The entrance had been cut into a hill that did not look important enough to contain a fortune.
There were no banners over the doorway, no statues of dead kings, no warning carved into the stone. A pair of iron brackets held torches that had burned down to ugly black stumps. Somebody had left a boot in the mud. The boot was missing its owner and, judging by the teeth marks around the heel, had been missing him for a while.
The young man counted his money again: six coppers and a clipped silver piece. He had counted it in the village, at the bridge, and halfway up the hill, where a woman driving goats told him that a lone beginner was exactly the sort of customer a dungeon liked. The inn would still take him back for two coppers a bed and one for a meal. His brother would ask where the treasure was. More than that, his brother would ask whether he'd come home before trying. He dropped a copper into the mud, dug it out with his thumbnail, and told himself that going inside wasn't the same as doing something foolish.
He tied the purse to his belt and drew the sword he'd sharpened that morning. At the inn, a veteran had advised beginners to join a party, then named a joining fee larger than the contents of Frank's purse. When the young man offered to pay from whatever they found, the veteran laughed. Nobody else at the table had offered to take him along. He had spent the night sharpening a blade whose edge he now hoped he wouldn't need.
Inside, a dry passage ran straight through the hill, dust lifting beneath his boots. Its smooth stone joints disappointed him. He'd expected bones, ancient writing, perhaps something worth describing over supper, and instead found a room with three stools, a bare table, and a clay pot painted with a flower. The pot stood in the middle of the table, neat enough to look like an invitation. He had seen enough baited purses at roadside fairs to distrust invitations, though he still looked.
He hooked his sword tip under the nearest stool and lifted, keeping his boots clear in case something sprang out. The wood creaked, but nothing moved. He checked a second stool, feeling ridiculous, and considered the pot. There might be coins tucked into the clay or a compartment beneath it. He could have picked it up, but the sword was already in his hand. He struck, scattering sharp pieces across the tabletop. Beneath it, something gave a startled squeal and shot toward the passage.
The green creature glanced back just long enough for the young man to recognize a goblin before bolting away. The young man raised his sword, but the creature was already around the bend. It hadn't tried to attack him. He knew that, and followed anyway. If it had friends, it might bring them back. If it was guarding treasure, perhaps it would lead him there. Those were two opposite reasons to chase something, and neither improved when he ran.
At a fork he came close enough to see a sleeveless work apron flapping against the goblin's knees. It clutched a bundle of thin wooden pegs, dropping them one by one as it ran. He lunged and struck the doorframe instead, jarring his sword arm until two fingers went numb. The goblin slipped through a narrow service opening, hauled a reinforced door shut, and left him with a ringing blade.
He slammed his shoulder against the door, then struck it twice with his sword before admitting that the iron reinforcement would defeat both efforts. Through the wood came the rattle of wheels retreating over stone. He couldn't tell whether the goblin was escaping in a cart or hauling one. When the noise faded, he heard only his breathing.
It was the apron that bothered him more than the failed chase. Every painted goblin outside a tavern had fangs and a rusty knife. This one had been carrying pegs in a work apron, and had looked frightened when he saw a sword. The young man imagined telling the veteran he'd scared off a maintenance worker. The imagined laughter made him feel hot. He turned toward the next chamber rather than retrace his steps.
The next room offered exactly the sort of bait he had come to find. Beneath faded paintings of hunters stood a stone pedestal with a shallow basin. Coins glittered under clear water, some stacked against the curved edge. No pipe fed it, and he saw no drain. He circled the basin, checking the ceiling before he approached, half expecting one of the painted hunters to draw a bow.
He dipped the sword tip into the water and waited. Nothing snapped at the blade. He crouched and reached into the basin, keeping his other hand on the sword. Most of the coins were ordinary brass tokens pierced with square holes, but one was solid silver. A merchant would recognize that, whatever the tokens were worth. He grinned and reached for another handful.
The tapping began while he rubbed corrosion from a token. He held his hand above the water. A knock sounded inside the pedestal, followed by a pause and two quicker taps. He thought of the goblin's pegs and apron. Someone might be fixing a mechanism beneath him. Then he looked at the silver in his palm and pictured a hidden compartment full of it.
He backed away with the coins clenched in one hand. No dart came from the wall, and there was no hiss of gas or flash of steel. The passage behind him was open. He could already picture the veteran examining his silver at the inn, and for several breaths he genuinely intended to leave.
Then he noticed that a stone panel at the pedestal's base stood proud of its neighbors. The tapping had stopped, but the seam was just wide enough to admit the sword tip. A trapped basin was one possibility. Another was that the basin itself had been made to distract people from a compartment underneath, where someone had stored the real valuables. He took another look toward the open passage and knelt anyway.
