CHAPTER 33

I land on my hands and feet and scramble to press myself against the wall, heart drumming hard. What a joke it would be if I placed my foot wrong now and slipped. Hilde jumps after me, landing hard but on her feet.

The pit beckons gently, persistently. Below us lies the room I pulled Hilde into after Essa left her to die. From this upper room, it’s possible to hop down. Risky, but doable. Thankfully, it’s also unnecessary.

The walkway we’re on was the same Wyl climbed up to when I first saw her. Below, the wider bit of corridor where Hilde was abandoned. Her blood is still there, a dark spot on the floor. I wonder if Essa found it an accusing shape, if Rev thought about it at all.

The impact of the crumbling upper floors is painfully obvious here. Cracks have formed along the walls and debris fallen in from above, blocking doors and making the corridor murkier with dust.

Hilde drops down first and steadies me when I follow clumsily after.

“How’s the hand?” she asks.

I just nod quickly and hide it from view inside my tattered rags. “Where to?”

She doesn’t seem convinced, but points and starts walking, peeking cautiously into each open room before passing in front of it.

This is the section of the second floor I never explored, but I can tell the fall of the upper part of the edifice abused it considerably. The traps are both unfamiliar to me and knocked out of their usual shapes, so that devices that were as trustworthy and reliable as the gentlest of ponies are now behaving in strange and dangerous ways.

There’s another dart trap, but you can see where the rubble from above crashed into the floor and triggered the thing in permanence. A pile of bolts lies on the floor on the opposite wall of the corridor, and, as we stand still and wait, another comes shooting out of the room, snaps against the wall, and falls in the pile. Trapped pits abound, covered or not, with jagged spikes peeking out of holes or an unhealthy-looking liquid bubbling in the depths. All are empty of corpses. A swinging blade, supposed to go from wall to wall and bisect anyone searching for treasure or weapons, hangs still as a mournful pendant.

Each trap that’s been made useless has also made the room safe for plundering. Essa’s people have taken advantage of that, I assume, because the rooms are picked clean, leaving only the more obviously trapped treasure. We find the only example of this strategy going poorly when we round a corner into a corridor that shoots off from the ring and find a thin trail of blood oozing from a room. Inside, a boy died standing, a metal spike spearing him through the chest and holding him up. His face is turned away from us, facing the far wall, which makes watching him easier. I’m surprised at how calmly I can face death now.

There are a number of holes on the ceiling and walls, aimed at an angle. At the far end of the room, on a tall table, there’s a small, golden coil of rope. The rest of Essa’s people simply moved on. They didn’t even bother recovering the boy’s short sword, which dropped from his dead hand and lies quietly lapping at the bloody river.

“Rue,” I ask. “Can you get that? I don’t think you’re heavy enough to trigger the trap.”

“Even if I was,” he buzzes, then jumps down from my shoulder and moves, serpentine, into the room, while Hilde and I wait and watch his hypnotic movements.

“We’re nearly to the stairwell,” she says, pointing. “Between those two doors, hidden in the wall.”

I nod. A moment passes when Rue steps over the red stream, drawing the shape of a bridge before pulling himself completely over to the far side.

“You know where we landed? The room where I first found you?” I ask. Hilde furrows her brow, but nods.

“The Ebony Door is close to that. Taking the opposite direction we did, then left and left again.” I press the sapphire into her hand and fumble for the emerald. “If anything happens, anything at all, I don’t want you to die for no reason. I want you to go and find a way out and if you can get Rev out of here.”

Hilde stops me, a hand on my shoulder.

“Don’t. I won’t leave you behind.”

A needle of guilt pierces through me and I shake the feeling, ignore it.

“I’ll hold on to this,” she says, lifting the sapphire. “In case the unthinkable happens. But you’ll get to use that emerald yourself. I’m sure of it.”

Just then, the thin sound of metal on rock interrupts us. Rue is partially wrapped around the sword’s hilt, buzzing innocently. Several feet above him, a sharp length of metal has struck out of the wall and now trembles uselessly, having pierced several feet of empty air.

Rue waits a moment, then metal drags on stone as he returns, tendrils coiled around the hilt of the sword, the rest of his body moving up first and then pulling the blade behind him. I pick them both up and stop a moment, watching the loop of rope. Its color, placement, and size intrigue me.

“Sorry,” Rue buzzes, like he’s reading my mind. “It’s too high up.”

“I can throw you,” I say.

He buzzes unintelligibly.

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“It might be magical,” I insist. “It would be silly of us to just leave it. How big did you say that drake was, Hilde?”

“Oh, huge,” she says. “Toothy, too.”

“See?” I ask Rue. “It might literally mean our lives.”

If Rue had eyes to roll, he would certainly be rolling them now.

A few minutes and two throws later, he drags the rope out of a room that is suddenly filled with sharp metal spikes.

I hand the sword over to Hilde. It would be wasted on me. The memory of Wyl dodging my blows like they were stationary tree branches is still painfully present.

Despite everything, I find myself wishing Wyl did make it out and can enjoy a long, happy life as a Champion.

Hilde brings us up to the wall that ends this little corridor while I pass the rope from hand to hand, sure that there is something special about it yet unable to see it. The two doors that border the wall are closed and the stones seem solid enough, but there are footprints in the dust. People came through here, but whether they actually went through the wall and into a passage beyond it is beyond my tracking powers. Hilde is looking at the architecture with an appraising frown.

“Anything amiss?” I ask.

“Nothing. I’m just trying to find out how to open it from this side.”

“You mean you don’t know?” My heart drops.

