The Dungeoneers

by Jeffery Russell

  “Clear!” she called from the bottom of the hall.

  They stepped through the arch, Durham glancing up nervously. The boulder was tucked away in a recess above the archway. The dwarves had netting up in front of it, spiked into the stone of the walls. He could see the hole in the wall near the floor where the skull trigger had been. The walls of the hall were carved with an elaborate stone relief of skeletons rampaging through a burning city and slaughtering the living. Blackened stubs remained in sconces above the carvings.

  “The fall of Tanahael,” Ruby said. “This had to have been carved before the city fell, wouldn’t it? When the tomb was made? I wonder if anyone asked any questions about it.”

  “Not this wall,” Durham said, examining the carving to the right. He pointed. “That building is in Karthor. I know because I look at it everyday from my post.” It was the Rookery, a brewery in a tower that had once housed ravens. They’d co-opted the name and mounted a stone raven statue on the roof. The raven was unmistakable on the tower depicted on the tomb wall. “He never attacked Karthor though. And that statue has only been there for the last dozen years or so.”

  Ruby pursed her lips and frowned but was silent.

  Nibbly examined it and clucked his tongue.

  “Some fine work but pretty small market for something like this. No accounting for taste though.”

  “How would you even get it out?” Durham asked.

  “Well, it’s carved into the facing rather than the native stone so it’s at least on the plausible side. We’d have to cut it into sections and restore it at its destination, all of which makes it pretty cost prohibitive. Here’s hoping Alaham liked tapestries too. Much simpler all around.”

  Durham gestured at the sconces. “Do liches need light?”

  The entire column stopped in a thoughtful pause.

  “Don’t rightly know,” Thud said. “No eyeballs. Ruby?”

  “It’s theorized that undead see, but in a different way than we do,” Ruby said. “They are usually capable of functioning in complete darkness.”

  “I don’t know much about how wood ages but those torches aren’t six hundred years old,” Durham said. “And sconces bolted to the wall indicates intent. We’re not the first ones to come through here and whomever came before was invited.”

  “Int’restin’ proposition. You’re startin’ to prove yourself right useful,” Thud said. “What makes you think they was invited?”

  “Someone had to have let them in through the front doors.”

  “Brilliant! You could be our first non-dwarf member!” Mungo said. He stroked his cat beard.

  The stone door at the bottom was wide with a split down the middle. Two great iron rings hung from it, one on each side. Ginny was scrutinizing them with her eyepiece.

  “Somethin' peculiar here,” she said. “These rings ain't fixed in tight. 'Spect they'd come right out if you gave 'em a tug.”

  “Trap?” Thud asked.

  “Probably, give us a minute.”

  Mungo trotted down to her. He had a utility belt that he wore over his shoulder, loaded with an array of metal picks and files. He selected one and began poking around the door rings with it. Ginny and Mungo began muttering back and forth, an incomprehensible string of jargon. Thud sat on the barrel and puffed at his cigar.

  Mungo had managed to insert no less than six picks around one of the ring settings before Ginny began to slowly ease one of the rings out of the door. Durham tensed, expecting something awful to happen any second. Ginny stepped back with the ring and Mungo peered into the hole left behind, holding one of the gyro lanterns up, focused in a tight beam.

  “Non-lethal,” he announced after a moment. “Apply sufficient door ambulation force to the rings, they dislocate and a metal bar drops inside. Undoubtedly secures the door to the floor via an internal slide-lock bar mechanism.”

  “Twist the rings a quarter turn and you can lock them into place,” Ginny said. “They've got this little notch on them that...”

  “That’s it?” Thud asked. “Simple one, eh? Pull the rings like normal and yer blown. Twists 'em first and they works.”

  “Affirmative,” Mungo said. “The egress is still secured from within, however.” He took a long thin bar and carefully slid it between the doors near the floor then began to slowly raise it up, coming to a stop when it was just under halfway. “Cross bar at this location,” he announced. He wiggled the end of his shim. “Twenty pounder, give or take.”

  The dwarves brought in a heavy gauge telescoping steel bar with a fork on the end. Cardamon placed it at the door and adjusted its length until the door shim rested in the fork.