He slid the tip under the edge and pulled.
The panel came loose so easily that he nearly fell backward. Inside lay a brass wheel, two braided cords, and a lever far larger than the opening suggested. He recognized the cords as part of a trap linkage, or hoped he did; the old soldier who'd demonstrated such things used a board and pegs, not a dark mechanism clicking to itself. A bracket secured the brass wheel, which looked expensive. Knowing just enough to be dangerous, he reached for it.
The veteran's one useful warning had been to leave a trap alone unless he could identify the release. The young man remembered it as he slid his hand past the cords. A pin appeared to hold the wheel against the bracket. He told himself he wasn't moving the lever, only removing a piece nobody would miss. It was the sort of distinction a person made while doing exactly what he'd been warned not to do.
The stone under his supporting elbow sank the width of his thumbnail. For an instant the movement was so slight that he thought the floor had simply settled beneath him.
Then the pedestal clicked and a heavy knocking traveled through the wall, much louder than the tapping he had followed. He snatched his arm back, pinching two fingers beneath the panel as it swung against the opening. Iron bars dropped across the doorway behind him. The basin cracked along its rim, spilled water across the floor, and took the handful of coins from him before he could decide whether to save them.
He tried the gate first. It weighed more than he could lift. The bars were set close enough together that he could not turn sideways and squeeze through. Behind him, something began to scrape at the wall.
The right-hand wall lurched forward a finger-width, then began to advance. He had imagined traps as sudden blades and falling spikes that a quick man might dodge. The advancing stone gave him time to understand what it would do. He shoved against it until his boots slipped in the basin water. The wall kept coming. At the pedestal he pulled the brass lever, then pushed it the other way, and the knocking grew faster.
He could see now how the mechanism worked. The wall would advance until it met the pedestal, trapping him between them. A narrow recess to the left offered enough space for a person if the person were thin and unencumbered. He threw down his pack and shoved himself toward it.
His sword belt snagged on an iron peg jutting from the pedestal. He could see the recess within reach, could even get his head and one shoulder inside, but the buckle had twisted around the peg. He tried to pull free without unfastening the belt. When he finally reached for the clasp, the wall pinned his leg against the pedestal, and pain struck with a force that emptied his mind of every plan.
He screamed. The sound surprised him as much as the pain, and for an instant he was ashamed of it. His brother would keep believing the fortune story until somebody returned the sword. The woman with the goats had been right. He clawed at the buckle, missed twice, and at last understood that even if he freed the belt he no longer had room to move.
The stone kept coming, as slowly and completely as it had from the start.
* * *
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Under the killing room, a crystal in an iron cradle brightened. The dungeon had been waiting for a decent return on its newest trap, and the flow of energy surprised it. Down on the service level, the adventurer's coins clattered into a collection chute while the gate lifted, the basin refilled, and the wall reversed. Water washed across one dark smear in the floor groove without removing it. A repair order already existed for that groove; the Core had declined it twice.
The dungeon was too young to disguise its accounts successfully. Fewer than twenty seasons had passed since opening, and some weeks the visitors laughed at the monsters and went home with every purse they brought. Rooms cost energy. Traps needed resetting. Monsters needed feeding, replacing, and occasionally persuading not to eat the staff. Three new chambers had nearly exhausted the budget. The Core had removed the word deficit from the report, which had not improved the figure underneath it.
This death changed the figures. The dungeon had equipment and coins, material from the body, and enough energy to pay for the trap several times over. The Core checked the totals twice. It considered announcing a record day, but the only nearby worker had already endured three such announcements that week.
The Core issued instructions before anyone had finished clearing the room. The trap was already resetting. It had not asked whether the workers were ready.
The apron-wearing goblin pushed a narrow handcart through the service entrance and stopped at the water. Four of his dropped pegs were back in his pocket; he had been carrying the fifth when the Core summoned him. The unfinished door repair would wait. So would his break. He looked at the body, then at a groove in the floor the Core had declined to repair twice, and parked his cart where the next reset couldn't catch a wheel.
"You told me the basin was safe until tomorrow," the goblin said, looking up at the ceiling. "I put it back together yesterday. The grout hasn't even cured."
"A customer engagement has been completed," the Core replied, filling the chamber with the warm, pleased voice it used for announcements. "Please try to sound happy. This is what growth looks like."
"There was only one customer."
"A hundred percent conversion rate."
