‘I’m over!’ he called. ‘I’m safe!’ But he could hear no response.

  There was no triumph, as there had been with the arrows. Mal was not with him. He got to his feet, pulled the rope after him, and went on.

  He turned left, left, right. He took the two next turns – tight right and right again – and abruptly the lights stopped. Mal hadn’t warned him of this. It must be new. He was in sudden, total darkness.

  It was so dark that he could not tell if his eyes were open or closed. And there was something else – a chill mist, which he could not see but could feel, dampening his hands, and rising into his face and nose.

  He hesitated; then he laid one hand on the wall, and continued. Left. Left. Right. Left again. It grew colder and wetter as he went deeper in. His heart clenched tighter than it had ever been. The dark closed over him.

  THE GREY MIST

  Christopher walked. He did not know for how long. He dared not think; only kept repeating the directions. Right turn. Left.

  All there was was dark. The mist grew colder; it was on his clothes, something bitter and seeping. It smelt of dead skin. He recognised it, as he breathed it in. It was horror.

  He fumbled in his brain, to make sure he still knew the way. It was there, imprinted on his memory by a thousand repetitions – but everything else was blurred.

  He walked on, and on, and the minutes became dozens, and then untrackable, and he had no idea how long he had been moving forward in the dark, one arm stretched out ahead and the other on the left-hand wall.

  He breathed in the mist, and a flare of jealousy went up in him; jealousy of those who were not here. The jealousy gripped at his organs, stomach and lungs and throat. Jealousy is not like anything else. It is a locust. It eats a great deal that cannot be spared.

  He tried to think of his father, his grandfather, his mother, of how they would call out, encourage him, love him, but they would not be summoned up. His imagination was dead in the dark.

  The mist rose and became a grey wind. It seeped into his skin. The darkness was in him, and with it misery, a dull, blunt, angry sorrow. He had already, in a short life, done such hurt.

  He stumbled. The dirt beneath his feet was interrupted by something: stones, or bones. Keeping his left hand on the wall, he bent, picked one up, tried to feel the edge – but curiosity failed, and he let it fall.

  It clattered, in the dark, and an animal cry from somewhere in the labyrinth went up.

  He walked on. He breathed the mist, and he knew that the idea of goodness was a great con. A way to control the weak and many. Such loveliness as he had seen was an illusion. Kavil had been right: the thought cut at him. Hope is a little lie that the powerless use to comfort themselves.

  His thoughts stuttered in his mind. We are human rot. Rats for hearts. He had wanted his life to matter. He had wanted there to be large, everlasting truths. It was a drab, ordinary lie to want them. Stab-stab, went the insidious little knife.

  The dark was inside his nostrils. It was on the insides of his eyes. It was dread.

  His heart was an iron spike.

  This was the truth: the cold dust on the floor. You died: nothing mysterious. A hundred and twenty-four. Right. A hundred and twenty-five. Left. A hundred and twenty-six. Left.

  He thought about stopping, but that too would have no meaning.

  He walked on. He counted: a hundred and thirty. Left. He would die here: he was sure of that now.

  He would walk, until he could not, and then he would sit against the wall, and he would die like that; and for a second he was so unbearably sad, it flavoured his mouth with bile – but then even that ceased to matter, the thought drained away like black sand through his hands, he could not catch it, and there was nothing at all except left, right, right, right.

  Sudden hoofbeats rang down the labyrinth ahead of him.

  Something came round the corner and crashed into him. He had no time to brace himself, to think, to cry out. It hit his head first, his chest a second later: something on four legs, furred, with teeth. He landed on his back, winded, could not even yell. Something tore down his arm: a claw, he thought. A horn? He could see nothing at all: blackness, and a roar. Could the thing see? Should he turn and run? But he’d lose his way.

  He pulled the kitchen knife from his side – realised as he did, with a terrible lurch, that he had forgotten to take the glamry blade from Mal – almost dropped it, slashed in front of him.

