Chapter Three #2
Bait knew the Dungeon around the Trapsmiths’ Arcade, but she was still human.
To navigate the lightless halls, she needed to track exactly where she was.
Two hundred and twenty-four paces, then the third archway on the left-hand side, don’t forget to step over the tripwire and so forth.
Now, she had lost that mental thread and had no time to find it again.
Speed was her only salvation, and she ran headlong, blindly, bouncing off the walls, dodging and falling and running again.
Heart pounding, breathless, terrified beyond measure.
“Idiots!” snarled Balor.
That one I heard. I heard the Squinter’s cry of frustration echoing down the stairwell from distant corridors far above.
Then came Bait, falling down my stair, to land with a splash in the mud beside me.
“Stay very still,” I whispered.
Three things to note: first, her impact had knocked me out of my muddy hollow, so I was now lying face up and could see the stairwell above.
Second, I can see in the dark, although “see” is not quite the right word: I don’t have eyes, after all.
Third, I can whisper. Few things are spookier than a whispering skull, but, to her credit, Bait did not flinch in the slightest. I do not know if this was courage or concussion.
A kobold came tap-tapping down the stair, and paused on the level above.
I could not blame the kobold. Orphir had thrown me into a midden. The bottom of the stairwell was a morass of foulness, even by the standards of the Dungeon. A fourth thing to note, for which I was grateful: I cannot smell.
He peeked his head over the stairwell, and saw a human skull grinning up at him. I had a great smile when I was alive, really charming. The skinless grimace was less charming, but I gave it my best shot.
“You there!” I said. “It’s your lucky day, lad.
I am the wizard Cornelius! I was Master of the Dungeon when I was alive!
No doubt you’ve heard of me! Come down and I will reward you beyond your wildest dreams!
I grant wishes, work wonders, reveal cosmic secrets.
Quick, come down here and pick me up! Don’t delay, act now! ”
If something seems too good to be true in a dungeon, it’s generally a trap. Golden idol unguarded on a plinth? Trap. Clearly marked exit? Trap. Beautiful, scantily clad maiden chained to a wall, waiting for some strapping adventurer to rescue her? Trap.
“Izza trap,” hissed the kobold with a sneer. He vanished. Then he came back. “Did a little human come this way?”
“Absolutely! She landed right here in the mud! Come down and dig around and you’ll find her in no time! I think she hit her head and she’s stunned and unconscious and—”
“Izza trap,” repeated the kobold, with the air of a canny consumer who’s seen through the merchant’s patter.
I listened to his claws tap-tap-tapping on the stone until the faintest echo died away.
My reunion with Bait started poorly, but improved as we went along.
“You’re that impudent girl who stuck her fingers in my eye sockets,” I said.
She did not respond because she was unconscious.
I waited a bit until she stirred, then said, “You’re that impudent girl who stuck her fingers in my eye sockets.”
This time she yelped and scrambled away across the mud and filth of my pit.
She pressed herself against the far wall, her fingers brushing and probing the stone for some clue as to where she might be.
She’d run far from the tunnels she knew, far from the Trapsmiths’ Arcade and Clickglee and anyone she might trust. It was clear that she did not remember me, even though I was the first Denizen to welcome her to the Dungeon.
I could hardly blame her. For her, it had been half a lifetime.
For me, only a fraction of even my post-mortem existence.
“The Squinter is looking for you. I remember him from when I was alive. Disagreeable creature.”
She said nothing.
“And kobolds! They haven’t come up from the Fifth Level in a long time.”
She said nothing.
“I should reintroduce myself. I was the wizard Cornelius.”
Then she said:
“Help.”
She held me like a lantern. I could describe the Dungeon around her, and guide her back to more familiar terrain, even though she could not see and I was somewhat out of touch.
“There’s an archway just ahead on your left-hand side,” I’d say, or “Quiet! There’s another kobold just down the corridor! Hide!”
Our journey was hampered by the sheer number of kobolds that the Squinter had called up out of the depths. All the routes to the Trapsmiths’ Arcade were watched.
The Rules were the work of old Yrn Kyos.
Fearing the outside world, but trusting no bodyguard or hireling, he filled his basement with strange and violent beasts, cramming it with teeth and claws and tentacles and poison stingers and eyes in the dark.
