by Tom Lloyd
Bade frowned, there was only one row left. ‘Can’t you jump the rest too?’
‘I can, but this game doesn’t like you cheating. Before I try that, I’m going to work out which one will be safe – just in case. This jump I had to make because there wasn’t another option available, the next I may not.’
‘Well, take your time,’ Bade muttered as Ulestim returned to his paper. ‘Not like we got anything better to do.’
Ulestim found his next slab after five minutes of scribbled sums then stepped over and on to the platform on the far side. Bade joined him a few moments later with a flush of relief and they started directing the others across. It took Bug a long while to be persuaded to follow and Bade was already resigned to watching his half-tame maspid die. In the end the sight of the far door being opened was enough to tempt her over and she clambered along the steeply sloping side, creeping slowly and at an angle that threatened to tip her on to the slabs at every step.
‘Let’s not do that ever again,’ Bade suggested as they watched Bug raced through into the empty room beyond. ‘Please?’
After their little statue test, Lynx had hoped they would pick the pace up through the labyrinth, but it appeared the Duegar had other ideas. First the prime numbers had steadily increased in value, beyond the point of Paranil’s studies. It was not impossible to work out the correct answers, but it took time – more and more each time – and Lynx’s patience was wearing thin.
He could feel his inner demons scratching away, those tiny claws of fear and panic in his mind slowly digging their way to the surface. From the looks he was getting from Toil and Kas, they knew it too. They were keeping an eye out, but there wouldn’t be much they could do if it all got too much for him. Down here, dead weight was dead.
The Monarch’s lamp was helping, Lynx had to admit. The cool white light of that smooth Duegar glass kept the darkness at bay, but every time their winding path took them down a level in the labyrinth, the more smothered Lynx felt.
And the more this feels like a prison, he couldn’t help but think. Lynx looked over at Toil as she sat with Atieno, both hard at work. Gods on high and spirits below, I think I’d prefer Shadows Deep!
‘Toil,’ he called, ‘you sure the air’s good down here? Feels like it’s getting stuffy. We’ve been in here a while now.’
‘The air’s fine,’ she replied, glancing back. ‘You’re just getting bored.’ The look on her face made it clear she knew boredom wasn’t the problem, but he was grateful all the same for her not saying it. ‘Walk about, stretch your legs. The movement will help.’
‘You sure about the air?’
‘Yup.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s a big space,’ Kas answered for her, ‘and it must’ve been sealed for centuries at least before we came along, but we could breathe fine when we came in.’
‘That’s right,’ Toil added, ‘and if it goes bad, I got a toy to help with that. This place is unusual – often in a city-ruin there’ll be pockets that get sealed and you’ll be dead before you cross the room. I always think of it as being Bade’s parting gift to me, though of course the bastard would’ve taken it if he’d known. Was hoping it’d help me beat him to the labyrinth heart, but no such luck, it seems.’
Kas nudged Lynx. ‘She’s got a talent, your girl, I’ll give her that.’
‘Eh?’
Kas grinned. ‘Cells and underground caves not being your favourite places and all, she’s outdone herself finding somewhere that combines the two!’
Lynx forced himself to laugh at that, knowing that in such a mood it would help, even if he needed a run-up.
‘Aye, well, she’s resourceful.’
‘Ah, but drugging half the men in the company and leaving you all stripped in a cell was resourceful,’ she said. ‘Sparking a war and opening up a fabled ancient labyrinth, all just to keep a man she likes off-balance, well …’ She whistled. ‘That’s really going the extra mile if you ask me.’
‘Put it like that, I almost feel special.’
Lynx felt his mouth waver into a smile before he looked again at the stark, blank stone walls all around him and it sank again.
‘Mebbe,’ Kas said in a more serious tone. ‘Or mebbe she just thinks that, as passing the time goes, mushroom pot-luck is a game for amateurs.’
‘Toil!’ Lastani shouted, over-loud in her excitement. ‘Sorry, but we’ve got it.’
‘You sure?’
‘I …’ She glanced at Paranil, who nodded. ‘Yes, we’ve eliminated the other two. That door there, that’s the one we want.’
