by A J Hackwith
Lamplight and leather. Her breath snagged in her throat when she recognized it. Beatrice’s office was much as they’d left it, stacked with an aftermath of shuffled books and used teacups. Claire caught herself leaning forward, listening for footsteps. Even on this side of the arch, she could make out the distant sound of the Mdina streets that filtered in through the open window. It was night, the only light spilling from the desk lamp on Beatrice’s desk. Claire could just make out several bottles and plastic bags that hadn’t been there before. Hope clotted in her throat. If Beatrice had survived, she could be just out of frame. Stepping away to care for her injuries, or her book.
Her book. If the struggle with the Hellhounds had damaged her book, she’d need repairs. If it was damaged and poorly repaired, it could fall apart, stranding Beatrice outside her book or, worse, trapping her inside— Oh, no. Claire’s hand clapped at her side, where her bag of tools should have been. Her skin was tingling and somehow the arch had moved a breath away from her nose.
Claire jerked herself back and clamped one hand on top of the other. Heat stung her eyes. Bea. The thought was enough to twist a sharp pain through the numb despair in her chest. Her book could be just on the other side, hurt from ensuring their escape, dying, needing help.
She knew—she knew if she went through, if she found Beatrice, Hellhounds or not, she would not go back. One step and she could rest. One step and she could be accepted, loved, cared for. One step and all the rest of it could end.
She’d rejected the idea before, but it washed over her again in a way that she was too tired, too grieving to resist. The idea was strong: to rest, to stop, neither to run nor face her past.
Her eyes burned again from the powerful attraction of it. She’d felt the power of an easy escape before. When she’d said the god words that had banished Gregor.
So she said a different word instead.
“Fuck.”
The heels of her hands dug roughly into her eyes as she stumbled back. She ground them in until she saw stars. She screamed. “Fuck!”
She’d been looking for an exit, thinking of those left behind, and the labyrinth had presented her with what she desired. Like it had with Hero. But this wasn’t a temptation built on happiness; it was one built on despair. “Not again. I won’t. Not—”
A wordless rage tore at her throat. She flung one sneaker at the arch. The shoe sailed through the air before passing harmlessly through a shimmer of lamplight and disappearing. Not as satisfying as she needed. Claire let out a growl and flung the other shoe after for good measure.
The rage drained out of her just as quickly as it had come. “Sorry, Bea,” she muttered, then frowned down at her feet. “And now I’m barefoot again. Bloody fantastic.”
The images of a dead Leto, a wounded Beatrice, paper corpses and ink blood, swept through her. Claire twisted and ran from the dead end, down the path toward the rumbling bellows that echoed from the center of the labyrinth. Ghosts at her back, monsters ahead.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
THE HOWLING GREW LOUDER until Claire could feel the vibration jostling the organs in her chest. The air felt like it opened up, walls widening at the next intersection. She slowed as she turned the corner.
The endless dirt paths of the labyrinth fell away to a wide, paved courtyard, each cobblestone dotted with a jade symbol in stone. Half-finished pillars rose every few yards like shattered bones, forming a loose ring around an otherwise barren space. Ragged flags of saffron yellow hung limp from the tops. It was approaching what passed for day here, and the sun throttled down, heating the stones and dwarfing the shadow of the beast that hunkered in the center of the yard.
Claire didn’t realize its true size until the creature rose from the stones and began to pace.
Shaggy hair hung off massive shoulders that appeared mostly human until they ran up to meet a monstrous head. Horns thick as oaks arched out from both sides of its skull. They glowed a deep, blackened red. The beast’s head was turned away, but even from afar, Claire could tell that its features were gnarled with muscle, and hairs as stiff as needles.
The minotaur skulked past one of the pillars, knocking great blocks aside. It had to be twice the size of the giant Hero had faced in Valhalla.
But what drew her attention, what made Claire take a step away from the wall, was the large iron key that swung from a ratty leather strap around its neck. There was no door in sight, but Claire had read enough fairy tales to know what it unlocked.
