Lady of Mazes

by Karl Schroeder

  Past the forest and meandering river the land rolled on in waves of wilderness into hazy vagueness. What looked like towering, half-visible clouds floated above the haze. These were the familiar Southwall mountains, blued to near-invisibility by a distance of over two hundred kilometers. Livia could see the white caps of glaciers atop some of the shortest peaks; snow never fell at the higher altitudes. Above them the sky was a uniform indigo.

  Livia knew the lake Lucius was pointing to. There was a boathouse down there, a distant outpost of the Romanal estate. So she took the lead when they reached the trees. "There's the path."

  They entered the hushed realm of the trees. Now that the estate was out of sight, Livia began to feel a bit nervous. That was irrational by any ordinary standard: she had her angels to protect her, and her presence in the heart of Westerhaven did not have anything to do with whether she was near some building.

  Even so, she awoke her Society and let them walk alongside her as a reassuring crowd. For a while Lucius was silent, and Livia thought about how similar this walk was to her first official journey to a neighboring manifold, which had happened several months before.

  It had been an occasion of sorrow. Shortly after her confirmation, the Westerhaven diplomatic corps had contacted Livia asking whether she would agree to help close out the estate of the Drummers. She had studied to be a diplomat like her parents before her, and she was a musician. So the request might seem natural; but she had given up on diplomacy when she realized she had no desire to travel to other manifolds. She suspected the hand of Lucius Xavier in her selection, if not of Mother herself. But she agreed to go, more from curiosity than any desire to improve her authority.

  Livia joined the expedition on an empty road outside the city of Barrastea. There were representatives from a number of other manifolds as well as Westerhaven. Jach-man was one of the other junior members of the Westerhaven contingent, and it was on this occasion that Livia first met Rene Caiser. He was acting as groomsman, caring for the stamping and proud horses that were to lead their carriages.

  Trees towered beyond the carriages, but the slope here was steep enough that Livia could see past them into the deep valley below. Amid the dark, nearly black treetops lay the city of the drummers. To anyone within Westerhaven, it was invisible.

  Serena Elesz, the expedition's leader, briefed them before they set out. "The last drummer died a week ago," she said from her perch on the step of the lead carriage. "Officially, their consensual reality ends with that death. In fact, everyone who shared some of their values carries a template of the drummers' manifold with them, and these templates still have some authority over inscape and the tech locks. It is up to living representatives of those values to decide the fate of this manifold and its physical manifestations." She meant the land and those aspects of the city that were physically real.

  Livia had put up her hand; she was never one to stay on the sidelines. "I was always told that Westerhaven gamers and preserves the cultures of other manifolds."

  Serena nodded. "Yes, of course; and we'll try to do that here. We are the great integrators of the many threads of culture in Teven Coronal."

  Livia put up her hand again. "I've had six people come up to me and tell me that what I need to do is make sure the drummers are shut down, so Westerhaven can recover their resources."

  An awkward silence followed. Serena's take on Westerhaven had sounded like a quote straight out of the Fictional History. Livia had been raised to follow those values, but she was learning that the truth was always more complicated.

  Finally Serena shrugged. "You need to vote with your heart, Livia — but remember that everything in Westerhaven is political."

  Still chewing on this thought, Livia entered the carriage behind Serena's just as it began to move. They jolted down the dirt track that led off from the main road. Livia reached out with her senses and will, determined not to notice anything of Westerhaven: no buildings, no contrails. Her change of attitude and attention was noted by her neural implants and the mechology known as the tech locks; where there had been impenetrable underbrush, a pathway appeared leading into the woods. The horses joined this road without breaking stride.

  She listened for rhythms in the sighing of the breeze, and soon she began to hear them. She listened for patterns in the chirping of the birds, and eventually, she heard music there. Even the clip-clop of the horses' hooves took on a complicated order, as Livia had been told it would. A sense of palpable presence began to build around the carriages, a subliminal excitement "We're close," Jachman murmured beside her.

