Into the Labyrinth (65 page)

“You are the only one of us who can reach the Final Gate in time, Lord,” Haplo said, every word costing him obvious pain. “You are the only one who can stop them.”

He sank back into Marit’s arms. Her face was near his, her anxiety and concern for him obvious. The three paid no heed to the battle raging around them; Xar’s magic enclosed them in a cocoon of safety and silence, protected them from death and the turmoil of war.

Xar’s gaze turned, his eyes searched far, far into the distance, until he could see the Final Gate from where they stood—which, with his magical power, was within the realm of possibility. His face grew drawn and grave, the brows came together, the eyes narrowed in anger. He was seeing, Marit guessed, the terrible battle being waged, the people of the Nexus leaving their peaceful homes to defend the only means of escape for their brethren caught inside.

Was the battle already taking place? Or was Xar seeing the future?

His gaze came back, and the eyes were hard and cold and calculating. “The Final Gate will fall. But I will open it again. When I have found the Seventh Gate, then I will take my revenge.”

“Lord Xar, what do you mean?” Marit stared at him, not understanding. “Lord, do not worry about us. We will manage here. You must save our people.”

“I intend to do so, Wife,” Xar said curtly.

Marit flinched.

Haplo heard the word, felt the quiver run through the arms whose touch was so comforting, so welcome. He opened his eyes, looked up at her. Her face was streaked with blood—his own, her own, the dragon-snake’s. Her hair was disheveled, and now he could see, on her forehead, the mark, the entwined sigla—hers and Xar’s.

“Leave him to me, Wife,” Xar commanded.

Marit shook her head, crouched over Haplo protectively. Xar reached down, laid his hand on her shoulder. She cried out and slumped to the ground, her body limp, its rune-magic disrupted.

Xar turned to Haplo. “Don’t fight me, my son. Let go. Let go of the pain and the despair, the heartache of this life.”

The Lord of the Nexus slid his arms beneath Haplo’s broken body. Haplo made a feeble attempt to free himself. The dog dashed up, barked at Xar frantically.

“I know I cannot hurt the animal,” Xar said coldly. “But I can hurt her.”

Marit, curled up, helpless, moaned and shook her head. The sigil on her forehead blazed like fire.

“Dog, stop,” Haplo whispered through ashen lips.

The dog, whining, not understanding but trained to obey, fell back. Xar lifted Haplo in his arms as easily and tenderly as if he were a small injured child.

“Rise, Wife,” he said to Marit. “When I am gone, you will need to defend yourself.”

The magic that held her paralyzed released her. Weak, Marit stood up. She took a step nearer Xar, nearer Haplo.

“Where are you taking him, Lord?” she asked, hope fighting a final struggle in her heart. “To the Nexus? The Final Gate?”

“No, Wife.” Xar’s voice was cold. “I return to Abarrach.” He looked with satisfaction on Haplo. “To the necromancy.”

“How can you let this evil happen to your people, Lord?” she cried in anger.

Xar’s eyes flared. “They have suffered all their lives. What is one more day or two or three? When I come back in triumph, when the Seventh Gate is open, their suffering will end!”

It will be too late! The words were on her lips, but she
looked into Xar’s eyes and dared not say them. Catching hold of Haplo’s hand, she pressed it against her own heart-rune. “I love you,” she said to him.

His eyes opened. “Find Alfred!” He spoke without a voice, his lips moving, stained with his own blood. “Alfred can … stop them …”

“Yes, find the Sartan,” Xar sneered. “I am certain he will be more than happy to defend the prison his kind built.”

The lord spoke the runes; a sigil formed in the air. The flaring rune struck Marit, slashed across her forehead.

The pain seared through her as if he’d cut her with a knife. Blood flowed down over her eyes, blinding her. Gasping, dizzy with the agony and the shock, she fell to her knees.

“Xar! My Lord!” she cried wildly, wiping the blood from her eyes.

Xar ignored her. Bearing Haplo in his arms, the lord walked calmly across the field of battle. A shield of magic surrounded them, protected them.

Trotting along behind, unnoticed and forlorn, was the dog.

Marit sprang to her feet with some desperate notion of stopping them, attacking Xar from behind, rescuing Haplo, but at that moment a whirlwind of sigla spun about them—all three of them, including the dog—and all three were gone.

ABRI
THE LABYRINTH

T
HE BATTLE CAME TO AN END WITH THE EVENING. THE DRAGON
-snakes were vanquished, destroyed; they no longer threatened to breach the walls. The wondrous green dragon—the likes of which no one had ever before seen in the Labyrinth—joined with the Patryns to defeat the serpents. The walls held, their magic swiftly reinforced. The gate stood fast. Hugh the Hand was the last one through before it shut. He bore Kari in his arms. He had found her lying wounded beneath a score of dead chaodyn.

He carried her inside the gate, gave her into the arms of her people.

“Where are Haplo and Marit?” the Hand demanded.

Vasu, directing the renewing of the gate’s magic, looked at him in sudden consternation. “I thought they were with you.”

