by Jim C. Hines
Still maybe he could swap it to Barius for his sword. He slid the bracelet onto his arm, above the elbow, then snorted. Sure, and after Barius returned his sword, Jig would get Ryslind to teach him that fire-shooting spell. Maybe he’d follow it all up by asking Darnak for his wineskin.
He grabbed the bone and shoved it through the noose, close to the knot. The point scratched his neck, and he couldn’t pry the knot too hard without choking himself. He tried again, giving up only when blue spots of light began to float across his vision. Had the knot loosened at all? He couldn’t tell. Gasping, he fell back against the wall.
“What are you doing?”
Jig felt his neck. The touch stung, and his fingers came away sticky. “Cutting my throat.”
“What?”
He ignored her confused question. Tossing the bone away, he went back to searching the floor. Whoever this was, he had died wearing that bracelet. The other creatures still bore weapons and armor. What else might this one have with him? Jig hadn’t had time to look at things very closely before flinging himself into the alcove.
“If anyone cuts your throat, it should be me,” Riana muttered.
He often brushed against her foot or hand as he searched. Each time she slapped him away. It was too easy to get turned about in here. Time after time, Jig fixed Riana’s position in his mind, only to run into her in another corner. Bad as his vision might be, he wished for even that poor sight to return. Worse than his disorientation, Jig was beginning to hallucinate. Movements to either side, colors that vanished when he blinked. But Jig had lived his whole life underground. Darkness was not uncommon. While not a welcome thing, anyone who couldn’t cope with the dark tended to die an early death.
Jig closed his eyes and straightened his ears. The most difficult part was letting yourself ignore the lies your eyes told. Eyes were like children. If they had nothing to say, they made things up. Focusing on Riana’s breathing, he continued to search through the bones.
His search turned up a few small coins, an old belt, and a pair of boots that came all the way to Jig’s knees, but no knife or sword. Nothing he could use to free himself from Barius’s noose.
The boots he kept, even though they were a bit too large. Their hard soles would be too loud on the floor, so he tore them off. The threads were loose and broke easily. In the process, he ripped the seams by the toes of one boot, but that didn’t matter. They were still better than bare feet, especially down here, where he didn’t know what he might be stepping on.
More importantly, they gave him a way to hide his bracelet. Goblins had large feet, but skinny limbs, and with a bit of force, Jig shoved the bracelet around his ankle. It might pinch a bit when he walked, but this way Barius wouldn’t take it from him.
The belt tore apart when he tried to use it. The leather had rotted too badly to be worth anything.
“What are you doing, Jig?”
“Trying to find a knife.” Failing to find a knife would be more honest. Wasn’t it Jig’s luck to end up trapped with the only unarmed corpse in the place? If he couldn’t find a weapon, he would have to go back to the bone.
“Why? Didn’t you already cut your throat?” She snorted. “Or are goblins as clumsy at suicide as with everything else?”
“For this noose. I want it off!” Where was the bone he had used before? There were so many. Could all of these bones really fit into one person? Even a human? And what were all of the tiny ones for? There must be hundreds scattered across the floor.
Before he could find one to use, Jig was jerked sideways by the noose. His head smacked into the wall. His fingers clawed at the rope as he tried to gain himself another breath. He could hear Riana next to him. She had the rope in her hand. What was she doing?
“This noose?”
Jig gagged something close to, “Yes.”
Riana stood, pulling Jig with her. “If you had been tied up back there, I’d still have two working hands.”
Or you’d have been one of those creatures. Even if he wanted to say it, he couldn’t. The noose was too tight, and he couldn’t pull it away. He needed air.
Wait, it wasn’t the noose he had to fight. It was Riana.
“They were coming back to heal me. Barius told me Darnak had prayed for a spell that would cure the poison.”
That made sense. They couldn’t have told her the truth, after all. Not if the prince didn’t want to wake up one morning with a knife in his belly. They knew Riana’s temper as well as Jig did.
