The Dungeoneers (8 page)

I
t was more of a slide than a fall, though the rocky ground did little to slow Colm's progress, and the cold stone he eventually slammed his shoulder into jarred his teeth and sent a bolt of pain through his spine. Colm looked up, hoping that he hadn't slid as far as it seemed and there was an easy way to climb back up and out, but his heart sank. The cave entrance, a small circle of fading light, seemed as distant as a full moon. He looked for the shape of a figure in the halo. He called out Finn's name three times, though his echoes were the only response.

“This isn't funny,” Colm called up. “I've decided I want to go back home. Stealing is bad. I've learned my lesson. Shoe
cobbling is a very respectable profession. So if you could lower a rope or something . . .”

Still no response. Colm scrabbled up the slick surface of the stones, making it all of two feet before slipping back down to his knees. He called Finn's name one more time, then called Finn a name he usually reserved only for his sisters, and even then only behind their backs. Finally Colm turned and gazed down the length of the cave.

The first thing he realized was that it wasn't a cave. The floor was too smooth, the ceiling too uniform. It was more of a tunnel, the work of picks and shovels rather than nature and time. Someone had hollowed this space out of earth and stone on purpose, and someone else, maybe the same someone, had seen fit to leave a torch. Colm saw it fastened to the wall about fifty feet away, its light spreading along the cold, gray floor.

Colm looked around and then noticed a glimmer by his feet, peeking through a pile of loose rocks. He bent down and retrieved his silver coin, the one Finn had given back to him while he wasn't looking. He held it up to the flicker of light from the lonely torch.

This was the test. To get out of here. By himself. To conquer his very first dungeon. The realization hit Colm like a horse's hoof in the gut, but once it landed, there was no arguing with it. He didn't have a lot of options anyway. He couldn't climb back out, and even if Finn was up there, he obviously didn't intend to help. Colm needed to find his own way or be stuck here forever.

He walked slowly, keeping one hand on the wall for balance until he made it to the torch. It hadn't been burning for long, which meant someone must have lit it recently, which meant that there was another way out.

Unfortunately, it also meant that there was possibly someone else down here with him.

Colm removed the torch from its sconce and held it in front of him, stabbing at the darkness. He thought back to the pile of blades at the road and Finn's insistence that they weren't right for him. The dirty thief knew all along. He
intended
for Colm to come down here unarmed. If only Colm had had his father's hatchet. Even the butter knife would have been some consolation.

Colm stepped slowly, looking behind him constantly, trying not to jump at his own shadow. He had been in dark places before. He had spent hours in cabinets, corners, and crevices, hiding from his gaggle of scheming sisters. But this was a different kind of darkness. In the flicker of the torchlight, the shadow seemed to move, as if it were skulking around, sneaking up behind him. Looking down the black tunnel, he felt it could go on forever.

But it can't, he told himself. Every tunnel ends somewhere.

Colm paused as his tunnel crossed paths with another, the new one looking narrower and darker still. Now there were choices. That made it even worse. Now there was the possibility he might get lost, though in truth he already had no idea where he was.

Colm started to continue straight ahead, then froze, his ears perked. He was certain he heard something. A loose rock. A whisper.

Stop it,
he told himself.
You're just imagining things.

But he wasn't. He could distinctly hear the sound of feet shuffling along the stone. Except they weren't his feet.

Suddenly he felt something sharp and cold at his throat, followed by a voice.

“Go ahead,” the voice said. “Give me an excuse.”

It wasn't a knife or a sword. He could tell by the feel of it beneath his chin. It was a rock. A piece of shale or limestone, long and skinny enough to act as a makeshift dagger. It certainly felt sharp, though, nipping into his neck.

Colm felt his torch wrested from his grasp, the circle of light retreating behind him, leaving him staring into the darkness. He wanted to turn and see who it was who was holding him there. It obviously wasn't Finn. For starters, the person standing behind him had much smaller hands, with a full complement of fingers. And judging by the sound of the voice, it wasn't even a him. The person who spoke to Colm dared him in a voice that was confident and commanding but still distinctly female. It almost sounded like Celia, though of all of his sisters, Celia was the least likely to want to behead him.

