The Spiral Labyrinth

by Matthew Hughes

  "What do you mean to do?" Lavelan said, edging back on the bench.

  "The empirical method in action. I will smash this down on the corner of the bench, perhaps to break off a piece."

  "Why?"

  "To see if Albruithine still 'defends' his work."

  Now he quickly rose from the stone slab and put distance between us. "That is not wise," he said. "Really."

  "We'll see, won't we?"

  I scooped up my assistant from where he was chewing bread and placed him on the ground. I went to one end of the bench, lifted the rock and drew a bead on one of the bench's chiseled corners. A chill breeze suddenly swept down from the uplands, ruffling my hair, followed by a rattling as if stones tumbled down a ravine. My assistant squawked and the sword at my hip awoke to say, "Alert! Alert!"

  Lavelan had turned and fled the shelter. He was making his best speed up the path.

  "I advise you to put the rock down," said the grinnet's voice in my inner ear, "and very carefully." It was looking up the hill that rose behind the bench. Not far up the slope, the grass and gorse were moving, as if something shifted ponderously beneath them. As I watched, the rock still poised above my head, a giant hand of gray stone broke free of the sod, fingers spread wide, and was followed by a forearm as thick as my thigh. The hand descended to pull at the turf where its owners face might be expected to lie.

  I very carefully replaced the rock where I had found it and stepped away from the bench. Up the hill, the hand paused. After a few moments it slowly sank back into the earth. The rattling sound ceased and the cold wind died away. The sword said, "Clear."

  Pars Lavelan was coming back down the path, wearing a look of concern. "If we are to travel together," he said, "I must ask you not to make any more such 'tests.' At least not without giving me a warning and ample time to depart the vicinity."

  "But the test was successful," I said. "I demonstrated that Albruithine's spell still works."

  "You demonstrated what any child would know. How does that contribute anything useful to our lives?"

  "The demonstration was of the usefulness of the empirical method," I said.

  A flash of exasperation caused his brows to knit then quickly rise. "It is all double-talk with you. Enough! Let us get on and make some distance before nightfall." He set off again, and I heard him muttering something about how he hoped that I would eschew any further demonstrations of my disrespect for Albruithine's will.

  I gathered up the uneaten food and hoisted the grinnet to my shoulder. It also had a few unuseful comments to make. I ordered it to keep silent. But after I had taken a few steps, thinking it best to stay a little behind Lavelan until he got over his ill temper, the integrator spoke again. "All the fruit is gone. There is only bread."

  "That should be enough for you. Doubtless there is more fruit in your future. Exert your mind toward more productive ends."

  "I am doing so," it said. "I have been considering the inventory of spells that Osk Rievor had been assembling."

  I had known that my other self used to spend the hours when I was sleeping working through the jumble of books and grimoires he had acquired. "What of it?" I said. "He is not here to employ them."

  "But you are," the grinnet said.

  "I?" I said, adding a sound of derisive dismissal. "Can you possibly think that I would wield magic? That would be like expecting Ob to embrace Emmerine."

  I referred to the old comic play in which a noted epicure is pursued by an amorous dollymoll who seeks to tempt him with her simple charms. All her ploys come to nought.

  "Yet the story implies," my assistant countered, "that by refusing her, Ob missed his chance to experience sensations that, though rudimentary, were also more potent than he was accustomed to. He would have benefited from a wider knowledge of what the world had to offer him."

  "Some see that implication. I do not. I see it as a warning to the simple-minded not to pester their betters, whatever they may feel they have to offer."

  The integrator chose not to take the implication of my remark and pressed on regardless. I had noticed it had lately developed an increased tendency not to recognize a gentle hint. It said that it had raised the subject because it had been considering what Pars Lavelan had said about being under a spell of sufficiency.

  "Yes," I said, "what of it?"

  "I know a spell of sufficiency," it said. It went on to tell me that Osk Rievor had been sorting the various incantations and cantrips he had come across in his late-night reading. A few were complete and genuine, dating from when magic last ruled. A few more were incomplete, half-remembered renderings written down in the time after reason had regained control. Others were farcical.

