by Tanya Huff
“Chaos!”
The smell of rot grew overpowering and Raulin found himself staring between four rows of teeth.
Silver hair wrapped around his head and snatched him back just as the massive jaw crashed shut not a finger’s width from the end of his nose. A blaze of green, bright enough to leave spots dancing before his eyes, slashed downward.
The creature screamed. A line opened along its jaw, oily black liquid beading the length.
Crystal appeared to be wielding a dagger formed of power.
“Got another one of those?” Raulin yelled, scrambling backward, slicing into a massive arm and again doing no damage. “Plain steel ain’t worth spit!”
An elbow drove into Jago’s stomach and slammed him up against a wall. He slid to the floor gasping for breath.
Throwing herself between Jago and the creature’s next blow, Crystal caught a talon on the shaft of green she held. The talon smoked and snapped off. She reached behind her with her free hand and dragged Jago to his feet.
“Distract it!” she shouted. “Let me get close enough to use this.” A sword of power, she realized belatedly, would’ve been more practical. She tossed bands of green around the creature, slowing it by the smallest of margins.
Raulin and Jago agreed on strategy with a glance and raced to opposite walls of the corridor.
Crystal swung at the creature twice more.
“You’re cutting it,” Raulin told her, panting. “But I don’t think you’re hurting it much.” The effort of keeping himself alive was beginning to tell. He’d taken only glancing blows so far and suspected a solid hit would break bones at the very least.
The creature ignored both its gaping wounds and the fluid dripping from them.
Rocking with the force of a blow that clipped his shoulder, Jago kicked with all his strength at the rear of a bony knee.
Taking advantage of the resulting lurch, Crystal opened a diagonal gash across its chest.
Free me, Zarsheiy demanded. Free me and it will burn! The fire goddess beat at the barriers containing her.
Suddenly, the creature concentrated its attack on Crystal. Both huge, taloned hands reached for her, curved around the shield she threw up, and began to compress it.
The power dagger faded as Crystal reinforced the shield. It lasted maybe three heartbeats longer.
She heard Jago scream her name as she went down.
We’re dead, she thought, and prepared to pull power from the barriers.
Yes! Zarsheiy shrieked.
“Mustn’t, mustn’t, mustn’t!” caroled a high-pitched voice.
The sound of a strangely muffled explosion echoed off the walls of the corridor. Something wet dropped onto her cheek.
As she could feel her power repairing shattered ribs, she didn’t try to move. Lying motionless hurt sufficiently.
An iridescent face poked into her field of vision. “Are you mashed?” it asked brightly. “Pulped? Crushed? Scrunched?”
“Yes,” Crystal answered.
“Oh.” It looked concerned and withdrew.
“Crystal?” Raulin’s face was smudged with black and his mustache was caked with blood. “Can I do anything?’”
She shook her head, carefully. “Just let me lie here for a moment and tell me what happened.”
“The creature blew up.”
One eyebrow rose slowly. “Just like that?”
Raulin grinned. “Pretty much.”
“Is Jago all right?”
“I’m not sure the solution wasn’t worse than the problem,” Jago answered, off to one side, “but yeah, I’m fine.”
“Jago was closest to the center of the blast,” Raulin explained, smiling strangely “and the whole thing was kind of . . . messy.”
“Oh, I see.” She didn’t, but Jago sounded all right. “If you’ll help, I think I can sit up now.”
He slid one arm behind her shoulders and lifted gently until her back rested against his chest.
The corridor—walls, ceiling, and floor—was awash with black ichor and fist-sized bits of steaming flesh. She noted with disgust that Jago—especially Jago—Raulin and herself were covered with the stuff. Surprisingly—fortunately—it smelled no worse than it had when alive. The demon she’d freed from Aryalan’s cave sat cross-legged in midair, about the only place it could sit and stay clean. Its resemblance to the larger creature was illuminating.
“One of yours?” she asked, prodding at a misshapen lump with the toe of one boot.
“Was,” the demon agreed. “Warned you not to come here. Told you it was dangerous.” It looked down at her, as close to a serious expression on its face as its features were capable of. “No more debt between us,” it said. “All debts are paid.”
Crystal nodded. “All debts are paid,” she repeated.
The demon nodded as well, a motion that set it bobbing in the air. It spun about once, and vanished.
Jago pulled a sodden sleeve out from his arm and summed up the situation with an emphatic, “Blech!”
“Could be worse,” Raulin reminded him. “You could be dead.”
“I think I’d prefer it,” Jago muttered, flipping a braid back and wincing when the movement jarred his shoulder. Using the wall for support, he stood and stripped off jacket, shirt, and undershirt. Where his torso wasn’t black with ichor, purple bruises were already beginning to show.
Crystal pushed power across their link and left it to sort out what needed healing. Then she turned to Raulin and drew her finger along the shallow gash that ran the length of his thigh. Behind the finger’s path, only a fine white scar remained. “Anything else,” she asked.
“Well, I’ve got a lump the size of an apple on the back of my head, but I can live with that.” He brushed her hair back off her face. Not a single drop of ichor clung to the silver strands. “Save your power for when you need it.”
