They pelted down the fog-filled street. Bullets whizzed around them, at first sporadically, then steadily. A man grunted behind Avery, then fell. Hot blood spurted the doctor’s back. A bullet grazed his arm. The group turned down a street. Most of the rebels plastered themselves against the buildings or behind corners in order to ambush the enemy, but Avery and his group ran on, along with a few rebels, either fleeing or leading the fallback, Avery wasn’t sure.
Suddenly, the ground pitched beneath him. He was flying through the air, Layanna beside him, and small things were hitting him, fast, He smashed against the ground and slid. Something roared in his ears. When the sound faded, he climbed to his feet, then helped Layanna to hers, with one of her arms around his neck.
“W-what was that?” she said.
He coughed dust. “A bomb, I think.”
Guns rattled from in front of them. Soldiers gaped and fell, only silhouettes in the cloud of dust. Avery saw dark shapes sagging lifelessly against the walls and prayed that Janx and Hildra weren’t among them. Coughing, he dragged Layanna down an alley.
“Here!” he called behind him. “Janx! Hildra!”
He heard the roar of a pistol and knew it must be Janx. He hurried Layanna around a corner. In his hand he gripped a gun. When men wearing brown uniforms stormed down an alley at him, he fired. They shrank back.
Sweat beaded his entire body and he shook as he ran, tugging Layanna with him. At one point he fired behind him at the uniformed figures, half hidden in the fog, as they pursued him, then ran up a busy street, down another, and into still another set of alleys, more twisting and ancient than the ones before.
“I think we’re entering the Maze of Dark Delights,” he huffed.
“The Maze …”
“I don’t know where Janx and Hildra are. Or Lisam and the others.”
They plunged deeper into the warren of alleys and boulevards. Strange shops reared to either side through the fog, their display windows glowing with severed, preserved heads, some stained or shrunken, and other curious, often morbid objects—strangely shaped animal skulls, horrific illustrations and knick-knacks. Avery saw bizarrely mutated animal fetuses still moving in glass jars filled with viscous fluid.
This was the heart of the sinister cult of alchemy in the region, possibly where the mist originated. Many unique plants grew in the jungle, some of them containing elements that could be used in alchemical practices, though why this was no one knew. No one understood the source of the power behind alchemy, though there were many theories about it. The Ezzezians had taken this power in their own direction, building a fairly sinister business around it, and its practitioners—sorcerers, some said—believed in making a profit off their mysteries. Incense burned in niches, and exotic, warbling reed music filled the air. Night had gathered in full, and darkness draped the streets save for the gas lamps. Moths and other insects, not all of them natural, swarmed around the street lamps, which spread diffuse light through the fog.
In some of the doorways, black men with glowing tattoos gestured customers inside, and Avery wondered what the customers might be purchasing—love spells, reanimation compounds, remedies for unnamed diseases? It could be anything. Avery wondered how many of them actually worked.
“I don’t hear any … gunfire,” he said, stopping to rest.
“Me either.”
Layanna leaned against a building. “I think I can … walk now.” Instead of walking, though, she just leaned there, breathing fast. Sweat glimmered in her hair, shining by gaslight.
“We should wait for them,” Avery said.
“They know where to meet us—the temple.”
Yet after an hour of walking, they came to the end of the Maze, at least on this side, and saw sirens; collaborating soldiers blocked the roads. The troops seemed reluctant to enter the Maze itself. Avery and Layanna retreated backward around a corner.
“We’re trapped,” he said.
“Let’s get a hotel room. I doubt the police blockade will last long—that could turn into a riot. I’m sure by morning they’ll be gone.”
They checked in at a three-story motel with a sharply triangular roof—two triangles, in fact, representing the fangs of a serpent. Avery paused when the clerk asked him whether they needed one room or two, but Layanna, despite her obvious sickness, said, “Two, thank you”, and Avery, hiding a sigh, forked over some cash. Fortunately Layanna had been carrying most of the money Denaris had vouchsafed to the group, so that wasn’t a problem, though he did worry about Janx and Hildra; they only had a handful of the local currency.