‘Four hundred and thirty-three?’ Toil nodded and pushed herself to her feet. ‘You know, relic hunting is more fun when you’re not spending hours dividing numbers.’
‘You just hate that Paranil’s now the expert rather than you,’ Aben chuckled, hefting his pack.
Toil stuck her tongue out at him in a curiously girlish way. ‘I like to think of that more as salt in the wound,’ she said as she extended a hand to Atieno.
She pulled the ageing man to his feet, Atieno looking stiff and weary after the hours they’d now spent underground. They crossed into the next room and Lynx again tried to picture their path through the labyrinth. They had moved down six levels, that much he knew, but if his estimate was right, they were moving away from the centre of the puzzle-box. He didn’t know if that was significant, but it was something to keep his mind occupied at least.
‘A new game?’ Toil commented as they moved into the latest cell, where a small stone tablet stood at the centre.
There were four exits there, more than usual, and as Paranil read aloud the number above each for the others to confirm, Lynx realised even without seeing the tablet that Toil was right. The numbers weren’t as high as they had been earlier, but from what limited amounts he’d picked up thus far, they were all primes. The door ahead had twenty-nine above it, the left-hand was an eleven, thirteen was inscribed on the floor and nineteen on the right.
‘A key to the puzzle?’ Lastani suggested as Paranil confirmed the number of their entrance was a one.
‘A sequence. Does it mean anything to you? One, one, two, three, five,’ Toil read from the tablet aloud.
‘Not much,’ she admitted. ‘Paranil?’
The thin man beamed, revelling in his new role of brains at the heart of the crew. Lynx guessed that he was normally trailing along behind Toil and her more practical colleagues. Her Duegar knowledge was extensive by most standards so Paranil wouldn’t be needed much of the time, he was intellectual backup in the same way as Aben was violent support, most likely.
But this labyrinth didn’t have maspids or rival relic hunters, just magical traps she couldn’t fool the same way she could those in Duegar tombs. They lived or they died on the years of study Paranil had put in, the teachers he’d had and his love of sciences.
‘It’s a sequence,’ he explained, ‘called the golden sequence. Each number is the sum of the two before it.’
‘So the next in the sequence is eight? But we don’t have an eight.’
‘We do, however, have a Duegar in love with prime numbers. It’s no great surprise the elegance of the golden sequence is similarly favoured.’
‘And only one of these doors is both a prime and a part of the sequence,’ Toil said slowly, waiting for Paranil to nod before continuing. ‘Right, thirteen it is. Down we go.’
Lynx dragged himself through the open hatchway and down the shallow steps as they levelled out into another spiral slope. As with every other tunnel and cell entered so far, the Monarch’s lamp was carefully covered by whichever agent was carrying it and Toil’s Duegar lamp produced. Once Toil had checked there was nothing hidden in glowing patterns on the wall she let them move on. Before long there were more numbers to be worked through on whatever scraps of paper remained so Teshen produced a deck of cards and the mercenaries all sat.
The next cell proved no different to the usual pattern, almost suspiciously simple c
ompared to recent rooms. But there was no indication that the pattern had changed and little they could do, so Sitain opened the door and they all peered fearfully through. Lynx felt a sinking feeling as, beside him, Sitain stiffened. A frown of confusion crossed her face and as she looked around the next room, she said nothing at all.
‘What’s wrong?’ Toil asked.
‘I don’t know,’ the night mage said. ‘I can’t see a damn thing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Three or four yards forward mebbe,’ she said, ‘then nothing. Really nothing.’
Toil elbowed the others out of the way and raised her black lamp.
‘Huh,’ she said after a while.
With her staff she prodded forward at the darkness, meeting no resistance until she felt for the floor. Bringing the Monarch’s lamp forward didn’t help. When she held the lamp out in front of her, it just vanished entirely. At the sight of that, Lynx felt his inner demons renew their frantic clawing. He leaned against the wall, trying to stop his hands shaking, but realised no one was watching anyway. All eyes were on Toil as the woman hesitantly leaned forward and put her face through the veil of darkness, lamp held out before her.
