Eye of the Labyrinth

by Jennifer Fallon

  “I’m not going to spend days, weeks, maybe even months playing games with you, Dirk Provin. Either there’s something going on between us or there isn’t. If there’s not, then tell me now, so I know. If there is, then let’s cut out the nonsense and do something about it.”

  Dirk stared at her, speechless for the first time since she had met him.

  “Well?”

  “Just like that?” he managed, eventually. “Let’s do something about it? What exactly did you have in mind?”

  “What do you think I have in mind, you idiot?” she snapped. “Goddess! You really are thick, aren’t you?”

  “You haven’t been eating mushrooms again, have you?” he asked.

  Suddenly, Tia’s bravado deserted her. She blushed a deep shade of crimson. “You promised you’d never mention that again.” Tia turned to leave, realizing that she had just made the biggest mistake of her life. And an even bigger fool of herself.

  “I might, if you ever stopped throwing yourself at me,” he said.

  Tia’s first reaction was to turn around and slap him but he caught her wrist as she raised it to strike him and gently pulled her closer.

  “Let’s agree on something,” he suggested as he put his arms around her. “You stop trying to cause me grievous bodily harm, and I won’t make any further references to your ferocious behavior while under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms.”

  Filled with uncertainty, Tia thought about his offer for a moment and then nodded. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. His eyes gave away nothing.

  “Sounds fair,” she agreed.

  A lot more hesitantly than she had barged into his tent, she kissed him, a little cautiously at first, afraid she had imagined what it felt like in the darkness. She was not sure, but it felt like part desire, part hunger and part terror.

  “You do realize, don’t you,” he remarked a few moments later, “that you’re probably the most unromantic female on the whole of Ranadon?”

  Tia opened her eyes and smiled. “This from the man who tried to scare me to death before seducing me? That’s a bit rich.”

  “Just so long as you remember whose idea this was in the morning. I’ve a feeling your second thoughts might be quite fatal.”

  “Dirk, just shut up and get on with it, will you?” she said as she began to undo the remaining buttons on his shirt. “Goddess! Why couldn’t I have found somebody who doesn’t talk so much?”

  He laughed softly as he slipped the shirt from his shoulders. “You used to complain that I didn’t talk enough.”

  “There’s a time and place for everything, Dirk,” she told him, impatiently.

  He kissed her again, the urgency between them putting an end to further conversation. At some point, her shirt was tossed across the tent. Their trousers and sandals presented something of a hindrance, but somehow they managed to get rid of them without too much difficulty. They stumbled backward in their haste and fell onto the narrow camp bed, which creaked alarmingly under their combined weight.

  Tia laughed at the sound as she lay back on the bunk. Dirk bent to kiss her again, and then he stopped suddenly when he spied the necklace he had given her in Bollow nestled between her breasts. With his finger, he lightly traced the V-shaped line on her skin where she was tanned and freckled from long hours in the sun in an open-necked shirt. Then gently, he picked up the little silver bow and arrow. He looked at her curiously. “You’re still wearing it.”

  “And you thought I was unromantic.”

  With a smile, Dirk let the pendant drop. Tia closed her eyes as she felt his tongue trailing down between her breasts toward her navel. She arched her back with a cry that was caught somewhere between terror and delight and after that, she did not think about much at all, for a long, long time.

  Chapter 58

  When Tia woke the next morning she was alone, and all the doubts and fears that she had pushed away the night before came crashing down on her like a falling building. She sat up and glanced around. Her clothes were strewn across the tent where they had thrown them in their haste last night, like a silent reprimand.

  Dirk’s clothes were gone.

  She scrambled off the narrow pallet and hurriedly gathered up her things, cursing all the while under her breath as she got dressed. She emerged into the sunlight to find the fire smoking and the pile of equipment they had gathered the night before missing. Dirk was already in the Labyrinth.

