“If you fall and split your skull open, I am not cleaning it up,” Porzia huffed.
Leo had to smile at that. It was just so … so Porzia. An oddly comforting familiarity.
Finally he got his hands over the top edge and—through a combination of pulling and scrabbling that probably did not look especially suave to the watchers below—heaved himself onto the top of the labyrinth wall.
He stood, surveying the domain that stretched away from him in all directions. He’d known the labyrinth must be large, but it was a different matter to see the expanse with his own two eyes. The air was also eerily still. In the real world, if he climbed up on top of a structure there would be a breeze, or at least the feel of warm air convecting off the sun-heated stones. Here, nothing. There wasn’t even a sun—the sky was the swirling bruise-purple of Edgemist, made luminous enough to cast a meager quantity of light down upon the labyrinth. No wonder it seemed like perpetual dusk down below.
Up here, with the world laid out at his feet, he could see that the group’s current position was close to one side—presumably the south side—though the walls blocked them from the gap he guessed had been their original entry point. From the curvature, he could be reasonably sure of where the center was, though both the distance and the shallow angle of his line of sight made it difficult to discern. As he looked out across the vast expanse of curving corridors, he once again felt that slight tremor through the soles of his shoes. And as he watched, a section of wall sank into the ground, disappearing from view.
“We have a problem,” he called down to his companions. “The labyrinth is changing.”
* * *
Elsa frowned as she, Faraz, and Porzia followed Leo’s directions. Leo walked along the top of the wall, keeping pace with them and occasionally instructing them on which turns to take. His apparent disregard for his own safety only served to irritate her more.
“I still don’t like it,” Elsa muttered to Porzia. “It’s too easy.”
“Perhaps Montaigne didn’t expect to be pursued by an acrobatic Venetian swashbuckler,” Porzia said. “The walls are plenty tall. I certainly wouldn’t have made it up there.” She gestured at her dress, which was admittedly not suitable for wall climbing.
Despite her suspicions, Elsa grudgingly had to admit to herself that Leo’s plan was expediting their progress. From atop the wall, he could pick the shortest route to the center and watch out for changes in the labyrinth. They still had to retrace their steps a few times when the labyrinth grew a new wall to thwart their passage. But Elsa could tell they were getting close by the tighter curvature of the corridors.
“There’s definitely a large space in the center, like a round courtyard,” Leo called from above. “Hold on a minute.”
He sat down on the top of the wall, rolled onto his stomach, then lowered himself off the edge, reaching for footholds in the stone. He scuttled down the wall deft as a mountain goat and rejoined them on the floor of the corridor.
“We’re close. I’ve got the last few turns memorized,” he said, as Faraz handed back the rapier.
They walked in silence for a minute or two, following Leo’s lead. There was something eerie about the absence of sound inside the labyrinth. Veldana was a scribed world, but it had birdsong and wind through the trees, waves rolling over rocks and small animals burrowing in leaf litter. Here, nothing. It was quiet as death.
“Skandar’s nervous,” Faraz observed.
Porzia said, “The tentacle monster isn’t the only one.”
Elsa was watching for the flicker of shadow that would give away another camouflaged pit in the floor. “Just keep your eyes open, everyone.” She half expected Leo to offer a snappy reply, but when she stole a glance at him, he seemed too focused on the path ahead.
They turned right into a corridor so sharply curved that Elsa could only see a few meters in front of them before the inner wall obstructed her view. Leo led them halfway around the circle to a place where the inner wall opened up onto a larger space beyond.
“Hah, this is it!” Leo crowed, but the mirth died on his lips as he stopped dead in his tracks.
Elsa peered around his shoulder, hoping to catch a glimpse of her mother’s book—she imagined it on a stone pedestal, like some sort of religious icon—but instead the round inner courtyard of the labyrinth hosted a sharp-toothed monster. It bore some resemblance to a wolf but was much too large, with a row of spines protruding from its grotesquely arched back, taloned eagle’s feet, and too many eyes, like a spider.
