If you can talk and walk, I subsay, I’m very, very curious.
Holly walks forwards through the connecting tunnel until her palms meet the wall of a new left-right passage. Holly turns right. “The last time I saw Jacko,” she keeps her voice very low, “I was packing a bag to leave home. Did Xi Lo ever tell you any of this?”
Maybe — I don’t know. It was so long ago.
We’ve gone about ten paces through the darkness when Holly’s left hand registers empty air. Another “connecting” archway. She enters it, walks five paces to another left-right passage, and turns left. These corridors appear to be concentric to one another. “Well, as I was packing, Jacko appeared, with a — a—a labyrinth. He used to draw these big, intricate mazes, just for fun, like. There should be another one opening soon …” After another ten paces of curving darkness, Holly finds a gap on the right and goes through it. For fear of putting her off, I say nothing about the maze Xi Lo once designed for King William of Orange. Through the arch is another left-right branch. Holly goes right. “The labyrinth Jacko gave me that day, though, it was plainer. Just a nest of nine circles, with a few connecting gaps between them. He made me promise to learn it. To learn it so well that, if I ever needed to, I could find my way through it in the darkness, without one mistake …”
And now we’re in it, I finish the sentence.
“Now we’re in it. I s’pose how hardly matters?”
Transubstantiation. The Blind Cathar’s soul became the Chapel of the Dusk. Xi Lo’s soul, I believe, entered the fabric of the Chapel during the First Mission. Once it was inside, Xi Lo became this labyrinth. Like a benign cancer, perhaps?
Holly hurries on. “But why would he do that?”
So that there would be a way back to the world after the Second Mission, but one that only you could navigate. Anyone else … Both Holly and I think of the three Anchorites who arrived here before us, trapped in a dead end, with a wall of Dusk closing in.
“Does Jacko know we’re here, do you think?”
Transubstantiation is an arcane, powerful act. I can’t invoke it and I don’t know its modii. Xi Lo never even told me he was studying it. The Blind Cathar knew we were in the Chapel, however, so it stands to reason that, yes, Xi Lo — Jacko — knows you’re here.
Holly finds an archway in the right-hand wall, and enters.
If the labyrinth’s round, I subpoint-out, we’re now moving away from the center.
“You have to go out to go in again. This next junction should be a crossroads. A little light, please?” I egress and glow for a moment. A crossroads. Holly takes the left branch. I ingress and fade.
You kept your promise, then, I subsay, to memorize the path.
“Yeah. Those were Jacko’s last words to me. I stormed off to my boyfriend’s house, and never saw my little brother again. Ruth, my sister-in-law, she was into jewelry making, and turned his sketch into a sort of pendant, made of silver. When I left home I took it away with me. Probably every week of my life I’ve studied it. Left turn coming up.”
We take the left, and pain explodes in our head. Holly spins as she falls and tumbles. Fresh pain shoots through her ankles and knees, and our scorched retinas are dazzled by petals of temporary colors. Through these, as my host lifts her head, I glimpse Constantin, her chakra-eye glowing rose-red, standing over us. “Show me the exit,” the Second Anchorite says maternally, “or I’ll turn you into a screaming human torch to light my path.” Her palm-chakras are glowing red too, a psychobolt in each ready to make good her threat. Holly’s shaking and muttering, “Please don’t please don’t please don’t.” I don’t know what Constantin just heard, how much she knows, how much psychovoltage she’s retained after the battle. Enough to kill us both several times over, I think. I decide to draw her away from Holly, back to the Dusk, so Holly at least has a chance of getting out alive.
I egress, glowing.
Icy and scalding, Constantin demands, “Which one are you?”
Marinus, I subannounce.
“Marinus. It would be. Time’s short. Lead.”
If you kill us both, you die too.
“Then I’ll die happier, knowing who I killed in the last scene.”
Before I can think of a strategic reply, Constantin’s chakra-eye goes out, her head tilts back, and she slumps to the floor. “I TOLD YOU!” Holly makes a throat-scraping, berserking yell, and brings down an indistinct clublike object on our attacker’s head a second time. “NOBODY THREATENS MY FAMILY!” And a third time. I glow brightly to find Holly panting over the slumped form of Immaculée Constantin. The Second Anchorite’s head is a mess of blood, white-gold hair, and diamonds. I ingress back into Holly, finding a supernova of fury melting into many other emotions. A few seconds later, Holly empties her stomach in three powerful bursts.
It’s okay, Holly, I say. I’m here, it’s fine.
Holly vomits a fourth time.
I synthesize a drop of psychosedative in her pituitary gland. Okay, I think you’re finished now.
“I killed someone.” Holly’s shaking. “I killed. It just … sort of … It’s like I wasn’t me. But I know it was.”
I tweak out a little dopamine. She may be alive … sort of. Shall I check?
“No. No. I’d rather not know.”
As you wish, but what’s the murder weapon?
Holly drops the thing. “Rolling pin.”
Where did you find a rolling pin in here?
“I nicked it from your kitchen at 119A. Put it in my bag.”
Holly stands up. I sedate her ankle and knees. Why?
“You were all talking about the War, but I didn’t even have a Swiss Army knife. So — yeah, I know, hysterical woman, rolling pin, big fat cliché, Crispin would’ve rolled his eyes and said, ‘Oh, come on!’ but I wanted … y’know … something. I hate the sight of blood so I left the knives in the drawer and … so. Shit, Marinus. What have I done?”
Killed a 250-year-old Atemporal Carnivore with a fifty-dollar kitchen implement, after putting on a fine impersonation of a sniveling, scared middle-aged woman.
“The sniveling part was easy.”
The Dusk’s coming, Holly. Which way now?
She pulls herself together. “A bit of light, please.” I half egress and glow, illuminating the narrow crossroads where the woman lying dead or dying ambushed us. “Which way were we going?”
We spun as we fell, I remember. And Constantin moved around us before she threatened us. I glow brighter, but this just enhances our view of a dead ambusher and a puddle of vomit. I can’t be sure.
Panic surges through Holly. I psychosedate it back down.
Then we hear the hum of the approaching Dusk. Shall I drive?