Dedication (The Medicean Stars Saga Book 1) (17 page)

The maze is damp, dark, and cold. The wooden portions of the walls are slimy to the touch, and the concrete seems to radiate a chill. Grateful for his elevated body temperature from the jog over, William trots along the path, trying to figure out the most likely place where the cube would be hidden. Making turns more or less at random, he heads towards the middle, figuring that it is as good a place as any to start his search.

Heading deeper into the maze, there is no trace of the others. The only movement that he encounters comes from the faint drip of water off the walls. William is beginning to doubt his choice of direction when he finally hears something like another person. Up ahead, there are the sounds of a scuffle—a few muffled thuds, a grunt, and then he distinctly hears the wet smack of someone’s head hitting the ground. He rushes towards the sounds, thinking he may be able to help, but his way is blocked by another of the damp plank walls. Listening intently at a crack in the boards, he can hear muttering but cannot make out any of the conversation. Then he hears a rustling, followed by long scraping sound, as something heavy is dragged across the ground.

Overcome with a sense of urgency to find out what’s happening on the other side, William backs up and gauges the height of the wall. If he gets a running start, he should be able to climb over. Backing up as far as the hallway allows, he throws himself forward and manages to grab the top of the wall with one hand. Fighting for purchase, he digs his nails into the slowly rotting wood. Swinging slightly, he manages to get his right hand up and gripping just as his left pulls free with a chunk of the wall.

Spitting out pieces of wood, he eventually pulls himself up onto the top of the wall. From up above, he can see Mary (Florence) lying against the far wall. As she is in the shadows, he can’t even tell if she is still breathing, but her long legs and flowing blond hair are enough for him to identify her by. Glancing down the passageway, William can just make out the fleeing forms of her assailants, but before he can see more than their dim outlines, they’re around a corner and lost in the maze.

Jumping off the wall, he lands hard, jarring his knees. Ignoring the pain, he rushes over to her side. Once he is closer, he can make out a slowly spreading pool of blood under her head. William brushes away her fine golden hair, searching for a pulse, half-remembered first aid from a long ago summer camp rushing back into his mind. There, he can feel it. It is faint at first but getting stronger as he shifts his fingers into a better position.

“Mary! Mary! Can you hear me?” he asks. Pausing for a moment, he changes his mind.

“Florence?!?” he begins again. “Are you ok?”

Glancing down, he can see her chest rising and falling rhythmically, each breath even and strong. Grateful that she is still alive, he slowly begins searching for the source of the blood. He is holding her head in his right hand while slowly running the fingers of his left through the hair behind her ear when he finds something sticky. Her head jerks as she yelps in pain, and her eyes flutter open.

“Wha-What happened?”

“It’s ok,” William reassures her. “What was the last thing you remember?”

“Um… we were eating breakfast, and you were being a total nerd just reading your notes.” She stops, replaying what she has just said in her head. Her cheeks, despite having a deathly pallor, manage to gain a little color back as she blushes. The embarrassment seems to invigorate her, and she pushes away from William, forcing herself into a stand. She almost falls back down as some of her memory comes rushing back, William’s quick grab of her elbow being just enough to guide her to the wall.

“I remember now. We’re in the maze looking for the cube,” she begins. “So tell me this: Why was I on the ground, and why is my head throbbing?” As she asks this question, she reaches up to feel her scalp. Her hand comes away bloody, and with a crooked grin, she adds, “Well, that explains the headache.”

“I think you were jumped by another team. I wasn’t able to get a good look at them, but they went that way,” William supplies, indicating the darkness that shrouds the end of the passageway.

“Thanks for helping me up, but I’m not going to let a little bump stop me from getting that stupid cube,” she says, pushing off of the wall. She makes it one step in the right direction before starting to pitch forward. The only thing to stop her from a face-forward dive is William’s supporting arm around her waist. Looking at him, her eyes burn fiercely with a challenge: Why is he helping her? Doesn’t he care about winning?

“Come on, let’s go find this cube,” is all he says, as he starts off, half carrying, half guiding her down the corridor. For the first couple of steps she resists any support he tries to give until she catches her foot on a small stone. Nearly falling again, she finally relents and allows him to take some of her weight.

Shuffling along, it seems to take them an eternity to reach the end of the hall, but eventually they do. The corridor turns and leads them down another path, this one longer and straighter than the last. William hopes that, if the paths are straightening out, maybe they are nearing the center of the maze.

Glancing over his shoulder, William can no longer see the first corner that he and Florence turned, nor can he make out any variation in the path ahead of them. At least it would seem that Florence is recovering somewhat. She is not resting nearly as much of her weight on him as before, but she has yet to remove her arm from his shoulders. At first he’d been worried that she might be more seriously hurt, but the speed at which she seems to be recovering gives him hope that they might be able to do more than just limp to the nearest exit, they might be able to achieve their objective. It never crosses William’s mind to leave her behind so he can move faster searching on his own. They continue down the hall in silence, the darkness cocooning them from the rest of the world. As they near the apparent end of this hall, they begin to hear shouting, the crack of wood hitting wood, and an occasional grunt.

Curiosity slips through the iron curtain of focus that had been shielding William’s mind from wandering. They pick up their pace and move towards the end of the hall. To the left, the hallway extends off into the darkness, looking very much like the hall they are currently in. But the branch to the right opens up into a chamber that is relatively well-lit.

The sounds are coming from within the chamber; William eases Florence to the ground by the corner and peaks around. His eyes find Jackson, who is ducking in and out of the pillars, and William realizes that the cracking of wood on wood that he had heard from the hallway is the sound of the club in Jackson’s hand deflecting blows from the clubs of four attackers. William sees a fifth form lying on the ground, unmoving, with another club lying on the wet concrete beside it. Not checking if the form is alive or dead, William scoops up the club and runs to help Jackson.

