World of Mazes

CHAPTER TWELVE

The sensation of falling through infinity vanished, only to be replaced by one of spinning. Inyx staggered like a drunk, reaching out for support and finding nothing. Colors flared and odd odors assailed her nostrils. Whining deafened her, and her skin dripped ichorous fluids that made Inyx nauseated simply from the feel.

The assault on her brain ended as quickly as it had begun. Inyx stood in a hallway. Behind her was nothing. Ahead, the same. Which way had she come? No indication of passage told the tale. She dropped to hands and knees and began checking the floor in both directions.

Nothing.

An examination of the walls failed to disclose any hidden doorways. The floor appeared substantial, and the ceiling, while peeling yellowed paint, looked solid.

For all intents and purposes, she had entered a bare room, turned, and ended up in the middle of a very, very long hallway with no obvious entry point.

" Well, I' m alive. I' ve been in worse places." She tried not to think of the almost- dead quality between worlds. Inyx looked left, then right. " Which shall it be? To the left." It mattered little since no differentiation was possible.

Inyx walked. And walked and walked. For hours she walked. No doors. No cross- corridors. No one.

" So this is the horrific Twistings," she muttered. " The Lord bores his victims to death with the sameness of it all." Her words echoed slightly, then died. Coming in on top of the echo, however, her sensitive ears detected a: chomping.

Inyx looked behind her. A light blue bulbous creature, more teeth than body, waddled along, filling up the entire corridor. Its massive jaws swung open, revealing an impossibly large mouth. The jaws closed with a bone- jarring crunch. It advanced. The jaws opened.

Inyx ran.

The beast whined in triumph and speeded up. She stumbled, braced herself against the wall, and kept running. Her fastest was barely enough to stay in front of the opening and closing mouth. Once, when she slowed down the tiniest fraction, hot breath gusted along her neck and the chomping sound came too close for safety. Tiny bits of skin stayed on the teeth; Inyx picked up the pace.

She came to a branching in the corridor. To the left, she noticed the floor had been littered with small yellow globules. Trying to hurdle them and stay ahead of the blue gobbling creature didn' t seem too conducive to long life. If she remained in the same corridor, the path was clear. Inyx kept on the straight and narrow.

Only when she' d gone another twenty paces down the hall did she venture a look behind. The hungry beast stood at the junction, turning to face the perpendicular corridor, then back toward Inyx. It made a decision and walked off on tiny legs toward the yellow globes. It vanished from sight.

The woman gasped and leaned against the wall, arms around her own body. Safe. For the moment.

" I was wrong about you, Lord," she said when she regained her wind. " You' re not the kind to be content boring me to death. You' re trying to run me to death." And, she silently added, scare me until my heart explodes from the fright.

The paths open to her didn' t seem too appealing. To continue meant more of the same. Going back only covered terrain she' d already seen, even if it had been at a dead run. Curiosity enticed her to the juncture. Peering around the corner, she saw the blue monster gulping up the yellow globules. The sight of the creature feasting set her own stomach to rumbling. She couldn' t remember how long it had been since she' d eaten. From Alberto Silvain she had gotten nothing. Her last real meal had been a drugged one given her by Luister len- Larrotti.

If the blue beast ate and survived on the globular fruits, so could she. The only problem was stealing one away from the creature. It had picked the hallway clean and made a right- angle turn some distance away to vanish from sight.

Cautiously, Inyx followed.

Her careful advance saved her life. She heard the gulping, snuffling sounds in time to turn and run. The round blue appetite had doubled back and now pursued her. Inyx ran, skidded around the bend in the tunnel, and stopped. Coming toward her were wraithlike creatures. The lead one glowed an incandescent red. Behind came one of a more subdued sea- green. Eyes burned like insanity and tiny hands groped in front. To her left came the blue glob. She had only one way to flee.

Inyx took it.

Unholy screeching noises echoed past her as she ran. She turned and saw the blue spheroid attacked by the leading wraith. To her surprise, the contest was one- sided. In spite of the teeth and voracity, the blue ball had no chance.

Inyx slowly learned the hierarchy in the Twistings. And she had to class herself as being at the bottom.

The wraith hovered at the juncture of two corridors, facing away from her. On silent feet, Inyx advanced. Her hands reached out. With a movement more like a striking jungle cat, she caught the wraith around the spot where its throat ought to be. Inyx felt substance; the creature only looked ghostlike. She leaped, her legs circling the beast' s body. Her weight and ferocity forced it down. The darkhaired woman found what passed for a throat, and cut off wind.

