Her mouth dropped open and her eyes went wide as she noticed it: gleaming purple threads of light running through the grass. It was not intense, not yet, but it was definitely there. The purple gleam that showed the influence of nearby magic.

  “It’s like the glow that was on the trees and grass around the Fordwatch dungeon!” she said.

  “That’s right,” Jack said. “And it becomes more powerful the stronger the influence gets. This is not very strong, so I suspect that whatever influence is here must be quite weak. But I think it shows that there’s some dungeon magic here, and that explains why the elf was here.”

  He was rummaging in his pack as Melinda asked, “Is there a dungeon here?”

  “My thoughts exactly,” he said, drawing the map out and holding it near the gleaming silver Guiding Light line to examine it. After a moment, he shook his head. “It’s as I thought,” he said. “There is no dungeon on the map here.”

  “But then what…?”

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “But I’m going to find out.”

  They dug in the soft earth together, lifting the turf and quickly finding that there was only a thin covering. Beneath, there was a stone slab about a yard square. It didn’t take much for them to lift it, revealing a dark opening. It was a passage that plunged straight downward, with straight stone sides made of brick and a ladder of footholds and handholds cut into one wall.

  The silver mana guideline led straight down the hole.

  “This looks promising and a bit dangerous at the same time,” Melinda said.

  “I agree,” he said. “Whatever that elf was up to, the answer lies down here. Come on, let’s solve this riddle once and for all.”

  Chapter 7

  The silver gleam of the mana from the guideline lit the tunnel as Jack turned around and lowered himself feet-first into the hole. He got a foothold on the ladder and, with a wary look downward into the darkness, began to descend.

  Glancing up, he saw Melinda take a quick look about the woods and then follow him down.

  The ladder was rough, and the descent was tough going. After they had been climbing for a little while, Jack could feel the sweat trickling down the small of his back. His arms ached, and he could hear Melinda’s labored breathing from above him. The silver mana rope hung straight down next to him, illuminating the tunnel with a weird, unearthly glow. As Jack descended, the silver line disappeared. It was as if it were being rolled up and turned off about a yard after he passed.

  “The guideline is disappearing as we follow it,” Melinda panted, her voice sounding muffled in the brick-lined shaft.

  “It’s good,” Jack said. “It means that no one but us can follow it.”

  After that, they kept quiet, saving their breath for the climb.

  After what seemed like a long time, Jack glanced down and finally saw the welcome glow of the mana guideline illuminating the ground. It curved at a sharp angle and disappeared from view.

  “There,” he said. “The bottom.”

  Melinda didn’t reply.

  When they reached the ground, their feet splashed into a half-inch of stagnant water. Melinda put an arm out to lean on Jack’s shoulder and they stood in silence together for a while, catching their breath.

  “That was a brutal climb,” Melinda said after a little time had passed. “I thought I was in better condition.”

  Jack frowned. “You’re right,” he said. “I feel the same. And that’s strange, now I come to think of it. We are in better physical condition than that. Look up—it’s not actually that far.”

  Melinda peered upward then swore under her breath. “You’re right!” she said. “I can see the light up above! But it felt like we were climbing forever, and now I feel like I could sleep for a week!”

  “I don’t trust this,” Jack said. “Wait a moment.”

  Taking a few seconds to center himself, Jack drew in a deep breath of the fetid, stale air of the tunnel. He allowed his magical awareness to overlay his normal human senses, and felt for his magical link to Melinda. Then he drew on his Resist Magic spell, drawing mana from his pool and letting it flow along his connection to Melinda. The spell flowed along their connection and after a moment Melinda stood straighter and let out a small, amazed laugh.

  Jack turned the magic on himself, letting the Resist Magic spell wash over him. It ran through his limbs and through his brain, he could actually feel it tingling through him from head to foot. Suddenly, he felt as if a heavy blanket had been lifted from him. His limbs felt lighter, the ache disappeared from his back and shoulders, and his thoughts were clearer.

  He drew a deep breath, finding the air less damp and musty than it had been before.

  “Magic,” he said with certainty. “There was some kind of enchantment over the entrance, and we walked right into it.”

  “A spell to make the affected person feel sluggish and tired,” Melinda said in amazement. “That’s genius.”

  “A trickster’s kind of magic,” Jack said. “It would appeal to Lachlan!”

  Melinda grinned, her eyes bright and her smile broad now that the spell had been lifted from her. “I wonder what its source was?”

  “The elf cast it,” Jack said. “But whether it was the result of some enchanted item in this place, or just an enchantment cast over the general area, I don’t know. If it’s an item, we’ll find it, but I’m sure there’s more to this place than energy-sapping spells. Come on. Let’s keep exploring.”

  They set off together down the tunnel. Jack reabsorbed the mana guideline, bringing it back into his pool as Melinda lit the magical torches that had been gifted to her by Hannah Dwimmer. The flickering light illuminated the damp, low tunnel as they splashed forward.

  As a precaution, Jack summoned his spear from the aether and kept it at the ready in his right hand. Melinda drew her sword with a faint ringing sound.