  “This is gonna make a helluva clatter, sir,” Ginny said. Thud nodded.

  “Door breach positions!” he called, then turned to Durham. “That means get yerself back up there next to Ruby. I'm right behind ye.”

  They stood at the top watching as the dwarves readied. The rings were twisted and tied with ropes. The shield wall was produced and secured, Mungo and Ginny retreating behind it. One of the armored dwarves clanked his way forward to the door with a large hammer in his hand. With a grunt he brought it down hard on the shim, levering it against the fork support. A split second later there was a loud crash from behind the door.

  The dwarf dove behind the shield wall, the rest of them lined up with the crossbows at the ready. Ginny and Mungo pulled on the ropes and the doors swung open.

  The dwarves at the bottom of the hall all whistled in unison as they got their first view through the door.

  “Don't lose yer heads!” Ginny barked. “Last thing I needs is one o' you bargin' in there and gettin' impaled by somethin'.”

  “Whaddawegot Gin?” Thud called down.

  “Looks like the museum.”

  Nibbly chortled and rubbed his hands together.

  “Museum?” Durham asked.

  “Just our term for it,” Thud said, starting down the hall. “The sort of folks that build themselves tombs like this often has the notion that they gets to take all of their stuff into the afterlife as long as its buried with ‘em. Granted, if’n you’re a lichy sort and know that your afterlife is gonna take place inside the tomb I can see that bein’ a fairly practical type consideration.”

  They reached the doorway and looked in. The room was crescent-shaped, the doorway opening through the middle of the greater curve. Couches were strewn about, topped with precarious piles of crates. Chairs were stacked in a corner, piles of paintings leaning against them. Clay pots were clustered here and there amid shelves crowded with small statues and pyramids of scroll casings. Half full cans of paint, stuffed animal heads, three crutches, a few ironing boards, a tourney dummy, a rowboat hanging from the ceiling…lacking only a vendor to be a flea market. Ginny, Cardamon and Mungo were creeping through it, poking at things with sticks. There was a clear path through the room to a large double door on the other side. The door looked to be covered in gold and carved with designs. It glittered in the pixie light.

  “Form up!” Gong barked. The vanguard moved up with their shields facing the golden door. The Diplomat was rolled in, loaded and positioned.

  “Don’t want nothin’ interruptin’,” Thud said.

  Dadger kicked a clay pot, shattering it.

  “What are you doing?” Nibbly shrieked.

  “Checking to see if there’s anything in it.”

  “There is a hole in the top! Turn it upside down if you want to know what’s in it!” Nibbly glowered. “Coulda gotten a silver for that pot, ya dafty. Now you’re on pot-shaking duty. Check em all for the lich’s shrively bits. I’ll catalog the fun stuff.”

  “Gonna take a good while to sort through this lot,” Thud said. He was beaming. “Looks like this’ll put us in good financial shape for this venture though, eh?”

  “I estimates it’ll at least covers cost,” Nibbly said. “Some nice stuff but I’m not seein’ anything yet that anyone’s gonna retire on. Apart from the couches.” He laughed,
a giggle that trailed off into a sad silence when no one else joined in. “We’ll see what kind of shape it’s in,” he went on. “Pretty dry in here but them things is old. Don’t hold out much hope for them couches and the paintings is going to be pretty questionable. Statues will all be fine and there’s plenty of small ones. Sell good too. We’ll start by loading those before we gets into any of the big stuff.”

  “Do you think the phylactery might be in here somewhere?” Durham asked. “There’s a lot of vases and pots.”

  “Possible but I wouldna say likely,” Thud said. “It might seem clever to hide something like that amongst all of the other vases in here but even a group of adventurers coulda gotten this far in. I’m still havin’ a hard time believin’ that this lich is as amateur as this dungeon is makin’ him seem. Alright, Nibbly, you and your team keep working this room. Keep an eye out for a phylactery but don’t dig down for sunlight. Ginny? Mungo? Let’s have a look at that door.”

  “No dust,” Durham said.

  “Pardon, lad?”