  He might have been screaming but it was impossible to tell. The thing was bellowing, a horn or claw came at his head, caught at his ear, cut through, and he lifted his knife and swung at it, hard. He felt something give way and heard a yowl. He dropped to all fours.

  Then it was over. The thing bellowed, pushed past him, and he heard running hooves echo down the corridor.

  Then there was no sound, except his heart, which beat in his ears. He wiped his face, and spat.

  He felt his body, carefully, his hands shaking. His ear was bleeding. There was pain everywhere, in his chest and the back of his head, but his feet worked. His teeth were all there. He could not see his hands, but they still moved, though one was agonised: the thumb had been pulled back. He rose, took one step forward, and a thought came to him. His heart lurched as if another creature had come at him.

  He had been turned round.

  Or had he? Had he spun, or only dropped?

  He thought only dropped.

  He had to choose.

  Forward. It was impossible to bear going back. So forward. Even if forward was back.

  The adrenalin of the fight gave electricity to his blood. It gave him speed. It was not hope, but something else: it fought back at the mist. It was a kind of gritted determination. His urgency returned.

  He began to run.

  He stopped. Running, he could not hear if the thing was returning behind him.

  He walked – and then he didn’t care; he ran again.

  He ran fast, faster than he had ever run, with his left hand pressed against the wall, running straight into the dark. The wall tore at the skin on his fingers. He did not stop counting.

  There were one hundred and fifty-two turns. He should be ten away. Then six, five, four. And ahead – he blinked, then touched his eyeball, to check his eyes were open – light. It was a real light.

  He turned left, and right, and left: and burst into the very centre of the maze.

  AT THE CENTRE

  The centre of the maze was a huge stone room, lit by lamps, the ceiling so high it disappeared into the darkness.

  A great wave of something hot and fierce went through him. The centre of it all! Even if what was in that room killed him, he had walked the labyrinth. Unseen, unheralded; and he might die yet, and nobody would know: but even if no witnesses ever told it, it was still true. He felt a wild exaltation as he stepped into the cavern.

  There was a smell: three smells, in battle. A smell of human waste, yes, and the dank mist, but beneath it the glorious living smell that he had smelt in the woods, and in the breath of the unicorn. It was the smell of pure distilled life. It was the glimourie.

  A great tree grew up from the centre of the stone floor. It was tall and slim and noble, a rich brown, its leaves yellow-gold.

  His eyes adjusted to the light – and then he leaped backwards, and smothered a yell of horror.

  It had a face.

  He forced himself to step closer. He saw it clearly: there, embracing the tree, wound into the tree, melded and merged with the tree, was a man’s body; a face, half-grown into the trunk, and a body, grown the texture and colour of the tree’s wood.

  The face looked at Christopher, and it showed no fear. Its voice was low, and slow, and rough with disuse. It sounded of a hundred years of darkness.

  ‘Who is this, in my arboretum?’

  ‘My name is Christopher Forrester,’ he said. He stepped, again, closer. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am the future of the world.’ The voice rasped through the air, and grey mist curled from the creature’s mouth.

  ‘What have you done?’

  ‘I have taken what was there for the taking.’

  ‘Taken what?’

  ‘The Glimourie Tree.’ The face moved, shifted in the tree. ‘I have taken its power into my body. Soon, I will have it all. The tree will be dead. A husk. I will be the root and source of power, and I will move into the world, and take hold of what is mine.’

  Christopher fought back his panic: he pushed it back, tried to think. The man, he saw, was human; or once had been. Humans need to speak aloud. There was a hundred years of speech, pent up, bursting to erupt. If Christopher could keep him talking – if he could keep the man from directing the force of his power at him – perhaps he could think of a way to survive.

  ‘But how did you get here?’ he asked. ‘Only the Immortal knows the path to the centre of the maze.’

  ‘The Immortal, yes. And two others.’

  ‘Who?’

  He exhaled; the mist eddied, choking and acrid. ‘The men who made the maze.’

  ‘But Leonardo da Vinci, and his cousin – they took a potion. They forgot.’

