The Dungeoneers

by John David Anderson

  “I’ll just be happy to spend the afternoon with Master Merribell,” Serene said. “She’s promised to teach me how to conjure butterflies from flower petals.”

  “Terrific,” Lena countered. “Can’t imagine how that won’t be useful.”

  “You don’t have to be snotty about it,” Serene said. “I suppose you’ll just spend the afternoon hacking away at something.”

  “If I’m lucky,” Lena replied.

  Colm put a hand on Scratch’s paw, then caught sight of Tyren and his two friends taking seats four tables away, laughing and making faces. They weren’t alone. There was another girl with them this time, one Colm hadn’t seen before. She had hair so black it looked almost blue, pulled back into a single braid that fell across one shoulder like a sash. Unlike the other three, who were busy throwing food or pounding on the table, her narrow face was shoved into a book big enough to be ammunition for catapults. She had bronze skin and long, thin fingers—the usual number—and looked like she might have come from somewhere far away. Far from Felhaven, at least. Maybe across the seas. She wasn’t particularly beautiful, but there was something about her absolute stillness, her total disregard for what was happening around her, that captured Colm’s attention.

  “Who’s she?”

  Lena twisted around to get a look, then shook her head.

  “Don’t know,” she said. “She’s no warrior, though. A warrior would never be caught dead in leather armor that thin.”

  “Her name’s Ravena Heartfall,” Quinn said, moving on to his third bowl, though he seemed to be slowing a little. “She’s a talent.”

  Colm gave Quinn his don’t-forget-I’m-just-the-poor-son-of-a-shoe-cobbler look. He had perfected it over the course of the morning, whenever one of them took something for granted as common knowledge.

  “You know, a talent? A person with a wide variety of natural abilities. Like Imon Invale. Spellcasting, fencing, disarmament . . . she was working by herself when I was practicing with Master Velmoth yesterday. She can summon a sword out of thin air, and swing it pretty well too.”

  Colm nodded, impressed.

  “Big deal,” Lena snipped.

  Quinn gave her a surprised look. “Rumor has it that she conquered Bloodclaw’s little maze by herself. She’s like a whole dungeoneering party wrapped into one.”

  “Why is she hanging out with those three, then?” Serene asked. Like Colm, she was studying the strange figure of Ravena Heartfall intensely.

  “Yeah,” Lena seconded, reaching out and snatching her bowl of stew back from Quinn, stabbing forcefully at a carrot. “If she’s so amazing, how come she needs that ogre Tyren?” She stuffed a hunk of meat into her mouth, determined to chew it to oblivion.

  Quinn shrugged. “You heard what Master Argos said. None of us can do everything all the time.”

  Colm tried not to keep staring. Quinn was right. Finn had made that perfectly clear. In fact, they all had. Fimbly with his sketches. Herren with his slime. If Colm had to take any other lesson from this morning—outside of his being so ignorant of things—it was that anyone, even a talented anyone, would be a fool to try to make it through a dungeon by himself.

  Still, he thought, taking one last glance at Ravena Heartfall, it wouldn’t hurt to have someone like that on your side.

  “Whatever,” Lena said dismissively. “There’s nothing she can do that we can’t do better.”

  “But there’s lots of things she can do that I can’t do at all,” Quinn said. Then he tried to steal Lena’s stew back from her, but she wrapped both hands about it and growled at him. He wasn’t a very good thief.

  Odds were, Ravena Heartfall was a better one.

  After lunch, Serene and Lena marched off eagerly to meet their mentors and do pretty much the opposite of each other, the druid learning to heal the wounds that the warrior was learning to make. Quinn moped glumly toward the spellcasters’ hall to face one of two masters he’d already set fire to. “And I’ve only been here a day,” he complained. Finn came to collect Colm, seeming to melt right out of the walls.

  “Ready to get your hands dirty?” he asked. Colm thought about the ogre’s jelly that had nearly sucked poor Dagnor’s face off. Finn flashed his confident smile. “Don’t worry,” he said. “This is more in your direct line of work.”

