by James Fahy
Henry looked at his feet a little bashfully. “S’pose,” he muttered. He looked up again, grinning a little. “Plus, I guess one of us in our ragtag group has to be the rakishly handsome one, right?”
Robin patted his friend's shoulder. “Henry,” he said. “With the best will in the world, you look like someone dropped a sack of old potatoes, and right now, you smell like old cabbage.”
“Thanks,” Henry said. “Sorry if I gave the wrong impression.”
Robin shook his head, “Forgotten. I shouldn’t have assumed–”
A dramatic and drawn-out wheezing sigh came from Strife in the darkness ahead. “If you two are going to kiss, I may vomit,” he rasped dryly, boredom dripping from his words. “I cannot bear affection. Are we quite, quite done with the man-hugging and happy families? Only, there is something of the pressing issue of a Shard and a familial betrayal to avenge.”
“We are working through some stuff!” Robin glared at Strife sharply.
The old man returned the boy’s stare with an absolute lack of humour or indulgence, his face a mask of bitterness. “Te odeo,” he muttered under his breath murderously, in his crisp low tones. “Interface te cochleare.”
“I have got quite good, actually,” Henry said, in much lighter tones, as they began to follow their dark guide once more, ignoring his dark mutterings. “With the bow, I mean, and with fighting. I’ve been doing MMA”
“I’m sure you have, Xena,” Robin said. “You're still naff at following orders though. Come on.”
They started off again, turning yet another corner, weaving deeper into the Labyrinth. Something occurring to Robin. “Anyway, you do have your own special talent you bring to the group already, something you’re better at than any one of us.”
“What’s that then?” Henry wanted to know.
“You’re really, really good at getting kidnapped,” the blonde boy teased.
Henry, muttering in the darkness, suggested that Robin go away and do something anatomically impossible, using some very colourful language.
*
“How do we know we’re on the right track?” Robin asked, calling ahead to Mr Strife. It felt that they had been stumbling in the gloom for an eternity. Surely an hour, maybe more, had passed since they first entered the maze, turning endless lefts and rights along the cobwebbed corridors. For all he knew, they could be going in endless circles. The tunnels were designed to look identical, confusing. He was beginning to suspect that they had passed the same clump of moss more than a few times now. He voiced the opinion that maybe Henry was right about always turning left.
“Netherworlde mazes all have one thing in common,” Strife told them. “They have checkpoints. Markers of progress. Traditionally, there will be two of these. Usually where the way is blocked, and this is usually bypassed only by a test.”
“A test?” Henry asked dubiously. “What, like sums?”
“A test of wits,” Strife sneered. “Between you two, that would be two halves.”
“We haven’t seen any checkpoints though,” Robin argued. Strife had stopped dead ahead of them, and as they caught up, they saw they had come to a dead end.
“Until now,” the old man said, his dry voice rich with satisfaction. He raised his flickering purplish mana-light to the stone wall before them. It was carved with lettering.
“What does that say?” Robin asked. “It’s in the high tongue, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Strife agreed, running his fingers over the carved words on the stonework before him. It seemed to be an etched tablet, covered in script. Below it, set into the wall there were three smaller carved squares, each with a rough and primitive design. One looked like a rudimentary tree, a fir, Robin thought. The next was three waving lines atop another, a flowing wave, and the last of the three, a primitive sun. A circle with carved lines radiating.
In the hushed and enclosed darkness, Strife translated aloud. “It is a riddle,” he confirmed. “Always runs, never walks. Often murmurs, never talks. Has a bed, never sleeps. Has a mouth, never eats.”
Robin and Henry exchanged a look. “Hopefully the answer’s not ‘the minotaur’," Henry said. “I don’t like the idea of a massive bull-headed man that runs all the time instead of walking. Imagine it charging towards us down these corridors.”
“Murmurs without talking?” Robin pondered. The image which rose in his mind’s eye was a witch, bent double and muttering incantations into a bubbling cauldron. The three sinister sisters who had spent time at Erlking recently. But that didn’t seem right.