  ‘They did. But Leonardo’s cousin Enzo was an intelligent man, and an angry one. Leonardo, in the Archipelago, as in the rest of the world, was the one who claimed credit. Leonardo sketched on paper; Enzo worked in stone. Enzo sweated; Leonardo merely basked.’

  ‘And what then? What happened?’

  The face in the tree turned its eyes full on Christopher. He was taking pleasure, Christopher could feel it, in his story. He breathed, and the mist rose, and with it a wind that eddied at Christopher’s feet.

  ‘Enzo grew first disgusted, then angry. And then he made a plan. Before he took the potion, he made a secret copy of the plans for the maze, and hid them. He returned home, his memory a blank, and he did not understand the importance of the plans. But he put them among his books – a child’s dream, he supposed.’

  The grey exhalation of mist came again, and again the air filled with the dread that clutched at Christopher’s chest.

  ‘Hundreds of years later, one of his descendants – me, Francesco Sforza – found them. I had no interest in his grubby little quarrel. But when I found what was in the heart of the maze – the tree, and its vast power – then I understood what was possible. I found a way into the Archipelago, at the equinox. I followed the plans and found my way to the island. And when I reached it, I found that the Immortal – the great protector – was gone. Think, first, of my astonishment. Think, then, of my pleasure.’

  He breathed out, a rough gasp of glee, and Christopher stepped back.

  ‘I followed the plans into the maze. I found the tree. It grew alone, unseen. It was as if it were waiting for me; as if it were waiting for someone to put its power to use. And I began to devour it – to eat, to graft, to become the tree. Its power is mine. Within weeks – days, perhaps – it will be mine in its totality.’

  ‘Why?’ said Christopher. ‘Why, alone here, in the dark? What good is it?’

  The thing that had once been Francesco Sforza turned its eyes on Christopher, and the look felt as though it charred his skin.

  ‘It is freedom. The only freedom is in absolute power. Without absolute power, you will always be subject to some other man. Freedom is available only to those who are willing to take it by force.’

  His voice rose, a raw hiss of disgust. ‘Half the world knows it to be true; the other half only pretends not to. They play their little games, of what-can-I-do and how-can-I-help, and they know, on their deathbeds, that they wasted their lives. They changed nothing. They knew nothing. They were nothing. They were slaves to chance, to luck, to other men.

  ‘But I refused to be like them. I have learned to take the glimourie into me, and control it. The tree is the source of the glimourie: it sends it out into the world, steadily. But now I have grafted its power on to me; soon I will be the source. At first I struggled, faltered, in the dark – but these last ten years, I have found the way. I get stronger daily, and the tree weaker. The glimourie – the entirety of the world’s magic – is almost mine. My breath has power, to confound and control. My lips have the power to kill.’

  Christopher took another step backwards. The wind grew stronger; it whipped through the cave.

  ‘You must understand,’ said the man. He was guttural, slow. ‘I have never once had a human visitor; some have tried, but none have reached the centre. So I have had no chance to try my power at death.’

  Christopher’s head was growing foggy. He shook himself, hard, like a dog. Like a griffin. Like Gelifen.

  He had to fight. Even if he was going to die, he had to fight first. He reached for the knife at his side, and leaped forward.

  The creature thrust out a great branch of an arm, and sent him flying against the floor. It winded him, and his head smacked against the stone. He rolled over, his head spinning, and climbed to his feet. Again, he ran at the man.

  This time the man did not move. His eyes glinted, and a bout of mist came from his mouth. The mist rolled over Christopher, up over his chest, his head, and he felt a great weight pressing down on him like a hand; a terrible, cold dead weight. He dropped to his knees.

  ‘Enough,’ said Sforza. ‘Enough.’

  Christopher crawled sideways, out of the mist. It took every piece of strength he had to get to his feet. His lips were dry, and his mouth burned. He staggered towards the man.

  ‘This is pointless, child. This is a little play you are putting on with no audience. Nobody will know whether or not you fought. Nobody will know, or care, what you did before you died. It’s worthless.’

