“Are there more of these rooms?” asked Galen, struggling to keep his voice from rising. He could feel the black tide around his feet, tugging at him, whispering that there was danger, and he fought it down. There’s danger, but it’s nothing you can fight with a sword. This is like crossing a narrow bridge or skirting a cliff face. Running mad with a sword will not help anyone and will probably get you killed. The tide backed off grudgingly.
“Oh yes,” said Thomas. “At least six that I’ve been able to reach. Don’t worry, it’s all quite safe. Well, as long as you stand in the right place, anyway. And the traps won’t bother you going back the other way at all. We’ll just have to wait for the doors to open. In fact, that click you heard? If you listen very closely, you can hear a kind of soft whirring right before the click. I think that’s the mechanism firing up.”
Stepping under the line of the blade was utterly nerve wracking. Galen focused on his breathing. You have charged into a room full of enemies with only a knife before, he told himself. That was more dangerous than this.
Yes, but you had a chance of killing those enemies. How do you kill a wall made of the hardest stuff you know?
During the Clocktaur War, they had tried any number of ways of dispatching the clocktaurs. Sledgehammers worked if you had enough men and enough sledgehammers, but you always broke dozens of hammers doing it, and the men wielding those hammers said their shoulders were never the same again. Divine blacksmiths of the Forge God ultimately proved the most effective, probably because their god had a certain sympathy for the joints of His chosen.
In the end, if you could dig in the dirt, the best method turned out to be to dig a giant pit and then just roll massive stones down onto the clocktaurs. Siege towers were swiftly repurposed into ramps that could be dragged to the edge of the pits. It took many, many stones.
When the Dreaming God’s paladins cleaned up the remaining clocktaurs in the years that followed, they went out with the Saint of Steel’s paladins and a few of the Forge God’s people. Galen and his brothers dropped immense weighted nets on the clocktaurs and the smiths went for the legs. You just had to get them down long enough for the Dreaming God’s paladins to get hands on them and get the demon out of them.
“Right!” said Thomas. They passed through the door and into another corridor, identical to the first one, except for the lack of barrels. “Now, the next room—”
“We’re going into more of these rooms?” Galen was not pleased about this at all. “Is there some point to this?”
Thomas looked briefly stumped. “Don’t you want to see them?”
“Are you asking if I want to stand in rooms where giant blades fall on my head?”
“When you say it like that, it sounds weird,” said Piper. “But isn’t this fascinating?”
“And horribly dangerous!”
“Oh no, not nearly as much as it looks,” said Thomas hastily. “As long as you don’t do anything foolish like run into the middle of the room. That triggers all the traps immediately. Now, this next room for example? Perfectly safe if you stand in the corners this time. Here, I’ll show you.” He palmed the switch beside the door and it slid open. “Come on, follow me, you have six minutes…”
Galen wanted to scream. Intellectually, he knew that this was probably not nearly so dangerous as it seemed, but his nerves were ringing like church bells and the battle tide wanted to rise but there was nothing to attack.
“Up against the corner, scoot, scoot,” said Thomas, making shooing gestures. Galen grimly herded Piper into the corner. Thomas stood on the other side of the room, still beaming like a proud father, beckoning to Earstripe.
“A gnole thinks ancients were crazy,” muttered Earstripe, heading toward the corner.
“I’m sure it makes perfect sense if we only knew what they were using it for,” called Piper. “I mean, a mill must seem like some kind of horrible torture device if you don’t know about grinding grain.”
“A gnole thinks our bone-doctor may be crazy too.”
“Exactly!” said Thomas, ignoring the gnole. “We just don’t know what it’s for. Now, my personal theory—and this is only a theory—is that it’s meant for some kind of religious pilgrimage.”
“The Church of Sharp Falling Objects?” asked Galen.
“Not quite that, my good man. We have no writing from the ancients, so we can’t know as to their scriptures, but imagine a kind of proving ground where the acolyte has read the holy texts and knows where to stand. Imagine the act of faith, to kneel in the proper place while blades come down around you.”
