Pages of Pain p-1

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Pages of Pain p-1 Page 10

by Troy Denning


  The Amnesian Hero rushed over to the jar, silently thanking Apollo for not letting it shatter-then he noticed the crack in its neck. A loop of fine golden thread had pushed through the tiny fissure and seemed to be writhing out. The Thrasson kneeled down and clamped his free hand over the crevice. The filament pushed its way between his fingers and continued to work free.

  "I fear your gift has been damaged." Still holding his sword, he turned to the Lady of Pain. "Whatever your intentions for me, perhaps you should open it now."

  The hem of the Lady's gown billowed outward, as though she were walking forward. She seemed to step downward, then her dress fluttered again, and she vanished from sight.

  "Milady?"

  Another clatter sounded from the wall, then Tessali's voice called, "I need another net. They're both here!"

  The Amnesian Hero turned to see a barmy net spinning through the air toward his head. He reached up and caught several strands in his hand, then, before Tessali could pull the draw cord, yanked his attacker from the wall. The elf had barely hit the ground before the Thrasson's sword was slashing back and forth through the net, cutting it to pieces.

  By the time he turned back to the amphora, the golden thread had worked completely free of the crack. It rose into the air and began to circle. Pains Of The Flesh

  Against that golden strand, there is no slip.

  Still as stone, I stand before the Amnesian Hero, both feet smooth upon the ground. The Thrasson and his ilk call me gone, but not so that flaxen thread. Like a worm to a corpse, it comes to me and scribes its circle.

  There is time yet, I think. I steal forward, feet as soft as feathers upon the haze-brown sky. The Thrasson's supplication, those divine lines, cannot stand: he must recant. He must disavow, he must renounce, he must curse my name and sob, wail, and beg for death. He must suffer for what he has done; for the good of the multiverse, he must rue the hour he uttered that beautiful prayer.

  I do not reach him.

  Once more the filament circles me, and something – I cannot say what – stirs in that void where I once had a heart. It is nothing I have ever felt before: a fluttering, a feeling as gentle and lonely as a mourning dove's lament; it is like a lover's hand: warm, comforting, and somehow familiar, so very inviting and so very dangerous.

  Daedalus himself, most cunning of men, spun that golden fiber. It is sturdier than any chain Hephaestus ever forged. To pull against that filament is to make it stronger; to cut it is to braid it double, to untwine it is to spread it in an inescapable mesh. The Thrasson has cast Poseidon's net, if a single strand can a net make, and I dare not give it the touch.

  I close my eyes, and when the thread circles the third time, no fiber drags across my skin, no filament tightens around my throat, no string binds my wrists. The Lady has gone from that dim alley.

  The Thrasson stands unrepentant, the tiefling unpunished beside him. A key has turned, a lock has clicked; a door hangs unlatched and the treasure sits unguarded. I could go into the mazes after them, but there are dark things in the labyrinth, and corridors innumerable, branching and twisting and feeding into themselves in an irreducible tangle. In those passages all wanderers perish, by bloody claw or upon tottering legs, but always with the certain knowledge that the exit lay just beyond the next corner. Perhaps that is punishment enough.

  And, in truth, I dare not allow the Thrasson to open the amphora and cast at me more strands from Poseidon's net. Already, the first has found me again. I feel a growing surge in that void where I once had a heart, a rhythmic roar that builds and fades, then rises again more powerful than before. The smell of brine and the salt sea pervades the air, and a stiff breeze whispers across the water. Hard as I try, I cannot shut off the sounds or ignore the scents; they are inside, like nightmares gushing from that dark well in my chest.

  Standing above white-crested waves I see the Lady of Pain, gowned in white cloud and belted in golden light, her lips the same turquoise as the Arborean Sea. A string of pearls, black and lustrous like succubi tears, hangs around her neck. About her head flashes a diadem of blue lightning, while in place of her red-stained blade halo waves a flyaway mane of yellow hair: The strands vanish into the air and have no ends; they are a hundred thousand golden threads that lead to a hundred thousand of the multiverse's infinite planes.

  In the air beside her – me? – hangs a ghostly visage made of the wind itself and as huge as the sun: the Elemental Queen of Air. Though her features are as translucent and shifting as a breeze, I see something in the shape of her face, in the angle of her oval eyes, and in the set of her high cheeks: a certain motherly semblance to the Lady of Pain.

