Labyrinth g-5

by Kat Richardson

  The broken lines on the ground stirred, rising into the air, and a shock wave of crows erupted from the nearest trees, plunging at us, shrieking and shattering the Grey. Quinton ducked, yanked his hat over his head, and turned up his collar, hugging his coat close against the ripping talons and clacking beaks of the flock. I turned my shoulder into the cloud of birds and tucked my head down until they lifted away again, circling into the sky and flocking to and fro as if waiting for my next move. A shadow shaped like a bear assembled itself from the clutter on the ground and roamed a restless path a few feet away, pacing just beyond the next wall of the labyrinth.

  I looked at the trees and the ground, then back up and down again, studying the way the shadows fell and the returned detritus that lay along the labyrinth’s paths. “So that’s where the animals came from,” I whispered.

  “Are they real?” Quinton demanded, raising his head warily.

  “They are, but they’re not exactly normal. Did you get a look at any of them?”

  “Hell no. Too busy hiding my eyes from their beaks.”

  “They’re dead.” The cloud of crows fluttered and fell from the sky, breaking into bones and feathers, scattering back into the years of leaf rot and weeds. “Every animal that ever wandered in and died here guards this place. Guardian beasts by the score, animated by the energetic forces under the house. Probably tied to it by blood—seems like the blood mage sort of thing to do, doesn’t it?”

  “Sounds like the creepy thing to do, you ask me.”

  “But effective. That’s probably what attacked the kids who came here and thought they were chased by animals. These guardian beasts try to keep people out of the labyrinth or away from the house; cross the lines, walk in the wrong place, and they come after you. I’d bet that you encounter fewer of them if you stay on the right path. . . . You want to take the long way, or risk the dead things and run straight through?”

  “To where?”

  I pointed to the cleared place at the back of the tumbled-in foundation: a circular area of weedy grass about the size of a baseball infield. “There. The center of the labyrinth.” It was as clear as water to me, and as I named it, the misty walls of the orchard labyrinth thickened and brightened, increasing the electric sensation in my body.

  Quinton gave it and me a considering look. “Much as I tend to live recklessly, I think this might be a better time for caution. And I could do without any more encounters with skeleton crows.”

  I stared at the ground for a while, looking for the silver fog that marked the lines of the labyrinth’s walls, then led forward until we came to the first turn.

  We must have looked insane, wandering around the orchard in looping arcs for no apparent reason. We were nearing the center and I was getting fatigued from staring at the Grey without vanishing into it. A thin silver fog covered the ground in my view and I was concentrating on the thicker shapes of the walls, so I missed the shadow bear, its tattered skin stretched over an incomplete skeleton of bones and twigs.

  The eldritch creature grunted and charged us, rising on its back paws as it came on. Its breath was the scent of things rotting in the earth as it roared, swiping at me in the lead. Quinton grabbed for me, shouting, “Watch out!” as he tried to pull me backward. The massive, ruined paw of the shadow bear fanned over my shoulder, claws ripping into the leather of my jacket.

  I threw myself sideways as Quinton tugged back, losing my footing and scrambling for a solid purchase. My foot descended on emptiness and I plunged straight down into a pit the Grey had concealed.

  I landed on the damp-smelling earth with a thud and a burst of pain up my right leg. Quinton jumped down next to me and the shadow bear lumbered to stare down at us from empty eye sockets, too large to get through the narrow hole we’d come down. It pawed the earth a moment, thrusting its razor claws at us through the opening, snorting. Defeated, it finally shuffled off in disgust.

  I let out my breath and leaned against the dirt wall of the hole. Jarred out of my observation of the Grey, I could see it was more of a ramp than a pit, a twist in the path that looped under the main way like a stream under a bridge.

  Quinton pulled me to my feet, wincing in sympathy as I made a pained face. “You all right?”

  “Yeah.” My ankle twinged and throbbed, but well-laced in my boot, it held up fine. “I’ll be OK, now the bear’s gone. What about you?”

  “All right. Couple of cuts and scrapes but nothing dramatic. How did you miss seeing that hole?”

