‘Thanks.’ The word sounded less gracious than I wanted it to, but at least this time I said it. If Lorican had really known what kind of threats lurked in the cavern, then agreeing to guide me down here and risk himself had required courage. I wondered what Acarius had done for him, and just how far back he and the old man went.
He shrugged. ‘No trouble. What does it say?’
‘Apparently we’re at the beginning of a puzzle.’ I brushed the dust away from the carving, but I hadn’t missed anything. There wasn’t going to be an easier way out. I touched the letters and recited:
‘When one does not know what it is, then it is something; but when one knows what it is, then it is nothing. Prove thy worth at the middle of the web and all doors will open.’
I sighed. ‘The answer is “a riddle”. A riddle maze. We’ve got to get to the centre in order to “prove our worth”. It’s probably where the artefact is, but more urgently, it’s probably where the lever to open the gate will be. The priests had to have a way to rescue stuck devotees. Makes no sense to let your shills die before they can pay you.’
Lorican was studying me, not the writing. ‘Not a religious man, are you?’
‘Not for Jaern, anyway.’ I ran my fingertips across the pictograph, following its sinuous lines. I had never found the doctrine of the Lord of Secrets convincing – the idea that if you proved your worth, the god would give you secret knowledge. I had never found any of the doctrine about the gods convincing. My mother had prayed to Ranara, the Lady of Shadows, every night. It was one of the few things I could remember about her, apart from the bits that I didn’t want to remember. Ranara hadn’t kept my mother alive. Jaern wasn’t going to teach anybody anything.
I cleared my throat and tapped the pictograph. ‘This part says I’ll go to the hell-of-ice-and-knives for my blasphemy, if that makes you feel any better. We should start the maze. Put the lamps out, before the oil is used up.’ I scribed an illumination spell on the back of my hand. When I pronounced it, a tongue of blue flame bobbed above my right shoulder.
‘Can’t you . . . ?’ Lorican pointed at the light. ‘Why do we need to worry about the lamps?’
‘I might not continue to be in a condition to make even a childish incantation like this one.’ I met his eyes, trying to make him understand what I was saying. If the magic toxicity knocked me out, Brix and Lorican still had a chance of making it out if they had working lamps. If not, they’d be even more thoroughly trapped than they already were. ‘Magic takes a lot of energy; also, miners say that lamps burn up the sweet air. Save the lamp oil.’
He nodded shortly, and put out their lamps.
*
There had to be more traps, of course.
The hallway led away from the gate, terminating in a ‘T’ shape. There was a picture on the wall where the path split in two, a mosaic of a life-sized man in glittering, semi-precious stones. His arms stretched out, pointing in both directions. Once his eyes must have held larger stones, but now they were empty, staring sockets. Over his head was a string of letters. The translation spell rearranged them for me a moment later:
The blind lost my name; the deaf found it.
I repeated it to the others, in case they recognised the riddle. They both frowned.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Lorican said.
The picture shouldn’t have mattered. I should have been able to solve the maze by keeping my right hand exactly where it was – on the wall that had started to the right of the entrance. It would require traversing every corridor in the maze, but it should work.
But it didn’t make sense that the instructions had promised doors – plural – would open, unless there was a way to make more of them fall. So there had to be more pressure plates, or trip wires, and a way to avoid them. It was a puzzle on more than one level. Taking a wrong turn had to have worse consequences than just getting lost. It had to mean getting stuck, having to pay some kind of penance.
‘What did you come down here for, anyway?’ Brix said.
‘I don’t know, exactly,’ I said, and braced for the way they both looked at me, like I was incompetent or mad, or both. ‘Acarius couldn’t tell me. But it’s here, probably in the sanctuary. Why do you care?’
‘I thought if I knew what the treasure was, it might give us some kind of clue to this thing,’ Brix said.
A child, of sorts. You’ll know it when you see it. The riddle was about vision.
If only I could have shut off the pain in my knee enough to think, even for a moment. Acarius had believed I’d be able to get through this. Almost certainly I was just not seeing what the puzzle really was. ‘Visions, visual, sight, see, look . . .’ I straightened. ‘Look. It’s something about the mosaic. Something we can see.’
