"What are you thinking?" Aziza asked in a loud whisper.
He jumped, not realizing she was so close.
"What happened to you?" He asked her quietly. "I don't recall any violent inclinations in you when we were in school."
She took a step back.
"What does that have to do with this puzzle?" She asked, sharply.
"Nothing. But it does help me figure out a different puzzle altogether." She didn't answer him, just glared. Giving up, he waved a hand at the etchings in the wall in front of them.
"I'm trying to figure out which one of these carvings gives us the correct pathway out of this room." He waved at the wall. "Obviously, there is a pattern to follow which won't result in our being impaled." He gave her a glance. "Unless that's your plan."
She put her hands on her hips and glared at him.
"You don't trust me, do you?"
"Is it that obvious?" He shook his head. "I'll try to hide that better." He continued his study of the wall.
She huffed, walked a few paces away, then came back to him, pointing her finger at his face.
"You still hold that notebook incident against me, is that it?"
He sighed and turned to her.
"That was an annoyance, but you paid for it." He stared her down. "You broke any trust with those actions, though. And now you're here again, trying to steal something else."
"The weapon." She whispered, almost reverently.
He shook his head
"If it is a weapon. I can come up with at least twenty other things it might be. The problem, Aziza, is that you will not entertain any other idea." He pointed at her in return. "Your mind is made up. Brilliant though you may be, you are and have always been short-sighted and impatient." Finished, he turned back to the wall, trying to regain his concentration.
Aziza, her eyes blazing, took a deep breath.
"You had better hope I don't get impatient with you, Tremain,” she warned, "otherwise you might just find yourself on the receiving end of my gun."
Not looking at her, he quipped,
"No, I won't be. You need someone to do your thinking for you. And the goon squad over there is ill equipped for higher thought." He gestured to the three men. The wounded man had passed out. She huffed again and stormed over to them.
Tremain, ignoring her display, went back to the carvings. Each successive grid, from left to right, became more and more complex, as if he were watching someone's thought process as they went through this puzzle. There was a sequence he had to follow. He turned to the floor. Yes, he could see it now. There was no discernible difference between the squares of the grid, but if he looked at the floor compared to the carvings, a pattern emerged. Quickly, he turned to the far wall. He skipped over the first row of squares, which caught Aziza's attention.
"Tremain, what are you doing?" She hissed. He ignored her. Sweat popping out on his brow, he avoided the next row and stepped two squares to his right, breathing a sigh of relief as he remained un-impaled. Looking back at the carvings, he turned and hopped, skipped and jumped his way across to the far side doorway. He wiped the sweat from his brow and turned to Aziza, to find she had been following him the entire time, one of the remaining goons behind her. She came up to him, her eyes blazing once again. She pushed him into the wall. "Don't ever think you're going to ditch me here, Tremain." She pulled out her gun. "I hold all the cards."
Tremain pushed the business end of the gun away from his face.
"Don't threaten me, Zee, unless you intend to carry it out."
She fumed at the use of her nickname, but put the gun away.
"Don't use that name ever again." She hissed.
"Are you going to shoot me if I do?" Tremain taunted.
"I should."
He folded his arms and smirked at her.
"Then you will die here, probably impaled from some trap." He turned to the doorway. "You need me, so stop with the empty threats." He ran his hands over the outline of the doorway, gave a satisfied grunt and pushed. The doorway swung open, exposing darkness beyond. A cool breeze blew in, blowing back Tremain's hair. The air smelled sweet and humid. Fresh air. He shone his flashlight into the darkness. There was a wall, not ten yards in front of him, but he could see openings to the left and right of it. He pointed the flashlight up to see the tops of the walls, some twenty feet above them, the cavern roof hanging above that. He took a few tentative steps, shining the flashlight over the floor. Reaching the openings, he looked down one side, then the other. He turned to Aziza, his eyes wide and surprised.
"It's a labyrinth!" He exclaimed.