It peeled its lips back, and even the labyrinth’s dim light was enough to glint off those rows and rows of dagger-shaped teeth.
18
I KNOW NOW THAT SHE IS DESTINED TO SURPASS ME, IF SHE HAS NOT DONE SO ALREADY.
—personal notes of Jumi da Veldana, 1891
“Everyone keep quiet and hold still,” Faraz said under his breath. “It’s not sure where we are.”
Elsa wondered how that could be true, since the monster’s head had swung around to face them. But then she noticed its nostrils flaring and its head cocking from one side to the other hesitantly. Montaigne might have spent his time liberally when scribing its slavering maw, but some corners had been cut on the matter of keen senses.
Leo swallowed visibly and muttered, “Unless I’m horribly mistaken, that’s not a prize waiting for us in the center of the labyrinth.”
Very slowly, he began to ease his rapier out of its sheath. The wolf-monster twitched an ear at him halfway through the task, generating a collective gasp from the humans and forcing Leo to freeze in place, but as soon as its attention shifted again, the blade came free with a soft shnick.
Faraz gave a barely noticeable shake of his head. “Don’t. This is a scribed monster—you have a weapon of precision and no promise the vital targets will be in the right places.”
“You give Montaigne too much credit for creativity. It will have a heart and a throat, at least, which is good enough for me. What do you want to do, stand here forever?”
Faraz gave him a warning look, but Leo ignored it. Icy fear threaded through Elsa’s veins as Leo lunged forward, rapier at the ready.
He feinted left and right, testing the beast’s reflexes. It could move fast for its size, but Leo was smaller and more agile. He darted forward and sank the rapier deep into the wolf-monster’s throat. For a second, Elsa believed he’d done the beast in, but then it twisted to the side, wrenching the hilt from Leo’s hand.
Seeing him disarmed, Elsa drew her revolver. At the same time, Faraz quietly said, “Skandar, attack.”
Skandar’s wings snapped open and it launched itself from Faraz’s shoulder, tentacles flaring. Despite its apparent lack of a mouth, Skandar emitted a high-pitched “Shreeee!” so loud Elsa nearly dropped the revolver in her attempt to cover her ears against the piercing sound. If there had been any glass nearby, she imagined it would have shattered.
The wolf-monster shook its head as if addled by the cry and stumbled backward a couple of steps. As soon as the cry ended, though, it seemed doubly incensed. The beast lunged at Leo, the rapier still grotesquely skewered through its neck. Elsa took aim and squeezed off two rounds into its chest. The bullets slowed the monster, but it stumbled forward to take another swipe at Leo, who scrambled out of range of the beast’s claws.
“Yes, well,” he panted. “I’m willing to admit this isn’t going as well as I’d hoped.”
“Leo admitting he’s wrong?” said Faraz. “If we weren’t fighting for our lives, I’d take a moment to mark the occasion on my calendar.”
Skandar, circling the beast’s head just out of reach, let out another earsplitting “Shreeeeee!” Elsa winced, but at least the noise seemed to pain the wolf-monster much more than it did the humans.
Faraz folded his arms. “Skandar, stop playing around and finish it.”
Skandar’s one enormous eye seemed to regard them for a moment, and then the creature dropped from the air like a stone, landing on the wolf-
monster’s head with tentacles splayed. There was a bzzzt sound, and arcs of blue-white electricity and the monster’s whole body twitched and jerked. Then Skandar released its tentacles’ grip, and there was only the sound of limp flesh hitting flagstone and the reek of burnt hair.
Faraz calmly welcomed Skandar back to its usual shoulder perch while everyone else stared openmouthed at the dead wolf-monster.
Leo picked himself up off the ground and straightened his waistcoat, but his attention was on Faraz. “You told me that thing was harmless!”
Faraz regarded him mildly. “Because you have never lied about something important before.”
“But … but it can electrocute things,” he sputtered. “To death. And you carry it around on your shoulder.”
“Well, Skandar wouldn’t do that to a person. At least not unless I told it to, and probably not even then.”
