World of Mazes

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Lan Martak had to stop and use his healing spells once more on the shoulder wound. The mechanical' s dart had become infected in spite of his earlier treatment. Lan sat and chanted the spell, feeling the magics soothe and begin the healing process anew. But as he relaxed after the pain finally began to recede, he also grew increasingly lethargic. Even at the best of times when he was uninjured, the use of magic sapped his strength quickly.

" Can we stay here for a while, Krek?"

" It is not a good place. I detect many of the mechanicals nearby." The spider bobbed up and down, talons grating against the walls and floor of the Twistings.

" Can' t go on. So tired. Must sleep. Wish I had a bed. Wish I could just:" Lan drifted off to fitful sleep.

And awoke screaming.

Krek towered over him, peering down, concern in his soft chocolate- colored eyes.

" What is it?"

" M- my dreams. They turned all around like I was in a dark, rotating barrel. I felt as if I' d been impaled, but it was more than physical torture. The dreams were: rotted."

" The Lord of the Twistings sends those to you as his present," said the spider. " He wants to keep you from using your full powers. Distrust yourself and the spells you know will not work."

" I do need to keep my confidence," admitted Lan. He wiped some of the sweat from his forehead. His clothing had become thoroughly drenched while he slept and dreamed. " But if I can' t sleep without experiencing more of that:" He shook his head.

The dreams- nightmares- had been horrific. What was worse, he found it difficult to separate the fantasy from the reality. It mattered little whether his eyes were open or shut. This hallway stretching forever in front of him played such an important part in his dream. Did that mean he had seen what would happen? Had the dream been a foreshadowing? Did his powers now include prophecy?

" I don' t want to walk along this corridor, Krek," he said, voice shaking. " Awful things will happen. The floors will grow teeth and swallow us. The walls will crush in. Everything will turn black and start to spin. The-"

" Lan Martak," snapped the arachnid. " Those were dreams. We face some illusion, yes. The Lord sends those to taunt you. But our own fear is the greatest obstacle. I know the location of the door leading out of the Twistings. Shall we go there and escape, or do you wish to cower here on the floor for the rest of your miserable existence?"

Such words from Krek took Lan by surprise. The man usually was on the giving end of lectures like that.

" The maze, Krek. I' ve seen."

" You have seen nothing. The Lord of the Twistings puts it all into your thick skull. Once there, it can never escape. That much is obvious. I grow tired of this place. There are no juicy grubs to eat, no fit places to hang a web, no peaks to scale. It is not a proper place for a Webmaster. Not at all."

" Which way is out?" Lan asked. As he stood, vertigo assailed him. He felt as if he were being turned inside out. But he straggled to keep moving, in spite of the feeling of falling, turning, going in all the wrong directions. He had to rely on Krek' s inbred sense rather than on his own distorted ones.

The spider trooped off, talons clicking merrily on the floor. Lan followed more slowly. The wound, his tiredness, the feeling of something about to happen made him uneasy.

Every step produced more giddiness and disorientation.

" Stop, Krek, wait. Are you sure you know where we' re going?"

" Yes."

Illusions flittered just at the periphery of Lan' s vision. He concentrated on them and noted how they vanished when he uttered certain ward spells. But this constant magic use drained his vitality further. When the Lord of the Twistings appeared behind him, he had nothing left to draw on.

" So good, yes, you' re much better than I thought," crowed the Lord.

" Friend Lan Martak, he is here," said Krek. The spider turned in the narrow corridor and faced the Lord. " This is no illusion."

" Can you be so sure, fuzz- legs?" taunted the Lord. " I control this maze perfectly. The Twistings are mine, all mine! I love them, I do!"

" He is here, Lan Martak. Kill him. Or get out of my way and allow me to do so!"

Lan wobbled. What was real, what wasn' t? Krek seemed sure the Lord had actually come into the treacherous maze personally. Lan guessed differently. This was illusion.

" He only mocks us, Krek. He can cast his images wherever he wants."

