by Heide Goody
“Pass me a rope,” said Lorrika, eager to go.
“What happened to the wizard?” asked Bez.
“Something fell and hit Sparkles here. A stone or something.”
Pagnell moaned wordlessly in agreement.
“Ha!” said Cope, understanding. “He is the donkey! He is the metaphor! You should have ducked, wizard.”
Pagnell moaned again, his meaning uncertain.
5
Lorrika managed to scrounge together enough dry material to make a small fire in the corridor. Once the magic lights in their mouths had faded (much to Cope’s relief), the fire was their only light and heat for five recently dunked people to dry themselves by. As smoke pooled on the high ceiling, Lorrika focused on getting one of the lamps lit. Cope bandaged Pagnell’s head with a strip of cloth which had the one saving grace of being merely wet and not drenched. The wizard was not making the task easier by bobbing back and forth as he laid out Abington’s research notes to dry on the floor.
“You obviously did something very bad in your last life,” Cope said.
“What?” muttered Pagnell.
“That’s what the priest told me.”
He stared at her blankly for a moment. “We’re lucky the pit was filled with water: there are supposed to be some terminally surprising stakes at the bottom. It must have flooded from somewhere. The Yokigiz River isn’t far away. Maybe the water found a way through.”
“We encountered a hunting party of grimlocks as we came up the Yokigiz,” said Cope.
“Can’t imagine they caused you much trouble.”
“Have you ever fought grimlocks?” she asked.
“I’ve met them,” said the wizard. “They’re stupid.”
“That they are.” Cope tied off the bandage and sat back to look at her handiwork. Pagnell was wearing a curious expression. “What?” she said.
“Without your black armour, you don’t look much like an Amanni. And I know the famous Rantallion Merken is not an Amanni.” He straightened a squidgy sheet of parchment on the floor. “I suppose most people just see that distinctive plate and think, ‘Aaagh, the Amanni are coming!’ That could be an advantage to a band of invaders who want to create the right impression.”
“General Handzame is Amanni,” said Cope.
“The only one you’ve got?”
Cope glared at him suspiciously and wondered if this wizard knew more than he was letting on. Not that it mattered now; there was no one he could tell.
Pagnell continued to lay out his sheets. Cope saw him come up against another carpet of papers spread around the other side of the fire. Pagnell slapped down an intricately labelled map. Bez slapped down a sodden sketch in front of it.
“You’re in my way,” said Pagnell.
“I need to dry these out by the fire,” said Bez.
Pagnell looked at the sketch. “What is that?”
“It’s a jaffled cake.”
“You drew a picture of … food?”
“My muse was hungry. It was my lunch yesterday. I bought it from the vendor on the corner of Cisterngate with the stuffed wyvern head over the door.”
“Why?”
“I think it’s an advertising gimmick. You know: the shop with the wyvern head over—”
“I meant why draw it? I’ve seen cakes better jaffled than that.”
Bez shrugged. “I just do sometimes. That way I can show it to people. I sometimes pop it on the wall and see if people like it.”
“The w—? You think people would be interested in seeing pictures of what you had for lunch?”
“It gets a lot of likes.”
Pagnell started to shake his head before stopping abruptly. He picked up the corner of a damp book and traced his finger over the drawing of a child on the open page. “You drew this?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
“It’s very good.”
Cope could detect something in Pagnell’s voice. She thought it might have been a thing called subtext, but she was never really sure what that was. Subtext, the late Master Jarden Orre had explained to her at length, was the things people said without actually saying them. As far as Cope could fathom, it was some sort of ventriloquism, hiding words within words but no matter how hard she listened she could never make out those hidden words. She suspected her hearing simply wasn’t good enough.
She picked herself up, stepped over the warring squares of wet paper and around the fire to where Merken sat against a wall. He had removed his boots and socks, wrung out the socks and hung them over the tops of his boots to dry. His feet were calloused, cracked and bony. Cope approved. That’s how old soldiers’ feet should look. Those were feet which had seen the world – well, trodden on it.
