The Dungeoneers

by John David Anderson

  Lena was unperturbed. “Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe Herren Bloodclaw will let his pet slime loose, and it can make out with the other half of your face.” Lena took her right hand and attached it to her cheek in imitation of the common green jelly latching on, then made a strange slurping sound.

  Quinn snickered. Dagnor’s eyes narrowed. Master Fimbly simply looked confused. It looked as if the other members of Dagnor’s party were about to add insults of their own when a shout from the corner of the room made them all freeze.

  “Stop it!”

  Colm turned to see Serene standing with her hands on her hips, her brown eyes narrowed to knife edges. She started to say something else but then gave up, grabbed her staff, and hurried out of the room.

  Dagnor pulled himself back into his chair, all the laughter suddenly stifled. Lena started to get up, but Colm stopped her. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll go.”

  She wasn’t hard to find. Colm went straight to the back garden and spotted her slouched beneath one of the cherry trees. Even though none of the other trees had bloomed yet, this one was bursting with vibrant pink petals, as if it had gotten its seasons crossed. He assumed it was her doing; probably she had coaxed it into blossoming early. When she saw him, Serene looked away and drew her knees close to her chest, scrunching into a knot. Colm sat beside her anyways. If his sisters had taught him anything, it was how not to leave someone alone.

  He didn’t say anything, though. Finn had taught him that most of the time, if you just stay quiet, the other person will start talking, even if it’s just to fill the space. Eventually they will get around to telling you what you want to know. After a while, Serene finally loosed an exasperated sigh.

  “She brings it on herself, you know?”

  Lena, he assumed. And the teasing. He couldn’t disagree. It seemed as if she was always looking for a fight. “She can’t help it,” he said. “It’s her nature. And it’s this place. Just look at all the paintings on the walls. It’s the warrior mentality. Swing first, ask questions later.”

  “But it shouldn’t be that way. We shouldn’t be competing with each other. We should all be working together.”

  That would be fine, Colm thought, if there was always enough to go around. If there was plenty to share and everyone shared equally. “Like one big, happy party, traipsing through dungeons, holding hands and singing songs?” he suggested. He tried to imagine it. What would the ogres think?

  “I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that sometimes, I think we lose sight of what’s important. Where I come from, in the Grove, living among the order, there’s none of this bragging about who’s better. There is just nature, so vast, so encompassing. And you learn to be in harmony with it, to appreciate how delicately balanced it is. And it’s humbling, to realize your place. To know that one day you will be food for birds and trees and worms. That you will be energy and growth. You don’t think about prizes and treasures and trinkets and all of that, because you realize, in the end, it doesn’t matter. All that matters are the connections you make to what lives and breathes around you.” Serene closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  “Huh.” Colm said. He hadn’t given it much thought, the whole delicate-balancing-act-of-nature thing. “But if you don’t care at all about the treasure, what’s the point? Why even come here?”

  Serene stroked the grass beside her. At each stroke, the blades quivered beneath her touch, as though they were laughing. “Druids are not supposed to be afraid. Not of anything. Not even death. And there are still so many things out there that scare me.” Serene turned and looked at Colm. “That’s why I’m here. To learn how not to be afraid anymore.”

  Colm touched the grass. It kind of prickled. “Finn says fear is a good thing. Makes you cautious. Aware. Sometimes fear’s the only thing that keeps a rogue alive.”

  “Maybe I should be a rogue, then.”

  “You would never make it as a rogue,” Colm said. “We spend our days lurking in the shadows, scheming and stuff. You have to be devious and underhanded.”

  “If that’s the case, you’re never going to make it as one either,” Serene said with a smile. He knew what she meant. At least he thought he did. “Of course, if we did win . . . ,” she pondered.

  Colm recognized the look in her eye. He had seen the look before. On his mother’s face after he’d stolen the money. On Quinn’s face when he’d first stumbled into the great hall, with its grand pillars. On Finn’s face when he described the wealth buried in the castle’s treasury. They all got that look sometimes. That was human nature.

  Serene took a long, deep breath. “It’s going to storm soon,” she said. Then she stood up, and Colm stood with her. She touched him lightly on his sleeve. “Hold on. I want to show you something.”