  “I wasn’t looking for a normal trap,” I replied, a bit ashamed I hadn’t thought of it.

  “The bear was a little distracting. You can’t watch everything, I guess. And why did the bear attack us anyway? I didn’t think we’d stepped off the path. . . .”

  “Guardians are supposed to keep you out of things . . .” I started but petered out.

  Standing under the path, we looked around. Even with normal eyes it would have been hard to detect the new path much earlier. The roots of the apple trees and decades of rain had camouflaged the entrance and filled it in slightly, making the hole smaller. I turned around several times, trying to get my bearings on the new elevation.

  Another path took off under the bridge, heading off in strange twists and falls through the surface of the orchard labyrinth. The bridge wasn’t so innocent either: From the top it looked like just more surface dirt, but from below, it was a stonework arch that opened into a new landscape of passages below and through the orchard.

  “It’s another maze,” I observed. “A hidden one under the surface labyrinth.”

  “I don’t think it’s just ‘another maze.’ What if it’s the start of the real maze? Should have realized a labyrinth—even with ghost-bears and skeleton crows—was too easy. That bear was trying to keep us out of here. I’ll bet this leads into the center,” Quinton speculated.

  Studying the visible part of it, I agreed. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  “Can you make it?”

  “Yeah. My ankle’s a little sore, but the boot’s as good as any brace. Let’s go.”

  He shrugged and walked closer to me as we passed under the arch and into the new maze. This was different from the labyrinth above; the paths branched and twisted, rising up to the surface and falling back below it, ducking under more bridges and coming to sudden ends that turned us back again and again. But the closer we moved to the center, the stronger the sensation of electricity coursing through me became while the harmony of the grid grew—lounder and more like a single great voice.

  We’d been in the maze nearly an hour when we saw a shaft of light from above. We were passing through a long, turning corridor choked with roots when we saw it cutting through the gloom ahead, plunging down from an opening above. The light was brighter and stronger than any we’d seen since entering the maze and we moved toward it with caution. It seemed too good to be true and that made us both wary.

  At the base of the light, we came to another arch, this one leading to a cylinder of rising stairs. Going up them, we emerged into the edge of an empty circle at the heart of the original labyrinth, about a hundred and fifty feet from where the back door of the house must have stood. I paused at the top of the steps, looking through the Grey again before stepping out onto the weedy grass. Bright blue lines of energy crossed just to the west of the stairs at the center of the circle. Dru Cristoffer had enclosed a power nexus for herself in the secret walls of her labyrinth. A spiderweb of rich green and golden-yellow energy spun out from the crossed spokes of the nexus. One color I did not see was red.

  I had a bad feeling.

  I checked my shoulder where the shadow bear had hit me, but only the jacket showed any damage. If it had cut me, the wounds had already closed. I looked back at Quinton, blocking his path up the stairs. “Hey, how bad are those cuts and scrapes of yours?”

  “Not bad. Kind of oozy, but nothing to worry about.”

  “You have any bandages in those pockets of yours? Because I think this m
ight be a very bad place to bleed.”

  He frowned and squinted. “Why?”

  “Cristoffer is a blood mage. This is, essentially, her workroom. What do you think?”

  His face lit and then clouded with unhappy recognition. “Ah. Yeah. No bleeding here.”

  I left him on the stairs and stepped cautiously onto the lawn, half expecting something to attack or flash or change, but nothing did. “Power must be off,” I muttered to myself and thought I heard the voices of the grid giggle. I walked to the point where the colored lines of energy crossed, figuring that was the most likely place to start with whatever came next.

  “OK, Dad, I’m in the labyrinth,” I thought aloud. “So . . . what do I do?” I supposed now was the time to open one of the puzzle balls. The doors, the voice of the grid reminded me. Just one at a time. . . . But I didn’t have them. Quinton did. I called out to him. “Can you throw me the puzzle balls?”

  “Sure.”

