Villains by Necessity (v1.1)

by Eve Forward

  They ran down the pass, the slope adding to their speed. Suddenly, the pass opened up, tumbling down a steep, muddy slope that had recently served as a floodwash. They slid down this, their pursuers close at their heels. As they fell, Valerie’s voice could be heard over the muffled curses scrambling.

  “Quickly! Assemble the Segments! Our only possible escape is into the Labyrinth!”

  “Where is the entrance?” Kaylana called back. “Is it here on Ein?”

  “It’s wherever it needs to be!” the sorceress shouted.

  “All we need is the Key and fast-moving water, if legend serves!”

  “There’s a waterfall up ahead!” Robin announced. His four-legged gallop, though treacherous in the slope and mud, was carrying him along at a fast clip.

  “Perfect!”

  They landed at the base of the slope and turned, running as best they could upstream through the cold shallows.

  The rushing noise of water filled the air and before them, they could see the waterfall-a forty-foot straight fall sending crashing cascades of mist and foam swirling about in a deep pool. The mist formed a huge rainbow that danced in the sunlight; a wide indistinct arch that hovered between air, land, and water, spun of the firelight of the sun. The sun had shifted little from its high place in the sky; the Light of the world showed strong.

  Little time was left.

  They reached the edge and halted; there was nowhere else to go with steep cliffs to all sides but one. From behind them, the shouts of pursuit came ever closer. Arcie fumbled the three Segments he carried out of his pockets.

  Kaylana, Valerie, and Blackmail quickly added theirs, and there was a scramble to fit them together.

  “Hurry!” whinnied Robin, looking ahead; more of Tasmene’s men had cut around and were sliding down the cliffs, swords drawn. Others had begun firing arrows from the clifftops.

  Sam screamed suddenly, and fell as an arrow stabbed into his back, and another one into his leg. Pain! Agonizing pain! It ripped through him and made him curl up, crying and retching. The sounds of his agony were more terrifying than his usual silence; his voice, always so calm and controlled, twisted in high, helpless anguish.

  Valerie and Arcie, working on the Segments, were protected by Blackmail’s upraised shield. The knight moved and twisted to block the arrows as the two fumbled with the Segments.

  “You Barigan fool!” shouted Valerie. “The spectrum! Put them in order of the spectrum! Like the rainbow!”

  “Och, Richard - Oversees - Ye - Great - Battle - Plans,”

  Arcie’s voice recited indistinctly. “Red-orange-yeller...”

  Kaylana did not seem to be a target of the bowmen; she used this to her advantage, causing the rocks that many stood upon to turn to loose mud, tumbling the archers to their deaths. Robin grabbed a dropped longbow and arrows from one of the bodies, and, taking partial cover behind a rock, returned their fire with legendary centaur accuracy. The air was full of shouted orders and screams and the zip and hiss of arrows. Sam, looking up through pain-wracked vision, saw Lord Tasmene running back and forth at the top of the cliff, giving orders, and up the path they had come charged a second group, led by Fenwick. Sir Fenwick wasn’t waving his sword now; he had it drawn, but he was holding it sensibly and advancing in deadly earnest. It was just as they were about to close ranks that a shout rang out. “... Purple!” finished Arcie’s voice triumphantly.

  There was a very loud click noise, as the last Segment snapped into place.

  Arcie and Valerie fell back as a sudden burst of white light exploded outward from a single, shining star. The Spectrum Key, perfectly round now that all its Segments had been joined, hung in midair, a burning too bright to look at that flashed in its whiteness all colors of the rainbow.

  And as it pulsed, waves of pure magic fluxed out, warping reality around them.

  The air thickened, and the ground warped; the sky seemed to ripple and shift. Everyone fell, disoriented, as the very nature of reality twisted, changed, making allowances for something very vast to exist. The Key called to the Lock, and the Lock came, bearing with it the Labyrinth.

  The Labyrinth was everywhere and nowhere; a continuous thread through the fabric of the world that lay flat and unseen, but present at every point; unseen until the right hook dragged it up from the surrounding cloth. And as it was dragged, it caused space around it to crinkle up.