  Grabbing one of the few torches left behind, she lit it from the fire and headed off toward the Labyrinth with a purposeful stride. Tia rehearsed what she was going to say, over and over, but it didn’t seem to make much sense.

  It’ll sound better when I say it out loud, she decided as she stepped into the darkness. Things always sounded better when you said them out loud.

  When Tia stepped through the last gate into the hall, she stopped suddenly, her eyes wide with wonder. Dirk had been busy. There was a line of torches that stretched away into the distance, slicing the gloom like a sword-cut made of warm yellow light. The ceiling was lost in the gloom, but the golden Eye in the floor reflected the flames unevenly, giving the impression that it was winking at her. The few walls that she could see were covered with elaborate illustrations of circles within circles. There were pictures of creatures she had never seen, so real it was as if they had been captured and stored in miniature behind glass. There were images of cities she was sure could never have existed and, strangest of all, every ten feet or so, a large opaque window was set into the wall, though on closer inspection, it was obvious that even before the eruption, there would have been only solid rock behind them.

  Momentarily forgetting why she had come, she walked to the wall on her right and held the torch up for a closer look.

  “Now who’s gawping like a country boy on his first trip out of his village?” Dirk asked from behind her.

  She squealed with fright at the unexpected voice. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!” she cried as she spun around to face him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, relieving her of the torch she was waving wildly between them. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Isn’t this place amazing?”

  She stared at him in bewilderment. “Is that all you can say?”

  He looked at her with a puzzled expression. “I suppose, if you really want, I could think up a more colorful adjective ...”

  She punched his arm impatiently. “I meant about us! About ... what happened ...”

  “Ah ...” he said warily. “That.”

  “What do you mean ... ah ... that ?”

  Dirk regarded her cautiously, and then he nodded in understanding. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you apologizing?”

  He sighed. “I realize you’ve probably come down here to run a blade through me. But you don’t have to worry. It won’t happen again.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s just ... well, I mean there’s no future for us really, is there? And it’s not even as if you like me all that much, and ...” He turned away from her, making it impossible to see his face and guess what he was really feeling.

  “So it meant nothing to you?” she said to his retreating back.

  He did not answer her. He began to walk away.

  “Don’t you dare just turn your back on me!”

  Dirk turned and retraced the few steps between them cautiously, his eyes the color of dull metal, his mood impossible to fathom in the uncertain torchlight. “It was a mistake, Tia. Look at us. You’re already angry at me.”

  “Well, that’s not my fault,” she retorted uncomfortably. “And I’m not angry. It’s just I woke up and you were gone ...”

  “So you’re mad at me because I’m an early riser?”

  She searched his face for some hint of what he truly felt, but as usual, she had no idea if he was dying a little inside or laughing at her. “I am making such a mess of this, aren’t I?”

  He appeared to consider the matter for a
moment, and then nodded. “Pretty much.”

  “Kiss me, Dirk.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you need a reason?”

  He searched her face doubtfully. “Are you sure about this, Tia?”

  In reply, she slid her arms around his neck. He tossed the flickering torch aside and kissed her hesitantly, as if expecting her to pull away. Tia closed her eyes as his doubt gave way. His arms tightened around her, and she found herself pushed up against the wall, all her fears and doubts forgotten ...

  “Wow!”

  She opened her eyes with a languid smile, not sure what she had done to provoke such an exclamation of awe. But Dirk wasn’t even looking at her. He was staring at the wall behind her.

  “Look at this!” he exclaimed excitedly, moving her aside and reaching for the discarded torch.

  “Dirk ...”

  “This is it! This is how Neris must have worked out when the Age of Shadows would end!”

  She stared at him. “But what about? ...”

  He was tracing his finger over the mural that, to Tia, looked like nothing more than a whole lot of circles. “He used to draw these circles all the time. This must be the orbit of the two suns of Ranadon.”

  A part of Tia was delighted that he had made such an important discovery, but mostly she was irritated by the way he had cast passion aside for something so ... inanimate.

