The Viper's Fangs (Book 2) (30 page)

12

Ortis led Angus through a series of tunnels lit only be the
flickering flames of the torch he was carrying.

“The magic led Giorge here,” Ortis said, pausing at the back
end of a tunnel. “Giorge knew the tunnel kept going, but it took us a long time
to find the secret passage in the floor. Giorge is the expert on such things,
and he couldn’t see well enough to help us.” He shrugged and knelt before a
small two foot square opening in the floor. “There was a nearly invisible crack
in the floor, and we would have missed it entirely if Giorge hadn’t been so
sure the tunnel didn’t end. But he was sure, and once we knew there was a trapdoor,
it was fairly easy for him to figure out how to open it. The passage down there
is narrow, low, and goes on for over a hundred feet. It slopes downward at a
steep angle before leveling off in a room too short for us to stand upright. Even
Giorge had to slouch a little bit.”

Ortis handed Angus the torch, sat down, and slid his feet
over the edge. He dropped down, and the top of his head was almost flush with
the floor. He paused when he reached up for the torch and said, “It will be a
lot easier with that Lamplight spell you have. The torch will work, but the
smoke builds up pretty quickly in here.”

Angus nodded and quickly cast the Lamplight spell. This
time, he knew why he could do it. It had been his first spell, and Voltari had
drilled it into him again and again until he could cast it on demand—but only if
he didn’t think about what he was doing. That had been the first real insight
he had learned about magic: The less he thought about what he was doing, the
more he let his body do the movements on its own, the easier it was to tie the
knots together.
Your body knows
, Voltari had told him afterward,
but
your mind does not believe.

Angus propped the torch up in a corner as Ortis moved a few
paces down the tunnel to make room for him to drop through the trapdoor. It was
a tight squeeze, and he had to slouch as he followed Ortis down the tunnel.

He’s vulnerable,
Typhus thought.
One quick stab—

And his other constituents would know it immediately
.
Angus thought back. Then, as an afterthought, he asked,
Why do you want to
kill them?

Why not?
Typhus replied.
They are in my way.

How are they in your way?

We should be running,
Typhus said.
Sardach is coming.
He will kill us.

Why?
Angus demanded.
What did you do?

Typhus didn’t answer.

The slope was steep enough that it made his footing
uncertain, and he had to steady himself with his hands on each side wall. The
rock was smooth but bumpy, as if it had been roughly carved and the sharp edges
pounded flat. Eventually, they came to a tiny door, barely two feet square, at
the end of the tunnel. Ortis paused and half-turned toward Angus. “There’s a
room on the other side. We’ll have to crawl through this tunnel to get there. Hobart
couldn’t fit with his armor on, so he decided to go back. He watched you for a
while so I could rest, and then went to look at the lift.”

“Is that where he is now?” Angus asked.

Ortis nodded. “The lift is similar to the ones at Hellsbreath,”
he said. “He’s trying to figure out the differences.”

Angus nodded. “Is Giorge in that room?”

Ortis shook his head. “The room is a ten foot cube. This
tunnel emerges at the top of a wall. Giorge was lucky when he went through. If
it had been any deeper, he would have been badly hurt or killed when he fell
out of it. As it was, he didn’t do his sprained arm any favors when he landed.”

“Giorge fell?” Angus asked. “Didn’t he have a torch?”

“He said it was confusing him too much,” Ortis replied. “Apparently
there is a lot of weird energy in the flames that makes it difficult for him to
see the other energy around him. He went through the tunnel in the dark.”

Angus half-smiled. When he had first seen magic, he had felt
the same way. It had been weeks before he had finally been able to tone down
the glare to see the other magical threads clearly enough to use them
effectively. Now, though, he didn’t even notice the glare; he just
automatically set it aside as part of his normal routine—except when it was particularly
powerful, like in the Angst temple. But why would the others let the blind man
go first?

“The room has a keyhole in each of the walls,” Ortis
continued. “But Giorge said they were all decoys. The magic he was following
wasn’t behind any of them. Instead, it was under this tunnel, behind the wall
that it came through.” Ortis knelt down and crawled backward into the tunnel.
When he came to the end, he scrunched himself up with his hands to either side
of the opening to brace himself, and then he slid down the wall to the floor.
Another of his constituents caught and steadied him, and together they turned
to help Angus out of the tunnel.

