“Who are you?” Xar repeated.
He looked into the old man’s eyes... and then Xar saw the madness. It dropped like a final curtain, dousing the memories, putting out the fires, clouding over the red-hot skies, blotting out the horror.
The madness. A gift? Or a punishment.
“Who are you?” Xar demanded a third time.
“My name?” The old man smiled vacantly, happily. “Bond. James Bond.”
31
Aleatha flounced through the gate leading into the maze. Her skirt caught on a bramble. Swearing, she tore it loose, taking a certain grim satisfaction in hearing the fabric rip. So what if her clothes were in shreds? What did it matter? She would never get to go anywhere, never get to do anything with anybody of interest ever again....
Angry and miserable, she curled up on the marble bench, giving herself up to the luxury of self-pity. Outside the maze, through the hedgerows, she could hear the other three continuing to bicker. Roland asked if they shouldn’t go in after Aleatha. Paithan said no, leave her alone, she wouldn’t go far and what could happen to her anyway?
“Nothing,” said Aleatha drearily. “Nothing will happen. Ever again.” Eventually their voices faded away; their footsteps trailed off. She was alone.
“I might as well be in prison,” she said, looking at her surroundings, the green walls of the hedges with their unnaturally sharp angles and lines, strict and confining. “Except prison would be better than this. Every prisoner has some chance of escape, and I have none. Nowhere to go but this same place. No one to see except these same people. On and on and on ... through the years. Wearing away at each other until we’re all stark, raving mad.” She flung herself down on the bench and began to cry bitterly. What did it matter if her eyes turned red, her nose dripped? What did it matter who saw her like that? No one cared for her. No one loved her. They all hated her. She hated them. And she hated that horrid Lord Xar. There was something frightening about him...
“Don’t do that, now,” came a gruff voice. “You will make yourself sick.” Aleatha sat up swiftly, blinking back her tears and fumbling for what remained of her handkerchief, which—from being put to various uses—was now little more than a ragged scrap of lace. Not finding it, she wiped her eyes with the hem of her shawl.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said.
Drugar stood over her, gazing down at her with his black-browed frown. But his voice was kind and almost shyly tender. Aleatha recognized admiration when she saw it, and though it came from the dwarf, she felt comforted.
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she said hurriedly, realizing her previous words hadn’t been exactly gracious. “In fact, I’m glad it’s you. And not any of the others. You’re the only one with any sense. The rest are fools! Here, sit down.”
She made room for the dwarf on the bench.
Drugar hesitated. He rarely sat in the presence of the taller humans and the elves. When he sat on furniture made for them, his legs were too short to permit his feet to touch the ground; he was left with his limbs dangling in what was to him an undignified and childlike manner. He could see in their eyes—or at least he presumed he could see—that they tended to think less of him as a result.
But he never felt that way around Aleatha. She smiled at him—when she was in a good humor, of course—and listened to him with respectful attention, appeared to admire what he did and said.
Truth to tell, Aleatha reacted to Drugar as she reacted to any man—she flirted with him. The flirtation was innocent, even unconscious. Making men love her was the only way she knew to relate to them. And she had no way at all to relate to other women. She knew Rega wanted to be friends, and deep inside, Aleatha thought it might be nice to have another woman to talk to, laugh with, share hopes and fears with. But early on in her life, Aleatha had understood that her older sister, Gallie, unlovely and undesirable, had hated Aleatha for her beauty, at the same time loving her all the more fiercely. Aleatha had come to assume that other women felt the same as Gallie—and admittedly most did. Aleatha flaunted her beauty, threw it into Rega’s face like a glove, made of it a challenge. Secretly believing herself inferior to Rega, knowing she wasn’t as intelligent, as winning, as likable as Rega, Aleatha used her beauty as a foil to force the other woman to keep her distance.
As for men, Aleatha knew that once they discovered she was ugly inside, they’d leave her. And so she made a practice of leaving them first, except that now there was nowhere to go. Which meant that sooner or later, Roland would find out, and instead of loving her, he’d hate her. If he didn’t hate her already. Not that she cared what he thought of her.
Her eyes filled with tears again. She was alone, so desperately alone... Drugar cleared his throat. He had perched on the edge of the bench, his toes just touching the ground. His heart ached for her sorrow; he understood her unhappiness and her fear. In a strange way, the two of them were alike—physical differences keeping them apart from the others. In their eyes, he was short and ugly. In their eyes, she was beautiful. He reached out, awkwardly patted her on the shoulder. To his amazement, she nestled against him, resting her head on his broad chest, sobbing into his thick black beard. Drugar’s aching heart almost burst with love. He understood, though, that she was a child inside, a lost and frightened child, turning to him for comfort—nothing more. He gazed down at the blond, silken tresses, mingling with his own coarse black hair, and he had to close his own eyes to fight back the burn of tears. He held her gently until her sobs quieted; then, to spare them both embarrassment, he spoke swiftly.
“Would you like to see what I have discovered? In the center of the maze.” Aleatha raised her head, her face flushed. “Yes. I’d like that. Anything is better than doing nothing at all.” She stood up, smoothing her dress and wiping her tears from her cheeks.
“You won’t tell the others?” Drugar asked.
“No, of course not. Why should I?” Aleatha said haughtily. “They have secrets from me—Paithan and Rega. I know they do. This will be our secret—yours and mine.” She extended her hand.
By the One Dwarf, he loved her! Drugar took her hand. Small as his was, hers fit well inside it. He led her by the hand down the maze path until it grew too narrow for them to walk together. Releasing her, he admonished her to stay close behind him, lest she get lost in the myriad turns and twists of the maze.
His injunction was needless. The hedges were tall and overgrown, often forming a green roof that blotted out all sight of the sky or anything around them. Inside it was greenly dark and cool and very, very quiet.
At the beginning of their journey into the maze, Aleatha tried to keep track of where she was going—two right turns, a left, another right, another left, then two more lefts, a complete circle around a statue of a fish. But after that she was confused and hopelessly lost. She kept so near the dwarf she nearly tripped him up, her long skirts constantly getting under his heels, her hand plucking at his sleeve.
“How do you know where you’re going?” she asked nervously. He shrugged. “My people have lived all their lives in tunnels. Unlike you, we are not easily confused once we cannot see the sun or the sky. Besides, there is a pattern. It is based on mathematics. I can explain it,” he offered.
“Don’t bother. If I didn’t have ten fingers I couldn’t count that high. Is the center much farther?” Aleatha had never been strongly attracted to physical exertion.
“Not far,” Drugar growled. “And there is a place to rest when we get there.” Aleatha sighed. This had all started out to be exciting. It was eerie inside the hedges and fun to pretend that she might be lost, all the time enjoying the comforting knowledge that she wasn’t. But now she was growing bored. Her feet were beginning to hurt.