Labyrinth Gate (36 page)

“Maretha, my dear child!—” He took a step towards her. “You can’t mean that.”

“Of course I can mean it,” she continued, reckless now. “He would have strangled me if he could have, but I escaped. And he has to find me now, because he’s lost the source of his old power. He can’t get it back. Just here, he tried to—” She broke off. Her father extended a hand, but she flung herself away from him. “No, no. It was my own dream.” Her tone was almost scornful. “My nightmare. Much you cared.”

“But—Maretha … I never—”

“You’re a selfish old man,” Maretha cried. “You never cared about anything but your work.” She moved abruptly past him, as if to run on into the forest again.

And was brought up short with a frightened cry by the sight of the earl advancing on them through the trees.

“Maretha,” said Chryse in a firm voice. “Come back by me.”

Maretha retreated.

The earl looked so different a man that Chryse would almost not have recognized him: his clothes in disorder, without coat or waistcoat, without boots or cravat; his hair mussed and a smudge on his cheek; but more than that the look of desperate passion on his face, so entirely removed from the chilly hauteur that characterized him. The inconsequential thought crossed her mind that at least he had never used sorcery to enhance his looks: he was still a handsome man, not some repulsive horror as she had often imagined.

“Stop right there,” she said.

He had a spear in one hand, but he stopped. “Let me through. You don’t understand. I must kill her. The ritual has to be completed.”

“I understand.” With a push she moved Maretha behind her, so that her body stood between the spear and the earl’s wife. “You’re the one who doesn’t understand. I understand that you were willing to murder Maretha to gain power for your sorcery. You
tried
to kill her. You’d still do it, given the chance. I understand that both you and Professor Farr completely mis-read the ritual of the labyrinth.”

“Impossible,” protested Professor Farr. “I have studied the remains of this civilization for decades.”

The earl kept his spear hefted, point towards Chryse. “What do you mean?”

“How did you get here, Professor? Was it with Thomas Southern?”

The professor shook his head, confused. “No. No, it was one of the workers. He’d found a way to get below. What was his name—Tagness, I think. Somehow below we got separated, and I found myself here. I fail to see what this has to do with my years of careful research.”

“Did you come through the central chamber below? Did you?” She turned to the earl again. The slightest blush colored his cheeks, matching the one that flushed Maretha’s face at the question. “Did you look at the frescos there? An entire set, the whole year, unbroken, and very clear. They depict the same eight holidays that are on the Gates. The old legends are true, in some sense: the Gates do descend from ancient Pariam. And you were right on one count, Professor. If the frescoes are a true reconstruction of an ancient ritual and not just some artist’s fancy, then there was a sacrifice. A—coronation beginning the year, I suppose, followed by a—craft’s fair, and then the sowing in early spring. There
was
a sacred marriage, as you theorized, which was indeed followed by a sacrifice to fulfill the ritual of the labyrinth.” Her voice rang in the glade. “But it wasn’t the bride, at all, who was sacrificed. It’s the man.”

Maretha gasped.

The earl’s expression did not change, but there was a kind of whitening around his eyes as the shock of her statement hit him.

“You’ve thrown the year off a little, I think,” Chryse continued, so furious that she felt the last shred of mercy or sympathy drain from her. “I didn’t get to see the whole thing, but the Gates tell it anyway. And if it’s been as long as centuries, I don’t think the city cares what season it is, as long as it gets the blood it wants. I finally understood why the day is called Hunter’s Run. The wedding takes place, and then the groom is imprisoned and then released, into the forest—like any wild animal. They’re hunting the bridegroom. Men, hunting a man. He’s the sacrifice.”

Into the silence left by the effect of her words, a wind came up suddenly and rushed through leaves, rattling the undergrowth. As if a cloud had covered the sun, the light dimmed abruptly and quickly, like a reversal of the dawn that Chryse had just experienced.

Faint, for in the distance, a horn sounded, and hounds belled.

The professor and Maretha both started at the sound, and turned to look around. Only the earl’s gaze remained fixed on Chryse, and hers on him.

“I’d start running if I were you,” she said.