Any intruder from the surface would be bitten and clawed and stung or otherwise disposed of in short order.
Then he faced a conundrum: left to their own wiles, the monsters would turn on one another in an orgy of bloodshed until only one was left to rule over an empty labyrinth.
So, he imposed the Rules of the Dungeon on those who dwelt there, and over the centuries the Rules became a self-perpetuating tradition.
Now, the Rules state that a monster’s lair is inviolate, assuming they are strong enough to claim it in the first place, but the open corridors are fair game.
Killing is permitted there. There are customs of safe passage, rites and bargains and exceptions and – well, the only thing more intimidating than a giant carnivorous troll is a giant carnivorous troll lawyer who gets to eat you on a technicality.
To survive in the Dungeon you need to learn the side passages, the secret ways.
Which is how we ended up crawling through a crack in the rock so narrow that Bait could not bend her knees or elbows, but had to worm her way forward, propelled by fingers and toes and sheer dogged determination.
I say we had to crawl; she did all the work, and I gave whispered encouragement which she doggedly ignored.
“It gets a little narrower up ahead, but I think you can squeeze through.”
Or
“Try breathing out. You don’t need all those ribs, do you?”
Or
“There’s no turning back now. Literally. I mean, there’s no space to turn around.”
I may have lost the knack of encouraging people.
What can I say? The last person I encouraged was so fired with vim and passion that he stabbed me in the back.
Doubt and doleful predictions were a safer bet.
My doleful prediction then was that the child would get stuck and suffocate in this narrow gap in the bowels of the mountain, never to be found again.
Her silent skull and my loquacious one would lie side by side until the world’s ending.
It would be a sad ending for her, and awkward for me.
“Keep going! Nearly there!”
Our enforced closeness did give me a chance to form a fresh opinion of our young Bait, and to observe how she had changed in the few years since our first brief meeting.
Then, the words that first sprang into my skull were: well-fed, wilful, stubborn and heedless.
I might also have remarked upon the fine lace and expensive cloth of her nightclothes.
True, Throte had told me that she’d been plucked by Nithscalpa from some distant castle, but I’d still have guessed that she came from wealth.
I had a nose for such things when I had a nose.
Now the nightclothes were rags, and any baby fat was lost to scabs and scars.
A child of seven years old, maybe, but “stubborn” and “wilful” had been alloyed into a determination that would have been impressive in a soul of any age.
It certainly impressed me in my advanced age, but I had always bent to the prevailing winds and looked for easy answers.
A good con involves going along with what people want, feeding their impulses until you’re in a position to pick their pockets.
It requires being flexible in every way.
Bait, despite her name, would never have made a good con artist, or a good wizard. She would not bend, no matter what the universe said or the situation demanded. This crack was impossible to crawl through, but she’d put her mind to it, and so she’d do it.
When her bare feet touched the cold floor in the cave at the far end, a thrill of familiarity ran through her. She knew where she was now, and didn’t need my guidance any more.
“If you’d be so kind as to return me to my tomb, I’d appreciate it.” After all that time face down in the mud, I was worried about the crack in my wall. When all you have to stare at for eternity is a wall, you get notions about plasterwork.
Bait had been about to deposit me on a stone shelf.
Instead, she shrugged and stuffed me under her arm as she tiptoed through the cave.
Our short cut had brought us close to the safety of the Arcade, but there was still a way to go – and, I feared, plenty of kobolds.
We could hear the distant tack-tack-tack of stone on stone as they tapped out messages to one another.
She halted in front of a wooden door set in the cave wall.
“What are you waiting for? The Arcade’s not far. Just cut through the Chasm Hall, and—”
“Clickglee said no.”
“No to what?” Even after she learned to talk, Bait was always overly curt, whereas I regard verbosity as a virtue. Let he who is without limbs say the last word!
“No Chasm Hall.”
“Why ever not? It’s the most direct route back to the Trapsmiths’ Arcade – not to mention my tomb.”
“Mintyoar,” she whispered.
“What?”
“There’s a mintyoar.”
“A what?”
She let out a grunt of frustration and rapped on the door.
“Oh,” I said, “a minotaur. There’s no minotaur in this dungeon.”
The minotaur opened the door.