The Dungeoneers

by John David Anderson

  Lena wasn’t deterred. “Oh, please let me fight it,” she pleaded with Finn. “Just to show you how I would have killed it.” She turned to the goblin and half whispered. “Don’t worry, I won’t really slay you.”

  “You’re flamblasted right you won’t!” Herren Bloodclaw shouted, reaching out for her with both hands, but Finn held him back.

  “That won’t be necessary, Miss Proudmore,” the rogue said. “Your courage was never in doubt, and we are thankful that a well-timed spell from Mr. Frostfoot here probably spared the overseer’s life. Aren’t we, Ren?” Finn looked at the goblin, who huffed but didn’t say otherwise.

  “What matters is that you are here at last.” The rogue indicated the great gleaming hall with both hands. “Normally there would be a warmer welcome, but I’m afraid the other masters are preoccupied at the moment, and your fellow apprentices are all asleep.”

  “Fellow apprentices? Does that mean we’ve been accepted?” Serene asked in her reticent whisper, peeking over Colm’s shoulder.

  “It means you passed,” Finn repeated. “Though nothing is official, not without Master Thwodin’s approval. You still have some time to think it over. Tomorrow we will give you a proper introduction, give you a feel for what we do here, what you can hope to accomplish as a member of our guild. Then you can decide whether this line of work is right for you.”

  He was speaking to everyone, but Finn was looking dead at Colm. Colm took in the vast chamber, thinking of how much it must have cost to build. Just one of those paintings was probably worth more than his father made in a month, or even a year. Not to speak of the gold chandeliers or the marble pedestals that lined both sides of the room.

  He looked back at the hole they had just crawled out of. This was it. This was the treasure at the end.

  Finn Argos pointed up at the bottom-heavy hourglasses. “No doubt you have hundreds of questions, but as you can see, it’s late, and I’m sure we are all tired from the long roads we took to get here. I’m afraid sleeping space is limited, so you will have to share a room. Master Bloodclaw, if you could please escort Miss Proudmore and Miss Willowtree to the ladies’ hall . . .”

  “I’m not goin’ anyplace with her,” the goblin spit, pointing a crooked green finger at Lena.

  “Then if you could take Mr. Candorly and Mr. Frostfoot . . .”

  The goblin looked at Quinn and cringed, even though the mageling was still tucked behind Lena, just as scared of the goblin as the goblin was of him.

  “Fine. I’ll take the girls,” Herren grumbled. “But if the red one so much as touches me, I’m going to bite her head off.”

  “Good luck trying, with my fist crammed down your throat,” Lena muttered. Colm watched as Quinn whispered something to Lena. “It will be all right,” she said to him. “Colm will be with you.” She gave Colm a lingering look; then the goblin escorted the girls to the stairs.

  Colm felt a tug on his belt, saw the question in Quinn’s eyes as they darted back and forth from him to Finn. After what they’d just been through, it made sense that the mageling would be a little wary.

  “It’s all right. I know this guy,” Colm said. “He’s the one who brought me here.” And pushed me down the hole, he thought—but at least now he had an explanation for that.

  “But he only has four fingers,” Quinn whispered.

  Colm held up his right hand.

  “Oh.”

  Colm grabbed Quinn’s hand as the rogue led them through the great hall, through one of its many oaken doors into a well-lit corridor lined with even more rooms. Colm heard noises coming from most of them. Conversations. Laughter. Snoring. The sound of a blade being sharpened. Someone moaning in his sleep about not wanting to be turned into a pig again. None of his sisters ever complained about that in their sleep, at least.

  “Here we are, then.”

  The room Colm and Quinn found themselves in was sparsely decorated—especially compared to the great hall—but it was still an improvement over Colm’s closet at home. Each bed was twice the size of his hammock and came furnished with an actual pillow, so he wouldn’t have to make one out of his pack. A dresser separated the two beds, and another stood against the far wall, candles burning on each. Two desks sat next to each other, with hard wooden chairs to match. They didn’t have a window, but they did have a mirror—a precious commodity in a house full of girls, and not something Colm was used to having pretty much to himself.

