Meduramanth the Enigma Castle towered above them as they rode along the path. It’s huge shifting walls tall and thin like spires and covered in those cryptic spiralling runes. Beyond the shifting walls there would be the keep, a keep that had never been breached, nevermind taken, for a thousand years. A thousand years, until now. But this time the invaders had somewhat cheated.
Lord Farro led the way on his great black horse, his brown and gold patterned cloak trailing over it. He was a tall man, Lord Farro, imposing, intimidating. Lord Sturken, a shorter man who rode behind him in blue and purple colours, had always respected him, always admired his resolve and power. No one ever got the better of Lord Farro they said, he was always one step ahead they said, but they’d also said the Enigma Castle was unbreachable. They’d been wrong about both.
The small party of lords and their retainers were ushered through the gates and began to follow the string through the maze. The walls towered above them and Lord Sturken watched intently, waiting for them to move, clutching his reins far tighter than necessary. Farro ignored the walls and just rode calmly on ahead, it was his castle after all, or it had been.
They reached the keep, a building much smaller than the huge shifting walls but also covered in the strange spiralling symbols. No one knew who had built the castle or why they’d left it but the Farros had found it and taken it after working out the secrets of the shifting maze. Surrounding the keep were Farro’s soldiers in their browns and golds but there were also her soldiers, with their dotted armour.
The lords walked past and into the keep where she had a great map of the Hallowed Realm stretched out on the table. There were different colours for different keeps and castles depending on which side held them. Their side held the most. There was also a new colour, orange, that didn’t occupy anything, instead it stretched in a line from Stallwinds Crest to Fort Sundrick. The path the phoenix had taken, as near as they could figure it.
She was looking over the map with her generals and some of theirs, with her black lipped slave standing by. Sturken approached the gathering and spoke, eager to offer some new information.
“The phoenix destroyed Fort Sundrick and everyone there, then it went to Elkring.”
The Inkdrop Queen turned from the map and looked at him, she wasn’t holding her wicked black sword but she did still have her jagged crown with its frozen inkdrops and that made him uncomfortable all the same. He was often uncomfortable with these people.
“Did it destroy Elkring?” she asked him and everyone looked eager.
“No,” Sturken said dejectedly. “They had some sort of trap for it, they drowned it we think.”
The Queen looked back at her map and pondered. “I suppose that would have been too easy.”
They discussed further tactical maneuvers confidently. It seemed obvious that they’d already won, the phoenix may not have destroyed Elkring and won them the war but it had destroyed whole battalions and occupied the king’s forces for days. They had a huge advantage in both numbers and initiative, all that was left was to seize Elkring and claim the Hallowed Realm for the Uprising. Sturken was interested to see who’d be claiming it though. Farro was technically the leader of the Uprising and most of the men and soldiers looked up to him. But he obeyed the Queen for the sake of his wife and children who were miles away in the Wilderness, imprisoned by the best soldiers her considerable money could buy.
Sturken leaned back and watched them debate tactics. Ever since he’d lost at Stallwinds Crest they’d never respected his opinion. He wasn’t actually sure they’d respected his opinion before that either. He looked over at the Queen’s slave. The ragged woman with the scar across her mouth dribbling with ink. He loved that slave, she was hilarious.
“What’s your name?” he asked her quietly, ignoring the discussion before him.
She looked at him with sadness and he smiled mischievously. “I am not Rana of Rostalion,” she sighed and he struggled to keep from laughing. She could only lie, that was what the blade did, turned you into some ridiculous character from a riddle or game. Sturken feared the blade himself of course but as long as the Queen only stuck it in other people he was happy to enjoy its effects.
“Do you enjoy serving us? Do you enjoy ridicule?”
She didn’t get angry, he was slightly disappointed in that, she only got sadder. “Yes,” she lied and he stifled another laugh. It went on like that for the rest of the meeting, her answering his absurd questions. She’d thought at first she could simply choose not to answer but that hadn’t worked either. It wasn’t just that she had to lie, it was that some part of her wanted her to lie, like an addiction, a yearning in the back of her mind. She didn’t have to answer every question but quickly she found the yearning unbearable. Not that it brought any joy when she actually did it, it just drove the yearning back down for a while.
