Page 74 of The Dungeon Book

Bait nudged the old woman with her foot, and Clove froze. “Who’s there?”

“Bait,” said Bait.

“Eel.” Clove spat.

“Bait.”

The sound of old fingers scrabbling for a dropped knife. Bait smelled fear in the air. She squatted down next to Mistress Clove, and poked her with the knife. I couldn’t have done this in her kitchen, she thought. Even though I wanted to do it. We hate each other above and below, only here we can be truthful about it. Nothing has to be complicated. “Rules say you’re not allowed here. This is not your place. I could kill you for being here. Keeping watch on the Entrance Hall’s the common task of all.” The last words in the Dungeon Tongue. Bait wrinkled her nose. “Why’d you come here?

“I’d nowhere else to go. No one wanted me. They didn’t need me at the castle. No one would take me in. But Offa—”

“I told you. He’s dead.”

“I knew you’d be the death of me, changeling,” spat Clove, with a little of her old venom, then she crumbled. She lay back and rested her head on the hard ground. “I know my boy’s dead, but is he here? They say the ghosts came down the mountain. They say they’re all down here in the dark. Is it true?”

“No ghosts. Wraiths are different. They’re down on the temple levels. I don’t think Offa’s with them. He died in the dragon’s lair.” She put the knife back down where Clove could find it. “He helped kill the dragon, and the dragon was my enemy.”

Bait stood. “If you lie there, the wraiths will find you. It’s not far, and the smell will draw ’em. But they might not be kind. They’re monsters, too. Like me.”

Nineteen steps and four to the far door, and Bait paused at the threshold.

“Or you can follow me, and I’ll show you how to live down here.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Mistress Clove came to dwell in the Dungeon. For a time, she and I were roommates and tombmates, which was such an exceedingly frosty arrangement that even Gloop felt awkward around us, and it is no small thing for a boneless, shapeless slime to feel awkward. Mistress Clove and I knew each other of old, and had not liked each other then. Age had not improved either of us; death had not improved me, but I suggested it was worth trying on her.

Bait did not take my suggestion. Instead, Mistress Clove moved in with Only-Sister. The manticore’s wounds were slow to heal. She needed someone to care for her, and her lair was not far from the wraith-temple. I do not know if Clove ever found what she sought in the whispering shadows, but she and the manticore became unlikely friends. The cackling of old women echoed up from the Fourth, an unfamiliar sound in the Dungeon.

And Bait? Bait disappeared for weeks at a time, exploring regions of the Dungeon even I did not know, I who had once been Master here. She showed me pages from her notebook. Sketch maps of places she called the Vale of Teeth, the Worm-Gnawed Caves, the Room of Faces. She gave up hunting on the surface, and turned her back on the light. She grew cave-pale from lack of sunlight and refused to speak anything other than the Dungeon Tongue.

Deeper she went, then deeper still, filling the blank pages in her notebook. There was, after all, one way for a human to unambiguously claim a rightful place in the Dungeon, one lair reserved for humans. Yrn Kyos had been human. Orphir had been human. All the other masters had been human.

I’d been human.

Bait feared she was human.

But if she had the Master’s Tower, that wouldn’t matter.

She talked about the tower, sometimes.

There’d been times when Bait was young when she hung on every word I spoke. I’d been the font of all knowledge and enchanted her with magical tales of the world above. (Of course, there had also been times in those early days when she’d ignored me and wandered off to play, and I could do nothing but grumble from my ledge.) I’d enjoyed having such an avid audience. In life, I’d never been more alive than when I was in front of a crowd, selling them on a magic trick. Orphir was a better wizard than I, but he’d never enchanted anyone.

After Bait returned from the world above, we’d never quite recaptured that knack of conversation. She did not need my second-hand stories of either the world above or the Dungeon below. She’d grown enough to explore on her own, to write her own book. My only contribution a few sardonic comments in the margins.

But the tower – only I knew the tower.

She questioned me about it, and I’d warned her away. I’d told her how absurdly lucky I was to survive. Orphir and I sought the tower while drunk on our own genius, crowing to one another that we’d found the omphalos, the wellspring, the keystone, the root of all magic in the Dungeon. If it was good enough for Yrn Kyos in the Dust Years, then it would suit two Crowhaven rogues. We thought the tower was unguarded, you see.

We didn’t know about the traps left behind by Yrn Kyos.

We didn’t know about Throte.

Eight of us went in. Only two survived, and we were the two who’d stayed at the back, behind the sellswords and the brigands and the heroes. You’re all on your own, Bait, I told her. The risk is too great.

I don’t have the guts to go back there.

We come now to a part of the tale that is not pleasant to tell.