“Good. Now, this maze was created by the great wizard Minus and we can expect it to be fiendishly complicated.”
There was a cough from behind him. “Actually, that ain’t entirely true,” said Mother Hemlock. “It’s very easy to find your way from the entrance to the centre, where the portal lies.”
“Then what’s the point of a labyrinth if we can just breeze through it?”
“Oh, there’s nothing complicated about finding your way, it’s gettin’ past the traps and monsters that’s the hard part,” Mother Hemlock said.
“You see, commander,” Velicity said, “I doubt Minus wanted to risk himself or one of his servants getting lost. So the maze is like a spider’s web; whichever route you take will bring you to the centre but only if you get through the perils waiting for you.”
McGuff raised his hand.
“Yes, sergeant,” Chortley sighed.
“Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but if that’s the case, why not take the whole garrison through. There can’t be no monsters in there that could take on the lot of us!”
Chortley ran his hand across his eyes. He was exhausted already, and they hadn’t even entered the maze yet. “The maze will be too narrow for that, sergeant, it would just make us easier targets.”
“That’s right, this is a task that’s better suited to a few hand-picked soldiers,” Mother Hemlock said, before lowering her voice “but since we don’t ‘ave none of them, this lot will ‘ave to do.”
Chortley turned to the sergeant. “McGuff, get the squad in position.”
“Right you lot! Get your hairy arses to the maze entrance at the double. Quick march, quick march!” bellowed McGuff, performing an on-the-spot knees up while he waited for them to comply. Unfortunately, their way was blocked by the huge barbarian on the end.
“Thun! Go door, now!” McGuff called and, the congestion removed, the squad made their shambolic way across the narrow bridge over the chasm.
Chortley turned to Mother Hemlock. “Are you sure you want to come with us?”
“Yes, lad, I think you ‘as a better chance with us by your side than without,” the witch responded, looking, Chortley thought, ten years older in this fire-lit darkness than she had outside.
“And we did, rather, get you into this,” Velicity said, with a nervous smile.
Chortley nodded. “Yes you did, rather, didn’t you,” he said.
#
“Look, the map’s changed again,” said Bill, as he lay in the light of the fire he’d made.
Brianna, who’d been negotiating the price of a watermelon at a little stall next to the road, put her dagger away and turned her attention from the huge, but thoroughly intimidated, salesman.
Bill pointed. “That arrow wasn’t there the last time I looked.”
“I can’t see anything in this light,” she said, squinting.
With a smile, Bill pushed heat into his hands, causing them to glow red. “There, can you see it now?”
“Oh yes, and it’s moving backwards and forwards. Looks to me as though our friend Marcello is pointing the way for us, finally,” she said.
Bills nose filled with the acrid scent of burning parchment.
“Idiot! You’ve set the map alight!” Brianna snapped, pulling it from his red-hot fingers and plunging it into the sand. She patted it vigorously on both sides, then pulled it back out. It was undamaged.
“I could have sworn it was alight!” she said, puzzled.
“Apology accepted,” Bill responded, not wanting to miss an opportunity even though he, too, had smelt the burning.
She thrust the map at him then stomped over to the stall. “He’s gone,” she said, pointing at a large, dark, figure running into the night, “can’t imagine why.”
“Perhaps it’s your warm personality,” Bill said, attempting to keep the upper hand.
Brianna rummaged around and returned with two watermelons and a bottle. “Or, just maybe, he hasn’t seen a boy with glowing red hands before, and decided, on balance, he’d rather be elsewhere.”
“Stop calling me a boy,” Bill snapped. Then, realising the battle was over almost before it had begun he held out a hand. “What have you got there?”
“A watermelon each and an apology,” she said, lobbing one of the giant fruits at him, “you decide which is sweeter. Oh and if you behave yourself, there’s a bottle of wine here. I think our quest to Mount Doom can wait until the morning, don’t you?”
Bill smiled. Sometimes, amongst the chaos and labours, the little things made up for it all.
#
By the time Bently had reached the laboratory door, he’d concluded that whoever built this place was some sort of masochistic bastard. By his calculations, he’d descended as far down the long stairway as he’d climbed the previous night and so he was, more or less, now at ground level. I mean, why not simply cut a horizontal tunnel into the mountainside and save all the fuss? But no, that would make matters two easy and if Bently knew anything about magic, it was that its purpose was to bugger up life for everyone else.
And it wasn’t just the stairs. Once he’d reached the bottom, he’d found himself in a maze-like tunnel system and needed constant directions from whoever was whispering in his master’s ear35. Even then, he’d walked down many blind alleys. It seemed the whisperer’s memory was fallible, or that the walls moved.
Finally, after what had seemed hours of wandering, he’d arrived at an inner door that matched the description he’d been given. It had lettering on it that might have said “laboratory” but, for all he knew, it might equally have warned of a painful death for any who entered. Quite possibly both were true. But he was here now, and he hadn’t the faintest notion of the route back to the door in the side of the mountain so his only way was forward or, to be more precise, in.
