Ruins and Revenge Page 7

  “But you won’t,” I told him firmly. “That’s an easy distance for you, Malik. Leave your pack where it is, we’ll pick it up on the way over.”

  “Or if you don’t mind possibly sacrificing your pack, you can toss it to that tile as a test,” Agata suggested.

  “If I’m wrong, I won’t be needing my pack.”

  “Will there be enough room for you to land with your pack there?” I asked.

  “Let’s just say I’m motivated to be light on my feet.”

  Dasant glanced at me. “Boss, should we have a retrieval spell ready… you know, just in case?”

  Phaelan’s brow furrowed. “Retrieval?”

  “I’d reach out and grab Malik with magic and yank him back here.”

  “Doesn’t sound comfortable.”

  “It’s not.”

  “But it’s better than being flattened.”

  “No magic,” Malik called. “I’m getting the feeling that would not be welcome here. The tiles haven’t moved, but when I step on them, they are vibrating.”

  I frowned. “Like the ground outside?”

  “Essentially.”

  “Then let’s not make it angrier.”

  “Agreed.” Malik carefully removed his pack’s straps from his shoulders. “The pack goes first. That way, I get my test—hopefully successful—and my pack isn’t in anyone’s way when the rest of you come across.”

  No one spoke, moved, or even breathed as Malik got his pack in precisely the right grip to distribute the weight as evenly as possible. He turned to the side, his feet in a fencer’s ready position, and tossed the pack.

  It landed exactly in the center of the tile.

  Dasant cleared his throat. “Uh, boss, I just had a really bad thought.” His voice was the barest whisper. “I hate to bring this up, but what if Malik’s pack was too light to set off the trap?”

  Malik spoke without turning. “Das, you bastard, I heard that.”

  “Sorry, but it’s a viable concern.”

  “Yes, it’s viable. It also does not help.”

  He jumped.

  And landed.

  And remained unsquished.

  Malik nimbly—and very quickly—crossed the rest of the floor without stopping, arriving on the other side alive and whole.

  He shouldered his pack, turned to us, and grinned in challenge. “I think Das should go next.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Das crossed without incident, followed by Elsu, Jash, and Agata.

  Phaelan was about to go, with Talon next, Indigo flying across after him, and me crossing last. Indigo would remain with us. We didn’t know what to expect in the caves and once we reached the subterranean city. Indigo might become an invaluable member of the team.

  All those who had already crossed had felt the vibration in the tiles beneath their feet, but it hadn’t gotten any worse. I’d take that as a good sign.

  As a pirate and expert swordsman, Phaelan was used to keeping his balance and even fighting with a pitching deck beneath his feet. Vibrating tiles probably didn’t even register.

  Talon had been a dancer. He was as nimble as a thief sprinting across a city roofline.

  He leapt with graceful power across the blank tiles in the middle of the room, landing perfectly where everyone else had.

  The tile exploded upward, propelling Talon into the air.

  Indigo squawked loudly and I sprinted across the floor, only half looking where I was stepping.

  Talon curled into a ball in mid-air, turning once, twice, and three times, then landed squarely and safely on the next safe tile.

  I slid to a stop, the toes of my boots on a white tile. I pinwheeled with my arms, rocking back on my heels.

  The white tile didn’t react.

  “What the hell?” I yelled.

  Malik’s eyes were wide and Phaelan was white as a sheet. Looked like my two booby-trap experts hadn’t been expecting that.

  And here I was out in the middle of the floor, one leap from the trick tile, not knowing if the next one I stepped on would be my last.

  As fast as it had tossed Talon, the trick tile, capping a thick metal pole, lowered back into its mounting.

  My mind raced. Could it have been set to not react for six people, with the seventh to cross setting it off?

  “You might want to avoid that tile,” Dasant suggested.

  “You think?”

  He winced. “Actually, you might want to avoid any of them. Too bad you can’t levitate.”

