The Spiral Labyrinth

by Matthew Hughes

  Lavelan regarded me as if I were a not-very-bright child. "No," he said. "With three colors, you get a constantly shifting dissonance. The whole is less than the sum of its parts. With four, you get stasis, and it all blends into a useless gray."

  "Fascinating," I said, to encourage him to say more.

  He obliged. "If you really know nothing about this, you're probably thinking that one color ought to be easy."

  I probably would have thought just that if the idea had occurred to me, so I assured him that he was correct.

  "But you'd be wrong," he said. "Trying to control one-color magic -- monopolar technique, its misguided advocates call it -- is a fool's pursuit. Every now and then, someone sets out to do it, and ends up as a pool of malodorous goo or a puff of blasted debris."

  I thought of the blue wizard from the previous age of magic whom Osk Rievor had rescued from a timeless imprisonment, but decided not to mention him to Pars Lavelan. Perhaps sympathetic association was different in this aeon than in its previous iteration. Or perhaps I had been pitched into an early period of the new age, when much remained to be rediscovered. The existence of the ruins of Lakh, a city that was probably destroyed in the chaos of the great change and had since remained unrebuilt, argued for that theory.

  The people of this time also seemed to have no knowledge of animal familiars. Everyone I had met so far, even as sophisticated a practitioner as Bol surely was, had seen the grinnet on my shoulder as no more than an odd pet. It was more evidence that I had arrived in a primitive age, like the remote times before integrators had arisen.

  Pars Lavelan was chuckling over a thought he had kept to himself, probably the memory of some fool's efforts that ended in rank goo or drifting dust. "Is there any wizard," I asked him, "who commands red and black?"

  The question brought a snort. "Of course not. One type must be dominant. But red and black are both primes. Neither can be subordinated to the other, so the practitioner who tried to wield both would be torn asunder." He paused to consider, then said, "Or he might be crushed to a gory pulp, depending on how the poles encountered each other. Either way, it would not be a sight for innocent eyes." He walked on, shaking his head, then looked at me curiously and said, "Why do you ask that?"

  I showed him my blandest face. "I thought I'd heard of a wizard who expressed himself in those colors."

  He made a soft whistling noise through pursed lips. "That would be quite the wizard."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Well, think about it. A skilled practitioner uses the minor color to strengthen his projection of will toward the major, while slipping some of the dominant's power off toward the recessive strain. It requires a fine balance, and takes years of persistent effort to develop. You couldn't do that with two primes. Controlling them would come down to an exercise of sheer will, and the will would have to be of vast power. Godlike. Unimaginable."

  "Hmm," I said, "fascinating."

  "But you say you've heard of a practitioner of red and black?"

  I became vague, said that the details eluded me.

  "Somewhere down south?" he pressed.

  I supposed that it must have been.

  "I will have to get down there some day," he said. "It sounds like quite the place."

  We had come to a door, identical to several dozen that we had passed. He touched it with a finger and it swung smoothly inward. Beyond was a roomy chamber with bed, chair, table, commode and gardrobe. A rug of copper and green covered the floor, with a pattern woven into it that disturbed my gaze. I looked away and saw Lavelan touch one of the panels that formed the wall opposite the door. It became a pane of green-tinted glass that looked out on the landward spread of Bambles, showing both the new city and the bones of the old.

  "I have duties to perform," he said, "but I will be back when they are completed. If you require anything, ask the attendant."

  "How do I do that?" I said.

  "Speak and you will be heard." He addressed the air. "Attendant, make yourself known."

  I instantly felt a presence beside me, as I had when we had paused before the tall doors to Smiling Bol's great room, though this one was less baleful.

  "What is needed?" said a voice from nowhere.

  "Nothing," I began to say, but was interrupted by a word from my assistant. "Some fruit," it said in my ear.

  "A bowl of fruit for my pet," I said.

