The Spiral Labyrinth

by Matthew Hughes

  "Level two," its voice said. "Draw me."

  The grip throbbed in my hand and seemed to push itself against my flesh. I tightened my fingers and did what the weapon clearly wished me to do. At the same time, I looked down the road and saw that three men, clad in rough trousers and leather jerkins, had stepped from beneath the shadows of the trees. One was small but showed quickness in his movements. The second was of moderate size and moved with a loose-limbed athleticism. The third was big enough to be called, without too much exaggeration, a giant.

  They did not pause at the sight of me, but steadily approached. As my weapon came free of its scabbard, a look passed between the smaller and the middle-sized, and the former moved farther to one side, almost into the ditch on his side of the road. The man in the middle nudged the giant with an elbow, and the big one side-stepped ponderously to the other edge of the thoroughfare.

  I took the man in the middle to be the leader because he now said something that I couldn't hear but that his companions could. The giant reached back over his shoulder and when his hand reappeared it held the end of a heavily knotted length of wood, bound in bands of black iron. The small one reached behind him to his waist and produced a coil of rope. The man in the middle hooked his thumbs in his belt and the three of them came on.

  To my weapon I said, "Is the one in the middle armed?"

  "He has something in his right boot. I detect no other metal nor any energies."

  I asked my integrator. The grinnet stretched its neck. "He holds something loosely in each hand," it said, "small, perhaps alive. His forearms are tense. I believe he intends to throw them at you."

  "Level one," said the weapon in my hand. I looked at it briefly as it spoke. It had become a sword of moderate length, its blade black and double-edged and polished brightly. Down its middle ran a long, shallow groove of a gray shade, on which was graven a frieze of curved, interwoven runes.

  When I looked back to the scene before me, the three had come within easy speaking distance. The slight one to my right had red hair and a scraggly beard of the same hue. His small eyes looked in two different directions from around a sharp pointed nose. The giant was gray of skin, with a fall of lank, black hair tied by a greasy thong around his brow, his heavy features impassive.

  The leader, brown of hair and dark of eye, with a droop to one corner of his mouth caused by a long scar across his cheek, took a step forward. The sword in my hand tingled. I half raised it before me in a guard stance, thinking it had been a long time since my student days, when I had been useful with the epiniard.

  "Let me," whispered the weapon, and I allowed it to nudge my hand and wrist subtly in a manner that altered its alignment. Suddenly, it felt like a natural extension of my arm and I realized that if things came to the moment of crisis that clearly loomed, I would do well to depend on the sword's intelligence.

  "Well, now," said the man with the scar, glancing at my weapon then back to my face, "that's a far from friendly way to greet three amiable fellows like us, chance-met along the road."

  His accent was odd, as if his vowels slid loosely across his palate and his consonants were dulled. Old Earth had several regional manners of speech, especially among enclaves that had little contact with the plurality, but this was none that I had heard, though I had heard them all. As he spoke, the giant and the fox-faced one continued to sidle obliquely forward on my flanks. I would soon be hemmed from three sides.

  "This weapon," I said, "has a mind of its own. If it thinks I am threatened, it will act decisively."

  The two that had been moving stood still. The middle one smiled with the half of his face that could move. "That would be a valuable item," he said. "I would like to examine it."

  "You may soon have an opportunity to do so," I said, moving the sword's dark tip in a small but ominous circle. "But your wisest course is to stand aside and let me go on my way."

  The leader affected to consider my proposal, but he did not move. "Would your name be Apthorn?" he asked.

  "My name is my own business," I said.

  His eyes moved to the grinnet. "That's a curious creature on your shoulder," he said.

  "All the curiosity seems to be on your side," I said. "Now I am asking you formally to step out of my way."

  "Not before you answer some questions."

  "What questions?"

  "We were watching the road from the south. One moment, it was empty; the next, you were on it. How did that happen?"

  I kept my eyes moving, from one to the other, and down to the leader's thumbs, still hooked in his belt. "I walked down the hill. I recall nothing startling. Perhaps your attention was distracted for a moment."

