by Jim C. Hines
“I need a bit of twine.” He held his hands a foot apart to indicate how long.
Darnak said nothing. He still seemed a bit uncomfortable with Jig. Did he feel guilty for almost letting Riana die? Jig didn’t care. In fact, the more uncomfortable they felt, the happier he would be.
Riana wouldn’t look at him at all, but it was harder for Jig to feel pleasure at that. Still, what did Jig care for an elf’s goodwill? If they hated him, he would hate them right back. That was his job. He was a monster and they were adventurers.
As he had hoped, among the endless junk the dwarf carried upon his back, Darnak managed to find a ball of twine, tangled up like an abandoned nest. He ripped a piece free and handed it to Jig.
He seized his trophy and moved to the front of the door, humming quietly under his breath. For once he knew exactly what to do. Better still, none of the others had thought of it. He scooped up one of Riana’s discarded tools, a thin steel rod as long as his hand with several diamond-shaped ridges near one end. He also grabbed her severed finger.
As he lashed the rod to the end of the finger, he began to sing. In Goblin, of course. The song sounded ridiculous in Human.
Oh, down came the humans into the dark.
Up raced the goblins, ready for a lark.
The humans were weary, much had they drunk that day.
The goblins found them sleeping, said, “Come on, let’s play.”
First they stripped the humans bare, then they painted ’em all blue,
Said one goblin to his mate, “This one looks a bit like you.”
From a fighter’s leather shield, they carved ears with points so keen,
And moldy old potatoes made noses large and green.
When the humans all awoke, they were in for quite a fright.
The goblin-looking fools instantly began to fight.
The wizard who survived called upon his magic flame
To slaughter the real goblins, then he killed himself from shame.
For if you fall in battle, all your friends and family mourn,
But to fall against the goblins is a thing that can’t be borne.
As he sang, he jabbed the metal rod into the keyhole and wiggled it around. The finger itself felt strangely stiff, more like leather-wrapped wood than flesh. No trace of blood showed at the severed end, and a bit of bone protruded a half inch past the shrunken skin, giving Jig a convenient handle. The poisoned needle jabbed the fingertip repeatedly as he worked, but nothing else happened. He tried for several more minutes, not knowing what exactly might trigger the traps. He could feel the rod scrape the inner workings of the lock, and he poked those as well. Still nothing.
“I guess there are no more traps,” Jig said. He dropped the finger, still tied to the lockpick, and walked back to sit against the wall. If he had built this room, he definitely would have put a second trap there.
Riana stood. Her face was stone as she walked determinedly, if a little unsteadily, to the door. Pale as she was, she didn’t flinch when she picked up the finger and tugged her lockpick free. She used her knife to bend the needle aside, then began to work on the lock itself.
While she worked, Jig went over to claim the discarded twine. He returned to his spot by the wall, where he took his belt pouch and chewed at the leather cord, trying to remove it without damaging the pouch itself. After a few minutes, the old cord lost its fight against goblin teeth, and he slipped it free.
He used the cord to tie the pouch over his right shoulder. Bringing the end of the pouch to his mouth, he used his fangs to bore two holes in the bottom. The twine secured that end to his upper arm. Smudge still refused to crawl into the pouch, and Jig couldn’t blame him. But this would provide a perch where the fire-spider could sit without burning Jig whenever they walked into danger. Which seemed to happen every time Jig took a breath.
“Prepare yourselves,” Barius said. “We’ve dallied here long enough, and the gods only know what waits behind that door.” He grabbed the end of Jig’s rope, looped it once around his wrist, and tugged.
Jig gagged and scrambled to his feet. Riana still hadn’t picked the lock, but Barius’s patience had run out.
Darnak drew his club and moved to stand behind Riana. Ryslind remained where he was, resting against the far wall. His eyes were alert though, Jig noticed. He watched, not the door, but the other adventurers. Jig looked away.
Three bodies peering over Riana’s shoulder did nothing to help her concentration. Her pick slipped, and she turned to glare at the dwarf. “Bad enough that my head pounds from your ale. I don’t need your breath adding to my drunkenness.”
