to be much harder to take than it looked. Pinch wondered just how many had tried before him and failed.
It was a question to be approached with caution. From his perch in the window, Pinch studied the room. There was much not to like. The coverings on the walls hid too much, the floor was too clean-it was just too easy. A lack-a-wit could figure out things were not what they seemed here. It wasn't a case of whether there were traps, but just what traps the priests had stitched up for him.
As he perched in that window, pressed against the sill so that he was nothing more than a black shadow on the wall, Pinch cursed Maeve for her drunkenness. Maybe Therin was right, that the woman's drinking was outbalancing the usefulness of her skills. If she'd been more of a wizard I wouldn't be sitting here, afraid to touch the floor. I'd have me a scroll or a ring or something to find the mantraps and show me the way. As it is, she's too drunk to properly prepare what I need most the time.
Pinch allowed himself the luxury of this frustration for a few moments and then put it away. When he was down, not hanging in some clergy's window, he would take it up with her. A little cold water and drying out would do her some good, but now there was work and it was time it was done.
From his boot, Pinch slid a slender packet of tools wrapped in soft, oily leather that smelled faintly of dried fish and cologne. He undid the strings and laid out a small collection of rods, marbles, blades, probes, and saws. Working tools for a working man. He took the rod and pulled on it till it grew longer and longer, to the length of a spear. It was rigid, light, and didn't slip in his grasp. It had cost him three particular rubies that the old dwarven smith had demanded, the stealing of which turned into more of a job than the thief had expected. Right now, it was worth it.
With the wand he brushed the hangings. The first three barely stirred at his caress. The fourth quivered at his touch like a thing prodded in its dreams. Pinch poked it again, a little more firmly. The heavy cloth suddenly snapped and writhed like a thing alive, trying to envelop the slender rod.
Well enough, Pinch thought. Stay clear of that wall.
So the path led to the right, away from the living curtain. That meant the next trap would come there, where he was being herded to go.
Careful testing revealed nothing else obvious behind the walls, so Pinch focused next on the floor. The floor beneath the sill sounded solid enough when rapped, so he tentatively set one foot on the floor. When nothing gave way, he eased down into nervous crouch. He rolled a marble from his kit into the center of the tower room. Only after it came to a stop did he move again and then he never took his eyes from it as he sidled around the perimeter of the room. If the marble moved it was a sign that something in the floor had shifted: a pivot, a trapdoor, or some sinister deadfall. He spread his arms and legs spiderlike as he moved, a painful way to get about and one that his tired, restitched muscles could barely stand, but it was the most prudent way. Should something shift, the spread of his weight gave him the best chance of recovering.
It was poised like this that Pinch discovered the next trap. With his gaze still locked on the marble, he slid a foot closer to his goal. All at once, the floor disappeared beneath his toes. There was no telltale creak, no rattle and swish of the trapdoor to give him warning. There was just suddenly nothing up to his knee and beyond.
Even expecting some trap, the drop caught the rogue off guard. His weight had been overbalanced to that side, and before he could correct it he slid until the weight of what dangled over the edge pulled the rest of him along. A frantic look over his shoulder presented a strange sight, his body being swallowed by the unbroken smoothness of the floor. Illusion! he realized in panic, the thrice-damned floor was an illusion. Gods knew how many floors he might plunge through or what lay below.
Desperately Pinch scrabbled at the floor, but the vein-creased stone was polished to a perfect and ungenerous beauty. His fingers squeaked greasily over the sheen. All at once the cold stone popped away from his chin and, like a sailor drowning in a shipwreck, his head dropped into the ocean of magic. The world of light and substance disappeared into a swirl of irrational color, the blend of mottled stone, and then gloom.
In the last instant, Pinch's fingers closed on the only thing there was to seize, the sharp edge of the stone rim. With the instinct of years of practice, he set his fingers the way a mountain climber clings to the smallest ledge of rock. The strain on his arms was tremendous; his fingertips almost gave way at the jerk of his sudden stop. His prize tool pouch tumbled from his waistband, spilling the marbles, rods, and steel into the darkness that swallowed everything beneath him. Through the panic and the strain, he listened for them to hit bottom, to at least give him some clue in their departing plunge.
