Bruce Cordell - Darkvision

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.