Chapter 29
There was no sense of time in those dark halls.
No day, no night, only the same dim glow that made everything look gray—even the crimson of Ryn’s much-abused ball gown.
After the first long trek through the never-ending corridors, she switched the layers of her clothing, not to save the velvet from destruction, but so she could have better access to her pockets.
Just in case. One never knew when one might need a notebook, a fishhook, or a bit of string.
Or maybe she just wished there were any problems at all in that place that could be solved by such mundane, ordinary methods.
But all they could do was walk. They tried to memorize the path—and Ryn even attempted to draw a map—but it soon became plain that the labyrinth did not remain the same after they passed.
There was water, at least, in occasional pools and cisterns, indicating that the fae did not intend for them to die of thirst. But nothing else interrupted the twisting sameness. There were only the smooth, blank walls, level floors, and dead ends. A maze intended to drive them to madness.
And had Ryn been alone… She didn’t care for that thought, actually. She had no idea how long she might have lasted once she realized there was no way to think herself out of this mess.
She only knew that it was Xavi who kept them both going. Who forged on in spite of the sameness and the gloom.
“How long do you suppose she will keep us here?” Ryn mused as they rested for a moment, seated against a wall that was the same as all the other walls. “We cannot go on forever without food.”
“She still seems to think your presence is required to end the curse,” Xavi reminded her. “So I doubt she will allow us to starve. But you must cease asking such questions. They will only drive you to despair in the end.”
“Is that what happened to you?” she asked softly. “Was it the not knowing that hurt the most?”
“Perhaps.” He shrugged and leaned his head back against the smooth stone behind them. “Perhaps the poison of that despair is how Lesh came to be.”
She perked up at the hint that he might be willing to talk about his past. “You have mentioned that name before. You even told the enchantress you were named after a guardian spirit of the forest. I imagine you must mean it as something like the Leshy of ancient folk tales. The one who tricks travelers and punishes those who do not respect the forest or its secrets.”
“It is what the night elves call me, when they call me anything at all.” Xavi’s gaze seemed focused on something far beyond the prison of those walls. “To them, I am just another terrifying creature who haunts the woods of Dunmaren.”
“Did you never show them your true face?”
“I never wanted their pity,” he replied.
“Nor could I afford for them to learn the truth of my existence. Or at least those were my excuses for being capricious and unkind—full of sly trickery and barely contained rage. Lesh became much like a second person who shared my skin and whose voice grew louder whenever I left the valley.”
“So,” Ryn said thoughtfully, “it was Lesh who I met at first. The one who told me he could kill me whenever he wished.”
Xavi looked as if that memory pained him. “In a way, yes. In every way that mattered, really. I had all but forgotten Xaviel ven Arazul until you begged for his story.”
A wry smile tugged at her lips. “I kept telling my professors that stories have unimaginable power—to express truths that have no other voice, and to share knowledge in ways that transcend time. I wonder if they would believe me now?”
“Do you regret it?” Xavi asked curiously. “All that you gave up in order to come here?”
It was true—she’d lost even more than she’d anticipated when she first set out. Her fortune, her credibility, her reputation… All of it was gone. And yet?
“I don’t.” Because she’d gained so much more than she’d given up.
“I can’t imagine going back to a world where I never met you and Kel.
Never learned the truth about your people or about my dreams. Even if it’s not the truth I thought I would find.
No matter what happens, I’ll always be glad that I was brave enough to try. ”
She turned her head to regard the strange, wild creature she had befriended, and knew that he had changed her as well. Despite everything, it would always be worth it to know that in some small way she had set him free.
“I suppose I only wish that…”
A rumbling growl shivered through the air, grating against Ryn’s ears and raising the hair on her neck.
“Tell me that was you,” she whispered.
Xavi was already on his feet, listening. “It was not,” he murmured, stepping towards the center of the corridor to look right, then left into the gloom. “It seems this punishment of ours is only just beginning.”
“I should have known,” Ryn muttered, rolling her eyes. “We’re in a labyrinth, and a labyrinth always has to have monsters.”
The moment the words left her mouth, an enormous bulk came hurtling out of the gloom, too fast for her to even make out its shape.
