World of Mazes

CHAPTER SIX

Inyx stirred, moaned softly, and reached out. Her arms felt soft, pliant, flabby flesh when she should have found nothing but firmly toned muscle. Vivid blue eyes fluttering open, she stared at the man in bed next to her.

" Reinhardt?" she asked, her voice still husky and her eyes gummy with sleep.

" Yes, my love."

The softness under her fingers never changed, but the shape altered subtly. She blinked harder and stared. Reinhardt smiled at her, his perfect, even teeth shining whitely in the soft light filtering through the window. The four parallel scars on his cheek glowed.

Four?

Inyx sat up.

" There should be three scars," she said.

" What' s this, my dearest?"

The woman looked harder. There were three. She' d been mistaken.

Or had she?

" Where have you been for these years, Reinhardt? Why did you make me suffer? How did you:?"

" Shush, my darling," he said, pressing a finger to her lips. " This is not the time for talk. It' s a time for rediscovery, for love."

She felt his hands moving slowly over her naked body. Old responses rose within her, responses she cherished and had denied herself since he' d died- gone away. She sighed and sank back to the bed. But Inyx worried. Something wasn' t right. The scars. Three or four? The flesh under her fingers, the weight pressing her into the mattress, the feel of the way Reinhardt made love to her.

Then her passions consumed all doubt and she cried out in joy. She' d found her beloved Reinhardt and would never let him go. Never!

Inyx awoke in midafternoon. She rose from the bed and found her clothing. Silently, she put on tunic and trousers, noting that her weapons were gone. Living with them as her constant companions for all these years made her feel more naked without them than when she wore no clothes. She looked around the small room, looking for a spot where Reinhardt might have laid them.

The room was dingy in the extreme. White and blue striped roaches frolicked along the rotting floorboards, darting in and out and mocking her attempts to step on them. The light coming through the window revealed a coating of dust on the pane thick enough to give a brown tint to everything in the room; one small pane had been broken and not replaced. Curtains hanging in tatters added little class to the place. Inyx sat heavily on the bed, heard the springs protesting mightily. The bedclothes were grey- once they' d been white. The pillows were lumpy. The mattress ticking poked through in heavy knots. The headboard had been sloppily painted years ago and was now peeled and chipped.

" At least that matches the walls," she said glumly. But, in spite of the sordid surroundings, she had to feel a warm inner glow.

Reinhardt.

She' d thought him dead all those years, killed by the grey- clad soldiers as they attempted to take over her home world. The woman flopped back on the rickety bed and stretched like a cat in the warm summer sun. She felt good all over, for the first time in recent memory.

Reinhardt!

Footsteps sounded outside. From the tentative quality of the tread, she guessed someone tried to walk softly and keep the floorboards from creaking. They failed. In this boarding house, only faith kept the roof from falling down or the floors from collapsing.

" Reinhardt, is that you?" she called out.

" Yes, my dearest." Inyx felt a moment of giddy shifting, then the door opened. Her husband stood there, a tray of food in hand. " I brought you lunch. You' ve slept most of the day."

" I: I' m still a little sleepy," she confessed. " But it was so good being with you last night. It' s so good being with you now."

He batted away her teasing fingers.

" Not now. I have work to do. You eat."

" But Reinhardt, let me help. I can:"

" Eat." The word came out sharp, brittle, a definite command. Inyx had been walking the Cenotaph Road for three years and had learned to rebel against such orders. In spite of the fact that this was her beloved husband Reinhardt, she only pretended to eat the food. A little sleight of hand slipped most of it under the bed for the gourmet feasting of the roaches. It' d hardly be noticed with all the other debris there, she guessed.

" I' m finished," she said. Reinhardt stirred from across the room and looked at the plate. He nodded curtly, turned, and left.

" Wait!" she cried. By the time she reached the door, it had been locked from the outside. " Reinhardt, why are you doing this to me?" Inyx thought she heard a cruel laugh, but wasn' t certain. Did Reinhardt have three or four scars on his cheek?

She slept fitfully, awakening from a nightmare combining tigers, Reinhardt, and grey soldiers on one side against her, Lan and Krek on the other defending her. Inyx wiped away sweat and took a deep breath to regain her composure. It was an odd dream. Reinhardt should have been aiding her, not opposing her.

Voices drifted up through the flooring. She shook off a slight dizziness and got out of bed, pressing her ear to the wood planking. What Inyx heard turned her cold inside.

": best I' ve ever seen. Great legs, too," bragged a man. She recognized the voice only after difficult concentration. It sounded much like Reinhardt. " I' ll keep her up in the room till after the election. I can make at least a score a tumble with her and have the men lined up around the block waiting their turn. The women, too! She' s a fine one, she is."

" Really, Luister, I couldn' t care less about your crude sexual exploitations. You owe me eighty score interest on the loan. My superiors are very upset over the lack of payment." The voice turned icy with menace. " If you don' t pay a hundred score by the end of the week, we shall have to take over your Fine Rooms."

