Eye of the Labyrinth

by Jennifer Fallon

  She said nothing for a time, perhaps trying to decide if he meant what he said. “Do you really think you’ll find the answers in Omaxin?” she asked eventually.

  “I don’t know. But if Neris won’t tell me what I need to know, the only other option I have is to go to the source.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I want you to come with me.”

  She was clearly shocked by the suggestion. “Me! Why?”

  “There’s only one other person on Ranadon who’s spent as much time as I have trying to extract the truth from Neris, Tia, and that’s you. Between us, we know everything Neris has ever said about the place. I’m going to need that information if I have any chance of working out how to get through the Labyrinth or when the next Age of Shadows is due.”

  She shook her head in disbelief. “You’re out of your tiny little mind if you thought I’d agree to this!”

  “What’s the alternative, Tia?” he asked. “Are you going back to Mil to wait for Antonov? You know he’ll come. It may not be next week, or next month even, but we lit a fuse on Elcast and it’s going to explode in our faces if we don’t do something to stop it.”

  “And whose fault is that, Dirk Provin? We tried to tell you it was foolish to attempt a rescue. But you had to try, didn’t you? And now you’re going to destroy us all.”

  “You agreed with me,” he reminded her.

  “If I’d known you were going to ask me to kill your mother for you,” she retorted bitterly, “I might have had second thoughts.”

  Tia was not nearly as tough as she pretended, Dirk thought. He was also sure that she was a lot tougher than she knew. He did not flinch from her accusing eyes. He empathized with her anger. He just couldn’t think of a way to make her understand that.

  “You’re blaming me, aren’t you?” he asked, hoping to somehow impart his sympathy for her plight. Not that she was all that interested in sympathy from him.

  “You’re damn right I’m blaming you!” she cried. “As if it wasn’t bad enough watching you kill your own father, I let you talk me into killing your mother for you, too. Got any plans for your brother you’d care to let me in on?”

  “Until you appeared on that terrace in Antonov’s palace in Avacas, Tia, I’d never killed anyone, either,” he said.

  “You acquired a taste for it quick enough, didn’t you?”

  “I killed Johan to save your life,” he reminded her.

  “Nobody asked you to save my life, Dirk. Don’t try justifying what you did by making it my fault.”

  “I asked you to kill Morna to save her from unbearable suffering. You didn’t have to do it, but you couldn’t bear her pain any more than I could.”

  His words silenced her. She said nothing for a time, then, as if she had come to a decision, she squared her shoulders and glared at him, a little of the Tia he knew before Landfall showing through.

  “Suppose you do this; suppose you somehow manage to cross Senet without getting caught. Suppose you get to Omaxin and find a way through the Labyrinth without getting killed. Can you actually work out when the next Age of Shadows is due?”

  “I don’t know,” he told her honestly. “For that matter, I don’t even know if having that information will help. All I’m certain of is that I have to try. I can’t promise any more than that.”

  She nodded slowly. “We’d better speak to Reithan, then.”

  “Does that mean you’ll help me?”

  “If you’re determined to do this, Dirk Provin, there is no chance I’m letting you loose in Senet on your own.”

  Dirk nodded with relief, glad that she had agreed with his plan, while a small voice in the back of his head warned him that she had only agreed to it because he hadn’t told her everything.

  They met in the captain’s small stateroom a few hours later, where Dirk outlined what he had in mind. Porl Isingrin objected immediately to what Dirk proposed. Reithan, however, was a little more thoughtful.

  “It’s a huge risk, Dirk,” he warned, “with no guarantee of success at the end of it.”

  “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”

  “Can you do it, though?” Porl asked. “Are you really smart enough to work out what Neris learned in those damn ruins?”

  “Everyone keeps telling me I am.” Dirk shrugged. “I won’t know until I get there and see this Eye of the Labyrinth for myself.”

