Into the Labyrinth

22

Taking 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.[30] 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, Fait, 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 eyeballs. 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.”

“I was trying to study it, Paithan,” she said with a sob. “I’ve been looking at those damn books you’re always reading and I came... came in here”—she hiccuped—“this winetime to... to look around. You... you were so ... interested in it ... I thought it would make you happy if I was—”

“And it does, dear, it does,” said Paithan, stroking her hair. “You came in here and you looked around. Did you... touch anything, my dear?” Her eyes flared open. She went stiff in his arms. “You think I did this, don’t you?”

“No, Rega. Well, maybe not on purpose, but—”

“Well, I didn’t! I wouldn’t! I hate it! Hate it!” She stamped her foot. The clock gave a lurch. The arm that held the diamond above the well creaked and started to turn. Rega flung herself into Paithan’s arms. He held her, watching, fascinated, as a red light started to beam out of the well, pulsing up from its fathomless depths.

“Paithan!” Rega whimpered.

“Yes, yes, dear,” he said. “We’ll leave.” But he made no move to go. The books provided a complete diagram of the way the Star Chamber worked and explained exactly what it did.[31] Paithan could understand the part that dealt with the machinery, but he didn’t understand the part that dealt with the magic. Now if it had been elven magic, he could have comprehended what was going on, for though not magically inclined himself, he had worked with the elven wizards in his family’s weapons business long enough to have learned the fundamentals.

The Sartan magic—dealing as it did with such concepts as “probabilities” and making use of the pictures known as “sigla”—was beyond him. He felt as awed and baffled in its presence as he knew Rega must feel in the presence of elven magic.[32]

Slowly, gracefully, silently, the lotus-blossom ceiling started to reopen.

“This... this is how it all began, Paithan,” Rega whimpered. “I didn’t touch anything! I swear it. It’s... doing this all by itself.”

“I believe you, dear. I truly do,” he answered. “It’s all... so wonderful!”

“No, it isn’t! It’s horrible. We’d better leave. Quickly, before the light comes back on.”

“Yes, I guess you’re right.” Paithan started for the door, moving slowly, reluctantly.

Rega went with him, clutching him so close that their feet tangled.

“Why are you stopping?”

“Rega, darling, I can’t walk like this...”

“Don’t let go of me! Just hurry, please!”

“It’s hard to hurry, dearest, with you standing on my foot...” They edged their way across the polished marble floor, circling the well—capped with its gigantic multifaceted jewel—and the seven enormous chairs that faced outward from the hole.

“The tytans sat here,” Paithan explained, placing his hand on the leg of one of the chairs, a leg that extended far over his head. “I can see now why the creatures are blind.”

“And why they’re insane,” Rega muttered, tugging him along. The red light beaming up from the depths of the well was growing brighter. The clockwork hand that held the diamond turned it this way and that. The light glinted and danced off the jewel’s sheer planes. The sunlight, shining in through the ever widening panels, was sliced into colors by the prisms. Suddenly the diamond seemed to catch fire. Light blazed. The clockwork mechanism ticked more rapidly. The machine came to life. The light in the room grew brighter and brighter and even Paithan admitted that it was time to get out. He and Rega ran the rest of the way, sliding across the polished floor, and dashed out the door just as the strange humming sound started again. Paithan slammed the door shut. The brilliant multicolored rainbow light shone out from the Cracks, illuminated the hallway.

The two stood leaning against a wall, catching their breath. Paithan stared at the closed door longingly.

“I wish I could see what was going on! If I could, perhaps I could figure out how it works!”

“At least you got to see it start,” said Rega, feeling much better. Now that her rival had, in essence, spurned the devotion of a smitten follower, Rega could afford to be generous. “The humming is quite nice, isn’t it?”

“I hear words in it,” said Paithan, frowning. “As if it’s calling ...”

“As long as it’s not calling you,” Rega said softly, her hand twining around his. “Sit down here with me a moment. Let’s talk.” Paithan, sighing, slid down the wall. Rega curled up on the floor, nestled beside him. He looked at her fondly, put his arm around her. They made an unusual couple, as unlike in appearance as they were in almost everything else. He was elven. She was human. He was tall and willowy, white-skinned, with a long, foxish face. She was short and full-figured, brown-skinned, with brown hair that hung straight down her back. He was a hundred years old—in his youth. She was in her twenties—in her youth. He was a wanderer and a philanderer; she was a cheat and a smuggler and casual in her relationships with men. The only thing they had in common was their love for each other—a love that had survived tytans and saviors, dragons, dogs, and daft old wizards.

