by Evelyn Avery
This place hadn’t felt like a maze until right now.
“Sorry about that,” Puck said as he helped me up. He brushed imaginary dust off my dress, his hands moving down my waist until I slapped them away. “The breaks in illusions are small and don’t last very long. We had to move fast.”
“I’m sure.” I gestured to the maze of stone around us. “I guess this means we did it.”
“Alas, each challenge will become more dire than the last. This is the way of the Underground. One small victory will not win a war.” He sounded almost sad for a moment before his expression brightened. “Now get that ass moving so I can watch it twitch.”
I rolled my eyes at him but continued forward. Secretly, I wanted him to watch it, too.
If I was happy to have beaten the illusion, the feeling was short-lived.
I wouldn’t have thought I was the sort of person to struggle with claustrophobia. But the walls lining the path had slowly shifted closer until I couldn’t stretch my arms out completely without hitting them.
Maybe the path was going to narrow even further until I was forced to crawl through the darkness with stone scraping my skin. The thought of it almost made me want to give up right then and there. Being trapped in small spaces with no way out was pretty much my worst nightmare.
The sky above us had darkened, turning from a pale red to a frothing gray-blue, like foamy waves crashing into rocks.
“Storm is coming,” Puck remarked from behind me, sounding almost nervous. “The Erlking’s doing, no doubt. He’ll bring the force of the heavens down upon us at some point. I hope you don’t mind the wet. Or the cold.”
I had to twist my body to fit between the gap in the walls as the path turned. “And you really aren’t worried about what he’ll do to you when he finds out you’ve helped me?”
“Nothing that hasn’t been done before.” Puck didn’t so easily navigate the gap, given our differences in size. He had to use his arms to extricate himself when his chest got stuck. “What concerns me most is that you’re trusting me to help you at all. I’ve warned you before to trust nothing and no one that you encounter here.”
Nervousness twisted in my stomach, but I forced myself to ignore it. What choice did I have? “I’m familiar with this logic puzzle, you know. How can I trust you to tell me the truth about you being untrustworthy if I believe you when you say you are?”
“That’s certainly a question just begging for an answer, isn’t it?”
There was a warning written into his gaze, even though I didn’t understand precisely what it was. If Puck had wanted to stop me from reaching the castle in time, then all he had to do was refuse to help me cross the barrier of obsidian trees. Or simply neglected to point out how the illusion of the endless path could be defeated.
I didn’t have to trust him to know that I couldn’t afford to turn him away. A fourth stone had already begun to change color on the lariat, turning a dusky amber that I could only assume would become a brightly burnt orange.
When the path widened, I breathed a sigh of relief that caught in my throat when I saw what lay ahead. There were three doors blocking our progress. On each was the identical figure of a man made entirely of stone.
Together, the doors stretched from one wall to the other and were tall enough that it was impossible to know what might lie past them. Creeping closer, I marveled at the detail on these carved statues. My face shifted nearer to the one in the middle, like all the others it had been made to look like a sleeping man.
Every detail of a human face was there, from the fine lines of his eyelashes to the tiny veins that crisscrossed atop the lids. His nostrils flared out as if he’d just taken a breath, and his lower lip was slightly larger than the upper in a slight pout. He reminded me of a carving of Sleeping Beauty—if she’d been a man with a face like that of a Greek god. I reached out to touch the cheek, just to feel if the stone was as smooth as it looked. A shock of static electricity made me pull my hand away with a gasp.
And then the eyes opened.
“Not good,” I heard Puck murmur from behind me.
All three of the mouths opened and spoke simultaneously. “Who dares to disturb our slumber?”
My heart couldn’t take this shit.
I stumbled backward, but the stone men didn’t move. Fearfully, I waited for them to disengage from the doors and come lumbering toward us with the carved swords sheathed at their waists raised in attack.
“This is the Hunter,” Puck whispered harshly in my ear as he tried to pull me backward. I resisted, and he made an exasperated sound. “He guards the inner circle of the Underground. If you answer his riddle wrong, he’ll kill you.”
“The Hunter? There’s three of them.”
“Close enough.”
Annoyed, I turned to glare at him. “How is one at all close to three?”
“Which is more similar, one and three or three and infinity?” At my confused look, he cast me a humorless smile. “You see? They’re practically the same.”
That wasn’t the sort of nonsense I could waste time puzzling out at the moment. My gaze swung back to the stone men. I didn’t quite believe they weren’t about to jump off the wall and attack us. “Is there a way around them, or him?”
He hesitated but then answered honestly. “Not any that I know of.”
“Then we don’t have much of a choice.”
I approached the Hunter, unsure of which of the identical faces I was supposed to address. Their eyes had closed when I initially backed away, but now opened again and stared at me with equally impassive expressions.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted the Hunter to be a real man or just a bit of enchanted stone. A real creature could potentially be reasoned with, although that probably depended on how long he’d been trapped here. A millennium as a statue might mess someone up pretty badly.
Playing it safe with politeness, I addressed the face in the middle. “I apologize for disturbing you. But we have to get past these doors to continue our journey. How do they open?”
