No time for dice. They would just snatch those anyway. Mat yanked open his pack and pulled out a nightflower. “Once this goes off, I’m going to close my eyes and spin about.”

“What?” Thom said.

“It’s worked before!” Mat said, lighting the nightflower and throwing it as hard as he could into the darkness. There was a count of five, and the boom that followed rattled the room. All three of them averted their eyes, but the colorful flash was bright enough to see through eyelids.

Eelfinn screamed in pain, and Mat distinctly heard pings as weapons were dropped. No doubt hands were raised to eyes.

“Here we go!” Mat said, spinning.

“This is flaming insane,” Thom said.

Mat kept going, trying to feel for it. Where was that luck? “That way!” he said, pointing in a random direction.

He opened his eyes in time to leap over the dark form of an Eelfinn huddling on the ground. Noal and Thom followed, and Mat led them straight into the darkness. He charged ahead until his friends were barely visible. All he could see were those lines of yellow.

Oh, bloody ashes, he thought. If my luck fails me now….

They burst into a five-sided corridor, the darkness vanishing around them. They had not been able to see this corridor from the other room, but here it was.

Thom let out a whoop. “Mat, you wood-headed shepherd! For this, I’ll let you play my harp!”

“I don’t want to play your bloody harp,” Mat said, glancing over his shoulder. “But you can buy me a mug or two when we’re out.”

He heard screams and screeches from the dark room. That was one trick used up; they would be expecting nightflowers now. Birgitte, you were right, he thought. You probably walked past the corridor you needed several times, never knowing it was only a few feet away.

Never choose the card a man wants you to. Mat should have realized that. It was one of the oldest cons in creation. They hastened forward, passing five-sided doorways leading into large star-shaped caverns. Thom and Noal glanced into them, but Mat kept on. Straight forward. This was the way his luck had sent them.

Something was different from when he had visited before. There was no dust on the floor to make footprints. Had they known he was coming, and used the dust to confuse him? Or had they cleaned the place this time, knowing that visitors might arrive? Who knew in a realm such as this?

It had been a long walk before. Or had it been a short one? Time blended here. It seemed that they ran for many hours, yet it also felt like moments.

And then the doorway was in front of them, appearing like a striking adder. It had not been there a moment before. The rim of the opening was intricately carved wood, with an impossible pattern of weaving vines that seemed to double back on one another and make no sense.