by Layton Green
“What does that mean?” Will gasped. “What’s wrong with her?”
Mala held a small bronze bottle in her hands. She uncorked the bottle and approached Will, while Val and Caleb looked on.
“What’s that?” Will said.
“A healing potion,” Mala said.
“You have two, right?”
“I do not.”
He tried to sit, but Mala eased him down. “Give it to Marguerite!” he said, straining against her.
The exertion almost made him swoon. Mala placed a hand on his forehead, and Will shivered from both the fever and her touch. “There is only the one,” she said, “and it’s only effective against basic poisons. The spittle of the wyrm is too strong.”
Caleb hid his face and looked away. Will grabbed Mala’s wrist. “So she’s going to die? Give it to her. It will buy her time.”
“Open your mouth,” Mala said gently. “You’ll die if you don’t take it. We’ll help Marguerite if at all possible.”
Val was gripping Will’s hands, and Caleb knelt beside him and held the back of his head. Caleb’s eyes were red. “C’mon, little brother. We need you with us.”
Will continued to protest as Mala tipped the bottle and poured it into the side of his mouth. He was so weak he couldn’t stop her, though he continued to object until he started to choke. He finally stopped resisting and let the tasteless liquid seep down his throat. Marguerite moaned and thrashed beside him, and Will felt numb with guilt. He had been her fighter, her protector. She had fallen on his watch.
The potion had a miraculous effect. A warming sensation coursed through his body, and by the time the stone ceiling came into view, Will felt the effects of the poison draining away. He still felt weak, but a thousand times improved.
His brothers and Lance hugged him in relief, though everyone cast sidelong, troubled glances at Marguerite. Caleb eased her head into his lap, stroking her hair. He looked dazed, disbelieving.
Will noticed a grief shadowing Val’s eyes that he guessed stemmed from the loss of Alexander. Again Will wondered what had happened, and knew it must have been terrible.
They rose through another hole. When the pedestal stopped moving, clicking into place, they found themselves in the center of an enormous round chamber with a thirty-foot stone ceiling. A dim glow the color of moonlight lit the chamber. Will couldn’t detect the source of the illumination. An iron ladder extended down from the ceiling, almost to the head of the Minotaur. At the top of the ladder, inset upside-down into the ceiling, was a tiled Zelomancy board the size of a table-top chessboard.
Will stood and flexed his limbs, feeling almost normal. He surveyed his surroundings. The circular room was about the size of his high school gym. A moat filled with a greenish-brown liquid surrounded the room, and Will watched Mala walk over and drop something inside. He could hear the sizzle from across the room.
The only other objects in the room were two incredibly lifelike twelve-foot tall stone statues on opposite sides of the room, at the edge of the moat. They stood with their arms at their sides, like soldiers awaiting a command.
Caleb moved beside Will on the pedestal, his eyes lingering on Marguerite. “I didn’t get a chance to thank you. You saved me, little brother. And you didn’t panic.”
Will gripped Caleb’s arm. “Let’s thank each other when we get out of this alive.” His eyes moved to Marguerite. “All of us.”
“Let’s,” Caleb whispered.
Mala walked the perimeter of the moat, sprang back onto the pedestal, and climbed the ladder above the Minotaur. Will watched her study the Zelomancy board. Peering closer, he realized it wasn’t a traditional nine by nine board, but seven by seven. He had no idea what that meant. Also, the Zelomancy pieces were scattered across the board in seemingly random positions, as well as lined up in rows outside the board.
Mala started to place her hand on one of the pieces, then reached back.
Val looked at Will. “Why don’t you help her? You’re a whiz with puzzles.”
Will took a tentative step on the ladder, which swayed with his weight. When he reached the top, Mala swung around to face him.
“This makes no sense,” she said. “It’s not the right size and the pieces seem to be placed at random on the board. Nor do I understand the pieces on the outside. There are far too many for a Zelomancy game.”
“Do they move?” Will asked.
