Deathstalker d-1
Page 55
"The Empire fought back. They had been split into warring factions for so long that we considered them weak and easy prey, but in fear of us they put aside their differences, and we found ourselves facing a single, determined Empire, with all its power and resources. We were superior, but they were many, and in the end we fell before their might. The survivors fled back to Haden, in the dark, and lay themselves down to sleep the sleep of centuries in the Tomb of the Hadenmen. So that time might pass without them, and they might emerge into a future Empire more ready to accept their clear superiority. And those few of us left behind, denied the peace of sleep and sanctuary, made what lives we could in a human Empire, growing gradually weaker and more human all the while. Surviving, when it would have been so easy to lie down and die, so that one of us might yet find their way back to lost Haden and awaken the sleepers once again to glory and destiny. Our time has come round once more, and this time we shall fight on until we are successful, or we are all dead.
"And all of this, because a few men walked through the Maze, and it changed them. Tell me, Deathstalkers: what do you think you will become, if you survive the Maze? What new destiny will you steer Humanity toward?"
Owen looked at him silently for a long moment, and then fell back to rejoin his ancestor. "I don't think I've ever heard him say so much at one time since I met him. Coming home has made him positively chatty. You, on the other hand, haven't told me one damn thing you didn't have to. Why is it so important for us to go through the Maze? What do you expect to happen?"
"We will become greater than we are," said Giles. "We can't remain as we are and hope to survive. The Empire will kill us. Our only hope is to take a step into the dark, and hope it forges us into a new kind of humanity. Someone or something capable of standing against an entire Empire."
"And if that something isn't human anymore?" said Hazel.
Giles smiled suddenly. "Then the Empire had better pray we're pacifists."
* * *
And finally they came to the Madness Maze, and stopped to stare at it. The forest came to a sudden halt, as though thrown back by the sheer alien presence of the Maze. It seemed straightforward enough: a simple pattern of tall steel walls, shining and shimmering. It was only after Owen had looked at it for a while that he realized it wasn't simple at all, but subtle and intricate, like the folded convolutions of the human brain. There were no obvious traps or dangers, only the steel walls and the narrow paths between them. The walls were twelve feet tall, but only a fraction of an inch thick. Owen went to touch one and only snatched his hand back just in time. The steel was deathly cold, so cold frost had already formed on his fingertips. Owen retreated to a cautious distance and breathed heavily on his fingers. Above the Maze there was only darkness, untouched by the shimmering glow of the walls.
The maze lay stretched out before him like a sleeping predator, too wide to go around, and beyond it lay the Tomb of the Hadenmen. Owen scowled. He still wasn't sure how he felt about the Tomb. Whatever the Maze did or didn't do to him, he was going to need the army of augmented men if his rebellion against the Empire was to stand any chance. But could he take the risk of unleashing a force he couldn't hope to control; an army of living weapons dedicated to toppling the Empire in the name of their own superiority? Owen had no love for the Empire, but he was still human, and that gave him certain responsibilities. He shrugged angrily. The Empire had backed him into this corner; they would have to live with the consequences. And he would just have to hope the Maze gave him the ability to control whatever he let loose upon the universe.
He glanced round at his companions, who were still silently studying the Maze. Hazel was glaring at the entrance, as though daring anything to come out, and unconsciously hefting the heaviest of her guns. Ruby Journey was casually polishing her sword blade with a piece of rag while keeping a wary eye on Hazel. Jack Random was frowning thoughtfully, his lips pursed as he looked from one steel wall to another, as though in search of some detail that would give him an insight into their nature. Tobias Moon stood a little to one side, arms folded across his chest, his glowing golden eyes staring right through the Maze to the Tomb beyond. The Wolfling was sniffing the air cautiously, as though checking for signs of an approaching storm. And Giles Deathstalker was studying the Maze as though it was a worthy opponent in some as yet undetermined game. Owen took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It didn't calm him nearly as much as he'd hoped. Giles had described entering the Maze as a step into the dark, and that was exactly how Owen saw it. There could be anything waiting inside the Maze. Anything at all. But he had to go in. The Empire could be here at any time, and he'd run out of places to hide. The Devil before and the Devil behind, and damned no matter what he did.