Chapter 11
Tremain stood in the first intersection of the labyrinth, playing his flashlight first down one corridor, then the next. He had originally thought they were in open air, but a quick look up disproved that. His flashlight beam had shown a cavernous ceiling, stalactites and all. He felt the walls and found the rock smooth and cool to the touch. There were no crevices or seams to be found. It seemed as though this labyrinth had been carved directly out of the mountain. Rubbing his chin with his free hand, he contemplated which corridor to take. Aziza, impatient, pushed past Tremain and pointed at one of her remaining men.
"You -- go that way and check it out. You,” she pointed to the other. "Go the other way." She crossed her arms and gave Tremain a smug look. "You worry and hesitate like an old woman." He frowned at her, but continued to try and make some sense of the rock wall. Each of the two henchmen walked slowly down their respective corridors, each away from Tremain and Aziza. Both had their flashlights shining along the floor, looking for tripwires or other traps. Tremain had just turned to Aziza when there was a yell from his left and a grinding stone-on-stone noise. He whirled to see in his flashlight beam the floor of the corridor tilting up at a sharp angle. The henchman slid down the smooth stone and disappeared. Tiptoeing to the hole in the floor, Tremain shone his flashlight beam down. He quickly grimaced and looked away. Aziza, questioning him with a look, moved to the hole herself. Tremain put his hand up.
"You don't want to see it. He's gone." Ignoring him, she pushed past him and looked down.
The trap was ingenious, she could see. The floor was hinged, the rock so seamlessly placed that there was no way they could have detected it. The hole was over ten feet deep, she surmised, the floor lined with sharpened spikes of stone. The body lay impaled by the spikes. She turned around to find the last of her men standing right behind her. He shook his head as he saw the body.
"That could have been me." He turned and retraced his steps back to the white grid-room. "That's it. I'm done. I'll wait here with Jasper." He pointed toward the injured man. "Won't die in there."
Aziza pulled her weapon and pointed it at the man.
"You will do what you are paid to do. Now get moving."
He shook his head.
"No. No paycheck is worth getting killed over." He turned his back to her and she pulled the trigger.
A flash of energy enveloped the man, who froze in surprise and shock. In seconds, he was disintegrated.
Tremain stared at the spot where the man had been.
"Why did you kill him?" He whispered.
She pointed the gun at Tremain.
"He was no longer of any use to me." She waved the business end of the gun. "Don't make the same mistake."
Tremain shook his head.
"Put that damned thing away, Zee." He indicated the open corridor. "For us to make it through this maze, we'll need both our wits." She didn't move. He kept his eyes on her, his breathing level, not giving in to her threat. Slowly, she lowered the gun and replaced it in her pocket. He turned and trained his flashlight along the floor, and indicating her to do the same. With both their beams concentrated in the area, he was able to see more detail.
"There has to be a pattern here too. Some way of knowing which turn is safe, and which is leading to a trap." He glanced at the upturned stone. "We don't want to encounter any more, do we?"
A
ziza didn't answer, just played her beam across the walls and floor.
"What are we looking for?" Her movements were frantic, the light jumping from one wall to the next.
Tremain put a steadying hand on her arm.
"First, you need to calm down." She glared at him, furious, then nodded and looked away. He didn't move his hand. "Second, what's the one thing I always preached when we were in school together?"
Again she bristled.
"I'm not a student anymore. Don't talk to me like I am."
He didn't move, just stared at her.
"The one thing, Zee." She didn't react to his using her familiar name, he noted.
She took her time answering. Eventually she shook her head.
"I don't remember. Probably wasn't too important anyway."
"Observing. The most important thing you can do in any situation is use your eyes." He moved away from her and studied the walls around the hole again. "There has to be an indicator of some sort. It might be subtle, but there has to be one. There should be a way to navigate this maze safely." She huffed and turned her attention to the wall on her side of the corridor. They studied the rock face for a few minutes until Tremain called her over.