Brix chewed her lip. ‘Like what?’
‘Like something out of place, maybe,’ I said. ‘Or a symbol.’
‘Whatever Acarius was doing in here when I brought him down,’ Lorican offered, ‘he couldn’t have got far. I was hurt, and he made me stay at the door outside. I hardly had time to sharpen my knife.’
Maybe he had come no further than this. I looked into the empty eyes of the figure on the wall and hoped that my grandfather hadn’t wrecked my only clue.
Brix stepped closer to the mosaic, gesturing for me to send the light closer to her. I did, and watched as her nose wrinkled with concentration, her eyes moving. ‘It’s . . . the pattern,’ she said. ‘Some of them are shiny, like mica. Do you see it?’
I did, when she had pointed it out. If I made the light move slowly back and forth, the glittering stones in the mosaic, scattered among the flat ones, shone in the pattern of a half-closed eye. Brix looked over her shoulder at me. ‘Should I try?’
‘Try what?’ Lorican said. ‘Gray told me you know things. Are you a . . .’ He looked at her, doubtful. ‘Priestess?’
She grinned. ‘Not quite. But I know about Jaern-temples, and this looks like the sort of thing they put on locked doors. If it is the same sort of thing, I can unlock it.’ Her smile faded a little. ‘If the countersigns are the same, that is.’
I didn’t like the bit of doubt, but what else were we supposed to do? I swept my eyes across the mosaic, starting at one corner and scanning it systematically. Outside of the Jaernic symbol, it was just a collection of stones, arranged to look like a pretty young man. ‘I can’t think of a better idea,’ I admitted. ‘Try the countersign.’
Brix put her hands at her sides, and took the time for a couple of deep breaths. Then her hand flashed up, so quickly it was difficult to follow, and she touched the shiny stones in a rapid sequence, counting under her breath. Each one clicked as she pressed on it. When she finished she stepped back.
At first nothing happened. Then, with a high, grinding whine, the stones in the mosaic began to shift and move, flowing over the mortar like water over a streambed. Lips made of chalcedony curved into a smile. Pale quartz fingers on the right hand pointed. And the eyeless head turned, slowly, until it was in profile, facing right.
‘That seems conclusive,’ I muttered. ‘I think we’re meant to go right.’
Brix came to stand beside me and took my hand. ‘Come on, then. Lean on me.’ As her fingers gripped mine, the ache from the spell behind my ear dimmed, just a bit.
‘No.’ I twisted away from her. I felt weak and helpless, but I was damned if I was going to demonstrate my failings in front of her and Lorican. ‘I can walk. I’m fine.’
‘You’re stupid.’ She grabbed my sleeve and put my arm around her shoulders. ‘You said yourself that we might not have much time before the air starts to foul, and Lorican can’t help you because he’s the wrong height.’ With that, she started walking into the black passageway, and I had no choice but to keep up.
The passage twisted and curved, but there were no wires – no falling gates – no pits. We must have made the right choice, but it was disorientating as the hells because the walls were all the same black, shiny, polished stone. W
e were leaving footprints on the dusty floor, too, almost as though we were walking in snow.
The second choice came before we had walked far. We came to a larger room that branched into two passages. Instead of a mosaic this time, three obsidian statues graced the middle of the floor – a trio of female dancers. My stomach turned over as I looked at their faces.
‘What’s the matter with their eyes?’ Lorican said.
Instead of irises and pupils, the dancers had blank white eyes, mouths open in either song or screams. I swallowed my distaste. ‘They’re supposed to be yavadis – slaves. Some of the traditionalists still use them, girls kept so full of yavad that they go blind. A way to get heavenly visions, I suppose.’ Or hellish ones. I didn’t like the look of those open mouths, holes in the rock. It was almost as if the statues had been a fountain once.
‘There’s writing on the base.’ Lorican crouched beside the statues. ‘Another riddle, likely – see if you can read it.’
I already knew I could read it, if I could stay on my feet long enough to get around the statues. Leaning on Brix, I limped in a circle, reading aloud as I went:
‘I am the song-killer, the city-breaker, and when I have consumed, I die.’