Merken was fiddling with the wet drawstrings on the velvet pouch at his belt. “Damn thing,” he said, struggling. “Would you mind, Cope?”
“Mind?”
He spread his hands to indicate the pouch. “My fingers aren’t what they once were.”
She picked at the damp knot with her fingernails until it came loose. “There you go, sir.”
Merken hurriedly pulled it open and removed a small polished chestnut box. Opening it, he poked at the contents and gave a heavy sigh of relief.
“All okay, is it?” asked Cope.
Merken turned it round to show her. In a cushioned interior which had somehow stayed dry sat a complex contrivance of metal: as round as a biscuit and not much thicker. Its heart was a collection of levers, wheels and various spinning things sitting on a tightly wound coil of brass which gave the item much of its shape and bulk.
“Should it look like that?” she asked.
“It’s Hary Greginax’s constant force timepiece. It keeps perfect time by means of the enclosing going barrel and Greginax’s eccentric cam. It also features his prototype for the adjustable carillon alarm. It’s quite melodic.”
“Ah,” said Cope, none the wiser.
“It’s a clock.”
“Oh. It’s very small.”
Merken withdrew the box and carefully closed its lid. “Greginax envisaged a time when every gentleman would have a personal clock in his pocket.”
“Do pockets need clocks?” asked Cope.
Merken smiled sadly. “Greginax of Carius was a dreamer. And a damned visionary. Handzame gave this to me as my payment.”
“Is it valuable?”
“Priceless,” he said, wiggling it back into its damp bag. “I suppose you got paid in good old-fashioned gold.”
Cope shook her head. “I offered my services for free,” she said. “On condition Handzame would use the Quill of Truth to answer a question for me.”
Merken checked his socks, clearly found them lacking, but began to pull them on anyway. “What question is that?”
“It was given to me by High Shepherdess Gwell, and I must answer it if I am to complete my own personal quest in life. Now, it sounds simple, but you have to think about it. I think it’s got a deeper, hidden meaning; like your donkey metaphor thing.”
“Yes?”
“The question she asked me was this: ‘Do b—”
“Hey!” called out Lorrika as her lamp sparked into flame. “Done it!”
“Good,” said Merken. “Five minutes and then we’re off again.”
“I’m going to need longer to dry these out,” said Pagnell, indicating his notes.
Merken’s expression was grim. “So far, those bits of paper have been of little use to us. And neither have you. Five minutes.”
6
The smoothly carved tunnel forked ahead. The left fork was wider than the right, but there was nothing else to pick between them.
“Well?” said Merken.
Cope held a lamp high so Pagnell could consult a still-damp book of notes. It was entirely illegible to her, and not only because some of the ink was running.
“This,” said Pagnell slowly, still reading, “is The Impenetrable Labyrinth.”
“Good,” said Merken. “And what does
Abington advise?”
Pagnell tried to peel apart two sheets of paper. They ripped, refusing to part. He pulled a face before realising Cope was watching, and stopped.
“We penetrate it,” he said boldly. With only a glimmer of hesitation he led the way down the right path. “Step where I step. Touch nothing unless I say it’s okay to do so.” As he walked, he flipped over the wet mass of pages to the next bit of accessible text. “Abington clearly did his research into mazes and labyrinths of antiquity.”
“I think that’s why he had me pack these,” said Lorrika. She was holding a ball of wool yarn a foot in diameter in one hand and a fat nub of chalk in the other.
“Excellent,” said Pagnell. “Lorrika, you’re on chalking duty. An arrow at every junction. Bez?”
“Yes?” said the artist.
“Yarn.”
“If I must.”
“Um. Can I touch the walls to put chalk on it?” asked Lorrika.
“I think you will have to…”
“But you said we should touch nothing.”
“Yes, true. Let’s play it safe and put the marks on the floor.”
“Is the floor safer?”
“Probably not.”
