Under the withering glare of their Troupe leader, Jaikus and Reneeke moved off a ways to discuss this latest development.
“We’re going to die,” Jaikus moaned.
“Everyone dies, Jaik.”
Flashing his friend an annoyed look, Jaikus spat, “Don’t start in on one of your philosophical musings. Not now.” A glance back to the others revealed them impatiently waiting for their answer.
“There is no way he’s going to put me forward for Guild membership anyway.”
“I think you are correct, Jaik. But that still doesn’t alter the fact that we are in a dire situation.”
“Rene, I don’t want to die on my first adventure!”
“Neither do I; nor on any other for that matter.”
“And for what? Just so they can get rich?”
Reneeke was silent a moment as he pondered various courses of action. Finally, he said, “I see that we have only two choices before us. First, we agree to be Springers and possibly die some grisly death at the hands of a long dead trap-setter.”
“You put that so well!”
He ignored his friend’s outburst. “Or, tell them that we renege on the contract and forge our way back to Reakla through the Swamp on our own.” He met his friend’s eyes. “You know there is no way we could even begin to make it back on our own. The Swamp would swallow us up as sure as anything.”
“So what are you saying?”
“Being Springers may be a death sentence, but at least there is the possibility, however small, that one or both of us might actually survive to see Running Brook again.”
At mention of the village where they had grown to manhood, Jaikus envisioned the worry his mother would experience should he fail to return. The thought saddened him greatly.
“It’s better than nothing,” Reneeke said.
“I don’t like it.”
“Sometimes, Jaik, life only gives you the choice between bad, and worse.”
Sighing, Jaikus nodded. “You are correct, as usual.”
Reneeke laid a hand on his friend’s back. “Come on. We may as well get this over with.”
Resolved to face the unenviable task of being Springers, the pair walked back to where the others waited.
“So? What’s your decision?” Seward asked. “Are you going to die here, or in the Swamp?”
Reneeke shot the fighter a look of annoyance. “Neither.” Then to Charka, he asked, “What do we have to do?”
The trip through the skeletal remains of Sythal took a little under the hour foretold by Charka. During the trek, Lady Kate walked with the forlorn, and despondent, Springers.
“It isn’t nearly as bad as what you two are thinking,” she announced.
“What isn’t?” Reneeke asked. “The chance of us surviving this ordeal?”
“The fact that you are Springers does not relieve us of the obligation to do everything in our power to see that you survive. We have a score of healing potions and scrolls with us for no other reason than because the two of you are along.”
Hope glimmered. “Really?” Jaikus asked, almost afraid to believe it to be true.
“Of course. We are not heartless mercenaries. What Yurki said is partly true. Charka takes care of those under his command. And that means you two, too.”
“Don’t let him hear you say that,” Seward commented. Glancing ahead to where their leader led the way, he said. “He isn’t that nice.”
“Perhaps not,” she agreed. “Although, a leader who habitually returns with fewer than what he left with, quickly finds it difficult to recruit more when the need arises.”
Reneeke gave Jaikus a glance and grinned. Perhaps their situation was not completely hopeless as they had thought.
“You see, Jaik? We’re going to be fine.”
Seward couldn’t resist one last barb. “Springers are considered expendable. It goes with the territory. So should he come back with one, or none, very few would think much about it.”
Lady Kate turned a withering gaze upon her cohort. “Perhaps you could curb your tongue and leave these boys alone?”
He gave her a bow with half a dozen flourishes. “As you wish, milady.”
Rolling her eyes, she shook her head.
Their destination turned out to be a group of buildings that, somewhere far below the surface, may have formed the four sides of a plaza. The northern side was rubble, while the east and south sides each had a few walls jutting upward out of the ground, but held very little in the way of areas in which to explore. Three buildings were still relatively intact on the west side, though intact was a generous term.
The building on the left had three walls still in place, with the fourth having disintegrated into a pile of rubble. The one on the right boasted two walls still proudly standing, while the other two were in various stages of collapse. In the center, four sturdy walls rose in almost perfect majesty for a span of two floors before quickly tapering to a point. It was to the center building that Charka led his people.
An opening loomed in the side. The interior was lit by intermittent rays of sunlight making their way through cracks and other imperfections in the structure.
“A doorway,” Jaikus commented.
“No, a window,” Lady Kate corrected. “Remember, the bulk of Sythal lies buried deep below our feet.”
“So that means it wasn’t a doorway I entered earlier when I went exploring. It was a window?”
“Hey, we got ourselves a smart one here.” Seward flashed Jaikus a humorless grin.
“Ignore him.”
“I’ll try,” Jaikus assured her.
Charka brought them to a halt before the window. “We will explore the upper areas first. After that, we will descend into the depths.”