Silence, while I looked at the words so I wouldn’t have to look at the statues’ faces. My wits felt like they were slowing with every new challenge. ‘Any ideas?’ I said.
Lorican wiped sweat out of his eyes with the cuff of his sleeve, in spite of the chill in the room. ‘Thirst,’ he said. ‘The answer to the riddle is “thirst”, I reckon. “When I have consumed, I die.” Unless either of you has a better answer.’
‘But what does it mean?’ Brix’s hand tightened around my forearm. ‘Are we supposed to drink yavad?’
‘Drinking yavad wouldn’t do anything – it’s a sedative, all it would do is make us tired.’ And maybe take the edge off my knee, but I wasn’t going to risk blunting my wits, not down here. Besides, there was a part of my mind that wanted to save the half-bottle of yavad that I had left in my pouch. If it came down to dying in the dark, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be sober.
‘Maybe there’s a hint in the design, like last time,’ Brix said.
But there wasn’t, as far as I could see. The dancers weren’t pointing at anything, they weren’t painted, nothing was out of place.
‘If there’s nothing to go on,’ Lorican said, ‘you could divine, couldn’t you? Scry for the answer?’
‘It’s not going to be that ludicrously simple,’ I snapped. ‘Divining spirals need foci – names, usually – and even if I knew the name of a maze designer who died centuries ago, I couldn’t do more than divine their location, which is presumably a boneyard somewhere.’ I sighed. ‘Let’s think. The statue is asking some kind of question. The maze is supposed to make the pilgrim prove they’re worthy to learn Jaern’s secrets, right? It’s a temple. There’s supposed to be worship happening. Maybe there’s a prayer—’ I glanced at Brix.
‘Are you asking me to perform a miracle?’ she said. ‘The priests do those.’
‘I don’t know what I’m asking.’ I pulled away from her and leaned against the wall. ‘I want something to make sense.’
Lorican crossed his arms, frowning. ‘When did Acarius give you this task? What exactly did he say? Maybe you’re forgetting something. It’s not like him to withhold information.’
‘He gave it to me about two weeks ago, via unsecure intrapersonal conjuration, and it’s very like him,’ I said. ‘Maybe he doesn’t withhold information with you. Congratulations. All he told me was to go to Ri Dana, find you and then retrieve an artefact down here, about which he only said I’d know it when I saw it.’ I glared at the statue. ‘I am assuming it’s not this unholy thing, but that’s just because there’s no way I could lift it.’
‘You’re angry with him,’ Lorican said, surprised.
Angry wasn’t a big enough word. I swallowed, and tried to wrestle back some kind of control over the situation. ‘At the moment how I feel about my grandfather is irrelevant. Are we going right, or left, or back to the beginning? Does anybody have an idea how to choose?’
An uncomfortable silence descended, where Brix and Lorican both scowled at me and I scowled at the writing on the base of the yavadis statues, willing it to become coherent. I should have been able to figure it out.
‘We go right,’ Brix said, at last. ‘If there’s no reason to choose one way or the other, then someone just has to make a decision. I’ll look down the passage before we go tromping into it. Send the light with me, Gray. Maybe I can see a turn, or a tripwire or something.’
‘I’ll go with you.’ Lorican moved beside her. ‘Two heads are better than one.’
‘Why am I the only one who stays?’ I dragged myself upright.
Lorican glanced at me. ‘Because you’re the only one who can’t pick his feet up quickly. Quit grousing and give us the light.’
‘Gods, fine.’ I let myself slump back against the wall and made the ball of blue light follow them. ‘Be careful. There could be another pressure plate.’
Brix looked back at me, with the glow on her hair. ‘Or it could just be a regular maze, and if we’re wrong we have to backtrack. Have a little hope.’
When they got to the arched doorway of the passage, she dropped into a crouch and examined the walls, then the ceiling. She slid one hand forwards along the floor, pushing through the inch of dust that coated the stone.
‘I don’t see anything,’ she said.
‘Right.’ Lorican took one step, and then another into the passage. ‘I don’t see anything on the walls, either. If it’s a trap, it’s well hidden.’
