The Crosser's Maze

by Dorian Hart

  “Grawly, I assure you that he is not. If there is any breach of the portal, however slight, I will know of it, and my ruby is enchanted as a failsafe even in the worst emergency.” Abernathy gestured to a familiar ruby pendant hanging on a chain around his neck. “But that doesn’t mean you’re wrong about getting started. We should begin this meeting properly. As we discussed, I think Grey Wolf should speak first. Grey Wolf, would you please relate your experience to my colleagues, in as much detail as you can recall?”

  The sellsword stood nervously and walked to stand before the fireplace. Dranko would ordinarily have taken delight in the man’s discomfiture, but not this time. He had already heard the story and shuddered to think of it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The memories surged up and through Grey Wolf like a swiftly rising tide.

  He is fifteen years old, the only child of Ivos and Lia Forrester. They live in a small cottage in the Valding Woods, a green and peaceful place. Idyllic. His parents are master carpenters; several times a week someone comes from one of the nearby villages to place an order for chairs, or a table, or a wardrobe. The sound of footsteps coming down the leaf-strewn path is common and welcome.

  This time there are many footsteps, and they are running.

  Ivellios is in the backyard, trimming lengths of cut oak. The wood will soon be made into the bedframe old Wilda Walker had ordered earlier in the week. Ivellios hears the sound of stomping feet along with an ominous clanking of metal and some guttural snorts.

  Even as he drops his tools, he hears crashing sounds from the house, a high-pitched scream, and unmistakable sounds of a struggle. His mother speeds out of the cottage’s back door, her face stretched with terror.

  “Mother? What—”

  A dull gray axe follows her; it flies from the door and embeds itself in Lia’s back. The sickening sound of its impact is that of the world stopping, of his heart shattering. Lia reaches a hand out towards him as she falls. “Ivellios—”

  A green-skinned goblin moves into view, looming in the threshold of the cottage. Its tusks jut revoltingly from its lower jaw and shake up and down as the creature laughs. Ivellios is paralyzed by his own fear. There has not been a goblin raid in the Valding Woods in his lifetime, but like all the village children he has heard stories of the creatures’ brutality.

  From inside the cottage comes a wet, bubbling scream, a human scream that ends abruptly. His father. The goblin steps casually from the house into the yard, and two more of the monsters follow him. All three wear stained red tunics, and on the front of each is the emblem that marks the goblins’ clan. It is the gray head of a snarling wolf.

  “Grey Wolf?”

  He blinked rapidly. For thirty years he had carried the bloodstained memory of the deadly goblin raid on his childhood home. Hundreds of times he had closed his eyes and watched his mother fall face first to the dirt, an axe handle rising obscenely from her back. Hundreds of times he had heard the death-scream of his father. Goblins! Gods, how he hated them…

  Before him were the other members of Horn’s Company, as well as the five enormously powerful wizards. All looked at him with expressions grave, sympathetic, or both.

  “Grey Wolf,” repeated Abernathy. “I know it is difficult. Why don’t you start with what’s clearest?”

  “Right,” said Grey Wolf. He swallowed and wiped his sweaty hands on his shirt. This was a poor time for his old memories to intrude.

  “We were on a ship bound for Seablade Point, to investigate the Kivian Arch. I felt something weird, painful in my stomach. It wasn’t the first time, either. I’d felt it two or three times before that.”

  “When did the pains start?” asked Ozella. Her goiter wagged distractingly when she talked. Usually when you saw someone like that, it meant you were in a bad part of town.

  “First one was…let me see…on our first assignment from Abernathy, on the way to Verdshane to examine Naradawk’s prison door.”

  “Interesting,” said Fylnia. “So not until after Abernathy had summoned you.”

  “That’s right. The first two times, there was just discomfort. It felt like something was tied around my innards and getting tugged on, but it passed. Then the third time, from my point of view, the ship I was on just disappeared, and I was on the floor of…I think it was Naradawk’s palace.”

  “You, uh, you saw him?” asked Grawly. “Saw Naradawk Skewn?”

  “Yes.”

  That was one of the only things he was certain about. Everything else was jumbled in his mind, like the broken pieces of something delicate that had been stuffed in a sack and beaten with a plank. He tried to remember what Naradawk had said to him, and—

  He is fifteen years old, the only child of Ivos and Lia Forrester.

