"I wonder what the person who wrote this meant?" Tim wondered as he read the cryptic inscription.

"Anything at all. He must have been in a bit of a bad mood."

"Him? What if it was her?"

"It's unlikely. Girls rarely write on walls. By the way, good idea. Let's take our rings off and see. Perhaps we can determine what kind of person he was."

Along with the others, Tim also removed the ring, though he highly doubted that an earthling could have left a message. Instead of the letters he was accustomed to, there was now a cuneiform on the wall. It seemed that a similar alphabet had been used, either in Babylon or in the Sumerian kingdom; Tim couldn't remember exactly. But it could also have been Scandinavian runes - he knew next to nothing about them, having only come across them once in pictures. But his intuition told him it was the writing of another world. And so it turned out.

"Pa bap tsa do tok!" Ri-Bo said.

"Dind bamz zdi gung?" Naar-Tam asked something.

"Taass siorsh iliss ashmarr," Mez'A'Shib answered.

Ri-Bo's voice was the clatter of little hooves, Naar-Tam's was the chime of bells, Mez'A'Shib's was the hiss of snakes. It wasn't his fault he was born a dark elf, Tim mentally reprimanded himself.

"Ut la kok?" Ri-Bo turned to him, and Tim hurriedly put the ring back on his finger.

"I'm sorry, I got a little distracted. You guys, talk so funny!"

"Your talk is very funny to hear from the outside, too," Mez'A'Shib grinned.

"But I didn't say a word!"

"But then, during the walk in the woods, sometimes you talked a lot," the ironic smile reappeared on the drow's lips. "Okay, we can talk about that later. Personally, the language in which the inscription is made is completely unknown to me. I'm a little familiar with the languages of the light elves and dwarves, but it's definitely not them. Orcs don't have their own writing, they just draw what they want to tell the world about."

"It was actually done by someone from the yusmes, that's how they write," Naar-Tam explained. "Well, that explains a lot! He took a bad fall, blew his nose, took offense at the world, and used his own blood to tell of his misfortune."

"Does the yusmes have blue blood?" Tim clarified, distracted from his thoughts. Why should that surprise him, though? Not all creatures have red blood! He remembered an incident two years ago, when he had accidentally stepped on a caterpillar, leaving a green stain on the pavement. Some ocean dwellers, like octopuses, seem to have blue blood. Too bad there's no Internet at hand, or he'd know for sure in a minute! So is Selkise blue inside, too? The thought made him blush slightly for some reason. Fortunately, none of his friends noticed.

"I'm surprised that the crybaby could even get out of here in that kind of mood. Well, we're not going to cry over nothing like that, are we? Better get a move on!"

Before he followed his friends, Tim touched the wall with the palm of his hand. The cold burned his fingers, though it was warmer on the minus second tier than upstairs. For a moment he could capture the feelings of whoever had left this inscription here - disappointment, pain of loss, fear and despair, even an underlying desire to die. No, there was no trivial resentment over a broken nose. Strange, he'd never noticed that ability before. Was it because of what Selkise had said, that he too was a latent empath? If she were him, she'd probably be able to find out a lot more. Especially since the author is from the same people as her. But it's doubtful she'd dare come here. And the guys aren't likely to be thrilled if a girl joins their company.

"Hey! What are you doing up there?"

He had to catch up with his friends. They didn't get far, though: the only tunnel leading into the interior of the tier soon ended in a fork. They could have gone further, or they could have turned right. They went straight ahead, but soon they had to choose whether to go straight or to go left. This time they went left, but around the next bend the situation repeated itself - left or right. Finally they ended up at a dead end - another passage ended with a blank wall.

"Damn it!" Mez'A'Shib swore. "I should have known all along! We're in a labyrinth!"

"What is a labyrinth?" Ri-Bo asked naively. As far as Tim had learned, the tilfings, like the elves, were forest dwellers, but unlike Gallaeri, their planet had no mountains or dungeons, only plains and steppes. Even if you're lost by chance, you can always find your way either by sun or by stars, and sooner or later you'll come out somewhere. But in the labyrinth, where the sky is replaced by the vault of stone, one can wander endlessly until one realizes that he walks in a circle.

