Pool of Radiance_ Ruins of Myth Drannor - Carrie Bebris [21]
As they neared a chamber with an open doorway, a sudden voice from within startled them. “Light? Oh-whoever you are, I beseech you! Please bring your light this way!”
They exchanged glances, knowing that their torches would reveal them to the speaker well before they could see him.
“A trap?” Kestrel mouthed.
“I don’t think so,” Corran responded softly. “If he means to ambush us, why alert us to his presence?” More loudly, he called out, “We’re on our way.”
Corran entered the chamber first. “Oh!”
“What?” Kestrel darted in after him. “Oh!” she echoed. “Well, I’ll be damned…”
In the corner of the room stood a man-or at least, half a man. He looked ordinary enough from the torso up, with a medium build, long brown hair, and penetrating dark eyes. From the waist down, the unfortunate fellow was embedded in an enormous boulder. His body appeared to simply end, consumed by the rock.
Behind her, Kestrel heard Durwyn and Ghleanna enter. The warrior gasped. “What happened to you?”
“If you can believe it, a lovers’ quarrel,” the man responded. “I was exploring these dungeons with my fiancee, a fellow sorcerer, when we fell into an argument. The subject was so trivial that I can’t even remember what the fight was about, but in the heat of the moment I renounced my love for Ozama. She flew into a rage and cast a spell that sealed me in this boulder until I solved a riddle:
A quest of love
Ends with me,
Yet I am made
Endlessly.
If I drop,
I say my name,
If I touch rock,
Freedom gain.”
Kestrel nearly snorted. “That old thing? Your sweetheart changed the ending, but the first half of it must have circulated through half the taverns between here and Waterdeep last year.”
“And all the courts the year before,” Corran added.
The man’s face lit up, his eyes darting from one party member to the next. “Do you really know the answer?”
“A ring,” Durwyn said.
Kestrel crossed the room and tapped her silver ring against the rock. A mighty crack! rent the air as the boulder broke into pieces. The long-trapped wizard immediately fell to his knees, his legs unused to supporting his weight.
“A ring,” he murmured, rubbing the atrophied muscles of his calves through the fabric of his purple robes. “So much lost time over such a simple answer.” He remained absorbed in his own thoughts, an expression of regret settling onto his angular face. His musings, however, lasted but a few moments before he left the mournful thoughts behind and addressed the foursome. “My name is Jarial. Words aren’t enough to thank you for releasing me.”
Corran introduced the party, then asked how long Jarial had been trapped in the boulder.
“Since the Year of the Arch-1353 by the Dale calendar,” he said. “What year is it now? There’s no way to tell time in here.”
“The Year of the Gauntlet. 1369.” Kestrel soberly studied him. Even though Jarial was a sorcerer, she felt sorry for him wasting so much of his life trapped alone in the darkness. He appeared only twenty or so, but he had to be much older. And the riddle that had imprisoned him had become so common while he endured endless isolation-even Durwyn had known the answer! “You mean this Ozama woman just left you down here for sixteen years and never came back?”
“I believe she meant to return,” Jarial said. “Something must have happened to her. She was angry but not vindictive enough to leave me here forever. We came here in the first place seeking a magical item called the Wizard’s Torc, said to lie in the lair of a dark naga somewhere in these dungeons. I fear she continued looking for it alone and met with misfortune.”
“Or found it and left you here to rot while she kept it for herself,” Kestrel