  The goblin steps casually from the house into the yard, the symbol of the wolf upon its chest.

  No, not a goblin. It is someone with blue skin and no hair. A Sharshun. But that is not how this memory should be.

  “It’s all right.” Abernathy’s old voice was soothing. “You are in the safest place in Charagan. Nothing can harm you in the Greenhouse. Certainly not the emperor.”

  Grey Wolf took a slow, deliberate breath. Why was he reliving this now? “Sorry. It’s…Sorry. Naradawk wasn’t surprised that I was there. He said my being there was inevitable. He even knew my name.”

  “Do you, uh, mean he, mean that Naradawk, that he teleported you?” asked Grawly. “Across the boundary of the worlds?”

  “No, I don’t think so. It was more that he had an inkling I’d be arriving. And he said I was likely to keep showing up. Unanchored, I think he said. I was coming unanchored.”

  “Be more specific,” said Ozella. “What exactly did he say?”

  “I—”

  He is fifteen years old.

  His parents have been murdered by the Grey Wolf clan of goblins.

  His parents have been murdered by Sharshun.

  One of the Sharshun wears a silver cloak.

  “I don’t remember. It’s all a blur.”

  Grawly wrung his hands. “Did you tell him anything about our plans? About the Crosser’s Maze?”

  “No…I don’t think so. He said I was coming unanchored, and then…”

  Naradawk looks down upon him as he kneels. The emperor is tearing his mind apart.

  “Gods,” said Grey Wolf, paling. “I think…I was fading out of his throne room, and he…he took my memories. He ripped them out like old stuffing. That’s why I can’t…”

  He is fifteen years old.

  A dull gray axe embeds itself in his mother’s back.

  A goblin in a silver cloak laughs at him, and…no, not a goblin, a Sharshun. Wasn’t it?

  “—meddling with his mind, we have to assume the worst.” It was Salk talking. Grey Wolf had missed a few seconds of conversation, overwhelmed by his old memories. “It’s entirely possible that Grey Wolf told him everything—against his will, of course.”

  “Does it matter?” asked Fylnia. “Naradawk is still trapped on his prison world. What can he do?”

  “He has already slipped one of his elite soldiers through the breach,” Abernathy reminded her.

  “Yes, but that was a one-time affair. Think of all the trouble the enemy went through just to distract you long enough for Aktallian Dreamborn to break out. It’s not as though they can dig up another blood gargoyle whenever they want.”

  “Are you blind, Fylnia?” exclaimed Grawly. His head jerked back and forth as he spoke, giving quick stares to every person in the room. “Think about what that means! We have enemies, here, on Charagan, specifically working to free Naradawk! We thought the Black Circle was dissolved, but they’re not. We thought the Sharshun had all been killed, but they weren’t. While we’ve been attending to the prison with our shoulders to the door and our eyes squeezed shut, Naradawk’s agents have managed to wipe out a city and start a foreign invasion!”

  “And that’s exactly why I summoned my team,” said Abernathy
patiently. “They are a counterforce.”

  Grawly threw up his aged hands. “Liability, you mean! If Grey Wolf here is ‘unanchored,’ and is going to keep paying involuntary visits to Naradawk on his prison world, it’ll be like our enemy can read regular reports about what we’re up to. We need to lock Grey Wolf up, so at least he won’t have any new information Naradawk can scoop out of his brain.”

  Grey Wolf listened to the archmagi bicker, but the words hardly registered. His mind was a swirl of chaos and confused memories. Each time he tried to recall what had happened in Naradawk’s throne room, that awful day from his childhood flooded his brain. The two events mixed together in a cloud of disjointed recollections.

  Aravia’s voice brought him out of the fog. “We have an anchor.”

  Fylnia pushed her glasses higher onto her nose. “We do?”

  “Ernie’s bracelet generates stability. Over the past few months, I’ve been refining my spell of identification, largely in an attempt to learn more about our Eyes of Moirel, but I’ve also discovered one of the properties of Ernie’s golden band. It binds someone to the world, preventing travel across the boundaries. If Grey Wolf wears it, it should keep him anchored to Spira.”

