By KD Sarge
Read previous installments: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Jhi Bo slipped through the door and flung herself back, adding her weight to Gerda’s to slam the door. A tentacle thudded against the other side. Maybe two. The door shuddered but held.
A few more thuds, then silence. Jhi Bo thumped her head lightly on the door behind her. Idiot! Srivasi wouldn’t have forgotten the proper order for solving an equation.
“Inda brofid na?” the girl said, waving at Jhi Bo’s sword. She mimed drawing it and swinging mightily.
Jhi Bo scowled at her. Why would she fight the squid if they could escape it? The animal had only defended its lair.
Right. So. Solve the equation in the correct order this time, and the door was…
Jhi Bo noticed as she stepped forward that the girl stepped back.
***
Srivasi hadn’t argued, but Dasid said it again, louder. “It’s a death trap. It’s a stupid lousy—you know what? Sod this.” He plunked down on folded legs, folded his arms in front of his chest. “I’m done. I’m not giving some madman his jollies, watching me run in circles like some trained chicken.”
“I thought you wanted to find the gold?”
“There is no gold,” Dasid snarled. “There are circles. There are doors, and questions. Answer wrong, and there’s a monster. Answer right, and there’s more doors. Sooner or later you’ll blow it again, and then what if we can’t outrun whatever we find?”
“Not saying you’re wrong,” Srivasi said as he slid down the wall to sit beside the boy. “But I still don’t see how we have a choice. I don’t have any food with me; do you?” Oh. As soon as he sat, Srivasi’s feet let him know just how long he’d been walking. He hadn’t thought it had been that long.
“Goats’ breath,” Dasid said, “what I wouldn’t give for a slab of Gerda’s honeycake and a whole bucket of clotted cream poured over it.”
“Oh, that does sound good.” Srivasi tugged off a boot because why not? He took of the other as well, and sat wiggling his toes and twisting his feet to ease the ache. “Does she make pie at all? Takes a certain skill to make a crisp pie, and not every baker has it. I’ve been yearning for a good fish pie for years.”
“Fish pie? Who eats fish in pie? Now, catfish breaded and fried in fresh butter, that’s how you eat fish.”
“Have you ever had greenside? Now that is a tasty fish. It’d be a waste to put it in a pie, or bread it and fry it either.” Srivasi chuckled. “Of course, you have to know what you’re doing to bring in greenside.” He spread his arms wide. “They’ll wreck your boat if you handle one wrong.”
“Telling me stories now? Fish don’t get so big.”
“Not in your river, perhaps, but in the ocean…” Srivasi reached in his bag and pulled out a book. “Look at this,” he said, opening to a drawing of four men struggling to drag aboard a fish half the length of their boat while a man at the wheel shouted, probably something like “we’re going down!” from the amount of water the boat was taking on. “Speckleside don’t get as big as greenside,” Srivasi said, tapping the spotted side of the fish, “but you can see what I mean.”
“Someone’s sold you a tale, friend Whiskers. Books are stories—they’re not real.”
“Only some books are stories! Most are true. Well, as far as the author knows, anyway,” Srivasi said, thinking of Aresthanet’s claim that camels could sing. “But I know greensides get that big, because I have seen them with my own eyes.”
“Your whiskers are twitching,” Dasid said. “Are you that hungry, to eat a paper fish?”
“I like books,” Srivasi muttered, snapping the book shut. And he liked sharing knowledge almost as he liked learning things himself, and this child—
“Cursed shame you don’t have a book about mad maze-builders in there. Or how to make food from stone.”
“I—oh!” Srivasi shoved the natural history book back and groped in the far reaches…there! He pulled a book out with a grin. “I don’t remember a food spell in here, but…ah ha!” He read the words silently several times, then out loud as he tapped the wall between them with his wand. “Eka eta takketa!”
The stone he had struck spat water, and then gurgled, then collapsed to a slow but steady drip. Srivasi frowned at it.
“I usually do those sorts of spells better.” He examined the end of his wand. Was it because he was still using it for light?
“Well, it’s getting my britches wet enough.” Dasid shifted away, came back with a rock with a dip in it. He set it under the seeping stone. “Better than a smack in the nose with a spiny toad.”
