The Labyrinth

by Kenneth McDonald

“Keric. Keric, wake up.”

  The voice drew him the rest of the way back to consciousness, but it brought pain with it. His whole body hurt, but those aches could almost be forgotten against the throbbing that filled his skull. Falling back into the black seemed like a wholly preferable option, but he forced himself to open his eyes and sit up. He was surprised that he was able to manage that, but once he was fully awake the pain receded to a more or less manageable level.

  Ashandra was crouched over him. She looked to be mostly intact, if somewhat the worse for wear. Her dress was torn and singed in a few places, and her hair was scattered in a wild halo around her face, but her eyes were bright and alert. Marthek sat against the wall opposite, conscious but obviously in distress. He cradled the stump of his ruined arm, wrapped in a hasty bandage, in his remaining hand.

  “Where are we?” Keric asked, looking around. They were in a passage of unmarked stone. Ashandra had summoned a light from a silver pendant dangling from a chain around her wrist, but its glow didn’t extend more than a few paces down the tunnel to either side. The darkness seemed malevolent, expectant, and Keric quickly looked away.

  “We’re in the tunnel on the far side of the Petitioner’s Arch,” she said. “Don’t you remember?”

  “How long… how long was I unconscious?”

  “Just a few minutes. The blast from the disrupted resonance nearly knocked me out as well.”

  He nodded. “The blood golem?”

  She glanced over her shoulder, and when she looked back there was a haunted look in her eyes. “I collapsed the passage,” she said. “If it could get through, I suppose it would have already.”

  “We can’t assume that there isn’t another way around,” Keric said. “We need to find the exit. Help me up.”

  Ashandra nodded. Once he was back on his feet, both of them looked down at Marthek. “You said you had a healing spell, earlier,” Ashandra said.

  Marthek didn’t look up. “Better to just leave me,” he said.

  Keric knelt beside the stricken man and took out his wallet, and the last precious scroll inside. “I can’t replace your arm, but I can restore some strength, and maybe counter some of the effects of what that thing did to you.”

  Marthek looked as though he would protest, but finally he closed his eyes and nodded. Keric unrolled the scroll, and gestured for Ashandra to hold her light close by. The spell gave him no difficulties, and as the soft blue glow faded from the scroll and spread into the body of the steel mage, he sighed and relaxed incrementally. When Ashandra and Keric helped him to his feet, he was able to remain standing on his own power.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Give me… a moment,” he said, taking a few tentative steps back down the passage.

  “He needs immediate attention from a senior healer, and quickly,” Ashandra said quietly. “That thing hurt him, but more than that, it’s this place, it’s affecting us somehow. I can feel it.”

  Keric nodded. “That was an illegal stimulant in that vial, wasn’t it? Tarrenbar, or white lotus extract…”

  “Naetha,” she said. “It was naetha, if you must know. Unfortunately I had only the one dose, or I would share it with both of you.”

  He must have betrayed his revulsion in his expression, for she laughed grimly and shot him a hard look. “Had I not used it, none of us would be here right now.”

  “But the degenerative side effects—”

  “Only develop upon repeated and excessive use,” she responded. “You are in no position to judge me,” she added, nodding at his arms.

  Keric looked down, and saw that his bare skin was streaked with faint smears of red. At first he thought it was Marthek’s blood, from when he’d carried him earlier, but with a dawning realization he reached up and touched his face. He could feel the slight stickiness on his fingers even before he looked down at them. He already knew that he would find no cuts or gashes on his skin. Neither of the others bore such marks. They were the physical remnants of the magic he’d unleashed in the desperate battle against the blood golem. The marks of a blood mage.

  “I suppose if someone is still watching, we’re both finished as wizards,” she said, handing him a small kerchief from a pocket. “I wanted to win this before.”

  “And now?”

  “Now, I just want to live.”

  Marthek rejoined them, a bit steadier on his feet. He let Ashandra take the lead as they resumed their trek down the tunnel. It went on for what seemed like forever, and they were all breathing heavily by the time that they finally saw a light ahead.

  The passage opened onto a large oval chamber. A small stair of three broad steps led down to the level of the floor in front of them. The room was lit by lamps recessed into the ceiling, providing a vague but sufficient illumination. Keric could see at least four other exits, all on the near side of the room, and all at different levels, from one passage mouth at least ten feet above the floor, accessed by a ladder of iron rungs, to a deeply recessed opening in the floor that had the look of a cave mouth. The plethora of routes into the chamber made him nervous, and he quickly joined Ashandra in crossing the room.

