by Max Anthony
Rasmus thought about this for a moment. Whenever he was faced with a choice of left or right, he normally went left. He was aware that if he kept going left that he’d eventually end up back where he’d started, but somehow it had always worked out for him. Or at least he’d never been killed taking left-hand turns. In a similar way, he always called out tails when he flipped a coin. Funnily enough, the coins that he flipped always ended up on tails, owing to the nudges of magic as they were in flight. As it happened, Viddo Furtive always called heads when he flipped a coin and he, too, was always correct. Never trust a thief or a wizard in a coin toss was a little-known phrase which was rapidly gaining traction across the parts of Frodgia where these two had chosen to stop.
On this occasion, the left-right-left combination propounded by Viddo eventually took them to a dead end of sorts. They’d got quite far into the rocks now and there was little hope that the soldiers would find them any time soon. Nevertheless, the only way to advance was upwards, through a tight crevice in the rocks.
“Bah, let’s go back and take that left turn we just passed,” said Rasmus, not entirely keen on the idea of climbing.
“No, we must go upwards,” said Viddo defiantly.
“Eh? Why’s that, then?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t like going backwards once I’ve gone forwards.” That was Viddo Furtive to a tee. He liked to see progress in one direction and saw even the smallest deviation as a failing, especially if it took him back where he’d been. The only time he liked to travel the same route twice was when he’d successfully stolen a large enough quantity of goods that he felt that his endeavours had been successful, such as if he’d broken into a house, pilfered the contents of the safety box and then had to beat a hasty retreat to avoid capture.
“That’s your problem, not mine,” said Rasmus, equally defiant. “I’m a wizard, not a human fly. I can’t climb up there!”
“Of course, you can, it’s easy. Just watch.” And with that Viddo smoothly climbed ten feet upwards, as easily as if he were the human fly that Rasmus was not.
“Showing me something and then saying ‘look how easy it is’ does not help me do something which I cannot. It’s like me saying to you, ‘go on, summon a couple of elephants’ and then expecting you to be able to do it.”
Viddo Furtive hadn’t really been listening to this minor invective, for something high up had caught his eye. “Shut your chuntering for a moment, would you? I think there’s a cave up there.”
“I am NOT chuntering,” chuntered Rasmus. “And even if I were, the sound of this hypothetical chuntering has no bearing on your ability to see whether or not there is a cave above.”
In spite of his chuntering, the wizard had become curious. Everyone liked a good cave, he knew. Even the remote ones were exciting. They rarely contained anything of note, but it was the potential that made them worth looking into.
“Is it a cave then?” he asked eventually.
“Why yes, I think it is,” said Viddo, also happy at the boundless possibilities. “Fancy a look inside it? Or would you like me to have a look and then tell you what’s in there?”
Not wanting Viddo to have all the fun, Rasmus informed him that he was suddenly eager to also investigate the contents of the cave eighty feet above them and that furthermore, Viddo Furtive should get a shift on, in order that his wizardly colleague not be delayed in his own ascent. These desires were put most succinctly by the next word to be spoken.
“Climb,” said Rasmus.
And climb they did. Viddo used his thief’s skills to scale the vertical rocks. In truth, the climb was a fairly easy one for him. He could have climbed a smooth, sheer wall with a bar of soap tied to the palm of each hand if he’d needed to. Rasmus was not so lucky and he made his ungainly way upwards, using the few small outward-jutting rocks for his hands and feet. The wizard had never been scared of heights and besides, he had a spell that would have ensured his safety if he’d been careless enough to fall.
“Can you see any soldiers?” he called upwards to Viddo.
“I think they might have gone. At least, I can’t see any of them,” came the reply.
“They seemed a tad bumbling,” said Rasmus. “All cocky with their travel-stained clothing and their sword waving, but when it came down to it, they weren’t very good at arresting us.”