  They walked along the western corridor, passing by rooms where other dungeoneers were in the middle of their training. Colm peeked, hoping to catch another glimpse of Ravena the Talent, but the only one he recognized was Tyren, hacking away at a practice dummy with a battle-ax. Tyren turned to see Colm spying on him, then gave the dummy one more solid thwack, splitting it down the middle. Colm quickly caught back up to Finn.

  “I mailed your letter this morning,” the rogue said. “Though I should tell you, it might take a while. The hawks seldom fly to Felhaven. It’s not exactly the hub of commerce and adventure.”

  Colm didn’t need Finn to tell him that. “Can they write back?”

  Finn nodded. “You will hear from them soon, I’m sure. I wouldn’t worry. I doubt your sister Celia would let anything happen in your absence.”

  Colm nodded appreciatively, though the thought of his sister made his insides ache. “Can I ask you something?”

  “If this is about the scar, I told you, I got it in a knife fight with a pirate lord off the coast of Mardoon.”

  “You said it was a goblin executioner,” Colm corrected.

  “Who just happened to be a pirate lord,” Finn replied wryly. “What was your question?”

  “I was thinking about the test. To get into the guild. Not the dungeon. That I understand. But the coin. I mean, what was the point, if you were just going to give it to me regardless? Why even make me try to get it? Was it just a trick? Or did you just want to see me make a fool out of myself?”

  Finn stopped in front of a door, the last one at the end of the hall.

  “No trick, Colm Candorly. I just wanted to make it clear which of us was the master.”

  “As if that was ever in doubt,” Colm muttered. Finn shook his head.

  “Rule number twenty-three. Be the best there is at what you do, and always be aware that someone does it better.” Finn opened the door and ushered Colm inside. “Welcome,” he said, “to my workshop.”

  Colm looked around the room. It didn’t look anything like his father’s workshop back home. Of course, Rove Candorly’s shop wasn’t much more than a table and a barrel of tools in one corner of their warped wooden barn. Finn’s workshop was much more elaborate, overflowing with cabinets and chests, shelves nearly collapsing under the weight of books, the floor littered with all manner of gadgets that Colm couldn’t identify. One wall was covered in maps, most of them ancient-looking and torn. Another was covered in keys of varying lengths and designs, each hanging from its own ring. A skull sat on the corner of a large walnut desk, its top sawed off to make a morbid candleholder.

  “Wow,” Colm said.

  “It’s nothing like Tye Thwodin’s, I can tell you that, but it serves its purpose.”

  Colm walked over to the wall of keys and started touching them. They made a kind of forlorn music when they fell against one another. “Do you know what they all go to?”

  Finn shrugged. “I did at one time, I suppose, but there are a lot of doors that, once opened, are never shut again, making half of those keys superfluous. Besides,” he added, “rule number thirty-nine. Most of the doors worth opening don’t have a key—at least not one you can easily get your hands on. That’s why there are people like us.”

  Colm turned from the keys to the maps, running his fingers along the borders of mountains, tracing the snaking trails of rivers. He didn’t recognize most of the names of the places he read. He found Felhaven on one of them and was surprised at just how small it was. Barely a dot, with its name scrawled in scrunched letters.

  Then he turned to the far wall, and the most unusual door he had ever seen.

  “What’s that?”

&n
bsp; “That,” Finn said, beaming proudly, “is my own personal invention. My pride and joy.” He pursed his lips. “Well, it’s not exactly my invention. I had some help from Renny . . . and Velmoth . . . and some of the other masters. But it was still my idea. I needed an easy way to teach the craft that we rogues are so well known for, so I created . . .” Finn paused for dramatic effect, then thrust both hands toward it. “The Door of a Hundred Locks.”

  Colm stood at the door, which had been set into the wall. Sure enough, it was practically covered in intricate plates of copper, iron, and silver, each with a keyhole, some big enough to shove in a dagger, others barely large enough for a horse’s hair. “Where does it lead?”

  “Where do you think? To a mystical land teeming with nymphs and sirens and sprites that tumble playfully through the eaves of dancing trees and feed you sweet nectar from a crystal bowl,” Finn said, his eyes wide.

