The Viper's Fangs (Book 2) (31 page)

Giorge shrugged, leaned forward until only his toes were on
the floor, and half-shouted, “Hey! It’s moving!”

So were the other trapdoors.

13

Angus was ready for spiders. He had the magic in view and
Lava Whip clear in his mind. It only took moments to cast it, and the long
tendrils of flame streamed out from his fingertips toward the trapdoor on the
opposite wall.

But no spiders emerged. Or snakes. Or anything else he could
zap with the tendrils of flame. Instead, there was an explosive burst of luminescent
green gas that flared outward in a growing, hissing cloud. It sizzled where the
flames struck it, but they barely impeded its progress.

“Gas!” Typhus screamed before Angus could realize what was
happening.

A moment later, Ortis dropped to the ground and covered
himself with his cloaks.

Angus hesitated for over a second before he extinguished the
Flame Whip and reached for a strand of air. As he grabbed it with his left
hand, his body twisted and, with his right, he grabbed Giorge’s belt, lifted
him up, and gave him a shove into the recess.

The glowing green clouds were expanding rapidly and had
almost connected to each other in the center of the room.

“Stay down!” Angus shouted and then held his breath as his
right arm pushed the trapdoor shut on Giorge. Then he turned to face the
encroaching cloud of gas.

Poison,
Typhus said, his tone clinical.
If you
breathe it in, it will slowly burn your lungs away. If it gets in your eyes, it
may cause blindness. Prolonged exposure—

Quiet!
Angus thought as he tied the knot for Puffer
and used the mild breeze it created to push the cloud away from him. But it was
too weak on its own to do little more than hold the cloud at bay. When he
pushed in one spot, it billowed out in another and he had to redirect it to the
new bulge to keep it from getting closer. Then another bulge would form.

“Ortis,” Angus said, his voice calm. “You need to open the
trapdoor to the tunnel.”

There was a rustle of movement as Ortis shifted his
position, and then said, “I’m on my way,” he said. “But it will take several
minutes.”

“Can’t you open it from in here?” Angus asked as he felt his
right hand reach out to snag another strand of air.

“No,” Ortis said. “You saw how it disappeared, and with
Giorge—” he paused and said. “He’s still in the recess!”

A trap,
Angus thought as he watched his right hand
slowly, carefully tie the knot for Puffer. It wasn’t a perfect knot, but it was
close enough to work, and then his fingers released it. Another breeze joined
the first, but from a different angle, and together, he and Typhus herded the
poisonous gas into a corner and kept it there.
If Giorge had been alone,
he’d be dead by now.

“Giorge!” Ortis cried.

“He’s fine,” Angus crisply said. “It’s an airtight
compartment.”

“But he’s locked in!” Ortis cried, standing and trying to
find a purchase on the trapdoor.

“I know,” Angus said. “I’ll get him out after we’ve dealt
with this poison.”
Let’s see if we can force it back into the trapdoor opposite
us,
he thought to Typhus.

“You’ll—”

“Quiet!” Angus snapped. He needed to concentrate. It was a
delicate maneuvering of the spell, a far more fine-tuned adjustment than it was
designed for, and Typhus was clumsy. Worse than clumsy. His gross manipulation
of the spell was almost completely undermining the progress he was making with
his own.
Keep your breeze directed at the right half of the trapdoor. I’ll
bring the gas to you, and you can push it in. When it’s all there, I’ll have
Ortis close it up.

Typhus moved his breeze as if it had just tripped and lunged
forward, and some of the gas escaped from Angus’s grasp. It was a small amount,
and he let it go—for now. He focused on the large, compact cloud and pushed it
steadily, gradually, carefully toward the trapdoor. It was a time-consuming
process, and when he finished, he thought a question to Typhus.
Can you hold
it there while I recapture what escaped?

There was a long delay, and then Typhus replied,
I don’t
know. I am having difficulty keeping control of the energy.

Try
. Angus nodded, and worked quickly to recapture
the rest of the gas. He kept one eye—the right one—on the trapdoor to the
recess containing the poison gas they had already corralled. By the time he had
the last of the poison contained, the trapdoor to their exit was opening. Then
Typhus lost his grip on the spell, and he had to adjust his own to compensate
for it.

“Ortis,” Angus said, his voice distant in his ears. “I need
you to close the trapdoor across from us. It will seal the gas inside.” He was
sweating. It felt strange—a distraction he didn’t need. The right side of his
forehead was drenched, but the left barely had a few beads on it.

It took all three of Ortis to force the stone back into
place, and as it moved, the other two trapdoors moved with it. When it was
sealed up again, Angus let go of the magic and took a number of slow, deep
breaths.

