The Spiral Labyrinth

by Matthew Hughes

  I sighed. "We are far from home."

  "Indeed." It was silent for a while, then said, "May I have another piece of fruit?"

  I walked on with the sound of its chewing in my ear, following the road that followed the river on my left. I soon left the village behind, and passed through a bucolic landscape. The river was intermittently lined with copses of broad-leafed, low-crowned trees whose gray-barked trunks twisted and intertwined with each other. To my right passed a succession of crop lands, some appearing, to my inexpert eye, to be planted in vegetables, others in fodder grass. I saw no fences, but here and there along the way were single posts, with a design in metal or pottery fixed near the top of each.

  When we had come so far that the stone bridge seemed no more than the size of my smallest fingernail and the hills ahead were close enough to show where the road met a declivity that was surely the beginnings of a pass, my assistant said, "Someone is standing under those trees ahead."

  I stopped and knelt on one knee, pretending to adjust my footgear. "Sword," I said, "what do you have to say about it?"

  "I detect no threat."

  "How do you make that determination?"

  "By the usual means: respiration, heart-rate, chemical exudates from the skin. The person is relaxed and unstressed. Also, no arms are in evidence."

  "I concur," said the grinnet. "I would judge his affect to be one of curiosity and expectation."

  "Wouldn't a well-practiced, cold-blooded killer be calm and cool?" I said. "And are not bare hands adequate weapons for a skilled assassin?"

  "I am not a sophisticated debater," said the sword. "Draw me if you feel threatened. My automatic responses will be overridden and I will follow your lead."

  Now the grinnet spoke up, a nervous note in its usually calm voice. "Do you expect another assault? If so, perhaps I should throw stones?"

  Yesterday's attack had clearly touched an instinct for self-preservation. Since I was already down near the side of the road, I picked up a few pebbles and gave them to my assistant. "Only if I say so," I said. "And try not to worry."

  "You were not the only one who saw what happened to the innkeeper's hand," it said. "If anything like that looks to be coming at me again, I will let fly without seeking permission."

  "Follow my lead," I said, straightening up. "We do not know what the penalties may be when pets fling gravel at passersby."

  The grinnet said nothing, though I think it bridled at being labeled a pet. But I was already approaching the twisted trees where the unknown someone leaned on a walking staff. As I neared, the figure stepped out of the shadow onto the side of the road and offered what looked to be a friendly salute.

  It was the gray-eyed man from the night before, with a traveler's satchel slung across his shoulder. "Good morning," he said. "I thought you might be coming this way."

  "And, why," I asked, drawing nearer but pausing before I was within range of a swing of the staff, my hand idling near the hilt of the sword, "would I be in your thoughts?"

  He smiled a half smile. "I will not circumlocute. I am interested in you, after the events of yesterday evening."

  "In me? Or in the gold and silver that the 'events' led to?" I said.

  "I am no more covetous of wealth than the next man," he said.

  I gripped the sword's hilt firmly. "And perhaps no less. In any case, the next man is not here. I see only you and me, alone on a lonely road."

  He held up both hands, palms toward me, so that the staff slipped into the crook of an elbow. His eyes dropped to the sword. "If I am a good judge of weaponry -- and I count myself so -- what you have under your hand makes you more than a match for me, and two more like me."

  "And yet you do not seem perturbed by my presence," I said, "though the road is as lonely for you as it is for me."

  He smiled again. "That is because I am sure you mean me no harm."

  "And how would you be sure of that?"

  "Let us say that it is my business to be sure of men," he said.

  "And what might your business be?"

  "Now, that would be premature to say."

  I shot him a searching look, but he returned it with a bland expression and another placid flourish of his hands.

  I stepped back a couple of paces and whispered, "Integrator?"

  Its voice sounded calmer. "I see nothing to act upon."

  "Sword?"

  "Nor I."

  "Very well," I said to the stranger. "I am bound for some place called Bambles. Do you know it?"