“You must solve our riddle.”
It still freaked me out when they all talked together. “What riddle?”
Puck made a sound of warning behind me. “Izzy—”
But the stone men were already speaking again. “Two of us are noblemen and tell only truth. One of us is the Hunter, who only speaks in lies. Find the Hunter, and you may pass. Make the wrong choice or run out of time, and your lives are forfeit.”
Before I could ask what they meant by time running out, Puck pointed over my shoulder.
“See, this is exactly what I was talking about,” he exclaimed with obvious annoyance. “Look at their legs.”
The bottom of the figures had already changed. Real leather boots were sticking out where there used to be stone. “What’s happening?”
“You have until they become men to figure out the puzzle, or else they come alive and murder us both.” Puck gripped my shoulder hard and then let it go, giving me a frazzled version of his normal smile. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you for the minute it takes them to chop my head off.”
I remembered his disembodied head floating in the trees. “Can you survive if your head is chopped off?”
“You might get the chance to find out.” He sighed. “I’ve never seen anyone solve this riddle.”
But I didn’t come all this way to just give up. Addressing the stone men, my tone turned demanding to hide the fear. “How am I supposed to figure out which one of you is the Hunter?”
They spoke together in the same monotone. “You may ask two questions of any of us, but no more.”
“We can figure this out,” I told Puck, determination overcoming any worries about imminent beheadings. This was just a simple logic puzzle, and as a true introvert, I’d read my fair share of them in books. “One of them always lies, and two only tell the truth. If we can figure out what questions to ask, then this should be easy. C’mon, help me.”
But he only gave me an
exasperated sigh. “My time might be better spent figuring out how many of them I can take in battle.”
“Fine, be a pessimist. I’ll figure this out myself.”
I approached the stone men, noting that they really were completely identical down to the finest detail. There weren’t going to be any physical differences that might help me figure this out.
“Okay, so none of you guys can tell me that you’re the Hunter even if I ask because that one would only lie about it, and the other two are noblemen, so would also say no because it’s the truth. And if I only get two questions, then just coming out and asking wouldn’t do me any good unless I already knew which two to ask.”
All three faces continued to stare at me, giving nothing away.
Their swords had turned a shiny silver as the stone melted away, the edges probably sharp enough to split a hair in half. That was not exactly a comforting thought.
“If asking a direct question won’t work,” Puck said with a weary sigh, his gaze on their swords. “Then maybe you should ask an indirect one.”
And now I had the answer.
Approaching the leftmost stone man, I pointed, so he knew that I wanted an answer from him. Their faces had already begun to change to the color of normal skin, but traces of the marbling pattern remained. It was fascinating, but I forced myself to focus on the more important issue of not having my head lopped off.
“Are you and the man next to you both knights?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
Which meant this one could be the Hunter lying to me or a nobleman who was telling the truth. It was impossible to know for sure without asking another question.
I shifted to face the man in the middle. His eyes grow more expressive with each passing moment as the gray stone darkened into a limpid mahogany. Beautiful eyes trapped within a man made of stone.
For at least another few minutes.
“Did the man beside you just tell me the truth?”
Some sign of life flashed in those carved eyes. “Yes.”
With a smile, I turned to the stone man on the right. “Which makes you the Hunter.”
Puck let out a surprised laugh. “Well done.”
I didn’t know what I expected to happen next, but the stone continued to melt away with no signs of slowing. I realized with growing terror that they weren’t changing back. There was a shriek of metal as their swords separated from the doors behind them. In another few moments, their arms would be free, with those blades swinging toward us.
“Are you sure that’s right?” Puck asks, sounding more than a little frantic.
“They would be attacking us if I’d gotten it wrong,” I argued, not sure I even believed what I was saying. “I got it right, I know I did.”
Puck tried to push me behind him. “It doesn’t matter. You need to run, I’ll hold them off.”
“Wait. There has to be something I’m missing. I know you’re the Hunter. The only way that the answer to both those questions could be yes is if both of them were telling the truth.” I thrust my finger at the man on the right who continued to stare me down, making me wonder if his expression would remain that impassive as he cut us down. “Maybe just saying it isn’t enough.”
“And what’s going to be enough?” Puck sounded exasperated and more than a little terrified. “Because you’ve got about thirty seconds to figure it out.”
“I know he’s the Hunter.”
Working on an impulse that I didn’t fully understand, I lunged forward before Puck could drag me back. I closed the distance between the rightmost stone man and me. His arm was only partially made of stone at this point and slowly raised above his head in preparation to strike.
My mouth pressed hard against lips that felt like cool granite. I kept my eyes open, so I could watch as life slowly returned to his face, his eyes morphing from marbled stone to the color of freshly turned earth under bright sunlight. I winced at the flash of steel over my head. My eyes squeezed closed, but I didn’t break the kiss even as it flashed downward.
But the killing blow never came.
The mouth beneath mine grew impossibly soft as strong hands came up to grasp my shoulders. The kiss tasted of gratitude and wanting, stirring a sense of familiarity in me that made absolutely no sense.
