World of Mazes

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

" Looks the same as it did on the screen, doesn' t it?" Lan commented. The vault door leading into the Twistings had been depicted accurately when Inyx had been cast forth.

" We shall be able to rejoin Inyx," said Krek. " If we are allowed to live that long."

Lan walked down the corridor toward the huge vault door. His mind lovingly shaped the spell he needed to turn aside the death blast from Silvain' s weapon. The commandant had been fingering the device all the way down from the audience chamber. While he had outwardly agreed to the Lord' s exiling them into the Twistings, Lan knew better. Claybore had ordered their deaths; Alberto Silvain would obey.

" Cast the criminals into the Twistings," came the ringing order. Lan turned and saw the Lord standing on a rolling platform pulled by a pair of the juror mechanicals. He' d simply fastened the black ribbons around their necks to the platform. They pulled him the way horses pull carts.

The silver door swung open silently. Beyond lay the simple unadorned room. Sulfurous smells boiled forth. Lan felt the tensions mounting. Silvain had to act soon.

He and Krek were nudged forward by the Lord' s mechanical guards. None of Silvain' s human troops had been allowed this far.

" Now!" barked Silvain.

Lan' s mind reached out, used the spell, strove to deflect the beam from the death tube. Instead of finding the death beam, a heavy metal fist struck him squarely in the stomach. The air gusted from his lungs. He doubled over and fought to keep from blacking out. He looked up to see the mechanicals locked in fierce combat- with each other.

" Rebellion," Lan muttered to Krek.

" Which side do we favor?" asked the spider. Lan had no easy answer for that. To fight on the side of the Lord' s loyalist mechs meant they' d be thrust into the Twistings. To fight against them gave Silvain a free hand to murder them on the spot. Lan straightened, kicked a mechanical leg out from under one robotic guard, and backed toward the entrance to the Twistings.

" You said it. Inyx is on the other side. Let' s go join her. But first:"

He ducked and dodged his way to Silvain' s side. The man, for whatever reason, didn' t use his death tube. Still, the knife he wielded proved deadly enough to give Lan second thoughts about this impetuous course of action. Then he had no choice. The Lord' s side gradually pushed back the mechs opposing them. Lan had to act now.

He grabbed Silvain' s wrist and forced the knife up and safely away. At the same time, his other hand groped for the tiny leatherbound grimoire that had been taken from him.

" No, Martak, you won' t get it." Silvain gritted his teeth and tensed all his muscles. The man outweighed Lan by a considerable margin- and none of it was fat. At the last possible instant, Lan stopped opposing Silvain' s strength and spun about. The action sent Silvain tumbling over and down. Lan grabbed and sprinted for the vault door.

Just as he entered, he heard the Lord laughing.

Then the world twisted crazily and he spun, shrieking, into infinity.

" This is a peculiar place," observed Krek.

" What a wonderful job you' re doing if you' ve just figured that out," Lan said acidly. The disorientation he' d experienced entering the Twistings hadn' t been shared by Krek. The spider remained aloof and impervious to it.

" I, at least, did not go hooting and howling off like you. It took considerable effort to maintain your pace, I might add. Never have I seen you travel so fast."

" But the colors, the shapes, the sounds!"

" Nothing," said the spider. " I followed you, remembering every turning, every corridor that you traversed."

" You can get us out again?"

" Certainly." For once Lan didn' t care that the arachnid was smug and self- satisfied.

" Let' s go exploring, then. I' ve got enough to get us through just about anything." In the last seconds before entering the Twistings, he' d recovered his grimoire, in addition to stealing Silvain' s death tube and knife. With these items he felt confident enough to take on anything the Lord threw his way.

" Something comes," said Krek, his talons pressed against walls and floor. " Something large and slow."

" No problem," said Lan. He pulled out the cylinder, checked to make sure his thumb rested lightly on the trigger, then asked, " Where' s it coming from? Left or right junction?"

" Left."

And then the waddling blue monster was on them.

Lan fired point- blank, to no effect. He fired again and again, and still the creature waddled on, filling the hallway so completely that there wasn' t any way of dodging. The man didn' t have time for even the simplest of magical spells; he' d relied too much on Silvain' s death tube. Hacking and slashing with the knife produced little more reaction than had the tube.

Furry legs engulfed him as Krek lunged forward. Blue globe and giant spider slashed and gouged one another. With a quickness that Lan hardly believed, the blue monster spun in the hall and went waddling off in the direction it had come.

" Thanks, old spider. You saved me that time." Lan felt an uneasiness mounting. He turned and saw another creature coming at him from the other way. Still far enough away, it gave him time to formulate his fire spell. He had learned a rudimentary fire spell when very young; it had aided him in the wilds. On his own he' d developed it to something more offensive in the way of weapon. With hints in the grimoire, he thought he might turn it into a formidable force.

Wrist- thick lances of flame blasted forth from his fingertips. Heat boiled back and seared his eyebrows and made his eyes water. Nothing mortal could withstand that wall of fire he cast forth.

Nothing except the blue glob. Its huge jaws opened and shut as if it hadn' t even noticed his devastating spell. Lan started to cast the spell again, in spite of the enormous drain it made on his vitality, when Krek stopped him.

" What are you doing?" the spider asked softly.

" The monster. Another one. It: it' s:" Lan looked back. No monster. He gusted a sigh and slid down the wall to sit on the floor. " An illusion. I should have known the Twistings would be filled with them."

" Allow me to ascertain the reality of what we find," said Krek. " My superior arachnid brain is not befuddled like your decidedly inferior human one."

