The wizard hadn’t said a word. He pulled a blue vial from his cloak and drained the contents in one swallow. A coughing fit took him, and the vial shattered on the floor. Jig watched as he doubled over and fell. He wondered if Ryslind had grabbed the wrong potion, taken something deadly instead of the potion he wanted.

Ryslind’s eyes glowed brighter than ever when he struggled back to his feet. He blinked and squinted, and finally said, “Too much magic in here. I can’t see anything. Someone lead me to the corridor.”

Darnak had taken it upon himself to grab the wizard’s arm and guide him over the corpses and into the corridor. Once there, Ryslind had begun to walk at a slow, steady pace. He stopped before the trapped tile, gestured at it with one hand, and muttered, “Don’t step here.”

“I think we’re already knowing that much,” Darnak said.

Ryslind ignored him. He pointed out two more tiles before reaching the first fork in the corridor. Without hesitation, he took the left turn. Jig wondered if Ryslind even noticed the other hallway, or if he saw anything but the path his magic showed him. He didn’t seem to see or hear the rest of the party, much to Darnak’s dismay.

“How can I make a good map if you’re racing about like a tomcat on the prowl?” He sketched as fast as he could, but Jig could see that his careful map was devolving into a few lines and arrows. “Can’t even keep track of which tiles we’re to avoid. Probably trigger every one if we have to come back this way in a hurry.”

In addition to the traps, there were a number of secret passages, like the one Ryslind had just found. Everything was constructed of the same marble panels, and from time to time Ryslind would point one out at random. Nobody knew how they were supposed to open, for the wizard’s magic allowed him to bypass the normal mechanism. Even as he pointed, his eyes would flash, and the panel would crash onto the ground, often breaking into thick shards from the impact.

Jig got down and crawled through the hole into the secret passageway. “They could at least make the doors taller,” he grumbled.

“You should mention that to the Necromancer when we find him,” Riana said as she followed. “I’m sure he’d love to hear architectural suggestions from a goblin.”

She hadn’t been quite as mean to him since his aborted duel. In fact, she had laughed harder than Jig had ever seen, which only added to Barius’s fury. But that didn’t mean she had forgiven him, either. She merely flipped back and forth as to whom she hated more, Jig or Barius. With Barius up ahead, following his brother, that left Jig as a target for her frustrations.