“It’s not as bad as that,” Crystal protested. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of crumbled horse-cake, wishing she’d landed on her other side when she’d fallen. “Sokoji planned for this; I’ll eat and I’ll be fine.”
“Fine,” Raulin repeated. “When you’re not putting yourself at risk, you can heal whatever you want but now you’ve got to be close to drawing on the barriers.”
Crystal stared at him in astonishment. “How did you know?”
He pinched her chin. “I’m smarter than I look.”
He’d have to be, Zarsheiy snarled.
“In the meantime,” he continued, unaware of Zarsheiy’s remark, “let’s get out of this mess.” He took a step and had to windmill both arms to keep his balance.
“Careful,” Jago pointed out mildly, “It’s slippery.”
Raulin glared at his brother, then turned his attention to the doors. As Crystal had mentioned earlier, they were identical; which one then to open first? Ready to slam it shut at the first sign of danger, he broached the door on the left.
Nothing.
He picked up Jago’s discarded jacket and slapped it over the threshold, both breaking the line of the door and spraying the room beyond with black.
Nothing.
He peered into the room and blinked at the red and black checkerboard on walls and floor and ceiling. Both side walls and the one opposite held archways but from where he stood he couldn’t tell if the openings led to rooms or corridors. Turning his head, he could see the backs of the other two doors. He examined the floor carefully.
Nothing.
Moving next to the central door and then to the right he repeated the process with the same results.
“Okay,” he said at last. “It seems safe. Shall we go on?”
“Which door?” Jago asked.
Raulin shrugged. “Why not all of them? I don’t like the idea of one of us being in there while the other two are
still out here; those doors are too narrow if someone gets into trouble. If we go through at the same time, at least we’ll be together. Are you going to get dressed?”
Jago clawed congealing ichor out of his beard. “No,” he growled, “I’m not.” Even his undershirt had been soaked through and he didn’t want it touching his skin.
“Good thing your legs didn’t get hit,” Raulin muttered shaking his head, “or you’d be wandering around bare-assed.”
Jago ignored him and turned to Crystal. “Your decision,” he said graciously.
Crystal hid a smile. “We’ll go through together like Raulin suggested.” She waved Jago to the right and Raulin to the left while she took the center.
“All right.” She drew a deep breath. “On three, open the door and step through. Freeze on the other side until we’re sure of what to do next. Ready?”
Jago gave her a thumbs-up and Raulin blew her a kiss.
“One, two, three!”
In unison, they pulled the doors open, turned sideways, and stepped through.
Crystal found herself alone in a room with an open archway cutting through the checkerboard wall opposite her.
She spun around.
No door.
“RAULIN! JAGO!”
No answer.
FOURTEEN
“CRYSTAL! JAGO!”
The answering silence seemed to mock him and Raulin lost his temper.
“Chaos’ balls and the Mother’s tits!” he screamed and threw himself against the wall that should’ve held a door but didn’t. He kicked it, he pounded on it, and he slammed his shoulder into it all along its length. When he finally calmed down, he had a sore foot, aching hands, and a bruised shoulder but no better idea of what had become of his companions.
“This can’t be happening,” he muttered, and slumped against the offending wall. Drumming his fingers on his thighs, he reviewed everything he’d done to check for traps. His memory held no clue to what had happened.
He’d seen a room with three archways and three doors.
He stood in a room with an archway in the left wall and no door.
The red and black checkerboard pattern was the same, and so was the size as near as he could tell. The remaining archway had neither moved nor changed.
He hoped Crystal and Jago were together, but he very much doubted it.
“Okay,” he said to the silence, “I have two options. I can stay where I am and maybe Crystal or Jago will find me. Or I can go looking for them myself.” He picked at the torn hide where the demon’s talon had ripped through his heavy pants, then, squaring his shoulders, pushed himself off the wall. “Right I go looking.” Every second that he delayed increased the chance he would arrive too late to help either lover or brother or both survive.
Of the sixteen red and black tiles in the floor, he’d already effectively tested four by his mad race up and down the wall. Hugging the walls, therefore, seemed the least hazardous path to take as it gave him only one more tile to risk. This proved out as he reached the arch safely and sighed in relief at seeing the plain gray stone beyond the opening. The red and black motif was apparently at an end.
Giving the single stone of the threshold a quick inspection, he stepped completely over it. The fine crack surrounding it might have been the result of ancient mortar crumbling away to dust, but he didn’t think so.
The hall he now stood in had a high vaulted ceiling and about half the width and twice the length of the room he’d just left. A clear white light banished shadows from even the farthest corners. An archway, identical to the one behind him, cut through the far wall. At equal intervals along each side of a central aisle, were statues of strange and impossible creatures.
“Well, maybe not so impossible,” Raulin muttered, staring up at the first, “considering what else is wandering around down here.” He scraped a bit of caked ichor off his sleeve. The statue appeared to be a demented combination of snake and bear. He peered closer. Each scale had been intricately carved. He lifted a hand to touch the stone; and stopped, suddenly remembering nursery tales of carvings coming to life.