“Your pardon,” Darnak said, taking a step back.
Only Jig heard her mutter to herself, “This would be easier if I wasn’t seeing double. Hard enough to pick one lock, let alone two.”
Something clicked. Riana grabbed a second tool, a thicker, angled rod which she jabbed into the keyhole. Keeping the first pick in place, she turned the larger rod, and the door popped inward.
Riana scrambled back to avoid the door and fell with a loud “Oof.” Darnak stepped over her body, club held high.
“Nothing,” he said.
The others moved toward the doorway as Darnak raised the lantern, shining a beam of light down the corridor.
Where the goblin tunnels had been smooth obsidian, this hall shone with the same black marble as the room behind them. Large panels of marble covered floor, walls, even the ceiling. Only the threads of red in the marble and thin stripes of glittering silver mortar gave the passage any color.
The labor that must have gone into building these tunnels didn’t impress Jig as much as the fact that they were so clean. Not a trace of dust marred the gleaming tiles. After all these years, he would have expected the floor to lose its polish. Either the Necromancer used magic to maintain his domain, or else nobody ever walked these tunnels. Jig decided to believe the first explanation.
“Nice,” Darnak commented.
“Dangerous,” said Barius.
Jig looked up, confused.
“Each panel is wide enough to cover a pit, like the one we encountered above,” the prince explained. “We must be cautious.”
Cautious meant sending the goblin ahead to trigger any traps. As Jig moved to the front of the party, he consoled himself with the fact that Barius kept a firm grip on the rope trailing from his neck. If the floor did fall away, at least the human would be able to haul his choking body back out. Assuming, of course, that Jig didn’t break his neck in the fall.
Once again they made slow progress as a result of Darnak’s compulsiveness. The dwarf had taken it upon himself to draw each individual tile on his map. “If one of these squares hides a trap,” he explained, “we’ll be wanting to know which one.”
This time, Jig had no complaints. The sluggish pace meant that he could test each tile before putting his full weight on it. He would press his back against the wall for balance and extend his toes to tap the next tile up the hall. If that felt safe, he ran to the opposite wall and did the same on that side. As the corridor was three tiles wide, this procedure eliminated all but one. The middle tile he simply tested with the ball of his foot. If something happened, he would be off-balance, but without a convenient wall to lean against, he had no choice in the matter.
Naturally it was a middle tile that turned out to be trapped. The corner sank a half inch, and Jig leaped back, flailing his arms for balance.
“Which tile?” shouted Darnak. He hurried to Jig’s side, counting as he went. “Ten, eleven, twelve . . . the thirteenth tile. Center one, right?”
Jig nodded. That had been too close. He could have easily fallen forward instead of back, and who knows what would have happened had he landed on the loose tile. But I didn’t. That was the important thing. He glanced to either side, waiting for the trap to spring.
Darnak’s quill scratched furiously as he penned a warning about the tile. Barius stepped closer, shoving Jig to one side. With his sword,
Barius prodded the corner Jig had stepped on. Another click, but nothing else happened.
He tried again, harder this time. “Perhaps it’s stuck,” he mused. “The mechanism grown tired from disuse? A clumsy oversight by whomever maintains these tunnels. What could be more useless than a trapdoor that refuses to open when triggered by its prey?”
“Behind us,” Riana yelled. At the same instant, Smudge flashed red-hot.
Darnak whirled, blinding Jig as the lantern’s beam passed over his eyes. The rope tugged Jig forward, then went slack. Jig crashed into the wall and stayed there, out of the way. Whatever was coming, Barius had decided to keep both hands free to deal with it.
Jig blinked and squinted. Riana had stayed behind, next to him. He could make out the shapes of Darnak and the humans moving back up the tunnel. Beyond, more humanoid figures moved in silence. Jig saw the glint of weapons from the new-comers. What were they? His vision was bad enough without the party blocking his view.
