Tower of Trials: Book One of Guardian Spirit (6 page)

“At least there’s that.” Lydia reached for one. “Percy?”

Her male snatched one. “Your clue is not much of a map. Its entrance doesn’t line up with any of these, so I say we take the middle route the first time. Then the leftmost. Then the rightmost.”

Guard swallowed his grain whole. He screwed the lid back on and set the hourglass down. It remained aglow.

Lydia lightly bit into hers and smiled. After she swallowed, she said, “Sweet and sour.”

Percy made a face as he crunched. “I’d rather it be one or the other.”

“Manners, Percy. Swallow before speaking.”

“Sorry.”

Once they had finished, Guard retrieved his bow and headed to the rightmost path.

“Hey! I said the middle.”

“Then you may take the middle and leave the last path to Lydia.”

Lydia blinked. “Oh, but . . . ”

“You are to guide us, Guide.”

“We waste time.” Guard pointed his bow at the timepiece, and they flinched back at the abrupt gesture. The glowing grains had shrunk, and they flowed as swiftly as normal sand in a normal hourglass. “Each takes a different route. We cover more ground this way.”

“But how will we meet up again?”

“As you guessed, Shalott, we will not succeed the first time.”

Guard wasted no more time arguing. Nocking an arrow, he stalked down the rightmost path, the string lights softening the gloom.

The smell struck him right away. It came from the walls, which unlike the white ceiling and floor, were bronze-colored. A spicy scent, one he associated with the magic of amarants like vanilla-like bone-wood and rose-like stone-wood, but he couldn’t place this one, citrus in tone. After rounding the first bend, he came upon another oddity: a bronze-colored statue protruding, half in, half out, of the wall. Toylike, it was completely square, a block for top and bottom—except for its outstretched, gauntleted hands. The statue itself was faceless: no nose, no ears, no eyes, just smoothness.

The wall holding it was not; there was a seam. Bow lowered, Guard traced one side of that boxy shape with a fingertip. The construct filled its hole perfectly.

Cold numbness crept through Guard’s fingertips despite his gloves. In fact, the color of his gray gloves seemed to leach away toward whiteness.

He withdrew his hand, and after a moment, sensation started to seep back. Color followed. Warmth returned last. Guessing, he touched the extended arm next. Chill numbness spread; gray faded.

Same amarant material. Guard shook his hand, trying to return feeling to the extremity, but it took longer this time.

At least the floor was safe.

But when he really looked, he could see glimmers of bronze spiderwebbed through the white: cracks in the material. He slotted the tip of his loose arrow through one, and its gray bone-wood head faded, as if its essence was being drawn out.

Yes, the floor was safe, as long as he did not try to pass through it in smoke form. And he looked up at the similar ceiling. Or pass through that either.

That confirmed what his unlearned nose could not.

“Tomb-wood.”

His foster-father had warned him of two materials most dangerous to spirits: Tomb-wood, which would nullify his aetheric abilities and interfere with most other amarant magic. Iron, which, especially when magicked, could kill or bind.

Guard returned his arrow to the quiver and shouldered his bow. This was his test, too. He knew it would not be easy, but he hadn’t planned on this. He touched his throat; was it because of the iron incident? To see how well he handled spirit obstacles? To prove he had learned from that poor choice? To teach him that luck would not be enough once he was a true spirit?

“Know the weapons,” Fuller had always told him before starting the day’s training session. “Both those you wield and those wielded against you.”

Guard had made a start on that. Now, he needed to check out more, down other bends, and quickly so. After all, they didn’t have nine years here; only a few hours. Time was a weapon wielded against The City’s ghosts; so it would it be here, except in a different way. What simultaneously felt too long and too short for the ghosts, only felt too short now.

And getting shorter by the moment.

Guard stepped away from the statue, whose purpose was as of yet unknown, and after a moment of concentration poured himself into smoke form. He roiled down the path, came across the first fork, and picked a direction, and then he did so all over again. The new branches, like the original, were made of tomb-wood, and both sides were studded with statues. He picked up speed now that he understood as much as he could of those weapons. But what about that of time itself? How much had he spent? A little shift in attention, as if he had closed his eyes, and he could picture the hourglass on the table, and sense without counting: One hour allotted for the run. Ten minutes filled the bottom glass. Fifty to go.

He flew down different branches, hope building, until he hit his first dead end twenty minutes into their quest. He backtracked a little. Went another minute. Another dead end. And so on and similar: so many twisting paths, so many dead ends piling up like sand in the bottom glass. A torturous maze. Almost impossible for any human to navigate, so that meant he must pick up the slack. He flew faster than the fastest falcon, methodically keeping track of progress and false routes. Down, around, back, down, and so on . . . until the path ended in a section of white material—stone-wood—spiderwebbed with tomb-wood and fronted by a wide-eyed tomb-wood statue.

So ended the rightmost path of the maze’s three. With . . . just under five minutes to go. No time to try others.

He turned to head back to the pedestal room and then stopped, thinking,
Eyes.
He swooped back in the direction of the endmost statue.

It was watching him. He flitted close, till they were nose to nose.

Its round eyes nearly crossed to follow.

He retreated down the trail and slowly passed another statue. It too watched him, eyes having grown in place. Ghoul-like behavior. Guard shuddered. At least, these were only on its face. But they too tracked him.

That was not the only change. As the time wound down, the statues began to shift in place, as if restless. He hovered beside one to see what it would do.

The last grain dropped, and the statue broke forth from the wall, sounding not like a cork popping, not like wood splintering, but like a blade drawing. It rolled toward Guard on its fused legs, swelling, expanding all around, but it was slow.

