Labyrinth, p.1
Labyrinth, page 1
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LABYRINTH
The World of the Stone Maze
Book One
by Shane Lee
Table of Contents
Part One: The Monsters of the Maze
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Part Two: Into the Labyrinth
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Part Three: Magic
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Part Four: The World
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
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Part One: The Monsters of the Maze
Chapter One
The Walls are filled with darkness.
It is not a complete darkness. The Walls rise high, but not to the clouds. The space between them is often filled with a thin mist, and wide. Five young men like me could stand shoulder-to-shoulder within, and the ones on each end could brush the cold stone with their fingertips.
Light comes in from the sky, but it is bare, diffused, and must travel a long way to reach the ground. Little of it does. The spaces within the Walls are dim and cold, like they are a different part of the world.
It’s been like that for over two hundred years. No one I know has been outside the Walls, not even me, Jost, the lone soul from Cartha who wanders the labyrinth. Who goes out into the dark passages to hunt, and who returns alive.
People think that I’m a fool, or that I’m crazy. I like to think of myself as brave and reckless, but the truth is, I’m not scared of the Walls. I’m not scared of the monsters that people say are out here, or the poison that is supposed to fill the air. I’ve been brushing my hands along the gray stone here since I was eight years old, and in almost twenty years, I had never run across anything to be afraid of.
The people in the city are scared of what is supposed to be out here. The beasts or creatures or malign entities that thrust humanity into small hidden pockets among the Walls. The labyrinth was built around all the cities to keep them safe. The legends are old and confusing, and they name a dozen enemies of man.
I have never seen these things. Perhaps there was once evil that forced this maze to be built, but it’s gone now. The Walls are darkness and mystery; mist and silence. I was not afraid of them. I feared nothing in the walls.
Until I found the light.
Chapter Two
It was a day like any other spent in the Walls. Dim and cold. I flexed my fingers and rubbed my hands together, the rasping sound of my skin loud in the calm. I was the only man who roamed the labyrinth, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed the weather. I dressed for it. I’d spent a lot on my clothes, and little on anything else. A man who spends his days going miles in the Walls needs warm, strong clothing.
My boots were heavy and worn. I wore long, dark pants of thick fabric sewn to tough leather strips that ran down the legs, some of the best leather in Cartha. My shirt was two layers of linen and wool, dyed a deep black with sleeves that went up to my wrists. It was my hunting shirt. Dark clothing made it much harder to be seen in the Walls, and when I crept upon the ratmoles and burrow pigs that I sold for meat, they would not notice me.
That was today’s task—and tomorrow’s, if today went poorly. Secure twenty pounds of meat or more.
“More,” I said, scratching at my forehead beneath my short brown hair, which was dirty but neat. “You can do more than twenty, Jost.”
Talking to myself was common in the Walls. There was no one else. Aside from the unending chill, it might have been nice. No one in the city really talked to me, anyway.
The wooden stringing pole I used to carry carcasses hung over my shoulders, and I shrugged it higher. I was far from Cartha now, almost far enough to need to pull out my map. I knew the labyrinth for a good span of miles around the city, but eventually I always reached a new part.
That would never stop happening, of course. The labyrinth was thousands of miles long, if you believed the stories. And I did.
Not fearing the legends did not mean I wasn’t a believer. I was the only one who ventured into the Walls because I was the only one who made it back alive. Ever. Not even one other person had left the city of Cartha and come back to tell the tale.
People stopped trying. They had their own lives to live in Cartha, where the sun did shine and one could grow crops and livestock and pretend the world was like it used to be before the labyrinth, as long as they ignored the hundred-foot-high stone wall that curved around the farmlands and city.
I blinked, casting the sunlight from my mind’s eye and returning to the dark mist of the Walls. My boots stepped softly into the wet dirt. I had two small but very sharp daggers strapped on the outside of each thigh, secured tightly to prevent any noise. I smelled the damp soil and the lingering rot of plants that had tried to grow and died, over and over.
I was searching for the burrow this time. Rather than spend days picking up one pig or ratmole at a time, I could find the nest.
“Thirty pounds,” I whispered, running my fingers absently along a dagger’s sheath. “Forty. Fifty, if I’m quick.”
The burrow pigs weren’t big, but six or seven would add up fast.
I made a final left turn before pulling my lifelong project from its special pocket inside my shirt. I unfolded it, barely able to read it in the narrow light. The sun had passed its highest point in the sky an hour ago, and this was as bright as the Walls would be for the rest of the day.
