by Dorian Hart
Ivellios looked down at the golden bracelet on his wrist. “If the Sharshun need me for whatever it is they’re up to, if I’m the ‘prime instrument’ for a Sharshun plot, and they’ve been waiting for me all this time, it seems like they’ll try to grab me sometime soon.”
Aravia nodded. “A place that is all places. They were talking about the Crosser’s Maze.”
“We won’t let them take you,” said Morningstar.
“That’s right,” said Ernie. “If they try, we’ll be ready.”
“What about the rest of us?” asked Tor. “Why did Abernathy choose us?”
“Maybe we’re the support team,” said Dranko. “Tor, you beat up our enemies, Aravia gets us out of scrapes with her knowledge and wizardry, and I keep you all from dying when things go south.”
“That still doesn’t explain Mrs. Horn,” said Ivellios.
No one had an answer to that.
“And more than that,” he went on. “Did Abernathy know I was the great-great-great-whatever-grandson of Moirel? Either he did and chose not to tell us, or he didn’t know, in which case that doesn’t explain why he summoned me.”
“Abernathy said he cast a spell that chose us,” Morningstar reminded him. “Maybe that’s simply how magic works.”
Ivellios turned to Aravia. “Is it? How magic works?”
“I am not an expert in Arcane divinations,” said Aravia. “But my understanding is that they are never so far-reaching. Even locating a simple, known object is extremely difficult unless it is close by. Magic of the sort that Abernathy claims to have used to select us belongs more rightly in the domain of the gods, as we’ve seen in various divinely-inspired prophecies since our summoning.”
“None of that matters,” said Ivellios. “We should forget about— We should focus on finding Solomea again and convincing him to give us the maze. I don’t see what else we can do. Anyone know or care which way we go?”
“Pewter has an idea,” said Aravia. “He noticed that we all arrived in this courtyard from different entrances, but none of us came from that one.” She pointed to a gap in the hedge next to a large blue stone balanced on an iron pedestal.
“It don’t matter,” said Kibi. It was odd that the others didn’t realize it.
“Why not?” asked Ernie.
“This ain’t a real place. Solomea could shuffle this maze around all he wants, whenever it suits his fancy. Not sure why he has us wanderin’ around, but I reckon we could head anywhere, and eventually he’ll turn up again.”
“I’m not certain of that,” said Aravia. “This…place…was called the Crosser’s Maze long before Solomea became its Keeper.” She kneeled and scraped the pebbles away from one particular spot. Beneath an inch of piled stones, the floor of the courtyard was an iron plate. “There’s a physical aspect to it, even though it’s also a mental construct. We shouldn’t assume that Solomea retains full control over its topology. Its shape, I mean.”
Kibi knelt and picked up one of the little stones. It would make a good skipping rock, had there been a pond nearby—smooth, round, flat, and sized nicely to his palm. But it didn’t feel connected to anything. The stone had none of the sort-of-consciousness that all rocks had back on Spira—probably because it wasn’t a real stone, but only Solomea’s idea of one.
The Crosser’s Maze wasn’t as awful in that regard as Calabash (though he was still in Calabash, wasn’t he?). Back in the City Vitreous, there had been no connection at all to solid earth. The entire time, he felt a nauseating vertigo, same as when he’d been falling after that waterfall washed him out of the mountains. But here in the Crosser’s Maze, an assuring sense of solidity came from…from somewhere. Somewhere not immediately to hand, but close enough for him to draw strength from it, to reassemble his sense of self. As if the Crosser’s Maze contained Spira inside of itself, even though it wasn’t nearby.
In the end they went with Pewter’s idea, on the theory that maybe one of Solomea’s criteria for choosing whom to give the maze to was an ability to solve puzzles. That seemed too simple to Kibi, but he didn’t have a better plan. For a few minutes they marched single file, choosing their path based on Aravia’s left-hand rule. The only sounds were their boots crunching against the gravel floor and the omnipresent breathing, steady as the sea. Kibi imagined that if they were shrunk down to a size that would fit into Solomea’s head, maybe they were close enough to his mouth to hear his actual breathing.
