The Dungeoneers (17 page)

“All right, adventurers, take your seats.” Finn sighed. “Welcome to Basic Survival. Here we will cover a cornucopia of skills that you will need to be a successful dungeoneer. For as we all know, the history of dungeoneering is the history of survival.”

Colm felt the impulse to raise his hand and ask how that fit in with revenge and armed robbery, but he resisted. After all, if it came down to following the advice of an ancient, hard-of-hearing has-been, a bitter, excommunicated goblin, or Finn Argos, Colm knew whom he would side with.

“As many of you know, this topic is often covered by Master Wolfe, but as is frequently the case, Master Wolfe is away at the moment, so I will be training you in his stead. . . . Yes, Mister Tobbs?”

The mageling who had vanquished the slime put down his hand. “Is it true Master Wolfe once escaped an enchanted
tower fifty stories tall by killing a giant spider and then weaving a rope out of its silk?”

Finn nodded slowly. “That
is
the story, yes, though no one was actually there to confirm it. Now, the purpose of our meeting is . . . Yes, Miss Golen?”

“Is it true that Master Wolfe once survived being stranded in a snowstorm by killing a bear with his bare hands, skinning it with his teeth, and then using its hide as a tent?” the girl with the braided hair asked.

Finn sighed. “I think that might be a slight exaggeration. I'm fairly certain he had a dagger with him at the time, which would have made both killing and skinning the bear considerably easier. However, this story, though embellished, does yield interesting implica—Yes, Miss Proudmore?”

Lena lowered her spastically waving hand and leaned across her desk. “I heard that Master Wolfe once slew a dozen dragon hatchlings with a sword he'd whittled from an orc's leg bone.”

“Yes. I've heard that too,” Finn said, clearly exasperated. “And were he
here
, I'm sure Master Wolfe could regale you with that and a hundred other fantastic tales of how he narrowly escaped death, killing giants with a piece of tree bark and snaring goblins using nets made out of his own plucked chest hairs. But since he is
not
here, you will have to make do with me.”

“Can you even do that?” Quinn whispered to Colm. “Make a net out of chest hair?”

“I don't think so,” Colm said. He didn't have any chest hair yet to say for certain.

“Now,” Finn said with a huff of impatience, “if there are no more questions—” Four trainees raised their hands. “Not including any about Master Wolfe.” The same four lowered them again. “Then who here can tell me what the key to surviving any dungeon is?”

Colm quickly ran through the list of rules Finn had already taught him. Stay behind the big guy. Give the mage some space. Don't steal from your friends. Most of it seemed practical enough, but none of it screamed most-important-rule-ever.

Lena raised her hand. “Kill it before it kills you?” she offered.

Finn scrunched his nose. “A good policy, provided you are certain it is going to kill you, but there are numerous ways to die in a dungeon, and many of them don't come at the hands of anything you can stab with a sword. Yes, Mr. Frostfoot?”

“Enunciate,” he said, clear as a bell.

Colm chuckled. Even Finn smiled. “I can see where that might be good counsel for some, but I doubt Miss Proudmore's battle cry requires careful elocution.” He looked around the room for another response. Colm thought about two nights ago and the four of them in the dungeon and the only time they were really in any danger. He raised his hand.

“Watch your step?” he said.

Finn nodded, eyes bright and beaming. “Master Fimbly told you about the four brothers, did he? Did you know that the first dungeon ever built was nothing more than a cave with a hole in the middle of it, covered with tree branches? That's
how an ogre chose to protect his treasure. So simple, and yet no fewer than seven adventurers perished trying to get at that ogre's gold. The treasure was ultimately snagged by the blind bard Bartholomew Plink, who walked
around
the hole simply because he had to keep his hand against the wall of the cave to get there.

“From that hole in the ground, the art and science of dungeon making has evolved, from the humble simplicity of the Straight Hall of Singular Death to the majesty of the Lich Lord's Labyrinth of Lost Souls, a nearly impenetrable maze crawling with all manner of traps and beasts that managed to exist unmolested for two hundred years.”

Colm had never heard of either of these, but everyone around him seemed to be nodding in appreciation. Serene was even taking notes, scribbling them all over a cloth-bound book that she'd brought seemingly for that purpose.

“And yet half of all dungeon-related deaths could be prevented if people would only keep their eyes open and look where they are going.”

“Keep your eyes open,”
Serene whispered as she wrote.

“And what,” Finn continued, “is the single most important asset you need to have when tackling a dungeon?”

“A sword. Der,” Lena said.

“A positive attitude?” Serene suggested.

“Food,” Quinn offered.

To each of these, Finn Argos shook his head. The others threw out more suggestions.

“My spell book?”