  "But even the latter category can sometimes contain the germs of truth," the grinnet said. "By constructing a matrix of the true, the partly true and the false-facsimile, he was able to tease out congruencies. By the time we went to Hember, he had identified several dozen authentic charms and enchantments, some of them quite powerful, including a spell of sufficiency."

  "I am surprised he did not demonstrate them to me," I said.

  "They did not work well on our side of the cusp. Here, however, they ought to be fully effective."

  "Hmm," I said, "show me one, preferably not too startling."

  "I cannot," the grinnet said. "I experimented after we left the inn but before we met Pars Lavelan. My efforts had no effect. I believe it is because I lack will."

  I made a small noise, then said, "If you do, you certainly seem to have developed a workable substitute."

  Lavelan looked back at me. "Did you say something?"

  "No, I was comforting my pet."

  "I lack will because I am artificially created," my assistant said. "You, however, have more than a normal share. And on this side of the cusp, you should be able to empower a spell with considerable force."

  "I have no intention of doing so. I would feel. . ." I sought for the right word, but could not choose between "sad" and "defeated." Finally, I settled on "It would seem inappropriate."

  "You have always prided yourself on a flexibility of mind," it said. "You have been prepared to accept the most improbable truth if it was all that was left standing once the impossible had been pared away."

  "Even so."

  "I have no wish to upset your emotional equilibrium, but if Lavelan had not warned you, that flying thing would have come silently down upon us and by now we would be nothing but bones tumbling about in its digestive juices."

  "Perhaps I would prefer that to being a spell-slinger," I said.

  "You would truly rather die than speak a spell?"

  I was forming an answer when it continued, "Because that may be the choice you are about to be offered."

  I had been walking with my eyes downcast. Now I looked up. The trail had climbed to skirt a boulder beyond which began a level patch of ground before the hill climbed again. At the edge of the flat space, a few paces in front of me, stood Pars Lavelan, his back toward me and his front toward four men who blocked the way. The men were clad identically in leggings and puffed jackets of blue and dark purple, and each wore a slouch hat of the same colors, with a badge of white metal pinning up edge of the brim. Each had a rod of some black substance and from the way they held the objects, two-handed, with one end pointed in our direction, I had no doubt they were weapons.

  "Alert," said the sword. "Draw me."

  But I thought better of it. From the way the rods were aimed at us, I took them to be weapons that would act before I and the sword could reach them.

  Lavelan's gaze was not on the men in front of him. He was looking up at the object that hovered above and behind them. It was a railed platform of gilded and white-painted wood, oblong in shape and supported at its four corners by what appeared to be four compact whirlwinds that neither dissipated nor spun away.

  Standing at the front of the platform, leaning his elbows on the rail and looking down at us while his hands cradled a fifth black rod, was a man
wearing the same livery as the four on the ground. He was grinning at Lavelan, the grin made crooked by a scar that disfigured his cheek and twisted the corner of his mouth. I realized that I had seen the man's face before, had seen it only yesterday. The grin had been the same, but the eyes above it were even harder now as he looked me up and down. From the way he handled the weapon, I knew that I now had a more difficult problem to deal with than a couple of thrown skets.

  Chapter Seven

  Pars Lavelan was saying something I couldn't quite catch, a stream of syllables pronounced in a formal diction, in the manner of an Archonate official reading a public pronouncement, but under his breath.

  The man on the platform flicked his gaze back to Lavelan and I saw the network of lines at the corners of his eyes deepen in concentration. He grunted, a sound that mingled amusement with disdain, then put the fingers of his right hand through a rapid series of motions. My companion ceased his utterance. I saw his shoulders slump, but then he squared them again and spoke.

  "This is a serious breach of the Compact, Ezzers. This is not like some quick flurry of blades after a drunken curse shouted a drunken curse across a tavern table, or when shoulders brush past in a narrow alley."