“Imagine the mess, if you don’t remember the text correctly.”
“It’s only a theory,” said Thomas, sounding slightly hurt. “I could be completely wrong, of course. But imagine such a pilgrimage, through multiple rooms, stopping to pray at each place, until arriving at last at…well, whatever they arrive at.”
“You don’t know?” asked Piper.
“Not—oh, hang on, nearly time. Do make sure you’re in the corner, please.”
Galen set his feet, Piper wedged into the corner behind him yet again. “We seem to keep doing this,” said the doctor.
“Because we keep going into these rooms.”
Click. Click. The walls slashed down again. This one came down at an angle, three feet away. There was technically plenty of space, but Galen felt a chill wash of adrenaline nonetheless. His fingers were locked on his sword hilt. He shoved backward even farther, his back against Piper’s chest. Piper lost his balance and grabbed for him, one hand on his arm and one at his waist.
If we weren’t in an ancient death-trap, I could really enjoy this part.
“It’s the same as the other one,” Piper said, craning his neck over Galen’s shoulder.
“Yes, and I hate it. We’re going back.”
Piper squirmed, trying to wriggle out of the corner, and Galen had to close his eyes. Adrenaline turned to arousal much too easily and there was a very attractive man moving against his back and this was not the time, not at all the time—
Piper stilled so suddenly that Galen feared he’d fainted. I can’t have been pushing him that hard. No, he’s breathing fine. He half-turned, and then Piper’s breath was warm in his ear, and there were too many shadows to read the man’s eyes, but he could see a line of white around the irises.
He’s frightened. Galen felt a sudden mad urge to gather the man up in his arms and protect him from whatever had alarmed him. Yeah, that will certainly work well when he’s frightened of giant blades falling from the ceiling.
“We can’t leave,” the doctor said, very softly.
It took Galen a moment to make sense of the words. “What?”
The lights that Thomas and Earstripe were carrying cast beams of light through the holes in the walls, leaving a pattern of cut-out shadows across the walls. Piper’s lips were almost against his cheek. “We can’t,” he whispered, “because this is where those men died.”
Twelve
“Are you sure?” asked Galen, just as softly. Piper nodded. “How do you know?”
Piper’s breath caught. “I’ll explain later,” he whispered. “But it was in a room like this one.”
“He said that was a pig.”
“We don’t know it wasn’t. Shhh, act normal. The wall’s about to come up.”
The last thing Galen wanted to do was act normal, but if Piper was right, they were down in a labyrinth with someone who was probably a murderer. Although you don’t know that, he told himself. They might have been his assistants. Or burglars.
Though those bodies didn’t get dumped into the river by themselves, now did they?
Either way, act normal. Don’t let him think you suspect. He’s clearly excited to talk to Piper, but if he gets the impression you know what’s happening, he may turn on you. And since this is his dungeon, that’s the last thing we want.
The wall slid up. Thomas stepped out of the corner. “Just one more!” he promised. “This one’s
easy.”
“Easy?” said Galen, with false heartiness. “Easy how?”
“Easy in that nothing happens. I think it was meant to be filled with poison gas.” Thomas sounded much too excited by the prospect. “But it must have broken down over the centuries, because now nothing much happens. There’s a little bit of a hiss from some nozzles and then the door opens.”
“If nothing happens, do we really have to see it?” asked Galen.
“Oh, but you must! The technology is really quite ingenious. The nozzles look like seashells. Come, come, it’s very safe. I’ve been in that room a hundred times.”
Galen and Earstripe exchanged glances. Galen knew that gnoles were much better at reading body language than humans—their language was based on it—but he didn’t know how to express as complex a concept as this. He settled for jerking his chin toward Thomas’s back and giving Earstripe a very intense look.
The gnole shrugged. “Door back is closed anyway, tomato-man. Might as well.”
Galen stepped away from the wall, one hand on Piper’s arm. “Are you feeling all right?”
