by Jean Johnson
“Well?” Kerric asked as she stayed silent after her recitation. “Do you know what the answer is?”
Frowning softly, she turned to eye each of the gemstones. “You spoke of the Aian language being phonic, bits of word-sounds. Since this isn’t a normal gauntlet, but rather one you have ensured will be traversed swiftly and easily, your comments have something to do with—ahah! Pearl.” She stated it with confidence, turning to point at that pedestal. “The first one, I didn’t get, but the last two, if you take away the L, you get PEAR, which is a fruit that grows in a tree. And if you take away the P and the L, you get EAR, which come in pairs.”
“The first one, take away the P and you get EARL, which is a type of nobleman,” Kerric told her. “Hence being able to ‘shake your hand’ even with his ‘head’ missing.”
“Clever,” Myal praised. Moving around the bronze pillar, she approached the pearl one. “I just touch it?”
“A compartment will open below the pearl; you may take whatever lies within. Just don’t forget to find and press the lever inside,” he told her. “Unless you want me to do the honors?”
She smiled with a touch of pride this time, lifting her chin. “My riddle, my task. And I’ll have my kiss out of you, now.”
“Oh, well, if you insist,” Kerric joked, heaving a mock-sigh and rolling his eyes, though he did grin at her. He waited for her to clear the ring of pedestals, then lifted up on his toes and met her descending lips.
SIX
This time, the kiss was a relatively brief one. Myal pulled back with a small frown and a worried look in her eyes. It was prompted by the differences in their heights, and the memory of one particular man about three years back, a fellow adventurer whom she’d tried kissing before. He, too, had been shorter than her. “You don’t mind that I’m so tall, do you?”
Kerric arched a brow at her. “Milady, I have always been short. I was short as a boy, I am short as a man, and when I came here from two kingdoms over, half the native-born women in this valley were and still are taller than me. Most adventurer-women are taller, period.”
“That doesn’t bother you?” Myal asked, thinking of the previous fellow she had kissed, a man with the pale skin and light blond hair of a far northerner. He had been exotically handsome in her eyes, but standing a palm-width shorter than her, he had been uncomfortable having to kiss up when kissing her.
“Oh, it used to. I even thought about using magic to lengthen my body,” Kerric admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. His helm got in the way, so he pulled it off, fluffing out his curls for a moment with a tousle of his hand. “I went to a Healer-mage to see what could be done about it. He told me it could be done, but that it would be like stretching anything else out of its proper shape. My bones would always ache, my joints would twinge, and that was just if I lengthened my legs and my arms.
“My feet would have problems, too, since they’d have to grow to keep my balance, and there are dozens of little bones in them, all of which would hurt with every weather change. And if I messed with the size of my torso, I’d have digestive problems and worse.” He shook his head, frowning into the distance off to her right. “It wouldn’t be worth the constant problems that would plague the rest of my life. He did show me a few easy levitation charms—I’ve never needed a stepladder since—but since I can’t go around floating for the rest of my life, it was just easier to accept that I am who and what I am.
“Like you,” he added, flicking a hand at her armored body. “Yes, magic could make you permanently shorter, or you could figure out a tattoo to do it temporarily, but there would always be attendant problems in the long-term, and it wouldn’t be you. I don’t know about you—and I hope you feel this way about yourself, too—but I like who I am. Yes, I had to work harder because people often overlook or dismiss shorter people, but it seems to me that the too-tall have their fair share of stares and unrealistic expectations. So I’m not going to be bothered by it.
“Um . . . unless it’s a literal pain in the neck for you,” he finished, eyeing her uncertainly. “If it is, I can start floating. I’m just trying to conserve energy.”
“Or I can take a knee, on every other kiss?” Myal offered, dropping to the right one so that she had to look up at him instead of down. That made him chuckle, which made her grin. This time when they kissed, her neck and back didn’t feel the strain so much, though there was enough difference in their heights that she knew he was probably feeling some of it.