  “So, in other words, you might risk your life and Tia’s for a solution that doesn’t even exist?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s worth a try, Captain,” Tia insisted. “All we’ve done for twenty years is hide in the Baenlands waiting for Neris to give up his secret. And Dirk’s right when he says the Lion of Senet is going to want revenge. Even if we go back to Mil, the chances are we’re all going to be dead by next Landfall. Antonov will offer a reward for the secret to sailing through the delta so large that even you’ll be tempted. We might as well give ourselves some small chance.”

  “I think I preferred it when you two didn’t get along,” Porl complained. He looked across the chart table at Reithan. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s dangerous, risky and doomed to fail,” he said. Then he smiled. “But I also think it might be worth a try.”

  “You can drop us off in Tolace,” Tia suggested. “They won’t be looking for us in Senet. Anyway, I’m Senetian, and Dirk was in Avacas long enough to act like one. Come to think of it, he acts like a Senetian most of the damn time, anyway. But we can blend in. We’ll just be two travelers heading north.”

  “And what happens when you get to Omaxin?” Reithan asked. “Belagren has had her Shadowdancers working those ruins for years. How are you going to get past them?”

  “We need to get them out of there,” Dirk told them.

  “How?” Reithan asked.

  “By giving them what they’re looking for.”

  They all stared at him suspiciously.

  “They’re after the same thing we are,” he explained. “If they think they’re going to find it someplace else, they’re not going to waste time and energy scratching through the ruins of Omaxin to find it.”

  “I’m not as smart as you, lad,” Porl said. “Would you like to go back and explain that again?”

  “There are only two ways anybody will ever learn when the next Age of Shadows is due,” Dirk said patiently. “One is the ruins in Omaxin, but by far the easier way is to get the information from the one who already has it.”

  “You’d better not be suggesting what I think you are,” Tia warned.

  “You want to give them Neris?” Reithan asked in a carefully guarded tone.

  He looked at them in despair, wondering what it would take to make them understand what he could see so clearly. “It’s not the truth that matters; it’s what people believe to be the truth. If Belagren thinks she knows where Neris is, then trust me, she’ll abandon Omaxin so fast they probably won’t have time to quench their cooking fires.”

  “So you want to feed Belagren false information about where Neris is?” Tia concluded. “Great idea in theory, but how are you going to manage that? Do you suggest we let one of our people be caught by the Lion of Senet, just so Belagren can have the fun of torturing the information from him?”

  “No,” he replied. “We use Alenor.”

  “What reason would Belagren have to believe anything that Alenor told her?” Porl asked. “And more important, how would Alenor explain where the information came from without endangering herself? What’s she going to say to Belagren? ‘Hey, I have a message from my friends in the Baenlands that you might be interested in’?”

  “She doesn’t have to tell Belagren anything. She tells Antonov.”

  “This is getting way too complicated,” Porl complained.

  “It’s simple. Alenor tells Antonov she has information about Neris’s whereabouts, and we provide her with a source of information that can’t be connected to us. Even if he doesn’t believe
her, Antonov will mention it to Belagren, and trust me, she has no choice but to act on the information. Antonov just wants to get his hands on Neris because he’s a heretic. Belagren has to find him, because her entire future rests on the information Neris has about the Age of Shadows.”

  “There’s an awful lot that could go wrong . . .” Porl said uncertainly.

  Reithan nodded slowly. “But it might work.”

  “Will Alenor do it, though?” Tia questioned. “She wasn’t exactly brimming with enthusiasm over the idea of an alliance.”

  “She said to come to her with a workable plan,” Reithan reminded them. “Given a healthy dose of luck, this just might work.”

  Tia smiled briefly at Dirk before turning to Reithan. “You’ll let us do it then?”

  He nodded slowly. “Actually, Tia, I have a bad feeling there’s no way of stopping either of you.” Then he turned to Dirk. “How do we provide Alenor with the information about Neris without risking her neck?”

  Chapter 37

  Kirsh’s injuries had kept Rainan and Alenor in Nova longer than anticipated, which gave Antonov and Belagren plenty of time to receive Rainan’s letter regarding Kirsh’s unfortunate accident. That was how everyone was referring to the beating—an unfortunate accident—as if that somehow lessened the crime.

