Labyrinth Wall (9780991531219) (15 page)

Soll takes the lead, insisting he be the person to test his own plan. “Here goes.”

The group watches breathlessly as the tall muscular pale man runs across the boulder, positions his branch against the large rock below, and vaults toward his destination. Fingers tapping again, my own tick annoys me. My mind tells them to stop. Korun has allowed Keelie to tightly grasp his arm as Soll flies into the air. Large body thudding onto the rough rock surface, he makes it across the steamy orange liquid.

“All right, come on.” He turns, motioning his hand for us to follow.

Laon is the first to vault off of our boulder safely. Meanwhile, across the way, Keelie’s next to vault after Soll. Her small body struggles to maneuver the branch in her arms. Determined, she runs across the boulder as quickly as she can before extending the pole to the rock between her and her destination. Keelie attempts to launch her little body off the boulder but lacks the strength to get all the way through the air. Violently, she falls back to the huge rock from which she came. I flinch as she crashes to the boulder. She lies still for a minute. Saige squats by her side.

From my vantage point, it’s difficult to make out her condition. She appears to have gotten the breath knocked out of her and takes a moment to recover. Then she stands to her feet, lifting the branch as she argues with Saige.

“I can do it, you know,” Keelie insists, her hands on her hips.

“You can do it,” Saige encourages, “I’m just going to help you launch.” Something about Saige’s gentle voice is familiar to me. The interaction between them also strikes me as particularly unique.

“I think I can do it alone,” Keelie pleads.

“Make a deal with me?”

Keelie cocks her head, as if waiting for details.

“You try one more time and then hear me out?”

“Right, but you’ll see I can do it,” Keelie compromises.

Her small body runs across the boulder once again. This time, she extends the branch to the small rock but abruptly stops before taking off. It is hard to tell from my angle, but it looks like her eyes are watering.

“Okay,” she chokes out. “I’m slowing us down. Please help me, Saige.”

Saige smiles at her kindly. “Okay, run as fast as you can and make certain you get that branch in a sound position. I’ll make sure you get through the air.”

Korun stands near Saige, looking as if he might dive into the lava if necessary to save Keelie in the event of an accident.

Keelie nods, walking for the third time to the other end of the boulder. “I’m ready,” she announces nervously. She darts across the boulder with her branch in hand.

As she positions her pole preparing to launch, Saige sweeps beneath her with remarkable speed and utilizes her entire body to help launch the small girl into the air.

Keelie flies across the lava with a shriek, landing safely in Soll’s arms on the other side.

A sigh of relief slips from my mouth.

“You seemed distracted, so we went ahead and got Laon and Rase to the other side,” Rifan demands my attention. “You’re next.” He clears the path for me to run.

“Oh, you can go,” I offer.

“No, I think it would be better if you go ahead. I’ll hang behind the group.”

There really isn’t time to argue. “If you insist.”

The opposite side of the boulder would be the best place to start. A deep breath sucks heat into my throat. My eyes can’t help but survey the tall swords and blades scattered across the ground and, of course, the lethal lava that fills the gaps. I stab my branch at the boulder beneath me a couple times testing its strength. It feels solid. As I turn the pole in my hands, my fingers identify a good place to secure a grip. The bark isn’t pleasant against the skin on my palm. Given the choice though, rough bark on the skin seems better than lava consuming me.

One more time, I glance across the lava to assess the progress of the other group. Everyone but Olum has made it across. In fact, he also appears to be preparing for his leap.

Wasting time won’t get me to my destination. It’s time to focus. This is it. My eyes firmly fix on the other boulder. Hastily, my legs propel me forward. Nearing the edge of the giant rock, I glance down long enough to position my pole before setting my sights back to my intended landing spot. My weight leaves the boulder, and I glide through the smoke-filled air. My mind is aware this activity is purely to escape death, but the freedom of the air rushing through my hair creates momentary enjoyment.

A sudden scream startles me, bringing my heart to a stop. My eyes dart to survey the area around myself fearfully. My feet land securely on the boulder, but Keelie’s screams continue. Olum is the recipient of her frightened stare. He leaped about the same time as me, but it looks like his branch was not as solid as mine. I can only conclude that his branch snapped. His body is impaled through the stomach with a sword from the ground.

He must have just fallen because he still attempts to move for another moment. Despite the lava engulfing his lower legs, he tries once to push himself up off the sword. Failure wins over his efforts as his arms fall limp.

Keelie’s screaming comes to an abrupt end, and she buries her face in Soll’s chest. Despite how many times I’ve watched Mahk die, somehow this moment strikes me differently. We spoke only one time, but that’s more interaction than the other Mahk I’ve seen die. Something touches me too about the response of the group. As an awkward spectator, I watch them all bow their heads quietly then grasp their hands to their foreheads.

“We will remember,” they say quietly in unison.

Their united expression of sadness captures my attention and stirs my heart. Pressure builds in my chest, and time seems to stop. It’s like the world paused when his life drained away.

It’s hard to rush them, but we’re flirting with our own deaths. The lava is going to get higher, and we need to get moving.

Thankfully, Rase interrupts them. She waits until Keelie happens to make eye contact with her before she offers words from across the expanse of lava, “May his spirit be at peace, but he would want all of you to keep going.”

I’m surprised she doesn’t come across harsh, judgmental, or even happy.

“We really do need to keep moving.” She looks to the ground as the last word leaves her mouth.

She can’t possibly care, but sometimes, she’s convincing at pretending she does.

“She’s right.” My hand sweeps a strand of curly red hair from my face. “I’m sorry for your loss, but we don’t have much time.”

