Darkvision (31 page)

Ususi nodded, apparently agreeing with Iahn’s statement, and followed.

Warian and Zel brought up the rear.

The long, spiraling corridor opened into a wider space. Iahn and Ususi entered, and Warian moved just inside the new chamber. The wizard’s light flickered around, revealing a wide, empty room with a single exit opposite the corridor. It was shuttered by a rusted slab of iron.

“If I recall correctly …” Ususi began, then a shudder rumbled below Warian’s feet. He tried to retreat the way he’d come, but he bumped against his uncle.

“Get back!” Warian cried.

The floor dropped away. He fell, as did Zel and Ususi. The vengeance taker performed a desperate and impressive leap toward the far door, where an iron handle glinted invitingly, but he came up several feet short and plunged like the rest of them. He tumbled through a series of braking maneuvers against the wall.

Warian smashed hard onto stone. Thuds, cries, and gasps peppered the darkness around him, and he knew he wasn’t alone. Ususi’s light flicked back on.

The stone pit that enclosed them was perhaps fifteen paces across. Putrid, slimy water pooled in the corners. Disintegrating bones lay scattered across the room. The walls rose on all sides about twenty or thirty paces, to a ceiling of rusted iron.

“It closed?” groaned Zel, who lay next to Warian. “It closed us in!”

Iahn, who’d somehow managed to land on his feet, helped Ususi to stand.

Breathing hard, the wizard said, “An automatic trap, meant to apprehend intruders. How stupid of me not to foresee such a possibility. I know better.”

“Then you should have warned us,” accused Zel. A thin line of blood trickled from the older man’s brow.

“Cease!” snapped Iahn. “Is anyone hurt badly?”

“I think my leg’s broke,” grimaced Zel. “I can’t move it, and it hurts like a devil’s got his teeth in me.”

Ususi said, “I’ll be fine when I get my breath back. Tend them, please, Iahn?” The wizard rooted around in her satchel and withdrew a vial she pressed into the vengeance taker’s hand.

Iahn inspected Warian first and helped him to his feet. Other than having his breath knocked out of him, Warian was healthier than he expected after falling such a distance. He’d sport some terrific bruises later, though.

Next, Iahn knelt at Zel’s side and probed Zel’s left leg, which was splayed too far to one side just below the knee.

“Fractured,” Iahn concluded. The vengeance taker unstopped the vial Ususi had given him and administered a portion of it to Zel.

Zel attempted to drink down all the fizzing fluid, but Iahn drew back. “Not all at once. We must conserve. Your leg should be mending already.”

As Warian watched, his uncle’s leg slowly straightened to true, and the lines of pain in his face eased. “I do feel better,” Zel said.

“You’ll walk with a limp for a while,” said Iahn as he rose and turned to Ususi.

The wizard approached one of the walls, which wasn’t as bare as Warian had first assumed. Subtle characters were reflected in Ususi’s light, forming a script unfamiliar to him. A moment later, each strange letter began to glow with a cool blue radiance.

Warian joined the wizard and vengeance taker at the wall. “What is it?”

“Instructions for getting clear of the containment,” said Ususi. “Any Imaskari who resided in the palace would know the answer to this riddle, so if accidentally caught in the automated trap after coming through from the Celestial Nadir, he could regain freedom in short order.”

“It’s a riddle? And you know the answer?”

“Yes. Yes, it’s a riddle, but I don’t know the answer. For certain. But perhaps we can think of the answer together,” said Ususi.

As Warian studied the lighted inscriptions, those in the center swam and changed before his eyes, forming words he could easily read. Symbols on the periphery remained incomprehensible, but they didn’t seem important.

Warian asked, “Couldn’t someone not authorized to know the answer, like us, work it out, too? That would negate the entire point of the trap, right?”

“You would be correct, of course—however, if any but an Imaskari attempts to answer the riddle, the walls of this room will close down upon us and squeeze us dead. Or so promise these glyphs.” The wizard pointed to the upper right corner of the wall at an inscription that remained meaningless to Warian.

“Oh. A trap within a trap.”

“How efficient,” said the vengeance taker.

Warian nodded and said, “Maybe I’d better not even read it. Zel, you look away, too.”

Zel shrugged and turned away, as did Warian. Ususi read.