  The scarred face mimed mock fear then the grin returned. "You should have been a pedagogue, Lavelan. True, your penchant for stating the obvious would have bored your students to distraction, but at least you would have lived longer."

  "This will be found out," Lavelan said, "and your patron will find four Powers ranged against him. I will not be the only one to find his lifespan abruptly shortened."

  "You really should draw me," the sword was saying, but I hushed it because my assistant was speaking in my ear.

  "Place the tips of your middle fingers against your thumbs and squeeze hard," the grinnet said, "then speak these words after me." Then before it gave me the spoken part of the spell, it added, "And it would be helpful if you would assume your most determined frame of mind."

  "Exert my will, you mean?"

  "It is essential to the process."

  Meanwhile Lavelan was saying, "Ezzers, you cannot have heard your instructions right. Your master will feed you to that thing that stirs beneath the floor of his keep."

  "Step to the side, and I might let you live," the man with the scar said. Then he addressed himself to me. "Remove your weapon and place it on the ground. Then come forward."

  Lavelan cast me a worried look as he moved off the trail. I dropped my eyes to the path and listened with all my attention to the syllable that the integrator was causing to sound in my ear. Some small part of me still wanted to reject the grinnet's plan, but all my other parts had come to accept that no other course was open.

  I slipped the sword's baldric over my head and stooped to lay the weapon on the ground. Then I put my fingertips together as the grinnet had advised and spoke the first sound, mouthing it softly. As my lips formed the syllable and my breath pushed it past my tongue, I felt as if a bright light had suddenly turned itself on within my skull. My hands grew intensely warm.

  I rose slowly. The second syllable, a hard-edged guttural, formed in the back of my throat. As if it were a live thing it slithered to the front of my mouth and slid through my gritted teeth. Suddenly, my hands were cold, as if sheathed in ice, and the light in my head had turned a deep crimson.

  "Lavelan!" shouted the man above. "What are you doing?" His rod swung toward the gray-eyed man, who put up his hands and swore that he was blameless.

  "Get away from him!" Ezzers ordered as my progress up the path brought me level with Lavelan. My companion was regarding me with consternation, backing away.

  The third syllable, soft and sibilant, whispered across my lips, leaving a taste as of acrid oil on my tongue. A bell was tolling behind my eyes, faster and faster, its reverberations rippling through the crimson light like fine silk stirring under a breeze. My hands felt as if they had swollen to thrice their normal size, their weight dragging down my arms.

  "Look at me," Ezzers was saying. I heard a hum as if a hive of bees were stirring. He was charging his weapon.

  "Level one," said the sword, from the ground. "Pick me up."

  The grinnet whispered two more syllables into my ear. "Say them together," it said, "and as you do so, raise your hands, palms up, then unlock your fingers in the direction of the enemy."

  One syllable was barely more than a grunt, the other a fricative of lips and teeth. I brought up my hands as bid, surprised to see them no larger than usual, though now it felt as if they vibrated with great power. The tolling in my head had become a single, sustained, overpowering note, so loud within my mind that I feared it would force apart the bones of my skull.

  As I blew the air of the last syllable over my lips, I flicked open my cocked middle fingers. One hand was aimed generally at the four men on the ground, the other toward the man on the hovering platform.

  It was as if an icy wind roared silently through me, or a surge of glacial meltwater, welling up from the soles of my feet as if entering me from beneath the ground then sweeping and scouring my inner channels until the torrent of invisible force exited my fingers and struck its targets.

  I knew nothing of real magic. I did not know what to expect. Perhaps the five men would disappear in a puff of green smoke, or be turned into lumps of stone. Thus I was not prepared to witness the horror that my unleashed will inflicted on them.

  As the spell's impact struck them, each man stiffened as if jerked upright by the collar. The rods fell from numb fingers, clattering on the stony ground. Ezzers tumbled forward over the front railing of the hovering platform, executing a stiff-limbed somersault but landing upright on his feet.