She left the meeting, following the Inkdrop Queen back to her quarters dejectedly. At first she’d thought that she was chosen as her slave because it would be difficult for her to reveal any secrets but she’d quickly figured out that wasn’t the reason. As she’d discovered in the Wilderness when she’d met the first person to be marked like her, there were ways to disclose any information in the form of blatant lies. No she was the chosen slave because just like Sturken the Queen seemed to take a perverse joy in her affliction. It was less obvious but it was there. She was a joke now, just a character for them to enjoy.
She could try to kill the Inkdrop Queen of course. She was still a warrior even if she’d lost some of her edge from the constant drudgery of slavery. But the Queen was careful and always slept behind locked doors with her blades close to hand. That was one piece of information Rana knew that nobody else did. There were actually two blades, almost indistinguishable but she was sure that they did different things. There was the one that made you lie but there was another one. One that did something else. The Queen never used that one and Rana was still working out exactly what it did. She had some ideas of course, she had a lot of ideas. But she knew it wasn’t the same as the first one because once when she’d been helping the Queen change she’d seen a scar on her side that bled ink. The Queen had been stabbed and it couldn’t have been by the same blade as Rana since she could still tell the truth, so it must have been by the other one.
Rana wasn’t sure what she’d do with the information once she’d gotten it. There wasn’t anyone who’d particularly care but she wanted to find out anyway. That way she was doing something, she feared what would happen once she was no longer doing anything.
After fetching the Queen’s dinner and making her bed she left to wander the castle. She wasn’t allowed out in most of the castle of course, only the keep. The great thin walls were dangerous, they said. They said you could wander into them and never escape, being lost forever and they’d never find so much as a body. She didn’t believe that, she knew someone who regularly wandered the maze and never got lost, he also seemed to find plenty of bodies. Unfortunately, he was even more difficult to get information out of than she was. But he was the only one who talked to her without mockery so she was determined to try.
Sal was sitting outside the keep on a rock in the courtyard looking up at the shifting walls. He was a strange man, thin and pale and with eyes that seemed wrong and never blinked. He reminded her of a frog or a gecko and she always half expected to see his tongue reach out from his mouth and lick his eyeballs or a snatch a fly. It never did though, much to her disappointment. He had lips that were as dark as hers although he didn’t have a scar and he assured her it was just from living in the Wilderness for so long. The food there did that to you, he said. He could still tell the truth, apparently, she was skeptical if anything he said was truthful.
“You’re not in the courtyard,” she commented. She’d have liked to ask questions, that would have made things easier, but apparently the blade forbid that as well. It was lies only, nothing ambiguous.
Sal nodded looking up at the walls. “It is a good night to not be in the courtyard. A calm night.”
Rana really wanted to ask him about the maze, but of course, she couldn’t ask anything. She sat down next to him on the rock and thought about it for a while. “I can read that,” she pointed at the spiralling symbols on the wall above them.
Sal looked at her with his seemingly lidless eyes. “It says ‘Here is the Wall of the White Shark, may it ever be swift and silent in the ocean waters.’”
Her eyes grew wide. He could read them! No one could read them, that was part of the mystery, the enigma of it all.
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He tilted his head curiously, then he smiled and put a finger to his lips. She’d always assumed that Sal had come from the Wilderness with them because of his dark lips but if he could read the symbols maybe he’d actually been here the whole time. She looked at his smile and wished she could ask him more.
She pointed to the symbols on another wall and tried to put on a questioning face. It was the best she could do for now.
Sal rocked his head back and forth, reading the runes. “That says ‘Here is the Wall of the Praying Mantis, may it remain regal and defined until it senses weakness and the time to strike.’” He rocked his head again and looked back at her. “What one is your favourite?” he asked. There were two so whichever one she picked he’d know what she really meant.
“The Mantis,” she lied, back when she was young she’d swum a lot in lakes pretending to be a shark. She was a strong swimmer, not that it mattered very much any more.
