halt. “He’s trapped!”
When he saw Hobart trundling after him, he turned and ran back down the corridor, pausing at each corner only long enough for Hobart to catch sight of where he was going.
16
“He’s in there?” Hobart gasped, looking at the dingy stone underside of the floor.
“Yes,” Angus said. “The floor—” How could he explain it? He held out his hands perpendicular to each other, the left vertical and the right horizontal. “It did this,” he said, turning his flat right hand so that it became vertical and flush with the left.
Hobart scowled, pointed at the blockage, and said, “That’s the floor?”
“Yes,” Angus said. “We need to find the trap’s mechanism. There has to be one somewhere around here.”
Hobart put his shoulder to the floor-turned-wall and grunted a few times. A few crusty flakes broke off, but the floor didn’t move. When he finally stopped, he asked, “Where could it be?”
“I have no idea,” Angus admitted. “As far as I can tell, there aren’t any other doors or rooms around here.”
“Can you melt it?” Hobart asked. “Like you did to the fishmen?”
Angus shook his head. “No,” he said. “That spell almost killed me when I cast it, so I didn’t prime for it again. Even if I had, I still wouldn’t try it; it would roast him—and us—alive in these cramped quarters.”
“How thick is this?” Hobart asked, trying his shoulder again.
“At least a foot,” Angus said. “You’ll never put a dent in it doing that.”
“The wand!” Hobart almost shouted. “You blew a hole in Hedreth’s, and you can do it here, too.”
Angus shook his head. “That’s not a good idea,” he said. “The range of the wand is too far. It would go through this easily enough, but it wouldn’t stop there. Giorge is only about fifteen feet inside there, and he’ll get hit by it too. If that happens,” Angus shrugged. “We won’t have to worry about whether or not he’ll fall.”
“Fall?” Hobart asked. “From what?”
“I saw him jump into a bowl on top of a column in the center of the room. If he stays there, he should be all right for a little while, as long as there are no more parts to the trap.”
“I saw the tunnels you made,” Hobart said. “You can aim that wand, can’t you?”
“To a certain degree,” Angus admitted.
“Where is Giorge in that room?”
“The center.”
“Fine,” Hobart said. “You can aim to avoid the center, can’t you?”
“It isn’t just that,” Angus said, shaking his head. “Using the wand in Hedreth’s nearly killed me—would have killed me if Giorge hadn’t gotten a healer.”
“It didn’t do anything to you when you made that tunnel through the lava flows,” Hobart countered.
Angus nodded. “I know,” he admitted. “And I don’t know why. I think it was because of the density of the materials I was using it on, but I can’t be sure. It could easily be something else.”
“It’s Giorge,” Hobart wailed. “You have to try!”
Angus set the torch against the wall and began pacing. He didn’t like the idea of using the wand, but Hobart had a point. There weren’t very many options. If they couldn’t find the reset mechanism—and he had no clue where it might be—then Giorge was stuck in there until he either fell out of the bowl or the trap reset itself. It would reset itself, too; he was sure of it. Unlike Hobart, who thought no one had visited the temple before them, the skeletons in the pit—and under the floor of the room Giorge was in—indicated otherwise.
“What are our options?” he muttered, then began counting them off. “We can wait and see if the trap resets itself,” he said. “If Giorge can hang on that long, he’ll be fine.”
“I’m not waiting,” Hobart said.
“We can find the trap’s reset mechanism,” he said. “But we have no idea where to even begin looking.”
“It will take too long,” Hobart said. “Even if we find it, we wouldn’t know how to work it.”
“I could use my wand,” Angus continued, “despite the risks involved.”
“What are you waiting for, Angus?” Hobart demanded. “Use it!”
“What else? A spell? Firecluster is no good; it won’t be hot enough to do more than warm the stone. Arclight? Pointless. Firewhip? Ineffective; it’s not hot enough to melt through stone, either. Lavageyser? It might be worth a try, but what would it do in such close quarters? It’s designed for soft ground, not stone, and the heat it generates probably would kill Giorge if it got close to him—not to mention what it would do to me. But it would melt rock, and if I cast it on a vertical plane instead of horizontal….