Soll nods, regains his composure, and continues onto the next boulder. Laon and Rase make it to our next boulder pretty quickly. Korun has now placed himself at the back of the group, demanding he be the last to vault. He carries himself with a slight hunch now and a saddened expression across his face. Korun doesn’t really know any of them, but it seems like Olum’s death hit him almost as hard as it hit the others. Again, he reminds me of Blue. His compassion for strangers when he himself is far from home and seeking answers in his own life is surprising.

We all continue on, trying to pretend we’re immortal. Time soars by as we fly from boulder to boulder. For the next hour, survival is the prize as both groups vault forward. Two more surges of lava have come through in that time so the surface now stands about four feet off the ground. The swords and blades have disappeared under the orange liquid substance. Short rocks which have enabled us to leap to the larger boulders are dangerously close to being covered up.

“How close are we getting to the den?” I finally yell across to Soll.

“We’re almost there, Araina. It’s going to be all right,” he insists.

Keelie backs him up. “Right, we can get there, I know we can. It’s around that next turn.”

Hopeless dread flies away with my sigh. At the rate the lava has been coming through, we should reach that turn before another surge. The smoke that has been thickening in the air is an equal threat, but if we move fast enough we could survive.

“Okay, let’s power through this last bit.” I smile at Keelie. Her little squeaky voice and crying can be very obnoxious, but her determination is admirable. “Wait, which side is the den on?” I blurt out.

Everyone pauses for a moment to take in the question. No one considered how the adjacent group was going to cross the lava river to join the other group.

Soll’s face turns even paler than its natural shade. Despair barks viciously at my spirit. Realistically, I’m not the kind to give up easily though. If I’m going to end up in the lava, it won’t be without a good effort to avoid it.

Then Keelie’s expression lights up. “Keep moving. There’s something at the den to get you across.”

She then stretches upward, signaling Soll to stoop over as she whispers something in his ear.

“Fate be, you’re right!” he exclaims. Soll turns to Korun with a stern look. “I’m going to have to move ahead of the group. I can get your friend across, if you can get my friends to the den safely.”

“Please hurry.” Korun nods.

Soll takes off, moving with impressive speed from boulder to boulder as the two groups continue at the same pace as before. We have only moved forward two boulders, and Soll has already disappeared around the corner.

The rest of us keep pressing forward, jumping from one large boulder to the next. My arms are becoming incredibly tired. It’s amazing Keelie is still going. She looks even weaker than me.

We make it to the turn in the labyrinth passages, but there’s still no sight of Soll.

“He should be almost ready,” Keelie comments. “He’ll need our help. We’ll be back as quickly as we can.”

Keelie, Korun, and Saige work their way across three more boulders before coming to a towering mountain slope. I’ve seen that part of the mountain many times before. We’ve come back around to a different side of the same mountains the Blood Caves are in. I’ve seen this mountain area several times and never spotted a cave. Where is the den?

It’s hard to make out anything they say, but Keelie, Korun, and Saige are discussing something. Keelie points toward the mid-section of the mountain. Then Saige and Korun help boost her to a small rock shelf. Keelie hikes up the mountain a few feet. A dust trail rises behind her as she moves. Every few feet, she kicks a rock loose that tumbles downward.

Still, there’s no visible door or opening in the jagged mountain. She decreases her pace and shimmies out of view, disappearing into the slate-colored rocks. She vanishes into what I assume is a small entrance, and Korun, who had lifted himself up on the shelf behind her, follows. Clearly there’s some small tunnel entrance to their den on the mountain. The entry is completely out of view. It now makes sense that they’ve been able to sneak in and out unseen by outsiders.

Saige waits on the boulder at the base of the mountain, her icy blue eyes fixed on the den entrance. She’s a pretty woman and appears to have been created only a couple years more aged than me. Like the rest of us, she scratches at her bone dry skin, which is a couple shades darker than Rase’s but not the same color as Korun’s. As she scoops a couple of loose black hairs back into the tight bun on her head, her compliment to Soll surfaces in my memory. It seems ludicrous for any Mahk to hope for affection from another, but as a woman, I sense that’s what she desires from Soll. I’ve seen that kind of attraction between Creators before, but never imagined Mahk would act like that. In a world of kill or be killed, how could a relationship involving that much trust exist? Those dreaming of passion are likelier to find themselves dead in the arms of affection than happy in love.
 

Chapter 16
Fast Beating Hearts

Lava continues to flow. Hopelessness continues to grow. The air is getting so thin it’s hard to take in deep breaths. As I monitor the entrance of the cave, my eyes burn from the intense smoke. Time drags on, leading me to thoughts about my two years of life, and how different they could have been had I known about and joined the colony. Aside from Blue, would there be friends in my life?
Would my heart be in Saige’s shoes, falling for some Mahk man?
Or maybe the colony would have granted me some respectable role. It all sounds so picturesque yet so unreal. It would be an illusion. The relationships and the security could never last in this labyrinth. The Creators would have eventually caught on.

Aside from the risk of losing all that, I imagine having lived without Blue all that time. She sparked a change in my heart that I’m not sure anything or anyone else could have brought on. The gentleness she radiates softened me, yet her dependence on me taught me responsibility. Without her, I don’t know who I’d be, but I don’t think Soll would be calling me “exceptional.”

The minutes drag on, and still they’ve not emerged from the mountain.

“A trap in the den?” Rifan whispers.

The question was rhetorical. How would I know? But I have to admit, I’ve had the same thought. I prepare for the worst. Anticipation lingers that this boulder may become my grave. My chances of a potential future diminishing rapidly, I’m suddenly saddened never to have discovered Korun’s origin or learned more about his abilities.