“My Lord,” Moira said fiercely, “the only thing I need is for this trip to be over as soon as possible.”
Wiz ran his hand over the surface of the stone one more time. There had to be a way out of this. After all, the Dark League would need to retrieve anyone captured in the pit, wouldn’t they?
He looked over at the spike-and-wood contraption in the pit. Then again, maybe not. It would be perfectly in character for the Dark League to leave a captive to rot in a place like this. Well, he wouldn’t get anywhere brooding on that. He would have to see what he could find.
Wiz put both his palms against the wall and pushed. His left hand met unyielding resistance, but the stone under his right hand seemed to shift. He pushed again. Yes, the stone had moved!
A secret door. Wiz didn’t know much about dungeons and mantraps, but that fitted perfectly with his conception of them. There must be a passage behind this wall.
He pushed again. The block shifted a little, but nothing else happened. He pushed the stones around it. Some of them also moved but no door opened. He put his fingers on the edge of the block and tugged hard. The stone moved slightly, but that was all.
He dropped his arms. Either he hadn’t found the right stones to push or the door was broken. Either way, it seemed like the best thing to do was force the door rather than rely on the mechanism. For that he needed something to pry with.
He looked at the iron spikes of the trap reflectively. The metal was dark and pitted with rust, but it looked strong. Each spike was about three feet long and perhaps two inches around, crudely forged to a point on one end.
He grabbed the end of a spike and tugged. The spike moved ever so slightly. He dug his heels into the stone floor and wrenched back on the spike with all his strength. The spike moved some more.
Eventually he was able to work the spike free of damp and somewhat rotten wood. It was heavier than he expected and his biceps ached from the pulling, but he ignored that and attacked the loose stone in the wall.
The tool was clumsy and there wasn’t much of a joint around the stone, but Wiz set to with a will, heedless of the noise he made. His technique was crude and it took a long time before he was able to pry the block part way out of the wall. With hands trembling from eagerness and fatigue, he jammed the bar into the joint and heaved one final time. The block clattered out onto the floor and Wiz thrust his hand into the opening.
Behind the stone was nothing but dirt and rock.
With a groan he threw the iron bar across the trap and slumped to the floor. It wasn’t a doorway at all, just a loose stone in the wall. He looked up at the hole in the ceiling. The only way out of here had to be through that hole. That meant he was trapped unless he could climb the overhanging walls or build a ladder.
There was wood in the spiked device, but not nearly enough to reach the surface, even if it were all combined into a single long pole. Stick the spikes into the wall and climb them like a ladder? Not enough spikes. Besides, how would he get past the overhang?”
Magic? With that demon on the loose he’d never live to complete the first spell.
And that was it, some half-rotten wood, a few pieces of iron and a block of stone levered from the wall.
A block of stone? Just one?
Wiz stood up and began to try the wall again. He found another loose stone, and then another and another. Most of the wall seemed to be loose, almost every other block could be pried free.
It was the cold, Wiz realized, the cold and the damp working at the stones. When this place was built the City of Night was kept magically warm. But with the fall of the League the magic had vanished and the stones had been subjected to alternate freezing and thawing. The walls of the trap had not been mortared and the working of the water had shifted the stones. The fact that most of the courtyard was paved in dark stone probably helped warm things up.