by Jean Johnson
Something in her didn’t like that idea, having to acknowledge this was all ephemeral and temporary, but that was alright. It wasn’t the first time she’d known that reality and wishes wouldn’t coincide. She had chosen to become a Painted Warrior with a full understanding of just what she would be giving up in recompense.
Turning to the plaque, she examined it, grateful that this one at least wasn’t going to explode in her face when she did so. The message cast in raised letters on its surface was fairly simple, and didn’t even rhyme, unlike many of the riddles found on similar plaques elsewhere.
A man in a rowboat rows to the center of a small lake. In his rowboat is a large, heavy brick. He tosses the brick overboard. Does the level of the water in the lake go up, or down?
A glance at the iron lever showed it sticking out perpendicular to the wall, parallel to the floor, in a neutral position. The socket in which it was set was a longish, curved slit, giving plenty of room to push it up or pull it down. The trick was, she had to be either standing in the shallow, long pool of oil to move it, or clinging to the wall next to it.
Kerric waited while she read the plaque, then looked at the lever. Finally, he asked, “Well? Do you know which it is?”
“I am no mage, to be taught the ways and the workings of the world,” she confessed. “But I am a former sailor. And I have loaded many a longboat, and occasionally tossed something heavy overboard. I say the water level goes down overall . . . because if you toss something heavy overboard, the boat goes up, and is no longer displacing a large amount of water. Something heavy enough to sink, like a brick, displaces a lot of water in a rowboat, but only a little bit when it goes over the side.”
He grinned at her, and crooked his finger. Relieved she had figured it out right, Myal bent over to accept her prize. This time, the kiss wasn’t tenuous. This time, he cupped both of her cheeks, and engaged her lips thoroughly, sharing his pleasure in her wits. She felt a little dizzy when it finally ended and her face felt warm with a blush, when he finally allowed her to straighten. Gathering her wits, she focused on the task at hand.
“Should I . . . ?” Myal offered, gesturing at the lever. Oil in her boots would be better than sand, unless they encountered a fire-based trap.
“I’ll get it. Stay here,” Kerric told her. A gesture and a snap froze the surface of the oil in a variation of a popular liquid-hardening spell known as the glasswater spell. A narrow strip of the oil solidified, allowing him to walk along the edge of the wall. “If we’d been wrong and chosen up, the gate would have risen, but only after the torch dropped, igniting the oil.
“As it is, since that is the right answer . . .” Grasping the lever, he flexed his muscles, hauling down on it with a hard clunk. The gate did not move, but a section of wall next to the plaque did, swinging open to reveal a set of stairs. “There’s a lever upstairs that opens the gate without the torch, and a bit of treasure. You can have whatever you like of the treasure, but be mindful of how much you can carry.”
Myal nodded. Rejoining her, Kerric gestured for her to go up the steps first. She did so, he noted, with a touch of caution, eyes wide, head cocked slightly to listen, feet testing each step for a brief moment before committing her weight. He knew this particular stairwell wasn’t trapped, but she had several good habits. One of them, the mark of a seasoned adventurer, was being wary and watchful in new territory. Not every trap was used in a gauntlet, nor every puzzle or riddle, particularly if it was part of a physical path to the Fountain Hall.
Unlike the last one, this stairwell was short. It doubled back up over itself, emerging in a room of only about ten feet square. Until now, the lighting had been low and gentle; this room had larger veins of suncrystal. They illuminated a longish, footstool-sized chest on a pedestal in the center of the room, and a small lever off to one side. Kerric crossed to the lever, but did not yet pull it.
Myal eyed the chest warily. Such boxes were normally locked, trapped, and tricked. She couldn’t see any sign of a lock, or even a latch, though. Drawing her sword, she prodded the gap between lid and base with the sharp edge of the weapon, and eased the top up. Nothing happened, no poison needles or gaseous hissing. Just a glint of light reflecting off gems and metals, and the rich gleam of velvet lining the case.
“A dagger? Is it enchanted?” she asked her companion.