It took over three minutes to strangle the wraith. It took even less for her to discover it wasn' t edible.

The corridor stretched as far as the eye could see, strewn with the yellow fruits. Weak and shaking from lack of food, Inyx still took the precaution of checking the cross- corridors for any sight of either wraith or blue eating monster. Nothing.

Hungrily, she picked up the nearest globe and bit through tough skin. The warm pulp inside dribbled down her chin, over her tongue, and into her throat. She spat out heavy pink seeds without taking her mouth away from the succulence of the fruit. Inyx ignored all conventions of politeness and decency. When the fruit had been messily consumed, she went on to another and another. Eating so much fruit might eventually give her the runs- it also saved her life.

The sugars triggered energy sites in her body. She felt her head clearing. No longer dizzy and faint, she rose, wiped away the pulp from her mouth and tunic, then picked up one of the cannonball- sized fruits. It proved semiportable.

" No!" she cried. Inyx sighted another of the blue monsters. It entered the hallway and began devouring all the fruit leading to her. She had learned that they never passed up a meal. This gave her time to escape, clutching a single fruit for some future meal.

She found another juncture and ducked into it to avoid several wraiths drifting toward her. The same sensations she' d experienced entering the Twistings caught her up again. She spun and whirled and finally dropped to her knees- in a different part of the Twistings.

Never had Inyx felt more helpless.

Voices. Humans' voices. She debated about seeking them out or fleeing. Then the hard thought came to her; she couldn' t run for the rest of her life. Alone, unable to sleep, she' d soon fall prey to the beasts scouring the Twistings for food.

She squared her shoulders and walked forward. For a moment, she thought she' d been transported to still another world. In a large room- the first she' d seen in the Twistings- sat or lounged at least fifty men and woman.

All were filthy and wore tattered clothes, and not a few were quite insane. Some sat staring into infinity and gently humming to themselves. Others carried on detailed conversations with no one.

": vegetables deserve their freedom," one man was saying. He spun, his voice lifted and he answered himself, " Scallions are vegetables, too. What about them?"

Inyx sidled past this human remnant while he continued the debate with himself. She knew who the loser in that discussion would be. Others rocked to and fro like zoo creatures in a cage, while still others fought with a ferocity that belied their humanity.

" A new one, eh?" came a sober voice from her right. Inyx glanced in that direction. A blonde woman, with arms around drawn- up scratched and bruised knees, peered at her. The blue eyes were a bit wild, but the inflection in her words came out saner than anyone else Inyx saw in the room.

" I was just put into the Twistings today." She stopped, frowned. " I think it was today. I seem to have lost track of time. I got hungry, found this, then I: I spent a lot of time running away."

" The fruits are about all that' s good for eating. With one exception," said the woman. She inclined her head to indicate the far side of the dimly lit room. A fire blazed in the distant corner and two men roasted a haunch of meat. The odor wafting in her direction made Inyx' s mouth water.

" I suppose they want more than to be friends to share," she said.

" You can be their friend- or more- if you like. Not too many want to share their meal."

Suspicion flared. Inyx inhaled more deeply of the odors. For a moment, she didn' t recognize the meat the two men cooked. Then she blanched. Once, when women and children had been trapped in a burning building, the stench of tar and wood had been intermixed with burning human flesh.

This odor was similar. The only difference was in intensity. These men roasted, not burned.

" Don' t want to share their meal anymore?" asked the blonde.

" I think I' m going to lose what little I have eaten."

" Share the fruit?"

The blue eyes fastened hungrily on the fruit Inyx held cradled in her arms like a small babe. Inyx wanted to say no, to keep her hardwon food for herself.

" Fifty- fifty," she said. " If you' ve got a knife to cut through this leather."

" No one' s got a knife, ' cept the mechs. And they cannibalize their own parts for them. Teeth' ll be as good as anything else. Go on, you do the divvying." The blonde watched as Inyx carefully bit through the tough skin. Juices spurted. With great care, she divided the fruit and passed over the larger section to the blonde.

" Thanks," the woman said even as she thrust the savory pulp into her mouth.

All too soon, they' d finished their meal. The blonde sat licking fingers and blouse for the last of the juice.

" How long have you been in the Twistings?" asked Inyx.

" Can' t say. No one knows. We just wander aimlessly."

" Is there a way out? Does the Lord have the entrance blocked with anything other than the vault door?" She tried to remember the door itself. Most vault doors protecting vast caches of money tended to be difficult to open from the outside but relatively simple to burgle from the inside. Inyx hoped this might be the case with the Lord' s door into the Twistings.