"I don't know about the rest of you," said Random, "but this thing disturbs the hell out of me. Are you sure there isn't some way around it?"
"No," said Moon. "My people surrounded their city with all kinds of lethal unpleasantness, all of which are no doubt still in excellent working condition. My people built it to last. They wanted to be sure their rest would be undisturbed."
"Then why leave the Maze open?" said Hazel, frowning.
"Because the Maze created the Hadenmen," said the Wolfling. "It scares them. Possibly the only thing that ever did."
"I'm going back to the ship," said Ruby Journey, sheathing her sword. "I never signed on for this. I don't want to change. I like the way I am just fine."
"You can't back out now, Ruby," said Hazel.
"Watch me."
"I'm afraid it's no longer possible for any of you to return to the Standing," said Ozymandius in all their ears. "An Imperial starcruiser has dropped out of hyperspace and assumed orbit around the planet. And it's a big bastard, too. Its sensors immediately discovered the Standing, and the castle has been forced to raise its shields. If it were to drop them long enough to transfer any of you back on board, I have no doubt the Dauntless would immediately reduce the Standing to a great many pieces of interestingly shaped rubble. So the shields are staying up."
"Never mind protecting your silicon ass!" said Ruby. "Get us the hell out of here! Do something!"
"What would be the point?" said Giles. "Where could we go that they wouldn't follow us? Our only hope is to pass through the Maze and wake the Hadenmen. Don't tell me you're afraid, bounty hunter?"
"All right, I won't tell you, but someone's bound to notice. Only the foolish and the dead are never afraid, and I have no intention of becoming either. There are too many unknowns here. I don't like the odds."
"I've faced worse odds than this in my time," said Random. "Of course, I got my ass kicked quite a few times. You stick with me, Ruby. I'll hold your hand if things get scary."
"You so much as lay one finger on me," said Ruby coldly, "and I will personally cut it off and make you eat it. Same goes for anyone else."
"I believe her," said Owen, and Hazel nodded solemnly.
"Enough talk," said Moon. "My people are waiting."
He strode forward into the entrance of the Madness Maze and was immediately lost to sight. The others watched, half-tensed for some angry reaction within the Maze, but the moment dragged on and nothing happened. They all looked at each other, but there was nothing left to say, so one by one they entered the Maze, until they were gone, with nothing to show they had ever been there.
Owen Deathstalker entered the Maze cautiously, disrupter in one hand, sword in the other. Up close, the bright shimmering of the steel walls was almost painful, no matter how he scrunched up his eyes. Static sparked on the air around him and rustled in his hair. It was bitter cold in the Maze, and his breath steamed on the air before him. He shivered despite himself and immediately looked back, ready to make some remark so his companions wouldn't think he was shivering from fear, and only then realized he was completely alone. He quickly retraced his steps, but although he had only made a few twists and turns in the Maze, he couldn't find his way back to his friends or the entrance. He called out, and
his voice echoed loudly in the silence, but there was no reply. He started to shout again, then stopped himself. He had a strong feeling someone or something was listening, and it wasn't any of his companions. He activated his comm implant and subvocalized his message, just in case.
"This is Owen. Can anyone hear me? Can anyone hear me? Please respond. Oz, can you hear me? Oz, are you there?"
There was no sound at all over his implant, not even static. He was on his own. He scowled, hefted his gun and his sword, and moved on, heading deeper into the Maze. At first he checked the floor for hidden trapdoors and the walls for hidden mechanisms, but slowly it came to him that the Maze's secrets would be more subtle than that. He tried taking only left-hand turns, and then left followed by right, but finally he made his choices at random in response to some deeper, more receptive instinct.