  The air shimmered over the table and a bowl of fruit appeared. The integrator climbed nimbly down me and crossed the rug. A moment later, it was peeling some kind of plum.

  Lavelan made a simple farewell and departed, closing the door after him. I waited until he had been gone a short while, then stepped to the portal and touched it. It swung silently open. I closed it and went to the window.

  One of the requirements of the discriminator's profession is the occasional interval for leisured thought. I had had few opportunities since the moment Osk Rievor and I had set out for the Blik Arlem estate and plunged into a world not made for me.

  I made a gesture to draw my assistant's attention, then added a series of touches to tip of nose, point of chin and lobe of ear that constituted a secret code. The integrator would now generate out loud the sound of my voice singing a sentimental ballad about hapless Farouche, the ever-yearning lover, sadly strumming his bardolade as he sought the favors of hard-hearted Ardyss. Under this sonic subterfuge, my assistant and I could confer privately, it speaking in my inner ear while I spoke in an almost unbreathing whisper. The technique was effective against eavesdropping house integrators and all but the most sophisticated surveillance suites; it ought to serve against Smiling Bol's attendant.

  "Integrator," I said, once I heard the opening bars of Farouche's lament, "do you retain--"

  "This fruit is of indifferent quality," it said.

  "I believe we find ourselves in a less well developed world than we are used to," I said. "This is not just a different time; it is a simpler one."

  The grinnet put down the uneaten plum and palpated a small, striped melon, offering a grunt of disappointment. I directed its attention to the view out the window. "Do you retain the image of the city of Ambit in the age of Majestrum?"

  "I do."

  I put my hand before my eyes as if shading them from the light. "Project it onto my palm."

  A cityscape of long-dead Ambit appeared before me at its height, with its spires and cupolas, its walls and gardens, its eyries and shimmering pools. In comparison, Bambles was a poor place, even leaving aside the fact that it occupied a graveyard. Most of its structures were modest, and even the palaces of its ruling magicians would not have stood up to the better manses of Olkney's magnates. And there was nothing to rival the Archonate's palace high on the crags above Olkney, a sprawl tens of millennia in the building.

  "Hypothesis," I said. "We have landed in the coming age not very long after the transformation. That event brought on an age of chaos and darkness -- the Lacuna -- from which this Old Earth is still emerging."

  The integrator responded as it was designed to do. "Supporting evidence: the extensive ruins -- there were nonesuch in Ambit; also, Majestrum and his opponent, the blue wizard, showed no duality of color, indicating that they flourished at a time when the monopolar technique has been mastered."

  "Now consider," I said, "that the magic that brought us hither was directed by a practitioner who apparently wielded two prime strains, black and red, indicating a strength of will that is beyond the conception of an experienced fellow like Pars Lavelan. What is the inference?"

  An obsession with fruit and self-grooming had not dimmed my assistant's analytical processes. "That the creator of the spiral labyrinth was not of this place and time. Perhaps not even of this plane of existence."

  "Indeed," I said, "Lavelan used the term 'godlike' to describe this mysterious actor's willpower. That might explain the source of the 'great shout' that so disturbed the demon."

  I had also trained my assistant to spot weak links in
my chains of reasoning. "But godlike will should be companioned by godlike knowledge. The unknown shouter is calling out the wrong name."

  "Perhaps," I said. "Or perhaps the mispronunciation is deliberate."

  "I see," said the integrator. "Close enough to be recognized by the one being shouted for, yet different enough not to cause difficulties when shouted into continua where there is no difference between the name and the thing that is named."

  "But am I being shouted for?" I said. "Or is someone roaring my name in divine rage? Is the correct response to run toward the call, or to run from it?" I had had no experience in dealing with bellowing gods, but I imagined that making the wrong choice could be my final exercise in volition -- or any other activity that required the breath of life to remain within my person. I weighed the alternatives and decided that, in the absence of the insight that would have been provided by my missing intuition, it was premature to say.