He examined the door in the feeble light of the magical torches that had lit as he’d approached. When he’d first descended the stairs, he’d thought they were only fairly short but, when he’d passed the dozenth step, another bank of lamps had ignited and this had continued all the way down and throughout the corridor system. Once he’d passed by, they were extinguished, giving him the impression that he was a bubble of light moving through infinite darkness. When, on one of his brief rest breaks, he’d asked how they worked, his master had told him they were “in for Ed” although who this Ed was, his master didn’t know.
There was no sign of any door handle or bar and when Bently pushed at the door, it didn’t budge. Then he found it; a small recess near the bottom which took the end of the staff perfectly. After a moment, the door creaked open as gears that hadn’t moved in centuries, turned.
Bently sneezed as decades of dust poured out of the laboratory; the majority of it heading for his over-large nostrils. It smelled musty with a hint of decay and Bently turned his head into the corridor, drew in a big breath of the fresher air and plunged into the room which erupted into light as he did so.
The laboratory was large and semicircular in shape; he had entered on the curved side and, as he turned, he could see it sweep behind, around and in front of him to meet the flat wall opposite. In the centre of the room stood a globe as tall as he was, its crystal surface reflecting the light of the torches onto the walls in a hypnotic pattern that, for some reason, made him want to dance. It was hard to judge size in the unfamiliar lighting and with so much that was strange to him filling the room, but the straight wall opposite must have been, in his estimation, a hundred paces along. And it was lined with coffins.
#
“What’s got their wind up?” Chortley whispered to McGuff, “We’ve only just come inside the maze.”
McGuff cupped his hand around his mouth conspiratorially. “They didn’t like the sign on the door, sir.”
“None who enter this door shall leave by it?”
McGuff nodded. “Yessir, I think some of ‘em are feeling a bit trapped.”
“Right, you lot,” Chortley said in a loud voice which caused
the more nervous members of the cracked squad to jump, “there are two reasons why you shouldn’t be too spooked by the message on the door. Firstly, we’re trapped either way, whether it’s in here or out there and we might as well be doing something rather than sitting around eating and drinking.”
Private Epocrypha raised his hand but Chortley ignored it.
“Secondly, there’s a door over there with the word Egress on it in ancient Varman.”
There was a silence interrupted only by the furrowing of brows and the imagined (or otherwise) scurryings of creatures up ahead in the maze.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, no it’s nothing to do with female birds of prey, it means exit!” Clegg said to Lance-Corporeal Minissun.
The dwarf responded with a glower that, if anything, was sharper than the edge on the axe she was now fingering angrily.
“Right, let’s be getting on with it,” McGuff said, and began shooing the squad into some sort of order.
“You do know that the sort of exit behind that door is the terminal kind?” Mother Hemlock said quietly to Chortley as they watched McGuff fluster.
Chortley smiled. “Well, know is probably too strong a word but, yes, I strongly suspect the reward for anyone seeking a quick way out of the maze would be a quick, and painful, way out of existence.”
“Now then,” he said, once the squad had settled down, “Sergeant McGuff has organised you into pairs. Epocrypha and Ratbag will be at the rear, chalking our route. Clegg and Minito will be next, their role is, primarily, to help interpret any riddles or similar that we might find and to tackle any traps or puzzles. In the event of any actual combat…”
“THEY IS TO STAY OUT OF THE WAY OF THEM WHAT IS FIGHTING!” McGuff screamed.
When the echoes died down, he ran the back of his hand over his forehead and turned to Chortley. “Sorry, sir, I don’t know what came over me.”
“Quite, sergeant. Now please keep it down.” Chortley said before pointing at the last two members of the squad. “Thun and Minissun will be our spearhead, with support from myself and the sergeant.”
Minissun nodded before looking up at the huge barbarian. “He says, you and me kill.” Thun smiled.
If you ignored the ridiculous height difference, thought Chortley, those two made a good, and deadly, team. They, at least, looked the part which was something that couldn’t be said for the others. Clegg looked like a university professor on a sabbatical; Minito was a goblin in a chef’s hat and the two at the back, Epocrypha and Ratbag, were indistinguishable from the sort of rabble you’d find in the city gaol after a particularly busy Saturday night. Still four decent fighters and two witches was better than nothing.
Chapter 18
Bently stood in front of one of the coffins scratching his chin with the back of his claw. His initial thought that they were coffins had proven partly correct as, when he’d swung open the lid of the first, there was, indeed, a body inside. However, it didn’t appear to be entirely dead, as its colouring had none of the pallor of a corpse.
There was a dozen of these containers hanging vertically from the wall and Bently had so far opened half. His instructions had been quite clear; to find an attractive male to be the host for his master’s whispering helper. Once reanimated, this stranger would then be able to bring his master out of the staff and restore his magnificence to the twin worlds.
However, this task presented Bently with two problems. Firstly, he wasn’t particularly inclined to help this Aligvok character, someone who, as far as he could tell, had remained comfortably floating around inside the staff while Bently had trudged halfway across the continent. And yet it would be Aligvok, if Bently wasn’t entirely mistaken, who would end up with the credit.
The other problem was that Bently had no idea what constituted “attractive” and only had the most oblique understanding of genders so, having opened up 6 coffins, he was beginning to consider taking pot luck.
