Incarnations of Immortality

by Anthony, Piers

  This just wouldn't do! She needed a strategy of approach, not only to make her way through, but to do it economically enough to get ahead on threads. She needed to expunge two illusions for every thread, instead of the other way around. Blundering through by blind chance simply wasn't going to accomplish that.

  Well, she did have time. There was no time limit on the maze; she was to continue until she either won through to her son or lost her soul. If she hesitated forever, she would never escape Hell—or save Luna's position. Her timing was her own.

  There had to be some key she had overlooked. How she wished she had Cedric's ready intelligence, or her son's! Obviously sheer chance was not going to get her through; only an appropriate strategy would do that. But what strategy?

  She played her mind over it, knowing there had to be something. Satan might have deceived her about the odds, but Mars would not have. She had at least an even chance—if she could only figure it out.

  Slowly it came to her. She had to ration her threads— but Satan had to do the same for his illusions. Each was limited to one hundred. If she didn't want to throw away threads, he didn't want to throw away illusions. Each of them had to calculate a strategy to make the assets count most. But while she could change a nonproductive course, Satan could not; he had set up the maze at the outset, and could not change it. It stood to reason that wherever Satan didn't need an illusion, he wouldn't use it. He had to use some in key places, because otherwise she would be able to thread the maze simply by avoiding visible monsters. An illusion-monster could seem to block off the one route through, shunting her into real monsters and trouble.

  Here were five exits. It would make no sense to have several illusions down one passage—if the start of it was blocked by a real monster. She couldn't pass the monster, so would never have a chance to be fooled by the illusions. The illusions had to come early—or along the real path.

  All five of the monsters at this junction had to be illusions. That was the only pattern that made sense. No wonder she had verified the first illusion she had challenged, here! She could have saved the thread.

  Furthermore, since Satan's illusions were limited, there were only so many he could spare for any one segment of the maze. She had discovered only one in the crystal section, strategically situated; that might be all there was there. Perhaps nine of ten monsters would be real, because here in Hell monsters were relatively cheap. In the mortal world, illusions were cheaper than demons, but here in Hell it was the other way around. So the chances were that after the beginning of any passage, most of the monsters would be real. If a passage divided into ten alternate routes, nine of them would be blocked by real monsters, with only the one that actually led somewhere having an illusion. That would give her nine chances to lose threads, regardless whether she gambled or tested. That was why she had been falling behind; she had not perceived the strategy of Satan.

  That being the case, what she needed to do was figure out the pattern of the overall maze, and select the route that was most likely to have illusions. The wrong routes would be blocked mostly by real monsters.

  But how could she analyze the maze when she couldn't see it as a whole? The walls might be of glass, but that gave her no notion of the overall layout. She could see many monsters, but could not make out the convoluted channels of the maze.

  She looked up, and saw that one tower rose above the rest. Most of the maze seemed to be open, and the tops of the walls, in addition to being too high for her to reach, looked knife-sharp; she could not climb them. The tower sported a short diving board. Into what was she expected to dive, from there? The illusion of a lake? She knew she couldn't risk that; it would cost her at least two threads.

  But the tower was high. From it, she might be able to see the layout of the puzzle as a whole. If so, that would be a useful spot to reach, even if it was not the correct route.

  She selected the passage she deemed most likely to lead to the tower and walked through the monster that guarded it, the woman-headed snake. The monster hissed at her, but could not touch her; it was, as she had surmised, illusion. She had saved herself a thread; in fact, she had saved four, for all these monsters had to be illusion. Just by pausing for thought, she had brought the running score up to nine to seven, for once she had identified an illusion she didn't have to waste a thread on it. These illusions were fixed in place; they could not follow her about. She could check off any she was sure of, and the more she could discover by deduction, the better off she was. She found herself shivering with release of tension; by bracing the monster "blind" she had not only saved her threads but also had confirmed her analysis. Had she been wrong...

  Now there was a snake-headed woman, the inverse of the prior monster, blocking the passage. Since there was no alternate route, she knew this was illusion. Satan wanted her to be able to navigate this route, after wasting a thread, perhaps hoping she would indeed dive off the tower. She braced herself again and marched through the monster: illusion number eight.

  She came to a coiled staircase. That fitted in with the serpentine theme. She had to admit that Satan had a certain artistic sense. But of course all art could be considered a form of lie, because it differed from reality; that was certainly in the bailiwick of the Father of Lies.

  She mounted the stair, testing each step for illusion so as not to fall through; that required no threads. Soon she emerged at the top of the tower. It was enclosed by glass that distorted the view of the surroundings; she had to go out onto the diving board to see clearly.

  She went out—and was attacked by a siege of aerophobia. The board was about fifteen feet above the top of the walls of the maze, and twenty-five feet above the ground. It gave slightly under her weight and she shivered. She had never been a confident diver and was less so now. She remembered that she had been bolder when crossing the seeming chasm in the Hall of the Mountain King, so maybe her courage had eroded with age. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled to the end and peered over.