  Colm stood by and watched as Serene approached the blossoming cherry tree. She placed one hand against its bark, the two seeming to blend together, and whispered to it gently, her eyes closed, her body swaying.

  Then, suddenly, it was raining. Not fat droplets, but petals. A shower of pink flowers falling free from their branches. Hundreds of them at first. Then thousands. Until all he could see was this cascade of pink petals, soft as satin, lighting on his shoulders, in his hair, covering his boots, piling to his ankles. The gardens vanished. The castle too. Even Serene was gone. Just this blooming curtain enveloping him, tickling his bare arms, getting stuck to his cloak, and the gentle patter of them hitting the ground.

  Until finally the storm of cherry blossoms trickled to a stop, and Colm could see Serene again, standing beside the trunk of the now-barren tree, its branches naked, a skeleton of brown against the full green stature of its cousins beside it. And Colm suddenly felt guilty for having stood there while the tree shed the full weight of its beauty on him, leaving him with the memory and it with nothing.

  Serene stepped over and took his hand.

  “What is it? Didn’t you like it?”

  “I did,” he said. “It was amazing. But . . .” Colm pointed to the empty boughs. “It’s not pretty anymore.”

  Serene shook her head, gazing up at the tree’s bones.

  “I disagree completely,” she said.

  “I think we should skip ahead a little and work on lock twenty-four.”

  Colm was in Finn’s workshop for the afternoon. Morning classes were over. Lena and Serene had made amends, apologizing though neither of them was quite sure what they were apologizing for. For being so different, Colm supposed.

  At lunch, Colm tried to steer the topic of conversation away from the coming trials by asking Lena who she thought the greatest dungeoneer in history was, a topic that produced no end of discussion between her and Quinn. Quinn argued for Imon Invale, despite his unfortunate end. Lena went, predictably, with Grahm Wolfe. They looked to Colm to decide the champion. He sided with Quinn. There was something about Master Wolfe that Colm didn’t like. Probably the fact that everyone else adored him. Everyone except Finn.

  Finn, who told Colm to try lock twenty-four. Colm found himself staring blankly at the door while Finn hunched over his desk, pounding what looked to be sunflower seeds with a mortar and pestle. The whole room smelled different today, much like the cure-all’s cart back in Felhaven—an earthy, almost rancid stench that Colm attributed to the new collection of powders and liquids lining Finn’s shelves. Or maybe part of it was him. Colm hadn’t bathed in a while.

  “But I’m only on lock fourteen,” Colm protested. It was true. He was making excellent progress, had worked his way down the first column and started in on the second. His father had a cobbler’s hands—thick fingered and rougher than the steel wool he used to sand the soles of boots. Colm’s hands, it seemed, were custom-made for the act of picking locks. Thin and nimble, the skin smooth and ticklish, responsive to a feather’s touch.

  “And normally we would take them in order,” Finn explained. “But twenty-four is the first one on that door of the magical variety. It won’t hurt you to get some exp
erience with those before the trials.”

  Colm reached out, tentatively touching lock twenty-four. It hummed at his touch with a kind of magnetic resonance. “I can sense it,” he said.

  Finn nodded. “Most magic has its own aura, though you often don’t notice unless you are looking for it.” Finn opened the center drawer of his desk and removed a small silver container, tossing it to Colm.

  “Is this . . . ?”

  Finn nodded. “‘Don’t trust your locks to any man; for magic locks, use Magic Dan’s,’” he sang. “Magic locks require disenchantment before they can be picked, otherwise you are likely to find yourself on fire or transformed into a frog or simply blinked out of existence. Most of the time that responsibility falls to a mage or a cleric; they can usually dispel a magical ward on a lock in a finger snap. But there are times when a rogue finds himself forced to tackle one on his own. There are trinkets out there that will also do the trick. Magic amulets and the like. Legend has it that the rogue Andres Kyn had a skeleton key with a disenchantment blessing built right in. But for most of us humble practitioners of the pilfering arts, Magic Dan’s is the way to go.”

