by J F Rivkin
I knew it was a mistake to wake up.”
“We’re somewhere in the ruins, that’s my guess-and it’s night. The stink of magic’s so thick I can hardly breathe.”
Nyctasia sobered suddenly. “Carelessness,” she said. “Always and ever carelessness. It’s not only night, it’s the night of Yu Valeicu. Sweet vahn, we’ve got to find them before-”
“Find them! We don’t know where we are.”
They rose unsteadily and groped around them in a darkness so dense that they could not even see one another, and all directions were alike. The floor beneath them was smooth stone, but Carson discovered that she could not reach the ceiling or walls from where she stood. “We’re not in a tunnel, anyway,” she said thankfully.
But her relief was short-lived. As they shuffled forward together, her outstretched hand soon met with an intricate web of metal that she took for part of the fountain until she remembered that the courtyard was not paved. “Oh no,” she said softly, “they would do that, the rotten bastards. They wouldn’t just kill us, not them. They wouldn’t soil their pure spirits and clean hands with our blood-perish the thought!”
Nyctasia touched the bars, and understood. It was the gate to the maze, and this time they were on the wrong side of it.
Corson pulled furiously at the gate, but the ironwork held fast, for all that it had looked delicate from the other side. “I never thought to say it, but I wish we had Newt here now. He could pick this lock in the dark as easy as picking his teeth. But we’ll just have to get through the maze. For Hlann’s sake, if children can do it, I can.”
Nyctasia’s voice was flat and hopeless. “They didn’t do it in the dark. There are torches on the walls which our hosts have neglected to light. And even if we should find the way through in time, what do you suppose they have waiting for us at the other end? Not, I think, a welcome to the ranks of the initiated.”
“It’s no use asking that now. We might as well take our chances as wait here for them to come fetch us. You know, we’ve been round the maze-it’s not much bigger than a barn-it won’t take long to cross it.”
“Don’t you see, it may be too late already. And the size of the space doesn’t matter when all you do is go around in circles and wander in and out of the same blind alley over and over-”
Corson heard the edge of panic in her voice, and became immediately the stern commander. “No-hold your noise and listen,” she said firmly, dragging Nyctasia into the maze. “We won’t get lost if we’re careful. I’ll keep my left hand on this wall; you keep your right hand on the other side, and take a good hold of me with your left. We don’t want to get separated.”
They moved forward slowly until they reached the first junction of the path.
“We’ll go left,” Corson decided. “As long as we keep going in one direction, it makes no difference which. We know there’s an opening somewhere. If I always have my hand on the wall, it has to lead us there sooner or later, doesn’t it?
If we strike a dead end, we’ll just retrace our steps and go the other way. Come on.”
“One, left,” said Nyctasia.
“Left, straight, right, not counting the blind ends. Remember that, it may repeat. There’s sure to be a pattern of some sort. The Cymvelans did everything by design.”
“Left, straight, right,” Corson repeated. “No-it’s straight, left, straight, right! The first bit was straight, remember?”
“Yes, I didn’t see that it mattered before. Corson, I apologize for calling you a simple-minded barbarian.”
“Spoken like a lady. There’s a straight part coming now. How much will you wager that the next turn should be left?”
“I’ll wager my life on it.”
But they had followed the left turning for only a few paces when Nyctasia stopped. “Corson, I can’t feel a wall on this side. I think we’re out!”
Corson kept her hand on the other wall. “Are you sure? This side’s still curving in. It should go the other way on the outside.”
Nyctasia stretched to reach as far as she could without losing touch with Corson. “It’s open over here,” she insisted.
“Maybe it’s just another opening in that wall, like the ones we’ve come through.
We’d better keep to this wall for a while, and you go on feeling for the other.”
“All right… but there’s nothing yet… it’s still open…”
“This side’s still curving around. Wait, here’s another turning. We’re still in the maze, then. There was only one opening on the outside.”
“Yes.., unless we’ve come full circle, and that’s the same opening we came through just now.”