This time, without his hair being confined by that silly but necessary cap, she could feel the curling ends brush against her skin. It was a sensual, subtle caress, particularly when he tipped his head just a little bit more, deepening their kiss. Sighing softly, she wrapped her arms around his waist when he looped his around her shoulders, ignoring the stiffness of their various bits of armor in favor of enjoying the closeness of his embrace.
She knew these intimacies were a deliberate choice, that they were necessary to get through a complicated-sounding trap. Foreign or familiar, Myal also knew enough about men to know when one was lying to her, and the Master of the Tower was being as honest as he could, given the secrets she knew he had to hold back. At the end of their kiss, he pressed his lips to her forehead and murmured something. She looked up at him in silent inquiry, and he smiled with one corner of his mouth.
“Oh, I just said Enshil-ka. It’s a word one of my fellow Guardians taught me. It literally means ‘your wave has rolled me,’ but in the Menomonite culture, it means ‘your beauty rocks me.’” He ducked his head a little, but didn’t stop looking at her from under his lashes.
Honesty prompted her to speak. “I’m actually not all that pretty. Not ugly, just average for a Mendhite woman.”
“And I’m short, but you still think I’m handsome,” he retorted.
“What makes you think I think you’re handsome?” Myal asked, smiling to show she was teasing.
“Because you have been checking out my backside,” he reminded her.
She smiled and shook her head, looking up at him. “Not your rump. Your legs. That strip-skirt armor you wear isn’t much different from a proper Mendhite kilt. You have very nice calves.”
“What, you don’t think I look silly in it?” Kerric asked, twisting a little so he could peer down at himself.
She bit her lip, but couldn’t quite muffle her chuckle. “I didn’t say that . . .” At his mock-affronted look, she pointed at the curve of boiled leather in his hand. “It’s the helmet. It squashes your hair into an odd fringe, and flattens out all those handsome curls.”
“Well, I need it, even if it makes me look silly.” Scrubbing his fingers through his locks, fluffing up some of the natural wave, he added, “That, and it makes my scalp itch.”
“But it’s needed,” she agreed, watching him scrape his hair back and squish the brown curls under the boiled leather cap. “The next one is the Rushlight Trap, yes? Another riddle trap? Another chance for a kiss?”
“Yes and no. It’s a timed trap. We have exactly sixty seconds to decide on a solution, thirty seconds to carry it out, and sixty more to get out of the room, so I’ll handle the riddle, since I already know the solution,” he warned her. Kerric offered her his hand. She accepted it, letting his stout but strong body help haul her to her feet. “Beyond it is Rope, Bridge, or Swing. That one, you can take a stab at. We’ll have the time for it.”
“I think I know that one,” Myal murmured, dusting off her knee armor. Crossing to the pedestal with the giant pearl, she touched the creamy orb. A crack appeared in the pedestal just below the top. It eased out like a tilting drawer, one filled with yet more orbs; these were the size of beans and peas, and some of them were strung together on silken cords.
They felt cool and smooth against her fingertips as she wiggled her digits into the mass, trying to find the lever. Brushing up against something lumpy, cold, and decidedly not a pearl, she pulled it out, revealing a necklace that should have belonged in the diamond pedesta
l, since most of the gems strung in white gold were clear-faceted jewels that sparkled in the light of the suncrystals streaking the ceiling. Three thumbnail-sized pearls had been set between the bejeweled links, though.
Kerric recognized it. His brows lifted. “Congratulations. Those three are rainbow pearls—you can’t tell because there isn’t any direct sunlight or moonlight to make them glow with rainbow tones, but I remember approving that necklace as a Tower treasure. Each pearl is worth the cost of a large castle, and the diamonds could fully staff it for four, maybe five years per segment. You could retire in quite a bit of comfort off of that one piece of treasure alone.”
She frowned at the necklace with a thoughtful expression. Kerric held himself still, wondering what she was thinking. He hoped she would stay with him all the way through, and wasn’t thinking of just taking the necklace and turning back. She could change her mind at any point up until the trap for the Scales of Justice; once they triggered the chute for that, there was no easy way back.
