by Kate Elliott
Sanjay extricated himself from her grip and looked thoughtfully back at the valley, laid out below them in the lowering dusk. “I haven’t seen the professor,” he admitted, “but I left Thomas back at camp. Charity was really feeling poorly and he was talking with Mistress Cook and two of her people when I left.” He shook his head, then handed her two unlit lanterns. “But there’s worse. Evidently there’s one of these entrances south as well, just outside our camp. I saw the earl go down it, but I still had Charity, and by the time I could follow I found the room below empty. I don’t know if he found a way in or not.”
She knelt to light a lantern. “We can’t afford to assume that he’s not down there chasing her. If he didn’t really want an heir, then what does he want her for?”
“Good question. Let’s go.”
“I’ll go first. I’m more afraid of what’s behind me than what’s in front. This way, it’ll grab you first.”
“Thank you,” said her husband as he followed her down the steps.
The entrance was laid out just as the other had been, this one decorated with an elaborate fresco of the Harvest Fair celebrations, but all in such an antique, ancient style that they could both see it was centuries old, and of a society quite alien from the one they lived in now. There was an object set on a pillar of stone here, too, and Chryse gasped with pleased surprise to see it.
“A pipe!” She picked it up. It was some kind of bone, pierced with holes, carved with a filigree of intertwined animals along its length. She put it to her mouth and blew. The tone was pure as water, and as she moved her fingers, creating a tentative melody, the wall dropped away to reveal a further staircase.
Sanjay laughed. “I wish your music professor could have seen that. They’d have begged you to stay for a doctorate.”
“And what makes you think they didn’t?” she asked with hauteur. “Lady, it’s dark in there. Maybe. I’ll allow you to go first.”
He kissed her. “For luck. Better bring the pipe. We may need it.”
“And it isn’t even my best instrument,” she replied, but he was already descending.
It was a long, slow, cautious climb down, circling, but at last they reached a small, round chamber.
“It’s hot down here,” said Chryse.
Sanjay had lifted his lantern high to get the broadest circle of light, but he looked back over his shoulder at her and grinned. “I’ll take off mine if you’ll take off yours.”
“You must be joking. I’m not afraid of a little sweat.” She advanced several steps across the chamber. “But don’t let that stop you.”
He came up beside her, laying a hand at her waist. “Whatever’s down here, my sweet, I don’t plan on meeting it clad only in my underwear.”
“Oh, Sanjay. It’s terrible to laugh when Maretha could be in danger.”
“Do you have your half of the deck?”
“Of course. Pouch tied at my waist.”
He nodded and patted the coat pocket in which he carried the other half. “But how do we get out of here?”
“Look!” she breathed. “There’s a picture on that wall. It’s like it’s forming out of nothing. It’s—why, it’s one of the Gates—one of the ones Madame Sosostris read for me, The Seeker.”
“No,” said Sanjay, puzzled. “It’s the one with the young knight, the—” He broke off. “There’s nothing behind that painting at all. That’s a tunnel!”
He walked forward, and Chryse hurried after. They passed through a cold wall of air and then into the stifling heat of the tunnels.
“Slow down, slow down,” she called. “Hold my hand.”
Sanjay did not reply, but he took her hand, and they went on. Their two lanterns illuminated the passing walls. They were of smooth stone broken with the barest of seams at intervals, but it was impossible to tell if the tunnels had been hewn out of rock or built with such skill that the seaming of stone was almost imperceptible. There was an impression of great age sealed into the very air, caught in the stone itself.
“Hold on.” Sanjay stopped to peer down a side tunnel. “There’s got to be a pattern to this—there must be a center to all this.”
“Do you suppose the entire city sits above tunnels? My God, Sanjay.” He turned to look at her. His face blended half into the darkness. “This is the labyrinth.” She began to laugh, a little nervously. “It isn’t a myth at all. It’s true.”
He waited, patient, until she stopped. She coughed, self-conscious, and he gave her hand a squeeze and they went on. She was soon utterly lost, but he paused by every branching corridor and seemed to taste or measure the air in some way, and eventually they came to a huge circular chamber in the middle of which lay a low stone slab.
