Villains by Necessity (69 page)

"Well, it were quite a tussle-up there, eh?" Arcie remembered, chuckling at how the sudden opening of the Darkgate had sent the Verdant Company fleeing in terror.

Sam nodded.

"Yes indeed ... pity Kaylana had to go home after we'd won, though," he sighed wistfully.

"Och, you'd never have brought her back into another town anyway," said Arcie. "Anyway, what's for you now? Back to assassining?"

Sam shook his head. "No, that's gone forever ... I don't really know. I suppose I can learn a trade ... the others did."

"Ah, but them were whitewashed," the thief pointed out Sam nodded. 

"I thought, perhaps, of trying to find Valerie. She vanished about the same time Kaylana did ... heading home. She said I might have some magical talent ... maybe I'd make a good sorcerer."

"You looked mighty farce in the hat," replied Arcie doubtfully. Sam smiled.

"It's pleasant to be able to just relax and look back on it all," he said, with a sigh. "It seems so far away now.

Everything, after we got into the Labyrinth, until we got out and came all this way home. It seems so distant ... like a..."

Two mugs of ale froze halfway to two mouths. Arcie and Sam stared at each other with eyes suddenly full of shock and realization. "... dream," they said, simultaneously.

"I'm picking up some fluctuations in the field, Sir Fenwick!" called Towser. Fenwick looked through a cloud of scintillating butterflies to where the mage sat. The sky was blue, the sun was bright, a very pleasant eleven o'clock in the evening. The grass and wildflowers were lush and thick, songbirds sang continually in the trees.

There was no trace of the barren, rocky land that had bred the hardened Einian people since the beginnings of time. Reports came in that in the areas around the mountain Putak-Azum, there were lush green fields and no trace of the barren, salt-poisoned plain that had once been the Frozen Waste. The very air seemed to shiver with perfect light. Troubles with the Labyrinth seemed a distant memory. Though it still sprawled in white coils across the valleys, it had sat there without change or danger for almost a full week now and seemed to be harmless, though the wildflowers which grew everywhere would not root in its smooth marble surface. It was truly an enigma ... but soon, perhaps ...

"Well, keep an eye on it," Fenwick instructed with a smile. Soon, soon, he thought. Soon there will be nothing more to worry about, ever.

Sam and Arcie sat frozen, ice flooding into their stomachs as they realized the narrow escape they'd had.

Around them, burning off under their lucidity, the warm familiarity of the Frothing Otter melted away, leaving behind icy white marble walls, smooth and featureless but swirling faintly with half-images. If Sam closed his eyes, or looked out of the corners, he could see faint dreams-faces, places, shadows. It was a similar experience to days past when he'd been deprived of sleep during finals week, back in the Guild in studies, and would start seeing things ...

"Wake up! Sam, wake up!" Hands shook his shoulders and he sat up, warm bedsheets tumbling around him.

Tousle-haired, he looked up into a pair of rich azure eyes, framed by black curly hair and a worried face. He smiled, and the face smiled back at him. Around him, the warm shapes of his bedroom resolved themselves. Sunlight was pouring through the window behind Cata, helping to outline her nimble figure dressed all in tight-fitting black silk. She must have just come back from an assignment.

It was good to see her, especially dressed so provocatively.

"Cata," he said with a sigh, reaching out to stroke her cheek. She sat on the bed, winking at him. "Was I having a nightmare?"

"Yes indeed, and darker than any of Hruul's adventures it sounded, too," Cata replied, running her long fingers through his hair. He took her hand and kissed the fingertips gently, as he had done so many times before.

She smiled. "You were yelling about a labyrinth and someone named Kaylana..."

"Kaylana ..." Sam looked up, unsure. Kaylana. The name was vaguely familiar, but...

"Sam! Wake up! Wake up!" Hands shook him and his eyes flew open into a world of white marble. Blue eyes and black hair blew away and were replaced by impossible green and red. The green eyes bored into his mind, his soul; once, guarded by the fire, his spirit could have withstood almost anything. Now, dream-dizzy and powerless,

Kaylana's Druidic strength reached in, took hold of his will, and shook it.

