Page 83 of The City of Zirdai
“Great. How does that help us?”
“Patience, Jaft.” Shyla examined the others. “Here are numbers one, two, four, and five.”
“It’s a code. Get the right combination and…something happens,” Aphra said.
“Something good or something bad?” Jayden asked, no doubt remembering his near miss with the blade.
“It’s usually a surprise.”
“Fun.” Jaft’s dry tone indicated he thought the opposite.
“There are one hundred and twenty combinations with five numbers if you don’t repeat a number,” Vashi said. “But if you do, then it’s in the thousands. If the code is longer than five digits, then the possible combinations can be in the millions.”
Shyla flipped between being impressed by Vashi’s math skills and despairing over the sheer number of possibilities.
“Vashi was in charge of our treasury and ensuring we had enough supplies,” Jayden said.
While interesting, it wasn’t helping. Shyla concentrated on the glyphs. The numbers weren’t in order on the walls either from left to right or right to left. Only Tamburah would be able to see them, so why not make it simple?
Since she needed magic to find them, Shyla guessed she needed to use her power to…what? Touch them? It’d be a start.
“I’m going to try pressing them from one to five in ascending order. You need to leave the room just in case there’s a bad surprise,” Shyla said.
They moved to the doorway but remained there.
Shyla went to number one and pulled her magic into her right hand. Taking a deep breath, she said, “Yell if you see or hear anything.” She placed her palm against the symbol. The rough wall was cool to the touch. Moving onto two, she repeated the action. Then three, four, and five. She kept her weight balanced, ready to dive or dash.
Nothing happened.
All right, what else was simple? “Now descending order.”
“Are you going to try all hundred and twenty combinations?” Jaft asked.
Was she? “Yes.” She touched five, then four, three, two, and one.
A deep boom rattled the room. Then, starting in the middle of the floor, a line appeared in the sand and spiraled outward, growing larger with each rotation. It looked as if a giant invisible finger was drawing it.
She looked at the others. “Can you see—”
“The creepy death spiral? Yes,” Jaft said.
Shyla joined her friends as it grew. With a thud, the middle of the room sank. Sand sizzled through the cracks in the floor as it continued to go down. The grating sound of stone scraping stone filled the air. The next spiral sank a moment later, then the next, and the next followed. Another boom vibrated through the soles of her boots. After a few heartbeats, the sand stopped. Silence descended.
Instead of a flat floor, before them was now a ramp that corkscrewed down into the blackness.
Thirteen
The five of them stared into the darkness. For the floor to just drop away…that was impressive. She’d never witnessed anything like that before.
“Who wants to climb down into the seven caverns of hell first?” Jaft asked.
“Are you always this melodramatic?” Vashi asked him.
Shyla glanced at Aphra. “Do you think there will be booby traps?”
“It depends if Tamburah believed someone could get this far. Considering only he had been able to see the symbols, I doubt it. But I’m not relaxing my guard.”
“Then you first.”
