It 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?”
“We were friends before,” Quinn explained as they came to another fork. “We come from the same town. We are pretty much in this together. And now so are you.” The boy smiled brightly.
Lena made the choice on which direction to take. She made all the choices as the forks multiplied. She led them right. Then left. Then right again. The idea, she said, was to avoid going in a circle.
“The idea,” Colm said, “is to find the way out.”
“The idea,” Quinn added, “is to stay alive. And m-m-maybe f-find something to eat. I’m starving.”
Colm fished in his sack for his last apple and handed it over. Quinn took it eagerly.
“I wouldn’t worry,” Lena said. “We’ve been down here for some time now and haven’t seen anything remotely dangerous. I’m guessing the place is deserted.”
Quinn reached out and clutched Colm’s arm as a shrill screech, like the sound a wounded animal might make, came from their left.
“That doesn’t sound deserted,” Colm said. “Maybe we should go right this time.”
Lena looked like she wanted to disagree, but instead she nodded and turned right, Colm following behind her. Stay behind the big guy, he thought to himself. That was Finn’s advice. He just hadn’t said that the big guy might be a girl. Or that the girl would have such brilliant red hair.
They continued deeper, away from the screeching, Colm walking on tiptoe. He listened for sounds. He watched for traps. He inspected the walls for levers or pulleys or anything vaguely mechanical, something that might trigger a secret door or a falling rock. He wasn’t sure why he was doing these things or what, exactly, he was even looking for, but his instincts—honed by so many years of sibling torture—had kicked in. Quinn held on to Colm’s belt strap the way Colm used to do with his father when he was three. He had finished the apple.
“So you say you’re a mage,” Colm whispered behind him. “That means you cast spells and stuff?”
“I’m n-n-not qu-qu-quite a mage yet. I’m only a m-m-m-m—”
“Mageling. Yes. But even a mageling must know some magic, right? I mean, you could maybe fill these tunnels with light or see through the walls or even maybe teleport us all out of here,” Colm suggested.
Quinn shook his head emphatically, eyes somehow growing even wider. “Oh, you don’t want me to do that,” he said.
“No, you really don’t,” Lena seconded from up ahead.
“I t-t-tried t-teleporting my cat once. Poor F-F-F-Friskers. All that was left was her t-t-t— her t-t-t— her—”
“Tail?” Colm guessed.
“Toes,” Quinn said. “Four little sets of toes. C-c-claws and all. And all the rest . . . p-p-poof.”
Quinn let go of Colm’s belt long enough to make an imitation of a cat exploding, then latched back on. Colm decided that was enough talk of spells. He focused his attention forward and then ran smack into Lena’s backside.
“Sshhh!” she hissed. “Hear that?”
Colm listened. He could hear something coming from up the hall. It sounded like someone singing. Soft and melodic. Much better than the screeching they had left behind. Colm thought of Finn humming on their way out of Felhaven. Maybe it was him. “Maybe this is the end,” he said.
“Or maybe it’s a trap,” Lena countered, but even as she said it, she smiled, as if a trap were preferable to an exit. Beside Colm, the mageling started to shiver, but Lena Proudmore was already moving in the direction of the sound, torch in one hand, her makeshift stone dagger in the other. The three of them turned the corner.
They found themselves staring into a small chamber, lit with another torch. There was no ogre, but there was something. Another girl, her features sharper and even more angled than Lena’s. She had skin the color of tree bark and short black tufts of hair that were cinched with all manner of thread and twine, making little horns jutting out in all directions. She wore a cloak, much the same as Finn’s, save hers was brown and spilled out behind her as she sat cross-legged on the floor, humming and admiring something in her hand.
“Is that a spider?” Lena whispered, but the girl in the room heard her and turned. Startled, she threw up her hands, and the spider she’d been holding somersaulted in the air. It hit the ground, then gathered its legs back underneath it and scurried off into the shadows.
“Now look what you’ve done,” the stranger said. “You scared Mr. Tickletoes.”
The girl with the spiky hair turned and crawled after the spider on her hands and knees, refusing to say another word until she found him, despite Lena’s repeatedly asking her who she was and how she had gotten down there. Finally, when the spider had been coaxed back into her open palm, the girl stood up and addressed them.