  On my other side stands a trident-wielding giant, waist-deep in waves, reeking of kelp and salt air, sea-foam for hair, sparkling skin like moonlight on water. Upon his lips, a father's miserly smile. He is stretching an upturned palm toward me and looking out to sea.

  This cannot be! If I had parents, I would remember. This memory – this illusion-is some trick of Poseidon's, a ruse to win my trust and nothing more.

  A black-sailed dhow approaches, steered by a single black-hooded helmsman. On the deck rest four black coffers, the bride price mighty Poseidon demands for the heart of his golden-haired daughter. The boxes hold agony, anguish, misery, and despair-the four Pains that rule the multiverse – but how I know, I do not know; that is as dark to me as the face beneath the hood.

  And now the tide turns; the surf roars more softly each time it rises, the smell of brine grows sour and distant, the face of the Elemental Queen vanishes in a shimmer of still, hot air. Poseidon sinks beneath the waves; the whitecaps subside, the sea calms to a turquoise mirror and the air spills from the dhow's black sail. The helmsman turns his hooded face toward me, and a whirlpool opens beneath his vessel; down he is drawn, down into that void in my chest he whirls, this night-cloaked stranger who paid the bride's price for my heart. City Of Iron

  The Amnesian Hero stood in the charcoal dimness, cautiously awaiting the pleasure of the Lady of Pain. Although she had disappeared a moment earlier, a certain disturbing stillness continued to hang in the air. The alley had suddenly grown hot and muggy, and the musty smell of clay seemed stronger, perhaps because Sigil's other fetid odors had vanished. Even the murky light looked somehow deeper – not darker, but heavier and more enduring. From the wall behind him came a frightened gasp and the rasp of boot heels kicking for purchase in the dirt. Thinking the Lady of Pain had finally shown herself, the Thrasson raised his sword and spun.

  He found Jayk stooped over Tessali, trying to dodge past the elf's kicking legs and catch hold of a flailing arm. The Thrasson stepped over, grabbing the tiefling's collar and throwing her against a hut wall. Her pupils were diamonds and her fangs were folded completely down.

  "Have I not warned you about this, Jayk?"

  Before Jayk could answer, Tessali was on his feet and climbing the wall. "Over here! Helpl"

  One-handed, the Amnesian Hero jerked the elf down and pushed him to the ground. "You, be silent!"

  Tessali's eyes darted to the crest of the wall, then half closed in disappointment. "What's taking so long?" he yelled. "I'm all alone with these bar-arrrgh!"

  The complaint came to an abmpt end as the Amnesian Hero placed his foot across Tessali's throat. The Thrasson glanced toward the wall, but saw no sign of anyone coming to aid the elf.

  Jayk gathered herself up, still staring at Tessali through her diamond-shaped pupils. "I make kiss with him, yes? When he reaches the next stage, he is not so much trouble."

  "No," the Amnesian Hero said. "We need him alive, to trade for my wine woman."

  "Wine woman?" Tessali asked.

  "The one in white." The Amnesian Hero did not explain that he called her wine woman because she only appeared when he drank wine. "She approached you in Rivergate."

  Tessali knitted his brows. "You were there!"

  "She will be your ransom." The Thrasson did not bother to confirm the elf's deduction.

>   "But Zoombee! Did you not hear me? I told you he was looking for this'wine woman'!"

  Tessali nodded. "That's right. We lost her."

  "Lost her? How?" The Thrasson put a little more weight on the elf's throat. "If something happened to her…"

  "I can't say what became of her," gasped Tessali. "We were barely a dozen paces out the door when she escape- er, when she disappeared."

  The Amnesian Hero had no need to ask for details. The same thing had happened to him a dozen times; he would be crossing a room toward the woman, or perhaps pursuing her down a crowded lane, when his view was blocked by a pillar or a comer. In that instant, she always vanished.

  "I'm sorry," Tessali said, seeming to sense the Thrasson's disappointment. "But if she's important to you, come back to the Gatehouse. Sooner or later, we will-"

  "You will not catch her," said the Amnesian Hero. "No matter how hard you search, you will not even see her."

