The path led downhill, so that when we reached the hedge it towered over our heads. We stepped through a gap, and saw another hedge, also with gaps in it. Paths went off to the right and left, curving around and out of sight. A maze. I had heard about them, but had never been in one. Without a ball of string, I had no clue how to find our way through.
We stepped into the maze. Claire said, “We’re going to get lost, aren’t we?”
“Um—”
“Which way?”
I looked up at an overcast sky. What happened to Rubierre’s cloudless blue? “Going widdershins would be unlucky, I suppose.” I started down the path to the left.
We must have wandered around for more than an hour, before we stumbled upon an exit with a path leading up the hill towards a door in the wall. Claire set off up the path at a brisk pace. I trailed behind, relieved to be out of the maze, but troubled that we’d gotten through it simply by luck. I glanced down at the path, and gasped.
“Claire, wait!” I shouted.
She stopped a foot from the door. “What is it?”
“We’re headed towards the same door we came in through. Look!”
I showed her the fresh footprints in the damp dirt, two sets leading from the door; two sets the same size and shape going towards it. Her shoulders sagged as she agreed they were ours.
I sank down onto the pine needles and studied the maze. After a few minutes I turned and studied the trees. There was one not far away that had branches lined up on one side like a ladder. Too old to climb trees? We’d see about that.
The trees I had climbed as a child had been hardwoods with smooth bark. The bark on this pine was rough, and sticky with sap. I surveyed the other trees, but they were all pines. None of the others would be any better.
I set my jaw and started up.
The branches that had, from the ground, seemed like rungs on a ladder, were not close enough together to make climbing easy. I had to get a solid grip on each branch with both hands, and swing my legs and then the rest of my body up onto it. On the second branch, my skirt caught on the rough bark and tore a two-inch rip front and centre.
I said, “Scorch this despot of a Fire Warlock and his flagrant bias for boys.”
Claire gasped. “Lucinda, you can’t say that. What if he’s listening?”
“We’re not important or talented enough for him to pay attention to. And what if he did? He’d laugh at us.”
My dress and petticoat—both threadbare and easily torn—were going to be in ruins, but I kept climbing. By the time I got high enough to get a good look at the maze, I had scratches on my arms, legs, and face, and I was sticky all over with sap.
There was even sap in my hair. My hair was the feature I was most proud of, even if it was ordinary compared to Claire’s golden halo. Mine was the colour of polished oak, thick, glossy, and fell down below my hips. It caught and pulled on several branches, and would probably acquire more sap on the way down. It came loose and fell in my face, but there was so much sap on my hands that I didn’t dare touch it to put it back up again. Would it wash out, or would I have to cut it out?
The possibility of dying on the challenge path had not stopped me, but I had not anticipated losing my hair. Maybe dying was better. Dead, I wouldn’t care about my hair.
I took a good look at the maze, and my heart sank. The curving paths were obvious, but even once I had worked out a route through them, I would have trouble remembering when to turn left or right. I couldn’t draw the plan of the maze without anything to write on. Even if I’d brought paper, ink, and a pen, my bundle lay on the ground and I couldn’t endure climbing this abomination of a pine tree more than once.
A gap in the hedge on the far side of the maze, opposite the one we went in through, opened onto the path leading to the gate in the far wall. There were at least two, maybe three paths through the maze, but only one went through the open space in the centre. I couldn’t see the ground from my perch in the tree, but the centre must be important, and I tried to memorise that path.
I called down to Claire about what I saw, and looking down, I noticed, as if for the first time, that her dress had a long fabric sash, long enough that it wrapped several times around her waist.
“Claire, take off your sash. I want you to put knots in it to help us track which turns to make.”
“What? Why? What kind of knots?”
“It doesn’t matter what kind, as long as you use one kind for right turns, another for left turns, and a third for gaps to skip.”