  Relieved of the oppression of the enchantment, they made better progress. The corridor was straight and there were no doorways or turn-offs to either side. The walls and floor here were of hewn rock, roughly cut from the bedrock of the earth itself. Their feet splashed rhythmically in the water as they made their way cautiously forward.

  “Look there,” Jack said, pointing with his flickering torch. “A door at the end of the corridor.”

  They had turned a corner and about fifty yards from where they stood the corridor ended in a low wooden door. The door was made of rough wooden planks and studded with reinforcing iron. There was a heavy key in the lock.

  “Looks like whoever was here wanted to keep something inside, but was confident that no one would make it this far from outside,” Melinda said.

  Jack nodded thoughtfully. “He left the key in the door,” he mused. “That means he was about to come back here. When we met him, the elf was on his way to his prisoners. Perhaps he was about to bring them here?”

  Jack and Melinda approached the door cautiously, but there was no sound from behind it and there was no light shining from beneath. There were veins of purple light in the lichen on the walls by the door, however, and that told them that there was some kind of magic going on here.

  There being nothing else for it, Jack leaned over and turned the key in the lock. He waited a moment, glanced at Melinda, then pulled the door open.

  A flash of white light blinded them for a moment, and Jack leaped back as a wave of hot air hit him in the face, making him raise his hand to shield his face. There was a sudden rumbling sound, followed by a groaning noise that made both their hair stand on end.

  “What in the…” Melinda said, then stepped forward.

  Beyond the door there was a little square room. In the middle of the room, there was a table—a round stone table engraved with strange golden symbols that began to glow as Jack and Melinda approached. The groaning got louder.

  “It sounds like a thousand people all moaning at once,” Jack said.

  “But very far away,” Melinda added softly.

  Red light shone from the center of the table. They approached cautiously, but there were no more flashes of light. The air of the room was warm as the inside of a smith’s forge. When they got to the table, they looked down at the center of it and saw a sight that made them both shudder.

  There was a gateway in the middle of the table, a round hole three feet across that led down into a glowing red pit. Hundreds of feet below, they could see a weird, terrible landscape of black rocks and deep pits, all lit with red light as if by a great fire. The whole place was filled with moving figures, countless thousands of them, and it was from there that the horrible groaning sound was coming.

  “It’s a gateway into one of the demon realms!” Melinda said. “This is it, Jack, this is the source of all evil magic! The power of the red and the black comes from these realms, it’s drawn from the presence of all these demonic beings that live here. This is what we’re meant to destroy, isn’t it? This place?”

  Jack gazed down through the gap at the terrible sight below him.

  “Not just this one,” he said. “There are hundreds of these demon realms. We’ve seen Lachlan open portals to them, allowing monsters and demons to come through. We can’t destroy them all, one by one. There must be some other way…”

  They looked around a bit more.

  “Look there,” Jack said, pointing. “There is blood on the table here, and here, I hadn’t noticed this before…”

  He leaned over and, with a slight shudder, lifted a sheathed blade from a nook in the side of the table. He drew it.

  “The blade is made of pure gold,” he said, awestruck. “And the handle is of obsidian. That must symbolize something. I seem to remember reading in one of the books in the library what a golden blade means magically.”

  “I don’t know,” Melinda said with a shrug. “But I know this—it means that elf was up to something dark in here. Whatever he was trying to do, he has managed at least to open this gate through to one of the demon realms. Was he trying to draw power from it? It seems likely.”

  “And it seems likelier still that he was planning to use Jed and Rog to power some kind of evil ritual to achieve his purpose.”

  “Well,” Melinda said. “I’m glad we stopped him when we did.”

  “Me too.” Jack took his pack off his back and stowed the strange knife in it. “I’ll take this, and perhaps when we see Lachlan again he’ll be able to throw some light on the matter.”

  They examined the rest of the chamber carefully, but they found nothing more. Neither of them recognized the symbols around the table, though Jack guessed they were there to stop anything escaping unbidden from the gateway, as well as to keep it stable.

  They carefully examined the gateway itself, even risking using some magic on it to see what would happen, but nothing seemed to affect it. It was as if they were looking through a window down on the demon realm, but could not actually influence it directly in any way.

  Eventually, after a careful examination, they decided the best thing to do was to lock the door and take the key, then move on with their quest.

  “And I’ll make a mark on my map,” Jack said, “to remind us of the location in case we even need to come back.”

  Using ink and a brush, Jack made a small X on the map approximately where the chamber was located. Then, with a last glance back at the eerie red light emanating from the table, they left.

  “This is strange,” Jack said as he closed the door behind him.

  “What is?” Melinda asked.

  “There’s no light from the gateway shining out under the door,” he replied. “See? There’s nothing visible, and I can’t hear the groaning either once the door’s closed.”

  “Magic again?” Melinda asked.

  Jack shrugged. “I’d say so, but there’s not any sign of any spells on the door—I can’t feel or see anything.”

  “Strange,” Melinda said. “I can’t explain it. At least the protection spells cast by the elf seem stable. If we cover the trapdoor again before we leave, it’s not likely anyone else will stumble on it.”

  “Out here in the woods? Jack said. “I think you’re right about that.”