  The rainbow of the waterfall, the link of all the elements, was the focus and the door. As the light of the Key fell upon it, it thickened and widened and became a full arch, solidifying into a multicolored construct no. thicker than soap bubbles but real as ice. Around this, behind the shimmering space beneath its arch, white whorls swirled up, rippling themselves over the mountains and water without regard for gravity, spiralling high into the bright air, diving through the earth in tunneling coils.

  Lumathix the dragon, who had just taken off to begin scouting from the air after a short rest, had the best view as the Labyrinth solidified. Twisting white marble passages finally settled into full existence, and he spent much time later trying to describe it fully. But when people would ask the great rose-gold, “Yes, but what did it look like?”, the best Lumathix could do was blurt that it seemed as though some god had taken a huge potful of pure-white noodles and dumped them over a large part of the Einian scenery.

  Luckily, as the world ceased its strange magical upheaval, and the Labyrinth stood, sparkling in the clear sunshine, the villains who had caused its summoning were the first to recover. The Spectrum Key abruptly ceased its brilliant glare and fell to earth with a gentle thud. Arcie grabbed it, and kicked Sam back to consciousness as the others got to their feet, looking about in awe. The men of Ein and the Verdant Company were also recovering fast. The villains ran into the shimmering, rainbow-marked archway, and before anyone could shout or fire a spell or arrow, the last one, a limping, bleeding man dressed all in black, had disappeared.

  Fenwick and Company, along with a large section of the Einian army, slowed their charge and stopped before the entrance, uncertain. The Labyrinth, bathed in the light of the high bright sun, bulked there like a great sand-sculpture, its shimmering magic casting strange colors over faces and clothing.

  The men of the Einian army backed off, muttering among themselves. In the Einian culture, a rainbow was a gateway to the world of the dead; a place of feasting and happiness, perhaps, but still not a place any living soul wished to venture too soon. They looked to their leader. Lord Tasmene. He viewed the archway with suspicion and motioned to his men to stay back: But Fenwick scowled, hefted his sword, and marched to the entrance. He turned around to face his men.

  The members of the Verdant Company, the finest elite fighting force assembled in the Six Lands ... avoided his piercing glance. He addressed them.

  “Well? Come on! Follow them! Follow me!” he roared.

  There was a long moment of silence, broken only by the panting of the men and dogs, their breath steaming in the mountain air. Armor jingled.

  The men looked away, fidgeted with their weapons, looked at the Einians, looked at each other. Then Towser spoke for all of them, in a young, frightened voice.

  “Sir, we follow you. To the depths of the earth, to the peaks of the mountains. We’ve followed you through fen and fire, forest and flood, across the entire chain of the Six Lands ... but we will not follow you into the Labyrinth.”

  The young heroic prince glared at him, but Towser, with the air of one who has greater things to fear, met the gaze and continued.

  “If you pass through that portal now, sir, you go alone.”

  Fenwick stood unmoving a long moment, his eyes glinting in the sunlight. Then he spoke sharply, decisively.

  “All right! We camp here for one week. If nothing has happened in that time, we go home. The villains will be as good as dead. But, should they manage by the greatest of miracles to survive once more, and even solve the mystery of the Labyrinth...”

  Sounds of scoffing cam
e from the ranks. Fenwick ignored them.

  “Then we will be ready. We will track them to the center of the maze if the magic is removed, and meet them for the final battle there. Towser, I’ll want you and your colleagues to keep a twenty-four-hour-a-day watch on the magical field of this place, and notify me of any changes. The rest of you, bring the rest of the troops here, and call the clerics in from Clairlune Castle to heal the injured and raise the dead. We will not fail again.” The sun burned at its high apex over the mountains, bathing the Labyrinth in golden light.

  XII

  It seemed they ran through solid walls of twisting stone, and the stones fell away; and then there came a twisting and a falling and time and distance were stretched away into past and future. They tried to keep together but the turning passages were alive and wriggled like snakes, spinning them down into emptiness and then ...

