by Leo Romero
I needed Seamus to show me where his gold was, which meant I had to use another strategy. Now, I knew something else about leps. If you did one a favor, he had to return that favor, no matter what. It was like a kind of contract. One where he couldn’t refuse even if he wanted to. All I had to do was get him into the contract.
“Hey, Shay,” I said.
“What?” he answered, his back still facing me.
“How about we make a deal?”
He paused. “What kind of deal?” he asked.
“If I break you outta here...”
“Aye?”
“You give me your gold.”
“I don’t want to break out. I like it in here.”
“Not exactly the Ritz, buddy.”
“Don’t care. I’m away from me wife. No deal!”
I growled under my breath. Stubborn little asshole! I tried another tactic. “Shay?”
“What now? I’m trying to sleep!”
“Just one minute! Listen, how about that gold of yours?”
“What about it?”
“Wouldn’t you like to...count it?”
He shifted on his straw mattress. Hope sparked in my heart.
“Feel it sliding across your palm, your fingers?”
He began shifting more. A good sign. I was getting in his head.
“To stare down at those coins as they shine. Oh how they shine! So beautiful, golden white in your hand. So smooth on your skin. And you can count them as well. One, two, three... Come on, count with me, Shay. Imagine you got the coins in your hand right now. So golden, so shiny, so tinkly. One, two—”
“Three,” he said, squirming on his bedding, his back still facing me.
“Four, five, six,” we said in unison, a grin on my face, while I imagined white gold in my dirty hands.
Seamus flipped onto his back. “Seven, eight, nine, ten!” he squealed, his hands balled up into fists. “Me gold!” he shouted, erupting like a volcano, his face beetroot-red. “So shiny, so smooth, so tinkly! Me gold!” He leaped up from his bedding and began hopping from one foot to the other, his hands outstretched. “One piece o’ gold, two pieces, three,” he sang. “Four pieces, five, six all o’ them for me! Ha ha!”
He continued to sing and jig, and I began clapping, egging him on. I needed him to have his gold on the brain, needed him to want it more than anything else right at that very moment.
“Me gold, me gold! I want it! I need to count it, make sure it’s all there.” He spun to face me, his eyeballs ready to burst from his head, veins jutting out on his neck. “Me gold! I need to see it, boyo! Now!”
I nodded. “Okay, Shay, here’s what we’re gonna do.”
Seamus darted over to my side. He put his hands on his knees and leaned into me, his eyes bubbling with excitement, his lips pulled back in a huge grin.
“I’m going to break you outta here...” I told him.
“Aye,” he said with a brisk nod.
“So that you can go and count your gold.”
“Aye!” he sang and spun away, his fists in the air. “Yes, Gabriel!” he chirped. “We’re gonna go to me gold. You and me, we’re getting outta here!”
“That’s right. Now, if I get you outta here, you’ll then owe me a favor. Right?”
“That’s right, boyo. Anything. Any-thing! If you get me out of this cell to see me gold once more, I’ll do anything for ye.”
“That’s good to hear. So as payment for breaking you out…you are gonna give me your gold.”
Seamus became perfectly still. He stared at me with glassy eyes. Behind them, his brain worked. But I could tell he was befuddled. As the seconds ticked by, his brain became overworked from processing the deal as it should make no sense to him, but seeds had already been planted.
See, I was double bluffing him. I’d told him I’d break him out of there—even though he didn’t want to break out—so that he could get to count his gold, which he’d then hand over to me as payment for breaking him out in the first place so he could get to count his gold, even though he didn’t wanna break out or hand over his gold, which he’d have to do anyway to fulfill his end of a bargain he’d agreed to, the details of which didn’t benefit him in the slightest. Genius! I had the little fool wrapped around my finger.
The good thing with leps was a verbal deal was as good as a signed contract. All he had to do was say okay. Now, he knew deep down the deal was crummy on his end. I was about to take the guy’s precious gold, but on the other hand, I was gonna give him his freedom so he could go and count his gold, and it was that temptation that clouded his judgement.