Jig squirmed and reached behind his head. He didn’t know if she would really kill him or not, but he couldn’t take the chance. His fingers found Riana’s wrists. He squeezed, but she was too strong. He couldn’t pry her grip loose.
That was okay. He hadn’t planned to do this by brute strength.
His hand slipped past her wrist and up her sleeve. She figured out what he was doing and pulled back, but he had already grabbed the hilt of her knife, the one she had stolen from Barius. As she leaped away, the knife stayed with Jig. Seconds later, he was free of the noose and gagging on the floor.
“I can still kill you,” Riana warned. “For all you know, I could have a dozen more daggers stashed away.”
But she didn’t attack. She was afraid, Jig realized. Afraid of him! They had fought, and Jig had won. And he was too tired and sore to give one whit about his victory. He only wanted to curl up and rest.
So he did. He kept one ear aimed at the corridor so he could hear what was happening outside. The other remained pointed at Riana. He thought she was bluffing about the knife, but there were plenty of sharp bones in here. He wouldn’t let her surprise him again. Which was why he couldn’t allow himself to sleep. Even though he was so tired that the bone-littered floor felt almost comfortable.
The fighting couldn’t go on for much longer. If the adventurers won and came back for Jig and Riana, they would be free soon. Otherwise, it didn’t matter if Riana killed him or not.
The noise in the corridor stopped a little while later. Despite Jig’s vigilance, Riana noticed first. “They’ve stopped.”
Jig had listened as the clash of battle died, but he hadn’t really heard it. Dealing with all of these people trying to kill him must have left him more tired than he realized.
“Should we call for help?” Riana asked.
“I don’t know. If those corpses won, they might not be too eager to help us. Especially after we burned one of them up like that.”
“What happened to him anyway? Where did the fire come from?”
Knowing she couldn’t see, Jig grinned at her. “My guess is that Smudge got hungry. I haven’t fed him since yesterday.” When she didn’t say anything, he explained. “Fire-spiders like their meat cooked. Not much meat on those things, but I guess he decided it was better than starving.”
He felt bad when he thought about it. Usually Jig took much better care of Smudge. Things had been too hectic lately, that was all. He hoped he’d be able to find something better than ancient human corpses to feed to the spider.
Since he couldn’t do that from in here, Jig pounded against the marble panel with his dagger. The noise echoed in the small alcove, and Riana yelped.
“What are you doing? You said yourself that those things might still be out there.”
Jig hit the panel again. “Either something lets us out, or else you get to stay in here with me until we both die.”
A few seconds later, Riana grabbed a bone and joined him.
CHAPTER 8
Armed to the Teeth
The panel faded to shadow. Jig squinted as light pierced the blackness of the alcove. Outside he saw Darnak’s stocky silhouette waiting, club held high.
Before the panel could vanish entirely, Jig moved his stolen knife behind his back, handle toward Riana. Darnak probably wouldn’t complain that Jig had, once again, freed himself of the rope. Coming out with knife in hand would be a different thing entirely. Darnak could get a bit club-happy after a fight, and Jig had been abuse
d enough today without adding a whack from the dwarf.
“Take it,” Jig whispered as the panel disappeared entirely. He stepped forward, placing himself in front of Riana so she could grab her knife unseen.
Which she did. Jig’s relieved grin tightened with pain as she sliced his fingers in the process.
“Thanks,” she said sweetly, too low for Darnak to hear. She slipped past Jig and smiled in passing.
Elves. They could be as bad as goblins sometimes. Jig clenched his fist to close the cut and hoped nobody would notice.
“Come on,” Darnak said. Sweat streaked his face and plastered curls of hair to his forehead, and he sported a stained red bandage on his arm. “We’ve regrouped back this way to catch our breath. Undead bastards gave us quite a fight.”
Jig could see that for himself. Of the creature Smudge had burned, nothing remained but a skeleton that lay in the middle of a man-shaped pile of ash. Jig felt thankful for his new boots, since he had to walk through those remains to catch up with the others. He tried to ignore the crunch of his footsteps as he followed Darnak.