  Abernathy gave the other archmagi a knowing smile. “You see? We need to trust in my friends.”

  “Forgive me if I don’t,” said Grawly. “It’s not helping that you won’t tell us how or why you picked them.”

  Abernathy smiled thinly. “There is no doubt that my team’s actions thus far have proved of great benefit. For one thing, if they hadn’t warned me about the blood gargoyle, it certainly would have killed me. For another, the Sharshun would have collected three Eyes of Moirel by now and possibly unmade the world—whatever that means. So please, do not question my judgment on that score. Have faith that none of them were chosen by accident.”

  “Hrmph.” Grawly crossed his arms. “Faith is the gods’ business, and look what a fine mess they’ve made of things. It’s for us on Spira to bail them out.” He turned back to face Grey Wolf. “Is there anything more you remember, or should we get on with working out the details of your hare-brained quest?”

  Before Grey Wolf could answer, Salk cut in. “Grawly, please. The journey we propose for Abernathy’s servants is our best chance to keep Naradawk locked away forever. We need the Crosser’s Maze—”

  “The Crosser’s Maze is a mirage!” exclaimed Grawly. “We don’t know much about what it looks like. We don’t know much about where it is. We don’t even know how it works! Yes, I understand that, in theory, we can use it to seal Naradawk’s prison, but it’s a ridiculous gamble.” He swept out an arm to indicate Grey Wolf and the rest of Horn’s Company. “We have troubles aplenty right here in Charagan. Abernathy’s team should be rooting out the Black Circle or figuring out where the Sharshun are hiding. It’s folly to send them to Kivia.”

  “No,” said Abernathy, and Grey Wolf sensed the other archmagi tense. His employer’s kindly voice had found some hidden store of weight. “We have to send them after the maze. Everything we do now regarding Naradawk’s prison is but staving off the inevitable. The stasis field is failing. The portal is cracking. There is no point in arguing, Grawly; they are my summonees, and my mind is quite made up. And our time is limited, so we should be spending it preparing them for their journey.”

  “Can’t you fix me?” asked Grey Wolf. “Restore my memories? Undo whatever Naradawk did to me?” The idea of someone mucking around in his brain was horrible to contemplate, and while he understood that the Crosser’s Maze was a high priority, he’d be gods-damned if he didn’t get himself put right. “All of you are powerful wizards. Surely there’s a spell that can fix my mind.”

  None of the archmagi responded. Salk looked down at his feet while Ozella found something interesting in her porridge. Fylnia glanced at Abernathy with an expression akin to embarrassment.

  Grey Wolf’s heart sank. “I’ll take that as a no.”

  Abernathy gave him a sympathetic look. “Grey Wolf, you need to understand something about psychomancy. It’s extremely…finicky. Anyone attempting to repair your mind would be more likely to do harm than good, and that’s assuming we had someone who knew what they were doing.”

  “Isn’t it worth the risk?” asked Grey Wolf. “Isn’t it possible that my memory of Naradawk could provide some vital clue to defeating him?”

  “Maybe,” said Salk. “But it’s moot. None of us are proficient in psychomancy. It’s a highly unethical line of arcane research. No self-respecting wizard would pursue it.”

  Grey Wolf grimaced. “But the Black Circle has.”

  Ozella chuckled. “Sonny, the Black Circle doesn’t play by any rules, and knowledge, gained any way they can, was always their stock-in-trade. If you’re looking for a bright line dividing good and evil, it runs directly between us and them.”

  “Yeah, about that,” said Dranko. “This seems like a good time to mention where I was this morning, and who I was chatting with. I spoke with a member of the Black Circle.”

  Grey Wolf had forgotten about Dranko’s stupid morning adventure. All the archmagi stared at the goblin.

  “Explain yourself, Tusky,” said Ozella.

  “Mokad. He was a Scarbearer at the church of Delioch, but at some point he switched sides and now he’s devoted to the Black Circle. Or maybe he’s been a mole the entire time, I’m not sure. He’s the one who funneled all the money that got that blood gargoyle dug up.”

  Grawly licked his lips. “And…?”

