Arlen was about to agree when the Opaline chief said, "How do we know you won't steal him away?"

"Our word of honor. And the chief's." The messenger handed over a glittering necklace of metal shards. If it was iron it was highly polished and oiled, heavy in the Opaline man's hand.

Opaline's chief admired it. "So be it. But are you going to run him through your mad maze?"

"His decision. We'll try to keep him safe if so."

Nobody else questioned the promise, so Arlen went along. He rode with the duo, away from the distant ring of storms and from Decim. "Tell me about the maze."

"It's always changing. Mostly empty, and sometimes the golems attack. Nobody knows why the Builders put it there."

He had to see this place for himself.

They let him pilot the boat for an hour while both sailors napped, which let them arrive by late morning. A craggy island lay ahead with a beach of grey sand, in the shadow of a mountain. A village huddled near shore, sharing walls and using a mix of finely quarried blocks and later additions of rubble and brick and sod. It gave him the impression of a modern shopping mall, the kind where its core had been torn out to create a collection of strip malls. Barely-tamed boars roamed grassy slopes in the distance.

His escorts took him to a feast hall. It was built in a false-arch style of triangular stone ceilings, creating several narrow vaults with partial interior walls and columns. The scent of sweet berry pie greeted him even before he saw the woman with a crystal-topped staff, standing up creakily from a padded chair.

"Hail, traveler," she said, and four islanders beside her waved or nodded. Their table was polished stone, and the chairs...

"How do you have those?" Arlen blurted out. Each of the six was an elegant wooden frame with decorative iron claw-feet and cushions that could have come from a modern factory. "I'm sorry. I just haven't seen that kind of worksmanship here."

The staff-wielding lady cracked a smile. "Will you run away in awe of our furniture?"

"I'll stay long enough for pie."

Arlen took the empty chair and admired it again. The table looked like it was made from grey stone rubble with a smooth top and bottom, but there were other objects around here that didn't fit with the technology of the islands. "Are those lightbulbs in those holders on the walls?"

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One of the other guests looked puzzled. "The moon crystals? I suppose you could call them that. They're from the Catacomb like everything else."

"Why aren't they everywhere?"

The lady at the head of the table said, "Everything we find in there is piecemeal. Some of it stops working if it's taken away from our home island, like the lights."

"But the bits of iron, and whatever else there is. Why hasn't High Chief Thoko filled his palace with the chairs or stripped them for scrap iron?"

"Well now, that's a tricky question. But we brought you here to ask a few of our own."

Arlen gestured to the pie. "Mystic insight comes after breakfast."

They bribed him with that first, then with a sizzling garlic pastry with bits of pork. Flaky crust, seasoned meat. Arlen hardly spoke till he was halfway through. "Excellent! So, what did you want to know?"

She gestured, and a man whipped a cloth off of a statue. It stood as a pillar three feet tall, covered in zigzag runic lines, standing on four legs that each ended in a claw. Unlike the chairs, it had distinct joints, and a black glossy stripe ran around its octagonal main body.

"Have you seen such a thing before, where you're from?"

Arlen took a moment to understand. "You call them golems? I recognize the word, in another language. The ones I know of are made of metal and other things, and they can walk and grab things. They're not smart like a person, though."

The guests murmured. Their chief said, "So it's not just some unique spell of the ruins. The Builders must have used them as servants. Traveler, we've learned to manipulate these stone creatures a little, making them carry things and stack stones. We feed or pay them with certain crystals, mostly from Opaline. But we have almost no idea how they work. Might you have some insight?"

"What are you hoping to do with them?"

"Defend us from any meddlers who'd tell us how to live, hopefully. But we'd also settle for having them not violently defend large stretches of empty land all over the island. We'd make more farms, but we can't do much more than chase pigs around without golems dismantling what we build. Or occasionally attacking us personally."

Arlen thought about it while finishing off his garlic pastry. "What I'd expect is that they're following a very specific set of instructions. They should respond in predictable ways, like following marked paths or recognizing certain shapes. Do they recognize specific people or adapt to what you do?"

"Probably not." The chief's ears flicked to one side and she sighed. "You can come out now, Meadow."

A squeak of surprise came from a shadowy corner full of boxes. A young woman peeked out and grinned sheepishly, stepping into full view. She wore more than most islanders, less decoration and more belts and pouches. "You're named Ar-il-en?"

"Arlen. You missed the pie."

"I know. You lot were torturing me with the smell."

The chief rolled her eyes. "Meadow is our self-proclaimed expert on the Catacomb and the golems. Since she's here, she may as well share theories."

Meadow hopped in place and clasped her hands. "They don't recognize faces but they do block people in general. Children get pushed away more gently, so the Builders cared about that. We can build outside of specific rectangular areas, and I thought we had them drawn out, but a year ago something changed and a few zones went from allowed to forbidden or vice versa. Small tents are allowed but wood and stone structures get destroyed."

Arlen chuckled. "Are the villagers paying you to study all this?"

"They tolerate me."

The chief said, "To her credit, she has a good record for retrieving things from the Catacomb."