Smudge scurried over and climbed Jig’s leg.
“Good spider,” Jig whispered, reaching down to scratch Smudge’s head. “Very good spider. A warrior-spider.” He glanced back at the bones and ash. “And still a hungry spider, I suspect. I doubt you found much meat on that thing. Don’t you worry, I’ll get something for you to eat.”
The remains of the other creatures cluttered the corridor. One had been hacked to pieces, probably by Barius’s sword. Another still jerked and twitched, as if trying to continue the attack. It might have succeeded, had its head not been lying upside down farther up the corridor. Darnak gave the body a lazy smack in passing, and the thing fell still.
As for the rest, even Jig could figure out how they had died. Only Ryslind’s magic killed with such finality. These bodies were the least damaged, but each showed a large, blackened hole where the hearts would have been. Was there any limit to what Ryslind could do? Jig counted four who had fallen to the wizard’s fire.
The smell was terrible, and he tried not to breathe through his nose until he had joined Darnak and the others in the room where they had first come through the whirlpool. Even there the charred scent of Ryslind’s work followed him.
He braced himself for Barius’s outburst as he passed through the door. No doubt the prince would yell and threaten and demand to know how Jig could have been so stupid as to trigger the trap. But Barius was in no shape to yell.
The prince lay in the middle of the room, next to the water pillar. His shirt and armor were piled to one side, and his white skin was pale even for a human. Bandages covered his stomach; another bound his left shoulder. Both were wet with blood.
“Is he dead?” Jig asked, trying to keep his hopefulness from showing.
“Pah.” Darnak spat on the pillar. Jig stared, fascinated, as the spittle shrank and vanished, somehow passing through the barrier and into the waters of the whirlpool.
“He’s not dead. He just tried a riposte when he should have parried in four.”
Jig nodded as though he understood.
“Don’t worry, he’ll be his charming self soon enough. Earthmaker won’t allow us to fail, not from a few scratches like that.”
“Earthmaker sounds like a useful person to have around,” Jig said.
“Aye. He’s one who rewards his followers. Over a hundred years I’ve offered up my sacrifices and prayed to him for guidance. Far be it from me to guess the mind of a god, but I’m thinking he’ll not repay a century of service by letting us all die here.”
Ryslind strolled to the dwarf’s side. “Yet for all of your devotion, your magic is still limited to those powers your god grants you. To be so dependent on the whim of a deity would be disturbing, to say the least.”
“It’s called faith,” Darnak snapped. “And it’s a far cry safer than your wizardry. When’s the last time you heard about a priest blowing himself up after trying a new spell and waving three fingers instead of four?”
They glared at each other, the dwarf’s tiny eyes not leaving Ryslind’s glowing ones. They might have continued for hours had Barius not stirred.
“Forgive my interruption,” the prince said, “but could your time not be better spent by aiding one who still bleeds from his wounds?”
“Aye,” answered Darnak. He knelt next to Barius and began praying. One hand covered the stomach wound, which looked like the more serious injury. Between his prayers, so low that even Jig could barely hear, Darnak muttered, “I’d love to see your high and mighty wizardry cure this.”
After a while, he leaned back and said, “He’ll need a few hours of rest. Earthmaker has closed the cuts, but it’ll take a bit of Barius’s strength to finish the job.”
“Perhaps your god is busy with other matters,” Ryslind said.
“Aye,” Darnak answered agreeably. His easygoing nod contrasted sharply with his earlier grumbling. Perhaps relief at Barius’s recovery had put him in a better mood. “A whole world of prayers, and you think he can spend all his time on one dwarf?”
Jig ignored the rest of the discussion. Several times now, Darnak had healed wounds that would have crippled a goblin. What would it be like to have that kind of power available all the time? To know that, no matter how grave the injury, a journey to the closest priest could fix you in a matter of hours?