Porzia gave him a scathing look. “You don’t know whether your tentacle monster would kill a human?”
“It’s not as if I’ve had an opportunity to test the theory.”
“Personally,” said Elsa, “I think Skandar did a lovely job of vanquishing our foe. Thank you, darling.” She reached out with her free hand to scratch the hollow under its wing, and Skandar’s eyelid drooped with contentment at her touch.
Leo crouched beside the felled beast and tentatively tapped the pommel of his rapier to check that it wasn’t too hot to touch. He must have found it acceptable, because he took hold and yanked it loose from the beast’s throat. The rapier made an unpleasant wet noise as he pulled it free, and it came out dripping viscous yellowish fluid. Leo took a rag from his pocket and scrubbed the blade clean before returning it to its sheath.
Elsa decocked the revolver and holstered it. “So what now?” she said.
Porzia, hands on hips, walked a slow circle around the clearing. “I don’t understand. The important things are always supposed to be located at the center of the labyrinth. Everyone knows that!”
Faraz stroked Skandar’s wing, only half paying attention to Porzia’s ongoing inspection of their surroundings. “Perhaps Montaigne needs to read up on his Minoan mythology.”
“Very helpful, thank you,” Porzia snapped.
Elsa started walking the perimeter, running one hand lightly over the curved wall that bounded the courtyard. There must be something they were missing—a secret passage, a hidden compartment. He was a man of ample ego—he would place the important object in the center of everything else.
Porzia stood in the middle of the courtyard, examining how the paving stones had been set in a spiral pattern. “Look at this,” she insisted. “There should be something right here!”
Elsa’s fingertips ran across a washboard of indentations in the stone, and she stopped to examine it more closely. An inscription.
“There’s something carved into the wall here.” She brushed the dust from the stones. “It looks like … French. ‘Si c’est ici le meilleur des mondes possibles, que sont donc les autres?’” If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others?
Porzia came over to see. “That’s strange. It’s a quote from Voltaire.”
At the word Voltaire, the carved stone made a grinding noise and shifted, sliding backward ever so slightly relative to the rest of the wall.
Porzia and Elsa exchanged a look. Then Elsa leaned close to the stone and clearly enunciated, “Voltaire.”
The stone slid farther away, as if it were a button pressed by an invisible hand, and when it stopped there was an audible clank from inside the wall. It was a test, Elsa realized—a kind of locking mechanism where the name was the key. But the unlocking process was not yet complete.
“Find the quotes,” Porzia said, turning to the boys. “Find the quotes!”
They spread out around the periphery of the courtyard, scouring the walls for more inscriptions. The stones had a weather-worn feel to them, caked with dirt in some places and hidden behind ivy in others.
“Found one,” said Faraz. “‘Un sot savant est sot plus qu’un sot ignorant.’”
“Molière!” Porzia called from across the courtyard. Faraz repeated the name into the stone, which slid into place and clanked audibly, just like the first one.
Elsa’s fingertips detected a pattern on the stone, and she pulled the vines aside to get a clear look at the carving.
Frowning, she read, “‘Le grand architecte de l’univers l’a construite on bons matériaux.’”
“Ooh! I know that one,” Leo said. He jogged over and announced to the stone, “Jules Verne!”
The stone slid inward. Everyone looked at Leo.
“What? I read,” he said defensively. “What’s with all the French literature, anyway?”
Quietly, Elsa said, “It’s meant to keep out Veldanese. My mother would borrow books from Alek sometimes, but it’s not as if we have a library in Veldana. So I don’t recognize the quotes.”
“Oh,” he said.
Typical Montaigne—making a show of his superiority as a real person and as a Frenchman. Elsa knew she shouldn’t let it bother her, but the slight stung. She shook off the insult and said brightly, “Smart of him. It might have worked, if I’d come alone.”
Leo grinned. “Good thing you didn’t, then.”
In all, they found eight quote-puzzles. Porzia solved most of them, with occasional help from Leo and Faraz. Elsa tried not to despair at her own uselessness. With all her talents for creation, she could not make herself recognize words she’d never read.