"Look at this," he said as her flashlight beam augmented his. He ran a finger along a long gouge in the wall, about waist high. "This is the only anomaly in the entire wall that I can see." He scooted over to the open corridor and checked the walls in detail. "No scratches." He straightened up and pointed his beam directly down the corridor to illuminate the wall at the end. It shone greenish in the light. "I think we may have found our 'tell'." And started walking.
Aziza caught up to him but remained a pace or two behind, just in case.
"How do you know for sure? That the scratch in the rock is an indicator of safety?"
"I don't know anything for sure. I'm trusting my instinct."
She stopped dead.
"Your instinct?" She almost shouted. "I'm trusting my life to your instinct? I want certainty!"
He turned to her, shining his flashlight into her face.
"Considering we really have no other choice, my instincts are about as certain as you're going to get. There was a gouge in the wall where the trap was. Conversely, there was no gouge in the other direction. Until we find another gouge or more, we can't be certain, but I believe the gouges will tell us where the traps are." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Now, I can leave you here, but then you won't get the opportunity to threaten me later, so come along!" He turned and continued walking along the corridor. She hurried up to keep pace with him.
"How deep do you think this maze goes?" She eventually asked, peering into the darkness.
He waved a hand wildly.
"I have no idea. It probably extends through the rest of the mountain. I'd be more concerned with the next intersection, myself." They rounded the corner to find themselves in a small chamber with three openings in the walls. Two were in the wall facing them, the third was to their left. Tremain made a circuit of the room, shining his flashlight around the walls. Aziza stood in the center, watching.
"Three choices." He muttered to himself. "Two must be traps or dead ends." He chuckled at his dark humor. "Not helping, am I?" He checked each opening, looking for gouges or some other indicator. He stepped back into the chamber, turning around slowly.
"Finding anything, or are you just trying to impress me?" Aziza asked, arms crossed. The sarcasm wasn't lost on him.
"It would go faster if there were help, but you disintegrated our last assistant." He looked her up and down. "You could exercise those eyes of yours too."
She laughed darkly.
"And I could probably test one of the exits too, can I?" She walked to the left opening, put one foot through the doorway as if she were going to take a step. "Is this what you're asking me to do?" Tremain, exasperated, stormed over to her as she placed her foot on the stone just outside the exit.
Tremain heard a faint click and yanked on Aziza's arm, pulling her back into the chamber at the same moment as a wooden lattice slammed into the stone wall where she had been about to stand. The points of the wood were sharpened. She would have been skewered had Tremain not pulled her to safety. She turned to him, her eyes awash with fright. She quickly composed herself and pushed him away. "Thanks." She said.
He grunted and shone his flashlight along the walls around them. There again, was a gouge about waist-high. He nodded
"Well, we know that one's a bust, and we have more confirmation of my hunch." He turned to the other two exits, his flashlight beam playing over the stone of the first of the remaining openings. "Now we need to figure out which one of these is the safe one." His flashlight beam criss crossed over the rock, looking for any sign. Aziza, deciding it was better to help, examined the last exit. She gave an excited intake of breath as she waved Tremain over. He hurried, his flashlight leading the way, until he spied what she had discovered. There was another neat gouge in the stone, again waist high. He looked down the corridor. It seemed to branch into a T intersection.
"What do you know of mazes?" He asked her in a hushed voice.
She threw him a glance.
"Mazes, labyrinths, who knows?" She cupped her elbows, shivering a little. "They're all the same."
He gave a low chuckle.
"No, they're not the same. I thought originally this was some sort of labyrinth, but they're usually more circular with a long path leading to the center," He motioned with his flashlight. "Which usually had some sort of cache or altar or whatever of religious importance. At least that was the thought at one time. But, unless I'm mistaken, I think we're in more of a maze." He walked to the non-gouged exit and took a hesitant step forward, turning his head and shutting his eyes tight as he placed his weight on his foot.