“I’ve been better.” Piper’s already pale skin had gone unusually ashen. He shook his head a few times, raking his hands through his hair. The candle in Earstripe’s hand cast shadows from beneath and left his eye sockets as dark and shadowed as a skull.
Thomas was waiting for them in the hallway. This one was turned ninety degrees, with a door at either end. Piper cleared his throat and said, in something approximating his old enthusiasm, “Does this lead to two different rooms?”
“Yes! Though the gas room is much more interesting. The other room is just another one where blades fall from the ceiling, though they do it in lengthwise thirds.” He started toward the left door.
Earstripe held up a hand. “Smells like death,” he said.
Galen stiffened, waiting for Thomas to react, but the man only sighed. “Oh dear. Yes, it’s the pig, I expect.”
“Another pig?”
“It’s really the most efficient way,” Thomas said. “I get a couple of shoats from one of the local farmers and then I put them in the room and close the door. When the door opens again, even though the trap has reset, I can usually tell more or less what happened. Unless the pig is still alive, of course, but when that happens, I just close up the door again and wait. And once I know, it’s easy enough to wait out the trap and then pull the dead pig out. But one of the doors past this one has a pit that runs across the middle of the room, and the pig fell in the pit, and then once the pit closed up…well, six minutes isn’t a lot of time to haul a dead pig out of a hole in the ground. So it’s still there. The smell was a lot worse a few weeks ago, believe me.”
“That is…efficient, yes,” said Galen, trying to keep his voice entirely neutral. He wondered if there was really a pig down there, or if there was another victim in a pit somewhere, like the ones that had washed up on the riverbank. Can Earstripe smell the difference between a decaying pig and a decaying human? He wished there was some way to ask without alerting Thomas.
“Anyway, this is the last room we’ll do,” said Thomas. He palmed the door switch and strolled inside. “No need to stand anywhere for this one.”
This room looked slightly different than the others, the walls lined with round shapes that resembled a snail shell, each with a circular hole in the middle. Galen found himself gravitating to the corner despite Thomas’s reassurances. Not that the corner is necessarily safe, mind you. Earstripe had his shoulders hunched and kept pawing at his nose, although Galen couldn’t smell anything yet. Piper went to one of the round openings and peered into it, which was unsettling to watch. It’s not likely that there’s a spring-loaded arrow in there, or an eel that’s going to shoot out and latch onto his face, but there’s something about staring into holes…
“Aren’t they interesting? I wish I could see the mechanism inside.” Thomas lifted the lantern and then cursed as oil sloshed from side to side. “Oh, blast!” He squatted down and set the lantern beside him. “No, don’t worry, just me being clumsy…should have dealt with the wick earlier, but I was so excited to show people the rooms…”
He crouched in the doorway, still muttering to himself, and began disassembling the lantern. Galen’s nerves were jangling again. “Could you please not put your eyeball against that thing when it starts clicking?” he said testily.
“I wasn’t putting my eyeball against it,” said Piper. “Thomas, have you slid a probe into these holes? How deep are they?”
“One and three-quarter inches, give or take,” said Thomas, and then, without so much as a pause, he pitched backward through the doorway.
Galen lunged forward on instinct, not sure if he was catching Thomas before he fell or grabbing him before he ran. The door was already closing and he barely got a hand around the edge, then had to yank it back or lose his fingers. The room was plunged into darkness, broken only by Earstripe’s candle.
Click.
Click.
Light began to leak from the walls.
“Thomas!” yelled Galen, pounding on the door. “Let us out!” Stupid. Stupid. I should have been watching him more closely, I knew he was a murderer, but I was so busy making sure that he didn’t think we suspected him that I didn’t move fast enough.
“You’re fine!” Thomas’s voice was muffled by the door. “It’ll open in twenty-eight minutes, don’t worry. And the gas really doesn’t work.”
“Why did you shut us in here?”
“The pigs never get past the pit trap,” said Thomas. He sounded as if this was perfectly reasonable. “I have to use humans past that. Incidentally, the pit trap is the next one on the right. There’s two stages to it, though. First it’s on this side, then it’s by the far door. If you stand in a line in the dead middle of the room and don’t panic, you’ll be fine.”
