by Jean Johnson
Myal glanced around, hoping no one had seen them. It was past sunset by not quite an hour, and most everyone was back at the village. But not everyone. She could see a few others as shadowy figures on the creamy granite paving stones, thanks to the pale white light of Brother and Sister Moon creeping their way across the starlit sky.
A couple groups had gathered near some of the other doors spread out along the broad base of the tower. Some were adventurers, their dark forms moving in ways that told her they were drinking and speculating about what had gone wrong. Others were pacing, arms folded, heads tilted up to look at the imposing edifice; those would be either fellow employees or loved ones of the personnel trapped inside. They were here because they were worried, not just curious as to what was going on.
She returned her attention to Kerric when he mounted the steps. To her surprise, he didn’t do what most employees did when they started a gauntlet by opening up a door to an adventuring party; he did not place his hand on the bronze plate above the lever for the latch. Instead, he fished out a set of metal tools and prodded at the opening of the lock below the latch.
For a moment, she wondered if he even knew what he was doing. Most mages did not learn mundane, non-magical ways to open locks. But with a faint, audible click, he shifted one hand to the lever and pushed down, swinging the door open, then extracted his tools with the other. To her surprise, he was as fast as any lock-picking adventurer she’d been teamed with over the years. Well, so the Master of the Tower has more than magical tricks up his badly bracer’d sleeves . . . Good.
“In you go, milady,” he murmured politely, holding the door open just wide enough for her to slip past. “There won’t be any traps for the first twenty feet. After that, we’re on our own—and this is your last chance to change your mind. Once this door shuts, the only way out is by completing our task . . . or by waiting for someone to carry our bodies out.”
“And miss out on a chance to run the Tower with its Master?” she muttered back, smiling. “If you hadn’t noticed, I am already crazy enough to adventure repeatedly.” Taking him at his word about the immediate lack of traps, she stepped into the Tower, letting him follow at his own pace. A few seconds later, the door clanked shut behind them, the locking mechanism reactivating with several clacks.
Like many other such entrances, the first room wasn’t large, just an area big enough to have served as a tenement sitting room, save that it had no furniture. At the far end of the empty chamber, a stairwell led up. Like the service corridor, it was dimly lit, though brighter than the darkness outside. The whole Tower was riddled with suncrystal veins, which drew in daylight from the Tower’s surface, storing excess sunlight for illumination throughout the night.
In corridors, stairwells, and halls, it was almost never truly bright, and not always in each chamber, but it was rare for a room in the vast structure to be completely dark. When it was . . . there was always something dangerous lurking in the depths, usually some sort of monster, sometimes some sort of trap. Most were very complex illusions, but rumor had it some of the beasts and guardians were real creatures. Mortal or magical, it did not actually matter; they were just yet another obstacle which adventurers had to navigate.
She had two small lightglobes in her pack, strung in fine mesh nets so they could be carried by hand, or by tying them to a shoulder guard or something. They weren’t the standard, head-sized spheres, which when struck illuminated at a level of brightness comparable to the firmness of the tap. These simply turned on or off, requiring a hard, swift double-rap to start or stop. That way they could be hung from bits of armor to free up both hands, without worry that the slightest jostling would reduce their illumination. Expensive, but necessary.
Other tools of the adventurer’s trade had been stuffed into her backpack as well. It wasn’t as if Myal lacked the room for it; she didn’t need more than a single change of clothes, and she didn’t need a bedroll. Unless a chamber or a trap was specifically designed to be overly hot or overly cold, the whole of the Tower stayed at a steady, reasonable temperature all year round. Curling up in a corner might be a little on the cool side, but it would still be comfortable enough to allow sleep.
Provided they could find a safe corner. If the Tower had realigned itself to protect the Fountain that powered it, yet provide a direct path to it, then that path was going to be perilous indeed. Myal had entered herself in only a few of the extremely lethal gauntlets.