“What about Giorge?” Ortis demanded.

“Don’t you think,” Angus countered, “one of you should stay
outside in the tunnel to open the door for us when we’re ready to leave? You
said Hobart wouldn’t fit in that tunnel.”

Ortis stared for a moment and then one of him helped another
climb back out. “What about Giorge?”

Angus didn’t answer. He was thinking at Typhus.
You know
how to pick locks.

Typhus didn’t answer.

If you don’t pick it, then Giorge will die.

Good,
Typhus replied.
That will end the curse and
we can run.

No,
Angus said, shaking his head.
I don’t think his
death will end it. Even if it does, what do you think Ortis and Hobart will do you—to
us
—for locking him inside that recess and letting him die?

There was a long pause, and then Typhus replied, his tone
reluctant, resigned,
Let me see the lock
.

Angus nodded and moved over to the lock and peered into it
with his right eye.

Bring the Lamplight closer
, Typhus ordered, and when
he had it in position, he said, “Yes, I can pick this.”

“What?” Ortis asked. “You can pick the lock?”

Angus nodded and selected one of the three picks Giorge had
just returned to him. It was the longest one, and he put it in the lock to feel
around with it.

“When—”

“Quiet!” Typhus snapped.

Several minutes went by as Typhus used first one pick, then
another, and finally two in combination with each other. Then they heard a
click, and the trapdoor extended itself from the wall and slid down. Giorge barely
waited for Angus to move aside before he half-jumped, half-fell from the
recess. Then he turned to Angus and demanded, “Why did you do that?!”

Angus shrugged. “The room was filling with poison gas,” he
said. “It seemed to be the safest place to put you.”

Giorge looked around the room and frowned. “I don’t see any
gas,” he said.

Angus laughed. “If you’d like, I’ll let it back out for
you—but not until Ortis and I leave.”

Giorge looked at Ortis, who shrugged and said, “He got you
back out, didn’t he?”

Giorge frowned and squinted at Angus. “Yes,” he said. “How
did you do that?”

Angus held up the picks and said, “Remember these?” After
Giorge nodded, he said, “I used them.”

“When did you learn how to pick locks?” Giorge demanded.

Angus shrugged and asked, “Was the other Fang in the box?”

Giorge continued to stare at Angus as he nodded slowly.
“Yes,” he said. “How did you know it would be?”

“I didn’t,” Angus said. “But it was the best place to start
looking—the
nearest
place. Also, this curse has been making ample use of
bridging the gap between two planes of existence. I’m not sure what the other
plane is, but it doesn’t have any naturally occurring magic. You said so
yourself when you told us that the curse makes use of what’s available to it.
This room, for instance, isn’t really a part of that mining tunnel. That’s why
the trapdoor disappears when we close it.”

“Talk later,” Ortis said. “If you have both Fangs, we can
go.”

“Right,” Giorge said, turning and pushing the trapdoor to
the recess back into place. It moved smoothly and easily, and a moment later
the trapdoor above it slid down. Ortis reached down and the other two gave
Giorge a boost and then turned to help Angus out.

While he followed Giorge down the tunnel, Angus asked,
“Where do we go now?”

Giorge didn’t turn as he said, “Down.”

14

It was late afternoon when they emerged from the tunnels,
and while the others went outside to see if they could help Hobart decipher the
mechanism for raising and lowering the lift, Angus decided to prime for his
spells. Normally, he would do it in the morning, when his concentration was
sharpest and the magic within him was most subdued, but he didn’t want to risk
waiting. At the very least, he wanted to be able to fly and cast his Cloaking
spell. They
might
be effective against Sardach. So, he wrestled with the
unruly magic within him and forced it to his will despite its reluctance. But
he was only able to prime for Flying, Cloaking, and Puffer before going out to
join the others. The other spells would have to wait until morning, when he
could better deal with the interference from Typhus; the fool had tried to help
him manage the magic within him—within
them
—and it only led to it becoming
even more disrupted that it already was.

The platform was nestled in the crook where the bridge met
the plateau’s outcropping. Its base was level with the bridge and large enough
for two dozen men with horses to stand in comfort. The winch system seemed to
be attached to the bridge on one side and the platform on the other. Hobart was
standing on the bridge fiddling with a lever.

“Is it magical, like the bridge?” Ortis asked him as he
approached.

Before Angus could concentrate, Giorge shook his head and
said, “No.”

The platform shuddered and dropped a few inches as Hobart
shifted the position of the lever, and Ortis reached for one of the rope
railings ringing the platform. “Warn us next time,” he said, glaring at Hobart.

