He peered at the black metal dart through his goggle lens. The barbed head had something gummy smeared on it, underneath the blood.
Dwarfbane, he guessed.
Would he succumb? The duergar’s trademark poison was specifically designed to kill dwarves; the duergar themselves were immune to it. Torrin’s human body, thankfully, was also immune. Yet the two puncture wounds burned as if the darts themselves had been forge-hot.
Torrin threw the dart aside; it clattered away on the tunnel’s stone floor.
He glanced down. The second dart had been slowed by his boot. The tip of it had barely pierced his calf, yet the tiny wound stung as fiercely as the first had. Torrin left the dart where it was for the moment, as it would take some effort to yank it back through the leather. He didn’t want to blunder into additional triggers while taking his boot off.
The third dart, Marthammor Duin be praised, had missed.
Torrin wished he’d brought a shield with him. Or, for that matter, his iron bracers, he thought ruefully as blood dribbled from the torn skin of his forearm. There was no time for regrets, however. Still moving slowly, he bent his knees slightly. Then he leaped backwards and away from the trigger. As he’d suspected, more darts exploded from the wall, streaking through the air at a dwarf’s chest height. They slammed into the opposite wall and skritched off into the darkness.
Away from the pressure plates at last, Torrin paused to remove his boot. He yanked the dart out of it and put the boot back on again. He’d have to be careful, he thought.
He drank the last of his potions. As took hold, the glow around anything that was ensorcelled intensified. A large rune on the wall just ahead, for example, glowed brightly. Yet his magically enhanced eyesight wouldn’t reveal ordinary pressure traps like the one he’d just trod upon. Nor had the orc given any warnings about traps when drawing his map. Likely, the traps had been installed after the rune was inscribed, to keep intruders like Torrin out.
Torrin had read extensively about traps in the Delver’s Tome, and had encountered more than one type, in the course of his years of delving. There was always a way to disarm or bypass any trap. Otherwise, those who’d installed it wouldn’t have access to their own strongholds.
He inspected the timbers that held up the section of the tunnel, and studied the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. He saw no evidence of a hidden lever or a secret passage to bypass the trapped section of tunnel. Either the duergar trap makers had done their work too well for Torrin to find their handiwork, or they’d never intended to use that way in.
Did that mean there was a second way to access the cavern where the rune was inscribed?
The obvious way to bypass the dart trap would be to crawl along the floor, below the level of the darts. Yet the trapmakers would have thought of that and prepared for it. Likely, just up ahead, the darts shot out at a height that would strike a crawling intruder-possibly in the eye. Or else some other, more deadly trap would be sprung.
Torrin could run through the hail of darts and suffer only minor damage-it was apparent the dwarfbane wasn’t going to kill him-but in his haste he might blunder into even more dangerous traps, triggered by spidersilk tripwires or the disruption of a current of air. There was no sense taking chances, especially given that he was so close to his goal. According to his map, the rune cavern was just a little farther ahead, at the tunnel’s end.
Through his remaining goggle lens, he could see some distance down the tunnel-about fifty paces or so. The magical rune he’d spotted was about half that distance away, and the area at the limit of his vision looked clear. There was one way to reach that clear spot without triggering any more traps.
Maybe.
He pulled the runestone from his backpack. It would likely work again, now that he was away from the slave pens, but did he dare use it? Teleporting such a short distance, to a spot he could clearly see, would be easy enough. But if he landed on a trigger, could he teleport away in time?
As he contemplated that, he heard a rustling noise behind him. The tunnel grew lighter, awash with a faint blue light. He whirled and saw what at first appeared to be a flowing mass of blue fire that humped and bulged as it flowed toward him. As it drew closer, he recognized it as dozens of rats whose fur crackled with faint blue light.
Spellfire!
There was no longer any time for debate. The swarm would be upon him in an instant. An individual rat he could easily kill with his mace. But there were scores of them, with enough teeth to gnaw him to bloody bone in a matter of moments.