Around one corner the hedgerows became patchwork iron walls, and the gravel pathway gave way to an iron-plated floor. As before when they walked the plain metal section of the labyrinth, it was dark as tar. The hedge maze had been lit up, but Kibi hadn’t seen any lights or a sun. Who could say how the place worked? However Solomea wanted it to, he supposed. Kibi was neither tired nor hungry and couldn’t recall how long they had been in the Crosser’s Maze.
Once more they brought out their light-rods. Kibi flexed his left hand, feeling it was a little stiff. The patch of rough gray skin had spread slightly, extending down the side of his hand toward his thumb. It didn’t itch, nor was it painful, so he put it out of his mind.
Time passed as they wandered through the maze, but how much time? Ivellios talked as they meandered; Solomea had told him how he was once part of an old order that used the maze for research, and how he had accidentally gotten himself stuck in his city in a bottle. It sounded like a right tragedy to Kibi.
They reached a widened space where six different metal hallways converged.
“Hey, Solomea!” Dranko called down one dark corridor. “This is boring! When do we get to see something interesting?”
“I don’t see how that’s going to help,” said Ernie.
“This way,” said Aravia. She made the sharpest left turn.
They walked. The breathing continued. Left turn. Left turn. Dead end, back again, new left turn. Aravia’s navigational rule didn’t seem very efficient.
“More mirrors up ahead,” said Aravia. “Maybe that means Solomea has something new to show us.”
This time, both the left and right walls of the hallway were mirrored, floor to ceiling. Kibi looked suspiciously at their reflections, checking for any oddities, anything Solomea may have been trying to show them. Solomea. The poor fellow had lost his mind, at least in part, but understanding him would be vital in convincing him to hand over the maze. He had shown the company different sides of himself: a cruel and callous persona who had mocked them in the Shadow Chaser, and a calm, rational man who had shown Ivellios the truth about his parents. And obviously a part of Solomea wanted to give them the maze; they had caught a glimpse of that one when they had first arrived. “Find me,” he had pleaded. “Please.”
Like so much of the company’s activities, this business was far beyond Kibi’s understanding. The fact that they were marching around some magical warren that only existed in a man’s head was absolutely ridiculous. Just like the way Ivellios could make worlds overlap, or a village-sized turtle could rise up out of a desert. Would there be a time, after all of this was over, when Kibi could return to a simple, quiet existence, just his tools and his work and the fate of the world not resting on his shoulders?
“It’s getting darker,” Ernie whispered, as though Solomea might be listening. “I think my light-rod is going out.”
Kibi glanced down at his own light and couldn’t say if it grew dimmer or not, but his friends did seem to be dwindling a bit into the shadows. Their reflections in the glassy black walls were likewise fading.
“My lights should not be failing,” said Aravia. “Solomea is altering our local reality.”
“Why?” Ivellios asked crossly. “If he has something to say, he should just say it.”
Darkness crept over them as they continued to walk, their lights increasingly muffled. The mirror-walls stretched out in front of them, until they were lost in the darkness—there had been no turns or forks in quite some time. But a new oddity presented itself: all of the reflections were nea
rly invisible, except for Morningstar’s. Her image looked out clearly from one side of the hall, though by rights her black robe should have made her the first to fade away entirely.
All the lights went out.
“Stop.” That was Ivellios.
The only thing visible was Morningstar’s reflection on the left side of the passage, her face shining out pale and luminous, like a chalky moon. Morningstar herself was lost in the same darkness as the rest of them. Her mirror image turned its head as she (presumably) looked around.
“Stop your games, Solomea,” she called out. “Speak plainly to us, if you have something to say.”
“You don’t know to whom you speak!” The voice began as a whisper and rose to a shriek, a scream of knife blades scraping on slate.
“Goddess, no…” Morningstar whispered.
A wave of hideous creatures surged around the feet of Morningstar’s reflection. Her image jumped.