  "Back to the matter of this being a simpler age," I said, "the spell you supplied to me was also unknown to Pars Lavelan."

  My assistant said, "It may be that the magic practiced in each age is distinct to its aeon, so that an entirely new arcanum must be discovered every time the change occurs."

  "Unlikely," I said. "Or why would a spell from the last age of magic be effective in this one? More likely, magic is what is always was, but it has to be rediscovered each time the Wheel turns. The powers inherent in spells and cantrips are there to be found and controlled, if sufficient will and aptitude are brought to bear."

  Listening to my own words, beneath the ongoing stanzas lamenting fair Ardyss's lack of kindness, I experienced a brief sense of intellectual dislocation. If, only weeks ago, someone had informed me that I would shortly be spending time in a wizard's demesne, trying to make sense of how magic might or might not work, I would have gently eased the speaker toward competent assistance and wished him a speedy recovery. Now, here I was, trying to apply logic to a system that inherently embodied rationality's opposite. I felt a moment's self-pity, followed by a flash of anger at my missing alter ego, then I pushed both sentiments aside and soldiered on.

  "So," I said, "the spells that Osk Rievor has stored in you most likely date from the empyrion of the last age of sympathetic association. Some of them may be relatively mundane -- the equivalent of standard recipes one finds in any general cookbook -- but others may be of gourmet quality."

  The grinnet confirmed my reasoning. "Some are of significant effect, judging by what is written in the annotations and commentaries."

  "I am sure that the man Ezzers and his cronies would agree," I said.

  "That was not the most powerful. I chose it because the commentaries described it as less likely than some others to rebound upon an untrained caster."

  The comment sent a chill through me. "Do you mean that I might have shared the fate of Ezzers?"

  I noticed that my assistant had suddenly developed a need to run its small fingers through its fur. "The probability was slight," it said.

  "How slight?"

  It began smoothing the top of its narrow head, an activity that meant it did not have to meet my eyes as it answered. "As you know, mathematical estimates are unreliable when applied to magic."

  "Make your best calculation," I said.

  It looked at the wall and stroked its throat. "Not greater than one in five."

  That meant there had been a twenty per cent chance that, by now, I would be drifting on the wind somewhere south of here. "I believe you should have informed me at the time," I said.

  "I considered it, but recognized that the knowledge might impair your performance."

  "Indeed?"

  "Yes, in which case the probability of rebound approached ninety per cent. You might also have taken out a substantial portion of the landscape."

  "I see," I said Again I felt a surge of anger against Osk Rievor, and again I put it aside. I focused on the episode in question and realized that there was another aspect to my spellcasting that I hadn't remarked upon at the time. "Tell me," I said, "do you still have that spell in memory?"

  "Orrian's Haste to the Dwindling? Yes. Why do you ask?"

  "Because I do not remember a syllable of it."

  "You wouldn't," the grinnet said. "Spells disappear from the practitioner's mind as soon as they are launched. Indeed, only a powerful magician can hold in mind three major incantations. The greatest wizards of the last age could encompass only four at one time."

  "Hence the need to write them down in books," I said.

  "And hence the need to keep those books close and secret."

  "How many spells has my other self put into you?" I said.

  "Fourteen that are truly overwhelming in impact, twenty-six that are of major effect, and sixty-two minor ones. There are also dozens of fragments of various sizes and pastiches he has put together from different styles and periods."

  I stroked my chin and looked out again at the darkening sky over Bambles. "That must make you a remarkably precious commodity in this place," I said.

  "I would prefer not to be a commodity," my assistant said. "It is difficult enough being a grinnet."

  "We had better take pains to ensure that no one but us knows of this." I was thinking of Smiling Bol's way with a captive demon. What he would do with a library of spells that would put him above all of his rivals taken together did not bear thinking about. I suspected that my integrator was also thinking the same as I; its small frame shivered.

  The attendant's voice broke into both our thoughts. "Pars Lavelan is at the door and seeks entry."

