by Dorian Hart
Kibi was easily liberated by a reminder of the Seven Mirrors and how they spoke to him, but afterward he flailed his arms and dropped to the ground.
“What’s goin’ on?” he cried wildly. “Are we fallin’?” He closed his eyes.
Morningstar knelt beside him. “Kibi?”
“It’s like the carpet,” Kibi groaned. “There ain’t no ground. There ain’t nothin’ solid.”
After a couple minutes of cajoling and reassurances, they helped Kibi back to his feet, but he trembled, pale-faced, as though he remained in a nightmare from which he could not wake. Morningstar wished she could do something for him. She took his hand and led him to the largest table in the otherwise-empty dining room. All of Horn’s Company—minus Grey Wolf—sat around it.
Morningstar gestured to the door. “We still need to help Grey Wolf. What can we say to him?”
Tor perked up. “Mrs. Horn! Did you remind him about Ysabel? He took her death harder than anyone.”
“Brilliant,” said Aravia. Tor smiled hugely.
“It may also help to have all of us there,” said Morningstar. “Let’s go.”
She put up the closed sign on the door of the Sands of Time, and they walked across the street to Grey Wolf’s shop. Kibi walked on his own, but his body trembled.
“I didn’t know Grey Wolf was a carpenter,” said Tor. “Do you think the city gives him the skill? Or does he have natural talent?”
“Who cares?” said Dranko. “He’s about to lose his job.”
Grey Wolf worked in the back of his shop, hammering a row of nails into the back of a cabinet. He brandished his hammer at them as they approached.
“Get back,” he warned. “Stay away from me. I’ll not have you trying to bewitch me again. All of you, get out.”
“Ysabel!” Tor blurted. “Do you remember Mrs. Horn? Do you remember the gopher bugs, how they killed her all those months ago? And then you yelled at Dranko?”
Grey Wolf froze. He closed his eyes. His lips twitched. Was he remembering?
“I don’t know who that is,” he said slowly. “And you are violating the fundamental laws of Calabash. If you do not turn around right now, leave my studio, and never come back, I will find a way to contact the Autarch and tell him of your crimes. Calabash is the most splendid city ever to—”
“Grey Wolf,” said Ernie sharply.
“That’s not my—”
“Think about your parents. Think about the day that they died.”
Again Grey Wolf became perfectly still, as if Ernie’s words had been a magic spell. “I have no parents,” he whispered.
Morningstar’s mind raced. What was this? What was Ernie up to?
The boy took a step forward. “That’s true. You don’t. Because goblins killed them in front of you when you were just a boy. You watched while your parents were murdered. Do you remember that, Ivellios? Do you remember?”
Morningstar’s heart sped up, a cold, prickly feeling spreading outward from her chest. That moment in the mountains, that strange confrontation between Ernie and Grey Wolf…Ell’s shadow, so much made sense.
Grey Wolf only stared straight ahead, straight at Ernie, his mouth moving but making no sound. Expressions of realization crept onto the faces of the others.
“Mother…” Grey Wolf finally forced out the word, a hoarse whisper, and tears were in his eyes. He fell to his knees on the sawdusted floor, put his head in his hands, and sobbed.
“I’m sorry, Grey Wolf—” Ernie said, but Kibi, still shaking, put a hand on his shoulder.
“You ain’t got nothin’ to be sorry ’bout, Ernie. You did what you had to.”
Eventually Grey Wolf looked up, his eyes red. “Gods, how long have we been here?”
“We don’t know,” said Aravia.
Grey Wolf stood up and angrily blinked away his tears, then looked at her in alarm. “Morningstar, what’s the news from Previa? Has Naradawk escaped?”
“We don’t know that, either. I cannot access the Tapestry from Calabash.”
“Then we still need to find the Crosser’s Maze.” He seemed disinclined to talk about Ernie’s revelation, which was for the best. She felt terrible, knowing now what had fueled so much of Grey Wolf’s anger, but they had no time to waste.