  The man smiled his half-smile once more. "When it comes to road-watching, I am no amateur. I saw what I saw. Now I would like an explanation." As he finished speaking, he shifted his weight slightly forward onto the balls of his feet and I saw the other two tense. Whatever was to come was rehearsed and imminent.

  As the leader's thumbs unhooked from his belt, I stepped back. His hands snapped up and two small, dark objects flew toward me. My sword point flicked to the right, slicing one of the projectiles in half, the weapon's motion pulling me in the same direction so that the other flung thing passed over my left shoulder.

  Or would have done so if that shoulder had not been occupied by a grinnet. I heard a clicking sound, rapid and high-pitched, pass near my ear, then a gasp. But I had no time to investigate because the rush was on me.

  Fortunately, for me at least, they had apparently not rehearsed what to do if the leader's throwing trick didn't deliver them a decisive advantage in the struggle's opening moments. So now the giant and the little one were coming at me while the middle one was stooping to put a hand to his right boot. But the two on my flanks moved at unequal speeds; the smallest one coming into range first on my right. I let the sword deal with him.

  The coil of rope he carried was a lasso, and he was tossing its loop at my head. The black blade sliced through the heavy cord as if it were gossamer then continued on to open the man's throat. Like a dancer being led by a virtuoso, I allowed the weapon to determine what we would do next, which was to throw a feint at the leader's eyes, causing him to stumble backwards and almost fall.

  Then I followed the sword's urging to pivot on my back heel so that now I faced the lumbering rush of the giant, who came at me with his club raised. I moved forward before he could deliver a downward blow and the sword directed itself up and into the big man's left eye, sliding easily through until its point met the top of his skull.

  The giant shuddered once, made a noise like a small animal encountering a surprise, then his knees and ankles bent and he collapsed like a tower crumbling into its own foundations.

  The sword withdrew itself and instantly swung my hand toward the remaining man, but the fellow was running toward the trees at his best speed. In moments he was out of sight, but I could hear him crashing through branches, going ever deeper into the woods.

  "Help me!" said a voice from the air. The weapon reacted, pulling at my hand so that its point swung toward my left shoulder. But I forced it down.

  "No," I told the sword, transferring it to my left hand then reaching with my right until I encountered the loose skin at the back of the grinnet's neck. I lifted my assistant free of my shoulder, though his prehensile toes gripped the cloth of my garment, and deposited him before me on the road.

  The integrator's two small hands held, as far from its face as its befurred arms could extend, something black and rounded with a chitinous sheen that reflected the red sun. I bent and peered at the creature's underside, saw a wriggle of many segmented legs, covered in barbs and ending in hooks, with at one end a protrusion of mouth parts, at the other a tail that bore a stinger wet with some doubtless unhelpful exudate. The thing hissed and clicked and flexed its appendages in a manner that left no doubt it longed to complete its mission.

  "Hold tight to it," I said, which caused my assistant to throw me
a brief look that wordlessly questioned the superfluity of the advice.

  I sheathed the sword and examined the two bodies. The red-haired man had a pouch sewn from thick leather on his belt. I knelt and untied it, opening it to find three silver coins plus a handful made of baser stuff. I emptied these out and stuffed them in a pocket, then brought the pouch back to where my assistant held the hissing, clicking creature and gently folded the thick leather around it, then told my assistant to release its grip. It did so with alacrity, and I swiftly closed the flap of the pouch. At once the struggles subsided.

  "What do you want with that thing?" the grinnet asked, its hands reflexively smoothing its fur as was its unconscious habit on stressful occasions.

  "It may be of value," I said, "and we may need something to sell."

  It looked up at the sun. "You are right," it said. "We are out of our own time," it said.

  "We are. And judging by the coins in that fellow's purse, the local economy operates on cash and carry."

  "So, no fiduciary pool." The integrator looked at the two corpses. "No Archonate Bureau of Scrutiny, either."

  "Indeed," I said. "No Archonate, nor an Archon to govern it."

