The Dungeoneers (27 page)

His second thought was that it must have been the chest. When Lena closed it, she tripped a hidden lever, activating the trap. It wasn't her fault. He should have looked. He should have been more careful.

His third thought—and the most pressing—was getting out of the room before the ceiling made pincushions of them all. All four of them started pounding on the stone slab door.

“Open it!”

“I can't!”

“Then unlock it!”

“There's no lock!” Colm ran his hands along the edges of the stone, feeling for something, anything. A notch. A release. A lever. There was nothing. He felt Lena shove him to the side.

“Then I'll bust it down,” she said, driving her shoulder into it and rebounding off ineffectually. She reached to her belt and removed one of her hatchets, striking the door over and over until the handle of the hatchet splintered in her hand, its iron head clunking to the floor. She had only scratched the surface. Colm looked back at the dropping ceiling. There must be a hundred spikes jutting out of it. Lena kicked at the door with
one steel-toed boot. “I swear when I get out of here, I'm going to grab that goblin and throw him down here, poke
him
full of little holes, and see how
he
likes it.”

Right,
Colm thought.
I'm sure Herren Bloodclaw would just love a taste of his own medicine. A goblin falling for his own trap.

Colm froze. “Lena, you're a genius!”

“What does that have to do with anything?” she shouted.

“The fail-safe? Don't you see? It's a goblin trap, which means there's probably an escape mechanism!” Colm snatched the torch out of Quinn's hand and held it up to get a better look at the ceiling of pointy death. “Goblins who design traps like this usually put in a release in case they accidentally wander into them. A lever or a button or something. Look around the walls or on the floor. Anything out of the ordinary. A loose stone or a knob or latch of some kind.” Lena and the others turned away from the door and started looking frantically around the room.

“There's nothing here!” Serene shouted, angling her torch to illuminate the wall.

She was right. The walls were smooth. The stones were all even. The only thing that stuck out were the spikes in the ceiling, now only a spear's length above them. At least a hundred barbs of black iron, each coming to a keen point that could easily bite through leather, skin, and metal alike. Colm was hunchbacked now. Serene and Quinn had both dropped to their knees, frantically feeling around, shaking their heads. Lena was trying to wedge her sword in between the ceiling and the wall.

“All right, Quinn. If ever there was a time to get your magic on and cast a spell of getting-us-the-heck-out-of-here, now is it!” Lena barked. Only four feet separated floor from spikes.

“He can't cast spells,” Colm shouted. “He's had too much to eat.”

“Well, then you do something!” Lena said. “I can't fight a
ceiling
!”

Colm took a focusing breath and held it, tried to summon Finn's voice in his head.
“It's all about the little things. The way the grass bends when you walk on it. The whistle of the wind changing direction. The way the light flashes off the surface of polished stone.”

The light.

More specifically, the torchlight. It didn't reflect off any of the spikes; the coal-black iron was too dull to offer a shine.

Except for one.

Crawling on all fours now, Colm scrambled across the floor like Mr. Tickletoes. He reached out and touched the spike, the only one with a glossy reflection. The one that was simply
painted
black to match the others but was made of an entirely different material. He gave it a sharp tug, and it snapped off in his hands, wooden and hollow.

The ceiling suddenly ground to a stop.

Everyone froze, not even daring to breathe. There was a hesitation, pure silence, and then the spikes began to retreat, crawling back up the walls into the darkness.

Colm felt something lasso around his neck, nearly strangling him to death—Serene's dark, thin, tattooed arm choking him
in relief. Quinn lay on the floor, panting. “P-please t-t-tell me it w-would've stopped anyway,” he said.

“It would have stopped,” Colm said.
The floor would have stopped it, at least. After it ground our bones.

“Look,” Lena shouted, pointing to the back of the room, to a dark tunnel that had appeared behind the treasure chest with its meager bounty—a secret door that had revealed itself only after the trap was disarmed.

“Do you think it's an exit?” Serene asked.

“If so, it's even b-better than a chest full of g-g-gold,” Quinn muttered.