“Greetings. My name is Serene. I am a child of the woods.”
“Oh, great. A squirrel hugger,” Quinn mumbled. Colm couldn’t tell why the boy stuttered sometimes and not others, and he didn’t know what “squirrel hugger” meant, but judging by Quinn’s tone, it wasn’t necessarily something to be proud of.
Lena stepped forward, bathing the girl in torchlight. She didn’t appear to be armed in any way. Her shoes, Colm noticed, were barely more than a single plank of wood strapped with twine (his father wouldn’t approve). Her underclothes were threadbare, lacking ornamentation of any kind. She did, however, have tattoos scrawled down the length of her forearms. They looked like tree roots weaving up toward her elbows.
“You’re a druid?” Lena asked.
“No,” the girl said. “I mean, yes, I suppose, theoretically, but not technically, no. I haven’t passed the ritual yet. I was supposed to, except I couldn’t because . . . well . . . it was just so big, and with those teeth and everything . . . and why’d you have to go and scare Mr. Tickletoes like that?”
“Mr. Tickletoes?”
Serene ran a finger along the back of the spider crouched in her hand. “It’s all right, Mr. Tickletoes,” she cooed to it. “I won’t let these people hurt you.”
“She’s crazy,” Quinn muttered beneath his breath. Colm nodded. Last he checked, spiders didn’t even have toes.
“She’s a natureling,” Lena corrected. “She can talk to animals. Plants too, probably.”
The other girl, Serene, continued to whisper to the arachnid curled up in her palm. The druid turned and cocked her head. “Mr. Tickletoes wants to know if you intend to squash him.”
Lena shook her head. “I am Lena Proudmore. This is Quinn Frostfoot and Colm . . . something or other. We were all three thrown into this dungeon, probably just like you. I promise we are not here to squash Mr. . . .”
“Tickletoes,” Colm whispered.
“Right. Whatever,” Lena said. “Honestly, we are just looking for the way out.”
“How fortuitous,” Serene sang, her green eyes sparkling. “Mr. Tickletoes and I were just talking about that before you showed up. He says he knows the way out. He can show us, can’t you, Mr. Tickletoes?”
In response, the spider crawled to the edge of the dark-skinned girl’s fingers and lowered itself to the ground with its silky cord. Then it scurried across the floor and out into the hall, passing too close to Quinn, who jumped back instinctively. Serene leaped up and brushed right past them as well, pausing only to look behind her.
“Well, come on, then! Hurry!”
Colm looked at Lena, who shrugged. “What are you waiting for?” she asked. “Follow the spider.”
Colm did. Technically he followed the barbarian, who followed the druid, who followed the spider . . . though, in truth, apparently, Lena wasn’t really a barbarian yet, and Serene wasn’t really a druid yet, and Quinn, who still hung on to Colm’s belt strap, wasn’t really a mage. But it hardly mattered, as Colm was still little more than the son of a shoe cobbler. The important thing, he reminded himself, was that he wasn’t alone. Besides, the newest addition to their party seemed friendly. She was certainly talkative.
“I should have expected it. You can’t fail your druidic rites twice and not face some sort of consequence. But I had no idea how truly horrible it would be in a dungeon without grass or trees or light. There isn’t even any moss down here. If it weren’t for Mr. Tickletoes, I would have gone crazy. But he told me not to worry. That I wasn’t the first person to be stuck down in these tunnels, and that it was always nice for him to have someone to talk to as well. Did you know he recently became a father? Three hundred beautiful babies.”
Colm shuddered. He thought eight sisters was a lot.
“I should have passed the trial. It’s not that I didn’t want to talk to the bear,” Serene continued. “I understand how important it is. After all, what good is being a druid if you can’t commune with all of nature? But let’s face it, Nature can be downright frightening sometimes. Have you seen a bear’s claws? They’re as long as my fingers!”
“She doesn’t take a breath,” Quinn whispered in Colm’s ear.
“Probably comes from talking to trees,” Colm whispered back. “She’s used to having to keep up both sides of a conversation.”
“It’s mostly about the size, I think. And the teeth. I told Mr. Tickletoes how much I enjoyed his company and that he was much easier to talk to than wolves or panthers or anything, and that, honestly, I see no point in trying to converse with anything bigger than a bunny. Regular chatterboxes, rabbits. Hard to get a word in.”
