Locks, I could do. I didn’t have time to hope that Nukpana’s gadget maker had enabled the machine to recognize when someone used picklocks rather than the key. I had to trust that he didn’t. There’d be no surer way to get your throat slit than to make a gadget fatal for the man who had paid you to make it.
There was a click.
The gears turned faster.
Oh shit.
I looked into the cell. Torches burning. Prisoners still breathing.
The box’s gears clicked and whirled and…
…and stopped.
A click came from above my head and the cell lock released.
Yes!
I started to pull out the picklock and the gears started whirling again.
In a fumbling panic, I got the picklock back where it was and the whirling stopped. Looked like I’d be holding this thing until everyone was out.
Jash pushed the door and Tam was pulling. It was heavy, but they got it open in short order, and the goblin prisoners quickly got out.
Kesyn came charging down the stairs with shouting and pounding boots entirely too close behind him.
“You got that Plan B ready to go, boy?” he yelled to Tam.
Tam had a string of curses ready. I hoped a brilliant alternate escape plan would come next.
The old goblin stopped next to me. I was crouching on the floor, picklock still in the keyhole.
It was past time to go. I pulled out the picklock.
There was a loud click, the floor opened up, and Kesyn and I fell into darkness.
Chapter 17
I landed hard in something soft—and squirmy.
“Dammit, girl,” Kesyn wheezed, “you could kill a man with that bony ass of yours. Ever think about eating?”
I half rolled, but mostly fell off of Kesyn and onto what should have been a floor. However, any floor I’d ever walked, landed, or fell on hadn’t been spongy.
I was panting and shaking. I swallowed and panted some more. “What the hell was that?”
Kesyn heaved himself to his feet. “Other than a trapdoor, it’s proof Sarad was expecting us.”
I scrabbled to stand up, falling twice before I could get my feet steady on the whatever-it-was we’d landed on. It wasn’t breathing; at least I didn’t think it was. Wherever we were was dark and damp, and from the way our voices bounced off the walls I couldn’t see, we were in a room only marginally larger than a closet. Frantically I looked up. No seam of light showed where that trapdoor was, and no sound came from beyond it.
“Can you see anything?” I asked Kesyn.
“Enough to see that no one else is going to be coming down the way we did. I heard the snap after I fell in.”
What the hell was he talking about? “Snap?”
“Trapdoor like that has to be reset before it’ll open again. I don’t know who Sarad was fishing for, but I think the boy will be tickled pink when he sees what he got on the end of his hook.”
Us. I didn’t want to ponder the image that Sarad Nukpana catching us on a hook conjured. Nor was tickled an emotion I could imagine Sarad Nukpana having. Though if he saw me, he might come close.
I desperately wanted to call out to Mychael, to let him know I was down here.
Raine, he knows exactly where you are—down a hole. If you open your big mouth and yell, you’ll let anything down here know you’re down here, too. Nukpana could have just as easily rigged his trap to catch food for the nice dragon family downstairs in this godforsaken house of horrors.
“Those prisoners just set foot out of that cell only to get captured again,” I muttered.
From the brushing sounds, I assumed that Kesyn was straightening his layers of robes and whatnot. “We don’t know that,” he said. “All we know for sure is that we’ve been caught. By who is an assumption, but since we’re in the Khrynsani temple, and Sarad’s in the temple, it’s safe to assume that Sarad’s on his way here.”
Our assumption was all that was safe right now; we sure weren’t.
Kesyn just stood there, listening to me panic. “Would you like some light?” he eventually asked.
“That would be helpful.”
I waited. No light.
“Well, basilisk balls,” Kesyn said mildly.
I tensed. “What is it? Or what isn’t it?”
“Magic doesn’t work. Must be a dampening ward around this cell.” He paused. “Nice job, actually.”
“Glad you’re impressed with their work ethic.” My voice was starting to shake right along with the rest of me.
I heard Kesyn fumbling around in his robes.
“If you have to take another whiz, old man, get away from me.”
“Nope, saving that for a special occasion.” More fumbling. “Let’s see if I still have… Yes, I always carry spares.”
I snorted. “A flask?” Though I wouldn’t mind a stiff belt right now.
“That, too.”
