turning steadily, clicking noisily as the teeth meshed and rust flaked free.
“Give me a minute,” Giorge said, tracing the connections of the gears and levers.
“Ortis doesn’t have a minute,” Angus said.
“I know,” Giorge said. “Can you do anything?”
Angus nodded, went back into the main tunnel, and sought out a blue strand of sky magic. It was difficult to find one; they were deep enough underground that almost all of the magical strands were the red shades of flame magic—many of them quite dark and radiating tremendous power—or brown ones of earth magic.
Hobart tossed the ropes he had carried down into the tunnel and stepped into the narrow opening. He turned and stared up the stairwell.
Angus finally found a faint blue strand and reached for it, weaving it into the knotted sequence for the flying spell. It was a weak strand, easy to manage but not very potent. His spell would not last as long, but it would be easier to manipulate it.
“Gods,” Hobart muttered as the floor clanked to a stop in the wall beneath them.
“Let me by,” Angus said.
Hobart barely looked up as he reached for the rope and said, “I have to catch him if I can.” He made a large loop in the rope and squatted down, bracing his calves and shins against the tunnel walls. The rope dangled below him as he extended his arms and made a practice toss with the noose.
“I will catch him if you let me by,” Angus said from behind and above him.
Hobart turned and looked as if he were about to protest, but when he saw Angus hovering behind him, he hunched down as far as he could.
Angus guided himself out by pulling with his hands instead of working the spell; the area was narrow, and his ability to aim was still uncertain.
“Here,” Hobart said, holding out the rope. “Take this.”
Angus nodded, took hold of the rope and tweaked the thread. He shot forward more quickly than he expected and barely managed to redirect himself upward before banging into the wall. The rope dangled beneath him like a long tail as he rose rapidly upward for about fifty feet. Ortis was tumbling down the slope of the stairwell, each of his constituents about ten feet apart.
Angus positioned himself, took hold of the rope, and whipped it around until most of it was lying on the stairwell. If Ortis was lucky, if he was quick enough, he might be able to catch onto it. But Angus didn’t want to rely upon luck; he brought his skills into play. He estimated the distance between himself and the first Ortis; he anticipated the trajectory for where he would be in three seconds, and he tweaked the thread, directing himself to that location.
He overshot it, but it didn’t matter. His timing was right, and Ortis collided with him, grappled with him, clung to his arm. Then Angus banged into the wall and almost lost him—but Ortis was clinging too tightly to him for that—and for controlling the spell!
“Get on my back!” Angus shouted. “I need my hands!”
Ortis hesitated only briefly before he maneuvered himself into position, his arms and legs wrapped around Angus’s torso and hips. Then the second Ortis was upon him, lunged for his legs. The impact and additional weight almost caused Angus to lose control of the thread—and would have if it had been a stronger one—and made maneuvering too difficult for his novice ability at flight. He floated outward, away from the slope, and fluttered downward. He had to drop the rope to regain control, and by the time he had, the third Ortis was past him.
Angus frantically redirected himself downward, and they dropped quickly—too quickly; the pit was rapidly approached, and in desperation, Angus redirected them sideways and used the wall to brake to a stop, almost losing both Ortises in the process.
The third Ortis tried to leap for Hobart, tried to catch the rope Hobart threw near him—but missed them both. When he struck the stakes, both of the Ortises with Angus tensed, the one clinging to his chest nearly cracking ribs as he squeezed the air from Angus’s lungs.
“Grab him!” Angus gasped, as he guided them to the wall near Hobart.
The tenseness in the Ortises suddenly eased, and the one dangling from his feet relaxed his grip, began to slide limply down the wall. The one wrapped around him began to tilt away, to slide, but Angus spread his legs as wide as he could and used his right arm to grip Ortis’s wrist. With his left, he lowered them down until they were level with the opening, and then used it to push himself along the wall until he could step inside. Once there, he turned around and let Ortis slump to the ground. Then he turned to the third Ortis, the one he had not been able to catch.
“Found it!” Giorge cried into the sudden silence. A moment later, the stairwell floor began to slide slowly out of the wall.