Naar-Tam, as it turned out, did not know that labyrinths existed either.

"Why build them at all? Couldn't a straight path be built and all the rest be bricked up?"

"There are often so many cracks under the ground that labyrinths form on their own," Mez'A'Shib explained. "But sometimes they were built on purpose. Why? Mostly for fun, betting on how long it would take to get out if you were completely unfamiliar with the construction. But then they found this fun too boring. And they began, for example, to launch several slaves into the labyrinth. Whoever got to the exit first would be free, and the rest would get a hundred lashes each."

"They're going to kill each other!" Tim exclaimed indignantly.

"Quite right. In the more innocuous version, the slaves were unarmed and it was usually limited to bruises and broken jaws. If the onlookers wanted blood, the slaves got daggers or clubs, and not everyone survived. But who cares about the life of a slave? The organizers of spectacles make a very good profit, which pays for the slaves in full. There are also duels with beasts, and passing obstacle courses. For example, if you catch the rope stretched above the floor, an axe will fly into your back. Or a boulder will fall on your head."

"Oh, we like to pull ropes, too!" Ri-Bo got excited. "But not with axes or boulders, just for fun. It's fun to see an anzimar walk a path, sticking his nose up, and bam - face into the grass! The main thing is not to get caught later."

"Any of us, whoever proposed such a labyrinth, would be banished for life," Naar-Tam snorted.

"Alas, it is not uncommon to find those who publicly condemn vice and then quietly indulge in it with pleasure. Surely there are those of your people who would love to see the bloody spectacle."

"I personally would not!"

"It's just that you've never tried it. What if you liked it?"

"Never!"

The discussion threatened to go on for a long time, so Tim had to intervene.

"While we're talking, time's running out. And we still have to find a way out of here. Mez, you're our biggest labyrinth expert, so you're our only hope."

"Traditional advice for those who don't want to get lost is to keep to the left or right side all the time, and sooner or later you'll get out. Although it will take you a long time. It is possible to try to rely on luck - sometimes it works. But seriously, it is better not to count on it. If others have been here before you, it is considered good form to leave notes that make the road easier. At least, that's how it is with us."

"Then let's look for signs!"

Luck smiled almost immediately: at the next fork Ri-Bo found an arrow pointing in the direction of one of the tunnels. The passage led them to a stairway up, which ended, however, with a tightly closed stone door - all their efforts were not enough to move it by even a centimeter.

" I wish there was a lock, or even a keyhole, my gift is powerless here," Ri-Bo sighed.

"Well, then that way is closed to us."

"That's where a person with overpowers would come in handy!"

"Do you wish we had an anzimar in our team?"

"Not at all," Ri-Bo backtracked.

"Possibly, even Super-Strength couldn't have helped us. There might be a pile of rocks on the other side and an avalanche would hit us if we opened the door."

"So we go back and look for other signs."

The next sign was a cross-crossed arrow that said 'Don't go there'. It was pointing toward the widest tunnel - the most likely place they would have turned into.

"I'd be very grateful to the author if he could explain why," Tim said wryly.

"Let's find out! Because if we're careful, nothing will happen to us, right?" Ri-Bo was enthusiastic about the idea and Naar-Tam supported him.

Tim was more inclined to listen to reason, especially since half the night would surely be over by now. Mez'A'Shib pondered for a while before he made up his mind.

"Well, all right. I'll take the lead and you follow. And keep your eyes open."

Everyone agreed, following the drow in a chain. The tunnel was no different from the others, except that the floor was darker, more asphalt than stone. Tim was at first unconcerned, but when Ri-Bo grumbled that some idiot spilled jam on the floor (Naar-Tam was quick to agree) and realized that Mez'A'Shib was having more difficulty with each step he took, he was very worried. He bent down and touched the floor surface, which felt more like rubber than stone. Which was also getting warmer and warmer.

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"It's resin!" he cried out in fright. "Quickly get back, or we'll be stuck!"