“Some heavy rope.”

“A torch. No . . . wait . . . lots of torches.”

A good pair of shoes,
Colm thought to himself, but that was just his father talking. He considered all the items in his bag: the lockpicks, the dagger, the sunstone. All useful, but was any of them really more important than the other? Were any of them more valuable than Scratch or even the cloak on his back? Finn continued to shake his head, continued to let them guess, his smile fading.

“A sword
and
a crossbow . . .”

“A map. Definitely a map.”

“. . . with poison-tipped bolts . . .”

“A potion of invisibility? No. In
vuln
erability. Wait,
is
there such a thing?”

“I'm still thinking food. . . .”

Colm racked his brain. He knew they were missing the point. He could tell by the look on Finn's face. Finally it came to him. Of course. What was the one thing you absolutely needed more than anything else? He raised his hand. “A way out,” he said.

Behind him, Lena cursed as if she had been about to say the same thing and he'd beaten her to it. Colm waited for the smile to return, but Finn just shook his head again.

“No, I'm afraid. The answer is
each other.
” It was the first time Colm had ever seen the rogue look disappointed—in him, at least. “You will need each other if you are to stand any
chance of surviving a dungeon. And until you realize that, none of you has any business setting foot in one.”

Colm felt Finn's eyes on him and looked away. Beside him, Lena leaned over. “I thought your answer was better.” He looked at her and smiled.

“Though I'd still rather just have my sword,” she added.

Colm chanced to look back at Finn, who had moved on and was outlining the various survival skills they would learn over the next several weeks, including, believe it or not, the identification of various edible berries, roots, grasses, and mosses. Serene clapped her hands in anticipation. Quinn said he knew it would come back to food eventually.

Colm just shut his mouth and leaned back in his seat, feeling uneasy again. Over the course of the entire morning, he felt like he had learned only one thing for sure.

That he knew almost nothing.

A
fter Finn let them go, Quinn sat in front of his four bowls of stew, a dense, dark broth with chunks of pink meat congealed by means of gluey fat to overcooked beets. Colm and Serene both took one look at lunch and declared themselves not hungry. Even Lena said she had to pass. Maybe it was the slime. Or maybe it was the sketches of all those doomed dungeoneers. Or maybe it was Finn's description of exactly what an acid trap would do to you if you triggered it. Something had squelched their appetites, leaving a feast for Quinn.
That boy's stomach will be the subject of bards' songs someday,
Colm thought.

“That was depressing,” Serene concluded as they discussed everything they'd done that morning. “It's like they're trying to spook us. Like they want us to quit before we even get started.”

Lena wasn't convinced.

“Believe me. If they wanted us to quit, the goblin would have unleashed something more menacing than a pile of green goo,” she said. Colm agreed. Though it certainly had done a number on Dagnor's face, a little fire and a mop had been all that was required to vanquish it. Hardly the stuff of legends.

“I'll just be happy to spend the afternoon with Master Merribell,” Serene said. “She's promised to teach me how to conjure butterflies from flower petals.”

“Terrific,” Lena countered. “Can't imagine how
that
won't be useful.”

“You don't have to be snotty about it,” Serene said. “I suppose you'll just spend the afternoon hacking away at something.”

“If I'm lucky,” Lena replied.

Colm put a hand on Scratch's paw, then caught sight of Tyren and his two friends taking seats four tables away, laughing and making faces. They weren't alone. There was another girl with them this time, one Colm hadn't seen before. She had hair so black it looked almost blue, pulled back into a single braid that fell across one shoulder like a sash. Unlike the other three, who were busy throwing food or pounding on the table, her narrow face was shoved into a book big enough to be ammunition for catapults. She had bronze skin and long, thin fingers—the usual number—and looked like she might have come from somewhere far away. Far from Felhaven, at least. Maybe across the seas. She wasn't particularly beautiful,
but there was something about her absolute stillness, her total disregard for what was happening around her, that captured Colm's attention.

“Who's she?”

Lena twisted around to get a look, then shook her head.

“Don't know,” she said. “She's no warrior, though. A warrior would never be caught dead in leather armor that thin.”

“Her name's Ravena Heartfall,” Quinn said, moving on to his third bowl, though he seemed to be slowing a little. “She's a talent.”

Colm gave Quinn his don't-forget-I'm-just-the-poor-son-of-a-shoe-cobbler look. He had perfected it over the course of the morning, whenever one of them took something for granted as common knowledge.

“You know, a talent? A person with a wide variety of natural abilities. Like Imon Invale. Spellcasting, fencing, disarmament . . . she was working by herself when I was practicing with Master Velmoth yesterday. She can summon a sword out of thin air, and swing it pretty well too.”