With Seamus’ head in a spin and his eyes rolling like marbles, he had no choice but to agree. “Okay!” he blurted, his eyes bulging even more.
I gave him a toothy grin. “We got a deal?”
“It’s a deal, boyo! You get me out of here to me gold, and I’ll hand it over to ye!”
I nodded nice and slow, a wicked smile spread across my cheeks. The poor asshole had no idea what he just said, nor the implications of it. He had to hold up his end of the bargain whether he liked it or not. It was now set in stone.
“But how are we gonna get out of here?” he asked, and my grin melted. The little guy made a good point.
He began spinning around in fitful circles. “We’re stuck here.”
I mumbled beneath my breath. The lep was right. My gaze flipped from the stone walls encasing us to the cell bars. If I could’ve created some light magic, I could’ve used it to warm up the cell bars to the point where they melted, but my magic was useless so far underground. I gave it a shot anyway. I tried to focus light magic, but all I got was a very dull glow, nowhere near enough to create any kind of heat. I clapped my hands hard in frustration, tiny sparks of light flying out of my palms and raining on the ground where they fizzled for a second or two and vanished.
My jaw dropped. I stared at my palms in bemusement. I looked around. My eyes fell on my straw bedding. An idea sparked in my mind and evolved into a full-blown plan in seconds. Without hesitation, I gathered a bunch of straw together and made a ball.
“What are ye doing?” Seamus asked, but I didn’t answer. I was too focused on doing what I was doing to explain it. Once I made a big enough ball, I began clapping my hands in short, sharp slaps over it. Every time I did, brief sparks of light frazzled across my palms and fell toward the straw where they fizzled out. I kept going, creating as many of those sparks as I could using my hands like a flint and light magic as a source of heat. The more I clapped, the bigger the sparks became. The more they rained down on the straw, the more they heated it up. To my amazement, thin wisps of smoke began to swirl off the straw. Excitement began juddering through me. I upped my tempo, clapping my hands feverishly, pain rocketing up my forearms. I ignored it, gritting my teeth against it, while I clapped up more sparks that showered down on the ever-heating straw. Seamus got the gist of what I was doing and bent over the straw, blowing on it, trying to feed it some extra oxygen to set it off.
“Come on, come on!” I urged the sparks, more smoke now billowing up, the acrid aroma of burnt straw hitting my nostrils. Seamus carried on blowing like he was a foot pump.
“Come on!” I urged one final time and the straw ignited. I gasped against the flame rising from the straw. I grabbed more straw and held it next to that small single flame, encouraging it to light like I was trying to feed a baby. That single flame grabbed hold of the straw and licked at it like a kitten. In seconds, flames spread outward. Seamus kept on blowing and the flames moved left and right, igniting any straw in their path. In no time, we had a small bonfire.
“Step back!” I ordered Seamus as the flames spread out across the whole of my bedding. Now we had a raging inferno on one side of the room. Both Seamus and I backed up toward his bedding, the heat from the now roaring fire tingling my skin, causing me to sweat. Smoke billowed from my bedding, filling that side of the cell. I stared at the flames as they danced on the air with an open mouth.
We didn’t have much time before the fire ate all the straw.
“Okay, Shay,” I said as he cowered behind me from the flames. “We got one shot at this, so give it your all.” I darted over to the cell bars. I grabbed them, pushing my mouth through the gap between them. “Fire!” I screamed. “Help! Fire!”
Seamus raced up next to me. “Fire!” he squealed. “Bejeezus, it’s a fire! Help!”
We slammed the bars with our palms, hollering as loud as we could. I prayed that this worked out. It was all about winging it from here. The flames grew with more intensity and the back of my neck heated up like I was on the Copacabana.
I slammed the bars harder. “Fire!” I screamed. Come on! Come on! Where are you?
I looked down at Seamus, whose face had gone red again. “Fire!” he screamed.
