Marit threw her dagger at it.
Her aim was rotten. She was upset, could barely see. The dagger grazed the animal along the left flank.
The dog yelped in pain, flinched away from her. The dagger thudded against the wall somewhere near the assassin’s right calf. Hugh put his foot on it. Alfred was staring in horror, so pale it seemed he might faint again. Marit turned her back on them all. “Keep that beast away from me, Haplo. By law, I can’t kill you. But I can kill that damn dog.”
“Come here, boy,” Haplo called. He examined the animal’s wound. “It’s all right, dog. Just a scratch. You were lucky.”
“In case anybody’s interested,” Hugh the Hand said, “I found the way out. At least I think it’s a way out. You’d better come and look. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Haplo glanced at Alfred, who had flushed bright red “What’s wrong with it? Is it guarded? Magic?”
“Nothing like that,” the Hand answered, “More like a joke.”
“I doubt it’s a joke. The Sartan don’t have much of a sense of humor.”
“Someone did. The way out is through a maze.”
“A maze...” Haplo repeated softly.
He knew the truth then. And Marit knew at the same moment Haplo knew. The emptiness inside her filled, filled with fear, fear that twisted and kicked inside her like a living thing. She was almost sick with it.
“So Samah did keep his word,” Haplo said to Alfred. The Sartan nodded. His face was deathly white his expression bleak. “Yes, he kept it.”
“He knows where we are?” Hugh the Hand demanded.
“He knows,” Haplo said quietly. “He’s known all along. The Labyrinth.”
29
They left the room of white marble and its crystal coffins. Following Hugh’s lead, they traversed a narrow hallway carved out of gray rough-cut rock. The corridor sloped, straight and even, steadily downward. At its end an arched doorway, also carved out of rock, opened into a gigantic cavern. The vault of the cavern’s roof was high overhead, lost in shadows. A dull gray light, shining from a point far opposite the entrance, glistened off the wet surfaces of huge stalactites. Stalagmites thrust up out of the cavern floor to meet them, like teeth in a gaping mouth. Through gaps in the wet teeth a river of black water swirled, flowing in the direction of the cheerless light. An ordinary enough cavern. Haplo looked at the arched doorway. Touching Marit’s arm, he silently called her attention to a mark scratched above it—a single Sartan rune. Marit looked at it, shuddered, leaned against the chill wall.
She was shivering, her bare arms clasped tightly. Her face was averted; her hair hung over it, hiding it. Haplo knew that if he smoothed back that tangled mass of hair, touched her cheek, he’d feel tears. He didn’t blame her. Once he would have wept himself. But now he felt strangely elated. This was, after all, where he’d intended to come all along.
Marit couldn’t read the Sartan rune-language, but she could read that one sigil. All Patryns could. They could read them and they had come to hate and detest them.
“The First Gate,” said Haplo. “We stand at the very beginnings of the Labyrinth.”
“Labyrinth,” Hugh the Hand repeated. “Then I was right. That is a maze out there.” He gestured beyond the gate.
Rows of stalagmites spread out into the darkness. A path, wet and sleek, led from the arch into the stalagmites. Haplo could see from where he stood —the first fork in the path, two diverse courses, slanting left and right, each wandering off amid rock formations that had not been naturally created, but had been formed by magic and fear and hate.
There was one right way. All others led to disaster. And they were standing at the very first gate.
“I’ve been in a few caves in my life,” the Hand continued. He gestured into the darkness with the stem of his pipe. “But nothing like this. I walked out onto the path until I came to that first fork; then I caught a glimpse of where it led.” He rubbed his chin. The hair was beginning to grow back on his face and his head, a blue-black stubble that must have itched. “I figured I’d better come back before I got myself lost.”
“Getting lost would have been the least of your worries,” said Haplo. “The wrong turn in that maze leads to death. It was built that way on purpose. The Labyrinth is more than a maze. It’s a prison. And my child is trapped in there.”
Hugh the Hand removed his pipe from his mouth, stared at Haplo. “I’ll be damned.”
Alfred huddled in the back, as far from the arched doorway as he could get and still remain near the group. “You want to tell him about the Labyrinth, Sartan, or shall I?”
Alfred looked up briefly, an expression of hurt in his eyes. Haplo saw the pain, knew the reason for it, chose to ignore it. Alfred wasn’t Alfred anymore. He was the enemy. No matter that they were all in this together now. Haplo needed someone to hate, needed his hate as a strong wall to lean against for support, or he’d fall and maybe never get up.
The dog had been standing beside Haplo, near the open archway, sniffing the air and not liking what it smelled. It shook itself all over, padded to Alfred. The dog rubbed against the Sartan’s leg, its plumy tail brushing back and forth slowly, gently.
“I understand how you feel,” Alfred said. Reaching out, he gave the dog a timid pat on the head. “I’m sorry.”
Haplo’s wall of hate began to crumble; fear started climbing up over the pieces. He gritted his teeth. “Damn it, Alfred, stop apologizing! I’ve told you before, it’s not your fault!” The echo came bounding back at him. Your fault... your fault... your fault...
“I know. I will. I’m s-s-s—” Alfred made a hissing sound like a spent teakettle, caught Haplo’s eye, and fell silent.
The Hand looked from one to the other. “I don’t give a damn whose fault it is. Somebody explain what’s going on.”
Haplo shrugged. “A long time ago there was a war between his people and mine. We lost and they won—”
“No,” Alfred corrected gently, sadly, “nobody won.”
“At any rate, they shut us up in this prison, then went off to find prisons of their own. Is that how you’d put it, Alfred?”
The Sartan did not answer.
“This prison is known as the Labyrinth. It’s where I was born. It’s where she was born.” He gestured at Mark. “It’s where our child was bom. And where our child lives.”
“If she lives,” Marit muttered beneath her breath. She had regained a certain amount of control; she was no longer shaking. But she did not look at them. Leaning against the wall, she kept her arms clasped about her tightly, holding herself together.
“It’s a cruel place, filled with cruel magic that delights not only in killing, but in killing slowly, torturing, tormenting you until death comes as a friend.[35] The two of us managed to escape, with the help of our lord, Xar. But many don’t. Many haven’t. Generations of our people have been born, have lived and died in the Labyrinth.
“And there are none of our people now living,” Haplo finished quietly, “who started at the First Gate and made it all the way through to the end.” The assassin’s expression darkened. “What are you saving?” Marit turned to him, anger burning her tears dry. “It took our people hundreds of years to reach the Final Gate. And they did it by standing on the bodies of those who fell before them! A dying father points out the way ahead to his son. A dying mother hands her daughter to those who will carry the child on. I escaped and now I’m back.”
She gulped, a dry, wrenching sob. “To face it all over again. The pain, the fear... And no hope of escape. We’re too far away.”
Haplo wanted to comfort her, but he guessed his sympathy wouldn’t be appreciated. Besides, what comfort could he offer? She spoke the truth.