I pulled away to see a face that was almost entirely alive. Tanned skin was a perfect match for the wood brown hair that was caught in a severe bun at the back of his head. My gaze traced down the aquiline nose and strong jaw to find lips that looked even plusher than they had felt against mine.
The other stone figures were gone, with only this man remaining. “You must be the Hunter.”
Gentle hands cupped my cheeks, and he kissed me again. “I am. Thank you for releasing me from this torment.”
Puck came up behind me. “Look. The doors are open.”
The Hunter’s hands dropped from my face as he stepped aside, revealing what lay behind him. Where the three stone men had once stood sentry, there were now three open doorways. And even though they stood side by side, each one appeared to lead to an entirely different place.
Red hot anger rose up in me. “Oh, this is bullshit.”
Looking like he had just been run through an emotional wringer, Puck turned to look at me. “What?”
“The Erlking said that there were no twists or turns, and the path to the castle would be laid out before me. There are three different ways to go here with no indication of which is the right one.” I swallowed hard before I made the accusation out loud because I had no doubt he was somehow listening. And there wasn’t a greater insult to levy at a fae. “He lied to me.”
Puck’s eyebrows shot up into the violet swatch of hair on his forehead. “Careful what you say.”
A surge of triumph moved through me at the thought of it. “The Erlking lied. Which makes our deal null and void.”
“Did he?” Puck shook his head, looking almost sad. “Every path leads to the Erlking’s castle, but some are significantly more treacherous than others. With this challenge completed, he now gives you the chance to choose your own path forward.”
I didn’t exactly like the sound of that. “So I can go through any of these doors, and I’ll still end up in the same place? All of them will eventually lead to the castle?”
“It would be a mistruth to claim that I know every inch of the Erlking’s domain or that I have walked every path, but I can assure you of this. If you are walking forward, then you move ever closer to his seat of power, the castle at the center of the Underground.” His voice was grave as he regarded the diverging paths, each one different in both subtle and obvious ways. “One is the path of least resistance, one is the path of destruction, and the last must be the unexpected path. But it is impossible to know which is which without walking all three. And you haven’t the time for that.”
I turned to the Hunter, who watched us with a grave expression on his face. “I can’t be the first person you’ve seen pass through here. Which path would you recommend?”
He hesitated as if unsure how to answer the question. “I have never walked through any of these doors. And you are the first to solve my puzzle and release me from my duty.”
His body was still imprinted with the pattern of marble, faint in places but more pronounced in others. He moved slowly and deliberately, but the sword at his side shone with a deadly gleam. I had no doubts that at a moment’s notice, he could erupt with deadly speed.
They hadn’t named him the Hunter for nothing.
“What can I call you?” I knew better than to ask for his name.
“Tamlin,” he said with formality, inclining his head. “It will be my honor to serve you.”
Puck made a rude sound with his mouth, but only smiled placidly when I turned to glare at him.
“Shut it. We need all the help we can get.”
Instead of responding to me, Puck addressed the former stone man. “How did you come to be here?”
Tamlin slowly bli
nked and then frowned, as if it was difficult for him to recall. “I am being punished.”
Neither of us asked for what.
It hadn’t escaped my notice just how empty this place seemed compared to what I’d seen in my dreams. In my imaginings, mythical creatures abounded of every type and temperament. The fact that I’d only encountered two other people so far, both of them apparently at odds with the Erlking, was beyond strange.
Puck gestured to the door on the right. Through it, sun shone brightly overhead, and I could hear birds twittering a strange song when I stepped closer. Fresh grass grew on the path between large, flat stones that were pale and glittered in the light. “This has to be the path of least resistance.”
“Which is rarely the best choice.” Tamlin moved to the door on the left. His body made a clanging sound as if there was something metal inside of him. “I assume this is the unexpected path.”
Through the door he indicated, the path was cast in twilight. It was dark but not overwhelmingly so, and I heard water rushing somewhere in the distance.
“Which makes this the path of destruction.” Through the center door, the path was overgrown with creeping vines twisting off the walls and thorny bushes sprouting from the ground. On its far side, the horizon appeared dark and stormy. Everything about it appeared treacherous. It would be insane to choose this one, but for some reason, I felt like I had to.
It called to me, even though I was terrified.
“This one.”
Puck violently shook his head. “That’s a terrible idea.”
Ignoring him, I strode for the door. “It’s where I’m going. You can follow me or not.”
“I will follow,” Tamlin said solemnly. “But please, allow me to go through the door first. Once you have passed the threshold, there is no way to return.”
Puck rolled his eyes so hard that I thought they might pop out of their sockets. “If some hideous creature jumps out and eats you, the last thing you hear before dying will be me saying I told you so.”
I fought a slight smile. It had taken some time, but I’d finally decided what Puck reminded me of, the Cheshire Cat. And just like a cat, he alternated between being one of the most fearsome predators in the animal kingdom and so skittish that he jumped at his own shadow.