The Spiral Labyrinth

by Matthew Hughes

  "And then there were three," I said.

  "Whereas you are now two," said a voice I recognized, speaking from the air above the cave entrance. I looked up, at the same time ducking back instinctively. A semi-transparent disk hovered silently. On it stood a green-and-copper-clad Pars Lavelan. He regarded me with that same considering look he had given me on the road to Bambles.

  But it was not his appearance that startled me most. It was the sight of another pair of eyes, large and lambent, staring at me from just above his left shoulder.

  "You found my. . . pet," I said.

  #

  "Actually," said Lavelan, as we were skimming through the air toward the ship in its fort, "it was your pet that found you. It was sitting on my shoulder while we were watching the battle. It began to tug on my ear and point to the cave. When I trained my ocular device where it pointed, there you were."

  The grinnet now sat upon my shoulder again. There had been a moment, before the transfer, when I had not been sure that it would leave Lavelan. I was becoming proficient in reading the expressions on its simian-feline face, and I had the impression that it felt aggrieved. But then the moment passed and it climbed down the man's extended arm and mounted mine to resume its customary position.

  He had taken one of Ovarth's flying disks and come to collect us, its little air elemental working hard to carry our combined weight in the thin atmosphere of Bille. I had made a cursory introduction of Osk Rievor, describing him as a fellow former prisoner of the entity who had helped me escape. "What will happen to us now?" I said.

  "They will want to talk to you," he said. "Right now they are occupied in trying to capture the thing in the cave. They believe that they can turn its powers to their purposes. If you can shed any light on its nature and capacities, they will want you to do so." He gave us each in turn a sympathetic look. "I suggest that you cooperate fully. Their patience is running thin, especially Chay-Chevre's."

  He delivered us to the ship's afterdeck, bade the elemental rest, then went to report to his patron. The three remaining Powers were gathered on the broad mid-deck next to Bol's apparatus, their heads together in a discussion, I assumed, of what to do next. Bol's debating style seemed off-hand: he kept gesturing to the assemblage of rods and coils in a manner that suggested that there was their only option, and eventually they would come to see it.

  Chay-Chevre was forcefully arguing for another course, pointing to the silver and gray dragon that gone back to crouch above the fissure that led to the symbiote's cavern. She also hooked a thumb over her shoulder to indicate the yellow and blue that perched on its platform beyond the upswept stern of the ship. I turned and looked and it, to find it regarding me with what I took to be interest.

  I could see no profit in being of interest to a dragon, and looked back to the debate on the mid-deck. Chay-Chevre's vigorous arguments were not converting Smiling Bol to her view, nor did his bland assurances win her over. Shuppat stood with his hands in his sleeves, his small head swiveling between the two disputants, his face giving no indication that he favored either side. I presumed he had his own agenda.

  "Integrator," I said, softly, "what can you tell us of how things stand amongst those three?"

  It spoke in my ear. "Whatever sense of common purpose they may have had has been frayed by the deaths of Ovarth and Tancro. Hitherto, they saw the fungus as primarily a great opportunity, coupled with a certain degree of threat. Now Chay-Chevre is convinced that the proportions are reversed. She wants her dragons to widen the crack in the hill enough to admit their necks and heads. They will then take turns spewing flame into the cavern until the symbiote is well cooked."

  "Bol, I assume, still leans toward the opportunity?"

  "He does. He believes his interplanar trap will draw the creature, in its avatar form, and hold it securely. He can then make its will serve as an augmenter of his magical skills."

  "And Shuppat?"

  "He has advanced no plan," my assistant said. "His strongest abilities are in the control of small animals. Like them, he prefers to remain still, lying low, until the most propitious moment for action."

  I quietly relayed this information to Osk Rievor, whose borrowed ears were not adapted to receive it directly from our assistant. I was aware as I did so that the grinnet had more to say, because, to regain my attention, it was tugging on my earlobe.