  Rene was having difficulty making the transition. He began to fade even as the drummers' city appeared around the trunks of the redwoods that walled the road. He tried to speak but no sound reached Livia's ears. The last thing she saw before he vanished was his frustrated, embarrassed frown. She couldn't help but smile at the boyishness of it.

  He would be back, as soon as he'd managed to properly purge Westerhaven from his system of habits and responses. Meanwhile, they were at the drummers' ruins.

  Once a thriving community had come together here to worship in ways that were difficult or impossible in other manifolds. In some places, such as Westerhaven, the pace of life was wrong for the drummers' style of contemplation; or the attitude to music interfered with what they were attempting. The ancient and powerful religions of Earth still held sway in other manifolds and would not permit any iconoclasts or experimenters. So they had made their own reality, one in keeping with their ideals. And for several generations, it had held strong.

  For some reason, they had built on low swampy ground. Water had reclaimed most of the tall brick structures. Marsh grass grew between the houses and waved on their roofs. This place had been in decline for a long time. It was more of a village, anyway, thought Livia; the houses ended not more than two hundred meters away. Once there had been frescoes on the sides of the buildings, and statues, but they had been weathered away long ago.

  The drummers' microcivilization had run its natural course, and now uncomprehending outsiders had come to lay it to rest.

  The expedition left the carriages and walked, sometimes wading, out into the city. They split up and began to poke about. The place was desolate, like something out of a historical sim. Livia's feet were soon wet and she found herself shivering. When she met Rene coming around the side of a large (and empty) public building, she said, "Why would anyone stay here?"

  He shrugged. "There were never many of them. But apparently it was quite the religious center once. Reaching the divine through music. You're a musician, you'd have loved it here."

  "But they never wrote any of it down. And they didn't perform for pleasure."

  They walked on for a while, but whatever possessions the drummers had once had, they were gone, toppled into the swampy water or taken away by those who had abandoned this place's values. Rene shook his head at last.

  "They're dead. I dunno about you, but I agree with the others. We should shut it down and reclaim the land."

  Livia shook her head. "And just replace their reality with ours? Better if we could all learn to travel here. That would be diplomacy."

  "But they're all dead. So what's to stop us?"

  Livia opened her mouth to reply, then stopped. She couldn't explain why, but she felt there was still a presence here, however tenuous. It felt wrong to simply wipe the place away — but it was hard to justify preserving it; doing so would go against her very public political stance.

  She decided to change the subject. "We lost you for a while back there," she said at last. "You're not very musical?"

  He grinned. "Maybe I'm not. And you are not nearly as scary up close as I was told you'd be."

  Her heart sank. "Who told you I was scary?"

  He waggled his fingers in horror-show fashion. "You and Aaron Varese are the biggest political critics of the generation. You fight duels over ideas, for God's sake! And you ... they say you blink out during parties, come out with
odd pronouncements at odd times, have strange notions ... You've Seen Things We Were Not Meant To Know. You're the one who led the survivors out of the crash zone, right? They say it changed you."

  "But I don't remember doing it," she said seriously. "How can I be a hero if I — " At that moment they both heard the drumming.

  It came from somewhere ahead: a single, steady beat, deep and confident. Livia and Rene looked at one another.

  "Not dead after all!" Rene sprinted in the direction of the sound; more cautiously, Livia followed.

  She found him staring up the side of a ten-meter mud-brick tower. The steady drumbeat sounded from somewhere overhead. He looked at her uncertainly. "Do we go in?"

  She looked around for footprints on the muddy ground; there were none, not even at the shadowed entrance to the tower. But she would not look weak in front of this young man. "Of course," she said.

  Inside, the tower was divided into three levels with lad-derlike stairways leading between them. They found large clay pots filled with grain and dried fish; firewood and the hardened, cold remains of a fire; blankets and a crude pillow. But there was no other sign of life. The sound obstinately continued above. "A recording?" Rene whispered. She shook her head: recording equipment of any kind was forbidden by the locks in this place.