" No image, this. I smell, I sense, I see. The vibrations are those of a living man. The Lord of the Twistings can die here and now." The spider lurched over Lan, mandibles clacking. They slashed through the air just inches in front of the Lord. He never flinched.

The man- the image?- danced back, saying, " Can you be so sure? Lan is the mage. He knows about such things. You know about grubs. Like these."

Wrist- thick grubs poked their blunt, blind heads out of newly formed tunnels drilled through the walls. Lan blinked twice. He sensed their ghostly, insubstantial nature, yet still felt the presence of another human. Krek might be right about this actually being the Lord of the Twistings, in the flesh.

" Kill him, Krek. You' re right. It is the Lord."

" Yes, Krek, kill me," taunted the man in the fool' s outfit. He rolled and somersaulted backward down the hall. " Who knows, you might be the next Lord of the Twistings. What a sight. A giant spider ruling over the Twistings."

Krek launched himself in a shallow attack, mandibles aiming for the legs. The Lord leaped, dodged, and retreated.

" Very good. But you can do better."

Lan pulled out the death tube and fired past Krek' s bulk. The lightning blast singed the spider' s legs- but the effect on the Lord was startling. Rage contorted his face. He clenched his hands into tight fists and screamed.

" A barrier," said Krek. " He has constructed one of the magical barriers between us."

Lan felt the barrier being erected but had been powerless to stop it. The Lord had somehow sensed the impending danger- or had the spell ready in case Krek got too close. However it had happened, the transparent wall had saved the Lord from fiery death.

The Lord of the Twistings vanished from sight, as if he had been an illusion. With him went the barrier.

" The walls are not as substantial as they seem," commented Krek. " We are not too near our entry point into the Twistings. Perhaps there are more ways in and out of the maze."

" Let' s get to the room as fast as we can. I feel like I' m going to pass out."

" That explains your cavalier use of that fire- thrower. You almost set my legs on fire." The spider shuddered. " I urge you to be more careful in the future."

" I will. Now, hurry."

Krek lumbered along in the opposite direction, taking turns and finding corridors where Lan didn' t think any were possible. When he had decided to tell Krek they walked in circles, they entered the small room that had been their first sight in the Twistings.

" Peculiar," observed Krek. " Note the way these pots burn for no reason." Black kettles filled with flowers of sulfur dangled over small fires. The released odor gave the room a hint of hell.

" He' s a showman. He knows how to stage and upstage. The sulfur keeps everyone off their guard until his spells turn them around. By the time the magic wears off, the people have wandered blindly into the maze and are irretrievably lost."

" I found my way back easily enough."

" Maybe he' s never tackled anyone of your: size," Lan finished lamely.

" True. I am somewhat larger than most on this world. You humans are not very big. Which can be a good thing. There are so many of you, as is. The crowding conditions would be brutal if all of you were my size." The spider shuddered, adding, " What an ugly thought."

Lan stopped listening to his friend and went to examine the inner workings of the vault door. His fingers pressed into the cold silver metal. Due to his weakness, Lan had difficulty turning his magics inward, to the mechanism operating the toggles. His magical senses reached out, lightly touched, failed to find.

He sank to his knees, head resting against the door.

" Can' t do it," he said, almost crying. " There' s something inside. A spell, a magic. But I can' t get a feel for it. If only I could manipulate it, the door would open."

" It is not purely mechanical?" asked Krek. The spider walked forward and spread four powerful legs out, engulfing the door. Talons dug into the rim of the door. He pushed. Lan watched as tendons stood out when the spider' s muscles contracted with gargantuan effort. A faint metal tearing noise came, but no movement of the vault door. Krek worked harder, then relaxed.

" It is beyond me, totally beyond the limits of my feeble strength. Oh, I' ve grown too weak being away from my dear Egrii Mountains. Why did I ever leave, why do I torture myself by roaming? Dear little Klawn, my hatchlings, I left them all, and for what? This!"

" There, there, Krek. We both tried and couldn' t move this metallic mountain."

" Try your flame spell. Melt it down!"