  They had received the news that the Lion of Senet and the High Priestess were waiting for them as soon as their ship docked in Kalarada. There was no sign of the Calliope in the harbor. Alenor wondered if that meant the rumors she had heard on Grannon Rock were true. Had Dirk really burned Antonov’s precious ship to the waterline in revenge for his mother’s death?

  There was no time to prepare for the confrontation. Although Rainan still nominally ruled Dhevyn, she was not foolish enough to try to stall the inevitable audience with Antonov. Alenor, Kirsh and the queen were taken from the ship straight up to the Audience Chamber in the Kalarada Palace. The city looked unchanged as they passed through it, although there were a lot of Senetians on the streets; particularly noticeable were Antonov’s Palace Guard. Kalarada’s red-shingled roofs clustered together almost as if the city was cowering under the gaze of what was, to all intents and purposes, an occupation force.

  Why do we let the soldiers of another nation walk our streets with impunity? Alenor asked herself as the carriage clattered over the cobblestones toward the palace. Then she answered her own question, acknowledging the bitter truth with reluctance. Because we have no choice ...

  Antonov was waiting for them, sitting on the Eagle Throne as if he owned it. Sunlight streamed down on him from the glass panels in the roof, bathing him in light. There were also a score or more people that Alenor did not know waiting for them, all of them Senetian, she guessed by their dress.

  Who are these people? Alenor wondered nervously.

  There was no sign of the High Priestess, which was something to be grateful for. Lord Dimitri Bayel, Kalarada’s Seneschal, also stood near the throne, wearing a look of cautious fear.

  The Lion of Senet slowly rose to his feet and stepped aside as the Queen of Dhevyn approached. She seemed unconcerned that she had found him comfortably ensconced on her throne. Alenor suspected it was deliberate, as if Antonov was reminding Rainan who really held the reins of power in Dhevyn.

  Her mother waited until Antonov had stepped aside before she took her seat and made a great show of straightening her skirts. When she was done, she looked down at the strangers filling her court with a frown, and then finally deigned to turn her attention to the Lion of Senet.

  “I trust you didn’t find my throne too comfortable, Anton?”

  Antonov smiled, but said nothing.

  Alenor stopped in front of the throne with Kirsh by her side. The Senetian prince was limping slightly, but other than some rather impressive bruises and his sorely wounded pride, he seemed none the worse for his ordeal.

  Antonov’s disconcerting gaze flickered over his son with a scowl. “Who did this to you?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Kirsh answered after only a moment’s hesitation. Alenor breathed a sigh of relief. At least Kirsh had not blurted out his dangerous theory about Alexin and the Queen’s Guard being in league with the Baenlanders. Marqel had planted that idea in his head, she was certain, and Alenor had spent much of the journey from Nova trying to laugh off his suspicions.

  “Do you have an explanation, your majesty?” Antonov asked Rainan.

  “We can only assume that Kirshov’s obvious wealth attracted a rather unsavory element,” she shrugged.

  “Obvious wealth? He was in uniform, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, Anton, but his wealth was rather prominently displayed. His saddle is trimmed with silver, as is his bridle. His boots are obviously well made and not standard issue. Even the sword he carries is worth more than most Guardsmen earn in a year. All these things would set him apart from other Guardsmen.”

  Alenor wondered if her mother was commenting on Kirsh’s mode of dress or chastising him for it. There was a note of reproach in her voice.

  “Yet they stole nothing,” the Lion of Senet pointed out.

  Rainan seemed unable to explain why, if thieves had taken such trouble to beat up Kirsh for his wealth, they would leave it behind when they abandoned him.

  If you’re going to lie to him, Mother, at least make it believable. “Perhaps they were disturbed before they could complete the task, your highness,” Alenor suggested.

  “And what was the task, Alenor? To rob my son? Or kill him?”