“All the people here are brainwashed,” said Tor. “Do you think they even know what it is?”
“Only one way to find out,” said Dranko. “We need to ask them. But we’re in luck! We have an expert in scouring an urban environment for information.” He stood. “No time like the present. I’ll come back in a few hours and tell you what I’ve learned.”
Dranko stood and walked out the studio’s front door.
Five minutes later, he returned. “There’s a problem. I can’t understand anyone, and they can’t understand me. Whatever enchantment had us mind-controlled also let us speak and understand the local language.”
“Our ear-cuffs! We’re not wearing them!” Ernie’s eyes went wide. “We don’t have any of our old belongings! I don’t have Pyknite!”
Morningstar had an idea about that. “Grey Wolf, does your studio have a locked closet in the basement? One that you’ve never wondered about?”
“Yeah,” said Grey Wolf slowly. “But I don’t remember what’s in it, and I don’t have a key.”
Aravia smiled. “We don’t need a key.”
They adjourned to the basement, neatly stacked with boards, crates of hand tools, and perfectly parallel shelves. A spare pole lathe was set against one wall.
“How does this work?” Dranko asked aloud. “Did the place come pre-furnished with everything a carpenter might need to run a business?”
“It was the same with our pub,” said Morningstar.
“Calabash is likely the greatest magical accomplishment in the history of creation,” said Aravia. “I could not begin to guess how it was achieved.”
“That’s all right,” said Dranko. “All we need you to do is knock down one of its doors.”
The wizardess stood in front of the door, uttered a short string of syllables, and twisted her fingers just so.
Nothing happened.
Aravia tried it again, then looked disapprovingly at the door with her hands on her hips. “There’s no magic.”
“What?” asked Grey Wolf. “What does that mean?”
“Spellcasting is manipulating the aether,” said Aravia. “And there’s no aether in Calabash.”
“Great,” muttered Grey Wolf.
“In a way, it is great,” said Tor. “If Aravia can’t cast spells, then Lapis can’t either.”
Everyone else looked at Tor in a kind of stupefied silence.
“She must be in here, right?” said the boy.
“Damn me,” said Dranko. “I had forgotten about her. But you’re right. There’s no way she would have missed a glowing house at the very spot she knew to look. She must have been sucked into this place a day or two before we did.”
“The real question,” said Aravia, “is whether she has thrown off the thrall of Calabash. We would be safer assuming that she has.”
“But without her magic,” asked Ernie, “would Step have broken her hold on him?”
“I don’t know,” said Aravia. “I don’t know enough about how mind-magic works, whether it functions through a constant draw from the aether.”
“Either way, we’ll need to rescue Step before we escape Calabash,” said Tor. “We still need him to fulfill his prophecy for us.”
Grey Wolf gave a breathy grunt. “Assuming that whole thing wasn’t a load of crap meant to fool us into bringing him along in the first place. We don’t have any proof that he was being mind-controlled.”
“I’m sure he was,” said Tor. “And without her magic, he’s probably not being controlled anymore.”
Morningstar turned to Kibi. “Are you feeling well enough to kick the door down?”
“I don’t know. Guess I can try.”
Kibi still looked like a man with a bad s
tomach ailment. He stood before the door and gave it as strong a kick as he could manage. From her experience watching Kibi impose his strength upon things, she expected the door to suffer badly, but it didn’t even tremble in its frame.
“It ain’t no use,” said Kibi despondently. “If I had to guess, I’d say my strength comes from the earth, just like Aravia’s magic comes from the air. And there ain’t no proper ground here. I feel like I couldn’t lift a spoon.”
“But you were plenty strong when you were Shale,” said Tor.
“There is clearly a psychological component in play,” said Aravia, frowning.
“Guess I’ll be doing this the old-fashioned way,” said Dranko.
“But you don’t have any tools,” said Ernie.
