by Lyndon Hardy
Rose-tinted clouds hung low over the hilltops in the center of the island, while the sky above the harbor was just beginning to show its blue. Canthor's banners hung limply from his keep, and beyond it, the details of the hall were muted in shadow. The faint groan of rigging in the harbor mixed with the crunch of their rapid footsteps on the rock, but otherwise the air hung heavy with the morning silence.
"They expect Drandor to be finished when the sun tops that ridge." Jemidon nodded to the east. "There barely will be enough time to get you in the well. But with my sliding about the scenery, I could come for you no sooner."
"I still do not quite understand," Delia said as they hurried along. "The scenery is supposed to be an aid to help the sorcerer cast his spell. An aid to put the watcher in the proper frame of mind. We were working with helmets and pikes, swords and battle-axes, to suggest battle scenes. Now you have replaced them with wavecaps and fogs, totally unrelated to what I will chant."
"Precisely the point," Jemidon said. "The more divergence, the better our chances will be. You see-"
He stopped suddenly and pointed ahead to the hall. "Look, waiting at the stage doorway are some robes of brown. Hurry, we can ill afford delay when dealing with Gerilac's tyros."
Jemidon grabbed Delia's hand, as he had done on the granite cliff, and sprang into a run. Together, they covered the remaining distance in a rush. As they approached the stage entrance, Jemidon recognized Erid and the others, standing with studied nonchalance in the frame of the door.
"Faster, faster," Erid shouted as they drew close. "I want to see your expressions when your entry is barred."
In response, Jemidon put on a burst of speed, tugging on Delia's arm. But she gasped and stumbled; reluctantly, he slowed his pace.
For a moment more, Erid watched without moving. Then, when they were about fifty paces away, he and the other tyros sprang back into the hall and slammed the doors. Jemidon heard the bar drop with a heavy thud.
"The patrons' entrance," Jemidon said. "Before they can secure it as well. Somehow we will work our way back to the stage."
Delia nodded, and they quickly circled the hall. Seen from the front, wings of unlike design jogged away from the central structure, one sprouting twin towers at its far end, the other a staggered tier of small boxes. Four doors cut the entrance facade, each one grander than the one adjacent, the last filling an archway twice the height of a man. Together, Jemidon and Delia bounded from the rock path and through the largest entryway into the hall.
Immediately they plunged into dimness. Two candles in a wall sconce illuminated three identical doors and a single staircase leading off to the right. Delia ran forward to try one of the latches, but Jemidon pulled her back.
"No, let's try upstairs," he said. "These probably all lead into the Maze of Partitions on the first floor. It would take who knows how long to work our way through to the stage. Perhaps in a balcony we can find a faster way around."
They raced upstairs and found a long corridor snaking off to the left. The wait nearest the stage was lined with doorways and elaborate portals that opened onto boxes beyond. Jemidon poked his head in one and saw that it was completely empty, the far wall hung with shutters that had been pulled firmly closed. In the next were lavish furnishings, couches with gilded frameworks, and deep floor cushions of shiny silk.
"Come along," Jemidon shouted as he withdrew. "These probably all open onto a balcony above the Maze. Let's follow the corridor to the end. There should be another stairway there."
Running faster on the smooth floors than they had been able to do outside, Jemidon and Delia traversed the straight mns of the passageway and followed the bends that wound about the outer wall of the hall. Finally they reached a barrier of brick and stone that blocked them from going further. In growing desperation, they looked for another exit, either up or down, but found none.
"By the laws, it is too late to retrace our steps back to the entrance and try again," Jemidon said. He grabbed savagely at the closed door on the last box in line and tried to wrench it open. The thin wood creaked, bowing from the jamb, but bolts at the top and bottom set from the inside held it in place. Tendrils of cold air whiffed from the crack as the door sprang back.
"Someone is in there!" Jemidon exclaimed. "Who could it be? All of the masters will be in the first row, and these presentations are for no others."
"Does it matter?" Delia asked. "I thought our goal was to get me to the well."