Mez'A'Shib jumped in surprise. He landed up to his ankles. Fortunately Ri-Bo and Naar-Tam were with him, pulling him out of the trap with a jerk. And then they all ran together toward the tunnel exit, pulling their feet more and more forcefully away from the viscous black mass.

"Now I know what the object was a little farther ahead," Mez'A'Shib spoke first as they relaxed, happy to be saved. "I spotted it a moment before you sounded the alarm. It was a boot half-buried in tar! I hope its owner made it out of there with only the loss of a shoe."

"Yeah, if he managed to fall down and either crawl or roll over in the right direction."

"Why?"

"There seems to be such a way of escape."

In fact, Tim just happened to remember a note he had once read on the Internet about how to behave when you are walking on thin ice and it starts to crack. It said to immediately fall on your back and try to crawl away. It was argued that in this case the weight of the person would be distributed over the area of the whole body, not just the feet, and the force per unit area would be much less. Probably so, but he did not want to check it on himself.

"So, the pointer was right!" Ri-Bo said excitedly. "And I thought someone was joking!"

"Next time, let's not believe a sign like that unless there's no other way," Mez'A'Shib chided him softly. "I was expecting a catch from the other side, so I didn't see the danger. Only now I remember that in our part of the world, according to the tales of the dwarves, there are caves with lakes, where instead of water is a viscous hot liquid. You should never light a fire near such a lake: it will burn so badly that you won't have time to run away."

"Oil lakes, I've heard of them too," Tim nodded his head.

"What about my torch?" Naar-Tam was genuinely surprised.

"It will have to do without it. Well, at least it hasn't come to that here."

"Don't worry, we can smell the oil on the way. It has a very strong and unmistakable scent."

"Can it self-heat?"

"Not usually."

"So it's magic! A magical trap!"

"That's what it looks like. What do we do now?"

"We should leave our own marks!" Naar-Tam had a bright idea.

"You should have done that from the start," Mez'A'Shib reassured him. "There's no point now."

"What if we split up? Then we could scout the tunnels a lot faster."

"We'd end up losing each other. Or someone would be unlucky enough to fall into another trap and no one would be around. And then what?"

"It makes sense," Naar-Tam said with a sigh.

"But what do we do? How do we get out of here?" Ri-Bo was at a loss.

"All right, I'll use my intuition," the drow suggested. "But I'm going to need silence for a while."

He sat down straight on the stone floor and closed his eyes. Tim, Ri-Bo and Naar-Tam settled silently around him.

"This way," Mez'A'Shib announced firmly about a minute later. "There's an air current through there (Tim didn't feel anything, but any dungeon-dweller would have given him a head start on that) which meant it wasn't a dead end."

They went deeper into another tunnel, and soon Tim too caught a faint oncoming breeze. Its source, as it turned out, were small round openings through which one could see the sky. Right now, though, only a few stars could be seen; the rest was obscured by black and purple clouds. And you couldn't poke your head outside: just like on the upper tiers, there were bars in these windows, too.

"Eh, too bad we can't come here during the day! Maybe we could see what's down there," Ri-Bo regretted.

"We're still too high for that," Mez'A'Shib shrugged. "To tell you the truth, I don't know how many tiers are below us. At least three."

"I wish we had more time, maybe we'd get to the bottom one."

The mention of time worried Tim. There were no circles of multicolored eyes here in the dungeon, and he could only wonder if it was half past midnight or not. Time always flowed wrong for some reason: too fast when there was not enough of it, and too slow when you were in anticipation of some pleasant event. And even if Tim had managed to bring his wristwatch with him, it would have been of little use - the duration of the day here is different from the earth one, and soon he would have been confused.

Mez'A'Shib was also a little worried.

"If we get out of the labyrinth, which I personally hope we do, let's not experiment any more today."

"What if we'll meet a door with 'Minus the third tier' written on it?" Ri-Bo asked slyly.

"Then we'll see what's behind it, but that's all. But I doubt very much that we'll find it so quickly. Any mountain expands to its base, and the tiers must get bigger and bigger."