  “Yes, that is too bad. Does anyone have any practical solutions?”

  Phaelan barked a humorless laugh. “How are you at tightrope walking?”

  I opened my mouth to retort, then closed it again, an idea coming to me. “The tiles are activated by pressure, a certain amount of weight. What if I stepped on the exact place where four tiles meet? The corner, and only with the ball of my foot?”

  Phaelan mulled that over, then began to nod. “If you could keep your balance, there wouldn’t be enough of your weight on any one tile to trigger the trap.” He added a smile to his nodding. “It could work.”

  Agata had her arms crossed, hugging herself. “Or it could trigger the first one you stepped on.”

  “Do you have a better suggestion?” I asked it gently and completely without sarcasm, which, considering that my knees were about to knock together, was nothing short of a miracle.

  “You know I don’t.”

  I slid my pack from my shoulders, leaving it on the tile. “If I make it across, screw caution, we’ll use a retrieval spell on it.”

  Indigo had flown across to where Talon stood safely on the other side.

  “Indy can fetch it,” Talon said.

  My boots were flexible, made for running and agility. They hadn’t let me down yet. I hoped this wouldn’t be both the first and last time.

  “Stick to the corners of every third tile,” Malik cautioned me.

  I flexed my feet. “Let’s get this over with.”

  There were approximately thirty more tiles to cross, meaning I’d be taking ten more steps, any of which could drop me through the floor to whatever death awaited below, fling me into the air to land on a trap tile, or send death to skewer me from above. My imagination treated me to a rapid-fire vision of all the ways I could die, giving special emphasis to what my mortal remains would look like as a result of each.

  I told my imagination to shut up.

  I’d often been grateful for long legs, but never more so than now. I carefully placed the toe of my boot on the exact spot where the supposed “good” tile intersected with three other unknowns. While being careful and precise, I was also moving as fast as goblinly possible.

  I not only arrived at my destination, I was also in one piece.

  There was no reaction from any of the tiles, the ceiling, or the walls around us.

  I started breathing again.

  And so did Talon and Agata.

  Indigo darted out, plucked my pack from the floor, and sped back to us. He didn’t want to be out there, either.

  “Tam,” Calik called across the room. “How long do you want me to wait?”

  We had previously discussed three days, but that had been when we thought we’d be closer to Nidaar’s mountain before entering the city. While assured that this was some sort of outer gate, I had no idea how much farther we had to go.

  “Let’s stick with three days,” I said, glancing around at my team.

  They nodded.

  I had one of the firedrakes’ spy gems. They could also be used for short-distance communication. I didn’t know of an instance when they had been used to communicate between the surface and deep inside a mountain, but I’d always been of the opinion that if you pushed enough magic into a thing, it would work. Each member of the team carried a smaller version, the size of a large marble.

  “Are you sure?” Calik asked.

  “Positive,” I told him. “Take care of yourself and the ladies. And if you need to leave,
do it.”

  The dragon pilot laughed. “Tam, I’ve got three hyper-protective, fire-breathing dragons. I’ll never be safer in my life. Just make sure that you come back—all of you.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Chapter Twelve

  I turned toward the single door that had been our objective. It was made of plain wood, with an iron frame and hinges. With the exception of Elsu, we were all taller than it was.

  “I tried it,” Malik said. “It’s locked, and there are no wards.”

  Dasant shrugged. “If it worked once, boss…”

  I held my hands out toward the door, palms forward, doing a quick scan of my own. Malik wouldn’t blame me for checking after him; he would have done the same, and quite often had. We’d discovered the unpleasant way that what was unwarded for one could be deadly for another.

  Not one tingle. The door was clean.

  And highly suspicious.

  The opening would be wide enough to admit only one person at a time, and that person would have to stoop to get through. It was a perfect ambush point.

  There was no knob, ring, or handle.