Pagnell continued forward. The tunnel branched every dozen yards or so. T-junctions, crossroads. Steps: up and down. At every turn there was the skrit-skrit of Lorrika drawing her arrows. There didn’t seem to be much actual method to Pagnell’s method. If these northern wizards didn’t have a reputation for judiciousness and wisdom, Cope would have suspected he was picking each path on a whim. A suspicion which reached a head when they came to their first dead end.
“It’s a dead end,” Bez pointed out.
“I thought you knew where you were going, Sparkles,” said Merken.
“I do,” said Pagnell, flipping back through the book. “This is all … part of the process.”
“Process?”
“This is a learning experience and all experiences, equally valid and worthwhile as they are, teach us something.”
“Which side of your head did the rock hit you?” asked Merken.
“This one. Why do you— Ow!” He flinched as Merken cuffed him on the other side of the head. “What was that for?”
“To teach you something.” Merken turned on the spot. “We’ve been down here for hours and we’ve not made enough damned progress.”
“Hitting the wizard won’t help,” said Lorrika.
The grizzled veteran sneered childishly. “Makes me feel better. I am wet, I am tired and I am hungry and, while these are ills I can easily bear, I don’t intend to bear them at your leisure, lad. Got it?”
“We’ve got food,” said Bez. He was munching on a whole stick of bread; his fingers sank into its damp crust and a trickle of water constantly ran from the tip.
“That’s been in the watery pit of dead things,” said Lorrika.
“It has a challenging authenticity about it,” agreed Bez. “But it’s soft. Got a certain, earthy oatiness, not unlike Rassuman’s Pale Ale.”
“Remind me never to order a pint of that,” murmured Pagnell.
Merken shook his head. “We’ve had enough of your learning process for one night. Find us the way through, Sparkles, or you will become a permanent resident of this tomb.”
There was no time in the darkness of the labyrinth, only that measured by the burning of lamp oil. They walked, drying still, the tooth-mage muttering to himself, taking one turn and then another; Lorrika scoring and re-scoring arrows; Bez unwinding and re-winding his considerable ball of yarn. There were traps: tripwires and concealed spikes; pools of liquid which Pagnell declared to be flesh-burning acids; wobbly flagstones and spring-powered spears; and more than a couple of iron jaw traps set into the walls. Anyone who tried to solve the maze by putting their hand to the wall and following it would soon find themselves without a hand.
As best as Cope could gauge, it was morning when Merken called them to halt for a brief rest. Up above, the city folk of Ludens would be waking up to their first morning under Amanni rule.
Lorrika extinguished one lamp to refill its oil reservoir.
“Gods, that stuff stinks like a fishmonger’s hanky,” said Bez.
“It would: it’s made from fish oil,” said Lorrika. “It’s also highly flammable: spill it near a flame and you can probably say goodbye to more than your eyebrows.”
“Sounds dangerous,” said Bez. “What’s wrong with a good old torch?”
“Three days we might be down here. How many torches would you need? And how much would they all weigh?”
It was a good question, thought Cope. A torch, wrapped in cloth and dipped in pitch, lasted perhaps a little over half an hour. And how much did it weigh? And how many hours in three days? There were twenty-four hours in a day—
“The great wyrm, Nilfandir, lives entirely below the earth,” Pagnell was saying as he consulted one of the drier books, “eating her way through hills and mountains, consuming rocks and precious metals and whatever she encounters. And as she passes, her scales ooze this … this ooze which dries on the walls and floor of her tunnel and hardens to a smooth cement; shiny and hard as marble. Where she crosses her own path, she makes junctions. A man following the maze of her trails can be lost for days in a network of perfect tunnels.”
“Are you saying that’s what this maze is? Niffle-thingy’s worm casts?” asked Bez, a question Cope would have asked if her conscious mind wasn’t taken up with mathematics. Three days of twenty-four hours was seventy-two hours and at two torches, roughly, per hour, that was—
“No, not at all,” said Pagnell. “This is the work of men; the invention of one man. I’m just saying it would be a neat way of constructing a labyrinth.”