  Colm raised an eyebrow, put a hand on the door. “Sure. But where does it really lead?” he asked.

  “It’s actually just the closet where I keep my spare shoes. But it’s not what’s behind the door that matters. Not in this case, anyways. It’s the getting it open. After all, we are rogues. We are counted on to get into places and things we otherwise shouldn’t. That requires tremendous skill.”

  Colm nodded. “And there are really a hundred different locks?” Colm had only counted the top row.

  “Not exactly.” Finn coughed. “But the Door of Sixty-Seven Locks didn’t have quite the same ring to it.”

  Still, sixty-seven locks was impressive. Colm wondered what you would have to be hiding to need so many different locks. Certainly something more valuable than Finn’s spare boots. “And you know how to pick every single one of them?”

  Finn nodded. “Though I admit some of them still pose a challenge for me. This one, for example”—he pointed to a lock along the top with a golden face no larger than Colm’s thumbnail and a hole no bigger than a freckle—“is called the Twitch. The tumbler inside requires only the most infinitesimal movement, barely a nudge. Less than a nudge. A breath. Force it too much one way or the other, and it triggers its fail-safe mechanism, usually a trap of some kind leading to your—”

  “Untimely demise,” Colm finished. The lessons of the morning weren’t lost on him.

  “Right. And this row,” Finn continued, pointing to a column of locks marching down the door’s right side, “is made up entirely of enchanted locks, which means that they are protected by magic of some sort or another. Even the most skilled rogue in history couldn’t get past them without some means of countering that magic.”

  “Like a counterspell?” Colm wondered.

  “A counterspell, certainly. Though you know how I feel about letting mages handle anything as sensitive as picking locks. There are other things that rogues can use. Scrolls. Talismans. Magic Dan’s Antimagic Paste.”

  “Magic Dan?” He was sure Finn was teasing him again.

  “Of course you haven’t heard of Magic Dan’s. They probably don’t carry it in any of the stores in Felhaven. Fantastic stuff, though. Comes in a little jar. Rub a little on the outside, and it eats away at the enchantment. Not good for really high-level magic, mind, but it can nullify a goblin shaman’s ward in minutes.”

  “How come you didn’t put any of it in my bag, then?”

  “Oh. It’s terribly expensive,” Finn explained. “We don’t go handing it out to just anybody. Now look here.” He pointed to a series of ten locks on the left. They were not particularly ornate, though they seemed to grow more complex as they descended. “These are the starters. This first one”—pointing to the top—“is just like the one you picked to get out of Renny’s dungeon. We begin with these, doing them over and over again until you can unlock them in your sleep; then we move on to the next ten and the next ten and so on, until finally you tackle that one.” Finn turned and pointed to the corner of the room, to a small chest made of iron, sealed with a silver plate. “Pick that, and you’ll be my hero.”

  “You’ll have to show me how,” Colm said, staring at the lock, thinking it looked like many of the others already set into the door and wondering what was so special about it.

  “I wish I could.” Finn shrugged.

  “You mean you’ve never even opened it?”

  Finn shook his head.

  “You don’t even know what’s inside?”

  The corners of Finn’s mouth twitched. “Nobody knows,” he said. “Maybe all the treasure in the world. Maybe a pile of dust. Maybe my missing fingers.” The glint in the rogue’s eye soon faded as he turned back to the door of a hundred locks—rounded up. “But as in all things, the best place to start is the beginning.”

  Colm fished in his sack for his lockpick set, the one Finn had given him, but found only the dagger and the jewel. He dug through the sack again, then looked up.

  Finn dangled the picks over his head.

  “Even I have to stay in practice,” he said.

  Colm snatched them back, then turned toward what had to be the best-protected pair of old boots in history.

  He picked until he had blisters. Then he picked until they burst. It was excruciating. The picks were finicky, and he found he had to hold them in a variety of awkward positions depending on what lock he was working on.