I explained this several times, and when she understood, she tied knots as I called out directions. Then I climbed down, acquiring more scratches and rips on the way, and leaving behind a lock of hair that tore right out of my scalp. When I reached the ground Claire looked me over with a wrinkled nose.
“You look like a street urchin.”
“This explains why the stories all have the boys arriving on the Warlock’s doorstep in tatters.” I rubbed my sore scalp with the heel of my hand. “Come on, let’s go. The sooner we get through this cursed maze the sooner I can get clean.”
With the knots in her sash, we had no problem finding our way through the maze. We had not gone halfway when we came across a door set in the hedge. The door looked just like the one we had come through to get into the park. We stopped and stared at it.
“Do you think this is the way out?” Claire asked.
It was tempting, but I shook my head. “No, we have to get to the centre. It would be good if we could remember where this door is. You could use a hairpin to mark its place on your sash?”
“And have my hair come down and blow in my face? I’d rather not.”
My hair was already blowing in my face. I reached up to grab a hairpin, and remembered too late the sap on hands.
Through clenched teeth I said, “Here.” I bent my head. “Pull out one of mine.”
She stretched out a dainty hand, and without touching me, pulled out a hairpin to add to the sash.
We were soon standing in a gap in the innermost hedge. A pond, nearly covered over with lily pads, filled the inner circle. There was no space to walk around it. We could not avoid it to get to the gap on the other side.
I glowered at it. I’d been expecting a test of courage. What was this nonsense?
Claire asked, “Do you think we’re supposed to swim?”
She could swim. I couldn’t. I sniffed. “To get to the Fire Warlock? Not likely.”
I took off my shoes and socks and added them to my bundle of belongings, leaving them and my cloak in the gap with Claire, then hitched up my skirt and started poking under the lily pads with my toe.
Claire asked, “What are you doing?”
I said, “Looking for stepping stones.”
No stones. Should I try wading? Keeping an eye on the far gap to make sure I headed in the right direction, I took two cautious steps out into the pond and realised I was not in the water, but on it. I looked down, startled. How could I have missed the stepping stones? I felt around for the other stones that must be there, but couldn’t find any. Magic. I straightened up, and couldn’t see the gap on the other side of the pond anymore. I stared for a moment, then took a deep breath, stepped off the stepping-stone, and fell onto my hands and knees in two feet of water.
I came up spitting out a mouthful of weedy water. If I were a fire witch, I’d turn the whole damned pond into a cloud of steam. I stood for a moment in the water, cursing the Warlock and his asinine challenges. What was the point of all this, anyway?
I clambered back to the gap in the hedge, where Claire was struggling, without much success, not to laugh at me.
I said, “That does it. I don’t care what it takes. We are going to get through these ridiculous challenges and we are going to see the Fire Warlock. If he sends us back home I’m going to demand that he use his magic to fix
the rips in my dress, so I don’t have to go home in disgrace.”
“Lucinda, you can’t do that.”
“Why not? What would I have to lose?”
I could once again see the gap in the hedge on the far side of the pond. I was already soaked, how much worse could it get? Fixing my eyes on the gap, I charged out across the pond. Halfway across I slowed down, and strolled the rest of the way on stepping-stones.
I called back to Claire, “Here’s the secret. You can walk on the stepping-stones across the pond, but you have to do it without looking down. You have to trust that they will be there. Keep your eyes on me all the way across. And you have to carry my bundle and cloak, too. I don’t dare come back for them.”
The rest was easy. We soon came out of the maze onto a path with no footprints, leading to the far door.
Claire said, “Was that one challenge, or two?”
“If that was two then we’re done.”
“Do you think?”
“Can’t be. That was too easy, and we’ve not had the only challenge I was sure we’d meet on the Fire Warlock’s path.”
“What’s that?”
I looked at the door and gulped. “A test of courage.”
Going to Blazes
“How do we get up there?” Claire whispered.
We huddled together in the recessed doorway from the park. “I don’t know,” I whispered back. “There has to be an entrance somewhere.”