“No. When it hits the ground, it bubbles upward and sends out globs of lava in random directions. If I cast it on a vertical surface, it will shoot out horizontally, and I would be right in its path. Could I run fast enough?” He shook his head. “If there were a side tunnel, I’d try it, but not this. It would be almost certain death.”
Angus continued pacing and muttering to himself until Hobart shouted, “Enough!” He stepped up to Angus and grabbed him by the shoulders, forcing him to stop and look at him. “You will use that wand of yours, and you will save Giorge. If you don’t, I will see to it that you will suffer the same fate he does.”
Angus focused on the magic around him, grabbed the nearest strand of flame, and made the quick little knot for the Arclight spell. A moment later, Hobart yelped and jumped back. Angus slowly lifted his gaze and tried to pierce through Hobart’s pain-wracked light brown eyes to reach the deep-seated fear that dwells in all of us, and said, his voice calm, soft, “You will not threaten me Hobart. You will not touch me unless I give leave for you to do so. That little shock is but a small reminder of what I am capable of doing.”
Hobart shook his hands as if they were wet and he was desperately trying to dry them, but he didn’t say anything.
“I know you are anxious about Giorge,” Angus said. “So am I. But when it comes to magic, I will decide what will be done, not you. If I think it is too dangerous, it is too dangerous. You don’t know enough about magic to be terrified by it, and I know far too much about it not to be. Or have you already forgotten what happened to the fishmen upstairs?”
Hobart clenched his jaw to keep it shut and turned away.
“Now,” Angus said, taking out the wand. “I suggest you go back around the last corner. There will be a lot of noise.” And recoil, he added to himself. This wand is not intended to be used indoors. “Take the torch with you.” If there was something else I could do….
Hobart nodded, picked up the torch and trotted down the corridor and around the corner.
“Perhaps if I sit down?” Angus muttered, turning to the doorway and taking several paces back. “An upward arc should be enough to miss Giorge. Maybe I’ll slide backward down the corridor instead of being flung against the wall.” He positioned himself as best he could and began the movements to release the wand’s spell….
17
Angus rolled to a stop near the end of the corridor.
His ears were ringing.
His right shoulder was bruised.
He had scraped his left elbow.
The side of his head throbbed, and there was blood trickling down his cheek.
He was covered in dust and rock fragments.
When he opened his eyes, there were flickering spots dancing all around him. At first, he thought it was his imagination, but then he realized there were flickering spots where the rock particles had briefly ignited.
He opened his mouth to take a breath—and sputtered as the grit in the air clung to his throat, his tongue. He coughed and spat, then used his robe to cover his mouth and nose.
He sat up slowly—he was sore, but not in serious pain—and opened his eyes a sliver. A strange, gray-black haziness permeated the corridor, and ended with a dingy yellow glow.
Much of the end of the corridor was
gone. The wand’s conical ray had disintegrated the upper half of the doorway and the stone above it. It had continued past it, through the floor that had blocked the doorway, and into the ceiling of the room where Giorge had been trapped.
Hobart hurried around the corner and the rock flakes fluttering to the ground lit up like sparks as the torchlight struck them. “Giorge!” Hobart called out, pausing only briefly as he passed Angus and made his way to the end of the corridor.
Angus continued sitting for almost a minute before he struggled unsteadily to his feet, his lower back protesting against it.
His ears were still ringing.
His nose was getting clogged, despite breathing through the fine fabric of his robe.
He reached up and gingerly felt his temple where a shard of rock had grazed him in passing. The wound wasn’t deep, and the blood was already drying.
As he tucked the wand back into his sleeve, he thought, Five more spells. Maybe I can find someone to cast the spells into it? It is a delicate process….
“Do you see him?” Angus called, his throat scratchy.
“It’s too dusty,” Hobart said waving his hand before putting it back over his nose.
“Where’s the Lamplight?” Angus asked, squinting.
“The what?” Hobart asked, still waving his hand in front of him.
“The light,” Angus said. He leaned against the wall and shuffled unsteadily toward Hobart. “Where’s the light?”
“Right there,” Hobart pointed. “In the middle of the room.”
“That’s where Giorge is,” Angus said. “The Lamplight is connected to him. Even if he were dead, it would