“Trying to keep my head about me,” Colm replied.
There was a snort, something close to laughter, except it seemed to come off to Colm’s right, and it didn’t sound at all like the same person who had him at stone point, which meant that there were two figures there in the darkness. That didn’t make Colm feel any better.
“I d-d-don’t think he’s any t-t-trouble,” the new voice sputtered. “He c-c-could be one of us.”
The sharp edge at Colm’s neck slackened a bit, though not enough for him to safely turn around or slip free. “Why are you here?” the girl’s voice demanded.
“I have no idea,” Colm said honestly. “I was with this man. He said he was taking me to visit a guild of some kind. Then we grabbed hold of this magic crystal and I almost threw up, and the next thing I know he’s pushing me down a hole and you’re sticking a sharp rock under my chin.”
“T-t-told you,” came the other voice. A boy’s voice. Suddenly the knife dropped, and Colm was free. He turned around slowly.
There, holding Colm’s torch, was a boy close to his age, though shorter and even skinnier. (Colm wasn’t sure how that was possible.) He wore a scarlet robe that fell well past his feet and dragged along the stone. His wrists were adorned with silver bracelets, and his underclothes were tattered and covered in grime. His face was pale, with giant globes for eyes and thin eyebrows that made the globes look even bigger. His hair, unlike Colm’s, was long, falling over his shoulders in straw-colored strands. He looked frightened.
The girl standing next to him did not.
“My name is Lena,” she said, putting one fist across her chest in a salute that Colm had never seen before. “Lena Proudmore. Sorry I almost decapitated you . . . Colm, was it?”
Colm just stared. In the flickering torchlight it was hard to make out all her features clearly, but he couldn’t miss the sharp chisel of her chin, like a weapon itself. Her crimson hair was cropped short in back, falling across one eye in front, the other shining brown in the flicker of light. Her lips were pursed, pulled tight against her teeth in a determined smirk. Colm had never seen anyone with red hair and brown eyes before.
“You’re kind of . . . ,” Colm began.
“Intimidating. I know. Sorry. It’s just that you can never be too careful.”
Intimidating wasn’t what he was thinking, but he couldn’t deny it either.
“Um, p-p-pardon me,” the boy in the robe said, inserting himself into the conversation and extending his free hand, his bracelets jangling. “I’m Quinn, but p-people sometimes c-c-call me N-nibbles, on account of how I’m always eating.”
Then how come you’re so skinny? Colm wondered to himself. “Nibbles,” Colm said, taking the boy’s hand but not taking his eyes off the girl, mostly because she had nearly slit his throat a second ago. Mostly.
“So what are you, then?” Lena said, her hands on her hips.
Colm wasn’t sure he understood the question. “Um. Lost, I guess.”
Quinn snorted again. Lena flashed him a dirty look, and he shut up.
“No. I mean, what are you? Are you a fighter? A wizard? You’re certainly not dressed like much of anything. Oh, gods, please tell me you’re not a bard.”
Colm pointed to himself. “What? You mean like one of those guys who go around singing dopey songs all the time?” Actually, Colm thought, maybe not such a bad life. Better than a shoe cobbler, at least. He shook his head anyway.
“Well, then?” Lena pressed.
“I guess I’m a thie—” Colm stopped and corrected himself. “A rogue, I mean. Except not really. I was going to train to become one. Or I was going to think about it. Then I got thrown in this hole.”
“A rogue,” Lena whispered to herself. “Figures.”
“Figures?”
She looked at him; even in the torchlight, he could see her rolling her eyes. “Haven’t you ever studied Herm Hefflegeld’s theories of proper party configuration? Didn’t you ever read Stormfist’s essay on the effects of class interdependency and dungeoneering efficacy?”
“Here we go,” Quinn sighed, rubbing at his eyes.
“I’m sorry, I’m a little new to all of this,” Colm said. “See, I come from Felhaven—you’ve probably never heard of it, it’s, like, this little farm town ten miles and some freaky crystal teleportation jump away from here. And my family doesn’t have a whole lot of money, and then my sister got sick, and I thought if I could help pay for the medicine, you know? So I went to the town square, and I—”
Lena put a hand in his face, actually smothering his still-moving lips. “We don’t need your life story, farm boy,” she said. “The important thing is that we finally have a rogue, so maybe we can get out of this place in one piece.”