Colm wasn't sure he agreed, but he took the torch and inspected the new entry, a short hallway leading to a set of stone stairs. He felt Lena's hand on his shoulder.

“Could be more scorpions,” Lena suggested. She turned to Serene. “What does the spider think?”

“Mr. Tickletoes says we are bad for his health and that as soon as he gets out of here he is going back home to his wife and his three hundred children,” Serene said with a pout.

Colm palmed the silver coin and cautiously stepped into the corridor, scanning every cranny and crevice. He had already missed the trap on the chest and hadn't noticed the secret door recessed into the wall. He couldn't afford to make any more mistakes. He made it to the foot of the stairs and looked up. It could still be a dead end. Worse still, it could just be another trap. The stairs could collapse about halfway up. A giant boulder might come rolling down. There was really no telling
what possible horrors awaited them at the top.

A door creaked open, flooding the staircase with dull white light, revealing another monster with yellow eyes and even yellower teeth, staring down at them menacingly.

”Well. What are you waiting for? Come up and have a gloat,” the goblin said.

When he stepped out into the great hall, through an entrance that had been concealed by one of Tye Thwodin's giant paintings, the crowd of dungeoneers in training erupted with applause. Colm's eyes instantly darted over to the hourglasses along the wall, hunting for the one that had turned the moment the carpet slipped out from beneath them. There was still a little sand at the top. That meant that Team Tickletoes had made it through the dungeon in less than half the allotted time.

Colm felt Lena's gauntleted fist punch him in the shoulder, much harder than he would have liked. Behind him, Serene and Quinn were dancing in circles. Colm felt a strange sensation work its way through him, warming him from the inside.

Tye Thwodin stepped up to them, face deadly serious, the other masters in tow. His grunt silenced the room. The warm sensation vanished.

“You have the treasure, I presume.” He held out his hand, large enough, it seemed, to crush Colm's skull with one squeeze. Colm opened his own hand to reveal the silver coin.

Tye Thwodin turned to Herren and Finn. “I thought it was
supposed to be gold? Are you skimping on me, Argos?”

“Wouldn't dream of it, Master Thwodin,” Finn explained. “It's just a little joke among us rogues. I can fully attest that that is the very coin I put in the chest this morning. This team has successfully retrieved the treasure.”

Master Thwodin nodded, satisfied. “Then to the victors go the spoils.” He flipped the silver coin back to Colm, who caught it against his chest. Then the guild's founder proceeded to pound Quinn on the back, nearly knocking him over before turning to the room full of recruits. “And as for the rest of you—mark this time. It is the one to beat.”

There was a murmur in the crowd. Colm caught sight of Ravena standing at the edge of it, away from her own party, away from everyone. He couldn't be sure, but he thought maybe, just maybe, she looked concerned. He smiled in her direction and offered a shrug. She turned her back on him.

“Time to beat indeed,” Herren Bloodclaw spit. “No way a bunch of green cave crawlers like you could make it through so fast. Not without cheating somehow.”

Colm's smile disappeared. He instantly thought of the stimsickle leaves. The earmarked book. Lock twenty-four. Colm looked at Finn, but the rogue didn't return his glance.

“Or maybe you're just getting soft in your old age,” Finn said to the goblin instead.

“No sense getting all bent out of shape over it, Renny,” Tye Thwodin boomed. “Obviously this just shows what outstanding mentors you both are. Now go reset the dungeon so
we can throw someone else down there. I'm getting hungry already.”

As Tye Thwodin and the other masters turned back to the stage, Finn grabbed Colm's arm and leaned in close, whispering in his ear.

“Remember our motto,” he said. “Ready for anything . . .”

Guilty of nothing,
Colm finished in his own head as the rogue turned to follow the others. Colm watched him go, then flinched as Lena put her face in his, eyes bright and beaming. “See. I told you. Nothing the four of us can't handle.” She reached out and took his four-fingered hand, squeezing tight. “You were almost as awesome as I was down there.”

“Yeah,” Colm said.

In his other hand he squeezed the silver coin even tighter.

W
ell, at least nobody died.