Sanjay walked forward and knelt beside the stone. “Look.” He picked up a scrap of cloth. “The earl’s handkerchief.”
Chryse had wandered away to the walls, attracted by the dim shapes of frescos along the wall. They sprang into brilliant life as she neared with the light.
“Maretha’s dress!” She crouched to touch it. “I guess she found it too hot, too—but if they were both here …” Her words trailed off as her eyes lifted to examine the painting in front of her. She felt a slight heat creep into her cheeks. “No wonder she took off her dress,” she muttered. “Sanjay, you should come see this.”
He made some reply she could not quite hear.
“Talk about a graphic—” She backtracked a little on the wall. “Oh, I see. It’s the wedding night, and before that the wedding feast, and before that—the planting, the sowing of the seeds… Wait.” She followed slowly back along the wall to return to the place she had started, folding Maretha’s dress into an easily carried bundle, and stared at the ritual that unfolded as she walked. “This is the scene Professor Farr thought was the sacrifice of the young priestess, but in context you can see that it’s really the consummation of the marriage. And then, this next one must be High Summer Eve. I don’t understand this. It seems the groom, or king, or whatever, is being chained and led away to a dungeon—probably down here—and this must be the Hunter’s Run holiday—Good Lord.” She halted. Her voice shook with amazement. “Now I see. Sanjay. Sanjay, come look at this. The ritual is the wheel of the year, like the Gates, like the city, turning in and out. Each holiday is one aspect, and in a way it never ends, just repeats itself. The professor was right about that much, about the ritual being central to the life of the city, although I’m not sure he knew why. And do you remember that old folk song about two lovers, a hunt, and a sacrifice? The one I sang to you? There is a sacrifice, but everyone was wrong. Completely wrong—it’s so clear in this picture. It’s so terrible. Sanjay.”
She turned. Silence, and complete blackness in the room except for her lantern. “Sanjay? Sanjay!” She knew by feeling that she was alone in the chamber.
“Oh, bloody hell!” she swore. Darkness clustered near the glow of her lantern like shadow moths engulfing light. “I hate the dark. I hate it, I hate it. Oh damn damn damn.” She stood staring into black. Her hand trembled on the lantern handle. The room lay hot and still and silent around her.
“Chryse,” she said, keeping her voice even. “Don’t be an idiot. Just think about what to do. Wait here, or go exploring, but you know your sense of direction—”
One hand, straying, touched the smooth bone of the pipe. She shut her eyes briefly, letting out a long, tight breath. It took a few minutes to rig a way to hang the two lanterns from her belt, using Maretha’s dress as a pad between the warm glass and her dress, but once her hands were free she lifted the pipe to her lips and played the same set of notes she had at the western entrance.
In the hush that followed she heard an answer: five liquid notes caught on a rising interval, like a question. She pursued them into a corridor, trading melody for melody until she and the unseen piper had an elaborate improvisation going, variations on a theme. She was so lost in the pleasure and challenge of it that she had almost forgotten where she was when she foun
d herself at the base of a stairwell that led up. High, high above, she saw a faint shaft of light, and a small figure turned in the light, framed against it, in silhouette. Small, no bigger than a child, its face bore the weasel-snout of goblinkind and a cap at an angle on its head. Even at such distance, she felt she could see its bright eyes.
“Wait!” she called, but it disappeared through the opening. She took the steps two at a time and arrived out of breath at the top to step out into a beautiful spring dawn.
The soft green of young leaves dappled the trees around her. It was a forest of light—birches, aspen, and alder. A bird sang, and she recognized its song as the five-note melody that had brought her here. She felt more than saw movement to her right, turned to see a beautiful, majestic black horse pause between distant trees and stare at her with such intelligence that she almost expected it to speak. Then it broke to its left and cantered away into the forest.
She blew out the lantern and set it and its companion down beside the gaping hole that admitted the staircase to the light.
