Into the Labyrinth

32

The sudden flaring of the light in the star chamber drove Xar from the room. He managed to rid himself of the old Sartan, foisting him off onto the elf, who had come upstairs to talk nonsense. Figuring that the mensch and the madman would get along well together, Xar left them standing in front of the door to the Star Chamber, both of them staring inanely at the bright light seeping out from underneath.

The old man was expounding on some theory concerning the workings of the chamber, a theory Xar might once have found interesting. Now the Lord of the Nexus could not have cared less. He sought sanctuary in the library, the one place where he was certain the mensch would not bother him. Let the Sartan light shine from this Star Chamber and any others like it. Let it bring light and energy into Death’s Gate. Let it light Abarrach’s terrible darkness, thaw Chelestra’s frozen sea moons. What did Xar care?

What if the old man was right? What if Sang-drax was a traitor?

Xar unrolled a scroll, flattened it out on the desk. The scroll was a Sartan work, portraying the universe as they had remade it—four worlds, air, fire, stone, water, connected by four conduits. Conquering these worlds had seemed so simple in the beginning. Four worlds, populated by mensch, who would fall before Xar’s might like rotten fruit dropping from the tree. But one thing after another had gone wrong.

“The fruit on Arianus isn’t all that rotten,” he was forced to admit to himself. “The mensch are ripe and strong and intent on clinging to the tree with tenacity. And who could have foreseen the tytans on Pryan? Not even I could have supposed the Sartan would be stupid enough to create giants, endow them with magic, and then lose control over them.

“And the magic-destroying sea on Chelestra? How the devil am I to conquer a world where all some mensch has to do is throw a bucket of water on me to render me harmless!

“I need the Seventh Gate! I need it. Or I might fail.” Failure. In all his long life, the Lord of the Nexus had never permitted that word to enter his brain, had certainly never spoken it aloud. Yet now he was forced to concede it was a possibility. Unless he could find the Seventh Gate—the place where it all began.

The place where—with his help—it would all end.

“Haplo would have shown me, if I had let him. He came to the Nexus, that last time, for that purpose. I was blind, blind!” Xar’s fingers, like talons, clenched over the scroll, crushed the ancient parchment, which crumbled to dust in his hands. “I cared. That was my failing. His betrayal hurt me, and I should not have permitted such a weakness. Of all the lessons the Labyrinth teaches, this is the most important: to care is to lose. If only I had been able to listen to him dispassionately, to cut to the core of his being with the cold knife of logic.

“He accomplished what I sent him to accomplish. He did what he was commanded to do. He tried to tell me. I wouldn’t listen. And now, perhaps, it is too late.”

Xar went over every word of Haplo’s—the spoken and the unspoken. The sigla had been running consistently along the base of the wall ever since we left the dungeon. At this point, however, they left the base of the wall, traveled upward to form an arch of glowing blue light. I squinted my eyes against the brilliance, peered ahead. I could see nothing beyond but darkness. I walked straight for the arch. At my approach, the runes changed color; blue turned to flaring red. The sigla smoldered, burst into flame. I put my hand in front of my face, tried to advance. Fire roared and crackled; smoke blinded me. The superheated air seared my lungs. The runes on my arms glowed blue in response, but their power did not protect me from the burning flames that scorched my flesh. I fell back, gasping for air...

Runes of warding... I couldn’t enter.

These runes are the strongest that could possibly be laid down. Something terrible lies beyond that door...

Standing before the archway, a preposterous, ungainly figure, Alfred began to perform a solemn dance. The red light of the warding runes glimmered, faded, glimmered, and died.

We could go in now...

The tunnel was wide and airy, the ceiling and walls dry. A thick coating of dust lay undisturbed on the rock floor. No sign of footprints or claw marks or the sinuous trails left by serpents and dragons. No attempt had been made to obliterate the (Sartan) sigla; the guide-runes shone brilliantly, lighting our way ahead...

If it hadn’t been too preposterous, Lord, I could have sworn I actually felt a sense of peace, of well-being that relaxed taut muscles, soothed frayed nerves... The feeling was inexplicable...

The tunnel led us straight forward, no twists or turns, no other tunnels branching off this one. We passed beneath several archways, but none were marked with the warding runes as had been the first. Then, without warning, the blue guide-runes came to an abrupt halt, as if we’d run into a blank wall. Which we had.

A wall of black rock, solid and unyielding, loomed before us. It bore faint markings on its smooth surface. Sartan runes. But there was something wrong with them.

Runes of sanctity.

And inside... a skull.

Bodies. Countless bodies. Mass murder. Mass suicide.

Runes appeared, running in a circle around the upper portion of the chamber.

“Any who bring violence in here will find it visited upon themselves.” Why is this chamber sacred, Lord? What is it sacred to?

I almost had the answer... I was so close...

And then Haplo and his party were attacked by... Kleitus.

Kleitus knew the location of the Chamber of the Damned! Or, as Xar now supposed he should start considering it, the Seventh Gate. Kleitus had died in that chamber!

Xar went over Haplo’s report again and again in his mind. Something about a force opposing them, ancient and powerful... a table, an altar, a vision... The Council set the Sartan the task of contacting the other worlds, to explain to them their desperate peril and beg them to send the aid promised before the Sundering. And what was the result? For months they did nothing. Then suddenly they came forward, prattling nonsense that only a child would believe—

Of course, Xar realized. How utterly logical. These wretched Sartan on Abarrach, cut off from their people for innumerable generations, had forgotten much of the rune-magic, lost much of their power. A group of them, stumbling across the Seventh Gate, had suddenly rediscovered what had been lost. No wonder they had been intent on hiding it, keeping it for themselves. Making up stories about opposing forces, ancient and powerful. Even Haplo had fallen for their lies.

The Sartan hadn’t known what to do with such power.

But Xar did.

If only he could find the chamber. Could he do so, perhaps, without Haplo? The Lord of the Nexus walked through Haplo’s mind, as he had done on Haplo’s return from Abarrach. Xar recognized the dungeons where Haplo had almost died. He had escaped from the dungeons, run down a corridor, guided by blue Sartan rune-lights.

Which corridor? What direction? There must be hundreds down there. The Lord of the Nexus had explored the catacombs beneath the castle in Necropolis. It was a maze worthy of the Labyrinth, a rat’s warren of tunnels and corridors—some naturally formed, others burrowed into the rock by magic. It might take a man a lifetime to find the right one.

But Haplo knew the right one. If he escaped from the Labyrinth. Xar brushed the ashes of the scroll from his hands.

“And I am trapped here! Unable to help. A ship within sight. A ship covered with Sartan runes. The mensch can break the runes, they broke them to enter here. But they’d never reach the ship alive because of the tytans. I must...

“Alive!”

Xar drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, thoughtfully. “But who said the mensch need to be alive?”