Chapter 28
Zemoch soldiers periodically charged out of side corridors, their faces bearing the hopeless expressions of men who considered themselves already dead. The ultimatum, ‘surrender or die’, however, opened an option to them the existence of which they had not even been aware. Most of them leaped at the chance to seize it. Their effusive gratitude waned, however, when they found that they were expected to take the lead.
The traps designed to surprise the unwary were ingenious. In those passages where the floor did not drop open, the ceiling collapsed. The bottoms of most of the pits in the floor were studded with sharpened stakes, although several pits housed assorted reptiles – all venomous and all bad tempered. Once, when the designer of the labyrinth had evidently grown bored with pits and falling ceilings, the walls smashed forcefully together.
‘There’s something wrong here,’ Kurik said, even as yet another despairing shriek echoed through the maze from behind them where the soldiers who had burst into the throne room were exploring side corridors.
‘Things seem to be going rather well to me,’ Kalten said.
‘These soldiers live here, Kalten,’ the squire said, ‘and they don’t seem to be any more familiar with this labyrinth than we are. We’ve just run out of prisoners again. I think it’s time to consider a few things. Let’s not make any blunders.’
They gathered in the centre of the corridor. ‘This doesn’t make any sense, you know,’ Kurik told them.
‘Coming to Zemoch?’ Kalten said. ‘I could have told you that back in Chyrellos.’
Kurik ignored that. ‘We’ve been following a trail of blood spots on the floor, and that trail is still stretching on out in front of us – right down the middle of a torch-lit corridor.’ He scraped one foot at a large blood-spot on the floor. ‘If someone were really bleeding this hard, he would have been dead a long time ago.’
Talen bent, touched one finger to a glistening red spot on the floor and then touched the finger to his tongue. He spat. ‘It isn’t blood,’ he said.
‘What is it?’ Kalten asked.
‘I don’t know, but it isn’t blood.’
‘We’ve been bamboozled then,’ Ulath said sourly. ‘I was beginning to wonder about that. What’s worse, we’re trapped in here. We can’t even turn around and follow the torches back because we’ve been busily moving torches for the past half-hour or more.’
‘This is what’s known in logic as “defining the problem”,’ Bevier said with a weak smile. ‘I think the next step is called “finding a solution”.’
‘I’m no expert at it,’ Kalten admitted, ‘but I don’t think we’re going to be able to logic our way out of this.’
‘Why not use the rings?’ Berit suggested. ‘Couldn’t Sparhawk just blow a hole straight through the maze?’
‘The passages are mostly barrel-vaults, Berit,’ Kurik said. ‘If we start blowing holes in the walls, we’ll have the ceiling down on our heads.’
‘What a shame,’ Kalten sighed. ‘So many good ideas have to be discarded simply because they won’t work.’
‘Are we absolutely bent on solving the riddle of the maze?’ Talen asked them. ‘I mean, does finding the solution have some sort of religious significance?’
‘None that I know of,’ Tynian replied.
‘Why stay inside the maze then?’ the boy asked innocently.
‘Because we’re trapped here,’ Sparhawk told him, trying to control his irritation.
‘That’s not exactly true, Sparhawk. We’ve never been really trapped. Kurik might be right about the danger involved in knocking down the walls, but he didn’t say a thing about the ceiling.’
They stared at him. Then they all began to laugh a bit foolishly.
‘We don’t know what’s up there, of course,’ Ulath noted.
‘We don’t know what’s around the next corner either, Sir Knight. And we’ll never know what’s above the ceiling until we have a look, will we?’
‘It could just be open sky,’ Kurik said.
‘Is that any worse than what we have down here, father? Once we get outside, Sparhawk might be able to use the rings to break through the outer wall of the temple. Otha may find mazes entertaining, but I think I’ve more or less had enough amusement out of this one. One of the first rules Platime ever taught me was that if you don’t like the game, don’t play.’
Sparhawk looked questioningly at Sephrenia.
She was also smiling ruefully. ‘I didn’t even think of it myself,’ she admitted.
‘Can we do it?’
‘I don’t see any reason why not – as long as we stand back a way so that we don’t get crushed by falling rubble. Let’s have a look at this ceiling.’
They raised their torches to look up at the barrel-vaulted ceiling. ‘Is that construction going to cause any kind of problem?’ Sparhawk asked Kurik.
‘Not really. The stones are laid in interlocking courses, so they’ll hold – eventually. There’s going to be a lot of rubble, though.’
‘That’s all right, Kurik,’ Talen said gaily. ‘The rubble will give us something to climb up on.’
‘It’s going to take a great deal of force to knock loose any of those stone blocks, though,’ Kurik said. ‘The weight of the whole corridor is holding the vault together.’
‘What would happen if a few of those blocks just weren’t there any more?’ Sephrenia asked him.
Kurik went to one of the upward-curving walls and probed at a crack between two stone blocks with his knife. ‘They used mortar,’ he said. ‘It’s fairly rotten, though. If you can dissolve a half-dozen of those blocks up there, a fairly sizeable piece of the ceiling will fall in.’
‘But the whole corridor won’t collapse?’
He shook his head. ‘No. After a few yards of it tumble in, the structure will be sound again.’
‘Can you really dissolve rocks?’ Tynian asked Sephrenia curiously.
She smiled. ‘No, dear one. But I can change them into sand – which amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?’ She intently studied the ceiling for several moments. ‘Ulath,’ she said then, ‘you’re the tallest. Lift me up. I have to touch the stones.’
Ulath blushed a bright red, and they all knew why. Sephrenia was not the sort of person one put one’s hands on.