Colm nodded, impressed.

“Big deal,” Lena snipped.

Quinn gave her a surprised look. “Rumor has it that she conquered Bloodclaw's little maze by herself. She's like a whole dungeoneering party wrapped into one.”

“Why is she hanging out with those three, then?” Serene asked. Like Colm, she was studying the strange figure of Ravena Heartfall intensely.

“Yeah,” Lena seconded, reaching out and snatching her bowl of stew back from Quinn, stabbing forcefully at a carrot. “If she's so amazing, how come she needs that ogre Tyren?” She stuffed a hunk of meat into her mouth, determined to chew it to oblivion.

Quinn shrugged. “You heard what Master Argos said. None of us can do everything all the time.”

Colm tried not to keep staring. Quinn was right. Finn had made that perfectly clear. In fact, they all had. Fimbly with his sketches. Herren with his slime. If Colm had to take any
other
lesson from this morning—outside of his being so ignorant of things—it was that anyone, even a talented anyone, would be a fool to try to make it through a dungeon by himself.

Still,
he thought, taking one last glance at Ravena Heartfall,
it wouldn't hurt to have someone like that on your side.

“Whatever,” Lena said dismissively. “There's nothing she can do that we can't do better.”

“But there's lots of things she can do that I can't do at all,” Quinn said. Then he tried to steal Lena's stew back from her, but she wrapped both hands about it and growled at him. He wasn't a very good thief.

Odds were, Ravena Heartfall was a better one.

After lunch, Serene and Lena marched off eagerly to meet their mentors and do pretty much the opposite of each other, the druid learning to heal the wounds that the warrior was
learning to make. Quinn moped glumly toward the spellcasters' hall to face one of two masters he'd
already
set fire to. “And I've only been here a day,” he complained. Finn came to collect Colm, seeming to melt right out of the walls.

“Ready to get your hands dirty?” he asked. Colm thought about the ogre's jelly that had nearly sucked poor Dagnor's face off. Finn flashed his confident smile. “Don't worry,” he said. “This is more in your direct line of work.”

They walked along the western corridor, passing by rooms where other dungeoneers were in the middle of their training. Colm peeked, hoping to catch another glimpse of Ravena the Talent, but the only one he recognized was Tyren, hacking away at a practice dummy with a battle-ax. Tyren turned to see Colm spying on him, then gave the dummy one more solid
thwack
, splitting it down the middle. Colm quickly caught back up to Finn.

“I mailed your letter this morning,” the rogue said. “Though I should tell you, it might take a while. The hawks seldom fly to Felhaven. It's not exactly the hub of commerce and adventure.”

Colm didn't need Finn to tell him that. “Can they write back?”

Finn nodded. “You will hear from them soon, I'm sure. I wouldn't worry. I doubt your sister Celia would let anything happen in your absence.”

Colm nodded appreciatively, though the thought of his sister made his insides ache. “Can I ask you something?”

“If this is about the scar, I told you, I got it in a knife fight with a pirate lord off the coast of Mardoon.”

“You said it was a goblin executioner,” Colm corrected.

“Who just happened to be a pirate lord,” Finn replied wryly. “What was your question?”

“I was thinking about the test. To get into the guild. Not the dungeon. That I understand. But the coin. I mean, what was the point, if you were just going to give it to me regardless? Why even make me try to get it? Was it just a trick? Or did you just want to see me make a fool out of myself?”

Finn stopped in front of a door, the last one at the end of the hall.

“No trick, Colm Candorly. I just wanted to make it clear which of us was the master.”

“As if that was ever in doubt,” Colm muttered. Finn shook his head.

“Rule number twenty-three. Be the best there is at what you do, and always be aware that someone does it better.” Finn opened the door and ushered Colm inside. “Welcome,” he said, “to my workshop.”

Colm looked around the room. It didn't look anything like his father's workshop back home. Of course, Rove Candorly's shop wasn't much more than a table and a barrel of tools in one corner of their warped wooden barn. Finn's workshop was much more elaborate, overflowing with cabinets and chests, shelves nearly collapsing under the weight of books, the floor littered with all manner of gadgets that Colm couldn't
identify. One wall was covered in maps, most of them ancient-looking and torn. Another was covered in keys of varying lengths and designs, each hanging from its own ring. A skull sat on the corner of a large walnut desk, its top sawed off to make a morbid candleholder.

“Wow,” Colm said.

“It's nothing like Tye Thwodin's, I can tell you that, but it serves its purpose.”

Colm walked over to the wall of keys and started touching them. They made a kind of forlorn music when they fell against one another. “Do you know what they all go to?”