  They were a little bigger than croquet balls, not as large as volleyballs, and well within my ability to catch, but while the first one was easy enough, the second spun off-center, wobbling as it came toward me, making an odd, thrumming counterpoint to the chorus of the Grey. I made a scooping motion to catch the ball, but it seemed to slide across my fingers with a slithering, impossible shimmy to fall willfully to the earth. The dark blotch of burned blood that Dru Cristoffer had made touched the ground with a clash that shook the foundations of the collapsed house behind me until they growled and grated together. Red light flashed across the lawn with a roar, sealing the center of the labyrinth in hot energy. I heard Quinton shout, but the sound seemed to come distantly, as if from behind a steel door.

  “No!” I yelled, and darted for the stairs, but they were gone, hidden away behind an impenetrable shield of light. I grabbed for the crimson-glowing barrier, concentrating, reaching with all my will for the living fabric of the Grey, and felt the earth groan and bulge as the searing shock of the grid burned through my frame.

  My ears rang as if I were surrounded by noise, but the silence was absolute with the rushing feeling of something pushing through me. The voice that wasn’t a voice but a million whispers told me to stop trying. To let go of the seal. Yes, I could break it, but not now. Stop. Stop and open the first door—just one—and all will be well.

  I shuddered at the invasive sense of knowing. Something that wasn’t me—that wasn’t even a single thing but a collective of knowledge—spoke to me, not in my ear but directly. I raged around the room of red light until I was too tired and dizzy from its endless sameness. I didn’t slip out of it; I didn’t tear it apart. I could have. Knowledge hovered nearby, taunting me with the way but not allowing me to do it. Dragging my feet, I came back to where the two wooden balls lay on the ground, hovering on the scarlet surface like bubbles on water.

  I picked up the first puzzle ball, the one Will had given me and in which I’d found the quiet one of Dru’s pair of earrings, and rolled it around in my hands until I found the odd slit in the surface into which my father’s key fit. I didn’t have to fumble around with the funny little wire puzzle this time. Once in my hand it shuffled into the right shape on the first try, adding its satisfied humming to the song of the grid. I was filled with disgust at the smug noise of it all.

  The puzzle ball folded outward, opening wider and larger, moving away from me as it pushed a passage into the Grey. I started to step into the passage, but a distant voice shouted and made me pause:

  “Theseus had a ball of yarn to mark his path through the labyrinth.”

  It didn’t look like another labyrinth, just a hallway, but so far very little of this had been what it seemed. I didn’t have any yarn, though. I put my hands into my pockets, searching for anything I could use and finding only the hard, cool tin in which I’d stuck the strand of Todd Simondson. I pulled it out and looked it over. The writhing end of his energy fluttered from under the lid.

  I opened the tin and Simondson flowed out, confused by his surroundings but still pissed off. Before he could start demanding anything, I shushed him and caught a twist of his strand on my finger while I stuffed the second puzzle ball—Cristoffer’s puzzle ball—into my jacket.

  “Stay right here,” I ordered the ghost of my murderer, and I started into the doorway, trailing his angry color behind me. Nothing and no one seemed to object.

  The red illumination of Dru Cristoffer’s labyrinth faded until I was able to see only by the shifting ghostlight that defined the hallway I was walking down. I cast a glance back over my shoulder, but though I’d never made a turn, the way behind me bent and vanished into darkness. The deeper I moved into the mist, the quieter my head became. I could feel more, feel the energy of the grid running through me as if I’d bled out completely and my veins were full of the living fire of magic. But of the chorus that had invaded my mind both dreaming and awake, I could hear almost nothing. I twisted to the left and found another, smaller round room with no other entrances or exits.

  This had to be the center of whatever labyrinth I’d just run. Keeping Simondson’s thread looped around my finger, I dug the other puzzle ball from my jacket even as I felt the grid nexus below my feet as strong and loud as before; I had moved and yet ended up in the same place. I fiddled with the key and felt it click into shape. This time it only made a dull whisper and opened the next ball with a grating noise.

