"Or someone's severed head, more likely," said Mumchance, eyeing the carnage.
"Can we do it?" questioned Zuzzara. "If one is off count or stumbles…"
"All of us die," said Ivy, turning to Archlis. "I don't like this."
The magelord adjusted his grip on his Ankh, one rusty ring on his hand grating unpleasantly against its smooth metal surface. "If you refuse, you will die faster. Then the others can choose which danger is greater-the floor ahead or myself. I only need four to cross and turn the key."
"If he is so clever, why can't he break the trap's spell?" Gunderal whispered.
"It is not a spell," Kid whispered back. "Do you feel any magic here?"
Gunderal's pretty face smoothed into that look of perfect serenity that meant she was feeling along the Weave of magical forces. She slowly shook her head.
Mumchance nodded in agreement with Kid. "It's all mechanical."
Ivy backed away from Archlis, fingering the hilt of her sword. Sanval also had a firm grip on his weapon. Archlis did not look worried, which was worrisome. The bugbears were a bit too relaxed as well, just leaning on their glaives and watching with interest. They obviously felt no threat.
"Waste of time," said Mumchance, who had been studying the floor and then the ceiling while carrying on a whispered conversation with Kid. He squinted at the little thief, who nodded very firmly this time. "All that hopping back and forth. Kid, get ready. Come up here, Zuzzara."
"No," said Archlis, "it must be two of almost equal weight who start the pattern."
"Don't care about the pattern." Mumchance scratched
Wiggles's head as he contemplated the room. "Zuzzara, how far can you throw a dead hobgoblin?"
"Same as a live one," she said with grin. "Halfway across the room without much trouble."
"Should work. Let's get you a little help. Hey, you, big guy," Mumchance said, crooking a finger at the nearest bugbear. "Hook me a hobgoblin with that stick of yours. The little one near the door will work fine. He's almost intact."
The bugbear growled at Mumchance, but he went to the threshold of the room. The hairs on the back of the bugbear's neck were clearly visible just below the line of his battered helmet and just as clearly standing straight out. The bugbear muttered and grumbled, very softly in the back of his throat, as he looked beyond the room to the doors on the far side. Still, he obeyed Mumchance's orders, ignoring the scowling magelord. The bugbear leaned through the doors, carefully keeping his feet out of the room and off the carved pavement. He thrust his glaive into the nearest hobgoblin and dragged it back through the door.
"You get one end. Zuzzara, you grab the other," instructed Mumchance. "Kid, get ready to jump."
Kid crouched in the center of the door. Zuzzara and the bugbear swung the body twice and then sent it sailing over Kid's head and into the room. It fell heavily on the tiles. With a screeching of gears above the ceiling, then the clash of unwinding chains, the ironwork grid dropped from above them and crashed to the floor, again impaling the dead hobgoblins and orcs.
"Go! Go!" shouted Mumchance at Kid.
Kid leaped lightly on top of the ironwork and raced across the grid. A ponderous tick-tick of gears sounded in the ceiling. "It's starting up again," yelled Mumchance. Kid spurted ahead and dropped in front of the doors. He grasped the lever and twisted it savagely around to the right. There was a grinding noise that came from the ceiling and then a distinct sproing sounded through the room. The spiked grid remained where it had landed on the floor.
"See," said Mumchance, hoisting himself on top of the ironwork and strolling straight across. "Much easier to break it than to go dancing across the floor."
If the magelord was pleased, it did not show in his scowl. The bugbears looked on, expressionless, but then Ivy did not expect any sort of expression on a bugbear's squashed furry face.
When they reached the far side of the room, Ivy said to the dwarf, "That was just too easy. What terrible thing happens next, do you suppose?"
"Look, these old tomb builders weren't exactly mechanical geniuses," said Mumchance. "Well, one or two were good at it, and the others just copied them. I would bet you a good night's sleep that the gears are rusted out, the chains have weak links, and a couple more drops would have broken the whole thing. But the most delicate gears are always in the lock mechanism. The magelord was right. It's all about balance and counterbalance, the right pressure at the right time. Archlis had already forced it open twice today, so it was sure to be a bit bunged up."
