by E A Bagby
Three obstacles prevented mortals from descending to the land of the dead, each more fearsome than the last. First, the wind in the cave blew so hard no mortal should be able to pass. Those hubristic enough to push past that would encounter the Maze of Azer, a place that confused the mind and either trapped the soul in perpetuity or led them to the third barrier. The Guardian.
How foolish of me! How did I forget it? This is the maze. It made me forget about its existence, tricking me into complacency. That must have been why the place didn’t look as I thought it should. In a panic, I searched around for where to run—too many options.
I took in a slow breath to calm myself.
“Cleo!” I shouted.
“I can hear you,” she said from somewhere nearby. “I just went down a passage for a second to see something.”
“I nearly dropped with fright!” I jogged forward to follow her voice.
After a turn, the walkway exited the mechwork back into the open area, and as it did, a thick layer of dust covered it. About a tree’s height beneath the path, the mechwork sloped at a more forgiving angle than the steep drop at the entrance. I stepped as carefully as I could through the grey filth, but my knees shook.
What am I doing here? I pulled the recorder from my pocket. I wanted to throw it into the tangle below, as if that would relieve me from the strange world around. As if Salihandron would come, take the spirit, and possibly free us from the maze in gratitude.
What am I thinking? I was no shaman. I just memorized lore. Seeing the world around, I realized I probably could no more interpret our stories, Salihandron, and this place, than could a child. My knowledge amounted to little. My body swayed. The Underworld blurred and spun.
“Salihandron,” I whispered, “if you’re here, have mercy on me.”
“Giels?”
Cleo’s sweet, clear voice snapped me out of my thoughts.
“Cleo?” I called back.
She stood on a walkway about a hundred yards away and a little below. I leaned over the railing to have a better look, but I stirred up more dust. Through the swirling mass, I sporadically glimpsed her staring up at me.
No passage or stair connected her walkway to mine.
“Giels, are you okay?”
“Yes. But I’m afraid—” I hesitated. I did not want to frighten her. But she needs to know. “I’m afraid the maze is trying to confuse us.” I could not stop my voice from quivering. I searched for the bravery I had found, but it eluded me.
Cleo screwed up her face. “What?”
Did she not know of the maze? “It might be difficult to find our way back,” I clarified.
“I know,” she said. She looked worried now. “Maybe we got carried away.”
Behind me, I heard our friends’ voices reverberating in the vast space. They sounded far away. I turned around. Looming over us, an enormous horizontal cylinder protruded into the space. It must have been the outside shell of the Wind Cave. It gave me an idea. “That’s the cave. Go back in that direction and don’t go too fast. Look for things that spark your memory. Look backwards regularly also to see what’s familiar, like we do when retracing our walks in dense forest.”
“Yes!” She sounded a little relieved. “And also, let’s pretend like we are in the Rambles Swamp, playing the searching game, and we’ll call to each other regularly.”
Without hesitation, I shouted, “Boorha!” a nonsense word from a childhood game, and she replied with the correct word, “Haybewen!”
Retracing my steps, I walked within the thicket of pipes, boxes, wires, and conduits. “Haybewen!” Her shout stretched in long echoes, mixing with the echoes of our friends. “Boorha!” I responded. Our friends’ eerie, drawn-out voices tightened as though we were drawing closer.
We’ll get back. After all, I could not know for sure how our lore applied. Perhaps there is no danger in the maze.
My attempts at calming myself did not work.
Another sound echoed. Unlike the long and drawn-out reverberations from my friends, this had a higher, inhuman pitch, similar to the squeaking of metal on metal. It trailed off in a minor chord. A chill ran over me, and I quickened my pace to find Cleo. Was there something here?
Jogging, I turned corner after corner, guessing at routes I hoped would lead to the cave.
My pace quickened. I looked behind me at every turn, expecting to see a beast trailing behind.
Run!
I grabbed and pushed off objects around me to propel myself more quickly. I thought I heard the sound again.
