Chapter 3 Part 20

Keeneye was standing in a room about twenty feet square. It was dimly lit with the only light source being a torch on one wall. How could he be abducted twice in one year? He was beginning to get angry. He felt as if he could cuss up a demon if he had a mind to. Someone really had it out for him. He was sure there was a higher power involved. Well, he reasoned, he might as well see if he could find the others. They might need some help.

Keeneye was still grumbling to himself as he walked over to the wall and snatched the torch from its holder. He was immediately sorry as he heard the distant click and felt himself drop into the floor. In his irritation, Keeneye had forgotten himself and gotten careless. He had tripped a trap and was now sliding down a chute to unknown reaches. He made several vain attempts to slow his descent, but the chute was near frictionless and the walls were too hard to dig into anything. So failing to stop himself, he unlatched his shield and maneuvered it underneath his body. Too often these slides had razors embedded in them to cut a victim to ribbons as they fell.

If there were any additions to the trap, he did not encounter them. Several long twists in the passage did barely more than add to a respectable collection of bruises that he was accumulating on his body. Finally, he had been sliding about a minute when the chute suddenly turned a corner and dumped him through the roof of another room to land unceremoniously on the hard floor.

Fretting as he brushed himself off, he was angry at himself for falling for the old trapdoor/slide gag. It was on page two of the Oldest Tricks in the Book series volume III.

His new cell was large--about a hundred feet on each side with ample light to see everything. He was standing in the center. Taking in his surroundings, he became distressed at the lack of exits. The only thing unusual about the room was a large hole in the center of each wall. The holes were about two feet in diameter and about five feet off the ground.

Just as he was about to walk over and investigate one of them more closely, there was a whoosh of air behind him. Spinning around, he reflexively brought the shield up. Bearing down on him was a ball of green fire. There was no time to run. Keeneye braced himself and placed the shield between himself and the flame. The impact was not very hard and the flames died out as they were dispersed by the shield. Somewhat amused, Keeneye slowly lowered the shield to see where the ball had come from. He saw only the hole.

The sound came again from off to his left. Turning, Keeneye was welcomed by another ball of flame flying at him. He did a repeat of his first performance. As the second ball dissipated, a third was launched. Keeneye noticed that this time the balls were being launched from the holes and were beginning to arrive more frequently. He quickly decided that to remain in the middle of the room was to ask for trouble, so he made for one of the corners.

No sooner had he taken two steps when he found his path blocked by an invisible barrier. Another pair of flames appeared from adjacent directions and Keeneye paused to deal with them. With a sweep of his arm, he perfectly timed the shield's path to intercept the flames in sequence as they drew near.

Another was coming from his left again and this time he simply dropped to his belly and let it pass overhead. It travelled halfway to the opposite wall then fizzled out. The next one came from behind. As he watched it, it started to drop down to where he lay. As it approached, he jumped up and let it pass under him. The archer grinned. He hadn't played dodgeball for some time. He noticed that even though the direction where the next flame would come from was random, they were always launched in a sequence and never more than one at the exact same time.

This was beginning to present itself as a challenge. Keeneye let his instincts take over the dodging and blocking, while he used his mind to concentrate on how to get out of the trap. As fun as it was, he was not too keen on the idea of letting one of those flames hit him. The flames were sequentially beginning to come more rapidly. They were coming from all four directions and now Keeneye was working hard just to keep up with which one would arrive next.

Inevitably, there came a time when, due to his moving around, two flames were going to hit him from opposite sides at the same time. Without thinking, he sidestepped them and whipped the shield around to intercept one from the right. He then blocked two from the left and was getting ready for another from the front when he noticed that the one from the front was going to miss him anyway.

Keeneye spun around to guard his back, blocking one from the right as he did so. Again the ones that had been at his back also zipped by without swerving to hit him. On inspiration, Keeneye stepped further toward one of the holes from which the flames were emerging. No invisible wall blocked his passage. With a solution in his mind, Keeneye blocked one last flame from the left, then sprinted to the right with his shield held before him. He reached the wall and slammed the shield against the opening, effectively plugging it up.

Glancing back, he relaxed as he saw the flames from the opposite wall dissipate long before they reached him. Satisfied with the temporary solution, he leaned against the shield, letting his weight hold it in place and contemplated how he was going to get back through the roof, which seemed to be the only exit.

Keeping pressure on the shield, he drew his bow and set its string. Then tying a light line to an arrow, he fired at the roof by the chute opening that had dumped him there. The arrow bounced off the stone with barely a scratch in the masonry. He would never sink an arrow into that stone.

Cursing, he replaced the bow in its sheath. The shield at his back throbbed at irregular intervals as flames tried to escape, reminding Keeneye of one of Ultrecht's contraptions that used weighted balls rolling around to tell time.

Half out of curiosity and half out of desperation, Keeneye ducked down underneath the mouth of the hole in the wall and lowered his shield. Instantly, a flame zipped across the room looking for a target. It was followed about nine seconds later by another. Chewing on a piece of jerked beef, Keeneye sat there for a full ten minutes timing the firing intervals between the flames. Most of the time they were spaced about ten to fifteen seconds apart. Only a few lagged longer than twenty and fewer still less than ten. None were spaced less than five.

Keeneye dug into his pack and located a device Armegon had constructed for him. Basically, it was a tube containing a permanent Light Spell. It was capped on both ends, but if one end was removed, it would produce a beam of light in a single direction. Counting to himself, Keeneye waited for the next flame. When it passed, he quickly peered into the hole and used his light to illuminate its interior. He saw that the hole was only about ten feet long and led into another room. In the other room, there was a catapult-like device that was reloading.

Keeneye sat down on the floor below the hole again. He knew that he needed to crawl through the ten feet of pipe and get to the other room. But he also needed more than five seconds to do it. He needed some way to predict the time lag. He was watching the flames crossing the center of the room when suddenly something he had noticed earlier came to mind. When he had been in the center of the room, never had more than one flame arrived at him at the same time. That meant they were dependent on one another and were firing in sequence. With this in mind, Keeneye began timing the relation between his hole and the others. After a while, he had it all figured out. The firing order of the holes depended on which hole had previously fired. When one fired, only it or one of the adjacent ones could sequentially fire next, so all he had to do was wait for the opposite hole to fire. That would give him at least ten seconds to crawl through the tunnel.

Keeneye gathered all his belongings and watched for his cue. When it occurred, he practically threw himself through the tunnel and crawled frantically down its length. Though it banged up his knees and elbows liberally, he emerged from the long passage in the next room with time to spare.

In the room, the catapult and a small human girl, dressed in a morally questionable attire, were the only occupants of the room.