“They haven’t come in here?”

“No, they haven’t. And I’ve been here the entire time.”

“Open the gate again,” Hugh ordered. “They must still be out there.”

“Open it!” Vasu commanded his people. “I will come with you.”

Hugh the Hand, glancing at the pudgy headman, was about to protest, but then remembered that he could not kill.

The gate swung open; the two men ran out into a host of the enemy. But with their leaders dead, the lust for battle
seemed to have drained from the foe. Many were beating a retreat across the river, and these were creating confusion among the ranks.

“There!” Hugh the Hand pointed.

Hurt and bewildered, Marit was wandering alone near the base of the wall. A pack of wolfen, drawn by the scent of blood, were tracking her.

Vasu began to sing in a deep baritone.

Hugh the Hand decided the man had gone mad. This was no time for an aria! But suddenly an enormous bush, with long, spearing thorns, thrust up out of the ground, surrounded the wolfen. Thorns caught their thick fur, held them fast. Supple branches wrapped around their paws. The wolfen howled and shrieked, but the more they fought to escape, the more entangled they became.

Marit did not even notice. Vasu continued singing; the thorns grew deeper, denser. Above, Patryns waited until Marit was safe to finish off the wolfen trapped in the bush.

Hugh the Hand ran to her, caught hold of her. “Where is Haplo?”

She stared at him from eyes almost gummed shut by clotted blood. Either she couldn’t see him clearly or she didn’t recognize him. “Alfred,” she said to him in Patryn. “I must find Alfred.”

“Where is Haplo?” Hugh repeated in human, frustrated.

“Alfred.” Marit spoke the name over and over.

Hugh saw that he would get nothing from her in her dazed condition. He swept her up in his arms and ran back to Vasu. The headman sheltered them in his magic until they had safely reached the gate.

When night fell, the beacon fire still burned bright. The magic of the sigla on the walls glimmered and flickered, but their light continued to shine. The last of the foe slunk off into the wilderness, leaving their dead behind.

The elders who had spent the day inscribing the weapons with death-dealing runes now spent the night restoring life to those injured and dying.

Marit’s head wound was not life-threatening, but the healers could not heal it completely. Whatever weapon had torn her flesh must have been poisoned, they told Hugh the Hand when they showed him the raw and inflamed mark on her skin.

But at least Marit was conscious—far too conscious, as far as the healers were concerned. They had difficulty keeping her in her bed. She kept demanding to see Vasu, and at last they sent for him, since nothing else would calm her.

The headman came—exhausted, grieving. The city of Abri stood, but many had given their lives, including Kari. Including someone Vasu dreaded to name, especially to the woman who watched him draw near her sickbed.

“Alfred,” Marit said immediately. “Where is he? None of these fools knows or will tell me. I must find him! He can reach the Final Gate in time to fight the dragon-snakes! He can save our people.”

Patryns could not lie to each other, and Vasu was Patryn enough to know that she would see through his deceit, no matter how kindly meant.

“He is a serpent mage. He changed into dragon form—”

“I know all that!” Marit snapped impatiently. “Surely he has changed back by now. Take me to him!”

“He … did not return,” Vasu said.

The life drained from Marit’s eyes. “What do you mean?”

“He fell from the skies, perhaps mortally wounded. He’d been fighting a legion of dragons …”

“ ‘Perhaps’!” Marit grabbed the word, clung to it. “You didn’t see him die! You don’t know if he’s dead!”

“Marit, we saw him fall—”

She rose from her bed, shoving aside the restraining hands of the healers. “Show me where.”

“You can’t go out there,” Vasu said sternly. “It’s too dangerous. There are roving bands of wolfen and tigermen, furious at their defeat, waiting to catch one of us alone.”

“The human assassin. Where is he?”

“Here, Marit.” Hugh the Hand stood up. He had been watching by her bedside, unseen, unnoticed. “I’ll go with you. I need to find Alfred myself,” he added grimly.

“He is our only hope,” Marit said. Her eyes glimmered with tears for a moment. “He is Haplo’s only hope.” She blinked the tears away and reached for her weapons, which the healers had set aside.

Vasu did not ask what she meant. Xar’s magic had not
blinded the headman’s eyes. He had seen the Lord of the Nexus, had witnessed the meeting of the three. He had seen Xar leave with Haplo … and the dog. He had guessed that the Lord of the Nexus was not traveling to the battle of the Final Gate.

“Let her go,” he said to the healers.

They stood aside.

Vasu led Marit and Hugh the Hand to the wall. He pointed out to them where he had seen the dragon—flaming green and gold—fall from the skies. He opened the gate of Abri and saw them depart into the darkness.

Then he stood for long, long hours, until the dawn, watching in despair a sullen red glow that lit the horizon in the direction of the Final Gate.