  "How has this been done to us?" it said.

  "We have passed through an interplanar gate. It has moved us forward through time and in some unknown direction through space."

  "We are in the age of magic, then. What does Osk Rievor propose?"

  "I wish I could ask him," I said, then told it what had occurred just before we encountered the road agents. The small hands again began to winnow through the fur on its cheeks. "Come," I said, extending my arm to that it could remount to my shoulder. "This is probably not a good place to spend the night."

  Distasteful as it was, I bade the integrator scan the bodies for more valuables, and it discovered some more coins in the giant's wallet and a gold brooch pinned to the inner lining of the little man's blood-soaked jerkin. I tucked all of it into an inside pocket of my jacket.

  I could not bury the bodies, and wouldn't have even if I had had tools. The sun was sliding down toward the horizon and I suspected that this was not the kind of country where a stranger could safely curl up under a tree for the night. I looked to where I had earlier seen what looked like rooftops. The road led that way and I set off at a brisk pace.

  "Weapon," I said, after a few steps, "are you aware of the change that has come over you?"

  "My function remains the same," it said, "but just before the recent conflict I believed that I sensed a rearrangement of my components. Now, however, it seems to me that I am as I always was."

  I thought about its answer. Like my assistant, it had passed through a deep dimple then through an interplanar gate, emerging into a world where, I was quite sure, magic was firmly in the ascendant. If it had remained a semi-sentient energy pistol, it might not even be able to work here. But as a self-willed sword, as it has just demonstrated conclusively, its functioning was unimpaired. Then a worrisome question occurred: "How are your energy stores?"

  "I was fully charged to begin with," it said. "Then I expended some energy during the fight. However, when I dispatched the first of the two opponents, I noticed that I regained all of my output. In fact, I am now slightly overcharged."

  I found its answer more discomforting than my question. It seemed I now owned a sword that could draw some kind of life force from those it slew. But, on reflection, that was unlikely to be the greatest problem I would face in this new world. "Use some of your overage to maintain the highest level of watchfulness," I told it. "Fresh dangers may appear at any moment."

  "Excellent," it said. I had an impulse to respond, but again I decided that I had greater concerns than my sword's attitude.

  "Integrator," I said, "how are your systems affected?"

  It did not answer immediately, then it said, "I have performed an introspection and I believe that my sensorium and memory are as before, although I cannot augment them through the connectivity's common resources."

  "Very good," I said, "but let us test your abilities, in case your appreciation of your own systems has been altered, as the weapon's has been."

  "I am quite fine," said the sword.

  "Of course you are," I said. "Maintain watchfulness."

  I tested my assistant's scanning abilities at their maximum range, and found that it could detect the beating of a small bird's heart at a good distance, and count the number of leaves on a bush far down the road. It also recalled several tiny details of events chosen at ransom from our own years together, as well as from its general stores of data.

  "It could be worse," I said, more to cheer myself than to reassure my assistant.

  It hunched itself on my shoulder and said, "It probably will be."

  #

  The road led through some low hills, covered in grass but speckled with trees whose leaves were so dark a red they appeared black, then broke out into a long flat valley through which a placid river flowed. Spanning the river was a stone bridge, and around the crossing had grown up a settlement mainly formed of stone-and-timber houses and a few huts rudely assembled from unpeeled logs. At the near end of the bridge stood the town's only substantial structure, three-storied and built of yellow fired bricks on a foundation of granite blocks, surrounded by a roofed verandah. It looked like an inn, and when I reached its front steps, that was what it turned out to be.

  It was growing dark now. Oil lights gleamed here and there in the town, and a yellowy glow seeped around the edges and through the slats of a pair of half-doors that marked the entrance to the inn's public room. I paused to listen before pressing through and heard a hubbub of voices overlaid by a whirring sound and some mechanical device that went clickety-clickety-click. Then the muttering stilled as the clicking stopped and I heard a single voice announce, "Four and silver," followed by a mixed grumble of disappointments punctuated by someone's "Oh, ho!" and someone else's gleeful giggle.