“It ain’t real,” Kibi said to her. “They can’t do no harm. The bad Solomea is tryin’ to scare you, is all.”
The lumpy, hunchbacked silhouette of Shreen the Fair coalesced beside Morningstar’s reflection. “You are close.” His voice was somehow oily and jagged at once. “The maze is everything I hoped it would be. Do not forget your promise, little night girl. The maze, and Lapis’s head!”
Morningstar herself was hidden by the blackness, but in the mirrors her bright reflection quailed, shrinking back from Shreen as though he truly stood in the hallway with them. But he didn’t; in the mirror he occupied the place where Kibi stood.
“Leave me,” Morningstar whispered.
“You are bound by an oath made on my holy ground,” Shreen said softly. “Your friends will encourage you to twist its words, the promise you all made. But Dralla knows the meaning she drove into your heart. You will do her bidding, and Ell be damned!”
Morningstar’s reflection trembled. Her knees buckled. Kibi grabbed her elbow in the darkness and helped her stay upright.
“Ignore the bastard,” Kibi whispered to her. “He ain’t even here. Solomea is drawin’ fears out a’ you, is what he’s doin’.”
“You don’t understand the Crosser’s Maze, do you, stone-man?” cackled Shreen. “I am here just as much as you are. Everything is here. The maze is an echo of creation’s cacophony made solid. Can’t you hear it?”
Kibi put his hand against the mirror-wall before him. If that was true, then somewhere in this crazy place was Spira, the source of his strength. He cast his mind outward—no, not his mind, exactly. His soul? Kibi couldn’t quite define it. But he sent his awareness far into the void, and a solid stone power came back to him from far off, not from one direction but from many, and it carried with it different…flavors? A strange way of thinking about it, but it seemed right. Strength and solidity settled in his bones.
“If you’re here as much as me, then I’m here as much as you,” Kibi said to Shreen. “We already made our promises; now you’re just gloatin’. Go back to your shabby little zoo and leave Morningstar alone.”
“You will not come between me and the blasphemer, stone-man! She—”
Kibi had heard enough. With his right hand still flat against the mirror, he punched it as hard as he could with his left, his fist striking the image of Shreen’s face. He half-hoped that the mirror would prove to be an illusion, that Shreen was truly, physically there, that he could deliver a right thrashing to the Night Master, but his punch met with something like cold and brittle glass. It shattered into a hundred pieces; Shreen shrieked and receded while the little misshapen animals at his feet scattered away in a chittering terror. Several light-rods flared to life, showing sharp fragments of glass falling to the iron floor.
Morningstar had fallen to her knees, so Kibi knelt down beside her. “He’s gone,” he said. “That screechy bastard up and ran off.”
“Thank you, Kibi,” she said quietly. “I know I shouldn’t let…” Her voice broke, and she rested her head on his shoulder. Kibi felt awkward, but the others looked down on them with only sympathy and approval in their eyes.
“You’ll always have one over on Shreen the Shrill,” said Dranko. “You’ve got something he’s never going to have.”
She smiled up at Dranko. “Lovely hair?”
“I was going to say friends, but yeah, that too, I suppose.”
“Can you imagine being friends with that thing?” added Tor.
Kibi stood, relieved that his punching hand wasn’t sliced up, and pulled Morningstar to her feet. While one mirrored wall of the passage now showed all of their reflections properly, the other wall, the one he had punched, was a flat empty black. Kibi reached out a hand and found it wasn’t there at all. He stared into the void, and somewhere far off, two twinkles of colored light kindled into existence.
“You see that?” he asked.
“See what?” answered Ernie.
They were hard to see with all the light-rods out. “Cover up your lights,” he told the others, and they obliged him. Yes. Two pinpricks of light shone like distant stars out against a moonless night sky. As he strained to see them, one of the glimmers resolved into purple, the other into green.
“Now do you see ’em?”
“What are you talking about?” asked Dranko. “What do you see?”
“Lights,” Kibi insisted. “Out there.” He let some light shine through his fingers, so they would see where he pointed. “I think we should go that way. Either the Eyes a’ Moirel are out there, or Solomea’s givin’ us a signpost. Will you trust me on this one?”
