Labyrinth of Shadows

	The courtyard with the koi tree had a single exit, once again limiting my choices, so I went out through it.  A short, roofed passageway lined in brick led to a circular room, open to the sky.  Six brick archways pierced the wall at regular intervals, seven if you counted the one I was still standing in.  Each led to an apparently identical roofed corridor.  I stared at them for a while.  
	
	"Great.  Which way should I go?"
	
	"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said a voice from over my head.
	
	I think I jumped nearly high enough to hit my head on the arch.  I peered up but of course there was nothing overhead but the vaulted bricks.  "Hello?"
	
	There was no answer.  Realizing that talking to the ceiling was absurd, I stepped out into the circular courtyard and turned to look at the top of the arch from which I'd just emerged.  Sitting atop it was a large tomcat.  It was a brown tabby longhair, very fluffy, and very elegant in the burly way that only a well-groomed male cat can be.  It didn't look like a field cat or a street cat, its ears weren't notched and it bore no scars from fights with other toms, but it had no collar either so it seemed unlikely to be a pet.  Of course here in the Labyrinth it might be anything at all. 
	
	"Hello," I repeated.
	
	"Greetings.  Salutations.  Hello," replied the cat.
	
	"Can you tell me which way I should go to reach the center of the maze?" 
	
	"I could," said the cat, "but I don't think I will."
	
	I blinked up at it.  It curled its tail about its paws and grinned at me.  Which was, really, as startling as anything I'd seen so far.  Cats do not grin.  Baring teeth as a sign of amusement is a human expression, which elves and orcs and other humanoids have picked up, but animals simply don't do it.  In the animal world baring teeth is a snarl, not a smile. But the cat, despite having a face that shouldn't have been capable of such an expression at all, was clearly grinning with amusement.  That a cat could talk I could accept.  Legends and myths were full of talking animals, and with prophets and gods already involved it wasn't the least bit starting to find talking animals.  But cats do not grin, not even in myths.  It was unnerving.
	
	"Why not?" I asked.
	
	"Because I am a cat.  And no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer."
	
	"You could give me a hint, at least," I said. "It doesn't have to be a [i]straight[/i] answer.  I'd take a curved one."
	
	"Clever child," said the cat, still grinning.  "Tell me who you are, and perhaps I'll tell you something.  You're not a hero. You are a little mystery, in this larger mystery."
	
	"No I'm not a hero, I'm a gardener."
	
	"Aaaaaaaaaaah."  The sound was a long sigh of understanding mingled with something else I couldn't name.  The cat's grin vanished and it looked suddenly solemn.  "I don't think a gardener has ever come this way before.  It doesn't really matter which way you go, gardener.  There are many paths to the center of the maze.  Of course there are many paths to death too, but as a gardener... you might make it."
	
	"Thank you," I said, feeling baffled all over again.  I had found growing things here, but the heart of the maze was somewhere underground!  What possible reason could there be for gods, prophets, or cats to send a gardener there?  
	
	I shook the thought off, suspecting that the cat would not give me an answer to that particular question, not even a curved answer.  I took off my backpack and rummaged around in it for the stick of chalk I'd packed.  This was starting to look more like a maze, and I didn't want to end up going in circles.  
	
	I marked the arch I'd come out of with a large x, then picked another arch at random, marking it as well, and began down it.  "It's no use using chalk," said the cat from where he still perched above the arch I'd come in through.  "String doesn't work either."
	
	"Can you tell me what does work?" I stopped and turned back to look at the cat.
	
	The cat grinned again, which was no less unnerving the second time.  "No."
	
	I tried to think of some way to pry a useful answer out of the creature, but before I came up with anything the cat began to fade.  That's really the only way I can describe it.  It gradually got more and more transparent, until I could hardly see it at all.  Its teeth, still bared in that completely un-catlike grin, did not fade, staying until the rest of the cat was entirely gone, and then vanishing abruptly. 
	
