Page 8 of The Dungeon Book

Not after, either, whispered the dead.

“All right then,” muttered the troll. “Long as it keeps the Rules, it can stay.”

“Eye have another matter,” came a voice from the ceiling. Everyone looked up – and shuffled back in alarm at the frightful sight of Balor the Squinter floating there. He was a ball of eyes, his only orifice a fanged mouth. Each of his eyes had a different magical property, but he kept them all shut, all but the one that permitted him to levitate. I do not know what wizard’s laboratory or arcane accident spawned Balor, but everyone in the Dungeon loathed him, and he returned their hate a hundredfold. He had no lair or chamber, but wandered the deeper levels. It was a long time since he’d come up. No one was pleased to see him. But there could be no fighting at a Levelling.

Balor bobbed down until he was level with Bait, and opened another eye – this one able to seize whatever he glared at with invisible force and move it around. Bait shrieked as Balor’s gaze fell upon her, tugging her forward towards the precipice. Clickglee grabbed on to her to pull her back, and when his strength was not enough to overcome Balor’s magic, the other goblins joined in on the tug-of-war, hauling their chieftain and his adopted child back. Balor smirked with his monstrous mouth, and closed the eye. The goblins huddled around Bait.

“What you want, Squinter?” said Clickglee.

“Eye was watching. Eye is always watching. Eye saw Throte in the dragon’s lair. Eye saw him lie to Nithscalpa. This human was meant for the dragon.” Balor opened yet another eye, this one glittering with hypnotic power. His gaze swept over the crowd of Denizens. “It is not wise to stand between a dragon and its meat. Eye say, the human must be returned to Nithscalpa.”

No doubt Balor felt sympathy for Nithscalpa’s injury. When you’re nothing but eye, the thought of a poke in the eye is like a dagger in the back and a hammer to the face and a thorn in the foot and any combination of injury and anatomy one cares to name. But more, the Squinter was ambitious, and sought to win the dragon’s favour.

“Throte gave her into my keeping,” said Clickglee.

“So let Throte speak for her,” said Balor. “Where is he?”

“Pinshriek!” called Clickglee. Clickglee had sent his cousin Pinshriek to fetch the gargoyle. Now Pinshriek was shoved forward by the other goblins to address the Levelling.

“I went to the Master’s Tower, I did. No light. No one home. No Master in the tower. The door was shut.”

A wave of muttered doubt swept through the Denizens. No Master in the Dungeon! Had I been there, I would have told the assembled Denizens of Orphir’s farewell, of his mysterious errand outside the Dungeon.

But I was lying face down in the mud at the bottom of a stairwell.

“And Throte?” asked Clickglee, suddenly nervous. “Did you get Throte?”

A dozen eyes twitched in anticipation beneath Balor’s lids.

“Up on top of the tower, he was. I saw him in the moonlight, still as a statue. He wouldn’t come down.”

“Did you call him?”

“Three times! But it was the surface, and I was skeered.” Pinshriek’s eyes bulged as he tried to convey the horror of the open sky.

Balor rose, hovering over Clickglee’s head.

“Throte will not speak for the human child! No one but Clickglee speaks for the human child! When Nithscalpa learns you kept his rightful prey from him, his wrath will be boundless. And should the Master learn you defied his wishes, well, Eye shall see, but Eye think the fiery breath would be a mercy.” More of Balor’s eyes opened so he could survey the assembled Denizens. “Give the human to me, and Eye will see an end to it.”

Then another shoved his way to the edge of the chasm. A huge figure, a hulking frame of corded muscle and iron-hard bone, hands and arms scarred with a thousand battles, a thousand kills. Its head was that of a great horned beast. A minotaur.

“I . . . speak,” it said, halting and clumsy, unused to the Dungeon argot. “I speak for the girl.”

“Who are you?” hissed the Squinter, focusing at least four eyes on the newcomer. “Eye’s not seen you before. You are not of this level.”

“Here. Now,” said the minotaur.

“You have no lair here.”

The minotaur looked around the Chasm Hall, then took one of the massive battle axes strapped to his belt and threw it to the floor. Metal on stone rang like a church bell. “Here. Now mine. Unless anyone wants to fight me for this place.”

No one had laid claim to the Chasm Hall. No one wanted to be neighbours with Nithscalpa, however deep and distant the way through the chasm.

Balor spun this way and that in discomfort. “You’d defy the dragon? For a human?”

“Dragon’s . . . sleeping,” said the minotaur. He pointed at Bait. “And she’ll be gone before he wakes.”

“Eye shall see.” And, with that, the Squinter dropped like a stone into the mists of the chasm below.