Kerric shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest. I’m not in charge of restocking these things anymore, and this particular trap-and-treasure hasn’t been used since I don’t know when. But I do know the chest isn’t trapped. This is one of the rare honest reward-rooms, with contents that are not an illusion.”
“I’ll trust you on that,” Myal murmured, eyeing the dagger. “But is the knife a trap? Is it cursed, will it cut my hand, or does it require magic to unlock its potential?”
Kerric shrugged. “I honestly have no clue. I could try probing it with my magic, if you like. Or you could pick it up and just hang on to it until we’re done, then check it against the Topside inventory list.”
She thought about it for a moment, frowning, then shook her head and flipped the lid shut again. “I think I’ll pass. I have good daggers on me already, and one of them is enspelled to return to my hand on command. I don’t need another.” Resheathing her sword, she looked at him. “I’m ready to move on.”
FIVE
Nodding, he pulled on the smaller lever. They both heard a chunk and several seconds of rattling echoing up the stairs, the sign that the gate was being raised. This time, Kerric led the way. “Step lively; the gate has been enchanted to reset after a minute or so. Stick to the left-hand wall, too; that’s where my altered glasswater spell has hardened the surface.”
“Thank you,” Myal told him. He glanced back up at her, so she explained. “For easing the way for both of us.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll be pulling your own weight soon enough,” he dared to tease. Then sobered a little, muttering under his breath, “And my weight, too.” Clearing his throat, he reminded her of the next trap. “Get ready to herd cats, milady.”
This door had two locks. The first one, he unlocked with his tools; the second, with a spell. Once both were undone, the panel swung open of its own accord. Inside was a well-lit chamber, about twice as big as the treasure room had been . . . and teeming with cats. Twelve of them, to be precise.
Twelve sleek, fluffy, large, small, dark, light, spotted, patchwork, or mottled cats . . . but otherwise quite common house cats.
Myal paused on the corridor side of the threshold, blinking at the felines. “You weren’t jesting, were you?” she finally asked. “We actually have to herd cats?”
Kerric, already inside, gestured her impatiently to enter. “Come on inside; this is one of those tricks where you cannot begin to solve it until all the doors are closed.”
Stepping over the threshold, she moved aside so he could shut the door. Immediately it latched. Not with two locks, but with twelve that snicked and ka-chunked into place, turning from vertical to horizontal. Off to the right was an identical door, also teeming with twelve locks. Or rather, with the knobs that normally were used on the inside of a room by its occupants to lock out the rest of the world. There were no keyholes, and no bronze plaques on any of the room’s four walls indicating what they were supposed to do in here.
As she looked around, one of the cats came up to the two of them and sniffed at their boots. The moment the tabby finished stepping all the way onto the patch of carpet under their feet with all four of its paws . . . one of the locks behind her snicked again. Myal spun around, eyeing the twelve knobs. Eleven of them were parallel to the floor. The fifth one up from the bottom was now perpendicular, angled up and down unlike its brethren. After sniffing for a few seconds, the tabby purr-rubbed against Kerric’s boot, then wandered off the carpet again. The lock on the door clicked, returning to the horizontal position.
The weaving wasn’t much bigger than a single person’s bed. Nor was it the only rug on the floor.
There was another one arranged in front of the other door. Two cats sat on it, one of them grooming its shoulder, the other hunkered down with its paws tucked under the chest, making it look like a cat-shaped loaf of bread, though the nearly-white calico’s tail-tip kept twitching while it watched the other felines.
All of the cats glowed faintly to her left eye. Myal quickly looked up at the row of locks. Two were vertical; ten were horizontal for the far door.
“I see,” she murmured. “We have to get all twelve cats onto that other carpet all at the same time, don’t we?”
Kerric sighed and spread his hands. “That’s why it’s called Herding Cats.”
“Did you at least bring some cat-mint to lure them?” she asked wryly.
“Better. A stasis-sealed packet of fish.” Unslinging his pack—three of the cats came over to sniff at it, and two triggered the locks on the first door—he dug around until he pulled out a parchment-wrapped bundle covered in runes.