A featureless wall dominated the view from the doorway. I stuck my head out from under the overhang, and got a good look. Arrow slits near the top, and flanking towers some distance away provided the only variety. By craning my neck, I got a glimpse of a second battlement-encrusted wall higher up and further in. The walls spanned the gap between two snow-laden shoulders of mountain extending out on either side. We were boxed in—easy prey.
If it noticed me, it would crush me like an ant, as it had crushed all other threats to Frankland for more than a thousand years.
Threat? Merciful Heavens, where had that come from? I was harmless. The Fortress protects women like me. Why should I be afraid of it?
Why shouldn’t I be afraid of it? This stronghold was Frankland’s shield; the rock all armies came to grief upon. The gates scattered all over the kingdom let the people of the land come with our requests and homage, but that was not their true purpose. They channelled all attackers, invaders and rebels alike, towards this place so that they must first attack here, no matter where the danger arose.
The castles in Rubierre’s gentle river valley that had so awed me as a child were nothing compared to this. The fairy-tale castles that the nobles now built only for show, even the much older fortifications, now in ruins, were but toys, built of a child’s blocks, which one could knock over with a sweep of a hand. We needed no standing army; we needed no other strongholds. Only scholars and Fire Guild enthusiasts remembered this castle’s original name, Citadel de Fortunatus. To everyone else it was simply the Fortress, and had been so for centuries.
The mountain at its back frowned down at me. I had seen mountains before—insubstantial blue shapes in the far distance that stirred vague romantic yearnings, when I thought about them at all. If I served my year here, would I ever forget that a volcano—Storm King, the source of the Fire Warlock’s inexhaustible power—loomed over me? The yearning it stirred was to run back in the park, and escape. White slopes faded into grey cloud with no discernible boundary, but even though I could not see the broken cone, that silhouette so familiar from the many drawings of this place, its hulking reality pressed against me. I was the phantom, not it.
I would have been disappointed if there had not been a test of courage on the challenge path, but this was not what I had expected.
I pulled my head back into shelter and shivered, pulling my cloak tighter under my chin. My wet dress would feel good in August, not April. We needed to move soon, my teeth were starting to chatter. Who knew that on my way to see the Fire Warlock, I risked freezing to death?
I edged further out, and gazed at the curtain wall, spellbound. No wonder we had been blessed with such peace while the forces of chaos swirled all around us, empires rose and fell, and our enemies coveted our lush pastures and wealthy cities.
Looking back, I realise I glimpsed many fragments, but not the complete picture. I did not yet understand the dangers that lay in its strength and rigidity, nor did I comprehend the human toll it took on the Warlock who served it, and not it, him.
Claire poked me in the arm. “Is that Blazes?” she said, pointing.
I forced my attention down to earth. We were on the edge of a small rock-strewn meadow, perhaps a hundred yards wide, separating us from the base of the Fortress. A path led off to our right, and some distance away, a low, rough rock wall extended perpendicular to the Fortress, with a gate halfway between the Fortress and the park. Slate roofs on buildings of dressed grey stone peeked over the rock wall.
Blazes, the home of the Fire Guild. I quivered like a foxhound on a tight leash and the scent in its nose. Gladys had twice gone to Blazes, and had brought back fantastic tales. I wanted to see for myself the bubbling pools of mud, and the school with its rock walls and metal furnishings where young wizards and witches practiced setting and controlling fires. Had the old witch been telling the truth in her stories about children keeping baby dragons for pets? Or about the fountain of boiling water that spouted so regularly you could set a clock by it? She must have made that up.
I said, “Yes, that has to be Blazes,” and returned to studying the Fortress.
Claire said, “Maybe someone there can tell us what to do.”
“I think we have to get through the challenges by ourselves.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“No.”
“Then let’s go.” Claire gave the wall another wide-eyed stare, then squared her shoulders and set off down the path towards the gate.