It’s just my friends. Calm down, Giels.
“Giels!” Cleo said from somewhere nearby. “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” I said, nearly squealing. What am I doing? Sound more certain. “They’re just echoes. Keep going; we’re getting closer.” I stopped to take a breath. “Boorha!”
“Heybewen,” she responded. “Wherever the path forks, always go to your left, and I’ll go to my right. But keep heading to the cave, okay?”
“Okay.”
Our voices returned stretched and thin, and within them other sounds and reverberations played, like a ghostly instrumental accompaniment—just the odd acoustics.
About fifty feet later, the passage only went right or left. I turned left. The path turned left again after several feet, and about thirty feet after that, left again. Cleo’s voice no longer came from my left but the right.
“We passed each other!” she said.
“I know; stay where you are, but keep calling. I’ll find you.”
Focus. Don’t let the maze win.
Back from where I came, I made a right. Her voice grew closer. “Boorha!” I said. After meandering seemingly in circles, I noticed a small passage on my left that I had not seen before. I walked down, turned a corner, and there stood Cleo.
“Giels!” she yelled. We clasped each other in a hug, and she kissed me on my temple. Our cheeks and lips brushed. She pushed at my chest with her palm, jolting me backwards, and laughed genuinely, showing all of her white teeth. Dust covered her face, except for where mine had caressed it. “I’m so relieved,” she said.
Part of me wanted to pull her in for another hug, but I desperately wanted to return. “Our friends are near,” I said, smiling, my eyes wide from the excitement of finding her. “I hear them messing around with the machinery.”
“Was that the sound I heard?” she said.
“Yes, probably.” She needed to focus and avoid scary thoughts.
“We’re so turned around,” she said. “I think all we can do right now is go up. The mechanical work rises closer to the Wind Cave.”
“Good idea.”
Holding hands, we meandered, ascending steps towards the shell of the massive cave. Occasionally we caught glimpses of it through the mechwork.
“I know this is crazy, Giels,” Cleo said, “but I’m so glad we’re doing this.”
By doing this, I assumed she meant “exploring the maze.”
I smiled to hide my alarm.
We called our friends. This time they responded clearly. Soon their voices sounded as though they were beside us. And, through gaps in the thick jumble of mechwork to our right, I saw movement.
“Giels! Cleo!” Alana called.
I peered into one of the gaps. Someone scattered aside the dust on a squarish pipe a few feet into the mechwork jumble. The grey substance swirled up, watering my eyes. After it cleared, Meritus’s eyes showed through a gap, followed by others.
“Hi there. Go that way,” Meritus said, moving his eyes several times left and right. “It’ll lead you back to where we started.” It took us a moment to work out which way that way was. We walked a little way down the passage and up a few steps to another path, where our friends were waiting for us.
Cleo and I ran to them and traded hugs.
I recognized the place. Bundles of silver strands and fine chains hanging from panels adorned the right side. And beyond that, the way opened up, and the stair
to the cave ascended to the left.
We’re safe. The maze did not hold us with its power, as the ancient stories said it would. My interpretation had been wrong. It was not the Maze of Azer. Had echoes in fact frightened me?
“Did you move any metal around, like on a hinge?” I asked the others.
“Why?” Meritus asked.
“Thought I heard that.”
“These two would not stop talking and pulling at stuff,” Alana said, shaking her head. “Like children.”
“See. I was right,” I said to Cleo. “The noises were them.” Oh, thank the Sun I was right. My shoulders relaxed, followed by my entire body.
The maze had not pulled me in; Cleo and I just wanted to have fun. How could I have thought we explored it against our will?
My fear gave me an appreciation of our safety over anything else. Learning that our lore was wrong had almost seemed worse than the perils they described. But, filled with warmth and gratitude that my body and soul remained intact, I put aside all of my unease. More than anything, I wanted my bed. I could try and sort out the place some other time, probably to ultimately accept that I did not understand any of it.
