“Not only is there an illusion covering the entrance, but the entrance is also shaped by magic, friends,” he informed us before vanishing from sight.
As we dismounted, he popped his head back through the wall. “Have no concern for the mounts. There is plenty of room for them inside.”
We pierced the illusion one-by-one for ourselves, leading our animals and Arghen’s dranth in by their sturdy leather reins. I was tempted to see if the iron bar would disrupt what looked like a permanent illusion, but I didn’t want to chance any of the roving quads of the valley’s army coming to investigate it behind us, so I left it sheathed. Inside, the pale-haired Under-elf pointed out the unnaturally smooth opening and cave floor as we joined him. A pair of magical torches like we’d seen throughout the keep lit the cave mouth and allowed us to look around a little. I was reminded of the guard outposts that Arghen and Jason and I had encountered on our way in on the first journey. What was different about this place was that it extended away into the darkness in front of us. Or what would have been darkness if there hadn’t been colorful splotches of lichen glowing faintly on the walls as the cave narrowed into a tunnel. But even the lichen light eventually faded from sight, but whether that was from distance or a bend in the tunnel, I didn’t know.
“Bascom’s work?” I asked, idly running my hand along one magically flattened and curved wall beside me.
Arghen shrugged, taking off the magical sun-shielding eye-wraps he and Stalker both wore, and stowed them in his saddlebags. “Likely, but then again, it could have been done by one or more of his Magelings. Remember that some of them had some affinity for stone.”
I nodded, remembering the three Magelings whom he and I had seen lifting huge stones by their magic before the Grey Riders had attacked the valley. I wondered what had happened to them. Had they died during the fight? Or were they among the ones who’d escaped the battlefield, like Heather had said had happened? I frowned, remembering the unknown being in the hayloft. What if that had been one of the Magelings? It would help explain how that unknown being had gotten out of the loft if the grooms had been telling the truth about not finding anyone.
Arghen saw me frown. “What is it, Lise?” he asked.
“While we were traveling yesterday, remember one of our conversations where I told you all about the mysterious slacker in the hayloft? I just had a thought. What if it was one of those Magelings who’d run away from the battlefield? That Mageling can and probably will give Dusk lots of trouble, and Dusk doesn’t even know about it!”
Surprisingly, Heather interjected. “Lise, chill. Dusk knows about the Magelings running away like cowards. How else would I have known to tell you about it? Besides, didn’t you say you went and told him already? He’s probably got the situation all sewn up, so I wouldn’t waste my brain cells worrying about it.”
Wow. That sounded almost normal from her. Maybe I was over-thinking Heather’s emotional state. What if she was the type to deal with stuff silently by herself? One of my friends while growing up, Johnny, had been like that. He almost never talked about what was bothering him with anyone. Me, I needed to talk things out even if I knew it wasn’t going to turn out the way I wanted; and as a result we drifted apart. I shrugged at Heather’s apparent coping mechanisms. “To each their own,” my mother had always said when consoling me about my friend.
I took a deep breath and let it slowly out, trying to release the tension that the thought of a Mageling running around had created in my shoulders. Of course Dusk could handle pretty much anything thrown at him and probably had a contingency plan to deal with the missing magic-users. He might have them in custody or even converted to the valley’s side, by now. He was good like that.
“You’re right,” I said to her, feeling a bit better. I turned to Arghen. “So, Arghen, do you think the tunnel’s safe for us to enter?”
He said, “If this is the entrance to the Sub-realms that Bascom uses but which is open to the Surface, I would hazard a guess that there are traps for the unwary beyond here. He would not want just anyone making their way down to the Sub-realms even if the opening is protected by illusion and he would not want the Under-elves making free with visits to the surface without his knowledge, either. I feel safe in saying that such traps would not be for capture’s sake but to kill those who set them off.”
CHAPTER 5
Heather and I groaned together.
“More traps?” she asked. “Like at his tower?”
I blinked, remembering what Heather had done at the tower for us. “Heather! You can be our canary!”
“What?!” she said, surprised into immediate anger, her black-colored eyes snapping. “You want me to go into danger first? Are you TRYING to kill me off?”
I brushed aside her accusation. “No, no, remember? Not only can you can see through illusions, you can see invisible stuff. Kind of. You’d be able to warn us about …”
“Yeah, but I can’t see traps, like that cute little pit trap that nearly swallowed Arghen at Bascom’s tower’s back door,” she shot back, overriding me.
I paused. “Oh, yeah. You’re right about that. Sorry.”
“What is a canary? Is it a monster on the Human side?” asked Auraus with interest.
I laughed. “No. Back when people were first started to dig coal out of the ground for use in powering our houses with electri–, umm, baby lightning, canaries, which are small birds, were taken in cages with the miners deep underground to act as a warning about bad air.”
Heather broke in, still sounding miffed. “Yeah, but what she isn’t adding is that the canaries died to warn the miners to get the heck outta there. So I don’t appreciate the comparison.”
Ragar asked Heather wonderingly, “You can see through magic?”
She looked over at the mountain-cat-elf, and her expression softened. “Well, yeah, it seems like I can for some stuff, anyway.”