“Shouldn’t we explore the lower areas first?” Reneeke asked. “It would seem that there is where treasure would most likely be found.”
“No. You’re thinking about this all wrong. If you were on the ground before a tall building, where would you expect the treasure to be secreted away? In the uppermost reaches, of course. People tend to stash their really good items as far from the entrance as possible. Before Sythal was buried…” he pointed toward the edifice rising before them, “this was the area furthest from the entrance. And thus, more likely to still contain items of value.”
Jaikus nodded. “That makes sense.”
“Okay, then.” Glancing to his two Springers, he said, “Who wants to be first?”
Exchanging glances with Reneeke, he was about to volunteer when Reneeke said, “I will.” Relief flowed over him, but so too did concern for his friend.
“You two will rotate the duty.” Turning to Jaikus, he said, “Until I say otherwise, stay back with Lady Kate.”
“Yes, sir.” Moving to stand beside the magic user, he watched as Charka removed a rope from his pack.
Passing one end to Reneeke, Charka said, “Tie this around your middle.”
About to ask why, Reneeke stopped the urge and took the end of the rope. While he secured it around his waist, Seward removed a lantern from his pack. It was a bulls-eye lantern, one that shined its light through a single opening in one side. There was a shutter whereby the light could be reduced in smaller increments to a tighter, more focused, beam. By the time Reneeke was securely bound, the lantern was lit and its light was being directed in through the window. With the shutter opened to its widest, the light filled the room.
Charka motioned for Reneeke to precede him into the room. “You first.”
Seward handed Reneeke the lantern before the Springer carefully made his way through the window.
Following ten feet behind came Seward and Charka, both keeping a firm grip upon the rope. After them came Lady Kate, with Jaikus bringing up the rear.
A single doorway broke the empty monotony of the room. Other than dust and dried leaves that had been blown in by the wind, there was nothing else of note. Reneeke paused and turned back to where Seward and Charka still stood on the othe
r side of the window. “Should I go through the doorway?”
“Go ahead.”
Moving forward, Reneeke heard the others making their way through the window and into the room.
A hallway extended from the other side of the doorway. Further openings appeared in the walls on either side at staggered intervals. The first one was on his left and opened onto a room similar to the one behind him.
“If you don’t see anything,” Charka instructed, “continue to the next.”
Keeping that in mind, Reneeke moved from doorway to doorway. At each, he would pause to inspect the room by directing the lantern’s light from one side to the other. When he failed to see anything of interest, he would continue on.
As he approached the fifth doorway, his eyes caught sight of a flash of light coming from within the room. He immediately came to a stop. “I think I see something.”
“What?” Jaikus asked. Despite the possible lethality of the situation his friend was in, Jaikus couldn’t help but be drawn into the excitement of the moment.
“I’m not sure,” Reneeke replied.
Moving to the doorway, he paused and slowly roved the light across the room’s interior. When the edge of the light reached the far right, the flash appeared again. A closer look revealed that whatever it was, was partially hidden amidst a pile of debris.
He sensed someone had come up behind him and glanced back to find Charka peering over his shoulder. “It might be a coin. Go find out.” As Reneeke entered the room, the Troupe leader added, “Be careful.”
The debris held bones, stones, and tufts of fur which may have once belonged to an animal. “Looks like this may have been a predator’s den.”
“If it was,” Charka replied, “then that would indicate the room is safe.”
Crossing to the pile of debris, Reneeke aimed the lantern directly toward it; there were more than a single item glittering within. Upon reaching it, he used the toe of his boot to disperse the pile and revealed two round, golden disks, each the size of his palm. There was also a silver one of the same size tucked beneath the two golden ones.
“Three disks,” he announced. “Two golden, and one silver.” He then bent to pick them up.
“Wait,” Charka ordered. Turning to his magic user, he motioned for her to enter and check it out. “We’ve encountered these before,” he told his Springer. “Most are harmless. Others are not.”
Reneeke stepped back as Lady Kate came forward to kneel by the three disks. A moment later, they glowed a soft blue. The glow lasted for only two seconds.
She glanced to Reneeke. “They are safe,” she announced then collected the disks and slipped them into her pack.
“What happens when they are not safe?”
“Of the two we have encountered that were not, one exploded, and the other caused a colony of warts to appear and spread across Seward’s face.” She gave the Springer a grin. “Lucky for him, Charka was willing to foot the bill for a curse removal at the temple upon our return.”
“Why would it do that?”
She shrugged. “Who knows? There are all kinds of magical items out there of which the intrepid adventurer should be leery. In the Tower back at the Guild, there is an entire room devoted to the weird and odd.”
From the doorway, Charka said, “If that is all, then we should continue.”
