“One way to find out,” Agannor drawled, stepping over the goblin, shoving the door wide, and striding through it. Pennae’s snarl of helpless anger followed him, as she started around the table like a storm wind-then stopped, shaking her fists in futility.
Agannor stuck his head back in the door and grinned at her. “ ’S’all quiet here, little battlemaster. No beasties, just a jakes.”
Pennae shook her head, still seething. “One day your luck will run out, Agannor! Tymora will shake her head and let Beshaba have you!”
“One day soon,” Islif echoed, also shaking her head.
Agannor shrugged and waved his hand airily behind him. “Call of nature, anyone?”
Pennae strode to the door and examined it and its frame very closely, ignoring Agannor.
Then she stepped into the passage beyond, Islif right behind her. They pushed past a grinning Agannor, and peered along the passage. It ran a few paces and then turned sharp west, to end at a wooden-seat-over-pit privy, that smelled very faintly of “Wait,” Pennae said flatly. “It doesn’t end there. Look, off to the left: there’s been a roof-fall, or they stopped digging. ’Tis all tumbled stones.”
Florin, Agannor, and Islif walked with her, Jhessail staying behind in the doorway of the bunkroom.
In the beam of Pennae’s lantern, the place where tool-marks ended in the solid stone overhead could clearly be seen. No collapse, then, but an end to delving through solid stone.
Pennae turned back to the privy, aiming her lantern upward. “A shaft-up as well as down. Islif, I need your blade here.” She pointed. “Thrust it up, hard, as I duck in here under you and look down. I’d prefer not to have some biting beastie pounce on my head.”
Islif nodded, and as soon as Pennae had slid in front of her, hunched low, the warrior woman brought her blade up, from knees to straight out over her head, in a hard, fast upward lunge.
The steel struck something solid, and Islif cried a warning as she felt her sword bite deep into it-as it moved.
She hadn’t even formed the first word when a flood of iridescent gold and purple liquid showered down on Pennae’s head.
The thief ducked blindly back, spitting, as something that squalled and scrabbled against the shaft walls in a frenzy descended, black fangs-if that’s what they were-chattering in agony. Florin hurled himself over a rolling, snarling Pennae to add his steel to Islif’s, driving his sword hilt deep into A spider the size of a Purple Dragon’s shield, sagging into view with faltering legs, purple gold shimmering fluids streaming out of it as it died.
The thing was surprisingly heavy, and slammed into the privy-seat with force enough to break that lone board. Dying spider and splintered wood fell together into the privy-pit with a wet, solid crash.
Pennae had plucked her waterskin from her belt, and was sluicing spider juices out of her hair and off her face. “It stings,” she gasped. “Make sure there’re no little spiders higher up the shaft.”
She thrust her lantern in Florin’s direction. Agannor slid past the forester, hip to hip, to put his own blade up the shaft beside Islif’s sticky, empurpled steel, and grunted, “Florin, shine the light along my arm-this shaft might be a way up to somewhere…”
It proved not to be, rough natural stone drawing together a tall man’s height overhead, and the Swords retreated to the bunkroom to get a good look at Pennae. Her skin was bright red in two places, but the fluids seemed not to have harmed her otherwise. She pronounced herself, “Just fine.”
“Back the other way,” Florin said, relief bright in his voice, “to rejoin our rearguard, and go on north together. I’m thinking now that splitting up was more foolish than guarding our way out. If either group meets a strong foe, ’tis darker days than if we’d stood together.”
They hastened, shining their lanterns on themselves and waving. The four Swords at the passage-moot waved back.
“What happened to you?” Semoor asked as the Swords drew together. He was peering curiously at Pennae’s gold and purple hair.
“A tale for later,” she said tersely, just as fresh lightnings hummed and crackled between the two bronzen statues. Pennae gave the crawling, stabbing bolts a disbelieving look. “Still?”
“Oh, yes,” Doust told her. “They’ve been doing that, betimes, ever since you left us.”
“Myself,” Martess put in, “I wonder why they never veer to the doors. Everywhere else, yes, but all that metal standing there so broad and high, and the lightnings never go that way.”
“I know,” Pennae said sarcastically, holding up a finger in a mockery of delighted discovery. “ ’Tis magic!”
“Gods,” Jhessail muttered under her breath, just loud enough for everyone to hear, “another Semoor Wolftooth! Truly, the gods weave in mysterious ways!”
Islif chuckled, tapping Florin’s arm to warn him to say nothing, and waved them on. Rolling her eyes, Pennae led the way.
The north end of the passage was a room with a westward archway and a slantwise passage back to the room of the barred gates that was a mirror image of the south end-except that the inner, westerly room lacked all furniture, damaged or otherwise, and had two doors in its walls, both firmly closed.
Pennae played her lantern-beam around the room and down at its floor, then up at its ceiling-which glistened.
Her eyes barely had time to narrow before something very small fell from that ceiling, to star across the floor with a wet splat.
She trained her lantern on it, seeing a leaf green color that darkened to bright emerald where her beam of light was. Deliberately, she sprang into the air and came down hard, stamping with both feet.
Splat, splat.
“Nobody get any closer to this,” Pennae warned the Swords behind her, her voice like iron-even as she disobeyed herself, sidling sideways from the doorway as she stepped cautiously closer to it. “That means you, too, Agannor, unless you want to die right here and now.”
“What is it?” Florin asked, as more drips fell from the ceiling to spatter the floor. Their lanterns were all trained on that floor, now-until Florin told Bey to swing around, and Jhessail with him, to watch their rear-and they could see the green, glistening wetness moving across the floor, creeping slowly but tirelessly toward the walls.
“Green slime is its name, bless all bards,” Pennae told him, without taking her gaze from it for an instant. “Its touch dooms you. It turns you into itself, and eats through… many things. Our lights and our footfalls are making it fall.”
She stepped back. “We dare not enter yon room, unless we can build a fire out here large enough to scorch the ceiling, and push it in there, and keep on moving it carefully around, so as to get it all-and I don’t want to be trying to breathe in here while a fire of that size is raging. See it moving? Every droplet that falls will spend almost a day-or more-oozing to the walls and up them, to rejoin the rest of the slime it fell from.”
“Charming,” Martess commented.
“I don’t like the look of this,” Doust said.
Just then Agannor pushed past him, gave Pennae a disdainful glare, and told the halls around him, “I don’t heed warnings and I don’t cringe and creep through life like an old farmwife a-quiver over ghosts. And I’m not going to start now!”
His first stride into the room brought a small rain of falling slime. His second caused fist- and head-sized pieces to plummet, spraying the room.
“You fool! ” Pennae snarled. “Get out of there!”
Agannor whirled and leaped back through the door.
“Grab him!” Pennae snapped, snatching a candle out of a belt pouch and thrusting it into her lantern. “Hold him-he’s got some of it on him!”
The Swords tussled with a cursing Agannor. The moment her candle was properly alight, Pennae thrust it at the warrior’s arm then low on his breeches, holding the flame to the glistening spots there until the leathers started to smoke.
The reek was unbelievable-and very different from burning leather. It smelled of swamps and earthy decay and… eels. Martess and Jhessail gagged in unison.
Slime was falling like slapping rain beyond the doorway now. In unspoken accord the Swords drew away from
