TZARK IN THE LABYRINTH

Until tonight, Tzark has known only one world: the abyssal slums, a chasm of sunless maze-alleys which wind among the sewers and storm-drains of the city, a world where nothing is certain and no one is trusted, where every choice is a risk, and the act of living is a series of gambles. Tzark has grown nonchalant about weighing the odds of his own death, and when he hears Glaneir's order to follow her closely, he decides that he prefers his chances out among the wards.

For he believes himself an astute judge of character, and he trusts Glaneir not at all.

On his own, perhaps, he can find knowledge to share with the others, and gold not to.

Drifting to the back of the group, he slips away down a branching corridor, soundless in his soft-soled boots, and there he waits. The footfalls of the others fade gradually into the distance, and darkness shrouds him utterly in its familiar folds.

With motions smoothed by long practice, he kneels, sets his thieves' lantern on the floor, and sparks the unseen wick. A chink of reddish light appears flickering on the wall. He sweeps the beam over the bare rock floor, inspecting the flecks of dust that lie there, sparse and nearly invisible. He sees tracks.

Without pausing for conscious thought, he begins sneaking atop them, placing his feet exactly on the footprints as he winds ever deeper into the dark and cool of the labyrinth, unlocking doors as he goes with the stolen silver keys. Only later does he realize that if some of the flagstones underfoot had been trapped, then walking in the tracks of the denizens of the Tower, who must know where not to step, might save his life. Subconscious insight, valuable to all who gamble with their lives, is more vital to Tzark than reason, because it is quick. Whenever he prowls in deadly vaults, being hunted, snatching for life-giving gold, it is not his head that does the thinking, but his feet.

As he weaves and winds in the semi-darkness, Tzark ghosts through mazes, dungeons, and spiral staircases, creeps across workshops muffled beneath layers of ash, and pads over walkways crossing pits of cobras, who rear hoods crusted in flaking blood. He ducks through low eerie galleries flanked by rows of chain-bound doors, passes in and out of crypts strewn with small animals' bones, chambers equipped for dissection, chambers for torture, chambers for rituals – but nowhere does he find the glitter of treasure answering the hopeful gleam of his red thieves' light.

Suddenly, his hairs prickle in a wave—a ward is rolling through him, and he feels it writhe! The silence is broken by a whoosh and a hiss. Blue flames leap up from the stone behind him, blocking his retreat. Ahead, shouts and footfalls echo from beyond an archway. He bolts down a side tunnel, but finds it filled with rasping fire. Having no choice, feeling like a trapped animal, he sprints toward the echoing voices, crossing through the archway and running into a refinery room of vats and fearful stenches.

Four-armed scimitar slaves—nine of them!—are rushing through the tangled mess of the chamber's machinery, heading for a tunnel to one side. Tzark's clothing is dark enough to blend with the ironwork of the room; he may yet be unseen. Opening the door of a cold furnace, he begins to fold himself inside—but hears a shout! The nine are swarming towards him.

He springs onto a table, then up onto a row of steel cabinets. His pursuers split up to surround him, but he leaps over their heads and rolls to his feet behind them, and when they turn and chase, he leads them on a twisting, clattering run, weaving through the tangled clutter of the machinery, aided by the terrain and the treacherous footing, the masses of levers, snags, and bars which he slips lightly between while his bulky pursuers crash and stagger, chipping their scimitars and howling with frustration after the nimble thief.

Everywhere, Tzark finds iron tables and obstacles to roll beneath, spring onto, and dash across, until finally he bolts through a door, back into the labyrinth, all nine foemen charging at his heels. With a clear run ahead, he leans into the sprint, and flies.

Before long the enemies have been outdistanced in the maze, and even their shouts have faded, leaving the silence complete save for Tzark's unsteady panting, and his laughter of relief.

He walks slowly to catch his breath, and as he does he hears a new sound, a shuffling from ahead, where a dim glow the hue of heated iron is spilling across the floor before an open gate. He slips to the edge of the light and peers into a chamber. It seems to be a smelting workshop, gloomy and black with burns. Far toward the back, beside a flickering furnace, a cloaked figure is scrubbing out a pan, the slender wrists and forearms smeared with the soot used in the place of soap.

It occurs to Tzark that in a Tower this deadly, information may be more precious to him even than gold, and that this laborer seems to have other tasks in life than hunting down intruders. Certainly she cannot be Ulto, or anyone else of rank, for in a Tower with slaves it is never the masters who scrub. Also, she appears unarmed, and small enough to think twice before seeking to attack him.

Taking his place cross-legged on a table behind her, Tzark allows his silent breathing to return to its natural volume, and waits for her to hear.

She wipes the pan with a rag and turns around. She is earless and scarred, but the mutilations, though savage and seemingly random, have not ruined her beauty, and it is Tzark who inhales quickly as if in surprise, while she seems not to notice him, merely crossing to the table on which he sits, where she begins to scoop wheat kernels from a sack. As she fills the pan, she asks its iron bottom, "Are you an assassin from the Upper Tower?"

Tzark mutters, "You must be used to surprises."

"This place brings many, few of them pleasant. Were you sent down here to slay me?"