" Some have found the room again."

" How' d they get out?"

" Out? They came back. Over there. See that one, the one with the red hair? She sits and cowers if anyone approaches her. She told me that she found the door open. All she had to do was walk out- and she couldn' t do it."

" Why not? I' d be through that door in a flash."

" No, you wouldn' t. I heard that same story million times or more." The blonde played with one of the pink seeds. She stroked it as if doing so gave her some magical power. It was only a nervous gesture.

" I would!" said Inyx with heat. " I want out of here. And when I escape the Twistings, I' m going to kill the son of a bitch who put me in here."

" You won' t care, not after a while. No one does. Only the newcomers try to escape."

" Giving up hope isn' t the answer. If she found the way out, so can we."

" Why bother?" The blonde leaned back, relaxing only slightly. She kept her arms around her knees. The blue eyes looked at Inyx again, hungry once more but this time with a different form of hunger. " We can do other things, you an' me. You' re not wonky yet. Neither am I. We can: do: things together, we can."

" I want to talk with the redhead," Inyx said, uncomfortable now with her nearness to the blonde. " What' s her name?"

" Don' t know. Can' t even remember my own. What' s the difference?"

Inyx rose and walked away from the blonde. The woman called out, " Thanks for the food."

Inyx waved in response and hurried to the redhead.

" You almost escaped," she said without preamble. " How' d you do it?"

The woman gazed up at Inyx, then smiled. Inyx shivered at the insanity she saw in that look.

" Easy. Just followed my nose. But I couldn' t: couldn' t leave. Couldn' t."

" Why not? What kept you in the Twistings?"

" Don' t know. Couldn' t walk out the door. Tried." She began laughing, high- pitched and hysterical. This brought unwanted attention from the two cannibals at the far side of the room. Inyx backed off, wanting to run. She managed to find herself a quiet spot along one wall where no one seemed willing to stay. Hunkering down, she tried to think her dilemma through. Somehow, the more she worked on the immediate problems of getting out of this crazy maze, the more difficult it became for her.

She cried herself to sleep, visions of blue gulping beasts that turned into humans haunting her dreams.

The clatter of steel on steel awoke her. She' d heard enough fighting in her day to know the sounds of battle. One raged very close by. Inyx craned her neck, searching for the source of the noise. Off to one side down a dimly lit corridor seemed the most likely spot. The residents of the room had begun slipping quietly away from that point, not wanting to fight.

Inyx flexed her muscles, winced at the way she' d stiffened during her sleep, then moved forward. Dying in battle was preferable to rotting away physically and mentally.

Even being devoured by a wraith or globuloid had to be a more fitting death for one used to freedom.

" Back," came a warning. " Get back. Knoton' s coming. He' s going to clean out the entire nest."

" Nest?" she asked. The man stumbling along had been bloodied by a dozen cuts, none deep. He had risked much bringing the warning- and he didn' t seem as demented as the others she' d met.

" The room. This place." He staggered forward another few steps, then stared into her deep azure eyes. " You' ve just arrived. Too bad. Knoton' s coming. He' s going to kill all us humans this time. And the hybrids, too."

" What are you talking about?" she demanded.

" Knoton' s a mechanical. He hates all flesh and blood for exiling him to the Twistings."

" But we' re here, too!" she protested. " That' s not fair."

" He' s not quite sane, either. But in this place, who is?" He grabbed Inyx by the shoulders and spun her around. " Now get moving. Knoton' ll be here in another few seconds."

" We should fight."

" With bare hands?"

Inyx peered into the gloom of the corridor the man had just vacated. Shining spots began growing in size. Mechanicals made their way forward, brandishing knives and swords. If any of them had been the shining perfection she' d seen in Dicca, Inyx would never have risked battle. But these mechanicals were rusty, slow- moving, clanking. Their banishment to the Twistings hadn' t been good for them, either. She waited for the first pair to enter the room- the nest, the man had called it. Then she acted.

She dived forward, dropped to support her weight on one arm, then scissored her legs around the lead mechanical' s. A gyroscope whined, the mechanical struggled for balance, then fell heavily. Inyx quickly recovered the fallen sword. She noted it had been made from another mechanical' s arm.

Even the metal men were cannibals in the Twistings.

" Watch out!"

She heeded the man' s warning by ducking. Just a fraction of an inch over her head slashed the other mech' s long knife. Inyx recovered balance, measured distance, lunged. Her blunted sword point found a spot between spinning cogwheel and shoulder joint. The mechanical whirred in rage, turned, and succeeded in forcing the sword even more deeply into its shoulder workings.

