With a Tangled Skein (43 page)

She pondered, then turned right-and discovered a dead end. She felt along the walls, floor and ceiling, but all were solid. No exit here.

She tried the left hall, but this, too, was a dead end. So she went straight ahead-and found a third dead end. None of the passages went anywhere.

She stood by the plaque and pondered. Could the message be a fake, not in its accounting of threads and illusions, but in its implication that the route was here when it was not? So that she would waste her few remaining threads looking for what did not exist? What a fiendish trap!

She walked around the plaque-and saw that there were words printed on its back. DO YOU YIELD?

Satan's humor, all right! "No, I don't!" she exclaimed.

That plaque could be here to make her think it was a lie, so that she would write off this annex-when it was the correct route. She had to make absolutely sure it was not, before she gave up on it.

She explored the halls again. It occurred to her that an illusion did not have to be merely sight; it could be sound or touch too. Some of the illusion-monsters had roared. There might be an exit she couldn't find because her hands missed it as readily as her eye did. In that case she would have to use a thread-which would leave it at four threads, nine illusions. She couldn't afford to trade off one for one. Not now.

She discovered a slanting connecting passage between the straight-ahead hall and the left hall, making the overall configuration of passages resemble the closed figure 4.

 
348 With a Tangled Skein

Why should that extra passage exist, when it was easy enough to go from one hall to another via the center? About all it did was make it possible to walk down every hall without having to double back.

Something nagged at her. Some figures had to be "solved" by tracing them without doubling back. There were some traffic patterns in large cities like that, where three right turns substituted for one illegal left turn. Could this be one such?

She returned to her starting point, at the base of the 4, then resolutely marched forward. She proceeded past the plaque to the apex, then turned sharp left. She followed the slant down, then turned sharply left again. She walked past the plaque, into the end of the 4-and now the passage opened out into a cave. She had penetrated the illusion, without using a thread. Two left turns had unraveled what one right turn could not.

Now she saw a straight path leading like a pier into a deep black pool. The path widened, forming a kind of island in the center of the pool-and on that island a dragon. The path continued on beyond the dragon, to terminate in a blank wall.

Obviously she had to pass the dragon to get through. But through to what? There was no exit there!

Ah, but there had to be! Satan had nine illusions left; he must have covered the exit through the wall with illusion, and set a genuine dragon to guard it. Most of the prior illusions had been of monsters, guarding real passages; this one was the other way around. She could probably penetrate the illusion, once she got by the dragon; she didn't need to use any thread here.

But how could she get by the dragon?

Well, the dragon could be illusion too. But if she walked into it, and it was real, she would lose two precious threads and still not be past. That was hardly worth the risk. It would be better to verify it with one thread-

No, she had a better notion. She approached as close as she dared and threw the helmet at it. The metal bounced off the dragon's scaled side and rolled into the water with a splash. The dragon snorted fire. It was certainly real.

She looked to the sides. There was a ledge just above water-level beyond the dragon; it curved around to either side, approaching the path on which she stood within eight feet before terminating.

She sighed. A man might have leaped across; she had no such hope. She had to find another way.

She saw that there were vines hanging from the ceiling, but they looked insubstantial. She took hold of one and jerked; it broke near the top and came tumbling down. There were some that looked strong enough to bear her weight, but they were dangling tantalizingly out of reach.

There seemed to be no other avenue, unless she went back to the figure-4 annex, which she would only do as a last, last resort. There had to be a way; she just had to find it.

She found it. She yanked down another weak vine, bunched it and tied it in a rough knot. Then she tied that knot to another hanging vine. Then she swung the knot across to one of the more substantial vines. After several tries she was able to entangle that larger vine and draw it over to her, using the weak vine. Now she had hold of the one she wanted.

She hauled at it with increasing vigor. It held; it was firmly anchored and it was strong enough to take her weight.

She held on tightly, drew back, then ran to the edge of the water. She leaped at the margin, clung for dear life, and swung across to the other path. Something flashed below her in the water as she passed, like a huge shark. She landed heavily but adequately, and the vine swung back behind. It might have been pitiful as a gymnastic feat, but she was across. She was glad she had not tried to swim.

She made her way along the narrow path, her right hand brushing along the wall. The dragon watched her, but could not reach her.

Where the straight path intersected the current one, she found the exit; it was indeed illusion-covered. She stepped through cautiously, alert for a pitfall, but there was none. She was through-and she still had five threads, with eight illusions remaining, if the plaque was to be believed. She remained behind, but her ingenuity had enabled her to gain.

She came into a broad cavern with a wide river running through, reminiscent of one she had encountered in the Hall of the Mountain King. Perhaps Satan had borrowed the concept. If so, she knew how to cross.

But it was not the same. There was no mesh fence in this river, and no sign advertising it as Lethe. Of course it could still be Lethe, as that was one of the rivers of Hell, so she would treat it with caution. There were fish in it; when she dipped her finger in, three horrendouslytoothed little monsters converged. One leaped as she drew her hand quickly away; the fish's teeth clacked in midair where her hand had been, before it splashed back down. There would be no swimming in this river!

There was a wide path along the bank, originating at the point she entered this section. She walked slowly along it. Obviously her challenge was to cross the river, but there were no more hanging vines; and in any event the river was about fifty feet wide. Well, she would see,

She heard something. She stopped, listening nervously. It was the even footfalls of a striding man. She shrank into an alcove to the side, not wanting to encounter the sort of man she would in Hell.

