CHAPTER 28

“So, what’s the plan?” Verra asks. “Where are we going?” Her blindfold lets her move in the aggressive torchlight but stops her from doing much else. Dako’s hand, so thin that it is almost skeletal, is her lifeline. It’s a blessing that the corridor is as clean and empty as it is, or we would have had to carry her.

“I want to try and find Hilde,” I say. Tale and Wyl both seem surprised by the statement. Well, Tale looks surprised. Wyl just sets her jaw and crosses her arms. “I want to make sure she’s all right.”

“That’s not a good reason,” Wyl says. “If she’s all right, she’ll continue to be all right. If not, we risking ending as badly as she did by dallying. You have to get it through your thick head, Malco, they may call this a game, but we aren’t playing. You said you have a way out of the dungeon. I know a way down from this level. Let’s find the door we need and let’s make sure we live to tell this tale.”

“You have the Emerald Key, Malco,” Tale says, looking at me with red eyes. “We should use it and get out of here.”

I let the words ring in the empty corridor and the echoes wane before answering. I just need a little more. A little more and everything will fall into place. I know it will.

“I do have the Key,” I say quietly. “And I do want to use it. I’m only asking for a little time. Nothing dangerous, we’ll only go and find the door to the room opposite the laboratory. That’s the only place she could have hid. Please. I need to know.”

It’s true, I think as I let them ponder the words. I do need to know. Was Rev telling the truth, or did she just want to spare me the pain and shame of having come too late?

“I’ll go with you,” says a voice. It’s Verra. I don’t know why she’d want to come with me nor how I could use her help. But right as she says it, Dako steps eagerly forward. Tale nods once. And Wyl just shakes her head.

“Fools all of you,” she says. “Hilde better be there, is all I’m saying.”

They file out down the corridor, close to the left wall. I breathe out slowly, my heart thumping away in my chest, before following.

We haven’t walked long when out in front Wyl stops us and points ahead. There are two oozes in the hallway. They are about as tall as a hunting hound, and so still there isn’t a single ripple in their strange surfaces. But as we appear around the bend of the ring, whatever senses they have are enough to spot us. They begin the chase.

It’s a very slow chase.

And it’s Tale who steps forward. At first I think he’s looking for some sort of needless heroic suicide, but then he starts moving towards the opposite wall and stomping his feet. Dutifully, the oozes follow, advancing like melting wax and leaving the corridor unobstructed. When we pass, the oozes, focused on the noise Tale is making, don’t even seem to notice us.

After we’ve walked past, Tale jogs in a wide berth around them and joins us.

“It’s easy when it’s just a few,” he says, managing a weak smile that cracks immediately. “Wish we’d been so lucky.”

We keep going. The ring is wide, with the wooden doors disposed at regular intervals. Sometimes noise can be heard from the rooms inside: fire crackling, running water. We ignore it. We pass another ooze, looking solitary and forlorn, but the wall on our left remains bare stone.

“I’m completely useless,” Verra mutters. “It feels like we’ve been walking for ages, that we’ve gone at least half around the ring.”

“No, you’re right,” says Dako. “We’ve walked too far.”

“Let’s keep going,” I say. “The door is close. We’re almost there, I’m sure of it.”

I can hear Wyl mutter to herself in annoyance from her place at the top of the marching order. Her knife is drawing circles in the air again, a nervous habit that breaks through her apparently unshakeable surface.

We keep walking. And walking. And walking.

“Malco…” says Tale.

“I think we’ve gone twice around the ring already,” says Wyl.

“They might be right, Malco,” Rue buzzes timidly, hidden in my shirt.

“There!”

I see the borders of a door. I pick up speed, not caring how much noise we make when we’re so close to our objective. Wyl is the first to arrive, skidding on her leather shoes, and we all see her expression fall.

We’ve arrived at the White Door. There’s a small pedestal next to it, streaming black light up into the air. I push it open. Inside is the laboratory, looking just like we left it.

“Is this… it?” Dako asks. Verra, holding on to his new arm with both hands, is the only one still smiling, but even she falters when she detects the disappointment in Dako’s voice.

