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[talien]

They reached a pentagonal room. The walls, ceiling, and floor were uniform black stone. In the center of each wall was a red door, although they had no handles, keyholes, or any obvious means of opening them. In the middle of the room stood a pedestal, capped with a metal plate bearing five studs.

“This is the device Yolanda created to enter the portal,” said Kham. “See each of these studs? They’re dials. There are twenty-six letters in the Hasturic alphabet. She used them to spell out key words. The right combination of key words opens the portal. You have to turn each of the dials, and the last dial you turn, if it’s in the correct sequence, opens the portal.”

“Great,” said Vlad. “I’m ready.”

Kham shook his head. “Not so simple. You have to do it one at a time. It won’t let more than one person teleport in; a safeguard of Yolanda’s.”

“Fat lot of good it did,” muttered Beldin. The dwarf had recovered from the poison with just a few minutes of rest. His companions were continually amazed by his constitution. “If Quelch is corrupting it now, it wasn’t too hard to guess.”

“No, it’s not,” Kham said grimly. “We just have to spell: enter."

“What if we turn the dial to the wrong numbers?” asked Vlad.

“You don’t want to know.”

Beldin stepped up to the pedestal. “I’ll go first. What do we have to turn the numbers to?”

“Five, fourteen, twenty, five, and eighteen,” said Kham.

Beldin clicked each dial over. When he finished the last one, Beldin disappeared.

“Quickly now.” Kham hurried Vlad, who carefully turned the dials. He flashed and disappeared.

“Okay, Emric, you go next.” Kham turned all the dials but one. “I don’t want to leave you here.”

Emric smiled a wicked smile. Suddenly, Kham realized what an idiotic idea it was to bring him along in the first place, as if a veil had been lifted from his mind. Emric’s form shimmered, replaced by the exoskeleton form of a k’n-yan.

The k’n-yan reached out to turn the last dial to the wrong number. “That’s very thoughtful of you,” it said.