Seeing William’s approach, Jackson kicks one of his assailants in the groin and launches a furious attack on the other three, driving them all back towards William. William approaches the closest assailant from behind, and, putting all of his weight behind the club, delivers a blow to her kidney.

The unsuspecting form crumples, as if all of her bones have been removed by the blow. The other two assailants, taken aback by the sudden demise of their comrade, pause just long enough to allow Jackson to deliver a crippling thrust to the middle one’s solar plexus. With his only remaining compatriot collapsed on the ground gasping for breath, the final assailant turns and runs for a hallway that is adjacent to where William entered.

“Come on, let’s get out of here before we have to take any more of them out,” Jackson says as he delivers a spiteful kick to the nearest downed form. “I bet that other idiot is going to go get back up.”

“I left Florence out in the hall, do you think you could help me carry her?” William asks. “I think she was jumped by these same guys. She’s in pretty bad shape.“

“Who?” Jackson asks.

“Florence, you know the tall blonde,” reminds William.

“Oh, right, her. Yeah sure I can help you out. If they were the ones who jumped her, it makes me all the happier we did this to them,” he says, indicating the broken forms lying around them.

With one of them propping her up on each side, Florence’s feet barely touch the ground, and they are able to maintain an almost normal walking pace. They take the first few turns at random, hoping to lose any possible pursuit.

Entering a small round chamber, they pause, trying to catch their breath and to figure out what to do. This is obviously more than a simple treasure hunt; the blood still slowly oozing from Florence’s head is proof enough of that. But somehow, they have to win this “game” if they want to get out of the maze. William can only imagine how bad it will get the longer they are forced to stay in here.

“Do you guys have any idea where to go?” William asks his teammates. “Something tells me they’re not really watching what’s going on in here, or they should have sent in some help.”

“Bob right?” asks Florence. “You obviously haven’t spent much time here yet. They don’t care about us. If they are watching, they won’t send help. They’ll probably just laugh and make bets on how long we’re going to last.”

“Call me William, I don’t like the name they gave me,” he responds, with a crooked grin. “You’ve got a good point though. But how do we get out of here? You’re probably going to need stiches in your scalp.”

“We win,” says Jackson, who has been quiet up to this point.

“I like that idea,” a fourth voice adds from above. Perched on the pillar above them is Jill. Her face is smudged with dust and slime, but her teeth shine brightly through the dim light as she grins. “And I know where we can find that annoying cube. Follow me.”

Resettling Florence on their shoulders, William and Jackson continue down the hall, glancing up to watch Jill spring lithely from pillar to pillar. She leads them along a crooked path, directing them to take the narrowest path available more often than not. After some turns, William can swear that she is going to lead them into a dead end, but before he can voice his thoughts, she springs off out of sight and they find an almost hidden side passage.

After an exceptionally narrow passage in which they all have to turn sideways to fit between the walls, they find themselves in a large open chamber with a single pillar in the middle. This pillar is not only taller than the normal ones, but it is broader and has the remnants of a rotted rope ladder hanging down one side. But, most importantly for the nearly exhausted group, shining atop it is the ruby red cube that they have been searching for.

Jill is perched atop the pillar next to where they entered the chamber, her legs dangling over the edge, her elbows propped on her knees, and her chin in her hands.

“There it is,” she says, gesturing to the cube. “I found it like two hours ago, but there is no way I can get off these stupid pillars other than back at the start. Looks like one of you is going to get the win.”

“As long as we get out of here, I don’t care,” Florence says as she frees herself from the supporting arms and makes her way gingerly towards the middle of the chamber.

“I’ll second that,” says Jackson, following her towards the pillar.

William hangs back, thinking for a second, before a plan pops into his head and he jogs after Jackson and Florence.

“Guys, hold up a second,” William calls to them. “Jackson, help Florence climb up to the top. She’s lighter than me and almost as tall, so if anybody can climb that ladder, it’ll be her. Jill, stay up there and act as our guide on the way out. That way, we’ll exit the maze together.”

“You good?” Jackson asks Florence, as he crouches down and offers his hands as a step. On her nod, he hoists her up onto his shoulders so that she can just barely reach the bottom of the degrading ladder. With a little hop and a push by Jackson, she is clinging to the bottom rung of the ladder. It creaks and stretches, sending a fine cloud of rope pieces fluttering down, but it holds, and Florence is able to climb to the top without incident.

Once up, she grabs the cube off its pedestal and turns back to drop it down to William, who is waiting below. As she turns, she catches movement out of the corner of her eye. Across the chamber is another entrance, and through it, another five forms in dark sweat suits are charging towards them.

“Look out!” is all she can get out before they descend upon William and Jackson with wild blows from their clubs. William and Jackson are able to pull out their own clubs and manage a hasty defense. The battle rages back and forth with neither side gaining any clear advantage and Jill and Florence feeling more and more helpless as they watch William and Jackson, already worn out, begin to tire further.

William spins away from his assailants and moves around the main pillar, momentarily breaking from the melee. He rounds the corner of the pillar and pauses to see if his attackers are following him, planning to dive into the back of Jackson’s attackers, however, he is distracted from his course when Florence gets his attention. She has something wrapped in her shirt that she drops down to him. Her intent is clear, and William makes a break for the nearest exit to the chamber, calling back behind him: “Jackson, hold them off as long as you can!”

The ruse works. The attackers, who had just knocked Jackson down and had already boosted one of their members onto the ladder, break away to chase after William, leaving their compatriot stranded. William runs like he has never run before, careening off the walls as he rounds corners, with each stride trying to go just a little faster, but never managing to lose the pursuers. He can hear them curse and pant behind him.