My shoulders ached. I massaged them before following, my attention still on the looming Fortress. I had only taken a few steps before I was nearly startled out of my wits by a fierce roar. Claire screamed and turned to run back towards me. A brown mound I had taken for a boulder was a male lion, bounding towards us.
Run, hide! My heart was about to burst out of my chest, but I couldn’t move. The lion was on the path to the gate. There was nowhere to hide, except back in the park.
Claire tripped and sprawled on the path. My world shrank. All that mattered was my terrified stepsister and the lion charging towards her. I raced towards them, screeching like a banshee, my cloak billowing in the breeze. I reached Claire seconds before the lion did. She was struggling to rise. I trod on her back, sending her face down again in the mud, and flung my only weapon at the lion. The bundle with the two heavy books hit him square on the snout. His roar changed to a yelp, and he stopped.
He’s just a big cat. A cat—
I grabbed my cloak with both hands and held it as far over my head as I could reach, shaking it, and screaming all the while. The lion backed up a step, snarling.
Our cat, hissing and spitting, with back arched and fur puffed, had once scared away a bigger dog. If I ever got back to Lesser Campton, I would feed that cat all the cream it could eat.
I got off Claire’s back. She rolled over and scrambled to her feet. I grabbed her by the arm before she could start running again and spun her around to face the lion. She screamed, and the lion backed another step.
“Hold your cloak up,” I said. “Yell. Don’t run.” The lion, still snarling, paced a full circle and a half around us until it blocked the path back to the park with the maze. The gate to Blazes was standing open, with somebody watching us.
“Claire,” I said, “we are going to walk—walk—to the gate. If we run we are dead.”
I took a few steps forward, keeping a tight grip on Claire’s arm. W
e reached my bundle, and I dived for it, coming up swinging. The lion backed away. We walked towards the gate, with the lion following twenty paces behind until we were within ten paces of the gate, where it turned its back on us and stalked away. The iron gate began to swing shut. We ran. I fell, rolling as I went through, and the gate clanged shut behind us.
I still half expected lion claws in my back. The rage that had carried me across the meadow evaporated and I lay face down in the grass, whimpering. The Fire Warlock doesn’t kill his own supplicants. I had said that, hadn’t I? Maybe not, but he’d done a bang-up job of scaring us half to death.
When I could move, I raised my head. Claire crouched behind a boulder, showing only wide eyes over top. I rolled, following her gaze, and fetched up at the feet of a red-haired, smiling giant.
I scrambled to my feet, ignoring a proffered hand, and attempted a deeper curtsey than I’d ever bothered with before, stammering, “Your Wisdom.” My shaky legs gave way, and I fell on my rump in the grass. I should have known better—curtseying has never come easily to me—but I couldn’t stop my cheeks from burning. So much for making a good first impression on the Fire Warlock.
The wizard grinned and doffed his hat. His mane was as big as the lion’s. He made an elegant bow, rumbling, “Welcome, welcome. Congratulations on making it through all three challenges.”
I whooped like a boy, and a warm glow settled in the pit of my stomach. Claire came out from behind her rock and made a deep, graceful reverence. He returned the salute with aplomb, then offered me a hand a second time.
I took it and let him pull me to my feet. My hands made a futile brush at my skirt, and I gasped. My dress was dry, and I was warm.
The wizard said, “You’re not the first I’ve had to dry off after a tumble in the pond. Wouldn’t want you to get sick. You’re not the first, either, to call me ‘Your Wisdom’, but I’m not him.”
“You’re not? But…” I gulped, and stared. His Fire Guild emblem had more dancing flames than I had ever seen on one hat before. He wore an ordinary tunic and trousers, but the cloak slung over one shoulder had a silk lining and fur trim. His bushy beard had only a few streaks of grey. Of course. What was wrong with me? He was decades too young. The Warlock never left the Fortress, either. At least I’d get another chance to make a respectable curtsey.
The Locksmith Page 4