by Jean Johnson
She frowned. “Discard our towels?”
“They’re enchanted toweling cloths,” he explained, gesturing. “You have to keep them with you for at least the next four rooms—slung around your neck, tucked into your belt, whatever and wherever so long as it’s on you and visible, but not hidden in a bag—or you get sent back to the starting point. If you get sent back, you have to grab a fresh towel and run the gauntlet all over again from One Foot, Two Foot all the way through to Greed Hurts. Without our towels on hand at each step of the way, we’re stuck in an infinite loop—and if I keep my towel but you lose yours, I get to move on, but you have to repeat all the tricks and traps. Or I’ll have to repeat everything on my own, if I’m the one who loses his cloth.”
Myal shook her head slowly. “I have never heard of that particular trap. Why a towel?”
Shrugging, he spread his hands. “It’s on the list of infrequently used tricks, so I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of it. As for why a towel, I have no idea. It was created long before my time.”
She considered that. Her hand still tingled a little from the effects of his nibbling. Folding her arms, Myal thought it through. “At what point do we get sent back? The moment we drop the cloth, or . . . ?”
“The moment we try to go through the next doorway,” Kerric told her.
“Then we just check before we open each door to make sure we have both towels on hand,” she told him. “Does it still work if we drop the towel then pick it up? Or do we get sent back?”
“I’m . . . not sure,” Kerric was forced to admit, thinking about it. “I’ve never actually run the room myself, remember?”
“Fair enough,” she agreed. “If one of us drops a towel, then both of us drop it, and we restart everything together. But better to knot it around our belts if we can.”
“Agreed.” He started to turn away, then looked back at her and crooked a finger, beckoning her head down to his level. When she bent over, Kerric kissed her on her cheek. He smiled when she pulled back, a surprised look on her face. “That’s for being smart. You’ll get more kisses as we go on, I’m sure.”
Chuckling, Myal unfolded her arms and turned to start looking for an hourglass on a handle or lever. “You make me wonder what I should look for in your own actions, to reward you with a kiss.”
“Oh, surviving a trap with pure physical skill, probably. Or being undeniably handsome, though you’d have to stop kissing me at some point over that one, or we’d never get anywhere,” he quipped, searching the right-hand wall. He was rewarded by another chuckle, and grinned over his shoulder at her. “You should laugh more often. You have a beautiful voice when you’re happy.”
She ducked her head, keeping her attention on her task. “You flatter me.”
“No, it’s true. I even brought a Truth Stone with me, if you’d like to see it for yourself,” he offered, peering at handles with various things attached to their ends. Rag doll, magnifying lens, grease pencil, wooden button, coil of linen thread. “Your voice is soft, like velvet. And you don’t waste it when you speak. When you have something to say, you say it. Nothing superfluous.”
Myal was glad they were working with their backs to each other. “I’m . . . shy. I guess. I’m better at writing what I want to say. I can take my time, that way.”
“Oh, that’s right; you’ve written those little pamphlets on the gauntlets,” Kerric recalled, stooping to peer at some of the levers down low. “I’m afraid I haven’t had a chance to read any, though I have heard good things from those who have. I’ve been caught up in my research—I don’t know about you, but the trouble with being a writer is that all your leisure time seems to get eaten up by research. Or at least mine does—hey, here we go! I think I’ve found it.”
Marking her place mentally, Myal turned and crossed to his side of the narrow room. Stooping, she eyed the handle he pointed to, but carefully did not touch. The bow-tie shaped glass was no bigger than her thumb, but the bottom of the two bell-shaped lobes did hold a fine white grit. “It’s not very big, but it is an hourglass.”
“Ready?” he asked her.
Myal drew in a deep breath and recited the next chain of steps. “Cookie Trap, Towel Room, One Foot, Jewel Trap, Rushlight, Rope choice, Petrification, the trap to the Scales of Justice, and Greed Hurts . . . right?” When he nodded, she did as well. “Then I’m ready.”