  Christopher forced himself to speak. ‘It’s not,’ he said. He was choking; he pushed the words through dry lips. ‘I’ll know.’

  He forced all his strength up, summoned it out of exhaustion and fear. He dodged, sideways, under the arm that came out to flick him away, and lunged towards the tree. He was fast, and he was angry – angrier than he’d ever been in his life. A branch came swinging down at him, and he dropped low and jabbed upwards with the tip of the blade. It stuck into the wood, and was whipped out of his hand. Sforza hissed, and flicked the knife away, clattering across the stone room, and the down-sweep of his arm caught Christopher across the head.

  He was thrown backwards, grazing his skin on the ground. He got to his knees. He would fight, then, with his hands. He would tear and bite, if it was possible, and spit – like Mal spat: hard – until the dark came down over him. He braced himself to leap.

  Through the stone room rang a shout.

  ‘Christopher!’

  He recognised the voice, but it was impossible. He was hallucinating.

  But the shout came again, and Sforza stared over Christopher’s shoulder, at an opening on the far side of the cavern.

  Christopher turned; and the iron spike that was his heart unfurled, and became a victory flag.

  There are many good things a person will see in a life. But few will ever see anything as good as what Christopher saw: the low-flying girl, arms out, her feet grazing the floor, sweeping into the light. She had Nighthand’s glamry blade in her hand.

  The sight went through him like raw gold.

  She threw the glamry blade to land at his feet. He snatched it up. He leaped forward. His hand swept down in a cut. Sforza’s scream ricocheted around the cavern, as he cut at the places where the tree had grafted on to the man – cut and hacked until man and tree were separate.

  Francesco Sforza staggered sideways. He was tiny, and withered, and ancient, wasted by his century in the dark. Immediately the wood-like sheen to his skin faded, and turned to white-grey. He fell senseless to the ground.

  They bound him with the rope, hands and feet. He was clammy to the touch.

  ‘I know the way back,’ said Mal. ‘I know it like my own home. Come. Follow me.’

  It was painful, and long, half carrying, half dragging the man through the darkness. At the chasm, they paused.

  ‘We could drop him in?’ said Christopher.

  Mal shook her head. She gritted her teeth, and they placed Sforza on her back, and on the chill wind that still blew, she flew across the gap. On the last breaths of the grey wind, she took Christopher across, the two half leaping, half flying through the dark. But when they emerged into the sun, sweat on both their faces, the air was sweeter and softer than it had ever been.

  THE IMMORTAL

  They dragged Sforza, haggard and thin and the white of a drowned thing, into the sun and set him down, trussed and bound, under the thorn tree. He appeared unconscious. They moved further off, far enough away that the man’s pulsating malice felt less powerful.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘I have seen so much, Christopher.’ Her eyes, in her child’s face, looked ancient; there was nothing young now in her look. It was the face of someone who knows the ancient, uncompromising truths.

  ‘Will you tell me?’

  ‘Not all of it. Some of it. What I can. We should sit, or we’ll collapse.’

  They sat, the two of them, shoulder to shoulder in the sand. It was hot, but she was shivering; she drew her coat around her. Her hair was a tangle down her back, and her face was filthy with sand and blood, but sitting there she radiated something infinite. She had the look of a queen to her – or not that, he thought: someone to whom a queen would kneel.

  ‘Have we got any water?’

  ‘I left it at the mouth of the cave.’ He fetched it – he walked slowly, and he was dizzy – and gave it to her. She drank half – and then slightly more, and tried to smile at him – and he drank the rest.

  ‘Tell me?’ he said. ‘If you can.’

  She said: ‘I have seen more than I could ever have guessed.’

  Her voice sounded burned, still. She spoke low.

  ‘I have seen horror. I have seen immoveable evil. I have seen brutality and lies. I’ve seen jealousy, and spite, and greed disguised as reason and sense. I have seen millions of men and women allow themselves ignorance as excuse. I have seen corpses piled in the night.

 

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