Time passed, until he had no idea of how far he'd come or how far the Maze stretched. He forgot about the Imperial starcruiser, or even why he'd entered the Maze in the first place. There were only the steel walls and the twists and turns of the path, leading him remorselessly on toward something momentous. It seemed to him he could hear breathing, slow and steady and gigantic, gusting about him like a warm, wet breeze. And above and beyond that, the regular distant thudding of an enormous heart. Neither of them were in any way real, and he knew it; it was just his mind trying to interpret something new in ways he could understand. The feeling of being watched was stronger than ever, only there was more to it than that. It was as though the Maze was somehow alive and aware of his presence in it. Not like a rat in a scientist's test, or an antibody in a bloodstream, but more as though he was the final component in an equation that had never before been completed. He put his sword and gun away and wandered on, drawn by something, or the promise of something, he could not name. He saw faces and heard voices, there were lights and sounds, and images from his past surged around him like a returning tide, implacable and unrelenting.
He met the Wolfling for the first time again, half man and half beast, made not begotten, and then abandoned by his creators because he was so much more than they had intended. Owen would never have done such a thing. He had always wanted children, but never considered himself worthy of them. He wanted them to have a real father, not like the distant authority figure that was all he'd ever known.
Again he saw Giles for the first time, held in his shimmering pillar of light like an insect trapped in amber, ancestor and legend and so much more. More and less than Owen had imagined him to be. The great warrior he had been trained to emulate since he was a child; a perfection never to be equaled. A tired old man in greasy furs, burdened by successes and failures alike, guilty of mass murder, clinging desperately to the honor of the Deathstalker Clan.
Owen fought his way through the deadly jungles of Shandrakor, virulent with life, red in tooth and claw, horrid shapes out of nightmares that came at him from every side. Fighting back with sword and gun. Fighting on because there was nothing else to do. He could not, would not, turn and run while his companions needed him.
Back, back. Once again he walked the narrow cobbled streets of Mistport, snow crunching under his boots, the fog like a pearly gray sea. He met Ruby Journey, cold and fearsome, and Jack Random, so much more fallibly human than his legend. He knelt on the blood-spattered snow beside a young girl wrapped in tattered furs. She sobbed hopelessly over her mutilated legs, and there was so much blood. His arms were crimson with it to the elbows, and it dripped from his fingers. She was just a child. And for all his strength and skills and status, he was helpless to do anything for her to undo the terrible thing he'd done to her.
He stood his ground, alone and beleaguered by a pack of blood-hungry killers, so that Hazel might have a chance to escape. He cut and hacked and watched them die beneath his blade, but there were just too many of them, and in the end they dragged him down. And part of him said he deserved it. He fought on anyway. It was all he knew how to do. And then Hazel returned with Moon to save him. The Hadenman. Boogeyman. To be watched and studied but never, ever trusted.
He fought his own guards on the grassy hillsides of Virimonde, cutting down familiar faces suffused with rage and greed. He killed his mistress, Cathy DeVries, and held her in his arms as she died. He'd cared for her, but when the moment came, he cut her down without hesitating. That was how he'd been trained. Historian. Warrior. Fighter. Killer.
He talked with his father, revered head of the Deathstalker Clan, who had time for everyone and everything but his own son. Owen wanted to love him, tried to admire him, but always they were separated by different visions of faith and strength and honor. Bound by blood, thrust apart by politics, Owen never knew how important his father was to him until he was gone, and he was left alone in a hostile world. He ran away to Virimonde, hiding in his histories, hoping not to be noticed. Wanting no part of the politics and intrigues that had killed his father. Wanting to be a scholar, not a warrior, closing his ears to what he didn't want to hear.
Owen's thoughts swirled backward, faster and faster, pausing here and there at important moments and faces. The passing moments of his life that gave it shape and meaning, held up before him so that he could understand them and choose which were really important. Back and back, deeper and deeper. Courage. Love. Honor. Until he reached the inner core, where all things are decided. He looked back over his life, from beginning to end, seeing everything clearly for the first time, and embraced what was really important to him. To be a warrior and a man of honor, defined by duties willingly accepted, in the defense of friends and a cherished cause, to protect those who suffered and punish the guilty. To fight to see an end to fighting, to care for those the Empire had persecuted, to be a hero to those in need.
To be a Deathstalker.
