For trap it undoubtedly was. Niall had seen a rat trap of this design — a door that came down when the mouse nibbled the bait. Presumably the massive stone door had been intended to catch thieves who entered the chamber to steal food. But even that explanation was puzzling. Surely no food thief would bother to move the wooden vessel.
Next, merely as a test, he pulled the clay jar clear of the wooden vessel, his eyes fixed on the door. The jar immediately split in two, and the vessel fell with a crash, but there was not the slightest tremor in the door. This tended to confirm Niall’s increasing suspicion that perhaps there was, after all, no connection between the wooden vessel and the door mechanism.
Then how did the men who had engineered this mechanism release those who had been trapped? There surely must be some lever or similar device concealed somewhere. But that might even be in the house next door.
Assuming, then, that there was no mechanism for raising the door, what other possibilities were there? The most obvious solution was to wait till dusk and attempt telepathic contact with his mother. And she in turn would tell Simeon or Doggins, or even Dravig, and some sort of rescue attempt would be organized. By spider balloon, the Valley of the Dead could be reached in less than two hours. But it would be a poor solution. The whole purpose of coming here on foot was to approach the kingdom of the Magician unnoticed, and a full-scale rescue expedition would be an infallible way of attracting attention to themselves.
They had been in the cave for about an hour, and Niall was beginning to feel chilly, and to wish he had not left his cloak with his pack. As soon as he thought about being cold, he shivered. The captain asked him what was troubling him. “I am cold.”
The captain found this hard to understand, since the will-force of spiders could simply increase their blood flow. He immediately shared his own warmth by a simple act of telepathic rapport, which had precisely the same effect as if the temperature of the cave had been raised by a flow of warm air.
It made Niall aware that he could have raised his own temperature by turning the thought mirror and concentrating. But for the moment, he was intrigued to find that he could also see around him, as if a dim light had been turned on. He had noticed the same effect when walking through the underground tunnel with Asmak, but had assumed that this was because Asmak was so familiar with his surroundings that he was transmitting this familiarity to Niall, producing an impression of light.
Now that the cold and the darkness had both been dispelled, Niall felt better. It was as if the spider had also given him some of its enormous patience. He therefore began examining his surroundings with a close attention that was free of anxiety.
It seemed to him logical that the key to escaping from this place probably lay inside the cave itself. After all, suppose someone became accidentally trapped inside?
But where? For the tenth time he played the flashlight inch by inch over the walls and ceiling, but could find no sign of anything that might conceivably activate the mechanism.
One by one, he looked into the jars and, as he expected, found them all empty.
At that point he noticed something that intrigued him about the jar that had split. It had cracked across the bottom, and a large piece had broken away. Spilling from this broken segment was a substance that looked like clay or chalk. When Niall peered more closely, he realized that he had been wrong to assume the jar had a flat bottom; in fact, its inside terminated in a point, presumably to trap wine sediment.
The white substance was hard to the touch, but crumbled when squeezed between his fingers.
With the spider watching him with mild curiosity — obviously wondering what he found so interesting about crumbling chalk — he looked at the other broken half of the jar. There the chalky substance was intact, and its top was flat. In effect, the jar had a kind of false bottom.
He laid the next jar on its side and crawled inside it. A few jabs with the rim of the flashlight revealed that its bottom was also made of chalk, which cracked and then crumbled as he poked at it.
It was the same with the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth jars. Each had a layer of chalk that gave the impression of a flat bottom.
As he crawled into the seventh jar he knew this would be crucial. Either the chalk had an innocent explanation, or it had been introduced to deceive anyone who looked casually into the jars.
This time, the metal rim of the flashlight encountered something hard as it smashed the chalk. He laid down the flashlight — his other hand was trapped against the wall of the jar — and probed with his fingers. They encountered a ball-like object, about three inches in diameter. Niall gave a grunt of self-congratulation.
He wriggled back out of the jar, sat on the floor, and eagerly rubbed away the chalk from the object. He found himself looking at a ball made of glass or crystal — he suspected rock crystal, since it was so heavy. And as he held it between his palms, he felt a faint electrical tingling sensation.
He showed it to the captain. “What do you think this is?”
The spider touched it with his pedipalp. “I have never seen anything like it. What is your opinion?”
“I don’t have one yet. But they must have had a good reason for hiding it so carefully.”
He closed his eyes, concentrating his attention on his fingertips. The tingling increased, and became stronger when he held the ball against his palms. But even at this stage Niall was aware that the globe was in no sense alive; it was merely a device for communication.
But with what?
The captain had been waiting patiently, observing Niall’s total absorption. But now he could see that Niall had returned to the world of the present, he asked: “Have you learned how to raise the door?”
“No. The mechanism is broken.”
Noting that Niall seemed unperturbed, the captain asked: “Then how can we escape?”
As he spoke, causing Niall to reflect upon the problem, a bright green spark of light appeared in the center of the crystal, and the globe began to glow with a gentle warmth. This faded after a few moments, leaving behind a tingling sensation in Niall’s hands. As he focused on this, Niall seemed to lose his sense of identity, as if he had become part of the crystal. He deliberately focused on this sensation, recognizing that it was somehow an answer to the captain’s question.
Fascinated by the crystal, he ceased to be conscious of the passage of time. An hour might have passed when his attention was drawn back to the present as the captain became alert, listening with total concentration. Niall could hear nothing, but the spider’s sensitivity to vibrations was greater than his own.
Several minutes later they heard stones that rattled down from above. Someone was descending the stairway with a slow and deliberate tread.
The sounds ceased in front of the door. Then there was a long pause. Whoever was outside was obviously considering how the door could be raised. Then the stone barrier rattled, shaken back and forth in its groove. As Niall peered up at the gap at the top of the door, hoping to catch a glimpse of the visitor’s face, two giant hands slid through it, and fingers that were an inch thick gripped the stone. There was a grinding sound as the great door was lifted a few inches. Then one of the hands vanished, and reappeared underneath the door, while the other held its weight suspended. With a rumbling noise that was like thunder, the huge mass of stone was raised, and they saw that the giant who was raising it was kneeling. They were looking at a bearded creature whose size made the troll of the sacred mountain seem small.
He growled something in a guttural voice, which they understood to be an invitation to come out quickly. Niall, being closest, darted under the slab, followed closely by the captain. When they were outside, the troll stood up, grunting, still holding the door, and raised it until it vanished into the stone slot above. But it was obvious that whatever catch had held the door in position was now broken. With a grunt of disgust, the giant released it, standing back, and the door fell down with such force that it split in two, one of the broken halves falling into the cave, while the other hung suspended lopsidedly on its rusty chain.