The beast halted and sniffed the air, giving a great roar as it turned. A familiar roar. “ABANDON ALL HOPE, ye who enter here! Beyond me lies the city of woe. Before me waits—”
“Walter?” Claire stepped forward before considering the wisdom of her actions.
“An’ no mercy will you . . . ah, oh. Oh.”
The minotaur swung its head around. It was a strange, bull-like face, crisscrossed with old scars and tumorous clefts. One eye was milky red in its socket, but the other one lit up with recognition, and there was a familiar set to his bulbous chin. “Hullo there, Miss Claire. You really shouldn’t be here.”
“A situation I’m trying to correct as quickly as possible, I assure you.” Claire felt relief like a kind of giddiness. She approached the Walter minotaur—Waltertaur?—carefully. “It’s really you, isn’t it? What on earth are you doing here?”
“I’m the gatekeeper. My duty is to guard the gates.” Walter puffed up before tapping his knuckles together abashedly. “All gates.”
Claire frowned. “The gates of every realm? But I didn’t see you in Valhalla.”
“Sure you did! Ah, apologies to Hero next time you see ’im, please?”
Claire squinted. She saw no similarity to the giant in the ring when she and Hero had faced the trial to enter Valhalla. He’d been quite thoroughly Viking and wielded . . .
“Widowbane!” Claire remembered the overlarge maul now, glittering with the same shadowy red of the minotaur’s horns and Walter’s teeth. “You were the bludgeon. You never told me.”
The Walter minotaur nodded. “That was me. Well. Part of me. One of me. An aspect. I don’t like talkin’ about it, precisely. It gets all rather higgledy-piggledy.”
“It does indeed.” Claire paused as a thought occurred to her. “You’re the gatekeeper. You’re every gatekeeper. Does that make you—”
“Death,” Walter said quietly. His gaze gentled and he rubbed his neck, a gesture familiar enough to make Claire’s heart ache. “Some call me that, yeah. I always rather liked ‘Walter.’”
“Oh.” Claire chewed on her cheek. She’d entered the labyrinth expecting to find death and here he was. And he’d been her friend all along. No matter how far she ran, she couldn’t escape the feeling of a story. “Regardless . . . I am very glad to see you, Walter. I need transport back to Hell, immediately. There’s an emergency.”
“I see. Ah, then may I just see your ghostlight, ma’am?”
Claire drew out the cold wax candle from her pocket. It was just as dead as Leto’s lighter had been. The tiny stub was crumpled on one side from having been wedged against her hip as she slept.
Walter bent nearly in half to lean his one working eye over it. His face was solemn as he looked back up. “Yer a mortal soul out without a ghostlight, Miss Claire.”
“I am.” Her fingers curled protectively around the cold piece of wax and stuffed it back into her skirts. At the bottom of the pocket, her fingertips grazed some bits of paper that whispered to her, but she left them there for now.
“That’s a mighty shame.” Walter took a step back from Claire, and pity was a strange twist on his ageless face. “See, I’m supposed t’ eat any regular folk that pass through here. It’s kinda why I’m here.”
“Now, wait one moment, Walter. You know I’m the librarian—”
“And you shouldn’t be here without a p
roper ghostlight. Makes you a lost soul, ma’am.” Walter began rolling his shoulders.
“I’m not anything of the sort! I had a light. There were extenuating circumstances.” Claire took a step back. Walter might be Death, but she couldn’t quite believe that the Walter she knew would attack her—in any realm. But he appeared to be preparing to do just that. “Can you at least tell me what is supposed to happen here?”
“Well. Screamin’ and bleedin’ mostly.” Walter paused. “I try to eat you, you try to fight, and then you try to run. It don’t work out. Your soul gets swallowed and feeds the realm.”
“This place has a rather concerning preoccupation with devouring souls,” Claire grumbled, rather than feel the flutter of nerves at the way Walter stretched. “Your realm’s god dies, and you all turn carrion? No, I suppose it’d be cannibals, since you don’t wait until a lady is done with her own soul first.”