He glances at her face. "I would never. But I may have to threaten to, yes."

Her lips do not curve at his irony; her eyes flit to his knife-belt, and she replies, flatly, "Here I believed I was dealing with a murderer. But worse, you are a wit."

"Answer my questions, and I'll spare you my jests."

She hesitates, glancing toward one of the shadowed doorways, seeming to search for spying eyes. Finally, after filling the pan with water from a rusted pump and setting it over the furnace to heat, she says, tensely, "Perhaps I had better hear one of these threats."

It has not escaped Tzark that a pan of water, once it boils, will become a weapon to equal his knives.

"Lady," he says, "your hands are without flaw. I would keep them beneath a magic bell jar and preserve them for all eternity."

She rounds on him and protests, "I cannot tell when you are in earnest. Say it clearly, are you a danger to me or not?"

With a concealed sigh, Tzark bids farewell to his hopes for extracting information, and admits, "I am not." He adds, perhaps too honestly, "I could not hurt an eyelash."

For a long moment, she peers into his eyes, scrutinizing. Then, with a tiny nod, she turns back to the pan, partly smiling now, and seems to pick up on his humor. "Then I suppose my safest course is to tell you nothing, lest I be punished."

Tzark presses a hand to his chest, feigning to be wounded. "You would punish me for my good nature? So this is why the unjust thrive… but I will not renege."

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Her motions are less tense now, and she looks at his face rather than his knife belt. "Perhaps… I could answer a few questions, if they are not forbidden."

Tzark smiles. "Something innocuous? Excellent. Where is the gold?"

She begins to grin. "You could ask, for example, about the location of rat droppings, or the most recent trends in stinks of unknown cause."

He raises his hands, "Very well, nothing concerning gold, I understand, of course. There are many other topics of interest to me. Where are the diamonds?"

She laughs. It seems to startle her, and she covers her mouth and swallows the sound like an unfamiliar lump. To hide her confusion, she asks, with some incredulity, "Are you really a thief? You snuck here from the Outside? Outside the Tower, I mean?"

Tzark shrugs and nods, asking, "I wonder if you might answer this one—do you know a slave, scarred and cloaked like you, by the name of Glaneir?"

She shakes her head. "Perhaps she serves in the Upper Tower?"

"Hm." Tzark feels the hairs prickle on the nape of his neck. "Tell me, what is life like, for slaves of your kind?"

"Well, we seem to be kept only for spell ingredients," she brushes her ear-stumps with a forefinger. "There is little work for us, and no chance of escape; we languish."

Tzark narrows his eyes. "No chance of escape?"

"As far as I have been able to discover, the enchantments cannot be evaded."

"What if a slave should learn the use of a silver wand belonging to Ulto? Could she escape then, if she stole it?"

The maiden frowns, stirring the simmering wheat with an expression of skepticism. "A wand? I never heard that Ulto was seen to use a wand. No, whoever gave you that idea is dreaming; it is their fantasy of escape." She bows her head over the water, and shuts her eyes. "It is impossible."

"I see." Tzark folds his hands, pensive. "What if I said I met a woman like you, scarred and cloaked, outside, and that she claimed to have escaped?"

"All the way Outside?" the maiden shoots him an uncertain glance, and shrugs uncomfortably. "Enough of these questions. I'd prefer to suffer your jests."

He gets up and dusts off his clothes, preparing to take his leave. "Then here is a jest for you, and it is a jest only because you will not believe it: the wards are in chaos, just for tonight."

Wistfully, she stares into the dust. "A pleasant jest…"

A silence falls. With neither of them speaking, faraway sounds become audible – the echo of screaming and the clash of blades, and the battle-cry of Vivict. Tzark turns to the nearest door. "I am needed."

"Wait." Her eyes are alive, darting. "This chaos you jest of, does it extend to the outer walls?"

He warns her, "The way is not easy."

The uncertain hope on her face fills him with compassion; he is reminded of his own entrapment in the sunless slums. After a moment's hesitation, he unsheathes one of his long knives and lays it on the table, then adds to it a few of Glaneir's keys, and his only rope, a slender, lightweight coil. "It will be easier with these. If you make it, the deep slums are a terrible place to go, but the best place for those who wish not to be found, or who wish to find me. Pay me back in gold, won't you?"

Her sudden chuckle brings sunshine to the room. "Gold, gold, gold. Is the stuff really so precious out there? It's almost dross in here. Look."

She takes him by the arm and leads him to a squat smelting vat with a heavy door. This she opens, and from within pulls out a sooty lump of black stuff, heavy as a dense mud brick.

"Ah," Tzark says. "Coal. Delightful."

With a smile, she blows on it, her cheeks puffing. A cloud of soot billows off and she is left holding a glittering fistful: pure raw gold. She says, "I doubt you will live to spend it. But if it makes you happy…"

She plunks it down in Tzark's palm. His mouth is hanging open so wide that she could have slotted it between his teeth.

"Lady," he stammers, "I could kiss you."

From the distance, a series of battle cries startles him into motion. He looks toward the farthest archway, from which the echoes come, then hastily back at the maiden.

