At Charka’s urging, Jaikus lent Seward a shoulder as they made ready to leave. Reneeke, with rope still secured about the middle, took lantern in hand and directed its light into the opening as he approached. Therin he discovered a tunnel extending outward at a slightly upward slant. Narrower by half than the previous passageways encountered, the tunnel continued past the reach of the lantern.
“Looks like an escape route,” Charka commented as he came to stand beside his Springer.
Reneeke nodded. “And unlikely to be trapped, wouldn’t you think?”
“Yes, I would. But then I wouldn’t trust my life to that assumption either. Be careful.”
Flashing him a half-grin, Reneeke stepped through the opening and made his way through the tunnel.
Charka followed, all the while keeping a firm grip upon the rope, just in case Reneeke ran afoul of another trap. Behind him came Lady Kate, with Jaikus aiding the still much weakened Seward.
The tunnel continued its upward slant for a good hundred feet before coming to a dead end. Attached to the stone wall at the end was a sliding bar whose end was firmly ensconced within a receptacle cavity in the wall on the right.
Getting the go-ahead from Charka, Reneeke slid the bar free of the cavity, and pushed on the stone wall. It slid open several inches before coming to a stop. Sunlight filtered in through the newly formed opening.
“It is an escape route,” he concluded. For a moment, he stood with face upraised, reveling in the sun’s warmth.
With Charka lending his strength, he and his Springer managed to push the wall far enough to allow for their passage. They discovered that the secret exit had been built as part of a wall, less than thirty feet from where they originally began their exploration earlier in the day.
“We made it!” Jaikus exclaimed jubilantly.
Charka glanced to the sun. “Still have several hours left.”
“You can’t be serious,” Lady Kate objected. “Seward is in no condition to continue rooting around through ancient buildings.”
Turning a questioning look toward his man, Charka asked, “How about it?”
Legs trembling, dots flashing before his eyes from the exertion of having traversed the tunnel on their way out, panting and feeling as if he was on the verge of passing out at any minute, Seward replied, “Sure. Let’s go.”
All it took was a glance and Charka could tell by Seward’s pale countenance and the sweat dotting his brow that he was at his end. The welfare of his man outweighed the possibility of recovering further treasure. There was always next time. “You’re right, Kate. We’ll return to camp.”
With the prospect of triggering traps now no longer a concern, Reneeke untied himself from the rope. Then after returning it back to Charka, went to lend his aid in supporting Seward.
“At least this trip wasn’t a total loss,” Charka stated as they left the site of the recently explored ruins. “We did recover a few items that will bring a coin or two.”
“Thanks to Reneeke,” Lady Kate added.
The Springer shrugged, or at least as well as he could with Seward’s arm draped across his shoulders. “It was nothing.”
“Nothing? I would hardly call gems, rings, and new sword for yourself, nothing.”
“I suppose. But those aren’t the treasures I’m glad to have brought out with us.”
“Oh?” she asked. “You have something else?”
“You know you are supposed to inform Charka of any treasure you find?” Seward’s voice was raspy from exhaustion.
Reneeke smiled. “I am referring to my life, and Jaikus’. Going in, it seemed one or both of us were doomed to not return.”
“You can thank Seward for that,” Charka explained. “If not for his current condition, we would even now still be delving into the unknown.”
They found that their camp had remained undisturbed. Everything was exactly as they left it.
“Master Hymal hasn’t returned?” Jaikus observed.
Lady Kate shook her head. “We won’t see him until just before dawn. That is when he normally returns.”
She directed the two Springers to bring Seward near the fire-ring and lay him down.
“I tell you, my strength is coming back,” Seward complained.
During the last half hour of their return, Seward had been blustering about how he no longer needed to be coddled, that he could walk on his own. It hadn’t been until they allowed him to make the attempt, and the ensuing crash to the ground, that he had finally ceased his squawking. Now however, his objections at having to rest resurfaced.
Lady Kate knelt beside him. Then just as she had before, she placed her hand on his chest. “If you can get up, I’ll leave you alone.”
Time had rejuvenated his strength to the point where he managed to gain a sitting position against her efforts to keep him down. “Perhaps you are no longer in such a poor condition after all.”
Pale from the exertion, Seward breathed a bit harder than he should. As sweat once again formed upon his brow, he said with some forced bravado, “See.”
