Song of the Saurials - Kate Novak [52]
Olive stared down the tunnel behind the gap, wondering what sort of creature, possessing the power to disintegrate things, would live with that smell.
Something without a nose, she thought, an idea that did not comfort her any. For a brief moment, she thought she saw tiny points of red light, but they blinked out immediately. She stepped closer to the hole.
From down the corridor Finder had followed came the rattle of another iron grate. With a start, Olive realized they had fallen into a trap-one undoubtedly set by the unknown thing that had disintegrated the ceilings. Her heart pounding with fear, she raced down the corridor toward the bard. Ten feet from the steel door to his underground workshop, someone had set up a second iron grate with a door. Finder had wedged his torch in the grating and was already bent over the door's lock with his wire pick.
"Must be something to keep the children out," the bard muttered disdainfully, but Olive could see at a glance that the lock on this second door was far more complicated than that on the first.
"Finder," she whispered nervously, tugging on his sleeve, "it's a trap.
Something's coming from the caves back there. We have to get out of here. Now!"
"Don't be silly, Olive," the bard said. "I'll only be a moment; then we can seal ourselves in the workshop. Ouch!" Finder drew his hand up to his mouth and sucked on his knuckle. "Scratched myself," he said with a touch of embarrassment.
Olive's eyes widened with horror. "Spit!" she ordered him.
"What?" the bard asked with amusement.
"Spit, you idiot! You've been jabbed by a poison needle! Don't swallow!"
Finder's brow wrinkled with concern. He turned his head and spat on the floor while Olive pulled out a flask and shoved it into his hands.
"Rinse your mouth and your hand," she ordered, looking back down the corridor anxiously.
Finder took a swig from the flask and spat it out, gagging and coughing. "What is this?" he asked.
"Luiren Rivengut," the halfling said. "Best whiskey there is."
"Tymora! If the poison doesn't get me, this stuff will!" Finder muttered.
"Wash out the scratch," Olive ordered.
Finder splashed some of the whiskey on his knuckle.
"Let's go," Olive said.
"Olive, now that I've sprung the trap, we've nothing to lose," Finder said, bending back over the lock with his pick. "It will be a snap to get this grate open and get into the workshop."
"No, it won't," the halfling insisted, growing more frantic with each passing moment. "This is a tee-trap," she explained. "The first lock had a silent alarm.
This lock will be so complicated it will detain us long enough for guards to reach us from that tunnel back there. We'll be trapped long before we can get the door open."
"No, we won't," Finder insisted, jiggling his wire in the lock, but a moment later, he fumbled the wire and it bounced through the grate. He slid his arm through the grate in an unsuccessful attempt to reach it.
Something crunched on the broken stone in the passage behind them. Finder froze, his lockpick forgotten. Very slowly the bard pulled away from the grate, rose to his feet, and turned around.
In the passageway near the tunnel behind the gap in the wall stood three shadowy human-sized figures. Their beady red eyes reflected the light of the bard's and the halfling's torches.
With his left hand, Finder grabbed Olive's wrist and thrust her behind him, while with his right, he drew a dagger from his boot.
One shadowy figure drew closer to the torchlight. It was a male creature with a jutting forehead, a snout, long canine teeth, pointed ears, and green skin covered with coarse hair.
Orcs, Olive thought with a disgusted shudder. Tymora, why couldn't it have been something cleaner or nicer, like giant rabid rats?
The other two orcs stepped into the light just behind the first. Each wore a pair of trousers, a vest of dirty yellow cloth, a necklace decorated with dried human ears, and a belt with a bolstered