The travelers all agreed that was most likely the case until Dravud smacked a hand against his chest plate, stunning them all into silence.
“He doesn’t want to defeat you more easily – he wants to kill you. This is not a game he’s playing. He’s not some pathetic, prankster laughing on his throne. This palace was designed to simply kill whoever came to it uninvited. That Vul Griffis let you in shows only that he is intrigued you are here – not that he wants to see you. If you want to get his attention, then you need to find him – and finding him means working through whatever this place can throw at you.” Dravud stopped short, pulling himself back down from the precipice of saying more, and realizing he might have already said too much.
Lydria’s chest and shoulders were heaving. She was on the verge of crying and she would not let Hokra or Dravud see her do that. She thought of her father, who told her that every soldier who had ever seen combat had cried – but they didn’t do it in the middle of a fight. Her father cried often, at night, in bed alone. He never cried or complained in a fight or around his men. She calmed herself and set her shoulders back, staring directly into the eyes of Dravud – eyes that seemed larger than they had before, and she spoke to her friends. “Let’s find Griffis and do what we need to do and get out of this place.”
23-The Key
The corridor, a charred remnant of itself, held no more surprises, but the three carefully navigated along the remainder of its length, walking through the darkened passage until they finally crossed a door way they thought would bring them to another room. As they stepped over the threshold, the rest of the building ceased to be. They were standing outside in a field, though it had walls and a single golden arched doorway to their left. Lydria walked straight ahead, and ignored the door making instead for the far wall. The place didn’t feel like the rest of the palace and when she reached the wall she understood why. It wasn’t a wall at all, it was a hedge – an enormous, impossibly tall hedge. Magic, she quickly found did not burn it nor cut through it.
“I don’t know what this is, but it is resistant to magic,” Lydria said as they walked toward the golden door, seeing it as the only remaining way out of the field.
“Is there nothing you know of that might be resistant to magic?” Dravud’s voice was quiet, as if the question might provide too much help to his charges, and but he would not provide more than the question he had supplied. He maintained his posture with his arms folded over his chest and walked without seeming care behind them as they approached the golden door.
After they all examined the door, Lydria pulled the large ring at its center and it opened as quietly as a flower stem bends. Walking through the door they were not surprised when it disappeared leaving them with a choice to go left or right. Lydria didn’t ask for opinions, choosing instead to turn left and whenever a choice in direction came, she continued taking each available left. After several of these turns it was Hokra who said what they were all thinking. “This is a maze.”
“Can we get back to where we started?” Lydria asked.
“I’m afraid not,” Haustis answered. “Though you have taken only left-hand turns, and I have tried to mark our passage, this place will not accept scratch nor trail, and behind us the walls and doorways shift. We cannot snap the twigs of the hedge, nor can we leave pieces of our clothing or equipment behind us. Always it is cleared away the moment you turn your head. Lydria created a small spool of blue thread and handed one end to her sister while she walked around a corner. When she turned onto the new path, the spool was whole again, and when she looked back, her sister stood with her empty hands in the air.
The others moved to catch up with Lydria at an intersection though by the time they arrived she was already walking away from them down a new path. Hokra caught her in the middle of a corridor of hedges. She was holding a stone of power and following a white path only she could see. They waited for the others and she explained what she was doing before heading on her way again. After several more turns, Haustis called for them to stop.
“Look, sister.” Lydria knelt by the hedge and saw a small portion of it was missing, as if something had clipped it sharp. Having tried to cut the hedge with magic, Hokra tried again and still was not able to penetrate the hedge. “I have been looking at the hedges as we have passed, and this is the first sign of any damage. The stone may guide us, but I would advise caution in this place.”
They moved more slowly but did not stop. Hokra tried once to raise himself above the hedge only to find there was no top and so they continued following the path shone by the stone until Hokra urged them to stop.
“Is that a voice?” Hokra whispered.
“It is.” Haustis confirmed. Her Eifen ears twitched backward and forward, scanning the space until when the voice cried out again, they stopped, perched forward, their tips pointed in the direction of a path to their right. “It comes from that path.”
“But that is not the path the stone shows.”
“If the stone shows the path true, do you want to continue, if someone else might be trapped in this forsaken maze? Or do you want someone, we know not who, behind us?” The appeal to her soldierly instinct won Lydria over and she agreed, urging them all to move forward carefully.
The voice led them through several turns, each of them resulting in dead ends. Unable to find the source of the noise, they followed again the white light of the stone, and soon found that the voice grew clearer. Lydria watched Haustis as her ears sought out the noise again, and when it wailed, Haustis shut her eyes and moved her head slowly back and forth. “No,” she said. “No. Not now, there is too much at stake.”
“What is it, sister?”
“The cry we hear is a cry of grief. The cry of someone who has lost everything only to find it and lose it again.” Haustis would say no more, but moved ahead purposefully, forcing Lydria to walk quickly to keep up while using the stone to guide her. Along the path, Haustis noticed more segments of the hedge missing – near the bottom and nearly hidden amongst the darkness, but she didn’t stop to look. She knew their cause and she understood what force could cause such damage.