She gave him a smile. “Just don’t go wandering off and collapse.”
He knocked her hand from where it still rested on his chest. “I’m not a baby that needs to be looked after.” Pulling his flask from out of his pack, he took a long drink.
Lady Kate glanced over to Charka. “I think he’ll live.”
“He better,” their leader replied. “I don’t fancy having to haul his carcass back through the Swamp.”
Draining the last of the water, Seward flashed him an annoyed look. “You won’t have to.”
“Good.” Charka had just settled down and begun breaking out some rations when the shadows of his two Springers fell upon him. Looking up, he glanced to Jaikus who was slightly more forward than Reneeke. “Yes?”
“We, uh,” Jaikus said before pausing a moment to clear his throat. “We were wondering if you wouldn’t mind if me and Reneeke did a little more exploring.”
“Haven’t you lads had enough for one day?”
“We thought to have a look through that building I investigated this morning.”
Acquiring a stern look, Charka’s glance passed from one Springer to the other, then he chuckled. “I suppose you can’t get into too much trouble, seeing as how we have already gone through there a couple of times. It should be safe.”
Jaikus’ eyes lit up. “Thank you.”
Charka nodded. “Be back by sundown.”
“We will,” he assured their leader. Then indicating for Reneeke to follow, Jaikus said, “Come on, Rene.”
As they rushed off to explore on their own, Lady Kate moved to sit next to Charka. “Think they will find anything?”
“No. But I well understand the need compelling them.” He watched the pair disappear before starting in on a package of trail rations.
Before they entered through what Jaikus now understood to be a window, Reneeke insisted they secure themselves together with one of their ropes. When it looked as if Jaikus was about to object, Reneeke reminded him that the rope had already saved his life once. “Despite Charka’s assurance that this building is secure, I would feel better if we used the rope.”
Jaikus gave in and tied the rope around his middle.
Since the lantern had remained back at camp, they each lit one of their torches supplied by Bella. Then with Jaikus taking the lead, they entered the building and quickly passed through the room with the mural depicting a Keep under siege. After that, he made a beeline for the darkened area that earlier he had figured to be a way down. He wasn’t disappointed. A spiral series of steps led to the unknown depths below.
“Isn’t this great?” he asked as he quickly began taking the steps down. The sheer ancientness of the place made him giddy with excitement.
Reneeke nodded. “Yeah.” In the back of his mind, he knew they wouldn’t find anything as Charka and his crew had already covered this area. But there was still an element of thrill in the hunt.
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They descended the steps to the next level, only to discover they continued still farther. “Let’s see how far down we can go,” Jaikus suggested.
Shrugging, Reneeke replied, “Sure.”
After giving the room on this new level only a cursory examination, Jaikus continued down the steps to the third level. Again, the steps continued down where they ended at the fourth and Jaikus pressed on.
“We’re quite a ways down now,” Reneeke stated as he left the steps and entered the fourth level. Jaikus simply nodded as he took a quick look around.
The room was of average size with a single doorway looming in one wall. Naught but dust and a carcass left behind by a long ago scavenger was to be found. Jaikus moved to the doorway and passed through into a hallway lined with doorways spaced every twenty feet.
Pausing at the first, he moved his torch within the room and saw where dirt had cascaded through a window from the outside to form a large mound. A brief glance at the rest of the room revealed nothing of interest.
Moving on, he encountered further rooms that must have been located along the outer perimeter of the building as each bore windows and held similar mounds of earth. After the tenth such room, they encountered another series of steps leading down. Jaikus glanced to Reneeke who nodded for him to continue.
They descended deeper beneath the surface; making their way down to the fifth level, then the sixth, until finally coming out into a room on the seventh.
“Can you believe it, Rene? We’ve come down almost a hundred feet.”
“I wonder how much farther until we reach what would have been ground level in Sythal’s time?”
“I don’t know.”
Level seven was little different than the ones preceding it. The only real difference was that the passageway leading from the room was slightly wider. Such a change could possibly indicate that they were getting close to the original “ground level.”
Not far after leaving the room, they came upon a gaping hole where the floor should have been. The hole was roughly the same size as the trap that had attempted to drop Jaikus to his death. Moving to the edge, they peered down into the shadowy depths below.
“Think there could be treasure down there like last time?”
Reneeke shrugged. “Possibly.”
