Roc And A Hard Place Read Free Page B

the building blocks.  She had to get out of this sudden chamber.
    She pushed at the wall, but it was firm; the blocks had locked into place.  She checked the ground, but it was hard rock.  Ordinarily nothing like this could inhibit any demon, but the ambient spell around the castle made her resemble an (ugh)!  mortal.  She discovered that she did not have a lot of experience handling purely physical things.  But her memory of being sane and sensible in the Region of Madness the year before gave her the assurance that she could adjust to this problem, too.
    She explored all around the chamber.  Dim rays of light filtered in through the crevices between blocks, so that it wasn't completely dark.  She tried to squeeze through a crevice, but she lacked even this power now.  It was most frustrating.
    'I wonder what Gary Gargoyle would have done?' she asked herself.  'He was a massive powerful stone creature who was transformed to a weak fleshly man for his adventure, so he had a real problem;’
    'Will you be quiet while I'm trying to rest?' Metria demanded crossly.
    Mentia thought, pondered, considered, contemplated, reflected, and cogitated as Metria had, and finally came up with a feeble notion:  Maybe she needed to think differently.  She knew there was always a way to handle the challenges, and usually it required ingenuity rather than strength.  So she should use her mind rather than her body.
    But that was what she had been trying to do, without getting far.  What use was it to think endlessly, if the only notion it produced was to think some more?
    'Not more, differently,' she reminded herself.
    She considered the chamber again.  She had pushed at one block and it was firm—but maybe there were others that were loose.  She might push one out and crawl through the hole.
    She put her hands on one block near the bottom.  It was firm.  She tried another.  It was firmer.  “Poop on you!” she said, berating it, but the block wasn't fazed.
    She continued to check, but all the lower blocks were firm.
    This evidently wasn't the answer.  She remained completely sealed in.
    She sat down, leaned against the wall, and gazed at the dust motes dancing in the thin beams of light.  The motes seemed to have a current, moving across the chamber.  Where were they going?  She focused closely, forming a very large and powerful eyeball, and traced their progress beyond the rays of light.  But her effort was wasted; they didn't go anywhere.  They just brushed up against the wall and slowly settled down toward the floor.
    Then she had a brighter notion.  The question wasn't where the motes were going, but where they were coming from!
    What was making that gentle draft?  She traced that way, and discovered that the air was coming from one of the blocks in the ceiling dome.  How could that be?
    She put her hand up to that block—and her fingers passed right through it without resistance.  It was illusion!  She had given up too soon; had she pushed against every single block, she would have discovered that.  This was the way out.
    She put both hands up into the hole, then hauled herself up.  In a moment her head was outside the building.  She scrambled and got out, then rolled head under heels to the ground.  She had navigated the third challenge!
    “Why hello, D. Mentia,” a voice said.
    Startled, Mentia got to her feet.  There stood a rather nice young woman.  “Do I know you?”
    “I think so.  You brought Gary Gargoyle here last year.
    I'm Wira, Humfrey's daughter-in-law.”
    “But I never came up to the castle,” Mentia protested.
    “How could you have seen me?”
    Wira laughed.  “Not with my eyes, of course.  But Gary spoke well of you.”
    Mentia felt that she was getting in over her depth.  'Metria! Wake up.  We're in the castle.’
    Metria joined her.  'Just like old newspapers,' she remarked, looking around.
    'Like old whats?’
    'Ages, eons, epochs, eras,