Turning a final corner to their right, the hedge opened to a large circle, the center of the maze. But there was no way out except the way they had come.
“We are too late.” Haustis whispered.
“Not yet.” Dravud’s reply surprised her. The fact he was still with them surprised her.
“But how?”
“I cannot tell you that. It is part of the trial, but it is nearly the last part.”
They moved slow to the center of the clearing and there they saw a small golden hole in the ground, and they carefully moved around it. “Wynter was here?” Lydria asked the question out loud but she knew it was true. Nothing but the Sword of True Death could leave such a mark in this place. “Is this what caused the hedges to be broken?” Haustis nodded.
“The voice we heard was Wynter. He was here.” They looked to Dravud for confirmation and he barely pointed his nose downward in the smallest of nods, before going still again.
“How do we get out of here – there is nowhere to go…” Lydria stopped suddenly, thinking about what Haustis had said. “This is the doorstep to Griffis. This is where we ask entrance?” She whipped around to Dravud daring him not to answer her. He nodded silently.
For a long while the three of them asked and begged to be allowed admittance but it was only when Hokra asked what they could possibly give him to agree to open his door, that Lydria understood. The Stone of Power she used to find their way through the maze was still in her hand and she held it up and shouted out the name of Vul Griffis, demanding entrance to his home.
Nothing happened for what seemed an inordinately long time. Lydria was starting to question whether her guess had been correct, or if there was something else Griffis wanted, something they were not prepared to give. Dravud was stoic and no question put to him was answered with even the smallest sign that might point toward an
other action.
Lydria sat on the grass in frustration. The others sat on either side of her, resting their arms upon their knees and staring into the space in front of them without seeing anything.
“What do you think our friends are doing in Eigrae while we traipse through the spirit world?” Lydria asked.
“I have been wondering that for some time,” Haustis answered. “But my time here has provided answers I did not have in Eigrae, and I long to go back. With the spirits closed to me, I will retake my given name, and I will seek out King Edgar Branch of Wesolk, and I will give him my answer.” She turned to her sister and smiled, lighting up the space as well as any magic light.
Lydria took her sister in a full hug and held her. “I am so happy for you. I cannot wait to see.”
“Oh, you will see, for you will be there by my side as I take a husband.”
“To make sure he doesn’t change his mind?”
“Or to make sure I don’t run away, back into the trees.”
The women laughed and Hokra accepted Haustis’ wedding invitation. “The Chag Ca’Grae do not marry with the same ceremony that accompanies human and Eifen bonds, but we do engage in a fair bit of drinking, and eating, and sport to mark the occasion. So long as there is some of that, I would be honored to attend. If there is none, I am still honored, but warn you that I will make sure there is at least drinking … for me.”
Haustis stood and walked to the prince, helping him to his feet and hugging him to her chest, she assured him there would be plenty of wine and beer.
“What do you think Kimi is doing?” Lydria intended the question to be jovial, thinking of the odd way the cat might behave at a wedding party. But when the words left her mouth, a tremendous feeling of loss and loneliness rushed over her. Since her father had died the day she received the stones of power, she had always had Kimi and she had never been so long without the cat. Only Haustis truly appreciated the connection they shared and how the bobcat had become a part of her. The two women hugged again.
“I am sure he is eating, or quite possibly sleeping,” Haustis offered, a huge grin playing across her face as she looked to make sure Lydria was laughing as well.
“I do not doubt that. How long do you think we have been gone?” They looked to Dravud who did not provide an answer.
“It matters not,” Hokra grumbled, all sense of mirth missing from his features. “Whatever time has passed, has passed. We have lost it to this place, and we will not get it back.”
Dravud smiled and a section of hedge opposite the path moved slowly until a golden arched door appeared and slowly swung open. On the other side of the threshold they could not see anything other than grey cloud, with darker and lighter stains as if they were looking at a room through a thick haze of smoke.
“The realization of loss, of a loss you cannot replace, was the key. That is the key to the entirety of the Nethyn Plains, but rarely do any who make it this far still maintain hope. That you do allows you to feel the loss, and so open the door. Now, only Vul Griffis awaits,” Dravud said.
24-The Man and the Sword
Lydria went through the doorway first, stepping through the open door and into a magnificent room. The grey cloud that had shrouded it from the other side disappeared entirely, and the space was well lit and comfortable. They had entered through a passage in the center of a long wall of probably some two hundred feet. It was easily a dozen paces to the wall opposite their entry and on the opposite wall two fireplaces crackled and provided noticeable warmth, but not enough to hide the fact the room was cooler than most of the Nethyn Plains. Along the floor there were several enormous rugs, much like the ones in Abulet’s shop, but these were full of color. Four of them covered almost the entire length of the room and were wide enough to leave only several feet of wooden floor visible along the edges. On the rugs were deeply carved pieces of furniture, chairs, benches, and upholstered sofas that two could sit on so as to speak to each other face-to-face. In the center of the room there was a round table with six chairs, and an open leather bag of bone dice and markers for games of chance.