Jemidon grunted and tried the door on the next box adjacent to the one that was sealed. It flew open. With no better plan in mind, he motioned Delia to follow him in.
The interior was decorated more luxuriously than most, with patterned draperies hanging on three sides and even a painting on the closed shutters facing the stage. Lighted cressets brimmed with scented oil, and additional bottles stood amidst sand buckets underneath.
Jemidon climbed over a down-filled bed in the middle of the room and flicked at the latches on the shutters, pushing them open to look out onto the lower floor of the hall. His eyes swept the stage, and he suddenly stopped in mid-glance.
"It is like what I saw the night of the storm," he said. "But this time Drandor has made it much more real."
The trader had tilted a mirror over the chanting well. The light that arched upward did not project throughout the hail, but reflected horizontally onto a curtain that hung from the stage. On its surface, Jemidon saw a scene that moved and changed as he watched. From some impossibly high vantage point, he viewed the offshore islands of Arcadia, sparkling in the sea like pearls on a string. Then, in a breathtaking dive, the islands grew and moved from the center of focus to vanish off the edges of the screen. Morgana remained in view, swelling larger with each instant. The hills, the harbor, and the individual buildings resolved into recognition. The detail was not that of a sorcerer's illusion or even of a good painting, Jemidon knew; but somehow the production was compelling, drawing him in so that he could not turn aside. He felt like a hawk swooping on its prey, expecting any minute to see a small rodent scamper among individual tufts of grass.
With a stomach-screeching "turn," Jemidon felt himself stop the plummet and reverse direction above the highest tower of the presentation hall. He raced over the peak with only inches to spare. He banked to the side and glided for a pass over the harbor. With a final turn away from a setting sun, he sailed from the island in a growing twilight.
The first row of the lower level which contained the masters burst into an incoherent babble. Jemidon blinked his thoughts back to attention and saw Drandor emerge from the well with his smile at its widest.
"Most interesting." The sorcerer on the right rose to greet him. He stepped past the small table with the open scroll and bulging bag of coins. "These glamours do not have the detail, but if I had to decide between yours and what I saw of Gerilac's today, my choice would be clear."
"Intriguing, I agree," the next in line said, "but should not master Gerilac be given the benefit of the doubt? We all have seen his Women of the Slave Quarter before. The high prince himself whispered that he enjoyed it well."
"You are to judge only what you see now." Drandor's smile melted away. "Past performances were not to be a factor."
"But it is so little time from our celebration," the second sorcerer continued. "Like us all, master Gerilac was not fully rested. It is no wonder he was unable to weave again the splendid glamour that we enjoyed so well when the prince was here."
"You have seen two performances," Drandor insisted. "It is no concern of mine that the other did not match its expectations." The trader looked about the hall. "And if the last does not start immediately, then we should waste no more time and proceed to your vote."
"A moment more," Farnel called out from backstage. "My tyros will arrive shortly."
"The vote," Drandor repeated, and several masters nodded their heads in agreement.
Jemidon tore his eyes away from the stage and finally looked down to the floor. "There,"
he exclaimed. "From our vantage point, we can see a path below the long tapestry on the left, a narrow walkway that winds to the front of the hall."
He turned back into the box and grabbed the nearest draperies from their hangings. While the masters argued, he tied several together and threw one end of a makeshift rope over the shutter rail. Delia nodded understanding. With Jemidon bracing against her weight, she shimmied down its length to land on the floor below. She paused and looked up expectantly, but he waved her on, holding up the free end of the drapery still in his hands. As she sped onto the walkway, he glanced back into the box, looking for a means to anchor his own way down.
While he tested the weight of the bed and tried to maneuver it into a position so that it would not slide, the agitation of the masters increased as more joined in the debate.
"But we agreed to three," one shouted above the rest.
"It does not matter," another answered. "Farnel has not yet started and has forfeited his chance. Let us vote and then be done."