“Yes, sir,” Reneeke said, then made his way from the room and headed down to the sixth door.
Therein they discovered a small room with a narrow, winding stairwell extending to both the floor above and the floor below.
“Let’s finish this level first before heading for the next.”
“Yes, sir.”
Continuing down the hallway, Reneeke reached where it ended at another hallway moving perpendicular to theirs. Down to the right, this new hallway ended with a pair of doors, one to either side. To the left, the hallway extended for a good thirty feet before the first doorway appeared. Relaying the information to the others, he waited until Charka instructed him to first investigate down to the right.
The doorways where the hallway came to an end sat directly across from each other, and like the others, didn’t have doors. Reneeke thought that odd until the notion occurred to him that had the doors been constructed of wood, they would have succumbed to rot long ago. Given the age of Sythal, such was a very good possibility.
Coming to the doorways, he shined the light through the one on the right. The room beyond was small and devoid of anything of interest. Turning to the other, a brief scan revealed it was just as barren.
“There’s not much in here,” he commented to Charka upon returning to the hallway junction whereat the others waited.
“Sometimes it’s like that,” the Troupe leader replied. “There have been trips in the past where we’ve come away with only Hymal’s gold for accompanying him.”
“At least we have the three disks,” Jaikus piped up.
Charka nodded. “Yes, indeed.”
Moving down to the left this time, Reneeke made his way toward the doorway thirty feet away. When he had gone ten feet past the junction of passageways, the lantern’s light revealed something past the doorway that protruded from the side of the wall. Directing the beam toward it, he discovered the protrusion to be a face.
Constructed of stone, the face stuck out several inches from the wall with a diameter of a foot and a half. It was human, sort of. There was an odd slant to the eyes, and the ears seemed a bit larger than they should be, as was the nose. Its mouth gaped open and appeared to be a hollow cavity.
Giving the room only a cursory examination before continuing to the mask, Reneeke shone the light within the mouth. “There’s an opening here,” he explained to the others. “It looks like it extends for over a foot before coming to an end.”
“We’ve come across these before as well,” said Charka. “I would be extra careful from this point on.”
Glancing back to his leader, Reneeke asked, “Why?”
“They are quite often found in the proximity of a trap,” Lady Kate explained.
Charka nodded. “More times than not, we’ve discovered.”
Backing away from the face, Reneeke stared uncertainly at it. “What should I do?”
“Avoid the mouth for starters. Keep as far from it as possible as you make your way past. If nothing happens before you reach the other side, it’s safe.”
“And if it does?”
“That’s part of being a Springer,” Seward piped up.
“Good luck, Rene,” Jaik said to his friend.
“Thanks.”
Reneeke sidestepped to the wall opposite the face. There he pressed his back against its hard, cold surface and began to shuffle his feet as he started working his way past.
Eyes glued to the mouth opening, heart racing, expecting at any moment some dreadful, painful fate to befall him, the young Springer worked his way down the hallway until he was directly opposite the face. For a brief moment he stood frozen, transfixed by the imminent doom weighing down upon him. But then his feet started working again and carried him past.
“I made it!” he hollered back to the others.
“Yes,” Seward replied, “we see that.”
“Great job, Rene,” Jaikus praised from his position at the rear.
“Great job?” Seward asked as he turned to him. “He didn’t do anything other than walk down a hallway.”
Jaikus met the man’s eyes and would have liked nothing better than to close them for him.
“You really are annoying sometimes,” Lady Kate commented.
Seward broke off the gaze with Jaikus to give her a crooked smile. “It is but part of my charm.”
“Charm of a snake,” Jaikus murmured under his breath.
“What was that?” Seward asked.
Once again being the focal point of the man’s attention, Jaikus murmured, “Nothing.”
Charka turned to them. “Can we continue now?”
“Certainly,” S
eward replied.
Charka eyed his man disapprovingly a second before signaling Reneeke to continue.
Following along beside Lady Kate, Jaikus asked, “Why does Charka put up with him?”
“His father was a cartographer,” she explained. “And aside from being able to read a map with ease, Seward has an unusual ability where the area of a building is concerned. Practically every secret room we have uncovered has been due to his ability to tell when there is less space being used than there should be. After we make sure a level is safe, he goes back through it and determines if there is a hidden area or not.”
“How?” Jaikus asked.
She only shrugged. “He’s never been able to satisfactorily explain it to me. Claims he just ‘knows,’ that his years as a youth working at his father’s elbow instilled it in him.”
“So what happens when he thinks there is a hidden area?”
“We search for the opening mechanism.”
Further discussion was curtailed when a shout from Reneeke announced that he had found something.
He stood at the end of the hallway. Before him loomed an opening wider than the doorways previously encountered. “It looks like some kind of hall.”