“Let’s go home now,” I said to Erikal.
“Fair enough,” he responded.
Cleo and I excitedly swapped stories with the others as we walked to the stair. They had not gone very far, and wanted to hear all about the long stretches of walkways that bridged over the mechwork.
Meritus showed us a bundle of the silvery strands that he had pulled from the panels.
“What’ll you do with it?” Cleo asked.
“We can—”
“Meritus,” Erikal interrupted, “I’m thinking it is a good time to sit low, and silent, like hunters.” He smiled and raised his eyebrows in an intentionally calming, fatherly fashion.
It put the hush into us. Had Erikal heard something? Did his ears trick him, as mine had me?
He crouched down, and the rest of us followed his lead.
The mechwork on the side of the path opposite the stair faced the vast open area and was almost low enough for me to see over it. But only Erikal could have seen over it without climbing up or standing on his toes.
“Did you see something?” Alana asked.
“Shhhh,” he responded.
Dust scattered around us.
“Who did that?” Meritus shouted.
“Shush!” Erikal said.
“That was just me,” Cleo whispered. “I hit the dust. Sorry.”
I could not restrain a cough. It echoed. The others shushed me, but then silence took over.
A long, distant sound broke the quiet—a mix of a hiss and a wail, like an ancient, angry cry. It rose with a haunting, musical quality, filling the vast space with primal power. Goosebumps covered my body. Gasps of fear came from my friends. Cleo clasped my hand tight.
The notion that we were not trapped, that this was not the maze, had calmed me, but that calm slipped. I clenched Cleo’s hand tighter, probably too tight. She pulled it away.
“What is it, Erikal?” Alana whispered.
With the dusty haze mostly gone, Erikal rose, his neck stretched upright. He peeked into the vast openness.
“What is it, Erikal?” Meritus said.
He did not respond. He stood still as a statue.
“What!” Alana whisper-screamed.
Erikal’s consistently focused expression broke. His shoulders dropped. His eyes widened.
Before that moment, I never could have imagined terror on his self-assured face.
10
The Guardian
I could not ever recall Erikal flinching, let alone being held firm by terror. While he stood unmoving, the four of us looked at one another frightened and dumbfounded.
We slowly rose.
I stood on my toes to see above the array of pipes next to the path. Cleo, Meritus, and Alana climbed up the mechwork to have a look.
For a moment, I looked on in denial of what I saw. Or, perhaps, the creature manipulated me into a sense of innocent curiosity instead of the hysterics I should have experienced. Able to gaze upon it, I gained a clear, prolonged view of a demon that should have sent me running.
On the far wall of mechwork—the one that rose to the mechwork sky—hung a beast, a devil, of mind-bending magnitude. It moved between the giant fissure and the tank like a tazer feeling its way along a rock wall. Being so far away, I could not judge its size except that it was colossal.
The creature had no fur, feathers, or scales, only leathery skin stretching tight around its bones. Flesh wings, like a tazer’s, dwarfed its body despite the torso’s impossible size. The wings had long, embedded fingers, but unlike a tazer, which had one hooked finger sticking out, the thing had a cluster of hooked talons. Spiked teeth extended well above the snout and below the jaw, and behind them writhed a tongue like a trapped snake. Hind legs jutted backwards from the rear, not unlike a jumping insect’s, and behind them, a long, spiky tail crept its way on the machinery.
“The Sun, what is that?” Meritus said, his voice grunting and hoarse.
“There’s no Sun here,” Alana said flatly.
The creature contorted its neck at an odd angle. It opened its mouth in a yawn so wide that the jaw appeared to disconnect from the head. Its blood-red tongue escaped the jail of fangs and slithered around its eyes.
“Let’s run,” Cleo whispered. “It’s still far away.”
Erikal remained fixated on the beast. “Yeah, good idea, Cleo.”
Instead of running, we watched it, entranced. The creature emitted a jumble of eerie, if almost magical, high-pitched sounds. It nibbled at itself with its long teeth and scratched with the talons of one of its wings.
