by Layton Green
“And if you’re wrong?” she said.
He didn’t bother answering.
When they came to the seventh intersection after the last longer passage, he careened down the corridor to the right. Another extended passage with no traps.
Marguerite hugged him and took him by the hand. “We ’ave the pattern! You’re going to make it, Will.”
The intersections came more quickly, one after the other. At the eleventh intersection after the seventh they took another right turn that led to the longest passage so far. At the end of the corridor, they encountered not another intersection, but a silver door.
Will turned and saw the two oozes twenty feet behind them, approaching rapidly. He grasped the handle. “This has to open,” he said, at the same time he remembered the inscription.
A terrifying thought hit him. What if there was a minotaur inside? There was no way they could handle such a beast, even if Will wasn’t about to collapse.
Marguerite checked the door for traps, then pulled on the handle. Will heard a click and the door swung inward. He hesitated again, glancing back at the oozes. Ten feet and closing.
The door started to swing shut on its own, and they hurried inside. Will hated to let the door close, since they might not be able to get it open, but they had no choice. True to his fears, the silver door shut behind them and possessed no visible handle.
Will leaned against the door, breathing hard, so dizzy the room was spinning. Marguerite whispered words of encouragement. When his vision cleared, he ran his hands over the seamless door in frustration. No builder was that good.
He half-expected the oozes to magically slide through the door, but nothing happened, and they turned to view the room.
The chamber was circular. About twenty feet high and fifty feet in diameter. An enormous statue of a minotaur filled the center of the room, the curved horns almost touching the ceiling. A wide marble pedestal, four feet off the floor, supported the statue. Two silver steps ascended the base of the platform.
There were five other doors in the room. Another silver door on the opposite side of the room, two midnight blue doors, and two brown doors. One door of each color had a handle, and above each of those doors was a familiar inscription.
Outwit if you can the monsters three, and the Minotaur’s secret you shall see.
Will placed a tentative foot on one of the silver steps leading to the platform, half expecting the creature to spring to life. Nothing happened. He took another step and ran his hands over the stone, so intricate and lifelike it looked frozen in time by a gorgon. Maybe it had been.
Will hopped back down. He tried the door with the silver handle. To his surprise, it opened to reveal a long corridor. He tried the other two doors with a handle and found the same thing.
He stood and scratched at his stubble. The adrenaline from the escape was fading, the poison taking hold. He eased down on one of the steps.
Marguerite came over and put a hand to his forehead. He saw her look away; he knew he burned to the touch. “Stay with me,” she whispered.
“Back in the maze,” Will said, gasping for breath as he spoke, “I wondered why there were only two oozes, instead of three. At first I thought we just hadn’t seen the third, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think there are three pairs of monsters, matching the Zelomancy board. And I also think,” he said grimly, turning to face the silver steps and noting the absence of the blue or brown ones, “we’re supposed to outwit them all.”
She ran her thumb along the hilt of her dagger. “You think the others . . . Caleb . . . .” her eyes went to the floor.
“I think they’re in here somewhere, and haven’t figured out the maze.”
He supposed someone might have unlocked the maze and gone back inside to find himself and Marguerite, but only the silver steps were exposed, and he knew that meant something.
“We ’ave to go back for them. But let me go alone, Will. You’re too injured.”
In response, Will struggled to his feet and strode towards the blue door, sword in hand. His brothers didn’t know the pattern, and Allira might need help. Anything could happen. The maze might be different.
They needed his help.
-44-
The midnight blue door swung shut on unseen hinges behind Will and Marguerite. Will had tried to prop it open and failed, and there was no handle on the other side.
Another dizzy spell forced him to kneel with his hand against the door. The numbness had spread to his chest.
Marguerite helped him stand. “Please wait for me,” she begged. “The poison works faster if you run about. I’ll open the door from the other side, once I find the others.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said, though his voice came out hoarse. He reached deep, finding reserves of strength he hadn’t known he possessed, and started walking without her. She caught up and took him by the arm as they hurried down the tunnel.
The passage was the longest one yet, ending at a dead end. Will pushed on a blue block in the center of the wall, and a hidden door swung open. Again, it closed after they stepped through.
He looked around and knew at once where he was. A square stone chamber with a midnight blue ceiling, a single open passage leading into the maze, and the same inscription carved above the passage. Just like the room they had first landed in, except for the color of the ceiling.
The beginning of the blue section.
“Let’s go,” Will said. “They could be anywhere.”
He feared whoever had dropped through the blue chute might be lost somewhere deep in the dungeon, perhaps beyond where he and Marguerite had ventured.
He needn’t have worried. As they approached the intersection leading to the second longer passage, Will heard shouting and Lance’s war cry. Will gritted his teeth against the pain and hurried forward.
They turned right, into the longer passage, and stepped into madness. Two giant worm-like creatures filled the corridor, one twenty feet ahead of Will, the other one further down the tunnel. Lance, Hashi, and Mala were trapped between the two monsters.
Will arrived just in time to see Mala perform some ridiculous acrobatic leap, pole vaulting onto the back of the creature at the other end of the tunnel and stabbing it with both blades.
