Frivaldi sighed. If he'd been in charge of the delve, they would have been exploring all of the tantalizing side passages and doors theyd seen since leaving the hall with the hacked-up statues. Like the one they'd just passed, for example. Similar to the door at the top of the stairs, it also had a shield-shaped lock. The door probably led somewhere important, but Durin had passed it by.
Frivaldi waggled his fingers. An apprentice was supposed to practice. Wasn't he?
This time, he thought, I'll know what to watch out for.
Walking back to the door, Frivaldi listened-nothing, looked-nothing again, and searched-no sign of a trap. Just in case there was a trap, he crouched to one side of the door as he extracted the prong from his ring and inserted it into the lock. The pins slid aside with only a minimum of effort. Frivaldi twisted his ring closed and flipped back his hair. He eased the door open a crack, half expecting a pendulum axe to swing out of the ceiling at any moment. None did.
He gave the door a shove. It stuck, hung up on something. He shoved harder, putting his shoulder into it. Something dragged across the floor-which, Frivaldi noticed, was discolored with what looked like dried blood.
Maybe he wasn't the first Delver to go that way.
He peered around the door and saw a body, long since dead. It was one of the oddest looking creatures hed had ever seen. Taller and heavier than a human, it had leathery wings and a mane of thick, matted hair. Its face was elongated-it had a snout rather than a mouth-and its jaw was studded with bony scales. A stubby horn jutted out from behind each pointed ear. The thing wore a motley collection of clothing: a torn cloak, leather pants that had split at the seams, and boots with the toes cut away to reveal long, curved toes that ended in talons. Around its neck was a leather thong that was threaded through three rings. The body wasn't as old as the goblin corpses. Judging by the lingering smell it had died only a few months ago, maybe a year at most. There were a dozen or more dagger-blade-sized punctures in its flesh. The creature had probably triggered some sort of trap.
The room was square and small, no more than two or three paces wide. Against the rear wall was a pile of coins that had spilled from a rotted wooden chest. The place must once have been a treasury. At the edge of the pile was a round blue gem-a sapphire shaped like a hen's egg. One side of it-the one tilted away from Frivaldi-was carved with an Auld Dethek rune, but he couldn't read it from where he stood. He crouched and reached for the gem.
"Don't touch it!"
Frivaldi leaped to his feet and exclaimed, "Durin! You startled me."
The older dwarf grabbed Frivaldi by the arm and yanked him out of the room.
"Never-ever-wander off on your own like that again."
Frivaldi shook off Durin's hand and said, "What's that? More standard delving procedure?"
"No," Durin growled. "Just common bloody sense. We're here to find the Bane of Caeruleus, not fill our pockets with gold."
"I wasn't-"
"Yes you were. I saw you reaching for those coins. If you'd touched them, you'd have gotten a nasty surprise."
"What do you mean?"
"Watch."
Durin fished a large copper coin out of his pocket and tossed it onto the pile. Dozens of the gold "coins" sprouted legs and scurried sluggishly about, filling the room with a metallic clinking sound. After a few moments they stilled, retracting their legs.
Frivaldi was intrigued by the tiny creatures. He'd never seen anything like them.
"What are they?" he asked, leaning into the room.
"Hoard beetles," Durin said. "They burrow into the flesh and head straight for the vitals. A swarm can take a man down in the time it takes to blink. They can lie dormant for centuries, waiting for something warm-blooded to touch them."
"Oh." Durin eased back out of the room. "So that's what killed him."
"Who?"
"Scaly face. The guy behind the door."
Durin unfastened the flap of one of the long, narrow pouches that hung from his belt-they contained his delving tools-and pulled from it a small silver mirror mounted on a short length of segmented rod. Cautiously, keeping one eye on the pile of coins, he extended the rod and used it to peer around the door. He grunted, nodded to himself, then collapsed the mirror rod and put it back in its pouch.
"Are you going to tell me what kind of creature that is?" Frivaldi asked. "Or do I have to look it up in the Delver's Tome?"
Durin gave him a sour look, but said, "It's a dragonkin." .
"What's that?"
"They're like dragons, but not as smart, or as powerful. No breath weapon, no spells-but they can tear open your guts with a single swipe of their talons and they know how to use weapons. They're drawn to anything that's magic. They can't resist it, any more than a crow can forego something shiny. They'll pick a place clean of magic, even though they don't know how to use it." He paused, nodding to himself. "So that's what made the scratches on the floor. Dragonkin."
"Are the rings magical?" Frivaldi asked.
"Let's find out."
Durin opened a second equipment pouch and pulled out a rod with a hooked blade at one end and a pincher-grip at the other. Extending it, he used the bladed end to slice through the thong around the dragonkin's neck, then reversed it and used the spring-loaded pinchers to recover the rings, one by one. He put the first two inside his pack, but held the last one up for Frivaldi to inspect. It was a band of solid hematite, set with a shield-shaped diamond.
"This one's a stoneskin. If the dragonkin had been wearing it, the beetles couldn't have penetrated its flesh."
"And the sapphire?" Frivaldi asked, eyeing it. "I suppose it's the most valuable bit of magic of all-and the dragonkin was too stupid to know what it was."
"Sapphire?" Durin snorted. "That's a blue spinel, not a sapphire. Any beardless boy could tell you that."
Frivaldi's face flushed.
"And it's nothing but a magical bauble," Durin continued. "The dwarves of Oghrann handed them out as favors at their feasts. I've found hundreds. I've stopped • picking them up."
"What do they do?"
Durin's lips actually twitched. A smile? He collapsed his pincher-grip rod and put it away in its pouch.
"Look it up in the Delver's Tome when we get back to Silverymoon," he said. "Volume sixteen, chapter four, entry number eight hundred and nine."
Frivaldi glanced at the gem and waggled his fingers. Why should he wait until they got back to Silvery-moon, when he could find out here and now? With the speed of a releasing trap, he lunged into the room and plucked the gem from the pile of coins before the horde beetles could swarm his hand.
"There," he said, turning to Durin. "Now I can start my own collec-"
Something strange had happened to his darkvision. The corridor was no longer black and gray-it had turned blue. No, his skin had turned blue. It was glowing with an eerie blue light that also emanated from his clothes, his hair, even his dagger and pack. Startled, he flung the gem into the air.
"It's just faerie fire," Durin answered. "Touching the rune triggered the spell."
"I knew that," Frivaldi said. He flipped the falling gem back into the air with his foot and bounced it off an elbow for good measure, then caught it, trying to appear nonchalant.
"My, uh… nephew… will love it."
He shrugged off his backpack and opened its main flap, savoring the smell of new leather that rose from it, and dropped the gem inside.
Durin, examining the door, said, "Did you pick this lock?"