He stared past Mr Strife at the three symbols. Suddenly, the answer was obvious. As clear as day.
“Got it!” he said, reaching past the old man. His fingers touched the carved square which contained the three wavy lines, and he pushed, feeling the cube of stone slide backwards with a grating rumble.
“It’s a river,” Robin declared.
There was a loud, worrying rumble around them, the walls, floor and ceiling of the tunnel shaking, dislodging a cloud of dust. The wall before them slowly sunk into the ground, revealing behind it tight stairs curving away downwards.
“Onward, to the lower levels,” Strife said, matter-of-factly when the noise and movement had subsided. “Further to the centre.” His eyes, black and shining like pools of tar, bore into Robin. “You are lucky, hasty Fae-child, that your guess was correct.”
“Why?” Henry asked, as they followed the narrow steps down, descending even further into the earth and darkness. “What would have happened if we’d guessed wrong?”
“Booby traps most likely,” Strife said. “The tunnels are usually designed to collapse and crush those who fail.”
“Oh,” came the quiet reply in the shadows.
*
The next level of the sprawling Labyrinth was much the same, only the walls here were less weathered, fewer roots penetrated this deeply, and most of the stones were unbroken. It was a long time of walking, turning corner after corner, left and right and left again, before they came at last to a second barrier. It occurred to both Robin and Henry that, were Strife to simply vanish, to extinguish his light and slip off into the darkness, the chances of them ever finding their way out again were extremely slim. There was no going back.
“I still can’t believe we’re ‘allies’ with Strife,” Robin whispered to Henry at one point, stumbling along in the dark after the stalking Grimm.
Henry nodded sympathetically. “I know, mate. I feel like I need to have the hottest shower in the world to stop my skin from crawling too. But the enemy of my enemy is my less enemyish enemy, or whatever the saying is, right?”
“We are not allies,” Strife hissed angrily without turning around, once more reminding them of his supernatural powers of hearing. “Make no mistake. The pitiful human is only alive because he was my offering to you, to ensure your compliance. And you are only here in the form of my tool. I do not ally with the rebellious wretches of Erlking. This leaves as vile a taste in my mouth as it does yours, Robin Fellows, mark my words. If you were not useful to me at the present time, I would be serving you up to my Lady Eris in a series of boxes … extremely small boxes.”
There was a curious smell down on this level, and it was getting stronger with every twist they took and every corner they chose. A bestial, animal smell. Rank damp fur, rotting meat … and something darker.
Robin and Henry both noticed this, and neither of them spoke of it. The minotaur was at the front of both their minds, but it seemed superstitiously perilous to mention it, as though it could be summoned just by thinking of it.
Robin was still holding the Mask of Gaia lightly in his fingers, and as he followed the Grimm, it suddenly occurred to him that he might be able to use it to check that Strife’s true intention was not to lead them to their deaths. Staring at the back of the Grimm, he lifted the mask to his eyes.
*
A flash as the power of the mask rolled through him, and a grainy, silent image rose swiftly before hi
s eyes. But it was one that made no sense to Robin at all. He was in a long room filled with beds either side in rows. They looked sparse and utilitarian, the kind you saw in old hospitals or boarding school in old black and white movies from long ago. A high, arched ceiling rose above him timbered and shadowy, and a long set of tall windows across one wall divided the room into slices of shadow and light.
The air smelled of floor polish and dust, chalk and ink, and before he had a moment to properly take in his surroundings, he noticed that in this quiet, bare place, there was a tremendous atmosphere of sorrow. A deep sadness rolling through him. It was emanating from two hunched figures, who sat together, side by side on one of the slender beds.
They had their backs to him, but he saw they were boys, their legs dangling from the edge of the bed, crisp black school shoes not quite reaching the floor.
One of the boys was crying softly, his back rocking as he buried his head in his hands. The other, sitting close by, had an arm protectively around his shoulders, trying to comfort and quiet him.