It wasn’t the time or the place for such a conversation, but thief and wizard were comfortable in each other’s company, for all the minor insults they exchanged. The competence or lack thereof as it pertained to the soldiers, soon became of no concern. Rasmus craned his neck and saw Viddo’s head looking down at him from above. He had found a ledge and was standing on it.
“This cave is a whopper!” he said happily. “And there’s a breeze coming out of it!”
“Splendid,” said Rasmus. A breeze meant that the cave either led somewhere or it was just a very big one and therefore worth their time to explore. “Any sign of what’s in there? It doesn’t just head up to the top of these rocks, does it?” the wizard asked with concern.
“No, it looks like it heads down. I’m hungry. Have you got that pie with you?”
“I didn’t have time to gather it, what with soldiers firing arrows at me. Why didn’t you pick it up?”
“I was being polite,” said Viddo. “And you know I hardly peck at my food anyway.” Both of these statements were blatantly untrue, since Viddo could pack away a meal for six in under ten minutes and he was definitely not shy.
Rasmus reached a hand up onto the ledge. There were few hand holds at this stage and his fingers scrabbled for grip. Viddo took hold of his wrist and hauled him upwards and over the lip, betraying a far greater strength than his slim size would have suggested. They were on a narrow ledge, four or five feet deep and eight or ten wide. The outcrop itself loomed another seventy or so feet above, meaning they were little more than half way to the top. Rasmus admired the view. The trees which they had recently escaped from looked surprisingly small, and there were tiny figures visible on the scrubby grass.
“The soldiers are already heading back,” he said. “They gave up quite easily. Perhaps it’s their lunch time, or something.”
The wizard turned his attention to Viddo, who simply raised a hand and pointed a finger at the cave entrance.
“Look,” he said. “Not bad, is it?”
They both stared at the cave. The opening was about seven feet high and five feet wide, with no sign of light from within, not that they’d expected to see any. The breeze which Viddo Furtive had mentioned wafted over their faces, faint but unmistakeable.
“By the way, your hat fell off when you were twenty feet from the top,” said Viddo, letting his friend in on the bad news.
Rasmus let forth with a slew of gutter language, but in truth had just that moment decided that he hadn’t been desperately keen on the purple shade of the hat’s brim.
“Never mind. You can steal me a red one next time,” he said.
Nothing further was said on the subject of hats and they walked into the cave without further pause.
Two
“I’ll cast a light spell,” said Rasmus. He knew that Viddo could see well in the dark, but the wizard could not. After a second, the darkness of the cave was dispersed and a light appeared, glowing a cold, but penetrating white. It hovered over the top of Rasmus’ head, just where a purple hat might recently have perched.
The walls of the cave were faintly damp and reflected the magical light with a glistening of their own. Viddo peered closely. “These walls shouldn’t be damp,” he said, though spoke no more as to how he’d reached his conclusion, particularly since neither of them was very interested in whether or not there was any dampness there. There was no ‘aha!’ moment to be drawn from whether or not there was water on the walls of the cave, so they promptly forgot about it, in order that they could proceed without being slowed down by the minor details.
Viddo’s earlier assertion that the cave sloped do
wnwards was proven to be true and it continued in this fashion until they could no longer see the entrance behind them. After a time, it sloped down even more sharply and they had to take care with their footing, in case one of them slipped and cascaded down the bank, which would have been uncomfortable indeed. Viddo Furtive was acutely aware that since he was in the lead, he suffered the additional risk of being caught in some sort of unholy wizard snowball if Rasmus stumbled over his own feet.
No such ungainly fall happened and the floor of the cave provided excellent footing for their stout travelling boots. Neither thief nor wizard spent a moment pondering why the floor of the cave was perfectly dry, while there was moisture upon the walls. They were both the practical sort and in truth, neither of them gave a stuff about it.
“This is an unexpectedly large cave,” said Viddo in an unexpectedly loud whisper, which made Rasmus jump at the unexpected nature of it. For some reason that he couldn’t fathom, Viddo always felt obliged to whisper in caves. The problem with whispering was that the other party usually couldn’t hear him, so he had to increase the volume of it until it was much more of a bellow than a whisper.