Jaikus laid his torch so the burning end extended past the lip of the opening. “Lower me down.”
Reneeke set his torch down as well, then grasped the rope. Once Jaikus had swung his lower half from the passageway and into the opening, Reneeke lowered him down.
Jaik grabbed his torch as he fully entered the pit.
This trap’s shaft wasn’t nearly as deep as the other, merely fifteen feet. Aside from the two-dozen, foot and a half barbed spikes set in the floor of the shaft to impale the unwary, there was naught to find but a single, human skull skewered by one of the spikes.
Disappointed, Jaikus hollered up to Reneeke, “Nothing here. Lift me back up.” As he neared the top, he heard Reneeke say, “Can’t expect to find treasure all the time.”
“No. But it would be nice to bring something away.”
“If you expect to do that, we first need to find an area Charka has yet to explore.” Reaching down, he took Jaikus’ hand and hauled him the rest of the way out.
“How do you propose we do that?”
Reneeke shrugged. “Haven’t a clue.” He reclaimed his torch.
Leaping across the opening, they continued down to the next doorway. There, they discovered another windowed room full of dirt. Only this time, the window was not completely clogged with earth. In the lower left corner, a small hole had been bored out by what may have been some small, burrowing animal, and not that long ago either. For beneath the hole, loose dirt cascaded its way to the floor. Jaikus entered the room to give the hole a more thorough inspection.
He was no stranger to gophers, moles, and other burrowing animals, they were enemy number one when you lived on a farm. Though he couldn’t tell exactly which one had made the hole, he was certain that the hole couldn’t have been more than a day old.
Moving the torch so its light could pierce the hole’s dark interior in full measure, he peered down its length. Three feet in, something glittered in the torchlight. Excitement!
“There’s something in there!” Jaikus cried.
“What?” Stepping closer, Reneeke tried to see what had caused Jaikus’ excitement. When his friend moved aside to allow him to peer into the small tunnel, he saw where the glittering object was still buried within the dirt filling the window. That only a very small portion was visible. However, that small portion glittered like gold.
Jaikus stuck the end of his torch in the pile of earth beneath the window. “Give me a hand,” he said as he grabbed a rock and began scrapping dirt from out of the window.
Picking up a flat rock suitable for excavation, Reneeke set to with gusto. “I bet Charka never knew this was here.”
“No way,” Jaikus agreed. Excited with the untold possibilities of what it could be, he scrapped with fevered enthusiasm.
Dirt flew and the pile beneath the window grew larger. The hole widened until they were finally able to excavate the dirt surrounding the glittering object. It was revealed to be a hand, a human hand.
As more dirt was removed, the hand turned into an arm. The arm in turn was attached to an upper torso. Removing still more dirt revealed a head attached to the torso.
“It’s a statue,” Reneeke announced. Covered in dirt, his dust-tinged face streaked with rivulets of sweat, he grinned. “I don’t think we’ll be able to carry it out, Jaik.”
“What do you mean?”
“A statue of that size, made entirely of gold, would weigh far too much for us to move, let alone haul it up eight flights of steps.”
“Oh, come on. It can’t be that heavy!” Encouraging his friend to move aside with a well placed nudge, Jaikus crawled into the recently excavated cavity and grasped the hand. He shook it, causing clods of dirt to be dislodged. “See?” he said. “I can move it.” Then, giving it one last shake, he started backing out of the cavity when the hand moved.
In stunned silence, Jaikus watched as the portion of the statue they had thus far uncovered shook, then toppled backward. He could hear a solid thud as the statue came to land somewhere below.
“Rene!” Jaikus shouted.
“What did you do?”
“I…I don’t know. Hand me one of the torches.”
When Reneeke passed him the burning brand, Jaikus climbed further into the hole with torch held before him. “Oh man, Reneeke.” Voice filled with awe, he glanced back over his shoulder. “You have got to see this.” Scooting forward, he disappeared into the hole.
A circle of over a dozen statues, each looking to be constructed entirely of gold, leaned toward a central point at a roughly forty-five degree slant. Their upper ends had come to rest against the bole of what appeared to have been a massive tree. Its upper reaches couldn’t be seen as an earthen dome had formed over the backs of the statues, leaving an opened area beneath.
Half a dozen other, smaller statues were either standing, or lying, within the dome’s interior. Three others were partially encased within the earthen wall of the dome, just like the first one had been before Jaikus dislodged it, causing it to topple over.
