The eldritch creature grunted and charged us, rising on its back paws as it came on. Its breath was the scent of things rotting in the earth as it roared, swiping at me in the lead. Quinton grabbed for me, shouting, “Watch out!” as he tried to pull me backward. The massive, ruined paw of the shadow bear fanned over my shoulder, claws ripping into the leather of my jacket.
I threw myself sideways as Quinton tugged back, losing my footing and scrambling for a solid purchase. My foot descended on emptiness and I plunged straight down into a pit the Grey had concealed.
I landed on the damp-smelling earth with a thud and a burst of pain up my right leg. Quinton jumped down next to me and the shadow bear lumbered to stare down at us from empty eye sockets, too large to get through the narrow hole we’d come down. It pawed the earth a moment, thrusting its razor claws at us through the opening, snorting. Defeated, it finally shuffled off in disgust.
I let out my breath and leaned against the dirt wall of the hole. Jarred out of my observation of the Grey, I could see it was more of a ramp than a pit, a twist in the path that looped under the main way like a stream under a bridge.
Quinton pulled me to my feet, wincing in sympathy as I made a pained face. “You all right?”
“Yeah.” My ankle twinged and throbbed, but well-laced in my boot, it held up fine. “I’ll be OK, now the bear’s gone. What about you?”
“All right. Couple of cuts and scrapes but nothing dramatic. How did you miss seeing that hole?”
“I wasn’t looking for a normal trap,” I replied, a bit ashamed I hadn’t thought of it.
“The bear was a little distracting. You can’t watch everything, I guess. And why did the bear attack us anyway? I didn’t think we’d stepped off the path. . . .”
“Guardians are supposed to keep you out of things . . .” I started but petered out.
Standing under the path, we looked around. Even with normal eyes it would have been hard to detect the new path much earlier. The roots of the apple trees and decades of rain had camouflaged the entrance and filled it in slightly, making the hole smaller. I turned around several times, trying to get my bearings on the new elevation.
Another path took off under the bridge, heading off in strange twists and falls through the surface of the orchard labyrinth. The bridge wasn’t so innocent either: From the top it looked like just more surface dirt, but from below, it was a stonework arch that opened into a new landscape of passages below and through the orchard.
“It’s another maze,” I observed. “A hidden one under the surface labyrinth.”
“I don’t think it’s just ‘another maze.’ What if it’s the start of the real maze? Should have realized a labyrinth—even with ghost-bears and skeleton crows—was too easy. That bear was trying to keep us out of here. I’ll bet this leads into the center,” Quinton speculated.
Studying the visible part of it, I agreed. “I guess we’ll find out.”
“Can you make it?”
“Yeah. My ankle’s a little sore, but the boot’s as good as any brace. Let’s go.”
He shrugged and walked closer to me as we passed under the arch and into the new maze. This was different from the labyrinth above; the paths branched and twisted, rising up to the surface and falling back below it, ducking under more bridges and coming to sudden ends that turned us back again and again. But the closer we moved to the center, the stronger the sensation of electricity coursing through me became while the harmony of the grid grew—lounder and more like a single great voice.
We’d been in the maze nearly an hour when we saw a shaft of light from above. We were passing through a long, turning corridor choked with roots when we saw it cutting through the gloom ahead, plunging down from an opening above. The light was brighter and stronger than any we’d seen since entering the maze and we moved toward it with caution. It seemed too good to be true and that made us both wary.
At the base of the light, we came to another arch, this one leading to a cylinder of rising stairs. Going up them, we emerged into the edge of an empty circle at the heart of the original labyrinth, about a hundred and fifty feet from where the back door of the house must have stood. I paused at the top of the steps, looking through the Grey again before stepping out onto the weedy grass. Bright blue lines of energy crossed just to the west of the stairs at the center of the circle. Dru Cristoffer had enclosed a power nexus for herself in the secret walls of her labyrinth. A spiderweb of rich green and golden-yellow energy spun out from the crossed spokes of the nexus. One color I did not see was red.
I had a bad feeling.
I checked my shoulder where the shadow bear had hit me, but only the jacket showed any damage. If it had cut me, the wounds had already closed. I looked back at Quinton, blocking his path up the stairs. “Hey, how bad are those cuts and scrapes of yours?”
“Not bad. Kind of oozy, but nothing to worry about.”
“You have any bandages in those pockets of yours? Because I think this might be a very bad place to bleed.”
He frowned and squinted. “Why?”
“Cristoffer is a blood mage. This is, essentially, her workroom. What do you think?”
His face lit and then clouded with unhappy recognition. “Ah. Yeah. No bleeding here.”
I left him on the stairs and stepped cautiously onto the lawn, half expecting something to attack or flash or change, but nothing did. “Power must be off,” I muttered to myself and thought I heard the voices of the grid giggle. I walked to the point where the colored lines of energy crossed, figuring that was the most likely place to start with whatever came next.
“OK, Dad, I’m in the labyrinth,” I thought aloud. “So . . . what do I do?” I supposed now was the time to open one of the puzzle balls. The doors, the voice of the grid reminded me. Just one at a time. . . . But I didn’t have them. Quinton did. I called out to him. “Can you throw me the puzzle balls?”
“Sure.”
They were a little bigger than croquet balls, not as large as volleyballs, and well within my ability to catch, but while the first one was easy enough, the second spun off-center, wobbling as it came toward me, making an odd, thrumming counterpoint to the chorus of the Grey. I made a scooping motion to catch the ball, but it seemed to slide across my fingers with a slithering, impossible shimmy to fall willfully to the earth. The dark blotch of burned blood that Dru Cristoffer had made touched the ground with a clash that shook the foundations of the collapsed house behind me until they growled and grated together. Red light flashed across the lawn with a roar, sealing the center of the labyrinth in hot energy. I heard Quinton shout, but the sound seemed to come distantly, as if from behind a steel door.
“No!” I yelled, and darted for the stairs, but they were gone, hidden away behind an impenetrable shield of light. I grabbed for the crimson-glowing barrier, concentrating, reaching with all my will for the living fabric of the Grey, and felt the earth groan and bulge as the searing shock of the grid burned through my frame.
My ears rang as if I were surrounded by noise, but the silence was absolute with the rushing feeling of something pushing through me. The voice that wasn’t a voice but a million whispers told me to stop trying. To let go of the seal. Yes, I could break it, but not now. Stop. Stop and open the first door—just one—and all will be well.
I shuddered at the invasive sense of knowing. Something that wasn’t me—that wasn’t even a single thing but a collective of knowledge—spoke to me, not in my ear but directly. I raged around the room of red light until I was too tired and dizzy from its endless sameness. I didn’t slip out of it; I didn’t tear it apart. I could have. Knowledge hovered nearby, taunting me with the way but not allowing me to do it. Dragging my feet, I came back to where the two wooden balls lay on the ground, hovering on the scarlet surface like bubbles on water.