Crypt of the Moaning Diamond (16 page)

“See why we loot the dead when we can?” Ivy said to Sanval. He made no reply.

Ivy pulled her gloves off her belt and put them on to protect her hands from the rope. She shifted her sword on her back again, making sure the ties were tight

“Now, remember, everyone is going to stay right here,” she said. Zuzzara found a protruding rock and tied off the rope, dropping it down into the black hole. Ivy grabbed the line and slowly descended into the darkness below.

A torch dropped past her. It lit the bottom of the hole with a faint pool of light. Ivy glanced down. She could not see Wiggles, but she could hear the dog whining below her.

She hit the sandy bottom of the hole and began to call the dog. “Come on, Wiggles, come here,” she cajoled. “Come on, darling.”

A sharp bark sounded ahead of her. Ivy picked up the torch and advanced farther into the hole. She spotted the shine of white fur. Wiggles was backed into a crack in the wall, tail between her legs, ears flat back against her head.

“Come on, Wiggles,” said Ivy, “you know me. Nothing to be worried about. Come out, there’s a good girl.”

The dog remained motionless, her eyes staring at Ivy, and she gave a soft whine.

Intent on the dog cowering away from her, Ivy tripped over the giant black snake slithering across the floor. The creature reared up with a hiss, its mouth open and its fangs gleaming. Its head swung slowly, dipped to the floor of the pit, and led the curve of its body in a circle around her feet. She grabbed for her sword, trying to pull it one-handed out of the scabbard tied on her back while keeping the torch between her and the serpent’s bobbing head. The creature lashed out with unbelievable speed, uncoiling its length and circling upward around and around, over her ankles, around her knees, and up her thighs. Ivy lost her grip on the torch, which bounced harmlessly off the snake’s back and rolled away.

The serpent twisted up Ivy’s body faster and faster, like lighting striking up from the ground. It pinned her arms in place; her right hand was twisted awkwardly up by her shoulder, still fumbling for her sword hilt. But her armor protected her arm, and, as painful as her pinned arm was, the position also kept the snake off of her throat.

Ivy screamed—outraged at the suddenness of the attack, furious at the pain of her twisted arm—and tried to lunge out of the snake’s coils. She could not move! The creature’s body lapped around her, pressing against her ribs, and little stars danced in front of her eyes as the breath was slowly squeezed out of her. Her pulse beat frantically in her throat, and she knew that soon her heart would be crushed to a stop. The serpent’s terrible head brushed against her face. She twisted her face clear, drawing shallow breaths against the overwhelming pressure, desperately trying to think of a way to escape from the crushing grip.

Fangs, fangs, the thing had enormous fangs. She remembered the ivory flash in the torch light. Poisonous? Did crushing serpents need poison? Something snagged at the edge of her thick blonde braid and pulled it forward around her neck so that it hung over the front of her shoulder. For a terrible moment, her own hair felt almost like a second serpent around her throat. She could not draw a deep enough breath to scream again, but in her mind she was shrieking.

When Ivy screamed, Sanval raced past Mumchance. He leaped straight out and, as gravity grabbed him, disappeared straight down.

“Sanval, stop! That is the most unbelievably stupid,” the dwarf yelled as Sanval’s brilliantly shined helmet disappeared below the lip of the hole, “and brave… . Zuzzara, follow him! Ivy is in trouble!”

The Siegebreakers rushed to the edge of the hole. Zuzzara grabbed the rope and swung after the Procampur officer.

Wiggles barked hysterically.

Landing on the sandy floor with a thud, Sanval scooped Ivy’s still burning torch from the floor. He thrust it toward the

serpents eyes, less than a hand’s width from Ivy’s face, momentarily blinding the beast. The heat of the torch flared against Ivy’s cheek, but the serpent’s grip was so tight that she could not even wince. The giant snake hissed and wavered, obviously confused as to whether to bite Sanval or crush Ivy. Sanval ground the torch into one of the serpent’s eyes. It popped and sizzled with a sickening smell right under Ivy’s offended nose. She gagged. The giant snake tried to twist around and face this new threat with its one remaining eye.

With a prolonged hiss, the creature struck at Sanval. Its ivory fangs gleamed more brightly than the Procampur captain’s sword.