That was what the masters kept saying to one another as the last party was rescued from Renny's dungeon after a full day of trials that stretched well into the night. Nobody died and, somewhat surprisingly, only a few young dungeoneers were injured. It was a splendid success.

Precautions had been taken, of course. The scorpions Master Bloodclaw had used had been handpicked for the nonfatal toxin in their stingers before being enlarged through magical means. And the spiked floor was engineered to stop with two feet to spare so that trapped dungeoneers could lie down and await rescue if they couldn't trigger the escape. The magic-imbued lock gave a nasty shock to anyone who tried to pick it without disenchanting it first, causing one young dungeoneer to smoke from the ears and experience some short-term
memory loss. Another had a leg broken by the scorpion's claw, and a third tripped while climbing the stairs at the end, knocking himself unconscious and earning his party a penalty for having to carry him out, causing Tye Thwodin to joke that stairs were “the worst.”

The other surprise, besides the dearth of injuries, was that the odds-on favorite, the party of Tyren Troge, didn't break the record as anticipated. They might have, if it hadn't been for the chest. While she broke through the enchantment with ease, using a counterspell of her own devising, Ravena Heartfall struggled with the lock itself, taking a full ten minutes to pick it. She emerged from the dungeon scowling, clearly disappointed, slapping the gold coin—everyone else got gold—into Master Thwodin's hands and then disappearing to her chambers without a word while Tyren raged and attacked the floor, resulting only in a scratched floor and a bent sword. It was an excellent run, Tye Thwodin said in consolation, and one that they should be proud of.

It just wasn't the best.

Colm wasn't sure what to expect.

He woke to the splatter of fat raindrops, set loose by a dark gray sky, bursting against his window. Not necessarily a good sign, but he wasn't going to let a little rain dampen his spirits. Not today. Not after what had happened. Nervous hands fumbled at his bootlaces as he quickly got dressed and made his way down to breakfast. Working his way through the
halls, he noticed strange things happening.

“Hi, Colm.”

“Hey, Colm.”

“Nice run, rogue.”

People talking to him. Trainees of all ages. He knew their faces and maybe could guess at some of their names, but he didn't know them well enough yet to call them out, to speak to them. And yet here they were, slapping him on the back or giving him sly winks, as if they shared some secret. By the time he made it to breakfast, he was sure it was a trap. They were all up to something. His sisters always smiled and said “Hi” in a sweet voice before they gang-tackled him too. He worked his way past the greetings and entered the dining hall, looking for his friends.

He spotted Lena instantly. She was surrounded by no fewer than ten other apprentices, encasing her like a second set of armor. She waved him over.

“Naturally I was the one responsible for defeating the scorpion. It wasn't that difficult, really. I considered wrestling it to the ground and flipping it over to expose its underbelly to the death knell of my sword, which would have been noticeably more barbaric, but time counts in a dungeon, and there are no points given for style.”

The crowd of trainees beamed at Lena with doe-eyed wonder—the same look
she
got whenever someone mentioned Master Wolfe. The older girl who had had her leg broken by another scorpion's pincer begged Lena to sign her cast. Lena pulled Colm toward her.

“Of course, we wouldn't have made it without this guy,” she said. “The best rogue in Thwodin's Legion. Heck, the best rogue in all the land. Isn't that right?”

Colm smiled nervously, waved to the gawkers. They all waved back with three fingers and a thumb. He couldn't tell if they were mocking him or saluting him. The girl with the cast smiled politely at Colm, then turned back to Lena.

“But how did it feel, you know, when you were stung? Did you think you were going to die?”

“Are you kidding?” Lena scoffed. “I hardly felt a thing. If it hadn't been for a structural flaw in my armor, the beast never would have touched me. I plan on writing a note to the blacksmith who manufactured it, recommending several improvements to the design. . . .”

Colm had heard enough. He slipped away—it wasn't difficult—and found Serene and Quinn hiding at their table. Maybe it was the incident with the frosted roll, or maybe it was their newfound fame, but Quinn had hardly touched his food for once.

“To the victor go the spoils indeed,” Colm said, glancing back over his shoulder at the radiant barbarian and her newfound groupies.