  One look in the mirror confirmed what Colm suspected: he was a mess. Hair matted. Pants wet and ripped. Knees bloody. Face caked brown and gray, eyes red, nails broken from scrabbling along stone. No wonder Lena had mistaken him for some kind of monster down in the dungeon. He could use a thorough scrubbing. He hadn’t thought to bring spare clothes, save for the extra pair of socks, still damp in his pocket.

  As if reading his thoughts, Finn pointed to the dressers. “You’ll find basins by your bedsides to wash up, and there are clean clothes in the drawers. You can find parchment and quill in the desk. All letters go out the very next day. I would stay and chat, but you need your rest for tomorrow.”

  As if on cue, Quinn yawned and collapsed onto one of the beds. Finn took Colm by the shoulder as they walked back to the door, leaning in close. “You did it. I knew you would. I had a hunch about you, Colm Candorly, and my instincts are seldom wrong.”

  “So this is it, then?” Colm asked. “This is where people like us come to get rich?”

  Finn shook his head. “This is where people like us learn how not to get killed. The getting rich comes after.”

  Colm nodded. Not getting killed sounded like a good first step. He must have looked worried, though, because Finn immediately tried to reassure him. “I’m not saying you have to stay. If you wake up tomorrow and decide you want to go back, I will take you. I am a man of my word, and you are a long way from home. I know how important your family is to you.”

  Which is exactly why I need to stay, Colm thought to himself, but he didn’t say it.

  “Most of us are born below,” Finn whispered. “Closed in. Locked out. Few of us ever get a chance to rise above our station, to claw our way up. A rogue is always aware when an opportunity presents itself. He knows which doors to open.”

  “Thank you,” Colm said. “For the opportunity.”

  Finn shook his head. “Don’t thank me yet. You’ve only had a taste of what lies ahead.”

  And with that, the rogue bade them both good night and shut the door.

  Colm sat on the corner of his bed and kicked off his boots. As well as they fit—and they fit perfectly—it was still a relief to finally have them off, along with the soaked and stinking socks. The day caught up to him in a rush, and Colm was suddenly overcome with exhaustion. His whole body ached, and he lay there paralyzed, barely able to lift a finger, let alone nine, recalling everything that had happened over the course of that one day. The duel on the road out of Felhaven. The failed attempts to get his coin back. Being pushed into the dungeon, saving Quinn from that trap, seeing Serene with that spider. And the goblin—Colm had never seen anything quite like him before.

  And Lena. She was something. What, he wasn’t sure yet, but definitely something.

  Colm turned to ask Quinn what he thought of it, this place, but he was too late. The mageling had already fallen asleep, fully dressed, without even bothering to get under his covers.

  It would all still be here in the morning, Colm told himself. He crawled beneath his blanket, this one plenty large enough to reach his feet, and nestled his head on his new pillow, relishing the suppleness of it. It seemed so extravagant, having a soft spot for your head.

  He considered snuffing the candle beside him, but then he remembered the darkness of the dungeon when he had first descended, how close it was, as if it could attach itself to you and follow you everywhere. How it made it hard just to breathe.

  Colm let the candle burn. A little light wasn’t going to hurt anyone.

  He woke to the sound
of Quinn nibbling.

  The mageling was sitting on the edge of Colm’s bed with a sweet roll in his hand.

  “Good morning,” Quinn said between bites. “You are a heavy sleeper.”

  He said it without a single stumble, confirming at least one suspicion: that the boy’s stutter was mostly a matter of nerves. He could speak just fine, Colm noticed, as long as he wasn’t being attacked or electrocuted. “There’s some for you too,” Quinn said, pointing to the plate by Colm’s bed. Colm sat up and rubbed his eyes, getting his bearings. He thought at first he wasn’t hungry, but then the smell hit him.

  “They’re really good,” Quinn mumbled through a mouthful. Colm didn’t argue, devouring his own roll in four bites. Obviously Tye Thwodin didn’t have to skimp on butter or sugar. They sat together on Colm’s bed, polishing their plates, licking their fingers to get to the crumbs. Colm stopped once to pinch himself, just to make sure that he really was in a castle in the middle of nowhere with a boy named Frostfoot who could shoot fire from his fingers.