  At least that was a good sign. If he had come with a squad of interplanar entities to seize me, he probably would not have bothered with observing the niceties.

  "Admit him," I said.

  The door opened and he stepped into the room. He wore a worried look. "You are summoned," he said.

  #

  "Must you bring your pet?" he said, as we wended our way through corridors of green and copper.

  "It pines," I said.

  We came again to the same tall doors and again I laid my throbbing sword on the floor. Inside the magician's workroom, I cast my eyes again at the strange twistings and wanderings of the floor and walls, recognizing that this was a place where interplanar forces were concentrated, handy for the practitioner's use.

  Lavelan led me, not to the dais, but to a side alcove where Smiling Bol reclined on a divan, eating balls of sugared, fried dough that were stacked in a gilded basket on a low table. Standing across from him was an imposingly tall figure, with a pale, elongated face and hands like the exposed roots of a dead plant. He wore a pleated gown of black and deep purple, and a look of severe dissatisfaction.

  If there was any doubt that this was the practitioner Ovarth, it was soon dispersed as Bol presented me to him, using the name Barlo that I had given him. I made a formal salute, without flourishes, then stood expectantly while Ovarth scrutinized me closely. After a lengthy inspection, he said, "You are oddly attired. Where are you from?"

  "I am traveling," I said. "At the moment I have no fixed address."

  "You were flown to Bambles by my elementals, from the south, accompanied by this man." He indicated Pars Lavelan who stood beside me with a face carefully empty of expression.

  "Yes."

  "The platform went out with five of my men on it. What happened to them?"

  Bol's eyes sent me a subtle message. I followed his advice and said, "I don't know." In the larger sense, this was true.

  Ovarth's thin lips grew paler. "The elementals who lift and carry the platform said my men blew away like dust."

  Bol intervened, his tone light. "Your little whirly-winds are nearly mindless. Their testimony is not to be relied upon."

  Ovarth cast an acid glance his way, saying, "Not for details, perhaps, but their simplicity prevents them from embroidering the tale." He fixed his cold gaze on me again and said, "Besides, I had them take me to the site of the incident. I found my servants
' clothing, a few flecks of dust, nothing else."

  Bol popped another ball of fried dough into his mouth, and spoke while chewing. "These facts seem inconclusive."

  Ovarth did not take his eyes from me. "I also found residual traces of a cast spell: by its odor, a very powerful spell, yet of a type I did not recognize."

  The smiling magician swallowed and said, "Your learning, while voluminous, does not approach omniscience."

  Bol was clearly enjoying his rival's discomfiture. I saw no profit in further angering a man who had the power to summon whirlwinds and conjure powers from the earth. I decided to cut to the heart of Ovarth's concern. "I am not a practitioner of magic," I said. "I am told that I have no aura."

  The tall wizard moved his pale and bony fingers in a complex gesture directed my way. He examined the air around me then said, "No, you are not a magician. But you are a mystery." He turned to Bol. "I would like to offer this man my hospitality."

  The perpetual smile deepened. "He has already accepted mine."

  "Somehow, he has killed five of my retinue, including Ral Ezzers, who was my most useful man."

  "That has not been determined," Bol said. "Nor is it clear what your men were doing on the road from the south."

  Ovarth's face was stark. "Attending to my business."

  As always, Bol's smile remained fixed, but now his eyes glittered. "From what happened to your retainers, one might take the impression that the business they were engaged upon was the kind of thing that could lead to a material change in our mutual relationships."

  I had heard enough conversations among persons of power to recognize in "material change" a phrase that was laden with significance. The words clearly had an effect on the man in purple and black.

  "If that were so," Ovarth said, "then your possession of this man constitutes a material change in your position."

  Bol stood, and though the other magician towered over him, I had the impression they were equally matched. "Now we come to the kernel of it," he said. "What were your men seeking on the road from the south?"