“No,” Wyl growls. “This is not it.”

They’re all looking at me, I know, eyes boring into my back as I advance into the corridor. I can feel Tale relapsing to silence, Wyl growing closer and closer to her breaking point, Dako and Verra feeling more lost than ever.

“There’s no outside door,” I say. “There’s only one entrance.”

“You mean the Floating Room,” Wyl says.

I nod. “It’s fine. The trap is almost dead, I think. All I need is some rope and someone to hold it and…”

“Yeah,” Wyl says. “Good luck with that. I’m off.”

“Where are you off to?” I ask, annoyed. “The exit is over there.”

“For you, maybe,” she says, moving to the door. “Unlikely, but I’m sure you’ll give it a good go. As for me, I’ll go back down the same way I came up.”

“You don’t have a way out,” I spit after her. “You may be able to go a level down, but then what?”

“A way away from you will serve me fine just now,” she says. “I would take the rest of you all along and all, but it’s a sheer pit.”

“We have rope,” Verra says.

“Fine, come along, then,” Wyl answers. She’s opened the door and is peering out into the corridor. “I’ll take you as far as level three and then we go our own ways, yeah? And move along, I can see the slimes coming already.”

“No,” I say.

A silence comes over the group. Wyl turns to me.

“You gonna stop us, are you?” she holds my gaze in silence, grinning. “Thought not. Last chance, guys and gals, I’m off—”

“If you leave,” I say. “You’ll be trapped here forever.”

“You think highly of yourself if you think you can stop me from going anywhere I please,” Wyl spits. “Door in each floor, think you can stop me from finding one of ‘em?”

“The Gold Door,” I say, raising a finger. “Guarded by a fire-breathing drake.”

“There are more—” Wyl starts, rolling her eyes.

“The Ebony Door,” I interrupt, second finger joins the first. “The key is right here on this floor, but I’ll wager finding it involves going into the Floating Room again. Then the White Door – you’re holding on to it right now – the key is hidden on the second floor and I killed the only clue.”

There’s a chorus of reactions to this, but Wyl barrels through them.

“Fine, then, the door on the third floor.”

“You’re not taking that one,” I say. “Because, like Tale said, I have the key right here.”

I pull the emerald out of my pocket and show it to the room. It captures the light and lets it out again tinged with a deep forest green onto every twinkling covetous eye. A hush falls over the group while everyone ponders their next course of action. Violence hangs in the air, suspended by a thread.

“Then why don’t we use it?” Verra says calmly, the only one unaware of the emerald’s brilliance. “We can follow Wyl down, find the Silver Door and go through it. Does it matter what Trial we pick? We don’t even know what they are! Malco,” her voice reasonable, level. “You have to admit that Hilde might not have made it, and that you should be saving yourself—"

“Yes,” I say. “It’s possible that that is so. I’m still going to try and find her, and you are welcome to pick your own path.”

I put the emerald back in my pocket. Wyl’s gaze could have burned a hole through the fabric.

“I’ll help you,” Tale says.

Crap. I’m wary of trusting him again, though something is changed about his manner. Whatever control he was holding onto has slipped through his fingers. If anything, Tale seems eager to let someone else take the reins. Still, I remember the last time I left him holding onto my rope while I went into the Floating Room.

But no one else comes forward. Dako and Verra’s guarded faces are alive with doubt; Wyl’s with a quiet fury I’m sorry to have caused. But I’ve made my decision.

“We agree, then?” I ask. “You’ll wait for us?”

At least Dako and Verra nod.

The passage from the laboratory to the central room is swift and unimpeded. One of my worries was that the slimes could have gotten to it. We’ve been lucky, but it’s only a matter of time until one of them accidentally floats into the corridor.

We arrive at the lip to find the Floating Room barely illuminated. The room’s glowing surfaces, earlier dazzlingly bright, are now dim, casting an eerie, green, ghostly shimmer in the air. At first I can’t see the slimes; there are no green globules floating or crashing into each other, and then I realize why.