You will stay awake. You will stay aware. We are in the Labyrinth of Dreams. We are searching for the Darkgate You must concentrate on that and let nothing else distract you, or we shall all die. The commanding presence finished with a shot of strength to his will that helped clear his head some. Kaylana dropped her fixing gaze and lifted his hand to place it on her staff, and he looked around for the first time clearly, the oak wood tingling under his fingers.

Next to Kaylana, also with a hand on the staff, was Arcie. Blackmail stood in a corner, his sword out, slashing at nothing. Robin sat some distance away, his ears up as if listening, his eyes open but unseeing. Valerie walked in a small circle, and Nightshade fluttered around on the floor, as if wounded.

"The dreams of the Labyrinth have caught them,"

Kaylana said sternly, "as you yourselves were caught. myself only managed to escape by the power of my staff."

"How long have we been wandering about this place?" asked Arcie. Kaylana shook her head. Sam looked down.

He, too, had no idea, his timesense having vanished with the fire. Kaylana, leading the two rogues by her staff managed to wake the others out of their dream-trances They were able to keep their concentration by holding hands, as long as the end of the chain was in contact with Kaylana's magical staff. Robin was the hardest to waken even after he had been shaken into consciousness and made to understand the situation, he seemed vague, as though trying to remember some lost knowledge. Blackmail was difficult as well; it took some quick maneuvering by Kaylana to duck his wildly swinging sword so that she could make contact with him, and of course, being unable to see his eyes, she could not reach into his mine to pull him into waking life. But his strange will was strong in its own way, and even as she touched him he seemed to recover, shaking his helmet and then looking around.

"We may have been out for days," grumbled Valerie.

"And we have no way of knowing how far the sublimation has progressed outside the Labyrinth. That at least is a small mercy-the magic of the Labyrinth protects us, at least until the final destruction of the world."

"Och, such a mercy," grumbled Arcie. "I'm half wanting to give up and go back to my dreams here!"

"But are we awake now?" Robin asked, looking worried.

"What if this is just another dream?"

"We cannot attempt to puzzle that further," snapped Kaylana. "We have come this far and must press on. We must find our way through the Labyrinth."

"That will take until the end of the world!" exclaimed Valerie in annoyance. "Literally!"

Blackmail rapped on one of the walls; it seemed solid, though its exact shape and dimensions seemed unclear due to the ghostly images surrounding it and the eerie light that shone from every surface. Passages twisted off in all directions, unpleasantly organic-looking, like the intestines of some huge beast.

"If it's all dreams," put in Sam, "shouldn't we just be able to walk through it?"

"Some people can control their dreams," Valerie said thoughtfully, gently scratching Nightshade as he sat on her wrist. "Perhaps by lucid thinking we can determine where we go in this mess of a maze."

"And how are we to do that?" demanded Arcie.

"If all the Labyrinth is a dream, then all space and time are no thicker than a thought," stated Kaylana. "And once the destination is known, the journey is no more than a single step." She strode forward, dragging the others with her...

And as it turned out, by her own backward, stubborn will, she was right.

The floor trembled beneath their feet as the icy whiteness shivered and began to melt into faded half-images, the Labyrinth losing power now that they no longer believed its dreams to be reality; The world seemed to spin, and there was the sensation of movement, and that feeling again of great energies being expended into the fabric of existence itself. As strangely as it had appeared, the Labyrinth of Dreams was dissolving.

The whiteness fell away, leaving them atop a flat plateau of rock of no kind natural to Ein; a red-brown, burnt-looking stone, a broad table left behind by the slowly vanishing Labyrinth like a fossil frozen in ice.

Even now the white dome over the center was creaking open, and brilliant light burst in upon them.

The sun and moon shone together in the sky, moving slowly in an impossible conjunction. The sight twisted Kaylana's soul with fear, as these figures of vital importance to the Druids moved in terrible, unbalanced, unnatural ways.

The light flowed in, burning white, and, as the Labyrinth's protective magic slipped away, they were struck with the full force of a world on the brink of utter goodness.

The air was strained and warped, even stronger than the Labyrinth's magic; the twisting of the world's existence could be felt in every motion, thrumming from every stone, like a glorious but demented music.