“Hush, William,” Robin heard, softly, cajoling. “It will be fine, you’ll see. Chin up, old boy, eh?” It was almost a whisper.
The sobbing boy’s voice was broken when it replied. “We’re never going to leave here, are we?”
Robin made to take a step forward towards them. They couldn’t have been more than nine or ten years old. But as he moved, a great terrible shadow seemed to rush up at him, flooding the room like an ink blot as it roared towards him, obliterating the scene.
*
Robin felt a slap, hard against his face. The mask was knocked loose, falling clattering to the floor of the dark Labyrinth corridor, bouncing off the wall with a noise that echoed up and down its length.
He staggered back, blinking and disoriented. Strife was standing before him, hand still raised and shaking. Robin had never seen such fury in his face.
The Grimm looked manic, eyes bulging, lips drawn back across his skeletal face.
“How dare you!” he hissed angrily. His cold voice shook.
Robin stumbled. “I … I’m sorry, I just …”
Strife gripped the boy roughly by the front of his shirt, almost lifting him off the ground as he shook him angrily.
“If you ever dare … ever … to point that foul thing in my direction again,” he spat, his face inches from Robin’s. “Ever! It will be the very last thing you do. Is that quite understood?” Robin nodded urgently, trying to twist out of the old man’s grip, but Strife, still shaking with indignation and fury, held him in a vice of steel.
“My mind is no place for someone like you!” he growled.
“Who … who’s William?” Robin stuttered.
Strife dropped him as though he had just burned his fingers. Robin fell to the floor, onto the dark dusty stone, Henry rushing to help him up.
“Bloody hell, steady on!” Henry said. “He said he was sorry, didn’t he?”
Strife straightened up, composing himself, but his hard black eyes still filled with fury. “Unless you wish for our distasteful arrangement to come to an end,” he said, razor blades in the darkness. “A very swift and bloody end, you will do well to keep your business out of mine, Robin Fellows.”
Robin nodded, getting to his feet. Not talking his eyes from the old man, whose fists were clenching and unclenching, he picked up the mask and put it carefully away.
He felt horrible, as though he had crossed some impassable line, committed some terrible crime of privacy. He wanted to apologise, even if it was Mr Strife, but staring into the old man’s hard and hate-filled face, he couldn’t find a single word.
“Anger me again, Scion,” Strife said, drawing his cloak around him. “And I shall cut out your heart. Are we perfectly clear?”
“Crystal,” Robin said hoarsely.
“Good.” Strife’s tone was deliberately businesslike. “Because our wanderings are almost at an end.”
He set off again, and they followed. Henry gave Robin a questioning look, but Robin, with a vile taste in his throat, merely shook his head, still smelling floor polish and chalk.
*
“We are soon to part ways,” Strife told them not long after, as they turned yet another left and he stopped before them. “Here is the second marker. The second challenge.”
“If nobody but this dead dryad guy who designed the place knows the way to the centre and back, how come you’ve been able to lead us so well?” Henry asked, the thought suddenly occurring to him.
“Because I am a hunter,” the old man growled, with a menacing pride. “I can track the shadow of an eagle across the moonless moor, human brat. I have been chasing your elusive and troublesome golden-eyed girl for some time before your treasured Fae friend even came to Erlking. I found you in the forest, did I not?” He pointed to Robin. “And him. I have been following the dryad's tracks, and his scent. Both are still fresh from when he retrieved the Shard.”
Robin looked beyond Mr Strife to the wall ahead. For the first time, they had reached a part of the maze which did not, in its crumbling, stone-hewn way, resemble every other part. Before them was a large arch of stone bricks, and filling its centre, solid rock, upon which more words in the high tongue were carved.
Beneath these words, this time there were two carved images. The one on the left, within a circle of carved stone ivy, seemed to be a depiction of a bull's-head, surrounded by curling, spirals and whorls, reminding Robin of old, organic-looking Viking carvings. The one on the right, in a stone frame of holly was identical, another bull's head, only here the pattern in its backdrop was not curved and twining, but instead geometric, all lines and edges, corners and squares.