“See this trapdoor?” Ortis asked, pointing at the two-foot
square section of wall hanging just below the opening they’d entered from.
“There is another keyhole like those—” he gestured at the other three walls,
each of which had a keyhole at eye level “—but it isn’t trapped. If Giorge
hadn’t known there was something behind that wall, we probably never would have
moved the trapdoor to find it.”

“Where is Giorge?” Angus asked. “And your other
constituent?”

“They went exploring,” he said. “The magic that had led
Giorge to the first Fang was gone, and he didn’t know the second one would be
close by. They’re in that long, narrow tunnel and should join us in a few
minutes.”

Angus nodded. “All right,” he said. “What do we do now?”

Ortis shrugged. “We’re going to try to find the second
fang,” he said. “If it’s close to where we found the first one, then it has to
be near here, doesn’t it? So it seems to be a better place to start searching
for it than wandering randomly through the mines.”

Angus nodded. It made sense, but he wasn’t at all sure how
much. Symptata’s third scroll had magic that suggested a direct attack, one
that would leave Giorge dead or dying. What better way to do that than by
trapping him in an abandoned mine until he slowly wasted away?

“Take a look at this,” Ortis said, pushing up the trapdoor
from which they entered. It moved easily upward and when it slid into place it molded
into the tunnel walls with a seal so perfect that the trapdoor disappeared
completely, as if it had become a part of the room’s wall. He was still staring
at it when Ortis pointed to the keyhole beneath it and said, “This opens into a
tunnel that runs parallel to the one coming into the room. But it only goes
back about three or four feet. There was another of those boxes in it, and it
contained the Fang and that note I showed you. At least, that’s what Giorge
told us. He was the only one in here when he found it.”

Angus brought the magic into focus and frowned. He had
expected the trapdoor to have magic in it, a spell that bent the air around it
to make it seem different than what it was, like his Cloaking spell did. A
spell of that sort would explain how it could mesh so perfectly with the wall
that it couldn’t be seen, but it didn’t have any magic in it
at all
, not
even the natural magic that all things possessed. The last time he had seen
that was when he looked at the pouch that had contained the Viper’s Breath. He
reached up—

The trapdoor above it opened inward and fell softly downward.
Instead of banging against the wall like normal stone, it made absolutely no
sound at all. Then Giorge’s head poked through and he grinned.

“Hi Angus,” he said.

“Giorge,” Angus said, nodding as he continued to stare at
the trapdoor. “I’d like my robe back.”

Ortis reached up to help Giorge into the room, and one of
him said, “Your robe saved his life. He was half frozen after that thing—the
frost elemental?—attacked him, and you were incapacitated. It was Hobart’s idea
to use it. I’ve never seen frostbite disappear so quickly.”

“It is amazing,” Giorge said, toying with the sash as if he
were unwilling to remove it. Then, quite abruptly, he pulled it loose and
peeled the robe off his shoulders and handed it to Angus. Almost immediately,
he began to shiver, and Angus gave him the gray apprentice’s robe to use. It
seemed to help some, but Angus didn’t understand why he was so cold. The room
was like his chamber in Blackhaven Tower, a bit chill but with a very steady
temperature.

Angus began checking his pockets, methodically inventorying
the items to make sure they were all there. While he did so, he turned to
Ortis—who was helping his last constituent through the opening—and suggested,
“One of you should check on Hobart. I’d like to know if he has that lift
working yet. Besides, we should have someone on the other side to open the
trapdoor, just in case we can’t get it open from in here.”

“That’s a good idea,” Giorge agreed. “If we find the other Fang,
we’ll need to leave quickly. We only have two more days to defeat this curse.
You should get the horses ready, too.”

Angus frowned. As far as he could tell, there was nothing
missing in his robe, but he felt like there should be something else there.
What was it? What did Giorge have of his that he hadn’t given back?

“What if you get attacked?” Ortis asked.

Giorge laughed. “By what?”