Riana had drawn her stolen knife, and her chest moved rapidly as her breathing quickened. She and Jig both jumped at the first clang of steel against steel.
But what was it they fought? Where had they come from? He suspected it was something to do with the trapped panel, but he didn’t understand what.
As if in response, the wall Jig had been leaning against vanished. It didn’t slide or fall away, as Jig would have expected. One moment it was there, and the next Jig was falling back into a small alcove. He looked up. A pale, dead face looked down at him. Nothing but an old corpse, Jig thought at first.
The corpse raised a spiked mace to strike.
Jig squealed and rolled aside as the mace cracked into the floor beside him. The thing’s decayed arm was little more than bone and a thin layer of dried flesh, but the strength behind that blow was a match for Darnak.
Smudge sprang free and hid behind the creature, out of sight. Lucky spider. Before the thing could attack again, Jig scrambled out of the alcove and collided with Riana.
The panel had disappeared from the opposite wall as well. Unlike the first creature, however, the inhabitant of this alcove was truly dead. The skin had decayed and flaked away, and one skeletal arm lay on the floor. Dust mingled with the smell of preservatives, and Jig had to grab his nose to keep from sneezing.
“There’s another behind me,” Jig yelled.
Whatever it was, it had begun life as a human, to judge from the rounded ears. Like the rest of its flesh, those ears were white and shrunken, but still recognizable. Rusted chain mail hung loosely from its shoulders, reinforced with metal plates at the knees and elbows. The hair was gone, making the head look like a skull covered in white mud except for the slight bulge of a nose and the clouded eyes that moved to track Jig’s movements.
The mace came up again. Riana fled farther up the corridor, and Jig started to follow, only to slip on the smooth marble. He rolled out of the way of another attack, but this moved him into the thing’s legs. It kicked Jig in the stomach, knocking him to the other side of the hall.
Jig gasped for breath. Doubled over, he could still see from the corner of his eye as the creature closed in.
But it stopped a few paces away. The skull-head turned to the right, then the left. Jig swore he saw the skin of the forehead wrinkle, as if in confusion. As the creature turned around, he saw why.
Beneath its armor, the creature wore tattered rags that had no doubt been magnificent finery, back when it was alive. Over time, decay had turned them to dry scraps. No color remained, and bits of thread hung down like the roots of a plant. Somehow those scraps had begun to burn, and nothing made better tinder than dry rags. Orange tendrils of flame danced beneath the armor, slowly climbing up the creature’s body while the threads blackened and shriveled.
As the fire grew, the creature began to slap the flames, but to no effect. Its own skin began to burn as it tried without success to extinguish itself.
Whether it was truly dead, or if some spark of life remained to guide it, Jig didn’t know. But the creature was apparently able to make decisions. Having realized it couldn’t stop the fire, it turned again toward Jig. A few more minutes and it would be consumed, but that was plenty of time to dispose of one little goblin.
So instead of the walking dead, Jig found himself facing a warrior of fire. Who still carried a big mace. This was not good. At least there was more light to see by, though. I guess there’s a bright side to every flaming corpse.
Jig grinned. That would make a good proverb, assuming he survived to tell it to anyone.
He scooted backward until he bumped into the bones that had fallen out of the far alcove. In his desperation, he grabbed the arm bone and flung it at the approaching creature.
It ducked out of the way, and the bone clattered into the far alcove. The far panel reappeared.
Jig stared. The panel was really back. He could see the flames reflected in the polished marble. That’s how they seal the alcoves after they kill off the intruders. That way they can go back and wait for the next adventurers.
“In here,” he shouted. Riana looked confused, so he grabbed her arm and threw her into the open alcove behind him. Even as she collided with the skeleton, her weight triggered the magic, and the marble panel began to shimmer into existence.
The creature swung as Jig leaped. He felt the wind and heat pass his head, and if Smudge hadn’t already burned his hair off, the creature probably would have ignited him. Passing through the shadowy panel was like swimming against a strong current. Or struggling against a whirlpool. His head and arms were already inside. He tried to push against the panel to help him through, but his hands sank uselessly into the half-formed marble.
