Page 29 of Paladin's Hope

Indistinct words came through the door. Was Galen calling that he had found the triangles? Screaming that there was poison gas that worked this time, and he was about to die? Piper curled his hands into fists, resisting the urge to hammer on the door. It wouldn’t help, and what if Galen came back to find out what the problem was and became trapped?

Earstripe sat down. Piper almost yelled at him to stop being disrespectful, which made no sense at all. Calm down. Standing or sitting makes no difference. You could stand on your head for twenty-eight minutes and it wouldn’t change anything that happens in that room.

Pretend this is a bedside vigil, and you are waiting to see if the patient recovers. You’re good at that.

He sat down as well. Vigil. Yes. He understood those. You went in and you drenched everything in alcohol and you prayed you didn’t nick an artery and you got out your needle and gut and you prayed some more and when you were done, you closed everything up as best you could and dumped more alcohol over it and then you waited to see if they lived or died.

It was so much easier with the dead. You couldn’t hurt the dead. You never had to second guess yourself. Nothing you did or didn’t do could make it any worse.

(Tell people you wished you were dead, though, and they thought you were suicidal. It was too much trouble to try to explain that you were fine being alive, you just envied the dead their composure.)

“How long has it been?” he asked. Earstripe shrugged.

Ten minutes? Surely more than six. Surely Galen was dead or not dead by now.

Someone thumped on the door. Piper nearly fainted from relief, and then thumped back. “He’s alive!”

“Sounds that way,” said Earstripe.

It was much easier after that. Piper leaned against the wall, resisting the temptation to keep pounding on the door just to hear the paladin respond. The minutes stretched by. Earstripe sat down and had a good scratch. Piper thought about pacing, but decided against it.

A minor eternity later, the door slid open. Galen stood framed in it. Piper jumped forward and threw his arms around the paladin. “You’re alive!”

“Ah…yes. Yes, I am.” Piper felt the other man’s chuckle vibrate through his chest. “I’m alive. And there was even a dead pig.”

It occurred to Piper that he had just flung himself into Galen’s arms like a long-lost lover, rather than like a friendly acquaintance and travel companion. He stepped back, feeling a blush already starting to climb his neck. “I…uh…”

“No, no, I love it when handsome men hug me for not being dead.” Galen paused, grinning at Piper. “Although if you want to hug the pig too, that’s going to be a little more difficult.”

“I shall skip the pig,” said Piper, with as much dignity as he could muster under the circumstances. His ears felt hot. Now why did I do that? I knew he couldn’t be dead, he thumped on the door and everything, so what the hell is wrong with me?

Galen hadn’t seemed to mind.

“Right,” said the paladin. “The floor is made of what look like interlocking tiles. Most of them snap down, starting from this side. Some of them don’t. It’s incredibly nerve-wracking, but the tile itself is about eighteen inches square, so you can stand on it easily enough. I understand why the pigs panicked, though.”

Piper and Earstripe nodded. “A gnole wants to get this over with,” muttered Earstripe.

They stepped through the door. Galen led them to the correct spot, holding up the lantern and pointing out the safe tiles. “There, there, and there. And now hold on.”

Piper listened for the mechanical click of the door. The lights came up.

The clicking started up again, but this time it was staggered—click-a-click-a-click-a-click! The floor fell away behind him. Piper fought the urge to lunge forward as the pit raced toward his heels.

“Steady,” said Galen beside him. Piper closed his eyes.

The clicking stopped. When he opened his eyes again, the floor behind him was completely gone.

“The rest will go in a minute,” said Galen. Piper nodded. Earstripe might as well have been a marble statue of a gnole.

Click-a-click-a-click-a-click…

“A gnole does not like to watch that,” said Earstripe.

Piper didn’t much like it either, but he forced himself to look, even though his heart was thumping in his chest. He had to admit that the design was ingenious. Each tile folded downward, leaving a narrow, wickedly sharp edge facing up. Anyone standing on the wrong tile would either fall down into the pit itself or find themselves literally on a razor’s edge.

“…and there’s the pig,” said Galen, pointing.

“I had been wondering why he didn’t just carry a pig over the pit,” Piper said, “but I suppose you couldn’t very well balance here for five minutes with a panicking hog, could you?”