At first the idea seemed wondrous, and Jig had to fight off a surge of jealousy. The more he thought about it, though, the more he began to question if that sort of power would necessarily be a good thing. What would bullies like Porak do if they knew their victims could recover from almost anything? Instead of tossing rodents into the muck pot, why not set Jig himself on fire? Wouldn’t it be far more entertaining to spend the afternoon playing flame-the-goblin? Especially if the victim could come back the next day, good as new and ready to play the game all over again.
But maybe gods were smarter than that. The fact that the gods had always ignored goblinkind might be a sign that they understood how much trouble a magic-wielding goblin could cause.
Darnak dug into his pack for food and came up with a new loaf of bread, which he passed around to the party. He also found several more strips of meat, as well as a small wheel of cheese. This he dusted off and cut into five pieces.
The cheese was good, if a bit strong. As before, Jig received only two pieces of the meat. He would have to endure bread again if he wanted to fill his belly.
Riana, he noticed, had taken some of her bread and tucked it into her shirt, along with a little meat. Saving something for later? That was probably a good idea. He waited until nobody was looking, then slipped one strip of meat into his boot.
The other he tore into with relish, eating half with one bite. As he swallowed, he noticed Smudge. The fire-spider quivered on Jig’s knee, and all eight eyes followed the meat in his hand.
“I don’t suppose I could interest you in some bread?” he asked, holding out a piece. Smudge actually heated up a bit as he scooted away, confirming Jig’s impression of the so-called food. “Right,” he sighed.
Resigning himself to a meal of cheese and bread, he tossed the remaining meat onto the floor. Smudge sprang. His legs landed to either side of the meat like a cage. Seconds later, the smell of burning meat drifted through the air as Smudge cooked his food.
“Enjoy it.” Jig brushed a bit of dirt off the cheese and took another bite. By alternating cheese and bread and drinking a fair amount of water, he managed to finish off the meal. But he would have given so much for just one cup of Golaka’s stew. Even day-old stew, the kind you had to skin before you ate, would have been heaven-sent.
“If I had the Rod of Creation, I’d use it to make some real food,” he decided.
“Another attack like that, and we won’t even make it to the dragon’s lair,” Darnak told him. “Let alone find the rod.”
“Will there be more traps?” Riana asked quietly. She tried to sound casu
al, but Jig could see the way she kept looking at the stump of her finger.
Barius coughed and rolled onto his side. “You’re the burglar of this party. What say you?”
She glared at him. “All those dead things couldn’t have come from one little trapped lock. The Necromancer could have traps everywhere. He could have armies waiting to pour out of the walls next time. Or maybe he set spells to turn us all into creatures like that. Even if we found every trick panel and poison needle, how are we going to find those traps hidden by magic?”
Her eyes kept going to the whirlpool. Jig knew what she was thinking about. She wanted to escape, to find a way back up to the surface. But she was doing everything she could to hide her fear.
As far as he could tell, nobody else had noticed. None of them showed any sign of fear, so they probably didn’t see it in others. They were adventurers, after all. Jig, on the other hand, had enough fear for the entire party.
Maybe that was what made Riana seem smarter than the others. She was no more a hero than Jig was. Of course, she was a young girl, barely more than a baby for her race, whereas Jig was a grown goblin. Why was he so afraid?
He didn’t bother to answer that question. He could have spent the next three hours listing reasons to be afraid, and all it would do was make him even more frightened.
“Our elven thief has a point,” Barius said. “Perhaps she begins to learn wisdom. No doubt the Necromancer’s traps litter this place like horse dung on the highway.”
“A beautiful image, prince,” Ryslind said.
Barius nodded, completely missing the sarcasm. “Brother, I think we must call upon your art once more. Can you guide us through this maze of traps and death?”
“Perhaps we should rest a mite longer,” Darnak said quickly.
Remembering the wizard’s fit after they came through the whirlpool, Jig was inclined to agree.
“There must be another way to find the Necromancer and the path to Straum’s domain. Would anyone be knowing a song, a story, even a rumor about this place?” Darnak looked around hopefully. “Anything at all, no matter how strange or confusing.”