S
ANJAY WAS LEANING OVER
the slab of stone that lay in the center of the great circular chamber, examining it with both eye and touch, when a wisp of a breeze stirred the close air of the room and his lantern flame wavered, guttered, and went out. He sighed, a little exasperated, and crouched to re-light it just as his gaze caught on a faint pattern glowing on the stone floor. He stretched out his arm and brushed at it with two fingers.

“Chryse. Come look at this. I could swear these are footprints leading away. It’s as if—I don’t know—each step left a tiny bit of life energy that marked the stone. I feel sure that this is Maretha’s trail.”

Chryse made some reply, but he did not really hear it, he was so intent on following the track. It was like a pale dusting, barely discernible, but unmistakable once the eye caught it. He traced it out of the chamber and down one corridor, turning into another and another before he realized that he was lost and that the trail of footprints was fading behind him, so that he could not follow it back to his wife. He had no choice but to go on.

He was not entirely surprised when the traces led him to a straight length of stairs that led up into the rock. He looked back once, into the dark tunnel behind, and then climbed.

The transition from under to above ground was almost imperceptible, until he realized that of course it was now night. There was no moon, only the brilliant scattering of stars above to illuminate the forest.

It was warm, for autumn. He found a smooth bole of a tree and sat against it, yawning. To his right he could barely discern the opening of the stairway set into a low rise. After all, he reasoned, Chryse was surely as likely to be drawn out this way as he had been.

He could see by the nature of the forest around him that it was as much a labyrinth as the maze of tunnels below. At first, sitting quietly, he let his eyes adjust to the way the dim light fell among the trees. Though it was night, his sight penetrated farther than it should have in such conditions. A quality of uncanny shifting permeated the woods. It was as if no thing or no point in the forest was ever entirely at rest, as if some force sifted randomly through it, changing its aspect from one moment to the next.

A double-trunked oak that grew some meters in front of him, when he looked again, had shifted position a good ten feet to the right. Later, looking a third time, the oak had shifted back, but now bore three trunks. A glade opened out to his left. Its boundaries altered when his attention strayed to other areas. None of this was abrupt, or even, he felt, conscious on the part of some unseen manipulator, but rather the natural result of a power that, loose in the forest, manifested itself by these constant transformations.

Above, he heard the quick beat of wings and a bird’s cry. Out of the brush loped a light blur that materialized into a white wolf. It stopped dead in its tracks and stared at Sanjay as if surprised to see him there. Some creature made a faint
chuff
ing noise out in the gloom, and the wolf flicked its ears and vanished into the woods behind. An insubstantial form that could as likely have been a wisp of smoke settled into the nook of a branch and coiled itself around the limb.

Wind rose from far away, fluttering the last leaves, talking in the branches. Its timbre changed as it grew stronger until it sounded like the snap and rush of a sail in steady wind, and Sanjay felt it push at his back and then subside abruptly. A thick, rumbling sigh shook the air behind him, followed by a hot gust of sulphurous breeze that brushed his cheek and made the hair on the back of his neck tingle as if someone was touching it. He turned his head to look.

And stood up, one hand on the tree to stop himself falling over from sheer amazement.

The most beautiful creature he had ever seen had settled into the glade. As he watched, it folded its wings against its body, an action incongruously graceful in so huge a creature. Light shimmered along its skin. It might have been moonlight trapped in the lustrous silver of its scales, running like water along the lines of least resistance as the creature shifted position, then flowing back again.

Sanjay came as close as he ever had in his life to swearing, except that he was too staggered to speak, never having expected, even here, to see a dragon.

As if he
had
spoken aloud, it turned its great horned head about and fastened its gaze on him. Unalloyed power radiated from it. Its eyes held both sheer terror and utter fascination, so that as he stared he felt progressively less that he had any will of his own and more an inchoate yearning, some longing buried deep that had surfaced only now. Like a famished man finding golden apples, he desired this thing more than anything and was yet afraid of the effect it had on him.

It spoke. Not a voice, pushed by air through vocal cords, but a melisma of sound that could yet be understood as words.

>Thou art known, child< said the dragon, not so much examining Sanjay as encompassing him. Its sinuous neck arched in a move as smooth as the flow of water.

“How do you know me?” asked Sanjay, finding speech at last. After the sonority of the dragon, his voice sounded thin, one-dimensional.