“That's always the way,” Serene said with a smirk. “The warriors get all the attention. It's the shiny armor, I think. And the swagger. She definitely has the swagger.”

“You mean you two don't have little mobs following you around?” Colm asked, thinking about all the people who had at least greeted him on the way down. Serene shook her head.

“I'm the Girl Who Whispers into Her Robes a Lot and he's . . .” She looked at Quinn, who scowled.

“I'm What's His Face . . . You Know, the Short One,” he said.

Apparently word had already gotten out that Quinn hadn't done much down in Renny's dungeon. Not that he could be blamed. It wasn't his fault he had ingested three full servings of Magic Dan's Anti-Magic Paste. “At least that's better than Smoke for Brains,” Colm said, using one of the names whispered about Quinn after the whole fire-out-the-ears incident.

“Who called me Smoke for Brains?” Quinn whined. Colm tried to change the subject as Lena finally pulled herself away from her admirers.

“You sure they don't want to join us?” Colm asked when she sat down, all flushed, fanning herself.

Lena shook her head. “What? No. They just wanted to hear how I slew that giant, disgusting, deadly monster, is all.”

“Did they want to hear about your fainting too?” Quinn asked.

“Or how I cured your paralysis?” Serene added.

“Or how you started freaking out and hacking away at the ceiling while the rest of us were looking for the release on the trap?” Colm said.

Lena's shoulders slouched, the buzz of her celebrity crashing. “I told them all about you guys,” she said quickly. “I swear. It's just . . . you know . . . whoever kills the dragon gets the glory.”

“It was a bug,” Quinn muttered.

“Technically, it was an arachnid,” Serene corrected.

“Technically, it was ugly and freakish and terrifying and I'm glad you stabbed it,” Colm said. Truth was, he would rather Lena be the one in the torchlight. He was quickly discovering how much he preferred to be in the shadows. Quinn still looked sour, though.

“Let's be honest,” Lena whispered, leaning across the table. “We all know I wouldn't have made it half a step down there without you guys.” She reached over and touched Quinn's hand, and he softened instantly. “And speaking of ugly and freakish,” she added, looking around, “where are Tyren and his crew? We still need to get him back for that little icing stunt of his.”

Colm looked around with her, but apparently Tyren Troge's party had decided to skip breakfast, Ravena included.
Off somewhere sulking,
Colm thought with some satisfaction. He wondered if Tyren even knew what he had done, if he somehow learned that his prank had been the key to Colm getting past the enchanted lock. Of course, given how much of the icing Quinn had eaten, it could still be several days before he would cast a spell again. Maybe Lena was right. Maybe a little more justice was called for.

“I'm not so sure revenge is the answer,” Serene said.

“Don't think of it as revenge,” Lena said. “Think of it as reciprocation.”

That sounded like something Finn would say.

Quinn smiled. Then his smile instantly disappeared as an
obnoxious blast filled the dining hall. Colm turned to the archway to see Tye Thwodin with a copper cornet to his lips, face somehow even redder than usual as he blurted out the last of his breath, then handed the horn to the goblin standing beside him.

“Attention, please.” He coughed. “Where's the party of the hour?” The guild's founder scanned the crowd, his eyes finally alighting on Colm's table. He strode toward them, Herren Bloodclaw ambling behind, motioning behind Tye Thwodin's back for them all to stand. The whole room was watching, silent, enthralled by the massive figure. Tye Thwodin's hand shot out and grabbed Lena's, swallowing it whole, dragging her to her feet. His voice easily carried throughout the hall. “Miss Proudmore, Mr. Candorly, Ms. Willowtree, and Mr. . . .”

“Frostfoot,” the goblin whispered.

“Frostfoot, yes. It is my pleasure, as head of this guild, to present you with your reward.”

Colm looked at Lena expectantly. Her face was serious, but he could see her bouncing on the balls of her feet. Tye Thwodin snapped his fingers, and Herren Bloodclaw reluctantly unfurled a scroll. The goblin cleared his throat. “As winners of the most recent dungeon trials, slaying the monster and retrieving the treasure in record time, the party of Proudmore et al. is hereby entitled to the following reward—”

Colm felt Lena's arm around him, pulling him close. The
room was suddenly so quiet you could hear Fungus snoring in the kitchen.

