CHAPTER 27

The White Door opens into a wide, squat corridor. The vaulted ceiling hangs a little over our heads at its shortest and a little more at its tallest, and the floors and lower parts of the walls are spotless. It’s empty. Whatever slimes there were, they are now gone.

The corridor curves in both directions with a few wooden doors scattered on the far wall.

“You want to watch out for those,” Wyl says. “They’re—”

“Trapped, yeah.”

Tale mentioned the traps on this level are different from the rest. Walls of fire instead of cleverly hidden bolts. And we don’t need supplies, so there’s no reason to go inside the rooms.

“Let’s go left,” I say, hugging the wall. That’s where the library is. If we can get to it we’ll have to solve the problem of how to deal with Tale and his goons, but that’s a secondary problem. Maybe we’ll be able to get to Hilde in the darkness. “Stay behind me.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, w—” I turn back to find Wyl holding broad and slightly curved knife. For the hands of an adult, it would be a discrete, silent weapon for quick back-alley fights. In Wyl’s hand the knife seems almost like a short sword, which she leverages without the least hint of unfamiliarity.

“You know how to use that?” I joke. “The pointy end goes—”

“Don’t be stupid,” Wyl interrupts. “It’s made for slashing, not stabbing, and deterrence. Armor is in short supply here, so whoever tries to make trouble is going to have a hard time walking after. Keep up.”

She brushes past me and makes her way down the corridor, muttering to herself about ‘pointy ends’ and what I could do with them. I follow.

If we’re careful, the curve of the corridor serves to keep us out of sight of anything that might be waiting up ahead. One hand against the wall and crouched until she’s almost at waist-height, Wyl is like a determined ghost, blade held back and at the ready. I curse myself for leaving my club behind in the library. There was no need for it when Essa’s group was a whole room away, and definitely no need for it when I went to meet up with Rev.

There is a rasping sound. Wyl jumps, flattening herself against the wall and holding her blade out. In the sudden quiet, we hear what sounds like dragging.

Drag, cough, drag.

Nothing more.

I walk up, ignoring Wyl’s hiss. It only takes me a few steps to see what’s causing the noise.

The thing is bulbous, its limbs out of proportion for its frame, green and full of blisters. Its so swollen that I can barely distinguish features, but as it turns to regard me with one vacant eye the shock of recognition courses through me: it’s the kid from Tale’s group. The one who’d been left mute and unresponsive after being touched by the mutt slimes. Whatever horrible transformation had taken place, it must have happened quickly.

“Are you there?” I ask in a whisper. “Can you hear me?”

The boy drools and turns its head when I speak. Without answering, it takes a step towards me, dragging an oversized leg behind himself, and then again. Step, drag, step.

An entire catalogue of herbs, roots, barks, and flowers runs through my head, blocking every other thought, forcing me to search for a solution that I know isn’t there. Finally, I have to shake myself off it and move away from him.

“Give him a wide berth, Wyl,” I say. And add, barely more than a whisper, “Sorry.”

If he, or it, understands me, he doesn’t show it. He simply turns to keep facing me as we walk around its engorged body. It moans, but it sounds like frustration, not pleading. At least I hope it isn’t. His body is covered with large, greenish boils, varying in size. Its skin looks too taut, nearly translucent.

“Poor thing.”

“Yeah. Don’t let the slimes touch you, Wyl.”

“Wouldn’t if you’d told me otherwise,” she counters.

That’s when the mutated kid lunges.

He’s surprisingly quick, for something that had been moving at the speed of a drag every five seconds. Its hand extends for my face, but I’m able to jump sideways just in time. He growls, letting a thick, green glob of saliva flow down his chin, and lunges again, separating me from Wyl. He stumbles, searching, one eye covered with a bulb that grows out of his forehead, the other glistening, wet, runny.

“Step away!”

I pull a torch out of the wall and point it at the boy. He doesn’t seem perturbed, and instead pivots to face me, arms extended, and takes another step. Wyl reappers, using the the opening to jump over the engorged leg, and slashes at his good one, cutting a line down his calf.

The mutated boy struggles. He swipes at Wyl, nearly getting her, but in the movement putting too much weight on his hurt leg. He teeters and falls, sprawling a mess of green liquids on the ground.

It’s a pitiful thing to watch. He whips his arms around, trying to catch something, anything, but we’re nowhere close to his reach. I’m about to tell Wyl we’d do best to leave it when she points with her knife-sword.

