CHAPTER 22

The farthest end of the library is where Tale’s group made camp, sitting around the meager supplies they were able to scrounge up.

Not counting the five that we met already, there are three of them. Two startle as we enter, but the third, lying down, doesn’t even move. My heart, still swollen with impossible expectation, deflates when I confirm that Katha isn’t among them. Only then do I take in what I’m looking at, and my thoughts veer in a completely different direction.

The people facing us seem to have been the subjects of horrible curses. One, a boy, has a strange protrusion growing from the side of his torso that has already ripped through the fabric of the uniform. The nubs on the end look like fingers. The girl at his side turns to us and her eyes sparkle in the candlelight, completely dark. She immediately shrinks from us, drawing an arm over her face with a little yelp.

“Sorry, Verra,” Tale says, and shields the candle with his hand as he leans in to whisper confidentially. “The blobs touched them and this happened.”

Hilde attempts a ‘Hello’. The response she gets is decidedly unenthusiastic.

“This is Malco and Hilde. They’re also Challengers and they made it past the Purple Room. And this happy couple is Dako and Verra. You can manage a warmer welcome than that, can’t you?”

“Put that away,” Verra moans, a hand over her eyes. “Please. It hurts.”

Tale sighs and walks off to place the candle behind the next shelf over. The room becomes dim, people fade to shades.

“So, this is our little camp. We barricaded the other passage, so that the blobs couldn’t get in. You’re welcome to stay if you like.” Tale lets out a little giggle. “What am I saying? Not a lot of places you can go, right?”

Even in the gloom, I can see Hilde furrowing her brow in response. I can relate. Tale’s overpowering cheeriness is as depressing as Edd’s sullen aggressiveness.

I try to steer the conversation to more practical matters.

“What happened to him?” I ask, nodding towards the third body, lying down on top of a few sacks spread around on the ground to spare him from the cold of the stone.

“We think Welse maintained contact with the blobs for too long,” Verra says. Even in the almost total darkness she reads as she talks and her voice is clipped and precise, like my mother’s when she’s delivering a lecture. “We only brushed them, but he got his foot trapped in one. We managed to get him out, but he collapsed shortly after.”

“They’re called Mutt Slimes,” says Hilde. “We heard the name on our way here.”

“Mutt slimes,” mutters Dako, the boy with the budding extra limb. He laughs and shakes his head between his hands. “You’re telling me there are purebred slimes too?”

“It’s probably a nickname,” says Verra. “Mutation Slimes, I’d wager they’re really called.”

She grows aware of the silence that follows her statement and turns her head up sharply.

“Mutation? Naturally occurring Transmutation magic? Surely you’ve at least heard of it.”

Tale looks at me with a crooked grin. “Verra is our scholar, you see. Me and Edd know some letters, but Verra reads as much as our father.”

Verra scoffs and turns another page.

“Fat lot of good it’s done me,” she mutters. “You’d think they wouldn’t leave these many books around for no purpose.”

“What are you searching for?” I ask.

“Anything!” Verra says, exasperated.

“And no luck, I assume?”

“Unfortunately…” Tale tries to interject, but Verra barrels through, unimpeded.

“No. You’d be pardoned for thinking Godtouched would keep well-stocked libraries, given their wealth. Rare tomes written in ancient languages, texts thought lost, rare magic compendiums…” She waves a reverential hand through the air. “But most of these are useless. Novels, inaccurate historical tidbits, recipes, a rather embarrassing amount of volumes on all manner of crafts…”

“You mean like carpentry and such?” I ask, unable to contain myself. “Godtouched like making their own chairs?”

“I’d say the chances are rather slim,” she answers as she turns another page in the gloom. I can barely make out the book she seems to have no problem reading.

“Verra hasn’t been able to find anything we can use,” Tale says, finally managing to wedge himself into the conversation. “We’re hopeful there was some kind of secret here, but so far nothing.”

“Tale, you’re being unfair and quite hurtful,” Verra says. “Unfair because only I think there might be a clue in these books and Dako is the only one who lifted a finger to help me look. Hurtful because, in case you’ve forgotten, I did find this.”

Verra picks up a book and holds it up. Its deep blue cover doesn’t betray anything about the contents. Moved by the triumphant expression in her face, I gesture for the book and she gracefully lets me have it.

I move closer to the candle and frown. This is a strange book indeed. The author’s name doesn’t figure anywhere I can see, only two pages have been filled, and half of each of them are drawings. One is a quite beautiful depiction, actually: it depicts an intricate dark door. A black door with a pedestal by its side from which streams a bright blue glow. My heart begins to beat faster.

The Ebony Door, the title says.

Second-come, the Ebony Door:

The challenge is to guess

If the drumming on the floor

Is your heart, or is your death.