Corson cursed. “It can’t be! We’ve not come far enough. Have we?”
“I don’t think so. But I can’t judge in this darkness. I’m going to try to cross this space-if we’re outside the maze, we should be almost opposite the door to the stairway.”
“And the door to that other room,” Corson reminded her. “Don’t go far. The door’s only a few feet away, if it’s there. Make some noise so I know where you are.” She released Nyctasia’s hand with misgiving.
Nyctasia stepped away hesitantly, her arms outstretched, reaching into emptiness. “Stars are wheeling in the night,” she sang, without thinking, “birds are circling in their flight, winter turning into spring, children dancing in a-” There was a long pause.
“Nyc? Are you still there?” Corson called anxiously.
“Oh, yes, we’re still here, both of us. I’ve come across farther than the width of that corridor outside the maze, and I haven’t found the wall. This must be an inner chamber, probably the heart of the maze. I can hear them from here, Corson. They’ve begun.”
“The chanting? I wondered when you’d notice. Come back here-follow my voice. We have to keep following this wall, it’s the only way. We must be halfway through, that’s something.”
“There’s no time for that. Suppose the maze doubles back on itself? I’m going to try to create a spell-flame to light the way, There’s power enough here to draw upon.”
“If you can conjure up a light, why didn’t you do it before, in the Hlann’s name?”
“Because it’s dangerous to tamper with an unknown Influence! But we’ve nothing to lose now. If we don’t get out in time to stop them, it won’t matter if we get out at all. Now be still.”
Corson heard her scratching at the floor, and thought she heard her spit. Beyond the maze, the chanting had risen to a wailing song. Corson could not understand the words, but she knew well enough what they meant.
“Air is the element nearest to fire,” said Nyctasia, after a long pause, and she breathed warmly into her cupped hands.
Slowly, the glow crept to the edges of the high, round room, and Corson could see that there were several entrance-ways to the place, evenly spaced around the circle. She pulled the ornament from her hair and left it to mark the place where she stood, then took a torch from the wall and hurried to Nyctasia.
She was kneeling in the center of the room, gazing into her burning hands, Corson soon found that those pale, flickering flames gave off no heat, but when she touched the torch to them, the pitch flared up at once in a reassuring blue and gold blaze. By its light, Corson saw that Nyctasia knelt on a wide circle of mosaic-work, surrounding the image of a huge, hideous spider made up of thousands of tiny chips of black tile. Nyctasia seemed almost to be riding on the back of the loathsome creature. Her face, lit from below by that eerie bowl of flames, looked unfamiliar and inhuman. Corson remembered how Nyctasia had seemed a different person when they’d traveled through the haunted Yth Forest-a dangerously different person, and perhaps not a person at all… Corson wanted to seize her and shake her from her spell, but she dared not touch that still, rapt figure, illumined by witch-fire.
“Nyc, get up from there! We’ve no time to waste, hurry!”
Nyctasia looked down at the decorated floor, then slowly raised her head. “The poisonous stone at the core
of the sweet peach,” she said. “The murderous spider at the center of the gossamer web. The forbidden spell hidden among the volumes of precious wisdom. And the bloodlust buried in the hearts of the peaceful. We are meant to remember it, but not to surrender to it. The Cymvelans have forgotten their own lessons.”
“If you’ve quite finished your recitation, we could go stop the Cymvelans and their rutting spell. Do you want to get out of here or don’t you? Make up your mind fast, because I’m leaving.”
Nyctasia shook herself, and stood. “And douse that cursed spell-fire,” Corson snapped, lighting another torch and thrusting it at her.
Reluctantly, Nyctasia pressed her hands together, quenching the livid flames.
She took the torch and looked around in confusion. “But you’ve left the wall!
Which door did we come through?”
Corson located her hair clasp. “This one. No, wait, we came through that one and walked to this one. Let’s go on. Now that we’ve light, we can find which of these lead to blind ends in half the time.”