She tried to move the dragon piece nearest to her, but it didn’t budge. Will attempted to move a few of the pieces on the board, but they, too, were immobile. When he put his hand on one of the knights outside the board, it felt loose. He looked at Mala. She gave him a slight nod, and he pushed on the piece.
It slid forward on a grooved track. Will hesitated, then followed the path of the track onto the board. It allowed him to move horizontally and vertically over the playing field, and he could feel where the grooves allowed entry into the empty squares.
“I think we’re supposed to move the pieces on the outside onto the board,” Will said. “But I have no idea where.”
And our only Zelomancy player is dead.
Mala’s eyes flicked to Marguerite shivering on the pedestal below, then back to the tiled board. “We must do something.”
Will was still grasping the knight, sliding it along the grooved track. He stopped and followed a different train of thought. “Counting both inside and outside the board, there are as many total pieces as there are spaces.”
“What do you think that means?”
“I think it means we’re supposed to fill the board, but I don’t know why, or how.”
“We’ll have to take a chance,” she said. “Try moving the wizard.”
Will stared at the board, swallowing as he returned the knight to its place outside the board. He had a feeling this was the final test—and that it wouldn’t be easy.
The ruby wizard felt cold in his palm. He moved it to the right, into the middle of the board. When he reached the centermost space, surrounded by three rows in every direction, he slid the wizard inside the square. Will felt the tile depress, as if the wizard piece was about to click into place. It failed to catch, however, and Will heard a loud scraping sound from below.
Lance’s panicked voice rang out. “The statues are moving!”
Will looked down and saw the two giant stone statues unfurl smoothly from their rigid positions. Fists clenched, they stomped towards Hashi and Lance. Each thunderous step looked as if it would crack the floor.
“Stone golems,” Mala said, in awe. “In classical Zelomancy, they—not majitsu—were the protectors of wizards. They must be the final guardians.”
With a terrified fascination, Will watched the twelve-foot tall beings advance on the party. Mala pounded on the tiled board with her fist, and then the hilt of her sword. Both to no avail. She tried to rip the pieces off, but neither she nor Will could budge them.
She gazed down at the golems. “They’re from another age. We can’t defeat them in battle. You must solve the puzzle, Will. It’s our only chance.”
She climbed down a rung, and Will’s voice sounded desperate to his own ears. “Where’re you going?”
“To give you what time I can,” she said, then dropped onto the shoulders of the minotaur.
One of the stone golems swung his fist at Hashi. He blocked it with his cudgel, but the blow brought him to his knees. Lance dodged a few swings from the other golem, then caught the stone guardian in the chest with a full swing of his hammer. The hammer clanged off the golem without effect, as did Allira’s boomerangs.
Caleb huddled over Marguerite on the pedestal, shielding her body. Val was focused on the air in front of him, clenching his fists in vain. Will tore his gaze away from the battle, his hand trembling as he returned the wizard piece to its place beside the board.
Think, Will.
Forty-nine spaces on the board, and forty-nine pieces, seemingly placed at random. What could it mean?
They couldn’t
be random. Leonidus did nothing at random. It wasn’t a Zelomancy game, so it had to be something else.
“Hurry!” Mala shouted. Will didn’t bother looking down. He tried to think of a pattern or a game that might fit, but was at a loss.
“It almost looks like Sudoku,” Val said from below.
“Yeah,” Will yelled back, “except Sudoku is a nine by nine board, has numbers, and has nothing to do with Zelomancy or this world.”
The golems were eerily silent as the shouted commands of the party and the sounds of battle rang through the cavern. Time and again Will heard the clang of someone’s blade bouncing off the stone bodies.
The pressure was making it hard for Will to think. He took a few deep breaths and tried to clear his head. He could feel the battle below. Risking a glance, he saw that the golems had almost cornered the fighters against the pedestal. One of the monsters caught Hashi in the chest with a melon-sized fist, sending him sprawling to the edge of the acid moat.