  “Oh no,” groaned the thief. In all directions, white marble passageways stretched, slanted, twisted, and curved. The air was still and cool, and eye-tricking lilac light filled everything. They had no idea how they had gotten there, but it didn’t seem to be important. Their wounds were healed, or perhaps they had never been. All that they could focus on was a shallow impression of some vague past, a familiarity with each other, and a vague sense of purpose. They were there, and they had to find their way out.

  “Very well, who wants to map the way?” asked Valerie.

  “What about your magic?” asked Robin doubtfully.

  The Nathauan shook her head.

  “Magical mapping would be useless in this place.”

  “I don’t see as even a written map will be much good,” commented Sam, looking around. “I mean, which way is north? And where did we come in from?”

  There was much looking around. In all directions stretched the passageways, but not a one of them looked like the one they had started to walk down.

  “Maybe we could ...” began Robin, trying to scratch the marble with his hoof. Nothing happened. He gave up.

  Arcie fumbled in his pockets and pulled out a piece of charcoal. He made a mark on the floor with it. But a moment later the mark faded and vanished.

  “Well, bugger,” whistled Arcie softly.

  “It is simple,” said Kaylana calmly. “There is no need for a map, because there is no way out but the solving of the Labyrinth of Dreams.”

  And was it waking or dreaming? The mind played tricks, and when the eyes were closed things happened.

  And what was past and now and waking and dreaming and all was spinning...

  “Oh, you’ll like being a good person,” assured Oarf.

  “Everyone does.” The dungeon was filled with flickering shadows, and Arcie struggled in iron bonds, but his fingers and toes were numb, frozen, and wouldn’t work right.

  “Yes, and you’ll forget I even did this, once it’s over ... your past of darkness and fear will just seem like a bad dream, long ago ...” Mizzamir smiled, displaying a dagger that was like a shaft of pure white light. Arcie held his breath. Grains of sand were starting to fall away from the wall bolts of Sam’s right-hand manacle. Then the assassin seemed to shiver and melt into the shadows, and Arcie was alone in the cell, with Mizzamir standing over him, smiling, the shining dagger held high. “I just use this, you see,” the Arch-Mage explained patiently, “and cut out your soul. It won’t hurt a bit.” The knife descended ...

  “Is there a trap, old chum?” Sam asked, looking around.

  The Barigan nodded, and pulled out his tools from an embroidered pouch with a large

  “R” on it.

  “Aye, a trap. Big one, too. Don’t move, now, or that large tile in the ceiling will open up and no doubt spill something nasty down on you.”

  Sam slumped against a wall. “We are going in circles,” he muttered in a low monotone. “We are trapped in here, the last of our kind, in the last days of the world. We will all die, whether we move on or stay in this room forever. We will languish here until the walls burst into pure white light and ascend into utter unbearable brightness and the very earth shatters with perfection, and our souls will not even have a hell to flee to for their eternal damnation.”

  He put his head on his hands, and the light on his eyelids shifted and changed.

  Kaylana walked through fields of blood, confused; everything was the same color, and it was hard to see. There were men, with strange devices of cold metal that fired tiny arrows of lead and slew things at a great distance.

  Smoke was in the air, and it was hard to breathe. Something was coming, something dangerous, and no matter how fast she tried to run it was always gaining ...

  Robin’s voice sang, in gentle cadences, the strains of a song he had learned well. Around him it seemed as though he and an indistinct other walked through white passages, and the song had some connection to it...

  And darkness was swept from the world forever, For the Light formed a maze of white Hidden within the keys of the Heroes To be won again should the need arise, In the lock that saved the world, And all to reach within the mind, And find the true and hardest test.

  The darkness was swept from the world forever And the last remains were sealed in the fabric of stone.

  “That’s one of your new-modern free-form thingies,”

  Sam muttered. “No rhyme, no rhythm, typical minstrel stuff.”

  “I don’t know,” said Valerie. “It’s sort of tolerable in an artsy-smartsy sort of way.”

  “It’s just a translation,” apologized Robin, a bit stiffly.