“Yes!” bellowed Rasmus in whispered response, “it is.”
The acuteness of the descent reduced and the cave widened, allowing the two of them to walk side-by-side, producing in Viddo a sense of relief that he didn’t have to keep an eye out for falling wizards to his rear. The expanse of the cave gave the appearance that the magical light had diminished in comparison, and Viddo saw his companion concentrate for a brief moment and then the light expanded.
“There!” said Rasmus. “We should be able to see a bit more clearly now!”
And indeed they could see more clearly, though neither of them liked what they saw.
“So we’ve come all this way and it just opened out into this…this…opening?”
“It’s more of a cavern, I’d say,” said Viddo.
The tunnel had ended in a roundish space about thirty yards across and twenty yards high, with damp walls and dry floor. The roof was rough, lacking even a tapering column of stone for them to stare at and argue over whether it was a stalagmite or a stalactite.
“This is a bit shit, isn’t it?” said Rasmus, feeling a trifle deflated. He always did when he explored caves. He went into each with high hopes and expectations, and invariably emerged disappointed. Still, he often told himself that the journey was as good as the destination.
“Yeah,” said Viddo in rare agreement. “You always come into these places thinking that you might find something nice. Like a chest of gems or something.”
“Or a forgotten spell book full of exciting new things!”
“Or a gold statue with emeralds instead of eyes.”
“Or a beautifully carved hardwood staff with a bit of tungsten on the end of it.”
They both sighed, lost for a moment in their own pleasant thoughts of what might have been.
“Mind you, I can still feel that draught,” said Viddo. “It’s coming from over here.”
Viddo licked his finger and raised it into the air, the better to feel the direction of the zephyr. He marched over to a section of the stone wall, that gave every impression of being the same as all of the other walls around it. Viddo Furtive was not fooled by its subterfuge and with an umm and an ahh, he reached upwards and then stuck two fingers into a hole, which was entirely unnoticeable unless you had known it was there and were looking for it.
“Arrrgggh!” screamed Viddo, the noise harsh and startling in the confines of the cave. “Get it off me!” he shouted, pulling at his hand as it something hideous had taken hold of his fingers and sought to pull his entire body through the finger-sized opening.
Rasmus rushed over in concern, his hands swirling in the air as he started the preparations to cast one of six possible spells, depending on the need. Most wizards struggled to pause just a single spell in mid-cast, but Rasmus was not most wizards and he clung on to his half-dozen, each on a hair trigger, waiting to be unleashed.
“What is it?” he shouted, raising his voice so that he would be heard over Viddo’s screams.
Without pausing in his screams, Viddo shoved his two fingers deeper into the hole. Then, he stopped screaming. There was a loud click and a section of the stone wall swung back, as if it were held on a set of powerful and perfectly-smooth hinges.
“Just kidding,” he said.
Rasmus gritted his teeth in consternation and the energies of his spells dissipated. The potential destructive forces of a blizzard, a hurricane, a conjured war elephant, two fireballs and a swarm of locusts fizzled away into nothingness, leaving Rasmus’ magical resources significantly depleted until he could get back to his spell book, whenever that would be.
“I’d say that was just a tiny bit unsporting, you sod,” Rasmus informed his friend.
“But I’ll wager you felt a swelling of excitement,” replied Viddo, his expression betraying a faint satisfaction.
“I’d have called it worry, rather than excitement. In the same way that I was worried about what those soldiers planned to do with my hat, but distinctly not excited at the prospect. I’ll remember this, Viddo, and next time you begin screaming, I’ll do no more than point at you and laugh.”
“You’re such a grump,” said Viddo, who was a man that took few things seriously. “Anyway, I consider my joke at your expense to be a fair exchange for this hidden opening that I have discovered. Look at it and know wonder.”