He fixed his eye on the apparently safe stretch of tunnel up ahead and pointed at it for good measure. “By blood and earth, ae-burakrin, take me there,” he commanded.
He felt a twist, then a prolonged stretch as he was pulled by magic to the spot. The walls blurred on either side, glowing with the blue spellfire the runestone was channeling. Then he landed. A pressure plate clicked underfoot. Barely in time, he threw himself aside. A blade scythed out of the ceiling and swept across the tunnel, jarring as it caught his pack and sliced off a buckle. As the blade continued to swing back and forth, swishing in a deadly arc, he glanced behind and saw the rats swarming up the tunnel toward him, drawn by the scent of fresh blood. Darts erupted out of the walls as they ran, clattering in a hail against the opposite wall.
Torrin whirled, gave the corridor beyond the spot where he’d landed a quick scan, and chose his next landing spot. Again, he activated the runestone. He teleported just in time, as the blue glowing rats swarmed under the swinging blade. He landed on something soft and invisible. The stench of squashed mushroom filled his nose even as spores erupted all around him in a suddenly visible cloud. Were they toxic? He couldn’t run the risk that they were. As the spores swirled upward to his chest and face, he frantically chose his next landing spot, on the near side of an area of tunnel that glowed brightly with magic. Did it hold yet another deadly trap? He had to take the chance. In another moment he’d be breathing in potentially deadly spores.
In the nick of time, just as the spores swirled level with his chin, he teleported to the spot he’d chosen. That time, praise Moradin, he landed without triggering a trap. He held his breath and shook spores from his clothes and his hands; they drifted lazily down to his feet. Still not daring to breathe, he stepped back a pace.
His heel bumped something on the floor. He stumbled and fell backward into an area that glowed with magic, landing on top of what felt like a pile of jagged rubble. He threw his body into an awkward roll, trying to escape the glow, knowing that, even as he did so, it was probably too late. The magic, however, proved to be benign. An illusion. What had appeared, a moment before, to be a continuation of the tunnel was revealed to be a collapsed dead end, as the illusion that had hidden the cave-in from sight winked out.
The rustling swarm of rats drew closer. Torrin sprang to his feet. Should he use the runestone to try to teleport back the way he’d just come, once they reached him? He wasn’t sure if teleporting past the rats would be possible; the glowing swarm stretched down the tunnel as far as he could see. He switched the runestone to his left hand and hefted his mace in his right. If he had to teleport into their midst, he’d need it.
The rats hit the spot where the cloud of spores still swirled. More spores exploded into the air as they struck others-invisible puffballs. The cloud grew denser. From inside it came harsh squeals and a frenzied rustling. Rats collapsed, asphyxiated by the deadly spores. Still more rats plunged on into the cloud and piled atop their fellows. At last, dimly sensing the danger, most of the swarm wheeled and scuttled the other way, flowing away down the tunnel in a glowing, ragged stream.
One or two rats burst out of the cloud and ran to the spot where Torrin stood. He readied his mace. Just before they reached him, a sheet of flame erupted out of the floor, filling the tunnel with a blaze of redorange light. It was barely a pace away from Torrin. He felt its intense heat on his face and smelled his beard singe. For a moment, the sheet of fire blazed brightly. Then it vanished, leaving behind blackened lumps that stank of charred flesh and fur.
“By Moradin’s beard,” Torrin whispered, mopping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. “That was close.”
Marthammor Duin, finder of trails, had truly lent Torrin his blessings. Still trembling slightly, Torrin whispered a prayer of thanks to the Watcher over Wanderers.
He shook his head and contemplated the dead-end corridor. What to do? It was clear that the duergar had taken great pains to ensure that no one could use the corridor to reach the cavern where the rune had been inscribed. They’d obviously anticipated that someone might learn of the corridor from the slaves. Torrin wondered