On the breeze, the music carried like a thought just entering her head. She wandered in its direction, still caught by the beauty of the forest, but pulled inexorably by the lure of the song.
A single pipe, first, elaborating on that five-note phrase; a second instrument joined, plucked strings, and a third, which she did not recognize. Voices added harmony, breathtaking in their perfection. Despite her yearning to find the players, she had to stop more than once to fully listen, to absorb the sound and the timbre, the peculiar twists of harmony, the instruments blending and separating with precise craft and felicitous art.
She discovered them in a glade, these musicians. She was not aware of what they wore, nor really even what they looked like, but she gazed raptly at the way they played, their technique, their breathing.
There was an empty chair, so she took it. Next to her sat a woman holding a reeded instrument. She lowered it from her mouth and sat waiting for her part to enter again.
Chryse leaned across to her. “Who wrote this?” she whispered. “It’s so beautiful.”
The woman’s mouth quirked up in an expression not quite human. “Don’t you recognize it?” Her voice was as musical as the wind through spring leaves. Her hair shone like the sun through blossoms. “You wrote this.”
“But I’ve never composed anything half this good.”
“You can,” said the soft voice, “if you choose to.” She cocked her head as if listening for her cue and began to play again.
Chryse realized abruptly that a part was missing, leaving the piece incomplete, and she lifted the pipe to her lips and joined them.
They played. She had no idea how long it went on. As she played she listened. She would lower her pipe when it seemed appropriate, lift it when it was needed. At times it seemed that she anticipated the way the music should flow, and it would indeed flow that way. A phrase would occur to her, and then, like an echo of her thought, occur in the music.
A few times the music meandered, as if it had lost its focus, though its lines and melody never lost their enchanting clarity. But she at length began to sense a climax to the piece, a given, inevitable end, and the music began to build towards that place.
Until a scream shattered it, abrupt as a wrong note, destroying her concentration. She dropped her pipe, it was so unexpected.
Dull, thick silence shuttered the woods. She sat alone in a glade that the first rays of the sun were just beginning to warm. Lowering her hand, she almost leapt up when she felt a damp softness on her skin. She was sitting on an old rotting stump. She stood quickly and brushed off her dress. As she turned to survey the clearing, she heard sobbing.
With pipe in hand she listened this way and that until she found the direction, and then walked cautiously through the woods.
Another clearing opened amongst the trees, and in a single shaft of sunlight a figure knelt in grass, trembling and sobbing.
“Holy Lady,” breathed Chryse. And louder, but not too loud, so as not to startle her. “Maretha.”
Maretha’s head jerked up and she scrambled backwards to her feet, ready to run. She looked terrified.
Chryse put out her hands and did not try to approach any closer. “Maretha. It’s Chryse. I don’t know what has happened to you, but this really is Chryse. Do you remember the time—I sent Kate into the village pond with the cards?”
Maretha froze in mid-run, like a deer suspended between paralysis and flight. Her white shift was stained with grass and dirt around the knees, torn at the hem where it brushed one calf. Her hair was wildly disordered, her feet bare.
“Maretha,” said Chryse again, soft.
“Chryse.” Maretha’s voice broke, but she stumbled forward into Chryse’s arms. “This place is full of nightmares. Nightmares, hidden as beautiful dreams.” She did not weep, just clung there for a bit. “He tried to kill me. He tried to kill me just as we were—were—finally—how can a person be so close, so intimate, and then just—” She had to catch herself to collect her voice. “And it was—we—I’m pregnant, Chryse.”
“But if you just—how could you possibly know so soon?”
Maretha shook her head, unable to explain.
“Well, you’re safe now.”
“No. He’s still out here. He means to re-create the old rituals. He has to sacrifice me to gain the power of the labyrinth.”
“Now I understand. That’s what he thought the treasure was all along,” said Chryse slowly. “Not an object at all, but the city’s power.”
Maretha lifted her head. “What do you mean, thought? He isn’t—dead, is he?” Her voice faded on the last words.
“I don’t know. But I don’t understand why he needs the labyrinth’s power. I would have thought he had power enough.”