“One piece?” Colm said.
“You make sure we don’t run into any traps, and Quinn and I will handle any monsters that come along.”
“Monsters?”
“T-t-traps?” Quinn repeated.
“Please,” Lena said. “You don’t think they would throw us all down here and not give us something to do, do you?” She reached out and took the torch from Quinn’s hand, then turned and continued along the same path that Colm had been taking. Colm watched her for a second, trying to decide if she was dangerous.
He was almost certain of it.
But she didn’t seem like she posed any immediate threat to him, at least, and obviously she and this other boy had agreed to work together, even seemed to know each other somehow. Colm had no idea what Herm Hefflegeld’s theories of proper party configuration had to do with anything, but he did understand that three people were better than one, and was thankful not to be alone any longer. Still, he walked behind her as he had walked behind Finn at the start. The boy named Quinn shuffled beside him, nearly tripping over his oversized robe.
“So y-you’re a ruh-rogue?” he mumbled.
Actually, Colm thought, I’m just a pickpocket. And only recently one of those. “More or less,” he said, then nodded at the boy’s strange attire. “And what are you, exactly?” Quinn looked like a kid who had decided to try on his father’s bathing gown.
“Oh, m-me? I’m a m-m-m-m-mageling,” the boy said.
“It’s like a mage. Only clumsier,” Lena explained from over her shoulder, and Quinn nodded. He didn’t seem to take offense.
Colm instinctively stepped away, remembering what Finn had said about mages. Except Quinn didn’t look like he could call lightning from the sky or produce fireballs from his fingers. Colm had expected the first wizard he met to be more in keeping with the descriptions from his book—white-bearded and billowing and larger than life. Quinn looked barely big enough to summon his own shadow. Colm nodded toward Lena and whispered to Quinn, “So, then, what is she?”
Whatever she was, she obviously had good hearing, because she stopped and spun. “I am a barbarian,” she responded curtly. “At least, I hope to be someday.”
Colm shook his head. From what little he’d read, barbarians were loud, long-haired, half-naked men who spoke in bellows and ate their meat raw. “Really? A barbarian? You? Are you sure about that?”
“Uh-oh,” Quinn whispered.
The girl suddenly advanced on Colm, her eyes slits, teeth bared. She looked terrifying in the torchlight. “Are you suggesting I can’t be a barbarian?” Colm threw up his hands, shaking his head, but she started jabbing a finger into his chest. “Because there is absolutely no law that says women can’t be barbarians. In fact, I’ll have you know there are several famous female barbarians in dungeoneering lore.”
“No. I believe you, honestly,” Colm said. He had never met a barbarian before. Not even the half-naked, raw-meat-eating male variety.
“Just because I don’t wear the hide of some dead animal across my shoulders and I have all my teeth does not mean that I’m not a barbarian.”
“I . . . I never . . . you are . . . absolutely . . . so completely a barbarian,” Colm stumbled.
Lena huffed, the
n spun back around and started walking faster down the dark hall.
“She really is nice, once you get to know her,” Quinn said, gathering his robe about him as he and Colm each quickened his pace to catch up.
Once you get to know her? Colm thought. “Wait a minute. How long have you two been down here?”
“We were friends before,” Quinn explained as they came to another fork. “We come from the same town. We are pretty much in this together. And now so are you.” The boy smiled brightly.
Lena made the choice on which direction to take. She made all the choices as the forks multiplied. She led them right. Then left. Then right again. The idea, she said, was to avoid going in a circle.
“The idea,” Colm said, “is to find the way out.”
“The idea,” Quinn added, “is to stay alive. And m-m-maybe f-find something to eat. I’m starving.”
Colm fished in his sack for his last apple and handed it over. Quinn took it eagerly.
“I wouldn’t worry,” Lena said. “We’ve been down here for some time now and haven’t seen anything remotely dangerous. I’m guessing the place is deserted.”
Quinn reached out and clutched Colm’s arm as a shrill screech, like the sound a wounded animal might make, came from their left.
“That doesn’t sound deserted,” Colm said. “Maybe we should go right this time.”