Sighing, Myal shook her head. “I don’t have a use for a castle. I could afford to go home with this and buy a very nice home, but there is nothing back in Mendhi that draws me there. I have friends and I have fame here. I have a life here, not there.”
Dangling it over the opening, she dropped it back into the bin, then dug in again. A click opened a door off to the left. Stirring up the bin, which went down as deep as her forearm was long, she buried the necklace.
“Careful,” Kerric warned her, half teasing, half serious. “An attitude like that just might get you formally employed, here. And you are free to take the necklace. It would look lovely on you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t have anything pretty to wear it with.”
“Well, I’d offer to take you shopping myself, but going shopping is what got me into this gauntlet,” he quipped wryly. “Although I could have some high-quality tailors bring their wares here to Penambrion for you, as a thank-you for helping me.”
Myal hesitated, then dug into the bin. Once again, her fingers found the diamond-strung necklace. “I’ll take it, for now. But I’ll keep it only if you find me something pretty to wear, and only if it really is pretty on me.”
He grinned and bowed. “Fair enough, fair lady.”
“I thought fair ladies meant blonde ladies in Aian culture?” Myal asked, tucking the necklace into her pouch.
“It was a play on words. And you’re not the darkest-skinned adventurer lady in the valley,” he pointed out. “There are at least two from the southern coast kingdoms, and a good dozen on the staff, if not more. Ready for the Rushlight Trap?”
“Ready.”
Opening the door, Kerric ushered her into the dark, dank chamber that formed the next room. It was stone-lined, not plastered and whitewashed, and there was a nasty metallic taint to the air that spoke of blood spilled, the kind that had never been completely cleaned. The source of the smell was apparent; there were three doors out of this place, including the one they had just entered. In front of each was a stained patch of floor, the cracks between each block dark with dried blood. Some of the blocks had small, deep holes, also crusted with unpleasantness.
Overhead, Myal spotted matching holes, and a broad crack that suggested that huge blocks slammed down, possibly with spikes descending as well, or maybe jutting up from below. The lighting level in the chamber wasn’t very good, so it was hard to tell. Even as she peered around the gloom-filled room, Kerric strode straight to the pedestal in the middle of the rounded chamber. Snapping both fingers, he simultaneously lit both ends of a lumpy, oil-soaked reed sitting on a longish metal dish.
Joining him, she read the plaque below the dish, polished raised letters gleaming faintly in the dim lighting.
I burn out in exactly sixty seconds. If you wish to proceed safely and stay alive, burn me in exactly thirty. But hurry if you do, for in sixty more, I will come back and kill you.
The rushlight, she realized, was indeed burning that fast. It was too lumpy to have been split evenly lengthwise down the middle, and gauging where to cut it in half crosswise would have been a hard task to judge. By igniting it at both ends, he guaranteed it would burn out in the required amount of time.
While she read the riddle, Kerric dug out his lock-picking tools, heading toward the door on the right. He glanced over his shoulder, counting down silently in his head. The moment the two reddish-yellow flames met and winked out, sending up a puff of oily-dark smoke, he slipped the tools inside and started counting under his breath. One to prod and twist, one to press and hold. Again a gentle prodding, and a slide of the other one to hold that bit down as well. Attempting to unfasten this lock by magic would cause the very deadly traps overhead to go off.
At twenty-one, Myal had joined him, though she carefully stayed out of range of the stained patch of floor. At twenty-seven, the last bit of the mechanism had been eased through. Twisting the knob, Kerric pushed the door open and stepped smartly through, turning to let Myal out as well. “Out” was the right word for it. Though the rocky promontory they emerged onto was located inside a rough-hewn chasm deep within the Tower, the sound of the door shutting didn’t even echo.
This wasn’t the only rift in the thick, tall block of chamber-riddled stone, but it was the most impressive one. It stretched far out to either side, giving the impression it existed somewhere other than the Tower itself. In fact, it gave the illusion that they could see Penambrion off in the dark somewhere, as if there were a big chunk of Tower wall missing, though it actually wasn’t. Anyone attempting to leave the Tower by going in that direction would find themselves dead rather quickly under the lethal conditions of the Tower on lockdown.