My map. As usual, my eyes crawled over it with wonder and familiarity, my fingers holding it like it was a baby bird. Paper was expensive, and treating it to make it durable cost even more, but I paid it for the map.
“Sixty pounds,” I muttered to myself, knowing that carrying all that meat back would cripple me. “I could trade for a stack of treated sheets if Gwin is fair to purchase...”
I would have to eat, too, but that could be treated sparingly. My frame was narrow and strong. Walking and hunting in the labyrinth was not a leisurely stroll—stones had to be moved; earth had to be dug up; walls had to be climbed where handholds could be found. The Walls were crumbling in spots, but there was a lot of wall. They would probably crumble for another thousand years.
I looked ahead, holding the map in one hand. I stood where the markings ended, some fifteen miles southeast of Cartha. Between the city and where I stood were three-dozen-and-four turns I’d taken along the way. I knew them by heart.
I had gotten lost only one time, when I was very young. Nine years old, and little Jost felt brave enough to wander farther than he had before. There’s no sound of the city once you enter the labyrinth—the stone blocks it all.
I was lost for four days. It was the most panicked and scared I’d ever been in my life. But it was also how I learned that ratmoles could be caught with my hands, and I could eat them alive and not feel bad about it. It was for survival. I learned to map and hunt and where to dig a hole deep enough with your hands to pull water from the ground, if you were lucky. I swore that brush with death would never happen to me again.
And I was right, all the way up until now.
Charcoal in hand, I marked what I saw on a raw, folded sheet that I would later copy in ink to the map. This path stretched ahead farther than I could see, than even the light could show me.
“Haven’t seen a straight this long aside from Riverway.” I glanced at the long, straight path drawn north of Cartha, which I had named Riverway because I had read about big rivers in books. “I’ll need a name for you.”
“Longsteel?” I offered, scratching the name down and picturing it looking like a sword from a bird’s eye. “No, I can do better. Arrow’s Way. No...”
I continued muttering to myself, hardly listening, as I stepped forward in the wet dirt and drew the paths I saw, adding as much detail as I could. I looked atop the sharp corner of a branch path and thought I saw green creeping over the top edge.
Ivy? I marked, and then I saw the small footprints on the ground. Pigs. Easy to track, as long as I was careful not to step on the prints.
“You’re lucky there’s no other predators here for you, little meat loaves,” I said, following the prints down a right turn while marking down the path. “You’re far too easy to find.”
I wished there were deer here. They were something I’d only ever seen drawings of. Huge, glorious beasts that weighed as much as me. Something you’d need a bow and arrow and true shot to take down. The only reason I carried these daggers was to skin the carcasses. The pigs were easy to catch, and their necks were easy to break.
Down the path, drawing rough lines with my charcoal pencil, it was only when I looked up from my map that I saw, for the first time in my life, light inside of the Walls.
Chapter Three
“What in fiery hell?”
I stopped dead, my hands frozen on the map. A yellow glow spread a faint but wide circle across the left side of a labyrinth wall. Something was planted in the stone and emitting a light. It was soft, but in here it might as well have been the sun.
I flicked my eyes away from it for just a moment to mark it on the map—light???—then got back to my senses and put my things away. I kept my eyes on the light and noticed it pulsed ever so slightly, like it was breathing.
Fear prickled at me, and I hated it. The labyrinth did not scare me, and nothing inside it should. But this was something I had never seen before, and it was so different from the vast unknown that I’d been chipping away at with my map. The longer I looked at it, the more angry I felt. In twenty years, I knew more about the Walls than anyone alive. I practically lived here. And what was this newcomer, this intruder?
You’re the intruder, Jost. You’re in its territory.
“Territory?” I scoffed, but quietly. “It’s just a light. It’s a little lamp.”
But I wasn’t staring at firelight; I could tell that from where I stood, some hundred feet away. This was something else. And I was going to find out what it was, and I might smash it for good measure. I didn’t need light scaring the pigs away.
I started walking. At least, I thought I did. But my feet wouldn’t move. I felt pressure in the back of my throat, and my blood pumped through my neck in heavy pulses.
“By all the denizens,” I growled through gritted teeth, “I am not scared of some stupid little lamp.”
My paralysis broke, and I moved forward stiffly. I could see now that the mist was gone here, and by the sounds of my boots on the ground, the soil was drying up. Every step I took, things got stranger.