Lena looked like she wanted to disagree, but instead she nodded and turned right, Colm following behind her. Stay behind the big guy, he thought to himself. That was Finn’s advice. He just hadn’t said that the big guy might be a girl. Or that the girl would have such brilliant red hair.
They continued deeper, away from the screeching, Colm walking on tiptoe. He listened for sounds. He watched for traps. He inspected the walls for levers or pulleys or anything vaguely mechanical, something that might trigger a secret door or a falling rock. He wasn’t sure why he was doing these things or what, exactly, he was even looking for, but his instincts—honed by so many years of sibling torture—had kicked in. Quinn held on to Colm’s belt strap the way Colm used to do with his father when he was three. He had finished the apple.
“So you say you’re a mage,” Colm whispered behind him. “That means you cast spells and stuff?”
“I’m n-n-not qu-qu-quite a mage yet. I’m only a m-m-m-m—”
“Mageling. Yes. But even a mageling must know some magic, right? I mean, you could maybe fill these tunnels with light or see through the walls or even maybe teleport us all out of here,” Colm suggested.
Quinn shook his head emphatically, eyes somehow growing even wider. “Oh, you don’t want me to do that,” he said.
“No, you really don’t,” Lena seconded from up ahead.
“I t-t-tried t-teleporting my cat once. Poor F-F-F-Friskers. All that was left was her t-t-t— her t-t-t— her—”
“Tail?” Colm guessed.
“Toes,” Quinn said. “Four little sets of toes. C-c-claws and all. And all the rest . . . p-p-poof.”
Quinn let go of Colm’s belt long enough to make an imitation of a cat exploding, then latched back on. Colm decided that was enough talk of spells. He focused his attention forward and then ran smack into Lena’s backside.
“Sshhh!” she hissed. “Hear that?”
Colm listened. He could hear something coming from up the hall. It sounded like someone singing. Soft and melodic. Much better than the screeching they had left behind. Colm thought of Finn humming on their way out of Felhaven. Maybe it was him. “Maybe this is the end,” he said.
“Or maybe it’s a trap,” Lena countered, but even as she said it, she smiled, as if a trap were preferable to an exit. Beside Colm, the mageling started to shiver, but Lena Proudmore was already moving in the direction of the sound, torch in one hand, her makeshift stone dagger in the other. The three of them turned the corner.
They found themselves staring into a small chamber, lit with another torch. There was no ogre, but there was something. Another girl, her features sharper and even more angled than Lena’s. She had skin the color of tree bark and short black tufts of hair that were cinched with all manner of thread and twine, making little horns jutting out in all directions. She wore a cloak, much the same as Finn’s, save hers was brown and spilled out behind her as she sat cross-legged on the floor, humming and admiring something in her hand.
“Is that a spider?” Lena whispered, but the girl in the room heard her and turned. Startled, she threw up her hands, and the spider she’d been holding somersaulted in the air. It hit the ground, then gathered its legs back underneath it and scurried off into the shadows.
“Now look what you’ve done,” the stranger said. “You scared Mr. Tickletoes.”
The girl with the spiky hair turned and crawled after the spider on her hands and knees, refusing to say another word until she found him, despite Lena’s repeatedly asking her who she was and how she had gotten down there. Finally, when the spider had been coaxed back into her open palm, the girl stood up and addressed them.
“Greetings. My name is Serene. I am a child of the woods.”
“Oh, great. A squirrel hugger,” Quinn mumbled. Colm couldn’t tell why the boy stuttered sometimes and not others, and he didn’t know what “squirrel hugger” meant, but judging by Quinn’s tone, it wasn’t necessarily something to be proud of.
Lena stepped forward, bathing the girl in torchlight. She didn’t appear to be armed in any way. Her shoes, Colm noticed, were barely more than a single plank of wood strapped with twine (his father wouldn’t approve). Her underclothes were threadbare, lacking ornamentation of any kind. She did, however, have tattoos scrawled down the length of her forearms. They looked like tree roots weaving up toward her elbows.
“You’re a druid?” Lena asked.
“No,” the girl said. “I mean, yes, I suppose, theoretically, but not technically, no. I haven’t passed the ritual yet. I was supposed to, except I couldn’t because . . . well . . . it was just so big, and with those teeth and everything . . . and why’d you have to go and scare Mr. Tickletoes like that?”
