Just then they heard cries from nearby and ran to see what was wrong.

Sergeant Oris and two of his riders stood over a round hole, talking excitedly.

“Fetch a rope,” Oris ordered and one of his riders ran to get it.

“What happened?” asked Alec.

“Talan fell down this dry well,” he told him. “We were walking along, then I heard the sound of cracking wood and he was gone. There must have been a cover over it that he didn’t see under the weeds.”

“Is he hurt?” asked Seregil.

“See for yourself, my lords.”

Leaning over the edge, they saw the rider looking sightlessly up at them, impaled through the back on several rusty iron spikes.

“Sakor’s Flame!” one of the female riders gasped, then began to cry. One of her fellows put an arm around her and led her aside.

“What in Bilairy’s name is this man trap doing in a deserted town?” wondered Alec.

“I suppose it must have been one of the protections of the town when it was—” Seregil began, but another scream from the direction of the tower cut him off.

Moving with considerably more caution now, they all followed the continuing sounds of the cries to where another of Oris’s men lay on the ground thrashing and crying out in agony, his face a ghastly purple and grotesquely swollen on one side. A male soldier knelt helplessly beside him while a woman struck at a nearby patch of tall weeds with her sword.

“It was some kind of huge viper, my lords,” the man said. “Matlin dropped something near those weeds and when he reached to pick it up it bit him on the face!”

With a snarl of disgust, the woman who’d been beating the weeds used the tip of her sword to lift out a long section of severed snake. More than two feet long, it was mottled red and black with a bright yellow belly. She poked into the weeds again and brought out the other half, nearly as long, but minus the head.

“The damn thing kept trying to bite me even after I cut it in half,” she said with a grimace. She flicked the tip of her sword in the weeds, and the head rolled out. The mouth was open, showing fangs nearly two inches long.

“Rock viper,” said Seregil. “It’s the largest, most dangerous serpent on the island.”

Alec looked around nervously at the piles of rocks and stands of weeds; it was perfect cover for snakes.

Matlin began to wheeze and choke. The others could only watch helplessly as he gagged up bloody foam and died.

“Maker’s Mercy!” Alec gasped. “No wonder that boy didn’t want to come in here.”