And after admiring the stars once more, they continued on their way. After a while they saw two small caves, almost equal in size and facing each other.

"Shall we look around?" Ri-Bo suggested cheerfully, and after some hesitation Mez'A'Shib agreed.

"All right. To save time, I think we can split into groups of two here."

So Tim and Naar-Tam took the cave on the left, and Ri-Bo and Mez'A'Shib took the cave on the right.

There wasn't much to see in the stone closet. Tim went over the gloomy stone walls and turned to the exit, but Naar-Tam stopped him. A small section of one of the walls protruded forward, just a little, not immediately noticeable. They grabbed the edges and, with some difficulty, pulled out the stone that covered the niche. Inside was a bundle, its outer shell decaying and crumbling to the touch. However, the inner cover was well preserved, and when they unpacked it, they saw a real treasure - a hundred colorful crystals, no less! And not trivial balls, but crystals of higher quality - tetrahedrons, octahedrons and cubes! And even a couple of icosahedrons!

"Wow!" Naar-Tam was stunned to the core. "Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to put together such a collection! But why had he hidden it here?"

"I suppose he was afraid it would be taken away," Tim suggested.

He couldn't add anything to this when he heard someone yell from a nearby cave.

"Give it back! That's my precious!"

"No it isn't, it's mine now!"

Tim and Naar-Tam dropped their find and hurried to their friends. They clutched at each other in a fierce struggle. Ri-Bo twisted and kicked Mez'A'Shib in the side. A blow to the solar plexus knocked the tilfing out, and the drow, breathing heavily, began to rub the bruise away.

"Hey! Are you crazy?!" Tim was indignant.

"I found the coin and he took it away!" Ri-Bo complained, struggling to get to his feet.

"You didn't have to brag about how lucky you were. And anyway, gold should belong to those who are stronger!" Mez'A'Shib grimly declared, displaying a coin that had turned green with age.

"What gold? It is a rusted copper," Naar-Tam was astonished.

The drow's eyes brightened at that, no longer filled with greed and insanity.

"It is not gold at all!" he exclaimed, tossing the coin to the ground. "And why did it seem gold to me? Where was my mind?"

Ri-Bo stepped closer, squinting cautiously at the apple of discord.

"Copper indeed! Was I really ready to stick my horns in my comrade's belly for that?"

"I would have broken your neck for it," Mez'A'Shib admitted. "What a blessing to have friends around! Forgive me, please, I've never meant you any harm."

"Nor did I! I wish I hadn't found that coin at all!"

"I guess it was another magical trap," Tim remarked. "Strange that it didn't work on us."

"Fortunately, otherwise it would have ended very badly. How beguiling the luster of gold can be if it can blind and cloud the mind!"

"What do you mean, Naar?"

"In our lands, gold is not hard to find on the banks of dried-up rivers. It is considered a sacred metal, but it has no special value - every family has items made of it. But I heard that some people have a 'lust for gold': they can go crazy when they see it. They will do anything to get their hands on a piece of yellow metal."

"Before the anzimars came, none of our people had ever heard of gold," Ri-Bo said. "They like it a lot, but it's not clear what they need it for. They don't use it anywhere, they just keep it in iron boxes, tightly closed and well guarded. In exchange for it, they can give good things, and so many tilfings have caught gold fever. They search everywhere for gold, forgetting everything, even their own families!"

Judging by the emotionality with which the last phrase was uttered, one of Ri-Bo's relatives had caught it, too. Tim himself, even seeing a piece of gold, would have thought it was made of brass or bronze. But even knowing that it was a noble metal, it was unlikely that he would have been moved by the desire to have it. He and his mother had once gone into a jewelry store, and there were many interesting things there, but they didn't impress Tim. Though if the thing had a charm on it, maybe he couldn't resist, either.

"This applies to us, drowes, no less," Mez'A'Shib grinned. "The more gold you have, the more weight you carry in the eyes of others. Even if you're not a nobleman, your opinion will be taken into account. And if you are rich, even the members of the first Houses will not find it shameful to befriend you. Thus the gold mines of our dungeons are sources of constant conflict, not only between the drowes themselves but also with our neighbors - dwarves, kobolds, and subterranean goblins. But such a dangerous find must not be left here."