  "Then the elf, he is worthless." Jayk started toward Tessali, the tips of her needlelike fangs showing beneath her cupid's bow lip. "I make kiss with him, yes?"

  "No." The Amnesian Hero started to rebuke the tiefling, then thought better of it and glared down at Tessali. He removed his foot from the prisoner's throat, then said, "Your life rests in your own hands. If you make any more trouble, I'll let her do as she pleases."

  Tessali paled, then glanced in the tiefling's direction. She gave him a coy smile, but the Amnesian Hero resisted the urge to warn her against being too hasty in judgment. For now at least, the more frightened the elf was, the less likely he would be to cause trouble.

  The Amnesian Hero stepped away from Tessali and positioned himself near the middle of the newly erected wall. He could not see into the murky comers where it connected to the huts, but there was enough light to spy anyone clambering over the top. No one came. The street on the other side had fallen ominously silent, and the ground had ceased to reverberate beneath the endless file of feet. The Thrasson sheathed his sword.

  "We appear to be alone."

  Jayk groaned. "Yes. The wall, it is finished. Now we are trapped."

  "Trapped?" Keeping a wary eye on the tiefling, Tessali rose. "That can't be!"

  A shadowy sneer creased Jayk's lips. "Why not? The Lady, she never sends Bleakers to the mazes?"

  Tessali scowled. "Of course she does." He studied the stone wall, as though considering what lay on the other side. His face suddenly seemed to light, then he said, "In fact, I've been in the mazes several times myself."

  The Amnesian Hero raised his brow. "The Bleakers play at mazes?"

  "Not play." Tessali's expression was guarded. "But people sometimes find themselves caught in a labyrinth through no fault of their own. The Bleak Cabal tries to help them find their way."

  "And the Bleak Cabal does not become lost?" the Thrasson demanded.

  Tessali shook his head. "We have freed our minds of delusion; we are not fooled by false paths." The elf's expression was smug. "If you will let me, I will guide you out of the mazes."

  "And straight into one of your cells, no?"

  Tessali received Jayk's skepticism with a smile. "Surely, that is better than remaining lost in the mazes?" He gestured at the dim walls around them. "And your constraint would not be permanent. You will be released when we have freed you of delusion."

  "When we are barmy as you, yes?" Jayk shook her head violently, flinging golden drops of venom from her fang tips. "You do not even know when you have hit the blinds. You are such a berk!"

  Tessali received this insult with a look of infinite patience. He turned to the Amnesian Hero, spreading his hands in entreaty.

  "You two are the ones who have hit the blinds. Won't you let me show you the way out?"

  The Amnesian Hero pointed at the wall the dabus had built. "That looks real to me."

  "It is real, but not every wall is a maze wall. Some are just walls."

  "Why would the dabus build a new wall here?" The Thrasson asked.

  Tessali pulled a stone loose and tossed it on the ground. "This wall does not look so new to me."

  "It is. The dabus built it as I tried to present Poseidon's gift to the Lady of Pain."

  Tessali's brow arched in compassion. "There were no dabus."

  "I saw them." The Amnesian Hero pointed at Jayk. "As did she."

  The elf shook his head sadly. "But I didn't. When two troubled people spend time together, they often feed off each other's delusions."

  The Amnesian Hero cast a questioning glance at Jayk, who was quick to explain, "He did not see the dabus. They were gone before he came."

  Tessali gave her a patronizing smile. "You can fashion an explanation for everything. That is the nature of delusions."

  The Amnesian Hero pointed at his crumpled corselet. "What of that? Did I imagine the Lady of Pain crushing that, too?"

  The elf glanced at the armor, but his smug expression wavered only slightly. "Bronze does not make the sturdiest armor. In this district, there are any number of denizens who could crush if

  "Not that armor, Tessali. You are the one who is fashioning explanations." The Thrasson kneeled beside the cracked amphora. "You can lead us nowhere but into more trouble."

  "Tessali was trying to trick us." Jayk slipped to the elf's side. "Now I make kiss with him, yes?"

  "No. Let him go." The Amnesian Hero picked up a piece of slashed barmy net "If Tessali can find his helpers, then we should go with him."

  Tessali's jaw dropped, but he was quick to start up the wall. "I shall hold you to that, you know."

