Curiosity Killed the Cat
A free fantasy serial
by KD Sarge
Part 2: Before a Closed Door
(Read part 1 here)
Jhi Bo heard a muffled shout and just knew it wasn’t the child she sought. It was Srivasi. He’d found trouble again. Somehow. Heaven’s truth, she thought, she should just leave him to the consequences, but she was already running as she thought it.
The farm girl saw Jhi Bo running and shouted something, her face joyful, as she ran to intersect her path. Jhi Bo ran past her. The girl’s feet thudded behind her; the goats with their bells trotted after.
In the middle of two stone-marked circles—multiple warnings, right there, that this place was important and should be left alone—in a dome of marble and glass surrounded by circles, Jhi Bo found nothing of Srivasi but the fading scent of his fear.
The dome was glorious; the floor was smooth dirt, patterned and braided as if a river had run over it. In the center of the room stood a twisted pillar of marble with writing chasing over every surface. To Jhi Bo, it was another warning—probably go away, written in a number of scripts—but she knew it was just the thing to attract foolish Srivasi and his all-devouring curiosity. But then why wasn’t he still poring over it?
The girl, Gerda, came into the dome, her eyes on the soaring pillar. The goats, wiser than their human, stayed outside. Gerda said something in a questioning tone. She might well have asked about the rainbows that filled the dome, but Jhi Bo answered the more likely question as best she could. She wriggled her fingers by her cheeks like whiskers as she said, “Srivasi.” Pointed at the dirt floor. “Here.”
“Dasid ya,” Gerda said, pointing to a dirty handprint head-high to her on the column. The smallest finger had a quirk to the side at the last knuckle. The girl spread out her hand to show her own finger did the same. Then she pointed at a fainter handprint, lower and smeared, as if the hand had been dragged down.
“Your mother’s whiskers,” Jhi Bo muttered, her hand on her sword as she scanned the empty dome once more. The girl growled something of probably-similar meaning as she put her hand to the long knife at her waist.
Abandoned in the doorway, a goat bleated complaint.
#
The moment Srivasi stepped into the corridor, the stone panel slid back out of darkness and closed off the room where they had first fallen into the trap. Bare stone faced him, with no crack to be seen. So no going back.
Srivasi had always wanted to do great things. Mysterious doors under strange cities might well lead to the sort of adventure he had long craved, but now that he faced the dim corridor…he found he would much have preferred to be following Jhi Bo. An overly-excited goatherd was not the stalwart companion he would have envisioned.
“I still don’t like this…” Srivasi muttered. Dasid did not hear him; on determining the first step was apparently safe, the boy had run ahead. He passed the light pillar and turned a corner. A moment later soft curses came floating back.
“What is it?” Srivasi called as gold light flared from the corner.
“Ran into another door,” Dasid called. “Hurry, friend Whiskers, this one has…oh! There are three doors. Looks like a twice-cursed maths problem above.”
“Which maths?” Srivasi asked, quickening his step. “I’m no master of the higher mathematics.”
Around the corner, as the boy had said, stood three doors. On a tall plinth stood another sphere-light, to ensure legibility of what was indeed a mathematical equation in an archaic but readable Aduli script. On each door below the equation was carved a number.
“Well, friend Whiskers?”
Was it worth the argument to get the child to stop calling him that? Probably not. From what Srivasi remembered of his childhood, the more he let on the name annoyed him, the more the boy would use it.
“It’s obviously another test,” Srivasi said instead. “Obviously we are meant to choose the door with—”
“With the right answer written on it. Obviously. Which is it?”
“I don’t know that we want to play according to the maze-builders designs,” Srivasi pointed out. “What are we trying to get to?”
“Riches,” Dasid answered. “Solve the puzzle, find the gold, become kings. Obviously.”
Well, if he liked “obviously” enough to forget “whiskers,” that would be—
“Maybe we should just go back,” Dasid said. “Where was the door, exactly? You know how to open it from this side? And then to get back to the surface?”
The light around the corner had gone out. Srivasi tried moving back to see if it returned, but it didn’t. Dasid watched from the corner, arms folded as he smirked.