>That which has already passed, is yet to be< it said, a rising and falling of tones on one syllable. >It is thy task to see the truth and let it therefore be known<

It gathered itself, claws pulling at the turf like a cat pulls at a rug, tail sweeping and curling as it unfurled its wings. It had a fluid beauty, never complete, never imprisoned in any one aspect.

Unlike mortal humans, thought Sanjay, trapped in time.

Than it sprang. Up—the force of the air displaced by its wings brought him to his knees and sent gusts of leaves scattering over the ground. He remained kneeling as he stared up, following its path with his eyes until the trees hid it.

As if the dragon had pulled all sound up with it, the night was covered with utter silence. Even his own breathing did not sound, or the rustle of undergrowth as he stood.

A hound bayed, then a chorus of hounds. A horn-call lifted on the breeze just after it, as if in pursuit. Sanjay brushed at the last dirt clinging to his trousers. The barking grew in volume, and under it he could hear the noise of horses passing through undergrowth. He stepped to one side so that his back was protected by the tree trunk, and waited.

The dogs came first, a pack of red-eared, brindle hounds that moved forward like some many-limbed, exciteable creature. They barked and bayed and bellowed and, spotting Sanjay, thronged to him and sniffed at a safe distance. They had huge, brown, weeping eyes and a look of such doleful exuberance that Sanjay had to laugh and crouch and put out a hand. The hounds swarmed over him, licking and snuffling as if he was their long-lost master.

The horn sounded again. The hounds, whining, retreated into a great quivering mass of dog. From out of the forest swept a phalanx of hunters. They pulled up their horses and the hounds crowded around them.

Sanjay tried not to stare until he realized that the hunters had evidently not noticed him. The horses had coats of burnished white, some shading to grey or gold. Each was arrayed with a spun-gold saddle blanket, fringed with strands of black pearls and brilliant feathers. Jewels blazed in their braided manes and tails.

The riders wore the same spun-gold fabric fashioned into clothing rich with interlaced patterns that seemed to expand and contract like an unbroken path of spirals through unfamiliar countryside, unending motion, unending change. Belts of intense red bounded their waists, and each bore an elaborately hafted knife in a sheath stitched with gold thread. All the riders carried spears.

Sanjay could get no clear idea of their faces. They had a kind of blurring focus about them, as if they existed on a different plane of time than he did. He only knew that they were not human.

One raised a horn to her lips. Before the high call rose on the wind, a riderless, grey horse cantered into the glade and halted before Sanjay. He felt a sudden shifting of focus so strong it was disorienting, had to put his hand on the horse’s neck to steady himself. When he looked up, he saw that all the riders were now gazing at him in a half-curious, rather flat way.

He could see their faces now. They were not beautiful, but splendid, graceful faces too exotic to be handsome to a human eye. He understood that they expected him to mount, so he did.

The horn sounded. The hounds belled and set off again on the scent. A strong sense not of antiquity but of timelessness settled on Sanjay as the air rushed past and they galloped through the trees. He felt caught up in some archaic sacrament that he did not understand. There was a relentless purpose to this chase; the trees themselves seemed to create a path where none had been before. He did not even attempt to guide the horse, but knew rather that he was being carried along toward a consecration far older than he was or could ever hope to become.

The baying of the hounds intensified. They had sighted their prey. Sanjay felt a surge of blood-taste in his mouth and his emotions, as he too sighted a single figure fleeing the inexorable pursuit. Beside him, the riders lowered their spears.

The hounds coursed alongside their prey, closing and nipping at its heels to drive it out into the open. Not until it turned did Sanjay register that the distant figure was a man.

Golden-haired. His white shirt had been pulled free in his run and now hung over the top of his black trousers. He had a spear; as the hunt neared, Sanjay watched him thrust at the hounds, who were merely harrying him. He had a sharp eye, this trapped man, but each spear-thrust, however well-placed, dug into turf, not flesh, though a hound had been in that spot an instant before. His steps slowed as he tired, and at last, when he thrust, two of the hounds slipped inside his guard and nipped and yanked and he fell, sprawling on the ground, his spear slipping from his grasp.