Slow enough Guard noted what it had left behind: a square opening in the wall. No, more than that, it left behind a
tunnel
through that wall. No string lights inside there, but Guard could see all he needed to, and far better than if he were in his human form. Smoke did not need light to see. Smoke did not need much (of anything) at all.

He flitted between wall and growing lumberer, went down the corridor, and . . . found himself faced with another statue, hands outstretched, only an inch leeway between its side and the wall. Guard retreated back a foot. But the one behind him had moved up. It now filled the path perfectly.

And now so had the one before him.

Between the two of them he was trapped.

He was not the only one. Elsewhere, a masculine cry sounded. Further away, a feminine one. After that? A few retorts of a gun, and a faint echo of
“Lydia!”

Then the statue behind him touched him, and he dropped into mortal form. The sudden transition hurt, and his vision blazed white—until its gauntlets grabbed his forearms, picked him up, and carried him forward.

This went beyond numbness. He couldn’t move; his body, his limbs were not his own. Even his senses dulled and narrowed to a few feet in front him. His body wanted to shiver, but it couldn’t even move that much.

And the gap between the two tomb-wood enforcers narrowed.

Would it crush him? Because he was not human? Because he was alone?

No. The foremost enforcer had begun to back up along its path . . . and reverse itself, somehow pulling its eyes and arms through its own body. Soon only its smooth back faced him.

And so they went, pausing only for the front enforcer to reinsert itself into its opening. Then slowly Guard and his enforcer trundled along the path, all of the others already back in place and eyeless once more.

His captor took him to the entrance of his maze-path and dumped him on the floor. Then it about-faced its features and retreated.

After a moment, he could mind-sense the hourglass. The timer’s grains had not returned to the upper half of the glass. He suspected they would not until this weapon—a formidable retriever—had returned to its spot in the wall. It would have a long trip ahead of itself.

And he had his own wait ahead of him, lying on the floor—fortunately, one made of stone-wood, not tomb-wood, or he’d never recover.

After six minutes or so, he began to shiver. A good sign.

A moment later, tingly aches began. A great sign. They started in his neck and crept down his shoulders in little spasms. The discomfort was mostly due to the returning warmth and departing numbness. Also perhaps due to the twist of his body, the angle of his chin.

He lifted and moved his head. Gratified he could do so well, he checked first on his clothing and weapons, discovered their color was normal. Finally, he sought—and discovered—his seekers.

They were sitting before the pedestal, their backs to it, the male’s arm around the female, her covered head resting against his shoulder, and her gloved hands in his free one. They no more noticed his arrival than he had sensed their presence these last few minutes.

Weakness,
Guard thought.
No survival instincts. Too focused on themselves, not their surroundings, not their mission.
Then he realized what their behavior really meant, and their weakness gave him an idea of how to defeat the maze.

But he had to be sure.

He watched them a while more as he moved one knee and dragged one arm out from beneath his body. By the time the grains had returned to the top of the glass, he was certain of his plan, so he made a noise as he levered himself up onto his elbows.

Too soft. It went unnoticed.

So he groaned.

Lydia lifted her head and gasped. “Oh, my, Guard!” She shot a look to her companion, face reddening, and disentangled herself, though he seemed reluctant to let her go. As soon as he did, she hurried to Guard’s side and knelt. “Are you all right?”

“I will be. I was in smoke form when the retriever grabbed me.” He moved onto his knees, and she tried to help pull him upright. “We can dismiss the right-hand path. I will try the middle next, and you two can work on the left.”

She looked back at Shalott as he rose and stood over them. He spoke, “You could have told us about the retrievers.”

“I could have if I knew of them.” Guard stood, slowly. Eager hands steadied him. The last of the pin-and-needle numbness faded as he marched toward the timer. “This maze was built to test the seeker and her motivation.”

“But I hate mazes.”

“Which is why the spirits picked it, dear,” Shalott said, reaching for her.

Yes,
Guard thought, as he handed out the grains.
Those of the Upper Tower who had designed this maze knew that much—and more.
She had undertaken this quest, chose to defy death, out of love. Watching them cuddle before and watching them walk now hand-in-hand down the leftmost path, he suspected the true nature of her heart, how it would be tested, and what the fastest route would be.

Speculation he must confirm on this attempt.

Guard just hoped he hadn’t guessed wrong.

For either way, time was running out.

CHAPTER 6

If anything, the maze was more frustrating than before. Guard didn’t know if it was due to the mortals journeying together or just a complication added to make try two harder than try one. Either way, this time around, dead ends abounded, and retrievers moved faster, both in waking up and in hunting. Forewarned, Guard still only managed to dart around three before they swelled to fill the path and trapped him.

But he had confirmed a few important things. One, the maze-paths shared walls, and his chosen middle tunnel was lined on both sides with retrievers; a hurried glance, not up-close inspection revealed that. Two, all the retrievers stayed out until one caught him. And the third thing he had discovered but had not suspected: repeated prolonged exposure to tomb-wood was detrimental to his weapons and armor, and his health. Color took longer to restore; draining numbness hit harder and lasted longer.

That meant, one touch by them at the wrong time, and his plan was for naught, and all was lost. They’d fail. But he couldn’t have done as the male ranted afterward; he couldn’t have taken them with him. He needed to see the pattern—

The male, glaring as Guard half reclined against Lydia’s lap, didn’t give him time to explain what pattern he had sought. “Do you have to touch him so, Lydia? It’s unseemly.”

She continued to rub Guard’s shivering arms. “He isn’t well.”