CHAPTER 38

Essa leads us down the inner corridor, walking in front of the group with her sword unsheathed and the group’s remaining bow slung across her shoulders with a few arrows stuck in a belt. Baz, the injured girl tending to the weapons, stayed behind on account of her foot, and Vidmo, the watcher boy, was left to guard her and the remaining supplies. Beyond Essa, the expedition is composed of Hilde, holding her short sword somewhat nervously, and then me and Rev with her spear and shield. Everyone insisted I traded my dagger for a short sword, though I couldn’t really see what the point was. Or rather, whatever the point may be, I was unlikely to get it into an enemy unless they tripped and fell on it.

But we’re all on edge, and the weapons serve to offset a little of that. It feels like we’re being watched, like every shadow can contain an ambush. It isn’t clear what Metalface’s splinter group’s plan is. After the heated discussion when they picked up and left, Essa assumed they’d gone to try their luck in the upper levels. Instead, they’d stayed, and they’d already attacked Rev and Hilde.

But the inner corridor is so far empty. We go down the same path I took. At one point, Hilde points out a passage I hadn’t noticed before, a hole half-hidden in the shadows cast by the braziers.

“That’s the stairwell we took,” she says. “It winds and twists, and it’s too narrow for comfort, but eventually it leads to the place we got separated. By the way: good job surviving a fatal flaw. Nearly killed me with worry.”

“Just trying my best.” I grin, patting the short loop of magical rope coiled around my waist with a lot more confidence than I feel.

Essa brings us to the room with the icy sword, clearly an item she’s had her eye on. The trap, she says, isn’t much of a trap at: step in a random spot and a magical, invisible blade slices down at you. The corpse I spotted earlier lies on the sand next to the entrance as testament to the invisible blade’s efficacy. Essa makes it clear she’s not convinced that Rue can be anything resembling useful.

“Prove her wrong,” I whisper. He buzzes in the affirmative.

I throw Rue inside. As soon as he touches the sand the air shifts, there’s a strange sound of air rushing through a very tight spot, and then a line cuts through the sand, displacing it and blinding us momentarily.

Essa gives a little intake of breath.

“Blast,” Rue buzzes.

He digs himself out and shakes the sand away before slithering to the short plinth the sword is resting on. After a few attempts, he finds the blade is too heavy to dislodge. Dragging it over is out of the question, and I’m too afraid to risk the rope against the trap. Rue is forced to return empty-tendriled, buzzing in frustration amid a flurry of invisible blades that don’t leave him with as much as a nick.

For the next attempt, Reva suggests something smaller but potentially useful. It’s only a few rooms past this one: in a narrow, straight room, with many thin holes dappled along the sides. At end, rests a small, round, and very polished metal buckler.

“The world’s most obvious dart trap,” I say out loud.

“Can Rue drag the buckler?” Essa asks.

“If he can’t, at least he can loop a rope around it. But he can’t climb that. I’m not sure I can throw him that far, either.”

The buckler lies on a shelf carved into the wall itself.

Essa breathes out in frustration, but it’s Hilde who speaks:

“You don’t need to throw him. Can he grip an arrow?”

I don’t even need to ask Rue before answering. He’s a natural gripper. Gripping is what he does best. My mangled wrist attests to that.

“Oh!” Rev nods to Hilde, a glimmer of understand in her face. She turns to Essa with a mischievous grin.

“Didn’t you mention you were the best shot in your village? Assuming you weren’t just trying to impress me, of course.”

Essa narrows her eyes.

“I said I was a fairly good archer.” She looks at Rue appraisingly. “Is he very heavy?”

I extend my arm and Rue travels down the length of it, settling on Essa gloved palm. She moves her hand up and down with a calculating look before turning to my sister.

“I can do it.”

“I like confidence, but I prefer to withhold praise until I see results,” Rev says, barely concealing her enjoyment.

Essa doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead, she stands in front of the door and pulls out an arrow, which she Rue climbs onto. She nocks it and tests the weight, moving the bow in circles. Then she kneels, takes aim, holds the draw tight for a second…

“Can you tell him to stop the buzzing? It’s making it hard to aim.”

I don’t need to translate; the low but ever-present hum dwindles, quietens, though it doesn’t die completely.

Essa releases.

Rue flies through the air in a sudden burst of vibration. The arrow curves gracefully just under the vault of the ceiling and hits the buckler, which explodes with light, blinding us all. We curse, hands over our eyes, and blink fiercely to try and dissipate the afterimages. I can’t help but notice how Essa immediately takes hold of her sword and turns to the corridor, not chancing a surprise attack when we’re at our most vulnerable. More clatter comes from inside the room, though I can only see shadows. I tell myself that while I can hear the thrumming buzz then Rue is all right.

“Come on, Rue!” Hilde says. “You’re nearly there!”

“You can see?” I ask.

“’Course,” she answers. “Old mine habit: don’t keep both eyes completely open at the same time.” I see the shape of her turn to me briefly. “Or… that can happen.”

“Then watch the corridor!” Essa hisses. “The blob can take care of itself.”

Rue’s buzz surges with what I think is irritation. He sounds close enough that I can crouch and lay my good hand on the sand and a few moments later feel his oozie exterior.

“Well done, Rue!”

I pass the buckler to Rev and place Rue in his favorite spot on my shoulder.

“Darts give you trouble?”

“Not beyond pushing me this way and that,” he answers modestly. “It’s hard to drag anything in this sand. There’s no purchase.”