"Are you suggesting we take it with us?"

"Absolutely not! And since we can hardly take the spell off it, I suggest we destroy it."

"But how?"

"Throw it out the window! Wait for me here!"

"That's it," Mez'A'Shib said a few minutes later, shaking off his hands in a picturesque manner. "Let the wildlings fight over it now. If, of course, they know a lot about gold, which I personally very much doubt."

"I hope that another treasure does not excite your base instincts," Naar-Tam said with a sly smile.

"What other treasure?"

"We found something better than your 'charms' in the next cave."

Fortunately, Mez'A'Shib and Ri-Bo didn't fight over the right to possess the crystals when they saw them. But they were just as surprised.

"It belongs to us now, doesn't it?" Ri-Bo asked slyly.

"Probably," Tim shrugged. "With us, if someone digs up pirate gold, he can take it for himself. No one would think of making a claim over the years."

"The state of the wrappings suggests that no one's looked at that cache in a hundred years or more," Mez'A'Shib commented. "Yes, I suppose we could be the new masters."

"I can only imagine how envious our classmates will be!" Naar-Tam exclaimed merrily.

Mez'A'Shib shook his head.

"I wouldn't recommend showing or telling anyone about it. Otherwise, there will be lots of people who want to take a piece for themselves. Not necessarily by brute force, but by pesky requests or even blackmail - because we're not supposed to be here now, but in our beds, right? This concerns you in particular, Naar."

"Why me?"

"And who almost blabbed about our expedition? Then we'd have to fend off tearful girls' requests to take them with us. On top of that, the whole class would know about it sometime later."

"All right, I'll try to keep my mouth shut," Naar-Tam agreed obediently, remembering how Tim had suffered as a result of Tiis-Mir's chattiness.

The others promised to do the same. But there was another problem: the bag could crumble at any moment, and there was almost no room left in their pockets.

"Let's pour water out of one of the flasks and put the crystals in it," Ri-Bo suggested.

Mez'A'Shib was unenthusiastic.

"It's bad luck to get rid of water during a journey, and people have been known to wander through tunnels thirsty and curse their own thoughtlessness."

"But we still have one more flask left!" Naar-Tam protested.

"Well, it's the only way," Mez'A'Shib waved his hand. "Any of you may drink as much as you can, and I'll spill the rest on the floor."

They all took turns taking a few sips, emptying only a third of the flask's capacity. But it held all the crystals from the hiding place, and even emptied some of their pockets!

"Now the main thing is to find the way back. What good is the treasure if we can't use it?"

So they went on their way. At the third fork Mez'A'Shib pointed to a crack at the top of the tunnel that resembled a zigzag of lightning.

"Do you see it? We have been here before! I happened to notice it as we were walking by. I think I can get us all out of here now!"

And indeed, they were soon upon a ledge from which they had to jump by touch. It was not difficult to climb up: someone had cleverly placed several blocks of stone on top of each other at the edge.

Once in the hall of the first tier, Ri-Bo jumped on the slab of black granite again, and it creaked back into place, sealing the passage.

"So that's how it works!"

The fire that had opened the door to the hall to them had already gone out (it would have been strange if it had kept burning, it wasn't magical after all), but some of the embers were still smoldering, and so the door remained open. When Tim stomped them out, it fell back into place.

"There's some kind of magic here, after all," Mez'A'Shib said thoughtfully. "They must have gone out long before we came back. And then we'd have to figure out how to open the door from the inside. If we ever come here for a long time, someone would have to stay and watch the fire."

Of course, none of them wanted to be on duty, but since it was destined to happen in the indefinite future, no one objected. They safely passed the fork with a signpost and the cave, where their names were now among others. The starfish trap was translucent; it would be invisible again soon, and then they would have to risk jumping where its rays were located. But why worry if it all worked out?

Too soon, however, they rejoiced at the safe outcome of the affair. Because they were already waiting outside the door.