Nyctasia ran to the door opposite the one Corson had pointed out. “This way. The maze must be symmetrical-the rest should be a mirror image of the first half, the same pattern in reverse.”
“That sounds like the Cymvelans’ tidy way,” Corson agreed, “And this is as good a starting place as any. It will save us a lot of trouble if you’re right.”
“Nothing will save us if I’m wrong,” said Nyctasia. “Don’t you hear? They’ve stopped. They’ve completed the invocation.” She disappeared into the waiting tunnel, with Corson close behind her.
The door to the underground temple stood open, and the ceremony within was well-lit by flaming brands and candles. Corson and Nyctasia abandoned their torches and grasped their weapons instead.
No one seemed aware of their presence. The celebrants, draped in skins and masked in the heads of animals, stood facing the altar, where one old man, who wore no mask, was speaking. He alone might have heeded their approach, but his eyes were fixed on some point in the air beyond them, where nothing was to be seen. His manner was commanding, and he intoned his words in a language like none Corson had ever heard in all her travels.
But Nyctasia, hearing him, gasped and suddenly screamed out, “Now, now!” and Corson let fly her knife.
“Run for help-I’ll hold them off,” she ordered.
“You can’t-”
“Go!” Corson pushed her toward the other door and turned to meet the first of the horned, furred creatures that rushed from the temple, howling in fury and brandishing clubs of oak.
Nyctasia raced up the stairs to the bell-tower, leaving Corson to certain death below. The Cymvelans were not many, but they were surely more than one fighter could hope to overcome. Yet she knew that Corson had been right to sacrifice her life to give her this chance to flee. If neither of them escaped to give warning, many more lives would be lost. Even now, Nyctasia was not sure she could summon help in time to prevent the Cymvelans from finishing what they’d started.
Then at the top of the stairs, she saw at once what had to be done. Instead of running away from the tower, she dashed through the inner door and threw herself upon the bell-rope, pulling it down with the full weight of her body.
The rope held, but the great bell barely moved at first. Somewhere, she sensed, something was taking shape, drawing power into itself, becoming more potent with each instant that passed. Desperately, she dragged down the rope, again and again, with a strength she had not dreamed she possessed.
When the bell spoke at last, it seemed to take on a life of its own, and its powerful voice sounded out over the countryside, so loudly that Nyctasia thought she would be deafened. Its motion grew wild and violent, like the thrashing of a caged bird, frantic to break free, and Nyctasia was pitched to and fro in its wake as she clung to the rope, fighting to control the bell’s great weight. She could not steady her feet against the floor, which seemed to shudder beneath her while the walls tilted drunkenly overhead. Not till Corson had seized her around the waist and dragged her from the toppling building did she see that the ground was really buckling underfoot, and the walls shaking. The whole earth seemed caught up in some terrible convulsion.
They flung themselves down the hillside in the darkness, falling, rolling, scrambling to their feet and plunging on, till they landed in a heap among the vines of the lower slope. “Idiot!” shouted Corson. “Didn’t you see the rutting place coming down around you?”
Nyctasia struggled for breath. “But-but-what about you-how-?”
Corson pulled her to her feet. “They were… old, Nyc. Weak. They looked fierce in those masks, but some of them could barely stand. It was easy to scatter them. I felt sick, to tell the truth, cutting down such people. Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know. Probably. I wonder if Jocelys was among them.” She looked back at the fallen tower, where nothing stirred except the settling stones.
But there was much noise and commotion at the foot of the hill, as people came running to answer the call of the bell. As Corson and Nyctasia walked down to meet them, they saw that great bonfires burned in the fields, and that the crowd was dressed in gay finery and vine-leaf wreaths. Singing and shouting, they swarmed up the slopes, waving ribboned torches and leafy branches, carrying flutes and drums and tambourines. It was the first night of the Harvest Festival.
“And I left my new hair-clasp down there, too,” Corson said glumly.
29
it was on the last night of the Harvest Festival that Nyctasia slipped away from the festivities alone, and toiled up the slope of Honeycomb Hill by moonlight.