  There was a clearing below. Five giant cushions sat in it, each one so fluffy that it was obvious that she could jump down on it, even from this height, and not get hurt. But some might be illusion, so she couldn't risk it without using at least one thread.

  Also, she realized, it could be a trap; she might locate a good cushion, land safely on it, and go on—only to discover this was a dead-end path. Then how could she return to the starting point? She could see that there was no access to the base of the tower from that yard. The jump was one-way.

  She could use a thread to rise back to the diving board, of course—but that would put her further behind. Every thread she used that didn't dispel an illusion was a loss for her.

  However, she had not come to jump, only to look. She had expended no threads on this path, so was gaining. She decided to assume that two of the five cushions were illusions, the two closest; if she had used her threads to verify her landing, it would have cost her several more to explore this dead end. She was learning to figure the odds.

  Now she concentrated on the rest of the maze. It was not as large as it had seemed from below; the convolutions made the distance seem greater. She traced the path of the first passage she had tried, to make sure she knew what she was doing; then she traced the route to the tower. Good enough; she was able to see them clearly from here.

  She traced the other three routes very carefully. All of them had several splits, but most of the splits dead-ended immediately after passing monsters. Obviously they were intended to seem to go on, so she would challenge the monster—and waste either one or two threads. One route looped back into the other, so that she might win through it—and find herself back at the starting point, perhaps several threads poorer. But one route wound its tortuous way all around the maze, with three separate splits and rejoinings, and finally exited to a hole in an opaque wall. That was evidently the one. There were a total of thirteen monsters along it. She concluded that all but three were illusions, the three being used t
o block one arm of each split. There was no way to tell which of each pair of monsters was real—but it didn't matter. The ratio now favored her. She needed to test only in the splits, using three threads, and she would pass ten illusions. Assuming she had correctly analyzed the two cushion illusions, that would put her running score at twelve to twenty. Twelve threads for twenty illusions—and perhaps other illusions bypassed in the other passages. That was the kind of ratio she liked!

  She memorized the route, then backed off the board. She got to her feet in the tower and descended, pleased with herself. If she had calculated correctly, she was now winning the game.

  The passage she wanted was guarded by the head with the muscular arms. Was that symbolic? A muscular head, meaning good thinking. Symbols were a form of art, and Satan had an insidious sense of humor; it was possible.

  She walked through the illusion and into the passage. The next monster was a cat with chicken's legs; she walked through it too. She reached the first split, took the left fork, and threw a thread at the hawk-headed dog that guarded it. The creature screeched and charged her;

  it was real. She retreated, took the other fork, and marched through the headless man whose face was on his belly.

  On the next split she caught the illusion the first time. It really didn't matter; one thread got her through regardless, now that she knew how to play it. She completed the course without difficulty and came at last to the opaque wall. She had done it! Her mind had enabled her to prevail.

  She walked through the doorway in the wall. In a moment she came to a blank barrier—but it was an illusion. She stepped through it—

  First one foot, then the other landed on something that rose up to fasten about her ankle. Startled, she looked down and discovered she was on skis. They started to move. She had skied as a child, so knew how to keep her balance and guide herself down a snowy slope—but that had been seventy-five years ago. The last thing she had expected to encounter in Hell was skiing! Still, she had known it was possible.

  She was picking up speed. She saw two ski poles standing upright on either side of the track. She reached out and grabbed them. Evidently Mars had ensured fair play for this aspect of the challenge; she had the necessary equipment.

  She shot out of the chamber. She was on a high mountain, on a steep slope, accelerating. Below her were diverging tracks in the snow, marked by thin columns of fire. One track led to a towering ski jump, another to a broad and ice-covered lake.

  She skewed into the third track, which seemed to be a slalom: a twisting path between the firepoles. She was no slalom expert, but this seemed a better bet than the others.

  She passed the first pole and made a wide turn around it, almost losing her balance. She was way out of form and she lacked the lithe muscles of youth. Who ever heard of a middle-aged woman doing the slalom?

  She overcorrected and brushed by the second pole, touching it. There was a sizzle as it burned her elbow;

  her clothing caught fire, and the pain was sharp. She brought her other hand about to slap out the flame—and the ski pole whirled around, upsetting her balance, and she spun out of control on the skis. She went right through a firepole; this time her face smarted from the burn, and her hair caught fire.

  She flung aside the ski poles and dived into the snow, trying to douse her blazing head. The skis twisted sidewise, and her dive became a preposterous belly flop. The snow was hard, almost like ice dusted by a powdery layer. Now she was sliding on her stomach down the slope, completely out of control. One leg was twisted; she felt the pain shooting along it.

  Then she was rolling, her skis tearing free along with one shoe, leaving the foot bare. The slope steepened, then became a dropoff. She fell—

  Into the lake. The ice cracked, and she plunged under it, immersed in the shockingly cold water. She tried to swim up to the surface, but she had drifted under the unbroken section of the ice and banged her head on it from below. She inhaled to scream—and sucked in water.

  Her consciousness was fading, but she focused on one thing; the threads. She clutched out a thread and flung it as well as she could.

