Treffen pressed his ear against the wood.
Nothing.
He waited there for several long minutes, listening for the slightest sound that would indicate an enemy waiting in ambush outside. Years of practice under Master Birch’s stern tutelage had taught him the value of patience. A Glimmerdusk Ranger could tell with eyes closed which hollow tree housed a colony of lava ants. The best Rangers could shoot an arrow into foot-deep snow and hit a scurrying frost mouse from beneath the frozen crust. Treffen didn’t kid himself that he was the best. Not yet. But after this, I’ll at least have some campfire stories to tell. He swallowed hard. If there is an “after this.”
Emerald was stock-still, watching him. Only the silent grinding of her jaw betrayed her impatience. Master Birch had taught her, too, but Emerald’s style was to just blast all the hollow trees with her rifle and see which one the ants ran out of. Same effect, different methods. She tapped her fingernails against the butt of her rifle.
“All clear?”
Treffen nodded.
They gathered their belongings. Gawain pulled the helmet over his head, and Emerald rammed her hat down over the tops of her ears. Treffen had his machete and a few arrows but had lost his bow in the battle. I’m going to be a big help if we run into trouble.
Emerald paused near one of the chests.
Treffen spoke before she could ask. “I wouldn’t.”
She frowned. “What about just this?”
A string of beads lay in a dusty corner, half tucked under the edge of a moldy tapestry. She pulled it out and blew the dust off, coughing and rubbing her eyes when it poofed up in her face.
“Shame you don’t have any . . . I don’t know . . . goggles for that kind of thing.” Treffen felt a burst of patriotism when he said it; if King Jasper were here, he’d have said it first.
Emerald rolled her eyes and held out the bracelet, and Treffen took a look.
“Definitely elvish. Look at the quality.” The beads alternated between small seashells, likely from the Mistmourn Coast, and tiny glass beads. No two beads were shaped alike, and each had a little red seed inside it. “Look, those seeds are from the Swamp Statue Shrub.” An ambush predator, the Shrub was known for its ability to remain rock still in any condition, leading unwary prey to assume it was just a plant. By the time the passing creature realized its mistake, the Shrub had pounced and secured its lunch. Treffen continued, “Swamp Statue seeds help old people with shaky hands.” And were notoriously dangerous to procure. This bracelet was worth any three of the coin-filled chests in the room.
“Nice.” Emerald tied the bracelet around her right wrist. “Feels good. Maybe it’ll help me shoot better.”
Gawain had lapsed back into his customary silence. Treffen had been unnerved by the Knight’s temper earlier, but now his silence was almost worse.
“You doing all right?”
A grunt in return.
“We’re getting out of here. Just hang on.”
Treffen made one more listen at the door before he was satisfied. He eased the door open.
Darkness in both directions.
“Hand me the torch.”
Emerald did, and Treffen relit it. It sparked to life with a puff of green smoke. They eased out into the corridor.
His connection to the Deeproot Tree told him which way he was facing, but not which hallway led out. Emerald, though lacking the elves’ bond to the Tree, had always been better with remembering directions. She led them confidently down the hall.
When they got to a T-junction, she hesitated and then turned right. At the next intersection, they turned left.
How many miles of tunnels are down here? As a prison for a tool of evil, it made sense for the place to be a confusing warren of hallways and dead ends. But this was Lordship Downs, once a thriving, beautiful palace, second in grandeur only to Crystalia Castle. What had all these tunnels been used for when the place was full of happy humans instead of twisted chimeras?
They turned a corner, and the walls opened into a large room. Rusted chains hung from the walls. Dry skeletons had slipped through their manacles as the flesh decayed, leaving thin white bones behind. They lay in heaps under each set of chains. In the center of the room, a long, flat table with restraints at its corners showed stains that Treffen didn’t look too closely at. Another table held rusted tools. Treffen didn’t look too closely at those, either.
“Dungeon,” Emerald said unnecessarily.
At a glance, all the bones looked human. “Hasn’t been used since the curse,” Treffen said, reassured that the room wasn’t currently occupied by anything other than dust and mold.
They exited quickly and continued down the hallway.
With a sharp exclamation, Emerald pulled up short, flinging her arm out to the side to prevent Treffen from passing her. “Stop,” she hissed. “Look.”
He did, peering into the darkness. Emerald was looking at the floor, and Treffen did the same. It looked like all the rest of the floors here. Slimy stone with crumbling mortar. But Emerald clearly saw something. He looked closer. The mortar was crumbling in a very regular pattern. A grid of round holes between the stones, each about a foot apart, to be exact.
“Who’s got something heavy?”
They both looked at Gawain.
“Helmet.” Treffen held out his hand.
The Knight removed it, clearly mystified.
Treffen knelt on the floor. “Be ready to run. I don’t know how far this goes.” In the dim torchlight he couldn’t see to the end of the grid of holes in the floor.
He rolled the helmet across the floor.
Iron spikes shot up through the holes, flinging Gawain’s helmet into the air. The spikes were as tall as Emerald without her hat on, and they stood like deadly quills, vibrating in the damp darkness. Gawain’s helmet crashed down on the far side of the wall of spikes, and Treffen was relieved to see that no more erupted from the place where it landed.
With a metal groan, the spikes began to retract into the floor.
“All right, we should have about five seconds to get across here while the mechanism resets.” Emerald looked back at Gawain. “Can you make it in that time?”
He grunted assent.
When the spikes were almost hidden, the party sprang forward. Emerald and Treffen hopped nimbly over the retreating iron points, but armored Gawain clanked heavily between them. The field of spikes was fifteen feet long and the whole width of the hallway.
Treffen watched helplessly as his companion crossed the deadly floor. Three seconds. “Hurry, hurry,” he whispered. Two seconds. One. Just as Gawain’s foot cleared the final point, they sprang up again right behind him, whooshing past his armored backside.
Thank the Goddess. But too noisy.
Treffen grabbed Gawain’s helmet and tossed it back to the Knight.
They continued down the hall to another intersection, turned the corner, and ran straight into a wall of sword-wielding Billmen.