A bellboy showed them up the mildewed stairwell, redolent of strange spices, and up to the third story. It proved to be a seedy, nefarious-looking inn, but Avery understood that was part of the charm. Tourists in happier days had come to Ezzez, some traveling quite far, simply to behold the Maze in all its unwholesome splendor and revel in its wantonness. This was a city within a city, and there were no laws here except those enforced by the underworld powers.
They had rented two adjoining rooms, but there was no connecting door, and Layanna consented to allow Avery to help her inside and to her bed for the night. The room was small and oddly-angled, with the ceiling not straight across but rising from two corners and sloping across overhead. The wallpaper was stained and sagging. No electrical lights lit the space, nor did the inn seem to have electricity. Various-colored alchemical lamps throbbed from lamp stands or niches in the wall, throwing languid fever-dream colors across the room. It was like plunging into a rainbow dreamt up by some madman.
Avery helped Layanna undress down to bra and panties, then she slipped into bed. Sweaty, all but naked and abnormally fragile, she suddenly and somewhat perversely seemed alluring to Avery, more so than usual, and he began to feel a swelling in his groin as he sat down on the bed beside her. The adrenaline-filled blood still rushing through his veins didn’t make it any easier to hold back.
She seemed to be aware of his sudden randiness, but she made no comment about it.
“Do you think the others are all right?” she asked, and he wondered if she said it because she was concerned or to get them talking about something other than sex and relationships.
“I don’t know. They may come looking for us here. Or they may not even be in the Maze at all—I didn’t see what direction they went in.” He didn’t have to add, If they’re still alive. That was understood. “At any rate, we need to think of our next move. Losg Coleel is either dead, captured or in hiding, the Octunggen want us dead, and we’re on the run in a most foreign country.”
“Actually,” she said, looking thoughtful. “I’m not sure they do want us dead.”
“Why do you say that? They had someone in position to poison you, and once that was done they sent in the troops. They’d obviously murdered the previous company of rebels sent to find Coleel.”
“Yes, but if they’d really wanted us dead, they would have just planted a bomb, wouldn’t they? They could have had their dart-shooter incapacitate me, retreat, then hemmed us in with gunfire while he got to safety—then blown us up.”
Avery scratched his cheek. “Why would they want us alive?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they think we know something, that we could help them find Coleel, assuming he’s still alive.”
“You think they want to find him?”
“Why else would they have been at his house when the first company arrived? They were trying to find him. Maybe they’d set a watch on it after finding it abandoned. I don’t know why they would want Coleel, except for the same reason we do.”
He nodded. “To locate ghost flower nectar. Maybe they know what it can do and want to get to it before we can, or someone with similar motives. Prevent us from using it.”
“Maybe.” She looked tired.
“Rest,” he said, and tucked her in. As he drew his hand back, their fingers touched, though the contact was brief. “I’ll check on you when I get back.”
“‘Back’? Where are you going?” The idea of him going off on his own seemed to alarm her.
He smiled. “Losg Coleel is missing. Why? Likely because he knew the Octs were coming after him. That’s if they haven’t captured him already, but I get the impression they haven’t. As you said, why else would they have put a watch on his house? So he’s in hiding somewhere. He had friends in the government—paid friends, probably—and they tipped him off when the authorities started to move against him. Where would he have gone?”
She blinked slowly. “Somewhere where local law would hesitate to go …”
“Exactly.”
“You think he’s here somewhere, in the Maze.”
“It makes sense. I just need to ask around.”
He stood to go, but she, to his surprise, reached out a hand and grabbed him by the sleeve. “Don’t go, Francis.”
“Why not? This is our chance.”
That divot appeared between her eyebrows. “I admire your bravery, but you, alone … in a strange land … you don’t even speak the language.”
“It’s an international city. Besides, I speak a hundred tongues.” He said this last part in the most pompous voice he could, and was rewarded with a small smile; it had been something Lord Haemlys had said back in Maqarl.
“Just the same, I wish Janx or Hildra were here to go with you.”