  "I know it well."

  "Is it your destination?"

  "It might well be."

  I looked him over again. His clothes were presentable, his cloak unstained, his footwear not noticeably roadworn. I said, "You do not give an impression of vagabondage."

  He returned the inspection. "Nor do you. And though you came up by the south road, with not even a bed roll, you do not look to have been sleeping under bushes."

  "Perhaps I slept at inns," I said.

  "There are none for a long stretch south of here. It is rough and untillable land, with scarcely a roof to be seen."

  "How do you know I came from the south?"

  "Because I saw all who came from the north," he said.

  "Perhaps I came at night."

  He laughed softly. "No one travels alone at night," he said. "At least not for long."

  I made a gesture that said the discussion had gone in his favor but that now it was ended. "You are observant," I said. "Is that also a requirement of your business?"

  "It is."

  "And is it still premature to state the nature of that business?"

  He made a show of reexamining his earlier judgment. "I perform various functions, as my patron requires. Lately, let us say that I have been a locator."

  "Indeed? And what do you locate?"

  "Usually, persons and things that are. . . missing," he said, after a moment's more thought.

  "Things that have been stolen?" I said. "Persons who have run away?"

  He signaled that I understood, then added, "And sometimes the other way round."

  "I used to do something similar," I said. "Indeed, at present I would be interested in locating someone who has disappeared."

  "Out of concern for the missing person's welfare?" he asked. "Or perhaps you require revenge and retribution?"

  "The former."

  "You expect to find your quarry in Bambles?"

  I weighed my answer, then decided to tell him my intent. "No, in Bambles I hope to find someone who can assist me."

  "Then let us travel together," he said. He introduced himself as Pars Lavelan. I was about to declare my own identity, but then I remembered the man on the road south of Bridge-on-Scammon asking me if I was named "Apthorn." I told Lavelan my name was Barlo, a pseudonym that I had sometimes employed when pursuing discriminations in places where it was not useful to be identified as Henghis Hapthorn.

  "When we get to Bambles," he said, as we walked on, he on my left, "I may be able to direct you to the kind of help you need." He punctuated his last remark by circling his hands about each other as if they were rolling downhill together, then drawing them apart with a flutter of fingers, like birds taking flight in opposite directions. Finally, he cocked his head at an angle, nodded knowingly and raised his eyebrows in a way that invited me to confirm the meaning of his odd and convoluted gesture. I merely blinked and he saw that I had not grasped his meaning.

  "A magician," he said. "You'll be looking for a magician."

  "That was my plan."

  "Do you know any of the magicians of Bambles?" he said.

  "No, do you?"

  "Oh, yes," he said, in a tone that admitted of a number of possible meanings, "all of them."

  "Can you recommend a good one?"

  His face framed a curious expression, as if I had posed him a paradox. After a moment he said, "That would depend on one's definition of 'good.' Normally, the more expert the practitioner, the less he or she
partakes of morality as you or I might frame it."

  "You say, 'normally," I said. "So there are exceptions?"

  Again, he gave the matter some thought, then said, "No, I suppose not. Or at least none that I can think of."

  "Well," I said, "can you give me some indication of what the services of a useful practitioner might cost?"

  He grunted a wordless syllable and rolled his eyes. "The most accomplished are often the most capricious in their wants. I recall hearing of a man who engaged the services of one whose name it is best not to utter. He lusted for a woman and desired that she would reciprocate his incontinent passion. The wizard agreed to cast a spell; in return, the would-be lover must feed a small fire under a pot until its contents boiled over.

  "The bargain struck, the practitioner performed his side of the agreement with a casual wave of a wand and the muttering of a few syllables of cant. He then led the man to a room which contained a hearth, a lidded pot above a banked fire and a few sticks of firewood to feed it. He sat the man down upon a stool, said another couple of words, and left him to his task.