  Durham pointed at the piles of objects in the room. “Dusty.” He pointed at the clear pathway between the doors. “No dust.”

  “Well spotted. What do ya make of it?”

  “Someone or something has been through here. Can’t say much more than that.”

  “Might be he has a skelly or two sweepin’ the place up.”

  “Seems odd that they wouldn’t dust all of the valuables also.”

  “It does, at that. Well, somethin’ to keep in mind I guess. Might make sense of somethin’ else later.”

  “Door is clear,” Ginny called. “Doesn’t even have a means of latchin’. Ornamental-like. Just pulls open.”

  “Brace one side. We’ll open the other to give us a choke-point. If there’s anything in there it already knows we’s here.”

  The vanguard had their crossbows positioned and ready. Clink was in place on The Diplomat. Ginny and Mungo hammered wedges in under the left side of the door and tied a rope to the pull ring on the right. They moved back behind the shield wall and Ginny handed Durham the end of the rope.

  “You wanna do the honors? On a three count so Gong’s crew knows what’s happenin’.”

  Durham took a deep breath.

  “One…two…THREE!” He yanked hard on the rope.

  -10-

  “Was expectin’ more skellies, really,” Thud said. They stood in the doorway, studying a room that, among its many qualities, was skeleton-free. “Think them bunch in the entry was his whole crew?”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” Ruby said. “One expects a lich to have a bit more necromantic power than that, though. Particularly since he is in possession of the Mace of Guffin.”

  “Might be a lotta pyrite. Mebbe he’s just a pretentious mummy.”

  The room was in the shape of a half-circle with a half-domed ceiling high overhead, the curved wall matching the crescent of the museum room. A tall statue stood in the middle, a robed figure in black stone with a freakishly long neck and a skull mask of gold, as if its face had been dipped in bullion. Its hands were clasped in front of it, holding a large crystal prism. A half-dozen other statues were scattered around the room, anonymous in hooded robes, each bearing a mirror.

  “Light-beam puzzle,” Ginny said. She pointed at a glimmering hole in the ceiling. “Beam from there, prob’ly. Has to be the right time of day. Or night, liches bein’ what they is. Statues have to be turned to get the beam to reflect all the way to the center.”

  “Well, run the room for traps and get Cardamon in on figgerin’ out what ‘xactly happens if the puzzle gets solved.”

  “Been a mighty slow day for the Vanguard,” Gong said as they stepped away from the door. He was leaning against the shield wall combing his beard with his fingers.

  “That’s a good thing and you know it,” Thud said. “Fightin’ is the biggest wild-card. I like all me dwarves to come out with all their bits.”

  “Is there usually more fighting?” Durham asked.

  “Depends on the type of dungeon,” Gong said. “Some have open access and just about anything can move in and set up for itself. Beasts, monsters, whatnot. Place like this, though, sealed up for however many centuries and you’re not going to see much alive in here unless there’s been a breach over time, either from outside or from beneath. Then you might get big spiders, rodents, that sort of thing. A dwarf can make a fine living just clearing rats out of dungeons.”

  “I’ve heard stories about statues coming alive,” Durham said, looking over his shoulder at the statue room.

  “You get that sort of thing when there’s a geomancer in the dungeon,” Gong said. “Or a golemancer. A Necromancer type likely wouldn’t know the first thing about getting a statue to move. Their closest trick is like we saw in the entry: sticking a skeleton in a suit of armor. Skeletons aren’t too good at moving plate mail around though. Too big for them. They rattle around inside of it too much. Makes them slow and clumsy. They do better in chainmail. We’ll be ready if those statues in there get lively but I’m not expecting that will be an issue. Gryngo will set charges up to blow them into gravel just in case and we’ll have the pickaxes standing by for anything that survives.”

  Cardamon had strolled up during the conversation and stood, waiting, hands in pockets, his half-lidded eyes making him seem chronically apathetic.

  “Center statue opens at the base,” he said, once Thud arched an eyebrow in his direction.

  “And?” Thud asked, after a few seconds of silence indicated that Cardamon had reached the end of his prepared briefing.

