“And what a darkly humorous fate that would’ve been,” Halek said with a grimace. “Drunkenly stumbling into the wrong room and getting impaled by a friend. I wouldn’t be the first Fatechaser to meet that fate, but I certainly would not want to join those ranks.” He looked at me and grinned. “Fortunately, as our warrior friend said, my beautiful singing saved me again.”
Chancellor Llorek politely pretended not to hear any of this. “If you are ready,” he said, and gestured to a pair of iylvahn who walked into the room as if on cue. “Our guides will escort you to the northern gate to the labyrinth. The kahjai called Raithe will lead you the rest of the way through the Maze. Once you reach the Shifting Dunes, you will have come to the edge of our kingdom. From there, you must cross the dunes until you reach the Obsidian Spine, the mountain range that separates the last of the known kingdoms from the wilderness. The World Scar lies somewhere beyond those mountains.”
I shivered in the shaded air of the palace. This mission felt like something out of a fable; like the story of the merchant prince who discovered an old lamp with a djinn inside. The djinnwould grant him a single wish, but the wish would stick only if the merchant prince found true happiness with it. The cautionary tale about how the prince ended up destroying himself and half the kingdom chasing a happiness he could never achieve was a story everyone knew. This journey into a blasted hellscape to find a piece of the goddess of Fate’s loom felt the same: like a cautionary tale that would end badly for those who dared attempt it.
But it was far too late to back out now.
We followed our guides into the twisted, shaded streets of Irrikah, stopping once to pick up Rhyne and Ratuk from the stables. The two rock beetles seemed happy to get out of the dark cavern, but whether it was because of the small enclosure or the company of dozens of hanging, chirping lizards, I wasn’t sure. They were both heavily encumbered, carrying a huge number of supplies for the journey, I guessed. At least the iylvahn had been generous in their provisions for a long, possibly fatal trek across the desert to find the goddess’s loom.
We left the city, crossing a bridge that looked like it had been hand-carved out of the mountain. A large, impressive-looking stone gate stood at the end of the road, and beyond that, the tight, narrow gorges of the labyrinth beckoned.
Raithe was nowhere to be seen.
The two iylvahn stopped and bowed to us. “This is as far as we take you,” one of them explained. “From here, we leave you in the care of the kahjai. He will guide you through the labyrinth to the lands beyond.”
“The queen sends her regards,” the other said, as they both rose and stepped back. “We hope you have enjoyed your timewith us, Fateless. Farewell, and may the goddess’s blessings go with you.”
They turned and walked away, back toward the massive iylvahn city that rose above us like a flowering mountain. Halek sniffed and gave a mournful salute.
“Farewell, then, Irrikah. May we meet again someday, if only in my half-remembered dreams.” He sighed and glanced at me and Kysa. “I guess we’ll have to wait for our good kahjai to show up, then?”
“No,” Kysa said, gazing at the looming front gate. “I don’t believe we will.”
I turned and saw Raithe standing in the shadow of the arch, as if he’d been there all along. A dark-scaled sand dragon waited beside him, camouflaged against the shade and stone. Relief battled anxiety as those pale eyes met mine. Relief that he was still here, that he had decided to come with us, after all; after last night in the tavern, I’d wondered if he would want to be around me at all. Anxiety that his fate was still out there, waiting to pounce, and that I wouldn’t be able to stop it. Or worse, that I had guided it right to him.
And beneath it all, though I didn’t want to acknowledge it, there was a tiny flicker of what could only be jealousy. Who was that kahjai in the tavern, the female who had touched him so easily, who had seemed so close? I knew it was none of my business; we had both made our decisions, and I had no right to wonder. But still, I did.
“Fateless.” His voice was calm, and he gave a single nod as we walked up. Once again, he was back to being overly polite, hisexpression impassive. I almost wished he would glare or make some kind of cutting remark; the icy wall between us now was even worse. “Are you ready?”
“I have a question, actually,” I said, and one silver brow arched. For a moment, I wondered why I was even asking him a question, but I plunged on anyway. “You said that we won’t remember what happened in Irrikah once we leave. If that’s the case, how will we know what we’re supposed to do once we’re out of the labyrinth? If we forget everything the queen told us, we won’t know anything about the World Scar or the piece of the loom.”
Raithe hesitated, and I held my breath. Was this another thing he had to keep from us, another piece of information he couldn’t share? “I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “Typically, visitors to Irrikah will lose their memories of the city somewhere inside the labyrinth. But I’ve been given no special instructions beyond keeping you safe and guiding you to the World Scar. The queen knows the importance of our mission. I assume you will retain most of your memories once we leave the Maze.”
“And if our memoriesareforcibly erased?” Kysa asked. “If we remember nothing once we leave the queen’s territory?”
“Then I will tell you everything you need to know,” Raithe answered.
“Will you?” Kysa’s voice was a challenge. “Or will you leave out the parts that are convenient? If we ‘forget’ our encounter in Irrikah, if everything that happened between us can be disregarded, are you really going to tell us that the queen you serve is a Deathless?”
“Everything we need to know,” I repeated, feeling a chill of unease at the words. “Not ‘everything we’ve forgotten,’ Raithe? Just what we need to know to finish the mission.”
Raithe looked at me, and for just a moment, the mask of the kahjai slipped. For a single heartbeat, his expression was stricken. “I swear on my honor as a kahjai,” he almost whispered. “If you do lose your memories of all that happened in Irrikah, I will tell you everything. Nothing will be left out, I promise.”
I desperately wanted to believe him. But with everything that had happened, all the mistrust and anger and bad feelings between us, if he could return things to the way they were before we’d found out the queen was a Deathless, would he?
Kysa sighed. “Either way, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “Whether he tells us the truth or not, we still have to leave Irrikah.” She glanced at the sky and frowned. “Namaia will be rising soon. How long will it take us to get out of the Maze, kahjai?”
“Not long,” Raithe said. “Half a day at most. There is a shelter at the edge of the labyrinth where we can wait out Demon Hour. After that, we’ll be close to the border of the queen’s territory, right on the edge of the Dead Lands.”
“The Dead Lands,” Halek repeated. “That sounds ominous.”
Raithe paused, gauging each of our reactions, then gave a slight frown. “Did Chancellor Llorek not tell you anything about the lands beyond the Maze?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No. This is the first we’ve heard of them.”
He winced. “Very well,” he murmured, and turned away, beckoning us forward. “Then I suppose it is up to me.”
He mounted the sand dragon, and we stepped beneath the arch that led out of the city of Irrikah and into the labyrinth. As the shadow of the gate slid over us, I held my breath, wondering if I would lose my memories of the iylvahn city once we passed beneath the arch. But we stepped through the gate, coming out the other side, and all my memories remained intact.
