Chapter 36 #2
Keryth and Lennox both backed away from their tables, directly across the arena from me, their arms outstretched as if for balance.
Cressa had also stepped back, but she seemed to be looking not at the ground, or the spectators, or her work surface, but at her competitors.
As if our actions were of more interest to her than the terrifying rumbling.
Then motion on the floor to my left caught my eye, and I understood why Wilder was staring at the ground.
Unlike the walls, the white tiles at our feet had been fitted together with thick mortar joints.
The floor tiles were uneven, and some had clearly been chipped into angles in order to fit into odd shapes.
And as I studied them, I noticed that the mortar was thicker in some places than in others, and that a line of it on my left had begun to… tremble.
A length of mortar suddenly bulged up from the floor, stretching oddly, as if something were pushing against it from beneath.
I dropped into a squat and pressed my finger into a line of mortar between my feet, and to my surprise, it was not hard and granular, like the grout between the stones of the ladies’ residential tower.
Rather, it was gummy and soft. Something between a paste and a wax, like a sturdier version of the substance used to seal vials for long-term storage.
All around the arena, lines of mortar had suddenly popped up from the floors, stretching, leaving thin threads stuck to stone as something beneath them pushed upward in a pattern I could not yet comprehend.
The strange protrusions did not involve all of the mortar but just the thicker lines, which stretched for a bit, then seemed to turn at right angles and to join other lines, almost like…
A maze.
Walls were rising from the floor, creating barriers between each of the workstations and stretching into the center of the arena, forming winding paths on the way.
The walls were glass, formed of the largest, clearest panels I’d ever seen—a mastery of craft that would have required the work of both a master alchemist and a master Toolkeeper to produce.
There were great, huge squares of it, with seams of metal, and within a few seconds, they’d grown to the height of my waist. A second after, that of my shoulder.
Then they were over my head, and I was staring at Yoslyn through a massive pane of glass.
I turned left, and when Wilder looked a bit distorted, I realize I was seeing him through at least two panes, and that it was no longer easy to trace the lines of the maze.
To see the paths. They had become a jumble of glass and thin metal frames, difficult to distinguish beyond the ones immediately walling me in.
How was alchemy supposed to help us through a maze? Were we meant to concoct a formula that would dissolve the front wall and let us into the labyrinth?
I turned back to my station and had just grabbed a burner and a single vial when a new sound from behind me made my heart thump too hard and my throat tighten. I spun toward the wall at my back to see that a gap had opened between two stones near the top, and that water was rushing into the arena.
Godfather of all chaos.
Yoslyn squealed, and I looked to my right to see that water was pouring in behind her as well. Soon it would reach her feet, and then it would begin to fill the cell that had formed around her, as it would fill the one I found myself trapped in.
A hole had opened in the center of the arena floor, and water rose from it as well, to fill glass passages still unavailable to us.
Yet another grinding sound—a deafening cacophony—drew my gaze upward, where a massive panel made of panes of glass was slowly being lowered toward the arena.
It was perfectly designed to provide a cover for the giant container we found ourselves in, enclosing us with the rushing water, with no way out…
except through a single hole in the center of the glass ceiling.
And finally I understood. We were rats in a maze, scurrying to escape our watery grave.
“We’re going to drown!” Yoslyn shouted, her voice muffled by the grinding and by the glass between us.
“No, we aren’t!” I shouted back. Then I pointed to her workstation. Ordering her to focus. To get to work. There was no way for me to help her—no way for anyone to help anyone else—with glass walls separating us.
We were truly on our own, at least until our cells opened, releasing us into the labyrinth.
Even worse, I now realized, once the rising water reached the surface of our workstations, it would put out our burners, ending any alchemical pursuit. At that point, anyone who had not found a way to survive would simply be waiting to die. In full view of both spectators and competitors.
My pulse rushed so fast that the entire arena seemed to warp around me. I gripped the front of my table in both hands, squeezing hard enough that the corner cut into my palms. Forcing myself to concentrate.
Panic would only get me killed.
When good sense had returned, I squatted to examine the supplies stacked on the shelf beneath my work surface, which would flood even before the water reached my burner.
Desmond had faced this trial. The Bluehelm and all of my professors had faced this trial. All of the observers had faced this trial.
Even if she didn’t finish in the top eight, my mother had survived this trial and gone on to marry and give birth to me. And if they could all do this, I could damn well do it, too.
Now I understood why we hadn’t been allowed to bring any notes; the parchment would be destroyed by the water.
Water, not fire. Purification by giant bathing tub. Rebirth after swimming in fluid, through a single narrow canal.
I glanced to my left to find Wilder laughing, watching me as he peeled off his cloak, then his vest, as if he’d been thinking the same thing—how very wrong he’d been. As if he found his own erroneous assumption too amusing to dwell on.
He was right about the clothing, though. The more I wore, the more weighed down my limbs would be when they got wet, and the slower I’d move.
I folded my cloak and set it on the shelf beneath my work surface, out of my way. My frock was much bulkier than his shirt and trousers, and it would have to come off, too, despite the frigid temperature of the water now seeping through my shoes to soak my feet.
After a moment’s hesitation, I unfastened my frock and stepped out of it, ignoring the scandalized gasps audible through several panes of glass as I folded it atop my cape.
Shivering now, in only my thin undergarments, I went over my options.
We were clearly in the first stage of the trial. The second stage, presumably, would open our cells and admit us into the labyrinth, though that was unlikely to happen before water had filled the arena.
So, I could try to get free of my cell early and make my way to the center of the maze before it filled, or I could work on a way to breathe underwater while I waited for the cell to open.
My classmates seemed equally split in their efforts.
Some were examining the glass walls, assessing the composition of the panels.
Others were already mixing components at their stations.
Several had laid out bits of their own clothing, and their goal was clear: to coat the cloth with something waterproof and use it as an air bladder, from which to breathe on their way through the maze once the doors opened.
Attacking the glass was a risk. If I failed, I’d be stuck until the door opened, with no way to breathe underwater, and if it took me longer to get through the maze than a single held breath could last, I would drown.
I decided to focus on not drowning and trust myself to get through the maze quickly. I only needed to beat two of my classmates to the center.
The obvious option was to create one or more air pockets, as several of my classmates—including Yoslyn—had opted to do. That seemed simple, in theory, but the risks were that the pocket wouldn’t hold enough air, and that breathing from it would let out too much air at once.
Still, the waterproofing substance would be easy enough to work on in the background.
I mixed a potion I remembered from Past Amber’s triumph with a rainproof cape and set it over one of my three burners.
Then, as the water rose above my ankles, I turned my efforts toward a more complicated—but hopefully effective—solution.
It had long been known, through alchemical experimentation in sealed jars, that the substance we called air—which was invisible and omnipresent—was actually made up of several different gaseous substances.
One, called noxious air, had been proven to suffocate rats in a sealed box.
One, called fixed air, was heavier than the general atmosphere, would not burn, and would, in fact, put out a candle’s flame.
And a third, called viable air, was highly flammable and yet very efficiently consumed by the human body. Viable air could be isolated in an alchemical reaction—in fact, it was the very treatment the Panacea’s doctors had offered Adria for her damaged lungs after the Black Trial.
Excited by this idea, I set up my second burner and began mixing everything I could remember from Past Amber’s notes on a hyperefficient candle flame, which involved dipping the wick in a tarry substance that interacted with regular environmental air to off-gas viable air, which made the flame burn brighter.
If I could reproduce her tarry substance and coat the inside of my air bladder in it, that substance would react with the trapped environmental air to create a higher concentration of viable air, which would make my breathable supply more efficient. Which would make it last longer.