The Sudoku comment stuck in Will’s head, though he wasn’t sure why. What did he know about that silly game, which he had played for hours on end? He knew Sudoku was simply the commercialized name of a type of Latin Square, a mathematical curio that had been around forever. A Latin Square was a box of any size filled with non-repeating numbers, integers, or symbols in columns and rows.
Symbols. Columns. Rows.
Will’s mind skidded, dug its heels in, and raced in another direction. To a different game.
To a chessboard.
He smacked his forehead. “Mala!” he yelled. “Are Zelomancy pieces ever assigned numerical values?”
“Yes!” she cried back. “One through seven.”
“What’s the order?”
“Knight, mounted knight, dragon, giant, kethropi, majitsu, wizard!”
“What do you have?” Val called out.
“You’re a genius,” Will said. “It is Sudoku. Or sort of, that clever bastard. It’s a Latin Square using Zelomancy pieces.”
“You’re sure?” Val asked.
“We’re about to find out. If I’m right, then there’re a few gimmees on the board. And if I’m wrong . . . .” Will took a deep breath, and moved one of the knights towards the center, where he knew a piece with a numerical value of one must go, based on the position of the other pieces.
It clicked firmly into place.
Will felt like pumping his fist in the air, but he concentrated on the next piece, knowing he didn’t have a moment to spare. The next four pieces snapped into place, cementing his theory.
“Hang on!” he shouted. “I can figure this out!”
It was not an easy puzzle, however, and he was either going to have to take a few educated guesses or spend some time thinking it through. He reasoned that the damage from the wrong move had already been done, and now it was just a matter of time. The question was, could they solve the puzzle before the stone golems annihilated their party?
He took a guess on a piece he knew fit into one of two places. It failed to catch. Mala screamed, and Will’s head whipped down. A square section of stone had hinged down underneath her, and she was dangling a foot above a lake of acid, hanging onto the floor with one hand.
One of the stone golems noticed, breaking away from Lance to take a giant step towards her. As Mala swung upwards onto the floor, Will could tell she wasn’t going to make it in time to stop the golem’s blow.
Will jumped off the ladder, spring boarding off the Minotaur to land a few feet away from Mala. The force of the drop sent a stab of pain shooting through his leg. He reached to help Mala with one hand, raising his sword to block the golem’s fist with the other.
The blow knocked Will’s sword out of his hand and sent him sprawling. But Mala used Will’s grip to regain her balance, and was able to distract the golem while Will grabbed his sword and escaped.
“Go!” Mala shouted.
One of the golems struck the pedestal itself, sending Allira and Caleb scrambling to move Marguerite out of harm’s way. Val and Hashi rushed in to divert the monsters, as Will jumped onto the ladder, yelling down to Val as he climbed. “I need pen and paper, now!”
“Marguerite’s a poet,” Caleb called up. “She has them in her pouch.”
As Val rushed to retrieve the items, Will cringed at the spectacle below. Hashi had become a tornado, blocking and whirling and striking with his cudgel, some of his blows chipping off pieces of the golems. With one giant swing, he shattered the back of an elbow, but the creature pressed forward as if uninjured. Mala was using different tactics, using the pedestal and even the golems themselves as her springboard, flipping and jumping as she sliced into her huge opponents with her magical short sword. Like Hashi, she barely seemed to be denting the things, and Will knew the space was too tight, the golems too gigantic.
Lance fared much more poorly. His hammer kept clanging off the golems, and Will watched him narrowly avoid swing after swing of the golems’ fists. With no way to hurt them, it was all he could do to stay alive.
Val raced up the ladder, handing Will a pen and a pad of moleskin. Will made frantic notations, moving a piece into place only after he was sure it was the correct move, afraid he would drop one of his friends into the acid.
“You must hurry!” Mala called. “We can’t hold out much longer!”
Will wiped sweat off his brow. He had to take some chances. He called down to the others to watch for dropping blocks, cringing as more pieces of the floor fell away while he worked through the puzzle. Lance ended up straddling a block, but no one fell through.