Angus flew cautiously to the third Ortis. He was impaled on metallic, spear-like stakes in the middle of the pit. One of them jutted up through his back, another pinioned his left leg, and a third had torn through the soft flesh of his right arm.
The floor was already a foot away from the wall, but it would take time to reach the other end. If he hurried….
Angus let himself fall until he was almost on top of the spear-like stakes, and then arrested his descent by transferring the momentum horizontally. When he was near Ortis, he stopped and, rather than flying closer to Ortis, used the spikes as if they were stepping stones, lightly pushing off from one to the next until he was hovering next to Ortis.
He paused, turned back toward the opening, and shouted, “He’s dead.”
The floor now extended about five feet—a third of the way—and would soon be over his head. He prepared to fly upward, but Hobart stopped him.
“Not yet,” Hobart shouted. “You need to bring his body back.”
Angus frowned. What’s the point? Does it really matter where he’s buried? Then he shrugged. It did to Teffles. Maybe it does to Ortis, too.
Angus gripped Ortis’s belt firmly in his right hand, and tugged on the thread, urging it to lift them up. He had braced himself for the jarring resistance of Ortis’s body, but was pleasantly surprised by how easily his corpse slid free from the stakes. He rose upward several feet, his right arm and shoulder straining against the additional weight of Ortis’s body. He redirected them sideways until they were over the floor—it had passed the halfway point—and dropped him. He fell only a few feet, and when he landed, he quivered a bit and didn’t move any more.
Hobart hurried out to him, lifted him easily over his shoulder, and carried him into the tunnel.
Angus settled down onto the floor, quickly adjusted to its motion, and was about to release the thread when Hobart returned to the entry.
“We’ll need all the food we can spare and more,” Hobart said. “We don’t have nearly enough down here. Can you get more?”
“Why?” Angus asked. The thread was weak, and even though he could control it for a while longer, he wasn’t sure how long.
“Ortis can sometimes heal himself,” Hobart said. “But he needs to eat a lot to do it.”
“All right,” Angus said, “I’ll need a torch.”
“Giorge! Light a torch!”
While he waited, Angus reasserted his control over the thread by reinforcing the fraying knot. It was the only thing he could think of doing to extend the spell’s life, and he wasn’t sure it would work. But if he lost control while he was flying up or down the stairwell….
When he had the torch in hand, he lifting himself rapidly up through the stairwell. When he reached the octagonal room, he slowed his ascent and redirected himself to the rope dangling from the trapdoor. He used it to guide himself upward, and then half-crawled, half-fluttered down the tunnel, the smoke of the torch stinging his eyes. Once in the room, he half-ran, half-floated until he was outside, and then flew to the horses. He quickly gathered up the hardtack and was about to go back when he remembered something Fyngar had written:
The plains folk gathered around a pile of grain that was taller than they were and began eating.
If Ortis was one of them, couldn’t he eat grain? He d
ecided to find out. He gathered the full feedbags from some of the horses and tossed them over his shoulder before flying back into the ruins. By the time he reached the bottom of the stairwell, he was out of breath. He dropped the sacks and feedbags, and slumped to the floor. The stairs still clattering into place, and they were getting closer. He let the spell go and waited for his breathing to ease before carrying the supplies into the tunnel.
“How is he?” Angus asked when he found them in the antechamber opposite the trap’s control room. It was a small chamber—not quite a ten foot cube—and Ortis was lying on the floor in its center. The two healthy constituents were on either side of the dead one, and each one was holding onto a hand.
“Not good,” Hobart said, rising to help him. When Angus handed him a feedbag, Hobart raised his eyes and said, “Grain?”
Angus shrugged. “It’s food, isn’t it?”
Hobart shrugged. “I’m sure he’ll eat it if there isn’t anything else left.” He positioned the food around Ortis, within easy reach of the healthy one’s hands, and then knelt to whisper something in his ear. When he was finished, he rose and walked over to Angus and Giorge.
“He needs privacy,” Hobart said, ushering them out of the room. “It will take time for him to recover—if he can.”
“Recover?” Angus repeated. “But that one is dead.”
“Not while the other two are alive,” Hobart said. “Triads are a strange breed. I’ve seen