“Who are you?” the female voice demanded, pressing the stone knife up and in.

“Colm. Colm Candorly,” he choked, then realized his
mistake. He should have said Mr. Black.
Don't let someone who's about to kill you have your real name,
Finn would probably caution,
just in case he doesn't pull it off the first time and decides to track you down for another go.
But it was too late.

“What are you doing here?”

“Trying to keep my head about me,” Colm replied.

There was a snort, something close to laughter, except it seemed to come off to Colm's right, and it didn't sound at all like the same person who had him at stone point, which meant that there were two figures there in the darkness. That didn't make Colm feel any better.

“I d-d-don't think he's any t-t-trouble,” the new voice sputtered. “He c-c-could be one of us.”

The sharp edge at Colm's neck slackened a bit, though not enough for him to safely turn around or slip free. “Why are you here?” the girl's voice demanded.

“I have no idea,” Colm said honestly. “I was with this man. He said he was taking me to visit a guild of some kind. Then we grabbed hold of this magic crystal and I almost threw up, and the next thing I know he's pushing me down a hole and you're sticking a sharp rock under my chin.”

“T-t-told you,” came the other voice. A boy's voice. Suddenly the knife dropped, and Colm was free. He turned around slowly.

There, holding Colm's torch, was a boy close to his age, though shorter and even skinnier. (Colm wasn't sure how that was possible.) He wore a scarlet robe that fell well past his feet
and dragged along the stone. His wrists were adorned with silver bracelets, and his underclothes were tattered and covered in grime. His face was pale, with giant globes for eyes and thin eyebrows that made the globes look even bigger. His hair, unlike Colm's, was long, falling over his shoulders in straw-colored strands. He looked frightened.

The girl standing next to him did not.

“My name is Lena,” she said, putting one fist across her chest in a salute that Colm had never seen before. “Lena Proudmore. Sorry I almost decapitated you . . . Colm, was it?”

Colm just stared. In the flickering torchlight it was hard to make out all her features clearly, but he couldn't miss the sharp chisel of her chin, like a weapon itself. Her crimson hair was cropped short in back, falling across one eye in front, the other shining brown in the flicker of light. Her lips were pursed, pulled tight against her teeth in a determined smirk. Colm had never seen anyone with red hair and brown eyes before.

“You're kind of . . . ,” Colm began.

“Intimidating. I know. Sorry. It's just that you can never be too careful.”

Intimidating wasn't what he was thinking, but he couldn't deny it either.

“Um, p-p-pardon me,” the boy in the robe said, inserting himself into the conversation and extending his free hand, his bracelets jangling. “I'm Quinn, but p-people sometimes c-c-call me N-nibbles, on account of how I'm always eating.”

Then how come you're so skinny?
Colm wondered to himself. “Nibbles,” Colm said, taking the boy's hand but not taking his eyes off the girl, mostly because she had nearly slit his throat a second ago. Mostly.

“So what are
you
, then?” Lena said, her hands on her hips.

Colm wasn't sure he understood the question. “Um. Lost, I guess.”

Quinn snorted again. Lena flashed him a dirty look, and he shut up.

“No. I mean, what
are
you? Are you a fighter? A wizard? You're certainly not dressed like much of anything. Oh, gods, please tell me you're not a bard.”

Colm pointed to himself. “What? You mean like one of those guys who go around singing dopey songs all the time?”
Actually,
Colm thought,
maybe not such a bad life. Better than a shoe cobbler, at least.
He shook his head anyway.

“Well, then?” Lena pressed.

“I guess I'm a thie—” Colm stopped and corrected himself. “A rogue, I mean. Except not really. I was going to train to become one. Or I was going to
think
about it. Then I got thrown in this hole.”

“A rogue,” Lena whispered to herself. “Figures.”

“Figures?”