  Colm unscrewed the lid. Magic Dan’s Antimagic Paste was thick and pale, like the buttercream frosting his sister Cally would sometimes top her oatcakes with—when she could afford to.

  “Just rub a little along the edges of the lock. And don’t swallow any,” Finn warned.

  Colm paused, a huge dollop of the stuff balanced precariously on one finger. “Why? Is it poisonous?”

  “Not poisonous, exactly. Most likely it will do absolutely nothing to you. I just don’t want you to waste it. The stuff is incredibly expensive.”

  Colm gave it a sniff. It smelled vaguely sweet, with maybe a hint of wintergreen. He shrugged and turned to the door, carefully working the paste around the edges of the lock. At his desk, Finn started measuring powders into cylinders and vials, constantly consulting various pieces of parchment that were strewn about. “Of course, if you were a mage, it would be different,” he continued. “Renny slipped some Magic Dan’s into Velmoth’s stew once, as a joke. Velmo couldn’t cast spells for a week.”

  Colm watched the paste seep into the cracks along the edge of the lock. He wondered if that meant it was working, or if the magic it was supposed to counter had countered it instead. He turned to Finn, who seemed to be involved in his mashing and grinding again. “Just give it a moment,” the rogue said.

  Then Colm felt the humming stop. He guessed that meant it was ready. He retrieved the lockpicks from his bag, his hand brushing against Celia’s hairpin, then proceeded to undo lock number twenty-four. It took a little extra courage to insert the pick—if the paste hadn’t really worked, there was a chance he was going to trigger a spell of some sort. And though he didn’t think Finn would be so callous as to have the door enchanted with anything terribly painful, Colm got a picture of himself sitting at dinner with a pair of huge bunny ears flopping across his shoulders. But the pin slid in easily, and Colm’s ears—and the rest of him—remained the same.

  “You don’t want to dally,” Finn said. “For all its merits, Magic Dan’s antimagic magic is only temporary. The enchantment will return if you don’t get the lock picked in time.”

  “How will I know when it’s coming back?”

  “Usually just about the time the whole thing erupts in blue flame,” Finn said helpfully.

  But there were no flames. Magic Dan’s paste held, and Colm managed to pick lock twenty-four not once, but three times, getting a feel for exactly which motions to make, how to angle the pick, how much torque to give, how far it had to turn to catch each lever. Finn was right—the more you practiced picking a lock, the stronger the memory of it held in your fingers. Without its magic to protect it, lock twenty-four wasn’t much harder than the others he’d undone.

  When he finished, Finn made Colm go back and run through locks one through ten again as review. Colm could pick lock number one with one hand in his pocket and both eyes closed. It was easier than tying his boots.

  “That’s enough for now,” Finn said when lock number ten clicked free. Colm stretched his legs, massaged the calluses on his fingers, and rubbed out the cramp in his hand. The rogue was still seated at his desk, though he had moved on from his grinding and was now busy remixing the contents of his many vials drop by steady drop, producing seemingly no end of small, billowing black and green clouds that hovered over the desk for a moment and then disappeared. The whole workshop was starting to smell like burned wood and rotten eggs.

  “Is that supposed to happen?” Colm asked, pinching his nose.

  Finn shook his head. “Not at all.” He poured some purplish liquid into a larger vial of green liquid, producing another noxious brown cloud.

  “Why are you doing it?” Colm meant to ask, “What are you doing?” but somehow the why seemed more important. After all, potions and elixirs were the domain of Master Merribell. They were the province of healers and druids and old women who lived in huts on the edge of town and polished their glass eyes on tattered gowns. Not to mention it looked as if Finn hadn’t the slightest clue what he was up to. He looked to be haphazardly stirring things together as the whim caught him.

  “Witches and warlocks aren’t the only ones who use potions,” Finn answered. “You’d be surprised how often we rogues are called upon to slip a little something into a goblet of wine.”

  Colm took a step back. “You mean poison?”

  “No,” Finn scoffed, waving the cloud away. “Well. Not just poison. Sometimes it’s a little something to numb your senses. Or to make you more agreeable to things you otherwise might not be open to. This one, for example, is a sleeping draft. Lights out to anyone who takes so much as a sip.”