Grasping the knob with the hourglass affixed to its tip, Kerric twisted it. With a click, the door hidden behind all those rods swung outward, a line of the levers tilting inward among their brethren in order to clear the opening. Another dimly lit corridor lay beyond. This one, however, had half a dozen doors within the first sixty feet, two side-corridors, and a stairwell leading up at the far end.
Myal eased into the corridor, eyes scanning everywhere for any sign of a trigger for the promised trap, down along the flagstones paving the floor, the blocks of stone that made up the walls, even the ceiling. Kerric carefully closed the door behind them, then strode forward. And stopped, hearing something behind them. Returning to the panel, he pressed his ear to its surface.
“. . . Did you hear something?” she finally asked in a whisper, not willing to move until he identified where the trap was located.
He nodded, a frown pinching his brow, and spoke in a whisper as well. “I heard voices—at least three. Sounds like they’re working on solving the trap.”
“I was afraid someone might have followed us,” Myal whispered back. “Looks like someone did. Let’s go.”
A swipe of his hand and a murmur of a spell flung a glowing green web onto a patch of stone no different than any other in their path, save that it was past the second door and the first turning to the left. Once they had hopped over the blocked trigger point, he dissolved the barrier with a snap of his fingers. “So much for the infamous Cookie Trap.”
“They’re fresh-baked, but a tonne is still a tonne,” she agreed.
Picking the third door, just before the right-hand turning, he pulled out his lock picks and went to work. As soon as the latch clicked, he pushed the door open and moved inside, giving her room to enter. Swinging the panel shut, he caught it at the last moment and closed the door gently, quietly, then twisted the knob above the latch to re-lock it.
Myal, looking around the room, took in the layers of fresh and faded linens hanging from the hooks on the bench-lined racks down the middle of the room. Narrow, painted metal cupboards with yet more hooks lined the walls, and a door with a glazed window in the upper half stood at the far end. If the cupboards had been made from wood instead of glazed metal, and the linens made from plain bleached muslin instead of the various hues and patterns she saw, it would have looked like one of the changing rooms for the practice salles of the Adventuring Hall.
That, and the other main difference was one of the Tower’s ubiquitous bronze plaques hung next to the far door. There was almost always a bronze plaque in this place.
“Pick a towel, tie it on, and let’s go,” Kerric whispered, one hand touching her elbow, the other her hip as he edged past her. Or rather, her buttock. He blushed a little when he realized where his hand had brushed. “Pardon me.”
“You like my rump, don’t you?” Myal asked as casually as she could. She reached for a faded blue cloth patterned in bleached-out flower designs. “You keep staring at it.”
Face warm, Kerric cleared his throat. “Well, it’s a magnificent rump, firm yet rounded, and you move it very gracefully. A man would have to be blind or dead not to notice it.”
He plucked a yellow and green cloth off one of the hooks. Working it under the strap of leather holding his pouch over his armor, he carefully knotted it in place. A glance at her showed she was doing the same. Grabbing three more towels, he carried them to the far entrance, where he carefully draped them over a hook next to the door in such a way that they obscured the plaque as much as possible.
“There . . . now if they follow us in here, they might not see that, and get stuck
in a repeating loop. Ready?” he asked.
She nodded, so he flipped the knob keeping the second door locked. While he did so, she shifted the towels just enough to read the plaque, something about counting fingers and”. . . what gets wetter and wetter, the more that it dries,” an obvious reference to toweling cloths. Gently readjusting the fabric, she re-concealed the plaque and followed him into the corridor beyond the door. Which was only glazed with frosted glass from the perspective of the inside of the changing room, and was nothing more than a solid wooden panel on the other side.
Once they were through, Kerric closed the door quietly, and relocked it with his tools. “Right. Best way to get across this hall is via the ceiling. Got your sticky-feet ready?”
Myal nodded—and found herself inverted with a swirl of his hand, her body lifted feet-first to the ceiling. Flexing her ankle, she touched the stones, felt the soles of her boots grab hold, and started carefully walking.
“Watch your hair!” Kerric hissed at her as her braid started to dangle and sway free. “Crouch a bit, if you can. The four traps can be triggered at just above knee-high on you, thigh-high on me.”