“You’re stuck in a hole in the ground too,” Srivasi muttered as he passed, walking back to examine the doors. Maths. He’d studied them, he’d had to, the rules were back there in his memory with the royal pronouns in Fwenye only less remembered because sometimes he ran through the pronouns in his head to make sure he didn’t lose them, but the maths not so much. Unless he had a—no, he halted his reflexive reach for his bag because he knew he didn’t have a book that would help. He’d left all the maths with his master, certain that such esoteric knowledge would never be of use in the real world.
But…Srivasi remembered a treatise written in Elvish by some swag showing his skill, that Srivasi had read because it was in Elvish and he hadn’t been able to get his hands on much written in that elusive tongue. Rhee, the maths sentence above the door would be called—in balance. Srivasi had wondered at the translation, usually rhee was used for harmony which was not quite the same as—anyway. Balance. When solving, you mustn’t disturb the balance, so what you did to one side, you must do to the other. To find yfwe you had to get it alone, so—subtract 5, times 3, and…
“Fifteen,” he said. Nothing happened. Srivasi tried it in Aduli, then in Elvish. Nothing.
“These doors have knobs,” Dasid pointed out.
“If you’re so smart, you open the door!”
“Life-smart.” Dasid pointed to himself. “Book-smart.” He pointed at Srivasi. “Tell me the door, friend Whiskers, and I will see if the door-knob is meant to work.”
Caught between disbelief and annoyance, Srivasi waved at the right-hand door. Dasid stepped forward and tugged the door open. A cool damp breeze ruffled Srivasi’s hair. Darkness lay beyond, like the darkness in Dasid’s mind where no light of education had shown. Had he no schooling at all? To not even know his numbers to 20…
No lights grew in the corridor beyond as had happened the last time they progressed. Srivasi didn’t know if that was good or bad. And the damp…smelled of fish? But not of salt. Of course not, so far from the ocean. Did the corridor lead nearer the river? He thought he heard a faint rushing sound.
“I’ll buy a horse first,” Dasid said as he moved into the corridor, hands out in front of him, “and a fancy saddle better than Lark’s. And a hat—a great wide hat with an egret’s feather. And a—”
“You could go to school,” Srivasi suggested as he touched his finger to his wand to light the tip. “There’s so much to—”
“Ha!” came rolling back, then Srivasi caught up to the boy in the darkness. His eyes glinted and his teeth showed as he grinned. “I’ve had enough of scrabbling, of struggling! I’ll have people to work and read and count my gold and—I’m not looking for dead fish,” he said sharply. “Why does it smell so?”
“I think we’re near the river.” A safe guess, considering that the dampness and the rushing noise that had grown with every step. “Perhaps an underground opening, and something died in the entrance?”
“That’s no good, how will we get the gold out?”
“Let me guess, swimming is another thing you never learned?”
“Swim with a bag of gold?” the boy shot back. “You first.”
“True, but perhaps we could rig something with rope and—”
Dasid grabbed Srivasi’s arm, yanked him to a halt. “Did you hear that?”
Srivasi stood and listened. He heard the rushing, and the…slithering?
“It’s a bloody great snake!” Dasid whispered, his eyes white in the small light. “Where is it?”
Reminding himself that whatever lurked could already see the light, Srivasi gulped and held it high and willed more power into the wand. The edge of the light met dark writhing forms, and beyond he saw glowing pale huge white eyes and— “Tentacles,” he said. “Not a snake, though—”
“RUN!” Dasid shouted, dragging at Srivasi. Then he let go and ran without him, but Srivasi ran after him as the noise grew louder behind and the smell of fish and—
“Door!” Dasid yelped, and Srivasi barely slipped through before the boy slammed it and the slap and slide of tentacles could be heard as the creature groped about for where they’d gone.
“See?” Srivasi said, gulping air as he and Dasid braced the door with their backs. “Just because…somebody builds…a maze—”
“You don’t build a maze to kill people,” Dasid snapped. “You just go kill ‘em. You build a maze to sort out the worthy. Are you sure you did your figures right?”
“Yes! You have to get yfwe alone, so I subtracted five—oh.”
“What oh?”
“I forgot. Pretty Elven men dream about ships.”
“…good on them?”
“It’s a mnemonic, for the order of operations.” Srivasi stepped away from the door to peer at the rhee. “So times three first, then subtract five…” he pointed at the door on the left. “Twenty-five. It’s that door.”
“Great,” Dasid said. “You open it.”
##
If you’d like more of Srivasi and Jhi Bo, you can read “Guardian” in our anthology Under Her Protection.