Guild Wars_ Ghosts of Ascalon - Matt Forbeck [121]
Or maybe whatever it was would affect the entire tunnel and kill him anyhow.
Dougal decided that that was unlikely, if this tunnel had been made for people who had to get out of the royal chambers in a hurry. The artisans who had crafted the trap would have known that. They wouldn’t have put in a trap that might accidentally kill the people they were trying to protect. A smart trap maker would have it so that it would affect only people entering the catacombs this way, not leaving them.
And it must be older than the charr invasion itself, made for earlier rulers. He could not imagine Adelbern ever using a tunnel to escape.
Dougal threw himself backward, spinning about and throwing himself flat on his face and covering his head with his arms.
The trap sprang as Dougal’s weight left the pressure plate. Fire did not engulf the passage. The floor did not drop away. Instead, he heard something come crashing down into the passage, right where he would have been if he’d walked blithely past the trap.
Dougal sat up and looked back up the passageway. In the light from the tiny lantern still hanging from his chest, he saw a series of spiked poles that had stabbed down from a set of concealed holes in the ceiling. These would have run him through and left him impaled on the poles until he either bled to death or died of thirst.
Despite that, there was just enough room around the spikes for Dougal to squeeze his way past. “I’m all right!” he shouted back toward the entrance, but Riona said nothing. Perhaps she could no longer hear him.
Dougal snaked his way through the catacomb. There were multiple passages now, some doorways crushed, others as open as spoiled tombs. The Foefire had twisted the catacombs when it struck. The darkened halls here had probably stood tall and unshaken once, but now the place was littered with bricks that had fallen from the ceiling and walls. In some sections the roof had caved in entirely, and in others it looked as if it might do so in an instant.
Finally he reached the site of the vault on his mental map. It was a slab of stone that seemed solid enough to serve as the foundation for a castle. It showed no hinges, knobs, or other features, only a dark hole in its exact center, just a little bigger than the size of his fist.
Five years. It had taken him five years to get to this point.
Dougal scanned the door with his eyes and his fingertips, hoping to find some flaw in it, some hint of what he needed to do to make it swing open. Finding nothing, he knelt down, brought his light up to the hole in the middle of the door, and peered into it.
He started cursing right away. “It’s a Thief’s Nightmare,” he said to himself. To work this sort of lock, you have to put your entire hand into the hole, grab the handle, and then turn it in the proper sequence. If you screw it up, a blade springs out to remove your hand at the wrist. Worse, you can’t see what you’re doing. Your arm blocks the way. Barbaric. And effective.
Dougal steeled himself and stuck his hand into the black hole, hoping that it would still be attached to him the next time he saw it. The metallic handle felt cool in his hand as he grabbed it.
He turned the handle counterclockwise until it reached a point of resistance, and there was a click. There was no sudden pain, no blade dropping. He had unfastened the first tumbler. Sweating now, he began to turn the handle in the other direction, past the original point. There was a bit of resistance. Was that the second tumbler, or was it the trap about to spring?
“Stop,” said a voice in Dougal’s ear, and for a moment he thought Riona had followed him down. He craned his head around, but he was alone before the stone door. Still, he had heard something. Or perhaps it was his own imagination, translating some shifting of the stone into words.
Nevertheless, his gut said he had gone far enough. He brought the handle back to where it had been, then started turning it counterclockwise