"I wish you fairest luck," he says, kisses her cheek, and sprints toward the clamor of his comrades' fight, though his thoughts remain with her.

The halls in which he flies are treacherous with dead-ends and branchings, but Tzark is no novice at mazes, and his keen ears and keener intuitions lead him swiftly to his comrades' trail, which is paved with four-armed dead. On catwalks over serpent cages, fallen foes are dying among their broken swords, blood draining through the bars to be lapped up by the snakes, as the voices of those wounded who can still speak give thanks to their unnamed gods for the long-awaited liberation of death. A few spend their final breaths to curse Voua Azrain and Ulto, invoking the power of their final drops of blood.

They pay no heed to Tzark, nor to the sounds he pursues.

Vaulting down a staircase, he finds himself on a shadowy shelf of rock overlooking a waterfall cave, a vast jungle lair for swarms of dragonflies as large as hyenas.

The silhouettes of half a dozen archers are creeping up to the edge of the shelf, where a ghostly light from above illuminates the curving path of a staircase of rose-quartz, the only way down to the jungle level, a staircase so long that the highest step is more than thirty paces distant from the lowest, which lies flush with the jungle ground. Beneath the trees, Cusáhn, Rokál, Vivict, Harrin, and UrokYann battle dragonflies and warriors who wield four scimitars each, while the unarmed Glaneir stands back and watches from the gloom beneath the ferns.

In front of Tzark on the shadowy shelf, the archers' silhouettes reach the edge overlooking the battle, and lift compact bows nocked to fire. Between their muscular sides, he can see their targets below: Cusáhn, Rokál, and UrokYann are armored, safe against all but the luckiest arrow; and Vivict is an ever-lunging streak of red, a difficult target at this range. But Harrin, having lost helm and breastplate at the burning gate, is unarmored, exhausted, and heavy of foot. A huge four-armed warrior is bearing down on him, smashing blow after blow against his unskilled but stalwart defense, trying to wear him down, but unintentionally placing his four-armed back between Harrin and the arrows above.

Tzark slips closer. The archers are intent upon the scene below. They do not notice Tzark as he gently, silently, lifts their arrows from their quivers. Not until he plants a foot on the chief archer's tailbone and assists him over the edge.

Tzark tosses the arrows after him—six bundles of them. If the yowl of the falling chief failed to alert Tzark's comrades below, the outraged shouting of the other archers certainly must.

Viványa whirls, sees her comrade Tzark alone among many foes, and hurls a javelin with the ferocity of a ballista, piercing clean through an archer from forty yards away. Then she tears toward the staircase, a menacing flash of red flickering through the green. The archers now have a clear shot at Harrin, whose attacker has been pulverized by UrokYann; but the slinger is the least of their concerns. Three bows fire at Viványa as she splashes out of the jungle and onto the open steps, but she is watching for them, and as the arrows arc across the intervening space, she twitches aside and lets them snap against the wall behind her.

Tzark's position is more difficult; the archer that spins toward him is two paces away. The thief flings himself down and hurls his knife. It only bounces hilt-first off the foe, but now the other three archers, reaching for fresh arrows and finding none, cry out a warning, and the one aiming at Tzark realizes that his arrow is the only one any of them have left.

"Choose!" Tzark shouts, displaying his empty hands. "Is that arrow for me, or the demon?"

The archer hesitates, then spins toward Viványa. A flying axe cracks against his skull; he staggers to one knee—and then Viványa tears onto the shelf and kills them all.

Panting loud as a wolf, with one hand guarding her mouth, she retrieves Tzark's knife and returns it to him, saying something half-articulate and grateful.

As she runs back down the stairs to help finish the battle, Viványa thinks that without Tzark, her first warning of the archers might have been an arrow in the neck. When she lacks armor, helm, and shield, as a pirate often must, she should be more alert.

Once the last of the monster dragonflies lies curled and still around its scorpion tail, and the four-armed slaves who did not crave death have scattered into the tunnels, the comrades, now gleaming with sweat and condensation from the foggy jungle air, gather on a stone shelf that curves behind the waterfall: a cool and shadowy place to rest.

"We draw near to the wyvern's lair," Glaneir says, "and to the chamber of Voua Azrain's apprentice, the cunning and powerful Ulto. Drink, bathe, and recover your breath; we must have our full strength when we dare the wyvern's den."

The armored warriors, careless of their metal gear, wade into the pool behind the waterfall to cool themselves and sate their thirst. Cusáhn sits in the shallows and begins oiling the spark-edged sword. Viványa kneels at the brink of the pool and dunks her head and hair, and UrokYann rollicks in the cascade, laughing like a boy.

Harrin offers to bind a long scimitar scratch on Viványa's shoulder, and she, appalled that he would consider her wounded because of so slight a cut, grabs him by the ears. They tussle across the pond, splashing amid spear, javelin, harpoon, and sword until UrokYann joins in, and joyfully overthrows them both, his bulk undefeatable in the water, even when Viványa and Harrin join forces and wrestle him as one.

Ulto, grimacing at this frivolity, says, "Now listen you battle-drunk cubs. If you would live out the hour, then you ought to know something of the monster you are about to face."

The comrades turn toward her, and she begins to speak.