Artore and Ginsmed arrived at the mouth of a huge canyon with a passage through a series of short walls of granite arranged in the form of a huge, complex maze.
“Ah, the dreaded Maze of Riddles,” sighed Ginsmed. “Some say it’s a maze, others say it’s more of a sequence of riddles. But there is a puzzle at the heart of the riddles that shows the safest path out of the maze. To my knowledge, no traveler has ever merged from the Maze of Riddles alive.”
“Riddles are not my thing,” Artore replied.
“Then we had best turn back,” Ginsmed warned. “If we venture into the maze at this point, we will surely perish at the first wrong guess.”
Artore wasn’t listening. He had already set foot inside the maze.
“That clumsy fool,” Ginsmed muttered, before entering the maze, When he found him, Artore was at a dead end, reading the first riddle inscribed on the wall.
Ginsmed walked up to Artore. “We had best – ”
Artore held up his arm to silence Ginsmed. He was reading the first riddle:
Suns may set and moons may rise
To which flows forward the hands of time
Heroes prevail where cowards flee
At the gifts bestowed them thrown away.
Ginsmed just stood, shaking his head. “I have no clue what the answer is.”
Artore just stood there, reading the words again and again. Suddenly he lifted his battle axe and with great force struck the wall bearing the riddle. Instantly it crumbled into a pile of rubble and revealed a passage to the other side. Artore walked through the passage with Ginsmed close behind, shaking his head in disbelief.
The two arrived at an arch of gold with an engraved plaque bearing these words:
Your genius and persistence have served you well
And guided you through the maze
For so your efforts shall be rewarded
For so you get the Glass Key of Bozreth.
Sure enough, hanging nearby was a key crafted from glass. Artore reached for the key and put it in his backpack. Then the two continued on.
After a long and stunned silence, Ginsmed spoke up. “Artore, how did you know to break the wall the way you did? Was that the answer to the riddle?”
“Ginsmed,” Artore replied, “As I said, riddles are not my thing. The only knowledge I possess is my strength and my only tool my battle axe. If I can’t reason with my mind, then I use other means I know well to solve the riddle.”
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