I follow the line of the blade. Right above Wyl’s cut there’s a boil in the leg. A small thing, comparatively, barely bigger than a walnut. It’s moving. Struggling. The skin shakes one way, then the other, and finally gives in.

“Is that…”

Before I can finish, the wound spits out a green slime that runs like egg yolk down the boy’s leg until it gathers itself as a blob on the floor. And then, with determination, it begins to inch towards us.

“They’re all slimes?” Wyl asks, taking in the mountains of boils under the boy’s skin. As we watch, the boils begin to shake, ever so slightly.

“Go,” I say. “Go!”

And there’s no more stealth. We dash down the corridor, putting distance between ourselves and the boy, followed by the sound of slimes dislodging themselves from the under the boy’s skin.

We’re barely out of sight when we come across an opening on our left. Wyl almost dashes in before I catch her by the shoulder.

It’s the library. But the entrance isn’t barricaded anymore; someone, perhaps the boy we just left behind, has cast the blockages aside and pulled the double doors open. Light streams in from the corridor and throws the gloominess inside into sharp contrast. There are paths inside the room that are completely clean, signaling where the slimes passed through. I look at Wyl and put a finger in front of my mouth, then walk inside.

The rows of books are unperturbed and quiet. As we pass each one, torchlight streams into the corridor of shelves and finds them empty. Wyl pulls on my arm to signal with a hand curved around her ear. I stop, and yes, there is something. A soft, constant whimper. We move down the rows with our ears pricked, the tip of Wyl’s knife tracing little circles in the air. Almost at the end of the room, I turn into the final row.

There is a yelp and a confusion of shapes. This row is lit by the tiniest of lights, so I raise the torch higher and shadows are thrown everywhere. A tangle of bodies. Two of the dagger-bearing boys are lying down, facing the ceiling. Their eyes are as still as their companion’s were, and already you can see the boils beginning to grow on their arms and legs.

The yelp came from a shape in the darkness with her face planted on the floor and her hands making a cup around her eyes. It’s Verra, I realize, just before another body steps in front of her. Three balled hands rise up in the air, one of which naked and pink, attached to an extra arm just below his right one. Dako.

“It’s me,” I say. “Malco.” I pass the torch to Wyl and raise my empty hands.

“What do you mean, ‘you’?” snarls Dako. “You’re the reason everything went to shit. You tried to steal from us!”

“What? No, I—”

“Dako,” says Verra from the floor. She’s sitting, one eye peeking from behind her fingers. “Stop. It’s not his fault that Zevi did what he did. He wasn’t well.” The eye turns to me. “What happened, Malco? Tale said that you and Hilde tried to run away.”

“No!” I say. “Tale attacked us while we were—”

Just then I become aware that the whimpering sound we heard in the entrance to the library is still present. Verra shakes her head, nodding to the end of the row.

There are two people there. Tale, washed in tears, bubbling incomprehensibly, curved over the body of his brother. Edd’s eyes are open but unresponsive. He shakes with his brother’s sobs, but is otherwise completely immobile, still as the grave.

“When Zevi woke up he attacked Dako and took the barricade apart. The slimes started coming in immediately. Ham and Olir tried to beat them back, but…” Verra trails off, but the two bodies are testaments to what happened. “We climbed up on the shelves,” she continues. “It was just in time. The slimes almost got to us. If Dako hadn’t thought of that we would all have ended up like Edd. He fell. His leg couldn’t take it.”

“And Hilde?” I ask.

Verra shakes her head. “When Tale came back she wasn’t with them. I don’t know. He won’t talk. Malco what happened?”

I shake my head, fuming inside, unable or unwilling to unload my rage on that pitiful ball of sobbing in the corner.

“We have to go. Get ready.”

But first, I have to know.

“Tale.”

He takes a moment to still his sobs and acknowledge me.

“It’s my fault,” he said, face buried in his brother’s shirt.

I’m tempted to agree.

“What happened back there? Where’s Hilde?”

The library is quiet and too dark. I keep picking up on every shadow, every dance of the distant torch.

“I… I saw her give you the emerald,” he sobs. Ah, crap. “I thought you were going to betray us. I thought that if I took her you’d come back, you’d, you’d help…”

I’d help Edd. Tale, you idiot.

“What. Happened?” I insist.

“They went after you,” he says. “It took them a while to get in position, but finally they managed it. And then… I don’t know. We heard screams coming from the library, but when we got here the barricade had been destroyed and the slimes were coming in. We climbed, but Edd, he…”

“And Hilde?”