APPENDIX I
THE ACCURSÉD
BLADE
SPECULATIONS
¹

O
F ALL THE UNFORTUNATE THINGS MY PEOPLE DID JUST BEFORE
the Sundering, the development of a weapon such as this cursed knife—now in the possession of Sir Hugh—is one of the most deplorable. Here is evidence that we involved innocent people—humans, elves, dwarves, the very people we were
supposed
to be protecting—in our battle against the Patryns.

That the blade was intended for use by the mensch is beyond doubt. I have examined it, examined the runes inscribed on it, and I am convinced. It was crafted in haste—that much is obvious from its crude design and manufacture—and therefore, most probably, the blades were turned out in large quantities.

Were Samah and the Council members so terrified of the Patryns that they armed entire legions of mensch with these heinous weapons? I can only suppose that the answer is, sadly, yes. Yet nowhere have I read that any wars involving mensch took place in the final days of pre-Sundering Earth. Such battles as did occur between Patryn and Sartan were generally fought on an individual basis,
terrible tourneys of magic which invariably proved fatal to one or both combatants.

But from information about those last days obtained from my dear Orla, I think I can speculate on what happened. Consumed by fear, terrified that the Patryns were forming their own armies (this may or may not have been the case), Samah and the Council decided to prepare a defense, armed vast numbers of mensch with these magical weapons. I doubt they meant to send the mensch to war. (For one thing, Samah wouldn’t trust them!) Most likely, the mensch armies were to be used as cover, to fight a delaying action, allowing the Sartan time to enter the Seventh Gate and proceed with the Sundering.

Such a battle apparently never took place. Perhaps the mensch revolted (I hope so!), or perhaps even Samah felt some twinges of conscience over forcing others to fight his battles for him. Apparently most of the cursed weapons were either destroyed in the Sundering or confiscated by the Sartan before establishing the mensch on the new worlds.

How did this one escape? It undoubtedly fell into the hands of an unscrupulous elf who, impressed by the weapon’s power, decided to keep it for himself. The blade itself would be a willing ally, eager to assist in its own survival. The elf was trained in the blade’s use, but, due to circumstance—perhaps his untimely death—such information was not passed along to future generations. Only the blade was handed down. The elf could have no idea he was passing on such a deadly legacy.

How does the blade work?

The following are my speculations based on Hugh’s and Haplo’s accounts of the blade in action, and my own study of the sigla inscribed on the weapon. (An interesting point: in enhancing the weapon with rune-magic, we Sartan did exactly what we had always claimed we despised the Patryns for doing, giving life to that which is not meant to have it!)

1. The first action the blade takes is to block the enemy’s ability to sense danger. Thus Haplo had no warning that Hugh the Hand was stalking him in the Factree, never knew that the assassin was waiting in ambush on the ship.

2. The blade’s second action reduces an enemy’s possibilities of retaliation. The blade cannot eliminate all possibilities;
that would take far greater power than the blade possesses. But it can and does limit the choice of options to those it can easily handle.

3. The blade’s third action analyzes both the enemy’s strength and weakness and reacts accordingly. Sometimes this reaction is a very simple one for the blade to perform, as in the unfortunate “fight” between the two elf brothers. The blade, facing a dueling dagger, had only to turn itself into a sword to kill its foe. When Hugh the Hand first encountered Haplo, the blade changed itself to an ax against Haplo’s knife.

Notice, however, that when the blade encounters additional opponents, its strength increases. The blade became a bat when attacking both Marit and Haplo. When this attack failed, the blade turned into a tytan.

Also of interest is the fact that the blade appears to draw on the memories and thoughts of the victims. Haplo says that he does not recall thinking specifically of tytans during the brief stop their ship made in Pryan (admittedly, he did have a great deal on his mind!), but it seems logical to me that he must have at least had the giants he encountered on that world in his subconscious.

And that is all I have been able to determine about the blade so far. As to any further speculations, I would have to see the blade in action (something I’d rather
not
do!) to be able to provide additional information on it.

I take this moment to add some information that I have acquired on the Cursed Blade.
²
The first bit of information is good: the blade can be controlled by the user. All one has to do is to say the word “stop” in Sartan.

The second piece of information is very bad. Apparently the blade can also be controlled by outside forces! I have evidence that the dragon-snakes are able to wield some sort of influence over it.

The weapon was created out of fear, designed to kill, and so it would naturally be drawn to the dragon-snakes.
They, in turn, appear to be able to control the blade’s magic. They cannot, it seems, cause the blade to turn against its user. But the snakes can direct the blade’s actions and reactions to suit their own purposes. Haplo thinks now that it was the Cursed Blade that brought the tiger-men down on us. And the blade apparently issued some sort of call to the dragon-snakes, alerting them to its presence in Abri.

There
must
be some way to destroy this weapon. Unfortunately, I can’t think of any at the moment, but then my mind is rather flurried. Perhaps if I had time to reflect and study the matter further …

(Editor’s note: Here the text ends.)

¹
Written by Alfred Montbank sometime during his sojourn in the Labyrinth.

²
This last is written in an agitated style, from which we must conclude that Alfred probably recorded this information just before the Siege of Abri.