The others came up behind him and saw by the lantern’s light that the “hall” was quite large, large enough in fact so that the home Jaikus had grown up in could comfortably fit within, with room to spare. Two staircases located against the walls to the left and right rose toward a balcony that completely encircled the upper reaches.
“A ballroom perhaps?” Reneeke suggested.
“Perhaps,” Charka said.
There were five other doorways spaced around the room, each granting access to parts unknown. Vacant recesses dotted the walls in fifteen foot intervals where statuary or other items could have been placed for display. A pair of torch sconces haloed each of the recesses.
After a brief visual examination, Charka announced that the room would most likely be safe. “Snares in such a place would run the risk of catching the unwary as well as the unwanted.” Even though he felt it was safe to enter, he still had Reneeke lead the way.
Seward removed two torches from his pack. Then using flint and steel, he lit the brands and placed them in torch sconces near where they emerged from the hallway. The light did much to dispel the darkness.
Jaikus came to his friend. “How is it going?”
Reneeke gave him a nervous smile and shrugged. “I still live. So, not too bad I guess.”
“Let’s check out those other rooms.” Charka directed Reneeke toward the closest.
“I’ll come with you,” Jaikus offered.
“We’ll all go,” Seward asserted. “If we start getting separated in a place like this, someone is apt to come up missing.”
“True,” Charka agreed. “We stick together.”
“Understood,” Jaikus replied.
The first doorway led down a short hallway and ended at another small, empty room. They checked two more and found similar areas, each holding nothing of interest. The fourth doorway entered onto a room a third the size of the hall. Its walls were as dark as night and seemed to absorb the light coming from the lantern. In the center of the room was a dais rising two feet from the floor. A pair of steps led to the top. Reneeke directed the lantern toward the top of the dais and saw a square, stone block. The block was not black like the walls of the room. Instead, it looked to be constructed of the same material as was the building. The dais, and the stone block resting upon it, were the only items of interest within the room.
“Better check it out,” Charka told his Springer.
As Reneeke moved toward the dais, Jaikus asked Lady Kate, “Ever come across anything like this before?”
She shook her head. “No. This is something new.”
Upon approaching the steps, Reneeke paused to pan the light across the surface of the dais, and of the stone block. Both appeared rather nondescript. Hesitantly, he moved his foot to the first step. Quickly putting his weight upon it, he jerked his foot back, fully expecting something bad to happen. When nothing did, he tried the second one. When still nothing happened, he took the steps up to the dais top and came to a stop.
A feeling came over him, something that was completely alien. Unsure what it could be, he was, however, fairly certain that the feeling emanated from the stone block. “I feel something.”
“What?” Lady Kate asked. Things magical and out of the ordinary were her bailiwick.
Reneeke glanced over his shoulder toward her. “I don’t know. I’ve never felt anything like it before.”
She came forward until she stood at the dais’ edge. “I don’t feel anything.”
“Neither did I, until I stood up here.” He pointed to the stone block. “It’s coming from that.”
“Is it a good feeling, or bad?”
“Do you mean, like, does it make me afraid?”
She nodded.
He thought for a moment. “I…it, uh…” Then he shook his head. “I wouldn’t call it either, actually. Merely a strange sensation.”
“Don’t approach any closer,” Charka told him. To Lady Kate he asked, “What do you think?”
Not taking her eyes from the stone block, she said, “We should leave it alone. If he feels something, then it is either magical in nature, or spiritual. In either case, it would be best not to tempt fate.”
“Spiritual?” Jaikus queried. “Like a ghost?”
“Perhaps. A cleric might be able to make a more accurate assessment if such were the case. But, seeing as we don’t have one…”
“Can’t magic users cast spells to learn about items?”
“If I felt the situation warranted it, I could,” she replied.
Suddenly, everyone in the room felt a momentary pulse radiate from the dais. Jaikus was just beginning to think that the odd sensation of the pulse must be similar to what Reneeke was feeling when darkness surged outward from the dais’s surface. His friend quickly vanished from sight as the darkness rose to engulf him, forming a shimmering dome that completely enshrouded the area above the dais.
“Reneeke!” he shouted.
“Pull!” Charka yelled as he and Seward yanked on the rope attached to the young Springer. The line snapped taut and budged no further. Jaikus and Lady Kate were quick to take up the rope and lend their aid. Yet despite their added strength, they were unable to bring Reneeke from the darkness.
Jaikus feared for his friend. “We have to get him out of there!”
Then in an instant, all tension on the rope vanished. Snapping back like a coiled serpent, the rope came free as the darkness which had risen to swallow Reneeke, returned back into the dais.
“Where is he?”
When the darkness vanished, Reneeke was gone.
Chapter 8