Sal rocked his head some more. “I like the Grass Snake,” he said. “It is further in, hidden most of the time.”
“I know who made this place,” she lied, hoping he’d know and could tell her. “I know why all the walls are named after animals.”
“They are not named after animals,” he said. She frowned, that sounded exactly like what she’d say and she was suddenly filled with doubt again about whether anything he’d said was the truth. “They are named after the people who built them,” he continued after a while. “And those people were named after animals?”
Who built them? She tried to ask but the question died on her tongue. Sal looked back at the walls and she felt her hope start to fade. Still, she’d learned a lot, perhaps she could learn some more another time, she’d have to think of more questions and ways to ask them.
Sal stood up and smiled at her as he left, putting his finger to his lips again. He strolled past the guards who let him go and he entered into the maze. He’d be back later with any equipment or provisions he could scrounge from those who’d died in the maze. He took no string, he had no map or compass, maybe he just read the symbols.
She turned back to the keep and heard the shouts and laughter coming from it. She didn’t really follow what was going on with the phoenix everyone was talking about but from the meeting it had seemed like good news. So they were having a party, she’d rather not go to a party, that was where she’d be mocked the most.
She went back to the tiny closet of a room she’d been given, barely tall enough to stand and barely wide enough for her bed. It was cosy though, she supposed and she had a shelf to keep her meagre belongings on. She took down her little idol of Vestus, the god of strength and hunting and tried to pray. It was difficult, so difficult now. She had to simply think the prayer, as soon as she whispered it or muttered it or breathed it it died on her lips because it wasn’t a lie, and she wasn’t willing to lie to her god. She prayed for strength, she prayed for hope and she prayed for answers. She didn’t think she was going to achieve much anymore but she could find her answers, that was what kept her going.
Far out in the maze the Wall of the Grey Wolf slid along the ground, letting out a high pitched scraping whine that sounded almost like a howl.
Rana was woken by a pounding on her door which shook her whole tiny room. She scrabbled from her bed, slamming her head painfully against the too low stone roof and opened the door, clutching her wounded scalp. The Queen was there, leaning against the wall, reeking of alcohol from the party. She had discarded the crown and her normal war clothing for a comfortable dress, she looked almost like a normal woman coming back home from a tavern. Normal except for the black sword dripping ink that she held in one hand.
She snapped her fingers at Rana and spun around awkwardly to walk back to her room, the sword trailing toward the ground but not touching it. Even heavily intoxicated the Queen was still a master swordswoman. “Come, slave. Help me out of this dress, and then fetch me some of that chicken from the kitchens. I’m starving.”
“The chicken will still be warm I’m sure,” Rana replied as the Queen staggered into her room. The Queen giggled at that and leaned against the wall.
“I’m sure you can manage,” she said. “Get the cook to make some more.”
Rana tried to grunt in agreement but the blade forbid that too so she said nothing and started undoing the dress. The Queen stood there swaying and let Rana undress her, the sword slowly trickling ink onto the floor. Rana would have to clean that up.
She moved the dress down past the Queen’s arms and had to move perilously close to the sword. The Queen was drunk and it would be so easy for her to accidentally impale her helpless slave but there wasn’t much else Rana could do. Keeping her eye on that terrible blade she took off the dress and then she saw it. Underneath all the drips of ink there were symbols etched into the blade, the same symbols that were on all the walls, the symbols that Sal could read. Answers.
She took off the dress and the Queen collapsed into bed, leaving the blade beside her on the dresser, then she pointed toward the kitchens and Rana went on her way. As she walked she thought about those symbols and how tantalizingly close she’d gotten. If only she could remember them, if only she could show them to Sal, if only she’d been able to read them herself, but she could do none of those things. Because the other thing she’d noticed while so close to the blade was that it was the second one, not the one that made you lie, the one that did something else, the one that had stabbed the Queen. The symbols probably said exactly what it did and she had been so close to them it was infuriating.
