“How is he?” Angus asked when he found them in the antechamber opposite the trap’s control room. It was a small chamber—not quite a ten foot cube—and Ortis was lying on the floor in its center. The two healthy constituents were on either side of the dead one, and each one was holding onto a hand.
“Not good,” Hobart said, rising to help him. When Angus handed him a feedbag, Hobart raised his eyes and said, “Grain?”
Angus shrugged. “It’s food, isn’t it?”
Hobart shrugged. “I’m sure he’ll eat it if there isn’t anything else left.” He positioned the food around Ortis, within easy reach of the healthy one’s hands, and then knelt to whisper something in his ear. When he was finished, he rose and walked over to Angus and Giorge.
“He needs privacy,” Hobart said, ushering them out of the room. “It will take time for him to recover—if he can.”
“Recover?” Angus repeated. “But that one is dead.”
“Not while the other two are alive,” Hobart said. “Triads are a strange breed. I’ve seen Ortis heal wounds before, but nothing like this. I don’t know if he can do it or not, but at least he’s going to try. We need to let him do it. It takes an incredible amount of concentration and energy, even for a minor wound, and this….” He shook his head. “It might not work.”
“What is he doing?” Angus asked as he allowed himself to be led away.
“He doesn’t talk about it,” Hobart said. “Neither should we. All I know for sure is that if you want to kill a Triad, you have to kill at least two of the three constituents to make sure it stays dead. If you don’t, the other two can transfer their energy—their health—to the dead one. It has to be done quickly, and it doesn’t always work. He’ll be famished afterward.”
“How much do you know about this?” Angus asked.
“Not much,” Hobart admitted. “It’s just one of the conditions he had when he joined my Banner. He didn’t go into details.”
“Do you know how he does it?”
“I have no idea,” Hobart said. “The few times I’ve seen him heal himself, he just held hands, closed his eyes, and a little bit later the wound was gone. Those have all been minor wounds, though; nothing like this. You noticed there wasn’t much blood, didn’t you? Well, it’s always like that. The three constituents each have their own body, but they’re all connected together as a single thing. If one of them is severely injured, it will shut itself down until the other two can help it. It looks like they have died, but they haven’t. When the healing is done—if they can do it—he’ll wake up as if nothing has happened. At least, that’s how it’s gone with the minor wounds I’ve seen him heal. I don’t know about this, though.”
Hobart frowned, and looked into the control room. “We better see what Giorge is up to,” he said. “He always gets twitchy fingers in places like this. We have to watch him pretty closely; he has pockets that I don’t think even he knows about.”
I can relate to that, Angus thought as he glanced over his shoulder and imagined the healthy Ortises sending out silky filaments, slowly building up a cocoon. But Fyngar said the plains folk ate first….
15
A half hour later, when they were back in the control room, Angus asked, “What do we do now?”
“I’m going to rest,” Hobart said, “and keep watch over Ortis.”
“I’m going to scout some more,” Giorge said. “I didn’t get very far before you caught up with me, and we need to know what else is down here. I won’t go much further, though; I could use some rest, too.”
“I’ll keep watch if you think we need it,” Angus said. “I haven’t been up for that long.”
“There can’t be much down here but traps,” Giorge said. “At least, not the kind of things we’d expect to find in a dungeon. We’re too far below ground for rats and things like that. The ones who built this place are long dead—unless they’re not, and if they aren’t, we need to know about that sooner rather than later so we can get out of here before they eat us. Of course, there could be things down here that we’ve never seen before, but we won’t know that until we find them, and we won’t find them unless we start looking. Of course, they might find us….” Giorge continued muttering to himself as he walked out into the tunnel.
Not long after Giorge left, Hobart sat down against the wall and closed his eyes, and in less than a minute, he was beginning to snore. Angus waited another half hour before picking up the torch and walking softly out of the room and across the corridor to where Ortis was recuperating. He paused only a moment to make sure Hobart was still snoring before he thrust the torch through the opening and looked inside.
He didn’t know what he had expected to see, but whatever it was, he wasn’t right. Inside the room, the three Ortises looked almost exactly like they had when he had seen them last. There were no cocoons, no tendrils snaking out from their hands, no buds sprouting up among them, no half-devoured corpse—the only thing that was different was the wound. Instead of a gaping hole in Ortis’s chest, there was new flesh forming. He could almost see the bones merging together, the new skin forming….
Quite a bit of the food had been eaten, but he hadn’t touched the grain—yet.
Angus shook his head and turned around. There was no point in watching; whatever was going to happen was going to happen. He’d have to ask about it later; it would be a good opportunity to find out more about what Ortis was….
Instead of returning to the room with Hobart, Angus decided to check on Giorge. He walked softly down the corridor and looked at the dust to see which way Giorge had gone. He followed the trail until he rounded a corner and saw him. Giorge had his back to him and was looking through an open doorway. Angus smiled, backed around the corner, and propped the torch up against the wall. Then he quietly walked down the corridor until he was standing behind Giorge.
Giorge was muttering to himself. “It’s a trap. It has to be. Who would leave gems all by themselves in a bowl like that? It only invites curiosity.”