Walter had the grace to look abashed. “I didnae exactly write the rules, ma’am. I hope ye know this is rather off-putting for me too.”
“Yes. Well, eating your colleague is a bit of a faux pas.”
“Yeh could just turn around and go back into the labyrinth.”
“I’m afraid not. There are pressing matters elsewhere,” Claire said. “Besides, it’s dull, and I didn’t bring a thing to read.”
Walter’s shoulders dropped. “Then I’m afraid I gotta eat you.”
Claire reached for any question to make Walter pause in his warm-up. “What happens if I win?”
“Huh. Well, no one does that.”
“But if I did?”
“If you did . . . well, you get to claim a boon, I suppose. In the old days, yeh got to reincarnate on Earth as a kitty cat. But I don’t think I got the mojo to do that anymore.”
“Good. I rather mistrust cats.” Claire considered. “What’s your secret?”
“Ma’am?”
“Oh, come, now. I’m an unwritten author, and this whole blighted thing feels like a tale. I know how stories go. Every monster at the center of the labyrinth has a hidden weakness. A trick for the hero to find.”
“Oh.” Walter was flummoxed. “No one’s just come out and asked that before.”
“But you do have one?”
“Well. Yes.” Walter mulled it over. “I’m not sure I can just tell you like that.”
Claire tilted her head. “Is there a rule against it?”
“Well . . . no.” Walter’s face lit up, pleased, as he gave his full attention to it. “My eye.”
Claire inspected both the brown eye fixed on her and the milky white orb opposite it. “Your eye? What? I am supposed to hit you there?”
“Not exactly. I . . . probably can’t say any more.”
“I see.” Claire sighed, skittering back toward a pillar as Walter appeared to square up. “But knowing that, a hero could escape this place?”
“You’re no hero, ma’am.” Walter was mournful as he said it.
“As this realm keeps on reminding me.”
“I’m awfully sorry about this, Miss Claire.” His clear eye was watery, even as he stamped his hooved feet and angled his horns down.
Claire reached a pillar and felt for the curve of it behind her. “Apology accepted, Walter. These things do happen.”
Walter opened his mouth and the booming howl that came out was much less mournful and much more horrifying than it had been from a distance. He charged.
Claire spun behind the pillar and stumbled back as Walter’s impact sent several man-sized stones tumbling from the top. She regained her footing, turned, and ran.
Hurtling headfirst into stone did not slow a minotaur much. Walter shook his head once, then charged after her. Sharp red claws that had not been evident a moment before gouged the wall as he went. Claire ran for the exit, but the junction where she’d entered the courtyard was nowhere to be seen.
The Greeks always loved their tragedies. She shoved the grim thought from her mind as she caught sight of a flash of yellow. One of the pillars’ ragged flags hung lower than the other. At Walter’s next charge, Claire took the moment of disorientation as he hit the wall to run toward the pillar. She grabbed it and scrambled her feet against the stone. Bare feet worked to her advantage for once. Her toes found the small holds between blocks, and she hauled herself to the top.
Walter circled the wall with a snarl but paused as he looked up. “Don’t be a silly wiggins, ma’am. This will go faster if you come down here.”
“I prefer not to.” Claire ran her hands over the top of the pillar, looking for something, anything, to slow down the minotaur. She shoved a hand in her pocket, and her fingertips hit paper. She took a breath as she drew it out. The ragged end of the Codex Gigas’s calling card fluttered in her palm.
The text, as usual, was mostly illegible from the tear, but Claire saw the beginning of a word where the location would be: “Hell, Unwri—” Andras was already at the gates of the Library, if not past the wards.
The calling card was not the codex, merely an artifact of the Library. But it was tied to the book, and the book held ancient destructive power. Books tended to bleed and wander, especially old ones. There was a chance, a remote one, that the card had some residual enchantment of its own.
Claire had hoped to save that chance for later, but later was gravely in question now.
Walter quit pacing and began to back up, stamping the earth with his head down.
