The Labyrinth

by Kenneth McDonald

Keric groaned and sat up, holding his head, where it felt as though a gang of miners had gone to work on the inside of his skull with pickaxes. “What happened?”

  Whatever had affected him, the others were clearly feeling it as well. He was the only one to have fallen down, but Ashandra was leaning against the wall, clearly relying on the stone for support, and Trave was on his knees. Only Marthek was still standing unassisted, but even he looked decidedly unsteady.

  “We’re in the Labyrinth,” he said, trying to ignore the pounding in his head. Marthek offered him a hand, which he accepted gratefully. The room swirled around him slightly as he stood, but he was able to stay on his feet without help.

  “Where else?” Ashandra said. With deliberation she stepped away from the wall, although she still looked pale.

  Keric looked around. The small foyer where they were standing looked like the room he’d seen through the Viewing Pool, but slightly… different. The whitestone blocks that made up the walls were gray and dingy, covered with a thin film that might have been dirt or soot. The lamps in the wall niches still shed light, but their flames were weak, fitful, struggling as though a faint gust might extinguish them completely. The four archways that provided egress from the room also looked somehow off, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on the problem. His eyes rose to the capstones above each arch, each marked with a different design that matched the symbols they wore on their belt buckles.

  “Something’s wrong,” he said.

  “There is always some disorientation when entering the Labyrinth,” Trave said. “It is a byproduct of our bodies adjusting to the altered reality present within an extradimensional space. But I have to admit, it was never this bad before.”

  “Maybe the Paladin’s skills are overrated,” Ashandra said. She turned toward the arch that bore the shield icon. “We might as well get this business over with.”

  “Maybe we’d better stay together,” Keric suggested. “I know we’re supposed to face the challenges individually, but if there is something wrong…”

  “If there was, wouldn’t they have pulled us out?” Ashandra countered.

  Trave nodded. “This could be part of the test,” he said.

  “What do you think, Marthek?” Keric asked.

  The golden-haired knight frowned. “I don’t know. I don’t like it, though.”

  Ashandra let out a derisive snort. “Well, you boys can huddle around here until mommy and daddy come to rescue you, but I still intend to win this thing.” She seemed to have recovered her equilibrium fully, and even Keric could feel his headache fading. Before any of them could comment, she stepped forward and vanished through the arch.

  Trave shrugged. “The Labyrinth can be a rough experience, but it’s not lethal,” the gem mage said. “Good luck, gentlemen.” With a nod at Marthek and Keric, he walked through the arch that matched his sigil.

  Keric looked at Marthek, who shrugged and did the same. The scroll mage stood there alone for another few heartbeats, then took a steadying breath and turned to the arch meant for him.

  The darkness of the archway gave way to a staircase of deep stone steps that descended in a slight curve. He almost stopped to conjure a light, but then saw that there was a bright glow coming from the foot of the stairs. He was almost fully recovered from his earlier disorientation, but he still made his way down slowly and carefully, with one hand on the inner wall.

  As he approached the bottom of the staircase he could see that it culminated in a broad landing. The walls were decorated with arcane symbols that looked almost as though they had been hacked into the stone. He couldn’t decipher any of the symbols, but somehow they filled him with a vague sense of disquiet. The glow originated through another open archway on the far side of the landing, where another, larger chamber could be seen beyond.

  Keric stopped there at the base of the stairs, and opened his case of scrolls. He’d already rearranged them in the most probable order he’d need them, so it only took a moment to withdraw the one he wanted. Turning so that the glow from the chamber fell upon the writing, he incanted the spell stored upon the parchment. Using a scroll scribed by someone else always felt different than his own work, with each mage’s magic feeling as distinct and unique as a fingerprint. But the spell was one with which he was quite familiar, and it gave him no difficulty. Within ten seconds he’d completed it, and he felt a tingling that spread across his body, sharpening until it was just shy of painful before it faded. The warding was invisible, but he could feel it there, its power lying quiescent upon him until it was needed. It would fade in a few hours in any case, but he hoped to be well clear of the Labyrinth by then.

  He took out a second scroll and cast it as well, adding a warding for mental protection on top of the physical defense he’d just enacted. That spell went easily as well, but as he triggered it he felt a sudden wave of disorientation sweep over him. Keric stood there and weathered it, breathing in deep and steady breaths until the dizziness faded.

  With his wards in place, he started toward the arch. The room beyond was not as big as he’d first thought, a square maybe six and a half strides on a side. The glow came from bright globes set into the corners of the room just above eye-level. Below them, Keric could see four stone pedestals that jutted from the walls like teeth. Atop each pedestal was an irregularly-shaped piece of metal. On the far side of the room was the apparent exit, a slab of stone of a slightly different color than the blocks that made up the walls. There was a small round opening in the door, ringed with some sort of silvery metal, and something else beneath it, a marking or design that he couldn’t quite make out from across the room.

  So his first trial would be a puzzle, then. He started forward into the room, but hesitated in the archway. Aware that he was being watched and judged, still he lingered there a moment, thinking. Ashandra might be the sort to charge forward, trusting to her talent and her magic to keep her safe from whatever traps she triggered, but Keric had always been more deliberate. It didn’t seem like the Labyrinth was the best place to change his habits.