Grunting, she scrunched her legs and stomach muscles until she could touch her hands to the ceiling as well. Crawling in an awkward, dangling way, she headed down the hallway. “How far do we go?”
“Around the corner to the stairs,” Kerric murmured. He floated right past her as he did so. The cheating, magically empowered . . . cheater floated right past her, blithely ignored each of the two doors on either side, and took the first left.
Shuffling upside-down after him, Myal turned the corner and pulled her feet free so that she dangled toward the steps where Kerric now stood, then flexed her foot again while concentrating to cancel the effects of her violet spider tattoo. That let her hands drop as well when the faint tingling sensation ended. Landing lightly, she balanced on the steps and lifted her chin. “Next?”
“Lady-adventurers first,” he offered, gesturing her up the stairs.
Myal smirked. “You just want to stare at my rump.”
“Guilty as charged. The Jewel Trap is a riddle trap,” Kerric warned her, following her up the steps. “Don’t touch any of the pedestals until we’ve picked the right one. We want the left-hand fourth landing. So . . . tell me about the childhood of Narahan Myal. Any parents or siblings back in Mendhi? What did your family do for a living?”
“Four brothers, three sisters. I was third-from-youngest. We farmed. Mother and Father raised ducks and chickens, grew quinoa and gourds, and harvested nuts in the fall, and twice a month Mother would take us down to the beaches to dig on the neap tides for clams and hunt for crabs,” Myal said. She moved steadily, not swiftly, pacing herself so that she could speak freely without feeling winded. “Great-Uncle Narahan Jomen was a Painted Warrior. He had been a quinoa farmer like Grandfather, but then became a sailor. He was the one who introduced Mother to Father. She had lived in a fishing village where his ship stopped on its trading route along the coast.”
“I’ve seen maps of the Mendhite coastline. I can’t imagine anyone not becoming familiar with the sea, in your home country,” Kerric quipped. “It’s all inlets and coves, little islands and peninsulas, and lakes all over the place, if the map I saw was in any way accurate.”
“Lakes, hills, mountains, inlets,” she agreed. “Legend says our Goddess created so many lakes and ponds and puddles and lagoons so that She would always have a place to dip the Brush of Creation.” Curling down her ring finger as she reached the next landing, she nodded at the door on the left. “This should be the Jewel Trap.”
Kerric pressed his hand to the latch plate, focusing his magic. The door clicked and swung open. “So what is this kinwa stuff? I’ve had a lot of things imported to the Tower over the years, but I don’t think I’ve heard of that one.
“Quinoa is a common grain. It’s not a grass grain like wheat or oats or rice, but we grow it, harvest it, thresh it and winnow it, and wash the grains and dry them quickly—you have to wash them because under the hull, they’re coated in something like soap, and can cause stomach-cramps,” she added, following him into the next chamber. Like some of the others, it was brightly lit, making her squint and shade her eyes protectively. “But once washed and dried, you can cook them like your oats for porridge, or grind them into flour. It’s very tasty.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Kerric murmured, shielding his own eyes. Walls, ceiling, and floor had all been painted a bright shade of white. Even the pedestals, six of them arranged in a circle around a seventh in the center, had been coated. “I see the maintenance crews recently whitewashed this room—how did you learn the Aian tongue?”
Myal raised her brows at the out-of-the-Tower question. She tapped the tattoo stretching from her eye to her ear to her collarbone, all on the right side of her body. “Translation tattoo. Some Painted Warriors apply a tattoo for one or two foreign languages on their bodies. Some even have five or six inked. I braved the pain of a face-tattooing to ensure I would understand all languages I encountered, as thoroughly as if I were a native.”
Kerric frowned at that, but more in a thoughtful way than anything. He tapped his lips with a finger, then pointed at the plaque on the central pillar. The outer six each bore a huge, gleaming gemstone fixed to the tops of the slender columns, but the central one was a riddle-plaque cast in bronze. Each jewel was as big as two fists pressed together: a clear diamond, a golden topaz the color of pale honey, a scarlet ruby, a grassy emerald, a sapphire the color of the evening sky just after the sun has set, and a glossy, iridescent pearl. The plaque, of course, was plain bronze, with the letters polished from years of dusting and cleaning.
