Page 45 of Paladin's Hope

“Three is not so bad,” said Earstripe, a bit dubiously.

“But that assumes there aren’t switchbacks,” said Piper, “or that it doesn’t turn again, or spiral.”

“Maybe we’ll be lucky and more of them will be broken,” said Galen.

“We’ve already been incredibly lucky, if you ask me.”

“A gnole thinks it would have been luckier not to get caught by a crazy human.”

There didn’t seem to be much to say to that.

When the door finally opened, the floor was covered in sliced fruit. An apple sitting in front of the doorway had been neatly halved. They all wedged in the doorway, craning their necks. “There,” said Piper, lifting his lamp and pointing. “Those in the far left corner are all intact.”

“That’s where I’ll go, then,” said Galen.

“But if you cross the halfway point, the trap will trigger.”

“There’s still got to be a way to get there,” said Galen. “There’s been a way to get through all the rooms so far.”

Piper blinked at him. “That’s…ah…”

His expression was simultaneously so sharp and so befuddled, as if he had just had a brilliant but baffling idea, that Galen wanted to kiss him. Oh hell with it, there’s a good chance you’ll die. Just do it. He leaned forward, planted his lips hastily on the doctor’s forehead, then stepped back into the room.

“Galen! Wa—”

The door slid shut. The lights came up. Galen saw that the apples in the center of the room were downright macerated. Not a great sign. Here goes nothing.

He lunged forward.

There was a click of warning as a blade fell. Galen dove under it, rolled, and kept rolling as a second one came down, missing him by half an inch. A third cut off the route to the safe corner. Oh shit. Oh shit. Okay, there must be a clear space, we didn’t have enough apples to completely cover the floor, maybe if I crouch right here, nothing will land on me.

He had one moment when he thought he’d avoided the worst of it, and then another one fell, perpendicular to the first two, coming right at his head.

Galen let out what he hoped was a yell, but suspected was a squeak. The battle rage wanted to rise but it had nothing to work with. This wasn’t an enemy you could fight. All you could do was dodge and he wasn’t going to be fast enough and—

His scalp smarted as the blade buried itself in his hair. He jerked free, leaving several inches of auburn behind. It occurred to him that there might well be another perpendicular blade, and if it was spaced anything like the others, that meant—

He jerked his knees up to his chest, feeling like a turtle on its back.

Click.

There was a little more clearance on this one. It missed him by nearly six inches.

He rolled over. He was trapped in a box about three feet on a side. Now, will it stay like this or not?

He didn’t dare risk it. The first blades were pulling back into the ceiling now, but he could hear the clicking as another set started up and he had no time at all to get to his feet. All he could do was throw himself forward on all fours, hearing things land behind him with soft, lethal clicks.

His hand skidded on a cut apple and he pitched forward, slamming his chin into the ivory floor and biting his tongue hard enough to draw blood. One of his knees hit the ground wrong and flared with pain, but he couldn’t stop. He wasn’t going to be fast enough, but he had to keep moving…

He found the far corner by virtue of running his head into it. He stared at it dizzily, thinking for a moment that more blades had fallen around him, but there were no holes in the walls and there was a whole apple between his hands. It was possibly the most beautiful object he had ever seen in his life.

I’m alive, he thought, picking up the apple. How am I alive?

He turned around, putting his back into the corner. His knee was complaining. The blades continued to fall from the ceiling, one after another, each offset a little way from the next, like a chef chopping vegetables.

It was nerve-wracking to watch, but Galen forced himself to do so. I have to get the others through here safely. There’s a pattern. It’s actually very straightforward. The first blade falls, then the next, then the next. Then each retracts, and then they fall again. If you step forward every time one retracts, to the next one in the sequence, you can walk through to the corners. The perpendicular blades are just the same, you just want to stay as close to one that’s already fallen as you can, so the next one misses you.

It didn’t look hard. It did look as if it would require iron nerves. If you panicked, you were mince. He had done the worst possible thing by trying to run through it, and the throbbing pain in his knee was proof of that. Nevertheless, just like all the rooms before, there was a way out. It was just that you couldn’t rely on the corners close to the door this time. The room had been designed to force people to cross the floor to survive.

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