There was no question this was the door I’d found. It also told me something I hadn’t known till now: I’d started on the second level. I filed that information away in case we ever made it back to the elevator and turned the page. The next drawing shows an overlarge blue stone in a very intricate ring.

The Sapphire Keystone, waiting lay,

Kept by roving, slimy goo,

That the floating keeps at bay

Waiting for the likes of you.

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A sudden calm comes over me. This is it. The first part of the maze, where we run around blindly, has ended, because the answer is here: we found the path to the exit and know what to aim for. We know the shape of the puzzle; everything that remains is finding the correct pieces.

Even now, my suspicious mind is trying to poke holes in this theory. Maybe the Godtouched made a fake exit, so Challengers would run around in circles; maybe it’s a trap; maybe this book doesn’t even have anything to do with the dungeon; maybe, maybe, maybe. But it’s all noise, because, one way or the other, I will have to explore the possibility that it is real. And the easiest way to confirm the theory is close at hand: scour the fourth floor for a sapphire and bring it down to the unguarded Ebony Door. All I’d have to do then was to find Katha and Rev and—

“What have you got there?”

I nearly jump out of my skin before I realize it’s Tale peeking over my shoulder. A sudden feeling of guilt comes over me. I’d already forgotten about them.

“I know where this door is. And they key is on this level.” I say, thrusting the open book in front of Tale’s eyes A sudden thought strikes me. “Hilde, you saw a door too, right?”

“Yes, but it was guarded…”

“We have to find more books like this! They, they—” I look at the book’s cover. “We’re looking for brightly colored books, I think. One blue… Hilde! In front of the door you saw, was there a pedestal?”

“There was a great big lizard roaming biting people and spitting fire, I wasn’t paying…”

“Did you see a pedestal streaming light?” I insist.

She furrows her brow, then her expression lights up.

“Now that you mention it…”

“What color?”

“Red,” she says firmly. “The light was red.”

“One blue, one red, and there might be more.”

I pick up the candle, spreading light through the room.

“Please don’t,” moans the dark-eyed girl, Verra, covering her eyes. “Even with my eyes closed it’s painful.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “But I need to search the shelves, we should all—”

“Fine!” she says, standing, grabbing the nearest shelf for balance and orientation. “I’ll go search somewhere where it’s nice and dark, then, and you can take those revolting candles wherever I’m not.”

She begins walking down the length of the shelf, tripping on the unconscious Welse, who doesn’t make a sound. Before she can completely disappear, Dako stands and follows after her.

“All right, the rest of you—”

“Is he giving out the orders now, Tal?” Edd asks. He’s leaning against a shelf, surrounded by his honor guard.

“Edd, don’t do this,” his brother groans.

But I simply don’t have the time to worry about bruised egos right now.

“I’m not giving orders,” I say. “I’m telling you I found a way out of here and we should—”

“Oh, pipsqueak found it, did he?” Edd scoffs. “Because as I recall it was Verra who handed you the book.”

“Fine,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Verra found the clue, and we, all of us, should be looking for the rest. Instead of milling about trying to look threatening.”

Edd straightens himself and takes a step forward. I curse mentally. This is Bago all over again. Why don’t I ever learn? But before he can do anything else, the sound of steps walking down the corridor interrupts us.

A moment later, Dako reappears, walking purposefully towards us and carrying two books. One bright red, the other forest green.

“Are these—?”

“Yes. Verra says the poetry is just as terrible as in the blue book.”

“How did you do that?” I ask, mouth open. “It hasn’t been a minute!”

He shrugs.

“Once she knew what she was looking for she found them in seconds. It’s easier for her in the dark.”

I hold my hand out for the books but Edd grabs them before I can.

“Come the hells on,” I mutter. I try to step in and grab at least one of the tomes before two of Edd’s boys hold me back.

“For the gods’ sake!” Tale reaches and whisks a book away from Edd and handing it to me. “There. You can share.”

The Golden Door, says the red book, on the first level, leads to the Trial of Strength.

I crack the book open. The cover is red, and the first drawing shows a large, harshly rectangular door wrought in gold.

“That’s the one!” Hilde says.

First the Door on golden sand

And the leaden weight of gold

Guarded by the firebrand,

The lizard king of old

I grimace before flipping the page. Fire-spitting lizard, just like Hilde said.

Ruby Key, way up high,

Third floor waiting still,

Dagger slaying-chill,

And holding up the sky

Cryptic. I wonder what they mean by that. The drawing shows a large ruby set in the pommel of a dagger so well decorated that I can’t see it being used for anything other than prettying up some fop’s attire.

I hold the red book up. Edd, surrounded by his guards as he slowly mouths the words he’s reading, gives me the stink eye until Tale sighs and makes the exchange.