The door they had entered disappeared soon after they had all made their way across and in its place was an enormous bookshelf fully twelve feet wide and as high as ceiling, at least a score of feet above. It was filled with books. Some Lydria could tell were from Eigrae, and others were written in strange languages that she could not read. Their leather bindings were brown and black with several in red or a reddish tan. The rest of the wall on either side of the bookshelf was covered with paintings – some of incredible beauty and character and some the work of someone who was less than a master. There were dozens of them ranging from the size of a book, to towering portraits as tall as Dravud.
Dravud, Lydria noticed, had grown again. Where once he was dressed in green mail armor, he was now arrayed in full scale armor, his shoulders ridged and piped with black, and an extra plate along his spine, providing for full movement and extra protection at the same time. The chain cap that had encased his head and down the back of his neck was intact but there were now jaw-like protrusions from the sides of his helmet. He looked familiar and yet entirely different than the young man they had met on the beach.
“Have you noticed anything about these paintings,” Hokra yelled from the far end of the room. He was scanning the images in the portraits, his eyes taking in the details and moving to the next.
Lydria pulled her thoughts away from Dravud and began her own inspection, joining her sister in making their way down the wall from the bookshelf.
“These all feature the same person,” Haustis said. She turned quickly to Dravud who had not moved from the middle of the room where they entered, “Is this Griffis?” Her voice was unsure. The man in the paintings was by most definitions, handsome.
“It is Griffis as he sees himself. Perhaps there is some truth to these paintings. He may have been the person you see once in his lifetime. But never have I known him to look like that. Of course, it may be that I see him incorrectly.”
“Does not everyone see the same thing in these images, then?” Hokra asked, his astuteness causing a brief nod and raising of eyebrows from the guide.
“Not everyone sees the same thing in a living person, my friend,” Dravud answered. He turned to face his companions, but he did not move from his space across from and between the fires. “A member of your people may look upon you and see a noble warrior, a royal who will one day rule your kind. While another, may look at you as a short, bald, temperamental man with exceedingly large hands. They are both correct, and they are both wrong. Your appearance does not define you. And so it is with these paintings. Whether they show you the true Griffis really does not matter. The person he is most certainly cannot be adequately represented here,” Dravud threw his hand wide, encompassing all the illustrations along the wall they scanned. Turning to his right he held his hand up to the opposite wall. “Whereas, these images, while not obviously a person, may provide more of a glimpse into his character.”
The paintings he pointed toward were dark and disturbing, swirling masses of blackness and turmoil scraped across the canvas. Dangerous peaks and storm-tossed skies, and tempest seas rife with floundering ships. There were no people in any of the paintings, only grim reflections of places where people did not live, or where they suffered before ultimately dying.
Lydria walked quickly along the scenes intending to only glance at them, seeing no point in looking into the mind of someone who was obviously bent on darkness. She stopped suddenly at the end of the row just as she was about to turn around and suggest they move on, and her attention was captured by a painting in her periphery. The image called to her, tugging at her as only something very familiar would. She turned slowly to stare at the artwork. It was a long painting that started at the floor and stretched the entire distance to the ceiling. It was the only one of its size in the room and as she stood looking at it, she felt like a non-magical young woman again, with her father
on a simple journey that turned dark. In front of her was an image of a forest in ruin. On either side trees lay flatted. Running from the floor almost all the way to the top was a dark brown smudge that Lydria recognized as the trench made when the stones of power struck Eigrae – leveling acres of trees and killing her father, her friends, and leaving only herself, Wynter, and Kimi alive in the wreckage. She could almost smell the earth, fresh-turned in spring, and the mass of wood and pine that filtered through the air. The only thing missing was the dirt raining from the sky.
She stared at the wall, intent on touching the painting, to see if it was real – some illusion made by Griffis for her alone. Haustis moved to stand behind her and the small gasp she let out let Lydria know the painting was real. At the height of her chest there was the crater, a small mound impossibly rising up from the middle, and in it a whole blue sphere, shining and larger than any sphere Lydria had ever held.
“It is the stone of power whole,” Haustis whispered. She was correct, even without having ever seen all thirty stones together, the whole was different from the sphere she held. Her sphere was segmented with fine lines of silver crossing around the surface, but the whole stone shone with a bright core whose light made its way out of the stone, spreading cobalt rays in every direction. It was beautiful and, Lydria was aware, it scared her.
Tearing her eyes from the center, Lydria searched the edges of the image, hoping to see something of those who were there. There was nothing. There was no indication of the people who had died then, or those who lived. The more she studied the painting, the more Lydria realized the whole area represented in the painting was different as well. The image in front of her showed a pristine devastation – trees knocked to the ground, and earth tilled, but it missed out on the majesty of destruction the picture in her mind assured her was real. The endless bits of wood, the branches and leaves sticking up through the ground like the bones of poorly buried soldiers after a heavy rain. There was no smell or choking rain of dust and debris. The image in front of her was a lie, but it held a deep truth.
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