Angus stepped up and looked over his shoulder. There was a large room, and in the middle, about fifteen feet away, was a short table with a bowl of gems sitting on it.
“No panels on the floor. No arrow slits in the walls. No ceiling stones ready to fall.”
Angus imagined Giorge frowning as he went through his checklist.
“I should go back and tell the others,” he muttered. “But they’re busy. Besides, they won’t mind, will they? What are a few gems among friends?”
Angus smiled. Giorge has twitchy fingers….
“I should share them, though,” he continued. “Hobart will hire a Truthseer.” Then he laughed and added, “I’m talking to myself, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” Angus answered from behind him.
Giorge squawked and leapt into the room. He twisted in midair and landed with a dagger in his hand.
The floor clicked.
Angus laughed and said, “A bit jumpy, aren’t you?” He started forward. “What did you find?”
“Stop!” Giorge cried as his knife slashed out in front of him.
Angus stepped back to avoid the wild slash and looked at Giorge. “Come now, Giorge. I didn’t kill you when you snuck up on me, did I?”
Giorge glared at him, and his nearly hairless upper lip quivered as he said, “It’s trapped.”
“What’s trapped?” Angus asked.
“The floor,” Giorge growled. “It’s pressure-sensitive. When I jumped in here, it initiated something, and I don’t know what it is.”
“What can I do?” Angus asked, his momentary playfulness gone.
Giorge shrugged and took a step closer to the door. When nothing happened, he stepped out of the room. “The trap has been down here a long time,” he said, looking back into the room. “Maybe it doesn’t work any longer.”
“Possibly,” Angus agreed. “But I wouldn’t count on it.”
“I wonder what it will do if I go back in there?” Giorge asked. “If I can
get to that bowl, it’s full of gems.”
“How do you know they’re gems?” Angus said. “They could be rocks painted to look like gems, a lure to draw would-be thieves into the trap.”
Giorge shrugged. “They look like it from here,” he said. “The only way to know for sure is to get closer. Here,” he held out the end of a rope. “I’ll tie this around me. If anything happens, you can pull me back out.”
Angus frowned. “We should get Hobart,” he said. “He is a better anchor than I am.”
Giorge chuckled. “Don’t tell him that,” he said. Then he grinned and added, “You only live once!” He turned and stepped gingerly back into the room. It clicked again, and he half-turned. “Usually,” he said and sidled forward, his eyes darting around the room, alert for any movement.
“They are gems!” he called, his voice radiant. “Rubies, diamonds, emeralds—they’re worth a fortune!” He opened a pouch and reached for a handful of them. He seemed poised to run, but nothing happened. He grabbed another handful—and another. Still nothing. It wasn’t until he had emptied the bowl and took his first step back toward Angus that something finally happened: There was a sharp clang, as if a piece of metal had suddenly snapped, and the floor tilted sharply, like a pulley with its weight released. Giorge took one step toward the high end—then abandoned the idea; the floor had split in half and each part was rapidly tilting upward and away from the bowl. He jumped backward, grabbed the podium on which the bowl rested, and quickly scampered up on top of it.
Angus pulled on the rope—but the doorway was disappearing. The floor was folding upward, the edge—over a foot thick—slid up past the doorway and took the end of the rope with it. When it reached the top of the doorway, it sheared off the rope, leaving the short end dangling in his hands.
“Giorge!” Angus cried as the floor rotated until it squeezed itself up against the wall and completely sealing the doorway. As it did so, he caught a brief glimpse of what was beneath the floor—more rusted, iron stakes. A lot of them. And then he found himself in near-darkness, the only light coming from the far end of the tunnel, where he had left the torch.
Angus dropped the rope and ran down the corridor. He paused to retrieve the torch as he rounded the corner, and then kept going. When he thought he was within range of being heard, he started yelling “Hobart!” as loud as he could. He kept yelling until Hobart shambled out into the hallway, his broadsword in hand. “It’s Giorge!” he yelled as he skidded to a halt. “He’s trapped!”
When he saw Hobart trundling after him, he turned and ran back down the corridor, pausing at each corner only long enough for Hobart to catch sight of where he was going.
16
“He’s in there?” Hobart gasped, looking at the dingy stone underside of the floor.
“Yes,” Angus said. “The floor—” How could he explain it? He held out his hands perpendicular to each other, the left vertical and the right horizontal. “It did this,” he said, turning his flat right hand so that it became vertical and flush with the left.
Hobart scowled, pointed at the blockage, and said, “That’s the floor?”
“Yes,” Angus said. “We need to find the trap’s mechanism. There has to be one somewhere around here.”
Hobart put his shoulder to the floor-turned-wall and grunted a few times. A few crusty flakes broke off, but the floor didn’t move. When he finally stopped, he asked, “Where could it be?”
“I have no idea,” Angus admitted. “As far as I can tell, there aren’t any other doors or rooms around here.”
“Can you melt it?” Hobart asked. “Like you did to the fishmen?”
Angus shook his head. “No,” he said. “That spell almost killed me when I cast it, so I didn’t prime for it again. Even if I had, I still wouldn’t try it; it would roast him—and us—alive in these cramped quarters.”