It hit Xavi at a speed that ought to have broken every bone in his body, and threw him down the corridor to bounce off the stone floor, roll several times, and then lie still.
“Xavi!” Ryn screamed and then froze, because her cry had attracted the creature’s attention.
It turned slowly, fastening strange, luminous golden eyes on her as another growl shook the floor and chattered Ryn’s teeth. Or maybe that was the sheer, abject terror. Honestly, it was difficult to tell.
In all her years of studying myths and legends, she had encountered no description that resembled this beast. Perhaps Xavi’s height or a little less, it was short-legged and muscular, covered in armored plates across its chest and shoulders.
Spines erupted down its back, and its lashing tail was barbed like a fishhook.
But its head… That was broad and flat, built like a battering ram, with tiny ears and wide-set eyes.
Odd, those eyes, but they matched what she could see of its feet. Not claws meant for holding or tearing live prey, but toes for gripping. Now if she could only get a look at its teeth…
“Ryn, watch out!” Xavi’s hoarse cry was the first indication that he’d survived, and she felt a brief surge of joy before it occurred to her to obey the warning. She rolled to the left an instant before that flat, powerful head connected with the wall directly behind where she’d been sitting.
“It’s not a predator,” she shouted. “Xavi, it’s not a predator. Its eyes are on the side of its head. And the toes are all wrong! I’d wager it even has blunt teeth. You might be able to…”
The creature pawed the ground, preparing to charge again, but a moment later it was bowled over by a charging mass of pure muscle and rage, sheathed in thick, dark fur.
Xavi, in his bear form.
Ryn shrank back against the wall, far too terrified to move as the bear roared in challenge and the armored creature roared back and tried to ram it.
The bear dodged aside and smacked its opponent across the side of the head with one enormous paw. The monster jerked and squalled, and then the bear charged again, ramming into it with enough force to throw it onto its side, where it struggled to rise.
And no wonder. Its underside was completely unprotected—covered in nothing but soft, downy fur—and Ryn tucked her face into the crook of her arm as the bear tore into it.
It seemed a very long time before the sounds of snarling and rending stopped, and Ryn lifted her chin to see the bear padding towards her.
Its dark fur was drenched and matted with blood and decorated with unspeakable bits of gore from the shredded corpse of their attacker. But its head hung low, and it whuffed almost apologetically as it approached.
Ryn swallowed the residual lump of terror in her throat and pushed to her feet, hoping her legs would agree to hold her up. “Thank you,” she said shakily. “If you’re finished, I suppose we might as well continue on. I don’t think I fancy sitting here much longer with a dismembered corpse.”
The bear turned and shambled off down the corridor, and Ryn realized with dismay that he did not intend to shift back. Probably wise under the circumstances, but somehow this maze felt less lonely with someone to talk to.
“I hope you don’t mind if I talk to myself,” she said in a small voice. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but I feel braver when I’m thinking out loud.”
That huge, shaggy head turned to regard her, then jerked in a recognizable motion, urging her forward to walk beside it.
Swallowing a sigh of relief, she fell into step beside the bear’s massive shoulder.
“So I’ve been thinking for the past little while that we ought to try using a new approach to this maze.
We know that it changes, but I think I’ve worked out the timing of the shifts, so it’s possible those occur according to a pattern.
And if I can plot out the pattern, there might be a way out after all. ”
The bear just nodded and came to a stop, at a place where there were two possible paths forward.
“We go left,” Ryn said decisively, pulling out her notebook and opening to a new page.
“And we try to find our way back to the scene of the battle. It’s a definitive marker that we can hopefully use as a base point.
Unless, of course, the magic makes it all disappear, but given that you now stink of very real blood and offal”—she grinned at the bear’s offended expression—“I’m choosing to believe that means it’s not going anywhere. ”
They walked on, and once again, Ryn lost track of the minutes, hours, perhaps even days that disappeared as she drew and noted and backtracked and muttered and crossed out until she finally felt as if she were ready to test her theory.
“All right,” she said, pausing for a moment as a yawn threatened to crack her jaw. “I say we do one more experiment before we find a place to sit down and try to sleep.”