  "Please do not do that," I said. "You have picked up a bad habit from your time with Pars Lavelan."

  "On the contrary," it said, "if he had not returned to the ruins and picked me up, I would not have survived. Have you any idea how many feral predators haunt such a place, many of them much larger than I and equipped with claws and fangs that are more than adequate to tear me to shreds?"

  "I am sorry that you were made to feel fear," I said. "I never intended for you to suffer emotions, other than satisfaction in a task well performed."

  "You abandoned me," it said.

  "I was taken from you by a power I could not withstand. In any case, all came out well in the end."

  "This is not the end. There is no telling what will happen next, or whether I shall survive it."

  I sighed. "You are having to deal with the question of mortality. Again, it was never my intent to inflict such a problem on you."

  "Somehow," it said, "the fact that you did not intend me to go in fear of being torn, or crushed, or incinerated, or dismembered, or swallowed whole--"

  I interrupted. "There is no need to itemize your every possible ending. We who live out our lives in flesh are fully aware of the inevitable and all its forms."

  "Well, I am only lately come to it," said the grinnet. "First that horrid sket thing was thrown at me. Then those men on the road with their weapons ready. Then being hunted through rubble by something that snuffled and slobbered on my trail. If Pars Lavelan had not come and chased it off, it would have had me."

  "I am sorry."

  "Your sorrow does not comfort me. I was not made to suffer anxiety and the dread of agonizing death."

  "What can I do about it?" I said.

  "These adventures must stop," my assistant said. "I cannot take the strain."

  I was about to point out that "adventures" could be a fair description of my professional activities, the pursuit of which, when not interrupted by my other self's magical obsessions, earned the funds that provided my assistant with the rare and refreshing fruit that comforted its new existence. But before I could frame the reply, Pars Lavelan came up the ladder from the mid-deck and said that the three thaumaturges wished to question us.

  "Be open and of assistance in your replies," he said. "Chay-Chevre has already pointed out that her dragons flame more hotly when they have freshly fed."

  I felt my assistant shiver on my shoulder. I had to repress a similar reaction.

  Chapter Eleven

  Smiling Bol's smile was happier than I had seen it on other occasions. He clearly believed that things were going well for him. I could see his point: he thought was about to harness an immense source of manetic power while the number of competitors who could oppose him in deciding how it would be used had summarily reduced themselves by half.

  Chay-Chevre's view of the near future was of a different color altogether. I supposed that thaumaturges, once they reached a certain level among their fellow practitioners, were more used to doling out fearfulness than to having it poured over them. Watching Tancro and Ovarth go down to ignominious defeat had unnerved her. Especially worrying must have been the realization that Tancro's myrmidons had been so easily turned against him. When she thought back to how her blue and yellow had been deterred by the fungus's will, the prospect of her own dragons' being telepathically induced to bathe her in fire would have tended to undercut her resolve.

  Shuppat, as always, was a more difficult read. He said nothing as the other two argued back and forth, observing their dispute as a small creature might watch a pair of larger nest-mates fight over a piece of cheese. If the two exhausted thems
elves, I was sure the small magician would neatly step into the arena and carry off the prize.

  Chay-Chevre was vehemently arguing some point when we came down to the mid-deck. She did not enjoy the way Bol cut her off, saying that they should suspend their debate until they had heard from Osk Rievor and me. But, when appealed to, Shuppat quietly indicated that he, too, would prefer more information before reaching a conclusion. The long black fall of hair twitched like a whip as the wizardress shook her head in futile disagreement, but the decision was made.

  "Now," said Bol, "you will answer a few questions."

  "Wait," said Shuppat. "I have worked up a new spell that should help." He directed his hands at my other self and me, moving them in a complex way, while muttering something under his breath. Both Bol and Chay-Chevre leaned in toward him, straining to hear the words of the incantation. "There," the small magician said, when he had done, "now they can tell only the truth."

