With that they took their places, close within the circle. Wiz raised his staff, gestured and spoke and with five small pops of displaced air they disappeared along the Wizard’s Way into the stronghold of the Enemy.
SIX – DUNGEON REDUX
“backslash light exe.”
The darkness around them was replaced with a cold blue light and Wiz and the others got their first look at the dungeons beneath the City of Night.
For the others it was a first. Wiz had been in the multi-layered labyrinth beneath the city of the Dark League during the great magical battle that broke the Leagues power forever.
Not that he recognized a thing. His only memories were of endless tunnels of dirt and stone separated by doors of oak and corroded iron, and strange furtive movements in the shadows. He hadn’t liked the place when he had been here then, he hadn’t liked it when a remnant of the Dark League had kidnapped him back to the now-ruined city a while later and he certainly didn’t like it now.
They were bunched together in a wide stone corridor apparently hewn from solid rock. The passage was wider and taller than any he remembered seeing in the dungeons and the walls were worked smooth instead of being left uneven and scarred with the marks of the hewers’ tools.
The place seems different,” he said, running his hand along the stone. “As if someone’s been working on it.
“Probably,” Malkin said as she looked around appraisingly.
Glandurg kept his hand on the hilt of Blind Fury and sniffed the stale air in great wheezing breaths. June stayed close to Danny, her head swiveling this way and that. Clearly she didn’t like what she was seeing. That was all right, Wiz didn’t like what he saw either.
“Well, which way?” Malkin asked. She seemed as calm as if they were out for a stroll in the castle rose garden, but Wiz noticed her hand stayed near the cup hilt of her rapier.
Wiz consulted the amulet around his neck. The amulet looked like an ordinary lensatic compass. The first time he came here he had used a seeker globe that floated ahead to show him the way to where Moira was held captive. That had proved less than ideal when the globe blithely floated into a guardroom full of goblin warriors with Wiz and his party close behind. If the compass was more prosaic it was also not as likely to get them in trouble.
Danny lifted a similar device hung around his neck and turned this way and that. “No sign of hostile magic,” he said.
The one thing they didn’t have was a map. The magical forces around this place were too strong for the wizards of the North to get the lay of the land and there were no pre-existing maps of the place. Wiz suspected that even the wizards of the Dark League, who had delved this place, hadn’t had a complete map. He suspected even more strongly that the dungeons’ new tenant had done some major remodeling.
“Off in this direction.”
Then,” said Glandurg, striding to the front, “let us away.”
The dwarf took the lead with Malkin following, then Wiz, then June and then Danny. It wasn’t an ideal formation out it did mean that if Glandurg started swinging that sword the others would be able to get clear.
The tunnel led slightly off to the right and down. Here and there the old dirt walls or rough stone showed through, as if whatever was working on the dungeons hadn’t finished yet. Wiz found the thought comforting and he tried to hold onto it
Every hundred feet or so the tunnel would branch, sometimes into three or four directions. But the directional amulet kept pointing straight ahead. At last they came to a branching where the amulet told them to go right. Right through a large iron-bound door of age-darkened wood.
Malkin studied the door in the light of the magic globe. “No obvious lock,” she said more to herself than the others. She ran her fingers over the rough iron surface, pressing experimentally here and there.
Glandurg reached for his sword.