  Cardamon shrugged. “Dunno. I expect monsters. Can’t say until we open it. No exits from the room and no tomb yet so maybe the statue is a sarcophagus and Alaham will pop out. Maybe it’s just hiding the door.”

  “Gonna think prob’ly the latter,” Thud said.

  “Oh, and it’s been opened recently. Fresh scrapes on the floor.”

  “Hmmm,” Thud said. His eyes narrowed and he stroked his beard. Durham had noticed that when he did so he only used his fingertips, likely to avoid getting his beard hair caught in his rings. “You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”

  “Probably not,” Durham said after a suitable pause for reflective thought.

  “No dust in the walkway out there, like you said. Them torches in the hall sconces. The other rooms and halls had clear floors too. Fresh scrapes in the next room where the statues opened. Thinking you were spot on about someone havin’ been in here recently.”

  “That farmer chap didn’t mention seeing anyone though,” Cardamon said

  “Because they paid him to be silent, maybe,” Durham said. “He had new clothes. Expensive ones.”

  “Which raises the question of who would visit a lich?”

  “More importantly,” Cardamon said, “Is they still here?”

  ᴥᴥᴥ

  Everyone was in position. Shield wall arrayed, ballista aimed, precautionary explosive charges laid. Leery had been called in. Leery seemed eccentric, even among the dwarves. Instead of the kilts the rest of them wore she had a pair of trousers that were missing the legs, revealing knees and shins crisscrossed with scabs and long scars parting the hair. She had a green leather jerkin that was too small for her and wore her beard in a long braid that seemed to whip about with a life of its own.

  Her first act had been to just shine a lantern on the crystal.

  “Sometimes that works,” she said, after it didn’t. “But usually it doesn’t. Light sensitive trigger mechanisms are expensive. The light beams are likely just gilding. It’s the position of the statues that matter, like tumblers in a combination lock.”

  “The configuration to achieve proper light reflection is relatively simplistic,” Mungo said. “Shall I position the statuary?”

  Leery nodded.

  Mungo’s idea of positioning the statues turned out to be directing other dwarves on positioning the statues. In all fairness, Durham wasn’t sure whether the gnome had e
ither the height or the muscle to move them. The statues were all moved into place with no results.

  “Is that right?” Leery asked.

  “I assure you that were a beam of light to come through the ceiling aperture that it would be reflected into the central prism,” Mungo said.

  “Maybe it’s positional AND light sensitive?” Leery held up her lantern to the prism again. A grating sound rumbled through the floor. Leery somersaulted backwards through the air as a seam appeared in the base of the central statue, the halves of the base moving apart to reveal stairs leading further down. Leery rolled her way to the top of the stairs.

  “Looks like the main burial chamber,” she yelled back.

  Thud snorted skeptically.

  “Too easy,” he muttered. “Too small, too simple, too basic.”

  Mungo extended his lantern-pole into the room at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Negative adversaries. Type C Room.”

  “Send in the chickens!” Ginny called.

  The order was relayed back toward the entrance. Goin jogged in a minute later, a pole on each shoulder, a coop dangling from each end. He set the cages down behind the shield wall, removed one of the chickens and began attaching some sort of complicated harness to its head, the chicken providing a running commentary on his efforts.

  “What's he doing to them?” Durham asked.

  “Chickens is pretty useful for finding traps in cramped or cluttered areas where barrels ain’t so good,” Thud replied. “They sees somethin' outta place an' they pecks it to see if its food. The difficulty is in getting' them to go in the right direction in the first place. So Goin puts a little harness on their heads with a worm hangin' on it. Donkey an' a carrot kinda thing. Catch is that chicken's got eyes on the sides o' their nogs and don't do so hot at seein' somethin' dangling right in front of 'em. So Mungo fixed that by adding lenses o'er their eyes that reflects the carrot with li'l mirrors. Problem then was that the chicken was seein' the worm on both sides and would stand still outta pure stupid while it tried to decide which way to go. So he added a little springy mechanism thingy on top that swings the worm back and forth so the chicken only sees it one side at a time. Tha's workin' well enough to get it to run forward in a zig-zag which is random enough that it seems to get us pretty good coverage.”