A spark flared to life in front of me, moving vigorously up and down. It was one of Kesyn’s light marbles, activated by shaking, which was what he was doing to it. The light confirmed what my hands had already told me: small cell, high ceiling that was mostly a hole soaring up into darkness, and no apparent door in any of the four walls. There had to be one. Why go to the trouble to bait a trapdoor without any way to extract your prize? That was what the two of us would be. Prizes.
Kesyn moved to the center of the cell and tossed the small green light up into the shaft. A sharp pop and sizzle later, we were dusted with glowing green remains of a destroyed light marble.
Kesyn gave a low whistle. “Nasty ass wards.”
I couldn’t see the old goblin take a bite out of his never-ending chunk of cheese, but I sure smelled it.
“Well, we won’t be climbing out the same way we fell in,” he noted. “That’s okay; I’ve got more.” He found another light marble in his pocket and shook it up.
Silence. Still no shouts from above. If Mychael and Tam were trying to blast or pound their way through that floor to get to us, I couldn’t hear it. Unless they were too busy fighting for their lives against whoever had been wearing those boots running after Kesyn.
“Who was chasing you?” I asked.
“Temple guards.”
“And?”
“Some black mages.”
“How many are ‘some’?”
“More than a few.”
Damnation.
Mychael and Tam could fight more than a few, and hopefully the mages among the prisoners they’d just freed would still be able to put up a decent fight after being in that cell for who knew how long.
“Could you tell how strong those Khrynsani mages were?”
“You don’t get to be a black mage by being a magical ninety-pound weakling,” Kesyn snapped. “I didn’t stop and ask for their qualifications.”
I blew out the first decent breath I’d managed to get. “Sorry.”
Kesyn grunted. I took that as manspeak for “no problem.”
“Where do you think we are?” I asked. “Besides up shit creek without a paddle?”
“This is the Khrynsani temple. This whole place is shit creek. Up, down, doesn’t matter where. I’d say we’re in a cell.”
“No kidding.”
“Judging from the padded floor, they wanted whoever tripped that trap up there to live, at least for a while.”
I did a quick exploration. The cell was as small as our voices made it sound, only five paces in any direction. The walls were rough-hewn rock. I reached as far as I could over my head and didn’t feel anything other than air, though we knew only too well that there was a hole big enough for us to have fallen through and not have left bits and pieces of ourselves along the way.
I moved in close to the old guy and tried to ignore the stinky cheese. I kept my voice to a bare whisper and counted on Kesyn’s goblin ears to hear me. “If Sarad Nukpana had set the trap, he knew only a null could trip it. We got caught. He knows you pack plenty of magical mojo, but I was the one on the floor, picking at the insides of that gearbox—”
Kesyn was shaking his head while chewing cheese; I was trying to breathe through my mouth. “Sarad couldn’t have known we were here until you kids attacked the guard desk on the first level. Cyran Nathrach had to have been moved before that; the same time that trap would have been set.”
“Then who was Tam’s dad bait for?”
Kesyn gave me a meaningful look. “Who indeed?”
I froze. “Deidre?”
“Or Nath. Or both. Neither have any magic, and both would risk themselves to free Cyran.”
“If so, that means they’re in the temple,” I said. “And from what I could see, they weren’t in that cell with Cyran and the others.” I didn’t exactly feel a spark of hope, more like a damp sputter, but Deidre did strike me as the kind of woman who would finish anything she started. She’d shot one hole in Sarad Nukpana tonight already. Perhaps she and Nath were lurking around here thinking that the second time would be the charm.
I grinned. Oh yeah, that’d be charming as hell. Maybe I could get a better seat for the show this time.
“Regardless of who that hole in the floor was meant for,” Kesyn said, “thanks to you, Cyran Nathrach is out of that hellhole and so are some of our best mages and fighters. Better still, those boys and girls didn’t look happy. And Mychael, Tam, and that scrawny elf cadet of yours are plenty pissed now that you’re down here and they’re up there. I wouldn’t want to be in the first pack of Khrynsani to run into them.” He started running his hands along the walls. “No wards here. They’re probably outside wherever the door to this box is.”
I hoped Mychael and Tam weren’t wasting any time hunting for us. With those prisoners freed, they could get up to the temple altar and get the job done. That was all that mattered. Save yourselves. Destroy the rock.
Then I remembered something.
I frantically patted myself down. When I felt the Scythe of Nen still nestled near my waist, I froze in horror. “I’ve still got it.”