Inyx frowned. The way the man said " Fine Rooms" sounded as if it meant something more than a description of a boarding room. The contempt carried in his tones were those a churchgoer reserves for " whorehouse." She slipped fingernails between the boards and pulled. Pain shot up her arms, but she had to see. After a wooden protest, the flooring parted enough for her to look into the room below.

A man dressed in a black suit over a frilly white shirt stood by the door. He gave the grossly overweight man seated in a chair a look cold enough to freeze fire.

" One hundred score by the end of the week. You will not like the alternative, len- Larrotti. I promise you that."

" Odissan, you bore me. I tell you that everything' s going to be fine now that I' ve got some high- class talent to sell."

" Maybe you will actually have a fine room," said Odissan. " It doesn' t matter. Good day to you."

The bloated frog of a man seated just at the edge of Inyx' s field of view made an obscene gesture at the departing man' s back. He rocked back in the chair and drummed stubby fingers on the battered chair arms. Inyx felt a wave of polar clarity wash through her brain. Everything fit into place.

This was Reinhardt. Or rather this gross blimp of a man had made her believe he was her husband. Reinhardt had died three years ago. Somehow she had been duped into thinking he still lived. The herb tea, the muffins, something had drugged her. Her thoughts were disturbed by someone knocking on the door below. She watched as Luister lenLarrotti rose and waddled forth.

As he walked, his form shifted, flowed. He became an old womanthe same one who had greeted her yesterday.

" Come in, my boy," cackled the old woman- Luister len- Larrotti. He ushered into the parlor an adolescent male, obviously nervous. " What can 1 do for you? Some herb tea? The muffins are superb."

" I: I want a Fine Room."

" Such a youth, so big and muscular. A real brawler. You want only the best, I' d wager."

" Yes," he said, head bobbing as if it were on springs. " The best."

" How much do you have?" The bite of greed made Inyx recoil. How the youth missed it was beyond her. Yet she couldn' t be too critical. She had entirely missed the illusion directed at her the day before.

She shuddered. Even worse, she had accepted the illusion of her dead husband as real. She' d wanted it to be true, and Luister lenLarrotti had played on that weakness, changing his form to match her every need. He was nothing more than a human chameleon, moulding himself to mood as well as physical surroundings.

" So much? Two score? You get the best."

" My m- mother," the youth stammered.

" She knows of your: love," said len- Larrotti. " And she is anxiously awaiting you upstairs. Come, I' ll show you the way to the best Fine Room in the house."

Inyx listened to the footsteps outside her door. One was heavy, confident. The other set came hesitantly. A hand rested on the handle. Inyx stood, fists tensed at her side. She' d fight her way out, if she could.

But magics permeated the room, gripping her, confusing her, turning her inside out. She felt her knees go weak and all resolve drain away. When the door opened, her Reinhardt stood there. How could she fight the man she loved?

" My dearest," he said, his voice ringing forth in the baritone she knew and loved so well. He came to her, undressed her, made love to her. Inyx shivered after he left.

Faint words drifted up through the floorboards.

": Luister, you were right. She was worth it. You run the best Fine Room in all of Dicca."

" Come back soon."

Inyx rolled over in the shabby bed and began to cry.

" It will be an exciting new venture for us, my dear," Reinhardt told her. She carefully hid away the food he' d given her and artfully poured the herb tea behind the bed. Inyx faced slow starvation, but in the past two days she' d learned that her first suspicions had been correct: the food was drugged. By not eating, she maintained some semblance of her former self.

But all resistance faded whenever Reinhardt came into the room. She knew now that her husband was dead, that this was Luister lenLarrotti hiding behind illusion. She knew it intellectually; emotions presented another facet Inyx couldn' t cope with. She wanted Reinhardt to live, to breathe, to hold her in his arms and love her. She wanted that with all her heart and soul.

Luister len- Larrotti used it against her.

" There will be customers coming to the diorama, paying good coin to see you in your full glorious beauty. This will be the finest exhibit of its kind in all of Dicca."

She stared at Reinhardt- len- Larrotti. Four scars on the cheek. Even as she doubted, the illusion changed.

" Why are you doing this?"

A sly look totally unlike Reinhardt came and went on the handsome face of the man confronting her. He smiled, and the smile took on evil qualities.

" My dearest, I want all of Dicca to share what I possess."

Inyx repressed a shudder. Since coming to this place len- Larrotti had paraded men and women through this tiny room. All had made love to her- raped her. And in each she had seen Reinhardt. What had they seen? Len- Larrotti' s magics provided illusion, for a price. He grew rich off others' obsessions and guilty desires.

" What of the Lord of the Twistings?" she asked.

" You jump from topic to topic, my dear. What of the Lord? The election is soon, only days away."

" What does he do?"

" He rules, of course. What an odd question. Now, come with me. I will show you the new quarters I have prepared for you. Fine ones they are, too."

" Fine magics?" she asked, her temper flaring. Inyx realized that len- Larrotti stiffened, although the Reinhardt facade he adopted barely moved.

" You will like the new quarters," he said, voice flat and cold.

