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As I hurried away from the fallen man, memories of the giant tusked hog plagued my mind, and I gripped the smooth wood of the bow with a sweaty palm. Both hands itched constantly now, as did my cheek where it had touched the fuzzy vine.
Whatever monster came at me next, at least I had a weapon now. I was no longer dead in the water.
Nagging thoughts buzzed like flies against the sense of comfort I felt holding a weapon. Who was that man? How often do walls shoot out of the ground? Will he be all right—and if so, will he hunt me down?
Questions were less concrete than the sharp arrows in the quiver.
I drew an arrow, then thumbed the fletching with nervous fingers. The long weapon felt foreign and clumsy in my untrained hands, tipping forward and backward as I attempted to nock a single arrow. The pointed end wobbled as my shaking hands fumbled the string into the notch. Finally, I was armed—armed but hardly dangerous.
I lifted the bow and aimed at a tree. All around, straight trunks reached into the heavens, so tall I couldn’t see their tops. The bow was too large or my arms were too weak…or both. I heaved back on the arrow, lost my grip, and watched as the arrow flopped useless onto the ground a few paces away.
With a grunt, I snatched up the arrow and tried again. This time, I managed to pull the string taut, but I couldn’t figure out exactly how to hold the bow. I’d never used one before. My straight arm buckled sideways, and the arrow shot off a stone’s throw to my right.
“Oops.”
I snapped my mouth shut and glanced around. A few moments later, I’d recovered the arrow and nocked it again. My arms ached and my hands itched, making my attempts to hold the bow even less graceful.
I didn’t know what lurked in the woods, and shooting an arrow into the mist might cause more trouble. Lowering the bow, I kept the arrow nocked and ready. I’d practice more, but not now. Now, I needed to find water—and a place, perhaps up in a tree, where I might feel safer.
Thick, writhing mist blanketed the forest floor. High in the trees, wind hissed through the branches. Faint whispers too quiet to discern drifted through the fog and the trees and left my skin prickled with gooseflesh. As I walked slowly forward, clutching the bow, my heart tapped like drums, and my neck dripped with sweat. The air was cooler here, shadowed from the summer sun, but it was also thicker, full of moisture that clung to my skin and smelled of damp earth.
Beetles the size of housecats skittered across the leaf-strewn ground up ahead. Two. Three. Four. I froze. They either didn’t notice me or they were already hunting something else. My gaze traveled, and I saw a figure—a woman, by the shape of her clothes and body—fleeing the massive beetles.
Icy dread cut through me. She was the second person I’d seen, and I’d only been here a short time. I’d rather not run into any of the criminals haunting this maze. Though admittedly, some of them would be innocents like me, thrown in here for their affinity for mind magic. The only problem was, I had no way of knowing who was a criminal and who wasn’t.
Though shooting arrows at my head was perhaps a good enough indication.
But he spared me. The thought brought little comfort, given the threat he’d hurled at me.
I adjusted my course to the left. As I glanced back toward the beetles, I saw that the trees had moved. One twisted oak was standing closer. A split-trunk tree that had been at least twenty paces back the way I’d come now loomed directly over me.
My balance faltered and I teetered, overcome with nausea at the idea that everything I’d once held as truth might not apply to this place. Terrified that the trees might come to life and grab me, I aimed the arrow, but my trembling grip flitted between the trunks of the trees, pivoting back and forth too quickly to hit either of them.
Before I was ready, I let the arrow fly. It thwacked against the split-trunk tree and dropped to the ground. My brows danced expectantly upward as I waited for the tree to move again. It did not. As I tiptoed to collect the weapon, keeping two eyes on the tree, a hand shot out from the tree, pale, blueish, and translucent, and snatched the arrow, drawing it back into the tree’s trunk. The only evidence of the movement was the swirling mist.
With a shout, I hopped backward.
So the trees could grab me.
I tossed out my plan of climbing a tree for safety and picked my way through the woods, careful to remain as far from the large trunks as possible.
The air chilled unseasonably for late summer as clouds thickened overhead. Alternately raking my nails over my cheek and my palms, I scurried through the trees like a fox fleeing a hunting party, desperately searching for dark green clusters of honeyleaf, an herb with healing properties. With the dimming light, it was difficult to spot the little green leaves that blended in so well.
Almost as distracting as the itch in my palms was the weight of the man’s quiver slapping against my back, a constant reminder that I was literally running for my life in a maze designed to tear apart my sanity.
My palms felt like they’d had hot wax poured on them. The skin was pink and swollen everywhere the vine had touched me. It was too early for evening, but if trees could walk and sprout arms, I guessed night could fall whenever it wished in this place.
“Honeyleaf, honeyleaf,” I chanted as I walked bent over, fingers spread out as I studied the undergrowth.
Trees danced in my peripheral vision, making it impossible to know if I’d been walking in circles or moving forward. I soon grew dizzy from the changing landscape…and walking hunched over. I dropped to my knees. Water. I needed water. My desperate search for the herb to cure my itch had left me blind to water sources I might have passed. Right now, I’d take a wet leaf to allay my thirst.
After rubbing my palms along the lace of my ruined dress a half-dozen times, I stood to continue my search. I never saw the trees move, but every time I turned my head to glance around, the trees were in different places than I remembered seeing them. This was the worst kind of maze; it had no rules.
Madness was easier to fall into than I’d realized.
I fisted my hands—which only hurt the tender skin—and willed myself not to cry. This place had been built with the magic of the Guilds, which meant it contained the power of every kind of mage…including the architects’ power to move any item anywhere. I ground my teeth and exhaled, glaring at the trees. Once there was an explanation for the moving flora, it felt less impossible, less wrong.
I kept my fears at bay by focusing on the things that felt real: the crunch of dead leaves beneath my feet, the feel of the cool mist on my skin, the smell of earth and the faint stench of the leather strap around my shoulder. Several steps later, a branch snapped, and I whipped my head sideways, only to walk directly into a tree that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