"And if the ironwork went back into place while Kid was racing across?"
"Wouldn't move that fast. Archlis said there was enough time for a bunch of Fottergrim's raiders to follow him through and out once already, which meant some type of gear rotating in the lock and, most likely, the same sort of gear powering the resetting of the trap. Of course, if there had been any magic behind it, that would have been different, but Gunderal didn't smell anything. But, Ivy, that's all done and in the past. You should be worrying about something else."
"What?"
"Whatever chased them back into this room. You heard the magelord. They went through once, doing that hop-jump-hop across the floor. Fottergrim's hounds followed them and then something forced Archlis back across that room one more time. It wasn't those hobgoblins and orcs. He roasted them as soon as they caught up to him."
The dwarf had a point. Ivy just hated that. A magelord unhindered by hobgoblins and unflustered by stray warriors appearing in the middle of his battles (even if those warriors were a battered troupe like Ivy's) would only retreat from something very large and fairly fireproof. And deadly. She doubted that anything short of deadly would stop him. What came next must be far more dangerous than Fottergrim's fighters.
"I knew this was too easy," said a rueful Ivy. Staying next to Mumchance, she squeezed to one side to let Zuzzara, Gunderal, and Sanval pass into the corridor beyond. Archlis and his bugbears followed. "Well, at least we got through that trap with minimum fuss."
Kid sidled next to her, stamping from hoof to hoof.
"Those early tomb builders lacked sophistication." Mumchance poked at the broken mechanism that locked the trap into place, wiggling the long brass handle that disappeared into a square hole carved into the stone. Like any dwarf, he never could resist trying to pull something apart just to see how it worked. Ivy almost expected him to pry the mechanism out of the wall, just so he could examine it later. "Not like today. If I had built that bit back there, there would be some secondary trap or…"
Ivy never heard the rest of the sentence. The stone slab under her feet slid open with a sharp click and the rattle of chains running through a stone channel. She and Kid dropped into the darkness below. As she was falling, she caught a brief glimpse of Mumchance's surprised face, his mouth still open, before the stone trapdoor snapped shut above her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The day after a fifteen-year-old Ivy had been dug out from under a dead horse by a kindly dwarf, she had wanted to stop at the nearest temple and make a few offerings.
Mumchance had dissuaded her.
"I wouldn't," he had said. "Over the last three hundred years, the one thing that I have learned is that it is best to ignore the gods. Take no notice of them, and they will take no notice of you."
It had seemed like good advice at the time. Now Ivy wondered if she had angered some god somewhere. Nothing else could account for her foul luck.
She sat up slowly in the darkness beneath the trapdoor, unsure which parts of her body still worked after her fall. Her ribs ached, her back hurt, and the rubble covering the floor was making itself felt through the leather of her breeches. But none of the pains felt fatal, just more bruises on top of the bruises collected in her earlier falls that day, not to mention the buffeting by kobolds, the squeezing of that snake, and-oh now she remembered-a few well-placed blows from the hobgoblins. Once she was free of this tangle of tunnels and traps, Ivy intended to march herself to the largest, most impressive healer's tent that she could find, lie down, and not get up again until every single cut, bruise, and kink in her muscles had been soothed away by some skilled healing hands. Some heroes might go to their temples to give thanks for salvation. Others might drink themselves blind in a victory party, and still others might pursue a new amorous alliance. From nauseous experience, Ivy had learned to avoid long drinking bouts, as they led to more physical misery. She did have a few ideas for possible lusty activities, and she most certainly planned to rethink her opposition to giving thanks in temples (although she supposed she would have to decide what god or goddess would be willing to overlook her long lapse in abstinence from worship). But at this moment, she needed to give herself some special promise to lure herself into standing up.