She shakes her hand at me irritably.

“I was the one who found the passage down on the first level. Why do you think they let me hold the cup? And if Essa could find her way back, then I can too. I just need a minute, please.”

I hold my hands up and back off a few paces. Crossing my arms with care, I watch Hilde for a while, but she does nothing but observe, still as her own marble rendition. I tap my foot nervously. I don’t like to wait. Waiting brings the pain in my hand to the fore, and then I stop thinking at all and begin worrying, doubting, panicking.

I walk to one of the closed doors, fiddling with the rope. Hilde turns her head to give me a look, but doesn’t protest, and so I push the door open a little.

Nothing strikes, jumps, or swings at me, so I feel confident enough to push the door the rest of the way in. Torchlight floods into the room, revealing a stretch of solid ground, a gap three meters wide, and more ground. On the other side of the room, lying against the wall, is the small, almost imperceptible shape of a leather flask. Water? I feel my mouth painfully caked in dust.

The space between stretches of ground is a pit, empty and dark all the way down: no spikes, no poison, no monsters, just a long fall and a sudden stop.

I peek out. Hilde is still busy looking at the wall. Guess I have time to solve one little trap, especially if there’s a drink at the end.

Jumping is the obvious way to traverse the divide, which probably means it isn’t the correct one. I search the ceiling and the floor for hints, but there are no holes for darts and no slots for blades. Bringing the torchlight into the pit to illuminate its far wall doesn’t reveal anything out of the ordinary.

“Think it’s safe?” I ask Rue.

“Do you remember where you found me, Malco?” he retorts.

“Uh… A locked puzzle room?”

“Yes! A locked room with no ceiling. I think this was how Archie died, Malco. No, I don’t think it’s safe.”

“Fair point,” I say, pulling the torch out of the pit. “Better leave it…”

Just then, I catch something: the light does something it shouldn’t. I almost ignore it. But when I wave the torch, there it is again, a glimmer in midair. I pick up a piece of rubble from outside and throw it.

Ting. It rebounds off air, bouncing on an invisible wall floating right in the middle of the pit. I try very hard not to think of what would have happened if I’d jumped.

So, invisible floating wall… I grab a handful of pebbles off the ground as I think of ways to go around it. My injured hand curls around the stones with difficulty, but at least it can at least keep up with this small effort.

Maybe up?

Ting. The rock strikes the invisible surface of the wall close to the ceiling and falls into the pit.

Around the sides?

Left and then right, both pebbles find the air as hard as their predecessor. They disappear into the darkness beneath. Frustrated, I throw a bunch of pieces of rubble, one after the other, hearing the ting, ting, ting, ting-ting.

Wait. Ting-ting?

I raise the torch and see it. One of the pebbles is apparently floating in midair. I throw another stone, my aiming clumsy and awkward, but it lands close enough, resting on thin air.

A part of the chasm, though it looks as empty as the rest, is also solid. It takes a while to find a place where the invisible bridge connects to my side of the room. On my knees, I press a hand against it, feeling the strange slippery hardness of solidified air.

“Want to give it a try?” I ask Rue.

He acquiesces, slithering onto the invisible platform with ease and immediately slipping. I catch him before he tumbles past the edge of the platform. For the second attempt, several feelers spread out from Rue’s main body, steadying him with dozens of little footholds. Looking like an engorged and blobby spider, he strikes out into the open air, the legs in front guiding him along the path, the ones to the side pushing him this way and that to keep him on course. The buzzing is ceaseless, anxious and curious in equal measures.

I watch him dart out, confident, and rapidly span the interval between me and the invisible wall. That’s where he hits a snag. The bridge leans only to the wall, not all the way across. He scurries to the left and the right, buzzing to himself. More feelers extend from his body, but these splay themselves against the wall, searching, prodding, until finally they find a passage.

“It’s too high,” Rue complains. “And slippery. I can’t pull myself up to it.”

“It’s about knee high,” I say.

“That’s too high,” he says. His buzzing grows thin and grating, irritated.

I can still hear Hilde’s mutterings in the corridor outside. She seems deep in thought, and still with a ways to go before making up her mind of how the door opens.

“Let me see.”

I kneel. It makes it easier to feel the platform under me, and with only one hand I can feel ahead to know where to slide. The surface is slippery, like the lakes in the Barrow hills during winter, only this one hopefully won’t crack under my weight. Gently, I pull myself down the same way Rue made. Only once do I feel part of my leg slip past the edge, forcing me to correct my course, but by then I can extend my hand and feel the wall blocking the way.

My hands are sweaty. I left the torch lying on the ground and am grateful that the little light it gives while it spits and splutters on the rock isn’t enough to encourage me to look down into the void.

My hand passes through the gap in the wall and feels down on the other side, finding more solid air.

“Stay here,” I tell Rue, and pass over to the other side before he can protest.

I pick a few pebbles from my pocket and drop them in random spots around me. Some fall down past my feet, others bounce off, showing me the way. I make my way on all fours.

At last I manage to stand on solid ground and grab the hard leather bottle. Before I can uncork it to check the contents, a grinding noise, loud and reverberating, echoes from the hallway. Hilde steps into the room muttering to herself and looking annoyed.

“Bastards blocked it,” she says. “Amateur work, but it still took me all this time to…”

Hilde stops and looks up, finally seeing me.

“What are you doing there?”

I open my mouth to answer, but another grinding sound echoes. This one much closer. It’s coming from the wall behind me.

“Uh…”

It’s all I manage. The next second the wall begins to move, pushing me towards the pit.