  "The man fed the fire, but the pot did not soon boil. He tried to lift the lid to see what it contained, but it would not budge. He put more wood under it, but though the fire blazed up the extra heat made no difference. He noticed, too, that the wood was replaced as quickly as he transferred it to the hearth. After some time, he sought to rise from the stool and go in search of the magician, but found that he was stuck fast to the seat, and that the stool was equally stuck to the floor.

  "And so he remained, with neither sleep, nor food nor drink -- nor any need of either -- as the days became months and the months became years. The man grew old and narrow in his outlook and the fingertips that conveyed the wood to the fire took on the polished hardness of horn. He lost all track of time's passage and spent whole years in dreams and reveries, in which the memory of the woman he desired was a constant torment.

  "At last, a moment came when the wizard entered the room, lifted the pot lid. Its contents released a green steam. 'That's done, then,' the practitioner said.

  "Immediately, the man, now drained and feeble, was freed from his obligation. He staggered from the manse and out to the street, where he stood blinking against the sun's ruby light. An ancient crone, bent and crooked, was loitering at the gate. When he stepped into the street she flung her arms around him and performed a frantic frottage against him, biting with toothless gums at his leathery neck and pendulous ears. Scandalized neighbors summoned the watch, who took her off to a refuge for the senile."

  "What happened to the old man?" I asked.

  "I don't recall," Lavelan said, "but it couldn't have been much. You see, it was not the fire that heated whatever was in the pot. It was his life-stuff. The wood was just to give him something to do while the spell took its course."

  I considered what he had told me. "So bargains with magicians are chancy affairs," I said.

  "You have to give them what they want," he said, "and their wants are frequently. . ." -- he sought for a word -- "peculiar."

  We were closer to the end of the valley now. We walked on in silence for a space, while I thought about the story and its implications. Abruptly, Lavelan seized my arm and pulled me beneath the trees, saying "Hsst! Quickly."

  I made to resist, but when the sword did not object, I went along with him. We crouched in the shade of a wide-topped tree and I tried to see up through the leaves, saying, "What is it?"

  But he pulled my head down. "If you see it," he said, "it is more likely to see you."

  A large shadow passed over the road. I had an impression of something long and relatively thin, with broad wings.

  "Do the authorities not protect travelers?" I asked.

  He gave me that curious inspection again. "Where are you from?" he said.

  I made a vague gesture. "The south, of course."

  "I really must go there, some day. It sounds most unusual."

  We would need to spend some time beneath the trees, he counseled, until the thing in the air above us went away. He spread his cloak because the grass was damp and invited me to sit beside him. We put our backs against a twisted bole. My assistant crept down from my shoulder and found a spot on the cloth where it could curl up. It was soon asleep.

  Lavelan glanced down at the grinnet, then looked off into the field across the road. "I have never seen a creature quite like your pet," he said.

  "Indeed?" I also looked off into the field, though at a different angle. "Not even in the company of the kind of persons we were recently speaking of?"

  I caught his reaction from the corner of my eye. He seemed to be genuinely puzzled at the question. I covered the moment by saying, "I have heard that magicians like to surround themselves with unusual pets."

  "None that I know of," he said, "although the ones I know do tend to favor weapons like yours."

  "Really?" I said, plucking a blade of grass and giving it my close attention. But Lavelan failed to take the hint and pressed on with his line of inquiry.

  "Then there was the matter of the wheel at the inn last night and the unfortunate state of the innkeeper's hand this morning." I said nothing, but he went on, saying, "The hand appeared to have been bitten by a sket."

  "I am not familiar with the term," I said.

  "It is a creature with a paralyzing bite, sometimes employed as a non-lethal weapon. But its wielder must first impose a spell upon it that prevents its attacking him."

  "I sense that you are working your way toward some conclusion," I said, disposing of the grass and drying my fingertips against each other.

  "No," he said, "only to a question, and that is: what kind of fellow travels with a strange beast on his shoulder and a magic sword at his hip, keeps a sket to guard his purse, and can convince a wheel to spin him a handsome sum without its showing any signs of being, shall we say, tickled?"

