“I think we’d better go see what we’ve done,” Aahz said. “Can you both walk?”
I tested my legs as Tanda tested hers. It seemed that, besides a lot of bumps and bruises, we had all come out of everything pretty well. It was going to be interesting to see how the rest of the inhabitants of this castle fared.
“Do we have to go back up the tunnel?” I asked, trying to imagine making that climb in the condition I was in.
Aahz shook his head. “If this didn’t work to stop Bovine’s spell, nothing is going to, and that means we’re never getting out of here, so why bother continuing to hide?”
“I thought I had the positive attitude,” I said.
“I can learn from an apprentice,” Aahz said.
We limped our way toward the door with the wonderful fresh breeze blowing in. It led us into a corridor that turned after about fifty paces. After the turn there was a flight of stairs. Painful stairs, but at least stairs that had fresh air blowing down them.
At the top, the corridor turned again and went out an archway covered in a mass of flowering plants. Aahz pushed through the plants and I helped Tanda follow.
We stepped out into the beautiful sunshine of a wonderful afternoon. After being under tons of rock, getting knocked out by an energy explosion, and waking up in pitch darkness, the sunshine was beyond words.
There was a shovel lying on the lawn in front of us. It was the same shape as the golden-plated shovel we had used, only there was no gold left on it.
“Would you look at that,” Aahz said.
On the corner of the lawn was a smoking pile of what looked like a cow.