“What?!”
“The middle of the room! Look, there’s a set of triangles on the floor. If everybody stands in a triangle, they’ll be fine. Be sure you do the righthand room, though. The lefthand one is full of spikes, and nobody ever gets past that one. I have lost more pigs that way…”
Galen slammed his fist into the door again.
Piper joined him. “We’re not running your gauntlet, Thomas,” he shouted. “We’re just going to wait until these doors open and come out.”
“I know you’ll try that, so I’m afraid I’m going to shut you in here,” said Thomas, sounding apologetic. “I am sorry, Doctor Piper. You seem like someone who could appreciate the mystery, and I hate to have to use these tactics. But you’ve also got a much better chance of getting through than any of the others did! Certainly better than the pigs! And think what we’ll learn!”
Hissssss…. Air puffed from the nozzles. Galen held his breath. Piper put his sleeve over his nose.
“Don’t worry,” called the muffled voice, “it really won’t do anything. I’ve been in there lots of times. I think probably the gas was lighter than air, so the penitent would have to lie flat to escape it.”
“A gnole doesn’t smell anything,” said Earstripe. Galen let his breath out again, cautiously, then began to pound his fist on the door in impotent fury. “You can’t think you’ll get away with this! People will come looking for us!”
“Yes,” said Thomas. “That’ll be useful. I can always use more test subjects if you don’t get to the end. I don’t actually know where the end is, you understand, though my theory is that you’ll eventually reach the sanctum sanctorum, and then the exit is the door next to the entryway, so you’ll wind up back in the cellar. So that’s a good reason for you to try and get through, isn’t it? To make it through before you run out of water or light. I shouldn’t want to try it in the dark.” He tittered again.
Galen snarled. The battle tide wanted to rise, but it had no target. Even a divine berserker did not know how to fight an unbreakable door. “When I get out of here, I’m going to wring your neck!”
“I hope not, bu
t I’ll be going now, just in case. Good luck! I really am rooting for you. Remember, stand in the triangles!”
And after that, despite Galen’s bluster and Piper’s pleas, there was no further answer from the other side of the door.
* * *
Galen put his back to the wall, slid down it, and said, “I’m an idiot.”
“No more than I am,” said Piper, joining him.
“Yes, but guarding people from murderers is my job. And I was so busy watching him to see if he had a weapon that I walked into this like a lamb.”
“A gnole did too, tomato-man.” Earstripe’s ears were flat against his skull. “A gnole kept smelling, but a human only smelled excited, not guilty.”
“Oh, good,” said Galen, “he’s a remorseless murderer. That makes me feel better.”
Piper tried to head off the recriminations before they got any farther. “Look, what could we have done? As soon as we refused to go any farther, he would have trapped us. He knows the place. We don’t.”
“I could have held a sword to his throat.”
“In which case he could have just taken us into a room with a blade and told us to stand in the wrong place, so that you got chopped in half and he didn’t.”
“Mmmm.”
Piper gave up. Paladins wallowed in guilt as a form of meditative exercise. There was only so much you could do. “The door opens back up in twenty minutes.”
“So he said.”
“Well. There’s that. But if he actually wants us to find the traps for him, presumably he would give us as much information as possible.”
“Or he could just be a garden-variety murderer who enjoys watching people get chopped to bits by ancient death machines.”
“How is it that I work with dead bodies all day and I’m the optimist?”
That won him an exasperated smile. Then Galen’s green eyes narrowed suddenly. “But you knew. How did you know that this was where those men died?”
“Oh. That.” Piper looked away and rested the back of his head against the wall. “I suppose you deserve an explanation.” He toyed with the idea of lying, then discarded it. Withholding information could be dangerous. And they were in a death trap. And if the paladin gets antsy about me being a wonderworker…well, I’ll refer him to Bishop Beartongue, I suppose.
Paladin’s Hope: Book Three of the Saint of Steel Page 8