Sliding down the embankment to the area below, Reneeke said, “This is incredible.” The reflected light from the golden silhouettes gave the area a surreal glow.
“How much do you suppose these would be worth?”
“More than a man could ever hope to spend,” Reneeke replied. “Though I doubt if any of these could be brought to the surface.” Stepping toward a small statue of a fawn, he tried lifting it. Strain though he might, all he managed to accomplish was to rock it slightly on its base. “Far too heavy.”
“Too bad.”
Jaikus went to the bole of the tree and was surprised to find it rock-like. “This is stone!”
“It is?” Lea
ving the fawn statue, Reneeke joined his friend at the tree. Running his hand along its surface, he nodded. “It sure enough is.”
“A tree statue?” Jaikus questioned.
Shrugging, Reneeke replied, “Why not?”
Turning his gaze toward the statues forming the ribcage of the dome, he shuddered at the thought that they were watching them. Why he felt that way he didn’t know.
“We must be at ground level,” Reneeke surmised. “This may have been a garden, or perhaps a plaza.”
“I wish there was more here than just statues,” Jaikus complained. “A ring, or better yet, a sword like yours would be great.”
“True. Though we couldn’t keep it.”
“Why not?”
“Anything we find belongs to the group,” Reneeke explained. Jaikus made a rude noise. Reneeke fixed his gaze upon his friend. “That is what we agreed to, and that is what we will do.”
Jaikus frowned, but finally nodded beneath Reneeke’s withering gaze. “I suppose.”
They spent some time going over the statues and testing the earthen wall of the dome, though not too intrusively. The last thing they wanted was for the dome to lose cohesion and crash down upon their heads. When they failed to turn up anything, they made their way back through the window.
“Sythal must have been a great place in its day,” Reneeke observed. Following Jaikus from the room, he allowed him to take the lead.
“You may be right.” Not really thinking about what his friend was saying, Jaikus instead had visions of hidden areas secreted in the building’s basement. “Wonder if we can find another stairway leading down?” he mused. A short time later, they did.
It was after coming across what had once been the entrance hall. Most of the large room was choked with dirt, having come through the massive opening that at one time held a pair of double doors. They followed one of the several passageways still opened to them from the hall and came to a fair sized room to which three other, smaller rooms were attached. It was in the middle room of the three that they discovered the stairwell; a flight of narrow, stone steps descending in a tight spiral.
Before they went down, Reneeke took a moment to study the floor area surrounding the stairwell entrance. When he saw the holes where hinges had once been attached, he nodded to himself. “I thought so.”
“You thought what?” questioned Jaikus.
“Oh, that there had been a trapdoor. Whether it was hidden at one time or not is hard to tell.” He flashed Jaikus a grin. “I like it when I’m right.”
“Aren’t you always?”
Reneeke laughed. “You know me better than that.”
Jaikus joined in with laughter of his own. “Even still, you are right more often than I am.”
“You simply need to take the time to see what’s before you. Why, just take a look…”
“Not again, please,” he interjected, cutting his friend off. Reneeke had for years tried to explain how and why he did things, explanations that did little to improve the way Jaikus saw the world. He simply figured Reneeke was smarter than he about such things and left it at that.
Jaikus took the lead as they headed down to what he hoped to be the dungeon, or basement. What treasures could be waiting in the dark for a pair of intrepid adventurers to uncover? Jewels? Gold? Magic rings? How he had always wished to have a magic ring all his own.
Spiraling around three times, they finally came out at a passageway extending straight ahead. As they made their way from the stairwell, Jaikus’ torch illuminated something they hadn’t seen before in all of Sythal: a door.
True, there wasn’t much left of it. Constructed entirely out of metal as it had been, the door sat skewed in a doorway with a covering of rust reminiscent of an animal’s fur coat. Jaikus drew his knife and tapped upon the door with the tip. The door disintegrated with the first blow to collapse in a cloud of rust.
Taken by surprise, Jaikus jumped backward as the cloud of rust spread throughout the passageway. “I guess that’s why we haven’t come across any other doors,” he surmised.
“Yeah,” Reneeke agreed.