“Sorry,” Hobart said. “I wasn’t sure what it would do. Now I
know how to lower it from here.” He shifted the lever again, and it dropped
down a few feet. It was a rough drop, as if it were bouncing down steps,
instead of the smooth, easy descent Angus had experienced at Hellsbreath.

“Don’t lower us any further unless you know how to bring us
back up,” Giorge called over to him, his good hand clinging to the top rope. “I
don’t relish the idea of climbing back up with this arm.”

“It’s making an awful lot of noise,” Ortis added. “It hasn’t
been used in a long time.”

Angus nodded from where he stood on the bridge. “It probably
isn’t safe,” he suggested.

“I don’t think Giorge cares,” Ortis said. “He doesn’t even
want to wait until morning to leave.”

“There is barely more than two days left for me to break the
curse,” Giorge said. “We can camp on the platform when we get to the bottom.”

Angus frowned and looked up at the dimming shadows. The sun
was already behind the peaks to the west, and it wouldn’t be long before it
dropped below the horizon altogether. There was a slight breeze, but it didn’t
feel particularly cold, like it had the past few days. Perhaps he had destroyed
the frost elemental after all? Or else it was leaving them alone for now, and
that troubled him. And what about Sardach? If he was coming—

He is!

—how long would it take before he caught up to them? He
brought the magic into focus and studied it, seeking out any of the tell-tale
anomalies that would let him know of the presence of the elementals as they
rode along the magical energy, but there was no suggestion of them within his
range. That posed a problem; his visual range was limited, and he would only
know of their presence when they decided to strike. When that happened, would
he be able to react quickly enough to thwart them?

“We need to find out if it’s safe enough to use,” Hobart
said. “I’ve figured out how to drop it, but I don’t know if it can be raised
from here. There is a brake mechanism that will hold it in place.”

“Why would they do that?” Angus mused.

“I didn’t say it
couldn’t
be raised from here,”
Hobart said. “I just don’t know how to do it. I just figured out how to lower
it a few minutes ago, and that was almost by accident. I don’t think the people
who built it wanted others to know how it works. See?” he continued, pointing
at a series of levers. “Most of these seem to do nothing, but when I put them
in this position and pull on this lever, it lowers the platform. If the others
are in any other position, it doesn’t move at all. It may be like that for
bringing it up, too, but I haven’t happened on the right combination.”

“The one down here,” Ortis said from across the platform,
“is much simpler. I’ve got it to go down and up far more smoothly than what
Hobart just did.”

Angus frowned. “Maybe that’s the point,” he said. “If
someone was on the lift, and a stranger showed up, they wouldn’t want them to
know how to override it, would they? And if there was someone on the lift they
didn’t want to see, they would be able to override it themselves if they knew
how it worked.”

Hobart looked at him for a moment and then grinned. “You know,
you may be right. If I wanted to protect myself from an attack from this lift,
I’d make sure I had the means to do something about it, and the way that
bounces when it drops, it could knock people off their feet.”

“Well, it is slower than the ones at Hellsbreath,” Ortis
said. “If we leave now, it will be dark long before we get to the bottom. If we
wait and leave in the morning, we’ll have a night’s rest and—”

“I know you can’t see the new map,” Giorge said, “but trust
me. If we’re going to make it around the mountain in time, we need to leave
tonight and get started at twilight in the morning. The snow down in that
valley looks pretty deep from here, and it won’t be easy to cross it. We may
have to leave the horses behind. The mountainside won’t be much better.”

“There’s a new map?” Angus asked. “Can I see it?”

“Later,” Giorge said. “You can help Ortis bring the horses
across the bridge. They should be ready by the time you get back there.”

“Now, Giorge,” Hobart said. “You know—”

“I know this,” Giorge snapped. “If we don’t go, there’s very
little chance of us getting to the skull in time.”

Angus sighed. The way things were going with the curse, he
already had the Viper’s Skull: his own. “All right,” he said, turning. “I
assume everything is packed and ready?”

“It is,” Ortis said, “and the fire has been doused.”

“I’ll want to look at that map when I get back,” Angus added
as he hurried back across the bridge.

By the time their horses and gear were on the platform and
they were ready to descend, Angus had his ink, quill, and the map he’d been
constructing out. He quickly added to it as Giorge held the last scroll out for
him. It still contained the death magic, which was wriggling around as if it wanted
to pounce on Giorge, and Angus fought the urge to shudder. He knew what it
meant, and there was very little he could do about it. Voltari had not taught
him enough about death magic for him to counter it; he had only shown him enough
to recognize what it could do—like when he had split apart the ogre, Mutgyf, into
two halves that each still appeared to be whole.