  They left, walking the corridor, then climbing the ladder again to reach the surface.

  There, Melinda stretched and Jack took a breath of the clean air.

  “You know,” he said, as they covered over the trapdoor with turf again, “something makes me think that we’ve not seen the last of that strange chamber. Whatever the story is there, I think we will know more about it before we’re through.”

  Melinda nodded thoughtfully. “I think you’re right, Jack,” she said. “I think you’re right.”

  After that, their days began to take on more of a routine. They would travel west on the backs of the ice wraiths, seeking out the next dungeon on the map. When they arrived, they would enter and Jack would awaken the dungeon spirit by summoning creatures in its presence. The dungeon would awaken, and there was invariably some damage or natural wear on the dungeon that would be repaired.

  They did not again encounter a dungeon that responded badly, the way the one at the bend of the road had. Nor did they come across any more strange characters like the mysterious elf, or any strange phenomena like the disturbing table with its red view into the demon realm.

  The dungeons were not uniform in character or size or development. Jack noticed that the ones that were further from the road or from large settlements were less well-developed. He began to understand that the reason the dungeon by the road bend had been so well advanced was that it must have had a great many adventurers in the old days.

  Days passed and winter deepened around them. Although it was quiet, still, and often very cold, it did not snow. They were still far enough south that the snowline was some miles away, off to the north, on their right as they walked. In the distance in that direction they could see the snow-capped peaks of the great dwarven range, where the dwarves lived and forged their incredible metal and stone artifacts in their great underground cities.

  They had been going like this for some weeks when something interrupted their routine. Jack had just reactivated a small dungeon that lay near a rocky cliff to the north of the road, and they had gone back to the road to continue on their way. It was a cold, clear afternoon, and Jack was preparing to summon the ice wraiths that would carry them on to their next destination.

  But the summoning didn’t work.

  “What’s up?” Melinda asked, her breath steaming in the freezing winter air and the cold bringing little patches of rose to her pale cheeks.

  “I’m not sure,” Jack said. “It’s as if my mana pool is depleted, but it’s not, not at all.”

  He pushed the spell again, feeling the mana move sluggishly toward it then retreating again.

  “Not good,” he said, feeling a tinge of uneasiness stirring deep in his chest.

  “Let’s try something else,” Melinda said. “Summon a creature for a different purpose than traveling.” She drew her sword with a ring of steel, and stood facing Jack with her blade drawn.

  Jack immediately understood. He grinned. “Come on, then!” he said in a challenging voice.

  Melinda, her face beaming happily, leaped forward with her sword raised and Jack summoned an ice wraith to defend himself as he stepped back. The mana flowed smoothly, an ice patch appearing on the ground in front of him and the tall, eerie form of the wraith immediately materializing above it.

  The wraith’s claws whistled as they whipped through the air to meet Melinda’s blade, and there was a clang of steel. She ducked, drawing a Ward spell from the aether with her red-and-black warlock magic. The spell worked like a shield, slamming upward into the wraith’s face and blocking its claws.

  She ducked under its guard, protected by the Ward, and dispatched the wraith with a swift blow from her sword. Immediately, Jack felt the mana that had made the monster slipping back into his mana pool.

  “So,” he said. “Seems there’s no issue summoning to defend myself… How about another experiment?”

  “Ready when you are,” she replied.

  “All right… come at me with your blade again, but this time, don’t kill the monster.”

  She did so, coming in low with a blow that would have skewered Jack if he’d not summoned the lumbering form of a rock troll in between them.

  “Careful!” he laughed as he leaped backward. “You nearly had my guts there!”

  She cackled as she leaped out of the way of a blow from the rock troll. “Don’t you trust my accuracy?” she teased. “I was only going to tickle you with it!”

  Jack chuckled. “Okay, okay. Let’s leave it at that.”

  He gave the command to the rock troll to stop attacking Melinda, and at the same time she leaped back and sheathed her sword. “Now what?” she said.

  “Now, we try to catch a ride on this troll.”

  Jack moved forward and made to climb onto its back.

  “Woah!” he cried, “look at that! It’s exactly as I thought!”

  His hand had passed right through the troll as if it had not been there at all! It did feel slightly warm on the skin—a pleasant sensation in the cold morning air.

  The troll flickered, becoming momentarily hard to see, like a flame in bright sunlight.

  Jack stepped away and placed his clenched fists on his hips. The troll came back to its normal form, looking clear and unambiguously real again.

  “It looked just like an illusion,” Melinda said in amazement. “A being that wasn’t even really there.”

  Jack glanced at her and smiled wryly. She was staring in consternation at the troll. “I guess this is what Lachlan warned me about,” he said. “Lachlan always said that one had to be careful of using magic for mundane purposes. I guess we’ve been a bit too free with using ice wraiths as mounts recently, and this is the consequence. It’s certainly taken quite a long time to manifest, but here we are.”

  “It’s a good thing,” Melinda said consideringly, “that the weakening of the magic doesn’t seem to affect the monster if it’s used for less mundane purposes.”

  “Such as stopping you from ‘tickling’ me with your sword, for example?” Jack said with a genuine smile now.

 

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