  In addition, he had several different picks to choose from, some with diamond tips or circles, some shaped like a saw blade or a pair of fangs or a rake. At first Finn wouldn’t tell him which pick to use for which lock, just let him fumble around for a bit, experimenting. Only when Colm’s sighs grew sufficiently exasperated did the rogue stop to explain, pointing to the proper pick and describing the mechanism inside the lock, how the tumblers worked and how many pins each one contained. He taught Colm the difference between a wafer lock and a disk lock, when to rake and when to push, how much tension to apply to get everything lined up just right. He taught Colm how to listen, putting his ear to the door, waiting for the characteristic click that Finn said was “the sound of gold in your pocket.” He held Colm’s hands and moved them around, like a puppeteer, but with such minute gestures it hardly seemed like either of them was moving at all. After each lock, Colm would open the door to reveal one pair of dusty boots. Then Finn would set the next one and close the door again.

  Colm conquered the first two locks with little trouble. The third took most of an hour.

  “Patience,” Finn would say, and Colm would relax for a moment, take a deep breath, and flex his fingers to get the blood back in them. Then, two minutes later, Finn would scream “Troll!” or “Spider!” or “Flaming skull!” and beg Colm to hurry lest they both perish by the claw of whatever imaginary creature was stalking them, causing Colm to get nervous and fumble with the lock, dropping his picks and losing any progress he had made.

  “Stop doing that!” Colm protested.

  “Working under pressure is the rogue’s hallmark. One slip, and your whole party is doomed. Your craft requires the utmost concentration and mental agility. Now hurry up before this imaginary ogre eats me.”

  By the time the afternoon was over, Colm had managed to undo the third lock and the fourth. He was just starting on the fifth when Finn told him his time was up, reminding Colm that he wasn’t the only member of the guild who needed training.

  Colm nodded. He had hoped to make it further. He had had a notion, when he first saw the door, that he would make it through the first ten locks in a day. After the first lock, Finn had called Colm “a natural.” But Colm couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

  “You know,” Finn said, stopping him on the way out, “lock number three is the same one the magistrate of Felhaven uses for the town’s treasury. I know. I’ve seen it.”

  Colm wasn’t sure why Finn was telling him this. He didn’t respond.

  “Which means you already know enough to be as rich as him.” The rogue offered Colm a wink and then shooed him out the door.

  Colm left the workshop, picturing himself breakin
g into the Felhaven treasury in the middle of the night. Imagine the look on the magistrate’s face when he woke up to find his coffers empty. But as soon as the thought sneaked in, Colm felt guilty for having it. He had no intentions of robbing the magistrate. Rule number one. He gently rubbed his three sore fingers with his other hand and made his way to the dining hall.

  The evening stew was whitish, with beans and bacon, a smell that reminded Colm of home—on the rare occasions when his family could afford bacon. An afternoon of listening for dropping tumblers and fidgeting with picks had given him an appetite, at least.

  Serene noticed him in the archway and waved him over. She looked to be her normally cheery self, and Quinn also seemed pleased, which was nice; Colm had hoped the mageling would have a better afternoon. This time it was Lena who was scowling. One look at her finger told Colm most of what he needed to know. He sat across from her, pulling the basket of bread away from Quinn, who appeared to be hoarding it like a dragon, and pointed to the bandage on Lena’s finger.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she snapped, slowly bending her iron spoon in half. Colm looked to Quinn, who raised his eyebrows sympathetically.

  “She lost,” he said.

  Colm nodded solemnly. She lost. It didn’t even matter what she had lost at. Lena was the kind of girl who could take a bad coin flip personally. But this was much more serious.

  “She was bested in single combat,” Quinn explained. “By him.” The mageling pointed across the room with his spoon at the table in the corner where Tyren was attempting to eat an entire loaf of bread in one mouthful. Lena twisted the spoon some more, apparently trying to tie it into a knot.

  “Oh,” Colm said. That was serious.

  Quinn and Serene both nodded. “Only wooden swords, but apparently he caught her knuckle just right. There was a little . . . you know.” Across the table, Lena shuddered and closed her eyes. “She didn’t faint—but she did get a little woozy and lost her balance. Tyren disarmed her in two moves.”

  “It was a cheap shot,” Lena said. “He tried to draw blood.”