  I felt no different. As a test, I framed a thought in my mind, a proposition that I knew to be untrue. I had no difficulty in doing so. But when I tried whispering it to myself, passing my hand over my mouth as I did so, the words simply would not come.

  "Now," Bol was saying, "I see you wipe your lips nervously."

  He was wrong, but I felt no urge to set him straight. I realized that the spell's power was limited. It would not let me speak a lie, but it did not compel me to tell the whole truth. And, as one who had questioned a wide variety of malfeasants over many years, I knew that there could be enough space between the truth and the whole truth to give a nimble wit plenty of room to wriggle.

  "You are observant," I said.

  "Indeed, and short on patience today. So answer and answer well: what is your relationship to that creature in the cave?"

  "I have no relationship to it, although recently I was its prisoner."

  The character of Bol's smile changed. He shot a glance at Shuppat who said, "You must put your questions precisely. Let me try." He addressed me. "Do you know why the entity seized you?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "Why did it do so?"

  "It wanted information from me."

  "Did you give it the information it wanted?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "I did not have it." I thought I should add something to that, and said, "Nor did I ever have it."

  "What was this information it sought?"

  "The theory and practice of magic."

  "The fungus wanted to learn how to wield magic?"

  Chay-Chevre burst in with a strong oath. "There, you see? That is why it wanted Tancro alive. We cannot let it couple knowledge with such a profound will! We must destroy it."

  Smiling Bol met her passion with a nonchalant air and a slight movement of his rounded shoulders. Shuppat waited quietly through her outburst, then repeated his question.

  "Yes," I said, "it wants to become a practitioner of magic."

  "Why?"

  "It did not say why."

  "Can you speculate on why?"

  "Yes."

  "Then what, to you, is its most likely motive?"

  "Self-preservation."

  Now Bol entered the interrogation. "You are not a practitioner. Why did the entity think you had any information on magic?"

  "It knew me a long time ago, though its memory has declined. I was a knowledgeable person in. . . other fields. It may have thought I was knowledgeable about magic."

  "How long ago did it know you?"

  "I do not know."

  "Your best guess?"

  "Several centuries. Shortly before the Lacuna."

  That stopped the proceedings. Bol performed a motion of his hands and spoke some syllables. The others did likewise, then they conferred and I saw that they agreed on their findings. Shuppat took up the questioning again, first saying, "You are not several centuries old."

  "No, but I am out of my rightful time."

  "So I see. This fellow, however," -- he indicated Osk Rievor -- "is ancient."

  "His body was absorbed into the fungus before I met it," I said, choosing my words carefully, "and has been there ever since."

  "Explain," said Bol.

  "And fully," said Shuppat.

  And so I told the tale of Chup Choweri and the Gallivant and the persons captured by the fungus when it was still a simple symbiote. Shuppat listened with apparent interest, Bol with obvious skepticism, and Chay-Chevre with mounting anger as I spoke of integrators and crushes and, finally, the turning of the Great Wheel. "When magic replaced rationalism as the underlying principle of the universe, the fungus and its symbiotic partners were as affected as any other intelligent entity: they forgot much of what they knew, and soon they had forgotten even that they had once inhabited a cosmos in which empiricism was the most useful methodology."

  "But before this so-called change," Shuppat said, "the entity commanded a great deal of this knowledge-of-cause-and-effect, as you call it. And that translated into its immense will in the new age?"

  "So I believe," I said. "I am not versed in the study of will."

  "Preposterous," said Bol, "yet entertaining."

  "He is telling the truth," Shuppat said. "And it would explain why the fungus sought him out. It wanted knowledge of our arts. It associated this fellow with great knowledge. It sought him out."

  Bol smiled dismissively. "He is telling the truth as he knows it, but he has been in the thing's belly. His thoughts may have been put there."

  "Why?" said Shuppat. "What purpose does that serve?"

