Krachma looked smug at my admitting failure.
“Don’t rub it in… Fine. If things go sideways and start exploding, you two can just turn to stone. Everybody else, be ready to duck. Let’s go.”
Twenty-Three
It was nerve-wracking, expecting to set off a magical death trap with every step, but at least it was a lot warmer and drier down here. The shivering from the cold ceased and now my muscles were shaking from the tension.
The stairs went down for a surprisingly long way before we entered a large chamber, which must have stretched beneath the ocean’s surface. The room was a long rectangle, so big, my light charm barely illuminated the ceiling or far wall. This was the sort of thing wizards of advanced rank could carve out of solid rock on a whim. As a mere rank one, the construction of such things was far beyond my understanding, but going five hundred years without springing a leak was quite the testament to the skill of the builder.
“You guys stay on the stairs while I range ahead a bit.”
“Aww, come on, Carnavon,” Rufus whined. “It already took us an hour just to go down this far!”
It had been less than half that, and it had taken that long because I’d used the rusty sword Azarin found to carefully push against each of the steps before placing my own weight on them. Every few steps I’d paused and tossed handfuls of dust to see if the particles would hit anything invisible or hard to see. Then I’dthrown rocks down to see if they set anything off when they hit the floor. After those tests, I’d wait a minute before proceeding, just in case any of the traps had a built-in delay.
“Patience, Rufus. This is hard enough as it is without you barking at me.”
“I am no dog!”
Oh so carefully, I started making my way across the room. I was counting on my old crawler’s charms to protect me against extreme heat and caustic air, which were two of the more common hazards on Fogo, and from what I heard, popular wizards’ traps. If I was really lucky, any surprises left by Korthican would be in the form of fire or poison gas. If I was unlucky, they’d be anything else. There were so many different ways to kill someone with magic, the possibilities were endless, and it would take an incredibly powerful wizard to have defenses prepared against them all.
Trax sent me a thought. “It is difficult to smell, but a great deal of blood has been spilled here. It is all dried out now, but the scent permeates the stone. I would urge caution.”
“Duly noted, Trax.”
There was still a lot of furniture in the room, but it was covered in five centuries of dust and spiderwebs. All the shelves were empty. That wasn’t unexpected. The fishermen warned me that so many other adventurers had hit this place over the years that anything of value that could be easily carried off, had been.
I wasn’t the only one to notice the empty shelves and broken open chests. “Hey, Carnavon?”
“What now, Rufus?”
“If this place has already been looted, shouldn’t all the traps have been sprung?”
It was Rade who corrected him. “You’d think that, but if a mage is sufficiently powerful, and the original casting involved even a tiny bit of Permanence, a spell can be discharged,then recharged to go off again later. Lesser enchantments, like Azarin’s wand or my sword, only have a finite number of uses, but if a wizard uses up a little time magic in the formula, enchantments can last nearly forever.”
I turned back to point the rusty long sword at Rufus. “Which is why you keep your grubby mitts in your pockets. Got it?”
“Fine…” Our dwarf was getting huffy. “I just didn’t know this part of adventuring would be sotedious.”
That was easy for him to say from the safety of the rear. Out here in front, the pressure was killing me. “I’ve heard rumor there’s spells that can detect traps. You should learn one that does that and save us all a lot of time on our next job.”
“Oh, I’ll do that for sure, mark my words, soon as I find one.”
The floor was a tiled mosaic, though it was hard to tell in what image beneath so much dust. I poked each tile before stepping on it. I extended the sword to knock down spiderwebs that might be concealing trip wires. I couldn’t see anything threatening above or to the sides either. Once I’d cleared a ten-foot square, I signaled for the next Outcasts in line that it was safe to come down.
On the other side of a desk, I found a skeleton. He’d been wearing some mismatched armor, but the steel cuirass hadn’t been tough enough to stop whatever had poked a jagged hole through one side and out the other. It had hit him so hard that bits of rib had gotten blasted out and were lying several feet away. A hit of such violence had probably stuck some of his lungs on the wall, but all the soft bits had long since rotted away or been eaten by bugs.
I picked up one of the rocks I’d thrown down earlier and tossed it at the desk the dead adventurer had probably been searching through. The rock hit a drawer andBANG!
A yellow streak flew from one wall to smack into the other. At the point of impact, the dust had been blown off in a big circle, leaving a smoking crater in the middle of the bare stone.
“See?”
Rufus quickly shoved his hands in his pockets.
From that point on, there was a lot less whining.
I found another skeleton. From the diminutive size, I hoped this had been a halfling or one of the equivalent-size races, because I really hoped nobody had let their children play down here. The bones were partially crumbled to ash, which suggested fire, acid, or some kind of disintegration spell. I studied where he’d fallen, what furniture was around, and where it looked likely that something impressive or valuable must have once sat. There was a little podium that had probably once held a treasure, which was probably the lure. I went back, picked up an ancient rotting boot from the last dead fellow, and threw it at the podium. A hungry black mist engulfed the whole thing for a moment, and the half-charred sole fell out the other side.