Strife read aloud, translating for the others.
“Rivers with no water. Forests with no trees. Cities with no buildings.”
He stared for a moment. “That’s it. That is all that is written.”
They all pondered this for a while, quiet in the flickering purple glow of Strife’s bobbing mana-light.
“Sounds like some dead place to me,” Henry suggested tentatively. “You know, post-apocalypse kind of thing? A river without water, like it’s dried up long ago. Forests that have been cut down, an abandoned town?”
Robin shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “But what does that have to do with either of these two carvings then?”
Henry had no answer to that. Apart from the differing decorative backdrops, the stone bulls seemed identical.
“A dream of a place?” Mr Strife offered, almost speaking to himself. “That would fit the riddle. What except the mind can create things that are real, but that are not there? A waterless river can exist in your imagination. You can picture a city without building it …”
Robin didn’t think this sounded quite right either. He was lost in thought, his fingertips tracing the carvings, following the swirls on one, and the angular lines on the other, careful not to put any pressure on either until they knew which one to safely choose.
He rolled the strange riddle around in his head as his fingers moved. The pattern on his left was quite hypnotic, circles and whorls, his fingers tracing the route in one long and unbroken line. The one on his right was less so. Every couple of inches, the carved lines changed angle, so that his finger was forced to move in a different direction, up down, right, right again, left. It reminded him of being in …
“It’s this one,” he said suddenly, his hand dropping away from the swirling design. He pointed to the other, the bull's head in a geometric backdrop. “This is the right one. I’m sure of it.”
“You should ensure that you are indeed sure, Scion,” Strife cautioned darkly. “Your blundering haste last time was half luck. I have little wish to be buried alive in a collapsing corridor with the likes of you.”
“I am.” Robin said. “I’m sure. This angular one.”
“How do you know?” Henry asked.
“Because it’s the Labyrinth,” Robin explained, looking at his friend in the gloom, his blue
eyes shining. “Look. Left and right turns … it’s a picture of a maze, with the minotaur in the centre here. It’s a schematic of the Splinterstem’s Labyrinth we’re looking at here.”
His companions both examined the stone carving carefully their eyes narrowed.
“The other one, that’s just pretty curls, but there hasn’t been a single curved corridor since we came into this place. It’s always been straight edges, ninety degree turns, just like this.”
“That may well be a drawing of the Labyrinth,” Mr Strife agreed, rather grudgingly. “But even if so, how would you know that is what we are meant to be looking for here?”
“Because the riddle tells us what we’re looking for,” Robin said, very sure of himself. “What’s got forests without trees, cities without buildings, and rivers without any water?” He grinned. “A map has. A map has all of those things. That’s what the riddle is telling us to find, and of these two carvings here, only this one is a map.”
Henry nodded, supporting Robin’s choice, still looking a little baffled.
“Beyond this doorway,” Strife counselled. “Lies the centre. There may well be the legendary guardian of the Shard within. Although it is no longer guarding anything, which I imagine may have put it in rather a sour mood.”
Robin’s hand hovered over the stone tablet. “Well,” he reasoned. “We didn’t come all this way for nothing, did we?” He didn’t relish the thought of meeting a giant monster, if he was being honest, especially without his mana stone, but as his gran used to tell him, very little was ever achieved by those who stay at home safe and warm. He might well be deep underground in questionable company and considerable danger, but Karya and Woad were counting on him, and the Shard was waiting.
“What’s life without a little terrifying hazard, eh?” Henry agreed.
For once Mr Strife seemed to agree with them, nodding.
“Dulce periculum.” He placed his pale hand, fingers spread wide on the tablet and pushed. It sank into a recess with a grating rumble, and again, with a shaking of the world around them, the entire carved wall filling the archway descended smoothly into the ground. In the dust cloud that filled the corridor, Robin and the others moved forwards.