  “And he tried to recruit me,” said Dranko. “He said some unflattering things about you wizardy types, and promised me all sorts of knowledge if I turned coat. And let me tell you, Mokad knew a lot about me. Given some of the things he said, we should assume he knows everything about all of us in Horn’s Company.”

  Fylnia’s eyes widened in alarm. “Did he mention the Crosser’s Maze?”

  “No, but I’d assume he knows all about it,” said Dranko. “Anyway, though I’m sure Grey Wolf here is disappointed, I rejected Mokad’s tempting offer to become a cultist. After I told him where he could stick it, he decided to kill me, and he nearly did.”

  “How did you escape?” asked Salk.

  “My friend Praska clocked him in the head with a horseshoe. Didn’t kill him, but it gave me time to get away. I ran straight back here.”

  Grey Wolf barely resisted rolling his eyes as Dranko told his tale in full. It was so typically idiotic of Dranko to have gone into possible danger without backup, or without telling anyone. He found himself pacing back and forth while the goblin talked.

  “It changes nothing,” said Ozella, when Dranko had finished. “Except, perhaps, that now we can even less afford to waste any time.”

  Having endured the maddening scrambled-memory portion of the meeting, Grey Wolf eagerly took this opening. “Agreed.” He still stood in front of the assemblage, which made him the natural focus of attention. “You must have some useful intelligence about the Crosser’s Maze. Not to mention a plan for getting past the army of Kivians that’s currently clogging up the only way to cross the sea.”

  The archmagi only looked at one another like a bunch of new recruits being asked to formulate a battle plan, and much less like the living embodiments of power and wisdom they supposedly were. When the awkward silence had dragged on a bit, Salk cleared his throat. “Our only description of it is quite vague. The Crosser’s Maze is a ‘thing of mind, magic, and metal.’”

  Grey Wolf waited for something more, but that appeared to be all he was getting.

  Grawly shook his head. “Like I said, a mirage.”

  Salk gave Grawly a sour look. “That description comes from the greatest archmage ever to don a robe. Parthol Runecarver was one of the three master wizards who died in the battle in which Naloric Skewn was killed. It was Parthol who had been researching the Crosser’s Maze, seeing it as a way to keep Charagan safe from the emperor. Though he found too little and too late, we still have
his notes and records about the maze, scant though they may be. We will just have to hope that ‘mind, magic, and metal’ proves sufficiently descriptive that you’ll know the thing when you see it.”

  Before Abernathy’s summons, Grey Wolf had made a living as a sword for hire. Some weeks he had served as a bodyguard to wealthy nobles or merchants. Others he had spent standing watch outside warehouses or trudging cross-country alongside caravans. Seven years ago he had signed on with a small mercenary force hired by Duke Nigel of Harkran to help roust out a smuggling ring in Minok. At the other end of the spectrum, for one six-month stint the Baronet Faudley had paid him to teach his hopeless teenaged son how to swordfight. Though the jobs varied, one thing had always been constant: The more details and foreknowledge provided by an employer, the smoother the job went.

  “That’s crap,” he said. “Do you even know for sure that it’s a ‘thing’? What if it’s a place, like a…like a magical hedge maze? How in the hells would we get it back for you, even if we stumbled across it?”

  Ozella laughed. “In that case, we’d be screwed. Nothing about this is going to be a sure thing, boy. Grawly here may be a sourpuss, but he’s not far wrong about your chances.”

  “You’d a’ said the same thing ’bout the odds of us killin’ the Ventifact Colossus,” said Kibi.

  “Quite right,” said Abernathy with a smile and a nod.

  Grey Wolf didn’t share his employer’s optimism. He stared at Salk. “So you don’t know what it looks like. What about where to find it?”

  Morningstar took a small step forward. “We know a little from a Seer Dream. It’s far from the arch, many miles across a great continent. I believe it’s in a jungle. It’s not much, I admit.”

  “Excellent.” Fylnia pushed her spectacles up the wrinkled bridge of her nose. “See, Grawly? Not so hopeless. And we have something a bit more solid to go on from Parthol’s notes. Specifically he wrote: ‘My divinations have revealed a sure source of knowledge regarding the maze. In a city called Djaw, seek aid at the shrine of Dralla, who is the goddess of night.’”