Tale shakes his head. “I don’t know. I left her there with Gaun and came here, but…”

He trails off and the sobs start off again.

“We can’t stay here,” I eventually say. My voice doesn’t betray any emotion. I hope. “There’s nothing we can do for them now.”

“It’s not fair that he paid for my mistake. I did it… I…”

I can just drag him. Hit him, force him up, I think. And then, guiltily, I can just leave him.

Instead, I pat his shoulder awkwardly and mutter, “Get ready.”

When I turn, I find Verra and Dako looking at me. There’s a question dancing in their eyes, one that they aren’t daring to ask.

“We’re all going,” I say. I search the shelves and find my cudgel where I’d left it. At least it didn’t get stuck inside a slime. “Get ready, pack things up.”

Gratitude washes over their faces, and I realize they thought I was leaving them behind to fend for themselves. They begin to pick stuff up, anything that can fit into a bag.

Torchlight still glows from the end of the row, marking Wyl’s position. I make my way to her and am welcomed by a frown.

“Don’t remember agreeing to this,” she says.

“We have to help them,” I say. “They won’t last an hour if we just leave them, Wyl.”

“Tough luck for them,” she answers. “It’s the Challenge. Most people don’t survive, and that’s just part of the game. If we start picking up every helpless waif and straggler we come across, we’ll die too.”

“She’s right, Malco,” Rue buzzes. “You promised we were leaving.”

We could argue this, sure. There are many worthy points to mull over, analyze, discuss, dissect, and analyze. Maybe one day we’ll get to do just that.

“Yeah. But I’m the one who knows how to leave this place, so I guess you’re out of luck too.”

I ignore the surprise on her face and yank the torch away before walking down a row of shelves. They have a few minutes to prepare. I don’t need more than that.

The first thing I do is run down the passage to the Floating Room, following the dust-free path the slimes made. At the end, I find roughly what I was expecting: the barricade in shambles, large pieces of wood strewn across the floor, the Floating Room filled with slightly fewer, yet bigger, slimes. But nothing else. There are no signs of Hilde, of her guard, or of Essa’s people. I stand at the lip of the room shining my light inside. There is a new body there, but one I don’t recognize. One of Essa’s people, maybe, a victim of Wyl’s slime stampede. Every passage is empty and bare: to the moving room, the laboratory, and the mysterious remaining one.

I stare inside for a long minute, thinking. A slime passes right in front of my eyes, chunks of wood floating inside it, and stretches a little blobby appendage. I see myself reflected in the oozy surface, my face distended and misformed, until the ooze drifts away again.

I turn back and head into the library again.

This last stop is easier, I hope. I know what I’m looking for now. I raise the torch high when I pass by the lines of books, eyes darting in every direction, taking in the dusty covers. I have to traverse three rows before I find it.

The book is sitting on the highest shelf, the pitch-black cover looking almost oily in its reflection of the torchlight. Before, we looked for bright colors: green, red, blue. But the final gemstone, as the pillar next to the white door attested, isn’t that.

The White Door, says the book,

The White Door hides away

On the fourth and final level—

Right, yeah. That part we know. Flip.

The Jet Key, I find written on the following page along with a drawing of a simple dark stone.

The Jet Key, I mark,

Hid the pupil of the dark.

Second level, come and see:

The cyclops comes for thee.

Pupil of the dark? Lord Obrein’s student? And mark what? I rack my brain, unsuccessfully. Maybe it’s somewhere I didn’t search.

I stash the book for another time and rejoin my new companions. Dako and Verra did as well as could have been hoped for. She has rolled a thick layer of bandages over her eyes, and Dako’s extra hand is entwined in hers. Wyl watches me arrive with undisguised venom.

The only one that’s left is Tale. He’s still holding his brother, his shoulders shaking with every sob.

“Tale, we’re ready. Let’s go,” I say.

He doesn’t answer. He also doesn’t react when I approach, which makes my job much easier.

The cudgel hits him on the side. I don’t put a lot of force behind the swing, just enough to make him turn. The next hit smashes square against his solar plexus and makes his eyes go wide with pain and lack of breath. In that state, it’s easy to grab him and pull him along while Dako and Verra look on in shock.

He tries to fight, tries to scream for Edd. I’m convinced he could, if he wanted to. But as we move away from his brother and the comatose boys, I find that I don’t have to drag him as hard, that he’s moving of his own volition.

It’s easier this way, I know. To have leadership wrested away, to be forced to do something rather than being given a choice.