Into the Labyrinth (30 page)

Enraged, Aleatha struggled to her feet, but her heavy skirts hampered her, and by the time she was upright and ready to claw his eyes out, Roland had rounded a corner of a building and was gone.

Aleatha paused, breathing heavily. To run after him now would look like just that—running after him. (If she
had
gone after him, she would have discovered him
slumped against a wall, shivering and wiping sweat from his face.) Digging her nails into her palms, she stormed through the gate that led into the maze, flounced down the stones marked with Sartan runes, and threw herself on the marble bench.

Certain she was alone, hidden, where no one could see her if her eyes turned red and her nose swelled, she began to cry.

“Did he hurt you?” a gruff voice demanded.

Startled, Aleatha jerked her head up. “What—oh, Drugar.” She sighed, at first relieved, then not so. The dwarf was strange, dour. Who knew what he was thinking? And he
had
tried to kill them all once …
¹

“No, of course not,” she replied scornfully, drying her eyes and sniffing. “I’m not crying.” She gave a light little laugh. “I had something in my eye. How … long have you been standing here?” she asked, airy, nonchalant.

The dwarf grunted. “Long enough.” And what he meant by that, Aleatha hadn’t a clue.

His name among the humans was Blackbeard, and he suited it. His beard was long and so thick and full that it was difficult to see his mouth. One rarely knew whether he was smiling or frowning. The glittering black eyes, shining out from beneath heavy, beetling brows, gave no hint of his thoughts or feelings.

Then Aleatha noticed that he had come from the inner part of the maze, the part into which she’d never dared venture. She was intrigued. Obviously no wicked magic had stopped him. She was about to ask him eagerly what he’d seen, how far he’d gone, when he disconcerted her by asking her a question first.

“You love him. He loves you. Why do you play these hurtful games?”

“I? Love him?” Aleatha gave a lilting laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous, Drugar. Such a thing is impossible. He’s a human, isn’t he? And I’m an elf. You might as well ask a cat to love a dog.”

“It is not impossible. I know,” he answered.

His dark eyes met hers and then their gaze shifted away. He stared into the hedge, gloomy, silent.

Blessed Mother! Aleatha thought, her breath taken away. Though Roland might not love her (and she was quite convinced, at this moment, that he did not and never would), here was someone who did.

Except it was not love which had stared at her hungrily from those eyes. It was more. Almost adoration.

Had it been any other man—elf or human—Aleatha would have been amused, accepting his infatuation as her due, taking his love and hanging it up for show with the rest of her trophies. But her feeling at the moment was not triumph over another conquest. Her feeling was pity—deep and profound.

If Aleatha appeared heartless, it was only because her heart had been hurt so much that she had locked it up in a box and hidden the key. Everyone she had ever cared about had abandoned her—first her mother, then Callie, then her father. Even that fop Durndrun—who had been a sap, but rather a dear sap—had managed to get himself killed by the tytans.

And if she ever
had
been attracted to Roland (Aleatha was careful to put that in the past tense), it was only because he’d never seemed the least bit interested in finding the key to the box containing her heart. Which made the game safe, fun. Most of the time.

But this wasn’t a game. Not with Drugar. He was lonely, as lonely as she was herself. Lonelier, for his people, everyone whom he had loved and cared for, were gone, destroyed by the tytans. He had nothing, nobody.

Pity was swallowed by shame. For the first time in her life, Aleatha was at a loss for words. She didn’t have to tell him his love was hopeless—he knew that for himself. She didn’t worry that he would become a nuisance. He would never mention it again. This time had been an accident—he’d spoken out of sympathy for her. From this moment forward, he’d be on his guard. She couldn’t prevent him from being hurt.

The silence was becoming extremely uncomfortable. Aleatha lowered her head, her hair hanging around her face, hiding him from her sight, hiding her from his. She began to pick little holes in the lace shawl.

Drugar
, she wanted to say.
I’m a horrible person. I’m not worthy. You haven’t seen me. Not the real me. I’m ugly inside. Truly, truly ugly!

“Drugar,” she began, swallowing, “I’m a—”

“What’s that?” he growled suddenly, turning his head.

“What’s what?” she asked, leaping up from the bench. The blood rushed to her face. Her first thought was that Roland had sneaked back and had been spying on them. He would know … This would be intolerable …

“That sound,” said Drugar, brow wrinkling. “Like someone humming. Don’t you hear it?”

Aleatha did hear it. A humming noise, as the dwarf said. The humming wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, it was sweet, soothing. It reminded her of her mother, singing a lullaby. Aleatha breathed a sigh. Whoever was humming, it certainly wasn’t Roland. He had a voice like a cheese-grater.

“How curious,” Aleatha said, smoothing her dress, dabbing at her eyes to make certain all traces of tears were gone. “I suppose we had better go see what’s causing it.”

“Ya,” said Drugar, hooking his thumbs into his belt. He waited deferentially for her to precede him down the path, not presuming to walk beside her.

She was touched by his delicacy and, reaching the gate, she paused, turned to face him.

“Drugar,” she said with a smile that was not the least flirtatious, but was a smile from one lonely person to another, “have you gone far inside the maze?”

“I have,” he answered, lowering his eyes before hers.

“I’d love to go in there sometime myself. Would you take me? Just me. None of the others,” she added hurriedly, seeing the frown lines appear.