Hands shoved deep into his pockets, he headed toward the exit, carefully keeping his eyes straight ahead.
Just on the edge of his vision, he thought he saw a giant cat with too many heads twitch slightly. He walked faster.
“. . . thirteen, fourteen,” he counted as he reached the arch, teeth clenched from the effort of not breaking into a run, “and each one uglier than the last. Interesting taste this Aryalan had.”
Although the hall behind him sent icy chills up and down his spine and he wanted nothing more than to be out and gone, he bent and examined this second threshold. The same fine crack ran around it. Satisfied, he straightened and lifted a leg to step over.
The first tile on the other side protruded slightly higher than the others.
Raulin jerked his stride short and brought his foot solidly down on the stone of the threshold. It settled and he felt, rather than heard, the mechanism it controlled click into place.
The first tile now lay level with the rest of the floor and Raulin advanced into one end of a long corridor leading off to his right. Opposite him was a large, wooden, brass-bound door. Just the sort of door you’d expect to find in a wizard’s tower, he thought, not like those little lacquer things. Looking to his right he counted twelve more doors, as far as he could tell, all exact copies.
The door he faced led father away from Jago and Crystal, so Raulin ignored it. He turned and walked to the first in the right-hand wall. His only plan was to circle back until he passed the checkerboard chamber. If the trap that got them into this followed any sort of logical pattern when it split them apart, his chamber would’ve been the farthest left. Using their initial orientation, he had to go right.
The lock on the door was huge and ornate and had, he saw, a keyhole large enough to look through.
So he looked.
Something looked back. Its eye was large and yellow and bore no resemblance to the eyes of either of the two Raulin searched for—or for that matter, to anything Raulin had ever heard of.
“Jago can’t be in there, he hasn’t had time to get this far.” But a small, illogical part of him kept insisting he go back and check as he walked away; kept supplying him with visions of his brother lying wounded and helpless in the creature’s den.
Nothing looked back through a second, similar keyhole but the line of sight was too limited for Raulin to see much of the room beyond.
“It’s going in the right direction,” he muttered, sliding out a lock-pick. “Good enough.”
A few moments of careful examination identified the trap and a few moments more was all he needed to spring it. When the dart flew out of the frame, his hand was nowhere near its path. Satisfied, he pulled open the door.
“Empty,” he grunted. “Good.” Through an archway directly opposite, he could see another small room. It appeared empty as well but he decided he’d better check. The door that led back to his brother might be just out of sight.
He stepped into the room and paused. Both side walls had peculiar scratches running diagonally from the near corner to the ceiling. Under normal circumstances, Raulin preferred to stay near the walls, but those scratches didn’t look like normal circumstances so he started across the middle of the room.
About three-quarters to the other side, the entire floor tipped suddenly down like an unbalanced teeter-totter, dropping Raulin with it.
Raulin threw himself at the archway.
The threshold hit him in mid-chest. He clawed at the stone, feet scrabbling against the wall below, and managed to stop his fall.
Then he remembered to breathe.
Bracing his elbows, he levered himself up and flopped the top half of his body over into the second room.
The floor moved.
He jerk
ed away, almost overbalanced, and spent the next few seconds stabilizing again.
The side walls of this room bore scratches as well, running diagonally from the far corner to the ceiling.
“Chaos. Chaos! CHAOS!” Raulin swore, blinking sweat from his eyes. His dangling lower body had never felt so exposed and vulnerable. He could feel his balls drawing up into safer territory. He didn’t blame them.
He risked a glance back over his shoulder.
All he could see was a gray stone wall, slightly angled away from him.
“Wonderful,” he muttered, steeled himself, and looked down.
The bottom appeared to be no more than two body lengths away.
He snapped his head back and tried to calm the pounding of his heart. It wasn’t very far. Next to no distance at all if he lowered himself on his arms before he dropped. He swallowed and wet his lips. His chest hurt where he’d slammed it into the stone. His choices seemed to have narrowed to staying where he was or taking a chance down below.
Slowly he began to inch back, taking his weight on his forearms and then on his hands alone.
Kicking out a little from the wall, he let go.
One leg twisted under him when he landed. He fell heavily, then lay for a moment while he writhed in time to the waves of pain pulsating out from the injured joint. When the demon had slashed his leg during the battle, the blow had wrenched his knee as well, a minor ache in the wake of the other and until this moment he’d forgotten about it. He had a feeling he wouldn’t forget about it again for a while.
Finally, the pain began to ebb. He straightened his arms, pushing his body into a sitting position, and dragged himself around until the floor/wall supported his back. Yanking his waterskin forward, he managed to remove the stopper. Although the water had the slightly brackish taste of melted snow, the action of getting the drink helped to calm him.
“What I wouldn’t give,” he sighed, taking another mouthful, “for even a mediocre brandy.” He looked up. “’Course, it could be worse. If I’d followed the wall like I usually do, I’d have been near nothing I could grab, would’ve fallen the whole distance, probably broken my leg, at the very least, and lain here until I rotted. Which raises the question,” keeping much of his weight on the wall at his back, he stood, “how in Chaos do I get out?”