She looked at him; even in the torchlight, he could see her rolling her eyes. “Haven't you ever studied Herm Hefflegeld's theories of proper party configuration? Didn't you ever read Stormfist's essay on the effects of class interdependency and
dungeoneering efficacy?”

“Here we go,” Quinn sighed, rubbing at his eyes.

“I'm sorry, I'm a little new to all of this,” Colm said. “See, I come from Felhaven—you've probably never heard of it, it's, like, this little farm town ten miles and some freaky crystal teleportation jump away from here. And my family doesn't have a whole lot of money, and then my sister got sick, and I thought if I could help pay for the medicine, you know? So I went to the town square, and I—”

Lena put a hand in his face, actually smothering his still-moving lips. “We don't need your life story, farm boy,” she said. “The important thing is that we finally have a rogue, so maybe we can get out of this place in one piece.”

“One piece?” Colm said.

“You make sure we don't run into any traps, and Quinn and I will handle any monsters that come along.”

“Monsters?”

“T-t-traps?” Quinn repeated.

“Please,” Lena said. “You don't think they would throw us all down here and not give us
something
to do, do you?” She reached out and took the torch from Quinn's hand, then turned and continued along the same path that Colm had been taking. Colm watched her for a second, trying to decide if she was dangerous.

He was almost certain of it.

But she didn't seem like she posed any immediate threat to him, at least, and obviously she and this other boy had
agreed to work together, even seemed to know each other somehow. Colm had no idea what Herm Hefflegeld's theories of proper party configuration had to do with anything, but he did understand that three people were better than one, and was thankful not to be alone any longer. Still, he walked behind her as he had walked behind Finn at the start. The boy named Quinn shuffled beside him, nearly tripping over his oversized robe.

“So y-you're a ruh-rogue?” he mumbled.

Actually,
Colm thought,
I'm just a pickpocket. And only recently one of those.
“More or less,” he said, then nodded at the boy's strange attire. “And what are you, exactly?” Quinn looked like a kid who had decided to try on his father's bathing gown.

“Oh, m-me? I'm a m-m-m-m-mageling,” the boy said.

“It's like a mage. Only clumsier,” Lena explained from over her shoulder, and Quinn nodded. He didn't seem to take offense.

Colm instinctively stepped away, remembering what Finn had said about mages. Except Quinn didn't look like he could call lightning from the sky or produce fireballs from his fingers. Colm had expected the first wizard he met to be more in keeping with the descriptions from his book—white-bearded and billowing and larger than life. Quinn looked barely big enough to summon his own shadow. Colm nodded toward Lena and whispered to Quinn, “So, then, what is she?”

Whatever she was, she obviously had good hearing, because she stopped and spun. “I am a barbarian,” she responded curtly. “At least, I hope to be someday.”

Colm shook his head. From what little he'd read, barbarians were loud, long-haired, half-naked men who spoke in bellows and ate their meat raw. “Really? A barbarian? You? Are you sure about that?”

“Uh-oh,” Quinn whispered.

The girl suddenly advanced on Colm, her eyes slits, teeth bared. She looked terrifying in the torchlight. “Are you suggesting I
can't
be a barbarian?” Colm threw up his hands, shaking his head, but she started jabbing a finger into his chest. “Because there is absolutely no law that says women can't be barbarians. In fact, I'll have you know there are several famous female barbarians in dungeoneering lore.”

“No. I believe you, honestly,” Colm said. He had never met a barbarian before. Not even the half-naked, raw-meat-eating male variety.

“Just because I don't wear the hide of some dead animal across my shoulders and I have all my teeth does not mean that I'm
not
a barbarian.”

“I . . . I never . . . you are . . . absolutely . . . so
completely
a barbarian,” Colm stumbled.

Lena huffed, then spun back around and started walking faster down the dark hall.

“She really is nice, once you get to know her,” Quinn said, gathering his robe about him as he and Colm each quickened his pace to catch up.

Once you get to know her?
Colm thought. “Wait a minute. How long have you two been
down
here?”