Once the rust cloud settled, Jaikus moved to the doorway and extended his torch to the room beyond. As he made to enter, Reneeke grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back. “We need to be extra careful from here on out.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think Charka and the others ever made it down here,” he explained. When confusion appeared on his friend’s face, he explained. “The door, Jaik. If they had come this way, they would have been the ones to have caused its collapse, not you. I seriously doubt if Charka would have forwent taking a look at this room because he didn’t want to ruin a door.”
“You mean, there could be treasure down here?” he asked excitedly.
Reneeke nodded. “Treasure, and traps. Keep in mind, Jaik, that we don’t have any healing scrolls or potions should things go badly for us. And it’s a long way back to the surface.”
Jaikus took a moment to digest that. When he was done, he said, “Let’s go until we find something. Then we’ll head back to the surface.”
“Okay. It’s probably getting late anyway. Just be careful.”
“You worry too much.”
Reneeke’s eyebrows creased in a frown as he asked, “After what we’ve been through today…?”
Turning back to the doorway, Jaikus stepped over the remains of the door and into the room. He could feel tension on the rope as Reneeke kept a firm hold on it in the event Jaikus ran into trouble.
Evenly spaced recesses dotted the wall across from the doorway as well as the walls to the right and left. Each wall held four, two rows of two, one atop the other. In the dim torchlight, they discerned that each recess contained something. Eager to discover what awaited them, Jaikus crossed to the quad in the wall opposite the doorway.
Three held mounds of red powder, the remains of metal having long succumbed to rust. The fourth held a crude black stone. As it was almost an exact duplicate of the stone Lady Kate’s spell had indicated was cursed back in the underground room, Jaikus decided to play it safe and pass it by. After all, there were still eight more recesses to check.
Next he headed over to the right side and found only disappointment. Each of those four recesses held nothing but mounds of powder. One mound still retained the shape of the object it had once been: a small, curved-bladed knife. Jaikus blew on the knife’s shape and caused a small cloud of rust to fill the recess.
On his way over to the left side of the room, he glanced to where Reneeke waited in the doorway. “Nothing,” he announced. “Not one thing has survived intact except one of those black, lumpy stones like what that golden naked-man statue had held in the palm of his hand.”
“The cursed stone?”
Jaikus nodded. “I thought it best not to touch it.”
“Good thinking. We’ll have to let Charka know it’s down here so maybe he could recover it on his next trip.”
The remaining four recesses held but four more piles of rust as well. Jaikus was not happy. He had figured to come away with at least something after all this.
“Are you ready to head back up to the surface?” Reneeke inquired.
“Not yet, no,” he replied as he made his way from the room and re-entered the passageway. “Let’s first see what’s at the end.” Taking the lead once more, Jaikus proceeded down the passageway.
The next room yielded nothing of interest, and the one after that was just as lacking in treasure. Hoping the third to hold something of interest, he hurried along, a little too fast as it turned out. For just before reaching the doorway, the floor fell away beneath him.
Screaming, his arms and legs flailed wildly before the rope snapped taut. The suddenness of the halt brought his outcry to an end with an, "Oof." As he crashed against the side of the shaft, the torch slipped from his grip.
“Are you okay?” Reneeke’s voice came from above.
It took a second or two before he could ge
t his wind back. “A bit sore around the middle from the rope, but I would rather have that, than hitting the bottom.” Glancing downward, he saw where the torch struck the bottom some forty feet below. This was a deep one!
“Do you want me to pull you up?”
Jaikus searched the floor at the bottom before answering. He could see the barbed spikes protruding upward to snare the unlucky that ran afoul of the trap. In the flickering torchlight, it looked as if there might be something down there, but it was hard to tell. The shadows kept shifting as the torch’s flame flickered wildly.
Maybe it was his turn to be observant, or perhaps it was simply the years spent with Reneeke that caused a thought to cross his mind. “Rene? Should a torch be burning quietly, or wildly when it sits at the bottom of a hole?”
“It should burn fairly steady. Why?”
“The torch slipped from my hand and is now lying down there. The flame is whipping around pretty good.”
“The only thing that would cause such an occurrence is a breeze, and you don’t get those at the bottom of a hole,” Reneeke explained.
“Unless there is some sort of access at the bottom, like a tunnel?”
There was quiet for a moment before Reneeke, replied, “I take it you want me to lower you down?”
“Is there enough rope? It’s still forty feet to the bottom.”
Another silence, then, “I think so. It will be close.”
“Then lower me down.”
Chapter 12