by Layton Green
“Who knows how to play?” Val asked. “Mala?”
“I know the rules,” she said. “Not much more.”
“I’m not an adept by any means,” Alexander said, “but I play.”
“Let me guess,” Caleb said. “Leonidus was an adept.”
“He was a Level Four Adept, a Maven, the highest mark attainable.”
“Lovely,” Val said.
Will eyed the tricolor board. “What are the basic rules?”
“After the first five rounds of one move apiece,” Alexander said, “each side gets two moves per turn. Each with a separate piece. Knights move one space at a time, any color, any direction. Mounted knights travel two spaces in a line, any color, any direction. Giants can move vertically or horizontally across the board, on any color, as long as they’re unimpeded. Dragons move the same as giants but on a diagonal, and kethropi can travel up to three spaces on any two colors, with the added ability to swim through one occupied square per turn. Majitsu can move five spaces per turn in any direction—including zig-zagging—on any two colors. Wizards can move three spaces any way they wish.”
“Fascinating,” Will said, already running through the rules in his mind.
“After that it’s quite simple,” Alexander said. “If one piece lands on another, it takes it off the board. The goal, of course, is to claim the opposing side’s wizard.”
Mala strode to the green wizard and tried to move it. It wouldn’t budge. Lance and Hashi joined her, but failed to move the piece even a fraction.
One by one, they tried to move each of the pieces, but none of them was mobile. Will assumed they had been affixed to the floor or magically altered.
Marguerite slumped against one of the dragons. “How do we play if we can’t move the pieces?”
Val stood in the center, surveying the life-size board like a war general. “Alexander, how do you take the wizard?”
Alexander wagged a finger. “Yes, of course. Unlike the others, one piece alone cannot capture a mage. Two opposing pieces must attack the wizard on the same turn. If the game proceeds to where this is an impossibility, a draw is declared.”
“Just as in reality,” Mala said. “Best to strike a wizard from multiple sides, where he is not focused on defending.”
Val’s hand moved to cup his chin. “Maybe’s the game’s already set up like Leonidus wants it, and we’re supposed to finish. Think about what’s missing on the board.”
Standing by the emerald wizard, Will examined the board again. This time he saw the two empty squares in front of the colossi-like ruby figures from a new perspective. Each unoccupied space was on a square diagonal to the statue of Leonidus. Will figured out what Val was saying at the same time Alexander snapped his fingers.
“If we could move two of the green pieces into the empty squares,” the geomancer said, “we could win the game.”
“He means for us to slay the wizard,” Mala said slowly, as she turned to face the statue of Leonidus. “The purpose of the items hidden in the keep.”
“Maybe we don’t need to move the missing pieces,” Val said, walking over to stand on one of the spaces missing a mounted red knight. Mala followed his lead, walking towards the other empty square diagonal to the red wizard. As soon as her foot touched down, the floor dropped out beneath Will. He went into free fall, then found himself sliding down a steep chute, faster and faster and faster.
-39-
Will slid for long seconds, went into free-fall again, heard a steel clamping sound, then landed hard on his back on a stone floor.
After regaining his wind, he pushed to his feet. Somehow he had managed to keep a grip on his torch, and the flickering light illuminated a ten-foot high stone ceiling, painted silver. No sign of a chute or any other opening. The sound he heard must have been a trap door snapping back into place.
Movement to his left. He scrambled for his sword and whipped his torch around. It was just Marguerite easing to her feet, checking to see if anything was broken.
Will shuddered with relief. “You okay?”
“I’m fine, though I wasn’t expecting that bit. Could use a little ’elp with me torch.”
Will walked over and relit her torch. They had landed in a square stone chamber, the only visible exit an open passageway in the center of the wall across from where Will had landed. Above the passage an inscription had been carved in stone.
Outwit if you can the monsters three, and the Minotaur’s secret you shall see.
Will’s eyes slid from the inscription to the ceiling, lingering to see if more of their party would come sliding into the room. When no one else came, he exchanged a nervous glance with Marguerite.
“Why us?” Marguerite asked.
“Do you remember what color tile you were standing on?”
She looked at the ceiling. “Silver, I think.”
“Me, too. Either it was just the silver tiles which opened, or everyone standing on the same color fell to the same place.”
Will grimaced. No Mala, no Alexander, no Allira, no Lance. He was ecstatic not to be alone, but he and Marguerite weren’t exactly the Dream Team.
After a silent prayer for his brothers, he inspected the walls and floor. They felt as solid as the rest of the keep. Whoever built this place was no joke.
“How far do you think we fell?” Marguerite asked.
“A couple hundred feet, at least.”
She took a deep breath. “Then I’m s’posin’ we’re in the dungeon.”
He swallowed. “Looks that way.” He pointed his sword at the single passage leading out of the room. “I don’t guess we have much of a choice.”
Marguerite drew her dagger. “I don’t fancy waiting around to see what wonders in here.”
The opening in the wall led to a narrow corridor that disappeared into the gloom. Granite blocks comprised the floors, walls, and ceiling.