‘Yeah, we’re screwed,’ she reported back after a few moments, a manic gleam in her eye. ‘Barra – you’re up,’ she added, turning to her lithe comrade. ‘And someone get Lynx a stiff drink. Reckon he’s really going to need it now.’
Chapter 29
‘So when you said “really dark” you weren’t kidding, eh?’
‘Which o’ the words confused you?’
Bade shrugged and put a hand on Sebaim’s shoulder. The ageing scout had ventured just a yard or two into the black, but that had been enough. He was cool-headed in most situations, but right now, even Sebaim looked on the ruffled side.
‘Floor runs out pretty fast,’ Sebaim continued, taking a swallow of brandy from the flask that was always at his hip. ‘Some sort o’ stone spur out beyond that – and a beam or somethin’ crosswise above. Cracked my damn head on it ’cos, like I said, even with a Duegar lamp you ain’t seeing shit.’
‘Any guesses?’
The man’s face crinkled as he thought. ‘Felt cooler,’ he ventured. ‘Just a touch, sound ran further. I reckon it’s open, or part is. We’re heading down so chances are it’s there.’
‘We’re supposed to climb down to the next level?’
‘I’d guess so. Mebbe the beams and spurs are everywhere, room to climb and a different sort o’ test.’
‘Traps too, mebbe.’
‘Makes things a bit random, though,’ Torril added, joining them right at the edge of the dark wall. ‘This is a test, not a tomb. In a tomb you don’t want the raider to see it coming ’cos you want to kill every fucker who comes in. But in this place, if there’s no way of avoiding the trap, you’re just testing a man’s luck.’
‘And what’d be the point of that?’ Bade mused. ‘It’s comforting, but I remain a suspicious bastard. Time to play our trump card.’
‘What’s that?’
He grinned and gave a low whistle. Almost immediately there were cries of alarm as dragoons threw themselves out of the way.
‘One of our number don’t have eyes.’
Lynx sat on the floor, staring at the wall of darkness through the open doorway. A scuffed foot nearby startled him and he shuddered slightly before taking another swig of the whisky Atieno had been helpful enough to provide. Up ahead, Barra was somewhere in the darkness with Toil and Layir. All he could hear was muttered curses and the clack of Toil’s staff on stone. Paranil seemed to be making notes on what they were reporting while beside him Aben slowly let a rope play out through his fingers.
It was all background noise to Lynx, drowned in the hot rushing sound that filled his ears. The warmth of whisky in his belly helped, but there was a metallic taste on his tongue and the jangle of nerves running through his mind was hardly dampened.
There was a yelp from up ahead and suddenly figures were darting forward. Lynx blinked and watched Aben lurch half into the dark, legs disappearing from view as he took the weight on his rope.
Lynx didn’t move beyond a shiver. He was a bystander in his own body as everyone ran forward and hauled on the remaining rope behind Aben. The big man roared with the exertion but Lynx didn’t hear it. Everything was consumed by the darkness ahead, an indistinct sucking void that was drawing them all inexorably in. Lynx could feel himself moving slowly towards it, the world tilting beneath him as his courage ran downhill into the deepest black.
Stars burst before his eyes as something struck his cheek. A distant voice yelled his name in his ear, but Lynx could only blink at the encroaching darkness. When it met him it was a hammer-blow to the face and snapped his head backwards.
‘Hey! Get up, you shitbag Hanese convict!’ roared a voice from the blur ahead of him. ‘Move it, help us!’
Lynx could feel the heat of their rage on his face, the spittle on his cheek. He stared blankly, the words filtering slowly through his brain but not fast enough for his assailant. A whip-crack slap across the face jolted him around. His vision went from black to purple to red then he could see again.
Lynx gasped as he saw the bustle of bodies through the doorway, a mad tangle of limbs and shouting – the back of Kas running to join them as a flush of anger filled his body. His hands tightened into fists, but sat there on the floor there was nothing to vent that rage on. As he lurched to his feet his wits seeped back into his mind.