  I spoke in a light tone. "I suspect you ask the question already knowing the answer."

  "Knowing an answer," he said, "that being: the fellow is an expert practitioner of the recondite arts." Now he interlaced his fingers and studied them. "The problem with that answer is that the person in question gives off none of the unmistakable emanations one would expect from an accomplished magician."

  "Emanations?" I said.

  His eyebrows ascended toward his hairline then drew down and together. "Again, you do not seem to know what even that rustic rabble at the inn know. You looked at the inkling as if you had never seen its like."

  "They are different down south," I said.

  It was Lavelan's turn to make a wordless sound, a skeptical "Hmm," deep in his throat.

  I decided to force the issue. I faced him and said, "Make yourself plain. I do not care to travel with one who harbors dark suspicions about me."

  He turned toward me then, and blinked in surprise. "I have no suspicions," he said, "but I will admit to a frank curiosity. I have not met anyone with your combination of competence and innocence."

  It was not a combination that I would normally have admitted to, but I was a stranger in a strange world. "I do feel a little out of place up here," I said. "It is not what I am used to."

  "Down south, you mean?"

  "Exactly."

  "You know," he said, "I have been quite far south myself. To Bleyne on a number of occasions, and even to Choriond on the edge of the Waste."

  "Really?" I said.

  "Really. And I have also met travelers from beyond the Waste, though, again, none like you."

  "I suppose I am from beyond their beyond."

  He looked at me from lowered eyes while his mouth drew off to one side. "Shall I tell you what I think?" he said.

  I was growing tired of his circling dance. I invited him to take a grand leap.

  "Very well," he said, eying me with a measuring stare, "I take you for a magician's servant who has somehow become separated from his master. There are far-away lands about which one hears only rumor and fancifu
l tales, even tales of other worlds. You may come from such a place. Before you were separated, your patron gave you charge of his weapon and his pet. He must also have blessed you with a spell of luck."

  He watched me now for a reaction. I resisted an urge to bridle at being thought one of the servile breed and weighed the merits of adapting myself to his view of me. He wasn't that far off the truth, except that I was of coming to be two minds about searching for Osk Rievor. My other self had got both of us into this mess with his cheerful disregard of good sense and if I could find a way out of it and get home to my own time, my alter ego could fend for himself, wherever he had ended up. Indeed, getting home without Osk Rievor might well be a bonus, especially now that I could avoid locations where the new age's influence was dimpling.

  Lavelan had more to say: that my master must be an accomplished practitioner; that he might be in difficulties, hence our separation; or that he might have just gone off on some abstruse, wizardly tangent where he would not require my assistance, abandoning me to my own resources until he had need of me again.

  "Your higher-echelon magicians can be careless in the deployment of their servants," he finished. "Retainers are so easily replaced. Indeed, it is possible that you are only a facsimile struck from an original that has been left behind to care for your patron's keep. Perhaps you were whipped up in haste; your intelligence seems not fully formed. That would explain the gaps in your understanding of the most common facts."

  I was not accustomed to hearing my intellect so undervalued and though I was keeping a rein on my reactions, some of my irritation must have shown in my face before I could suppress it.

  "Please," he said, "I meant no disparagement. We are all who we are and not to be blamed for our natures." He thought a little more, then said, "The sket puzzles me, however. It seems out of place. "You haven't met a man named Ral Ezzers, have you? He is known to throw the sket."

  "Ral Ezzers?" I said. "I do not know the name."

  "He is employed by a practitioner named Ovarth."

  "Is he also a locator?"

  He confirmed my supposition, but added, "Though he is not as sophisticated as I am."

  I decided to tread a careful line. I neither denied nor confirmed his estimation of my circumstances, I said, "I cannot say too much about my situation. Only that I still believe I require the services of a good practitioner. Though I would prefer not to find my buttocks glued to a stool for the rest of my life."