Keith Strohm - The Tomb of Horrors

Once again, the wizened mage stood in front of the group. This time, however, he raised both hands, fingers slightly curled, in front of his eyes and spoke the words of power. When he was finished, the base stones on the left and right of the arch pulsed with a yellow and orange light, while the keystone within the archway flickered with a blue incandescence.

Majandra watched as the mage stood before the archway in silence, studying the mystic construction with eyes that had always seen far and deeply. “There is strong magic woven into the very heart of this stone,” hesaid. “I believe that the arch itself functions as a teleportation device. Thestones that are glowing are part of a key that will change the coordinates of the target area.”

“Knowing what we have experienced so far,” Vaxor said, “Iwould wager that the arch is currently set to send whoever walks through it to a particularly deadly location. The trick will be unlocking the right sequence for a safe journey.”

“Who should attempt the sequence?” Gerwyth asked. “Therecould be further traps built into the arch that Phathas hasn’t detected.”

It only took a few moments for Majandra to make her decision. “I will,” she said with all of the confidence she could muster. “I have had someinstruction in the ways of magic.” The bard smiled as she looked at Phathas.“And, if there are any physical traps-well, I have some experience dealing withthose as well.”

This last she said with a great deal of nonchalance, hoping to slip that bit of information by her companions, who would no doubt be surprised by such a revelation.

She failed.

Amid the whispered murmurs of surprise, it was Vaxor whose voice she heard frame the question she had most wanted to avoid. “And how, mydear,” the cleric asked in the most colored of paternal tones, “did you come topossess such an expertise?”

The half-elf blushed, hoping that the pulsating lights of the archway masked her discomfort. “Well,” she said in an even tone, “you don’tthink I spent all my time in Rel Mord poring over ancient parchments and rehearsing fragments of old songs, did you? Let’s just say that I had somecolorful friends and leave it at that, shall we?”

With that, Majandra withdrew a small pouch of tools from within a hidden fold of her cloak and set about examining the stonework around the archway. A few minutes later, after she had poked and prodded and searched the area on and about the arch, the half-elf turned to the rest of the waiting company. “Seems clear to me,” she said. “I’m heading up.” And with a singlenote, she tapped into the still-active levitation spell she had cast when examining the rune-inlayed mosaic. Gently, the bard floated up toward the top of the arch. Gingerly, she pressed her palm against the pulsing blue stone and was rewarded as the incandescence solidified. Slowly she returned to the floor and touched the orange and then the yellow pulsing stones. Each in turn burned with a solid light until Majandra was finished.

Nothing happened for a few moments-and then, with a brightburst of light, each of the glowing stones pulsed once again.

“I sense no change within the magical construct,” Phathassaid.

Majandra acknowledged the wizard’s comment with a sigh offrustration and then quickly tried a new sequence. Again, nothing happened. Determined to uncover the correct order with the least amount of time wasted, she kept trying. It wasn’t until her last attempt, when Majandra touched theyellow, blue, and orange stones in that order that the arch emitted a single sharp sound. Within seconds, the swirling mist faded, until Majandra could see a passageway heading off into darkness.

There was a collective sigh, as if the entire company had been holding its breath, waiting to see the outcome of her attempts. She turned and was rewarded by the mage’s beaming smile. “Well done, my child,” Phathassaid, and she could hear the pride evident in his thin voice.

With the path clear ahead of them, the company resumed its former marching order and continued their march. The half-elf’s inability to seeanything ahead of her should have offered a warning. However, flushed with her recent success, Majandra wasn’t paying much attention. She could do no more thanscream when, with a sudden, deep lurching motion, she felt first the floor, then the walls, and soon the entire tomb itself fall away from her, replaced by a blackness so impenetrable that she knew it had no end.

Kaerion felt a moment of disorientation as the darknessreceded. The bard’s scream had offered him a few seconds of warning before thecomplete and total annihilation of light, and so he was not caught in total surprise. As the spinning in his head gradually receded, he blinked, trying to make sense of what his eyes were showing him. The long hall had disappeared, and now the members of the expedition were crammed into a small room, holding their heads as if each nursed one of the hangovers that he had woken up with every morning for more than ten years. Wherever they were, the teleporting arch had clearly worked as designed.

He cast another glance over his companions. Satisfied that no one had suffered any permanent harm, Kaerion gave his surroundings a more thorough search. The room itself was no more than ten feet wide and, judging by the way Vaxor’s pulsing light reached from end to end, it was less than twentyfeet long. In the center of the room, glaring at him with an expression of hatred locked in solid stone, stood an imposing statue of a gargoyle. Though startled enough to draw his sword at first sight of the creature, Kaerion’sheart settled as his eyes registered that one of the monster’s four gruesomelymuscled arms lay on the floor at its clawed feet.

“Careful, Kaerion,” Gerwyth said as Kaerion slowly approachedthe statue. “Give a shout if it starts to move.”

The fighter grunted his affirmative as he stalked silently over to the gargoyle, sword drawn and held ready for a sudden attack. The elf was right to warn caution. Both of them had seen enough animated statues in their time to be forever wary about stone constructions.

Vaxor’s light grew brighter as he and the other members ofthe expedition drew closer to the statue. Satisfied that the looming block of worked stone before him was simply a statue and nothing more, Kaerion bent and picked up the gargoyle’s splintered arm. Like each of the other three arms, thestone appendage possessed a round indentation in the center of the palm; its flint-gray claws curled slightly around it. As Kaerion called the others over to examine this new discovery, one of the guards shouted out her own find-a narrowtunnel that sloped away from the room at an angle.

“Landra,” he heard the cleric of Heironeous say, “take threeguards and set them to watch the tunnel’s mouth. I don’t want any surprises.”

“A fearsome beast,” Gerwyth remarked as the guard captainsignaled her compliance. “I’m just glad that we don’t have to face the tearingclaws of this thing in battle.”

The elf was right, of course, Kaerion thought as he traced the gargoyle’s palm indentation with a calloused finger. The statue itself wasover eight feet tall, and each of the beast’s teeth looked sharp enough to cutthrough the thickest armor. He’d settle for poking around an old statue any day.

“This depression looks deep enough to hold a large stone,” hesaid to the others, each of whom were poking and prodding the statue.

“A stone,” replied Majandra, whose hands, Kaerion could see,were sliding expertly across the ridged lines of the statue, “or a large gem.”

The half-elf rummaged through the leather pouches hanging from her belt until she produced several red-hued stones, each with many crystalline facets. The gems gleamed in the surrounding light. “Perhaps youshould all step back,” the bard said as she reached out and gently placed one ofthe gems in the gargoyles upturned hand.