  All five of them remained standing, but their limbs and torsos shook and trembled, and their heels thudded against the ground, as if the stones they stood on were violently shaking beneath them. But the ground was still.

  Their faces had gone bloodless, the corners of their mouths downturned in identical grimaces, their teeth chattering in continuous spasms that gashed the flesh of tongues and lips, sending rivulets of blood flowing down their chins. Their eyes rolled loose in all directions and from each of them came a wailing and keening that raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

  All of this took but a few moments, though to me they seemed to stretch through an eternity of time outside of time. Then, as one, the five men grew still. Their eyes rolled up and their mouths hung slack. Their heads seemed to shrink back onto their necks while their necks sank into the collars of their jackets. Their hands shriveled and were drawn up into their sleeves. In no more time than it takes to tell of it, they disappeared into their own clothing, and the suits of livery collapsed empty to the ground. Small puffs of gray matter, dust and tiny flakes, erupted from the openings in the piles of blue and purple cloth, and blew away on the wind.

  Pars Lavelan swung me around to face him. I saw horror contending with curiosity in his expression. "What was that?" he said.

  My assistant was whispering in my ear -- "The spell is called Orrian's Hasty Dwindling," -- but I told Lavelan I did not know.

  "Yet you cast it."

  "How could I? I am not a magician," I said, reflecting as I did so that that was a sentence I would never have thought I would find it necessary to utter.

  "It came from you."

  "It is complicated," I said.

  He took out his medallion and extended it to me. I noticed that his hand was shaking. Then he looked at the disk and shook his head. "I do not understand."

  "Nor do I, really," I said. I went and recovered the sword.

  He chewed the inside of his lip a moment then said, "You must talk with my patron."

  I had been thinking about that eventuality. "I'm not sure that is a good idea," I said. "I do not wish to insert myself into a struggle for dominance between powers."

  He looked at the heap of clothing that had been Ezzers. "I would say that you are already well inserted." He shook himself and took s
tock, looking up at the platform that hovered just out reach above our heads. "We will need to get onto that."

  "Will it answer your commands?" I said.

  Again the uncomprehending look was directed my way. "Why wouldn't it? Those are elementals of the basest sort, nothing but air and the will to move it. We have only to get aboard and operate the control." He looked up at the unreachable floor of the platform. "Perhaps I could hook it with my staff."

  "Describe the control."

  He did so. A pedestal stood near the middle of the platform. From it emerged a lever of green glass, topped by a faceted crystal. "Push the lever in the direction you wish to go. Pull it up to ascend, push it down to land. Center it to hover."

  "Very good," I said, lifting my assistant from my shoulder. "If I may borrow your staff?"

  The staff reached to the bottom of the railing. I bade the integrator climb up and operate the lever and was pleased that it did so without argument. The platform settled to the ground and we climbed aboard, Pars Lavelan first collecting the five black rods which he stored in a cupboard behind one of the several couches that were the vehicle's seating. Then he positioned himself at the control pedestal, pulled the lever up and pushed it to the right. From the whirlwinds at the corners came a soughing like wind around eaves. The platform lifted, swung toward the north and moved smoothly through the sky.

  #

  It was like sitting in the salon of a minimally appointed aircraft. Though the vehicle was unwalled and unroofed, its passage brought no flow of air across my face, and when we rose to a height from which the river we had walked beside that morning was a thin ribbon of darkness set between far-off carpets of green, the temperature did not change.

  Pars Lavelan made minor adjustments to the position of the green rod then approached to where I was sitting. He made as if to sit but checked himself, turned and went instead to a low cabinet that stood to one side of the platform. He opened its doors and bent to rustle inside, coming up with a stoppered bottle of worked glass in which a green liquid sloshed. He found two crystal goblets and brought the collection back to where I sat, using one foot to nudge a low table into range. He set down the glasses, sat and poured from the bottle, raising one glass to me while saying, "Spell of sufficiency or no, some occasions require fortifying."