Faster than one of Ivy’s thundering heartbeats, Sanval thrust up with his blade, skewering the serpent through the jaw and piercing straight into its brain. The creature collapsed, its coils tightening in one last spasm of cruel strength, then going slack around Ivy’s body.

Ivy could clearly see her open-mouthed expression in the polished gloss of Sanval’s breastplate as he tried to catch her with his free hand. She slid down in front of him until she was kneeling on the floor.

“That was … That was …” She could not think what to say. She remained on her knees, gasping for breath.

A worried Zuzzara dropped from the rope, arriving on the pit’s floor with an audible thump of haste. Her shovel was held high, ready to brain any attacker. “Ivy? Sanval? Are you all right?”

Wiggles crept out of the hole where she was hiding and rushed to Ivy, collapsing by her side with a doggy sigh of relief.

Ivy swallowed and tried to speak again. She could feel her ribs creaking when she took a deep breath, but nothing felt broken. She shook herself free of the coils of the dead serpent, as Sanval pulled the weight of it away from her.

Sanval caught her elbows and helped her to her feet. Ivy nearly swatted his hands away. After all, she wasn’t some weak court lady who needed a hand up every time she tripped over her silk shoes or a giant snake. Then she took a deep breath to clear her mind as well as her lungs, and decided rhat Sanval would reach down to anyone who needed help, not because that person was weak but just because that was what you did when you lived by the rigid rules of Procampur courtesy. Why not let him be polite for once—it would make the man happy—especially when her knees were wobbling and she was still seeing little stars dancing in front of her eyes.

Sanval did not even look winded. Just concerned.

“Ivy?” asked Sanval. “Are you bleeding? Your face, your hair?”

It was a trick of the torchlight. Ivy felt the dampness in her hair and a trickle down her face. It was wet, it was cold, and it was water, showering in rapidly increasing drops from the ceiling.

“Ivy!” Mumchance leaned far over the edge, head tilted to one side as he strained to see her. “We need to go! There’s a lot of water coming down the tunnel.”

“No, no, no!” Ivy could not prevent the childish sound of mutiny in her voice. The gods knew, she could take falling into a river, getting lost in a maze of dark tunnels, and fighting off kobolds, phantom fungus, and giant snakes. She could even take getting rescued by somebody who acted like he belonged in one of her mother’s heroic ballads—though she meant to repay the favor as quickly as she could, because she did have her pride after all. Everything that had happened was just the sort of thing that could happen on the edges of a siege, when you were supposed to be doing a job and were getting lost instead in ruins that stretched on forever. She was serene about all of that. Most assuredly, she had handled anything that had

come before. But she absolutely and completely refused to be sanguine about drowning in the dark. If she wanted to panic now, she would panic.

In the climb out of the hole, pulling herself up the rope slowly, each stretch of Ivy’s right arm caused twinges all down her snake-bruised body. Wiggles rode triumphant on her shoulder, barking directly in her ear when she scented Mumchance above them. As soon as Ivy was level with the top of the hole, the dwarf reached out and snagged the little dog, hugging her tight to his chest.

As she clambered out of the hole, Ivy calmed down a little and decided to wait until they were above ground before she threw the mother of all fits. Right now, she was going to get them out of this dismal, damp disaster of a situation.

Water glimmered in the torchlight, dripping down the walls and flowing from the direction of the old city baths. Right now it was barely deep enough to cover the soles of their boots, and most was pouring down into the hole in the passageway.

Ivy glanced at Gunderal. The little wizard shook her head, looking close to tears. “I just can’t stop it,” she said. “Maybe slow it down a little.”

“Do what you can,” Ivy said to Gunderal. The moment that Zuzzara and Sanval cleared the hole, she shouted, “Let’s move!”

Taking the lead, she set off at a fast jog into the black unknown as the river continued to worm its way into the tunnels, water rising fast behind them.

Intent on fleeing the water gushing into the underground ruins, the Siegebreakers trotted at increasing speed through the black tunnels. Once again, to Mumchance’s distress, they were going down, not up, and the way was broadening before them. The underground road was now wide enough to run three or even four abreast, and the angry mutter of the river continued to follow them.

“We have to go higher!” cried Mumchance, gesturing with his lantern and sending the shadows wildly swinging across the wall.

“Wonderful idea,” panted Ivy as she lengthened her stride. “But which way?”

“There,” said Mumchance, pointing at the dark entrance to a tunnel that branched off the main way.