She had done so strictly for the challenge and the thrill once her skills had improved to the point where she felt the risks were manageable, and only with fellow adventurers she believed she could trust to do their parts. But not in the last year or so . . . and not with a mage who admitted he was no warrior, and hadn’t made a daily, weekly, or even monthly habit of running the Tower, as far as she knew. Staring at the line of steps ahead of them, she wondered how bad this trip would be.
Kerric knew how bad it would get. Memorizing all the direct paths to the Fountain was something he did once every turn of the seasons, at solstices and equinoxes. All previous Guardians of the Tower had done so, for just such an emergency. This wasn’t the first time someone had attempted to take over the Fountain energies from outside, after all, and not the first time someone had tried to control it via the Fountain ways connecting the various singularity-points.
“Right,” Kerric half-muttered to himself. With only a handful of weeks between himself and his last memorization, and almost two score of such sessions under his belt, it didn’t take long to organize his thoughts. “The first five traps and tricks are . . . a common gas trap on the stairs, designed to make us sleep. That’s the first one, forty-two and forty-three steps up. It’s a straight flight, and the gas acts quickly.”
“I see,” Myal murmured, considering the implications. “So if we trigger it, and we succumb, we fall down not just to the steps, but quite possibly tumble all the way down, and run the risk of breaking bones, or even our necks.”
“Exactly. The second trap is the Danger Sign. It’s a bronze plaque, similar to all the rest that mark various riddles and warnings,” he told her. “Don’t read it. The runes are enchanted to explode the moment your mind makes sense of what they say.”
Myal nodded. It was common for all of these traps to be given a code name. No one knew if the adventurers had come up with them first, or if the Guardians had, back when the Tower was turned into the adventuring show it was today, but everyone used them. They made good mnemonics for remembering and differentiating each peril. “The third?”
“The Hourglass Pit,” he told her.
“I know that one,” she said. “In fact, I ran into it five games ago. Unless there’s anything different I should know about this version?”
Kerric grinned. “Nope. I remember watching that one with you in it, and it’s the one with the sand, not the one with the oil. You’re welcome to sift through the sand in your shoes for diamonds and other gemstones once we get free if you like—actually, any treasure that isn’t an illusion, you can keep, though I cannot guarantee you’ll have access to any refreshing room with a bank depository, and no guarantees it’ll be transferred from the Tower to the Adventuring Hall’s depositories. At least, not while the Tower’s locked down.”
“Fair enough,” she agreed. “The fourth trap?”
“Wasp Hitting the Mage Shield.” At her puzzled look, Kerric explained. “There’s a pit with spikes on the bottom, and it’s just narrow enough you can jump over it if you take a running leap . . . but there’s an invisible shield-wall hanging down to the level of the pit opening at about the halfway point. So you splat against it like a bug on a mage’s shielding and drop onto the spikes.”
“Ah—we call that one the Pit Stop,” Myal told him. “I’ve encountered it many times.”
“It’s a common one. Not every pit will have them, but it’s a popular way to stop someone from crossing with careless arrogance,” he agreed. “The last one in the first set is The Door That Wasn�
��t.” Again, his label earned him an odd look from her. “It’s not a door. It’s a shield. We’ll need to fight something on the other side. On the bright side, once it’s down, it’s down and won’t reset for at least an hour, so I’ll have a break to list the next chain of hazards. So. Ready?”
She checked the fit of her weapons in their sheaths, a sword at her hip which she’d had enchanted to cut through all but the toughest of armors, plus several daggers tucked into belt and boots. Giving her backpack a careful shrug-and-jiggle to make sure it was well-balanced, she nodded. “Ready. Steps forty-two and forty-three, you said? Are the walls trapped as well as the steps?”
“Only for about a foot or so along the bottom,” Kerric admitted.
“Then I’m ready. You first, or me?” she asked.
He grimaced at the question. “I know all the traps, and I’ve even repaired a number of these traps, but I don’t run them like you do. So you first, if you don’t mind?”