Two halves?

Two wholes?

Reverse the process?

Two wholes?

Two halves?

He thrust the questions away; he needed to focus on the
present, not the past. If he lost himself in the past now, he would become lost
in the present—and the future could be forfeit. He finished with the quick
sketch and put his equipment away, lingering only briefly to show the others
where Giorge said they were going. It was a single circle low on the opposite
side of the mountain they had just left—and there was a clearly defined trail for
them to follow to get there. That troubled him; why would Symptata’s map change?
Why would it show Giorge the way to the skull but not to the others? Was
Giorge’s death waiting for him somewhere on that trail?

It was almost dark now, and the moon wouldn’t be rising for
at least an hour. He cast his gaze upward, staring at the blossoming stars for
a long moment before obscuring them by bringing the magic into focus. If the elementals
attacked while they were on their way down, their impact on the magical strands
could be their only warning.

The temperature had dropped significantly, but Angus barely
noticed. He was aware of it, but his robe made him nearly impervious to such
changes. The others were not, and they draped their cloaks more closely about
them.

“Give a prayer to whatever gods owe you a favor,” Hobart
said. “Ask them to make sure this contraption doesn’t fall apart on us.”

“It won’t,” Giorge laughed. “I know the ropes are old, but
there are a lot of them. This thing was built to carry a lot more weight than
us and our horses.”

“The ore from the mines,” Angus suggested, leaning lightly
against the rope railing and keeping his gaze upward.

“Even if they all broke,” Giorge continued, “the brake
mechanism will stop us before we fall.”

“That brake mechanism uses ropes,” Hobart noted.

“Onus will watch over us with that big unfriendly eye of
his,” Giorge said, grinning. “He’s been with us the whole time.”

With you,
Typhus thought.
Not us
.

Hobart glared at him but said nothing.

“Besides,” Giorge said, “I’ve paid enough dues in his temple
for all of us. More, in fact.” Then he paused, grinned, and added, “Well,
we
have, anyway.”

Hobart glared at him some more.

“Anyway,” Giorge added, his grin broadening, “you only live
once!” He paused to let the others finish his saying, but after a few seconds,
his grin faded somewhat as he said, less jovially and a bit more somberly,
“Usually.”

They were all silent for a few more seconds, and then Ortis
said, “I’ll lower us slowly. If anything breaks, it should give us some time to
react.”

“Let’s tie the horses to the ropes near the cliff face
first,” Hobart said. “They aren’t going to be comfortable near the edges, and
there’s no sense in letting them roam around if something goes wrong.”

Once they had the horses secured, Ortis moved over to the
lift mechanism, one of his constituents on either side holding onto the rope
railing, and the third working the levers.

“Maybe we should tie Giorge to the railing, too,” Angus
suggested, a half-smile on his lips as he looked at the thief. His left arm was
in a sling, and he was still limping from his ankle wound. His earlobes were
mangled where the frostbite had taken them, and his nose was still blackened at
the tip.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Hobart said, moving to get a rope.

“You will not,” Giorge protested. “I can hang onto this
railing with one arm just as good as you can with both of yours.
Better
,
in fact; I’m not lugging around half my body weight in armor.”

Angus shrugged. “Just an idea,” he said as he moved to the
center of the platform and cast the Lamplight spell. He attached it to the wood,
and then moved back to the railing. He leaned back and looking upward, focusing
on the magical threads. They still pulsed as they normally did; there was no
hint of the tell-tale ripple of an elemental passing along their lengths. He
gripped the top rope loosely in his right hand and tightly in his left as the
lift began to descend. It was a slow, smooth descent, as Ortis had said it
would be, and after several dozen feet, he increased the speed. It was still a slow
descent.

“When we get down to the bottom,” Hobart said, wrapping his
left forearm around the top rope and spreading his feet apart as if he were
bracing himself to lift a heavy weight. “We’ll stop a few dozen feet above the
snow and make camp. We need to be able to see to make it across that snow, and
that spell of yours won’t be enough.”

The horses milled around each other, snickering sleepily as
the cliff face passed slowly by them.

Angus glanced at Giorge, and then returned his gaze upward.
Minutes passed with no change, no conversation, only the slow, steady descent. It
was tedious and tiring, and if it weren’t for the discipline Voltari had
instilled in him, his mind would have wandered endlessly, following the random
thoughts that kept popping into his head. He was still staring upward when he
saw at the edge of his vision a pair of red eyes coming straight for him from
the mountain.