  “How can you tell what those circles mean?” she asked, a little petulantly. “More to the point, how did you manage to work it out while you were supposed to be kissing me?”

  He glanced at her with a grin. “You must inspire me to great leaps of intuitive reasoning. Like Neris and the poppy-dust.”

  “Poppy-dust destroyed Neris,” she reminded him, not sure she liked the idea of being compared to a dangerous narcotic.

  “Then it’s a better analogy than I realized,” he chuckled.

  Tia rolled her eyes, realizing the futility of arguing with him. “Do you really think this mural is what we’re looking for?”

  Dirk moved a little to the left, holding the torch high, tracing the incomprehensible series of diagrams carved into the stone. Then he stopped suddenly and scooped up a handful of shattered stone that lay at the base of the wall and held it up for her examination with a wry smile.

  “Behold! The secrets of the second sun of Ranadon,” he said.

  “How can you tell?”

  Dirk pointed to the wall where he was standing. Tia moved closer to get a better look. The diagrams suddenly stopped, shattered by a gaping hole in the mural. On the floor beneath the hole lay a pile of cracked stone. It looked as if someone had quite deliberately defaced the wall at that point with a sledgehammer.

  “This is it. All the phases of the first and second suns,” he explained, pointing to the series of carvings. “And I’ll bet you all the pumice in the Tresna Sea that the ruined section was the part we needed to work out when the next Age of Shadows is due.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  “Because this wall wasn’t damaged by accident.” Dirk suddenly chuckled softly. “Your father has a wicked sense of humor.”

  “Care to let me in on the joke?”

  “Don’t you see? The whole Labyrinth ... the traps he set ... everything he did to keep Belagren out of here ... It doesn’t matter. None of it matters ...”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s nothing here for Belagren to find.”

  “You mean Neris destroyed it?”

  Dirk nodded. “I have a bad feeling that I could work on these diagrams for the rest of my life and never learn what Neris knows.”

  Tia smiled at the delicious irony. “So Belagren spent half a lifetime trying to get into this cavern and it’s useless.” Then her face creased into a frown as another, less pleasant thought occurred to her. “That doesn’t help us much, either, Dirk.”

  “Maybe,” he shrugged. “I won’t know for certain until I’ve had time to study it closely. But I’ll wager there’s little useful information here.”

  “So it’s all been a waste of time,” she concluded.

  “Maybe not,” he shrugged. “There’s a lot to study ...”

  Tia shook her head. “I don’t know why I was worried about you. I mean, it’s not as if we’re ever going to actually spend any time together ever again, now that you’ve got this place to play in.”

  He tore his gaze away from the wall long enough to smile at her. “Jealous?”

  “Of a wall? I think maybe I am.”

  “You can come and distract me every now and then,” he offered.

  “I have a bad feeling you’re not that easily distracted, Dirk.” Tia sighed, thinking of a kiss that ended with Dirk getting excited about an ancient mural.

  He didn’t answer her. He was too busy studying the damn wall.

  Chapter 59

  Alenor got an unexpected break from Dorra’s constant surveillance about a week after Kirsh’s departure for Omaxin. Since her husband had left Kalarada, her lady-in-waiting had been particularly vigilant, and had even insisted on accompanying her on her daily ride with the guard. Even Jacinta had not been able to deter her. But thanks to a meal of spoiled shellfish, Dorra and two dozen or more members of the palace staff were trapped in their rooms, looking miserable and pale, not daring to venture too far from the garderobes.

  Most of the victims were Senetian. Shellfish was considered a delicacy of Senet, a dish the Dhevynians had never really embraced. There were lots of recriminations, of course, and angry mutterings about the stupidity of the Dhevynian palace chefs— at whose feet the Senetians firmly laid the blame for their illness. The mood in the palace was quietly buoyant, as not only the queen, but most of her staff, suddenly found themselves free of Senetian interference, even if only for a few days.