  “Everyone against the walls,” I said. Not that it would do any good if something on the other side was waiting to introduce our insides to our outsides. The floor behind us was no longer safe. We couldn’t go back. Forward was our only option. When our mission was complete, we would have to find another way out.

  I carefully put my hand where a handle should have been and slowly pushed.

  It opened into darkness with a grating creak of hinges.

  We all winced. Phaelan and Dasant mouthed their respective favorite curses.

  So much for sneaking into Nidaar.

  I reached out with my magic and quickly scanned through the door. There was no discernable barrier that would be triggered by shielded and cloaked mages stepping through.

  I glanced at Jash, my brow raised in unspoken question.

  He shook his head.

  Nothing alive waiting on the other side. Though we’d discovered the dead could be even worse.

  “I’ll go first,” I said. “Wait here.”

  I shielded, cloaked, and stepped into darkness.

  To a goblin’s eyes, there are varying degrees of darkness, far beyond what an elf or human can distinguish.

  Below me, the blackness was deeper, telling me that where I stood was a ledge. Above me was lighter, with the reason gradually becoming apparent.

  Strands hanging from the cavern’s vaults began to glow with a brightness that defied their delicacy, illuminating a space even larger than I had sensed. I hadn’t seen the phenomenon before, but I’d heard of it. The luminescent strands were created by cave spiders. Small and clever, the creatures had adapted to live in the darkness by making their own light. Any life that found its way into a cave was instinctively attracted to them. Bright drops stood out along the length of each strand. As the spiders spun their traps, they secreted a sticky substance so that any prey that made contact would be stuck and unable to escape. Fortunately, they were too small to be of any danger to us.

  The webs’ light was faint, but it was enough to show me that the shelf of rock where I stood was big enough of accommodate all of us. A rough-hewn stair curved against the wall to the left, giving us a way down to the cavern floor. We would be forced to go single file, and would be completely exposed with our backs literally to the wall. I couldn’t see the floor of the cavern, but we had no choice.

  I ducked back to where my team waited and told them what I’d seen.

  “Phaelan, use your night-vision goggles to get down the stairs, and watch your step,” I told him. “Depending on what we find there, it’s up to you to determine if you want to keep them on or off.”

  The elf pulled the goggles up to his eyes from where they’d hung around his neck. “I’ll take them off if I can. Peripheral vision sucks in these things.”

  I nodded. “Then let’s move. I’ll take point with Jash second to tell me if there’s anything in that cavern that wants us dead.”

  “I might duck first and tell on the way down.”

  “Just as long as you make it obvious.”

  Dasant chuckled. “His girly squeal always works.”

  Jash fired back with a crooked grin. “If it ain’t broke, I’m not fixing it.”

  “Okay, people,” I said. “Keep it quick and quiet. Let’s move out.” I glanced at the door, our last contact with the surface. “And the last one through, close the door.”

  The cavern floor was farther down than it had appeared. As we descended, less light from the webs made their way down to us. There was a single “oof” from Phaelan when he bumped into Malik, but other than that, the elf pirate didn’t misstep or make any noise. I had to admit I was impressed.

  It took us at least half an hour to reach the bottom.

  Jash moved in close, speaking in the barest whisper. “Still no life. We need to risk a lightglobe.”

  I kept my own voice down. “Agreed. I’ll do it.”

  I conjured the tiniest point of light, no larger than the drops along the cave spiders’ web strands, and sent it darting away from us into the darkness, increasing its brightness when it was far enough away not to expose us any more than we already were.

  As it brightened, it showed an enormous chamber with stalagmites rising from the cavern floor to form towering monoliths, or fusing with others to form curtains of stone. Between them wound a path that was no more than six feet wide. The stairs we had just descended had been carved out of a wall that curved around to give us no choice but to take the path where it led.

  “You think they want us to go that way?” Elsu asked.

  “I’m not opposed to being given obvious directions,” Malik said. “However, I harbor an extreme dislike of being herded.”

