Labyrinth of Shadows
(Still looking for a better title.)

	I stood before the entrance to the Labyrinth of Shadows.
	
	I had a backpack full of everything I could think of that I might need, though it felt woefully inadequate.  [i]I[/i] felt woefully inadequate.  I had considered getting some kind of weapon, but I was more likely to hurt myself than somebody else with a sword or even a bow.  I had an axe, which I'd used enough to feel comfortable with, though it was just a little hand axe, not a battle axe.  
	
	I fidgeted with it where it hung on my belt, wondering if maybe I should have brought a sword after all.  Or perhaps a crowbar, or a portable stove or any number of other things that I either couldn't afford or couldn't fit in the backpack..  I shook my head and took a deep breath.  If what I had was enough, then all would be well, and if it wasn't there was nothing at all I could do about it.  So I exhaled the breath in a long whoosh, trying to let out all my tension with it, and started walking forward.
	
	The entrance to the Labyrinth consisted of two massive pillars of stone, framing a gap in the intimidatingly high wall that surrounded it.  A lintel that had once stood across them lay broken on the ground, partially blocking the entrance.  It was too large to be dragged aside and made it nearly impossible to bring horses or mules into the Labyrinth.  How the original builders had lifted something that couldn't be budged by a full team of oxen I had no idea.  Nobody did.  That was the least and smallest of the Labyrinth's mysteries.
	
	There were no carvings on the pillars, though I had heard that deeper within some of the walls were carved with incredible skill with scenes of untold beauty, while others were carved with perhaps as much skill, but with scenes that disturbed and horrified.
	
	I could believe that.  I could not quite believe some of the other stories I'd heard.  Anything and everything, from dragons and fairies to demons and zombies was said to lie within the Labyrinth.  It held treasures untold, and the mysteries of the universe, and the secret recipe for the best apple pie in the world, if one listened to the stories about it.  It had been built by a mad king, with an army of ten thousand builders and masons, or by an immortal monk, all by himself, or by the gods during a bored moment.  It was a test of those who went in, and the person who reached the center would be king of all the world.  Or would be king of the Labyrinth itself.  Or would simply go mad in a more profound way that those who stumbled out of it raving.  Or there was no center at all, it just branched and coiled through the earth forever.  
	
	The stories were as endless as the Labyrinth's own passages.  
	
	What actually lay within few could say.  A handful of people had gone inside and come back  Of those who returned, the vast majority had gone no further than the upper passages, and still many returned shaken and unsettled, often unwilling to speak of what they'd seen.
	
	Most never came back at all.
	
	I had the feeling that I'd be among that latter group.
	
	All the same I took a deep breath, settled my pack on my back, and stepped between the pillars.  I was inside.  According to some tales even setting a single foot within risked one's life and sanity both, but nothing in particular happened when I stepped in.  The empty courtyard with its carpet of brittle winter grass that I'd seen from the outside looked the same from within.  It crunched under my feet.  Few enough people came here that there was no path worn through the grass.  I looked around, but could see nothing but bare stone walls and dry winter grass.  I shrugged.  Opposite me was an opening in the wall, a doorway to the chamber or passage beyond.  It was the only option, so I took it.
	
	On the other side of the doorway was a corridor, stretching to the left and right for some distance.  I peered in each direction, but could see no real difference between them.  
	
	The walls here were decorated.  Or perhaps I should say they weren't plain and unadorned as those in the first chamber had been.  They were covered with deep, irregular grooves.  They were about half an inch across, and half an inch deep.  I had the sudden, strange impression that they'd been made by somebody dragging their fingers through the stone, as one would drag one's fingers through soft clay.  The whole wall was covered in them, so if somebody had made them in such an impossible manner, the person must have had a ladder, or been quite tall.  The walls were perhaps twelve feet high, well above my own head, though I am a bit on the tall side, compared to the human villagers I'd known, at least.  I suspect I am very short for an orc, and average enough for an elf.
	
	I stepped closer to the wall, curious, and placed my hand on it.  I had half expected that which looked like stone to feel as soft as clay, but it was clearly stone.
	
	"Fascinating," I said softly.  I put a finger into one of the grooves.  It fit perfectly.  I turned to the left at random and resumed walked, running my fingers over and in the grooved wall as I went, enjoying the feeling of cool stone on my hand.  I wondered how the marks had been made.  They obviously hadn't been chiseled out.  There were no tool marks at all, the sides and bottoms of the grooves were as smooth as the surface of the stone.  Could some strange magic have turned a slab of clay into stone?  Or perhaps there was something in here that could scoop out stone as easily as clay.  Or perhaps the explanation was stranger still.  
	
	Up ahead the corridor took a sharp turn.  When I went around the corner I saw that the corridor opened up into another square chamber.  The walls to the left and right of me were covered in that same network of grooves.  The wall in front of me was covered in ivy.
	