That didn’t mean there was nothing there. I began limping towards them. ‘Wait. It doesn’t have to be mechanical. Let me—’ I saw it as Brix stepped into the passage, in the clean place on the floor her hand had left: a painted ward sigil, just beginning to glow. ‘Wait!’
She turned, her foot scraping across the rest of the sigil.
Up from the floor exploded a gate, yanked from its slumber by the force of magic that was still as strong now as it had been centuries ago, when it was scribed. It clanged into position, filling the entire doorway between us with metal cross-hatches, glowing a dull orange.
‘Help me!’ I tugged downwards on the gate. ‘Hurry!’
Lorican had lunged towards the doorway when the gate shrieked its way into place. Now he put the unlit lamp on the floor, curled his fingers around the metal and glanced at Brix, who took hold of the cross-hatches above her head. ‘Everyone together. One, two, three.’
We yanked. Brix pulled hard enough that her feet left the ground, her entire weight on the gate. It didn’t budge.
‘No, dammit!’ I slammed the heel of my hand against the steel.
Brix startled. ‘Don’t do that!’ It was the first time I’d ever heard her raise her voice. ‘It doesn’t help!’ She took a step back from the gate, raking both hands through her hair.
I knew what it was like to flinch when someone yelled, to watch faces and hands. I hated that when I was afraid I wanted to shout and hide and make enough noise to get people to leave. ‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘Great Linna’s fire, we’re spiked,’ Lorican said, quietly, studying the edges of the gate. A muscle jumped in his throat. ‘I don’t know that this can open, brat, unless you know how to get the spell to let go. There’s not even a latch holding it.’
‘Go a little way down the passage and see if it’s a dead end,’ I said. Maybe I was the one locked in, and they could go on. ‘But – stay where you can see me.’
‘I’ll do it.’ Lorican jogged a few paces down the hallway, until he could see around the corner. He turned back to me. ‘It’s a blank wall.’
‘All right. It’s going to be all right. I’ll get you out.’ I allowed myself to hang on to the gate, using my arms to take the weight off my knee for a bit. ‘Brush away the dust on the floor, so I can see the whole sigil. Maybe I can break the ley.’
> Brix squatted and swept the floor clean with the palms of her hands, heaping the dust around her feet. ‘You mean you’d do whatever-it-was you did in the alley behind Lorican’s tavern?’
‘Knocking out the magic might make the gate fall.’ The ward sigil wasn’t a spiral. The runes were arranged in more of a triangle, something I’d never seen before.
‘Might.’ Brix’s hands rested on the edges of the runes. She was frowning at me. ‘Might?’
‘That’s—’ I blinked. ‘Move so you’re not touching it. The magic might have been just a trigger and there could be some mechanical lock. Or the magic could be holding it. I can’t read the incantation well enough to know. It’s almost like it’s just a . . . piece of an incantation.’ What I could see of the runes didn’t look promising – there was no static sequence, nothing that should have been keeping the gate in place. ‘Doing the ley-breaker would at least prove it one way or the other.’
‘And it would ruin the painkiller you put on your knee and wreck the light,’ Brix said.
I had been trying not to think about that. ‘So?’
‘So you’ll make yourself of no use to anybody, just on the off-chance that the gate might fall?’ She leaned backwards and pointed at the runes. ‘This is a prayer. You remember the one from the temple in Fenwydd?’
‘That was a spell, just like this one,’ I said, ‘written with a different style of runes than Guild characters, not—’
‘Stop talking,’ she snapped. ‘I’m explaining something to you. You don’t know everything. This is half of a Jaernic prayer, just like the one that went around the library at the Fenwydd temple. If you’d triggered that one, it would have dropped gates too, locked you in the room with the books. The way to deactivate the prayer in Fenwydd was to let the idol in the sanctuary taste fire. So there’s something that would have deactivated this prayer, too, that we missed.’ She paused. ‘You look like you have a question.’
‘If I find the equivalent of letting an idol taste fire, will it drop this thing?’ I pulled at the gate one last time, unable to help myself. It was maddening.
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