“It does look a tiny bit interesting,” said Rasmus. “I’ll concede that.”
“Far more than interesting, my friend. It’s a hidden passage that has absolutely no reason to be here, therefore it must lead to wealth unimaginable.”
“Or dangers unimaginable,” replied Rasmus.
They stared at each other for a few seconds and then looked at the opening of the passageway. It was six feet high and three wide: an almost perfect doorway. The door itself was made from a thin slab of stone, and mounted upon three stone hinges of a sort that neither man was familiar with.
“Not bad work,” Viddo admitted, checking over the door. “I’ve seen worse in the palaces of kings. Whoever made this door must have known what he was doing.”
“Let us see if this mysterious craftsman has anything worth stealing,” said Rasmus. He had not always been enthusiastic when it came to thievery, but he found that the longer he associated with Viddo Furtive, the more his moral boundaries shifted until he occasionally found himself salivating at the prospect of making off with another person’s goods. For certain, any goods left unguarded in a cave out in the middle of nowhere were fair game.
“That’s what I’m meant to say!” exclaimed Viddo, slightly miffed that a wizard had got the jump on him when it came to exhorting another into the noble act of pilfery. “How about I summon a couple of chimps to scout on ahead?” he asked, seeking to turn the table on his companion.
“Be my guest,” said Rasmus. He waited patiently for a few moments.
“Maybe I’ll summon them later,” muttered the unmagical Viddo, brushing past the wizard and entering the passageway.
They entered a corridor that had been hewn through the solid rock. The walls were fairly smooth and the floor likewise. The doorway had been three feet wide, but the tunnel was a little over six feet wide and seven feet tall.
“Look at this,” said Viddo, waving an arm to encompass their surroundings. “It takes ages to cut even a tiny hole into solid rock, so what manner of fool would carve a passageway that is both wider and taller than necessary? It just doesn’t make sense.”
Fancying himself as a scholar, Rasmus dropped into lecturing mode. “There have been many famous wizards who have had a knack with stone. It may be that such wizards were responsible for what we see here. Additionally, it is well-known that wizards are both intelligent and enlightened, therefore it would make sense for a wizard to make their tunnels as civilized as the one through which we currently travel.”
“
Hmmm,” said Viddo, entirely unconvinced by the notion of an intelligent and enlightened wizard. “Another possibility is that this tunnel was meant to be a permanent and well-travelled road, used by people from the past and because of that, they expended a greater effort to make it usable without having to crawl along on one’s hands and knees.”
“If that were to be the case, that would imply that wherever this tunnel leads, it is to a place that has been home to many people,” said Rasmus.
“And where there are many people, there are likely to be people amongst them who have a greater wealth than the poorer citizens,” said Viddo.
“Wealth that might now be lying around in piles, waiting for a pair of lucky adventurers to happen by and place it into a sack. Do you have your emergency loot sack with you, Viddo?”
“Always,” said Viddo, patting an area of his tunic to indicate where it was. In fact, his emergency loot sack was located elsewhere, but Viddo knew that one should never give away the location of one’s possessions by patting at their correct location on one’s clothing. Pickpockets could be anywhere, even in a tunnel such as this one. A part of his mind was aware that the chance of anyone picking his pockets down here was effectively zero, not least because Viddo was a master thief and almost immune to having his pockets rifled, but old habits died hard.
The passageway had been sloping gradually downwards, but now it turned into steps, which dropped away into the gloom. The light from Rasmus’ spell illuminated the first fifteen or twenty steps, before the darkness reasserted itself.
“I’d not fancy coming up and down these with a gammy leg,” said Rasmus. “Nor carrying a barrel of ale in one hand and a sack of potatoes in the other.”
“You’re rambling again,” warned Viddo. “You asked me to let you know when you started rambling. And you’re doing it now.”
“What good is living if a man can’t ramble aloud every once in a while?” asked Rasmus. “It helps me play things through in my mind.”