  “You eat fast too,” Quinn remarked.

  “I have eight sisters,” Colm reasoned. “The faster you eat, the more you get.”

  “Wow. Eight sisters. Your parents must be crazy.”

  Colm nodded. It was as good an explanation as any.

  “I have two sisters,” Quinn continued. “At least, I used to. When I was four, my parents disowned me.”

  “Disowned you?”

  “Abandoned me. They knew I was different and it scared them, so they bundled me in a wagon and took me on a long ride, then left me in the woods outside another town, far away.”

  “That’s horrible,” Colm said. Of course, his own father had threatened to do the same thing to each of them at least a dozen times, but Colm knew it was only in jest. He had never met anyone who’d actually been abandoned.

  “My father—the man who raised me, I mean—he says my first parents were horrible people. It might have been worse, though. In some places they consider mages to be demons, so they bind them with rope, stuff them into baskets, and throw them in the river.”

  “Well, at least that didn’t happen,” Colm remarked.

  “Lucky, right? Mum and Dad found me in the woods and took me in. They didn’t even kick me out when I accidentally set Dad’s beard on fire. That’s how come I’m here, you know. They thought it might help me get better control of my power, some more formal training.”

  “So, then, you actually knew about this place?” Colm wondered how Tye Thwodin went about finding new recruits. Finn had made it sound as if he had discovered Colm by accident. Maybe he had. Then again, Finn didn’t strike Colm as the kind of man who did anything accidentally.

  “Actually, they came to recruit Lena. We are both from Kingsfort. My father works for the Proudmores, so I’ve known her most of my life. When Master Stormbow heard what I could do, she told me I should come along too. A long wagon ride later, Lena and I found ourselves stuck in that gloomy dungeon. Then we met you. And then Serene. And now we are here.”

  That at least explained their constant whispers and the way Quinn always looked to Lena for confirmation. “So you and she are just friends, then?” Not that it mattered. Just a curiosity.

  Quinn shrugged. “She needs me. She doesn’t have that many friends. She’s not so easy to get along with sometimes, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “Not at all,” Colm lied.

  “She’s an only child, and she comes from a long line of warriors, so she kind of has a lot to live up to, I guess. She thinks becoming a dungeoneer is the best way to earn her name.”

  Earn her name. Colm had to stop and think about that one. He figured the whole reason people became dungeoneers was for the treasure. He hadn’t considered that there might be other reasons.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Quinn added. “She can be nice when she wants to be. She just seldom ever wants to be.”

  As Colm got dressed, Quinn told more stories about him and Lena growing up in Kingsfort. Unlike Colm’s backwater, edge-of-the-map hamlet, Kingsfort sounded like a sprawling city, where warriors and wizards were not unusual, even if they were still uncommon. He was about to ask Quinn what it was like using magic—how it worked, how it felt, what the most powerful spell he’d ever cast was—when someone knocked on their door.

  “Morning, gentleman,” Finn chirped, peeking his head in the door and eyeing the empty plates on Colm’s bed. “I see you’ve already taken care of breakfast, which is good, though I believe, Mr. Frostfoot, that you already had one breakfast this morning.”

  Quinn blushed and looked down at his feet. Colm wondered how someone with such a large appetite could be so bone skinny.

  “You two should hurry and get outside,” Finn said. “It’s a big day. You’re going to miss the tour, and believe me, you don’t want Master Fimbly to have to repeat himself.”

  “Welcome to Thwodin Castle, home of Thwodin’s Legion, the most accomplished dungeoneering guild this side of the Stormforge Mountains, built by one of the greatest dungeon divers who has ever lived.”

  Colm rubbed the gooseflesh on his arms. They were standing outside, and for the first time, Colm got a good look at where Finn had brought him. It wasn’t the chill that prickled his hair but the view: the enormous castle sitting in the center of a clearing, ringed by a forest; the forest encapsulated by a halo of snowcapped mountains, blue-gray mounds iced over. The castle was equally stunning, looming four stories tall, its crenellated battlements boasting an even better view of the neighboring range, its seven towers and accompanying smaller balustrades of whitewashed stone stretching skyward and casting their long shadows behind them. The center tower stood tallest, topped, as it was, with a tarnished silver pinnacle that still sparkled in the sun. Colm stood and marveled at it, this hidden jewel, tucked here on its field of emerald grass glossed with dew.