“Maretha!” The third voice broke into their conversation like an arrow, and the two woman spun around to see Professor Farr standing at the edge of the glade, looking, as usual, perplexed. “My dear girl.” His gaze was fixed with unnerving lucidity on his daughter. “You can’t mean that the earl tried to kill you.”
“Of course I can mean it.” She broke away from Chryse. “You were the one who gave him the idea. You were the one who was willing to sacrifice me, to marry me to him, to finance this expedition.”
“Maretha, my dear child!—” He took a step towards her. “You can’t mean that.”
“Of course I can mean it,” she continued, reckless now. “He would have strangled me if he could have, but I escaped. And he has to find me now, because he’s lost the source of his old power. He can’t get it back. Just here, he tried to—” She broke off. Her father extended a hand, but she flung herself away from him. “No, no. It was my own dream.” Her tone was almost scornful. “My nightmare. Much you cared.”
“But—Maretha … I never—”
“You’re a selfish old man,” Maretha cried. “You never cared about anything but your work.” She moved abruptly past him, as if to run on into the forest again.
And was brought up short with a frightened cry by the sight of the earl advancing on them through the trees.
“Maretha,” said Chryse in a firm voice. “Come back by me.”
Maretha retreated.
The earl looked so different a man that Chryse would almost not have recognized him: his clothes in disorder, without coat or waistcoat, without boots or cravat; his hair mussed and a smudge on his cheek; but more than that the look of desperate passion on his face, so entirely removed from the chilly hauteur that characterized him. The inconsequential thought crossed her mind that at least he had never used sorcery to enhance his looks: he was still a handsome man, not some repulsive horror as she had often imagined.
“Stop right there,” she said.
He had a spear in one hand, but he stopped. “Let me through. You don’t understand. I must kill her. The ritual has to be completed.”
“I understand.” With a push she moved Maretha behind her, so that her body
stood between the spear and the earl’s wife. “You’re the one who doesn’t understand. I understand that you were willing to murder Maretha to gain power for your sorcery. You tried to kill her. You’d still do it, given the chance. I understand that both you and Professor Farr completely mis-read the ritual of the labyrinth.”
“Impossible,” protested Professor Farr. “I have studied the remains of this civilization for decades.”
The earl kept his spear hefted, point towards Chryse. “What do you mean?”
“How did you get here, Professor? Was it with Thomas Southern?”
The professor shook his head, confused. “No. No, it was one of the workers. He’d found a way to get below. What was his name—Tagness, I think. Somehow below we got separated, and I found myself here. I fail to see what this has to do with my years of careful research.”
“Did you come through the central chamber below? Did you?” She turned to the earl again. The slightest blush colored his cheeks, matching the one that flushed Maretha’s face at the question. “Did you look at the frescos there? An entire set, the whole year, unbroken, and very clear. They depict the same eight holidays that are on the Gates. The old legends are true, in some sense: the Gates do descend from ancient Pariam. And you were right on one count, Professor. If the frescoes are a true reconstruction of an ancient ritual and not just some artist’s fancy, then there was a sacrifice. A—coronation beginning the year, I suppose, followed by a—craft’s fair, and then the sowing in early spring. There was a sacred marriage, as you theorized, which was indeed followed by a sacrifice to fulfill the ritual of the labyrinth.” Her voice rang in the glade. “But it wasn’t the bride, at all, who was sacrificed. It’s the man.”
Maretha gasped.
The earl’s expression did not change, but there was a kind of whitening around his eyes as the shock of her statement hit him.
“You’ve thrown the year off a little, I think,” Chryse continued, so furious that she felt the last shred of mercy or sympathy drain from her. “I didn’t get to see the whole thing, but the Gates tell it anyway. And if it’s been as long as centuries, I don’t think the city cares what season it is, as long as it gets the blood it wants. I finally understood why the day is called Hunter’s Run. The wedding takes place, and then the groom is imprisoned and then released, into the forest—like any wild animal. They’re hunting the bridegroom. Men, hunting a man. He’s the sacrifice.”