Darkvision - Bruce R. Cordell [107]
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!"