They dropped forever and then finally hit something with a soft, crunching plop. As Pinch dangled helplessly, he could only think that the noise was not one he would have expected. If there had been the clank of steel on stone or even the splash of water, that would have made sense, but a sound like that of an insect crushed under a boot was just beyond understanding.
And then deep below, he heard the sound of the floor slithering.
Just what was beneath him? It wasn't good, whatever it was. Futilely Pinch tried to pull himself back up to the floor, but his grip was too poor and his muscles too spent from the rigors he had already endured. The priests had healed him, but the healing left him still weak. Perhaps it had all been intentional on their part, and they had foreseen what the night would bring him.
Pinch fought to drive the panic out of his mind. Concentrate on what was known and drive out speculation. Think and act, think and act-he recited the litany in his mind, driving out the burn in his arms, the bone-cracking pain in his fingertips, the fear of what waited below him.
His eyes were adjusting to the darkness, which was not complete. From the underside, the illusion was like a thick filter of smoke. Against it he could make out the lip of the real floor. It curved a semicircle against the back side of the small chamber, except for a small landing at the very wall that most certainly had to be in front of the shelf. The gap formed a moat, the last line of defense around the royal regalia.
The slithering below grew louder, though not closer. It was as if a host had been roused and not some single thing. In the near darkness, Pinch could barely see a gleam of white, perhaps the floor, though strangely folded and misshapen. He looked again, harder, straining to see clearly, when all at once the floor heaved and shifted.
Gods damn, I'm looking at bones.
His fingers creaked and almost gave way, so that Pinch couldn't suppress a shriek of pain. The cry reverberated through the pit and, as if in eager concert to it, his voice was taken up by a sussurant hiss as the white gleam of the bones rippled and pulsed in a slithering crawl.
The floor was alive with maggots, thick fleshy things that coated the shattered arches of bone like pustulant skin and mounded themselves in squirming heaps against the walls. The skeletons beneath him were the bones of those who'd tried before, scoured clean by a slow death in the nest below. How long could a man live among them? How excruciating would the pain be as they burrowed into his flesh? Better to die in the fall.
Fear dragged from inside Pinch the last reserve of his strength. With his fingers slipping, he kicked his legs up madly. His toes flailed for the ledge, scraping it once as his fingers started to pull free. Desperately he tried again. One foot hooked over the edge and he pressed his weight on it. The leather sole slid, then held, but his strength was fading fast. Frantically, the rogue levered one elbow over the edge and kicked his other foot up until he could raise his head above the sea of phantasm and see the real world again. Half-supported on his forearm, Pinch risked letting go with one hand. Almost immediately he started to slip backward, so with a desperate lunge he slapped his hand down as far onto the stone as he could. His cramped fingers burned, his palm stung, but his crude grip held for the least of instants. In that second he wrenched himself up and over, seizing on the momentum of his lunge to carry him to safety. Barely he twisted his hips over the edge and onto solid ground.
Pinch lay drained on the cool stone floor, unable and unwilling to try any more. All he wanted to do was collapse and rest, to come back another night and try again. Sweat soaked his doublet, and beads of it matted down his curly gray hair. His shoulders were shaking and his fingers were knotted like claws, clumsy and useless to his trade.
Nonetheless, Pinch knew he wouldn't quit. As he lay panting on the marble, he felt alive with the thrill of it all. It was the joy of risk, the game that he'd outwitted again. This, surely, was what a thief lived for. If he left tonight, he knew he'd just come back tomorrow to risk it all again.
Sprite was waiting, he reminded himself as he struggled to his feet. There was no more time to waste here.
Barely collected or steady on his feet, the rogue gauged the distance to the ledge. The priests had designed their trap well. The moat, he guessed, was just large enough for a man to cross in a single giant stride, like clearing a puddle at the side of the street. The landing gave enough space for him to stand discreetly but well, from what he
