Suddenly, in his mind, he could See the trip-wire breaking, and as it did, the section of floor on which he and Idalia were standing pivoted and fell away, leaving a deep pit where the floor had been. How deep, he wasn’t sure; but the fall would kill all who were standing in this length of corridor when the wire was broken.
Kellen got to his feet and backed away. He pulled off the cloak again.
“If we’d broken that wire, the floor would have fallen away, and we’d both have been killed,” he whispered into the darkness.
There was a moment of silence.
“Kellen, if we’re attacked by a horde of poison-flinging Shadowed Elves, you
“Yes,” Kellen said with certainty.
“Then let’s use lanterns. Because I really don’t want to miss you warning me about the next trap because I can’t hear you. And they’re easier to put out quickly than Coldfire.”
They lit their lanterns and went on, stepping carefully over the trip-wire after marking its position with chalk-marks on the floor to either side of it.
The corridor opened out into a small chamber. Long thin poles were stuck into the rock at intervals, jutting out into the room. The only way through them was a narrow corridor down the middle.
Disturbing one of those would bring a jar of acid pouring down.
“Don’t touch any of those unless you want a faceful of something bad,” Kellen said grimly.
They went on.
Each of those traps—the pit-trap and the acid-trap, would have caused losses. But they could have built a bridge across the pit—or even jumped it—and once the acid jars were empty, that trap would be harmless, too.
Neither was bad enough to make the army turn back. And from there on, they’d be alert for more traps.
But if the Shadowed Elves were attacking at the same time, they wouldn’t have the chance to spot them. They’d be forced into them.
The next trap was a patch of corridor that looked like stone to the unaided eye, but when Kellen threw a coin into it, it sank beneath the surface instantly. He chalked a mark at the near edge, Saw where the far side was, and jumped it. Idalia did the same, chalking a mark to indicate the far boundary.
“It must have taken them a long time to make all of these traps,” Idalia said consideringly, looking back at the pool of artfully-disguised quicksand. “Moon-turns, maybe.”
“There weren’t any of these in the first cavern. Did they build these just for us? And if they did, how did they know we were coming?” Kellen wondered aloud. He was glad of the breathing space. The need to be constantly alert—and the knowledge of the penalty if he wasn’t—was draining.
“And where are they?” Idalia asked, putting into words what Kellen had been wondering since they’d begun to descend into the cavern.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Kellen said grimly. “These traps—bad as they are—aren’t enough to stop the army—only to make it pay dearly for every foot of tunnel it takes. Let’s keep going. We need to find the village.”
It seemed they could not go more than a few steps without encountering another trap. Some were as simple as poisoned spikes jutting out of the walls, or a rain of stones set to fall from the ceiling when a trip-wire was broken. Some were as complicated as the jet of air rushing between two low holes in the walls—they crawled beneath that one, and didn’t stop to find out what would have happened if they’d interrupted the flow of air. Some trip-wires seemed to have no purpose at all that Kellen could see—that probably meant they triggered more distant traps, perhaps to seal the whole army into the cave system, so it could be dealt with at leisure.
And no matter how far they went, they saw no sign of the cavern’s inhabitants.
Several side caverns had been hastily filled-in with rubble, as if the Shadowed Elves did not wish the invaders to get lost—or to find shelter.
“They’re leading us right to them,” Idalia said. “Or to the village, at least.”
Kellen had no doubt of that. And the army, having gotten this far, having sustained horrific losses, would be thinking of nothing but closing with its enemy.