“That one I haven’t seen,” Hilde mutters, frowning at the page.

Door of silver, door of moon,

In the next floor up to last.

The serpent’s waking soon,

In the caverns dark and vast.

“Could be in this floor,” I say.

“But serpent?” Hilde doubts. “There’s already a reference to the slimes in the blue book. If it’s one monster per level…”

“You’re right. And look:” I read the next part out loud. “The Keystone Emerald, in sandpit lay, – you can see where they started running out of ideas – protected by scale and fire. O warrior, come and stay, guarded from blaze’s ire.”

We stand in silence, each deep in thought. Hilde is nervously fidgeting with something in her pocket. I’m about to ask if something is the matter when Tale speaks up.

“Terrible,” he says.

“The scheme doesn’t even work,” Hilde agrees immediately. “And ‘blaze’s ire’? Ew.”

“Could we focus, please?” I ask. “This is the sand level, right? It has both the Emerald Keystone and the Golden Door.”

“Does one open the other, you think?” Tale asks.

“Too easy,” Hilde says. “The light on the pedestal was red. Wouldn’t it be simpler to assume that’s for the Ruby key?”

It would, I think. Is that too easy?

“I think Hilde is right,” I say. “Plus, they’re in the same book. Golden Door, Ruby key. Until we find more clues, we have to assume this is the pairing.”

I’m still holding the green book open in the Emerald Keystone page. The drawing below this little message catches my eye and furrows my brow. It’s a little golden cup with an emerald at its center. I’m not sure why the image is so familiar, but then I realize: the emerald drawn in the cup is a mirror image of the emerald in the necklace I still carry. Only the ornamentation, the object they were inserted into, is different. But the necklace was nowhere near sand. It was on the second floor, around a long dead man’s neck.

I snap the book shut and hand it over to Tale.

“This is all we need. There are several ways out. I don’t know if we have to pass through all of them, but I’m certain the exit lies that way. I need your help searching to see if there’s more. Please.”

Even Edd, still holding the red book, seems interested now, though not enough to trust me completely. Eager, Tale divides us into groups, and we begin the search for more of the colorful volumes. Hilde and Tale join me, with Edd never more than a couple rows away.

No more bright covers present themselves, but I take the opportunity to leaf through other books. There are a few tomes on herbs. I open some, taking in the detailed drawings inside. I feel a deep pang of disappointment for not being Dala, for only knowing the necessary rudiments of herblore that are most useful for the sort of accidents that crop up around farmers. The information contained in these tomes would bring tears to her eyes. It would take years of study before I could benefit from them.

As I’m busy searching the room, Tale hovers over my shoulder, filling me in on the gaps of his group’s journey. After they’d managed to barricade themselves inside – he points the door out to me, blocked with worktables – a faction had decided to explore the Floating Room, as he calls it. When they found it, the objects inside had been still and whole. It only took one light touch, Tale says, for the stillness to become carnage. Those were the corpses we’d found

“And you didn’t try again?” Hilde asks.

“I value my life, dwarf,” Edd spits. He’s made his way to us slowly, perusing the shelves but never dedicating them much more than a cursory look.

“Cowards often do,” I answer idly. I do it without thinking, the way I used to poke at Bago a lifetime ago.

There is a movement and I’m suddenly yanked back from the rows of books. Edd is holding my shoulder, pulling his fist back, but before I can raise my own hands up in defense Tale jumps in and separates us.

“Edd,” he snaps. “Enough. Can’t you see they’re helping us?”

“He accused me—!”

“Enough!”

Edd shoots me a look of pure venom, then storms off down the passage to the Floating Room, quickly followed by one of the dagger-carrying boys.

“Sorry about that,” Tale sighs. “But you should know: my brother is no coward. He wants nothing more than to jump into the room, but I pleaded with him not to. Even if we find a way across, we can’t bring everyone. Not like this.”

The way he says it makes me think of the three mutated Callengers. Verra with her dark eyes, Dako with the protrusion which I’m almost sure is longer now than when we met him, and supine boy, dead to the world.

“How bad is he?”

“We don’t know,” Tale says, shaking his head. “When a slime touched him, he… He just cried out, and now he won’t move. His eyes are open, he’ll drink when told to, but he won’t do anything more. He’s got boils all over his body and mutters every now and then.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I really am, but—”

“Tale!”

The voice echoes down the passage, and a second later a figure comes into view. It’s the boy with the dagger, lurching down the passage, dragging something…

“He’s been shot!” he says.

Behind the boy, half-walking, half letting himself be dragged, is Edd. His face is contorted in a mask of pain, and his hand is closed around the shaft of an arrow that sprouts from his leg. He stumbles past the rows of books, slips from the boy’s grasp, and Tale catches him before he falls.