Around them, the light burst into everything. The redbrown stones suddenly flashed into soft blue-gray, and everything, everything of colors of shadow and darkness faded. Valerie's hair fugued into a soft shade of brown, and Nightshade turned a brilliant blue while the sorceress's clothes melted into a cheerful yellow color. Sam's tattered clothing lost ink and dye in a rush, leaving him wearing tattered creamy-colored silk and cotton decorated with bright patches of other colors put there by a Martogon tailor. Even the blackness of the silent knight began to shade into a mouse gray, the heavy shield dull with layers of fading paint.

At the camp of Sir Fenwick, the more gradual buildup of light energy had been hailed as a glorious sign from the gods that all was well; the men and women of the Company had never been better. Towser and his mages had power they had never dreamed of, everyone was healthy and strong and never felt fatigue. The countryside of Ein was thick with flowers, and reports came in everywhere of similar wonders that had been occurring all over the world. For the triumph of energy, evil or good, is similar to any fall; the object may teeter on the brink of falling for a long time with little change, but once that final plummet begins, it accelerates.

Fenwick and his companions knew nothing of this. All they knew was that the Labyrinth seemed to be disintegrating; barely visible at what once had been its highest point was a strange chunk of rock that could be seen jutting from the frothy white remains, with several indistinct figures atop it.

"Towser! Summon your mages and begin the charge!" shouted Sir Fenwick in sheer joy, as he drew his sword Truelight and raised it above his head. It glowed like a stab of lightning as Tasmene and his men came to rally with him, and the mages appeared ...

Everything was shifting; it was as though the world suddenly became a flat, artificial picture, with no more depth than a child's drawing. It took them a minute in baffled shock before they realized that almost all the shadows had vanished. Everything was illuminated equally, even the insides of their mouths as they gaped in astonishment.

The light picked out in vivid detail a crater of jagged stone. At the bottom was a circular area, perhaps fifteen feet across, covered by a mesh of glowing magical cords, forming a shield over whatever lay beneath. A double arch stretched over this area, the two spans meeting at right angles and dropping from their intersection a long needle of stone, with a hole straight through, about three feet from the spear-sharp tip. The hole shimmered with magical workings, and was just about the size of a large apple, or the size of the glowing composite gemstone Arcie now held in his hands.

"The Key!" cried Valerie, looking at the gemstone, her eyes squinting as she fought the burning light. Yet her joy gave her strength to endure the all-pervading force of Good. "And the Lock on the Darkgate ... by all the dark dead gods, I never thought I should live to see this place..."

"So all as we has to do is put it into yon hole?" asked Arcie, ignoring the metaphysics.

"Not quite," said Valerie with sudden deathly seriousness.

"The Darkgate is evil... many lives were sacrificed to seal it. From what I was able to learn from my tomes, it will take at least one more life to open it."

"That's why you dragged us all up here?" gasped Sam, shocked out of his self-pity. "For Gate fodder?"

"Not all of you," said the sorceress pleasantly. "Just one."

Things might have gotten very nasty at this point had it not been for a series of sudden soft explosions as air was displaced in teleportation. There in a flash stood Sir Fenwick, at the head of thirty of the Verdant Company.

Another, and there appeared Lord Tasmene and his powerful adventuring companions. A swooping shadow overhead told them that Lumathix the dragon as well was on call.

"Get to work, Sam!" Arcie hissed, as the party drew weapons. The Labyrinth was already closing behind them, sliding down away from the crater on the summit.

Its magic fading, it sank slowly under its own weight into the solid dark stone. There was no retreat. Sam shook his tousled head.

"I can't," he whispered. He willed his muscles to draw, to throw, to kill... but he couldn't.

"Then open the Gate," urged Kaylana, snatching the Key from Arcie and pressing it into his hands. "You are the only one who can climb there anyway."

"She's right," Arcie muttered, hefting his morning star. "No way in hells are you getting me up them arches carrying yon rock."

"But I don't want to die!" protested Sam. He felt so lost. His patched gaudy clothing hurt his eyes and made him feel like a jester in motley.

"Don't worry, old chum," said Arcie, as he started forward. "We should be able to throw but one of these bastards in there."