  “Oh,” Colm said, leaning over the desk to get a better look, still careful to hold his nose. “What do you need it for?” Colm thought of the rogue sleeping with one eye open. Finn did look tired.

  “I don’t need it for anything. I just want to know that I can make it, should the time come when I might. Which reminds me . . .”

  The rogue opened another drawer of his desk and removed a small package wrapped in thick brown paper and tied with cord. He handed it to Colm. At first Colm thought it might be something from home. Another letter, perhaps. Or one of Cally’s treats. Except there didn’t appear to be any writing. Colm peeled back one corner of the paper and saw a thick green leaf with red veins etched across it.

  “It’s called stimsickle,” Finn said, turning back to his experiment. “A plant with a wide variety of medicinal properties. I was out in the woods this morning, gathering the ingredients for this foul-smelling concoction, when I spied it and thought it might come in handy. Remember the rogues’ motto.”

  He turned back to look at Colm, no doubt waiting for a recitation. Except Finn had never taught him the rogues’ motto. He didn’t even know they had a motto.

  “Don’t get killed?” Colm guessed.

  Finn laughed. “That’s more of a daily affirmation. The rogue’s motto is ‘Ready for everything, guilty of nothing.’”

  Colm raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  Finn smiled. “No. Not really. There really is no motto. But it’s good advice regardless. Let’s say we quit for the day. There’s an increasingly likely chance that I’m going to blow myself up here, and I would feel a little guilty taking you with me.”

  “You just said rogues weren’t guilty of anything.”

  “That’s only because they don’t get caught.” Finn smiled.

  As Colm walked out the door, Finn asked him if he’d had the chance to read the book he’d given him. Colm shook his head. He’d been busy in the evenings training with Lena, trying to get a handle on Scratch.

  “Well, it’s probably worth a look, if you can find the time,” Finn said, then cursed as another cloud the color and smell of pea soup billowed around him. Colm left before the smell seeped into his clothes.

  That night Colm retired t
o his room with Quinn yawning beside him. The mageling collapsed into a drooling heap as always, and Colm carefully pulled off the boy’s boots and set them beside his bed, then brought the thick wool blanket to his dimpled chin.

  With Quinn tucked in, Colm sat at his desk and pulled out The Rogue’s Encyclopedia, Volume Two. It appeared to be hurriedly copied and heavily marked, with writing going up and down and diagonally, and hand-drawn figures stuffed into corners and spaces or sometimes just drawn right over the words themselves. Whole sentences were crossed out or amended, and at least three pages were torn out completely. It was clear that this was somebody’s well-worn copy, maybe Finn’s, and that it had seen more adventure than Colm had probably dreamed of (though maybe not—Colm had dreamed an awful lot). Colm flipped through the pages, most of them elaborate diagrams and illustrations of traps. He paused at a dog-eared page, the only one in the book. It was the start of a chapter, and it began with a story of a goblin.

  His name, Colm read, was Gall Gorebones, and he was one of the most gifted dungeon designers in goblin history. But he was also absentminded, concocting some diabolical new device in his head when he should have been watching his step. One day, Gall was inspecting a dungeon when he accidentally triggered his own trap, losing his left eye to a spike.

  From that moment on, Gall “Cyclops” Gorebones began to fashion all of his traps with fail-safe mechanisms—tiny, well-concealed levers that would disarm the trap and allow for free passage. Of course, only he and the lord of the dungeon would know what the fail-safe was, but it made the goblin feel better, knowing that he wouldn’t be killed by his own handiwork again.

  The point, the encyclopedia explained, was that many traps—especially those of goblin design—include such a fail-safe mechanism, though they could be notoriously tricky to find and should not be counted on as a means of escape. Much better to disarm a trap, or to avoid it altogether.

  Colm flipped through several more pages, marveling at the sheer number of ways creatures of all kinds had developed for keeping their treasure safe. Ingenious mechanical contraptions so sensitive they could be triggered by a breath or the flutter of a moth’s wings. Gears and levers and pulleys combining to form such intricate engines of death that even the masters of dungeons would marvel at their elaborate workings. So many clever and diabolical ways to ward off would-be thieves.