A spider,
Typhus thought to Angus, who frowned and
said, “A spider?”

Yes,
Typhus thought back.
An enchanted one, like
the spiders that made the thread for my breeches.

“Enchanted spiders?” Angus asked. “Where would they be
hiding?”

There are four walls
.

“Enchanted spiders?” Giorge repeated, looking around the
small room. “There aren’t any spiders here.”

Angus turned his attention to the other four walls and noted
that each of the keyholes was placed in the center of an area that was
completely free of magic. Each was the same size and shape as the trapdoor
through which they entered, and there was a space behind them that he couldn’t
penetrate. “Yes,” Angus corrected him. “There are.” He pointed at the other
three keyholes. “They are waiting behind those.”

He turned to Giorge and demanded, “Show me the scrolls.
Quickly!”

Giorge shrugged and reached into his sling to bring out the
scroll tube.

Angus grabbed it from him and opened it. He dumped the
scrolls into his hand and grabbed the one tied with green and black thread. He
nearly broke the thread as he untied it, and then breathed a sigh of relief.
“It’s still there. Whatever is going to trigger it hasn’t happened yet.”

“Good,” Giorge said. “Let’s try to find the second Fang.”

Angus frowned, looked at the other walls, and said, “It may
be behind one of those trapdoors,” he said.

“Why do you think that?” Ortis asked.

Giorge looked at them and shook his head. “Because they have
no magic,” he said. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

Angus nodded. “Yes,” he said. “They’re like the pouch. It
concealed the Viper’s Breath from me, and they are concealing something else. Also,
they’re near where you found the first one.”

Spiders.
Typhus suggested.

Angus nodded again. “Or they could be spiders,” he agreed.
“Remember how this trapdoor melted into the wall? It’s as if it were a part of it.
If we didn’t know it was there, it would be completely invisible to us. The
opening to a trapdoor spider’s lair is just like that; it blends into the
background and the spider sits back and waits for its prey to pass by.”

“We know what trapdoor spiders do,” Giorge said, moving over
to look at—but not touch—the trapdoor on the wall to the left of the tunnel.

“Why don’t you show me how you found the first Fang?” Angus
asked suddenly. “It was in this wall, wasn’t it?”

Giorge nodded and reluctantly turned away from the trapdoor
he was studying. “Yes,” he said. “When I closed this trapdoor—” he pushed it
easily upward and the tunnel entrance disappeared as the trapdoor melted into
the wall “—I saw that the magic went into this wall, right about here.” He
pointed at a keyhole level with his eyes, and Angus suddenly realized all of
the keyholes were at the same level as
Giorge’s
eyes. “I picked the lock
by feel, and it opened up a small recess. There was another one of Symptata’s
boxes sitting at the back of it.”

“What did you do with the box?” Angus asked. “I’d like to
see it.”

Giorge shrugged. “It must have been bolted down,” he said.
“I couldn’t move it.”

“You couldn’t—” Angus frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. You
had no trouble moving the other boxes, why—”

Yes,
Typhus thought.
It could be—

“Pick the lock again, Giorge,” Angus said. “I want to see
that box.”

Giorge frowned and moved toward the trapdoor. He took out
the brown velvet pouch and—

My picks!
Typhus thought.
He still has them!

“That’s right!” Angus said, a bit too excitedly. “Giorge
still has them!”

Giorge looked back at him and asked, “Have what?”

Angus nodded. “My picks. You borrowed them at the aerie and
never gave them back.”

“Oh,” Giorge said, smiling. “I’d forgotten all about them.”
He reached into his pouch, found the three picks, and handed them to Angus.
“There have been too many other things going on since then.”

Angus nodded. “Yes,” he said, putting the locks in one of
his robe’s pockets. “There have been.”

Giorge selected a pair of his own picks and stepped up to
the lock. While he worked on it, Ortis and Angus kept their eyes on the
trapdoors in the other walls, but they didn’t show any sign of movement.

A few minutes later, there was a click and the trapdoor
popped forward and slid down the wall, revealing a small, three-foot recess. In
the back of the recess was a small box, just like the others they had found,
and Angus said, “Try to take it out now.”