Myal was familiar with those runes; stasis spells had been one of the earlier inventions of the mages of ancient Mendhi. She couldn’t craft any herself, but she had used such papers, and rune-carved boxes and cabinets, multiple times herself. Watching him break the wax seal holding the packet shut, she noticed the cats reacting to it within moments. The nearest ones looked up at the crack and rustle, then strained their muzzles upward, nostrils sniffing and whiskers trembling, ears aimed forward.
“Here, you take half,” Kerric offered, holding out the unwrapped paper.
“Let me hold it while you get your pack back on,” Myal countered as more and more of the cats noticed the fishy scent. Lifting the paper, she cradled it in her hands while he quickly slung the heavy pack back over his shoulders.
Kerric reached into the parchment and pulled out a hunk of pink-broiled fish, then stooped and started walking around the room, luring the cats. Myal stooped as well, crinkling the paper slightly to ensure she had the attention of roughly half the cats. She reached the carpet first, felines rearing up on their hind legs, meowing and trying to paw at the paper, noses still sniffing away.
When he came back to her, all but one of the cats had been lured by the smell. Myal finally put the paper on the ground, letting him dump his half of the tender, flaky fish on it. Quicker than expected, Kerric dashed off the carpet, scooped up the last, napping kitty, and carried it over to the rug. It woke up and rowrred in protest, but he had it set on the carpet before the mottled orange and black cat could actually do more than hiss unhappily.
The moment it touched down and the last lock snicked itself into the open position, Myal quickly hauled the door open. The cats were forced to scatter as the panel swung inward, but that was alright; the locks clicked when they scampered out of the way, but the dead bolts couldn’t seal the exit now that the panel was free of its frame. Kerric toed the paper out of the way, then followed her into the short hall beyond. Once the door was shut, the same dim level of lighting from before prevailed.
Myal looked at the closed door behind them. “Those cats were just illusions, right?”
“Yes—don’t worry about the fish being left to rot,” Kerric added, guessing what her concern was. “The spells are complex enough that the bits they ‘eat’ get shuffled off to the Tower’s sewer system. They’ll continue to eat it, too, until it’s all gone,” he said. “When this is all over, I’ll also leave a note for the Bottom maintenance teams to check it and the other rooms for cleanup.”
“Right. Where are the three trigger points on these stairs?” Myal asked, lifting her chin at the next obstacle.
“Seventeen, nineteen, and thirty-three, out of fifty-two steps,” he recited, eyes lifted to the ceiling while he reviewed what he had memorized.
Repeating the numbers to herself with little curls of her fingers, Myal started climbing. When she reached step sixteen, she skipped the next—easy enough with her long legs—then the one after that, and kept going. Behind her, Kerric hopped over the intervening trigger points. As soon as they skipped thirty-three, he spoke up again.
“You do realize that Junk Room Four has a riddle, right?” he asked, watching her strip-skirt armor sway as she climbed the remaining steps.
“You did mention that, yes,” Myal replied politely.
Rolling his eyes, Kerric joined her at the top of the stairs. A short hall and a door awaited them. “I meant, if you get the riddle right, would you like another kiss?”
She blushed and smiled, ducking her head. “Yes, please. Is the door locked or trapped?”
A lift and swirl of his hand sparkled energy over the latch. The door swung open. Beyond lay another well-lit room, though it had no cats and no carpets. Piled in the center of the room was a mound of gold coins, jewelry, trinkets, goblets and plates and more. Ropes of precious pearls, colorful, faceted gems, unsheathed blades of highly polished crafting, even what looked like the edge of a cape trimmed in luxuriously thick white fur, all lay mounded in the center of the room.
This wasn’t the Junk Room; this was the trap named All That Glitters Is Bone. The wealth glittered under the glow of the suncrystals streaking the ceiling. Both of them ignored the pile, skirting the edge of the room carefully. “All That Glitters Is Bone” was easy enough to decipher; if either of them touched so much as a single coin of it, the entire treasure would transform and rise up as an army of skeleton warriors. Only those adventurers without any common sense or self-control would fall for such an easily avoided hazard.