The man came into view. He was tall and blond, muscular and handsome in a boyish way.

All Niobe's reserve crumbled. "Cedric!" she cried.

Cedric turned to face her. "Niobe!" he exclaimed, spreading his arms.

Then several things caught up with her. "But you're dead!" she said, stopping before she reached him.

"Of course I am. But my love for you remains."

"But what are you doing in Hell? You were a good man in life-a wonderful man!"

He shrugged. "A glitch in the system, maybe. But if you're here, that's where I want to be. With the most beautiful woman of her generation."

"But I'm not beautiful anymore! I've gone to seed."

He shrugged again. "It doesn't matter. My love is eternal."

"You're an illusion, aren't you!" she said indignantly. "A demon in disguise! I can use a thread on you and expose you for what you are!" She was angry now that Satan should use this particular device to trick her. To taunt her with her long lost love!

Cedric just stood there, not answering. He looked just exactly the way she remembered him, and her love fought in her breast to emerge and take over. There was nothing in life as sweet as first love! That made her angrier yet. "Get out of here!" she screamed. "I'll not waste a thread on you! You're just a-a mockery!" Now the tears were flowing. She had been caught entirely off-guard by this specter, and her emotion had to be expressed somehow. "You have no right to-to-"

"I'm sorry you feel that way," Cedric said. "But of course your love for me was never as true as mine for you."

There was just enough truth in that to sting. She rushed at him and struck him with her fist, scoring on the nose.

Blood streamed down his face, but he made no motion to strike back. "I'll always love you, Niobe," he said quietly.

Her rage was so great that she was ready to kill. Her fingers curled into claws. She started for his eyes-

And caught herself. Hate was Satan's way. She was falling into Satan's trap! If she allowed hate and rage to dominate her, she would remain in Hell forever.

This was a demon in disguise, for it was solid under the illusion. Surely the demon could wipe her out with a single blow! But it had not done so. Instead it was taunting her into rage, baiting the love she could not afford to express. She could have used one thread on it, to expose it-or it could have killed her, costing her two threads. The rules of the maze did not allow monsters to chase her down; they could only hurt her if she made contact on her own initiative. She had made contact-but the thing was trying to destroy her rationality, not her body. To ruin her objectivity about her mission here, so that she would act foolishly and waste her remaining threads. That was the trap she could not afford-the one that would cost her all.

She calmed herself. "I'm sorry, Cedric. I shouldn't have struck you. Of course your love is true." She brought out a hanky and dabbed at his face.

Now he became uncomfortable. "Please don't bother," he said. "I'll be all right."

"Oh, but I must help you," she said warmly. "It's so important to love you back as strongly as you love me."

He jerked away. "I really must be going."

"Must you-so soon, Cedric?" she asked sadly.

He hurried away without further word.

She knew why. Demons were creatures of violence and hate, and could hardly tolerate gentleness and love, whatever they might say. This demon had been besting her- until she became positive. Then it could not handle the situation. Love defeated hate-with a little management.

She walked on-and encountered another man. "Pace!"

"Niobe!" he replied.

But it had to be another demon, for Pacian, like Cedric, had been a genuinely good man, not destined for Hell.

She headed for it. "Darling, it's so good to see you again!" she exclaimed.

It hesitated. "Uh, yes, of course. And I know you aren't really to blame for my being here."

So that was its ploy! Force her into an angry denial of that outrageous implication. "Oh, but I am," she replied. "I know you wouldn't be here now, if it weren't for me."

Again it hesitated. This wasn't following the script! Then it tried again, gamely enough. "Well, actually, you know it's not exactly me here-"

"Let me give you a big fat kiss, dear," she said, approaching.

It lost its composure and fled. Niobe smiled. She was learning how to handle demons.

But she wondered whether she had been correct in assuming that her anger was worth more to Satan than her life. She was so low on threads that the two threads a killing would have cost her represented forty percent of her total. Either of those demons could have dropped her total to three threads, putting her critically behind in the terminal stage of the maze. Was her anger really worth more than that?

She stopped where she was, certain that she was on her way to an important realization. Satan was evil, but hardly stupid. Anything he did made sense. So why would he instruct his demons not to attack her, if their taunting , was not effective? There had to be some way he expected ' to gain from this.

Well, suppose there was a way she could get into more than two threads worth of trouble, if not diverted from it by the demons? She had recognized the wrong courses in prior segments of the maze because they were impassable. Now she was encountering demons who could have stopped her, but did not. Did that mean she was heading into more than two threads worth of mischief? That she was in fact on the wrong route?

If so, she should reverse course and get out of here. But that would mean encountering the two demons she had passed-and they surely would not let her travel that way. She could get killed twice, costing her four threads. These were more sophisticated than the prior monsters; they hadn't had to kill her as long as she was going in the direction Satan desired. And if she managed to get back past them-where would she find the correct route? She had no idea.

She concluded that she simply had to gamble on this being the right course. It was after all possible that the demons were merely trying to make her think she was going wrong. Wouldn't that be an irony: for her to turn away from the correct route, simply because the demons let her pass!

Meanwhile, she had an advantage: she knew that Satan was not about to force her to lose two threads. He wanted her to lose at least three. That must be the minimum number she needed for victory. He was willing to throw away illusions; they didn't matter. It was the threads that counted.