"No," he answers. "They are set in the outer wall of the Hall at regular intervals." He points to stones in the walls, about three feet from the floor. "Here and here and here and here." 

"So what happens," I ask, "If we take the stone in your hand and put it back into the wall with the rune side facing downward?"

Enturi grins.

"Any creepy crawlies in the basement are going to be quite frightened. And there would be a narrow, fear-free corridor right along the big wall outside that would allow us to get to the outside corner of the ruins without having to counteract the ward. Then, if we crawled low to the ground under this second runestone here, we could get to the hole in the wall and reenter." 

I take the runestone from him and place it back in the wall, rune side down. It fits perfectly.

"All right, then." I grin back at Enturi. "Looks like we have a fear-free path in. Unless whoever warded the Hall pulls out the stone to inspect it, they won't know there's a gap in their armor.

"Who did ward this place?" Enturi asks.

"I don't know. This room looks like no one has been here for a very long time. Let's see what the rest of the place looks like. There might be some clue."

We don't find anything useful on the rest of the first floor. Bare stone rooms, rotted wooden walls and doors, old blood stains dark as pitch here and there on the floor, probably where elves or guards died during the storming of the Hall in the revolt. A few caved-in spots. A couple clumps of weeds growing in corners of the entrance hall where the sun can creep in late in the afternoon. In a large empty chamber behind the entrance hall, there are stairs going up to the second floor and the ruined tower and stairs going down into a basement or dungeon. I look at Enturi.

"Better odds down," he says. I agree.

"A little light?" I ask. He nods and does his little incantation. The pale blue globe appears in his hand again. I lead the way down the stairs, weapons drawn. He follows, holding the light out to the side so that my shadow falls against the wall rather than in front of us, where it could obscure our vision.

At the base of the stairs is another large stone room. A storage room, perhaps. It is empty, as though nothing was ever here, except for a few more old dark blotches staining the floor. Looks like Enturi and I were wrong. There is a door, though. On the Elftown side of the room. Stone, bound in metal, looking solid. With a large window at face height, crisscrossed by decrepit rust-orange iron bars.

"Looks like we found the dungeon," I say, crossing to the door. It opens surprisingly smoothly for such an old, heavy door, with just a little whine from the hinges. 

"Good thing it wasn't trapped," Enturi says annoyingly from just behind me. He's right. Should have checked. But he doesn't have to be such an orc about it. Oh, wait. Yes, he does. Because he's Enturi. We've been cooperating so well I forgot how much he irritates me.

"Ghosts don't set traps," I sneer.

Beyond the door is a wide corridor, with smaller cell doors set on each side every few paces. It's impossible to tell how many cells there used to be because the passageway is collapsed after the first six cells. I peer into the nearest cell, but there's nothing to see but some old bits of metal protruding from the rear wall.

"Not sure there's anything to see down here," I announce, but Enturi does not respond. I turn to look at him. He is facing down the hall toward the cave-in, but his eyes are unfocused. The light flickers in his hand.

"Something's not right here," he mutters.

I stand still and focus on my senses. I can't see anything. I can't hear anything. But I can feel something. So faint, I wonder if it's real. A vibration, cadenced, like the vibrations I felt below the olive oil warehouse from the Footstomp tavern. But that's impossible. I am on the other side of Elftown. There is no way I could hear them here in the dungeon of the Hall of Law.

I look at Enturi with alarm.

"Uh-oh," I whisper.

"What? What is it?"

I don't know. But it can't be good.

"Come on!" I whisper, turning around. I run swiftly through the door into the storage room and up the stairs to the first floor chamber. "Put out your light!"

The sorcerer complies as we reach the top of the stairs. From the first floor chamber, I take the stairs up to the second floor and continue up into the ruined tower. About ten steps up, there is a hole in the tower wall.

I peer out the opening, into the wet night.