Will gritted his teeth and pressed forward. The board was more than halfway finished. He didn’t need the pen and paper anymore, and started whisking pieces into place. He risked another glance down and wished he hadn’t.
Mala, Lance, and Hashi were backed against the pedestal, furiously dodging blows from the golems. Three fourths of the floor had dropped away in an irregular pattern, leaving no room to fight. Will saw one of the golems knock Lance senseless against the Minotaur. Val and Caleb dragged him onto the pedestal.
Ten pieces to go. Will heard Mala yell in pain, and he couldn’t help glancing down. Her right arm hung limp from her side, and she parried furiously with her left. The golem facing her stomped forward, unconcerned with her blade, and she was forced to skip away into the exposed middle.
Both golems turned to Hashi, the only fighter standing between the golems and the helpless members of the party. Val had given up on his magic and dropped down to help defend, but Hashi pushed him back onto the pedestal.
With a superhuman effort, the Chickasaw warrior turned his cudgel sideways and shoved the nearest golem a few feet back. He lured both monsters away from the pedestal, towards an isolated section of stone near the edge of the moat. There was nowhere for him to go, and the golems advanced. He started twirling his weapon above his head, spinning his body as he went, the cudgel whipping faster and faster through the air.
“Hashi, no!” Mala screamed, and Will’s intuition told him what Hashi meant to do just as the big man brought his cudgel down with two hands from high overhead, a spinning djinn with the power of a hurricane, roaring as he struck the floor with a blow the likes of which Will knew he might never see again.
A clap of thunder shook the room. The stone floor crumbled in a twenty-foot radius around the cudgel’s impact crater, dropping Hashi and the golems into the lake of acid.
The golems wrapped him in their arms as they fell. When they hit the acid, their weight took them beneath the surface before Mala or anyone else could react. She ran to the edge, but every time she drew near more of the floor cracked and fell away, forcing her back to the center.
Lance moaned Hashi’s name from where he was lying on the floor, and tears blurred Will’s vision as he finished the puzzle. Ten seconds later it was done.
Ten seconds too late.
As he moved the last piece—the emerald wizard—into place, the tiled board hinged upward, revealing a circular o
pening into which the iron ladder continued to ascend. At the same time, the sections of floor that had hinged downward, and which had not been destroyed by Hashi’s cudgel, snapped back into place. As Will continued to watch, hatred for Leonidus pumping through his veins, the stone golems climbed out of the moat, pulling their enormous bodies onto the floor. Will started to scramble up the ladder, but instead of giving pursuit, the golems returned to their original positions, snapping their arms to their sides and staring straight ahead. They looked as if they had never moved.
Except for the gaping hole Hashi had smashed in the floor, the room appeared just as it had when they arrived.
Holding his head, still dazed from the blow he had received, Lance was staring at the spot where Hashi had disappeared. “Should we retrieve the body?” he said, in a toneless voice.
“What body?” Mala said, her voice just as flat.
Will knew she was right, even before the first few bones floated to the surface of the acid, already stripped of flesh. Lance forced his eyes away from the jagged hole.
“We have to hurry,” Mala said, glancing at Marguerite.
As Will looked up, eying the darkened shaft, he couldn’t stop thinking about the hush inside the chamber during those final moments, the stillness that now rang inside his head. Once they had Hashi in their grip, the golems had sank quietly into the acid as if resigned to their fate. Will and the others had been too shocked at the swiftness of the ending, too horrified at Hashi’s fate, to do anything but gape.
But what struck Will most of all—what he would never forget—was the proud silence of Hashi as he slipped beneath the acid, refusing to utter a sound as his skin bubbled off in waves.
-46-
They climbed and they climbed and they climbed. Will kept glancing down at Lance, who had strapped Marguerite to his back with rope, but he gave no sign of flagging.
They finally reached a small ledge fronting a wooden door. Will peered back down the ladder, praying nothing would come barreling up the shaft.
