the guild shut overnight. Apparently, a man had travelled to the guild to request someone take care of a plague of giant locusts wreaking havoc in his olive farm, and he found it empty.

  The heroes had left the guild overnight without a hint of warning or explanation. Jandafar the Red was nowhere to be found, and nobody from this area of Fortuna had heard of him again.

  What had made the heroes go? Nobody had any idea. The most chilling thing about it all was the fact that the heroes hadn’t been heard from since.

  The state declared Jandafar as a criminal, and according to the three kings’ new justice and property policies, this meant that the building had to be auctioned to the highest bidder. Joshua and Benjen picked up a bargain all those years after the guildmaster and his heroes had vanished.

  Now, though, that left him and Benjen with a question, one they wouldn’t answer with Benjen still down in the basement.

  “Just don’t move,” he said into the darkness.

  A low voice answered him, one full of the tones of someone feeling a little sorry for themselves. “…I won’t. Can’t see a thing down here.”

  “I’ve got a candle.”

  He would have cleared the steps in a second normally, but the threat of more traps urged caution in him, and he scanned every inch of the stone as he progressed, looking for any sort of bump or irregularity. He really, really didn’t want to have his flesh melted from his bones.

  His natural awareness skill told him that there were rats close by, but he wasn’t worried about those. Through zoology, he knew that rats would rarely attack unless provoked or cornered. The biggest danger here was the mana traps.

  “Did the trap glow before you stepped on it?” he said.

  Benjen called from the darkness. “No, only afterwards. That was when it made a ringing sound and spoke a word to me.”

  “There could be a dozen of the things down there for all we know.”

  Clearing the steps, he finally reached the basement proper. There was a strange change in temperature when he stepped into it, almost like it was another climate entirely. Rather than a cold chill like in the larder – or like in most basements – there was a heat down there, the kind of comfortable warmth you’d find in the greenhouse of a botanical garden.

  He held the candle in front of him. The flame stood straight and proud with no breeze to make it dance, but the glow it gave illuminated barely a few feet in front of him, before growing weaker.

  “Benjen?”

  “Over here.”

  He followed his friend’s voice, holding the candle low so that he could see the floor clearly. The basement floor was made from a stone that was a faded pink in color, full of nicks and dents, and with sparling flecks in places. Joshua had never considered learning the mineralogist class, but he knew what this stone was, he knew how rarely it was used as a building material, and he knew why someone might pay a fortune to use it.

  “Remember when that guy stayed at the inn?” said Joshua. “He was heading to the docks in the southwest and catching a boat to the Sunken Shores.”

  “Yeah, he kept bragging about all the money he had, but then tried to get us to buy him drinks all night.”

  “He was a salesman, wasn’t he? I remember his little wooden box that he showed us, and it was full of rock samples.”

  “I must have been too bored to listen.”

  “Yeah you were singing that bloody song again. Anyway, the guy travelled around with all sorts of stone samples, like that black stone that was completely fire-resistant. He tried to get Leopold to buy a load of good-luck bricks and rebuild the tavern with them so he’d get more customers.”

  “Oh yeah! I remember now…vaguely. It’s one of my misty nights.”

  Misty nights were the names for the evenings in Benjen’s memory, of which there were many, that were slightly hidden by a coating of drunken haze. It meant that these memories couldn’t be completely trusted for their accuracy. If, through some unfortunate chain of events, Joshua was ever on trial for murder or something, he hoped to God that Benjen’s misty nights weren’t the only evidence he had to rely on.

  “What about it, anyway?” said Benjen.

  Joshua moved the candle closer to the slightly flesh-colored stone flooring. “He showed me a sample of this stuff. It’s called quarite. It’s a strange kind of rock; its liquid when you lay it, but then it solidifies and becomes completely unbreakable. Get the best pickaxe in the world and try and smash it up, and you’ll end up with a broken pickaxe and a sore hand.”

  “Someone was awfully protective of the basement.”