  He left “like sheep to the slaughter” unsaid, but we all knew what he meant. Malik had said it before, and it had turned out to be all too accurate on more than one occasion.

  I appreciated his omission.

  “The Heart is in that direction as well,” Agata said.

  “Since Jash says we’re alone, drop your cloaks and shields. Save your magic reserves for later. Hopefully we won’t need it, at least for a while. As soon as we find a defendable area, we’ll stop and rest.”

  We had been steadily descending through the cavern for the past hour, keeping our lightglobe out in front of us. I’d expected the temperature to go down, not up. My experience with caves, tunnels, and mines had been cold, damp, and miserable. This was still uncomfortably damp, but the cold had been replaced by heat and humidity. A slight breeze blew from up ahead, bringing with it a hint of the mossy undergrowth of a forest floor. Considering how far beneath the surface we were, that was impossible, though my nose was telling me otherwise.

  “I thought caves were supposed to be cool,” Phaelan said. “It feels like the Daith Swamp down here.”

  “There’s never been a survey of these mountains,” Agata told him. “With all the seismic activity, I wouldn’t be surprised if this mountain was a semi-dormant volcano.”

  “Wonderful. Yet another way we could die down here.”

  I ran the back of my hand across my eyes. Sweat. I had wanted nothing more than to take off my helmet, flight leathers, and everything underneath, and take a dip in the pool we’d just passed.

  Until I’d seen the worms that lived there. We’d thought they were reeds, until Phaelan tossed in a piece of jerky.

  Worms.

  Hungry worms.

  With teeth.

  “Does everything down here want to kill us?” Dasant asked.

  Malik slapped at an insect on the side of his face. His hand came away bloody. “No, they just want to eat us. Whether we’re still alive or not does not concern them.”

  “The Khrynsani don’t want to eat us.”

  “But their green, scaly friends might.”

  Minutes later we encountered the last thing we wanted to see�
�other than giant, man-eating insects.

  A dead end.

  It hadn’t been a dead end until recently. However, when in a cavern, “recently” was relative. The rockfall blocking our way could have happened a few years ago, or a few millennia ago. When it happened didn’t matter. That it was in our way now did.

  “Can we blast it?” Dasant asked.

  “I would strongly advise against it,” Agata said, surveying the structure of the small mountain of rocks. “We don’t know how thick it is on the other side, or how stable the roof is here. We could easily bring it down on top of us.” She summoned a lightglobe. “I need to check the walls on either side.”

  I nodded and told the others to take a break, as I followed Agata at a distance that wouldn’t interfere with her magic. Some of the worms in that pool could have land-dwelling cousins.

  Agata stopped and removed her pendant, placing it flat against the wall, her attitude one of intense listening. “I’m getting the same strength of signal as before, and the wall is thin here.” She shone her lightglobe on the rock above our heads. “And the rock above us is more substantial.”

  The others had joined us. Dasant shouldered his way to the front. “Then one good kick should do the—”

  “Not that thin,” Agata said.

  “Ma’am, you underestimate my motivation.”

  “And you mistake the stability of the roof over our heads. I said it’s stable. Not necessarily impact-proof. A couple of your ‘good kicks’ could bury us all.”

  Elsu elbowed Dasant aside. “I’ve got this one. Will cutting an opening less than waist high and just wide enough to squeeze through be too disruptive?”

  The gem mage considered that for a moment. “It shouldn’t be.”

  “Shouldn’t be versus buried alive,” Malik mused. “Sounds like we have a winner.”

  We all cleared out of the way so Elsu could go to work. She used a small rock to outline where she planned to cut. “Does that work?”

  “Das might lose some skin,” Jash noted. “But a couple of good kicks should pop him out the other side.”

  “How thick is it?” Elsu asked.

  Agata held up her hand, indicating the distance from her wrist to the tip of her longest finger. “It’s this thick from the floor to just above my knees. Then it thins out to about this deep.” She held up her little finger. “We need surgical precision here.”