“I c-c-can’t imagine,” Quinn remarked.
Colm looked down at the floor, where the spider was moving as fast as its spindly legs would carry it. The darkness was overbearing, and the chill bit into his skin, and there was still this lingering feeling that they weren’t alone. Yet there was something about being down here, underneath the surface, ferreting out the exit, that made him tingle. It was exciting and terrifying, and for a moment he imagined what Tye Thwodin, the young blacksmith’s apprentice, had felt when he fell into a sinkhole and came face-to-face with his first ogre so many years ago. He thought about the pockets full of jewels. What if there was some kind of treasure down here as well? Maybe they should take a look around. “You don’t think . . . ,” Colm started to say, but stopped as Serene bent down to pick up their eight-legged guide. She brought it up to her ear and frowned.
The spider whisperer turned to Colm and the others. “Mr. Tickletoes says we should hurry. He says the Overseer is coming.”
Maybe looking around wasn’t a good idea.
“The Overseer?” Lena repeated. Colm didn’t like the sound of it either. It wasn’t as bad as, say, the Intestine Ripper or the Blood Guzzler, but it had an ominous weight to it.
“He says the overseer always comes when you’re near the end,” Serene said.
“So we are close, then,” Lena confirmed. Colm felt a nervous tug on his belt and put a hand on Quinn’s shoulder. Lena started spinning in circles, torch in hand. “I knew it was too easy. I knew there’d be a butt to kick.”
“Mr. Tickletoes says we can still get away if we hurry.”
“Get away?” Lena scoffed, holding out her rock. “The Proudmores don’t shy from a fight.”
Colm put a finger up. “Yes, well, the Candorlys are naturally shy, so I recommend taking the spider’s advice and getting out of here.” Quinn and Serene nodded emphatically.
Lena scowled. “Fine. But if this overseer confronts us, I get to kill it.”
No one argued. Serene scooped up the spider, holding him in her palm and whispering to him. To Colm’s surprise, the spider lifted its two front legs and pointed with the toes it didn’t have to one of the six tunnels branching outward. From behind them came the grating screech they’d heard before. Except this time, it was much louder.
Which meant it was a lot closer.
They quickened their pace, Serene in the lead with Colm on her heels, dragging Quinn. At one point the tunnel narrowed, and Colm slammed his head once as they stooped down to crawl through a small opening in the rock. He heard Lena behind him do the same thing and then let out a hiss.
“Are you all right?”
“Just a nick,” she said. “I’m fine.”
They pushed through the rock into another tunnel, this one wider, leading to an archway and an open chamber beyond, lit by several more torches. Colm could make out an iron door on the far side of the room. The way out, he hoped.
He turned back to see Lena propped against the wall, eyes closed, stretching out her hand. There was a small cut on the palm, less than a coin’s width across, little prickles of blood beading up. Quinn quickly wiped them away with a corner of his sleeve and whispered something to her.
“You sure you’re all right?” Colm asked. Lena didn’t seem to be in any pain, but she refused to open her eyes until Quinn was finished cleaning her hand.
“I told you, I’m fine,” she snapped.
Colm looked at Serene, who shrugged. Then all four of them stood in the archway and stared across the room.
“You think it’s really the exit?” Lena asked, keeping her hand closed.
“Mr. Tickletoes says so,” Serene offered.
“He is a spider,” Quinn reminded them. “They trap things for a living.”
Lena took a deep breath. “Only one way to find out.” She started across the room and toward the door, Serene behind her. Colm followed, casting backward glances, sometimes looking at his feet or the wall, still not sure what he was looking for, but looking just the same. Something on the floor caught his eye, and he paused to get a closer look, squinting in the light offered by the torches lining the chamber.
It was a stone, like all the others. Nothing remarkable except for how polished it was, and how round. The ones surrounding it were irregular and jagged, but this one was almost as perfect as a pearl.
He spotted another one just a ways up, almost identical to its brother. In fact, looking closely now, he could see the whole floor was littered with them, spread out at wide intervals, but plentiful enough that you would almost certainly step on one if you weren’t watching.
“Stop!”
Colm’s cry rebounded off the walls. Everyone froze. Lena turned, a look of annoyance on her face. She was nearly to the door.