“Of course we will,” said Ernie.
“Then follow me.”
He stepped out into the empty darkness and walked toward the distant lights, feeling his feet treading on a metal floor. Behind him came a patter of softly clanging footsteps, hardly louder than the unchanging rasp of the sourceless breathing. Ahead of him, at an unknowable distance, shone the Eyes of Moirel—or, more likely, an imaginary version of them that Solomea had conjured up. After one or two confusing blinks, Kibi could see the twin lights even with his eyes closed, bringing to mind that awful night when the Eyes of Moirel had burned themselves into Eddings’ eye sockets.
Fearing something similarly calamitous, Kibi hurried forward. After a time that felt like minutes, a vague shape began to coalesce around the lights. Over the course of the next hundred steps, that shape resolved into a man, and then Solomea stood before him, one eye green and the other purple. Kibi glanced behind him and didn’t see the others, though he heard their distant footsteps as they moved to catch up.
“Hello, Kibilhathur.” Solomea wore a white robe with a golden arrow stitched diagonally across the front. As before, he hid his right arm in his robe, as though he planned to pull out a weapon to take Kibi by surprise. He gestured into the nearby darkness. An object appeared, brightly lit though all around was black void. It was a baby’s crib, fashioned of dark red wood and decorated with carved panels of wildflowers.
“Hello, Solomea,” said Kibi slowly. He pointed to the crib. “Is that what you wanted to show me?”
“Please, look,” said Solomea.
Kibi feared what he might see inside, but it was only a baby boy, a chubby little thing who looked no more than six months old.
“Was that you?” Kibi asked.
Solomea nodded. His eyes were no longer colored; they were a swirly hazel. “Look closely.”
Kibi peered nervously into the crib. A small silver spider crawled up the baby’s right arm.
“The silver recluse.” Solomea had walked up behind him. “Not as aggressive as the forest widow nor as deadly as the Ocirian acid spider. But the silver recluse enjoys cold, dry indoor spaces, and its venom acts quickly.”
The crib’s interior expanded until it filled Kibi’s vision, as though he held his eye directly up to it. The baby, twice the size of a grown man, idly brushed the now-huge spider with his curled left fist. The spider plunged its fangs into the fleshy pink arm, just above the righ
t elbow. Kibi instinctively reached out to grab the spider and hurl it away, but his hands passed right through its body. The scene was an illusion.
Once more the vision expanded, and the fangs of the spider were as long as swords before Kibi’s eyes, sinking repeatedly into the baby’s arm. The child shrieked, flailing violently, not understanding the source of his pain.
“My father’s healer did what she could, but there was not enough time.” The baby’s arm turned a sickly green, a necrosis spreading outward from the holes left by the spider’s mandibles. “I remember it all with such clarity. It seemed so large to me at the time. And the pain…I was an infant with no understanding. There was only pain, a fire I could not quench.”
The baby, spider, and crib faded away; the infant’s cries died out soon after. Kibi turned to Solomea, who had withdrawn his right arm from his robe. Below the elbow it was a withered, blackened stick, a twig of gnarled bone that ended in three useless fingers.
“Damn,” Kibi muttered under his breath. “Surprised they didn’t cut that off a’ you.”
“They did,” said Solomea. “But here in the maze, this is who I am.” He held up his wasted arm. “The pain grew less over time, but I could never fully be rid of it. Even here in the maze, with all the possibilities of the universe at my command, I am unable to find comfort. It is too much a part of me. I am more than a product of my pain. I embody it.”
“I can’t imagine it,” said Kibi. “And I’m sorry, for what that’s worth.”
“What do you want, Kibilhathur Bimson?”
The question took him by surprise. He could think of many possible answers. He wanted the Crosser’s Maze. He wanted to get out of Calabash and back to Charagan. He wanted to save the world from Naradawk Skewn. More generally, he wanted his life to make even an ounce of sense. He’d even settle simply for knowing what in all the hells was going on most of the time.