	"Okay then," I said to myself and continued on my way.  
	
	The passage I'd chosen shortly opened up, letting the sunlight in from above.  It was a sunny day, cool but not cold.  Winter in this part of the world rained a great deal, but never snowed, and I hoped that by the time the rain inevitably started I would have found the underground part of the maze and would be well out of it.  But for now I would enjoy the sunlight while I could. It soaked into the bricks that lined both walls, leaving them pleasantly warm to the touch.   
	
	The sun-warmed passage twisted through several broad curves, turned a few sudden corners, and ended in a blank stone wall.  I spent a few minutes examining the stone, but if there were any hidden levers or switches I couldn't find them.  With a shrug I retraced my steps back to the circular courtyard.
	
	I regarded the seven arches, trying to decide where to go next.
	
	Suddenly I realized that something was not quite right.  The arch I'd come out of still had a chalked x on it.  But the second x was now on the arch directly next to it, and I was very certain I'd originally come from the arch opposite it!  The chalk mark had somehow moved.  Had somebody come along and erased it?  I crossed over to the arch I'd arrived through, but there was no trace, if it had been erased it hadn't just been rubbed out, it had been thoroughly scrubbed off.
	
	Apparently the cat was right about chalk not being any use.  If somebody was going around moving my chalk marks they wouldn't be terribly helpful. Although for all I knew the mark hadn't moved, the arches had.  In either case it would probably be less confusing to not leave any marks at all. 
	
	I shrugged again and picked another arch at random.  I was probably going to be doing a lot of shrugging, if my experience so far was any indication.
	
	The next passageway stayed roofed all the way along, until it let out in a huge open square.  You couldn't call it a room.  You couldn't even call it a courtyard, unless you were talking the kinds of courtyards you found in the palaces of emperors.  Most of it was dirt, bare and dead, not even dry winter grass growing in it.  A flagstone path wound and twisted from directly in front of me towards the distant wall.  Flanking it were widely spaced objects. As far as I could tell at this distance they seemed to be statues.
	
	I started to walk along the flagstone path.  The stretch immediately in front of the arch was straight, then it began to curve and twist a few meters ahead.  But somehow when I'd walked a few meters, the path was still straight, and the twisting still began a few meters in front.  I paused.  I must have simply thought the first bend was closer than it was.  I continued forward again.  But somehow the path remained straight, the bend was still in front of me.  Had I been walking in place?  I turned around.  A few meters behind me the path because to curve, a sharp bend lay immediately in front of the arch that I'd entered through.
	
	Curious, I stepped off the path and onto the dirt next to it.  I didn't see anything move, but the path ought to have writhed like a snake, for the section of it immediately next to me suddenly became curved and twisted.  I walked along next to it for a while, following the curves.  Then I stepped onto the flagstones again, and without moving at all, the path straightened, ruler-straight both in front and behind me for several meters.
	
	"Weird."
	
	Nothing answered me but silence.  The Labyrinth was very quiet.  Not the flat, dull quiet of something that was never alive, nor the echoing, ghost-filled quiet of something that has died, but the soft quiet of a forest, where somewhere nearby there are birds and faint rustles of life.  There were birds here, in fact.  Distant calls, and soft, but definitely birds.  They were probably as strange as everything else here.  Perhaps they were actually mice that called like birds.  But whatever they were they were alive and singing.  There were none present in this gigantic open space, however.  This area was dead.  The only sounds of life came from a great distance off.
	
	After walking for a few minutes I drew near one of the objects that flanked the path.  It was, indeed, a statue.  It was quite detailed and realistic, as though the artist had been looking at a real creature, or perhaps had been some kind of genius at making the fantastic look real.  I think I preferred that latter option, for there was something about the statue that was profoundly unsettling.  It was roughly humanoid in outline, but the face was a disturbing blend of human and fish, as were the hands and feet.  It was draped in strands of seaweed that thankfully kept me from being able to tell its gender, if it had any.  
	