“We’re lost. That is what he is saying,” said a tired Merken.
Lorrika relit her lamp and put the flask of oil back in the pack.
“Not lost,” Pagnell insisted. “Exploring.”
“Well, this explorer’s socks are still damp and he’s not happy.”
Lorrika raised the lamp and, her attention caught by something, walked a little way down the tunnel.
“Don’t wander off, Pipsqueak,” said Merken.
“Sure,” she said and ran her hands experimentally over a wall.
“And don’t touch anything!” urged Pagnell.
Lorrika tutted.
Cope, working through her torch-based calculations, wondered if she should double her figures to make two torches per party (which was sensible) or reduce the total to take into account sleep periods (which was practical). So, double the number of torches but knock off a third for sleep times. And how heavy were the torches? About half a pound each? Call it ten ounces—
“Why would anyone want to follow Niffle-thing’s trail?” asked Bez.
“What?” said Pagnell.
“You said a man following her trail could get lost for days. Why?”
“Dragon dung.”
“Pardon me for asking. Anyway, if I wanted to solve a maze, I’d use an army – the general’s army. Come to a junction: send half one way, send half the other. Next junction, do the same. Someone would find the exit.”
“Armies have died down here,” said Pagnell flatly.
“Really? You’d expect there to be more bodies lying around. Skeletons; whatever.”
Pagnell frowned. “Good point. Anyway, it’s not about brute numbers. This maze is a trick, designed to trap the unwary for years, but to let the wise man through in a matter of minutes.”
“Minutes?” grumped Merken.
“I’m not Kavda the Builder and I didn’t write these notes!” snapped Pagnell. “There’s a trick to this place and I’ve yet to see it.”
“You’d better see it bloody quick, Sparkles.”
“This is a door,” called Lorrika.
Everyone turned to look. She was pointing at a seemingly ordinary stretch of wall. “It’s a door,” she repeated.
“She’s gone mad,” Bez w
hispered aside to Pagnell.
Lorrika already had her lock picks in her hand. “I can have it open in a jiffy.”
“Wait!” cried Cope.
“What?” said Merken.
“Just wait!” Cope closed her eyes, muttered a final calculation and then opened them again. “A hundredweight, three cloves and one ounce!” she declared proudly.
“What?” said a baffled Merken.
“We’d need to bring six men with us just to carry the torches.”
Pagnell nodded, smiling. “Thanks, Cope. Um, good work. Let’s take a look at that door.”
After a short inspection, the tooth-mage declared the door to be free from traps – “Definitely probably safe” – and Lorrika inserted her picks into an innocuous gap in the mortar. She wiggled and twisted until she felt the catch; a section of wall less than half an inch thick swung out.
Pagnell’s hope this would be their exit from the labyrinth was short-lived indeed. Beyond was a small room, little more than an alcove with no further doors.
“Oh, well done,” said Merken icily. “Pipsqueak and Sparkles have found us a broom cupboard. Let’s give them a round of applause.”
“I don’t see any brooms,” said Cope.
The door itself was a simple metal panel, the camouflaging layer of stonework cemented to its front. An ancient parchment calendar on a loop of equally ancient string hung from the back of the door. Inside, there was a stool and a little writing shelf only big enough to hold a short stack of papers held down by a tarnished metal plate and cup. Pagnell picked up the metal cup and traced his fingers over the engraving which ran around the rim.
“What does it say?” asked Lorrika.
“‘A Vestaltide Gift from Sathea,’” he said. “A holiday souvenir.”
“Souvenir?” said Cope.
“You know,” said Pagnell, placing the cup down again, almost reverentially, “a memento. I bet the Hierophant does it. Pops over to Qir for a spot of light pilgrimage and comes back with a box of candied apples and a piece of decorative pokerwork that says Greetings from Qir. Don’t the Amanni go in for that kind of thing?”