“All the treasure they can carry from the . . .”

The goblin stopped reading and looked up—way up—at Tye Thwodin, who stood with his arms across his chest, beaming at the lot of them like a proud father. “You can't be serious,” Herren Bloodclaw said. “These four?”

“Just read it, Renny,” Master Thwodin commanded.

The goblin shook his head. “Ahem, all the treasure they can carry from the . . . very
real
dungeon into which they will accompany Master Thwodin in five days' time.”

Everyone froze. From the kitchen came another sonorous rumble. Then Tye Thwodin's face exploded into an even bigger grin, his giant arms stretched wide. “So what d'ya think? Get to dive with the big boys, eh? How's
that
for a reward?”

“Oh, my leaves and branches,” Serene whispered.

“You're j-j-joking,” Quinn said. “A real dungeon?”

Colm glanced at Lena. She looked like she was going to soak her armor. She was practically vibrating, biting her lip. A hundred pairs of eyes seemed to be staring directly at Colm. He wasn't sure what he saw in their faces, jealousy or sympathy, envy or relief. Maybe all of it.

“A real dungeon? With real treasure? And we can take as much as we want?” Lena asked.

“Minus the guild's cut, of course, and split according to your rank as outlined in our agreement. But yes—we're not talking about some little goblin playground tucked in a basement.
And best of all,
I'm
coming with you . . . and some of the other masters, of course.”

Quinn's mouth was working, his lips were moving, but he wasn't producing any sound anymore, just indecipherable grunts. Tye Thwodin took them as groans of appreciation, though Colm was fairly certain they weren't.

“Don't bother thanking me. It wasn't my idea. It was Master Argos's. He came up with it a while ago, said that whoever makes it through the trials should get a chance at the real deal—with chaperones, of course. In fact, I believe he already has a dungeon in mind.”

“B-but what if we're n-n-not ready?” Quinn finally managed to blurt out.

Tye Thwodin cocked his head sideways, as if he didn't hear quite right. “Not ready? Well, then I suppose we could offer the reward to the second-place party. Who was that, Renny?”

“That would be Tyren Troge's party,” the goblin said. Tye Thwodin started to look around the room, but he didn't get very far.

“Don't you dare!” Lena said defiantly, stepping in front of Quinn.

Colm stared at her. He couldn't imagine talking to Tye Thwodin that way, but the head of the guild bellowed laughter.

“By gods, she reminds me of me,” he said. “I wouldn't dream of it, lass.” Master Thwodin turned to address the whole crowd of budding dungeoneers. “Now why don't all of you take the morning off, as a reward for your efforts yesterday? It
won't be long before you're
all
diving into dungeons and raking in coin!” The guild's founder rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Won't be long,” he repeated.

After Master Thwodin left, goblin in tow, Colm and the others stared at their food for all of six seconds, then decided they were finished eating. Colm followed his comrades out into the great hall, with its whitewashed walls and its glittering chandeliers, listening to Quinn, who was no longer stuttering, though he talked without taking a breath.

“Why couldn't it have been gemstones? Or a new set of robes? Everybody likes new clothes! I'm not ready to go into another dungeon. I'm still recovering from the last one.”

“This is an honor,” Lena insisted. “Most apprentices don't even step foot in a real dungeon until they've been here a year or more. We are fortunate.”

“I don't feel fortunate,” Quinn said. “I feel like I might be sick.”

Colm decided to follow rule number six a little bit, taking a step away from Quinn.

“Don't get me wrong,” Quinn continued. “I want to go eventually. But in
five days
? I'm not even sure my magic will be
back
by then.”

Serene snapped her fingers. “Since we've got the morning off, we should go see Master Merribell,” she suggested. “I once watched one of her elixirs bring a dead frog back to life. Of course, the next day she cut out its tongue and ground up its liver to make another potion—but that's beside the point.
She's bound to have something to help get that Magic Dan's stuff out of your system.”