	I can't really put into words why I found it unsettling.  Human-fish hybrids were certain strange, and probably quite unnatural, but it was more than that. The thing was fairly ugly, but that wasn't it either.  I've seen a lot of ugly statuary in my life, and none of it made me want to run screaming, but the longer I looked at this statue the more I felt that that I wanted to sprint down the path, to get as far away from the thing as I could.  I looked away for a while, and the feeling let up, but returned as soon as I looked back.  There was just something [i]wrong[/i] about it.  No individual feature of it was particularly wrong, or even particularly creepy, but the whole was just disturbing and unnatural, in a way that "fish-man" in and of itself wasn't.
	
	I gave up trying to examine the thing and hurried down the path.  I couldn't resist stopping to look at the second statue, though.  This one was on the opposite side of the path perhaps ten meters past the first one.  It was the same size as the first, and made of the same slightly greenish stone, but that was all it had in common with its fellow.  Where the first had been easily labeled as a fish-man, this was something much less explicable.  It was probably an animal.  It certainly didn't look like a plant, though I suppose it might have been a seed pod, plants produce some truly strange seed pods. The main body of it was a ribbed barrel sort of shape, like the bodies of some cacti, though it tapered at both ends, which cacti don't generally do.  At the bottom were five arched, stubby tentacles that ended in triangular paddle-like feet.  Midway along the body more tentacles sprouted, one from each rib.  They hung down limply at the thing's sides. Each one branched into thumb-thick ropes and then into fine filaments, and I wondered how the sculptor had carved them.  At the top five fat arms, each tipped in an eye, spread out like some sort of demented flower, or perhaps an upside down starfish.  There were little tooth-lined bell-shaped things that might have been mouths on stalks in between the arms of its starfish head.  It was one of the most bizarre creatures I'd ever seen, if it actually was meant to represent a creature.  
	
	Strangely enough nothing about this was disturbing in any way.  Weird yes, but not disturbing.  If anything looking at it made me feel a little sad.  Somehow it was a melancholy creature, even though there was nothing about that it even remotely resembled a face.  
	
	If the previous statue had come alive I would have screamed and run for my life.  I think if this had started moving I would have tried to talk to it, to understand what it was and why it seemed so sad.
	
	I lingered, looking at it, trying to figure out .  It was as realistically rendered as the other had been, textured with consummate attention to detail.  I reached out and touched it. The stone was warm under my hand.  No doubt simply from the sun shining on it, but it still nearly made me jump.  Maybe it was a living thing, somehow frozen like a statue.  Perhaps that was why it was so sad.  
	
	Eventually I left it and continued down the path.  It still seemed straight where I walked, but ahead and behind it still twisted and snaked. Up ahead there was a rise, a kind of tiny hill.  I wasn't too surprised when I topped it without having climbed at all.  Apparently the path could go up while seeming flat just as easily as it could curve while seeming straight.  On top of the little hill was another statue.  The path divided to go around either side of this one.
	
	And even before I got close enough to make out any detail it was already sending shivers down my spine.  The fish-man had been disturbing.  This was disturbing and [i]frightening[/i].  My heart started beating faster as I approached it.  I had a strong urge to step off the path and circle around it, but my curiosity was strong enough to overcome it.  Although I did stop further away from this statue than from either of the others.
	
	It was fairly humanoid, though the proportions were somewhat different from the human norm.  And the long claws on hands and feet weren't particularly human-like either.  Nor elf nor orc-like, for that matter.  It had bat or dragon wings on its back, so perhaps it was some sort of demon. Its head was not even remotely human, and not like any demon I'd ever heard of either.  It looked more like somebody had cut off the original head and dropped an octopus on its neck instead.  Where the mouth, cheeks, and nose should have been was nothing but a writhing mass of suckered tentacles.  Looking at them made me feel a little bit nauseated.
	
