"I'm glad that's finished," said Colorado Smith. "Reconstructing the Death Tablet of the Xuduvudu was never going to be easy." He ducked as a poisoned dart sped past his nose. "Now we know the symbol that will open the secret passage behind us we can escape from a hideous—"
"I don't think so," said his hardy sidekick Brunnhilde, plucking a feathered spear out of the air just as it was about to embed itself in Smith's back. "I agree that the six green stones lie horizontally, that the two yellow stones are vertical, and that the overall shape must be a square… We found that much in Hieronymus's Lost Notebook in the secret vault of Smenkhare's Vanished Pyramid. But—well, look at it!"
"I can't see anything wrong," said Colorado, irritated.
"The Xuduvudu are ophiolaters, Smith. Snake-worshippers."
"You know I hate snakes! Anyway, my reconstruction has snakes! Four of them. A long wiggly one down the middle and—"
"Smith: the Xuduvudu worship Oroconda. What does that mean in Xuduvudish?"
"Um—The One That Eats Its Own Tail?"
"Precisely. So the lines should form a single closed loop," said Brunnhilde.
"Now she tells me," muttered Smith, ducking a barrage of fire-arrows.
"I also have a feeling that some of the stones may be upside down," Brunnhilde continued. But Smith was too busy moving stones to reply.
What would be the correct reconstruction?
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The answer
The Death Tablet of the Xuduvudu looks like this (or its mirror image).
The winner is Helen Power from Cardiff