“I don’t think anyone can hear us,” I said, my heart sinking. Not only would our one chance of getting outta here go up in smoke, but so would my bedding and I’d find myself sleeping on the stone floor. I was about ready to give up, when movement in the tunnel up ahead jumped me back into life. Someone was heading our way. Hope ignited in my heart. “Fire!” I shouted, injecting as much energy as I could into my voice.
From the shadows, Fishstink came bounding along. I grinned to myself.
“What’s all the noise about, you roaches?” he growled, iron bar in hand.
I thrust my mouth and chin out between the gap. “Let us out, Fishstink!” I demanded. “We’re about to burn to death!”
Fishstink came to a stop outside our cell. He glared beyond us both. His remaining eye widened in shock, the intense flames reflecting in his black iris. “Blarg!” he blurted, which was goblin for ‘holy moly!’
Without giving it a second thought, he grabbed his keys and inserted the correct one in the lock and spun it around. There was a satisfying clink as Fishstink swung the cell door open. My eyes widened. Freedom.
Fishstink grabbed my upper arm and yanked me out. He slung me into the tunnel and rushed into the cell where he confronted the fire like it was a wild animal, his hands out to the sides, knees slightly bent. I met Seamus’ stare and gave him a firm nod. Seamus got the message. With a deft hop, skip and jump, he was past Fishstink and out of the cell to join me. I gazed down at him with eager eyes. Did he do it?
He lifted both his hand up high and I grinned. Clutched in his grip were Fishstink’s ring of cell door keys. Thank Heavens he was a master pickpocket. I leaped toward the cell. Fishstink was still inside seemingly rooted by the fire, just as I was hoping. Fishstink’s IQ was about as high as the temperature of lukewarm milk. The fire stole all his attention, and any brain cells he actually had. The poor guy didn’t know what to do. But I did. I threw the door shut. The clang made Fishstink whirl. Now his eye was brimming with fear.
I grabbed Seamus by the waist and lifted him up as high as the lock on the cell door. He was already rifling through the keys. “You sure you know which one it is?” I quickly asked.
“Trust me, I’ve seen him open and close that lock so many times, it’s branded on me brain.”
Fishstink realized what we were up to. He made a dash for the cell door.
“Quick, Shay!” I urged.
“A-ha!” Seamus replied, jabbing the correct key into the lock and turning it in one smooth motion, right as Fishstink grabbed hold of the bars that made up the cell door. He pushed and pulled hard, but they were unmoving.
I jumped backward in shock, taking Seamus and the keys with me.
Fishstink began rattling the bars. Behind him, the fire still burned. “Lemme out of here, you pair of bottom feeders!” he rasped.
“No can do, Fishy, my man,” I replied. “Enjoy your stay!” I added and made a dash down the tunnel.
“Don’t each too much of that gruel,” Seamus said, following up as we left Fishstink behind.
“You rats will never escape!” echoed Fishstink’s voice through the tunnels as we made our prison break.
Chapter 11
“Do you know the way outta here?” I asked over my shoulder as I made it into the end of the tunnel, where it split left and right.
“No. Do you?” Seamus replied, looking from side to side.
My response was to groan and take a wild guess. I headed right, which opened up into a new tunnel, dimly lit by neon veins of magic sprawling across the black stone walls. We dashed past a cell holding a couple of trogs. They watched us fly by with sullen eyes. The tunnel entered more gloom where it branched off again. I took a guess and went left, past more cells and into more gloom at the end, to be met with more tunnels branching off at all angles. I ran down one at random. I looked behind me; the tunnel vanished into a thicket of darkness. I moved through this new tunnel, passing more cells holding more humanoids who’d pissed off Bracken in some way or t’other. This time I took a left, then a right, then left, then right again. I emerged into yet another identical tunnel, my bearings totally gone.
I pulled up, sweat plastering my forehead. “We’re lost!” I gasped in a grim voice.
Seamus pulled up next to me, grabbing his thighs, his chest heaving. “Bejeezus, boyo. T’is the truth ye speak. I’m knackered, so I am.”