  Sam, after a moment to lift his head again, picked a dart up off a side table. It was made of a carved bone, and the fletchings were carnelian. The bar was full of vague shadows, watching and laughing in distant voices ...

  Sam looked at them, trying to find faces-faces half-familiar, half-forgotten. A slow fear turned in his stomach when he suddenly realized that each and every one of the patrons had met death at Sam’s hands. A half-formed, stinking, sneering face, seen through blood and flickering fire, chilled his blood with memories over thirty years old ... and chuckling merchants, and laughing Plainsmen, and snickering woodsmen, and last of all his own face that smiled with his mouth and raised a glass of bloodred wine to his health. Sam felt a searing pain in his hand, and looked; the dart had turned into a tiny lizard, all colors and glowing like flame, that had sunk its venomous teeth into his finger. He could feel the poison rushing up his arm, and felt his heart tremble, and fail...

  Valerie stumbled through whiteness that burned into her eyelids, making them close in pain. Burning, searing light ... she couldn’t see. Outside, in the heat, sand blowing, under her fingers, choking her throat. A pile of feathers under fingers ... She knew, without needing to look, without daring to look. Nightshade, his blood soaking into the sand, and the cold emptiness at her throat where the Darkportal had once hung. The sand stripped her clothes away and the sun attacked her skin, worse than dragon fire, blistering and burning until the skin was slowly peeling away, not even hurting very much, but she could feel bits of her flesh dropping off. She crawled forward, trying to get to shelter. The sand and sun scoured her of flesh and skin and blood and then she was a skeleton, crawling blind over the sand, and the wind felt strange blowing through her rib cage, like a mockery of breath. She slipped into the cool shade, of a rock cleft, stone, caves, underground. The cool darkest deepest caves where the Nathauan would place their dead to age for a few days before eating. But she had no skin, no flesh, and no one would even know her. Her empty eye sockets wept tears of sand.

  Robin felt his feet trapped in the mud turned to stone, caught! With the villains approaching! But, wait... were they villains? He shook his head. All around him were clouds. On his wrist was a silver bracelet; it was very tight, but he knew better than to touch it. There was a strange wind, blowing up around him from below. He looked down as the wind blew the mist away and saw the jagged rocks of the mountains of Ein rushing up at him as he fell... he screamed and passed out.

  Whe
n he woke, he was on a hill at sunset. Mountains ranged in the distance, outlined by the setting sun; they seemed familiar somehow, but he could not say why.

  There was a tree at the top of the hill-huge and old and gnarled, a great oak thrown into stark relief by the sunset.

  He walked up to it and lay down under it. As he rested his head against the trunk, he froze. Thrumming through the wood he could hear music! A strange and ancient music, filled with such grief and sorrow he could not move or think. He sat where he was, listening to the tree.

  He could almost make out words.

  “Adventure?!” Sam shouted incredulously. “Where do you get the idea that this is anything more than a wild goose-chase through the most hellish parts of the world with everything in existence trying to kill us!” A stinking fog whipped through the Fens, chased by ghosts and half-seen vegetables. The rain poured. They had to shout to be heard over the storm. It was raining drops of light, pure light like fireflies.

  “All this were never to happen had we but stayed in Dous enjoying the laxity of the lawfolk, instead of trying to make trouble,” grumbled Arcie hotly. “We might have had food and horses to spare if you hadn’t Wanted to chase dreams!” The rain of lights lashed in his face and tossed his words like whips.

  Arcie sighed. “I dinna expect to find it easy,” he said, half to himself. “Yet it are so alone ... In th’ stories about adventurers, ye always hear of them as being captured by goblins, then rescued by Elves, meeting strange old wizards, enjoying the hospitality of fairies, sailing on ships with strange companions, meeting interesting people from yon days past ... but such them things are for heroes, I warrant. There’s but the few of us against a world as hates us, and even those we meet as thinks the same wants to kill us.” He ran a hand, stiff with arthritis, through his hair thoughtfully, and many of the strands came loose. He looked at them, all of them silver-gray, thinning. He sighed. “Yet I would no’ trade myself as I am for anything. I doubt but anyone would.”