“More tracks!” squealed Kid, ears flicking nervously, nostrils wide as he tried to scent possible danger. He stamped his hooves against the dirt. “Many feet, running past, my dear, and hobnail boots. Smoke ahead too!”

“He’s right, Ivy.” Gunderal was breathing hard and looking even paler than before. “I smell fire and magic.”

“Maybe I should go ahead, in case of danger,” Sanval started to suggest.

“No! We stay together. It’s safer. No more lone rescues— not even from me,” decided Ivy, straining to smell whatever danger had spooked Kid and Gunderal. Her human nose just reported damp stone and the old sour scent of air trapped too long underground. She saw nothing but blackness beyond the light of their torches and Mumchance’s faithfully burning lantern. “It’s probably just another burned part of the ruins. More ash and old spells.”

“Water’s running fast, Ivy.” This came from Zuzzara, staring over their heads, looking back along the way that they had come. Her half-ore vision clearly showed her the rising level of the water moving down the ancient sewers.

“Then we run faster.” To Sanval, she said, “We are good at running. You should have seen us clear that tunnel when the hogs started to explode.” That twitched his worried expression into a half smile. Pleased to have distracted him from any rash lone heroics, Ivy led them into the new tunnel, shouting at the others to turn and go in this new direction. “Regular formation, single file!” she yelled. “Sanval, fall in with Zuzzara, help Gunderal if she needs it! Kid to the back, watch our rear! Mumchance, keep up and don’t forget your sword! Everyone stay alert!”

They scrambled up the slope. The tunnel turned sharply left. As they hustled around the bend, Ivy heard the clash of fighting—nothing else sounded quite like that. And then she heard shouting. She ttied to turn back and warn the Siegebreakers to be quiet until they could assess the situation, but the momentum of the others behind her propelled her into the fight before she could shout a warning.

A man on fire, surrounded by hobgoblins and ores, stood in the middle of the fight. Ivy slid to a halt, flipping her sword out even before she came to a complete stop. Startled by the sight of the burning man, she blinked and looked again, almost too

dazzled by the flames to notice the ores and hobgoblins yelling at the strangely calm gentleman.

Unperturbed by the flames licking around his body, the wizard (for what else could he be?) leaned on a smooth metal crutch and spat out some arcane command. Squealing hobgoblins and shouting ores rushed the apparent cripple as a group, only to be deflected by the flames rising hotter and higher off the wizards cloak. The smell of singed hides filled the air, but it was definitely the acrid stink of well-roasted monster. Flames might be sprouting from the wizard’s body, but it was his enemies who burned!

The wizard’s attackers wailed, throwing up their arms to protect their faces from the flames. When they turned aside, they fell afoul of a giant pair of bugbears—all snarls and big muscles and rusty chains holding together well-worn black leather armor. The bugbears fought with glaives, old-fashioned spears with oak shafts and leaf-shaped blades on one end and rough knobs of iron on the other. The bugbears swung the huge glaives around them as if they had no weight at all, slicing through the stomach armor of a hobgoblin or an ore with the sharp end and then braining the creature with the round end.

The howling hobgoblins and ores backed away from the wizard and his bugbear guards. They rushed toward the tunnel, trying to escape out of the entrance that Ivy and the others had just stumbled through.

To avoid being trampled by the creatures, Ivy bent low into a defensive crouch, sword out in the right hand, torch still clutched in her left hand. Sanval settled naturally onto her left side while Zuzzara swung onto her right.

“I’ll take the lead,” shouted Ivy as she barreled forward, knocking hobgoblins and ores back into the room, pushing them toward the flaming wizard who frightened them so. At least with a burning man in the center of the room, there was

plenty of light. She could clearly see her opponents, and what she saw was trouble. Big, fat, well-seasoned fighters, with good armor and weapons, all bearing the black boar emblem of Fottergrim’s horde.

“Oh blast and blast,” said Ivy as she swung into the fight. They had stumbled into a dispute of Fottergrim’s raiders. Didn’t anyone stay above ground these days? Just what she did not need! And this was supposed to have been such an easy, quick job! Drop a wall, collect bags of gold, go home and fix the barn roof. She had a plan, and other people kept messing it up. Snarling louder than the bugbears, Ivy launched herself into the fight that she could not think how to avoid.