Claire fumbled back in her pockets and withdrew the ghostlight candle. She quickly squeezed, warming the wax with her hands, and crumpled the calling card remnant around it, making a projectile that would be easy to throw. It stuck, but just barely.
Walter charged, canceling any other preparation she could make. The entire pillar rocked as he hit, and the minotaur dug ruts in the stone as he continued to press his full weight on the displaced stone. Claire held dearly to the top flagstone; it began to pitch.
She clutched the candle to her chest and kicked away as she fell through the air. But something clamped over her right leg and squeezed like a vise.
It arrested her fall sharply enough that her hip jolted, sending fire up her side. Her knee shrieked and Claire screamed along with it.
Pain watered her eyes when she opened them. Upside down, Walter’s knotted face looked like a rotten potato. He held her aloft in one hand, as easily as one would dangle a mouse by the tail. He regarded her with sad, bloodshot eyes and lowered his jaw wide.
Claire got a glimpse of daggerlike incisors and wide, flat teeth made for grinding bone and flesh. Her fingers clenched the candle, and as Walter drew her chest toward his gaping lips, she swung back and let the fistful of paper and wax fly.
She’d meant to aim for the eye. She hadn’t forgotten what Walter had said.
But Walter dropped his head back and squeezed his eye shut as he brought her near. The ghostlight arced through the air and pinged dully on a great black tongue before it hit the back of the minotaur’s throat.
Walter gagged and snapped shut his mouth out of reflex, latching down on the papered candle. A perplexed look crossed his face. A muted rush of air sucked his cheeks.
Then a sharp burst of blue and green flame lashed out through his nostrils, out shaggy ears, past his lips, even from beneath heavy eyelids. Walter’s grip loosened as his good eye went glassy, and Claire had a moment of terrifying free fall before they both hit the dirt.
A limp, meaty arm, covered in thick red-brown fur, broke her fall. Claire scrambled back to get out of reach, but the arm and the clawed hand attached to it remained still.
Her breath was ragged and loud in her ears. It took another moment before she could process that Walter wasn’t moving. She slowly shoved to her feet, wincing as her knee shrieked in protest. Likely torn ligaments there. If she could get back to Hell, they could be tended to. First things first.
&nb
sp; Walter’s barrel chest shivered, barely moving, muscles twitching under heavy scars. The air held a sizzling sound, and the smell of charred meat suggested that the calling card was still working on the poor creature’s insides.
Claire leaned over and caught sight of the iron key askew on his neck. As she reached for it, a great clawed hand came down on her wrist and made her heart skip a beat.
But the claws did not tighten, did not tear. Claire looked up and saw Walter’s good eye just cracked open. Sluggish blood trailed from every opening on his face. Walter made a weak snarl that was intended to be a smile, and released her to point a trembling claw at his bone-white eye.
The eye was the key.
Claire swallowed a lump in her throat and nodded. “I’m sorry, Walter.”
The minotaur didn’t speak but closed his eye with a smile that seemed almost proud. A final gout of flame trickled over his lips, and his chest stilled.
Claire extracted herself from his arm and hobbled around to the side of his head. She considered the dead eye lodged in a tumorous skull.
This would not be pleasant work.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
SHE’D HAD NO TOOLS, just Walter’s own limp claws. By the time it was done, her skirts were tacky with blood, her fingers trembled, and her hands felt as if they’d never be clean again. But a sphere about the size of a grapefruit and the color of bone sat heavy in the palm of her hand. It was completely smooth and was translucent in sections. Not an actual eye, but . . . something else.
That was the problem with defeating the gatekeeper: no one was left to explain how to open the gate.
Claire turned it over in her hands. She hobbled up to this pillar and that, pressing the white surface against random stones. Hoping something would happen. Nothing did, and the urgency to get back merged with injury and exhaustion to eat at what patience she had left for analysis.
“Hell and harpies.” She had just pulled away from another pillar in disgust when light hit the orb as she held it up. Claire blinked and squinted as she held the sphere in front of her.