The low ceiling and narrow walls felt terribly claustrophobic to Will, the darkened corridors ominous and secret. A dungeon adventure that was all too real. Marguerite sheathed her dagger and crept along in the lead, probing each stone block with her foot, eyeing the walls in front of her for traps.
After a few hundred feet they came to an intersection. When they shone the torches down each passage, they saw only identical corridors.
“Carry on,” Marguerite said, “or aim for one of the side routes?”
“Let’s keep to the left for now.”
Will was aware that the traditional way to defeat a maze was to pick a direction, and choose that direction every time a route choice presented. However, every dungeon master and maze creator alive knew that as well, and took steps to ensure the solution was not that easy. There might be hidden passages leading to the exit that, if missed, would ensure the traveler stayed on an endless loop. Or the designer might have made the maze so enormous and complicated that if you did not figure out the correct route quickly enough, you would wander around forever while whatever monsters inhabited the maze tracked you down at their leisure.
After a few minutes, the passage dead-ended. Both of them kept a constant vigil for a secret opening or a trap door, but the corridors were maddeningly uniform. They returned to the crossroads and tried the other passage, with similar results.
Marguerite turned towards Will, her eyes anxious behind the torchlight. “I fear we’re in a labyrinth.”
“Technically it’s a maze, not a labyrinth. A labyrinth has only a single path that will eventually lead to the center, with no dead ends or branches, though it may be long and arduous. It’s a symbol of the difficult journey to spiritual enlightenment.”
Marguerite looked at him blankly. “What’s a maze, then?”
“Mazes have multiple paths and branches, and can be as confusing or as dangerous as the designer wants. They’re devised as mental or physical tests, sometimes both.”
“And what do mazes symbolize?” she asked.
“Trouble.”
They returned to the inter
section and continued on the original path. Surprisingly, the air did not smell stale. Will took that as a sign that, unlike in the keep above, fresh air was circulating.
After a few hundred feet, something on the floor glinted in the torchlight. Marguerite approached carefully, Will hovering behind her. When they drew closer, he realized it was an old shield. A few feet later they found a sword, a belt buckle, the head to a war hammer, and finally an empty quiver and a scattering of bronze arrow tips. Marguerite toed them with her boot.
“Weird,” Will said.
“Aye.”
“I don’t know why they were left behind, but I’m gonna assume these belonged to one of the missing parties.”
“Aye.”
They came to another intersection. This time they ignored it, continuing down the original passage until it ended at a door. Marguerite gently tried the iron handle.
“Locked,” she said.
“That’s probably a good sign, if you can pick it.”
“If it opens, I can pick it.”
Marguerite extracted a set of thieving tools, shortened iron filings with a variety of hooked ends. Soon after she started, Will heard a soft snip, and a concealed slit in the handle popped open. Marguerite extracted a barbed dart and a metal spring.
She gave a satisfied grin and set the dart on the ground. “Disarmed, unlocked, and at your service, milord.”
Will stepped forward, gripping his sword so hard his knuckles turned white. All sorts of visions as to what lay on the other side of the door ran through his mind, monsters and treasure and streams of molten lava, a hidden grotto leading to a temple of elemental evil.
He eased the door open as softly as he could. No resistance. He pushed harder and stepped inside, sword at the ready.
His foot never touched the floor, and he plummeted straight into darkness.
Marguerite caught him by the shirt as he fell, but his body was already below the ledge, his feet dangling over a chasm and his shirt quickly slipping out of her grasp. He twisted and tossed his sword onto the ledge, jerking Marguerite forward.
“Grab my wrist!” she yelled.
He reached for her wrist and missed, pulling her closer to the edge. She was on her stomach, holding him tight with both hands. He could feel his jerkin pulling away. He threw his hand up again, knowing that if he missed, he would slip into the abyss.
They connected, and Will squeezed her wrist so hard she gasped. He forgot how strong his grip could be, loosened it, and grabbed the ledge with his other hand.
She helped him climb up. He looked down at the empty chasm yawning below him as Marguerite dropped the barbed dart into the gulf. Neither of them heard it hit.
Will couldn’t stop staring downward. “I’d still be falling if you hadn’t caught me.”
She brushed a hand across her brow, flicking away the sweat. “That door was . . . devious.”
No more lapses of concentration, he told himself with a shudder. Not for a single solitary second.
They walked as fast as they could back to the previous intersection. Will’s knees felt weak from his brush with death. This time they chose the left corridor, which branched on multiple occasions, each variance ending in a dead end. They returned and walked down the only passage they had yet to try, the second one on the right after the entrance. The passage lasted a good bit longer before it branched. Will took that as a good sign.
This time they opted for the passage to the right. It branched multiple times, so they went back and tried the passage to the left, but it also presented multiple options. They went back and proceed down the longer original path, soon arriving at another branching intersection, and then a dead end.
Will stopped and ran a hand through his hair, gripping the back of his head. “We’ve got to figure out a better way to do this. We could wander down here forever.”
“Such as?”
“There’s got to be a logical solution to this maze. Leonidus is too crafty for random patterns.”
