Page 30 of Paladin's Hope
“I wouldn’t want to.”
Piper’s gaze was drawn back to the darkness. “Look there,” he said, crouching down.
Galen made a small noise of alarm. “Don’t fall in.”
“I’m fine. But look—chunks of ivory. And are those gears?”
“More over on this side, too. Couple of them.”
Galen knelt down cautiously on his own square. “I don’t…wait, yes. That looks familiar.” He scowled. “It looks like part of a goddamn clocktaur.”
“Couldn’t fit a clocktaur through the door, tomato-man.”
“No, of course not. Although if you were going to kill one, those giant falling blades would probably work a treat.” He frowned. “This can’t be some kind of clocktaur killing device. It’s just not big enough. But if it was about twice as large…”
“Maybe they used to have small clocktaurs,” said Piper thoughtfully. “I suppose if you have the capacity to make a sword, it follows that you can make a dagger just as easily.”
“But why would you need this whole maze just to kill them off? You could do it with one room full of blades.”
“That’s an excellent question.” Piper stretched out his hand and touched one of the razors. He felt the skin on his fingertip part and hastily pulled it back. “It’s incredibly sharp. Whatever this stuff is, it doesn’t dull over time. Fascinating. It must be some property of the material. It doesn’t oxidize, so rust doesn’t build up, even though the air is clearly being refreshed regularly. There must be some kind of ventilation system that’s still running, since the rooms aren’t full of bad air. I wonder how they managed that?”
“You’re enjoying this,” said Galen accusingly.
“I am not. It’s just fascinating, that’s all.” Piper huffed. “Obviously I’d rather be observing it with an easy way out and fewer dead pigs.” He wondered if the door below his workshop led to something like this, instead of water, as he’d suspected.
Speaking of water, there was a sudden liquid sound. Piper looked over and saw that Earstripe was urinating off the side of his tile into the pit.
“What?” said the gnole. “A gnole had to go.”
“You’re pissing on ancient technology!”
“Ancient humans did not provide toilets for a gnole.”
“Yes, but—”
“A gnole will aim for the dead pig, if it makes a human feel better.”
“Besides,” said Galen, “if those are clocktaur bits, urine’s not going to hurt them. Trust me on this one.”
“You pissed on a clocktaur?”
“What can I say? War is hell.”
Piper paused. “Did it do anything to the clocktaurs?”
“Made them slightly damp? You can’t drown the things anyway, they just walk along the bottom of the moat.”
Piper shook his head. “Incredible. And they were powered by demons, the paladins say. Err, different paladins, that is.”
“The Dreaming God’s people,” said Galen. “They’d know.” He chuckled. “They’re not the sharpest, even by our admittedly low standards, but what they don’t know about demons isn’t worth knowing. And god, are they pretty.”
“So pretty,” said Piper, almost involuntarily. Galen flashed him a broad grin, but whatever remark he was about to make was lost as the pit tiles snapped upright again. The far door ground open.
They crowded into the hallway nervously, even though the hallways had, so far, been entirely safe. The triangular lights came up. There was only one door this time, on the lefthand wall.
“Are we turning?” asked Galen. “Is this the halfway point?”
“Possibly,” said Piper. “Or there could be switchbacks. We have no idea what the layout of this place really is. It might be spiraling around a central point.”