	I'd seen octopus tentacles before, on one memorable occasion when I'd been a teenager and my father had taken me on a trip to the coast.  Not only seen them but eaten them, and found them to be quite edible too.  The suckers had fascinated me, and my father had needed to admonish me several times to quit playing with my food.
	
	These tentacles looked very similar to those I recalled from childhood, but somehow looking at them turned my stomach.  I glanced up from them to meet the statue's blank stone eyes, and another wave of fear, bordering on terror, swept through me.  I backed rapidly away from the statue.  Terror or nausea alone I might have coped with, but both together were too much for me, and I left the path to circle widely around the thing.
	
	Off the path I had to actually climb down the hill, but it wasn't high and soon I was on level ground again.  I was suddenly impatient with the weird path's twisting, and from here I could see the dark arch that lay at the end of it, so I cut straight across, without bothering with the path.  I didn't stop to examine the other statues either, though there were three more along my path.  Passing somewhat near one of them I felt another shudder of wrongness from it, and I figured I'd be happier just leaving them alone.
	
	It was a relief to step inside the brick-lined passageway, out of sight of the statues.  This passage twisted and kinked for some distance, and I was starting to wonder if I'd need to dig out my candles when I saw light ahead.  Soon I was standing in yet another roofless room.  Though perhaps this should have been called a corridor as well.  It was three or four times wider than the brick passage, but it was much, much longer than it was wide.
	
	My attention really wasn't on the room's dimensions though, it was drawn rather forcibly to the room's occupants.
	
	The room was completely full of animals.  Many different kinds, some familiar some not, stood crammed into the space, making it seem narrower than it was.  Everything from an enormous bull that loomed over everything else halfway along to a tiny shrew on the flagstones near my feet.  They all were perfectly still, and I wondered if they were statues too.  
	
	A deer, the common white-tailed forest deer native to this area, stood just in front of me.  I peered at it curiously.  It looked like a real deer, with glossy fur, a slightly damp-looking nose, and antlers very much the texture of bone.  It was more likely to be taxidermy than statuary.  I moved a bit closer and hesitantly touched it.  It remained perfectly still, but it was warm under my hand.  Warmer than sunlight alone could explain on a cool, late autumn day.  The short, sleek fur felt just like real deer hide.  I prodded its shoulder, and it gave under my finger like real muscle.  I reached up and fingered its ear, which felt like a real ear, warm with blood and flexible under my fingers.  I examined a few other nearby creatures and all were similarly real-seeming.
	
	There was enough space between some of them to thread my way through, so I headed forward down the passageway.  It felt very strange to be picking my way through a gallery of frozen live animals.  I had to watch my feet to avoid stepping on the smaller ones.  They were all mammals, I saw no lizards or snakes, and no birds either.  Just and endless variety of rodents, deer, horses, cows, sheep goats, and even a lion and a massive wolf.  
	
	Just past the gigantic bull, which I suspected of being an aurochs, was a unicorn.  I gasped when I saw it.  It was a male, bearded and tufted, but it was more graceful than the most graceful mare or doe in all the world.  I approached it slowly, drinking in the sight of it.  I'd never seen a unicorn.  I'd read countless accounts of them, I'd been utterly fascinated with them as a child, but none lived anywhere near here any more, not within an elven lifetime.  I started to reach out to it, then stopped.  Most of the stories said that unicorns would only tolerate the touch of a virgin.  I was a spinster, yes, but not a virgin.  There had been an elven bard, some years back...A faint flush colored my cheeks.  The unicorn couldn't refuse my touch, but what if I hurt it somehow?  Or if touching it hurt me?  I sighed and let my hand fall.  I had stroked several of the animals in passing, including the amazing coat of the wolf, which was deep enough to bury my hands nearly to the wrist in, but touching the unicorn without its permission would be wrong, I was sure of it.
	