Dranko laughed. “We’re in a carpenter’s workshop. Look around. Grey Wolf’s got files, chisels, nails, awls, the works. I’ll figure something out. But you can help by fetching a candle for some extra light.”
And so, without the use of Aravia’s sorcery or Kibi’s might, Dranko jimmied the door open in less than two minutes. He looked at Morningstar and gave her a sly smile. “Still got it.”
Inside were Grey Wolf’s belongings, neatly arranged. After he had retrieved them, Horn’s Company crossed the street and regrouped in the pub’s basement. Dranko once again plied his ignoble trade and popped the door open. All of their possessions were in there: packs and bedrolls, traveling rations, Aravia’s light-rods, their weapons, and Parthol Runecarver’s powerful translator cuffs.
Dranko took one of the cuffs and attached it to his ear. “I’ll leave the rest of my stuff here. Don’t want to call attention to myself. Now, let’s try this one more time.”
* * *
For the next five cycles, Dranko went out at early light. He explained that wringing information out of a city was a slow, accumulative process, though each day his confidence seemed a bit more forced. Each night he’d return with no news, only the assurance that he’d left word with dozens of people, and that he only needed one of them to send word of the Crosser’s Maze back to the Sands of Time.
Morningstar kept the pub open so as not to rouse additional suspicion. She had a fuzzy notion that Calabash had soldiers who would come to deal with anyone who had demonstrably broken free of the city’s mental shackles, though she had no specific memory of how that worked or what circumstances would summon them. She worried constantly that Dranko’s inquiries would bring down the Autarch’s wrath, but they had no choice but to take the risk.
Dranko described an astonishing variety of creatures populating Calabash. Most of the citizenry was human, but there were ogres, goblins, faerie-like creatures called sprites, the strange plant-like quith, a kind of lizard person whose name none of them could recall, and once he had seen an intelligent bird the size of a dog.
“It doesn’t make sense,” said Tor. They sat in Morningstar’s spacious bedroom in the hour after closing. “If that jungle hut is what draws everyone into Calabash, there wouldn’t be so many people here. It’s not as though folks were stumbling across it every day.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” said Aravia. “Whatever was on that table, there are more than one of them. I see two possibilities: Either there are other lands on Spira that are home to all the types of creatures we see here, or the entry devices for Calabash are scattered on more worlds than just this one.”
“I discovered something else today,” said Dranko. “The glass wall that surrounds the city has no openings. None of the people I spoke to are curious about it, but there’s agreement that there are no ways into or out of Calabash, and nothing worth mentioning outside of it.”
“We’re in a giant bottle,” said Tor.
Everyone stared at him.
“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked, his mimicry of Aravia certainly unconscious. “That thing on the table that was glowing, I didn’t get a good look at it, but I thought it looked like a big glass jug.”
“Calabash,” said Aravia. “Of course.”
Morningstar didn’t see it. “Of course what?”
“A calabash is a kind of gourd, shaped like a bottle.”
Ernie scratched his head. “So we’re in a huge glass bottle that keeps getting bigger the more people get drawn into it?”
“Hmmmm.” Aravia frowned thoughtfully. “I had assumed Calabash was a pocket dimension, but if so, its size should be fixed upon creation.”
“Then maybe it’s not one,” said Tor. “Maybe somewhere on Spira, or on another world, there’s an actual, physical bottle. Huge—and growing.”
“Or the magic shrunk us all down to fit inside the one in the hut,” said Kibi.
“Or the—” Dranko said, but Aravia cut him off.
“There’s someone at the door. Pewter says he hears knocking.”
Morningstar stood. “Let me handle it.”
“What if it’s the Autarch’s enforcers?” asked Ernie.
She turned to Aravia. “Tell Pewter to hide somewhere and alert you if it looks like I’m in trouble.”
More worries came to her as she descended the stairs. Could she bluff a representative of the Autarch? Or would they know, with some magical instinct, that the city no longer held her in its thrall? Morningstar still wore her gown and turban, but they felt out of place, like ill-fitting costume pieces. And while her ear-cuff might give her away, she couldn’t remove it without losing the ability to speak the local language.