I looked left and right, behind me, ahead of me. It was either cells or darkness at either end. “This is place is a maze,” I said, wiping sweat from my brow.
“That it is, boyo,” Seamus affirmed.
My mind was racing. I didn’t know what to do. There had to be a way outta there, had to be a way of knowing which tunnels to take. Maybe part of the protection against escapees was magic tunnels, but if it was, I didn’t have anything to counter it.
“What are we going to do?” Seamus asked. And I could hear the panic in his voice loud and clear.
I wanted to tell him I didn’t know, but didn’t wanna alarm the little fella any further. Instead I kept on running down the tunnel. “Come on.” He let out a little groan of anguish before he trotted along after me, gripping his stomach.
I jumped into a new tunnel and a familiar voice echoed through it. “The bells,” it shouted. I frowned. I staggered along the tunnel to the cell the voice was emanating from. We made it to the cell holding that insane dark elf I’d noticed when I’d been led in here. She was gripping the bars with all her might, her knuckles light-green, her distant eyes rolling. “The bells!” she screamed. “They’re donging so hard!” her face was a scrawl of anguish.
I stopped and stared at her for a moment. The bells? What bells was she hearing? While my mind worked, I looked up at the ceiling. Bells. There were bells in the highest spire of Bracken’s palace. Was it those she was hearing?
“Argh, the bells,” she wailed. “Make them stop!”
I went over to the cell. “Hey!”
She flinched my way, her eyes wide.
“The bells, are they up there?” I asked her, pointing at the celling.
She gave me a grim nod, her mouth turned downward. “Up there,” she echoed in a meek, broken voice.
“Can you follow them? Up there?”
She nodded slow.
“We’ll go to them, and we’ll make em stop!” I told her.
Hope flashed in her eyes. A twitchy grin spread across her face. “Make em stop?” she whispered. She began nodding fervently. “Yes. Make them stop!”
I grinned back at her, nodding my head. “Make em stop.”
“Make em stop,” she said, grinning, revealing rotten and missing teeth. “Vanya be happy if you make em stop. Vanya be very happy. Make em stop.”
I turned to Seamus. “Shay, get her cell door open.”
Seamus began rifling through the keys, while I went and lifted him up to the lock. He put a key in the lock. “No,” he said, pulling it out and trying the next one. “No,” he repeated.
I looked left and right with anxious eyes. Darkness at both ends of the tunnel stared back at me. The longer we hung around, the more chance we had of someone catching us in our escape.
“Come on, Shay,”
I urged through gritted teeth.
“Give me a chance, I’m working on it!” he slotted another key in the lock. “No.”
My arms started to hurt from holding him up. For a little fella, he sure was heavy. Must’ve been all that damn gruel.
“No,” he said again, pulling the latest key out of the lock.
Vanya came over to us. She gazed down at the ring of keys in Seamus’ hand as he rifled through them. After a small while, she said, “That one!”
Both Seamus and I met her stare. She was pointing at a specific key dangling from the ring, which looked identical to every other. Seamus carefully pinched it between his fingers, then held it up for her to see. “This one?” he asked.
Vanya gave him a firm nod. “That one.”
Seamus slotted the key in the lock and turned it. It went smooth. There was a clink, and Seamus swung the door open. I let out a relived breath and dropped Seamus back to the ground before my arms fell off. Vanya walked ghost-like out of her cell and stopped ahead of me. I stared at her nonplussed. Man, she really was batshit; Fishstink hadn’t been lying.
“Gonna take us to the bells?” I asked her nice and slow like I was talking to a baby.
She carried on staring distantly at me with her big green bug-eyes. I rolled my own eyes down to Seamus, who rolled his up to me. He shrugged.
“The bells!” Vanya erupted in a harsh screech, making me recoil in fear and Seamus grab my thigh. She turned on her heels and ran down the tunnel, her hands clasped to her head, screeching about bells.
My eyes widened. “Quick! Follow her!” I scampered off after her. The last thing I wanted was to lose her. She could be our only hope of getting outta there.
“Wait for me!” said Seamus.