Ragar turned to me. “Lise, I think Heather and I should go ahead on foot for a little while. She can tell me if she sees anything, and I can try to spot things unusual for a cave, or perhaps even smell things that should not be there as we search the area.”
“You can smell traps?” I asked dubiously as Heather inhaled with what sounded like delight to be working closely with him.
“I can if they have something like poison involved,” he said with confidence.
Arghen said, “Ragar has a point. Under-elves are fond of poisons, or at least the Under-elves in my city-state are. In my opinion, it would be a likelihood that if Under-elves had helped to fashion a trap here, poison would be a complement of it. There are many different kinds of these, which can do things from targeting one area of the body, such as causing only blindness; to giving you non-fatal bodily pain; to causing death in a variety of ways. If I had to guess, I would suspect that a fatal toxin would have been chosen for use here.”
I shuddered, remembering just how many cases of poisoning I’d read about while researching fairytales for my missing term paper. Poison I didn’t think was something we were set up to handle, unless Auraus’ magic could. I looked at the golden-haired Wind-rider.
“Yes, Lise, my magic can handle poison,” she said, correctly interpreting my look. Then she frowned. “Unless it happens to Heather.”
Heather’s tan face went a sickly beige. Ragar took her hand in his furry hand-paw, and color instantly flooded back to her skin.
“Do not worry, Heather,” he said in a gentle growl. “I will protect you.”
She looked at him all starry-eyed. “That has to be the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.”
She blushed a bright red and turned her face away from him, though she did not let go of his hand. I exchanged looks with Arghen and Auraus. Ragar’s eyes widened slightly, like he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. The mountain-cat-elf had had body issues for a long time because of Bascom’s magic having warped him, and he knew people didn’t easily take to him because of it. But us accepting him as a re
gular being seemed to have brushed off some of those chips he’d been carrying on his shoulder. I’d’ve bet, though, that he never thought that he would meet someone who could look at him the way Heather did.
Like the way I would look at Jason when I saw him next. Because I would see him again. There was no other outcome I was willing to consider.
I cleared my throat, and said to Ragar and Heather, “All right. Why don’t the two of you go ahead, then?”
Heather reluctantly let go of Ragar’s hand. The two removed the torches from the front of the cave and carefully walked forward with eyes and hands, and in the mountain-cat-elf’s case, nose, busily searching the walls and floors trying to find out where the traps that had to be there, were. About ten horse strides into the tunnel, Ragar put his hand-paw out to stop Heather from walking past him.
“Here,” he growled. “I smell something that should not be here.”
“What do you smell?” I called from where I waited with Arghen, Auraus and the mounts.
He sniffed a couple of times. “I smell essence of yew, and such trees do not grow underground.”
I swallowed. Yew I knew to be poisonous from the 4-H Club. All parts of the yew were poisonous to eat or have put into your body in some way. Even burning yew branches caused a poisonous smoke. The seeds were especially dangerous, except for the little red berry-like thing that grew around the seed. That was actually okay to eat and rather sweet to the taste. Or so I’d been told; I’d never been stupid enough to try it in case what I’d heard was wrong.
Heather said, pointing, “Hey, I see lots of little holes in the walls. Do you?”
“No, I do not,” said Ragar. “Perhaps what you see is an arrow trap.”
Arghen called over to them from beside me where we still stood at the entrance, “Maybe the arrows are made of yew wood?”
“No, too strong a smell for that,” Ragar objected.
“Perhaps the holes are filled with sharpened yew stakes with crushed yew seed paste or something smeared on them,” I suggested.
Ragar nodded. “That would explain the strong scent.”
“How do we get by?” Auraus asked.
Arghen replied, “There will be a trigger mechanism, and likely a safety mechanism as well. We can either set off the trigger mechanism and disarm the trap, or we can find the safety switch and turn the trap off.”
“But what if the safety switch is a word or a phrase?” I said. “Remember in Bascom’s tower when Heather accidentally said the words to free those poor statue people? We can’t count on being that lucky twice.”
“It does make more sense that Bascom would have it set to be a phrase, given what we have seen. But if so, how would he keep it from the Under-elves?”
“By making them stay back while he said it?” I guessed. “Or maybe working the word or a phrase into a conversation so the Under-elves wouldn’t even know?”
Arghen looked thoughtful. “The Under-elves would be able to hear a whispered command word, so the second suggestion makes more sense than the first. We can experiment. Let us search to see if we can find a lever, and if not, we will disarm the trap by setting it off.”
“What about the magic words?” I asked. “We should at least try to figure them out if we can.”
He looked at me. “Lise, we can and will do that, too. But we will not know if we were successful until we test out the trap.”
Oh. Right. Then I blinked as I realized Arghen was falling into command mode. He hadn’t actually overridden anything I’d suggested, yet, but he was getting close. It was time to pull it back. I was still determined to make him proud of me without his help.
“All right then,” I said decisively. “Let’s all fan out and work our way backwards from Ragar and Heather. I don’t think a safety lever would be right near a trap. All my past research says they are usually placed a safe distance away.”
Arghen blinked, and then he offered an apologetic look to me as if he’d realized what he had done.