“I’ve been neglecting you lately, Rega,” Paithan said, resting his cheek on her head. “I’m sorry.”

“You’ve been avoiding me,” she said crisply.

“Not you in particular. I’ve been avoiding everyone.” She waited for him to offer some explanation. When he didn’t, she moved her head out from beneath his chin, looked at him.

“Any reason? I know you’ve been involved with the machine—”

“Oh, Orn take the machine,” Paithan growled. “I’m interested in it, certainly. I thought maybe I could get it to work, even though I’m not really certain what it’s meant to do. I guess I hoped it might help us. But I don’t think it will. No matter how much it hums, no one will hear it.” Rega didn’t understand. “Look, Paithan, I know Roland can be a bastard sometimes—”

“It’s not Roland,” he said impatiently. “If it comes to that, what’s mostly wrong with Roland is Aleatha. It’s just... well...” He hesitated, then blurted it out. “I found some more stores of food.”

“You did!” Rega clapped her hands together. “Oh, Paithan, that’s wonderful!”

“Isn’t it,” he muttered.

“Well, of course it is! Now we won’t starve! There... there is enough, isn’t there?”

“Oh, more than enough,” he said gloomily. “Enough to last a human lifetime, even an elven lifetime. Maybe even a dwarven lifetime. Especially if there aren’t any more mouths to feed. Which there won’t be.”

“I’m sorry, Paithan, but I think this is wonderful news and I don’t see what you’re so upset about—”

“Don’t you?” He glared at her, spoke almost savagely. “No more mouths to feed. We’re it, Rega! The end. What does it matter whether we live two more tomorrows or two million more tomorrows? We can’t have children.[33] When we die, maybe the last humans and elves and dwarves on Pryan die. And then there will be no more. Ever.” Rega stared at him, stricken. “Surely... surely you can’t be right. This world is so big. There must be more of us... somewhere.”

Paithan only shook his head.

Rega tried again. “You told me that each one of those lights we see shining in the heavens is a city, like this one. There must be people like us in them.”

“We would have heard from them by now.”

“What?” Rega was amazed. “How?”

“I’m not sure,” Paithan was forced to admit. “But it says in the book that in the old days, the people living in the cities could communicate with each other. We haven’t been communicated with, have we?”

“But maybe we just don’t know how... That humming sound.” Rega brightened.

“Maybe that’s what it’s doing. It’s calling the other cities.”

“It’s calling someone, I think,” Paithan conceded thoughtfully, listening intently. The next sound, however, he heard all too well. A human voice, booming loudly.

“Paithan! Where are you?”

“It’s Roland.” Paithan sighed. “Now what?”

“We’re up here!” Rega shouted. Standing up, she leaned over the rail of the staircase. “With the machine.”

They heard booted feet clattering up the stairs. Roland arrived, gasping for breath. He glanced at the closed door, the light welling from underneath.

“Is that where... this strange sound’s... coming from?” he demanded, sucking in air.

“What of it?” Paithan returned defensively. He was on his feet, eyeing the human warily. Roland was no fonder of the machine than was his sister.

“You’d better turn the damn thing off, that’s what,” Roland said, his face grim.

“We can’t—” Rega began, but stopped when Paithan stepped on her foot.

“Why should I?” he asked, sharp chin jutting outward in defiance.

“Take a look out the window, elf.”

Paithan bristled. “Talk to me that way and I’ll never look out another window as long as I live!”

But Rega knew her half-brother, guessed that his belligerent facade was covering up fear. She ran to the window, stared out a moment, not seeing anything. Then she gave a low cry.

“Oh, Paithan! You’d better come see this.”

Reluctantly the elf moved to her side, peered out. “What? I don’t see...” And then he did see.

It looked as if the entire jungle were moving; it appeared to be advancing on the citadel. Large masses of green were surging slowly up the mountain. Only it wasn’t the jungle, it was an army.

“Blessed Mother!” Paithan breathed.

“You said the machine was calling something!” Rega moaned. It was. It was calling the tytans.