The Rest is Riddles

Chapter 11: Riddles, Dragon Edition

The dragon looked away. Abruptly, the pleasantness vanished. Reality returned with a lurch.

"I forgot how feeble humans are. Your kind are almost as weak-willed as sudok, and twice as fun to control."

Jane swallowed. The dragon was much too close. Its breath was hot on Jane's neck.

"Let me give you a lesson in history, pet. Eons before your time, we Fire-Breathers invented the logic of this land. Man – the invader – has brought nothing but ruin in his wake. So, even if I could help you, little mortal, I shall not. Your king is dying, and there is nothing in my possession that can save his life.

"But now that I have you here, before I devour you, we shall play. It is my custom to... hmm... entertain my visitors, and it has been years since I've had a satisfactory plaything. Hopefully you are smarter than your recent actions lead me to believe, or your life will be very short indeed. I shall ask you a series of riddles, and if you solve them all, I may just set you free. How does that sound?"

Jane had just enough time to think – with a hopeless sort of terror – that the dragon and Nikolay would have really hit it off, before the dragon waved a massive scaled paw, and three chests materialized. The first chest bore a glittering sign that said "Rubies"; the sign on the second chest said, "Emeralds"; and the third chest read, "Rubies and Emeralds."

The dragon chuckled deep in its throat. "One of these chests contains rubies, one contains emeralds, and one contains both. All of the chests are incorrectly labeled. I will give you an object from one chest of your choosing, after which you must tell me what each chest truly holds. Answer wrong, and you will die."

Jane sucked in a breath.

Logic puzzle.

It was just a logic puzzle.

Were she not still scared out of her wits, she might have smiled with relief.

Jane closed her eyes. It was hard to ignore the presence of the giant dragon, but she tried her best to disregard the distraction. To think.

She couldn't take a gem out of the chest labeled "Rubies" or the chest labeled "Emeralds." One of those chests contained the ruby-emerald mixture. So taking a gem out of those chests would tell her nothing.

The only chest that would tell her something useful was the one labeled "Rubies and Emeralds." That chest had to contain a pure sample of gems.

Jane pointed. The dragon yawned, and an enormous emerald appeared.

So the "Rubies and Emeralds" chest contained pure emeralds. Which meant the chest labeled "Rubies" had to contain the emerald-ruby mixture, and the chest labeled "Emeralds" had to contain rubies...

"Very good," the dragon purred, as Jane rearranged the chests' labels. "Let's try a harder one, shall we?"

It waved its paw again. The chests vanished. They were replaced with three glittering chalices, each one a different size. A fountain materialized behind them.

"The blue chalice holds nine swallows of water. The green chalice holds eleven swallows. Using only the right and left chalices, you will exactly fill the red chalice to the desired volume of four swallows of water."

The chalices were massive. A swallow for a dragon, Jane thought dubiously, would surely be enough liquid for a human to drown in.

She had seen variants of this puzzle before. Solving the puzzle was easy, but carrying out the task of transferring water...

It was a struggle to even lift the green chalice to carry it to the fountain. It was even more of a struggle to maneuver it into place to allow water to flow into it. It all came back to how dreadfully out of shape she was. Olesya kept ribbing her on her lack of upper body strength, but it wasn't like Jane was going to get magically stronger overni –