“How thick is this?” Hobart asked, trying his shoulder again.
“At least a foot,” Angus said. “You’ll never put a dent in it doing that.”
“The wand!” Hobart almost shouted. “You blew a hole in Hedreth’s, and you can do it here, too.”
Angus shook his head. “That’s not a good idea,” he said. “The range of the wand is too far. It would go through this easily enough, but it wouldn’t stop there. Giorge is only about fifteen feet inside there, and he’ll get hit by it too. If that happens,” Angus shrugged. “We won’t have to worry about whether or not he’ll fall.”
“Fall?” Hobart asked. “From what?”
“I saw him jump into a bowl on top of a column in the center of the room. If he stays there, he should be all right for a little while, as long as there are no more parts to the trap.”
“I saw the tunnels you made,” Hobart said. “You can aim that wand, can’t you?”
“To a certain degree,” Angus admitted.
“Where is Giorge in that room?”
“The center.”
“Fine,” Hobart said. “You can aim to avoid the center, can’t you?”
“It isn’t just that,” Angus said, shaking his head. “Using the wand in Hedreth’s nearly killed me—would have killed me if Giorge hadn’t gotten a healer.”
“It didn’t do anything to you when you made that tunnel through the lava flows,” Hobart countered.
Angus nodded. “I know,” he admitted. “And I don’t know why. I think it was because of the density of the materials I was using it on, but I can’t be sure. It could easily be something else.”
“It’s Giorge,” Hobart wailed. “You have to try!”
Angus set the torch against the wall and began pacing. He didn’t like the idea of using the wand, but Hobart had a point. There weren’t very many options. If they couldn’t find the reset mechanism—and he had no clue where it might be—then Giorge was stuck in there until he either fell out of the bowl or the trap reset itself. It would reset itself, too; he was sure of it. Unlike Hobart, who thought no one had visited the temple before them, the skeletons in the pit—and under the floor of the room Giorge was in—indicated otherwise.
“What are our options?” he muttered, then began counting them off. “We can wait and see if the trap resets itself,” he said. “If Giorge can hang on that long, he’ll be fine.”
“I’m not waiting,” Hobart said.
“We can find the trap’s reset mechanism,” he said. “But we have no idea where to even begin looking.”
“It will take too long,” Hobart said. “Even if we find it, we wouldn’t know how to work it.”
“I could use my wand,” Angus continued, “despite the risks involved.”
“What are you waiting for, Angus?” Hobart demanded. “Use it!”
“What else? A spell? Firecluster is no good; it won’t be hot enough to do more than warm the stone. Arclight? Pointless. Firewhip? Ineffective; it’s not hot enough to melt through stone, either. Lavageyser? It might be worth a try, but what would it do in such close quarters? It’s designed for soft ground, not stone, and the heat it generates probably would kill Giorge if it got close to him—not to mention what it would do to me. But it would melt rock, and if I cast it on a vertical plane instead of horizontal….
“No. When it hits the ground, it bubbles upward and sends out globs of lava in random directions. If I cast it on a vertical surface, it will shoot out horizontally, and I would be right in its path. Could I run fast enough?” He shook his head. “If there were a side tunnel, I’d try it, but not this. It would be almost certain death.”
Angus continued pacing and muttering to himself until Hobart shouted, “Enough!” He stepped up to Angus and grabbed him by the shoulders, forcing him to stop and look at him. “You will use that wand of yours, and you will save Giorge. If you don’t, I will see to it that you will suffer the same fate he does.”
Angus focused on the magic around him, grabbed the nearest strand of flame, and made the quick little knot for the Arclight spell. A moment later, Hobart yelped and jumped back. Angus
slowly lifted his gaze and tried to pierce through Hobart’s pain-wracked light brown eyes to reach the deep-seated fear that dwells in all of us, and said, his voice calm, soft, “You will not threaten me Hobart. You will not touch me unless I give leave for you to do so. That little shock is but a small reminder of what I am capable of doing.”
Hobart shook his hands as if they were wet and he was desperately trying to dry them, but he didn’t say anything.
“I know you are anxious about Giorge,” Angus said. “So am I. But when it comes to magic, I will decide what will be done, not you. If I think it is too dangerous, it is too dangerous. You don’t know enough about magic to be terrified by it, and I know far too much about it not to be. Or have you already forgotten what happened to the fishmen upstairs?”
Hobart clenched his jaw to keep it shut and turned away.
“Now,” Angus said, taking out the wand. “I suggest you go back around the last corner. There will be a lot of noise.” And recoil, he added to himself. This wand is not intended to be used indoors. “Take the torch with you.” If there was something else I could do….
Hobart nodded, picked up the torch and trotted down the corridor and around the corner.
“Perhaps if I sit down?” Angus muttered, turning to the doorway and taking several paces back. “An upward arc should be enough to miss Giorge. Maybe I’ll slide backward down the corridor instead of being flung against the wall.” He positioned himself as best he could and began the movements to release the wand’s spell….
17
Angus rolled to a stop near the end of the corridor.
His ears were ringing.
His right shoulder was bruised.
He had scraped his left elbow.
The Tiger's Eye (Book 1) Page 32