“The Thirty-Eighth Law of Veracity holds that a magical elixir can never be entirely drunk. A residue always remains behind. A miser mage who collects empty elixir vials can make a new elixir to drink from the residue of every five empty vials found. When he has collected twenty-five elixir vials, how many new elixirs will he be able to drink?”

Warian’s uncle guffawed. “Ridiculously easy! Twenty-five vials can be arranged into five groups—so the elixir-grubbing mage could drink five more potions.”

Warian flinched and whispered, “Only an Imaskari can answer!”

“Don’t worry, Warian,” said Ususi. “To formally answer this riddle, the changeable script now instructs me to answer aloud in the language of Imaskar.”

“Say five, then,” Zel said, rubbing his hands in anticipation.

“No,” interrupted the vengeance taker. “Five is incorrect.”

Ususi looked at Iahn. “Why so? Seems straightforward enough.”

“That should be your first warning—too straightforward. A real riddle hides an answer in an answer. Otherwise, it’s only a child’s calculation. But a riddle has been posed, because the true answer is six, not five.”

Zel said, “How do you figure?”

“The mage makes five new elixirs from the twenty-five empties he has, and after he drinks them, he has five more empties left for one more elixir. Thus the answer is six.”

“Seems a little slippery.”

Warian nudged Zel and said in an undertone, “Reminds me of the kind of merchant deals I’ve seen you put together.”

“Fair enough,” Zel allowed.

Ususi stiffened and said a word in a language Warian didn’t know.

The cool blue radiance of the glyphs heated, transforming into an angry, scathing red. The sound of stone grating on stone vibrated up through Warian’s feet.

“It was five!” crowed Zel. He was thrown to the ground when the floor gave a great lurch.

Doom bellowed a fell promise as stone scraped over stone. The walls began to close in.

“No, it was six,” asserted Iahn, his voice calm as he began to trace his hands through a constellation of arcane movements.

The wizard, looking stunned, said, “The trap triggered with my answer. The choice was correct. Am I not Imaskari enough to qualify as one of the ancients? Has the bloodline diverged so widely?”

Warian concentrated, and his arm flared with violet potential. He strode toward one of the approaching walls and landed a terrific hammer fist. A great shower of stones exploded from the wall, but the stone was so thick that it actually absorbed little of the blow. The greater part of the force rebounded into Warian’s prosthesis. The impact was so potent, it jolted him out of his Celestial Nadir mastery. He fell to his knees. Tiny points of light prickled his vision, and nausea grasped at his stomach. The light in his arm went out.

Iahn stepped forward, snatched Ususi around the waist with one free arm, and finished his somatic gesture with the other. When nothing happened, he noted, “Magical escape is blocked.”

Zel tried to force his pickaxe blade into the advancing seam where an approaching wall met the floor. “The crack’s too small—I can’t get any purchase!” he yelped.

The wizard conquered her shock and yelled, “Stand next to me. Quickly!” Without waiting for Warian or Zel to comply, she rushed through a spell, sputtering over some of the syllables. The Vaelanites stumbled toward her.

On a rising note, Ususi finished speaking, making a warding, circular motion with her hand above her head. Marble crystallized from the air, encasing the four delvers in a dome of solid stone. The harsh, scarlet light was gone, and Ususi’s free-flying light bounced around the too-small enclosure. The sound of the approaching walls diminished, but did not cease.

“This will protect us?” asked Zel.

“I hope so. Long enough for the trap to reset…”

Either Ususi’s summoned wall would block the crushing walls, or it wouldn’t. Warian whispered, “Come on, come on,” over and over, but he wasn’t sure who he was urging to what end.

The air splintered with the sound of the advancing walls’ contact with the marble dome.

“It’s holding!” yelled Zel.

A deep whine became audible, then began to ascend in pitch.

“The walls still attempt to crush us,” Ususi said.

A hairline crack appeared on the dome’s surface and raced a jagged path down one side. Another appeared, then another. The whine was becoming the shriek of a harpy, and a fine dust of disintegrating stone began to rain down inside the dome.

“The dome is failing,” said Iahn.

“Thanks for the news!” yelled Zel, his eyes darting around the tiny space, looking for some miraculous opportunity.

But there was no escape.

