Barius grinned and looked at the others. “Then how do we know there isn’t some faster way to our goal? Our vaunted guide tells us we cannot go a certain way. But what path should we explore, if not those forbidden even to the monsters? Does it not follow that those forbidden paths should be the ones to lead to the greatest treasures?”

Ryslind frowned. “As a boy, we were forbidden to explore the torture chamber. I seem to remember you following similar logic when you snuck down after father.”

“Aye,” Darnak said. “You had nightmares for months and kept your brothers awake with your screaming until they moved you to my chambers. As much to keep them from killing you in your sleep as to comfort you. Not that I wasn’t tempted to shut you up a time or two myself.”

Barius flushed so darkly that even Jig could see it. “May I remind you that this is my quest, and the two of you are here at my sufferance? I will be the one to decide our path, and I choose to explore a bit of this hobgoblin lair. Worry not. What is terrible to a goblin is hardly an annoyance to a true warrior.”

“You can’t,” Jig whispered. It was the wrong thing to say.

“Can’t, is it?” Barius tightened his grip on the rope and pulled Jig forward. “Come, and we shall teach this goblin what a prince can and cannot do.”

The others looked reluctant, but they followed. Darnak had just begun to draw the hobgoblin statue onto his map when a quiet click sounded beneath Barius’s boot.

Jig swore in Goblin as the floor fell away and they plummeted into darkness.

CHAPTER 4 - Jig’s Bright Idea

CHAPTER 4

Jig’s Bright Idea

The lantern died as it hit the ground, and Jig counted himself lucky to avoid the same fate. He couldn’t tell how far they dropped, but he landed on his heels with a jolt that threatened to crack everything from his ankles up to his shoulders and sent him tumbling onto the rock-littered ground. With his arms still tied, he kicked like an upended spider before getting back to his feet.

Still, he couldn’t complain. Darnak, yanked backward by the weight of his pack, had landed hard on his backside. If that weren’t enough, he wound up with Ryslind’s knee square in his gut. At least that was how Jig interpreted the grunting and swearing from that side of the pit.