" Wouldn' t work. I can barely walk. That requires intense concentration. I need to rest, to regain my strength. Maybe then we can get out. But I wonder:"

Lan Martak had felt enervated during the confrontation with the Lord of the Twistings in the corridor, but the nearer they came to the vault room, the weaker he seemed. It was as if some power drained him mentally and physically. He struggled to sit up and work his powers to detect any use of magic. That had been his first and most potent ability: sensing magic. Nothing impinged on his mind.

That didn' t mean spells weren' t in use around him, though. He had found subtle magics, clever spells, ones so sublime his untrained skills failed to detect them. Such might be the case now.

" Lan Martak, sounds of battle come from down the corridor."

He strained and heard human voices.

" We can' t get out this way, not right now. Don' t let the Twistings confuse you, Krek. Remember how to get back here, and let' s go see if we can help."

" Help?" the spider said, gusting a baleful sigh. " A shopworn human and a lonely spider far from mountainous home and loving family? How can we help anyone when we fail so completely to help ourselves? Oh, very well. Let us be off."

Lan managed to walk unassisted. He noted that strength returned as he put more and more distance between himself and the vault room. The man filed this information away for future investigation. He' d missed the use of a spell against him, of that he was sure. By the time they reached a juncture in the interminable corridors, he felt strong enough to use the knife.

Which was a good thing. A waddling blue glob engaged Krek, and three wraiths silently glided up to attack Lan' s left flank. He struck out with his fist and sent one wraith fluttering back. He lunged with his knife and skewered the second. Red blood cascaded down a purple front. The third wraith threw him entirely off balance; Lan kicked at it, and his foot sailed through its insubstantial formillusion.

The blue monster rolled over in the corridor and waddled off in the opposite direction, Krek chasing. Lan tried to stop his friend. Splitting forces wasn' t smart. But he had his hands full with the three wraiths, two real, one illusion. What made his effort even harder was the way the illusory creature kept changing color. Purple and purple attacked. He stabbed and a new fountain of blood squirted forth. The other wasn' t there, except in his mind.

The battle shifted in his favor. One wraith finally lay dead, the other severely wounded. The illusion hovered nearby, then winked out of existence.

" Lan Martak, come quickly!" rang out Krek' s agitated request. " We are needed!"

The man followed Krek' s pathway through the maze easily. The spider had severely wounded the blue glob. Droplets of thick, ichorous blood marked the corridors taken. He exploded into a hall where three humans and a part- human and part- mech hybrid fought against one of the blue monsters. Even as he watched, one of the men slipped; the powerful jaws opened and closed on an arm.

" Aieee!" screeched Krek, leaping over the battling humans. Lan followed, keeping the humans from attacking Krek.

" He fights like a thousand men," marvelled one.

" That he does," said Lan. " Follow him. We can finish off the blue thing and let him rest."

" Who are you?" demanded one of the women. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. " You are not of the nest."

" No, I guess not. My friend and I have just been cast into the maze."

" The Lord exiles more and more," said another woman sadly. " I wish I could leave."

" We know where the entry point to the Twistings is," said Lan. " When we rest up a bit, we can all go and tackle it. We can get out of this damnable maze and stop the Lord."

" You are freshly arrived," said the hybrid. A mechanical arm scratched a battered, scraggly- bearded human face. " Doesn' t he sound a lot like her?"

" He does, at that," answered one of the women.

" Her? Who do you mean?"

" Our leader. She has come info the Twistings, found our nest, and even battled Knoton to a truce. For the first time in any of our memories, we fight only the maze creatures instead of each other."

" Yes," piped up another. " With the mechanicals on our side- or not opposing us- we hope to live much longer."

" Some leader," Lan said admiringly.

" That she is. Inyx is quite a woman."

" Inyx!" he cried. " Inyx is your leader? Take me to her at once. Now!"

" Well:"

" At once! Krek, we' ve found Inyx."

The spider sauntered up, blood dripping from his furry legs.

" Good. I tire of this slaughter. Those blue balls begin to annoy me, and intelligent conversation with Inyx again would do much to lift my sagging spirits."

The small band of humans, hybrid, and spider hastened off in search of the nest- and Inyx.

At last, Lan Martak had found her.