" There' s that," Lan said in disgust, " plus you can fight off the real monsters we run across."

" Yes, you are quite right."

" Let' s walk. And keep track of where we are. I want to get back out of here as soon as we find Inyx."

" Friend Lan Martak, you worry too much."

They walked. And walked and walked. Lan made no effort to remember the turnings, the corridors, the slightly curving halls they traversed. The initial confusion he' d experienced entering the Twistings made it worthless trying. Still, he learned one thing quickly. Most of the monsters were real. Only a few- usually the wraith creatures- were illusory.

" How' d this maze ever come to be built?" he asked, more to hear his own voice than for a response.

" The Twistings is underground," said Krek. " I can sense the rock above my head, all around. From the ' feel' I get, the corridors were burned out of solid rock, possibly by fire elementals."

" The sorcerers just turned the elementals loose to honeycomb the planet' s crust? Why?"

" Who can say what a sorcerer thinks? From association with you and other humans, my best conjecture is that something even more vile lived underground. The elementals burned them out, leaving the tunnels as a by- product."

" And somewhere along the way," concluded Lan, " the Lord turned this into a mind- twisting maze- a prison- for those whom it wouldn' t do to execute."

" Possibly this obsession with mazes had a more benign origin."

" What do you mean?"

" Most cultures enjoy puzzles, mazes. I know my own hatchlings enjoy contriving new and more intricate web patterns. Perhaps the original Lord used this as an amusement park, allowing people to wander around until they were tired."

" It' s possible, I suppose. They have a park in the middle of Dicca devoted to illusion. Remember how Jonrod mentioned only the rich were allowed in Knokno' s park?"

They walked in silence again, not encountering any creatures. The presence, the presence, Krek lent to their small party kept most of the maze creatures at bay. Lan came to learn the only ones attacking were the illusions, but he still felt a thrill of fear when they advanced. His magical powers weren' t honed finely enough yet to detect image from reality.

After a few hours of hiking, Lan said, " I feel as if I don' t want to leave- ever."

" Another magical spell? A compulsion?"

" Maybe so. But another idea comes to mind. The Lord taunted Silvain."

" About something inside the Twistings. Yes, friend Lan Martak, that may be it. Whatever it is of Claybore' s that has been lost is within the confines of the Twistings."

" Silvain wouldn' t enter himself, not until he was sure he could escape with what Claybore sent him to find. He' s afraid we' ll find it and destroy it."

" If it is part of Claybore' s body, it is indestructible," pointed out Krek.

" For the most part, you' re right. But Abasi- Abi had worked for years on a spell designed to get around such protection. I found it in his grimoire. If we can find what Silvain and Claybore are so interested in, we might be able to come out of this ahead of them at last."

The only warning of attack he had was a small scraping sound. Then Lan felt the metal dart enter his shoulder, twist, and firmly embed itself on barbed hooks. He slumped forward, the corridor spinning. Whoever threw the missile wasn' t an illusion. Lan turned painfully and glanced back, his vision blurring.

A mechanical readied another dart. Lan' s finger pressed down on the death tube' s trigger. The mech' s legs sheared off just under the hip. It crashed to the floor, struggling to bring its dart into play. Lan fired again. The beam lightly brushed the mech' s arm. At last only harmless pieces of their antagonist remained.

" Pull it out quick, Krek," he told the spider. Mandibles clamped on the finned dart. He almost fainted when the spider did as he was told. Blood trickled, then gushed from the wound.

" Allow me to bandage it," said Krek.

Lan felt spider silk touching his skin, binding solidly. In less than five minutes Krek had woven a tight bandage over the wound. The pressure directly on the entry point staunched the blood flow until Lan could begin his own healing spells.

The man didn' t dare carry those spells too far. It presented him a case of lesser evils. If he completely healed the wound, he' d be too weak from the penalties the magics subtracted from his vitality to be very effective in another fight. On the other hand, the wound itself weakened him. He cleansed the wound magically, then began a healing. When he was finished, he needed Krek' s aid in walking. He felt drained, exhausted from the use of the spell.

They went to where the mechanical' s face glowered up at them. Lan picked it up and stared into the glassy eyes.

" Why' d you attack? Did you think we were maze creatures?"

" Knoton ordered all humans killed." While it hardly seemed possible, Lan had the feeling the mech looked from him to Krek, wondering if Krek counted as human.

" Knoton' s a mechanical?"

Lan got no answer to that. He hadn' t expected one.

" Friend Lan Martak, hostility inside the Twistings is more than we expected. I can cope with illusion. We can both defend ourselves against mere physical attacks."

Lan' s shoulder twinged in pain.

" You' re suggesting we should retrace our steps and get the hell out of here, is that it?"

" Regroup is a better way of phrasing it. We can reenter the Twistings equipped to do battle, knowing what to expect. That will assure us a much better chance of success."

" You' re afraid my wound will keep me from fighting."

" There are dozens more mechanicals coming down the corridor," said Krek. " You cannot fight them all."

" We signal one another," said the mech' s head. Lan threw it from him in disgust. The head seemed too much like Claybore' s fleshless skull for him to tolerate its insolence.

" The room through which we entered is not far distant," said the spider. " Let us retreat, heal, return then."

" Let' s go," said Lan. He disliked the idea of stopping, even for a moment, his hunt for Inyx, yet Krek' s advice made sense. Even now he heard the metallic feet tramping down the adjoining corridor. Whether or not the mech had lied about signalling them didn' t matter. An army advanced on their position, and he and Krek were in no position for holding off warring elements in the Twistings.