The whine, threatening to rise in pitch beyond Warian’s hearing, stuttered. The floor shook with the report of something like distant thunder. The whine regained its strength and ratcheted upward again. Another detonation rattled through the dome, closer than before. A basso succession of sounds penetrated the damaged dome. The new noises almost resembled speech in their regularity and cadence.

“Is someone out there?” Warian asked. “That sounded like someone speaking!”

Needing no further encouragement, Zel yelled at the top of his lungs, “Hey! We’re in here! Help!”

With one final boom, the whine failed completely. The cracks in the protective marble dome ceased multiplying. The deep-pitched noises sounded again, and comprehension dawned on Warian. He heard,”… ruined the crushing plates. Something is caught inside.”

Another voice, this one much harder to hear through the stone, yelled, “Blast, blood, and rot! What do you care? It’s probably another crystal puppet.”

The first voice said, “I can travel as easily through the stone of the structure as through the passageways in between. If you feel that my choices are not perfect, perhaps you should consider…”

Ususi pointed to the dome, and with a flash and a pop, it disappeared.

Standing over them, amidst the rubble of shattered walls, was a massive animate sculpture. The creature was like a man made of fused boulders. It wore, or more accurately, sprouted from its head, a crown of uncut rubies and diamonds. It stood nearly three times Zell’s height, the tallest of the group.

The silhouette of a mail-clad elf looked down at them from the lip of the pit. This one said, “Now, look! I told you to ignore it, but you had to mess with it. Just like before!”

A tiny creature flew down into the pit to alight on the shoulder of the great earthen being. Warian realized it was another animate sculpture, this one like a tiny dragon carved of reddish glass. It opened its mouth and pealed a series of tiny, bell-like chirps. The sound was reminiscent of laughter.

Ususi stepped toward the great earthen entity and said in Common, “Greetings. I am Ususi Manaallin. Thank you for disrupting these encroaching walls. We would have been crushed. We are in your debt. But who are you? You don’t seem to be in thrall to Pandorym …”

Warian tensed.

“I am Prince Monolith. I am in no one’s thrall. The question is, what are you doing in this ancient tower of malignancy?” Iahn moved as quickly as a snake to stand protectively next to Ususi, one hand on his dragonfly blade, still sheathed.

Ususi replied, “That was my question for you. We are here because this structure was built by my ancestors.”

The figure from above yelled, “So this is all your fault!” Warian now recognized the one above to be a woman, though he’d never seen an elf, male or female, quite so broad of forearm and rough of voice and manner.

“What blame do you place on us?” inquired Iahn, his voice ice. Warian judged the vengeance taker was only a jibe or two away from launching a physical attack against the newcomers.

The elf pointed at Ususi. “She just said your ancestors built this place. You must be Imaskari, hiding all these centuries when everyone thought you were dead. I’ve spent the better part of two months tracking down this tower because of the fell influence it released into the earth! Did you release it? My friend Thormud lies sorely wounded, or dead, because if it!”

Iahn bristled, but Ususi said, “Pandorym is what we call the evil you speak of. It is even now using the greater part of its strength to destroy my homeland, and may have already done so. We have not released it. We are here to destroy it.”

His face suddenly hot, Warian interjected, “My sister died to bring these opponents of Pandorym here! Don’t suggest they’re in league with the master of this tower, or you dishonor Eined’s name!”

The elemental called Monolith raised both of its giant hands, palms outward, and said, “You are not of this tower, I sense, but are newly come to it, like us. I have saved your lives, I think, from these crushing walls. That should prove our good intentions. For now, my friend and I will have to trust yours. Perhaps we should join our strength to overcome this Pandorym?”

“You believe them?” snorted the elf woman. “I want to know who released Pandorym if these relics of the empire didn’t do it.” She glared at Ususi.

“It was my grandfather,” said Warian. “Shaddon Datharathi. He found his way into a forbidden plane where this tower, until recently, slept through the centuries. Greed drove him. We’re here to help put right his mistake.”

“Sounds good enough for a trial partnership,” interjected Monolith. “What do you say, descendants of Imaskar?”

Ususi considered, nodded, and said, “Help us out of this pit, and we’ll compare strategies.”

Another set of circling stairs. It wasn’t far now. The Imperial Weapons Cache was ahead. And, presumably, Pandorym.