“Mr. Tickletoes?”
Serene ran a finger along the back of the spider crouched in her hand. “It’s all right, Mr. Tickletoes,” she cooed to it. “I won’t let these people hurt you.”
“She’s crazy,” Quinn muttered beneath his breath. Colm nodded. Last he checked, spiders didn’t even have toes.
“She’s a natureling,” Lena corrected. “She can talk to animals. Plants too, probably.”
The other girl, Serene, continued to whisper to the arachnid curled up in her palm. The druid turned and cocked her head. “Mr. Tickletoes wants to know if you intend to squash him.”
Lena shook her head. “I am Lena Proudmore. This is Quinn Frostfoot and Colm . . . something or other. We were all three thrown into this dungeon, probably just like you. I promise we are not here to squash Mr. . . .”
“Tickletoes,” Colm whispered.
“Right. Whatever,” Lena said. “Honestly, we are just looking for the way out.”
“How fortuitous,” Serene sang, her green eyes sparkling. “Mr. Tickletoes and I were just talking about that before you showed up. He says he knows the way out. He can show us, can’t you, Mr. Tickletoes?”
In response, the spider crawled to the edge of the dark-skinned girl’s fingers and lowered itself to the ground with its silky cord. Then it scurried across the floor and out into the hall, passing too close to Quinn, who jumped back instinctively. Serene leaped up and brushed right past them as well, pausing only to look behind her.
“Well, come on, then! Hurry!”
Colm looked at Lena, who shrugged. “What are you waiting for?” she asked. “Follow the spider.”
Colm did. Technically he followed the barbarian, who followed the druid, who followed the spider . . . though, in truth, apparently, Lena wasn’t really a barbarian yet, and Serene wasn’t really a druid yet, and Quinn, who still hung on to Colm’s belt strap, wasn’t really a mage.
But it hardly mattered, as Colm was still little more than the son of a shoe cobbler. The important thing, he reminded himself, was that he wasn’t alone. Besides, the newest addition to their party seemed friendly. She was certainly talkative.
“I should have expected it. You can’t fail your druidic rites twice and not face some sort of consequence. But I had no idea how truly horrible it would be in a dungeon without grass or trees or light. There isn’t even any moss down here. If it weren’t for Mr. Tickletoes, I would have gone crazy. But he told me not to worry. That I wasn’t the first person to be stuck down in these tunnels, and that it was always nice for him to have someone to talk to as well. Did you know he recently became a father? Three hundred beautiful babies.”
Colm shuddered. He thought eight sisters was a lot.
“I should have passed the trial. It’s not that I didn’t want to talk to the bear,” Serene continued. “I understand how important it is. After all, what good is being a druid if you can’t commune with all of nature? But let’s face it, Nature can be downright frightening sometimes. Have you seen a bear’s claws? They’re as long as my fingers!”
“She doesn’t take a breath,” Quinn whispered in Colm’s ear.
“Probably comes from talking to trees,” Colm whispered back. “She’s used to having to keep up both sides of a conversation.”
“It’s mostly about the size, I think. And the teeth. I told Mr. Tickletoes how much I enjoyed his company and that he was much easier to talk to than wolves or panthers or anything, and that, honestly, I see no point in trying to converse with anything bigger than a bunny. Regular chatterboxes, rabbits. Hard to get a word in.”
“I c-c-can’t imagine,” Quinn remarked.
Colm looked down at the floor, where the spider was moving as fast as its spindly legs would carry it. The darkness was overbearing, and the chill bit into his skin, and there was still this lingering feeling that they weren’t alone. Yet there was something about being down here, underneath the surface, ferreting out the exit, that made him tingle. It was exciting and terrifying, and for a moment he imagined what Tye Thwodin, the young blacksmith’s apprentice, had felt when he fell into a sinkhole and came face-to-face with his first ogre so many years ago. He thought about the pockets full of jewels. What if there was some kind of treasure down here as well? Maybe they should take a look around. “You don’t think . . . ,” Colm started to say, but stopped as Serene bent down to pick up their eight-legged guide. She brought it up to her ear and frowned.
The Dungeoneers Page 8