  “That’s not even the half of it. Quarite is completely magic-proof, too.”

  “So, what, we can’t dig this stuff up, and we can’t get a mage to blast it apart?”

  “No. And as well as that, someone went to the trouble of laying mana traps. The traps alone are worth a fortune, and quarite is the kind of stuff the palace of the three kings is made of.”

  “What the hell is down here that they need to protect so much?”

  “I don’t know. I have no idea how, but I’m going to find out.”

  “Don’t start getting wrapped up in it, Joshy. You know how you get with puzzles and stuff.”

  Joshua knew Benjen was right; this mystery would only drive him crazy if he couldn’t find out why someone had gone to such lengths to keep the basement floor intact. He couldn’t dig it up, nor could magic help. In simpler words, it was impossible.

  There would be no sleep tonight, he knew. His chances of a peaceful snooze were already small after finding the mysterious five doors in the tunnel in the guildmaster’s bedroom – the tunnel that simple geography said shouldn’t have existed.

  Now, with this palatial basement flooring, the chances of sleep and dreams were gone. They’d disappeared surer than Benjen’s self-control when they went to the tavern for a ‘quiet couple of drinks.’

  He aimed the candle around him now, checking every inch of the basement. In doing this, and taking small, steady steps, he found just three more mana traps. These were little oval rock discs placed on the flooring, darker in color and with rune etchings on them.

  “This way,” said Joshua, when he found Benjen. “There are two traps to your right, one on your left. Come this way and walk in a straight line.”

  Benjen took one step and then groaned.

  “You okay?” said Joshua.

  “Cramp…bloody cramp.”

  Joshua put his arm around Benjen’s big shoulders and helped him hobble out of the basement and then up the staircase.

  There, they found Kordrude waiting for them.

  “Three more traps,” said Joshua. “I’m guessing each is pressure activated.”

  Kordrude nodded. “And I imagine there is a mechanism or charm of some sort that will stop you simply picking them up.”

  “Wouldn’t the word you spoke have disarmed them all?”

  “If the traps were indeed made
by the Malformed, which I believe my success in disarming Benjen’s trap has proven, then each will have a different word that is needed to render it safe.”

  “And the only way to hear the word is to step on the plate.”

  “Or,” said Benjen, “We hire someone who can disarm traps.”

  “Three mana traps? That’s gonna cost a fortune. I’d rather keep the basement doors closed for the time being. There’s nothing we need down here anyway. But…that brings me to something else.”

  Kordrude and Benjen both looked at him, waiting. Joshua assembled the jumble mess of thoughts in his head to something he hoped was structurally sound.

  “You leave traps for only one reason, the way I see it. To protect something. Or, somewhere. For the mana traps to be set, I think there’s something in the basement that someone else doesn’t want to be taken, or found, even. I know that sounds vague, but it’s the best I’ve got.”

  “The traps could be for rats,” said Benjen. “A couple of them came and took a sniff when I was standing on the trap.”

  “No. They manage to scamper around down there and they’re too clever to stand on the plates.”

  “The rats are too clever to stand on one?” said Benjen. “What exactly are you saying about me, then?”

  Joshua smiled. “That you’re special…in your own unique way. But think about it; you wouldn’t set a mana trap to catch a few rats. It’s ineffective because the mana traps aren’t designed for rat catching, and it’s also a ridiculously costly option. You can buy rat traps for half a bronze in most markets.”

  “I think you are right,” said Kordrude. “The Malformed get visitors so rarely that when they do trade, their prices reflect their isolation. Not a cheap method of eliminating vermin at all.”

  “So, it’s logical then, that something’s down there is valuable enough to need protection. Not only that, given the floor is made of quarite, I think it’s safe to assume whatever this thing is, its buried under there.”

  “Mana traps and quarite,” said Benjen. “This thing must be worth a fortune, whatever it is. How do we get it?”

  Kordrude paced a little. “Worth a fortune, yes. Perhaps. But, there’s also something else it could be.”