The Madness Maze took the man called Owen Deathstalker, reduced him to his essentials and then rebuilt him, leaving him stronger and more focused than he had ever been before. The dross had been discarded, the merits polished till they shone. He saw clearly now and would not look away. The Maze gave him gifts that he would need, and its blessing, and then it let him wake up.
Owen looked around him, awake and alert, his memories already fading like an interrupted dream. Something had happened, something wonderful, but already he was forgetting, because no man could bear to see himself too clearly. His thoughts were bright and sharp, like the air after a storm has passed. He felt invigorated, cleansed, more than he had been, his life burning within him like a beacon. He was standing in a wide circular space surrounded by the steel walls that he immediately understood to be the center of the Madness Maze. The heart of the storm, where all was quiet and at peace. The others were with him, and they all looked different. It was a difference he recognized. They all looked sharper, more distinctly themselves, than they had been before.
"So that's what the Maze is for," said Giles. "Wulf tried to explain it to me, but I never could understand. We've been reborn, given a second chance. And all our sins forgiven."
"What the hell are you talking about?" said Hazel. "I feel like I've just come out of a week's drunk, and there are things I should remember."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Ruby. "Nothing happened. Nothing at all."
"No. Something happened," said Random. "I was… somewhere else. Why can't I remember?"
"Because your mind has undergone shock treatment," said the Wolfling. "And for the sake of your sanity, you are forgetting the pain. You have been born again, and birth is always traumatic."
Ruby looked at him suspiciously. "You're not going religious on us, are you? That's all we need: an evangelical werewolf."
"Whatever it was, it was of the spirit as well as the mind," said Owen. "I've never felt so clear, so focused. How do you feel, Moon?"
"An interesting experience," said the Hadenman. "There were equations like dreams, explaining everything, pure mathematics spiraling upward to infinity. I was at the center of the universe, and I felt like I could reach o
ut and touch everything. It seemed to last forever, but according to my internal records, only a few moments have passed since we entered the Maze. I would suggest that we have all encountered a very sophisticated mind probe."
"No," said Giles, "there was more to it than that. The Maze seemed—"
"Alive," said the Wolfling, and everyone nodded at that, even Ruby.
"Why is it called the Madness Maze?" Owen said suddenly. "I've never felt more sane in my life."
"Because most people who go into the Maze don't come out intact," said the Wolfling. "Somewhere along the way they lose their minds. Not everyone can face the reality of what they really are behind all the masks and evasions. Most go mad. I'm not sure whether that's because they see too much in the Maze, or because they won't let themselves see enough. For some, even madness isn't enough protection. They die."
"Wait just a minute there," said Owen. "How many go mad and die?"
"So far," said the Wolfling calmly, "only twenty-two out of the hundreds of people who passed through the Maze emerged intact. Including you. I'm really very impressed by your achievement. I wouldn't have put money on it."
Hazel glared at Giles furiously. "And you let us just walk right into it? No warnings, nothing? I ought to cut your heart out!"
"Damn right," said Ruby.
Everyone had turned so that their guns were covering Giles, but he seemed entirely unmoved. "It was necessary," he said quite unemotionally. "You wanted to get your hands on the Darkvoid Device, didn't you? Well, I've brought you right to it. This is the one place I could safely leave it. In the heart of the Madness Maze."
He turned and walked away, ignoring the guns, and after a moment the others followed him. In the center of the open space stood a large glowing crystal, roughly circular, some four feet in diameter. Giles stood next to the crystal, carefully not touching it, and stared into the glow. His face softened just a little, and he smiled. The others crowded around the crystal, drawn by curiosity and the smile on Giles' face. Only the Wolfling hung back. Owen leaned over the crystal, and the glow deepened, becoming warm and golden as it revealed what lay within. And there, wrapped in a single blanket, lay a tiny human baby. No more than a few weeks old, its details were still soft and settling, but its face was clear and distinct, the plump cheeks slightly flushed. It was sleeping quietly, breathing slow and steady around the thumb in its mouth. It looked beautiful and innocent and entirely helpless.