Nothing happened. He cautiously opened one eye, saw that nothing was going to skewer him, released a pent up breath and kept walking, Aziza close behind.
"What's the difference?" She whispered to him.
"Mazes usually are more of a puzzle. They have twists and turns, like we've seen here, and usually there's a way out." He took a deep breath. "Unless this one is very complex. If that is the case, we could be here for quite a while." He walked slowly forward, taking the next turn and stopping. The corridor branched into two paths, one running left and down whith the other bending right and curving uphill. Tremain's flashlight played over the stones. "Two paths, one going up, one down. Which one do we want to take, hmm?" He said to himself. He found the telling gouge very quickly, waist high on the path leading uphill.
Down it is.
The air grew cooler as they descended, the stone becoming damp to the touch.
"You had better be on the right path." Aziza threatened.
"We'll find out soon enough, won't we?" He countered. "If the gouges in the walls stay consistent, I think we're going to be able to navigate through this without any troubles." He stopped short as his feet splashed.
The flashlight beam showed a pool of water in their way. The corridor, curving back uphill, was visible on the other side of the water. Tremain shrugged and trudged into the pool. It came up to his knees at its deepest point. Aziza, being shorter, was soaked almost to mid-thigh. She cursed as she pushed her way through the water. As soon as they were on the other side, Tremain walked faster, coming to the next intersection quickly. It was another T intersection, the path leading left and right. Tremain could feel just the hint of air movement from the left leading corridor. Aziza quickly found the gouge in the right corridor. The decision being made, they headed to the left.
"Why would these puzzles be here?" Tremain mused out loud. "I mean, why go to all this trouble?"
"What do you mean?" Aziza asked, shivering in her wet clothes.
"These puzzles. The sand room, the grid room and now this maze. Why build them, not to mention how were they built?" He ran his hands over the stone of the wall. "This rock is smooth, like it was carved or sculpted, not cons
tructed. I don't know how the Mayflower people could have done this."
"Does it matter? I just want to get out of here."
"Yes . . . and find this weapon you are convinced exists." They walked in silence, taking turn after turn, finding the markings in the stone when the path branched.
"Why is this so important to you?" he asked Aziza as they walked. "This weapon?"
She glanced at him as if deciding something, looked down at her feet, then back at him.
"After I was expelled from school, I was angry and lost. Angry with you, but mostly at myself. If I had studied your notebook more, I might have made it past the board. I might have made something more of my life."
"That wasn't honorable, trying to pass my work as your own. What would you have done?"
"It doesn't matter now, does it? After a long while, I met my eventual husband. He was rich and doted on me. I liked what he was doing with his foundation, so I agreed to marry him." She paused, remembering. When she started speaking again, her voice became darker. "Little did I realize I was nothing more than something new in his collection. I was like a trophy he brought out to impress others. There was no love in his touch, no warmth in our marriage. I played my part. I was being taken care of, after all, I wanted for nothing. After he died, I found I had been left a very large portion of the foundation in his will. I wasn't a stranger to the board meetings, so I tried to assert myself as his widow. They went along with it, but I was soon pushed aside. I was as unimportant to them as I had been to my husband. I was marginalized. I was the face of foundation, but only that. With this weapon, I will show them that I am someone to reckon with. They will listen to me, or they will be very sorry."
Tremain remained silent, absorbing what he'd just heard.
Soon they felt a stronger breeze, the scent of vegetation urging them to walk faster. The corridor grew brighter. Tremain noticed the enormous cavern's ceiling had taken a steep slope downward and was steadily getting closer to meet the maze walls. He could see light coming from around the next turn in the corridor. Picking up their pace, they almost ran to the exit, bursting through the branches and vines that were partially blocking the way. Once outside, they stopped, taking in their surroundings. Tremain let out a low whistle.
The Purloined Pictograph Page 7