“Well, just tell me if you think a trap is too much for you.”

But he doesn’t seem worried. It takes a few more seconds before everyone can see properly, and a few tries before we find out what the buckler does. It’s a simple device: hit its metal surface, the part that’s aimed at the enemy, and a burst of light explodes from it, with the results we were already familiar with. It apparently needs a little recovery time between bursts, but other than that it promises to be useful against the big lizard.

Always at the front and alert, Essa brings us to look at a few more rooms. The traps we see don’t vary greatly: they activate when someone enters the room, and they tend to kill quickly and decisively with some variation of piercing, smashing, or slicing the intruder dead.

The difficulty of going around a trap seems to influence the power of the reward. One of the rooms we look into is taller than the rest, and inside a bladed pendulum swings from side to side, blocking an empty plinth as it arcs. Essa says this is where she found her sword: well balanced, artfully made, and as magic as a brick. Better than the weapons available in the untrapped rooms, but, since all one had to do was to time their jump with the swing of the pendulum, not remarkable.

In another room a fierce wind blows from holes in one wall, pushing any intruders against the spikes set into the opposite end. Rue’s response to this is to let himself be pushed, slither around the harmless spikes, and come up to the reward on the other side. The prize is a single gauntlet – every item on this level seems to be either a weapon or to be used alongside one – and since it keeps getting stuck on the spikes we’re forced to get creative: we apply a drop of magic glue to the end of a length of regular rope and get Rue to carry it back to the gauntlet. As soon as he connects the two, all we have to do is pull the rope to gain a new magic gauntlet, black metal veined with red. Essa tries it on and manages to bend the metal in the brazier with just a little pressure.

It’s as we explore the capabilities of the items we already possess that a plan begins to form. Blinding shields and strength gauntlets are nice addendums, but they’re not going to solve our drake problem, which Essa still wants to tackle head-on. But weapons aren’t the answer, I realize, while everything else can be. The pieces come slowly, but they arrange themselves quite simply the more we use and understand the tools at our disposal.

For example: two people pulling from opposite directions as hard as they can are unable to undo the connection the glue created – cutting the rope is the only way to free it from the gauntlet. Furthermore, the glue doesn’t dry unless it’s pressed between two surfaces. The magic rope, in its resting state about as big as my arm, can be extended to enormous lengths, and it also attaches securely to an object if thrown, and releases when commanded, like I inadvertently discovered.

We turn back after a while, concluding that Rue can’t circumvent most of the remaining traps or that the loot involved doesn’t seem worth it. Still, after all the praise he gets from Rev, he’s left buzzing like a worker bee that found the mother of all pollen caches. As we near the pool room and the promise of safety – despite our success, no one has been able to ignore the fear of an ambush – I bring up the subject I’ve been mulling over in my mind.

“I think there’s a way we can trap the drake.”

Essa turns to look at me over her shoulder, somewhat surprised.

“We’ve talked about this,” she answers. “You can’t trap it. The only way is to fight it. That’s what the Godtouched had in mind when they designed this place.”

Her mood has steadily improved throughout this expedition, especially now that the time has come to go ahead with her plan.

“It’s not, and you can,” I insist. “We lure the drake to one of the entrances and spread the glue on the doorway. It will get stuck trying to bite one of us.”

Essa shakes her head.

“It always breathes fire first, it will—”

“Yes,” I interrupt. “We let it breathe all the fire it wants and then draw it to us when it’s expended. As soon as it touches the wall, it will be stuck.”

“Don’t make me think you a coward now, Malco,” Essa says, looking down at me. “We agreed on this plan, we collected the weapons we needed to up our chances. Now we have to face it.”

“Face it?!” I ask with an incredulous bark of a laugh. “You’re just looking to die valiantly.”

She reacts like I just slapped her, which tells me all I need to know about how close I am.

“Malco, shut up,” Rev says from behind me. “Now’s not the time.”

I ignore her.

“You can’t deal with the fact that you were leading these people when they died,” I say, feeling my cheeks flush with wramth. “Admit it: you think you deserve the same fate.”

I feel Hilde’s hand tighten on my shoulder, another warning that goes unheeded.

“You… you stupid boy,” Essa manages. She’s shaking with rage. The gauntlet clanks when she closes her fist hard.

“Everyone?” Hilde says timidly.

“…you think you know what I’m feeling? You have no idea. You walked around in the shadows, alone, with a slime for company. Don’t pretend you know what it’s like to lead. The responsibility—”

“The responsibility that you’re about to abandon—!”

“Stop!” Hilde yells.

I’m suddenly aware of the fact that I’m shouting. Images of all the death I saw course through my mind like a dam broke upriver and a whole valley is being washed away. Verra, Edd, Dako, Tale, Gaun, and all the nameless faces crushed under falling boulders, killed by monsters, or savaged by a trap. The same images seem to be crossing Essa’s mind. I blink back treacherous tears before I turn to Hilde.

“What?”

“We’re close to the pool room,” she says. There’s a strange expression on her face. Not fear, no. Dread is the word. I don’t understand, but Essa does. Her eyes widen and she bolts down the corridor, feet throwing up sand. Rev shouts and runs after her.

I look at Hilde, dumbfounded.

“You were making a lot of noise,” she says, morose. “And we’re so close. But Vidmo didn’t come to check on us.”

When it hits, I curse myself for being such a fool. All that worry about being followed and ambushed from the shadows. But Metalface’s group didn’t need to go after us. They knew where we’d been, after all.