One bugbear walked in front of them, and another walked behind them. So far there had been no opportunity for escape.
"We've turned east again," Mumchance said with the certainty of an elderly dwarf far underground. Wiggles once again rode in his pocket, sleeping off her late lunch. Everyone had slipped her part of their bread because she had looked so sad and hungry. Now the dog was so full, she could barely waddle.
"Back toward the city? The city wall that we want?" Ivy asked.
"Closer than we were." Mumchance fingered his fake eye. "We could still use our little treasure against them."
"And kill whom? The one in front or the one in back?" hissed Ivy. "You can't get them all." She turned back to her wizard, the one that couldn't light fires but could definitely feel water. "Where's the river?"
"Still running strong behind us," Gunderal whispered. "I can feel it flooding the tunnels."
"There is something else too. Something old and magical behind us," said Kid, one ear swiveling forward and one back.
"Oh, do you feel it too?" A relieved Gunderal bent down and gave him a quick hug. "I could not figure out what I was smelling, and it was giving me such a headache-I thought it might be a reaction to my own spell."
"What are you talking about, sister?" asked Zuzzara. "Are you ill?"
"I'm fine. But whatever the magic is, it is giving me such an itch in my nose. I feel like I'm going to sneeze, but I can't. It's driving me crazy."
Zuzzara pulled a large silk handkerchief out of her waistcoat pocket. "Blow."
Gunderal blew, delicately of course, and sighed. "Oh, that's better. I felt my ears pop."
Ivy chewed her lower lip and thought about a possible magical threat following them. Well, it was not treading on her heels like the bugbear, so she decided to ignore it for now.
"If we are heading back toward Tsurlagol," said Zuzzara, who was always the most optimistic of the Siegebreakers (as long as her sisters Mimeri and Gunderal were happy), "then maybe we can find our wall again. The one that we are supposed to knock down."
"The Thultyrl gave us two days," Ivy said. "And I don't think that we have even finished out half of the first day." She thought about the number of fights, wrong turns, and other disasters that had befallen them. "Well, maybe more than half."
Sanval answered softly, "The Thultyrl may not wait. I did not go back to the camp. They would have investigated and found your tunnel collapsed."
"And presume that we are dead?"
"Or unable to complete your task."
"What will they do then?" Ivy asked.
"Charge the wall without your help."
"Wonderful thought." Now she had to worry about an entire troop of Procampur's finest trying to scale the western wall and overrun Fottergrim's orcs in the holdings at the top. Even without Archlis opposing them with his fire spells, it would not take much to turn the charge into a rout.
"Well, this looks like trouble," said Ivy.
A pair of oaken doors blocked the way. The lock had been burned open, and the blasted doors hung half off their hinges.
"Waste of magic," Mumchance said when he saw the condition of the doors.
"He has magic to waste, dear sir," replied Kid with a significant wink toward Archlis. The magelord stood behind them, flanked by his bugbears, and was obviously waiting for them to survey the room beyond.
Peeking through the ruined doors, they could see a corridor with a checkered floor made from huge stone slabs. Some had a fine cross-hatch pattern cut into them. Others were marked with a spiral of stars, and still others with wavy lines. A few squares were polished smooth and blank.
"Earth, sky, ocean," said Mumchance. "And that which we find on the other side of death."
"Nothing," said Ivy, because this was an old lesson, one that her mother had taught when she had taken Ivy hunting for treasure in the wild. She had seen such patterns in ruins before. They invariably led to a tomb or crypt. "It's a path to the dead."
"A bit more dead than usual, my dears," pointed out Kid.
For the floor was littered with the bodies of hobgoblins and orcs, a ragged and rather squashed looking troop. Their lifeless, muscular bodies were limp, their blank yellow eyes staring at nothing, their hide and rough hair poking out from breaks in their once bright armor. Shields were as flat as plates, and swords smashed.
"More of Fottergrim's?" asked Ivy.
"They pursued us through this section," said Archlis, "but they did not know the secret of the squares. The ceiling crushed them as it does anyone who does not know the pattern."
At this pronouncement, they all glanced up. The ceiling was low and gleamed with a spectral light, clearly showing a lattice of iron suspended above the floor. A long pointed spike was welded to the corner of each tiny square formed by the ironwork. Some of the spikes were clearly blunted by repeated poundings on the stone floor below. Others still dripped with bits and pieces of the unfortunates who had passed below without the knowledge of the floor's pattern. Chains ran from the lattice into square holes cut into the stone ceiling above.
"The floor is constructed in such a way that if four people move across the squares in unison, the trap stays in the ceiling. Should one make a misstep, the trap comes crashing down. I have the pattern here," Archlis withdrew his spellbook from his pouch and unfolded a page twice as large as the book from its center. The parchment was blotched with terrible stains, but a series of gray-brown lines and rust red symbols could be seen on one side.
"You and you," said Archlis, pointing at Sanval and Zuzzara, "should go first, as you appear to be about the same weight. Then"-he nodded toward Ivy and Mumchance- "you will follow. You must step exactly as I say."
"And then what?" asked Ivy.
Archlis pointed with the head of his Ankh to the doors visible at the opposite end of the room. "There is a lever on the left-hand side. Turn it three times to the right. The lock handle must be turned delicately and correctly, but if done right, the trap will remain locked long enough for the rest of us to cross."
"Then it resets itself?" asked Mumchance.
"Yes. There is no way to lock it open permanently. But it takes some time for it to reset. After we had left this room, Fottergrim's trackers were able to cross it safely when they followed us. We eluded them in the maze that it is beyond those doors, but were forced back. We locked the trap from that side when we crossed the room again so more than half the trackers escaped with their lives and continued to hunt us into the room where you found us."
"So when the ceiling comes down, it comes down fast," said Mumchance with a speculative note in his voice. "And it probably goes up very slowly."
"Whether it is fast or slow does not matter. I hold the pattern here. We used it to cross once before. Once you have reached the other side, the dwarf will turn the lock and secure the room as I have instructed. That should be within his skills," said Archlis. Mumchance snorted. "Then we will follow you," continued Archlis. "Now take one step right, one step forward, and one step left, and repeat that pattern until you reach the other side."
"It sounds like a court dance," said Sanval, readying himself to cross by the usual straightening of his helmet and a quick check of his weapons.
Ivy looked across the room and at the corpses that littered many of the squares. She laid one hand on Sanval's arm to keep him from stepping out. "But there are extra bodies on the floor, and that will make it harder. Hate to trip over someone else's feet as we glide along."