Inyx tried to continue her attack, but the mech held her at bay with its knife. Her human companion aided her now. A swift blow to the mechanical' s back threw it off balance. It sagged, allowing Inyx to wrench free her now bent and dulled sword.

Together the two humans decapitated the mech. It twisted fitfully, struggling to recover its cranium. Inyx let it pick up its head, then scuttle off for repair. The sight of the headless body brought back unpleasant memories.

Claybore. His skull floated without benefit of body.

" Good fighting," complimented the man. " You' re the best warrior I' ve found since the Lord threw me into the Twistings a couple months ago. I' m Fredek Fynn."

" Fredek, the pleasure' s all mine. I' m Inyx."

A metal- on- metal screech deafened Inyx. She threw her hands over her ears to dampen the noise. She succeeded only in part.

" What was that?" she said, louder than she' d intended.

" Knoton' s battle cry. A challenge. Let' s get into the maze, where we have a chance."

Inyx' s reluctance to leave this room and enter the maze almost overwhelmed her. Then the dark- haired woman saw a battle in progress. Down the corridor two shadowy forms locked in mortal combat. One was mechanical- Knoton. The other appeared human until a random flash of light reflected off silvered arms.

" The arms," she muttered, unsure of what she saw.

" A hybrid. Knoton hates them worse than he hates flesh- andbloods like us," said Fredek.

" We should help," Inyx said weakly. A strong hand rested on her upper arm. Fredek Fynn pulled her away.

" There' s nothing we can do. Look at it this way. Whoever that is just gave us a few more minutes of life. Knoton' s on a war- binge. Nothing short of disassembly is going to stop him now."

Inyx curtly nodded. She and Fredek trotted for the far side of the nest. The sword resting firmly in her hand gave the woman a feeling of safety now, even if it was a false one. No sooner had they entered the corridors than they ran afoul of a blue gobbling beast. It waddled forward, snapping, and gnashing its teeth.

" Don' t try to kill it," warned Fredek. " Even with a sword, it' s hard to injure. Make it mad and it' s well- nigh invincible. They don' t ever seem to feel much pain."

" I killed one of the wraiths with my bare hands," said Inyx. " With a sword, I can kill this thing."

" You killed a capper? Great Twistings, I' ve found me a real shedemon!"

Inyx pushed the man out of the way to clear the way for a lunge. She executed the attack perfectly. The blunt tip of the weapon, however, inflicted minimal damage. At the last possible instant, she changed the next lunge into a devastating slash. Ichor flew in all directions as the blue monster chattered in rage and pain. It launched a frontal assault that Inyx simply couldn' t stop.

She and Fredek retreated back into the nest.

From the other side of the room, Knoton shrieked his metallic cry of rage and vengeance. He lumbered forward, swinging a steel rod easily seven feet long.

Inyx and Fredek Fynn were trapped between the injured blue globuloid and an equally blood- crazed mechanical.

" Now!" shouted Inyx. She shoved Fredek one way and dived the other herself. Blue maze monster and mech faced one another. Knoton' s towering hatred drove him forward, metal bar whistling as he swung it in long, angry arcs. The creature had been blinded by its own blood.

It attacked.

Inyx watched in silence as the awesome battle raged. Knoton refused to give ground. His rod battered the tough blue skin repeatedly until Inyx was positive nothing solid could remain inside. But still the blue maze creature fought on, its teeth clattering off the metal rod every time it managed to get a chance to snap. Such stark ferocity couldn' t be maintained long. By the time Inyx circled and met Fredek, the metallic had triumphed over flesh and blood and voracious appetite.

Knoton stood, left arm bitten off, one eye blinking wildly, his right leg bent at an unnatural angle.

" I shall destroy you. I shall destroy all human life in the Twistings for what that madman has done to me!" the mechanical raged.

" Knoton," spoke up Inyx. " Let' s parlay. Let' s declare a truce and talk this out. We' re all here because of the Lord."

" He' s flesh; so are you. You shall die, soft one!"

Knoton wheeled around and limped away, leaving behind miscellaneous nuts and bolts. It would have been ludicrous except that Inyx looked past the hardware to the dead maze creature.

In the distance she heard the wraiths- the cappers, Fredek had called them- coming. Hunger in the Twistings was a way of life and death.

Silently she and Fredek left the nest. There' d be time to return later, after the cappers had fed.