Colm pointed at the floor. “Those stones, the round ones. They don’t look right to me.” He looked over at the wall. There, next to one of the torches, was a small crack, except it too was unnatural, carefully carved. The wall was studded with them, just as the floor was covered in the stones, all running parallel to one another.
“Watch your step,” he warned.
Lena and Serene looked around them, pointing out the stones that they had barely missed and the ones that lay between them and the exit. They would be easy to avoid, once you knew what you were looking for.
“Um. C-C-C-Colm?”
Colm turned around to see Quinn staring at his feet. At his right foot in particular. And the smooth round stone that right foot pressed flush to the floor.
“Ooooh-kay,” Colm said. Serene gasped, and Lena made a move to come toward them, but Colm waved her off. “It’s all right. Just stay there. We’ve got this,” he said, then turned to Quinn. “Just don’t move, okay?”
Colm took a cautious step toward the mageling, careful to watch where his own boots landed. He could see Quinn trembling in the torchlight, even underneath his giant folds of robe. Colm moved carefully, Finn’s words ringing in his head. Your face scorched by a fireball. Colm looked at the cracks in the wall, one lined up evenly with Quinn’s head. He had no idea what might come out of it.
“Mr. Tickletoes says be careful!” Serene cried.
Colm nodded and wiped his forehead. Picking a padlock with a pear thorn was one thing. He had no idea how to disarm a trap. When he was young, his sisters would hold him down, pin his arms to his back, and tickle him until he peed his pants. He had never even learned how to get out of that. He studied the smooth stone Quinn’s foot pressed against. There was clearly no way he could keep this thing from triggering; something was going to shoot out of that hole in the wall as soon as Quinn took a step.
But maybe Colm could make sure it missed.
Colm stood right in front of Quinn now, the boy’s blue eyes big as pumpkins. Colm checked to make sure the space behind him was clear of triggers.
“All right, Nibbles, listen to me. When I say three, I want you to jump, all right?”
“J-j-jump?”
“Yes. Jump as high as you can. Got it?”
Quinn looked at the wall, panicked. “B-b-but I d-don’t see how . . .”
“Just trust me on this one.” Colm got down on his knees, held out both hands. He could sense the boy tensing. This would only work if Quinn was taken completely by surprise. The same way Colm had been, back on the road with that sword aimed straight for his head. Colm put both of his hands right by Quinn’s feet. He saw Lena and Serene huddled together.
“All right. Here we go. One.”
Colm positioned his hands right above the boy’s ankles, calculating the angle. He really hoped that whatever shot out of the wall came out straight.
“Two!”
Colm grabbed hold of Quinn’s feet and yanked hard. Quinn fell backward, feet slipping from beneath him just as a sizzling bolt of blue electricity burst from the crevice, frying the space where his head had just been. Colm could hear it cackle as it passed. The bolt splashed against the opposite wall and dissipated into nothing. The trap missed.
Quinn hit the floor hard, and his curse filled the chamber. “Fergin flagnaggats!” he said, rubbing the back of his skull.
Colm took a deep breath and looked at the mageling struggling up to his elbows. “Flagnaggats?”
Then they both started laughing. Colm couldn’t think of anything terribly funny about seeing Quinn nearly electrocuted, but there must have been, because he couldn’t stop himself. They huddled together there on the dungeon floor, arms crossed on their knees, rocking back and forth.
“You swept me off my f-f-feet,” Quinn said through heaving snorts.
“Bzzzzzzttttt!” Colm said, pretending to be zapped by lightning, which was easy because the laughter was making him shake uncontrollably.
“Um, guys . . .”
Colm somehow managed to get control of himself, then glanced over at Lena, who was pointing to the hallway they had come from. The torches cast enough light that they could see their own shadows on the far wall. And one shadow that wasn’t theirs, growing larger by the second.
Without another word, Colm bent down and pulled Quinn up, the two of them quickly but carefully picking their way across the booby-trapped floor to the iron door at the opposite end of the chamber. They could hear footsteps coming from the hall now, and an awful sound, like claws scraped along stone. Lena reached for the door, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Locked!”