When the creature in front of Will moved from the floor to the side wall, scuttling along the vertical surface as if it were level ground, Will noticed Caleb crouching alone in the passage, ten feet from the giant circular maw. Will wondered why Caleb didn’t turn and run, then saw him backing away as he parried a green projectile with his bracers.
The sight of his brother in peril produced a burst of adrenaline that shook Will from head to toe. He roared and sprinted forward. The worm flipped its body impossibly fast, dropping back down onto the floor to face Will, spitting two gobs of goo in the process. One flew beside him, and he ducked the other. Marguerite screamed behind him, but he couldn’t turn to look.
The thing was fast, but Will had caught it from behind and already started his swing. He met the creature as it landed, swinging his blade with both hands and utilizing the posture Mala had taught him, snapping his wrists at the end like he was hitting a baseball. The sword cleaved right through the worm’s maw. A flood of green ichor spilled onto the floor.
The wyrm reared and flailed its legs, and Will kept swinging, cutting through tentacles, legs, and sinewy flesh. He whipped his wrists back and forth, shortening his backswing, slicing through the monstrous creature. All his fear and horror from being trapped in the web spilled forth, all his rage at the foul thing that dared to attack his brother, all his pent-up emotion from years of panic attacks and helplessness.
Lance and Hashi joined the attack from the rear. The creature went berserk, thrashing and wriggling and trying to lunge at Will, but the narrow corridor restricted its movements and it couldn’t escape the blows. Will and the others chopped at the mammoth worm until it quivered and sank onto the stones, its guts and green ichor pumping out.<
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Mala rushed over to help ensure the job was done. Will noticed the other creature twitching on the floor, further down the passage. He stumbled forward as the adrenaline faded, the weakness from the poison returning like a semi truck careening down a mountain with no brakes. Caleb caught him as he fell, though his shocked eyes looked past Will, and then back to his brother.
A wave of dizziness and nausea overcame Will as he slumped into Caleb’s arms. He whispered the secret of the maze, but his voice gave out as he tried to ask about Val. The only thing Will managed to do before the poison overcame him was to turn and see Marguerite writhing in agony on the floor.
Val heard the titan crab approaching in the passage around the corner. Allira had her back against the dead-end wall, one hand holding a boomerang, one stuck inside a pouch. Her body stance was rigid, lips compressed.
Val reached inside himself, focused every ounce of mental energy he possessed on calling forth the magic. He didn’t even know what he was searching for—he just knew he needed something.
Something to help them escape this nightmarish maze, something that would let him find and protect his brothers.
Everyone liked to think Val had never failed at anything, but he had failed two of the most important people in his life—his mother and his father. He had been unable to keep his mother out of an institution after his father’s death, an obvious failure, and he considered Dad’s death partially his own fault. Whatever risk Dad had taken on that cliff, Val reasoned that if he had loved his family, loved Val, just a little bit more, then he wouldn’t have put himself in such peril. He knew it was unreasonable, but he also couldn’t stop believing it. After those terrible events, Val had vowed never to fail his family again.
Never to fail his brothers.
More heavy footsteps in the passage, drawing closer. Yards away. Val stared at the azantite so hard he felt a blood vessel burst in his eye. He ignored the throbbing pain and pushed even harder, stilling all thought and emotion, driving his mind downward, reaching for that wellspring of power
Nothing.
He quivered with frustration.
Focusing the will requires extreme concentration, Alexander had said, but magic also requires release. The balance between the two is the hardest lesson to learn.
Alexander’s words rang in Val’s head. Focus and release, focus and release. What did he mean? Focus Val was good at. Release, not so much.
Allow your mind to move inward . . . Focus, Forget, Find, and Control.
One of the titan crab’s legs stepped around the corner, the bark-like limb as solid as an oak stump. The entire creature came into view, a tower of destruction, heaving as it observed Val and Allira trapped at the end of the passage.
Allira brought her hand out of the pouch, holding her palm out as if to toss the powder again. The titan crab bellowed and stomped, shaking the floor beneath Val’s feet. It lowered its head and took a step forward, its pincers snapping in the air. Val remembered how easily it had ripped the arms off of Alexander’s body.
For the first time since they entered the keep, for the first time in Val’s life since his father had died, he lost all hope. He slumped against the stone as a memory of Will and Caleb, laughing with abandon at Caleb’s bar, overcame him.
Furious at his weakness, he pushed off the wall.
Release, Val. Not just focus, but release. Whatever this magic is, a power of the mind or the universe or some unknown creator being, you have to embrace it, you have to trust in something other than your own willpower.
Move your mind inward. Find it and control it.
Still nothing. The titan crab roared and stalked forward. A final image of his brothers flashed in Val’s mind, and this time they were facing the titan crab without him. Two pincers gored Will just as Alexander had been gored. The other two pincers grabbed Caleb by the arms, lifting him into the air. The thought of his brothers at the mercy of the titan crab made Val physically ill. He bowed his head as his mind fell into a vortex of failure.