He glanced up at her warily, perhaps thinking she was teasing. His face softened. “Ya, I’ll take you,” he said. An odd glint came into his eyes. “There’s strange things to be seen in there.”

“Truly?” She forgot the eerie humming. “What?”

But the dwarf only shook his head. “It will be the dark-time,” he said. “And you have no light. You will not be able to find your way back to the citadel. We must go now.”

He held the gate open for her. Aleatha swept past him. Drugar shut the gate. Turning to her, he made a clumsy bow, rumbled something deep in his chest, something that
was probably in dwarven, for she couldn’t understand the words. But they sounded rather like a blessing. Then, turning on his heel, he stalked off.

Aleatha felt a tiny pulse of unaccustomed warmth in her heart, shut in its box.

THE CITADEL
PRYAN

T
AKING THE STEPS TWO AT A TIME IN HIS EXCITEMENT, PAITHAN
dashed up the spiral staircase that led to the very topmost tower of the citadel, into a large room he had named the Star Chamber.
¹
He could now see—and hear—for himself that some type of change had befallen his star machine (he took a proprietary interest in it, having discovered it), and he cursed Roland heartily for having kept him from viewing the change as it occurred.

He was also considerably surprised, and considerably alarmed, to receive the message from Rega about the machine. Humans were not comfortable around machinery. They generally tend to distrust it, and when confronted with it, usually break it. Rega had turned out to be worse than most.

Although at first she had evinced interest in the machine and had looked on admiringly as Paithan displayed its more prominent features, she had gradually developed a most unreasonable dislike for the marvelous contraption. She complained about the amount of time he spent with it, accused him of being more interested in it than he was in her.

“Oh, Pait, you are so thick,” Aleatha told him. “She’s
jealous, of course. If that machine of yours were another woman, she’d tear its hair out.”

Paithan scoffed at the notion. Rega had too much sense to be jealous of a bunch of gleaming metal clockwork, even though it was more elaborate than any other clockwork device he’d ever seen in his life, resplendent with sparkling stones called “diamonds” and rainbow-makers known as “prisms” and other wonders and beauties. But now he began to think Aleatha might be right, and that was why he was taking the stairs two at a time.

Perhaps Rega had torn up his machine.

He flung open the door, ran into the Star Chamber, and immediately ran back out. The light inside the room was blinding. He couldn’t see a thing. Huddling in a shadow cast by the open door, he massaged his aching eye-balls. Then, squinting, he tried to make out what was going on.

But all he could come up with were the obvious facts—his machine was beaming with dazzling, multicolored light while simultaneously grinding, revolving, ticking and … humming.

“Rega?” he yelled from behind the door.

He heard a strangled sob. “Paithan? Oh, Paithan!”

“It’s me. Where are you?”

“I’m … in here!”

“Well, come out,” he said with a certain amount of exasperation.

“I can’t!” she wailed. “It’s so bright. I can’t see! I’m scared to move. I … I’m afraid of falling in that hole!”

“You can’t fall in the ‘hole,’ Rega. That diamond—I mean the thing you call a rock—is wedged into it.”

“Not anymore! The rock moved, Paithan! I saw it! One of those arms picked it up. Down in the hole it was like a fire burning, and the light got so bright I couldn’t see, and then the glass ceiling started to open—”

“It’s open!” Paithan gasped. “How did it work? Did the panels slide over each other? Like a giant lotus blossom? Like in the picture—?”

Rega, shrieking almost incoherently, informed him just what he could do with his picture
and
his lotus blossoms. Finishing with a hysterical burst, she demanded that he get her the hell out of there.

At that moment the light shut off. The humming
stopped. It was dark and silent in the room, dark and silent throughout the citadel, throughout the world—or so it seemed.

But it wasn’t truly dark—not like the strange “night” that spread over the citadel for some unknown reason, not dark the way it was Below. For though night might fall on the citadel itself, the light of Pryan’s four suns continued to beam down into the Star Chamber, much like an island in a sea of black fog. Once his eyes had adjusted to normal sunlight, as opposed to blinding rainbow-colored starlight, Paithan was able to enter the chamber.

He found Rega flattened against a wall, her hands over her eyes.

Paithan cast a hurried and anxious glance around the chamber. He knew the moment he entered that the light hadn’t shut off for good; it was just resting, perhaps. The clockwork above the hole in the floor (he called it the “well”) kept ticking. The ceiling panels were closing. He paused to watch, enraptured. The book had been right! The panels, made of glass covered with strange pictures, were shutting up just like the petals of a lotus blossom. And there was an air of expectation, anticipation. The machine was quivering with life.

Paithan was so excited he wanted to run around and examine everything, but his first duty lay with Rega. Hastening to her, he took her gently in his arms. She grasped hold of him as if she were going under for the third time, keeping her eyes squinched shut.

“Ouch! Don’t pinch me. I’ve got you. You can look now,” he added more tenderly. She was shivering uncontrollably. “The light’s gone out.”

Rega cautiously opened her eyes, took one look, saw the ceiling panels moving, and immediately shut her eyes again.

“Rega, watch,” Paithan coaxed her. “It’s fascinating.”

“No.” She shuddered. “I don’t want to. Just … get me out of here!”

“If you’d only take the time to study the machine, my dear, you wouldn’t be frightened of it.”