From the hallway, the scraping grew louder. Whatever was coming was right outside the entryway now. Colm saw Mr. Tickletoes suddenly leap from Serene’s hand, land on the floor, and head straight for the darkest corner. Lena slammed her chain-mailed shoulder into the door. Nothing.
“Here, let me try.” Colm pushed her out of the way and bent down to inspect the lock. It didn’t look complicated. In fact, it looked like the one on his own front door in Felhaven. He could pick it . . . maybe . . . if he had one of his sisters’ hairpins. He turned to Lena and asked if she had one.
“Do I look like the kind of girl who does her hair?” she snapped.
He turned to Serene, who shook her head. “Druids aren’t allowed to wear metal,” she said.
Colm sighed, but then Quinn said, “I have this,” and handed Colm a feathered quill produced from his robe, the feather white and brown and frayed along the edges. It was thin enough, but Colm wasn’t sure it would hold; it wasn’t even as strong as a pear-tree thorn. It could easily snap, but he didn’t have any other options. Colm took the feather and inserted it into the lock, putting his ear against the iron door. He thought he knew what to listen for, but it was a little hard with Lena shouting at him.
“Hurry!”
“I am hurrying!”
“Hurry faster!”
Colm glared at Lena, who glared back. Then he felt Serene tap him on the shoulder. He was too late.
Standing in the entryway, across the chamber floor, was the Overseer.
“That’s the Overseer?” Lena exclaimed.
Colm looked across the room at the figure standing in the entryway.
“He’s just a goblin,” Lena said dismissively.
Colm had never seen a goblin before. He had read about them. Had heard about them, but he had never laid eyes on one in the leathery flesh. The Overseer was a wiry-looking thing, mostly bones with a little muscle to hold them in place, and flat ears the color of cabbage poking out on either side of a bald, sloping, greenish head. Its hooked nose hung well over its upper lip. It might have been comical if it weren’t for the very nasty-looking axes the goblin held in each hand. Hatchets with curved blades that glinted in the torchlight. He looked to be even smaller than Quinn.
“I’ll handle this,” Lena said, brushing her bangs from her eye with one hand and adjusting her grip on her stone dagger with the other. Colm knew he should turn his attention back to the lock, try to get them out of there, but he couldn’t help himself. He had never seen a would-be barbarian battle a goblin in the middle of a trap-filled dungeon before either.
From across the chamber, the goblin spoke. “Behold. It is I. The overseer. Lord of the Labyrinth. Keeper of the Keys. You have trespassed. Prepare to meet your doom.”
Colm expected a voice terrible and menacing, the kind of voice that puts ice in your veins. Instead the goblin sounded bored, slurring the words as if it couldn’t get them out fast enough.
Lena was menacing enough for both of them. “I am Lena Proudmore, warrior and barbarian, and my heart is as steel as my . . .” She looked down at the rock she was holding, licked her lips, then continued. “Erm, my resolve is as unyielding as the stone in my hand. Surrender now, and I may see fit to spare your life. Or take another step, and forfeit it altogether.” She held her makeshift dagger before her, pointing it at the creature.
The goblin nodded as if he’d actually heard this speech before and was just waiting for it to end so he could deliver his next line, which he did with the same apathetic monotone as before. “Then I shall make gravy of your blood and pick my teeth with your finger bones as I feast upon your skewered flesh.”
Then, with what looked like a sigh, though it was hard to tell from all the way across the room, the goblin charged—or at least began to hobble quickly. Lena held her ground, eyebrows cinched. Serene looked around wildly for Mr. Tickletoes. Beside Colm, Quinn was stuttering through half a dozen words that Colm didn’t recognize. Colm frantically turned back to the lock, working the tip of the quill around, desperately trying to get the tumbler to fall. If he could just get it open before the raging goblin made it across the room. The raging goblin who seemed to dodge the traps with ease, as if he had the route memorized. The raging goblin who was only ten feet away now, both axes raised, ready to take off Lena’s head.
The raging goblin whose legs were suddenly on fire.
Who cursed and dropped both of his axes, dancing around before curling up and rolling on the cold stone floor to smother the flames, triggering traps that caused more bolts of electricity to zap across the room, making the whole place buzz, just as Colm felt the last tumbler drop and the lock give way.
The goblin screamed.
The door swung open.
Revealing a grin of silver and gold.