Page 5 of The Dungeon Book

The Arcade appeared deserted when we arrived, apart from a pair of trolls hurrying along an upper corridor. Throte squatted down, hunching his shoulders forward to hide the human child and me beneath his stone wings. The bigger troll sniffed, scenting the child’s blood on the air, but a glare from Throte hurried him along.

Throte clapped. Out came the goblins. Dozens upon dozens of them, and no two alike. On average they were three feet tall. On average they had two arms and legs, two ears and eyes, and a great many sharp teeth. Some carried trays laden with trinkets and petty treasures, or well-worn tools, or schematics for traps, or suspicious meats on sticks. They crowded around Throte, pawing and tugging at his stony knees. The gargoyle was a rare sight on this level of the Dungeon – and a human child, even rarer. They tried scrabbling up his legs to reach her, but Throte waded through the crowd and shook them off.

“Is it a present?” the goblins cried. “Is it a meat?”

“No,” said Throte. “It’s a human.”

“Humans are meat.”

“It’s not to be eaten.”

“Whyever not?” the goblins chorused.

This, I felt, was my moment to shine. Talking, after all, was one thing I could still do, and I had been preparing my speech while Throte carried us through the corridors. It was eloquent, compelling, calibrated to appeal to the goblin audience while still packed full of abstruse historical allusions. I was rather proud of it.

“Because,” I began, whereupon a daring goblin knocked me from Throte’s grasp and threw me into a corner. A concealed trapdoor popped open in the ceiling just above Throte, and clever hands snatched the child away from him.

She vanished into the darkness of the warren, where goblins waited with sharp teeth. Had I still breath, I would have held it, expecting the child to be devoured within seconds. Nothing would be wasted, not shard of bone or scrap of rag. Goblins are nothing if not efficient.

Instead, there came a squeak of pain from the trapdoor.

Throte lunged forward and stuck his long stony arm into the aperture. He pulled out the goblin chieftain, and firmly attached to the goblin’s ear was the human child.

Goblins weren’t the only things with sharp teeth.

The goblin chieftain towered over his kin, being nearly three and a half feet tall. His fingers were astoundingly long and excessively jointed. All manner of tools – again sharp and clever – hung from his jerkin. He was the master trap-maker of the warren. Clickglee by name.

Throte disentangled Clickglee’s ear from the human’s teeth. The chieftain ran an eight-fingered hand over the ragged wound.

Then he laughed. “It’s very fierce,” he said. “It might be useful. It can stay a while.”

“What do we call it?” asked the other goblins. Goblins, being creatures of chaos, place grave importance on names.

Clickglee considered the question.

“Bait.”

We left Bait with the goblins. Throte carried me back to my tomb in stony silence, broken infrequently by stony speech.

“I do not like that name,” he said.

“It’s not especially auspicious, no. But it won’t be hers for long. Either she’ll go back to the human lands, or something will eat her.” Nithscalpa might be sleeping, but there were many mouths in the Dungeon.

“I do not like that thought, either.”

“Why do you care what happens to the child?” It intrigued me that the gargoyle would take such an interest in a human. From his perch atop the tower, he’d seen centuries and the passing of many mortal lives.

“Do you not?”

“I was never full of love for my fellow human even when I was alive.”

Throte returned to Orphir’s tower. I would not see him again for several years.

More weeks passed. I spent them in long contemplation of the crack by my door. You make your own fun when you’re a skull. My reverie was interrupted when Orphir opened my door without so much as a by-your-leave. For anyone else it would have been a flagrant breach of the Rules, but my old colleague was a special case.

I suppose I should give him his proper title: Master of the Dungeon. He leaned heavily on a staff as if weary from some great effort.

It would be petty to point out that it had once been my staff.