What would happen if the panel finished appearing before he was inside? Would it fling Jig back into the creature’s grasp? Would it form around him, leaving his legs sticking out in the hallway?
Probably not, he decided. A better trap would simply cut him in half. Which would at least save him from a slower death by fire and mace.
Jig reached out blindly, caught Riana’s arm, and pulled as hard as he could.
He made it through. Old bones snapped as he landed on the now ruined skeleton, and Riana grunted with pain. In the sudden darkness, Jig couldn’t tell what part of Riana his knee had landed on, but she swore at him as she wriggled away.
Blackness. Not even a sliver of light passed through the panel. At first, Jig didn’t even want to breathe. He could hear sounds of combat in the hall. If he pressed an ear to the panel, he could even make out the cracking and popping of flames. A clatter of bones told him the fire had overcome whatever black art held the creature together.
“I hate this,” Riana said.
Jig didn’t bother to respond. He wasn’t too happy with the situation either, but at this point he didn’t know what he could do about it. At least they were safe. So he continued to listen to the fighting, wondering which side would come out alive. So to speak.
Only then did it occur to him that he didn’t know how to open the alcove from the inside. The dead warriors probably didn’t mind being trapped here for years at a time, but Jig did. Even ignoring the stench, he would quickly starve to death. With Riana here, he might last an extra week or so before hunger killed him.
If the adventurers lost, would the creatures leave him here to die? Or would they be intelligent enough to open the panel and finish him off? Of the two possibilities, Jig didn’t know which one frightened him more. A quick death was always better, that was a goblin truism. But whoever made up that truism hadn’t been fighting animated corpses. The idea of dying at the hands of those creatures left him queasy.
Riana spoke again, distracting him from what was happening outside. “I would have ended up like that.”
Remembering the hard, tight feel of her severed finger, Jig thought she was right. Those things had the same shriveled look to them. Were they adventurers who had fallen prey to the same trap that had caught Riana? Or did the Necromancer have other ways
to collect his soldiers? This whole place could be nothing more than a trap, one designed to provide new corpses for the Necromancer.
“I hate this,” she said again. “Can’t we make a light?”
Jig threw up his hands, forgetting that she couldn’t see. “Barius neglected to give me a lantern of my own. And Ryslind hasn’t taken the time to teach me magic. So I’m afraid we’re stuck in the darkness.”
“Don’t push me, goblin,” she snapped. “I’d wager my knife can find your heart even in the dark.” The anger drained from her voice at the end, though. Jig heard her shift position. It sounded like she had backed into the corner.
“I’ve never known darkness like this. Outside there were always the stars. When I scraped together enough gold for a night indoors, or when some innkeeper took me in out of the snow for a night, I always slept in the common rooms, with a fire blazing.”
“I’ve never seen the stars myself,” Jig said. The idea of such openness made him nervous. Worse, he had once heard stories about snow. Water and ice falling from the sky, with nothing overhead but a thin wooden roof for protection? How could they live like that?
Jig tried to stretch out, but the end of his rope was still looped around his arm, and the movement tightened the noose.
“What’s that?” Riana said loudly.
“Me,” Jig said, once he finished choking. He quickly unwound the rope from his arm. The noose was too tight for his fingers to pry loose. He felt around for a thin bone to use as a lever. Barius would be furious if he freed himself, but Barius might also be dead, and Jig was tired of being tied up.
He found two long bones that might work. One was too thin, but the other had a broken end with a jagged point. This could make a passable weapon. Not as nice as his sword, but better than nothing. As he felt along the other end of the dry, scaly bones, his fingers touched a loop of cold metal.
A bracelet? It was wide enough. The oval ring was as wide as his upper arm, but might fit snugly about a human’s wrist. He could feel hammer marks on the metal, and a bit of engraving on the inside. That was odd. Who engraved jewelry on the inside, leaving the outside bare and ugly?