	I stepped closer and realized that it was not ivy, though the leaves were glossy and dark like ivy leaves. Their shaped was different though, being fiver-fingered and a bit like chestnut leaves, but smoother and darker in color.  At the corners where the walls me I could see roots spreading out, each root fitted neatly into a groove.  No ivy would grow so neatly into such channels.  Ivy grew wherever it pleased.  In fact I had never met a creeper or vine that would tidily fit itself into the provided space, they wanted to go their own way.  It was unnatural for a plant to follow the grooves as this one was doing.
	
	Then my eyes went wide as I realized what I was really seeing.  Fingers had not carved the stone.  Roots had.  The grooves were not channels prepared for the vine, they were channels left behind as it retreated.  How the vine ate away the stone I had no idea, nor did I know why, but I was completely certain all the same.  The vines had eaten the stone as they grew, and left the grooves behind when they died back.
	
	The look of the vine supported this idea, for all along the margins of the space it had colonized the leaves seemed unhealthy, blotched with rusty brown, some turned entirely brown and dead, while near the center of the wall the leaves were all green and healthy.  Ivy was an evergreen, and this seemed to be as well, the dead leaves were not leaves dropping in autumn, they were sick leaves, dying back.  The vines must once have covered the corridor I'd walked along, and who knows how much further, but something was causing them to retreat, leaving behind the grooves they'd bored into the stone.
	
	I was touched with sorrow for the plant.  I didn't know it well enough to know why it was suffering, and there was nothing I could do for it, which only increased my sorrow.
	
	In the center of the still-healthy mass against he far wall something rustled.  Vines began to shiver and twist.  For a moment I thought something was coming out of them at me, and my heart raced.  But no, these vines were moving of their own accord.  They crawled and twisted aside, revealing a wooden door set into the wall.  The surface of the door was grooved as well.  The vines that had grown there had pulled their roots out, making the door accessible.
	
	I stepped forward.  This was a clear invitation. Of course it might also be some kind of trap.  But somehow I couldn't believe that [i]plants[/i] would want to trap me.  I loved plants, and they had always responded to me with growth and health that I could only regard as a return of that love, in a mindless, vegetative sort of way.  Perhaps this was what the Prophetess and the child had meant when they'd implied that I would do better here than heroes.  Did the vines open for me because they knew I was a gardener?  
	
	I approached the door.  A knob was set in the center.  I pulled on it, and the door swung easily open.
	
	I stepped through and shut the door.  Behind me a faint rustle suggested that the vines were re-covering it.  My attention was on the chamber in front of me, however.  Only a meter or so in front of my feet the ground gave way to water.  The whole center of the open-topped chamber was a koi pond.  A few lily pads floated on it.  Even though it was late autumn, they were in bloom.  I could smell the sweet fragrance of the flowers, which were a deep, startling shade of blue.
	
	The koi were very much in evidence, huge brilliant shapes slipping gracefully through the slightly murky water.  Most of them were the brilliant orange that gets called "gold" though a few were white and orange spotted and I think a darker shadow amid the bright forms was a black one.
	
	At the center of the pond was a tree.  The oval leaves were bright and glossy.  A glint of something orange showed amid the branches, and I realized it was an orange tree.  I'd seen oranges, now and then, and even eaten a few, but I'd never seen an orange tree.  Not in person, at least, though I'd seen plenty in illustrations.  I owned enough books on plants to start a small library, and quite a lot of them dealt with things that didn't grow here in the mild, damp climate of the northern valleys.  It was a little strange to see one apparently thriving here, but no stranger than anything else I'd seen thus far.  Certainly not anywhere near as strange as the mysteries the Labyrinth was supposed to hold.  A little stranger was that the tree grew directly out of the water.  None of my fruit trees liked to have their feet wet like that, and I was fairly certain from what I'd read that oranges didn't like it either.  They wanted well-drained soil, not soggy pond mud.  Fruit trees were not mangroves.  Strange, but still not all [i]that[/i] strange.
	
	I took a few steps forward, until my toes were on the verge of the pool.  A few curious koi circled near me.  I wished I had bread crumbs for them.  I peered more closely at the tree and nearly fell over backwards.
	
	The glint of orange among the branches was not a late-hanging fruit.  It was a koi.
	
	I gaped at it for quite a while.  It did not gape back, though of course its round, piscine eyes were open.  Fish lack eyelids, so they could hardly be closed.  It hung by its tail, head down.  And it didn't appear to have been tied or fastened to the tree, it looked very much as if it had grown there.  Its mouth worked very slowly, showing that it was somehow alive, despite being out of water.
	
	A breeze rippled the water, shifting a few of the lily pads slightly.  The leaves of the tree shivered, the branches moved, and suddenly, abruptly, the koi dropped out of the tree and landed in the water with a sharp [i]plop![/i]  I jumped at the sound.  Once in the water the koi began to swim around like all the others, and soon I'd lost track of which one it was.
	
	I shook my head, wondering if all the koi in the pond had grown in the tree.  Perhaps the Labyrinth was going to deliver the promised wonders after all.