“This one sometimes trips up non-native speakers. I can admire anyone who learns a language the hard way, word by word, but their vocabulary doesn’t always cover enough to solve this riddle. On the other hand, some translation spells don’t translate the writing quite in the way it was intended, which can also cause problems.”
“How so?” Myal asked. She glanced at him as she paced around the outside of the pillars, careful not to touch any. There was enough room to slip between them to read the central post and its sign, but she remained outside, mindful of the potential for traps.
“Well, if your language is like that of Senod-Gra, it’s ideographic; symbols represent whole ideas. If it’s more like Aian, it’s phonic, where symbols represent sound-fragments,” Kerric said. “As he went about conquering and unifying the many disparate lands and peoples and languages of Aiar, the first emperor of the ancient Empire, Ai-kan Fen Jul, realized that using symbols for whole words might allow the people of one area to communicate with the people of another area through writing, but it would only be used by those who knew how to read and write.
“A written, symbol-based language would never unify the spoken versions, and without that unity of speech, the people would never unify,” he continued, warming to the subject. The Tower was no Great Library of Mendham, but it did have a substantial number of pre-Shattering textbooks on various subjects. This was one of Kerric’s favorites, the ancient days of the First Emperor. “So, Ai-kan decreed that words should be broken down into their individual sounds, and created a cross-continental version of common words found in most of the various languages. That became the language for both government and trade, which eventually became the main tongue. These days, it’s a very rare corner of the continent that speaks anything else besides Aian in everyday life.”
Myal nodded, seeing where the Master of the Tower was going with this. “I see. If your method of translation warps whatever you see into a version of your native tongue, you might miss the original writer’s intentions. Mendhite was originally all about the symbols, not the sounds, but over time, we came to realize it was smarter to use the sounds as we encountered new peoples, new lands, and new ideas, all of which required new words.
“Memorizing thousands of word-symbols is tedious enough, but memorizin
g hundreds of thousands would be near-impossible for everyone. Thankfully, my tattoo translates a written language as if I were the native speaker of that language. It has even allowed me to appreciate written puns, and cultural jokes,” she added, mouth curving in another of her shy smiles. “The pain of being inked has been more than worth it, over the years.”
“Yes, I would imagine being tattooed onto your very eyelid would be quite painful,” he agreed, grimacing at the thought. “I heard in passing from another Painted Warrior a few years back that the bigger the tattoo, the more powerful the magic imbued into it. Does that count as well when it’s the pain endured in the inking process?”
She nodded. “Hands, face, feet, inner elbows, backs of the knees, wrists, ears, throat, navel, spine . . . These are all places of great power. Pulse points and joints, major muscle groups . . . and the chakrasa, the focus points along the torso where certain magics are most powerful. The primary one is the navel, which gives magical abilities to those who have none. There are even some who have shaved their heads and inked their scalps, only to let their hair regrow so that they can hide extra powers. Others keep their heads shaved, baring their marks proudly.”
Kerric eyed the tall warrior with her long black braid. He shook his head after a moment. “I’m sorry, but I simply cannot imagine you bald. Not since you were a newborn baby, and probably not even then.”
She ducked her head, smiling. “I don’t know if I had hair on my head or not when I was born. I never thought to ask my mother that. I don’t remember my younger brother and sister’s heads, either; I was too young myself to pay attention when they were born.”
“Well, as fun as it is to learn more about you—and I do hope to continue learning,” Kerric added, “—but we should check the riddle. Don’t touch the outer columns,” he reminded her, watching her slip between them. “What does it say?”
Myal read the plaque silently to herself, then recited it out loud. “If you cut off my head, I may shake your hand one day. If you cut off my tail, I may hide in a tree. If you cut off both my head and my tail, you’ll probably be stuck with two of me. I am the only safe thing in this room.”