The room is almost all slime. All the little slimes, from the ones as small as apples to the ones as large as dogs, have been replaced with a single enormous one that floats contentedly from one side of the room to the other. As I watch it touches a wall, which gives a small burst of light and barely manages to send it in the opposite direction.

“Well, that plan is off, then.”

“No,” I mutter. “I think I can manage. Look, it’s so slow. If I jump… There!”

As the slimes bounces around contentedly, there’s a spot where someone could, theoretically, jump through. But it’s small. Very small. It would have to be perfectly timed.

“It’s insane,” Tale sighs. “You’re insane.”

And then he shrugs and a extends his hand for my backpack.

“Give it here. I’ll undo the knots.”

I shake my head.

“It’s useless now.”

“It’s not,” he says, confused. “If you miss, I won’t be able to pull you back.”

And you won’t be able to pull me off-course, either, I think.

I wonder how much he can see in my eyes when I just shake my head. Tale shrugs and sets the rope down.

“Don’t see why that whole thing was for, then. You could have just come alone.”

Because I didn’t know you’d be the only one to step forward.

But now to Tale it just looks like a stupid power play: I have the key; I make the rules.

“I need someone on watch. If I need help, or if I need something. And if I die, at least you’ll know where the emerald is,” I say.

Tale nods. I’m relieved he doesn’t suggest I leave the emerald.

“Your window is coming up.”

“Yeah,” I get myself in position like a racer, with my fingers past the lip of the passage, the cudgel by my side and at the ready. The slime floats past us, leaving the barest glimpse of passage across, then bumps against the wall and is thrown back, blocking it again. With each bump the room gets a little darker, the tiles drain a little further. The slime pushes appendages in our direction, much too short to be dangerous.

The passage comes into view again. I strain, but when the moment comes to push off, my body feels paralyzed.

“That was it,” Tale says.

There’s a hint of impatience in his voice.

I bite back an answer and breathe out. I try to focus, but my heart pumps in my ears and sweat trickles down into my eyes.

“Malco…” Rue buzzes softly.

I don’t answer. The slime passes, the passage comes unblocked. I wobble, but can’t bring myself to jump.

“Sure you don’t want the rope?” Tale asks.

“Tale, I would rather jump straight into the slime than let you tie a rope around me again,” I snap.

And just then I see it.

I jump. Not ahead, but up, where the oblong body of the slime comes shy of the ceiling. The weightlessness takes over me and I crest the translucent green surface, which ripples and swirls under me, extending knobby tendrils. The slime is large, and surely powerful, but much too slow. The tendrils miss.

I twist my hips like Rev did and face the ceiling. My good hand touches the surface to gain the push I need to shoot straight into the mouth of the passage. Immediately I feel the force pushing me away; a jolt of power that crackles up my arm and… leaves me exactly where I was. The energy is spent. The stone above me is dull, completely devoid of light.

“Malco!” Rue buzzes in high pitched discordant notes.

The slimy stalks swing like clubs. I manage to dodge one by pulling on the crevices between the stones and put my cudgel in front of the second. The slime envelops the weapon, joyful as if it had caught a limb, and yanks it out of my hand before dipping it into its main body. Tale yells out something that I miss.

Feet scrambling on the dark surface of the stone, I push off downwards at an angle a second before the slime’s arms hit the ceiling and spread through it. Every inch of stone it touches flares up once and goes dark.

I pass the lip of the passage the passage and hit the ground hard, rolling a ways down the corridor before coming to a stop. It’s a while before I manage to stand on weak legs. The slime is angry; the once peaceful blob is now swinging tendrils in all directions, scraping against tiles and draining them of the last of their power. The Floating Room gets darker and darker until I almost have no light to see by. A noise above the dying pulses of light and the smacks of the tendrils on stone could be Tale’s voice, but I can no more make out what it’s saying that I can discern his figure through the green translucence.

I quiet frantic Rue with calm words. There’s another sound here, above his buzzing. It’s indistinct and all-enveloping, and extremely incongruous: water.