“Bently!”
Bently sighed. He’d been holding the staff with one hand, as instructed, as it meant his master could call him at any time.
“Yes, master?”
“Have you found one yet? I grow impatient!”
Bently thought for a moment. “I am standing in front of one now, master.”
“Good!” Humunculus thought, there was then a pause as if he were conferring with another. “Is the body attractive? Is it male?”
“Yes, master,” Bently replied, on the basis that he wasn’t knowingly lying.
There was another pause before Humunculus’s thoughts appeared inside his servant’s mind. “Then it is time. You see the lever beneath the box containing the body?”
“Yes, master.”
“Pull it towards you, then take the staff and insert it into the globe in the centre of the room.”
Bently got the distinct impression that his master was repeating words whispered in his ear.
“Yes, master,” he said, before pulling the lever.
#
“I’m not comfortable with this,” said Humunculus as he came off the line to Bently, “I would be much happier if it were me being reincarnated first.”
Aligvok frowned. “First, I am not being reincarnated, I am being reincorporated. My spirit wasn’t destroyed, only my body.”
“Whatever,” pouted Humunculus.
“And secondly; as I explained, your reincorporation is more challenging. Non-human bodies are not stored in the same sarcophagi as those of men so, unless you want to wake up in the body of a human male, I suggest you let me go first and prepare things.”
Humunculus screwed up his face. “Yuk! The very thought of being trapped inside the body of a man. They have hair everywhere, or so I’m told.”
“Then it’s agreed,” Aligvok said, “I will be reincorporated first and will then aid your servant in preparing a suitable body.”
“Just make sure it’s handsome, strong and wise yet young looking.”
Aligvok shook his head, “I make no promises, the selection might be limited and, after all, if it displeases you, you could regard it as a temporary home until you can arrange new accommodation.”
“How would that work?”
“You’d have to re-enter the staff, of course, but otherwise it’s a fairly routine procedure once you’ve obtained a new host,” Aligvok said.
Humunculus thought for a moment, “You mean I have to die before I can change bodies?”
“Yes,” Aligvok replied, “but that’s the price for seeking perfection, I’m afraid.”
“Door,” said Negstimeaboi.
Humunculus spun around. “What?”
And then he saw it too. A red door with an ornate brass handle had appeared in the centre of the spectral room.
“Ah,” said Aligvok, “that is the way out. When I walk through the door, my essence will go into the orb and, from there, into the host awaiting me.”
The wizard grinned, then stepped towards the door, grabbed the handle and, as he was about to step through, flew backwards as a muscular arm pulled on the back of his spiritual vestments.
“What are you doing?” he snarled from within an iron-tight head lock.
“You go first, my love,” Negstimeaboi said, gesturing towards the door.
Ambler rose from where he’d been sitting, cross-legged, on the floor. “Not without you.”
“Let him go!” screamed Humunculus as he leapt at the giant warrior.
“I follow! Go!” she called and now Ambler had no hesitation, he ran into the open door which disappeared as he passed through it.
#
Bently ran to the sarcophagus as soon as he saw the body start to move. He’d slid the staff into the hole that ran through the centre of the orb and the great globe had slowly begun to glow faintly. After a few seconds, something that could only be described as a blob of light leaked from the bottom of the globe where it sat on its plinth and then ran along a groove cut into the floor directly towards the body Bently had chosen. It had passed
the open lever and run up the wall to disappear behind the coffin.
It was the sound of a huge chestful of breath being drawn into dry lungs that hadn’t been used for decades that caused him to scramble across the dusty floor and stand beneath the coffin.
The eyes of the handsome young man opened. “Where am I? Who are you?” it croaked.
Before Bently could answer, the leather straps that restrained the body withdrew, and it fell forward with a slap onto the floor.
Bently hauled the man onto his back, and knelt above him, his hands on the man’s chest, just to keep him where Bently wanted him, for now. “My name is Bently, and I am the faithful servant of the wise and powerful Humunculus, King of the Faeries,” he said, “and you, I suppose, are the one who has been whispering in my master’s ear?”
“What? No,” the man said, his lips learning to move again and his throat dry, “he was to come through but I got there first. My name is Ambler and I am not your enemy.”
Bently looked down at the man. He couldn’t explain why but he believed that this wasn’t the whisperer. He imagined he’d feel it if it was him, there would surely be a certain greasiness to him. So he rocked back.
Ambler sat up and immediately began examining his body. It was elegantly but plainly clothed in brown and white dyed cotton and Ambler began by feeling the muscles in each arm before having a quick peek at the contents of his trousers.
Bently helped him to his feet. “When does my master come through?”
“I do not know, my new friend,” Ambler replied, quickly finding his balance on corporeal legs for the first time in several hundred years, “I have many questions to ask including whose body I am now occupying and what happened to its previous owner. But, for now, I have one thing I must do. How did you select a body?”
He stumbled over to the sarcophagi and looked up at the five that remained. “How do I choose this one?” he asked, before spotting the lever, “Is it this?”. Before Bently could answer, Ambler had pulled it back. The body in the sarcophagus was that of a pretty woman in her early twenties.
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