	I carefully worked my way around the unicorn, trying not to even brush against it.  I didn't see any other mythological creatures in the menagerie until I was nearly to the end of the room.  A sphinx was sitting just in front of the doorway that led out, reclining like a cat at rest, and looking directly at me.  I managed to squeeze around a large draft horse, that had blocked my view of the sphinx until I was practically on top of her.  She was definitely female, but I've never heard of a male sphinx so that wasn't surprising.  Seeing her staring straight at me like that, on the other hand, gave me something of a start.
	
	It's just coincidence, I told myself, and started to circled around her, when she blinked.
	
	I yelped and jumped back from her.
	
	The sphinx chuckled, her very human face smiling a smile that had too many sharp carnivore's teeth to be a human smile.  It reminded me of the disappearing cat.  She rose to a sitting position, curling her lion's tail around her paws.  "Hello there little adventurer."  Even sitting she was a little taller than I, and between the claws in those lion's paws and the sharp teeth in her grin I was certain she could take me to pieces without even trying. 
	
	"Uh, hi," I responded articulately.
	
	She blinked at me, a sleepy, feline blink. Her eyes were bright gold.  "Do you know what I am?"
	
	I nodded, swallowing.  "You're a sphinx."
	
	"And do you know much about sphinxes?"
	
	"I've read some about them.  I've, uh, never met one before though."
	
	"Few of my visitors have.  You know then what sphixes do?"
	
	"You ask riddles."
	
	"Indeed."  The sphinx nodded.  "We ask impossible riddles, and eat those who cannot answer them."
	
	I swallowed again.  I wasn't very good at riddles.  I knew a few of the classic ones, but I could never figure out ones I didn't already know.  I'd had a riddle book as a child and on every single page I'd had to cheat and look at the answer in the back of the book.
	
	"I shall ask you a riddle," said the sphinx.  "What goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs in the afternoon, and on three legs in the evening?"  I blinked at her.  That was hardly an impossible riddle, that was the classic sphinx riddle. Anybody who'd so much as heard of a sphinx would know that answer to that one!  "Do you know the answer?" the sphinx prompted when I didn't immediately reply.
	
	"Man," I answered, still rather bemused."He crawls in the morning of his life, and walks upright in the afternoon, and when he is old in the evening he uses a cane."
	
	"Correct." 
	
	I gaped at her some more. "But... you said you asked people impossible riddles.  And I told you I knew about sphinxes.  Why ask me a riddle you knew I would know the answer to?"  I regretted saying it as soon as I had.  Perhaps she would declare that riddle to be invalid, and ask me another one, and eat me.
	
	"Do you know why most people come to the Labyrinth?" she asked.
	
	I was a bit bemused at the change of subject.  "No..."
	
	"There are exceptions, but most people come here to conquer it.  Why they wish to do so I do not know.  Perhaps they have conquered enough to grow bored with mundane conquest.  Perhaps they are insecure and need to prove they can conquer anything, even this.  Perhaps their mothers never loved them.  I do know, however, that conquest is why they come.  Each chamber they enter, each hallway they walk, they consider it conquered, and they believe they own it, merely by having entered it.  This chamber is far enough in that many are hungry."  My stomach growled just then, and the sphinx chuckled softly.  "Many of them, therefore, kill for a purpose. But they nearly always kill.  The animals are theirs, after all, they have conquered them.  So they kill them.   To eat, or because they dislike their stillness, or simply because they can.  
	
	"A few come here not to conquer, but to learn.  The scholars I find a little more tolerable, for at least they don't pretend to have conquered helpless creatures who cannot flee nor fight them.  But they too usually kill, simply to see if the animals are as real and living on the inside as they appear on the outside.  Both sorts also kill by accident, stepping on the mice and shrews as they pass through, and many tip the animals over as well.  And [i]everyone[/i] who comes here touches the unicorn. Some have even tried to strike off his horn, to gain the powers that supposedly lie within it.  
	
