The Lord paced along the top of the cube, looking like a giant. At his feet, similarly huge, lay the book containing the operative spells. For Lan, an ocean might have separated him from the book. He could read the opened pages clearly- the printed letters were each larger than his hand. It did him no good.
" I may seal you inside permanently. Wouldn' t that be nice? This is a special cube, oh, yes, very special. Time has no meaning in it. The stasis is one reason I have no clear idea what some of the spells actually do. This is ever so exciting."
Lan held on to his panic. He doubted the Lord' s words about this being a stasis. Time flowed smoothly and at the same pace inside and out. Hearing the Lord' s words and comprehending them proved that. Hearing the Lord and Inyx' s voices:
" Inyx!" he cried, struggling to sit up. " Stay away!"
He heard her voice; he doubted she heard his- or would heed his warnings. She had come after the Lord, somehow escaping the silken bonds Krek had spun for her. Lan tried to warn her away, to tell her to run. All in vain. Now she, too, would join him in an eternity of misery running the glassy corridors of this sadistic maze.
He looked up and saw two lightning spurts from death tubes strike the Lord. The sorcerer brushed such petty weapons aside.
" Come, join your friend in my maze," the Lord greeted. " Come. No, don' t run. Don' t!"
The Lord jumped down from the six- foot- high cube and pursued the woman. Lan flipped himself over, legs still paralyzed. But his eyes were keen and he read slowly through the spell in the book opened over his head. He studied it, puzzling over the strange terms. Then he realized the importance of the spell. The Lord had dropped the book face down and it had fallen open to the first page- the spell opening the maze cube was his.
Lan began chanting slowly, trying to master the spell. In the back of his mind he saw the Lord capturing Inyx, thrusting her into another of the mazes, torturing her, performing obscene acts on her. He had to use all the discipline he' d learned to ignore those images. They were his imagination, not reality.
He chanted faster. The syllables of the spell meant more to him. He struggled to sit up; the paralysis held him too firmly. He chanted faster, the meaning almost his. Then the pieces of the spell came together in his mind. It was as if he had thrust a key into a lock and turned it.
The maze opened.
For a split second.
Lan laughed and cried in despair and hope. He' d been unable to keep the entry point open, but something as good as his escape had occurred. The spell book had fallen in and lay not a body' s length away. Painfully crawling, he used fingernails to claw into the slick glassy material. Progress was slow, too slow.
What was happening in the room outside? Had the Lord caught Inyx? Lan Martak began uttering the strength- granting spells he had been taught by Abasi- Abi. He felt power flood into his body. The energy would last only a short while. Then he would collapse, possibly pass out, from the exertion.
Reaching the spell book controlling this maze, Lan hurriedly riffled through the pages. The Lord had entered them in a very logical order; he may have been insane, but that didn' t prevent him from exhibiting impeccable logic. Lan studied, muttered the chants, got a feel for what must be done.
" No!" came the female cry from outside. The Lord had captured Inyx. " You carrion eater! I' d spend a lifetime in the Twistings before-" The rest of Inyx' s words were cut off.
Composure came upon the trapped man like water rising around his head. He immersed himself totally in the spell book.
He gasped, staggered, and fell off the edge of the cube.
Free!
Free and past the point of exhaustion. Lan Martak had gotten out of the maze only to find himself on the verge of blacking out.
" How did you escape?" demanded the Lord. He held a struggling Inyx with careless ease in one hand. Lan felt the magics that allowed this feat. The woman fought with the fury of a hundred trapped tigers. " Ah, yes, I see it now. Oh, you are a clever one. Yes, very clever. I see I' ll have to conjure open the maze again. This time you' ll both go in. Won' t that be nice, having a friend with you? And I suspect she' s more than a friend." He sniggered as he bent to pick up the fallen spell book controlling the maze.
With contemptuous ease, the Lord picked up Lan and tossed him back onto the top of the maze. He dragged Inyx up and flung her down beside Lan. Lan gasped when he felt the ponderous weight descend on both of them, again holding them trapped.
" Now I can start anew with my opening spell. It is a complex one, too. Never can quite get it straight. Ah, yes, here it is."
The low, deep- throated chant began. Lan shook in impotent rage when he felt the hard surface of the maze cube begin to soften. In seconds he and Inyx would be cast into a pit worse than anything they' d encountered in the Twistings.
" It' s open. And in you two go. Yes, in you goooooooo!"
Lan watched in fascinated horror as the Lord tossed up his hands and lost his balance. He fell heavily, then slipped into the maze where he had intended imprisoning them. Lan gasped when the crushing weight left his chest.
" What happened?" he sobbed out. The Lord' s tiny face just inches away- and on the other side of the barrier- stared up in terror. " Why' d he slip like that?"
" Humans are not as sure- footed as we mountain arachnids," came Krek' s calm voice. " I have said that repeatedly: eight legs are far better than two."
Lan saw a weighty strand of web- stuff dangling over the edge of the cube. Krek had spat forth a gobbet, which had struck the Lord, unbalanced him, and cast him into the hell he' d created for others. Below, through the barrier, Lan saw the Lord blunder into the pain trap. No sound came. None was necessary to know the vicious, biting pain the man experienced.
" He said that time was meaningless in this maze," said Inyx, her voice a monotone. " Is that true?"
" I can' t say. Knowing his habits, I suspect that whoever' s trapped in the maze is immortal. In a way, that' s putting time in a bottle, a way of making time cease flowing." The Lord pushed past the pain trap and found a paralysis point embedded in a wall. His left arm hung limp. The panic on his face mounted.
" I' d better get him out," said Lan. " He' s gone through enough."
" He' s not gone through enough. Nor will he for centuries to come," said Inyx in that same shocky, emotionless voice. Lan sat up and saw that the woman held one of the death tubes.
" You can' t reach him with that. The magic barriers forming this maze are impenetrable to physical attacks. Only one spell unlocks the entry point."
" Good." This single word came laden with emotions: hatred, glee, triumph.
Inyx turned the death tube from the tiny, struggling figure in the maze and pointed it directly at the blue book laying on the maze surface. She fired. The spell book disintegrated. Not even ash remained behind.
" Y- you just trapped him forever," Lan gasped out. " I can' t conjure the spells to release him. No one can!"
" Let' s find Alberto Silvain," she said. " He' s the only unfinished business I have on this world."
Lan Martak didn' t argue. He could barely stand.
CHAPTER TWENTY- ONE
" Where is he?" Inyx demanded of Knoton. " Where is Silvain?"
" The human leader of the grey soldiers?" If metal shoulders could have shrugged, Knoton' s would have done so. " I have patrols out looking into every room of the palace. If he is within the walls, he' ll be found. We look most of all for the Lord."
Lan Martak limped in and sat heavily. The way Knoton stared at him told the man how bad he actually looked. He felt worse. If someone had reached inside and ripped his heart out, he couldn' t have been in a more debilitated state. The use of magic had pushed him beyond the limits of his endurance. Being cast into the Lord' s maze had almost killed him. And now he had to perform one last task: finding Alberto Silvain.