Chapter One #5
Balor bobbed down until he was level with Bait, and opened another eye – this one able to seize whatever he glared at with invisible force and move it around.
Bait shrieked as Balor’s gaze fell upon her, tugging her forward towards the precipice.
Clickglee grabbed on to her to pull her back, and when his strength was not enough to overcome Balor’s magic, the other goblins joined in on the tug-of-war, hauling their chieftain and his adopted child back.
Balor smirked with his monstrous mouth, and closed the eye. The goblins huddled around Bait.
“What you want, Squinter?” said Clickglee.
“Eye was watching. Eye is always watching. Eye saw Throte in the dragon’s lair.
Eye saw him lie to Nithscalpa. This human was meant for the dragon.
” Balor opened yet another eye, this one glittering with hypnotic power.
His gaze swept over the crowd of Denizens.
“It is not wise to stand between a dragon and its meat. Eye say, the human must be returned to Nithscalpa.”
No doubt Balor felt sympathy for Nithscalpa’s injury.
When you’re nothing but eye, the thought of a poke in the eye is like a dagger in the back and a hammer to the face and a thorn in the foot and any combination of injury and anatomy one cares to name.
But more, the Squinter was ambitious, and sought to win the dragon’s favour.
“Throte gave her into my keeping,” said Clickglee.
“So let Throte speak for her,” said Balor. “Where is he?”
“Pinshriek!” called Clickglee. Clickglee had sent his cousin Pinshriek to fetch the gargoyle. Now Pinshriek was shoved forward by the other goblins to address the Levelling.
“I went to the Master’s Tower, I did. No light. No one home. No Master in the tower. The door was shut.”
A wave of muttered doubt swept through the Denizens. No Master in the Dungeon! Had I been there, I would have told the assembled Denizens of Orphir’s farewell, of his mysterious errand outside the Dungeon.
But I was lying face down in the mud at the bottom of a stairwell.
“And Throte?” asked Clickglee, suddenly nervous. “Did you get Throte?”
A dozen eyes twitched in anticipation beneath Balor’s lids.
“Up on top of the tower, he was. I saw him in the moonlight, still as a statue. He wouldn’t come down.”
“Did you call him?”
“Three times! But it was the surface, and I was skeered.” Pinshriek’s eyes bulged as he tried to convey the horror of the open sky.
Balor rose, hovering over Clickglee’s head.
“Throte will not speak for the human child! No one but Clickglee speaks for the human child! When Nithscalpa learns you kept his rightful prey from him, his wrath will be boundless. And should the Master learn you defied his wishes, well, Eye shall see, but Eye think the fiery breath would be a mercy.” More of Balor’s eyes opened so he could survey the assembled Denizens.
“Give the human to me, and Eye will see an end to it.”
Then another shoved his way to the edge of the chasm. A huge figure, a hulking frame of corded muscle and iron-hard bone, hands and arms scarred with a thousand battles, a thousand kills. Its head was that of a great horned beast. A minotaur.
“I . . . speak,” it said, halting and clumsy, unused to the Dungeon argot. “I speak for the girl.”
“Who are you?” hissed the Squinter, focusing at least four eyes on the newcomer. “Eye’s not seen you before. You are not of this level.”
“Here. Now,” said the minotaur.
“You have no lair here.”
The minotaur looked around the Chasm Hall, then took one of the massive battle axes strapped to his belt and threw it to the floor. Metal on stone rang like a church bell. “Here. Now mine. Unless anyone wants to fight me for this place.”
No one had laid claim to the Chasm Hall. No one wanted to be neighbours with Nithscalpa, however deep and distant the way through the chasm.
Balor spun this way and that in discomfort. “You’d defy the dragon? For a human?”
“Dragon’s . . . sleeping,” said the minotaur. He pointed at Bait. “And she’ll be gone before he wakes.”
“Eye shall see.” And, with that, the Squinter dropped like a stone into the mists of the chasm below.
Bait giggled.
The Levelling agreed that Bait would be recognised as a Denizen of the Dungeon, with her lair in the Trapsmiths’ Arcade.
A few were minded to disagree, but the minotaur snorted at them, and minds changed.
The minotaur was also recognised as a Denizen; none disagreed with that.
The more dangerous monsters in the Dungeon, the better, so long as they obeyed the Rules.
One by one, the Denizens departed. The nixies melted into the trickling waters of the Buried River.
The wraiths faded like the memory of a nightmare after waking, leaving only unease behind.
Trolls stomped, kobolds scurried, ghouls skittered, until at the last there was only Clickglee and the minotaur.
“I don’t know you,” said Clickglee, “but that was a right nice thing you did, and a favour’s a favour. If ever you need a pit trap dug or something spiky or—”
The minotaur took an earthshaking step towards the little goblin. He lowered his titanic head. His hot breath steamed about his nostrils.
“Keep the child away from me,” snarled the minotaur. “That’s all.”
Bait giggled again.
That was how the child came to the Dungeon.