  “Wow.”

  Quinn stood next to him, gape mouthed. He was dressed in new robes that he’d found in his drawers, red with bright blue sunbursts stitched along the sleeves, actually his size. Both of them had discovered several pairs of pants and shirts and even new boots, though Colm preferred to keep his old ones. Still, the new clothes were in much better condition than the ones he’d brought, and he felt invigorated with a full stomach and dry socks on his feet.

  They weren’t the only ones cleaned up. Serene had on an emerald cloak that came past her knees. Her hair had been plaited into several glossy black rows that fell to her shoulders and curtained her eyes. She held a dark wooden staff, sanded and polished, and looked almost regal. And Lena . . . Colm tried not to look at Lena, because the glint from the sun striking her new shirt of chain mail blinded him. Still, he noticed she no longer had a rock for a weapon. Instead, a broadsword bounced against her leg. Colm wondered why she got a sword and he didn’t, but he didn’t say anything. She was a barbarian in training, after all. He still wasn’t quite sure what he was.

  “As you probably know, Thwodin’s Legion was founded twenty-three years ago by the great warrior Tye Thwodin himself. And I am proud to say that I have been here for every one of those years.”

  By the look of him, Colm would guess that the old man addressing them had been around for every one of everybody’s years. He had been introduced as Carrol Fimbly, expert in history and tactics and the oldest living member of the guild. Master Fimbly was, by his own admission, the foremost repository of knowledge on the history of dungeons, and thus the most suited for giving a formal introduction to the practice of treasure hunting. It was in his wrinkled hands that Colm and the others had been placed for the morning, with a promise from Finn that they would be retrieved after lunch, by which point they would be “more than ready to do almost anything else.”

  Master Fimbly, Colm noticed, talked so loud you couldn’t hear your own thoughts. Colm couldn’t imagine this old man ever venturing into a dungeon, though. He’d probably break a hip trying to squeeze through the entrance.

  “As you may
be aware,” Master Fimbly yelled, “Tye Thwodin founded the guild with the express purpose of training aspiring young dungeoneers, much like yourselves, to share in the bountiful treasure that is ripe for the taking. And as you can see by the beautiful structure behind me, his hopes were well founded.”

  The old man coughed up a phlegm-filled laugh. Colm thought about the contract Finn had given him, the one that was sitting on his new desk in his new room inside said beautiful structure. The contract that said fifty percent of earnings came right back to Tye Thwodin and the guild. That, at least, explained the fancy chandeliers.

  “Castle Thwodin,” Fimbly continued, “is a vast estate, comprising some one hundred eighty-six rooms, including laboratories, libraries, training halls, kitchens, dining areas, dungeons, armories, and one of the largest treasuries known to man. We have our own smithy, our own indoor archery range, and our very own hot springs. The whole estate is supplied to withstand a siege of several months, though I have yet to meet any army that would dare attack it. The castle cannot be found on a map, and save for a few individuals in Master Thwodin’s confidence, it cannot be accessed by anyone who isn’t a member of the guild.”

  “Unless you’ve got one of those magic crystals,” Serene whispered, and Colm realized she must have gotten here the same way he did: turned inside out and upside down and then thrown down a hole.

  “As a member of this guild, you will undergo a rigorous training regimen. You will progress according to your ability and your aptitude. When we feel you have acquired all the skills necessary to be successful in your chosen vocation, you will be granted the rank of master. This may take several years . . . and assumes you don’t die in the process.” The old man smiled.

  No one smiled back.

  “Now, before we continue our tour, let me address some frequently asked questions.” The old man pulled a scroll from his robe and unfurled it. It nearly reached his feet. “Question one. ‘What is dungeoneering?’ Well, you all know what dungeoneering is, don’t you? I don’t have to get into that. Ahem. Question two. ‘Is dungeoneering dangerous?’ What kind of nonsense is this? Anyone who’s ever stared into the eye of a beholder and felt his legs turn to stone beneath him knows the answer to that one. Stupid question, moving on . . .”