“Research?” asked Heather, cocking her head to one side. “You research this kind of stuff for fun or something?”
“Kind of,” I replied. “I was doing a term paper on fairytales for my English class, and this fact kept popping up in the more adventurous ones I was reading. I also have been reading fairytales since I was old enough to read.”
Ragar laid his sword on the floor to mark the line he didn’t want crossed, and then we all started searching the walls and floors backwards from it. A few minutes later he stopped and peered at a particular point on one wall.
“I see something that looks familiar, but I cannot place it,” he said.
Leaving Auraus to hold the animals, Arghen and I went over to where Ragar and Heather stood. The mountain-cat-elf pointed at the wall.
“See?” he said simply.
There, in an almost camouflaged state, was a familiar-looking chaotic design imprinted on the wall.
“That’s got to be the off switch,” I said. “It’s the same pattern as was in Morsca’s bedroom in the keep, and in Bascom’s tower.”
Feeling confident, I went over to it and pressed the same place that I had pressed in the other representations. It didn’t sink under my fingers, but it did flash, and a magic tingle ran across my skin.
“There,” I said. “That should do it. Hey, do you think I should also touch it with the iron bar?”
Auraus shook her golden head at me. “Let us see what touching that marking does first, before we try anything like that.”
I nodded. “Sooo, shall we try it out?” I saw Arghen open his mouth and hurriedly added, “But of course only one of us should test it first. Does anyone have suggestions on how we can protect whomever it is in case that what we just found wasn’t the off switch?”
Arghen smiled and didn’t say anything.
“I can cast a shield spell of wind as I did once before and anchor it to a being instead of the floor. But it will only protect someone on that one side, and I cannot cast two at once,” Auraus warned.
“It will still be a help, Auraus, so that’s great,” I said.
Ragar looked dubious. “So one side of one of us is protected. What about the other side?”
Arghen spoke up. “Let me do it. My armor is of metal plates and would be more impervious to arrows or stakes than leather or chain would be,” he said, gesturing at Heather’s and my armor. “With Auraus’ casting to my right, I will run along the wall to give me time to dodge the ones from across the tunnel.”
“All right, Arghen. It sounds like a good plan,” I said. “Go for it.”
CHAPTER 6
Auraus closed her eyes in prayer to Caelestis, then opened them and cast her spell on Arghen, and once again I felt the tingle of magic being cast cross my skin. The same shield she had cast for me when we broke Morsca’s soul trapper in the cavern under the keep appeared beside Arghen and moved forward as the Under-elf did.
Arghen went to the very edge of the line where Heather said the holes in the walls began and said, “For the glory of Morsca!” and “In Lord Bascom’s name!” He then charged across.
Immediately the trap started going off. They were not arrows that came out of the holes in the walls, but feathered darts that were made of extremely pointed wood. The green smell of yew flooded the passageway, and we could see the mini missiles flying across the tunnel for a good fifteen feet down it and covering a range from ceiling to floor. I felt a tingle of magic as Arghen, ducking and jumping for all he was worth, made it to the other side unscathed but not un-hit. I counted no less than twenty spikes bouncing off his armor even with all his evasive tactics. Once Arghen passed beyond a certain point, the darts stopped flying.
“All right,” I called to Arghen with a grimace. “I guess we didn’t figure out either the off switch or the shut down command.”
“For sure not!” agreed Heather, dark eyes wide.
“But why would Bascom have something as simple as an arrow–excuse me, dart–trap? That does
not make sense to me,” Ragar wondered out loud.
“Maybe it is not his,” Arghen called back. “Maybe the trap belongs to the Under-elves themselves.”
“Under-elves with access to yew?” objected Auraus.
“Why not?” Arghen asked her. “They have access to Bascom, who is of the surface. Bascom may not want the Under-elves to have access to the surface, but the Under-elves would not want to have Surfacers be able to enter the Sub-realms either, so a trap like this would be well within what they would create and set together.”
That reminded me of a fairytale I’d read during my research. “Perhaps this is a two-part trap?” I said. “Maybe I turned off Bascom’s part when that light flashed. What if the Under-elves have a switch over on the other side that deactivates the darts? Maybe it’s meant to be a sort of trust thing between them—both sides have to deactivate their part before negotiations can start.”
“Wow, that’s kind of brilliant,” said Heather half-admiringly. “Except for the part about the poisons. Under-elves have access to their own poisons, so why use a surface one?”
I said, “Huh. I see what you mean. Why would they?”
“What if both sides cooperated in the creation of the trap to begin with?” mused Ragar.
“That makes sense to me. Hey, Arghen? Would you advise me to use the iron now?” I called.
“Not yet, Lise. Let me search over here first,” Arghen called back. “If I cannot find anything, then we will chance the iron.”
“It’s dark over there,” said Heather. “How can you look around?”
I could hear Arghen’s smile in his voice as he said, “Do not forget that I am an Under-elf, Heather.”
“That means he has terrific sight in the dark. Like a cat’s, only better. A handy thing to have when you’re traveling at night. It means that the glowing lichen on the walls over there is enough light for him,” I explained to Heather.
Descent Into Underearth Page 4