	"I hate the conquerors. I ask them impossible riddles and take great pleasure in eating them.  I do not hate the scholars quite as much.  I still ask them impossible riddles, but they often know the answers, and I'm sometimes a little sad when I have to eat one.  But you... You killed nothing.  You did not so much as tread on a vole.  You didn't even touch the unicorn, though you obviously wanted to very much.  You are not a hero, and you are not a scholar either.  And you showed more care for the creatures here than any who has passed this way.  So I could not ask you an impossible riddle, it would have broken my heart to eat you."
	
	"Thank you," I said, feeling a little bit embarrassed.  
	
	"Why did you come here, if not for conquest or for knowledge?" asked the sphinx.
	
	"I came because a Prophet, and a Prophetess, and a Child asked me to," I replied.  "And I guess because I am a gardener."
	
	"Ah."  It was less drawn out than the sound the cat had made, but it was that same mixture of indescribable emotions.  I thought, perhaps, seeing the expression on her nearly human face, that it was something like hope.
	
	"Can you tell me how to reach the center of the Labyrinth?" I asked.
	
	The sphinx shook her head.  "No.  No one here can tell you that.  Many of us do not know ourselves.  And even if we know, we are forbidden.  I can tell you this, though.  Here in the upper Labyrinth there is nothing truly dangerous, at least not for a gardener, who will not flail around with a sword, provoking everything.  When you venture deeper though, tell everything you meet what you are.  Some things there may attack without asking riddles first.  A few are mindless enough that it will not matter, but anything that speaks, tell it that you are a gardener."
	
	"Why?  I mean I understand what you're saying, but why a gardener?  Why was I chosen?  Why prophesies and gods and all this madness?  Gardeners!  What should a gardener have to do with the Labyrinth of Shadows?"
	
	"You will discover that at the heart," said the sphinx.  "And I doubt you'll find it beforehand, for it is also forbidden knowledge."
	
	I sighed, feeling increasingly baffled.  Though I also felt a bit better about my chances of surviving.  I would have to remember to shout "I'm a gardener!" at things, but that was easier than having to fight them! I was not at all suited for fighting anything more dangerous than weeds.
	
	My stomach growled again.  "Is it all right if I stop here and have lunch?" I asked.
	
	"Certainly," said the sphinx.
	
	This end of the passage wasn't quite as choked with animals as most of it, so there was room enough for me to sit next to the sphinx and take off my backpack.  I'd mostly packed granola and jerky.  I could have brought fresh vegetables and fruit, of course.  But they were heavy, and often required cooking, and bruised and spoiled easily.  I had brought a sausage, and some cheese, though only enough for a couple of days.  After that it would be  granola and jerky.  Between them had everything I needed, since the granola was full of dried fruit, and were light enough that I had more than a week's worth.  I was sure I'd be very sick of both by the time I was done.
	
	For now I had a small handful of granola, a slice of sausage, and a generous wedge from my little wheel of cheese.  As I cut into it I felt the sphinx looming over me.  "Is that... cheese?"
	
	"Uh, yes?"
	
	"I haven't had cheese in years.  I don't suppose...?"
	
	Wordlessly I cut a second wedge and held it out to her.  She took it from my hand with her teeth like a cat, and sat it on the ground, where she pinned it down with a paw and set about gnawing on it with every evidence of delight.  I smiled and nibbled my own wedge.  It was pretty good cheese.  It wouldn't be so great tomorrow, once you cut into the wheel it didn't keep as well as I could wish.  But then the sphinx and I had eaten nearly half of it, so by tomorrow night it would be gone.  The sausage would last a day or two longer, and then it would be just the jerky and granola.  I should probably try to find edible things to stretch them out, especially while I was still above ground.  I wasn't sure what there might be in the lower levels.  Mushrooms, no doubt, and I knew many edible varieties, but those were the mushrooms of forest and field.  Cave mushrooms would probably be strangers to me, and one should never eat a strange mushroom.
	
	I mused on mushrooms and other idle thoughts while I ate.  I was tired of pondering gods and destiny, even as they related to gardeners.  Destiny would happen without my needing to think about it.  For now I would think about inconsequential things, and enjoy my meal.