Just leave, Jost. You know the pigs aren’t here.
Pigs? Who cared about some pigs? There was a lamp.
The ground was firm beneath my feet; so odd within the Walls. I wanted to look down to see it, but my eyes were locked on the light. The weak thoughts of pigs and meat were driven from my mind, and I found myself reaching one hand forward as I walked, grasping at the yellow glow.
Something was wrong with me. Something was wrong with all of this.
A sickening combination of fear and awe pulled and pushed me, but whatever drew me towards the light was winning. Dry dirt crunched under my boots. I was close now, close enough to see the source, something that was half-buried inside of the wall.
I drank the light in hungrily and reached out for the lamp—while inside I recoiled. I had no idea what this was. It could burn me, or poison me. What the hell was I doing?
I laid my hand on the light and gasped.
A shock coursed through my body, stretching me backward. There was no pain. Energy surged through my fingertips and my body, like I was being filled with rushing water. My mouth hung agape, and my short brown hair stirred like it was alive, making my skull tingle. Lights flashed in my eyes.
I stayed connected to the light for an eternity, though only moments passed. When it released me, I fell to the ground. My elbows dug into the dirt and my hip hit the ground hard, making my teeth knock together. I felt weak, like I’d just run five miles through the Walls and bumped into a few of them on the way.
I went flat on my back and lied there for a moment, finding my breath. The sky above me was narrow and blue, framed by the skyreaching stone, which grew darker with shadow the further down the wall you looked.
I could move, at least. I dug my fingers into the earth and felt it crumble into my palm.
Dry, indeed, I thought. Like the light took all the water from it.
Breathing deeply, I sat up, idly running my hands over my arms and shoulders to check if I’d been hurt and finding nothing. I felt battered, but I didn’t appear to be broken. I got to my feet, glancing back up at the light.
It was dimmer now. Still bright for the darkness of the labyrinth, but giving off less energy than before, surely.
I had to touch it again.
“What is wrong with you?” I asked, staring at my hand as it reached again for the light, and now I could see it was a round, yellow gem, just barely too big to close my hand around. It was clear and pure. The gray stone and the small pocket within it appeared golden behind the gem.
As far as gems went, even one this big wouldn’t get me much in the way of trade, unless I found someone who was an odd and wealthy collector, and there weren’t enough of those types in Cartha to keep me fed.
So why was I touching it again?
I braced myself for the shock, but it didn’t come. The surface of the gem was perfectly, incredibly smooth. A sphere so unflawed that even the most talented glass-worker in the city couldn’t hope to replicate its featureless curve. It was half-stuck in the wall, and at this point I was past wondering why I wanted the damned thing. I was now surmising how I would be able to take it out of the wall without a chisel or a pickaxe.
But when I rested ten fingers on the gem’s surface and pulled, it slid free. Shocked, I let it drop to the dirt. It hit the ground with a whisper, like it weighed hardly an ounce.
Jost, what the hell have you found?
Chapter Four
I turned back towards Cartha with no meat and a strangely weightless yellow sphere in my hand. I couldn’t stop turning the thing around, looking for any indication of what it was or where it had come from. It didn’t have scratches from the stone, nor any imperfections, even deep into its core. I got the feeling that I could smash it against a labyrinth wall and all I would hurt was my wrist.
I wanted to know what this thing was. I needed to. I kept thinking of it as a gem, but was it really? Not like any gem I’d ever seen, and there were plenty floating around Cartha. Apparently they used to be valuable, and people hoarded them before the Walls were built.
Hard to believe that something people let their kids lose in the street could be worth anything.
Gwin might know something. He was old, even if he didn’t like to be reminded of it, and he’d read a lot of books. I’d go to him first.
Clutching the gem in one hand and following my well-worn path back through the labyrinth, I felt a tingle in my palm. I stopped, pulling it up to my face and looking at it. Deep inside, light was starting to form.
I was so distracted by the lamp that I didn’t notice the burrow pig until it ran past my feet, spraying dirt across the front of my boots.
“Hey!” I whipped around, suddenly furious. I never missed a pig.
I tucked the gem awkwardly into my pocket and ran after the burrow pig. The little brown animal was fast, but not faster than me. I caught it as it was frantically trying to burrow into the ground, its only real way to escape. The lamp tingled against my leg, even through my pants, like it was getting ready to shock me once more.