She woke up the cook and got her to make some more chicken despite her insistence on giggling every time Rana spoke in lies. Then she took the chicken back up to the Queen’s room and walked in to find her asleep. Her heart leapt and she froze. The sword was right there, she could kill her right now and there no one could stop her. She walked over and set the chicken down on the dresser. The Queen was lying there, passed out cold and without her crown or her sword she looked just like a normal woman. Rana had never killed someone in their sleep before. It felt a lot less justifiable than during the thrill of battle.
She picked up the blade and turned it over to look at the runes. It wouldn’t do any good anyway, the guards wouldn’t let her out of the castle so she couldn’t escape and if the Queen died there were plenty of other people who could take her place, the intimidating Lord Farro for one, or worse that bastard Lord Sturken. She found a notebook and a quill and copied the runes then tore out the page to show it to Sal. She replaced everything, leaving it all where it was and left. Anger and disappointment brimming within her. This woman had ruined her life and now she had the chance she was doing nothing about it. But she didn’t really want vengeance, killing the Queen wouldn’t bring her truth back. She just had to learn to live with what she had. She closed the door on the sleeping queen and went back to bed.
Sal looked at the paper with his lidless eyes and rocked his head back and forth. Rana waited patiently but her patience soon wore out and she waited impatiently. These were the symbols on the second blade, the answer she’d been looking for since she’d found out it existed. Why was he taking so long to read it?
“This is dark script,” Sal said sadly. She’d never seen him sad before. “Written by a dark person.”
“I can read it,” Rana lied. “I know what it says.”
Sal seemed uncomfortable as he rocked back and forth. “It says...” he paused infuriatingly. “This is the Second Blade of the Spider, forged from the Blood of Irasada, Mother of Medusae. Cleansed be thy name of those this blade touches for you have been blessed by the Spider.” He looked up at her with pain in his eyes. “I did not like reading that.”
“I’m not sorry.” It sounded harsh but he understood. Questions filled her mind, what were the Medusae, what was Irasada, who was the Spider? What did the blade actually do? Although she was starting to suspect an answer to that one. She struggled to form the questions into lies Sal could understand when a voice called to her.
“Rana!” It was one of the soldiers from the Queen’s personal guard. She took the paper from Sal who was all too happy to give it to her and walked slowly over to the guard, tucking the paper away. “The Queen wants you.”
Rana nodded and went to the Queen’s room to find her clearly hungover but maintaining her composure all the same.
“You didn’t take your vengeance on me when you had the chance?” the Queen said as she dressed.
Rana nodded, that at least, the blade allowed. “There was no one else who could simply step into your place. It would have made a huge difference.”
The Queen shrugged. “Still, I took away your life.”
“I am not still alive. Had I killed you I would not have been killed.”
The Queen smiled as she finished putting on her uniform and stood in front of the mirror, she still had huge bags under her weary eyes. “Yes of course, you are not ruled by vengeance, by hatred, truly you would have made a great warrior.”
“I was never a great warrior.”
The Queen’s smile grew ever wider. “You are wasted as my slave, I can find any number of weaklings to fill that role. I am sending you back to the Wilderness to serve as a soldier there, clearing out our new lands of beasts and monsters.”
“I cannot escape there.”
Rana didn’t think she’d ever seen the queen smile this much. “You will be under the leadership of my sister Ayessa, you can try.”
Rana nodded. Ayessa, she’d heard that name before, she’d heard many names of many of the generals but there was one particular name she had never heard.
She let herself be dismissed and led back to the Wilderness after gathering her possessions. The secret passage that led into the heart of Meduramanth was now wide open and guarded by the Queen’s forces at all times. She went through with a few guards and into the impossible cave. It didn’t look that unusual, just a short cave with a few torches and a little stream ringed with mushrooms and a few other plants. The impossible part was that it was short, taking only a minute or two to traverse, yet the distance it covered, between the Wilderness and Meduramanth should have taken months.
She emerged into the little village in the Wilderness that had been converted into a base for the Queen and her forces. The waterfall roared and Rana stood on the other side of the world, a soldier again. She could reclaim her identity perhaps, become something like who she once was. She still had her identity of course, she still had a name. That was something she was fairly sure the Queen did not have.