  There was a stink of recent, bloody death, burned gunpowder, and the ice-blue odor of anesthetic. For a moment the silence was so profound I thought I’d gone deaf. Then came the distant sound of bone spines chiming against one another and a train wreck’s screech moving sideways and away from me. I recognized the strange underwater babble from a dream, and still trailing the red light of Simondson’s ghost from my fingers, I stepped into utter darkness that unfolded from the second puzzle like a blanket of night.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Beyond the portal of the open puzzle ball, the darkness brightened slowly into the silvery mist of the Grey, but not quite as I’d seen it in a long time. This was more chaotic than I’d become used to. The mist itself writhed and swirled as if things churned unseen below its surface, things that pressed incomplete impressions of their form into the dark fog, turning up glimpses of faces and limbs that then sank away into the restless steam of the world between. Walls made themselves evident, the form of the maze composed of passing roils of gaping, half-formed heads and writhing limbs. The grid had ceased to sing and only the vague burbling remained. Here the power lines of magic had gone quiet and reverted to the empty wire-frame grid I used to know. Here was a corner where the Grey was hidden even from itself.

  I followed the walls, staying to the left for two turns, drawing closer to the gut-wrenching odor. I came around a corner and into a small open circle: the middle of the last labyrinth. Here the faces in the walls made shrieking, gibbering expressions of torment and madness, but no sound came out of their twisted mouths. Off to my right, about the three o’clock position, a human form protruded from the wall, mostly free but not entirely. Part of the head, one arm, and the side down to the hip were undifferentiated from the cloud-stuff of the writhing wall that appeared to be splashed with dark-red gore. I recognized the odd medicinal smell under the death-stink: lidocaine, a contact anesthetic my father had used in his dental office. The figure in the wall turned toward me, twisting in an impossible way through its apparent skin.

  I recoiled a step: It wasn’t that the head was imbedded in the wall, but that part of it was missing. And I recognized the too-fine hair and doe-brown eyes just a moment before he said, “Little girl . . . you made it.”

  Part of me wanted to run to him and part of me wanted to scream and hide, but I just stood still and stared at him and felt my eyes grow hot and wet.

  “Oh, no . . . oh, little girl, don’t do that. Don’t cry. There’s already plenty of blood and plenty of tears here.”

  I stumbled a step toward him. “Dad?”

  “I’m sorry y
ou have to see this. I never wanted you to.”

  “I understand that, Dad,” I said, wiping the ruddy tears off with my sleeve.

  “Be careful. You’ve been clever—and lucky. You were always lucky, but now you have to be wise. Listen up, little girl—there’s not a lot of time. Don’t cry. Don’t bleed. It heals you, but this close to the web the power wants to flow freely through you. It’ll push every living thing out of you if you let it. I don’t want that for you.”

  “Dad—” I started, but he cut me off with a glare that sent ice into my chest.

  “Listen up! It’s the Guardian Beast he’s after. He’ll take its place—that’s what he means to do—but he has to have you to make the way. He needs someone to call it and someone to kill it and you to trap it between the Grey and the normal. And after that he has no use for any of you.”

  “But . . . why would he want to be the Guardian . . . ?”

  “He doesn’t want to guard anything; he just wants to take its place—that’s not the same thing. He’s like you: He’s becoming part of the living grid. But he doesn’t want to be sucked away into the song. He wants to own it, to control it. If he can displace and destroy the Guardian—”

  A clattering and bubbling started up beyond the wall of silently screaming faces. My father’s eyes bulged and he looked panicked. “Oh, no. . . . They’re coming back. . . .”

  The mist-world began a gentle heaving.

  “You have to go. I don’t want you to see . . .”

  “But Dad, how do I get you out—”

  “You can’t. They’ll know. You mustn’t tip your hand until the last minute! This place is hidden, but if it’s empty, they’ll know.” He twitched and pulled into the wall a bit, letting out a gagging sound. “Please go! Now! Listen to the song. Don’t trust it, but listen. It will tell you what it needs, but you must know when to refuse or you’ll be swallowed up. Draw close; command it; then turn it on him when he’s vulnerable. Don’t let him become the Architect of the Grey. Use the second door—this puzzle—from wherever you are. It will bring you straight here so long as the first door is still open and then . . . and then you can do what you have to. Carry the ball and key with you until then and protect them well. Anyone can use the door but only you can stop the plan. Oh, no. . . .”