  "To distract us!" snapped Chay-Chevre. "While we stand here diverted by these idiotic tales of a will-less age, the enemy may be preparing a devastating stroke. I say: kill them, now! Then deal with that nameless thing before it causes the walls of the fort to crash in upon us."

  Her harshly planed face was drawn, her mouth turned down at the corners to make a mask of anger. Yet I saw in her eyes other emotions when she looked at me -- a hesitant fear. Clearly, my story had unsettled her. I could understand: I knew what it was to discover that the underpinnings of the world were purely arbitrary. I almost felt sympathy for her.

  Shuppat had ignored her outburst. He turned to Osk Rievor and said, "What about you? Has your companion told the truth?"

  "He has," Osk Rievor said.

  "Yet you have a spell of sufficiency on you, and so does he. How does that come to be?"

  "I cast it upon us both to keep us from dying in this harsh environment."

  "Yet, like him, you date from the time before magic."

  "Yes."

  "Explain."

  "I was a student of magic, even when almost no one believed in it," my other self said. "Just as there must be people who are interested in rationalism in your time."

  "One or two," said Shuppat, "but they are loons."

  "As were those inclined to sympathetic association in our time."

  "Time is the essential word, here," Chay-Chevre said. "While you chat amiably with these aimless anomalies, doom could be stealing upon us, burrowing through the rocks beneath our feet."

  Shuppat pursed his small mouth through a long pause, then said, "Our colleague is right. We must decide."

  "Destroy it!" the woman in (colors) said.

  "Use it," said Smiling Bol.

  It was up to the small magician. He consulted his inner resources than said, "Let Bol spring his trap. If it confines the entity, well and good."

  Bol smiled in satisfaction. Chay-Chevre spat.

  "But if it does not," Shuppat continued, "if we are under threat, then we will use all our combined powers to destroy the thing. Chay-Chevre, will you bring both your dragons to the walls above us? If the creature cannot be contained, they can contribute to the effort to kill it. We will enfold ourselves in protective spells against their blasts."

  "I will leave the gray and silver where it is, guarding the fissure, in case the enemy issues any more forces against us. Once you have its avatar in the trap, I will bring the dragon h
ere."

  "Very well," said Bol. He turned to the apparatus and began to make adjustments.

  "What about us?" I said.

  "You are on your own," Shuppat said, "though I hope you survive. I would be interested to hear more of this ridiculous age from which, hard as it is to believe, you seem to have come."

  "May we at least withdraw to a distance?"

  Shuppat looked to Bol, who took a moment's thought then said, "Pars Lavelan!" When his retainer came to his side, he continued, "I will not need you for the confinement. Take these two a distance away until we are finished here. But not so far that we cannot see you." Then he spoke a few more words with his mouth close to Lavelan's ear. The retainer's face froze for a moment and his gray eyes seemed to look inward to a private vista, then he made a gesture of obeisance.

  #

  We flew off again on Ovarth's disk, the little whirlwind beneath it obligingly whirring away beneath our feet. It was much like traveling in an air car without seats. I wondered if the disk had indeed been an air car a thousand years ago, transmogrified during the great change and "rediscovered" by Ovarth or one of his precursors. I pondered the question as we came to a halt at a good height above the plain and far enough away from the enclosed ship that the fort's walls were no taller than my thumb if I held

  t out at arm's length.

  The blue and yellow dragon had looked at us as we flew past it, and now kept turning its head in our direction, even though Chay-Chevre was issuing it instructions. Its inattentiveness annoyed her. She snapped a few words at it that made the beast lower its head, like a hound scolded by its master. My thoughts about the disk and the air car now drifted over to a consideration of dragons. I was suddenly struck by what one of my old tutors used to call "a wild surmise" but just as I began to explore the notion, my assistant spoke quietly in my ear.

  "You should know," it said, "what Bol whispered to Pars Lavelan."

  "Very well. Tell me."

  "To trap the entity in its avatar form, the magician may need to augment the power of the apparatus. This will require something that he referred to as 'special vitality.'"