It would have to be bluff. She opened the door with a smile on her face. “I’m sorry, but we’re closed for the evening.”
A small man stood in the doorway, unarmed, wearing a dark blue gown and a yellow turban. He leaned to the left to look around Morningstar into the dining room.
“I’m looking for a half-goblin named Mel. Is he here?” His movements were twitchy, and a small tic tugged the edge of his left eye.
“May I tell him who is asking?”
“My name is Mazzery. I’m responding to an inquiry left by the half-goblin. I heard this was the place to find him. The Sands of Time on Ruby Avenue.”
She didn’t betray her excitement. “Come in, please. Are you hungry? Thirsty? The cook has gone to bed, but one of my boys can whip something up for you.”
Mazzery stepped inside, and Morningstar closed the door after him.
“I’ve heard you make good cider.” Mazzery looked around with quick, jerky movements of his neck.
“Why don’t you have a seat, and I’ll go rouse the help. I can also see if Mel is awake.”
Morningstar hoped that Pewter would keep watch and let Aravia know if Mazzery did anything unexpected. She returned to her bedroom, where the rest of Horn’s Company waited. Aravia finished up telling the others everything that had just transpired.
“It would appear that your outings have borne fruit,” Morningstar said to Dranko. “But I don’t trust the fellow. We need to maintain the illusion that we’re still happy citizens of Calabash, and no one should be left alone with him. Dranko, it will seem natural if I come down with you; and Tor, I told him I’d have someone get him a cider. With three of us in the room, perhaps he won’t try anything unpleasant.”
“And Pewter will continue to report to the rest of us,” said Aravia.
Downstairs, Mazzery had found a seat at the edge of the dining room, in a chair with its back to a wall. Tor went into the kitchen to fetch Mazzery a mug of cider while Morningstar and Dranko sat with their guest.
Dranko leaned back and propped his feet on the table. “I’m Mel,” he said lazily. “I hear you have something for me.”
Mazzery glanced around nervously. His hands fidgeted. “I do. I heard you were looking for something. I know where it is.”
Dranko gave a curt laugh. “Something? I’m looking for lots of things. The best bottle of wine in Calabash, a place that sells good cigars, a smart woman with a thing for tusks. We’re all friends here. Why don’t you be more specific?”
“The Crosser’s Maze,” Mazzery said hurriedly. “Th
at’s it, right? What you want?”
“There we go,” said Dranko. “Did you bring it with you?”
“No!”
“Shame. Would have saved us a lot of time.”
“It…it’s not mine. But I work for the man who owns it. His name is Solomea Pirenne.”
Dranko returned his feet to the floor and leaned in. “Have you seen it? Can you tell us what it looks like?”
Morningstar was more than happy that Dranko led this conversation. She sensed that Dranko was feeling the fellow out, probing him for lies or omitted details.
Mazzery narrowed his eyes. “Yes. Once. Solomea is a very private person, but one time I caught a glimpse of it. The Crosser’s Maze is small; it would fit in the palm of your hand. It’s a little round metal disc with a labyrinth carved into its surface. Silver-colored, like steel, but I don’t know what it’s made of, specifically. I’m not allowed to hold it.”
Thank Ell! She had been so worried that the maze would turn out to be either a place or something far too large to carry.
“Well, here’s the kicker,” said Dranko. “Would your friend Solomea be willing to part with it?”
“Here’s your cider, sir.” Tor set down a full mug in front of Mazzery. The little man looked up sharply at Tor, then picked up his mug with both hands and sniffed it three times. He took a tiny, tentative sip, as though tasting for poison.
“Yes, he would be willing to part with it. He wants to be rid of it, in fact. He’s simply been waiting for the…for the right buyer.”
“Why does he want to be rid of it?” asked Morningstar, at the same moment that Dranko said, “So, there have been others looking to acquire it.”