Overhead, the Reaper’s Eye burned steadily, like a beacon warning ships of treacherous waters. Danger, turn back. Turn back, fool, she thought, but she continued to climb, passing the cave and the rows of sweet, overripe golden grapes left drying on the vines. She did not stop to rest until she saw the ragged pile of stones where the bell-tower had stood. The great iron bell had crashed through the flooring easily, to disappear into the caverns below. The temple seemed to have sunk beneath the earth, and now its painted dancers, the fair and the wild, lay together in the tomb with nothing to choose between them.
Half the hilltop had caved in on itself, crushing the last of the life from the Cymvelan Circle for good and all. There was only a great pit now, like an open wound, to mark the place.
The Edonaris had argued hotly over the possibility of digging into the hillside to search for survivors of the cave-in, some arguing that it was their duty to try, others that the ground was still too unsettled to be safety disturbed.
But Nyctasia had assured them that no survivors were buried under the rubble.
She knew that all were dead, as surely as she knew that she had killed them-that the sound of the bell had finally shivered the weakened supports that upheld the whole hollow structure.
“But how can you be sure?” ’Corin had asked uneasily.
And Nyctasia, more composed and withdrawn than ever, had answered, “I know… that the One they summoned has been satisfied. The sacrifice has been accepted.
I know because it was I who carried out the sacrifice. Let no one set foot on the hill for any reason. Even if the earth has settled, the land is more dangerous now than before, more dangerous than you imagine.” But she had refused to explain further.
The superstitions of the countryside were well founded, Nyctasia thought, as they so often are. The land was unlucky indeed, the place was well and truly cursed, now, and it was for her to cast out the demonic presence that haunted it. The dragon had been wakened, and only she could bridle it.
But that would be a simple matter compared to the task that must be undertaken first. Before she could rid this place of its curse, she would have to cast out the demons of ambition and desire that haunted her own spirit. It was for that struggle that she doubted her own strength.
She had held vigil for days, fasting, solitary, silent, as she searched within herself for
the guidance of the Indwelling Spirit. She had examined with uncompromising clarity the choice that lay before her, and sought the strength to choose aright, though each way she turned seemed to lead to a grave mistake.
But she could not delay any longer. The power that had been bound by the ancient spell, and guarded by the Cymvelan Circle, had now been invoked, and it had been waiting a very long time to be free. Corson is right, Nyctasia reflected with a rueful smile, I think too much. There’s no time for that. Sometimes it’s action that’s wanted.
She could sense the newly roused, restless power of the place all about her, like an unseen radiance, in the earth, in the air, in the very stones at her feet-and within herself. It was easy, all too easy for safety’s sake, to draw upon that power and use it to work her will. She felt as if she were again in the enchanted Yth Forest, whose untamed, predatory power had all but ensnared her once. The feeling was not in the least frightening. It was inviting, enticing, elating. It offered everything and demanded nothing, and though Nyctasia knew that it lied, she listened.
Without further thought, she reached out in spirit to summon the enemy, using its own power to compel it to come forth.
There was only a subtle shifting of shadows to show that it had obeyed, and a heightened sense that something was demanded of her. But Nyctasia had expected nothing more. This was a being that could not be imaged by the eyes of the spirit, and far less could it be seen by the eyes of the body. But its claim upon her was strong and undeniable. A bargain had been struck. A price had been paid, and paid in blood. But not until the service thus won had been received would that bargain be fulfilled, and the spell broken that had held this Power captive for so long.
It is an exile, as I am, thought Nyctasia, and probably less to blame for its plight than I for mine. It is fitting that I set it free. For she knew that this was not truly an entity of evil. It wanted, as she did, to return to where it belonged, and only the service it owed to her stood between it and its desire.
Had the Cymvelans succeeded in using its power to avenge themselves upon the Valleylanders, it would have carried out their commands as surely as it would carry out hers now. It had no ties to humanity, and made no distinctions among mortal beings. Certainly it did not care whether they lived or died.