  The floor in the center of the chamber descended via more steep tiers to culminate in a deep bowl. The stone on the far side of the depression was carved into a slender flight of stone steps that connected its bottom to their level, then continued up to a raised platform that filled the narrowest part of the chamber opposite. The ascent was steep enough so that a man atop the platform might feel a sense of vertigo looking over the brink; certainly the drop was enough to break bones if one misplaced a step.

  Their eyes were drawn to something in the center of the bowl, situated just a few steps from the bottom of the stairs. A crystal orb lay in a broad stone basin, flashing slightly in the diffuse glow from above. The orb looked like a smaller version of the Labyrinth crystal.

  “Come on,” Ashandra said. She moved carefully around the perimeter of the bowl to the stairs, but hardly slowed there, taking the steps quickly down to the bottom in front of the basin.

  Keric and Marthek followed more slowly. The scroll mage paused at the juncture of the steps, and peered up toward the top of the platform. He could now see what had been hidden in shadows before; one last arch, this one black and empty.

  “It’s the way out,” he said to the others. “It must be.”

  “This must be a trigger of some sort,” Ashandra said, moving around the basin to a spot where she could easily reach the crystal.

  “Be careful, it may be corrupted in some fashion,” Marthek said. The steel mage’s color was much improved since Keric had healed him, but as he reached the bottom of the steps he slumped against the edge of the bowl, exhaustion drawing hard lines across his features.

  “I am just going to test it,” Ashandra said. She looked at Keric, who had descended halfway down the steps. As he nodded, she reached out and gently placed both hands upon the crystal.

  He could not tell exactly what she was doing, but he could see the look of concentration deepen on her face, and suspected she was doing exactly what he would have done; Delving into the magic. He hoped that whatever test Seris had placed here for them could be overcome with their innate talents; his own spells were all gone, and he doubted that Ashandra had much magic of her own in reserve.

  But even as the thought crossed his mind, the sphere began to glow from within, casting the shield mage’s features into stark relief. He could see the beads of sweat glistening on her brow as she continued to focus upon the crystal, activating its magic. The glow spread across the bowl, and he only belatedly realized that it was being matched by another radiance behind him. He turned and looked up the stairs, and saw that a brightness matching the light coming from the crystal had appeared within the arch. It grew steadier until it formed a sheer plane, a shimmering opening, a portal back to their own reality.

  “You did it!” Keric said. “Come on, we’ve got
to get out of here before—”

  But his words died even as Ashandra released the sphere; the light instantly faded, along with the portal within the arch.

  “I can’t… I can’t keep it open,” she said. “It should… there’s something there, something pushing against me. It slammed the door as soon as I released it.”

  Keric stepped forward. “Let me try,” he said.

  “No. You have to get him out of here,” she said, nodding toward Marthek. The steel mage tried to protest, but she ruthlessly cut him off. “You can’t even stand, let alone manage something like this,” she said. She shifted her eyes toward Keric. “The same goes for you. I could barely manage it, even with the naetha in my bloodstream, and you look like you’re going to fall down at any moment.”

  He stepped forward. “There has to be something, a way that we haven’t thought of, to keep it open…”

  “Save it,” she said. “We don’t have time—”

  As if on cue, a sound interrupted her. A terrible, familiar sound.

  “It’s coming!” Marthek said. He surged to his feet, but almost as quickly fell, groaning as he collapsed onto the steps.

  Keric met Ashandra’s gaze. “Go,” she said. “Go.”

  He tore his eyes away from her as she turned back to the crystal orb. He grabbed onto Marthek, pulled him to his feet. He didn’t look back as he dragged the semi-conscious mage up the stairs, nearly falling with each step. Ahead of them the glow from the arch began to shine again. And behind… behind he knew what was coming, could see it in his mind almost as clearly as if he’d stopped to look. He could sense the eagerness of the entity to stop them, to absorb their blood as it had taken Trave’s, and had started with Marthek’s.

  As it would take Ashandra’s.

  He almost stopped there, at the top of the steps. The glow had spread and steadied, the portal open once more, though its light was tentative, its edges flickering within the boundary of stone. Marthek groaned and tried to pull free, and that alone was enough to drive Keric to action. Drawing upon the last lingering vestige of his strength, he hurled the both of them forward, into the light.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 9