  Cautiously, they climbed the creaking steps to the top level.

  Someone had rigged a barrel on a tripod here to catch rainwater. From the base of the barrel, a spigot dripped steadily onto the taut skin of a large bass drum. The skin was discolored and worn where the water had been hitting it for days — weeks, probably. But the sound was steady, and impressively loud.

  Huddled beside the drum was a half-skeletal body: the last inhabitant of the drummers' manifold. Livia couldn't be sure whether this had been a man or a woman. But it was clear he or she had died alone.

  It stank up here so they retreated down the ladder almost immediately. Neither spoke until they were outside again. Rene waved to Serena and some others who were walking nearby. As they came over, Livia stood looking up — and listening.

  "Why didn't he leave?" Rene asked after a while.

  And of course, that was it: to leave this place, all you had to do was wish to be somewhere else. With a little concentration Livia could return to Westerhaven, and these towers would turn into trees, or rocks, or otherwise leave her sensorium. Barrastea's skyscrapers would appear over the crest of the hill. Inscape reticles and Societies would blossom all around her. This person, this last drummer, did not have to die alone. He or she could have chosen, right up until the last second, to abandon the Drummers' ideals — to join another manifold.

  Yet the drum still sounded above, slow and steady, like the heartbeat of the world. Livia could not have answered Rene's question; she did not have the words. But, for a moment or two, as she stood within the realm of that beating heart, she thought she understood.

  When Serena and the others came running up, Livia announced, "The last drummer may be dead, but the Drummers are still alive. We can't shut down this manifold while the drum still beats."

  Unanimity was required for the manifold to be closed. And so the absorption of the drummers' resources into Westerhaven had been postponed — and while Livia's reputation had grown, her authority had begun to deteriorate.

  "I don't know why I did it," she said to Lucius as they walked. They'd seen nothing impossible in the past hour and she was getting tired. She had dismissed her Society, however, and was enjoying this rare chance for a solitary talk with an older male friend. "I think it was just to spite Serena."

  He laughed. "A fine reason by itself. But is that all?"

  "I don't know. For years now I've felt like an outsider. Ever since the accident. People look at me differently, you know. Since only Aaron and I survived ... " She kicked at a fern. "It's like it was our fault, somehow."

  She was used to people trying to reassure her on this point, but Lucius nodded. "It's hypocritical," he said. "People here talk about valuing other manifolds, but really Westerhaven is a culture of butterfly collectors."

  "How do you mean?"

  "You catch the butterfly alive, then you stick a pin through it and mount it on the wall. That's what we do with other cultures. Like your drummers. You were right to leave their world alone, Liv."

  "Well, thank you! Practically nobody else has said that."

  "We outsiders have to stick together," he said. "That's why I invited you along today." He hesitated. "Livia. There's something I have to tell you. It's about — "

  She threw out her hand to stop him, practically falling herself. Raising a finger to her lips, she pointed ahead along the path.

  He scowled, then turned to follow her gaze.

  "Lucius, I think something impossible might just be happening."

  Standing nonchalantly about ten meters ahead was a tall, bronze-skinned man dressed in tanned hides. A dozen beaded necklaces hung around his neck.

  He was carrying a spear.

  2

  It was hard to tell the man's age; his face was lined and weatherbeaten, his brow sunburnt and his eyes narrowed to a perpetual squint. But he was fit and strong-looking, and Livia had no doubt he could throw that spear with great accuracy and force.

  But he hadn't spotted them. He was staring up into the trees with a puzzled expression on his face. Livia took the opportunity to start backing away.

  "What is he?" she whispered,

  "Not an Impossible," said Lucius. "More likely a warrior of Raven. Their manifold overlaps ours in most places. They can visit us, but they rarely do."