Other voices blurred the argument into indistinction, but then suddenly Delia's clear tones cut through them all. Her words pulsed with energy, crystal sharp and demanding attention, filling the expanse of the hall. Not strained or forced, they carried rich harmonics of mystery and allure.
For a moment, the babble rumbled onward. Then, one by one, the masters stopped to listen, their own voices quickly hushed when they became aware of what they heard. Like enraptured children, they settled back into their seats, concentrating on the charm.
Delia ran through the first glamour with the same skill she had exhibited in Farnel's hut. The spell for Dark Clouds blended smoothly into that for Clinton's Granite Spires. As she reached the last syllables, the stage curtains parted in darkness. Then, with the final word, the scene behind sprang to life. Jemidon dropped the drapery and returned to the open shutters to watch what the reaction would be.
On the stage, a two-masted sloop, its sails billowing from offstage fans, frothed in a shallow sea. Bellow-driven sprays dashed against canvas boulders. The largest rock was topped by a light that swept in slow circles and caught the dust that churned in the main vault of the hall.
Then, as quickly as the scene had appeared, the stage returned to blackness and Delia started the next portion of the charm. An excited murmur started to swell along the masters' row. Jemidon smiled. It was working as he had thought. The sorcerers could not have doubted that Delia's words would produce images of the mountains surrounded by high clouds. Her voice was too pure. And to see scenes of the ocean instead had to be an intriguing surprise.
"But that is no sorcery," Jemidon heard Drandor shout. "I have made sure that there is none. I am the one who must win. By logic's laws, there can be no other way!" Louder hisses for silence drowned out the trader. Except for Delia's voice, the hall quieted like a wizard's tomb. The masters sat attentively now, anxious to see what the next images would be. Drandor stomped his foot in frustration and looked up in Jemidon's direction to the box on his left.
For a moment, nothing happened in response. Only Delia's voice filled the expanses of the hall. Then, as the curtains began to part for a second time, the shutters on the next box banged open loudly and a bottle of oil sailed out to crash onto the walkway immediately below. A lighted torch followed and, in a flash, the long wall tapestry burst into flame.
Two more bottles hurled from the opening and shattered like the first. A brace of torches scattered over a wide arc. In two heartbeats, the first level was ablaze with half a dozen fires.
Jemidon looked back at the doorway and then to Delia, still chanting in the well. He threw the drapery aside and impulsively climbed up onto the ledge. Without pausing to take aim, he vaulted from his perch.
The momentum of his kick carried him past the walkway directly below. He crashed through a thin panel canopy, hit a pillowed divan, and tumbled to the floor. He staggered to his feet and looked about to catch his bearings. The sorcerers were aflutter. They had seen the fire, and Delia's voice no longer held them in thrall. Like huge black birds, they ran in all directions, tripping over buckets and shouting commands.
But the frenzy of the fires was already greater. Licks of flame touched oiled paneling, bursting the wood into glowing splinters that started dozens of additional blazes where they landed. A storeroom of paints and canvas suddenly exploded, sending globs of incandescence throughout the interior. Far faster than one could believe possible, the entire hall was embraced in the beginnings of a fiery death.
Jemidon saw the mirror that projected images from the well; reflected within was Delia's frown of apprehension as she debated what to do. She might remain, struggling to continue until it was too late. He had to get to the well and help her escape. But the walkway she had taken was now engulfed in flame. He glanced to the side and then quickly dove through a low doorway as the expanding fire caught another tapestry that billowed in yellow and orange.
Jemidon raced along the snaky corridor, trying to move in the direction of the stage, ducking at intervals into the boxes to see if they had another exit to shorten his path. He heard a rush of air like that from an anthanor and climbed a small ladder to peer over a wall. A wave of fire raced down both sides of the hall, exploding the tapestries along the way in globs of blazing anger. The stage curtain caught. To the rear, Jemidon heard the groan of a massive beam sagging as its supports began to burn.