The door beyond the pile unlocked with a bit of magic as well. It led straight into the next room. This one wasn’t quite as bright, though not as dimly lit as the corridors had been. It was a very strange room, rectangular and somewhat narrow, and the most normal thing about it was the stone pedestal in the center, with a bronze plaque topping the surface. The least normal thing about the room was the walls. Hundreds of knobs and levers poked out of the walls, each one tipped with an object that had been glued or nailed or screwed or welded in place.
Myal eyed the objects. She counted a rope sandal, a baby’s leather teething ring, an empty wine bottle, a book, a pair of scissors, a stuffed rabbit’s foot, a little hand mirror, and more, and those were just the nearest objects sticking out from the wall to her right. Joining Kerric by the pedestal, she bent her attention to the riddle, and read it aloud.
“Ones and twos, we fall from above, dropping into the past. Plus our world is oft’ overturned, allowing us more time to last.”
“Well?” Kerric asked her.
She shook her head. “Far too easy, given that first room. We need to look for an hourglass. Do you know where it is, or should I take the right-hand wall while you take the left?”
“It’s not a timed trap, so I didn’t have to memorize the location, just the answer,” he admitted. “So, first your kiss, then we’ll the search for the hourglass.”
Myal started to lean down for the kiss, but Kerric had other ideas. Catching her hand, he lifted it to his lips. Nibbling lightly as he worked his way toward her arm, he paused every once in a while to lick a bit of her fingers, the yoke between them, the lines of her palm. The play of his tongue against the tender skin of her inner wrist made her squirm and flinch.
Looking up, he raised a brow. “Something wrong?”
She blushed. “It’s . . . ticklish. It tickles. I thought you were going to kiss me on the lips?”
“I thought you might enjoy this more,” he countered lightly. “But if you like, I can work my way up there. Eventually.” Dipping his head, he nibbled her thumb into his mouth, and sucked.
Her blush deepened. Myal wasn’t accustomed to . . . this. Whatever this was. He kept his eyes locked with hers as he slowly suckled again, and again, a pulse of unexpected pleasure washed through her. Clearing her throat, she sought for something to say. “Ahhh . . . what comes after this, when we find the . . . the hourglass?”
Pulling his mouth from her thumb, Kerric licked his lips. As fun as it was to seduce her—particularly with the wa
y her tanned cheeks blushed so charmingly—they did have a task to perform. “Oh, after this is the Cookie Trap, then the—”
“—The Cookie Trap?” Myal asked, chuckling. “That old thing? You weren’t kidding when you said this was the easy route,” she scoffed. She started to tug her hand free, but he tightened his grip slightly.
“A tonne of fresh-baked cookies can still hurt if you’re caught under them when they fall,” Kerric reminded her. “But beyond it is the Towel Trap, which lasts for four more rooms, not including the plain traps, and some of those are quite deadly.”
Sobering, she dipped her head, acknowledging the moment was serious. “Alright. Cookie Trap, Towel Room . . . and then what?”
“One Foot, Two Foot, Red Foot, Blue Foot, which are a pair of pit traps of different depths, plus a spike trap and an ice trap,” he recited, releasing her hand so he could recall the exact order without distractions. “Then the Seven Jewels Trap, which is the first room of the four required by the Towel Room Trap, with the Rushlight Trap for the second room. Rushlight is followed by the chasm trap of Rope, Bridge or Swing, followed by the third room for the Petrification Chamber. The one after that is a trap we have to trigger instead of avoid, because it lands us on the Scales of Justice for the fourth room in the series.”
Myal blanched. Eyes widened, she stared at him. The Scales of Justice was one trap which no adventuring party cared to encounter, particularly one with members who were either substantially different in size such as herself and Kerric, or an odd number of participants.
“Yes,” Kerric confirmed, catching her unsettled gaze. “The Scales of Justice is one of the rooms. And after that one, we have to face Greed Hurts, so either we kill all the gargoyles on the platform and recover our wounds before we move on from the Scales, or we have to risk getting poison into our wounds. Thankfully, by that point, we’ll be free to discard our towels.”