  Livia had known that for years, of course, but somehow, despite her experience with manifolds, seeing this man was a shock. She thought of invisible warriors ranging through the Romanal gardens, firing arrows at deer on the tennis courts.

  "Aren't we ... well, sort of at war with Raven?"

  Lucius shook his head. "Only in the gamers' submani-fold. It's purely voluntary — " He froze, because the man had spotted them.

  For a while neither he nor they moved a muscle. Livia's heart was pounding, but her mind was clear. What was he doing here? Had he stepped out of Raven's people into Westerhaven? Or had she and Lucius strayed the other way?

  Finally the man snapped out of his trance. Carefully, he leaned his spear against a tree, then walked toward them. Stopping four meters away, he cleared his throat

  "You have come to celebrate with us," he said.

  "Yes," replied Lucius.

  "What?" said Livia.

  The warrior strode forward, extending his hand. "I am King Ghee," he said. "Do not be afraid, I was sent to find you. I am ... you would call me a diplomat, I believe." He smiled at Livia, showing white, perfect teeth.

  "I am Lucius Xavier, and this is my friend, Livia Ko-daly," said Lucius. "So we are not too late?" Lucius seemed anxious.

  King Ghee glanced up at the sky. "No. But we must hurry." The warrior set off up the path, snatching up his spear on the way.

  "Lucius? What's going on?" Livia tried to keep her voice controlled, with some success, but anger and fear made her hesitate as the other two walked ahead.

  "Come, Livia." Lucius waved to her. "This is important. You'll see why."

  "But why didn't you tell me that you were meeting someone?" She verified that her angels were still around her, then reluctantly stepped after him. He had not replied.

  "I am pleased to meet you," Raven's warrior said to her as she caught up. "You must be highly prized by your own people to be given this opportunity." Livia opened her mouth to ask him what he meant by mat, then noticed Lucius making a warning gesture behind him. She smiled.

  "Thank you," she said. "I am honored, yes." She needed to know what was happening, so she summoned an anima to replace her in this dialog, intending to split off and ask Lucius just what he was playing at But in-scape signaled an error: this warrior of Raven could not perceive animas. They walked now, it seemed, on the very edge of Westerhaven.

  "So
you will come with me to the city of Skaalitch?" asked the warrior. "It is not far, but it is under Raven's wing; your people would not normally see it."

  Lucius grinned. "I'd be honored, Kingy." He said the name as if it were one word. Livia did still have access to her internal inscape systems, so she called up a database of Raven names. Qiingi — that was it. And Skaalitchi The database had a listing, but she had no time to examine it as the warrior spoke again.

  "To come to us, you must open yourself to the sacred-ness of living things. Walk with me, under Raven's wing." He stepped off the path.

  "So the real adventure begins," said Lucius. "Sorry I kept you in the dark, but you might not have come otherwise. Well, Liv? Are you up for it?"

  She opened her mouth to chastise him, but somehow his enthusiasm was infectious. And, she realized, she was enjoying her surprise. "All right," she said with a laugh. "But there had better not be any more tricks. I need to be back by lunchtime."

  Qiingi wavered in and out of existence ahead of them. He often paused, instructing Livia and Lucius in what they should look for. Livia tried to forget about Westerhaven — her Societies' intrigues, the arcing aircars and glittering cities — and instead focus on spotting the creatures of the forest. With Qiingi, she paused to gaze at tracks on the damp ground, and consciously drew in the scents of pine and moss. It was a game she'd learned as a child, not knowing its significance at the time; only later, when her ability to shift manifolds was unlocked at puberty, did Livia understand. Now, she stopped, staring at an owl she'd spotted on a branch. She concentrated, frowning, and the bird suddenly changed, its face momentarily becoming a shaman's mask. Livia laughed out loud. Follow, follow the warrior of Raven, she told herself, as she dashed after him. As she went, the bark of the trees shifted from randomness to patterned design. The birdsong ceased to be incoherent twitters, and became tiny, piping voices whose words she could understand if she concentrated.