After the preening, it used the hooked talons to crawl quickly up the mechanical wall. It turned and jumped off into the vast space between it and us.
It glided at an angle oblique to where we stood. Its wings rose and dropped the height of a small mountain in an aggressive flap. A tremendous thunder rolled across the unnatural landscape. The wingbeat stopped the creature midair, and it stayed in place by continuing to flap with explosive booms. Its pupil-less eyes did not reveal where it looked, but its head slowly turned our way, until I saw directly down its snout.
“It’s seen us!” Meritus shouted.
“Hush, you,” Erikal whispered. “Go back to the cave.”
Before realizing it I turned and scrambled up the stairs. The others did the same. We tumbled over one another, kicking up clouds of dust. Somehow I found myself stumbling along at the back of the line.
Before reaching the doorway, Erikal and Cleo stopped and stared past me at the monster.
I crashed into Cleo but turned too out of impulse, to see the creature through a grey haze.
Its wings flapped even more forcefully than before. Thunder as loud as ten lightning strikes exploded, rattling the metal and machinery around us. My knees nearly buckled. My heart pounded against my chest. Terror overwhelmed me so entirely that my mind and body froze.
It approached. Quickly.
Go, Giels!
Cleo had gone. I threw myself against Erikal, who still stared at the demon. His body did not budge. I went limp and slid to the floor.
No one else remained outside the door except me.
“Door shut! Door shut!” someone cried.
I looked up. The door did not close. Erikal stood in the doorway, perhaps preventing its closure. He extended his hand to me.
Everything shook. My ears rang. I recovered my senses and jumped to my feet.
The beast hung in midair, no longer approaching. Its head cocked towards the right as if watching something, but the mechwork around the path blocked my view of what it could be.
The devil opened its mouth and emitted a high-pitched, pulsating sound, like needles puncturing my ears. Pain shot up my neck to my head, which I expected to split open. With another violent booming of its wings, the creature’s body twisted to face the sam
e way as its eyes.
Two white lights, one followed by the other, came from the right and hit the creature. White-hot, fiery streamers flew from where the bright projectiles impacted the beast’s torso. The heat warmed my face. The monster let out another deafening wail. I held my head to prevent it from exploding.
A machine, which I could only conceptualize as a large cab without wings, flew at high speed from the same direction as the lights, quickly passing the creature and disappearing out of view to my left. Inconceivably, the vehicle was shorter than a single one of the monster’s fangs.
The great beast turned its body away from us. Its thorny tail lashed, and wingbeats boomed. It retreated away, disappearing into the cavern-like fissure.
My friends’ screams blended together. Only after a moment did I realize they were screaming at me.
I started to turn but stopped. My view blurred. I forgot where I stood.
An unfamiliar voice, baritone and clear, spoke to me—not from nearby, but inside my mind.
“Lost souls remain in your Underworld. Stay. They cry out for you. Stay, and you’ll receive some great reward.”
“Giels!” Cleo shouted and pulled at my sleeves. I turned and ran into the room.
Cleo hammered a fist into the mechanical patterns next to the door and hollered, “Close!” With a startling swoosh, the door shut behind us. Our coughing and wheezing filled the little room.
“What was that!” Cleo shouted in the darkness.
The beast—the Guardian of the maze. I was too shocked to say it aloud.
“How about that cab?” Meritus said, as though he regarded the flying machine as impressive as the demon.
“Giels?” Alana said. “Tell us. That thing is what we all think it is?”
I pointed at the door. “I would have thought the Maze of Azer a normal cave, like the one by the entrance of the Wind Cave.” I drew a deep, strained breath to continue. “No Guardian dwelled there, and that maze is nothing compared to what’s beyond this door. The Sun—” I stopped to cough, hacking up and spitting disgusting black phlegm. “—what’s out there is worthy of the greatest myths. It must be the Guardian at the threshold of the mortal and immortal Worlds.”