“Is that…a thing that happens?”
Dasid grinned. “That wand of yours comes in handy. What else can you do with it?”
“Not so much.” Srivasi stuck the wand, lighted tip up, in the pocket in the chest of his robe. “I’m not a very good mage.” He flipped on through the book, Practical Spells for the Pragmatic Mage. Food, food…surely there was something about food? Or maybe finding one’s way out of a maze? Surely there was something for when you were lost…
“You just made water come out of a stone,” Dasid said. “Could you…make gold come out? Just a little?”
“You think a lot about gold, don’t you? It’s not that wonderful. It’s not even very pretty compared to a sunset.”
“Whacking easy to dismiss gold as greed when you’ve got enough yourself, isn’t it?”
Srivasi snorted. What about him made the boy think he was rich, he couldn’t guess. But it didn’t matter, because he’d found a seeking spell and he might just save the boy and rejoin Jhi Bo in time for dinner if his sense of time hadn’t been totally thrown off by all the doors and darkness.
He didn’t have any of Jhi Bo’s hair, or anything else of hers, but on his cloak he found some white hairs shed by Cabbage and that was good enough. Find his horse and he would find Jhi Bo’s horse, and Jhi Bo herself.
Oh, and just in case…he tapped the wand to end the light spell.
“Cor,” Dasid said softly, with the smallest quiver in his voice. “Sure is dark.”
“Sorry,” Srivasi said. “Just a moment…” He opened his palm with the shed hairs and by feel sketched a symbol with his wand tip above them. The hairs took on a faint moonlit sheen. Was it so late? “Ibenay tolka,” Srivasi breathed. The glow grew brighter, the strands lifted to dance beneath his wand. “Tolka abesu,” Srivasi directed. And “show me the way!” He flicked his wand tip upwards, releasing the spell.
A gentle breath of air caught the glowing strands, wafted them through the air drawing glints of light from the rock walls. A thin blue cloud trailed from them to Srivasi’s wand tip, then the strands struck a door and incandesced, burning up. The cloud disappeared, the light winked out, and the two sat in darkness.
“That’s the way out, is it?” Dasid’s voice asked.
“Yes.”
“Door next to the right-answer door, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Probably got a monster behind it?”
“Yes.”
“Cor.”
***
Jhi Bo reached for the door on the left, hesitated, and chose the door on the right instead. The girl, the tiny lamp she’d made of ham fat, cloth, and a shallow rock in hand, cocked her head.
“You are welcome to choose your own route,” Jhi Bo told her as if she would understand.
The door opened into darkness, as all the doors had since leaving the trap-room. Jhi Bo could see on the edges of the light the girl held behind her—when one had a sword, they were obligated to go first, it seemed—that the walls narrowed, until the path onwards was narrower than the door. She drew her sword before it became difficult to do so, and stepped into the new corridor. The girl muttered something and followed.
Jhi Bo could smell water, and under it a fustiness that was…not horse, not dog.
The smell grew as the corridor narrowed.
Abruptly the corridor widened. To the left was darkness. To the right, Jhi Bo could see a glimmer of pale light. Moonlight? Jhi Bo turned towards it.
She’d taken three steps before the girl squeaked behind her and a hand clenched on her belt. Jhi Bo looked back.
Not horse. Not dog. Bear.
Jhi Bo spun, whirling the girl behind her but holding her there. If she ran, it would—
The bear whuffed, sniffing. Confused. Jhi Bo held its gaze, and held the girl with an iron grip. Together they stepped back a step. Then another.
The bear came forward, snuffling. Jhi Bo backed away. Gerda whimpered. The bear hunched low, ears back, and snarled.
Jhi Bo snarled back.
The bear sniffed, short quick sniffs trying to gain more of her scent. Then it sat down, scratched its side, yawned.
“I, too, do not wish to fight,” Jhi Bo said softly, pushing Gerda back faster.
They came out of the cave on a hill above the river. Jhi Bo looked around and saw the odd small half-buildings of the child city upstream.
Srivasi was still under there. Jhi Bo sheathed her sword and started walking back. Behind her Gerda muttered, but she followed Jhi Bo.