ELEVEN
LATERAL TO THE REAL WORLD
I wish these things would run straight for a while, Wiz thought irritably. But the tunnels down here didn’t and this was an especially twisty part. Wiz’s inner ear was starting to send queasy messages to his stomach because of all the sharp turns.
Then the tunnel opened out into another room, an enormous, echoing black space that yawned before them in all directions. Wiz hastily ducked back around the corner and dimmed the magic light. Then he motioned for a huddle.
"What does the magic detector say?"
Danny squinted at the device. That there’s something magical around here that probably wouldn’t be too glad to see us." He cocked his head and squinted some more. "But it’s not real active and it doesn’t seem to be directly in our path." Wiz peeked around the corner again and listened intently. The silence was as overpowering as the darkness. He looked at Malkin, but the thief shook her head.
"Nothing," she said quietly.
"Okay folks, single file and move softly. We don’t want whatever’s out there to surprise us."
Wiz considered leaving the light off, but he decided the danger of falling into a hole outweighed the risk of alerting whatever was in the neighborhood. With a gesture he sent the globe of light floating above them. I gotta figure out a way to make these things directional, he thought as he followed Malkin out into the room.
The room was huge. After nearly a hundred paces the light no longer showed the walls or ceiling, only the uneven, stalagmite-studded floor, glistening with moisture. It occurred to Wiz that the detector might be pointing toward their ultimate destination rather than toward the exit. If that was true they could spend hours searching for the way out and if there was more than one they could be thoroughly lost before they knew it.
Out in tile gloom was a heap of something. It wasn’t rocks and it didn’t seem to be alive, but aside from that Wiz couldn’t make out just what it was. With a gesture he increased the brightness of the magic light and was rewarded with a glint from the heap.
At first Wiz thought the pile had caught fire. Then he realized it was his own light reflected back at them, glittering off the objects in the pile. Another gesture and the light grew even brighter. Now there was no doubt at all what the heap was.
Gold winked yellow or glowed ruddy in the light. Gems flashed green and red and wine-purple fire. Pearls and opals threw back a soft luster. There were ingots and cups and brooches and rings; candlesticks and platters and coins and gems loose like marbles. Wiz even caught a glimpse of a full suit of golden armor, studded with precious stones and filigreed with enamel. All of it piled head-high in a loose, careless mass.
"Look at that," Wiz breathed.
The others could only stare. Malkin started edging toward it, only to be pushed aside roughly by Glandurg in his haste to reach the pile.
"Glandurg! Get back here. We’re not here for gold."
"What kind of adventure is it if you don’t get the treasure?" the dwarf grumbled. "Uncivilized, I say."
"Boy," said Danny, "I always knew dungeons were supposed to have treasure, but this:" He waved his arm in awe. June stayed behind her husband, obviously torn between wonder at the sight and distaste at his reaction.
Wiz noticed that there were no containers in the pile. No chests, no bags, nothing that could be used to transport or contain the hoard. It was as if it had been carefully brought here and emptied out and then the containers removed.
"Where do you suppose this came from?"
"Your dark wizards, or whatever." Malkin ran her fingers through the pile.
"Whoever it was is long gone."
"You hope," Wiz retorted.
With a clatter and the ringing sound of falling gold hitting the stone floor, Glandurg burrowed into the pile like a homesick gopher. Suddenly his head emerged from the top, sending a shower of wealth cascading down the mound. He spat out a ruby the size of a hen’s egg and grinned gleefully.
"Look, people," Wiz said, "this isn’t what we’re here for."
"But it doesn’t hurt," retorted Malkin, who was already elbow-deep in a mass of gold coins.
Danny threw himself down in the treasure; scooped up handfuls and poured it over his head. He winced when a particularly heavy and tasteless gold goblet hit him on me head. "Hey, Scrooge McDuck was onto something with his money bin." Wiz hesitated. He didn’t like this at all and he sure didn’t want to be encumbered by a lot of dead weight. But obviously the attraction of all that loot was an irresistible force for Glandurg and Malkin.
"We need a way to carry this stuff," Malkin said.
"If you think I’m going to whomp up a levitation spell just so we can take that along with us, you’re crazy." Malkin and Glandurg looked at him.
"Okay," he sighed, "you can take what you can carry in a cloak."
It took Malkin and Glandurg a minute to decide whose cloak was bigger. Then they started shoveling gold, jewels and other treasure from the pile. When the heap on Malkin’s cape was about three feet high in the center they stopped for breath.
""Now try to move it," Wiz said.
Dwarf and thief each seized an edge of the cloak and gave a mighty tug. The pile moved perhaps six inches.
"What you need is a cart," Danny suggested.
"Won’t work. Floors too rough."
"Okay," Wiz said, "if it will get us moving again, I’ve got a spell that reduces friction to almost nothing. That will make the cloak easier to haul. But we’re burying the stuff the first chance we get."
He stepped forward, raised his staff and spoke a few words.
"There, it should pull easily now."
Malkin tugged on the edge of her cloak and nearly went over backwards when her hands slipped off the material. Glandurg grabbed and yanked and went careening into Malkin when his hands slipped. Both of them landed in a tangle on the rocky floor and glared at Wiz.
"Okay, let me modify the spell."
He drew a breath to list out the spell, but before he could exhale he heard a noise from beyond the circle of light. Something was moving out there in the dark.
"Ah, folks:" Danny began. He never finished the sentence. He didn’t need to. Wiz didn’t know if it was the biggest dragon he’d ever seen or not. For one thing, the cavern was mostly dark. For another he couldn’t see all of it. But primarily, he was too scared to take accurate measurements. If it wasn’t the biggest dragon he’d ever seen it would do quite nicely for now.
The dragon spouted a gout of flame that illuminated the cavern to its corners and left a dark smear of an afterimage clouding his vision. He tried to raise his staff to cast a spell and realized he was magically frozen in place. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the others straining to move as well. The dragon fire had been misdirection while the creature pinned them where they stood with a spell.