Jemidon saw Drandor appear from an aisle to the side, the imp buzzing free around his head. The trader swiped at the small table near the front of the stage and scooped up the bag of tokens as he ran.
"It is all rightfully mine!" the small man shouted. He looked around once quickly before plunging down the stairs that led to the well. Jemidon heard Delia scream and then only the roar of the fire.
Blistering air rolled past Jemidon's face, forcing him below. He looked back the way he had come and saw it blocked. He touched the wall at his side, and it was hot to the touch. Acrid smoke billowed overhead, stinging his eyes and forcing him to his knees.
Reaching the stage was no longer possible. He would have to get out as best he could. He closed his eyes to block the sting and began to grope along the floor. He felt the cold metal of a water pail and quickly doused it over his head. Pushing along the baseboard, he grasped the hinge of a door. But the metal was hot, burning his hand, and he crawled further down the aisle.
He detected an opening to the left and scrambled into it, only to crack his head against a panel a few feet beyond. He flung his hand about and felt a wall on one side and open space on the other. The smoky air pushed lower. He choked as he gasped for breath. Flinging himself to the side, he proceeded another few feet before again bouncing off a wall directly ahead.
Jemidon opened his eyes. The haze of gray and black was worse than before, but he saw high wooden panels of slick veneers. Like the first storey of a house of cards, the wooden walls zigged and zagged off into an unfathomable distance.
"The Maze of Partitions," Jemidon said aloud as he recognized where he was. He pondered for a moment on how to proceed and then grimly made up his mind. "It eventually leads to another entrance at the front of the hall. If the passages are simply connected, then I may have a chance."
He squinted his eyes shut and placed the palm of his left hand firmly on the panel. Moving slower than he had done before, he crawled on his knees along the boundary and into the Maze. The panel ran for a good distance before it finally ended, abutting another wall at a square angle, barring the way. Jemidon turned to the right with his hand still in front, guiding his movements, and continued on in the new direction.
The air grew hotter. It hurt to take a deep breath. He heard the crackle of the fire funneled down the narrow passageway. With a burst of effort, he tried to crawl faster through the Maze.
Time dissolved into a meaningless agony. Onward he crawled mindlessly, moving to the right when he ran into a barrier directly ahead, in the other direction when he felt his fingertips curve around a cor
ner to a panel going to the left. He snaked into a spiral, back out again, and then along a narrow straightaway. He blindly climbed one set of stairs and descended another. He scrambled through a long traverse and then a set of convoluted aisles.
For what seemed like the thousandth time, Jemidon reached the end of a panel. He slid his hand across rougher wood in front of him and then felt smoothness projecting back along the other side.
"Another dead end," he mumbled as he turned around and continued back in the direction he had come. He winced at the intensity of the heat and coughed with the choking smoke that now filled every breath. Faltering, he pushed himself another step onward.
Jemidon opened his mouth to lick his lips and then quickly snapped it shut again. He steeled himself to slide another half step into the heat, but he could not find the strength. He had to follow the left-hand wall all around the Maze. It was like solving a complex puzzle on paper, horribly inefficient but the only way that was sure. Only then could he be certain of finding the doorway that led back out to the front of the hall.
Doorway, his thoughts dimly lumbered as he laid his head down on the ground. Doorway to the outside. Visions of the Maze, the presentation hall, and the swirling smoke tumbled in his head. He remembered Delia's puzzle, familiar and yet somehow a little strange.
Jemidon felt a blistering pulse of heat course across his hand and he pulled it back. The fire now danced on his clothes. He sprang to his feet and whirled in desperation in the other direction. He clawed frantically at the wall until he felt the wood of the door. With a last effort, he pulled it open and saw daylight ten paces away. He tumbled forward into the brightness, trying to snuff out the flames as he rolled.
Jemidon stretched himself awake and took a deep breath. Vaguely he remembered the helping hands that smothered the fire and then the application of the sleep-inducing salve. Its caressing aroma still lingered. With surprising ease, he managed to sit up on the hard flagstones and look at what remained of the presentation hall.