  Suddenly she was moving upward. She passed through the ice without breaking it and landed on her feet on the surface. She had managed to avoid drowning, thanks to the magic.

  She looked about her. The ice supported her weight, in this region. To the side was a single ski that had followed her down; the other seemed to be lost in the snow of the slope. One ski pole floated in the open water where she had broken through. Her bare foot was freezing. She was here in spirit only, but only her intellect knew the difference; she felt every bit of it. Now she had the proof that those who suffered in Hell really did suffer!

  She looked at her collection of threads. It had shrunk significantly. She had destroyed herself several times over, in the course of that spill! She was well behind on the running score now.

  She limped across the ice, coughing out what remained of the water she had tried to breathe. She picked up the lone ski and found it was the wrong one; it was for the left foot, while her right foot needed the shoe. Of course her right foot was the wrenched one, so skiing on it might be awkward anyway. But she used the ski as a clumsy pole to brace against, and started dragging herself up the nearest slope that could be navigated. She would have to go the long way around, to get above the dropoff and find the other ski with her shoe, and it wasn't going to be pleasant, but she had no choice.

  She slogged up. Her bare foot hurt in the snow, but soon it became numb—which was no good sign. She tried to hurry, but her left leg also had been wrenched, it was now apparent, and haste was impossible. To make things worse, a wind was coming up, cutting cruelly through her inadequate clothing.

  She was never going to make it this way! She sighed, and fumbled out another thread. She flung it up at the top of the dropoff, and followed it up. She had just saved herself perhaps half an hour of slogging—but lost yet another thread.

  A white figure loomed before her. It was a snowman! "Damn it!" she swore. She swung the ski at the monster.

  It passed right through without resistance. Niobe spun around and fell to the ground, a victim of her own inertia, An illusion!

  She picked herself up and plowed on until she came to the slide-marks of her own descent. These she followed up until she spied the other ski, with her shoe attached. She hurried toward it—and dropped into an illusion-covered hole.

  It was only an ice-pocket, but it cost her two threads. She got out and proceeded on to the ski, where she detached her shoe, dumped out the snow, and put it on. The stocking was gone. It hardly mattered; her whole leg now felt like a dead stick.

  Where to, now? She had to find her way out of this frozen mess!

  She decided that the slalom remained her best chance. She tracked over to it and tramped down its slope. She no longer had any trouble keeping the course; what were impossibly tight turns at speed on skis were quite simple on foot. If she had been smart, she would have gotten off the skis at the outset and walked down. She was not on show for skiing here; she just wanted to cover the course. The whole ski-setup was probably a diversion; she had allowed Satan to dictate the mode of play, and naturally this had led to disaster.

  She paused to warm herself at a firepole, but it was an illusion. How fiendishly clever: the early poles were real, so that they had burned her, while some key later ones were illusion; probably she could have skied down the course successfully if she had known which firepoles to ignore. This one blocked the direct course, so that the skier had to make a wide and dangerous turn to avoid it.

  She went to the next pole, which was real, and came close to it. But it wasn't effective as a heater; the fire was too hot up close, and inadequate at a distance. She needed a warm ambience, not a sharply defined line-source. She dragged herself on along the track.

  There was a termination station at the foot of the mountain. A ski lift was there, but it didn't go up the slope she had descended. Evidently it led to the
next aspect of the maze.

  She was too cold and tired to debate the merits properly. She climbed into the seat. It was comfortable; it was a blessing to get off her feet. She buckled the safety harness. Imagine that: a concern for safety in Hell!

  The thing began to move. It hoisted itself into the air, hanging below its line, and proceeded slowly across the terrain.

  Now she counted her remaining threads. There were just twenty. Sixty-eight threads she had lost in that fiasco! That seemed an impossible number—but Mars would not have let her be cheated. Probably some had fallen out of her pocket during her slide down the mountain, and some had been washed away by the water. How would she ever catch up now?

  But she reminded herself that she didn't have to catch up; she just had to make it through the maze. If she used her mind henceforth, she could still do it. She had to believe that.

  How much more of the maze remained? She didn't know. But whatever it was, she would negotiate it.

  She reached down to chafe her cold leg. Some sensation was returning. That was good and bad; good because it indicated recovery, bad because it hurt. But that would pass; she had been tromped to death, as it were, by the headfoot monster, but had recovered immediately. It seemed it took longer to recover from sixty-eight threads worth of mischief than from two threads worth. But she would recover.

  The lift entered a tunnel. Light flared—and she saw she was in a kind of factory. The chairs of the lift moved among robots that used tools to adjust things. Obviously if she were in the correct spot, she would get adjusted— and that would not be at all comfortable. She had to find a clear route through.

  The line overhead divided. She shifted her weight to the right, and the seat took the right line. She could control her travel, to some extent.

  What she evidently could not do was pause in her progress. The seat kept moving forward at its measured pace. That provided her inadequate time to decide. The thing would not go backward, which meant she was committed to whatever decision she made. She could not change her mind and withdraw. She might already have made the wrong choice!