“Should we try and mark which way we’ve been?” Marguerite said. “I ’ave some chalk.”
“Not necessary yet. I’ve got it in my head.”
She stared at him.
“Yeah, I’m sort of weird like that.” He started walking again. “C’mon, we need to keep walking. Just keep your eyes open for a pattern. The way this maze is constructed at right angles makes me think it’s mathematical, and I’m guessing the second passage on the right was the first correct choice. At first I thought maybe Leonidus used the Fibonacci sequence, but the next passage on the right was a dead end, and anyway, everyone uses Fibonacci numbers. It’s way overdone.”
Marguerite’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “The what?”
“It’s a mathematical sequence involving adding up the previous two numbers to obtain the third. It’s connected to the golden ratio, and the pattern is found all over nature. Shells, plants, seeds, you name it.”
“You’re very different from your brothers,” she said.
“I get that a lot.”
They decided to skip the next intersection, as Will wanted to see how far the present passage would take them. They passed another string of abandoned weapons and miscellaneous items, all connected to dungeon exploration.
The discarded items unnerved them both. They had to be the remains of the last party. If so, what had happened and why was the equipment lying so randomly around the dungeon?
Will was walking close to Marguerite. Without warning, she stopped in the middle of the passage and held Will back with her arms. She crouched and pointed at a translucent filament running knee-high across the passage.
Will didn’t even want to think about what would have happened to him down here without Marguerite. She took out a miniature pair of wire cutters and snipped the filament. It fell to the floor.
She said, “These usually work on forward pressure trigger.”
They passed two more of the filaments and three more intersections before coming to another dead end. “I guess we work our way back through the intersections,” Will muttered. He was starting to grow despondent, and was desperate with worry for his brothers. He could only hope Val and Caleb were still in the Zelomancy room and not lost in this dungeon.
They explored the first three intersections, all of which led to increasingly convoluted portions of the maze. After a series of dead-ends, Marguerite stopped and threw her hands up.
“There’s one more passage we haven’t tried,” Will said, “though I’m about at the limit of my ability to remember this maze. Follow me.”
They walked a few hundred feet back to the intersection Will had remembered. Before they could choose a direction, Will heard a loud sucking sound, and then a noise somewhere between a slither and a shuffle, as if something heavy were being pushed across the floor.
Palms sweaty, Will clenched his fists. They couldn’t tell from which direction the noise was coming, and made the hard decision to hold their ground at the four-way intersection, to preserve their exit options. They didn’t want to run right into something nasty. Maybe it would just go away.
The noises continued. Will’s limbs felt watery and his breath short, a fish gasping out of water.
As the familiar panic surged through him, he let his mind flee elsewhere. To the fight at the Minotaur’s Den when he had been stabbed, to the brutal battle in the alleyway, to the thicket of trees where he had watched as blood and gore exploded outward from Akocha’s chest. When his heat beat faster, out of sheer desperation Will went someplace he had been avoiding at all cost: to the web in the swamp, waiting for the spider people to slice open his silken coffin and devour him. He let those ghastly memories flood his mind, the claustrophobia and terror, reliving the sight of the creatures eating the other victim alive.
Instead of further debilitating him, he felt strangely empowered by the rush of fear and revulsion he had felt, hardened by dark remembrances. He didn’t know what it meant for the state of his soul, but he knew he couldn’t
possibly feel more despair than he had felt inside that web.
He was still terrified, lost with Marguerite in a dungeon maze as they waited on God-knew-what to come for them. But as Lance had said, the fear would always be there, unless he became something other than human.
“Which way?” he growled, to conceal his cauldron of emotions.
“I think it’s coming from over there,” Marguerite said, her voice low and taut. She pointed in the direction from which they had just come, then gripped his arm and took a step back as the thing shuffling down the corridor came into view. “Dungeon ooze!” she yelled, spinning him around. “Run!”
She raced down the passage to the right, and he fled with her, his sword clutched in his hand as his mind tried to process the giant cube of green slime he had seen gliding rapidly down the dungeon corridor.
-40-
When the floor fell out beneath him, Val didn’t even have time for a desperate grab at the ruby knight. He clutched his staff and pitched straight down, hit some type of chute, careened downward, and landed in a heap. His torch fell on top of him, and he had to pat down a few flames.
His right arm ached from the fall, but he shook it off and pushed to his feet. Before he had a chance to call out, orange-red light flared into the room and he saw Alexander standing in one corner, Allira in another.
“What just happened?” Val said.
After drifting up to probe the ceiling, Alexander settled to his feet to inspect the square stone chamber. Val had already noticed two things of interest: the brown ceiling, and the opening in the far wall leading to a narrow passageway.
“The dungeon, I presume,” Alexander said.
Val looked up and saw no evidence of the trapdoor through which he had just fallen. His stomach tightened as he wondered if his brothers had suffered the same fate.
Alexander paced the length of the room, tilting his head and pausing in front of the open passage. “Look at this.”
Val walked over and read the carving.
Outwit if you can the monsters three, and the Minotaur’s secret you shall see.