  Alexin came to visit her as soon as he heard of the epidemic. For once, Alenor did not have to justify his admittance or find an excuse to be alone with him. Dimitri Bayel simply announced him and left.

  “Dimitri seems rather jovial this morning,” Alexin remarked, as the Lord Seneschal closed the door on his way out. “I swear he almost whistled on the way here.”

  “Almost every Senetian in the palace is bent over the garderobes this morning,” Jacinta told him happily. “I really must speak to the cooks. It was such a good idea to serve shellfish at dinner last night.”

  “I’d be careful if I were you, Lady Jacinta,” he warned with a smile. “They might start to think we’re deliberately trying to poison them.”

  “The idea does have a certain morbid attraction,” she admitted. She put aside her tapestry and rose to her feet. “But for now, I’m going to make the most of this little piece of unexpected sunshine. If you’ll excuse me, your majesty, I have a few things I’d like to take care of.”

  “Of course, Jacinta,” said Alenor. “I’ll be all right here with Alexin.”

  “Yes, well, if he tries to take advantage of you ... just be quiet about it, will you? Dorra’s got a dreadful headache and I’d hate for her to be unduly disturbed.”

  A little embarrassed, Alenor smiled as Jacinta let herself out of the room, but her good humor faded as all the other problems she currently faced suddenly seemed to crowd in on her.

  “You’ve been much happier since Jacinta arrived,” Alexin noted.

  “She’s wonderful. She bullies Dorra unmercifully, though. I’m sure they’ll come to blows one day.”

  “If they do, my money’s on Jacinta.”

  “So is mine,” she agreed. “Have you been able to get a message to ... the others?”

  “That’s why I’m here,” he told her. “A certain cousin of mine is here in Kalarada at present. He arrived yesterday. I thought you might want to meet with him.”

  “Reithan is here?” she gasped.

  Alexin nodded. “And with most of your Senetian watch-dogs incapacitated, there’ll never be a safer time to speak with him.”

  “When does he want to meet?”
>
  “Now,” Alexin said. “He’ll be gone by first sunrise tonight.”

  “I’ll have someone saddle my horse.”

  “Already taken care of, your majesty,” he said, offering her his hand. “I took the liberty of informing Lord Bayel that you would be visiting the barracks again this morning to see the colt.”

  She smiled at him as she placed her hand in his. “You’re getting a little bit ahead of yourself, aren’t you, Alexin?”

  “Just taking advantage of the situation, your majesty.”

  “I’m not sure I should be happy that you’re taking advantage of me,” she said lightly, but when she looked at Alexin, suddenly he was not smiling anymore.

  “It would be very easy to take advantage of you, Alenor.”

  There was something odd in his tone. Something that Alenor suspected shouldn’t be in the voice of a Guardsman addressing his queen. She found she could not meet his eye. “You think I’m a silly girl playing at being queen, don’t you?”

  He still had hold of her hand. Gently, he pulled her closer, and lifted her chin with his finger, forcing her to look at him. “I think you’re the most courageous person I know. And I’m not the only one who thinks you’re going to become the best queen Dhevyn’s had in a living memory. Ask Jacinta if you don’t believe me.”

  She searched his face for some hint that he was simply flattering her. “But I’m so frightened all the time ...”

  “But you still do what you have to, Alenor. That’s what makes you brave. Any fool can plunge ahead fearlessly when they’re too stupid to realize the risk. But when you know what’s at stake, when you realize the danger and you do it anyway, because it has to be done, that’s true courage.”

  “Then why does it feel so scary?”

  “So you can tell when you’re being brave. Otherwise, how would you know?”

  She smiled. “Now you’re teasing me.”

  He was still holding her close, much too close for comfort. Alenor suddenly became very aware of him. He was so much taller than she was so that when she lowered her eyes she found herself looking at his lips, which made her think of that day in Nova when she had kissed him ...