Page 44 of The Dungeon Book

“Oh, just someone who’s got relevant experience to your situation,” I said. I felt obliged to keep him company. “What got you?”

He mumbled about horrors of the underworld.

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

“Eyes . . . eyes in the dark . . . couldn’t move . . .”

“The Squinter got you!” I could not contain my amusement. There’s no other word for it – I cackled. “The Squinter! Oh dear, that’s . . . well, that’s unlucky. And you had those maps! I’d have expected you to do a lot better, considering.”

Memory of some old terror twisted his face. “All wrong!” he gasped. “In the Chasm Hall . . . it found us as we camped . . . a great beast . . .”

“Oh, that would be the minotaur. He’s new. Nice chap, on a good day.”

“Tore us asunder . . .”

“Well, he doesn’t have many good days.” I was fired with curiosity; where had these maps come from? Who had sent these adventurers? I had my suspicions, and wished I had a way of satisfying them. It’s hard to be inquisitive and immobile.

“Scattered,” he whispered, “lost. Lost. Wandering in the long dark hell. How long?”

I totted up the sunrises since they’d gone below. “Eleven days.”

“Eleven days.” He let out a wheezing groan. Blood trickled from his mouth and nose. “Felt like . . . lifetime.”

It was.

“Well then,” I said with as much cheer as I could muster. “Time to sit up, there’s a good fellow. Push yourself up with your right arm.”

His limbs twitched. He tried to speak, but there was little breath remaining in him.

“Come on! One last effort! Right arm!”

To his credit, he shoved himself upright, twisting in the middle of the gorse until he ended up with his back against the doorpost, his legs tangled in the bush.

“Now pick me up. I’m just to the left of your hand.”

He was too far gone to even question it. He fumbled about blindly until he found me, and dropped me in his lap.

“Good man. Lift your head now. Feel that warmth? It’s the sun on your face.”

“I can’t see it.”

“It’s there. You made it back to the surface. Few manage that. You made it out.”

He died with a smile on his face, this nameless adventurer. He was a creature of the sunlit lands.

He should never have gone below.

Perik survived. Three days later, he stumbled into Neb’s village, shivering and feverish. They wrapped him up in a blanket, relieved him of any loose change and other minor treasures he had in his backpack, bemoaned that the RATS had inexplicably filled their bags with bits of carved stone and chunks of masonry instead of gold, and decided that it was up to the reeve to bring the stranger back to Dunshelm Keep.

He was loaded, not gently, into the reeve’s cart.

“Fire!” moaned the adventurer. “Eyes in the dark! Things crawling on the ceiling. Heret’s skull . . . burst asunder. Pierced by a thunderbolt!”

“Spikers,” muttered Neb. “Bait says you need an iron pot. Or a good helmet.”

“That girl’s mad,” said his father Gyul. “That’s what they all say up at the castle. A dungeon’s where she belongs, all right – a proper one, with chains and locked doors and whatnot. Sir Rudyard did her a kindness by taking her in, and how did she repay him? Murdering scullions and eating babies, by all accounts.”

Neb bowed his head and kept his own counsel.