  “Anton, I’m quite sure nobody set out to murder Kirshov,” the queen scoffed. “There are much more efficient methods of killing a man, if that was their intention.”

  Antonov did not reply. Instead he turned to his son. “Did you get a look at your attackers, Kirsh?”

  “No, sir, they took me from behind and covered my head with something ... a fish sack, or the like. I couldn’t see a damn thing.”

  “Sergey!” the Lion of Senet barked suddenly. Even Kirsh jumped at his shout.

  “Your highness?” The captain of Antonov’s guard stepped forward with a salute.

  “You will return to Grannon Rock on the next tide. When you get back to that Goddess-forsaken island, you will turn it upside down and inside out until you have found the men who did this. Is that clear?”

  “Your highness, if the men who attacked Prince Kirshov were sailors, they could be long gone before—”

  “I don’t care, Sergey. Find them and bring them to me, or I will pay Grannon Rock a visit personally and deal with the matter myself.”

  “As you wish, sire.” Sergey turned on his heel and marched from the throne room to carry out his orders.

  “I trust no harm came to you on this ill-fated journey, Alenor,” Antonov asked with fatherly concern.

  “No, your highness, although ...” she hesitated and lowered her eyes.

  “Although what, my dear?” he asked curiously. “Come now, child, we know each other too well for you to be shy with me.”

  “It’s just . . . well, we heard there’d been some trouble on Elcast . . .”

  Antonov’s expression darkened. “I see. And did you happen to hear the name of the author of this trouble?”

  Alenor knew she was treading on very dangerous ground, but she needed to know how far she could push Antonov, as much as she wanted to learn what had really happened on Elcast.

  “Rumor has it that it was Dirk,” Kirsh said, before Alenor could answer him.

  “Then for once, rumor has the right of it.”

  “And the Calliope?”

  “The Calliope is now a burned-out husk,” Antonov announced flatly.

  “I’m sorry, sir . . .”

  “There’s no need to apologize, Kirsh. I will see to it that Dirk is found.”

  “Do you know where he is, then?” Alenor asked, trying to sound as if she was only mildly interested in his fate. “It’s been so long since anyone heard from him ...”

  “Oh? I heard a rum
or that he was in Nova while you were there, my dear. There’s even a suggestion that it was he who led the attack on Kirsh.”

  Alenor frowned. Had Marqel already communicated her suspicions about Dirk to the High Priestess?

  “Well, if he was in Nova, Anton,” Rainan said skeptically, “the boy must have sprouted wings since I saw him last. He can’t have been in Nova assaulting your son and in Elcast burning your ship at the same time.” Alenor breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t know how Dirk had gotten to Elcast as fast as he had, but her mother’s words had done much to remove the suspicion that he had been in Nova when Kirsh was beaten. In fact, the notion seemed quite absurd in light of the events on Elcast.

  Unaccountably, Antonov suddenly smiled.

  What’s he up to now? Alenor wondered.

  “Perhaps you’re right, Rainan. Let’s not dwell on it any longer. The important thing is that Kirsh is still in one piece, and we have the happy union of my son and your daughter to look forward to. I’ve brought some people with me to assist you in seeing to the wedding and the coronation arrangements. I’m sure you’ll find their help invaluable. And I’ve decided to stay on Kalarada until the wedding, too. Just to make certain everything goes according to plan.”

  Although it was pleasantly spoken, there was nothing subtle about Antonov’s threat. Just what we need, Alenor thought in despair. Antonov’s spies looking over our shoulder every waking moment. And probably while we’re sleeping, too.

  “There’s really no need ...” the queen began.

  Antonov turned to Rainan with a menacing smile. “On the contrary, your majesty, I think there is a need, a very great need, for me to stay and supervise the wedding. And your abdication. Or have you forgotten about that?”

  “No, I’ve not forgotten,” Rainan replied meekly.

  “I should hope not, Rainan,” the Lion of Senet warned. “We wouldn’t want your daughter to inherit your crown the old-fashioned way.”