“Nonsense,” answered Nerhaltan for him. “The boy’s got too much adventure in him to be content on some farm. Lead on, lad, lead on. There’s plenty for all if we can find our prize.”
Gustin led the three men toward the ruins. The woods buzzed with the usual noise of a warm autumn afternoon, birds calling to mates, the deep rumble of frogs, the chittering of insects. It sounded so normal that Gustin paused.
“What is it?” asked the dandy.
Gustin shrugged. He felt as if a dozen ants were marching up and down his spine. A prickling of his skin unlike anything he had ever felt before.
“Are we going forward or going back?” said Tapper.
“Forward,” replied the dandy, giving Gustin a slight shove between the shoulder blades. “Go to, sirrah, go to.”
“There’s something wrong,” said Gustin.
“What?”
He shook his head. Suddenly he wondered if he should have listened to his uncle and stayed home. And then he was ashamed of his cowardice. Here he was, so close to discovering a lost treasure, and he stood trembling, afraid of a few birds singing in the tangled branches over his head.
Even as that thought tumbled through his mind, Gustin let out a great sigh of relief and enlightenment.
“It’s the birds,” he said to the three adventurers staring at him. “The birds. It’s the wrong time of year. They should not be singing like that.”
And the minute he said it, the woods fell silent. Not a cheep or a chirp could be heard.
The fighter drew his repaired sword out of the scabbard with a well-oiled hiss.
“It is close,” he said to his friends.
Tapper peered from side to side. “Keep everyone together now. No one out of sight.”
Gustin stared at the three now surrounding him in a tight knot.
“What is it?” he asked, with a sinking certainty that he would not like the answer he would receive from the adults.
“Nothing to worry about,” said Nerhaltan with a strained smile. “Go on, boy, go on ahead. There’s a hole, you see, down by the base of the wall. It’s too small for us, even Tapper won’t fit, but if you can wiggle your way in…”
A shout sounded to their left. It sounded uncommonly like his uncle calling “Gustin! Gustin!”
Out of habit, Gustin almost started toward the shouts, into the thickest part of the woods, but Tapper grabbed his shirttails and pulled him back. “To the wall, boy, to the wall.”
Silence fell again. Gustin listened but he heard no more from his uncle. Perhaps he was turning away and searching toward the village road.
They reached the walls of the ruin. The place seemed colder than before and more menacing than he remembered, the shadows clustering at the base of the wall and making a gloomy twilight inside the roofless rooms of the abandoned fort.
High above his head, a kitten mewed, a lost sound. Poor thing, thought Gustin, it must have climbed the wall and gotten itself stuck. Fond of cats, he chirped, hoping to draw it into the open.
“Hush!” Nerhaltan clapped a hand over Gustin’s mouth. “Don’t call to it.”
Gustin wiggled his way free and eyed the dandy with suspicion. “Why should I be afraid of a stray kitten?”
“Not a cat,” muttered Tapper, nervously looking around. “It just sounds like a cat. When it’s not trying to sound like your mother.”
“Or a flock of birds.” That from the fighter, who had put his back to the ruins’ wall and was staring out at the woods.
“Now, about this hole,” said Nerhaltan. There was a hole at the base of the wall, newly dug, as Gustin could tell by the fresh clods of dirt lining its rim. As the dandy had said, the opening was small, the stone blocks of the wall preventing it from being enlarged beyond the current opening.
Gustin went flat on his stomach and peered within. He snapped his fingers, concentrating on a useful spell that the widow had taught him, and made a light. The little glowing ball rolled away from his hand and dropped down the hole. It disappeared into a chamber located just under the wall.
“A safe room. All these little hill forts used to have them. A place to hide treasure,” explained Tapper, leaning over Gustin’s shoulder. “The original way in… well, we couldn’t use that. So I came around to the other side of the wall and broke in through the roof. But it’s too narrow a route for us to wiggle down and back.”
The air issuing from the hole smelled stale, dank, and uncommonly like a grave to Gustin.
“Is something down there?” Gustin asked. For the end of his sensitive nose caught another scent, a stink like an animal, but no animal that he could identify.
“Nothing down there now,” said Nerhaltan.
“Now that it is out here,” added Wervyn. The fighter was facing away from the wall, looking up the broad stone staircase that wound around the tower to the guards’ walk at the top of the wall.
“Go on, wiggle in.” The dandy gave Gustin a little push from behind. “Look for a box, a little gold box with brilliants around the edge of the lid. That’s all we need to pay our way to Waterdeep.”
The late afternoon shadows stretched from the trees to the base of the fort, like long black fingers reaching for the adventurers standing over Gustin. “Hurry,” said Nerhaltan. “We should be out of here as quickly as possible.”
For the very first time in his ten years, Gustin wished that he was back at the farm and his uncle was yelling at him about his neglected chores.
He slid headfirst into the hole, plunging his arms in front of him like a swimmer to drag himself forward. His feet kicked the air outside until somebody grabbed his ankles-Nerhaltan, probably-and shoved him all the way in. Gustin slithered forward, concentrating on his light spell. A faint glow began to strengthen before him.
“What do you see?” The shout sounded very far away and muffled to his ears.
“Nothing!” he yelled back.
Then he popped like a cork from a bottle, tumbling out of the tunnel and onto the littered, stinking floor of the room under the wall. Piles of debris cushioned his fall. For which he was grateful until he put his hand onto the half-rotted corpse of a mouse. With a yelp of disgust, he rolled away, only to land on a much larger pile of bones that crumbled and cracked under his slight weight.
Gustin sprang hastily to his feet and spat a hasty command to his spell. By the glowing light that he now made float in the center of the room, he could discern rib bones, leg bones, and a few vertebrae. After a squeamish moment, he came to the conclusion that these were the remains of a lost sheep or, possibly, a calf. It certainly could not be a ten-year-old boy. After all, if somebody his age had gone missing from the village, he would have known. Even if it had been years and years ago. Or so he told himself firmly.
Gustin began kicking through the trash strewn about the room, looking for the gold box that Nerhaltan described. Nothing glittered or gleamed. After one quick turn around the room, he decided the search was hopeless and that he would rather be above ground, no matter what lurked among the trees.
Crossing back to the hole where he had entered, Gustin found that it was just out of reach. Even pushing the larger bones, dead leaves, and other bits of rubbish in the room into a pile under the hole didn’t help. The material was too unstable. Every time he climbed up, the pile collapsed under his feet.
“Help!” he yelled. “I need a rope!”
There was no answer.
Gustin called again, louder and more urgent.
A faint cough sounded far above his head and then he heard Nerhaltan call, “Where are you, boy? Where have you gone?”
The dandy’s voice was muffled and strangely distorted and, Gustin shivered despite himself, altogether too eager for an answer. Especially for a man who should know exactly where he was. After all, Nerhaltan had pushed him down this hole.
All the magic Gustin possessed tingled up and down his spine. Something was out there and it meant him harm.
Something sniffed at the hole leading into the safe room. Something scratched at stone and dirt, as if