Allira squeezed his hand. Her grip felt faraway. The titan crab was halfway down the passage, a freight train stomping towards them. In some dim corner of his mind, Val felt something spark. He realized his failure, hitting rock bottom, had given him a measure of release, just not in the way he had planned. He brought himself back just enough to concentrate. Focus, then release. Balance the two.
He did it again, one after the other, trying to merge his will with his subconscious.
Focus.
Release.
Together now, he thought. Focus, release, merge, and control.
He had gone deep inside his own mind. His conscious self heard the titan crab pounding towards them. If it reached them, he and Allira were dead, and Val could never help his brothers again.
Focusrelease. He felt something snap deep inside, a feeling as if his brain had just unlocked, giving him access to a wellspring of power deep beyond his wildest dreams.
Focusrelease focusrelease focusrelease
He dove headlong into that wellspring, trying to maintain his concentration at the same time he abandoned his conscious self, absorbing the realm of power, letting it flow through him.
Allira clutched his arm. The titan crab raised its pincers.
Focusreleasefocusreleasefocusreleasefocusreleasefocusreleasefocusreleasefocusreleasefocusreleasefocusrelease
A sunburst of magic exploded out of Val, a wave of pure force that drove the titan crab through the wall at the end of the twenty-foot passage. At the same time, Val felt as if he were floating above the maze, looking down on the dungeon. He saw the entire labyrinth outlined in phosphorescent blue, all of the traps and hidden doors in crimson, the other members of the party dots of green fighting two worm-like creatures. In an instant, he saw the borders of the maze, the layers of rock above and below, the chasm falling away on one side, the stone Minotaur in the middle.
And he saw the pattern.
It ended as quickly as it had come. He reached for the magic again, but it was gone, his mind as dry as tumbleweed. He didn’t know whether he had lost it or whether he had expended his power. He didn’t know anything except that it was gone, his brothers were in peril, and he knew how to escape the maze.
Allira was staring at him in shock. He pulled her down the passage. “Hurry,” he said. “I saw the exit.”
She followed him as he raced down the corridor. The titan crab struggled to its feet amid a pile of rubble. It saw them turn the corner and then it dove into the floor, ripping out a new tunnel.
Val led her to the fifth intersection, then raced to the right. Just as his mind had revealed, a longer passage appeared and they encountered no traps. They sprinted down the extended corridor, ignoring all of the intersections until they reached the seventh. Again he turned to the right, his heart soaring when a longer passage appeared. At the next intersection the titan crab burst out of the floor, ten feet ahead of them.
Allira blew her blue powder through the torch and into its face, but the titan crab looked away and swiped at her with a pincer. She ducked and rolled, narrowly missing being eviscerated. Val took a wild swing at the creature with his staff, grazing its side. The azantite sliced through the hardened shell, but the monster came at Val and snatched the staff in one of its pincers. Val would have been ripped to shreds had Allira not thrown a boomerang at the titan crab’s face, catching it just above the eye.
It surprised the monster enough to make it release the staff, and Val and Allira slipped by, sprinting down the passage to the right. They heard the titan crab bounding behind them, and they heard a telltale explosion of rock, followed by silence. They could see the eleventh and final intersection just ahead. They reached it just as the titan crab burst out of the floor, steps behind them. Val ran with everything he had. As they pushed through a brown door at the end of the passage, he felt the vibration on the stone floor as the creature pounded at their heels.
They entered the Minotaur room and the door swung shut,
inches from the snapping pincers of the titan crab.
-45-
Lying on the floor of the Minotaur room, Will blinked to consciousness just as Val and Allira stumbled through the brown door. One of Val’s eyes was bloodshot. With a soft click, two brown steps rose out of the floor next to the pedestal, joining the blue and silver steps already in place.
Through a fog of pain, Will watched everyone react. Lance and Hashi stalked the room with weapons drawn, heads swiveling for signs of anything coming through the doorways. Allira looked torn between Will and a feverish and shaking Marguerite, and even Mala looked uncertain who to point her towards. Caleb, kneeling between the two, rose to embrace Val, whose face contorted with worry when he saw Will.
Mala grabbed Val by the arm. “Alexander?”
Val’s lips compressed, and he swung his head from side to side. Mala blanched and let him go. Sadness pierced Will like a dagger thrust, followed by questions.
What had killed the geomancer? How had Val and Allira escaped?
After a contraction of pain in his chest, Will blinked and saw a disc-shaped portion in the middle of the stone ceiling spreading apart. Once the hole had fully opened, the minotaur statue, pedestal and all, rose off the floor.
“Everyone to the pedestal!” Mala shouted.
Lance and Hashi eased Will and Marguerite up the stairs and onto the platform. The rest of the party jumped on, clinging to the minotaur. They rose through the roof and found themselves in a vertical shaft extending into blackness.
Allira tended to Will and Marguerite as the pedestal rose higher and higher. She ran her hands over Will’s body, inspected the reddened point of entry, laid her hands on his forehead. She had him chew on a root and gave him a vial of powder mixed with water from her canteen. She did the same with Marguerite, but after tending to the injured rogue, Allira give Mala an almost imperceptible shake of her head.