  Finally he drew back, and opened his scroll case again. He paused again over the next scroll, considering his options.

  Layering was one of the more intricate hazards of working magic. Spells were extremely complex things, and even when they were designed to work in conjunction, it was very easy for even an experienced wizard to miscast a spell that was layered on another already in effect. Keric had once successfully layered four spells, but they had all been his own work, and it had been in the controlled environment of a classroom at the University. The magic of the Labyrinth itself wasn’t supposed to interfere with the workings of the wizards participating in the competition, but it was becoming increasingly clear to him that something was wrong, either by design or accident. Making assumptions in such circumstances was… dangerous.

  But when it came down to it, he decided that he would rather take risks now, before he’d placed himself in the midst of a trial. He took out a third scroll from the case, took a deep breath, and incanted the spell inscribed upon the parchment.

  His head began to spin almost at once, even before he had finished the first line. He completed the spell through sheer determination, but as the magic flashed around him, he staggered and nearly fell. Only the cold hard stone of the archway supported him, and he clung to it for stability as the walls spun and distorted around him. The bright glow coming from the room sent daggers of pain into his skull, and he closed his eyes, groaning as he fought through the pulsating waves of nausea.

  After an interminable span of time had passed, he stirred and opened his eyes. For the briefest moment he could not remember where he was, then memory and awareness returned in a sudden jarring surge.

  Slowly he stood, keeping the fingers of one hand connected to the wall in case he needed the support again. But he could stand, if a bit unsteadily.

  The room on the far side of the arch
was as it had been before, but its contents had slid into sharp detail. He could now clearly see the markings in the door, and the narrow slit underneath them. The round opening in the top of the door ringed by the silver metal was not a keyhole, as he’d first thought, but a spigot of some type, probably for the inevitable trap. He still couldn’t make out the full details of the metal objects on the platforms in the corners, except that each appeared to be made out of a different metal, and they were cut into different patterns, flat disks with jagged edges like oddly-spaced and sized teeth.

  Keys, then. No doubt if he slid the incorrect one into the door, something bad came out of the spigot.

  There was something else, something that seemed wrong, but which he couldn’t quite identify at first even with the boost to his senses from the perception-enhancing Heightening spell he’d just cast. The spell could cause some minor distortions, and with the combined effects of the layering and the odd problems with the Labyrinth, those could be expected. But as Keric studied the room, he realized that when he quickly shifted his attention from one side of the room to the other, faint red trails were visible in his peripheral vision, glowing tracks that faded to nothing when he turned his full attention upon them. Frowning, he studied the phenomenon for a minute longer, but did not learn anything further.

  You’re procrastinating, he told himself. He couldn’t gain anything more from standing in the doorway, so he turned to the nearest pedestal on his left and started into the room.

  He’d been ready for just about anything, but he hadn’t expected the trap to trigger instantly; midway through his second step through the arch the spigot on the door flared, and a stream of fire shot unerringly across the room to engulf him in a violent, raging maelstrom of flame.

  Keric fell back against the wall of the room as the flames roared over him. He cried out as he huddled there, just for a moment, while panic nearly claimed him. He couldn’t see, couldn’t feel anything except for a rising heat. The thought of his skin charring to black finally shook him to action, and clutching the wall of the room he staggered back to the archway. The flames followed him, and he could feel the heat beginning to sear his skin as his magical shield was overwhelmed. With another cry he dove forward through the arch and rolled clear, crawling until he ran into the first step of the staircase.

  He just lay there for a while, breathing in deep gulps of air. The flames had stopped, but he could smell the acrid tang of char, probably from his clothes. The skin on his back was raw and tender, but it could have been a lot worse; he had no doubt whatsoever that without his warding, the flame trap would have killed him.

  Moving slowly, he rose to a seated position and checked himself over. The ornate robe was a wreck, but at least it had offered some modicum of protection against the trap. He stripped it off and tossed it aside. It was a bit cool in just his vest and trousers—an odd feeling after being nearly roasted alive—but he welcomed the freedom of mobility gained by discarding the robe. Then he felt a momentary panic as he realized that his scroll case was gone.

  He found it a moment later, just barely inside the archway. His fears were confirmed as he picked it up. The exterior of the case had been blackened with char, and even before he opened it and saw the damage to the seal he knew what he would find.

  The scrolls themselves were mostly intact. But even the slight crinkling on the edges of the parchments had been enough. He checked each one just to be sure, but even before he unrolled them he could tell, could sense that the magic stored on them was gone, disrupted by the fire, or maybe by the magic of the Labyrinth, which he could no longer deny had somehow turned against them.

  His Heightening spell was still in effect, sharpening his hearing, so he quite clearly heard the distant cry that echoed down from the staircase above. The voice was familiar, as was the sound of pain and terror that filled it. This time he didn’t take time to think, and was charging up the stairs even as the shout abruptly and permanently ended.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 5