FOUR
Nodding, Myal crossed to the steps and started up them, counting quietly with little flexings of her fingers. Closing the fingers of her right hand, she counted to five, then opened them up again to ten, and closed her left thumb. A second time curled her left index finger at twenty, and the middle at thirty. At her ring finger, she stopped. “Step forty. Can you fly?”
“As well as you can wall-walk,” he told her. “I’d be doing it the whole length of the stairs, but this is just the start of a very long trip, and I don’t have access to the singularity anymore to bolster my own reserves.”
Myal nodded, looking back at him. Amusingly, she realized that with him placed just a few steps behind her, his head was at the level of her rump. He seemed to be fascinated by it, and blinked when she spoke. “A lot of inexperienced adventurer-mages don’t realize they have to conserve their energy on long gauntlet runs. It’s good you know what’s needed.”
One step, she could skip easily. Two steps would be a stretch, even for her long legs. She could do it, but that ran the risk of accidentally triggering the trap. Bending her right knee, she balanced that leg lightly on her toes, then twirled her leather-clad ankle and foot, activating the dark purple spider-tattoo inked into the sole. The movements didn’t have to be blatant; she could activate a pattern’s effects within a split second if needed. But they were imperfectly powered if she didn’t take a bit of time, and usually of shorter duration that way.
Feeling a touch of warmth and a faint tingling in her soles and palms, she turned to the right-hand wall and put her right foot on the surface. It clung firmly through the leather of her boot, though she knew she could lift it away again at will. Stretching out her left hand, she braced it on the far wall, then pushed and lifted her left foot to join the first.
The staircase was narrow enough that she had to hunch in with bent limbs as she pressed in both directions to hold up her weight, but at least she wasn’t trying to hold herself horizontal by just her own muscles. Ignoring the sideways tug of her braided hair, backpack and armor, she shuffled her way by hands and feet up the slope for a good ten steps, then carefully lowered one foot at a time, righting herself once she was safely past the trapped stretch.
Turning to check on Kerric’s progress, she found the short, brown-armored mage floating just behind her with all the effort of a dandelion puff on a warm day. He gave her a brief smile and settled himself on step forty-eight, gesturing at the rest of the steps. “Danger Sign, and Hourglass Pit.”
Myal nodded and turned to climb the rest of the stairs the normal way, relaxing her painted powers with another flex of the sole of her foot. It wasn’t magic like a real mage had, just a facsimile, but it was as effective in its own way, and just as exhausting, since she couldn’t tap into any other energy source than her own life, her own fertility.
Which meant conserving her own energy was just as important as Kerric conserving his. The top was a good forty more steps up; many of the ground-level entrances had access rooms at or near the ground floor of the Tower, but even with just thirty visible doorways piercing an area the size of a walled town, some had to go up so that they didn’t open into the same rooms.
A few also went down, since the Tower foundation stretched deep into the valley floor. Probably all the way down to the local bedrock, just to be able to support the sheer weight of the place. Or rather, it may have been grown from the bedrock on up, given the smooth, seamless stretches of granite and basalt she had seen here and there. If she’d been a mage of great power—with access to that Fountain hovering up in the sky—that was how Myal would have built the Tower. Solid rock for the foundation and framework, and everything else added in afterward.
Reaching the top step, she saw a pool of light just up ahead. The suncrystals enmeshed throughout the Tower, no doubt grown when it had been built, formed a thicker spot than the narrow ribbons of before. The result was a brighter patch of corridor. The light from that thicker vein gleamed off the reddish-beige metal of one of the ubiquitous Tower plaques.
Mindful of Kerric’s warning, she resolutely stared straight ahead, her attention fixed firmly on the next task, and not on trying to read the raised letters cast into the bronze surface.
“Good girl,” she heard the Master of the Tower breathe.