“Here we are. Last one,” said Porzia. “‘Vous avez des ennemis? Mais c’est l’histoire de tout homme qui a fait une action grande ou crée une idée neuve.’”
“No idea,” said Faraz.
Porzia scrunched up her face, trying to dredge up the memory. “Ugh, it’s so familiar! I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
Leo chewed his lip. “What if we came at it from a different approach? Which famous French writers are we missing?”
“Zola? No, it doesn’t sound like Zola,” Porzia said, immediately rejecting her own suggestion.
Porzia’s gaze locked with Leo’s and they said at the same time, “Hugo!”
She leaned close and spoke the name. “Victor Hugo.”
The stone slid away and clicked into place. For a minute, nothing happened. They all exchanged questioning looks—had they missed an inscription somewhere? What exactly should they expect? Elsa feared that Porzia might have gotten one of the quotes wrong, or perhaps they needed to be triggered in a particular order. Year of publication, perhaps?
Then the ground shuddered, stone grating against stone, the courtyard echoing with the noise of it. Slowly, the inner portion of the courtyard sank into the ground, each paving stone lowering to a different height so that the spiral pattern became a spiral staircase.
As soon as the shaking stilled, Leo stepped close to the edge and peered into the dark hole. “Now there’s an ominous sort of invitation if ever I saw one.”
Elsa joined him at the top of the spiral stairs. Grabbing his arm for support, she tested the first step to make sure it would take her weight. “Not an illusion, at least.”
Somewhere in the depths below, lights came on, as if the labyrinth knew they were there. With the bottom of the stairs bathed in gaslight, Elsa could guess the depth of the hole to be five or six meters—close to two stories. Letting go of Leo’s arm, she stepped down to the second stair. The stones were thick, making the steps uncomfortably far apart, as if they were designed for a giant.
“Nope, not creepy at all,” Leo muttered before following her.
There was no handrail on the inside of the spiral, and enough empty space in the middle to allow for a very quick trip to the bottom, so Elsa hugged closely to the outside wall as she descended. The cold of the stone seeped through her sleeve like icewater.
A few steps above, Porzia said, “By all means, let’s walk into the trap.” Her voice echoed weirdly in the stairway column.
Halfway down, the column opened up into an underground cavern. Elsa hurried to the bottom of the stairs, feeling precarious and exposed without the wall beside her, but she saw no slavering monsters lying in wait to attack them. Curious. She paused at the bottom and held up a hand to stall the others. There was something off about the air down here. Not the smell—though it was unpleasantly musty—but the way it felt when it filled her lungs. The density, maybe, or the temperature, as if she were breathing soup. Elsa took another deep breath, trying to analyze it better, and spots began to swim in her vision.
She spun around. “Get back outside. Quick!”
Ushering the others before her, she rushed back up the stairs, thighs burning with the effort. Above in the courtyard, she went to her knees on the flagstones, expelling the bad air from her lungs. Her vision tunneled, and she heaved a few deep breaths to compensate, her corset stays digging into her bruised side with each attempt.
Leo crouched beside her. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Elsa shook her head, focused on breathing. When her vision finally cleared, she said, “There’s no oxygen down there. Porzia’s right—it’s a death trap.”
“That’s fantastic news,” Faraz said in earnest. “It means the book is almost definitely down there.”
Porzia gave him a look. “Death trap, Faraz. Death. Trap.”
Leo said, “We need a breathing apparatus, like Fleuss designed for those construction divers on the Severn Tunnel project.”
The names Fleuss and Severn meant nothing to Elsa, but she was already thinking of oxygen tanks. “It shouldn’t take long to build a few. Here, hold this,” she said, handing the laboratory book to Porzia.
She raised her eyebrows. “Seriously? You want me to just stand here holding the worldbook?”
“I need Leo and Faraz for this.”
Porzia shook her head, exasperated. “Fine. But if I get eaten by another wolf-monster while you’re all off playing in the lab, I shall be very put out.”
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