  I stepped through the doors and found what I expected: a large room, rustically appointed with sturdy tables and stools and well populated, though with more men than women. At one end of the tavern was a long table around which a crowd clustered, placing stakes on a grid laid out with numbers and four different colors, while a man wearing a plush-fabric, long-tailed coat and a complexly-tied cravat was just in the act of spinning a horizontal wheel set into one end of the board. He smoothed his slicked-back hair and said something, then dropped a small white ball into the spinning circle. Again I heard that clickety-clickety sound amid a rising din of excitement from the bettors.

  A few persons noted my entrance, though none of them gave me more than a brief, hard stare. My rough clothing was different enough from theirs to mark me as a stranger, yet not so far off the norm to cause a sensation or scandal. A couple made careful note of the weapon slung at my hip, but I detected no more than a casual interest, and the sword found nothing to warn me about.

  At the opposite end of the room from where the gamblers crowded stood a bar of polished wood, behind which slouched a barman who, if less polished that his counter, weighed me with professional interest as I crossed the floor to speak with him.

  "Are you the innkeeper?"

  "I am."

  "Do you have rooms to rent?"

  "I do, if you have terces to pay the tariff."

  He was a lumpish man with a fringe of greasy hair around an otherwise bald dome, a nose that had not benefited from being broken at least once, and eyes the color of the ale he was drawing into a wooden stoup.

  "How much is the tariff?" I said, and saw a flicker of calculation pass across his face as he judged the quality of my clothing. Before answering he leisurely passed the full container to a man who stood hunched forward with his elbows on the bar, then he said, "Four terces for the night, plus two more for supper and another one for breakfast. Making seven in all."

  The man who received the ale made a noise like a suppressed snigger, causing the innkeeper to shoot him a hostile glanc
e. I was not yet sure what a terce might be worth, but I had traveled in enough out-of-the-way places up and down The Spray to know when I was being played for a noddy. I said, "Let us say two for the night, one for the supper, and I will retain a cob of bread for the morning. Making three."

  His response was immediate. "Four, and a pot of punge at breakfast."

  "Done."

  There being no empty tables, I ate standing at the bar. The food was unpretentious but came in ample portions: bread and butter, some boiled roots that tasted like stale eggs, a leafy green salad sprinkled with sharp cheese, and two thick sausages smeared with a fiery white mustard. The grinnet made do with some of my bread and vegetables.

  When I was finished I asked the innkeeper, "What is the name of this village?"

  "Bridge-on-Scammon."

  "Scammon is the river's name?"

  He signaled that it was.

  "And the nearest sizable town from here?"

  "Bambles," he said, "north to the end of the valley and over the hills to the sea. Two days' walk if you be fit."

  "Is there any form of transport I could hire?"

  He turned his head so that he looked at me sideways across the ruins of his nose. "Maybe if a farmer was going to market, but that won't be for another three days."

  It turned out that terces were the large coppery coins I had taken from the dead robbers. I changed one of the silver rounds for ten terces and eight smaller brass coins called bits, four of which made one terce. Counting it all up, I reckoned that I had enough to feed and shelter myself for the foreseeable future, but I would surely need more funds to do what I hoped to do about my predicament.

  I chewed the last bite of sausage, listening to the man on the other side of the room call for wagers. He dropped the small ball so that it struck and clattered among the spinning wheel's frets. Moments later came moans of disappointment and a whoop of triumph as the wheel delivered its judgment.

  I crossed the room to where I could get a clear look at the betting table and watched the play for a while. The system appeared simple. Players bet on individual numbers, or on combinations of two or four. They could also bet on even or odd or on the four different colors into which the wheel's sixty slots were divided. Winners were paid off in multiples of their wagers, the highest being for picking a single winning number -- that paid thirty to one -- the lowest for simple odd-or-even, which paid one to one. There was also a single slot on the wheel that showed not a number but only a face that sported a cruel grin. If the ball fell there, the house took all bets.