  The Amnesian Hero did not even look up. "I am a man of my word, Tessali."

  The Thrasson cut a length of rope from the barmy net and wrapped it around the amphora neck, then used the rest of the mesh to fashion a sling so he could cany the jar on his back. Even in the simplest maze, it was wise to keep both hands free.

  By the time the Amnesian Hero finished, Tessali was sitting atop the stone wall, staring in gape-mouthed astonishment at whatever lay on the other side.

  "What say you, elf?" The Amnesian Hero grinned at Jayk, who had recovered the spool of golden thread and was busy untangling the slack. "Will we be going back to a nice warm cell in your Gatehouse?"

  Tessali's head slowly turned toward them. "Sign's gone! There's nothing there, not even the ground!"

  "Then we would be wise to stay within the boundaries of the maze, would we not?" The Amnesian Hero slipped the amphora sling over his shoulder. "If you can't see anything, come down from there and stop wasting time."

  The elf made no move to obey. "What have you done?" His eyes were wild with fear. "Your madness has doomed us all!"

  "By the One Death, be quiet or I silence you myself!" Jayk's threat was an idle one, for her fangs had finally folded into the top other mouth. "Zoombee will get us out."

  "Get us out?" Tessali screeched. "These are the Lady's mazes! Nobody can get us out!"

  "Zoombee can." Jayk placed the spool in the hands of the Amnesian Hero. Save for a single strand leading into a dark comer, the golden thread was neatly coiled about its barrel. "Zoombee has a plan."

  Ignoring Tessali, the Amnesian Hero turned his full attention to Jayk. "You anchored the other end outside?" He had little doubt that she had, but he thought it wise to be certain. "It is tied securely?"

  "But of course, Zoombee." Jayk's reply was light-hearted and merry, as though being lost in the Lady's mazes was little more than an afternoon diversion. "I ran it down the seam between the wall and the hut, where nobody sees it, yes? Then I tie it twice around a stone in the bottom."

  "You did well. We should be back in Sigil in no time." The Thrasson waved Tessali down from the wall. "Come along. We won't hurt you, and you can tell me about the Lady of Pain. I'd like to know more about her before I present Poseidon's gift again."

  Tessali's wild-eyed fear gave way to gape-mouthed incredulity. "You're barmy as a dretch in Cania." He climbed down from the wall, shaking his head slowly. "And I must be an add
le-cove for keeping your company."

  Rewinding as he walked, the Amnesian Hero followed the thread into the dim comer. As he and his companions moved, the darkness seemed to thin ahead and swallow everything behind. It took only a few steps to reach the corner and discover that the wall no longer abutted the hut Instead, a long narrow passage had opened between the two. The golden thread ran straight down this corridor and disappeared into the silent gloom ahead.

  "This can't be right," Tessali whispered. "There should be a busy street here."

  "There should be a wall." Jayk was standing beside the hut, looking down a gloomy side passage that ran along what had once been the front of the building. Now it was simply a long wall of unmortared stone, similar to the one down which the golden thread ran. She kneeled and began scraping at a stone with her fingers. "This is where I tied the thread."

  "That is the trick of mazes," the Amnesian Hero said. "You cannot trust what you remember. You must place your faith in the thread, no matter how strange its course may seem."

  Tessali shook his head emphatically. "I climbed over only one wall before I found you, and it was no thicker than my foot is long. We must be going in the wrong direction."

  "By that thinking, when you climbed the wall, you would have seen the street on the other side." The Amnesian Hero continued to rewind the thread. "Did you?"

  "I saw nothing but… nothing."

  "Then trust to the thread. This place makes no sense, and only the thread can lead us back to the world we know."

  With that advice, the Amnesian Hero started down the passage, his frozen foot clumping bluntly on the rock-hard ground. He had forgotten all about it during his audience with the Lady of Pain, but now he recalled that he needed to find a healer before it thawed. He redoubled his pace, wrapping the thread around the spool so furiously that his wrist began to tire. They passed several more side passages before following the thread down one, then began a zigzagging course through the murky corridors. The Thrasson did not ask Jayk how long her spell would last; even if he had truly wanted to know, the knowledge was no use to him. Aside from walking faster, he could do little to speed their escape.

 

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