The goblin glanced from the corpse to his little cart. He could lift the arms and legs separately if he had to, but there was no way he could take the whole body to Processing before the gate reopened. "I need another pair of hands," he told the ceiling.
"I have good news for you."
"It would be good news if it was a bigger cart."
The Core began the recovery before the goblin had finished speaking. Light rose through the floor, stripping the body of what the dungeon could still use. The remaining flesh drew away from the bones. Clothing and equipment were pushed aside for inventory. Where the young man had lain, a skeleton remained on the stone, clean except for a dark stain from the tunic.
The goblin stepped back. "You're doing that here?"
"Is there a reason I shouldn't?"
"This is a public room."
"Not while I am resetting it."
The bones trembled against the stone. The smaller ones rolled toward the larger. Tendons of dull light bound the joints, and the whole figure drew itself together in a series of dry little movements. It sat up, turning its empty eye sockets toward the lantern in the goblin's hand.
The new skeleton looked from the goblin to the lantern and searched for a name to attach to either one. There was no name. No face he knew, no familiar voice, no memory of falling beneath a wall. He could see without eyes and hear without ears. The goblin's hands were tight on the cart handle, white around the knuckles. The skeleton registered the movement before he understood that the goblin was frightened of him.
"A wonderful morning to you!" the Core said.
The skeleton looked around, unsettled by the fact that it understood those words. It examined its hands, flexing the fingers one at a time. One small bone in the left wrist clicked out of alignment, and it pressed the piece back until the joint moved properly.
"I don't believe he understands you," the goblin said.
"Of course he does. I included basic orientation."
"You included a vocabulary. That's not the same thing."
The Core went on as if it had not heard. "Welcome to your new career. Your name is Frank."
The skeleton looked at the goblin and then up at the ceiling. "You called me Frank?"
"An excellent, approachable name. I chose it personally."
"What am I doing here?"
"You have been restored to productive service. The cost of that restoration will be recovered through an initial twenty-year labor obligation. All standard employment terms apply."
Frank considered the information. There was a great deal of it, and none explained why he was in this room or why his hands had so many bones.
"Will I get somewhere to sit?" Frank asked. He had been studying how the goblin leaned against the cart handle, and the posture appealed to him for reasons he could not explain.
"You are already sitting."
"I mean somewhere to sit later."
"Rest periods are scheduled, and the staff accommodations are downstairs," the Core told him. "You will find our facilities very generous for a new employee."
The goblin made a sound into his cloth that could have been a cough.
A narrow square of light opened in Frank's field of vision. Letters assembled themselves with the firm, cheerful precision of something that had never lifted a bucket.
INITIAL PERSONNEL RECORD
Name
FRANK
Classification
BOUND CUSTODIAL UNIT
Resurrection obligation
20 years
Wages during obligation
Applied to resurrection debt
Assigned department
CUSTODIAL / GENERAL MAINTENANCE
First work order
CLEAR ROOM 3, RESTORE BASIN ACCESS
Frank studied the lettering until it faded, then looked away and back to see whether he could summon it again. He couldn't. A coin lay near the drain. Broken stone surrounded the basin. Where he had first sat, the floor was dark. The goblin kept looking toward the reset gate, as though counting down to something Frank hadn't learned to fear yet.
The goblin followed his gaze. "You need a scraper first. That cart's for the heavy bits. And mind the left side of the basin; the old drain line leaks when we reset it."
Frank put his palms against the floor and pushed himself upright. His legs worked, although the arrangement of joints took some getting used to. He rose more slowly than he expected, placing his weight carefully as he had seen the goblin do while lifting the cart over the wet stones. He was taller than his new coworker by a good head. That seemed useful for reaching high shelves, if there were high shelves where they were going.
"Where can I find the scraper?" he asked.
The goblin indicated the service passage with his chin. "Cabinet at the far end, the one with a red mark on its door. Mind the threshold because the hinge has been dragging for weeks."
Frank walked over, opened the door, and found that its lower hinge was loose. It dragged across the threshold and left a white streak in the stone.
He watched the goblin squeeze the cart through the doorway. The hinge scraped again.
"That door's going to come off," Frank said.
"Put in a request."
"I don't know how."
"You will, soon enough."
The corridor lamps flared so suddenly that the goblin winced. "Welcome aboard our team, Frank!" the Core called after them. "We're a family here, and I know you'll fit right in."
Frank glanced at the loose hinge as the goblin wrestled the cart through. There might be a screwdriver in the red-marked cabinet. He turned toward it, then heard the goblin call for help with the body tray. Frank went back. He couldn't remember where he had come from. He knew only that the cart was too heavy for one worker, and he could help carry it.