Twisting to glance back over her shoulder, she retorted, “This isn’t my first time in the Tower. And I’m not a girl.”
He quickly held up his hands. “I’m sorry; it was honest praise, and not meant to sound condescending. I’ve known maintenance mages, experienced ones, who haven’t been able to resist looking, even knowing they were going to have to pass things like this. That, and ‘good woman’ doesn’t roll off the tongue so well in Aian.” He grinned mischievously, showing what he must have looked like as a teenager. “Feel free to call me ‘good boy’ if you like.”
She thought about that as they approached the next obstacle, a door with a lever-style handle and a lock placed above it.
“Fair enough, though I’d say you were a man, not a boy,” Myal finally allowed, stopping in front of the door. “Even Nafiel has fallen for a simple trap or two in the last year.”
“And we received great feedback from the betting houses in Senod-Gra over those mistakes, too,” Kerric told her. “Fortunes are made and lost as to whether or not our top stars will fumble along the way—and yes, that does include you. The Guardian of the City of Delights enjoys discussing the . . . effects these games have on her people’s livelihoods.”
The end of his statement fell a bit flat, tone-wise. Myal gave him a curious look. “You don’t sound happy about that.”
“Oh, I normally am, but . . .” Kerric grimaced. “Every hour we don’t have the ability to send scrycastings is an hour we’re not entertaining our patrons. The biggest of which is Senod-Gra. There’s a maintenance clause built into each contract, but it’s only for a limited duration. Once we exceed the full-day mark, we start losing income.”
“So why not take in a full crew? Three people at the very least?” Myal asked him. “Or rather, four, if the Seraglio gauntlet requires couples to get through it?”
“Because this is the easy path, and the easy path means having to go through Cabbage, Goat, Wolf,” he stated flatly.
“Ah.” He didn’t have to explain any further. She’d been caught in that one a few times before, as the Wolf, and as the Cabbage. She hated being the Cabbage, and didn’t like what she had tried to do to her adventuring partners as the Wolf. She couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to be the Goat, the one stuck in the middle. Thankfully, taking only two people on this trip negated that particular nasty trap because it required a minimum of three people to activate the spell. “If Cabbage, Goat, Wolf is the easy path . . . just how nasty are the others?”
“Twice to five times as nasty—but that’s not to say this one is a garden stroll,” he warned her. “One of my predecessors realized it would be best if a Guardian who found him– or herself locked out had an easier path to get back to the
heart, but easier isn’t easy. Oh, and past this door?” Kerric added, holding up a hand in caution. “There will be multiple-choice paths to take, once we get through the Hourglass Pit. We have to make sure we take the right path.”
“Understood.” Myal eyed the door, then him. “Can you tell if it’s locked or trapped? And if it’s trapped, can you disarm it? I can do a bit of pickwork, but not the really complex stuff.”
He nodded quickly, his curls trying to bounce below the hardened leather cap squashing his hair flat. They could only jiggle a little, a sight she found strangely amusing. Composing herself, Myal listened politely to his reply.
“I know every single one which can be disarmed magically, plus how to pick all the locks manually. And I know which ones will explode if you do them the wrong way. It takes a while to memorize everything, but I’ve been at it for nearly ten years,” he told her. Placing his hand over the lock plate, Kerric murmured under his breath. A modest but audible chachunk proved his words. Free hand going to the handle, he pushed down on the lever. “For example, the door to get into the Tower must be opened non-magically on this route, or it changes all the settings by routing us through a doorway-Gate set just inside the outermost doorframe, sending us to an entirely different track.
“This lock, however, leads directly to the Hourglass Pit, and it can be opened either way.” Pushing the door, open, he showed her the modest room inside. Round and smooth with the crazed lines of suncrystals piercing the upper curves, it was shaped something like a bell jar, save that the peak of the tall ceiling had a funnel-shaped hole about a foot in diameter. Gesturing for her to enter first, Kerric followed Myal inside, and carefully closed the door.