Luckily, Kerric and his partner weren’t going to leave. The rocky peak onto which they had emerged rose a good eighty feet from the cavernous, rubble-strewn bottom, with the ceiling at least another fifty or sixty more above them. Lit by a patchwork of jagged streaks of suncrystals growing out of the spires and peaks around them, the chasm showed bridges, balconies, chains, and more. Suncrystals crossed the chasm like beams of fattened lightning; others gleamed like shards of light embedded in the stones. Despite their presence, the place wasn’t even half-lit over most of its expanse, leaving the landscape grimly dotted by patches of light.
He knew the vast chasm was at least part illusion; it was in reality several much smaller chasms connected to each other via elaborately built Gate-frames. Under normal circumstances, they could have taken a shortcut by literally flying or climbing up to a higher spire, cutting off some of this tedious traveling, fighting, and puzzle-working. Unfortunately, what they currently saw were projections that did not actually, physically connect. Not safely, not directly. Not without a Master of the Tower back in control.
That meant they had to take the long way through . . . and like any good adventurer, Myal had already climbed the rugged path to the platform at the top of the peak. Catching up to her, Kerric found her reading the plaque at the edge of the balcony.
There were actually three ways to get across, here. The first, a trio of long ropes off to the left, which had been between this balcony’s edge and a peak a fair distance away; the thickest of the three ropes had been fastened at floor height, while the other two flanked it at waist height. They were tied to rough stone posts on either end in an inverted triangle position, forming a very unsteady means of crossing the rift. There was the bridge itself, of course, narrow but sturdy-looking despite its rough-hewn appearance and lack of railings. It stood open and inviting. And there was a single rope, hanging from a suncrystal shaft that crossed the gaping chasm. It lay draped over the near-side railing to the right of the bridge. Between the bridge and the rope meant for swinging across the rift sat the plaque, fastened to the railing.
“In the change of a song, the traveler is dry, the duck is wet, and the fault is crossed. Worlds can be straddled, ends always met, yet when it is washed, the journey is lost,” Myal recited. It didn’t take her more than a momen
t to point at the bridge. “Clever riddle. If I didn’t know anything about composing music, I’d be lost, too. But the middle of a song is called a ‘bridge.’ I learned that when my ship stopped for trade and provisions in the coastal kingdom of Garama, where music is as worshipped as writing is back home,” she murmured. Glancing over at Kerric, she asked, “What happens if we used the ropes instead of the bridge, either to balance and walk, or to swing our way across?”
“Lightning trap,” Kerric said. “It doesn’t fire until you leave the balcony by a body-length, but once it ignites, it doesn’t stop scorching you until you let go of the ropes and fall out of range. It doesn’t stop even if you regain the balcony; it just keeps firing until you’re dead or beyond its grasp.”
“Charming,” Myal muttered, eyeing the air around the bridge. Maybe it would come from the suncrystal shaft, or maybe from the air itself. Or there could have been enspelled chains intended for conduits hidden in the mottled patches of light and shadow; it was hard to tell. She dropped her fingers to the towel still knotted around her belt, and glanced at Kerric, checking for his. Both were still firmly in place. “What do I need to know about the Petrification Chamber?”
“One of us will be turned to stone,” he told her, as casually as he would have said, One of us will wear a red tunic.
She gave him an alarmed look. “Turned to stone?”
“Oh, it’s quite simple. The other person, the one not petrified, just keeps going. Don’t look back, just get through the next door . . . which may be locked,” Kerric admitted. “I didn’t memorize anything specific for getting through it, like using just magic or using tools, or just breaking down the door to get through, so you should be able to get through it in whatever way you can manage without problems. You’ll have a good fifteen feet on the other side of the door before you’d trigger the Scales of Justice, so just go right on through the door, then shut it and wait.”