Finn shrugged. “I did at one time, I suppose, but there are a lot of doors that, once opened, are never shut again, making half of those keys superfluous. Besides,” he added, “rule number thirty-nine. Most of the doors worth opening don't have a key—at least not one you can easily get your hands on. That's why there are people like us.”

Colm turned from the keys to the maps, running his fingers along the borders of mountains, tracing the snaking trails of rivers. He didn't recognize most of the names of the places he read. He found Felhaven on one of them and was surprised at just how small it was. Barely a dot, with its name scrawled in scrunched letters.

Then he turned to the far wall, and the most unusual door he had ever seen.

“What's that?”

“That,” Finn said, beaming proudly, “is my own personal
invention. My pride and joy.” He pursed his lips. “Well, it's not exactly
my
invention. I had some help from Renny . . . and Velmoth . . . and some of the other masters. But it was still my idea. I needed an easy way to teach the craft that we rogues are so well known for, so I created . . .” Finn paused for dramatic effect, then thrust both hands toward it. “The Door of a Hundred Locks.”

Colm stood at the door, which had been set into the wall. Sure enough, it was practically covered in intricate plates of copper, iron, and silver, each with a keyhole, some big enough to shove in a dagger, others barely large enough for a horse's hair. “Where does it lead?”

“Where do you think? To a mystical land teeming with nymphs and sirens and sprites that tumble playfully through the eaves of dancing trees and feed you sweet nectar from a crystal bowl,” Finn said, his eyes wide.

Colm raised an eyebrow, put a hand on the door. “Sure. But where does it really lead?” he asked.

“It's actually just the closet where I keep my spare shoes. But it's not what's behind the door that matters. Not in this case, anyways. It's the getting it open. After all, we are rogues. We are counted on to get into places and things we otherwise shouldn't. That requires tremendous skill.”

Colm nodded. “And there are really a hundred different locks?” Colm had only counted the top row.

“Not exactly.” Finn coughed. “But the Door of Sixty-Seven Locks didn't have quite the same ring to it.”

Still, sixty-seven locks was impressive. Colm wondered what you would have to be hiding to need so many different locks. Certainly something more valuable than Finn's spare boots. “And you know how to pick every single one of them?”

Finn nodded. “Though I admit some of them still pose a challenge for me. This one, for example”—he pointed to a lock along the top with a golden face no larger than Colm's thumbnail and a hole no bigger than a freckle—“is called the Twitch. The tumbler inside requires only the most infinitesimal movement, barely a nudge. Less than a nudge. A breath. Force it too much one way or the other, and it triggers its fail-safe mechanism, usually a trap of some kind leading to your—”

“Untimely demise,” Colm finished. The lessons of the morning weren't lost on him.

“Right. And this row,” Finn continued, pointing to a column of locks marching down the door's right side, “is made up entirely of enchanted locks, which means that they are protected by magic of some sort or another. Even the most skilled rogue in history couldn't get past them without some means of countering that magic.”

“Like a counterspell?” Colm wondered.

“A counterspell, certainly. Though you know how I feel about letting mages handle anything as sensitive as picking locks. There are other things that rogues can use. Scrolls. Talismans. Magic Dan's Antimagic Paste.”

“Magic Dan?” He was sure Finn was teasing him again.

“Of course you haven't heard of Magic Dan's. They probably don't carry it in any of the stores in Felhaven. Fantastic stuff, though. Comes in a little jar. Rub a little on the outside, and it eats away at the enchantment. Not good for really high-level magic, mind, but it can nullify a goblin shaman's ward in minutes.”

“How come you didn't put any of it in my bag, then?”

“Oh. It's terribly expensive,” Finn explained. “We don't go handing it out to just anybody. Now look here.” He pointed to a series of ten locks on the left. They were not particularly ornate, though they seemed to grow more complex as they descended. “These are the starters. This first one”—pointing to the top—“is just like the one you picked to get out of Renny's dungeon. We begin with these, doing them over and over again until you can unlock them in your sleep; then we move on to the next ten and the next ten and so on, until finally you tackle
that
one.” Finn turned and pointed to the corner of the room, to a small chest made of iron, sealed with a silver plate. “Pick that, and you'll be my hero.”

“You'll have to show me how,” Colm said, staring at the lock, thinking it looked like many of the others already set into the door and wondering what was so special about it.

“I wish I could.” Finn shrugged.

“You mean you've never even opened it?”

Finn shook his head.

“You don't even know what's inside?”

The corners of Finn's mouth twitched. “Nobody knows,”
he said. “Maybe all the treasure in the world. Maybe a pile of dust. Maybe my missing fingers.” The glint in the rogue's eye soon faded as he turned back to the door of a hundred locks—rounded up. “But as in all things, the best place to start is the beginning.”