She allowed him to lead her away from the room where she' d been imprisoned. The new one hardly suited Inyx more. It had a bed in it, no better than the one she left behind. There was also a large window facing Lossal Boulevard. She went to the window and touched fingertips against it. Pressing her slightly feverish cheek onto coolness brought a moment of mental clarity.

The bloated slug of a man holding her magically bound smiled ominously. She' d be used in even more degrading fashion. And she' d do it. Fight as she would, the hold of Reinhardt' s memory was stronger than her will.

" The first customers come. Enjoy, dearest, enjoy, and they will also!" Laughter filled the room in which she was on display, like an animal in a zoo cage.

" Show me what they see," she said in a listless voice. For another two days she' d been locked up in len- Larrotti' s picturewindow room, her every intimate moment on display to anyone passing by outside. She' d lost track of the men who' d used her in that time. She fought but it did no good. They all were Reinhardt. All.

" You know there is only me," said the man. She had learned to distinguish between Luister len- Larrotti as Reinhardt and his whoremongering customers, who also appeared to her as her dead husband.

" Show me."

Out of cruelty, he did. A small group gathered outside the window to peer in at her. She closed her eyes and then opened them. The man nearest saw her in a tawdry corset, net stockings, and high spiked heels. The man next to him saw her as a plain country girl, barely fourteen- a lost love. The one in the back of the crowd viewed her magically altered appearance as male, burly, rough. Inyx began to cry softly.

Out of stark hunger, she had been eating small bits of the food len- Larrotti brought her. The effects of the drug wore off quickly enough because little entered her bloodstream. But the paucity of food also made her progressively weaker and less able to resist the drug' s insidious shape- changing effects. Immediately after she ate, the man would come to her while the image of Reinhardt burned brightly in her mind.

Once, when len- Larrotti lay beside her, sated, she had whispered, " Why do you use me? Why me?"

" Reality is hard enough to change," he muttered, more asleep than awake. " You require very little altering in illusion. You are so close to perfection, only small magics give them what they want."

She watched heavy eyelids lower. Reinhardt. Inyx had reached out to caress. Her fingers found flabby throat, squeezed down on multiple chins. Reinhardt. She killed her own husband. The woman hesitated, then her resolve hardened. But it came too late. A convulsive jerk had allowed the man to break her grip and rise. She sat in bed, staring in dumb horror at her hands, as if they had betrayed her.

Luister len- Larrotti left, only to admit a steady string of patrons, all of whom looked exactly like lost Reinhardt. The magics strengthened against her, and she never again had the opportunity to kill her tormentor.

Inyx sat and watched, sometimes wondering what those outside saw, other times not caring. For all the traffic, not once did a grey- clad soldier stop and gawk. Their rules must prohibit use of Fine Rooms, she guessed. Whether that was a mercy or not, she couldn' t say. It might be better having them discover her and then execute her rather than continue providing cheap sexual thrills for len- Larrotti and his customers.

Inyx sat and concentrated, forcing her will down, ever down inside her. The point where she concentrated burned with fiery need. She fanned the flames, nurtured them, let them rise only to deny them. Not enough. She had triumphed over worse. Reinhardt was dead. Luister lenLarrotti imprisoned her. She hated Luister len- Larrotti. Reinhardt had died. Her husband no longer existed, except in her own mind. Inyx worked, moulded, changed, savored, hoarded.

Another man entered the room. Inyx continued to concentrate. She felt len- Larrotti' s magics flowing like warm water in a stream, filling the room, threatening to drown her. The woman didn' t resist; she went with the flow, moved with it, then began angling to one side. She saw Reinhardt waiting for her by the bed; superimposed over his muscular body she saw a middle- aged, paunchy man. Inyx resisted more. The illusion of Reinhardt wavered.

" I' ve always wanted to make love to a jungle goddess," the man said. " On your hands and knees. Go sniffing for jungle spoor. Let me stalk you through the jungle."

Inyx did as she was told. Like an animal, she raced around the room, the man joyously pursuing. The illusion faded. As the man caught her, she turned and delivered one silent, swift blow to his neck. He made a small choking noise, then sank onto the bed.

" Oh, Reinhardt," she cooed, in case her captor watched or listened, " you are as much a man as ever. No, more than ever!"

She searched her victim, finding nothing. Cursing softly at this failure, she pulled out a piece of steel supporting the mattress. Using this, she forced the door lock. Inyx felt the flood of magic around her abate slightly. However len- Larrotti focused his spells, that room was the center. The further away from it she got, the less she' d feel the pull.

Stumbling, crying in frustration, knowing the truth and perversely wanting Reinhardt all the more, she reached the door leading to Lossal Boulevard. Trembling hands undid the first bolt. Inyx worked frantically to open the second.

" My dearest Inyx, you aren' t leaving me, are you? How could you, after all these years apart? I need you so much."

She looked back over her shoulder. Reinhardt stood there. The look of hurt and betrayal on his face caused her to break down and sob uncontrollably. With her failure to escape came a tiny morsel of success: she again had Reinhardt.