Kali wasn't sure what alerted her to the danger, whether it was some slight click or a subtle disturbance in the air, but something did — though unfortunately all she had time to do was shout a warning and then throw herself down. Kris Jayhinch was not as quick.
There was a whooshing crack and Kali kept her head low while whatever threat accompanied the noise passed. She heard an agonised cry and then an odd crackling sound that chilled her to the bone.
She turned to look back. Jayhinch was exactly where he had been a moment before but he would not be accompanying her any further. Arms outstretched towards her, eyes staring blankly and mouth wide in a silent scream, the now grey-coloured lieutenant blocked the conduit as still as a statue.
And with good reason. Pim had evidently been wrong about there being no traps here.
Kris Jayhinch had been turned to solid stone.
Chapter Twelve
Kali blew out a long breath to calm herself, fully aware of how Jayhinch's fate could so easily have been her own. The unwanted thieves guild companion Jengo had thrust upon her had proved himself useful, yes, but in a way she would never have asked for, never have desired.
A gorgon trap was no way for anyone to go. The invidious magic could perhaps be thought merciful if it caused petrification in an instant, but Kali had heard that sometimes it took the internal organs — and most perversely the brain — as long as a day to fully turn to stone.
One minute in, one man dead — or as near as made no difference. That kind of put the Three Towers' quagmire cards on the table. No — it slammed them down with all the arrogant confidence of a winning bogflush, in fact. Suddenly the Three Towers seemed less of an entertaining, professional challenge and more the indiscriminating deathtrap that the thieves guild leader had threatened it would be. From here on in, if she didn't want to share Jayhinch's fate, she was really going to have to watch her step.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly to his immobile form, trying not to notice how a section of his skull — almost scalpless as a result of the lethally traumatic magic — remained as yet unpetrified and glistening, a bloody reminder of the man he'd been only moments before. She stared into his agonised, frozen eyes, wondering if Jayhinch heard her inadequate words, and then turned and continued on alone.
She didn't get far before the next of the defences hit. She experienced a sensation almost like a swoon, and then suddenly the conduit seemed to stretch away endlessly ahead of her, wavering slightly in her vision. Kali craned her neck and looked behind her, seeing that the conduit stretched into the distance that way, too, seemingly without end. But something was clearly wrong with the picture — apart from the fact she knew she hadn't crawled that far, the remains of Jayhinch were nowhere to be seen along its yawning length. It was also obvious to her that what she saw could not be real because the Three Towers, individually or as a whole, were simply not that expansive.
The sight that met her eyes, therefore, had to be some kind of illusion. An infinity illusion. But she couldn't see the point of such a trap. Any intruder who made it this far was unlikely to be dissuaded from progressing further as they'd know what they saw wasn't real, so why bother unless -
Unless it was a delaying tactic, meant to confuse while -
Kali's mind raced, wondering which way to go. Her natural inclination in such close confines would be to flatten against the floor as she had not long before, but the mages of the Three Towers clearly liked to play, to twist things, and dropping to the floor seemed wrong — wrong! Instead, she slammed her hands and feet against the conduit walls and with a grunt quickly heaved herself up above the floor, hoping to hells she'd made the right choice. At the exact moment she did a wave of ice hurtled towards her from along the conduit, turning the metal beneath her blue-white and sizzling and cracking it with cold. Limbs trembling with the effort it took to keep herself suspended, Kali hung above it, swallowing as she watched her breath condense into crystals over the super-chilled metal only a few inches below. The cold was spreading up the curve of the conduit, too — she could feel it in her palms, and, if she didn't let go soon, she'd be bonded to the metal so badly the only way to break the grip would be to rip the flesh off her palms.
Thankfully, the magically generated ice vanished as quickly as it had appeared, presumably because its job, for those with slower reactions, would have been done. Kali lowered herself back to the conduit floor with a groan, rubbing her palms to restore circulation to the throbbing skin, then did the same to her nose to alleviate a touch of frostbite.
She proceeded upwards, finding that the conduit levelled out some now, and as a result found her feet squelching in patches of alchemical waste that had not been fully flushed away. She avoided the muck as much as she could, stepped lightly and quickly through that which she could not, spurred to such action by the small skeletal remains of floprats who had chanced to crawl here. The remains of the rodents hadn't just been eaten away, their skeletons had been twisted and changed.
Her slightly increased pace made Kali no less aware of the danger around her, and she deftly avoided the triggers for another couple of traps — one apparently designed to release a cloud of living biomagical toxin into the conduit, another — which she purposefully triggered once she'd passed by — to make that section of the conduit momentarily discorporeal, meaning anyone unfortunate enough to be traversing it at the time would become part of the conduit on a permanent basis.
Pits of Kerberos! These guys really are bastards.
She continued on, relieved to find that at last the traps seemed to have stopped. Quite right, too, because anybody who had made it this far bloody well deserved to make it the rest. She couldn't relax until she was out of the conduit, however — the number of delays she'd suffered had eaten into the time she had for safe passage, and she reckoned she had less than a minute left before the alchemical laboratories were purged.
She hurried, the seconds ticking, and spied at last the access hatch marked on the map. The moment she reached it she heard dull, echoing rumblings from above, and grabbed quickly for the hatch wheel to swing it open.
Thread magic coursed through her, a crackling storm of blue energy that paralysed her momentarily before blowing her off her feet and slamming her into the conduit wall. Kali groaned and slipped to the floor, lay there stunned, bucking and spasming involuntarily as small discharges continued to spark off her body.
Dammit, one last trap. They'd lulled her into a false sense of security and caught her unawares.
One thing she couldn't help but be aware of, though, were the noises. The echoing rumblings from above had become a series of metallic clangs, and as she lay there she realised with a dull knot of fear that the drop-hatches from the labs were opening.
Gods! She had to move now! Only she couldn't, not an inch. Not even to thump the conduit in frustration. Annoyingly, all she could do was dribble.
Dammit, Hooper, come on, come on. You've been an idiot, but do you want to die here? Do you want to die and prove Jengo Pim right?
The conduit filled with the sound of sloshing.
Hooper, she screamed inwardly, do you want to fail the old man?
Kali roared with exertion and, consciously forcing every movement of her body, lurched forwards, twisted the hatch wheel and heaved the cover open just in time. The last thing she saw before she dived head first through the hatch and it clanged shut behind her was a raging torrent of rainbow sludge.