He pushed his way forward and grabbed the end of the rope, adding his weight to those hauling back on it. With so many hands helping, the clamour died and Aben’s voice could be heard from up front.
‘Stop, hold there!’
The mercenaries did so and a moment later Toil staggered out of the dark, a small cut on her forehead to add to her current set of wounds and a manic gleam in her eye. The tension on the rope went slack all of a sudden and soon Barra and Layir were crawling towards them, half-supporting and half-hindering each other as they tried to stand.
‘Down,’ Barra panted. ‘Definitely down.’
‘What happened?’ Aben yelled.
‘Damn tilt-bar threw me!’ She winced and pressed her hand to her side as she straightened, Layir taking much of her weight. ‘Seemed solid ’cos my weight was holding it down as I probed. Lost my bloody gun in the process.’
‘How far?’
Barra took two long breaths. ‘Did I fall? Five, ten yards mebbe. Hard to tell in the pitch black. Think you saved my life there, Layir. My feet cracked against something hard, felt like pointed stone spurs below. You took the weight just in time.’
‘What now?’ the young duellist asked.
‘Now I lead,’ Toil said. ‘Barra, you hang back, let Sitain do what she can for the pain.’
‘It’s not bad,’ Barra insisted as Sitain stepped forward. ‘Don’t think anything’s broken, just gonna be a mess o’ bruises.’
Toil nodded and hefted her staff again. She untied the rope from around Barra’s waist and attached it to her own, then crouched to look at Paranil’s notes a moment. With a nod she set off into the black, calling the instructions aloud to herself as she went.
‘Forward three paces, step ahead and right, duck down – crawl two steps.’
‘Need a break?’ Lynx asked Aben quietly.
‘You sober?’
‘Close enough.’
The man gave a cough of amusement. ‘Close enough,’ he repeated. ‘Here you go then.’ Aben handed the rope to Lynx who passed it around behind his hips to anchor it. Teshen took up the slack on Lynx’s right and fed it through to him as Toil continued to talk, Paranil occasionally chiming in as she paused.
‘The tilt-table should be there,’ Barra barked out abruptly.
‘I feel the back edge,’ Toil confirmed. Her staff clacked around, feeling out her surroundings and soon she was moving again – this time much slower as she broke new ground. The path wasn’t too complex; the myriad stone
platforms, bars and slopes would have been simple to negotiate had she been able to see. However, the invisible pitfalls, twists and turns made it dangerous at every step – every surface being made of stone. Toil would know as well as any of them that even a small fall in the irregular stone maze could prove fatal.
After a while Toil was far enough away that it proved hard to hear her and Barra went back in, following the line of the rope until she could hear Toil clearly again and relay messages. It took them a good hour, but at last Barra reported that Toil had found the bottom, so far as she could tell in the dark. She anchored the rope and the mercenaries began to slowly follow – guided by Barra who had created a map of the obstacles in her mind by then.
It took almost another hour, but eventually it was Lynx’s turn. He and Aben had taken it in turns to anchor the rope and when the time came he found himself more than a little reluctant to relinquish it to Aben.
‘You don’t want to be going last,’ Aben said, gently unpeeling the rope from Lynx’s hands.
‘I get that pleasure,’ Barra agreed. ‘Now come on, Toil says the dark doesn’t extend far once you’re at the bottom.’
Lynx pulled his pack and gun-holster on to his back and meekly allowed Barra to usher him forward. Stepping into the blackness was like a punch to the gut, but she’d been expecting his reaction and didn’t push him any further than the first step until he was ready. Instead the woman talked to him in a quiet, calm voice about nothing of consequence – just letting her voice soothe him the same way you’d calm a skittish horse.
Barra had a pleasant, young voice – a more cultured accent than Toil’s, he now noticed, and a breezy assurance that proved easy to trust. She smelled of soap and sweat, the chalk dust on her hands a faint tickle at the back of his throat.
‘Okay,’ Lynx broke in, heart still pounding but his chest not so tight. ‘I’m ready.’
‘Good, I wouldn’t want Toil to think I was monopolising your time,’ she said with a girlish laugh. ‘I’ll go ahead and lead you on, as it were.’